Ripping streams

Just as everyone else, I like to listen to music. But I really hate searching hours and hours on Kazaa for some decent music. Sometimes I only want to listen to an online radio station, and rip the music to my hard disk. Now I have found StreamRipper, which does this task for me. The thing rips online music for me, and nicely saves the music per song, so I don't have just one MP3 file of 100s megabytes. Unfortunately, the Unix version has a rather slim Makefile : I stumbled into problems when I kicked the thing into Debian's automated packaging build system.

Only option left was to build a Debian binary package with the bare hands (no fucking way I'm installing binaries with configure - make - make install on *my* system), just like I allways do on Solaris. By following this HOWTO, I managed to get the job done. My first self assembled Debian package ! If I find the time, I'm gonna hack some scripts around it to make it fully automated.

LOTR Engrish captions

Engrish is a slang word for the English language phrase that arose through poor translation of another language (usually Japanese) into English, or sometimes, poor translation of English into another language followed by good translation back into English. This used to be a frequent occurrence with product manuals, which might say something like "to make speed up find up out document". If you want to find out more about Engrish, check out Engrish.com (and also for a good laugh).

This site celebrates the wonderful engrish subtitles featured in an asian bootleg DVD of Lord of The Rings - The Two Towers. Unfortunaltely, the site seems to be brought down due to a lack of humor of New Line Cinema, but now here's the incredible silly Engrish captions of the Fellowship of the Ring !

Google Dance

Every webmaster knows that Google results vary from time to time. During the month there will be minor changes in rankings. This is called 'Everflux'. But only about once per month does Google dance, updating the back links and the PageRank. The dance usually lasts about 3-5 days. During these days results on Google tend to change by the minute. After the Google Dance is over each site will have been adjusted in rank.

Google is *VERY* interesting. It is highly inconsistent and extremely erratic - yet few notice and no one cares. See for instance http://google.fergusons.dk/

Google is not just one homogeneous database with the kind of consistency you require to run an enterprise. It's LOADS of databases, which are all updated on the fly and out of sync with each other. The expression used on the web site cited above - "the Google dance" - is a brilliant description. It can be very confusing - you do a Google search and spot an item. An hour later, you realise it was more useful than you thought and try to find it again. And you can't.

The major Google databases have a cycle supposed to be four weeks but actually closer to nine. Exactly which database you get when you type in your search is in the lap of the gods.

Middle Earth Name

Find out your own Middle Earth name (elvish, hobbit, ...). My orkish name is Razhghash the Wicked, and I like my Dwarvish name even more : Lorin Lightningmallet !