>матрациtended zTunes to handle VOB video files, and was able to push some tracks from DVD (ripped using DVDShrink) through zTunes to iTunes. Pretty nice, but I had to manually edit the ripped file names since ripping from DVD doesn’t include any metadata. Can anyone recommend a better way to rip from DVD to VOB, where one can more easily edit the track names before the rip so that the files get created with reasonable names?
Book review: Fermat’s Enigma
This is a nice little book about the history of mathematics and the 350-year quest for the proof to Fermat’s Last Theorem. It was written by the fellow who wrote the BBC / Nova TV special on Andrew Wiles, but includes a lot more information than a one-hour show could. It does a nice job at hitting many of the high points of mathematical development from Pythagoras to modern day, including the “discovery” of zero, then negative numbers, then imaginary numbers, techniques for grappling with infinity, Turing-computability, and Godel’s incompleteness theorem. It doesn’t attack any of these in great depth, but it does provide a nice historical perspective while remaining about as accurate as a lay book can do. It also does a nice job of illustrating the near-hubris required for Wiles to lock himself in a closet for eight years in order to solve a problem that had eluded mathematicians for centuries. Mathematicians will enjoy the panorama; non-mathematicians will likely find the introduction to some of these obscure concepts accessible and enjoyable. Also by this author: The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography
(Recommended to me by: Stuart Marks.)
Our government, protecting us
We’ve recently gone on an “energy efficiency” rampage at the house, replacing bulbs with CFLs, identifying devices that are unnecessarily left on all the time, wrestling with Windows to stay asleep during periods of inactivity, etc. We also recently just installed a “continuous” or “on demand” hot water heater, replacing the 50G direct-vent tank heater we had (it was getting to the end of its lifetime and it was easier to replace it preemptively.)
Unfortunately, the state requires all newly install water heaters to have a thermostatic mixing valve that limits the water temperature to 120 degrees. (For tank systems, it is recommended to keep the tank water at 140, to prevent the bacteria that causes Legionnaire’s disease, but 140 is hot enough to scald. But continuous systems have a control system for the output temperature, so can be safely kept at whatever temperature you program in.) And its probably not even working right, since the output temperature is even less than 120. The valve adds cost to the system and to the installation (probably a dozen additional welds in addition to the valve), and while we now have an infinite supply of hot water, generated more efficiently, its not as hot as we like it.
Reputable plumbers are not able to remove or bypass the valve, which means we need to either find a disreputable plumber or I need to do it myself (read: find an incompetent plumber.)
Note to lawmakers: in my many years of successful shower use, I’ve learned a secret trick to avoid getting scalded: put your hand under the water first — if its too hot, turn down the water temperature before getting in!
Thanks, elected officials, for making my house systems both more expensive and less useful.
zTunes released
As promised in yesterday’s entry, I’m releasing my digital media management software (ztunes) to the world. It’s hosted at github: http://github.com/briangoetz/ztunes. It is written in Ruby and based on “rake”, the Ruby equivalent of “make”. It currently has a long way to go but already does a lot.
You can download the Ruby gem here: http://github.com/briangoetz/ztunes/downloads. (It is not currently in any sort of gem repository.) It defines its gem dependencies, but you’ll also need the Unix tools ffmpeg, flac, and lame. It will run on Linux and Mac but currently has some trouble on Windows since it is dependent on symbolic links for some of its functionality, which Windows doesn’t support.
My motivation for writing this was that iTunes is really inadequate for managing a media library unless (a) you only want to play on iPod (or other Apple) devices and (b) you are willing to let iTunes be in control of ripping and encoding. This didn’t work for us for two reasons: we have Squeezeboxes on all the stereos, and I want to rip my CDs to a non-proprietary, lossless format (that means flac, which iTunew doesn’t support.) We also have music that has been aquired in various other forms (MP3s from Amazon, AAC from iTunes, WMA from Rhapsody) and want to be able to play all the music on all the devices, without transcoding it all down to a least-common-denominator. (In other words, if Squeezebox supports WMA but iPod doesn’t, let Squeezebox play off the original WMA but let iPod play the transcoded version.) And this should be transparent to the rest of the family.
There are several basic tasks in managing the media library that zTunes automates:
- Content ingestion. I’ve got a “drop” folder, into which I want to drop the originals of my media, in whatever form, and have them be analyzed, metadata extracted, and filed into a unified library based on its metadata. My metaphor here is the gas tank of an M1 tank: you can pour anything combustible (gasoline, jet fuel, diesel, used cooking oil) into the tank and it figures out how to burn it. Currently it maps a media file to a filename by using the author/album/title tags for audio or the title tag for video; audio files are named like “The Who/Who Are You/Squeezebox.flac”.
- Transcoding. Not all devices play all device types. So ingested content also needs to be transcoded into alternate formats, which are maintained as parallel directory trees. The transcoded trees are transient; they are merely shadows of the “authoritative” tree. Some files may need be transcoded to multiple formats; for example, video files ripped from DVD or transferred from TiVo might be transcoded to 480 x 320 video for iPhone but 320 x 240 for the older video iPods.
- Syncing. I use the Windows program “Tag&Rename” to edit the metadata tags on my media files, to normalize genres, naming details like “The Cars” vs “Cars, The”, “Vol 1″ vs “Disk Two”, etc. When I edit the metadata on an “original” file, I’d like the file to be renamed accordingly, and metadata changes to be reflected in the transcoded copies. When I delete an original, I want the transcoded copy to go away. Etc.
- Device management. I would like to have a single directory for each device type, that I can point device-specific library management software (iTunes, Squeezecenter, Creative Explorer) at, and it will see the right view of the media library for that device (will only see files it can play; will see them in the “best” format available for that device.)
One thing it does not do yet is manage the integration of your external media library into iTunes (iTunes is particularly bad at dealing with files you didn’t acquire through iTunes.)
See more in the README file here: http://github.com/briangoetz/ztunes/blob/master/README
I’m currently using this to manage a library of ~8,000 media files in half a dozen formats. I’d love to get some more users — drop me a note if you’re interested!
A busman’s holiday
Since I’ve been working way too hard, of course I decided to spend my XMas break…programming. (http://www.answers.com/topic/busman-s-holiday). I had two goals: rewrite my digital-media handling software, and learn Ruby. I’m pretty happy with what I accomplished on both counts.
The motivation to rewrite my digital-media scripts came from having too many conversations like the one below with Stuart Marks:
SM: Hey, you wrote a bunch of scripts to manage audio and video files, are you willing to share them?
BG: Well, in theory, yes. But I’m kind of embarassed to show them to anyone…
SM: Let me guess. Perl?
BG: Yep.
SM: I have a Perl story…
BG: Don’t bother — all Perl stories end the same way.
I’ll post the full details soon — including links to the software on github — but for now I’ll just outline the problem I was trying to solve:
- Ingest digital media files in any format (MP3, AAC, WMA, WAV, FLAC, M4A, M4V, WMV, MP4, etc)
- File them into a library based on their metadata
- Additionally transcode them down to one or more “compressed” formats (MP3 for audio, iPhone-sized Mp4 for video) for memory-constrained devices, without letting go of the original
- Organize them so that each device (iPod, Squeezebox, non-iPod MP3 player) can play all the media, in the best format that the device can recognize natively (Squeezebox supports MP3, WMA, and FLAC; iPod supports MP3 and AAC; Zen supports MP3 and WMA) or a transcoded form if it can’t. For example, for a given track whose source form is WMA, Squeezebox and Zen should see the WMA but iPod should see the MP3; for a track in FLAC, Squeezebox should see the FLAC but iPod/Zen should see the transcoded MP3.
Is this a joke?
We decided to upgrade the hard drive on our Tivo Series3, since the stock 250G drive only holds about 30 hours of HD video. I studied the various Tivo upgrade boards and selected a hard drive that had been recommended by some, the WD 1.5TB “EADS” Green drive. The upgrade process is simple: crack the tivo, extract the drive, move the data from the old drive to the new, “expand” the new drive (updating the partition table so it uses the extra space), and replace the drive.
Attempt 1: 1.5TB drive, using trusty Unix tools — put the drives into a Unix box, copy data with dd, then do the expansion with ‘mfstools’. This is the approach I’ve used several times in the past, with good results. Put the new drive in, turn it on, and it gets stuck forever in the “Wecome, powering up” screen. Back to Google.
Turns out that the S3 can’t see a partition bigger than 1TB, and mfstools expands the partition to the whole rest of the drive, yielding a too-big partition. Turns out mfstools doesn’t support limiting the size of the partition, but the Windows version (winmfs) does, so I’ll use that instead. (Its good to have lots of spare computers around when attempting any sort of upgrade.)
Attempt 2: 1.5TB drive, using winmfs. Put the drives in the windows box, run winmfs to copy the data, and let winmfs expand the partition. It asks me “should I limit the partition to 1TB”, I say yes, good. Put the drives back — same problem. More Googling.
So I discover that “some versions of the drive I was using (WD15EADS) are ‘not compatible’ with Tivo Series3.” Its been years since I’ve heard about incompatible (system, disk) pairs, and this is a standard SATA drive, but OK, I guess I bought the wrong drive. RMA time. Sorry, NewEgg. The Tivo Upgrade FAQ (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=370784) is telling me I should favor the WD EVVS drives instead, so I buy a 1TB drive (WD10EVVS) from Amazon.
Attempt 3: 1TB drive, winmfs. I repeat the process, copying the 250G drive to the new 1TB drive, and put the drive back in the Tivo. (At this point I’ve learned to try it before I fasten all the screws.) Same deal — stuck on the “Welcome, Powering Up” screen. More Googling.
I found this update, which was added after I’d bought my drive:
The WD10EVVS was removed from the list on October 10, because there is a new
batch of that drive, manufactured on September 20, that is not compatible
with the TiVo. These incompatible drives are labeled as follows:
MDL: WD10EVVS – 63M5B0
Product of Thailand
DATE: 20 SEP 2009
DCM: [b]HAxxxxxxxx
R/N: 701640
LBA: 1953525168
I looked at my drive, and sure enough, I had one.
Is this an elaborate joke?
Next up: RMA redux, ordered a WD 10EVDS drive. Stay tuned.
Update: installed the WD10EVDS, worked fine. Fourth time’s the charm!
You’ve been scammed!
I got an odd e-mail from PayPal the other day, telling me I’d paid EU250 to something called “Skype Business Panel.” My first thought was that it was a phish, but careful examination suggested it was real. I logged on to my PayPal account and indeed I’d been charged EU250. What the hell is “Skype Business Panel”, anyway? Turns out it is a skype feature where businesses can allocate credit to the skype accounts of their employees and thereby manage their telephone spending.
I have spent about $10 with skype per year, recharging my skype account from PayPal when it ran low. Somehow (don’t remember) I had authorized skype to charge my PayPal account when my balance got low. And this was the vector through which I was scammed. Someone must have gotten a hold of my skype password (don’t know how), logged on, and billed EU250 to my PP account (which didn’t require a PayPal webflow), and then allocated it to some bogus accounts.
First stop: dispute the charge with PayPal. They were completely unhelpful, pointing me to the authorization and told me to work it out with skype. Fortunately skype was more helpful, and they reversed the charge immediately.
I then logged on to my Skype Business Control Panel (now that I know such a thing exists), and found several bogus accounts linked to mine, which I deleted. After all was said and done, including the refund, I still somehow had a EU100 balance on my BCP, meaning somehow the scammers gave me EU100.
To see if you have any such preapprovals on file: login into your paypal account, click “Profile”, and click “Preapproved Payments.” You can delete them from there.
Laptop upgrade annoyances
We’ve got an old Dell C400 laptop. Its seven or eight years old, but its still going strong, and it just fine for an around-the-house laptop (similar in performance to a modern netbook, but with bigger screen/keyboard, and still nice and light). The limiting performance factor right now seems to be the hard drive; many Windows operations (booting, shutdown, sleep, wake) are disk-seek-bound, so I bought an IDE SSD to replace the existing IDE drive. Hopefully that will also improve battery life and thermal characteristics.
What I’d like is a simple way to move all the data from the existing drive to the new drive, and then just toss the old drive. But this isn’t as simple as it might appear. Laptop IDE cables generally only support one drive, so I can’t use (say) PartitionMagic to do a partition copy the way I would on a desktop system.
A lot of people have suggested various tricks, like:
- Get an IDE-USB adapter, put the old disk on that, put the new disk in the machine, boot from a Linux CD, and use dd to copy the data;
- Get a pair of 40 pin to 44 pin IDE adapters, put them in a desktop system, and copy using PartitionMagic (Windows) or dd (Linux);
- Find a dual-drive 44 pin IDE cable, plug both drives in, and hope that the OS / BIOS recognizes both disks;
- Just reinstall Windows and whatever apps I have on the new drive (including chasing down all the device drivers, such as the touch pad, speakers, etc)
Why is this so difficult? A hard-drive-swap should be a simple, common upgrade operation, that shouldn’t require using tools from another operating system, transplanting the drives into another system, or rebuilding the world from scratch.
On a similar note, I just bought a Samsung NC10 netbook, and was going to wipe the disk and reinstall OSes. I have all the software I want ripped to ISO images, many of them bootable. Why is it so hard to take a bootable ISO and turn it into a bootable USB key? (I tried “unetbootin” but it didn’t work on the PartitionMagic ISO, which is usually my first step in installing onto a new PC.)
WiFi prices finally come down
I’ve always been annoyed by just how expensive WiFi access is for such spotty coverage. I’ve had the T-Mobile plan ($30/mo) for a few years, which provides coverage at Starbucks (until they switched to AT&T), and many airports and hotels. Its been a better deal than not having it (they have coverage at the hotel I stay at most frequently, and the airports I transit through most frequently), but it always felt like too much money for too little service, given that there is not always a TMobile hotspot available. TMobile has roaming deals with many of the other big providers (Boingo, AT&T), but the only real benefit there is the convenience of the billing arrangement, as the roaming fees are not nominal. (Though I do like that TMobile also provides convenient pay-by-the-minute roaming access at many hotspots in Europe.)
Finally there seem to be some better alternatives. Boingo now seems to have an unlimited $10/month plan, so I switched to that. Boingo claims I also get free roaming on many TMobile, AT&T, and other hotspots — I’ll report on that once I get my first bill. I downgraded my TMobile account to the “Pay as you go” plan, which has no monthly fee, and is $3 for the first hour, which seems like a good option to have.
Starbucks also has a reasonably priced plan (Starbucks Gold Card) if you spend a lot of time in or near Starbucks (they are in the process of switching their hotspots from TMobile to AT&T.) For $25/yr, you get two hours per visit of WiFi time (not sure if this is enforced or not), plus 10% discount on most Starbucks purchases.
Initial iPhone experience — disappointing
I live in an AT&T-free state, so I have not had access to the cult that is iPhone. But recently, in preparation for AT&T moving into the state (through an asset swap that involves AT&T acquiring the VT GSM assets that Verizon bought in acquiring Rural Cellular), they are now willing to open accounts with VT addresses. So when in CA this week, I went to an AT&T store to plunk down my money so I could be cool like all my friends. I purchased a 16GB iPhone 3G.
I got out of the store and into my car, and noticed that the edge where the front metal rim meets the plastic case was extremely rough — almost sharp enough to cut. This was not the seamless tactile experience I was expecting from Apple. So I went back in the store, and asked for an exchange. I was told that “Apple prevents AT&T from making exchanges” and was sent to the Apple Store. When I arrived at the Apple Store, the rep informed me that they could make an exchange, but it would be a refurb unit, not a new one, even though mine was clearly new, because I’d bought it at an AT&T store and not an apple store.
So I went back to the AT&T store and argued with the manager. He tried to send me back to Apple. He ended up calling the Apple store, who must have told him to take the exchange, so in the end I got a new, non-defective phone. All was made right, but the experience was none too pleasant, involving three store visits.
While in the Apple store, which had many iPhones on display, I took the opportunity to do some sampling. I discovered that many iPhones had rough or sharp spots, and not all in the same places. Seems that in reducing the cost of the 3G, perhaps some quality-control corners were cut as well, since many were not very pleasing to the touch and there were significant variations in perceivable quality.