Chovy's Blog

I have an Alpine car stereo deck, which supports the iPod interface with cable (the advantage being the iPod will charge while it’s plugged into the deck). I can’t for the life of me figure out how to navigate the thing via the alpine deck (nearly got in two accidents trying). I simply hit Random and let it play while driving.

This was the only reason I bought an iPod. I hate the iTunes interface, requiring you to use their software instead of simply copying over files on the iPod. The real kicker is that it duplicates all the songs you add to your iPod in it’s own folder, taking up twice the disk space.

I’ve heard that the Creative NOMAD Zen Xtra (up to 60gb drive for price of 20gb iPod), doesn’t require you to use their software (if anyone has one, please let me know if this is true). I’d rather just copy the albums over to the Zen rather than installing some lame software to do it for me.

The real necessity, keeping me from buying a Zen is that I know of zero car stereo decks which support it. I know I could get an FM Transmitter, but I like how the Alpine iPod/MP3 deck will charge it while it’s plugged in, as it does when plugged into your pc.

Well, after talking about it for the last year and a half, I’ve finally gotten everything in place to rip my entire cd collection!

For starters, I had to setup a reliable file server running Gentoo Linux with Samba file sharing services for Windows clients.

Once I set that up, I bought a 300GB western digital harddrive, with removable drive kit. I wanted to be able to remove the drive and keep it in the trunk of my car incase of disaster (fire, etc.) so I won’t loose all my hard work.

The main drive is 250gb maxtor. Using rsnapshot for Linux, I am able to backup the main drive to my removable drive via cronjob on an hourly basis (not to mention all my remotely hosted databases and web sites).

The best CD-ripper, Lame MP3 encoder I’ve found for Windows XP is BonkEnc which supports Variable Bitrate and is Open Source GPL’d (ensuring you never have to pay for anything). I have the setting at VBR-MTRH, which rips the cds extremely fast (under 5 minutes). I set no minimun quality, with a target rate of 192kb, and maximun bitrate at 320kb. This will get the most out of the compression, as the quiet areas of the song are encoded at a lower bitrate, saving valuable harddisk space.

I tested ripping at Quality level 5 (middle) and Quality Level 0 (best), and the size of the album “Paul Simon – Graceland” went from 39MB to 75MB, and when listening, I noticed virtually no difference. So I’ll be keeping it the middle level to save disk space (not to mention more mp3s will fit on my iPod).

I also recently hooked up my 15GB iPod to my car stereo deck, which is an Alpine supporting iPod connections, with 2×10 inch subwoofers in the trunk of my Corolla! The next thing to do is replace the stock corolla speakers with some nice ones.

Spent the last few hours getting this to work on my LAN.

Now I can fill up those 250gb and 300gb drives :-)

Jim is a member of my politics forum, and is also a song writer.

His latest song Save the Planet can be found on Jim Coyler’s web site. His plans are to distribute the album at Hard Rock Cafe. Good luck Jim!

Here are the lyrics to “Save the Planet” mp3 (see link above).

SAVE THE PLANET

We’re floating on a grain of sand in the vastness of space
If future generations are going to inherit this place
We’ve got to Save The Planet
Do something while there’s still time
Save The Planet
This earth is yours and mine

The tropical rainforest is disappearing more everyday
We’ll never replace it, we’d better not burn it away
Save The Planet
The wonders of nature are free
Save The Planet
Have you ever planted a tree?

If the skies are blue
And the oceans too
Isn’t this a better home for me and you?
If the air is clean
And the land is green
Wouldn’t you like to be part of this lovely scene?

I’m thinking of the animals that once roamed the African plain
Their numbers have dwindled, pretty soon none will remain
Save The Planet
Do something while there’s still time
Save The Planet
This earth is yours and mine
Save The Planet
The wonders of nature are free
Save The Planet
Have you ever planted a tree?

Save The Planet
Save The Planet
Save The Planet
Save The Planet

c2005 Jim Colyer ASCAP
Jim Colyer

I live in Los Gatos, CA.

Well holy crapcast batman!!! at least it ain’t just me. I even went out and bought a new $80 linksys modem because the friggin’ tech support lackies claim there was nothing wrong.

here’s my scenario. On wedneday evening (6/15/05) I started having really bad connection, it was like dialup. I called tech “no outage reported in your area”. Those f-ing d–chbags think cycling the modem will cure everything. Next time I’m telling them “Look i’ve talked with you 15 times in the last 3 days. Don’t you think I’ve tried that already?”

Anyway, back on point. Thursday was dialup type speed too, although thursday morning at around 3am I got them to admit there was an “OS Upgrade” they were performing in my area.

Thursday evening, dialup type speeds. Got a tech to “ping” me, and said there was 7% packet loss, and he’ll send a guy out. “No outage reported”. I checked online, and there WAS an outage reported: http://tinyurl.com/7pqph

Friday it didn’t work at all (bought a new modem, thought maybe it was me). They claimed yet again “no outage reported”, after seeing these posts, I know they are full of sh*t. You know, I don’t mind an outage once in awhile, but when they don’t sync up their tech support phones guys and the network engineers on this, it really chaps my hide. One time I called friday (i called 4 times already today) I got an automated “outage alert” in my area. “Press 1 to get an autmoated callback when the outage is fixed”. It’s been 15 hours, and I still haven’t gotten that call – called two more times. One guy claimed “no outage reported” and the other intiially said none, then 10 minutes later after cycling the modem said “oh wait. there is a dhcp sync up issue in your area”. WTF don’t you just look a little closer before we go through this bs all over again? (this is all going on my blog at http://www.chovy.com) I’m PO’d at Comcast lately.

PS – I run Linux as well as XP, and use “mtr google.com” to check my packet loss (typically at around 50%, which explains the slowness), as well as the tests here at dslreports. Tonight I’m getting 350kbps down and 357kbps up.

Your download speed : 358876 bps, or 350 kbps.
A 43.8 KB/sec transfer rate. <-- this is very slow, usuaally get around 500KB/sec.
Your upload speed : 359732 bps, or 351 kbps.

What a bunch of rookies. Go to www.foxnews.com/oreilly and it redirects you.

I noticed this in FireFox, because I have auto-redirects disabled, and all I got was a blank page. I’m probably a communist/terrorist/evil-doer-of-the-day in their eyes anyway for using a browser called FireFox.

<!-- Vignette StoryServer 5.0 Wed Jun 15 15:07:58 2005 -->

 <html><head><title>FOXNews.com</title><META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="0; URL=/story/0,2933,159643,00.html"><body bgcolor=#ffffff>&nbsp;</body></html>

Daily Rant:
I’m writing while onhold with Comcast (outage in my area) . A pet peave of mine is companies like Comcast advising their clients to use Internet Explorer 6.0, as they do while on hold.

Have they not heard about FireFox yet? Seriously, when are these corporate conglomerates going to start advising their customers in a positive way, rather than a destructive way.

Internet Explorer is full of security holes, not to mention a sh0ty browser in comparison.