The wonders of modern technology

Today, I was able to sing a brace of duets with my girlfriend in Wisconsin... except that she was in the next state, a bit over 3 hours from home. Never mind, duets it was.

The site which enables this modern wonder ties you to it by only publishing the songs as a Flash video... so, with the DownloadHelper plugin for FireFox, I was able to capture said video clips...

Now, more modern technology starts to kick in. Using FFmpeg plus lame, I can rip the sound-track from the FLV file, cramming it into an MP3.

All of this software technology so far is completely Free & portable, it runs on Mac & ’Doze as well.

Next, we jam a $10 exHardlyNormal MP3 player into the USB socket, to copy on those MP3s.

Now I can listen to us singing as I wander around the local foodWorks store... hmmm... should pick up a set of $3 mini-headphones to replace these ghastly earbud thingies... a set of the SuperBass ones from King Kong Innaloo should do...

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new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b...

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.

Plantagenet Penguinista

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