When I used to maintain a large MP3 collection my absolute favorite tool to organize and “tag” the MP3s with artist, album and title information was Magnus Brading’s MP3/Tag Studio. Thde reason this worked so well for me is because as I ripped CDs I would put the music into folders by album and artist using track number and title for the filename. MP3/Tag Studio allowed me to capture all of that information from the path and put it into the tags. But some time ago I switched from MP3s to the lossless FLAC format. FLAC also allows tagging but tools are fewer and far between. Luckily I’ve discovered an open source tagging tool that looks like it will fit the bill. EasyTAG appears to have many of the same features as MP3/Tag Studio but works with many types of files including MP3, MP2, MP4/AAC, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, MusePack, Monkey’s Audio and WavPack which is a great advantage in my implementation. It’s also a cross platform application available for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows which is useful for those of us who regularly work with several different OSs.
Category Archives: Tech - Page 4
A better antivirus/anti-malware?
Even when I’m generally satisfied with software I’m using I like to keep an eye out for other, potentially better, solutions. In this case I have great hopes that eEye Digital Security has produced a better antivirus/anti-spyware/anti-malware solution than what has been available in the past. From Norton to McAfee to TrendMicro and others the traditional antivirus vendors seem to suck up more and more computing resources even when most of the security threats are coming from spyware, rootkits and other areas for which little or no protection is provided. Luckily, if you’re a home user the new kid on the block, eEye, has come out with a product called Blink which purports to be a security center for your PC which works and uses considerably fewer resources than the other options. If the hype is real this could easily become my solution of choice. Thanks to the current free 1-year subscription promotion I’ve installed it on a few computers and will be watching to see how it performs. It sounds like an interesting product and has some powerful features so I have high hopes.
Network Settings Profiles
When you’re regularly moving from one network to another it’s often useful to be able to store a profile of network settings which can quickly be recalled to set things such as a static IP address, etc. Many newer laptops include software to do just this but for those doing it with desktops or who have replaced the OS on the laptop it’s useful to know third party utilities exist which can accomplish the same thing.
Two free utilities are Network Switcher and SwitchNetConfig some of the low cost/shareware ones are SwitchPro, NetSetMan, Mobile Net Switch and NetSwitcher though many others exist as well. If you know of others, especially a free or open source solution I would encourage you to leave a comment and let others know about its existence.
Protecting your Dallas 1-wire network
I’ve written before about the various interesting applications for the Dallas 1-wire network such as HVAC control, access control, weather stations, etc. A few weeks ago I finally got around to ordering some 1-wire sensors to play with myself. I must say that I’ve had nothing but a good time with them. I’m currently running outdoor temperature and rainfall logging which you can see for yourself as the data is uploaded to a number of servers including Weather Underground and the National Weather Service (through the Citizen Weather Observer Program). In future postings I hope to discuss a bit more about how simple this was to get going and show off my own weather homepage (still in development).
For now I wanted to share the design for a 1-wire surge suppressor. As it turns out some people have had a problem, specifically with 1-wire weather equipment, with lightning inducting large currents into their 1-wire network and damaging the sensors and/or serial adapter. To combat this problem Philip Gladstone has posted some easy to build protection circuits for both 1-wire devices and the serial port adapter. While I haven’t built them myself yet I hope to have some time to do so before storm season gets into full swing.
The problem of multicasting
Bob Cringely has an interesting article about a new service called NeoKast which purports to make internet video broadcasting possible without requiring multicast support at the router or substantial amounts of bandwidth. I’m sure the technology is patented, which is unfortuanate as it would be nice to see some open versions of this software. As far as I can tell the NeoKast service is essentially emulating a multicast network by using peer hosts to spread the feed, in real time, to other viewers in a peer to peer manner. It’s an interesting idea but perhaps its time has already come and gone. While there are some live events that attract enough viewer interest where considerable amounts of bandwidth might be saved, for the most part it seems that the future of Internet video is on demand video which is a horse of a different color and which does not benefit from this method at all, at least in its current incarnation.
Online Amateur Radio Repeater Directory
I recently found the USRepeaters.com website which contains a listing of many of the amateur radio repeaters in the United States. I actually had a plan at one point to develop a similar PHP/MySQL driven site but simply have way too many other projects going to take on another. That said I do have a few issues with the US Repaters site. First, the site is a mess graphically and navigation leaves a lot ot be desired. The lack of an interface for owners of repaters and/or coordination bodies to make changes, users to search, etc. is also unfortuante. Secondly, the data is copyright instead of being open and freely available. As inexpensive as webhosting is these days and seeing that ham radio has a long tradition of sharing knowledge I am disappointed to see someone attempting to assert control over this factual data. I think a simple ad supported site (not the ads all over approach US Repeaters takes) would be sufficient to support such a directory. If someone out there is interested in working on an open PHP/MySQL repeater directory I would be more than happy to provide web space, bandwidth and my ideas. Contact me if interested.
Converting PAL DVDs to NTSC
Occasionally I’ll find a PAL (European video standard) video which I really want to preserve on an NTSC (US/Japan video standard) video DVD for showing where computers are not at hand. Because the frame rate of the video (the number of still pictures in each second of video) differs but sound must remain synced up this is a difficult thing to do. One of the best sites I’ve found with instructions for doing this with free tools is this one. The downside is that it’s a pretty lengthy and involved process and, at least to my eye, the end result is still sub-optimal. If you have any better resources for making this conversion I encourage you to post a comment and share them.
Downloading online Flash video
As with many technologies, the advent on online Flash video (flv) has both an upside an downside. On one hand it eliminates, or at least substantially reduces, the need to have a great variety of platform dependant streaming video tools (a la RealPlayer) but on the other hand there’s a lot of good, or at least interesting, content on YouTube which could either disappear without notice and requires an Internet connection to view. This is an argument I have with most of these Internet based services such as YouTube, Flickr, etc. I think people are setting themselves up for a future problem by posting so much potentially important data at sites with unknown and uncontrollable futures. Enough of my rant though. The point here is to find a solution, or at least a mitigation strategy for viewing Flash videos offline.
Thanks in part to others experiencing the same problem and the popularity of YouTube there are a number of people with an interest in this. Several online sites such as KeepVid and Javimoya offer web-based methods of saving these videos as well as downloadable FLV players for viewing them. Again though, I have a problem with relying on web services which are unpredictable in the future. A better solution would be to use a cross platform script, such as the python based youtube-dl, which does not rely on the cooperation of a third party. Even better is to understand how a script such as youtube-dl works by reading some information on manual FLV downloading from sites like this or this.
Remebering toasters that fly
I was recently reading some excellent interviews Tommy Thomas, of Low End Mac, did with the AfterDark team which brought back some fond memories of the flying toasters. Those who remember the quirky early Macintosh screensaver developed by After Dark (later Berkely Software) often wonder where the creativity went in screen saver development, something Thomas touches on in his interviews.
For the time being those who wish to relive the golden days of the screen saver you’ll either need to find an old copy of these screensavers many of which don’t run on modern operating systems or check out some of the knock off versions such as this free one, which unforunatly doesn’t look much like the original.
Decoding MDC Data
Many towns, counties and states still using analog based radio communications systems for public safety use Motorola MDC systems which emit a short “chirp” at the beginning or end of a radio transmission. If this is the case in your area you might be interested in the open source WinMDCD software. This software allows you to decode that chirp with a Windows based PC and see data such as date, time, unit ID or whatever else they’re transmitting. Note that if you’re interested in Motorola radio technology a great resource is BatLabs, in particular the BatBoard which has a great number of people who are extremely knowledgeable about Motorola radios.
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