Making it (almost) Official

Hello, let me introduce you to MuttonChop a media player for *nix with a Web UI and a JSON API.

What?

Once configured, MuttonChop will allow one to browse and play audio and video files on a computer. The browsing and control of playback is handled by a fairly basic API and MuttonChop listens for API calls, and serves the web interface, through port 2876. Yea, the port number is B-U-R-N on a telephone. Have I mentioned the sideburn theme here?

Why?

Multiple reasons; most importantly because MuttonChop didn't exist and I wanted a media player on my home network that could be controlled from any networked device with a standard compliant browser; such as a laptop, netbook, tablet, smart phone, or pocket computer.

Rant: I hate remote controls with a lot of buttons. Give me a web interface so I can use my many devices as a remote control.

How?

MuttonChop uses a very minimal web server to listen for API requests. Similarly, MuttonChop also serves a web based UI that utilizes the API via AJAX calls using the jquip javascript library.

A Tangent: Many Moons ago, I wrote a custom interface for MPD in Python, using the PyGame library, so that I could control my music playback with a joystick. If it wasn't for MPD's well documented API, I wouldn't have been able to write the interface (which was my first foray into Python).
Had it not been for MPD's API, I might not have had such a great learning experience with Python. That being said, I can only hope that someone learning to code might try their hand at making a client for MuttonChop; I know I certainly plan on making a client or two.

Back to Coding

Well that's about it for the introduction. Once I get MuttonChop to download audcasts, I'll start making point releases. Until then, the code will be in https://launchpad.net/muttonchop/trunk