Sound Juicer 0.2.1
Whoops. A last minute stupid bug sneaked in, don't use 0.2, but Sound Juicer 0.2.1.
Sound Juicer 0.2
Sound Juicer "Madly Deeply" 0.2 is out -- download the tarball here or a Debian package here.
What's New:
- RPM spec file
- UI for setting the extraction base path
- GConf key to set the output filename pattern
- GConf key to set the paranoia level of the extraction
- Always strip / from names to avoid extra path creation
- Option to strip special characters [ /*?\] from filenames
- UI cleanups
- More minor bug fixes
Sound Juicer Update
Wow, the feedback from Sound Juicer has been great. I did a Debian package, Frederic Crozat (@mandrake) did Mandrake package, and a Gentoo package is being worked on too. Two different projects (lymric and net-Rhythmbox) have both stated that they would like to integrate with Sound Juicer. Rock!
Feature requests, and better yet, patches, come in every day which is nice. I hope to get 0.2 out fairly shortly, with an UI to set the extract path, bug fixes, and a dependency on GStreamer 0.6.1. 0.3 should allow you to set the format for the ripped file. Beyond that, I don't have a plan...
I'm Engaged!
I did one more thing in Rome... I asked Vicky if she would marry me. Thankfully, she said yes!
This, obviously, led me to becoming The Happiest Man In England. If you see someone rushing through London with a ThinkGeek Caffinne t-shirt and a huge grin, it's probably me!
At the moment we are looking at a summer wedding in August 2004. A jazz band, fairy lights, barbecue in the evening, honeymoon to Italy and other fabulous ideas are planned.
Rome
Just got back from Rome -- a truly wonderful city. Everyone should go there, as it is lovely.
Our unique hotel was just off Campo de Fiorri (excuse the spelling, I don't have a map with me), with a roof terrace on the sixth floor overlooking the city. Our days basically involved getting up, having breakfast, spending half an hour on the balcony just looking at the city, then walking around the city until lunch, eating pizza, more walking, back to the hotel, rest for an hour, restaurant, hotel, bed.
The ancient Roman remains are amazing -- the sheer size of everything is amazing. The Collosium is large, the Roman Forum is just huge. It seems that everywhere you go in the old town involves walking past ancient pillars, column and walls, idly sitting on corners and in walls.
We also went to the Vatican. We went inside, and spent the next half hour in complete awe. It's huge, and intricate. Marble and engraving and statues and artwork on everything and anything. Right up there on my list of Groovy Churches.
We took three films of photos with our new Canon EOS-300V camera, when I can get my scanner to work I'll put a few online.
Sound Juicer 0.1
Well, I've finally released Sound Juicer 0.1.
It's not perfect, thus the version number, but it works. Please read the README before running the program!
I've been told that Mandrake Cooker will have packages very soon, and of course I have Debian packages in my repository.
Mark Thomas
A couple of nights ago (Tuesday, the 8th) I went to see a live Mark Thomas show. A very enjoyable show, he is wonderful at telling stories, making the entire audience collapse with laughter, and then can suddenly make the entire room silent with a serious point about the terrors the Western world manages to inflict on other nations.
Lots of interesting facts, like the poor drunk American who is in prison for three years for mentioning the "day of judgement" and "a burning Bush". The number of people dying daily due to lack of action from us. The propaganda about the current war, forced in our faces every second of every day, until the war is over (as far as the media is concerned), at which point it will be ignored and never mentioned again.
I am now a proud white ribbon wearer, supporting How About Not Killing Everyone?
A small piece of advice from the wise -- if you see MT live, and he starts to talk about John Major and Edwina Curry... look away. Quickly. You shall be haunted for the rest of your days if you do not.
Yay/Boo
Things to say "yay" too: I'm onto the last stage of the Debian New Maintainer process; Sound Juicer is going very well; it appears Jimbob is hacking on Gnome Chat again; I'm not coding Swing at work any more.
Things to say "boo" too: BBC reporter John Simpson (second only to John Snow as a Top Class News Person in my opinion) was very nearly killed by "friendly fire" yesterday, as a bomb dropped by the US Air Force hit 12" away. He had a piece of shrapnel embedded in his flak jacket next to his spine... He was very lucky, their translator was not, as he was killed by the blast. My thoughts go out to the families of the journalists who risk their lives to bring us the news.
Mr. Handy Man
On Saturday I turned into Mr. Handy Man. Our CD collection is getting rather large (~270 CDs), and the current CD rack is filled to capacity, with a 3 foot tall tower of CDs next to it. I decided to build a new one myself, there being no decent and cheap CD racks designed for this many CDs.
I measured and planned and drew, and eventually had a design for a rack nearly 6 feet high, and more than a foot wide [1]. My Dad and me went down the local timber yard, bought the pine (which they cut for us) for a mere £10, and set about building it.
The building went very well. My Dad is pretty damn good at DIY so we had all of the tools we needed, and a few hours later we had our new CD rack, and Vicky had caught the sun [2]. We did have a few minor problems -- one shelf was sticking slightly out (five minutes with a chisel sorted that), and the MDF back was put on backwards, showing the huge price sticker to the world, but on the whole its a damn fine and solid CD rack, which holds a grand total of 350 CDs, for £15. We have two and bit shelves free, so have space for another 80 or so CDs... shouldn't take long to fill that.
Of course, we then spend much of Sunday afternoon filling the damn thing... To celebrate we bought Solid Bronze, the Best of Beautiful South, and a Black Sunday by Cyprus Hill.
[1] The exact measurements for anyone wanting to build their own:
1700mm x 370mm x 150mm, in 15mm pine.
[2] That's a polite phrase for having a pink nose and arms.
...And Relax
It's nearly over. Vicky handed in her dissertation last Friday, all thats left is 6 weeks of revision (or as she calls it 'learning'). We we both tired over the weekend, and it turns out V was more stressed than she thought -- the day after she handed it in a cold promptly developed -- there appears to be a link between the removal of stress and illness.
Rugby. Need I say more? This year I am trying to watch more rugby, and the Six Nations is a good series. The final was England v Ireland, but Ireland didn't do very well... the score being 42-6 to England. I still don't understand all of the rules, but the players appear to so that's okay. I do however understand eight grown (in most cases rather overgrown) men jumping on top of each other, kicking and shouting, trying to get a funny shaped ball out of the writhing pile so someone else can kick it towards what is possibly the highest goal posts in any sport.
Which reminds me: whilst in the pub on Saturday we were talking about how some sportmans skills transfer into other sports. For example, a good British 200m sprinter (can't recall his name), is also a bobsleigher. I was thinking: if a rugby player can make one of those odd-shaped balls go where he wants it... how good will his shot be with a perfectly round ball! Will we be able to define new measures of straightness from the England rubgy team? :)
In other news, Sound Juicer in GNOME CVS now works and IBM finally paided me for my article.
