And I stumbled upon this advertisement:
And then I began to ponder... :)
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Job Market
There was one, today at the university.
And I stumbled upon this advertisement:
And then I began to ponder... :)
And I stumbled upon this advertisement:
And then I began to ponder... :)
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
"Being an Adult" Course
It's almost a year since I left home, living here in Jerusalem, and from time to time a thought about a course for "being an adult" pops in my mind.
The last time the thought popped was yesterday night, when I found out that our electricity bill is extremely large than it is supposed to be. So while walking like a ghost in the apartment on 1am while trying to forget about my insomnia, I found out that there are small letters in the bill that says the bottom line it is an "estimation" of our electricity usage (only it's a *7 one).
So, why are there colleges who teach about financial investments, raising babies and so on, but they don't teach you how to be a grown up?
I thought about these subjects as a basic discussion for a curriculum:
The last time the thought popped was yesterday night, when I found out that our electricity bill is extremely large than it is supposed to be. So while walking like a ghost in the apartment on 1am while trying to forget about my insomnia, I found out that there are small letters in the bill that says the bottom line it is an "estimation" of our electricity usage (only it's a *7 one).
So, why are there colleges who teach about financial investments, raising babies and so on, but they don't teach you how to be a grown up?
I thought about these subjects as a basic discussion for a curriculum:
- How to deal with bureaucracy.
- Taxes.
- Contracts (work, rental, etc.).
- Fixing stuff in the apartment (such as blocked sink).
- Paying bills.
- Handling car issues (tests, bills, fixing basic problems).
Monday, June 30, 2008
Piracy and Disinformation
"I have a friend" who's downloading music through Bittorrent, Rapidshare and some other http free file hosting sites.
One of the CD's that were downloaded included an inaccurate version of the album, which led me to some thoughts about the authenticity of information you gather from pirated releases.
My friend really liked the album, and his favorite track was "Trail of Life", which he mistakenly thought as the name of the original track.
The mistake has been found later after a friend of his friend went to this band's concert, and retrieved the set list, which named the track "Trail of Fire".
This made both of my friends to go and check, using multiple data sources (the internet and a friend who has the original CD), what is the original name of the track.
Why not trust the set list? Because bands sometimes do not write the exact track names in their set list. Anyhow, the verification showed that the real track name is indeed the one that was written in the list.
Funny thing is, another friend of my friend's friend wrote about this concert in his blog, referencing to "Trail of Fire" as "Trail of Life". Is this a new way to find who is a pirate and who's not?
Moving on, my friend wanted to update his track name and ID3 tag, so he used MediaMonkey to access Amazon cd database and retrieve information about the cd. He was extremely surprised to see that there's another, 9th track which is included in the original release but not in the pirated one.
As it seems, there were two different releases, but one of them (probably) was not nuked properly, so there are two different versions - an accurate one and an inaccurate one, which is encoded in a better quality, but lacks the latest track.
Conclusions:
One of the CD's that were downloaded included an inaccurate version of the album, which led me to some thoughts about the authenticity of information you gather from pirated releases.
My friend really liked the album, and his favorite track was "Trail of Life", which he mistakenly thought as the name of the original track.
The mistake has been found later after a friend of his friend went to this band's concert, and retrieved the set list, which named the track "Trail of Fire".
This made both of my friends to go and check, using multiple data sources (the internet and a friend who has the original CD), what is the original name of the track.
Why not trust the set list? Because bands sometimes do not write the exact track names in their set list. Anyhow, the verification showed that the real track name is indeed the one that was written in the list.
Funny thing is, another friend of my friend's friend wrote about this concert in his blog, referencing to "Trail of Fire" as "Trail of Life". Is this a new way to find who is a pirate and who's not?
Moving on, my friend wanted to update his track name and ID3 tag, so he used MediaMonkey to access Amazon cd database and retrieve information about the cd. He was extremely surprised to see that there's another, 9th track which is included in the original release but not in the pirated one.
As it seems, there were two different releases, but one of them (probably) was not nuked properly, so there are two different versions - an accurate one and an inaccurate one, which is encoded in a better quality, but lacks the latest track.
Conclusions:
Saturday, June 28, 2008
MySpace HiDef MP3 Download
I've got some bands I like that publish their music through MySpace, but I was quite frustrated to find out that the streaming music quality that is provided by the site is pretty low.
Then Ami showed me this site, that allows you to download the original mp3 files that the user uploaded to MySpace!.
Just click on audio, and put the URL of the user in the textbox.
I haven't tried to find out what's going on there, but I guess that the links are found in the original MySpace user page, or that someone reverse engineered MySpace's media player and revealed the URL of the original mp3's. Anyhow it's quite a shame for MySpace to put the original uploaded mp3's under their webroot, but I don't care much :)
Then Ami showed me this site, that allows you to download the original mp3 files that the user uploaded to MySpace!.
Just click on audio, and put the URL of the user in the textbox.
I haven't tried to find out what's going on there, but I guess that the links are found in the original MySpace user page, or that someone reverse engineered MySpace's media player and revealed the URL of the original mp3's. Anyhow it's quite a shame for MySpace to put the original uploaded mp3's under their webroot, but I don't care much :)
Monday, May 12, 2008
Python Winamp Control Module
As expected, I'm posting my iWC's Winamp control module here.
The module works without the need of installing a plugin in Winamp, hence it does alot of IPC (some of it is totally undocumented, and I think that even Winamp's developers didn't think of using their media library in such a way, but who cares).
All of the functions are documented beside of the three most complicated ones, because I'm just too lazy - so if you're really interested I can spread some lights on the ugly hacks I did too.
Get it from here.
Requirements: ctypes, win32 python modules (comes with ActiveState's python), Winamp 5+.
Feature request / comments - just leave a comment here.
Have fun!
The module works without the need of installing a plugin in Winamp, hence it does alot of IPC (some of it is totally undocumented, and I think that even Winamp's developers didn't think of using their media library in such a way, but who cares).
All of the functions are documented beside of the three most complicated ones, because I'm just too lazy - so if you're really interested I can spread some lights on the ugly hacks I did too.
Get it from here.
Requirements: ctypes, win32 python modules (comes with ActiveState's python), Winamp 5+.
Feature request / comments - just leave a comment here.
Have fun!
Friday, May 9, 2008
The Semester is dead. Long live the Semester!
Semester 1A and its exams ended, and the new semester is beginning on Sunday.
This means I've got some spare time to do stuff beside sitting in my room and looking at some papers, so here are some updates on the upcoming projects I'm planning to work on:
iWC - I've decided to discontinue the project, because I've found out this application which allows you to control Winamp, Windows Media Player or iTunes using an iPhone web application. It seems that programming a web application specifically for the iPhone can replace most native applications, and you should give it a try.
However, I'm planning to release the Python Winamp module of iWC, which enables communication with Winamp 5+. I still need to document and refactor it a bit, so I hope I'll be able to release it this upcoming week.
iPhone Synchronization - I'm planning to enhance the currently available iTunes-iPhone synchronization. I know, there are some products which allow better synchronizing, but they cost money, and they are not modular and open-source.
Currently, the main features I'm planning are Facebook synchronization (fetch friends pictures, phone numbers, addresses, websites and so on) and better Outlook integration (such as notes and to-do synchronization). If you have any other ideas, please send me an email or leave a comment.
Smart-Home - I wonder if I shall start working on an embedded project to connect some switches / electronic devices to the wireless network at our apartment in Jerusalem. If you know a cheap wifi microcontroller, please leave a message.
This means I've got some spare time to do stuff beside sitting in my room and looking at some papers, so here are some updates on the upcoming projects I'm planning to work on:
iWC - I've decided to discontinue the project, because I've found out this application which allows you to control Winamp, Windows Media Player or iTunes using an iPhone web application. It seems that programming a web application specifically for the iPhone can replace most native applications, and you should give it a try.
However, I'm planning to release the Python Winamp module of iWC, which enables communication with Winamp 5+. I still need to document and refactor it a bit, so I hope I'll be able to release it this upcoming week.
iPhone Synchronization - I'm planning to enhance the currently available iTunes-iPhone synchronization. I know, there are some products which allow better synchronizing, but they cost money, and they are not modular and open-source.
Currently, the main features I'm planning are Facebook synchronization (fetch friends pictures, phone numbers, addresses, websites and so on) and better Outlook integration (such as notes and to-do synchronization). If you have any other ideas, please send me an email or leave a comment.
Smart-Home - I wonder if I shall start working on an embedded project to connect some switches / electronic devices to the wireless network at our apartment in Jerusalem. If you know a cheap wifi microcontroller, please leave a message.
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