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technology
Vista: The World's First User-Hostile Operating System
categories: technology · originally posted 2007-02-23 15:11:59 · last edit 2007-02-25 17:27:49 · permalinkEngineers have been joking for years that a particular software package, far from being "user-friendly", is actively "user-hostile". But Vista is the first operating system that is deliberately user-hostile, and it is entirely by design. I don't ever, ever want to buy Vista or own a computer with Vista on it—and I've been a "Windows" guy for more than 15 years. (In fact, this is the straw that broke this camel's back—but that's a topic for another...
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Spyro Soundtracks, Part 2
categories: technology · originally posted 2006-11-30 04:37:16 · last edit 2007-03-04 06:40:50 · permalinkSince my original posting, I've learned even more about the Spyro soundtracks. Specifically:Read on,...
- I've uncovered seven new Spyro 1 tracks.
- I've found three new Spyro 2 tracks.
- I've discovered three new tracks that I don't even know which game they came from, though I suspect they're from Spyro 3.
- I've learned that we US citizens are lucky with regards to Spyro 3. (And Spyro 2 too, though less so.)
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The Spyro Soundtracks, And The Inscrutable XA Format
categories: technology · originally posted 2006-07-23 07:42:31 · last edit 2007-03-04 06:41:06 · permalinkLast decade, three fine games came out for the Sony Playstation: Spyro The Dragon, Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!, and Spyro 3: Year Of The Dragon. They were all well-crafted, with excellent graphics (for the time), a captivating art style, plenty of professional voice acting (including Tom "Spongebob Squarepants" Kenny as Spyro in the second two), and hours of fun—and occasionally challenging—gameplay.The soundtracks for these three fine games...
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ReplayGain
categories: technology · originally posted 2006-01-12 23:13:11 · last edit 2006-01-13 01:13:11 · permalinkFrom the "good idea!" department.If you listen to a lot of music, surely you've noticed that some of it is very quiet, and some of it is very loud. Classical music can be very soft, wheras modern pop hits are engineered in the studio to be as uniformly loud as possible (using a technique called "compressing" the signal).
That's all well and good, but what if you've got both queued up in your MP3 player and you listen to both tracks in a row? If the volume is loud...
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FLAC
categories: technology · originally posted 2006-01-12 10:14:11 · last edit 2006-01-13 10:40:49 · permalinkI have a lot of music. I genuinely don't know how many CDs I own; it's been a long time since I invested the time to count them. I'm sure it's over 2000, and it may be as many as 2500 or even 3000.Over the years, I've ripped most of it to MP3s. I've used various quality levels over the years, and re-encoded my archive a couple of times. Most recently, starting on New Years's Day 2001, I started over using 256kbps-average VBR "quality zero" joint stereo. These music...
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