Annoying MP3 Player

Well, the small portable Lexar MP3 player that I bought to attach to my 512MB USB flash drive turned out to be a piece of junk. I've been listening to a lot of long files (an hour or more), but in small chunks of time, say 15 minutes. This requires a simple bookmarking mechanism, which was supposed to be supported by this player.

It turns out that whoever wrote their firmware cheaped out. You can only jump to a bookmark if that file position is within your RAM buffer. This RAM buffer holds about 8 minutes of typical MP3 data, and is refeshed from flash when it runs low. What this means is that if you set a bookmark in a 1 hour MP3, you can't jump to the bookmark if it doesn't appear in the first 8 minutes of the file. What were they thinking? Lexar tech support acknowledged the problem, but their excuse was that it was designed for short songs, not long spoken-word files.

Harrumph. Well, luckily I didn't pay much for the player. And the USB flash drive is really great and useful.
Jim on 09.29.04 @ 06:08 PM ET [link]

A day in my life

I was sleeping peacefully on this Sunday morning. The rain gently tapped on the sky light over our bed while my husband, Jim, snuggled up against me. Then I was awoken by the sound, although it was not really a sound, but rather the PRESENCE of another person in the room.
Barb on 09.26.04 @ 11:48 AM ET [link]

BBC on MP3

I've found a way to convert the streaming RealAudio from the BBC into MP3's for later playback on my portable player (or computer). The capture tool for Linux is called "vsound". It's not supported any more because its Australian developer was strongarmed by the recording industry. You can still find the source on the web using Google. Vsound masquerades as your audio device, then streams the audio to a WAV file, which you can later convert to whatever format you want. I've gotten vsound to work with the RealAudio player, but have problems with xmms or mplayer.

The quality of programming available through the BBC web site is amazing. Not even NPR would do a 2 hour documentary on Ethiopian cuisine. This sort of thing is great to listen to during my commute or during lunchtime walks. The quality of the resulting audio is a bit less than standard FM, but is quite acceptable to me.

Jim on 09.25.04 @ 06:05 PM ET [link]

Half a gig in your pocket

I picked up a Lexar 512 MB USB flash drive for a pretty good price after rebates and such. It's half a gigabyte that hangs on your keychain. Amazing. Not only someplace to carry your address books, crypto keys, pictures of your kids, and other random /etc files, but also a place to hold about 9 CD's worth of MP3's. And I also picked up an MP3 player that plugs into this drive. Ah technology...
Jim on 09.23.04 @ 09:42 PM ET [link]

Firefox 1.0 Prerelease

The Firefox 1.0 browser is almost out. You can download the pre-release version. As always, it's absolutely free. If you are still using Internet Explorer (or Mozilla, or even Netscape), then do yourself a favor and switch.
Jim on 09.21.04 @ 01:18 PM ET [link]

Carbon

I'm salivating over the new Rio Carbon MP3 player. 5GB of space. And look how thin it is! Must resist...
Jim on 09.17.04 @ 08:45 PM ET [link]

The Japanese

I will never, ever, understand the Japanese.
Jim on 09.12.04 @ 05:29 PM ET [link]

Baby Snapping Turtles!

We discovered baby snapping turtles in our neighborhood, and we needed to undertake a rescue to make sure they all reached the river and didn't get squashed by cars. The momma snapping turtle laid her eggs in a neighbor's yard last spring right before it got re-sodded. Somehow some of the turtles made it out through the grass. More pictures here, here and here.
Jim on 09.11.04 @ 09:49 PM ET [link]

On the first day of kindergarten

A poem by Barb on the girls' first day of Kindergarten:

I planted a seed five years ago.
I found the richest
 soil
And the best fertilizer. 

Barb on 09.09.04 @ 09:25 PM ET [link]

First Day

Today was the girls' first day in Kindergarten. Whew! That whole parenting thing was rough. But from now on it's clear sailing!
Jim on 09.08.04 @ 09:38 PM ET [link]

Dependence on technology

Today at work, one of our main Cisco switches apparently died, and our network went down. No local LAN, no Internet. What was amazing was how difficult it was to actually get any work done. All our code is locked up in a source control system (Perforce) and one of my main working machines sits in a corner of a lab and doesn't even have a keyboard or a mouse. We use Lotus Notes extensively for email and to share documents and ideas, but Notes is a server-based application. So virtually no work got done. I guess if it had been a planned outage, we would have been more prepared, but it's a little scary how dependent we have become on The Network.

It's not as bad as the few times where we lost power completely. Now that's a lost day. All my databooks and code are on disk, and I actively try to avoid printing documents out. Save a tree, waste a day...
Jim on 09.07.04 @ 09:27 PM ET [link]

Thunderbird and Linux Transitions

I finally got Barb off of Outlook Express for email, and moved over to Thunderbird. It's a mail program that originated as part of Mozilla, which originated as Netscape. They pulled out the mail program as a separate entity and improved it dramatically. Functionally similar to Outlook Express, but without all the security holes.

We already have been using Firefox for a while now. It's a superior browser to the Microsoft offerings, and it's free. It has the same heritage as Thunderbird -- it started out as Netscape then was released open source as Mozilla, then split off as the leaner and meaner Firefox (after several name changes in between).

I'm dual booting my home machine between Windows 2000 and Mandrake 10.0 Linux. The former is booted by default and is necessary for some photo editing tools, CaptureOne and Paint Shop Pro, neither of which run under Linux. (Yeah, the Gimp runs, but it's not as good).

At work I finally have been able to transition my main machine over to Linux, now that the real time operating system QNX 6.3 can cross compile in that environment, and Lotus Notes can run under wine.

Jim on 09.05.04 @ 08:08 PM ET [link]