Amarok, iPods, and the Rest of the Circus

Right on schedule, there’s an empty iPod box sitting in my trash. The AAFES I shopped at was out of the 4GB Nanos, so for a mere $50 extra, it doubles up to 8GB. It looks like silver is the only color people don’t want, so that’s what I got too. It has a lot of nice features: syncing calendars with any iCal-formatted calendar, same with vCard-formatted contacts (all easily possible out of Kontact, Sunbird, and (I think) Thunderbird). Support for album art, just about any *.mp4/*.m4v video, podcasts (Diggnation, anyone?), photos (plus album art), the usual music, and games (official only, short of using iPodLinux or RockBox). Pretty good package, for being about a quarter of the weight/thickness of my Zen.

Now, under Linux, it just gets a little difficult. Users have two main choices: Amarok or Gtkpod. I use Amarok, since it came with KDE. It supports podcasts and a load of players (Creative products, Samsung, Apple, and Zunes, I think), including (gasp) iPods. But the Ubuntu repository has version 1.4.6; fine for what it was used for: listening to music and Diggnation episodes. But G3 iPod (3rd-generation, all you laymen out there) support was added… in 1.4.8. And libgpod was also outdated in the repos, so all that was left was to compile it all on my own. It wasn’t that hard, and most of the prerequisites were already met from my programming, and those that weren’t were in the repos/solved by a quick Google. It shouldn’t require more than 1 gig of space (less than your average Windows game), and then just the usual commands are needed:
./configure
make
sudo make install
And now, with no work, it works (no pun intended). Plug in the Nano, and up comes Amarok with it pre-connected. It gives options to sync/add album art, podcasts, etc., many of the same features as Amarok.

I have yet to get the pictures to work, since GPixpod refuses to recognize it; it’s a bit too new, I think. As for videos, I’ve read that Gtkpod can handle it, so that should work fine.

aNew iPod

It would seem that my non-mainstream, semi-generic, quasi-immortal music player, called by other people a Creative Zen Micro finally is laid to rest. It led an exciting life, surviving three devastating blows, and kept on chugging until now. And now, an iReplacement will take its place, since they seem to work so well.

So, the life story: First, I dropped it. It would probably have broken it, except it shipped with a protective case that did its job. At least that time; the thing is slippery. I’m not even kidding, a Zen Micro is pretty hard to keep a hold of, especially once your hand starts sweating in the summer, and you’re trying to walk the dog… etc. etc. Anyway, the second time, the battery became fidgety. If it wasn’t in the right position, there was, in effect, no battery connected. This made running while listening impossible, and charging wasn’t just another passive activity. I had to sit there and hold the battery in place to get it to full charge. And then my band went to Hershey Park. Every year for at least the past 5, it has rained at the park the band goes to (King’s Dominion, Busch Gardens, doesn’t matter). So, of course, we all got soaked by the sudden downpour, including all of our stuff. Like my backpack with my Zen in it. Miraculously, it seemed to short out the right points: my battery was only an issue if it was bumped an abnormally large amount. Downside: the audio jack also started to degrade. I think that I read somewhere that this is actually pretty common, due to Creative’s lack of reinforcement at the solder points. It is repairable in your own garage, if you have a soldering iron. But I don’t own one, nor did I want to mess with my finicky Zen any more, so I just dealt with a randomly-appearing low-pass filter. It survived until now, and then the battery just… fell through. There is a metal plate behind the battery, which can, it seems, come loose with enough time and/or force. Now it refuses to turn on. End of story; it’s just plain dead.

What next? An iPod Nano, of course. They seem to be at least a little more reliable, and my dad seems to have no trouble with his 3^rd-generation Nano. I’ll post my thoughts about it, too, but so far, it seems a far better alternative. There are truckloads of accessories (as opposed to the 3.5 offered by Radioshack and the like), and plenty of support. Plus my friends will stop bugging me about my “knockoff.”

Fawning over Kubuntu

I just updated my Kubuntu installation to the latest version, Feisty Fawn. KDE 4 is just around the corner; Gusty is being tested as we speak. So I’ve decided to not miss a thing and update already.

I can’t name anything that wasn’t updated at some point during the process. Even the boot screen got an overhaul. But here are the main things that I picked out:

Amarok: As long as I’ve had it, it’s never had a major update. Until now. While I’m still behind by a version (current is 1.4.6, complete with Oxygen icons, and I use 1.4.5), lots of new stuff has come in. Most importantly, the team has built in support for MagnaTune, a Creative Commons music store. You can listen, and then buy albums/songs right from the program’s sidebar. Some bugfixes, obviously, too, but they’re pretty minor. I think.

Interface: There’s something new about the interface. I don’t exactly know what they did, but some stuff is a bit more shiney, the taskbar’s a bit more streamlined, etc. etc. The desktop’s cool, too. When you click on an icon, now, it kind of pops out and fades out fast, ending up with a pretty neat effect.

OpenOffice: Upgraded to 2.2. I don’t know why (Fawn’s kind of vague, I think), but it just looks and feels more integrated. It doesn’t look square and gray like your average GTK/Wine program does… it takes on the style now. The features are pretty much the same, though.

Anyway, just an update about my update.

MP3s, Anyone?

Earlier, I posted how to rip MPEGs out of YouTube videos. Well, the same basic principle can be applied to getting MP3s out of, say, a music video.

Again, I’ll be using VideoDownloader. The Firefox extension is a bit unstable, but the site itself is relatively reliable.

The song, in this case, is Fall Out Boy’s Thanks for the Memories. After searching YouTube, the best version I found will be used. No extra sounds (to minimalize editing, though Audacity would be good for that sort of thing) and good overall sound quality.

So go back to the VideoDownloader page. Just put the address into box, select YouTube from the drop-down menu, and click DOWNLOAD. After it gets the video, it will give you a link. Download it (remember to rename it to whatever.FLV) and go to that folder (to simplify the job for anybody wanting the song, here’s the FLV) with a console. One simple command gets it done:
ffmpeg -i falloutboy_thanksforthememories.flv "memories.mp3"
(I named the FLV something different, obviously.) Simple command: call FFMPEG, specify the input (filename after -i) and then the output file (in this case, “memories.mp3″). After it’s done, you can go ahead and delete the FLV. And there you go. One MP3, courtesy of YouTube.