Tom & Nan Dot Com

This is the final part of a 3 part series on digitizing vinyl.

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 1 (and Part 1-A)

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 2

So now we have a directory containing 10 MP3 files, 2 Audacity project files and 2 directories containing the Audacity raw data:

The MusicInbound directory is on my desktop.  I use it to save music I’ve imported from CD with iTunes and when I digitize vinyl.  This particular directory is Linda Ronstadt’s “Heart Like A Wheel” album, one of 12 albums I bought out of the 50 cent bin at Homer’s in Omaha last month.

In this final part of the series we’ll be tagging the MP3 files, adding an image of the album cover and adding info about the album to each track in the notes section of the mp3 tags.

Picking up where we left off in Part 2:

Step 24.

Open up MP3TAG and Windows Explorer (NOT Internet Explorer) and browse to your directory containing your MP3 files.

Step 25.

Drag all of the MP3 files over to MP3TAG.

Step 26.

Select all files by hitting CTRL+A.

Step 27.

Enter the Artist, Album, Year and Genre.

Step 28.

Select Track01 and enter the Title and “01” for the track number.  I do this in 2 digits so the tracks play in the correct order when I play them on my iPod or on WinAmp on my computer.

– Repeat step 28 for each song on the album.

Step 29.

Now you need your Album Art.  I download images of album covers at www.albumartexchange.com. Just click on the gallery and do a search for the album art you’re looking for. I usually use 600×600 images…

In this case we’re looking for Linda Ronstadt’s “Heart Like A Wheel” album

Just click on the cover you want and you’ll see it in the size you want. Just right-click on the album art and save as whatever you want to call it somewhere on your computer so you know where you can find it. I generally save it where the mp3 files it goes with are.

Step 30.

Close the browser and go back into MP3TAG and select all files by hitting CTRL+A (again).

Step 31.

Right-click where the cover goes in MP3TAG and select Add Cover…

Step 32.

Select the file you saved in Step 29 and click the Open button.

Your screen should have all of the files selected and the album cover image should show up in the box in MP3TAG.

Step 33.

This step renames the files so that they can easily be identified on your hard disk.  On the toolbar at the top of the window you’ll notice near the menu a series of short-cut buttons. There’s on that allows you to use the MP3 tags to name the file.  Make sure all of your files are still selected (CTRL+A) and select the button to rename the files based on the tags:   

 

A window will pop up allowing you to set the pattern for the filename:

If you use the pattern like I have in the “Format string” box, the first song of the record I’m working on gets renamed to:

“Linda Ronstadt – Heart Like A Wheel – 01 – You’re No Good.mp3”

When you hit the ok button the entire set of files representing the entire album will be renamed and the previous screen will come back showing the files with their new names.

Step 34.

Move the files to wherever you normally store your music.  I keep mine on an archive drive. Each album gets its own directory.  You can now load the music onto your iPod, iPad, Cell phone or wherever else you use to listen to it.

Important Note: Sharing this music once you’ve converted it is still illegal under Copyright law…  DON’T do it!

Ok, So it’s been a little longer than I intended, but here is part 2 of this series.

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 1 (and Part 1-A)

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 3

This part of the series will cover chopping the individual music cuts out of the long album sides.  Here goes:

Step 11. (picking up where we left off in part 1)

Find the beginning of the first beat of music at the beginning of the record side and then click just before the music starts.

Step 12.

Click the “Edit” menu, then “Select” and click “Track Start to Cursor”.

Step 13.

Hit the “Delete” key on your keyboard.  You’re deleting the leader up to the point where your cursor is, so make sure you really put the cursor before the music starts.

Step 14.

Find the end of the first song and put your cursor at the end of it where you want the first mp3 file to end.

Step 15.

Click the “Edit” menu, then “Select” and click “Track Start to Cursor” and then CTRL+X to cut the song out of the file onto the Windows Clipboard.

Step 16.

Select “File” and then “New” to Open a second copy of Audacity and hit CTRL+V to paste the first song into the new copy of Audacity.

Step 17.

This step is not required, I do it in case I need to tinker with the audacity file if I don’t like the way the mp3 turns out.  Save the file as “Track01” in audacity’s native format “.aup”.

Step 18.

Click the “File” menu, Select “Export”.

Step 19.

This window pops up:

Click the Options Button.

Step 20.

This screen pops up:

On the “Specify MP3 Options” screen, select the options you want to use to encode the mp3 file.  I like constant bit rate, 192 kbps and “Joint Stereo, then click the OK button.

 

Step 21.

You’re back on the previous screen. Name the file “Track01” and click the save button.

Step 22.

Select OK from the window that pops up, don’t worry about adding tags to the file just yet.  We’re going to do them later in part 3 with MP3TAG.

Step 23.

Repeat Steps 11 – 22 for each cut on the album (both sides) except make sure you name them sequentially. Side 2 track 1 would be “Track06” if there are 5 songs on side 1 of the record…

When you’re done, you’ll have the same number of MP3 files named Track01.mp3 through Track10.mp3 (or however many songs are on the album).

This is the end of cutting the file into individual songs and exporting them to mp3. In Part 3, we’ll tag them and add album art to the files.

This is an added part to part 1 of my 3 part series on digitizing vinyl:

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 1

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 2

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 3

Need to add a couple of items to part 1… this does NOT supersede part 1, it adds a “what to do if”…

I bought a copy of Herb Alpert’s Rise album, Originally released in 1979. It was in the 50 cent bin at Homers in Omaha, one of 12 albums I bought when I was on my trip last month.  The record is pristine.  Initially I wondered why it was in pristine shape and noticed a sticker on the front of the album cover… It’s encoded in dbx.

Not many of those dbx encode/decode units around anymore, right?  Well I just happen to have one laying around… I picked it up cheap at a yard sale when I was stationed at McGuire… you don’t know how many times this thing was almost dumped in the trash bin over the years.

So… I’m in the process of digitizing this album as I’m building this post.  The most notable thing to point out is the DEAD SILENCE between tracks.  I didn’t expect this but there’s absolutely no surface noise from the record:

This section is of the leader at the very beginning of the last track on side 2.  Notice how flat the wave form is before the first beat of the music starts.  There’s no additional audio processing there, just the decoding provided by the dbx box that I’ve had on the shelf in the garage for 15 years and before that was moved from place to place over the years while I was in the military… I’ve NEVER used it to decode anything before today, most tapes were recorded in Dolby-B or Dolby-C so it didn’t see much use… I did experiment with it, but found I couldn’t record tapes with it and expect them to sound good in the car unless the car stereo had dbx decode in it…

As far as digitizing, except for putting the dbx encode/decode box in-line between the turntable and the sound card on the computer, I followed the exact same steps to capture the album as part 1 of this series.

We went to Mackinac Island last week for a vacation. The trip was awesome.

Mackinac Island is an island and resort area covering 3.8 square miles in land area in Michigan. It is located in Lake Huron, at the eastern end of the Straits of Mackinac, between the state’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas. The island was home to a Native American settlement before European exploration began in the 17th century. It served a strategic position amidst the commerce of the Great Lakes fur trade. This led to the establishment of Fort Mackinac on the island by the British during the American Revolutionary War. It was the scene of two battles during the War of 1812.

In the late 19th century, Mackinac Island became a popular tourist attraction and summer colony. Much of the island has undergone extensive historical preservation and restoration; as a result, the entire island is listed as a National Historic Landmark. It is well known for its numerous cultural events; its wide variety of architectural styles, including the famous Victorian Grand Hotel; its fudge; and its ban on almost all motor vehicles. More than 80 percent of the island is preserved as Mackinac Island State Park.

We flew to Pellston Airport in the northern part of the LP of Michigan and stayed 2 nights in Mackinaw City and then rode the “Cat” to the Island.  In Mackinaw City we visited the Historic Fort Michilimackinac on the southern coastline of the Mackinaw Straits. The entrance to the museum is literally under the roadway under the Mackinaw Straits Bridge.  Here are four pictures we took during the Mackinaw City portion of the trip.

On Mackinac Island we spent 5 nights at the Mission Point Resort.

We walked or rode horse buggies everywhere. We even walked the 8 miles of M-185, around the coastline of the island and yes, our legs hurt after that one.

One of the highlights of the trip was a visit to the Grand Hotel. This hotel was featured in the movie Somewhere In Time, starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. Another highlight was a stop in the Mackinac Island Library.

As mentioned earlier, cars are NOT allowed on the island. When you get off the ferry for the first time it IS like stepping back in time, except there are still a lot of modern conveniences like your cell phone will still work, wireless internet is available and some places have air conditioning. But the horses and buggy, bicycle, and using your own two feet to get from point A to point B are your only forms of transportation. It was definitely a different kind vacation, we hope to be able to go here again someday.

Here are some pictures from the island:

The weather this morning was awesome for a balloon ride. We got to Point Mallard early enough to catch almost all launches.  Here are a few pics from this morning.

This year the weather was a lot more cooperative for the balloon glow.  On Saturday evening we attended the balloon glow and watched some tethered rides.

When I was making rules for the firewall earlier this week, I set up logging for when people attempted to connect to our network using automated tools.  Many times people who know nothing about the underlying ports and protocols will use automated tools to try and break into a computer on the Internet; they’re called “script kiddies”  They connect to a machine that has a Secure Shell server running and repeatedly connect to it trying different passwords hundreds if not thousands of times hoping to guess the password.  I have the rules set up so that I connect in case I need to connect from the outside, but if someone uses one of these tools the packets get dropped on the floor.  This is what this set of rules looks like:

###  ALLOW SSH FROM RED INTERNET
# Limit external attempts to connect to SSH to 3 per minute
$IPT -A INPUT -p tcp -i $RED –dport 22 -m state –state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
$IPT -A INPUT -p tcp -i $RED –dport 22 -m tcp –syn -m recent –set
$IPT -A INPUT -p tcp -i $RED –dport 22 -m tcp –syn -m recent –update –seconds 600 –hitcount 4 \
-j LOG –log-prefix “SSH_EXT_GT3PKTS: ”
$IPT -A INPUT -p tcp -i $RED –dport 22 -m tcp –syn -m recent –update –seconds 600 –hitcount 4 -j DROP
$IPT -A INPUT -p tcp -i $RED –dport 22 -m tcp –syn -j ACCEPT

I chopped stuff out of the log file but kept stuff for analysis. There are some interesting things in this log excerpt that can be further used to create rules for the firewall.  I’ll explain after:

Oct 6 01:35:06 SRC=61.158.99.224 TTL=43 SPT=47787 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 6 01:35:09 SRC=61.158.99.224 TTL=43 SPT=47787 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 6 01:35:15 SRC=61.158.99.224 TTL=43 SPT=47787 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 6 18:14:22 SRC=218.108.0.68 TTL=43 SPT=3091 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 6 18:14:25 SRC=218.108.0.68 TTL=43 SPT=3091 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 6 18:14:31 SRC=218.108.0.68 TTL=43 SPT=3091 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 6 20:46:34 SRC=206.172.28.171 TTL=55 SPT=60242 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 6 20:46:34 SRC=206.172.28.171 TTL=55 SPT=60340 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 6 20:46:37 SRC=206.172.28.171 TTL=55 SPT=60242 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 6 20:46:37 SRC=206.172.28.171 TTL=55 SPT=60340 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 6 20:46:38 SRC=206.172.28.171 TTL=55 SPT=36291 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 6 20:46:41 SRC=206.172.28.171 TTL=55 SPT=36291 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 6 20:46:43 SRC=206.172.28.171 TTL=55 SPT=60242 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 6 20:46:43 SRC=206.172.28.171 TTL=55 SPT=60340 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 6 20:46:45 SRC=206.172.28.171 TTL=55 SPT=44009 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 6 20:46:47 SRC=206.172.28.171 TTL=55 SPT=36291 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 6 20:46:48 SRC=206.172.28.171 TTL=55 SPT=44009 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 6 20:46:53 SRC=206.172.28.171 TTL=55 SPT=53125 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 6 20:46:54 SRC=206.172.28.171 TTL=55 SPT=44009 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 6 20:46:56 SRC=206.172.28.171 TTL=55 SPT=53125 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 6 20:47:02 SRC=206.172.28.171 TTL=55 SPT=53125 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 6 20:47:06 SRC=206.172.28.171 TTL=55 SPT=38358 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 6 20:47:09 SRC=206.172.28.171 TTL=55 SPT=38358 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 6 20:47:15 SRC=206.172.28.171 TTL=55 PT=38358 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 7 06:19:15 SRC=212.150.184.184 TTL=51 SPT=36483 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 7 06:19:18 SRC=212.150.184.184 TTL=51 SPT=36483 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 7 06:19:24 SRC=212.150.184.184 TTL=51 SPT=36483 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 7 07:28:50 SRC=211.118.104.11 TTL=53 SPT=38767 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 7 07:28:53 SRC=211.118.104.11 TTL=53 SPT=38767 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 7 07:28:59 SRC=211.118.104.11 TTL=53 SPT=38767 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 8 09:20:54 SRC=60.191.222.84 TTL=52 SPT=39716 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 8 09:20:57 SRC=60.191.222.84 TTL=52 SPT=39716 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0
Oct 8 09:21:03 SRC=60.191.222.84 TTL=52 SPT=39716 DPT=22 SYN URGP=0

If you look at the timing:

Packet 1, 2, and 3 are received before logging occurs
Packet 4 is dropped, the tool waits 2 or 3 seconds and sends another packet from the same source port
Packet 5 is dropped, the tool waits 5 or 6 seconds and sends another packet from the same source port
Packet 6 is dropped, the tool gives up

I don’t know how long the network stack on the far end waits before clearing the dropped attempts from their network queues but it’s pretty effective at reducing the number of brute force password guesses on my machine. Also if you look at the log you notice that 206.172.28.171 made numerous attempts from numerous source ports.  Looks to me like 6 attempts from 6 different source ports;  I think my rule treats attempts from an address on different source ports as separate entities.  Will keep things posted here as I learn more on how this stuff works.

On Tuesday we went to Cades Cove, a small valley within the Great Smokey Mountain National Park.  This area was first settled in 1818 by the John Oliver family.  By the time of the Civil War rolled around there were about 685 people here among about 120 families.  The settlers established the Primitive Baptist Church in 1827.  Many of the early settlers are buried here.  There was also a Methodist Church.  It has two doors, one for the men and one for the women. Finally, there’s a Missionary Baptist Church here because some of the members of the Primitive Baptist Church were expelled because they favored missionary work.

This place is very peaceful.  Except for the caravan of automobiles and the paved roads, it’s almost a step back in time when you go here.  There’s no electricity, no cell phone service, and no Internet.  Kitchens in these homes were primitive, usually some sort of a wood burning stove or a kettle hung in the fireplace.  Of course there was no plumbing or running water. The accommodations were tiny.

We took a lot of pictures, these are the best:

Well I thought I’d write about this… We thought we had wifi so we could post here while we were in the cabin. Well we were less than impressed that there wasn’t internet available so we went to the realty and rented a MiFi…

MiFi is a service available from Verizon that is basically a cellular cable modem with a WiFi access point… Think of it as being able to get on the internet with a wifi enabled device… like the netbook I’m writing on… anwhere.  At the moment it is sitting here on a table at “Flapjacks Pancake Cabin on the border of Great Smokey Mountains National Park and GatlinBurg, TN.

I uploaded a 585 MB video to YouTube with it last night and I also made the last post with it.

Speeds are pretty good considering it’s a device that basically fits in the palm of your hand.

If I were a road warrior on the road all the time and always needed internet service on the road, this would be the thing to get.

You can check it out at http://products.verizonwireless.com/index.aspx?id=fnd_mobile_hotspot

Today was our first full day here.  We drove up Friday, left late so we stopped for the night in Fort Payne, Alabama, home of the country band Alabama.  We went to the fan club and museum and then resumed our way towards Gatlinburg.

When we get to Pigeon Forge, we had to find our way to the realty that manages the cabins, then we had to find our way to the cabin.  The traffic here is horrendous… worse than the Long Island Expressway.  The route up to the cabin entails driving up Ski Mountain road and then some steep and windy roads.  Here is video shot today of our descent from the cabin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMFnFiqAGmA

The video doesn’t do the trip justice, the trip down the hill in some locations is a 40 degree angle… going up the hill these locations are places where I couldn’t go anywhere unless I was in first gear on an automatic transmission.

Today while we were downtown we saw some cool stuff.  This town reminds me a lot of places we visited while we were in Germany. Here are some of the pics we took today:

Tomorrow we’re going to go to the Aquarium, and to Cades Cove.