SirFlakey at Core.org.au compares various broadband connections available in Australia currently. I'm thinking of getting a wireless connection when we move and sign up with a VOIP provider (so we don't have to pay the exorbitant Telstra line rental and call fees).
Monthly Archive for October, 2004
I woke up this morning to find something weird on the blog… It said that there had been 400+ page views (by distinct IPs) of the AAC Transcoding post from yesterday. Right now 529 people have read that post, and I would say almost all of them are from MacSurfer. 
I figured out that I'm linked to from the "OS X" section, but why? It was a simple blurb about wanting to have AAC transcoding in iTunes, nothing special. Weird…
Lucy and I went to see "We Will Rock You" at the Lyric Theatre last night, thanks to Mum and Dad. I thought that the musical/show would tell the story of Queen, or something along those lines, but was very wrong!
The show has a very… interesting story line, which manages to incorporate a wide range of Queen songs into the score. I enjoyed it, because I like Queen (as a result of seeing the show, I went out an bought the 3 CD Platinum Collection of Queen's Greatest Hits).
The one thing I thought was a let-down was the lead actor, who had a very pronounced American accent that became a bit annoying. Lucy and I agreed that he was also one of those people that old women lust after. (We even heard some wolf-whistles in one of the last acts) Ew.
If you're a Queen fan, go see it. You'll enjoy the songs, the lighting and sets, and the innuendo too, I suspect. (Funniest comment of the night: One of the actors says "You're a great root". A child in the row behind us says "Mummy, what's a root?")
One thing I forgot to mention the other day in my short post on Omar Shahine's "Plays For Sure" post was that he talked about Windows Media Player automatically transcoding his WMA Lossless files:
"As an added bonus, since I rip all my audio as WMA Lossless, I have no desire to actually transfer the lossless music to my portable device as only a small fraction of it would fit. WMP10 can automatically transcode (convert) the lossless audio to a smaller version (I use WMA 128K) with some small loss in audio quality. This is a super cool feature because I don't have to maintain multiple copies of my music as I have to today with my iPod. This also ensures that any device I get can have higher and better transcoded software as the codecs improve and as device storage increases without having to ever RIP audio again."
I would *love* for Apple to implement something like this in iTunes. If I could store all my music as Apple Lossless (hard drive space willing…), iTunes could transcode it down to 192k AAC when transferring it to the iPod. If a better codec comes out, or I get a bigger iPod, I could simply up the transcoding setting, and I have higher quality songs on my iPod.
MacInTouch reported today on some Mac OS X malware, which collects passwords on the machine. Nasty. The contributor didn't provide information about how it is installed or spread, unfortunately.
UPDATE: MacInTouch has more reader reports. It appears it's just a bash script made by some hackers, and requires physical or root access for it to be installed. Still a bit of an issue, but apparently many of the flaws were fixed in the recent Apple security updates.
One link I found from the recent Neal Stephenson interview was Vernor Vinge on the Singularity. It talks about the emergence of a "superhuman intelligence" sometime in the next 30 years. Interesting stuff…
Slashdot has an interview with author Neal Stephenson. I've never read any of his books, but Dad has. I think I'm going to have to go out and buy some… It's an interesting interview, anyway.
Omar Shahine talks about Microsoft's "Plays For Sure" program for portable media devices.
Terrorists, terrorists, terrorists! Absolutely hilarious.
Latest Comments
RSS