Tom & Nan Dot Com

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.

Since I’ve been asked… Here’s how *I* digitize vinyl… there are many ways to do it, There are lots of different tools that you can use.  This is how *I* do it at the moment on my Windows 7 computer.

The procedures I use make it a tedious process but the results are well worth the effort to preserve all of that keepsake vinyl a lot of people still have stashed in closets. Since there are a lot of steps, I’m going to break this up into three posts over the next week or so. When you’re done you can play the files on your IPod, or any other device that can play MP3s.

Other parts of the Digitizing Vinyl series:

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 1-A (additional info for dbx encoded records)

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 2

Digitizing Vinyl: Part 3

This is Part 1 – Capturing the file and performing limited digital processing.

In this section you’re going to capture a side of an album, process it and then save it.

Stuff you need:

1. Turntable (line level preamp included)
2. Computer with line input (duh)
3. A copy of Audacity (Awesome Free Software)
4. A copy of the MP3 CODECs (Code/Decodes sound to MP3)
5. A copy of MP3TAG

Do this for each side of the record:
If you have a record cleaning brush to clean the grooves use it… The more lint, dust and other crud you remove from the record, the better.

Steps:

Step 1.

Capture the entire album side with Audacity in 1 run. If you have skips you’re going to need to work them as you see fit; I try to manually hold the tone-arm back when I know there are skips, I’ve surprised myself by making recordings of a few scratched albums that you can’t tell were scratched in the final MP3.

Step 2.

Save the file in Audacity’s native file format (.aup)

 

Step 3.

Select the entire album (ctrl+A)

Step 4.

 
Select the Effect Menu, then Select Click Removal, Then select the remove clicks button… Wait

 

Step 5.

Use the left scroll slider on the bottom of the screen to select the very beginning of the album, it’ll be as far to the left as it can go.

Step 6.

Find an area at the beginning of the record where there’s surface noise from the record but no scratches or pops and NO MUSIC. Select a VERY NARROW area in the noise.

Step 7.

Select the Effect Menu, Select Noise Removal, and then click the "Get Noise Profile" button.
Note: if you select a large area of noise, the final product won’t sound very good.

 

Step 8.

Select the entire album again (ctrl+A)

Step 9.

Select the Effect Menu, Select Noise Removal, and then click the "Remove Noise" button.

After the noise removal procedure completes the noise signature goes almost flat as depicted in the next image:

Step 10.

The last step is to Save the file again so that you save all of the work you just completed… Select File, and then select Save.

That is the end of the capture and processing and the end of Part 1 of this series…

Part 2 of this series will describe chopping and exporting the individual tracks into individual mp3 files.
Part 3 will tell you how to tag the file and add album art.

I recently ran across an article from the February 25th 1995 issue of Newsweek (http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/1995/02/26/the-internet-bah.html) written by Clifford Stoll entitled “The Internet? Bah!”.  In it he asks “Do our computer pundits lack all common sense?” and states that online databases won’t replace our daily newspaper that CD-ROMs can’t take the place of a competent teacher and that computer networks won’t change the way government works…

Funny thing is that he’s dead wrong. Many daily newspapers have resorted to putting their news online, you can read for a fee, or sometimes you can go to sites that have it up for free… Yahoo News, CNN, and many other places put it up for free. Computer based training supplements competent teachers now, there are many colleges that offer courses online where you do the same work as you would when attending classroom based instruction, except that you have to be more motivated to not procrastinate your work. Finally, government has moved many (not all) functions online, You can eFile your tax return.  If you’re unemployed, you apply online, most interaction with the Social Security Administration is accomplished online… the list goes on…

Stoll complains about how “word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers”, about electronic publishing and how the “myopic glow of a clunky computer” is unpleasant compared to the “friendly pages of a book”.  Funny thing is that Mr. Stoll didn’t take into account advances in technology; we now have sleek elegant e-readers like the Nook, the Kindle and the iPad. In 1995 he doubts “we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet.” He couldn’t be further from the truth…

Another complaint is about how the “Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data”.  Enter Google… Mr. Stoll was writing about things as they were in February 1995.  The Internet was a fledgling network with only about 5.8 million machines hooked to it… Today we’re rapidly approaching the exhaustion of nearly 4.2 billion IPv4 addresses.  In 1995 we didn’t have Google to filter, index and catalog it.

Mr. Stoll complains that “What’s missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact”. Now we have Facebook… Instead of telephones, families and friends keep in contact with each other from across town, across the state, across the country or around the world. Today, many people use the Internet to remain in touch on his “electronic wonderland” of the so-called information superhighway.

My opinion is that Mr. Stoll didn’t take innovation and invention into account. He could not possibly have seen Google, or Facebook,  He couldn’t have seen the potential for video on demand through YouTube.  He couldn’t have seen smartphones, digital cameras or any of the other advances in technology that we now take for granted.

So where will we be in another  16 years? I don’t know, but I’ve always been an early adopter and in the words of Timbuk 3, “The Futures So Bright”.

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.

WARNING:  This is a technical geeky post my Internet firewall… friends and family not interested need to read no further…

For friends and family still with me here, iptables is the software in my Internet firewall that keeps the big bad Internet hackers from poking at my computers and causing problems.

I’ve been studying  the docs and looking at other people’s examples around cyberspace and got it working…  One ot the problems I’ve run into was when I tried to ping out to the world.  if I tried to ping www.google.com I got this message back:

ping: sendmsg: operation not permitted

I’m running ubuntu server 10.04LTS as a border gateway/firewall.  Lots of discussion on the net, and a few gave me clues but didn’t solve the problem…  The hints were that it was a firewall issue… ok.. no worries…  here is the code I used to fix the problem:

iptables -A OUTPUT -o $extif -p icmp –icmp-type 0 -j ACCEPT

iptables -A OUTPUT -o $extif -p icmp –icmp-type 8 -j ACCEPT

iptables -A INPUT -i $extif -p icmp –icmp-type 0 -m limit –limit 10/s -j ACCEPT

iptables -A INPUT -i $extif -p icmp –icmp-type 8 -m limit –limit 1/s -j ACCEPT

The problem I had was I couldn’t remember which icmp type was the echo request and which was the echo reply… Time to look at the RFC (for friends and family, RFCs are “Requests For Comments”).  They are the specifications on how the Internet works.  Ping uses a language called ICMP or “Internet Control Message Protocol” and ICMP is just one of MANY specifications out there.  Turns out that the pings I was sending out were being blocked by my own firewall. A ping, known as an echo-request, is type 8 in the spec. The responses, known as echo-replies are type 0 in the spec. I had them backwards.  So I fixed it once I figured the problem out, and set it up so my system can also respond to pings from my ISP but you’ll notice I’m limiting stuff on my input to prevent misuse by people on the outside…  The four lines above do the following:

Line 1:  Allows my machine to send out ping replies.

Line 2: Allows me to send out ping requests

Line 3: Allows replies to pings I send out to come back.  I’m limiting the replies in case a hacker tries to flood me with unsolicited replies.

Line 4: Limits incoming ping requests, I’m limiting these to prevent hackers from flooding me with ping requests.

Now when I send pings out I get the replies back instead of bombing out with an error. I don’t claim the limiting I’ve implemented will stop all abuse that hackers might dish out, but it will slow them down enough so our home network will stay up instead of going down cold.

The other day I discovered a new bug… er’ I mean feature on my phone… The ability to do panoramic photography… but the weather stunk so I had to wait till today to try it out…  I went to the Old Market section of Omaha, down by the riverfront to check out the flooding, and over by the TD Ameritrade Stadium while the Virginia and California College World Series game was underway. So… here’s a few panoramic pics and a little explanation on what’s in them.

This horse and buggy is shaped like a pumpkin.  I imagine at night they light it up and it probably looks awesome.

 

This is lake in a park near the river.

The Missouri River about 12 feet higher than normal.  I was here a couple of weeks ago and the lower walkway was about 5 feet above the water level.  The current was just amazing.

This is the front of TD Ameritrade Stadium, The new home of the College World Series.

This is about a 180 degree pan across the street from the first pan with the horse and buggy.

Pretty awesome capability in the new phone… I’m impressed, I hope you like it too.

Aside from a few technical issues, we spent a few hours on the hunt today.  Searched for 10 and had 2 DNFs:

#1.  http://coord.info/GC1Z49A 
#2.  http://coord.info/GC23BTG
#3.  http://coord.info/GC1ZBQ4
#4.  http://coord.info/GC14PMW
#5.  http://coord.info/GC1DZ0P
#6.  http://coord.info/GC1FMQ4
#7.  http://coord.info/GC2JC2T
#8. http://coord.info/GC1DX14
#9.  http://coord.info/GC1JVQ2 
#10. http://coord.info/GC1JVQ7

Nan took a couple of pictures on her phone, I’m putting them here for everyone to look at…

Tom and Jordan at Little Marler Park Cache http://coord.info/GC14PMW

Tom signs the Little Marler Park Cache log http://coord.info/GC14PMW

Our first DNF today, HEar, See, Speak no Cache http://coord.info/GC2JC2T

By the way… these are actually the the first pictures of ME geocaching… The pictures we used to take on our adventures were of her… I forgot to bring the camera so I got to be the subject rather than the photog…

On our two did not finds… Hear, see, speak no cache is in a pretty busy area, There was too much traffic and we attracted some attention of Uptown Station Security.  This spot looks like it’s right on the edge of the uptown station grounds…  I explained what we were doing and he said to have fun and that he hopes we find whatever it is we were looking for… we gave up after a while and will look again someday soon.

The last one, Where Eagles Serve #2 was a busy spot too… There were a LOT of people playing frisbee golf today… must be a weekend . This cache was definitely an interesting location, but we didn’t stay too long because we didn’t want to get hit in the head by a frisbee disk; the area we suspect as GZ is slightly out of view from the tee-off area for the nearby “hole”. Speaking of holes there are a lot of potential hiding spots for this cache…

As far as going paperless, we did it.  We were out for about 3 and a half hours today.  There were a few technical issues when the netbook couldn’t browse Geocaching.com, but we did make attempts at more caches than we’re ever done in one day. We usually go after about 5 or 6 and then quit…

In case your Administrator account can’t seem to edit stuff it’s “supposed” to edit…

Just wasted nearly half an hour trying to mod my hosts file on my vista laptop… ya I know… why run vista when I could run a flavor of Linux… Truthfully I have a few Linux boxes here on the network, this laptop is actually used primarily when we’re on trips… and it’s got a cool touch screen and a swivel display that allows the machine to be used as a tablet PC as well…  Anyway, I digress… back to my annoyance for the day…  I tried to mod my hosts table to point to the internal IP for the web server (a linux box) and couldn’t save it now way, no how…  I even switched users to the Admin and administrator couldn’t write over the existing file…  Turns out you have to run Notepad (or some other test editor) as THE administrator as follows:

Step 1. Right-click on Notepad

Step 2. Select Run as administrator

Step 3. open c:windowssystem32driversetchosts

Step 4. Save your file as you originally intended.

Task complete…

Hopefully, someone else will find this BEFORE they run into this quirky situation… The truth is the Administrator log-in isn’t THE Administrator… To find this I googled “vista admin can’t edit hosts file” and I found this out…

In the words of Timbuk 3 “The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades“…

I updated the software that runs this blog last night and can’t help but marvel at how connected we are. Yes, I’m a technology geek… always have been.  We’ve gotten to a point where we take for granted things that were almost impossible when we were kids… by the way, I’m in my forties… old by some standards, young by others… I’ll let you decide.  My point is, the most fantastic technology gadgets we had in the house when I was a kid were Color TV, radio, records (the kind that go on record players) tape recorders and the telephones.  Many had cameras, some had movie cameras; Back then people were usually cautious with their picture taking… It cost a lot to buy film, and it cost a lot to develop it.  Now you can take pictures and store them on a computer.  My experience is that it’s cheaper once you take the plunge… I took more pictures on the trip to Alaska last summer than families took during the 1960s… and more people can see them too!  We are now on our fifth iteration of video recording technology… video tape (Betamax and VHS), laser disk, DVD, DVRs, Blue Ray… ok so some of them are newer runs of older technology… the point is in the past 30 years there have been 5 different ways to record or play movies on your TV.

The first computer game console that I can remember was the Atari 2600.  I played Pong and Breakout on it at a friends house.  Today, people have multiple computers and video game consoles. Many (not all) houses are on the information superhighway envisioned on a paper napkin in the early 60s. Today most families have multiple television sets. I remember seeing movies and TV shows when I was a kid where television of the future (from the 70s perspective) would be right on the wall… and look, you can put a plasma or LCD television on the wall now.

Think about cell phones… in 1979 they were quite large and unwieldy… they had to be mounted in cars.  The FCC authorized them in the early 80s and I saw a lot of them in the days when I drove a bread route in New York City.  Now they’re small enough to put in your pocket and many families have multiple cell phones, even the kids have their own lines.

We use all of this technology in ways that were inconceivable when I was a kid.  We as common citizens have the ability to publish to the world… ANYBODY can read what we post; Anybody can watch the pictures and videos we shoot…  We have access to more information than intelligence organizations had access to during the 1950s.  You can load up a copy of Google Earth and look at satellite or aerial photography of nearly any point on the surface of the earth and it’s generally better imagery than the President had access to during the Cuban Missile crisis in October of 1962.  It’s no wonder SOME contries censor what their people can access on the Internet; information is power.

Again, I think we take technology for granted now; This becomes apparent during power outages or when a computer system is down at the license bureau you can’t update your drivers license…  I sometimes wonder what it would be like today; if we didn’t have our cell phones, or laptop computers with their ability to connect to the Internet wirelessly; or GPS receivers, digital cameras, digital camcorders, digital video recorders.  Like I said, I’m a technology geek… We’ve had a lot of innovation in the last thirty years; consider what we have in store over the next 30 years.  It’s a great time to be a techno-geek!