a favourite

i should have been asleep hours ago, but i've been doing this or that and before i knew it, it was 2am. i discovered this radio station some time ago, and its been a while since i've given it a listen. i'm glad to report it has only gotten better since turning into an internet only station.

right now i'm listening to the stream in aacPlus format. it sounds really good for only being 32kbps. at this speed you might even get decent results on dialup...

anywho, i downloaded the vlc player to try out this format. aside from not supporting the format, windows media player is acting flaky after an upgrade to the latest version (imagine that). i was very pleasantly surprised and will probably not go back to listening via streaming mp3 or streaming windows media.

i find it really cool that it always displays the name of the song is playing too. oh, and on the website they show the last few songs played. hmm, some of the last couple of songs are just eh. but they do have a section with some archived broadcasts that i would recommend giving a listen if you have a few hours to kill, and a connection to the internet. i for one will be killing time with the 97 best of 2007 show tomorrow.

new look, same crap lens

i'm finally getting new glasses. i've been meaning to do it for the longest time. rthe pair i'd been using broke ecently and so i went ahead and got my exam last week so that i could get a new pair. part of the exam involved dilating the pupils, and for some reason i decided to try and pick out frames AFTER dilation. i decided that since i'm so indecisive and since i couldn't really see what i was buying, i would put it off.

i've been depending on contacts for a week, but today i went back for a checkup and decided to go with the frames i had picked out. they should be ready soon, and in the meantime i put the lenses from my old pair into a new frame. its nothing spectacular, but its nice to have a decent 30 dollar backup. they'll also be getting me by until my new ones come in.

i couldn't decide which photoshopped picture i liked better, so i figured why not both? in case i haven't mentioned it before (or if you missed it), clicking on a picture will allow you to see the whole thing. for some reason blogger likes to cut them in half, and i don't like to shrink them even more.

technorati tags:glasses

use it or lose it

my late teens were a big waste of time. no, really. i wasn't working, only half-ass studying, and not really doing much of anything except accumulating debt by doing stupid things like buying tacos on credit. i sometimes joke that i'm alive today because of ramen noodles. i ate a lot of ramen noodles during this time.

anyway, one of the things that i WAS doing was perfecting a technique to record lp records digitally. in the pre-napster days, this was one of the ways i added to my digital music library.

at the time i had a sony vaio pentium 3 450mhz machine, and it was actually pretty well up to the task (granted i'm not an extremist when it comes to audio quality). i don't remember the model, but i used a cheapie aiwa turntable and the version of sony sound forge that came with the vaio. additionally, i used my home stereo as my pc speakers.

in short, the process wasn't too much different from using a stereo to dub an lp to cassette. however with lots of time on my hands and more options available with software it only made sense to try and make the recording as best as possible. i spent many hours experimenting with sound forge to try and figure out the best solution. eventually i came up with a decent combination of recording levels, equalizer filters, volume boosting, and other things to have good quality in a short amount of time.

well, skip ahead to 2008 and quite a few things have changed. an unknown cause made that cheapie turntable start playing at fast speeds (also it would have been pointless to replace the belt when the time came).  i replaced it with a technics sl-d1 (direct drive, no belt!) purchased on ebay for fairly cheap. the vaio was eventually replaced with something better, faster, stronger, and i ended up selling it in 2007 when i was unemployed and in need of some cash. for the record, if you have money problems, remember that computers really have nothing special about them...most material things that can be replaced.

anyway, this turntable is cool but it requires a phono pre-amp. its the first one i use that doesn't have it built in. i was able to get one at fry's to get me by...but in general its better to have less things between the player and recorder. i think one of these days i'll look into getting a very good modern turntable.

so...i have new equipment now and i'm having to learn what works all over again. its been some time since i've transferred any record. my current recording setup is going like this:

technics sl-d1 -> l.k.g. solid state phono preamp  pre600 -> aiwa stereo (aiwa headphone jack) -> input on my creative zen nano plus mp3 player using the cable supplied by creative and an adapter for the larger size headphone jack

the volume is set to 10 and i'm not using any eq.  the zen nano plus is set to record at its max of 160 kbps mp3. actually, the files i've heard so far sound pretty good. i haven't applied any restoration filters on the files yet. i think i have sound forge on my desktop still, and i'll have to see if i take it off of there so that i can put it on my laptop. if not then i will just edit the files on my desktop...

anyway, this all came about because my uncle came into town on saturday and is leaving on tuesday. during his welcoming party i was using my desktop to play the music, and when everyone left we migrated to playing some records. he was really surprised that a lot of them are in good shape considering their age, and also he was surprised at my music selection. we found a record entitled "raphael canta..." by raphael, and he sort of lit up as he asked if there was a way for him to have a copy. given my previous experience with the whole process i assured him it would not be a problem. now i'm finding that i'm a little rusty and have actually forgotten a lot of the process.

i guess it gives me good practice since i want to try and transfer in rainbows from the lp with just having to play the vinyls once. so...wish me luck. and if you can think of some other software i can use besides sound forge or adobe soundbooth, please let me know!  please, no search engine recommendations though...only first hand experience recommendations!

i don't know why i find this cool....the record player (like many others) has a red light and some marks to guide you for playback speeds. i think its because of variations of weight or something, but basically you have the right speed when the marks appear to be staying still. its pretty hard to take a picture of this with just a basic camera setup like mine...but i did my best. you can kinda make out the marks at the very bottom. there are other marks too for various speeds. i'll try and take one during the playback of a 45, since these appear higher up and may be easier to photograph. i guess i did a decent job of getting the speed because the turntable was on, the lens was open for some time, and you can make it out in the picture.

technorati tags:forgetting, how, to, transfer, vinyl, to, digital

160 vs. 320

i felt a little experimental today, and decided to put somewhat of an end to something i've wondered about for a few months.

when radiohead "leaked" in rainbows on october 10th, there was much griping in the e-world about the release being in mp3 format and only 160 kbps bitrate. personally i thought it a moot point, as people should be arguing more about the music itself than the bitrate of the files. i thought 160 kbps (considering that it was not a re-rip) was very good balance between quality and bandwidth demands. if they had decided to release via torrent, then yes it would have been nice to get higher bitrate files, but in the end the files were quite decent to my ears.

i also knew that in december i would be receiving the cds and 45's in the box set. to me, analogue has a totally different sound from digital, but that doesn't make the music any less enjoyable.

anyway, today i did an experiment. i popped open a (tall) can of guinness and poured it into a glass. once i had a slight buzz going, i compared the 160 files to the 320 files i ripped from the box set cd that came december 24th. i use audiograbber to rip and the freebie lame mp3 codec.

i was very surprised that with headphones on I COULD NOT TELL THE DIFFERENCE. in the end, i'm attributing it to only slightly-better-than-decent headphones and a not so great sound card on my laptop. when playing on my Zen Nano Plus mp3 player connected to my car, i've felt like the higher bitrate has a difference to it. i've never been able to pinpoint it, but i feel like my speakers distort less. yet, through my laptop and in a buzzed (and therefore more passionate about music state), i really couldn't tell between the two files.
its quite possible that because the lame codec is available freely that it is somehow inferior. i suppose its also that a direct mp3 is better than one ripped off a cd.

i suppose i'll delete the 160 and keep the 320. my mp3 player has an input, and i plan on using it to encode 160 files directly from the 45's. 160 is the max it can encode it, but it does a fairly decent job of encoding and its much less hassle than connecting the record player to my desktop (which has the better sound card out of all my machines).

so my final verdict is that you shouldn't worry too much about the bitrate and pay more attention to the music itself. i'd also like to say that i was very surprised, because normally my ears are pretty good when it comes to being picky. i can normally tell the difference between a 128, 160, and 192 file. i can normally tell when a song is playing at a slightly slower or faster speed than it should.  maybe i'll try the experiment again tomorrow using my mp3 player instead of the laptop...

anywho, i've babbled on long enough. its 216 and i should be awake in about 5 hours. the guinness hasn't totally worn off though....

have a great weekend!

technorati tags:in, rainbows, radiohead, 160kbps, vs, 320kbps

hooray!

sometimes i wonder...

i'll be with near someone who's looking for something online, and they put in the strangest searches. if they're the type to accept my help i'll pitch in  by suggesting search terms. i've been searching so long that if i know what i'm looking for it usually only takes me 1 try. every once in a while though, i'll get stumped.

recently i'd been a little mix of sad and angry. a web browser i'd come to love, Flock, changed drastically...for the worse. i am glad to say that i am not alone on this one.

anyway, i'll start off with what i like about Flock. Flock is based on Firefox, but you can think of it as a sort of a customized Firefox with social networking in mind. The idea is that you store/consolidate accounts from different popular websites and then they kind of become features of the browser. So for example, i have a photobucket account and a blogger (blogspot) account. i store my accounts and i can now use flock upload to photobucket without having to go to the photobucket website. i'm currently writing this blog from just going to the file menu and selecting "new blog". i don't know, it just seems nice to be able to blog so easily. it skips quite a few steps than when writing a blog by going to blogspot.

anyway, i started off with a beta version of flock. it essentially had the same feel as firefox but with some extra features that came in handy. so...what happened? well first off they changed the look. the new browser has all sorts of strange buttons that are supposed to be appealing, but instead are kind of confusing. they are also kind of bulky. next,  some features seemed to have disappeared altogether. suddenly dragging and dropping a photo into a blog was not as easy as it used to be. so to be quick and sum this up, the older beta version had easier to use features and looked nicer. the newer version had strange changes.

well, i've been looking around on my desktop because i was sure that i had the installer somewhere. i wanted to install the version i liked into my laptop. after all, i'm more likely to blog from my laptop these days. i'd been looking on the internet, and the only old version i'd found was a beta version that looks and acts very similar to the current version. for that i might as well get the current version! suddenly it dawned on me that i should type "download old flock" as my search term. voila! just a few results down i found links to several old versions, including 0.7.9.1 beta (last beta before it switched to the new look and feel).

so i'm happy to be flocking again. its not my default browser, but it does come in quite handy. maybe one of these days i'll do a real post on all its features i use.

anyway, the official story is that they don't offer it for download anymore because its based on an old version that is no longer supported by anyone. nuts to that! i don't need support. as for security, well there are many plugins out there that can help with that. its not like i depend on my browser for security anyway...

is there such a thing as security?

technorati tags:flock, 0.7.9.1, beta, installed, on, tx1000, running, winxp, sp2, totally, unsupported

bed, bath, and blogging!

i'm sitting here happy as can be. i'm typing semi-blindly because i finally went to have my eyes checked tonight and my pupils are still a bit dilated. anywho, aside from the excitement of getting new glasses and having new contacts that don't burn the hell out of my eyes, i'm also happy because i've been using winxp on my laptop all day without a hitch. its strange to be so happy about that, but i'll elaborate a bit. i recently purchased an hp tx1327cl (more generically the tx1000). at its heart is a pretty neat amd turion 64 x2 tl-58 which runs at 1.9 ghz. its a dual core laptop, so its kind of like having 2 processors if you have it setup right. i upgraded to 4gb of pc5300, although a 32bit system will only recognize about 3gb. anyway, pretty much all laptops these days are coming with some version of windows vista. this particular laptop came with the 32 bit version of vista home premium (they make it sound so appealing, eh?). the first sticker i removed was the windows vista sticker, however i did give it a shot for several months. in the end it just wasn't cutting it.

actually within the first week i was dual booting vista with amd64 ubuntu linux. unfortunately this laptop isn't as linux friendly as some of the other hp laptops i've used in the past. the most annoying thing is that i couldnt get the power management to work properly. so, after some time i looked into installing winxp pro again. today i am happy to report everything works. it is a shame that hp doesn't support xp on this laptop officially (of course it would totally rock a gazillino times more if they officially supported linux).

my main problem with vista is that it is a resource hog. it seems like with just opening messenger and a few webpages i would easily use 1.5gb of memory, which is crazy. also, the operating system itself uses quite a bit of disk space. oh, and my bluetooth adapter wouldn't work. partition magic wouldn't work either. et cetera et cetera et cetera.

i tried installing the 64bit version of xp first. apparently the performance with premiere (video editing) has something like a 40 percent improvement...or maybe it was 60? i can't recall, but it was something drastic. unfortunately xp64 is pretty much a pointless system because apparently hardly anybody makes drivers for it.


i installed xp pro (regular 32bit) and its great. right now i have notepad, dreamweaver, photoshop, firefox (with several tabs and playing music), and outlook 2007 open and i'm using slightly under 500mb of ram. what does that mean? well more resources are available for anything that needs it. i suppose its like back in the day when my family had 2 identical jet skis. we'd floor it, and i'd go faster than my dad...presumably because i weighed at least 100 lbs less.

i think it would be in hp (or any company's) interest to support more than just the most recent operating system. i give kudos to any company who lets their users choose. getting every feature working in xp proves to me that there is no real reason to downgrade to windows vista. actually the only cool thing i like about vista is that when you're copying files it won't totally choke if it finds an error with 1 file.

anyway, in other news...

i recently saw the movies "The U.S. vs John Lennon" and "Sicko". I really was expecting USVJL to have lots of stock footage i'd already seen in "Imagine", and was pleasantly surprised there were only a few things i'd seen before. Oddly enough these 2 movies have something in common. Nixon!

It's amazing/troubling to know how little we are taught about some things. I feel like all i ever knew of Nixon were the blips that came out in forrest gump. Of course, that's all i still know...since neither of these 2 movies was actually about Nixon.

i feel like history has been allowed to repeat. i swear i've heard Bush say some of the very words Nixon used with regards to war. that's all i have to say about that.

well, i'm off to see if i can find a picture of myself with my most favourite glasses ever. hopefully i'll find one and then also find a similar frame when i go to the store tomorrow. i'm stoked!

my apologies.

i failed some people today...
i was driving home around 4am, and on one of the hills i hit the brakes. my radar detector hadn't gone off, but i thought there was a cop pulled over. as i got closer i could see a disabled vehicle, glass (fresh?) on the road, and a pickup truck pulling away from the scene. i slowed down to 45 in a 60, but still passed up a larger dark pickup truck. unfortunately it was close to a highway intersection and i wasn't able to get a license plate number or anything else. i even had a hard time getting my camera out of my pocket. i called the non-emergency sapd number i have saved on my cell, because that's all i could do. they said they would send a car.

i've had my car broken into and lots of expensive equipment stolen. the cops never contacted me again (unless it was to ticket me for a stupid inspection tax). i wanted to help, but couldn't.

i tried though. anyway, these were from earlier...

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