Having been recently donated an XP box, without the option of installing linux on it, I’m slowly rebuilding my music toolkit.  Fortunately most of the bits of software I favour come in both windows and linux flavours…

The key tool that used to be a one stop shop for me was Grip, a combined ripping and encoding program with the obligatory CDDB lookup for track details. This though is a linux only tool, so I’ve been forced to find something else, enter CDDA Ripper XP.

The main reason for picking that one over the others I looked at, was the fact that it can use the LAME mp3 encoder, widely recognised as the best free mp3 encoder out there.  It’s a separate download, but well worth the effort, giving me the option to encode tracks with the ‘extreme’ settings, VBR with a maximum bitrate of 320kbps.  Large file size, but sounds great…

Those in addition with Audacity, which I wrote about earlier, give me all the tools I used to enjoy on my linux box. (Audacity also uses the LAME encoder, but not all the options are available, particularly the VBR ones…)  Let the merriment ensue.

Having been reading all the hype in Edge recently about MGS4, which I must note is one of the two games I would consider buying a PS3 for (The other being Burnout: Paradise) I thought I’d dust down my unfinished copy of MGS2: Sons of Liberty…

Now, either I set the difficulty level way too high, or I’m just getting too old for that amount of hand/eye co-ordination. It’s impossible. I’m off to restart in idiot mode, turn it all right down and start again. If that fails then it’s back to something that doesn’t require quite as much grey matter, like Burnout or possibly a bash on Final Fantasy X (something else I haven’t finished…)

Just been going thru some of my old MP3’s and I’ve finally figured out why some of them seem so slow.

A few years ago I went thru them and picked out some of my faves, then I ran them thru Audacity to speed them up by about 20%.  That’s why they sound so slow to me when I hear them on the radio.  It’s taken me ages to figure out what the difference was…

As an aside, if you’re in need of a free audio tool, for playing with, mixing, normalising or just generally playing with your tunes you could do worse than take a look at Audacity.

(The full list of tunes I tweaked is available, for a price, some of them I’m not proud of…)

Having had my little Sony MP3 player for a week now it’s just reminded me of the many failings of listening to tunes on any digital platform. Not even mentioning the lack of any tactile feedback from these devices, why does the software make it so hard to do what you want, which is just listen to the tunes you love?

Having bounced around from Winamp to Musicmatch and back, then onto XMMS and finally to a nasty hack I cobbled together myself, I still (to quote those noisy irishmen) haven’t found what I’m looking for…

Fine grained control of which tracks you like and which ones you don’t. A rating of one to five just doesn’t cut it anymore. (Well not for me…)

A random playback mode uses the preference data intelligently, plus details of when you played things to give a truly useful random play mode. (No more Scooter or thrash metal as you’re about to turn in…)

Totally transparent downloading of album and single art and lyrics, don’t keep asking me, just do it!

If you know of any tools out there that fit the bill then let me know…

Received this a day or two ago from pingmag, a jap based site covering all things japanese design related. Any of you out there with the slightest interest in computing history will probably appreciate the pictures from a book they are highlighting.

Check them out at pingmag. and at the authors site.

I’m not planning on making a habit of posting stuff like this, but the images were too striking not to pass around…