Author Archives: anachostic - Page 40

I Love You Too, World.

Posted by anachostic on January 18, 2016 No comments

I thought I was over that whole ordeal. You know, the one where a random person slammed into the back of my car while we’re all going full speed on the interstate and just took off. I spent quite a while both angry at the world and a little fearful about when it was going to happen to me again. Eventually, I relaxed and accepted that driving in traffic is nothing more than travelling through a large sewer pipe with pieces of shit flowing all around you. I got back to feeling sorry that these pathetics were stressing themselves out over nothing. I had moved on.

But, people are going to be people. I came out of the mall the other day and saw someone had been messing with my car. The passenger-side mirror was rotated inward partially. However, that wasn’t the first thing that I noticed. The first thing I noticed was the driver-side mirror was rotated right the fuck off the door and was dangling by its power cable.

My rage passed through me pretty quickly. I briefly considered kicking in the door of the truck beside me, since their door could have broken off my mirror, but reconsidered for a few reasons. First, it’s unlikely someone would bust off the mirror of the car beside them and continue to stick around. Second, it didn’t look like there was damage on their door consistent with the scenario. Finally, what good would it do? Seeing that the other mirror was fucked around with made it more likely it was just a roving gang of teen punks. You just can’t have anything nice anymore. Respect for others’ property? Ha!

What can you do in a case like that? After I cut off the mirror and was carrying it to the trunk like a cephalophore (your word for the day), the guy who owned the truck next to me – who fortunately did not have his door kicked in by an angry child – showed up. He had just gotten there about five minutes before, but didn’t notice anything amiss. Probably just unobservant. He suggested going back to the mall and asking for security cam footage. Yeah, that’ll help. “Oh we know those guys! We have them in our address book. We’ll send the cops to their house again now.” Another victimless crime for them, another mild annoyance for the rich guy with the nice car.

On the positive side (if there is one), it’s not going to cost me as much as I was expecting. A new set of mirrors is like $90. Might as well get both to ensure they are perfectly matched. Not sure how much it will be to paint them, but it shouldn’t be much. The mirrors did need repainted anyway since they had lots of chips from road gravel and whatnot. At least this is something I don’t have to get insurance involved with.

“Hi, Progressive. Yeah, it’s me again. Haha, yeah, yeah, I know. Hey, guess what happened this time? You won’t believe it”

Schrodinger’s Lottery

Posted by anachostic on January 14, 2016 No comments

This morning, I woke up and I had won the Powerball jackpot. And at the same time, I did not win it. I was, for a brief while, Schrodinger’s cat. And I could have remained in that state for as long as I wanted, provided I did not seek the truth or have it exposed to me by some means.

That period of time lasted longer than I thought. I checked the news and learned there were three winners. No change in status yet. One of the winners was in my state. Still no change in status. I made it another couple hours all the way into work until I overheard a co-worker saying the ticket was sold in another city in the state. Then, I knew my status.

Still, the idea of Schrodinger stuck with me. Not being a quantum theory expert, my understanding is that anything can be in an infinite variety of states and doesn’t become actuality until it is observed. The idea can really mess with your head especially if you have a good imagination. There could be a skeleton behind you right now, but you won’t know until you turn around and confirm that. If you wake up in the middle of the night, you could actually be dead. You won’t know until someone can confirm to you that you are not. Validate me!

If you have heard of or studied Theosophy, there is the idea that our spirit, or astral body (yes, the same astral as in astral projection), is so like our physical body and the astral world is so like the physical world, that upon a sudden death, many people aren’t even aware they are dead.

Quantum theory also suggests that there are infinite universes where all other alternatives exist. Who observed them, I have no idea. but whoever observed this one didn’t win me any Powerball. Thanks for that. But congratulations to my quantum fellows who did win. See if you can get someone to observe some of that stuff my way.

Exact Audio Copy Secure Ripping And Image Files

Posted by anachostic on January 6, 2016 No comments

I made a brief comment on this technique in a previous post, but I’m going to expand on it a little more because I tried a practical test of the technique and the results initially seemed valid.

Ok, so you are using Exact Audio Copy to rip your CDs, and you want to make sure they are good rips, but sometimes, you get “Read Error” and even worse, “Sync Error”. This means you have a problem reading your CDs. But you look at your CD and it’s pristine. What’s the problem?

I had this happen on a few CDs and I thought, what if I copied the CD to a binary file, mounted the binary file as a virtual drive, then ripped it from there? Well, guess what? That works! But the skeptic in me wondered why the disc would read as data, but wouldn’t read as audio data. It’s still reading the bits off the disc, why would one fail and the other didn’t?

So, I needed to prove to myself that a imaged CD was a bit-for-bit copy of the original. To do this, I decided to rip some imaged CDs with AccurateRip enabled. AccurateRip creates a checksum from the read data. The checksum would then be compared against a large database of other known good rips and it would confirm that the results were the same.

So, I chose four CDs from AccurateRip’s Key Disc list and imaged them to files. I used Daemon Tools Lite for the imaging. (If you’re going to do this, go to oldversion.com and get an older version of Daemon Tools that doesn’t have the imaging feature removed. I used v4.45.4 and disabled updates.) I imaged the discs at 24x speed to lower the chance of read errors. The file format I used was MDX. ISO would not cut it. Then I mounted each disc using Daemon Tools to a virtual drive and used Exact Audio Copy to rip the images to WAV. There is no need to rip to a compressed file because the checksum is calculated from the uncompressed data.

Part of the ripping process in Exact Audio Copy was configuring AccurateRip. I had to provide three Key Discs for it to properly set the offset for my (virtual) CD drive. I had four Key Discs, so I was well set. Ripping from a virtual drive is pretty impressive. It rips on my computer at 50x, faster than the theoretical 48x max my CD-ROM would do.

Disc 1 results: 8/10 tracks accurately ripped
Disc 2 results: 10/10 tracks accurately ripped
Disc 3 results: 3/9 tracks accurately ripped
Disc 4 results: 5/10 tracks accurately ripped

Not the results I expected. However, it was curious that discs 1 and 2 were newer discs and 3 and 4 were older discs. So I grabbed four more CDs, two new, two old, and tried again.

Disc 5 (old): 8/9 accurately ripped
Disc 6 (old): 0/10 accurately ripped
Disc 7 (new): 10/11 accurately ripped
Disc 8 (new): 1/12 accurately ripped

So, that doesn’t help anything, or at least doesn’t prove my hypothesis is correct. So, let’s rip the physical media and compare it to the virtual rips. We’ll do discs 5-8 since they’re in front of me.

Disc 5: Virtual 8/9, Physical 9/9. The tracks that were accurately ripped between the two had the same checksums.

Disc 6: Virtual 0/10, Physical 0/10. All tracks had matching checksums, just no matching AccurateRip entry.

Disc 7: Virtual 10/11, Physical 11/11. Same checksums on all successful tracks.

Disc 8: Virtual 1/12, Physical 12/12. The one successful track matched on checksum.

So what’s the takeaway from this? It would appear that imaging a CD to a file is the equivalent of ripping a CD in “Burst mode” (as termed by Exact Audio Copy). This means you may or may not get the exact bytes. But, when ripping in Burst mode, AccurateRip is not available. Doing the rip from an image file can get you AccurateRip results for some of the files and will flag others as not accurate. This way you sort of get the best of both worlds.

But, what you lose is the re-reading attempts that Exact Audio Copy performs in “Secure mode”. And in those cases, you may be able to salvage a track that might read poorly in Burst mode or through imaging. Remember, in burst mode, you get one try at reading the data (with error correction).

The important takeaway for me is that imaging a CD makes no improvement. It’s not going to make the CD any better. My new plan will be to use Secure mode to rip all the possible tracks, skipping tracks with Read errors, then re-rip the skipped tracks with Burst mode. That’s the same result as ripping an imaged CD with Secure mode.

Another Round Of Metadata For My Friends Here

Posted by anachostic on December 29, 2015 No comments

As I mentioned with my new MP3 (phone) player, a lot of my music had no album cover art. Now I’ve heard, but can’t confirm, that Windows Groove Music uses cover art stored in the files, so I’m doing another round of metadata cleanup. This time, I’m embedding the album cover art into the files.

I had resisted this for a while, because I didn’t want my library size to balloon. But, considering each song file is somewhere around 25MB, what’s another 100kb on top of that? Plus, it should ensure that I never have to go hunting for album art ever again, because the art is always in the files.

Well, the deal is, there’s some album art that’s not all that easy to find and some that’s in poor quality. So, as I made my way though the albums, I had to do a few scans along the way and post them to my Flickr account for posterity.

This will be a never ending cycle, I’m sure. Right now, my album art is 500×500 on average. Soon (sooner than I expect, I’m sure), the standard will be 800×800, then 1200×1200, then on and on.

The next thing will be embedding artist images in the files, because that will be used for a future utility I have kicking around in my head right now. We’ll see how that goes along.

Everything’s A Phone Now

Posted by anachostic on December 25, 2015 No comments

A recent post on a blog I follow informed me that there was a great deal happening on an entry-level, budget Windows Phone – the Lumia 435. I could pick one up for $30. That made me pause for a moment.

A brand new smartphone, capable of running Windows 10 Mobile, with expandable memory that can take an SD card up to 128GB. What if I bought it, never put a cellular SIM in it, maxed out the memory and just used it as an MP3 player? Huh? What’s stopping me?

Let’s look at some current MP3 players. They are really dwindling in numbers, because, well, smartphones do everything now. 16GB Sony Walkman – $80. 8GB Sandisk Clip – $35. 160GB iPod – $399. 32GB Zune HD – $275. This phone – $30. 128GB MicroSD card – $50. And I don’t even need the 128GB card now. I have a 32GB card from my old phone. Consider this a done deal.

So now I have another Windows phone. It’s going to be my new MP3 player. And better than other MP3 players, it will do Internet and Bluetooth audio, and games, and whatever else I want (except phone calls).

I began setting it up by installing the 32GB SD card I had around and upgrading the phone to Windows 10. Boy, what a drawn-out process that upgrade was. When I was done upgrading, I then uninstalled every app except for the ones I needed – primarily Groove Music.

Ok. Now, how do I get my music on there? I keep the music on my computer in WMA Lossless. That format works with Zune. But you can’t sync to anything other than a Zune device using the Zune software. And although I can copy the files right to the phone, I don’t want to use my lossless files since they’re around 25MB per song. I was dreading the idea of manually transcoding my entire library just to copy it and delete it. Surely there has to be some software that would automate that.

Enter the old stalwart, Windows Media Player. This software will not die, nor should it ever die. Windows Media Player can sync files to another device that is nothing more than a memory card. And in the process of doing so, it can transcode the files to a different bit rate – Exactly what I need.

Then you choose what you want to put on your device, and drag it to the Sync pane. Then Windows Media Player just does its thing.

So, with my test using the 32GB card, I got about 40-odd percent of my music on there. There’s some stuff I can take off because it’s not really mobile audio stuff. I also discovered that Windows Media Player encodes to WMA format, so I probably don’t need a high bitrate of 192k. 192k in MP3 is moderate quality, 192k in WMA is very high quality. Bringing that down a notch to 160k should reduce the space usage. And I see I also need to get cracking on cleaning up my album art.

But! Once that’s all done, I will have a pretty sweet MP3 player, that isn’t a phone, but really is a phone, just not being used as a phone.

Late Night Thoughts (But Torture Is Discussed)

Posted by anachostic on December 18, 2015 No comments

I’m coming down with a cold (I don’t get sick). Last night was the transition from a scratchy throat to a runny nose. Obviously, I was kept awake. During one of my wake-up sessions, I had a thought: Getting death threats from people could be pretty scary. But if you got a death threat from a death metal band, I don’t think it would be scary at all. How could you even take it seriously?

“I’ll rip out your guts!” – Yeah, ok. I hear ya.

“I’ll murder you while you sleep!” – You said that on your last two albums.

“You will be tortured for years and years!” – Blah, blah, blah.

And threats like that, whether you hear them from a death metal band or from someone who is trying to express how they don’t like you, are, by-and-large, empty. It’s what I will call a “smorgasbord of torture.” The person has no clue what they are going to do to you, so they say they’re going to do it all. Break your legs, crush your skull, rip out your tongue. Yawn. Do they even know how much effort those things take? Do they even know how a body works? Clearly, you can’t rip out someone’s guts and torture them for years. It’s not realistic. And what, in the realm of death metal music, is ever realistic?

Now, what you have to watch out for is someone who makes a threat and then starts making the threat more and more specific and detailed. This person knows. This person has a plan. This person is the one to be feared.

So yeah, I hope I feel better soon. It’s the holiday season, after all.

Christmas Cheer Is Here

Posted by anachostic on December 15, 2015 No comments

I have to say, I love my first Christmas tree. It’s a great mix of standard ornaments, special ornaments, and embellishments. The color palette is varied enough without being too schizophrenic. The ornament coverage is full, but not overwhelming. It’s at the point where adding garland would be too much.

There’s a nice mix of balls – matte, shiny, and clear. There’s a set of 6 glass icicles and an even cooler set of 3 ice drops, just enough to be a nice surprise here and there. Then there’s a bunch of diamond and ruby drops hanging at the ends of branches.

As far as unique ornaments go, there’s enough on the tree that it might be a nice scavenger hunt to find them all. This would be the list:

Hedgehog
Balloon animal dog
T-Rex
Flamingo
Bird nest
Coke cans
Buoy
Nutcracker
All three birds
The owls

And there’s plenty of others, too, but not unique enough to call out. Metal bells, acrylic stars, snowflakes, and candy canes, fabric candy canes, and more.

As I mentioned before, all the ornaments are hung with fancy hangers, not the simple green or silver wire hangers. Aside from how much easier it is to attach the hook to the ornament and how much easier it is to hang on the tree, these fancy hangers are sturdy and become a part of the decoration. So not only do you look at the ornament and try to ignore or look past the simple hanger, you see the hanger as part of the ornament.

I remember how the lower loop of the simple wire hooks wrapped around the bulb’s hanging loop. I remember how that was always just a little annoying to connect the two and it was enough of a hassle to not want to detach it when breaking down and packing the bulbs back up. Well, the fancy hooks don’t loop; they’re just hooks. So disassembling them after the season is going to be a breeze. It makes we wonder why the wire hooks had to be so secure like that?

The great news is that neither cat nor dog had any incident with the tree. For the most part, there wasn’t any need to put the non-breakables at the bottom of the tree. But we did put all the bells down there as an early warning system. In fact, the cat loves it. “…and to all a good night”, indeed.

Christmas Startup Costs

Posted by anachostic on December 13, 2015 No comments

This is the first year I’m going to be celebrating Christmas. When I say that, I mean this is the first year I’m going to be doing the traditional tree and trimmings. In years past, I did a tiny 3-ft, pre-lit artificial tree. You know, the bare minimum. I’m approaching this as a multi-year project, building up a little each year. Maybe next year will be exterior decorations.

The point I’m making is that I’m starting with nothing. I don’t even think I have a single tree ornament of my own. So, if you are considering doing your first Christmas, consider this list for the things that you will need. But, keep in mind, most all of these will be reusable next year, so you can spend a little more and get quality stuff that will last year after year. Normally, I would factor in whether I wanted to have something new each year and budget for disposable items. But I think Christmas stuff should have a sense of stability and memories each time they are used. And if your approach is also a multi-year vision, decide what you want for next year and hit the after Christmas sales.

So, this is what I started with:

Tree Skirt

This was the first advance purchase. The GF and I were evaluating our options at Old Time Pottery and we found one with the fabric we liked, but not the right colors. Later, we were at Lowes and saw one we both immediately liked. We noticed that Lowes’ Christmas supplies were really selling out (impressive), so I grabbed it right then to avoid any remorse over missing something we both agreed on. Price: $30.

Tree Lights

Wow, so many options. When I was growing up, we had one option for bulbs. I think they are classified as C7. But now, you have the LED lights and all these different shapes and colors. This is where I had to start thinking. I could do a themed tree, like all gold or silver or blue, in which case, I’d probably get a single-colored set. Or, I could go traditional and get the multi-colored sets.

I like the look of themed trees, but they seem so boring to me. I wanted a more interesting tree, with ornaments of all different types, to encourage exploration and to capture different moments. So, the lights I choose will either be multicolored or dual colored.

I started at Lowes. What the hell. They’re down to less than a full isle of Christmas stuff. Less than a full isle! They didn’t have the lights I wanted. Ok, let’s try Sears. Sears usually surprises me with prices and selection. Nope, Sears is down to thin pickings as well. Ok then, I know Target has them because I saw them the day before when I bought my tree stand.

I bought a 200-bulb string and two 50-bulb strings, for a total of $63. All LED, all sphere shaped. The 200-bulb is shiny and faceted and the two small strings are solid pearl lights. That’s about 100 ft of lights, at $.63/ft Not cheap, but much better than I budgeted.

Tree Ornaments

Consistent with my choice to have a non-themed tree, the ornaments will be a collection of many different shapes, colors, and styles. One thing I am against, though, is “shatter-resistant” ornaments. These plastic bulbs with the visible molding seams are cheap and tacky. I understand their place in families with dumb children, but for the record, I never broke a glass ornament when I was growing up. And since my household is not and will not be child-friendly, I’m having nice high-quality glass ornaments. Although, after discussing with the girlfriend, we’re going to have to put shatterproof ornaments of some sort at the bottom to account for curious cat and clumsy dog – their first Christmas with a real tree.

There’s no shortage of variety when it comes to ornaments. And the prices are all over the place, too. You’ll probably start with some multi-sets, then in future years, buy unique individual pieces to create memories.

I hit two places at first, Old Time Pottery and Michaels, and got some basic red/green/clear balls and a spire tree topper (which I’ve learned is called a Finial). Total running cost: $47. Then I did another run at Big Lots, Sears and JCPenney. The quality is getting better and plenty of diversity. Total now: $104. At this point the cat thinks this is going to be the best Christmas ever.

Then I hit Pier 1, Hobby Lobby, Bealls, Target (again), and Michaels (again). And I think we’re done. Total: $195. We did decide to go with the fancy ornament hooks instead of the simple wire hooks. I have to say, they’re worth the investment, both in looks and usability.

As far as what we ended up with, there’s probably close to 200 ornaments on the tree, between glass balls, icicles, bells, diamond and ruby gems, a few birds, a bird nest, individual personal items, and some novelty items.

The Tree

The tree is going to be a live tree. The initial reason for this is to have the more traditional experience. If I find I don’t like it, I can always go artificial next year. But I think I owe it to myself to try the real tree first.

We went to a tree stand that’s always been coming to town since I can remember: “Booger Mountain”. We picked out a tree. A big tree. 8 feet high and dense and wide. They only took cash, and it was a chunk of cash. $90.

Tree Stand

Since I’m going natural, I’ll need a tree stand. I might as well get a nice one. I had a couple of gift cards from Target, so I figured I’d use them there. I ended up with a nice plastic stand with an easy watering opening for $20, $10 after gift cards. I thought that was a good deal until I stopped at Walgreens and saw a stand on clearance for $7. But what’s done is done. My stand is good for an 8’ tree. It did the job just fine.

The Complete Damage

Adding up everything, I’ve spend $390 on this project. All but $90 will be reusable in future years. The girlfriend spend $300 on her own exterior home decorating (first year for that, too) and all of that will be reusable in future years. So, it looks like we’re even.

Behind-The-Curve Savings

Posted by anachostic on December 10, 2015 No comments

There was an XKCD comic a long while ago that made the joke that if you consistently remain behind the curve, technology still advances and is just as impressive, it’s just that the experience is delayed for you. It doesn’t say anything about the great savings you will have if you adopt this strategy. For example, I can pick up a Wii pretty cheaply now. I think I saw a bunch for $30 at local pawn shops. I’ve not really experienced the games a lot, so it’s still all new to me.

So, last Friday, I was a little klutzy and dropped my phone. It was fine. I’ve dropped my phone a few times in the years I’ve had it (photo history looks like I’ve had my Lumia 810 since March, 2013). It’s always taken the falls like a champ, even if the case back flies off and makes you think the phone has exploded into pieces. I have never used a case on my phones – never seen a need to.

Later on that night, I dropped my phone, again. Geez. This time, it landed on its side on my chair’s base and when I picked it up, I saw something I’d never seen on a phone of mine before. It wasn’t cracked, it was shattered. I was shattered, too. Now, I had to find a new phone and pretty quickly, too. This phone still worked. Touchscreen still worked. Swiping and dragging was a bit more risky since I don’t like cuts all over my finger. So, I wouldn’t want to be using it more than a couple of days.

I am a Windows Phone user. What does that mean for me? Well, I don’t have the massive selection of devices that Android users have, and I don’t have to pay outrageous prices like iPhone users have to. I had just read a couple of reviews of the newest Microsoft phones to come out and I was a little surprised at the retail prices. Over $900! No, that’s not going to happen.

Saturday, I hit some pawn shops looking for a cheap phone replacement until I could figure out what my plan was. Surprisingly, no one had phones. I didn’t get it, they used to have craploads of phones. When I asked about that, I was told that people were pawning phones that weren’t fully paid for and the phones would get blocked, so the next buyer could never activate their phone. Damn scammers.

So, Amazon it was. I was amazed at the prices of Windows phones. Most were less than $200. And these weren’t cheap phones, either. The one I ended up getting was the Nokia Lumia 925. A phone from 2013, discontinued in 2014. Windows Phone OS is very lightweight, so older phones have no trouble running it, either. This new phone will still be an improvement over what I had and was under $200. I don’t need to spend $500 or $800 or $1000 for a new phone. That’s awesome.

Since it’s a new phone, obviously I need to buy more accessories for it. This time, I’m going to invest in Qi wireless charging. The 925 has an optional wireless charging back in a few different colors. I picked up a white back for cheap (because discontinued phone, right?) and Qi chargers seem to have become commonplace since when I last remember researching them.

And the best thing is, it’s still all pretty much new to me.

The Way It Is

Posted by anachostic on December 8, 2015 No comments

Recently, I was at a thrift shop, shopping for CDs, and I picked up Bruce Hornsby’s The Way It Is album. I’ve heard the title track plenty of times on the radio, but I’ve never really listened to it. When I did, I was disgusted to hear that the song has the same 4-beat drum machine pattern playing through the entire song: four and a half minutes. No rhythm changes, no drum fills, no cymbals, nothing. Just the same beat. You can almost imagine Bruce playing the intro, then reaching over and pressing Start on the drum machine. The song even fades out since there’s no programmed drum ending.

Absolutely horrible. And that song was a hit!

But, that’s not what this post is about, even if the message of the song is somewhat relevant. This morning, I was reading a news story about a police officer shooting an armed suspect during what may have been a standoff. The details of the situation aren’t important. I was struck by the reporting of the story. When I finished reading, I had the thought, “was the guy black?” I went back and re-read it and there was no mention of the suspect’s race. Huh.

Well, we can probably assume he was white, then. But that made me wonder, why do news stories always indicate the race of the people involved when they aren’t white? The person’s race has nothing to do with the story unless it involves race, and sometimes, not even then.

This reminds me of a time I was reading a local newspaper from my hometown area. I had moved away a long time ago and come to the understanding of how prejudiced that tiny area was. The story was more or less, “Police are investigating a report of an assault on a white female by a black male that occurred late Friday night.” Take out “white” and “black” and the story is still accurate, but doesn’t stir up any racial biases.

There’s a natural tendency for people to call out differences. Like if you give directions, you reference places that are different and easily identifiable. I think this has something to do with the fact that we crave novelty. But to specify a person’s race in a news story is almost saying, “this person is different and easily identifiable.” And I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t work the other direction, too. In black culture magazines, they probably use “white” a lot, because it’s different than the “normal”, their majority black readership. I honestly don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised, nor would I be offended.

What I’m trying to say is what is being treated as a detail is not a detail unless it is a detail. For example, in that news story from my old hometown, the man’s identity is known, so his race is irrelevant. That would be different than “Police are asking for help finding a man involved in a fight yesterday at The Local bar. The man is white and balding, and referred to himself as Chuck.” That’s something you need to know in order to take action.

So, as an exercise for all of us, next time you read a news story, look for the race card being played, say to yourself, “that’s not necessary”, and self-censor it. See if the story reads just as well without those details.

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