Geriatric Punks

ps: Welcome Colin Whateveryournameis! I'm Phil, i'm everyone's favorite!

Posted by: lang at July 17, 2002 10:45 AM

Phil, I'll check the "scrap pile" in our office, I think we may have one laying around. No guarantee what shape it's in, but I'll do some searching for ya.

Posted by: Hoyt at July 17, 2002 10:46 AM

for real? thanks manj!

One more thing i wanted to say: i havent actually tried the burner yet, at my rate it'll take about a month to download 80 minutes worth of music!
Our burner program is called Roxio, about which I know nothing. Do any of yall know anything about it or having any advice?

Posted by: lang at July 17, 2002 11:06 AM

roxio is wonderful for the mac. i think it is great for windows too.

Posted by: ttk at July 18, 2002 08:53 AM

ttk, i ran into some problems last night that perhaps you can help me with. i downloaded some files that were so-called "real audio" that roxio didn't recognize because they weren't mp3s. There is a CONVERT function, but the catch seems to eb that because the werent mp3s already, the converter didnt recognize them either. at least that's what i think was going on. i tried "open with music match" also, but that didnt work either.

the files in question, if that helps any, are these: Velvet Underground and Virgin Prunes

mainly though i just don't know what i'm doing!

Posted by: lang at July 18, 2002 09:37 AM

Phil, the reason you can't convert those files is that they're just the trigger files for the actual audio. People usually use RealAudio for streaming audior ather than providing downloadable files. So there are two kinds of RealAudio files: .ra files are the actual audio files (the ones that can be converted to .mp3s). .ram files (like the files on the Virgin Prunes site) are very small files that just tell your machine to launch the RealAudio player and grab the audio file. .ram files are very small (under 50k) compared to .ra files (usually a few megs), so if you save a file for a song and it's way tiny, then you probably have a .ram file.

Saving the streaming audio is very difficult and technically illegal. I've only ever seen one program that can do it, and the company that made it got sued out of business by RealAudio. The program is still floating around on the peer-to-peer networks (like LimeWire and Gnutella), but it's kinda clunky.

Posted by: mccreath at July 18, 2002 11:08 AM

YOU MEAN I CAN'T BURN THESE TRACKS TO CD?! [sobbing]

Thanks for the info. Whats weird is i did download them, i mean i can log of the www and play the files w/ RA, i just cant load them into the roxio burner menu, whatever. It's not like i dont have plenty to listen to; i just got about 10 new belly dancing records- for 50cents each- which i will likely be burning to cd soon. SO GET READY FOR THAT!

Dave I know that before we have batted around the idear of posting mp3s to our cozy li'l log here, and you were concerned about size/bandwidth etc, and at the time i whined like a wet diapered ninny. At least now i have some sense of what that actually means. But, what if we could post an mp3 every so often, to be deleted by the poster after one week, no exceptions? Wouldnt that work? and, if so, how WOULD it work? could i just drop a mp3 file in, and then later just delete it, or what?

[ps. thanks for fixing my almanac post, i had no idea what happened there!]

Posted by: lang at July 18, 2002 01:32 PM

I've been thinking about the idea of an "mp3 of the week" or something. That wouldn't be too hard. Let me think about it a little bit. It would take care of the disk usage issue.

The other issue, bandwidth, is something that we'd just have to keep an eye on. Right now we're using just a fraction of the bandwidth that comes with this account (170 megs for 6-18 to 7-12, at just over 5 megs a day), but if we add mp3s to that, at a 3-5 megs a piece, and everybody clicks on one of those mp3s once a day or something, we'll see a pretty significant jump pretty quickly. So like I said, we'd just have to watch it, and if it became an issue we'd have to either pony up the bucks for more bandwidth, stop the mp3s altogether, or maybe have a weekly "mp3 day" or something.

Anyone else interested in posting time-limited mp3s?

Posted by: mccreath at July 18, 2002 02:04 PM

Oh, on the almanac post, you did everything correctly except that you tried to close your link tag with a paragraph tag. You typed:

<a href="blah">link text</p>

instead of:

<a href="blah">link text</a>

So the link was unclosed until it got to the next available </a>

Posted by: mccreath at July 18, 2002 02:08 PM

Oh, and as for the RealAudio files, here is a link to the old version of a program called "Streambox Ripper". You can download this, install it and convert .ra to .mp3. Scroll down the page to find the ripper. It's near the bottom.

Posted by: mccreath at July 18, 2002 02:35 PM

dave, thanx for the constant knowledge on these and other arcane topix! as for the streambox ripper, i am thinking ill download it here, convert the files here, and then email the new mp3s to myself for later. do that system sound like it would work?
[psst, you forgot to include the link Streambox Ripper]

:)

Posted by: lang at July 18, 2002 02:56 PM

Yeah, that should work. As for the link, well, DOH!

https://www.geocities.com/streamgen/streambox.htm

Posted by: mccreath at July 18, 2002 03:12 PM

Thanks darling! {Kiss!}

(Oh right, not in front of the guys, i forgot!)

Thanks dude! {punch!}

Posted by: lang at July 18, 2002 03:39 PM

[ mortified ]

Posted by: mccreath at July 18, 2002 03:53 PM

YAY! I succesfully burned my first cd entirely from downloaded mp3s! thanks to all the fans who helped me on the way!

Posted by: lang at July 19, 2002 10:17 AM