Rip Project Complete

I’m pretty much done with ripping my audio CD collection to my computer — I just have a couple of stragglers (lost, then later found in long-disused CD carrying cases) left to deal with. The final count wound up being approximately 900 CDs, with 16 cases where I couldn’t get a clean read of an entire CD (including two cases where I couldn’t rip it at all due to copy protection). I am also still missing one CD, which I hope to find after digging through some more clutter. A significant portion of my collection is actually CD singles and not albums — I might data-mine my archive at some point to see exactly what the breakdown is.

The encoding used the –vbr-new and -V2 settings on LAME (via Exact Audio Copy, which was used to rip the CDs) — the goal is to produce something that I can listen to, in a reasonable amount of disk space, not to produce archival-quality stuff.

The majority of the bad reads came from CDs that are more than 10 years old, so if you have any rare old stuff that you’d like to keep, I’d recommend ripping it sooner rather than later. One of the bad reads came from a CD that was stored in an open CD carrier thing (which straps onto a car sun shade) — not sure if it was because of it being exposed, overheated, or what, but the CD carrier seems suspect.

Here are some interesting things that I discovered or rediscovered during the project:

  • A promo copy of the Trash Can Sinatras’ Cake from KHIB, which is apparently now a religious radio station.
  • Two cases where there was a duplicate copy of the tray card under the CD jewel (Idlewild’s 100 Broken Windows and the single for the Bluetones’ Sleazy Bed Track).
  • Lyrics to the Bill album, on the back of the tray card for I Am An Elastic Firecracker by Tripping Daisy.
  • The Original Soundtrack Recording for Secret Weapons Over Normandy — AKA one of the last things Michael Giacchino did before the score for The Incredibles (AKA becoming rich and famous). Surprisingly, the track data for this was already on FreeDB.
  • Most people (including me) ignore the "omit the" naming rule on FreeDB. My rationale is that by omitting "The", information is actually lost when CDs are catalogued. Some unsuspecting person might think that Editors are actually "The Editors"!

    The presumed rationale for omitting "the" is that it prevents names from getting bunched up in the "T" section. My opinion is that this issue should be solved in the UI of a playback application, not by simply omitting data. (Perhaps it could be omitted from the folder name, but not the ID3 tag. However, this would require either automated support from a ripping program, or a better UI in the ripping program for allowing these changes. I don’t think this problem is important enough that anybody will really try to solve it…)

  • Some of the really silly Genre presets in EAC are actually Winamp extensions to the ID3v1 genre list. I now know who to blame for the ridiculousness of Primus having their own genre…

Disassembling Jewel Cases Quickly and Painlessly

I mentioned earlier that I was ripping my entire audio CD collection to my computer for ease of use. Initially, I was getting the back covers out by sticking my fingertips underneath the edge of the “tray area” (the part with the eponymous jewel), and then wiggling the tray to the side to dislodge one of the locking pegs from its slot. This has the side effect of really turfing up your fingertips after awhile, and so I did a quick Google to see if there was any Internet Wisdom on the subject.

As it turns out, there is. Seth Golub has a nice illustrated example of an easy way to remove jewel case trays. In short, you simply hold the jewel case from underneath, near the hinge, and flex the edges downwards (while pressing up from underneath the middle of the hinge). The tray will inevitably pop out, enabling you to easily access the back cover art (and, in the case of my copy of Kid A, the hidden booklet from the first pressing). This can be done very quickly, and with less time variation than prying the tray up (several CD cases were very stubborn in this regard, and required a couple of minutes to dislodge the tray).

I imagine this trick is probably common knowledge in record stores across the world, but it was new to me.

Installers. Again.

This time, though, my gripe isn’t with InstallShield, but rather with whoever put together an installer I used recently.

As part of my recent hard drive purge, I had to use a partition manager program to reset a drive to NTFS (from extfs) so I could overwrite it with the tools I had at hand. I downloaded and used the demo of  7Tools Partition Manager, which did the trick. (Strangely, “7Tools” seems to be a brand/front for Paragon Software Group.) However, when I uninstalled the program, it left behind a little surprise which was not to be revealed until a few days later.

I recently started a project to rip my entire audio CD collection (and, at the same time, to disassemble their jewel cases and switch to storing the CDs in binders). I’ll have more to write about this project later, but for the purposes of this article, the germane bit is that the CD ripping program interfaces with the CD drive through the ASPI layer (wnaspi32.dll).

On Friday, I went to rip the next batch of my audio CDs, and Exact Audio Copy (EAC) began behaving oddly. It would correctly read the track information for CDs (and get the track information from FreeDB), but when I went to actually rip it, it would suddenly claim that there was no CD in the drive. No amount of coaxing or tomfoolery would convince it otherwise. Attempts to use the feature autodetect, read mode autodetect, and C2 check would fail. After going through this cycle a couple of times, and with different CDs, I was convinced that there wasn’t anything wrong with the hardware itself, nor EAC.

A random Google search for the symptoms I was seeing produced some hits. These were forum posts, usually for people with dodgy or missing copies of the ASPI driver, so I checked my copy of wnaspi32.dll, discovering, to my surprise, that it was left over from 7Tools Partition Manager. (The “last modified” date, as well as the presence of a digital signature from Paragon Software Group, were what tipped me off. The digital signatures tab can be viewed in the Properties dialog for the file.) I had to reboot in safe mode to delete it, although I’m not sure that was strictly necessary — I may have inadvertently left a program open that was using it.

Naturally, after deleting it, everything was fine. My speculation is that, behind the scenes, one of the two following scenarios took place:

  • The demo version of 7Tools Partition Manager had a “nag timer” that would pop up after using the program for a certain period of time, asking you to buy it. The expectation of the programmer was that this screen was to be launched from Partition Manager itself, not from some other program via the ASPI driver, and some sort of problem occurred inside the driver as a result of this false assumption.
  • Alternately, the demo would simply stop working after a few days, and included code in the drivers to prevent any attempt to circumvent the time restriction. These restrictions were not visible from other programs using the ASPI layer, except as mysterious errors.

I haven’t kept up with InstallShield lately, but I think it would be really helpful if there was some kind of testing feature that allowed a developer to check what’s left behind after installing a program, running it, and then uninstalling it. (This would also be useful for verifying that user preferences and data which is meant to persist across installations is stored in the correct location.) Making these scenarios easier to test would make it easier for developers to do the right thing, and be conscientious about their “residue.” The closer installers get to the ideal (a cross between the Hippocratic Oath’s “do no harm” and the outdoors philosophy of “leave no trace”), the better the user experience will be.

New Arsenal Coach

The Anaheim Arsenal announced a press conference next Tuesday to introduce their new head coach. In a separate e-mail were some hints about who it is: “The coach that we got was a former head coach in the NBA last year and has won two (2) NBA Development League championships before.”

I did a little detective work and am now guessing that the new coach is Sam Vincent, ex-coach of the Charlotte Bobcats. His bio doesn’t quite match up with the details in the e-mail (only 1 D-League championship), but I don’t see anybody else in ESPN’s list of coaching changes who matches the description. Also, there was a recent article talking about the possibility of Vincent coaching the D-League’s new (and as yet unnamed) Reno franchise. My guess is that he got a better or more timely offer from Anaheim.

Sam Vincent, Anaheim Arsenal head coach 2008-2009: you heard it here first!

Getting Rid of Hard Drives (Safely)

In an effort to reduce clutter at home, we’re trying to get rid of things that we no longer need, or don’t want anymore. For many types of things, this isn’t a problem — box it up and fire it off to Goodwill, the library, e-waste, or other charities. However, certain types of junk require special care to avoid trouble.

As a bit of a pack rat, I tend to keep around old computer hardware, under the catch-all reasoning of “I might want to put another machine together!” This collection includes old hard drives, which naturally contain lots of my personal information thanks to their day-to-day usage in a personal computer. Getting rid of this information securely involves using a secure deletion program (such as SDelete, Eraser, or DBAN). These programs overwrite files and free space with a number of different patterns, to ensure that the data cannot be recovered easily, if at all.

(I also wound up using a partition editor program to reformat a drive’s partitions as NTFS — it used to contain a Linux distro. After the NTFS reformat, I then wiped all the free space on the hard drive, thereby achieving the same effect as securely deleting it in its original format.)

Techniques for overwriting data, and recovering data using specialized hardware, are described in this paper. Interestingly, it is practically impossible to completely remove all traces of magnetic reads/writes due to the lack of drive head positioning consistency in hard drives. However, modern advances in hard drive platter density apparently make the data recovery techniques in the article unfeasible for a reasonable number of random overwrites. (Of course, for top secret information, the sanitizing method of choice is still physical destruction of the drive.)

Overwriting entire hard drives, I have discovered, is extremely slow. Because of the need to use uncached disk access, wiping a 100+ GB drive (5400 RPM if I recall correctly) can take more than a day. However, it’s definitely worth it — there are quite a few articles out there describing data recovery efforts on hard drives acquired from swap meets, eBay, and so on, and the ease with which sensitive information is acquired is certainly a bit alarming. By taking these extra steps to sanitize my old hard drives before I get rid of them, I’ll avoid any unpleasant surprises down the road.

Recycling: Too Dangerous for O.C.

Cities, locals oppose recycling centers:

In Huntington Beach, plans for a recycling center at a Ralphs grocery store on Brookhurst Street and Adams Avenue have drawn strong opposition from city officials and residents, who say it would be unsightly, attract transients and generate noise.

…

Opponents say they already recycle through curbside trash programs and do not want a recycling center in their neighborhoods.

"Having a steel outhouse in the front with cans and bottle is not appealing," said Bruce Cowgill, who owns the Huntington Beach shopping center where the Ralphs is located.

The proposed center would be behind the supermarket near the 253-home Huntington Bay Homeowner Association neighborhood. Residents said an unlocked gate connects the two areas.

"We just feel that we are putting ourselves in harm’s way," resident Bonnie Meakin said about the gate. "It is going to make the mother with babies and little old ladies nervous about walking through the gate."

…

Vazquez said it is becoming increasingly difficult to set up outdoor recycling centers in Fullerton, Irvine, Orange and San Juan Capistrano. City permits that used to take three or four months are now taking up to two years.

"This is recycling. This is not a nuclear power plant," he said.

This just really disgusts me. Sometimes it seems that all people want is a comfortable padded cell in which to live.

“Get the facts!”

Whenever someone says, "Get the facts!," I read it as, "Please don’t look too closely at what we’re saying."

Today was the grand opening of a new Fresh and Easy store nearby. Fresh and Easy is UK supermarket giant Tesco‘s foray into the US, consisting of smaller grocery stores, generally stocked with pre-made foods and without things like a deli or butcher department. I drove by to check it out, partly due to the huge numbers of coupons we have gotten for the chain in the mail the last few days. When I arrived, I saw that there were probably about 25 protestors in front, with signs urging me to "Get the Facts."

I went and asked some of the protestors who were not marching in front of the store what this was all about. They gave me a flier urging me, "Don’t be fooled by Fresh & Easy," and proceeded to rattle off a litany of wide-ranging and somewhat incoherent complaints:

  • "Tesco is the Wal-Mart of the UK, and by supporting them, you’ll be taking money out of your community!" I don’t really get much mileage out of this complaint, as I feel that once you get beyond a 100-mile radius or so, you have effectively left your community behind anyway. Most U.S. grocery chains are not headquartered nearby, so I call this one a wash.
  • "Tesco is opening stores worldwide, and they’re going to treat their workers here like their workers in Thailand…like dirt! But, they treat their workers in the UK alright." This is so bizarre that it’s kind of hard to come up with a good response. After doing a bit of reading, I discovered that this was linked to union issues (discussed below).
  • "Their stores only use self-service check-out, which means that kids will easily be able to go in and buy alcohol illegally, which will lead to increased crime!" This is not a joke — this was spoken in sincerity. Apparently there has been a bill introduced in the California state assembly that would prohibit alcohol sales at stores with only self-service checkout, by requiring a full-service check stand for alcohol purchases. The link notes that Fresh and Easy would be the only retailer affected by the law. The bill does not address why this would reduce the occurrence of alcohol purchases by underage or intoxicated persons. The idea that self-service check-out is the road to teenage delinquency just strikes me as absurd, and the spectre of "increased theft" of alcohol seems bogus, since the opinion of the industry seems to be that self-service checkout results in the same or less theft.
  • "With their pre-packaged foods, they’re taking away the last line of defense between you and unsafe food!" Honestly, knowing what can go on in supermarket meat, fish, and deli departments, I’m almost more relieved than alarmed. At least with pre-packaged food there are fewer places to inspect… (Granted, our food inspection system seems to suck, too, but that’s a separate issue — the idea that grocery store employees are improving the food safety situation is pretty tenuous to me.)

    The pamphlet cites several instances of food safety violations — however, I don’t really see any skeletons that you wouldn’t find in a major American grocery retailers’ closet. So this is kind of a wash, too.

  • "Their record on environmental issues is terrible!" The website mentioned on their flyer links to a National Consumer Council report on "Green Grocers," which gives Tesco a grade of "C" for 2007. Sounds bad, right? Well, the highest grade given by the report was "B," and Tesco actually improved year-over-year from "D" to "C." A grade of "C," by the way, signifies "showing potential," while "B" is "good." The text of the report on Tesco is generally positive, with the only poor rating relating to their support of sustainable fishing.

    There’s also a link to an article claiming that Tesco drastically understates their carbon footprint. However, the complaint appears centered around two claims: 1) that their estimate does not include emissions caused by shoppers driving to and from their stores, and 2) that their estimate does not include emissions caused by their suppliers bringing goods to their stores. This is a pretty weak claim, in my opinion — if shoppers didn’t go to Tesco, they’d go somewhere else in their cars. Likewise, the goods on sale need to get to the stores somehow — otherwise, you wouldn’t have much of a store, would you?

    The people interviewed in that article also exhibit some of the same mixed-message antics as the protestors:

    Dr Sharon McClenaghan, Christian Aid’s senior policy officer, said: ‘Tesco has made some promises that it now needs to live up to. Currently, even the company’s own green auditors have said that there is still a long way to go. We are seeking assurances that the company will stick by its promises, but also ensure that it does not do so simply by axing overseas suppliers, where what’s needed is help and support from rich world companies to help them to go green too.’

    Ah yes, let’s throw in the topics of fair trade and developmental aid into what was an environmental conversation!

  • Their signs had Fresh and Easy logos in a "no smoking"-like symbol, as well as ones for Wal-Mart. I asked about this, and the one guy with whom I was speaking seemed a little embarrassed about it, and just mumbled something about "big corporations coming into neighborhoods and driving small businesses out and destroying communities." While I can understand the concern about Wal-Mart, lumping Fresh and Easy in the same boat is ridiculous in my opinion. The "neighborhood grocery" ship, in this country, sailed long before Fresh and Easy ever showed up. As a matter of fact, you could say that it was the U.S. grocery giants who killed neighborhood groceries.

    The other confusing part about this is that, as far as I can tell, Fresh and Easy’s business model isn’t based on having the lowest possible prices, like Wal-Mart’s is. It’s based around a larger number of smaller stores, in commuter-friendly locations, and about selling ready-to-eat or easy-to-prepare food at a markup. This is pretty much the complete opposite of Wal-Mart’s model, and would not be the same kind of threat to neighborhood grocers (if they existed) as Wal-Mart.

  • Something which was not said explicitly, but which I divined through a series of questions, is that their real concern is that the chain is non-union, and their fear is that if Tesco meets success in this endeavor, the industry will trend to smaller stores with fewer employees and overhead. All of the other concerns are just a smoke-screen for this.

    It seems that Tesco, despite its relationship with unions in the UK, is seeking to avoid unionization in the US. Even Barack Obama has weighed in on the issue, urging them to speak with union representatives. For their part, Fresh and Easy claim that their employees are free to organize.

The take-away from all of this? I generally hate being lied to, or mislead, no matter who is doing the talking. It pains me when things like this happen: positions that I generally agree with, used as a smoke-screen for more odious aims, and argued in a poor, scatter-shot manner. I just get enraged when I see things like food safety discussions taking wild detours into things like environmental issues, or, my favorite, politics. These pile-ons just distract from sober discussion on how to solve a problem, and just degenerate into vitriol. It’s just embarrassing.

Oh, and the store itself? Not bad — a few years ago I probably would have frequented it much more, but since Sandy likes to cook (and from scratch), this seems less likely to appeal to us now.

Diamond Hoo-Ha Man

Last night we went to see Supergrass in concert, which was a decent show. Standing near us was a guy wearing a promo T-shirt for a game — I had the same shirt, from an E3 several years ago. The game was "Seed," and was apparently shut down a few months after its release. As the developers are based in Denmark, and given that the game itself is dead, I assume that the guy I saw was just a random punter with the shirt, and not one of the developers.

Now, I am hardly a paragon of cool, but let me put it this way — freebie t-shirts for games sit at the back of my drawer, and are worn a) on lazy days when I don’t leave the house, b) to the gym, or c) when I’m doing any sort of messy work. I wouldn’t wear them out to a show…it would be too weird.

Quick Progress

I noticed that, at some point last night, my ISP’s DNS servers went down. Sure enough, I tested today for the DNS vulnerability that has set the Internet abuzz, and it appears to be patched now. Now Parallels just needs to get their act together, and I’ll be all set.

This whole thing is starting to take on a Y2K feel — here’s hoping for a similar sort of resolution (that is, quiet and unremarkable).