Titaaataifa

Weee, another round of things I think are awesome, and therefore, are in fact, awesome.

You know what I love? How about "Pay-what-you-want-for-my-music-because-you-the-customer-are-truly-the-ultimate-critic" album pricing. I love that ish, seriously. And on top of that, it very well could be the the single thing that could save (or perhaps bury) the record industry.

I recently took the time to get into Girl Talk, the stage name of Greg Gillis, a mash-up DJ who seamlessly constructs a grand opera of today's R&B hits mixed with yesterday's rock ballads and everything in between. His albums make the perfect party play list, with the lyrics and beats recognizable enough to get every up out of their seats while at the same time sequences move quick enough that no one's attention span is betrayed (and that even goes for your hyperactive little brother after several boxes of hawiian punch).

Anyway, back to the point. What was unique to the Girl Talk pay what you want format for his newest album Feed the Animals was the incentives he offered for you to pay more. Triggered by a reaction similar to those prizes I wanted if I only sold a few more dollars of holiday junk for my middle school's fundraiser, I actually coughed up $13. If you were to offer up to five bucks and you'd get the mp3's. Five to ten dollars gets uncompressed FLAC files and the chance to additionally download one continuous file to avoid awkward gaps when putting the album on a disc. Anything over 10 and you get added to the list to have a hard copy mailed to you when the physical release drops. And this is all months before the CD will hit shelves.

What a smart idea. I know Radiohead has offered the pay-what-you-want format. And Stars offered up a digital edition of their newest album before a physical release. It all makes sense. The people that will pay will still pay with these other options. All it does is allow them the opportunity to hear the music as soon as it's available to all the big magazine critics without going through illegal channels while being the most honest critics of the musicians they already love and support.

The End of a Year: What I Learned

As some of you know, I have just returned home from a year of Volunteering in Chicago. As I reflected on this past year at the end of year retreat, I wrote this little essay:

When looking back at what I wrote at orientation for “Who am I” I noticed a few things. Many of the items listed were things and people who I loved, schools I attended, and even TV shows I enjoyed to watch. Yes all these things shaped me, but they weren't who I was. Like many of the things listed, their importance are bounded by time. Time seems to be the hardest part to accept, especially for someone who's undergraduate career was so technical and could predict failure over time in a design based on certain initial conditions. When I look around at the physical world, I believe everything is defined by an equation. Some are algebraic, while others are non-linear time independent polynomials which with some work can be solved and the result can be known beforehand. There is comfort for me in knowing this and it almost gives me a sense of power to have this ability.

My mind analyzes everything and systematically gives me results of perfection or how things should be. I grew up in a pretty safe environment and things always went my way. My brothers paved a wave for me growing up and I had a self confidence that sometimes bordered on cockiness and controlling.

I entered this year pretty excited about the work I was to do at St. Rita and I enjoyed every moment with those Rita men. Coaching flag football and swimming allowed me to see and listen to them outside of school. Being the sacristan of the chapel allowed me to show the students that mass is not always boring and what the parts of the mass actually mean. Retreats were my favorite part of my job, especially the senior kairos retreat, because of the transformation that I saw in them over four days.

Enough about what I did and my work. Being in ministry I know that I wont see the result of the work that I did which leads me to what I learned about myself, or more importantly how I changed. I mentioned earlier how I like to know or solve everything. I loved to hold the steering wheel of my journey with both hands. In my commitment statement during orientation I said I wanted to better understand myself through my community and to grow in faith, a faith which was already strong.

My community and this volunteer year has taught me something that is 22 years too late: Patience. Its the same thing that I wrote on my stone at mid-year. I know that everyone has trouble in their life but listening to my house mates at dinner and at community meetings was what I needed. Also going through some personal rejections myself helped. How about the patience that Amanda showed when Ms. Lee forgot to put the Christmas gift list in for her clients. The patience of Brett in dealing with students who misbehaved and the development of his prayer life. Claire's patience with applying to graduate schools, the service club and the cancellation of the much anticipated car wash. Jeannie's patience in dealing with the frustrations of turning a room with boxes full of books and dusty shelves into a welcoming library. Finally, the patience of Susan in dealing with those bratty eighth graders and the train so she could finally come home.

Patience fort me was something that I needed but I would not have been able to receive it with out a strong faith. With out my faith and patience, I would not have been able to deal with the losses and rejections that I had in my future goals that I thought were perfect. Fr. Tom, our site supervisor in one of his homilies said, "if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” It was almost as if it was just me and him and he was saying to directly to me. I began to think about my own life and realized how things won't always go the way you want it to, even though all the initial conditions are perfect. My mind, no matter how technical or practical it is, cannot possibly grasp the understanding of the future and its relation to time. Time seems to have the final word and the best way to deal with it is with patience.

At St. Rita's commencement I heard the following quote which will help me come down the mountain of this volunteer year: “When you have come to the edge of all light that you know and are about to drop off into the darkness; Faith is knowing one of two things will happen. There will be something solid to stand on or you will be taught to fly.”

It was fun year, now welcome to the good life I guess.

Music is so Awesome

Another three month recap...

1. Tokyo Police Club
2. Say Anything
3. Royksopp
4. Owen
5. Vampire Weekend
6. Cartel
7. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
8. Death Cab for Cutie
9. Appleseed Cast
10. Mates of State

TPC is ridiculously good, so no surprise there. They are all good. Who am I kidding?

Death Cab for Cutie: Live at Millennium Park

Last night, Death Cab for Cutie played at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park in Chicago. Although I wasn't allowed in because of my camera I was still able to listen to the entire show clearly, while I took pictures around the park. Here is the setlist from last nights show. I am pretty sure this is accurate and in order:

1. Bixby Canyon Bridge
2. The New Year
3. Photobooth
4. Crooked Teeth
5. Long Division
6. Grapevine Fires
7. A Movie Script Ending
8. Company Calls
9. Company Calls Epilogue
10. Soul Meets Body
11. I Will Follow You into the Dark
12. I Will Posses Your Heart
13. Cath...
14. No Sunlight
15. Sound of Settling
16. Marching Bands of Manhattan

Encore
17. You're Bruise
18. Title and Registration
19. 405
20. Your Heart is an Open Room
21. Transatlanticism

Overall I think it was an excellent concert despite the fact that I wasn't in the pavilion.I heard the concert with ease and took mad pictures. Let me know if any of these are wrong.

Titaaataifa

And were back. So much for a weekly column. Maybe the second time around. Anyway, let's get on to things I think are awesome, and therefore, are in fact, awesome.

A solar powered world would be amazing. Maybe in 20 years? Yes we can! CNN had a nifty little article about big solar collectors that would float in a geosynchronous orbit and beam energy back to the earth via electromagnetic waves. A Pentagon report reported that, "A single kilometer-wide band of geosynchronous Earth orbit experiences enough solar flux in one year to nearly equal the amount of energy contained within all known recoverable conventional oil reserves on Earth today."

Well then, why don't we do it? Apparently the billion-dollar-plus price tag is seen as too expensive, in addition to the fact that NASA has yet to produce an easier way to getting up into space. I wonder if the 500 billion we've dumped into the Iraq conflict could have footed the bill.

Fox News to show clip of E.T.

I always had a thing against Fox News, although I rarely could put my finger on it. Maybe it was their incessant spewing of right wing garbage while claiming themselves to be a more "legitimate" news agency. Well, they've proved their worthiness once again with this little number.

Augustinian Volunteers: A Desire to Serve

The following is a talk I gave at one of the St. Rita Novena masses about the Augustinian Volunteer program. Enjoy reading and please let encourage anyone you know to a year of service:

The Augustinian Volunteers have sites in Bronx, New York, Chicago, Illinois, Lawrence, MA, which is outside of Boston, and San Diego, CA. Two international sites in Peru and South Africa. Our headquarters is in Philadelphia, PA in the Augustinian Province of St. Thomas of Villanova.

As Augustinian Volunteers we are no different than any other volunteer program with the service we perform. We serve others in various sites including schools as teachers, teacher's aids, campus ministers, coaches, mentors, after school programs, in youth ministry, social services (such as serving in soup kitchens, homeless shelters, delivering food, teaching English as a Second Language, working in immigration centers) and various other locations.

If you were to ask us for the reasons why we decided to volunteer, we would say reasons like giving back, or to serve others, or to learn more about ourselves, or that we had this desire to serve for a year. All reasons which reveal the truth about being Christian. As Pope Benedict says, "Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction." It is in the interactions we have this year that we become able to better understand and to know ourselves. Whether its helping a 13 year old mother pay for school, teaching a student how to solve a problem, being with a student who just lost a parent, or teaching the fundamentals of a sport, we come to recognize who we are as Christians.

What makes the Augustinian Volunteer program so unique is its spirit in the Augustinian tradition. A tradition built upon the practice of living in community. Together, the six of us live in a house in the south side of Chicago. There we share in each other's faith, hope, affections, ideals, feelings, thoughts, activities, responsibilities, failures, and praises. Together we live with the foundation of one mind and one heart intent upon God in all that we do. Furthermore, our community is supported by the Augustinian Community here at the St. Rita monastery. Together with the Augustinian community, the volunteer community, and the respective work sites, it is hoped that as the volunteer helps the lives of others that their lives may be enriched as well.

We all can truly agree that although there has been many challenges and obstacles that have come into our lives this year, it has been the experiences with each other and sharing in the lives of each other that has allowed us to conquer individual and communal challenges.

The Augustinian Volunteers accept men and women between the ages of 21 and 29 years of age with a college degree or equivalent work experience. Volunteers should be committed to a Christian lifestyle, have the ability to live with others in a community-like settings and possess a desire to serve others. A desire which reflects St. Augustine's own restlessness to know God.

If you or someone you know has a desire to serve others in a powerful and rewarding way, please encourage them to learn more about the possibility of volunteering for a year with the Augustinian Volunteers. Some people say that volunteering is taking a year off from your life and the real world. Well there is nothing more real about the experiences we have had this year and to come to know who we really are. So please encourage young people you know to look into the Augustinian Volunteers. In tonight's bulletin there is a website address for more information and how to apply. Myself and the other volunteers will be available after mass tonight if you would like to talk to any of us about our experiences. Thank you, and may God continue to bless the Augustinians, both religious and lay people in the work they do.

To learn more about the Augustinian Volunteers please visit http://www.osavol.org

Haterade

While I am a fan of Ubuntu, this blog has been a little technical as of late. To break this Linux how-to streak, and being that I am a hater, here's a list of things that have been pissing me off lately:

1. Girls with Big Sunglasses

Big Sunglasses are like a false advertisement, they usually hide some weird face shit like stinkeye. They can make a chick look super hot, but take them off and some blackmagic makes them gross...shitsweak.

2. Little White Chicks in Big SUVs

Little White Chicks (LWCs) are generally not all there. They might be paying attention for the 0.2 seconds they're not drinking their Mocha Iced Frappacino from Starbucks or texting their BFF Jill, but for the most part they are unaware of their surroundings. So I ask, why in the hell would anyone sell the most dangerous type of vehicle to the most unaware type of person. Although I guess throwing a dull knife into a room full of emo kids is a worse idea, depending on how you look at it.

3. Keeping Up With the Kardashians

I'll save you some time. Kim Kardashian has a big ass and talks too much. The End.

4. This: Gross!

5. NOT This: AWESOME!


Well enjoy. Migga out.

Batch Convert FLV to MP3

Many times on youtube I find concert videos or acoustic shows that I want to keep for later. Using the Firefox plugin VideoDownloader, I can download these videos as flv files but these flv's are not as portable as mp3. So I searched for a way to convert flv to mp3 and found help on the Ubuntu forums.

After looking at the script and looking at my flv files, I noticed that it would be very inefficient to do each file individually. Therefore, I modified the script to convert a whole folder of flv's. I will show the whole script itself and how to run it, but first lets install some programs that we need in order to convert the flv's.

sudo apt-get install ecasound mpg123 lame ffmpeg

The script itself is the following:

#!/bin/bash
# FLV to MP3
#flv2mp3.sh

FLV_FILE=/home/ditto/Videos/
cd $FLV_FILE

for vid in *.flv
do
ffmpeg -i $vid -f mp3 -vn -acodec copy /tmp/temp.mp3
ecasound -i /tmp/temp.mp3 -etf:8 -o ${vid/.flv}.mp3
rm -f /tmp/temp.mp3
done

exit 0

I save my scripts in a ~/scripts and don't forget to make the script executable.

chmod u+x flv2mp3.sh

Run as follows:

user@home:/scripts~$ ./flv2mp3

Let's take a closer look at the code.

FLV_FILE=/home/ditto/Videos/
cd $FLV_FILE

FLV_FILE is the location of the flv video files that we want to be converted. In the next line, the directory is changed to the location of the videos.

Next, we will look through the files in that directory, only using the .flv files. Notice:

for vid in *.flv

Next we will convert the video to mono audio and create a temporary mp3 called temp.mp3

ffmpeg -i $vid -f mp3 -vn -acodec copy /tmp/temp.mp3

Since the audio by default is mono, we will then convert it to stereo, output it into the current directory, and save it as an mp3, while keeping the basename. The file is renamed by ${vid/.flv}.mp3

ecasound -i /tmp/temp.mp3 -etf:8 -o ${vid/.flv}.mp3
rm -f /tmp/temp.mp3

That is pretty much it. Any comments or ways to make it better, please let me know.

Setting up Broadcom B43 Wireless with Ubuntu 8.04

After installing 8.04, I never had a chance to test wireless until now. I was always plugged the ethernet in under my desk. I notice one time at home that Fn-F2 was not enabling my wireless radio. I checked hardware drivers in System->Administration->Hardware Drivers. My Broadcom B43 wireless driver was in use but no enabled. When I clicked enable, it would install drivers and prompt for a restart. After a restart, it was again unchecked as enabled.

I looked on the ubuntu forums and google to see if anyone else was having problems. I found this tutorial but the last step was causing me trouble so I decided to modify it for you.

First, you can find out what Wireless Card you have by typing

lspci

Mine is:

Broadcom Corporation BCM4309 802.11a/b/g (rev 03)

I like to keep everything I download to install in a properly named "Installs" folder

So lets begin. This will allow us to build the driver

sudo apt-get install build-essential

Now make the Installs directory and download b43-fwcutter which will allow us to extract firmware for Broadcom driver

sudo mkdir ~/Installs
cd Installs
wget http://bu3sch.de/b43/fwcutter/b43-fwcutter-011.tar.bz2

Now we are going to extract and compile

tar xjf b43-fwcutter-011.tar.bz2
cd b43-fwcutter-011
make
export FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR="/lib/firmware"

Now we are ready for the firmware and to properly install it.

wget http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources/broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0.tar.bz2
tar xjf broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0.tar.bz2
sudo b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0/kmod/wl_apsta.o

The output should look something like this:

This file is recognised as:
ID : FW11
filename : wl_apsta.o
version : 351.126
MD5 : 9207bc565c2fc9fa1591f6c7911d3fc0
Extracting b43/ucode4.fw
Extracting b43/ucode5.fw
Extracting b43/ucode11.fw
Extracting b43/ucode13.fw
Extracting b43/pcm4.fw
Extracting b43/pcm5.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0initvals4.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0bsinitvals4.fw
Extracting b43/a0g0initvals4.fw
Extracting b43/a0g0bsinitvals4.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0initvals5.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0bsinitvals5.fw
Extracting b43/a0g0initvals5.fw
Extracting b43/a0g1initvals5.fw
Extracting b43/a0g0bsinitvals5.fw
Extracting b43/a0g1bsinitvals5.fw
Extracting b43/lp0initvals13.fw
Extracting b43/lp0bsinitvals13.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0initvals13.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0bsinitvals13.fw
Extracting b43/a0g1initvals13.fw
Extracting b43/a0g1bsinitvals13.fw

After that, restart the computer and your radio should be working. Make sure, that in the BIOS, the wireless device is set to on/fn-f2. You can load BIOS by tapping F2 while the computer is turning on.