spoonfork

Dear Audiophiles,

I have some questions for ya'll:

• What are the easiest, and the least effort-intensive ways to rip and encode audio CDs on Linux? I'm not talking about 50 CDs, but several hundreds.


• What is the best application to do the above on Linux? Currently I am using sound-juicer.


• Does it matter if I encode them to mp3 or ogg vorbis?


• What are the best medium to store audio CDs? I'm am looking for something that protect the CDs from dust and damp.


• What is the best app to use for managing my album collections? I am currently not using anything specific - just plain old beep media player

And finally, a question about hard drives:

• Which brand and model of hard drives are best for storage? I don't want my hard drive full of albums go bonkers, yanno...

Your lazy audiophile, spoonfork

Listening to: Bran Van 3000 - Afrodiziak

Toxicle has a map of wi-fi hotspots in Penang (Penang is in oversea exclaimed Alphademon, too bad you only managed to get as far as Butterworth dude), complete with a Google Earth map.

I was in KLCC the other day for a video shooting with the fine folks from Reuters for a rockumentary, and in between shots and occasional twist-and-turns of my heads looking at pretty girls, I managed to collect a few statistics for you wifi hackers:

• There's over 38 AP (access point) accessible from Starbucks, KLCC


• 1/3 of these are using WEP encryption for authentication


• 1/3 of these are using some other form of authentication (MAC address authentication)


• 1/3 of these are open (excluding the free wifi spots)


• Only a handful of APs hide their ESSIDs

Associating with one telco's network was much fun. There tons of open ADSL modem with default usernames and passwords. A few years back, I even managed to discover printers, and cash registers. Yeah cash registers with IP addresses, no kidding. And if you're lucky and diligent enough, you might strike the cash machines.

Listening to: Pixies - Debaser

Why can't they just form a straight line in front of the goal post?

A third-division provincial girls football team entered the annals of Belgian soccer on Saturday after suffering a crushing 50-1 defeat because of the absence of a single but crucial player: their music-loving goalkeeper.

SK Berlaar's goal was left unguarded in a match with FC Malines after its goalie opted instead to go to a rock festival, Het Laatste Nieuws reported Monday.

"Kick-off, move upfield and in it goes. That was repeated without a halt. At half-time, it was already 27-to-0," the Flemish newspaper said, describing how 16-year-old Charlotte Jacobs tried in vain to defend the goal in the absence of the usual goal-keeper.

"We came back in the second half. We only took 23 goals and we even made one at the end. They let us score, that was nice," the teenager said.... yahoo

She is HOT. Alphademon, go and save her. Sell everything you have. Save her!

"Australians, I would have thought, through the Schapelle Corby case and the Bali nine case, would know that you want to keep drugs right away from places like Indonesia . . . and for that matter, South-East Asia more generally.

"We've got an Australian on death row in Singapore for drug trafficking.

"We've got two Australians and an Australian resident on death row in Vietnam for drug trafficking, we've got the Schapelle Corby case, we've got the Bali nine case."

Legal experts said Ms Leslie could escape a trial if she secured a top lawyer.

If the matter does reach court, Ms Leslie, who was on holiday in Bali with friends after working in Singapore, will likely face charges of drug possession that carry a maximum jail term of 10 years under tough Indonesian anti-narcotics laws.

But a Bali police source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said she would more likely face a punishment similar to another Adelaide person, John Julian Pyle, who earlier this month escaped with a relatively light five-month jail term for using hashish.... theage

Elsewhere:

• http://www.memepool.com


• http://www.bullz-eye.com

Listening to: Underworld - King of Snake

I've told you that flickr is just plain fantastic. And now, there's flickrlicio.us which features pictures of babes from flickr. Rocking. This is something that I wanted to do for a long time, but heck, someone beats me to it. One thing that I found is that most of the babes pics on flickr are the ones that are carefully posed for the camera, rather than random and spontaneous snaps. But hey, a babe's a babe.

And oh. flickrchicks.

Listening to: Mars Volta - Sarchophagi

Programming is becoming a repetitive task. I feel like a machine. Seems like all that I ever done was create object, retrieve object data, manipulate object data, insert object data into database. Over and over. It's so repetitive. And I cannot stand repetitive tasks, day and night. But isn't its a fact that day in and day out all year round we'r doing the same think?

I believe that all humans are unconsciously trying to be machines. Look at moms, for example. Super machines. Look at working moms, superduper machines. Look at Japanese porn stars - 45 minutes of in-and-out action. Very very repetitive I tell you. Heck, even womenz drools at guys that have well-defined abs. Aren't well-defined abs more machine-like than say, Homer's beer belly?

We are fascinated by machines.

F1 - men and machine.
The Olympics - faster, further, higher. That's men with their machinistics ideals.
Aibos. Toyota. Sony. Machine-making corporations, i.e. robots.
The Genome Project - humans trying to 'erase' their imperfections.
Blogging. Podcasting. We express ourselves electronically.
The personal computer, the notebook, the smart phone - human to machine interface device
flickr. Our memories are stored electronically.


What is our fascination with machines? The answer is simple. In the near future, our lives will be complemented by machines. They will be the citizens of the future. They will become the backbone of our economy. They will become the workforce. They will replace us humans. We will become the couch potato watching the idiot box with all the machines around us doing our bidding ("bring me my tacos you useless japenis junk"). And then we realize that we can't just sit around doing nothing all day. We realize that we have to be above the machines. We have to be the machine. We are and will be, the only perfect machine.

Listening to: Underworld - Dirty