Thoughts, Raves & Outright Beatings

Ok…so it sounds like it may have been an outtake from a Keane vs. Coldplay jam off. (huh?) I still love it!

Discuss…

D-tags: Music, MUSE, Video

As many of you may recall, I went on a rant a little while ago about, among other things, the inability to find a decent program that would crack work around the current DRM code on my ITunes purchases so as I can play my fave Muse CD on my MP3 player (which is most definitely NOT an Ipod! :P). Which I was able to do anyway. Just doing it the old fashioned way (output=>line in; sounds suck, but it works).

Well today, per Slashdot, it looks as if the holy grail of DRM killing has been discovered. Of course, to get this program to work I had to search hi and lo for other components I would never have thought to have needed: Python 2.4 (I”m not a programmer; don’t ask) and FAAD.exe (oh great! Yet ANOTHER command-line based piece of functionality; apparently anything resembling a GUI-based interface for some of these items is non-existent. It also took me some doing to find this proggie; most places just had the source code - Like I said, I am NOT a programmer!). First, the program (which NEEDS Python to work) converts your protected .m4p file into a raw .aac file. Then, if you want this .aac file to play in something like, say, Winamp, you need to run it through FAAD.exe so at can convert to an ADTS-based .aac file. None of my encoding/decoding software can deal with any .aac file, protected or no, so my best solution, after that, is to run each converted AAC file in Winamp, one at a time, with the DiskWriter plug-in set as the output source. If you purchased the MP3 option from Winamp, you can save the export as an MP3. Otherwise, I’d just save it as a .wav file, then convert to mp3 in either Mediacoder or Audacity. At this point, it’s just a matter of turning off my crossfading in Apple and killing my equalization functions in winamp so the results don’t sound like crap.

I was having a bratty little school girl moment and was thinking of doing a “They won’t but I will” toss in terms of providing a lead for this proggie. However, I don’t want any hate from the hackers, so I’ll just let Google do my dirty work for me.

And remember, kids’ you’ll also need Python and FAAD to make this heap go… Best of, er, luck!

D-tags: Tech, Musings, MP3

One of the coolest things about Netvibes is that all these blog urls I’ve collected over the years can all be converged into one resource. I can now easily peruse experiences of others not viewed in a while.

Anyway, given how I was getting into the lives of others, I was considering not posting (or posting any further) today…

But this guy’s recent experience at a US airport changed my mind.

Sure, an dark-looking guy wearing a shirt with Arabic writing on it in a a large airport may cause some Fox-fed paranoid dumbasses to freak out. But come on! Has it come to a point in this country where every single pinpoint of opinion is subject to the highest of scrutiny?

People come to this country to get away from shit like this. My folks did. To experience it here NOW is beyond hopelessness.

Best quote from the article:

It sucks to be an Arab/Muslim living in the US these days. When you goto the middle east, you are a US tax-payer destroying people’s houses with your money, and when you come back to the US, you are a suspected terrorist and plane hijacker.

D-Tags: Politics, Musings

Well? Doncha?

The Pussycat Dolls did start out as a burlesque act. So who the hell were the Malaysians expecting? Josie and the Pussycats?

Wait a minute…

Given the current social mores permeating the Malay Peninsula, you think they may not have gone over well there either?

Discuss…