With ID a little under the weather, and as a follow-up to my earlier ramble on downloading music, here's an interview with Cory Doctorow (of Boing Boing and the EFF) on why DRM is likely be the downfall of anyone who relies on it.

TheFeature :: Closed Systems = Closed Opportunities

Concert DVDs are cool. But who has time to sit in front of a screen watching some pillocks prance around a stage. So I've taken to ripping the audio and playing that instead. There's an excellent guide over on Afonic on how to do this, almost for free.

The only issue is in step seven where you're asked to enter the “cue” points to split the tracks up. If you have to do this by hand, it's rather tedious. Fortunately, there's a way around it. Back in step two, if you add a tick to create “Chapter Information - OGG” a file will be written in the same dir as the extracted AC3 file which contains the times in the sample where each chapter starts - for all the stuff I've ripped so far, these have matched the tracks played.

Using the file you could enter the times one-by-one into Goldwave's Cue List. But this is also tedious... so I wrote a quick and dirty version to convert the chapter info into a cue file which can be loaded into Goldwave to automatically set the cue points. You still need to enter track names (I recommend using 01_Song_Name to speed things along), but that's not too bad. See the Read more section for the perl source. If you've not already installed it on Windows, you'll need ActiveState's Perl for Windows to run it.

With perl installed, and once you've extracted your AC3 file, kick up a DOS session and CD to the directory where the AC3 file is and run the script with the name of the AC3 file and the name of the chapter information file as arguments. For example, here's the one I just did for KMFDM's WWIII Tour 2003 DVD.

F:\WW3_TOUR\VIDEO_TS>perl c:\bin\chapter2cue.pl “VTS_02_1 - 0x80 - Audio - AC3 - 2ch - 48kHz - DRC - DELAY -280ms.AC3” “VTS_02 - Chapter Information - OGG.txt”

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I'm running a dual-monitor setup at the moment. By judicious use of Cygwin/X I've arranged it so that the right monitor is mainly occupied by a full screen Gnome Session over SSH from my Fedora box. It's possible to get the session full screen, but since it involves fiddling with the main taskbar (the session always pops on the main screen, so is initially constrained by the taskbar and doesn't resize when forced onto the second monitor - but you can shrink the taskbar then start Cygwin/X) I'm filling the gap with the trial version of UltaMon - though there's a displeasing gap between the fake taskbar and the bottom of the X-session. Best thing about this setup is the ease of passing clipboard data between the two systems.

The CoH Wiki and this site are now running under mod_rewrite URLs. It's quite a powerful feature in Apache but I don't think I've found a single example or guide which actually had a working example. As for trying to debug what's going wrong... well, I though JavaScript had poor debugging - but mod_rewrite doesn't seem to have any at all. There's supposedly a log file you can tell it to write to and a log level to set, but despite setting the level to the highest, I got nothing output to the file (though it was created).

Here's a very simple Plugin for Nucleus which allows you to automatically link words or phrases to Wikipedia using the standard Wikipedia double-square bracketing (ie “[[Word or Phrase]]” .

Update 2005-02-25: Version 0.2. Removes some extraneous code and now correctly works in the extended section.

Update 2005-10-30: Version 0.3. Re-written the replacement code and added coping with [[Actual Entry|Text to Display]] tags.

Grab the source.

I don't know about you, but this wording on the MSN Music sign up seems designed to confuse.

According to figures released this week, paid-for music downloads jumped 1,000% percent from 2003 to 200,000,000. Copyright violations meanwhile dropped from 900,000,000 to 870,000,000. Looking over the top 10 downloaded and traditionally purchased singles of the year shows in interesting dichotomy in the respective tastes of downloaders (U2's generic-rock Vertigo) and shoppers (Eamon's gormless Fuck It (I Don't Want You Back)) - sharing only the guilt-boosted sales of Band Aid 20's Do They Know It's Christmas between them - but little hint that legal downloading will free music from the clutches of Big Music and usher in the music revolution desired by so many.

Myself, over 2004, I downloaded one track and was not impressed. I decided to try out a few sites today and have come to the conclusion that there are essentially four reasons why the current model sucks.

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For the second time in my life, I popped a tyre at speed on the M25. In retrospect I think I heard it go; there was a spang kind of noise - as of a stone hitting the inside of the wheel arch, which is what I though it was at the time. But then things became progressively more wobbly and I switched the radio off and things didn't sound good at all. Fortunately, I was near the turn-off to the A127, so I trundled down there and parked just prior to the roundabout. Not the best place to change a wheel really, but I was rather out of options. It's possible I was in more danger of some drunken idiot ploughing into me down the slip road than when I was barrelling along at 80 with a rapidly deflating rear tyre.

After I got the spare tyre on - which is one of those mini-spares they always seem to supply - I slowly finished the journey. Today I splashed some cash on an entire new set of tyres. Before I took the old one in, I took a snap of the damage.

BBC Wiltshire's audio interview (RealAudio) with Michael "Villa" Keating about the DVD releases mentioned the other day.

BBC - Wiltshire - Entertainment - Interview with Michael Keating

In 1978 the BBC took seven classically trained actors, paid them very little, forced them to wear bizarre clothing whilst wandering around disused quarries in the cold and effectively ended their careers on the stage and damned them to spend eternity sitting on a stage answering questions about how cool Avon was instead of their one-man show at the Poddleton Borough Theatre.

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An interesting idea. Mine turned out to be:

1. “Just Out of Reach” by Jesus and Mary Chain (from Barbed Wire Kisses)
   B-side of “You Trip Me Up” from their debut Psycho Candy
2. “Ice Cold Man” by Probot (from Probot)
   Dave Grohl's trad-metal side project
3. “Upside Down” by Jesus and Mary Chain (from Barbed Wire Kisses)
   First single from the feedback-awash Scotsmen
4. “Eyes-Radio-Lies” by Orgy (from Vapor Transmission)
   From the second album - their third hasn't been released in the UK
5. “Biko” by Peter Gabriel (from Hit)
   PG's classic
6. “Beautiful Love” by Helmet (from Betty)
   In my opinion, their best album; Aftertaste and Size Matters don't quite match up
7. “Love Under Will” by Fields of the Nephilim (from BBC Radio 1 Live)
   Album no longer available; there are rumours Carl McCoy's releasing a new Neph album in 2005
8. “Waiting To Happen” by Marillion (from Holidays in Eden)
   Neither they nor Fish really recovered from the split
9. “Bulletproof” by Afghan Whigs (from Black Love)
   I don't think they ever really bettered Gentlemen
10. “Zeqk HOPQ” by Wire (from Document and Eyewitness)
    From Wire's final bizarre concert - random shouting over some noise; probably best avoided

What not to do when you're asked to feed the cat, but forgot to take the keys:

Reading the link in Gawker's Bill O'Reilly: 99 Problems entry, I noticed the Google adwords on the Fox News site were being a little rebellious...

Unfortunately, Muse's official site is one. You can - on advice - go directly to the appropriate flash or basic html sites, but this jams the page up in the left hand corner and, I'll be honest, it doesn't look as nice as when centred.

So I wrote a page that puts the flash in the middle. It uses one table, seems to work in both IE and Firefox and doesn't resize your browser to do it. You can find it here.

On Tuesday, playing City of Heroes, I unusually agreed to an unsolicited team-up offer. Though the team leader managed to turn up late for two of the three missions (once due to a crash, once due to a phone call) and had a name that screamed "I wanted this name so badly I stuck an almost un-noticable full stop on the end when I found it was already taken" I still managed to make more XP than I lost to debt.

On Wednesday, I chanced teaming up again. It was an adventure I've come to think of as:

The crazy-go-nuts blaster gets me killed several times

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There's still a very strong smell of smoke when you come out of the Dartford Tunnel, even four days later.

BBC NEWS | UK | England | Warehouse fire causing M25 chaos

Four long distance pictures of smoke from the fire that closed the M25 yesterday, necessitating a 27-mile detour for many people and my journey time extending to three hours rather than forty minutes.

...in a world rocked by devastating natural disasters, whilst civil wars and atrocities wreacked havoc, one man stood alone: Stephen Green - National Director of Christian Voice, a UK-wide prayer group - fought tooth and nail against swearing... on... TV?

“We will probably bring a private prosecution against them for the common law offence of blasphemy.”

“Having seen the thing, if this is not blasphemy, nothing is. There will be nothing sacred if we cannot successfully prosecute the BBC.”

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | TV and Radio | Springer opera draws 1.7m viewers

The sad thing is he's not alone. In addition to Christian loonies, The Sun managed to motivate 0.06% of it's drooling hordes to send in their complaints before the thing was even shown. Of course, the Sun wasn't motivated at all by outrage, but simply in another attack on the BBC because it's consistently shown up Rupert Murdoch's Sky TV.

“Blade is recruited by the Night Stalkers, who reach him through Whistler's daughter Abigail (Jessica Biel). It would have been too much. I suppose, to hope for Whistler's mother.”

:: rogerebert.com :: reviews

I just splashed out on a month's sub to Last.fm so I can keep listening to my personal radio station. Basically, it works like this: you pick your favourite songs, or have AudioScrobber automatically load up the songs you're playing in your player of choice (currently Rhythmbox for me since I moved the oggs to the Fedora box - though I wish it could do gapless playback). Then, Last.fm can stream you back your tracks from anywhere you can get on the Internets.

The main drawback is that they don't have everything available. Of "my" top artists, they're missing everything by Curve, The Wonder Stuff, Bush, The Wedding Present and Green River. On the other hand, they have at least one of Glenn Branca's albums, so it's not like they're stacking it with only the popular artists.

If you don't want to stump up a little cash for the personal radio service (you get a free 30 day trial when you join), you can also use the profile radio which is like a music recommendation service crossed with streaming radio - instead of playing your artists, it plays tracks by people who like the same stuff you do... so you may hear something interesting.

Click the buttons if you want to try it out - you need to sign up, but they don't ask for an email even then.



Reading this back makes me sound like I've been bought by them... but really, I haven't... I'll take the cash in used notes please.

...and can be reached at http://gallery.totalbiscuit.com/city_of_heroes

I spent much of yesterday trawling through old logs at work, cross-referencing email addresses and checking IP numbers. And why? Because, some idiot's spent the better part of eighteen months creating upwards of 60 accounts on the servers and then tricking the more naive amongst our users to give him email addresses so he can send them viruses >_<

As soon as HatfulOfHollow's device is done, I'm buying multiple copies.

Time for a new site system/design I think. The old site is here until I can be bothered to move the old posts over (if at all).

Update: apparently I can be bothered.