Jason's Little Corner of THE INTERNET!

YASP - Yet Another Sasuke Post

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 10:31:37 GMT

30 minutes into the broadcast, ... of a 4 hour broadcast.

And we're already on runner number 51.

More overviews of Stage 1 = LOTS AND LOTS of time spent on future stages. This is being set up for a good turn out.

Exciting!

Linux Audio Conversion Trick

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 02:46:20 GMT

I'm in the middle of transcoding much of my audio library to move onto a portable player.

For those who don't know me well enough, I archive my audio files in FLAC as much as possible, and on my computer, play those. I won't go into too much detail, but FLAC is to MP3 as PSD is to JPG. One is lossless (albeit with compression, as opposed to raw WAV files which aren't), the other is lossy. Lossy formats will discard data it feels unnecessary.
The main upside to this is that I can transcode the music any way I want based off the FLAC files, and I'll always have the same full quality base to start with.

I'm transcoding a bunch of FLAC files into AAC. AAC > MP3, and that's the last I'll say that.

To make this job easier and have it running like an assembly line, I have three shells/terminals open via the `screen` command. One for copying, one for FLAC -> WAV decoding, one for WAV -> AAC encoding. Remember that you'll need lots of hard drive space for this, because you're taking a compressed raw file, decoding it to an uncompressed raw file, and only afterwards will the post-AAC encode free up all the raw space.

First Terminal - Copying files into a scratch space.
This will obviously be rather specific to my setup, but I'll explain my concepts and leave the task of adopting them to you.

I store my music in /music/extension/Artist/Album/(music files here)
Where extension is one of the formats I have, mp3, flac, ogg, m4a, etc.

Quite obviously, I'm cherry picking albums, admittedly more en massé than cherry picking, but I have no need for the overall artist folder.

The first think to note is that I'm sitting in ~/tmp, a temporary directory created inside my home directory. So I copy them from their storage space, into my tmp directory on the desktop I'm using for this.
cp -rv /music/flac/artist1/album1 /music/flac/artist1/album2 .

This says, copy (cp) the entire folder and any subfolders (-r, needed to actually copy the directory itself) and tell me explicitly what you're copying when you're copying it (-v) into the current directory (.). That'll start churning away immediately.

Move over to the second terminal, move into the temporary directory, and issue this command:
while(ls */*.flac) ; do for x in */*.flac ; do flac --decode --delete-input-file --verify "${x}" ; done ; done

Nothing like a little bit of BASH scripting to kick your logical side into action.
First:
while(ls */*.flac)

This opens a while loop, a loop that runs as long as the expression inside remains "true". Long story short, this command will execute once and if successful, it will move onto the second command/loop in the chain. The brilliant part of using this while loop, is that once there are no more flac files (when `ls` returns "not found"), the whole command will stop and you will be returned to a shell. But since new files will invariably be copied in after it runs the first time, it will succeed the second time `ls */*.flac` has to run.

The ; do bit has to exist as part to set up the loop.

Second:
for x in */*.flac

The part where this command is dumb is that the `ls` portion of the while loop didn't send it's output to the next command. It's really not a big deal, because listing candidates is dead simple. Again, the while loop serves only to run when it needs to, and stop when it doesn't.

for sets up a for loop, x is the variable to assign the iterations too, and in */*.flac are the candidates. So, for each item that is in */*.flac, run the following command.

Once again, ; do has to exist as part to set up the for loop.

Third, the meat and potatoes:
flac --decode --delete-input-file --verify "${x}"

Explaining this probably won't be very hard:
flac is the command for operating with (or creating) flac files. Real shocking, I know.
--decode means to decode the flac file into a raw wav file.
--delete-input-file means to delete the flac file once the decoding is done. Again, this is why I made a copy. I could have very easily omitted that part and just specified an output path for the decoded wav file, but certain storage infrastructure and general computer setup 'isms in my house made just creating a straight up copy a much smarter idea.
--verify means to ... verify the file.
"${x}" I could have easily done "$x" and it would have worked the same. Lately I've become more explicit in defining what a variable is. Let's just say that with some of the variable work you do, sometimes you have to do something that requires you to add text immediately after the variable.

If I were to have said "$xm4a" (explained in the encoding section), this process would fail because the variable $xm4a doesn't exist. But, if you said ${x}m4a, then it would understand that ${x} is the variable, and m4a is plain text on the end.

Lastly, you must double quote the variable because my files have spaces in them, quoting them treats them as one argument, not multiple.

And finally, the pair of ; done statements signify the end of the loops. You need two, because you ran two loops.

This process will run and run and run until no more flac files exist in the path to encode.

Finally, we can move onto our third terminal:
This one takes the decoded raw WAV files and turns them into AAC audio files. I'm using the Nero AAC codec binaries, because they have linux versions, they work, and because the "faac" AAC encoder plainly states on their website that:
FAAC is an MPEG-4 and MPEG-2 AAC encoder.
Note that the quality of FAAC is not up to par with the currently best AAC encoders available.

The third terminal runs the following command, and it is a doozy:
while(ls */*.wav) ; do for x in */*.wav ; do echo "$x" && neroAacEnc -if "${x}" -of "${x:: ${#x}-3}m4a" && rm -fv "${x}" ; done ; done

Again we see the return of the while loop:
while(ls */*.wav)
Again, when run from my temporary directories, this executes the loop when wav files exist, and stops when it doesn't.

for x in */*.wav
Also again, this sets up iteration over all of the wav files I want to encode.

This part is messy, and I have to be a bit explicit because of the way the AAC encoder works.

echo "$x"
The biggest pain in the ass with the Nero encoder, decoder, and everything it ships, is that it doesn't report what file isn't working on, and I like to know that for progress reasons.

Thus, I simply echo the candidate file. You should note that I used $x and not ${x}. It was the first thing that came out when setting this all up, and it does work, I wasn't worried. You'll see where that's different later in the execution.

neroAacEnc -if "${x}" -of "${x:: ${#x}-3}m4a"
This may be deducible until the absolute madness occurring at the end.

neroAacEnc is the name of the binary.
-if "${x}", -if means input file, and I'm telling it to use the WAV file ("${x}").
-of "${x:: ${#x}-3}m4a", -of means output file (where to save the AAC file), and... ...
Ok, stay with me here. BASH (and likely other shells) have a means of "sub-selecting" variable content.
I said stay with me here.

So I input the WAV file, and output the AAC file (extension: m4a), and for some ridiculous reason I don't even want to know, it doesn't change the extension. I could very easily have a step I run after everything's done to change extensions en massé, but why bother?

BASH to the rescue.

Firstly, the entire operation is wrapped in double quotes because the content has spaces, and because it is one long variable plus text appending on the end.

Stat with just the ${x:: ${#x}-3} part.
${x:: means that we're operating on the "x" variable, as you should understand by now.
The :: portion is the part that sub-selects.

As described by the man page, the general overview is:
${variable:offset:length}
variable is x
offset is not set in my example, but it means to start offset characters into the variable text. In this case, I want to start at the very first character, so I simply don't use it.
That leaves us with length and it's a doozy. But it's about to all come together, I promise.
${#x} simply means, instead of using the actual variable content, return the length of the variable. Tack on that -3 immediately afterwards, and that means that if we have a 20 character string, return the number 17. That number 17 gets passed into the first variable selector as the length value.

Why -3? What is usually 3 characters in filenames? The extension.
So we have: ${x:: ${#x}-3} tells bash to return the entire length of the file name minus the last three characters. That leaves us with the straggling "m4a" on the end. What does that do? Makes that the extension of the output file.

Voìla.

So, consider $x = "20 - Mansun - I Can Only Disappoint U (Perfecto mix).wav"
Side Note: This is the last song on the first Dancemania "FantasiA" album, and it's hilarious. Check it out if possible.
All that ${x:: ${#x}-3}m4a madness does is specify the output file name is instead "20 - Mansun - I Can Only Disappoint U (Perfecto mix).m4a"

Makes sense? I sure hope so!

And of course, there's lastly the:
rm -fv "${x}"
This just deletes the WAV file because the encoder won't do it for me.

And one last time, you have ; done ; done to set the end points of the while and for loops.

Let that churn as long as it needs to, and you have compressed audio files suitable for an iPod, Sansa, or whatever plays AAC files. (Does a Zune? I honestly am curious.)

Believe me, this process took a long time to figure out. It was not easy, but here's hoping I made similar tasks a bit easier on you.

I'd like to thank the mysterious man behind the curtain (whose name I cannot find) at BASH Cures Cancer for having been an inspiration for doing more with less, and reminding me that Shell Scripting is damn powerful, and can be leveraged in more ways than I can imagine.

Obligatory Excitement

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:41:11 GMT

This should be very familiar to many of you:

At the time of this writing:
It is 5 days, 10 hours, 19 minutes and 0 seconds until Sunday, September 27, 2009 at 7:00:00 PM (Tokyo time)

SASUKE23 (〜秋〜) is less than a week out. And since it's on the weekend, I can watch it!
Yay.

Super Wailing Bonus:
At the time of this edit:
It is 15 days, 11 hours, 5 minutes and 0 seconds until Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 7:55:00 PM (Tokyo time)

KUNOICHI8 is finally making it's glorious return in just a day over 2 weeks out. Despite the fact that it was filmed before SASUKE, it's airing later. Note also that it was apparently very rainy in Midoriyama that day, and chances are good that this course will be fail-tacular.

Woot for Japanese TV!

Hmm, I need a Japanese TV/SASUKE/KUNOICHI icon. I should clip out the picture I took of Levi and Curtis and use it :>

Voice Post

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:49:35 GMT

Yessssssssssssssssssss

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 04:52:23 GMT

Also: Yesssssssssssssssssssssssss

Voice Post

Fri, 29 May 2009 23:55:33 GMT

Tue, 19 May 2009 01:42:37 GMT

Anybody feel like Duke-matching? (Duke3D deathmatch on XBLA(h).) Games are always better with a friend.

Your Code Zen Moment of the Day

Sun, 17 May 2009 04:15:19 GMT

I was going through some old scripts that I set up, trying to decide if I wanted to improve them, or work on something new.

I stumbled across this bit of an old script of mine.

Not that it should come as too much of a surprise, but RoXoR's conversion of StepMania for In The Groove wasn't exactly complete on all levels :P.

The gist of it (see what I did there?) is:
When displaying scores by difficulty, you have to translate "Challenge" (lol DDR) into Expert.

For the curious, that script is part of what powers this:

Refresh this post a few times, that should explain to you what's going on :).

:D

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:35:43 GMT

:D!

The wait is excruciating...

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:02:35 GMT

I came up with a silly thought earlier today... today/tonight is exactly the same as days leading into working Graveyard back in Arizona.

Despite any/all efforts to screw up my sleeping schedule prior to the sun starting to go down today, they've all failed, and instead of having a usual day in which I might actually sleep a lot during the day and manage being up all night, I have an UNUSUAL day for all the wrong reasons, and am actually awake ALL DAY!

Seriously, this is frustrating. Many many many weekend days, I simply take long naps during the day, which in turn keeps me up late into the evening. Hell, this happens on weekday... days... too! Even on weekend days in which I get a large amount of sleep through the night, I usually go back to sleep during the day.
I got a fair amount of sleep last night, somewhere in the vicinity of 8 hours, and I've had a very full day so far, the only problem is that I still have to wait 11 more hours for what I'm staying up for...

This same thing happened in Arizona. I'd go lay down to sleep some time after noon, usually 1 or 2, and I would just lay there. TV on, TV off, Music on, Music off, on my back, on my sides, etc. etc. etc. If I did fall asleep, it usually only ever happened after the sun was down. Meaning, 7, 8, or 9 o'clock depending on time of year. And then I had to get up and go work for 10 hours...
Sometimes I just didn't sleep at all, those nights were painful.

SASUKE2009 ~春~ (better known to many of us as SASUKE22) airs this morning at 5AM for those of us in the Mountain (Daylight!) Time Zone.
And just now I managed to grab this from My TimeAndDate.com Counter:
It is 0 days, 11 hours, 00 minutes and 00 seconds until Monday, March 30, 2009 at 8:00:00 PM (Tokyo time)

Only 11 hours to go, and here's hoping I don't fall asleep and miss some of the show. I think that means I should be setting alarms for 4AM and 4:45AM and what not now, while I'm still sanely awake to do so.

Oh the things I do for Japanese TV shows...

New Userpics Redux

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 04:37:43 GMT

I don't know what caused me to ask this, but I asked nabikchan to make me a Hackergotchi no more than 30 minutes before starting to write this post (which I started doing an hour ago >_>), and so it was done, because she's fucking awesome like that (and needs every excuse to distract her from doing her final project).

So freaking awesome XD.

The source picture was one taken by Moo when he was in town two weekends ago with Mark.

I only asked her for one, but she went ahead and found another one that was too good to pass up;

(The source image for this one comes from the same weekend/same day.)

Now that Music Games are popular in America...

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:48:07 GMT

All of us J-Fanboys can officially scream.

I think Scot posted this to the AllGames Twitter Account (or... whoever is behind that, I tip my hat to you for this tip).

From the MTV Multiplayer Blog

It also goes the other way: Like with “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band,” just because you play a real instrument, doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily be an expert in this right off the bat. Schwartz said he wasn’t even playing on the Expert difficulty yet. “I sucked at first — I started me out on a pretty high level, and I got a little mind-boggled because you have to switch back and forth,” he said. “You have to go from scratching to actual beat-making. You kind of have to be ambidextrous, but it’s all in fun. It caters to your skill level.”

Schwartz added that the game isn’t just aiming for hip-hop heads who want to be DJs. “I think it’s going to attract everybody,” he said. “Gamers — period — are going to look at this game, because it’s the first of its kind, so I think they’re going to be really interested. I think it’s going to be as big as ‘Guitar Hero,’ if not bigger.”

sigh

AND BEATMANIA WAS A BAD RIP OFF OF GUITAR HERO! Where's my "rolling my eyes" emote when I need it...
Thanks guys. Thanks for ignoring 11 years of one of the best series of games ever.

New Userpics!

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:35:56 GMT

For topical posts that I think I'll be posting about more than once, I'm going to create new userpics for them.

And... I'd like to give a big middle finger to LiveJournal, and also introduce show off my new userpics.

First;
I have a food pic! A picture I took at Sakura Bowl prior to scarfing the bowl down, I posted it to Brightkite some time ago, and just decided to go get it and crop it down:

Second;
A long overdue IIDX picture. One taken by Moo last weekend when we (+ApEtc) were down at Biggs in Colorado Springs.

I had to upload that userpic twice, why?

This is what happened after I uploaded it the first time :|. Thanks LiveJournal, thanks a whole fucking lot.

And... I have a follow-up post coming using one of those two :). (Yes, I had to put the userpic up before the post :P.)

Why must ones youth be so enthralling?

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:45:36 GMT

Holy crap I forgot how amazing the music and sound effects were. I should play this game again... I want to so badly right now.

So excited... So excited...

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:24:43 GMT

At the time of posting:

It is 13 days, 19 hours, 36 minutes and 55 seconds until Monday, March 30, 2009 at 8:00:00 PM (Tokyo time)

I can't freaking wait.
What can't I wait for? Go a few posts back :).

Also, I now have two amazing weekends I need to post about. Watch me not do anything until the morning of the 30th when I'll have nothing else to do :P. (Note: I need to not do that.)

Silent (Hill) Night, Holy (Fuck it's Foggy) Night

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 02:09:06 GMT

Also, the fog is already pretty thick; we tried to get a picture, but the lack of exposure control and what not on a point and shoot isn't working very well.

It's time to start...

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 05:04:33 GMT

After watching The Complex Rock Tour Live again, I just have to say.

Annette Strean >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Adrian Hartley

God, Annette's performance is too awesome.

[edit]
I should really post about this weekend. Just kinda hit me that it's already Wednesday night. I have another tech ~~whine~~ post to make too, assuming I don't figure it out.

The Pain, The Fear, The End, The Fury, The Sorrow, The Boss, The Plan (for the evening)

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:09:50 GMT

Cross posted from Twitter (boy, that sounds weird);
Apparently I'm all by myself tonight. Hooray?

Hmm, what to do.

I think it's movie night, it's a shame we don't have a stereo for our TV yet.

[edit]
By "a stereo", I guess I mean a receiver and a stereo. You know, a tall speaker, or surround sound, with woofer/sub-woofer, not just the small one I'll explain about below...
[/edit]

(And now the part that I can actually elaborate on, since, you know, I don't have a text limit here...)

Something tells me I'm going to be damn bored. I think I'll watch a bunch of stuff I wouldn't otherwise; Like some of my old wrestling DVDs (old school TNA \o/), the first Blue Man Group DVD, and maybe a few other random movies.

The REAL question is... what do I start with? I think I'll save Blue Man Group for later tonight. I think I'll start with the Simpsons starting in 15 minutes, move at least one Wrestling DVD, then wind down the night with my Metallica S&M DVD and the Blue Man Group DVD. I've been wanting to listen to "I Feel Love" for a long time now.
We bought the How to be a Megastar Live! Blue Man Group Concert on BluRay, and... the female vocalist sucked :/. I wasn't fond of how Peter Moore changed some of his lyrical style either.
Back to what I mentioned, whatever her name is, her rendition of "I Feel Love" was just absolutely boring. With the exception of what was new for Megastar, that disc was just not as good. The Complex Rock Tour Live! DVD is still absolutely freaking amazing. I'm going to watch the whole thing because of how good it is, but all I want to listen to is I Feel Love, over... and over... and over. Annette Strean's voice is absolutely perfect for the song, and the chorus of Peter Moore, and the other two members of Venus Hum, Kip Kubin and Tony Miracle, are beautiful.

...jesus, I should just go watch that right now. I'm thinking that I want to plug in our stereo to it just to have some extra umph when I do watch it. The Stereo adds a lot to the low end that the TV just doesn't seem to have, no surprise there, and it's just a two speaker system with no Woofer. The next question is... where are all the cables >_>. Everything is still all over the place since moving. Having said that, I can't find my external hard drive enclosures, and I really want to listen to all my music again :(.

If I did want to plug in our Stereo, I'd have to find a power cable (shouldn't be too hard), and some Stereo audio cables, which I think I saw earlier today when fishing around for my enclosures. Yeah, I think that's a plan, it just sounds like a great plan for the evening.

The Road Back to Gentoo...

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:26:10 GMT

The road back to Gentoo is littered with LOLZ and memories.

I do believe that Troy told me about this before, or I generally just saw it in a compile before. I'm getting media utilities/libraries back up to par so I can start using XMMS2 again, so I'm installing a few libs and mpg123.

In mpg123's autoconf I see something peculiar scroll by;
checking if you are too dumbing dumb for the dummy... no

*whew*, at least I'm not too dumbing dumb for the dummy...
Something tells me that some developer really hated the fact that he had to check for... whatever that's checking for :).

Happy Second!

Unrelated Madness

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:56:21 GMT

I suppose I accomplished my posting mission, since I stopped loudtweeter from posting for now :P. I asked about a weekly digest, haven't heard an answer. If he implements it, I'll probably re-enable it. Daily postings are just... too noisy.

But enough about that, it's time for something IMPORTANT to be shared.

My Counter, Let Me Show You It

You can probably guess what this is a countdown to, but just in case you don't:
Go read Muscle Park's News

\o/

This is a good month for my favorite Japanese TV Shows, because Kasou Taishou is airing on... either the 14th or 15th of this month!
It would appear that this is not the actual show like I have from January, but instead it is a "qualifier". How it differs or what exactly this mean, I don't know. But you bet I'm going to watch it, and try and understand as much as possible.

... with all this Japanese TV you'd think I understood the language.
Well, you'd be wrong.

Jason Exists Around the Web

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 02:16:31 GMT

I don't know that I've actually posted about it here before, but Bobby Blackwolf has a show on Friday nights called Friday Night Gaming, streaming video on UStream, streaming audio on AllGames.com, Friday nights (duh?) starting at 5PM Pacific.

Now that I got all of that link madness out of the way, to the meat'n'taters of the entry.

This last Friday was "Fright-day Night Gaming", or something like that. The intended theme of the show was "What Games SCARE (or SCARED) You?". Now, certain people will know that I've had some very weird fears from Video Games I've played. Sometimes I've only made it worse on myself, other times the games just had that vibe that catches you totally off guard.

People who were interested enough/like to call in appeared to be watching Dollhouse and the Sarah Connor Chronicles, because I think I was the first (and only) person to call in for the first hour and a half or so. It wasn't until after FNG's Hardware Segment that call traffic actually started to pick up. Either that, or I just broke the ice. I'd like to go with the latter, because I can. I'm kinda like Global Warming that way.

I'd just like to say that you should listen to the episode, and laugh at how stupid some of my video game stories are. I mean seriously, Scissorman, from Clock Tower 2?! He's not scary. I still don't know why that sequence scared me so badly, maybe the total lack of sound and just...
Yeah, I dunno. Also covered: Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Fatal Frame, Doom (yes, the original Doom), and much more madness from the weird and overly talkative side of me.

If you interested in checking out just the one episode, I'm sure Bobby would prefer that I link to the episode details page on fnglive.net (as opposed to the one on AllGames.com)
You can watch the video on the above detail page as well, as provided by UStream.

I highly suggest that you subscribe to the podcast, especially if you're interested in the details of Video Game System innards. Subscription details can be found (gasp) on fnglive.net as well!

I should be finding something to eat :/. I should probably wait for Ry to get off work though. Going out for food sounds really good right now. But the question is, do I have snacks to suffice me for 1+ hours to wait. Mmmmm, snacks.

Note to Self

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 17:17:26 GMT

Note to self:
I don't like fluxbox as my actual desktop.

I don't prefer it's Alt+Tab handling (I prefer Gnome/KDE/Redmond style) and Fluxbox routinely has window focus problems when using Alt+Tab and Focus Follows Mouse.

Please use this note to remember why you don't want to use Fluxbox as your primary desktop WM in the future.

For the curious.
Ever since I've discovered Fluxbox, I kept using it, finding a problem with it, and switching back to KDE. I do this time after time after time usually every 4 or 6'ish months.

But now, I'm documenting it and remembering just why I don't like fluxbox.

Well, I love it, but not as my desktop/workstation. I do use it in 'smaller environments'.