Watching the Presidential Debates

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 17:10:25 -0700
politics, tech

Tonight I will be watching the presidential debates. Since I can't stand the commentators on any of the major news networks, I will once again be watching the debates on cspan. If you don't have cable (or your cable plan doesn't include CSPAN), you can watch the video feed online. If you're running Debian, you can also use rtmpdump and mplayer to play the stream on your computer fairly easily:

  rtmpdump -v -r rtmpt://cp82346.live.edgefcs.net:1935/live?ovpfv=2.1.4 \
     --tcUrl rtmp://cp82346.live.edgefcs.net:1935/live?ovpfv=2.1.4 \
     --app live?ovpfv=2.1.4 --flashVer LNX.11,2,202,238 \
     --playpath CSPAN1@14845 \
     --swfVfy http://www.c-span.org/cspanVideoHD.swf \
     --pageUrl http://www.c-span.org/ | \
     mplayer -xy 3 -;

Then you can find a bingo card of your own, and play debate bingo! Or some other horrible drinking game.