Episode 107: iFixit iPod Iphone Teardowns! Keyboard vs. Swine Flu, FCC Bringing Net Neutrality, $500 PC [Discussion]

[serafina]

Computer Speaker Picks, iFixit DIY Repairs, Emergency Power: Solar vs. Generator, Can CyberClean's Blue Goo Stop Flu? Bargain CPUs For A New $500 PC from AMD and Intel, FCC Ramps Up Net Neutrality, pfSense: The Ultimate Free Firewall? Zune HD: It's awesome!

Watch or download this episode here

[fee]

Great Episode, LOVE the ifix it part, you should have those guys on with more gadgets and like the $500 pc, this should be a monthly thing, since prices change so much!



Audi 5000!

[nav13eh]

If Patrick is building a machine, is he giving it away like episodes in the past?

Dadditude is asking too much. But the only way I can think of is if he took a rewritable CD and burned the songs to that with something like Nero and tell it to add 25 seconds to the end of each song and rerip it. It would take a little while but not as much time as doing it manually.

[eminemdrdre00]

"I like that thought" ...haha nice one Veronica!

[latrine]

Python solution for the guy who wanted to add silence to his AIFF files:

import aifc
import os
from binascii import unhexlify

def add_silence(in_file, out_file, silence_time):
	old_sound = aifc.open(in_file, 'rb')
	params = old_sound.getparams()
	frames_to_add = int(old_sound.getframerate() * silence_time)
	old_frames = old_sound.readframes(old_sound.getnframes())
	old_sound.close()

	new_sound = aifc.open(out_file, 'wb')
	new_sound.setparams(params)
	frame_size = new_sound.getnchannels() * new_sound.getsampwidth()
	new_sound.writeframes(old_frames)
	new_sound.writeframes(unhexlify('00') * frame_size * frames_to_add)
	new_sound.close()

if __name__ == '__main__':
	directory = raw_input('Directory containing aiff files to add silence to: ')
	time = raw_input('Silent time in seconds to add: ')
	for file in os.listdir(directory):
		if file.endswith('.aiff'):
			add_silence(file, file, time)

Need Python installed to run it. Save it to a .py file and run "python filename.py"

PS - I wish I could have opened the file in append mode, would've made the code neater, but the documentation says read or write only.

[capwkidd]

Patrick put a speaker on the table during the show, that looked like it might be a decent speaker, anyone know what make/model it it? I am just trying to figure out if Patrick is a "real" audiophile

[jhd]

The Zune HD has been getting pretty stellar reviews and I wanted to see if MS would keep it real and NOT put a proprietary connector on the device. Of course they did.

IMHO, the mini-USB connector has been the best thing to happen to peripherals (do people even say that anymore?) since electricity. I have a G1, an iRiver Clix2, a Canon G9, PS3 controllers, etc. ALL mini-USB. How convenient! Why then would I buy a device which would make me tote around a special cable just for that device?

[shadfurman]

The Sony Sound Forge Pro 10 does have the ability to easily add silence to the end of a file built into it's presets. It took me about 30 seconds to set up the batch process, never having done it before. The trial version (30 day) seems fully functional, I did not hear any watermarking to the audio file and it did a full track list of Systems Hypnotize adding one second of silence to the end of each track.

I also picked this up off a forum, done with command line freeware. I have not tried it though.
http://www.videohelp.com/forum/archi...e-t372769.html

"Ok, in my car the mp3 player, that is the CRE-720 by silvercrest, or rather the speakers tend to produce the sound somewhere about 0.7 secs after the mp3 starts playing. So whatever mp3 i had it play, I'd always edit it first, by putting an 1000ms silence in the start, i used nero wave editor for that. However i just recently started working with besweet and belight and found that this program supports this in BATCH mode.

Now one problem i encountered was that the batch mode in belight doesn't... actually work all that well. If i input 2 files and encode it goes well, however more than that it displays an error, that i can't see, because it goes away really fast, and then moves on to the next file with the error again, and then the next, and the next... and it finally encodes only the last file that mysteriously doesn't bring up the error.

Still i managed to encode in batch by using the besweet command line and a bat file i made, it goes something like this. BeSweet.exe -core( -input "(Drive and folders)\(mp3name.mp3)" -output "C:\Documents and Settings\(MyUser)\Desktop\CarMP3\(Drive and folders)\(mp3name.mp3)" ) -ota( -d 1000 ) -lame( -b 128 )" ) -ota( -d 1000 ) -lame( -b 128 )
It's actually better that way because i had to pass the mp3s and their paths from winamp to belight somehow, and have no idea how to do that anyway.

However after the encode the tags of my original mp3s got obliterated. Now, i put allot of time and effort into those tags, so it's better to miss about 0.3secs from each mp3 when i hear them, than loosing the tags themselves."

And the last option, I know a lot of CD burning software lets you add silence between tracks. I thought windows media player did this, but I can't find it on the version I have. If you could find it, as a really hackish last resort, you could burn a CD and then rip it... er... not very efficient and not very automated though...

[brianlee]

Roger Chang should come by sometime. Maybe even give a special demonstration on how to overclock the new Celerons.

BTW, I'm trying to build a sub $300 computer which would function as an alarm clock on steroids. Preferably it would use Linux and display the time when it's not active. It would also come with a touchscreen display and it would show the weather, traffic, feature Pandora, and have a snooze button. Any ideas? I was looking into one of those cheap Atom motherboards from Intel which has ability to be powered by a DC adapter.

Thanks Brian

[davmoo]

Great episode.

One thing to add on the generator segment. Generators are great for emergency backup. But remember, they become useless if you can haz no gasoline. If your neighborhood gas station has no power, they aren't going to be pumping gas either. And if they do have power, all your other neighbors with generators but no gasoline are going to be there too. And that assume you can even get to the gas station, which depending on the emergency may not be possible. At the very least, before an emergency happens, fill the gas tank and add a bit of fuel stabilizer, and keep a filled 5-gallon can on hand also with a bit of stabilizer. And every month or two, if you haven't had need to use the generator, start it and run it for a bit, then refill the tank. When the power dies in mid-winter is not the time to found out your generator cannot be started.