Author: Alderete

How to Join Together Audiobook Tracks

Update: This post contains useful information about the Join Together utility, but has been superseded by a new article that details additional options, for both Mac and Windows users. See How to join multiple tracks into a single audiobook file for the new information.

One of the top two questions I get asked about audiobooks by visitors to Aldo on Audiobooks is, after importing a bunch of audiobook CDs, is there any way to join the many tracks together to get a single track for the audiobook?

For a while I simply shrugged, and said I hadn’t found a good tool. Then I found a good tool, and added it to the FAQ, but didn’t advertise it too heavily because it was only available for Mac users. But with the latest release the tool has gotten so good, I feel the need to share and promote it. (Windows users, I am sorry, but I haven’t found anything for you yet.)

Doug Adams runs a terrific site called Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes. Now on its fifth revision, his Join Together tool has evolved from a basic AppleScript into a stand-alone application which gives you a terrific interface for combining tracks and adding the right metadata such as title and author, along with options to convert to different formats, and even add chapter marks to the resulting merged track:

!/images/audiobooks/join-together_v5.png(Join Together 5.0 user interface)!:http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=jointogether

It’s truly an outstanding piece of work. If you’re importing audiobooks on a Mac, get it now. And if you use it and like it, be sure to thank Doug with a donation!

RailsConf 2006

RailsConf 2006Last weekend I was in Chicago for the first ever RailsConf, a gathering of about 600 people focused on developing web applications using the Ruby on Rails application framework. Other people are posting lots of details and thoughts (try clicking the RailsConf tag below), so I’ll just add a few deltas:

Continue reading “RailsConf 2006”

Get Free Audiobooks From BMW

BMW is offering four short stories in audio format at the new BMW Audio Books web site:

BMW, in conjunction with Random House, brings you BMW Audio Books, a unique series of specially- commissioned short stories showcasing the work of some of the finest contemporary writing talent. Each gripping audio book is yours to download for free.

While there is some “product placement” for BMW, the stories are high quality efforts by accomplished authors. The stories average about 50 minutes, and the narration is professional. The books are free in cost (but see below), and are also in MP3 format, meaning you can play them just about anywhere. I’m sure BMW hopes you’ll do it in the cockpit of a new car from their favorite manufacturer, but it’ll work with your iPod on Muni or the bus, too. Just download, and drag the downloaded files into the iTunes Library window.

To download you need to give BMW an email address. It can be a bogus address (there’s no verification), but from the text, if you give them a real address, you’ll be notified when new audio content is published to the site. (I gave them a real address.)

Aldoblog is Now Hosted at TextDrive

I wrote previously about my DSL woes, which at the time seemed to be rain induced. But in the last two weeks I’ve started hearing increasing static on the phone line, and can only assume my wiring is disintegrating rapidly, in spite of the currently fabulous weather.

I’m doing two things. One is get bids for doing all new whole house wiring, for both voice and data. That should happen later this month, and solve the immediate issue.

But I’ve also had multiple outages which were caused by a bad card in the data center at my DSL provider, something I have no control over. The most recent outage was four days, and was stupid, because when the service tech showed up at my house, he found no issues here, checked the data center card, found that I and four other customers were all down, and he reset the card remotely. There’s absolutely no reason why that shouldn’t have happened within 5 minutes of my first call, instead of waiting four days, and staying home from work for half a day to meet the tech.

TextDrive: A Joyent CompanySo I’ve begun migrating my web sites and email to TextDrive, a provider with serious hardware and connectivity, starting with Aldoblog last weekend. More will move as I get time to do it, until I’m not hosting anything on the end of an unreliable (and slower) DSL connection.

V for Vendetta

Been meaning for a while to post that I saw the movie V for Vendetta, on the IMAX screen at the Sony Metreon. I enjoyed the movie immensely. It’s been a decade since I’ve read the original graphic novel by Allan Moore, so I can’t say how faithful it is to the original. Certainly there are departures, both in the basic plot and to update the story for 2006. But overall it’s a very well-written, acted, and shot movie. Stylistically, there are two sequences which recall the best parts of Matrix: Reloaded — the dominos sequence, and V’s final fight sequence — and these are thrilling enough in themselves that I’ll probably see the movie a second time.

Like the Matrix films, V certainly is the kind of movie that benefits from the extra detail on the IMAX screen. I highly recommend seeing it, even if you don’t have an IMAX theater in your area. But if you do, spend the extra money and see it on the huge screen.

Up and Down, Up and Down…

That’s been my DSL connection over the last few weeks. And since I self-host this site, on a cheap PC sitting on a shelf, Aldoblog has been up and down, too. Very irritating.

The problem is the wiring. Our house is a 100+ year old Victorian, and all of our phone wiring (except for the actual phone jacks) is on the outside of the house. And it’s old, and it’s been abused, and so on. So with all the rain we’ve been having, apparently water is getting into the wiring.

We’ve had PacBell out, more than once, and about the only thing they’re consistent about is that it’s our problem, not theirs. Even thought it’s on the outside of the house, it’s “inside” wiring because it’s past the junction box, and so our responsibility.

Anyway, it’s sunny and working now, and it looks like we might be done with the rain for a while. In the meantime, I’m calling wiring contractors, because I can’t take it when we don’t have internet access. I must be a junkie…or then again, maybe I need to have internet access to, like, work and earn a living…

Dude, You’re Getting a MacBook Pro

I’m sure a million people will be linking today to the Apple announcement of Boot Camp, a new utility that now makes it both possible and easy to install Microsoft Windows XP onto an Intel-based Mac. I’m also sure most of them will put their amateur analyst hats on, and tell people what they think it means. (Most will be wrong.)

My interest in and comments on the announcement are quite a bit less global in scope.

Continue reading “Dude, You’re Getting a MacBook Pro”

Microsoft Packaging Parody Video

OK, lots of people are pointing to this “parody” video, Microsoft Redesigns the iPod Package, but since it involves the iPod, I thought I’d call a little more attention to it.

OK, lots of people are pointing to this “parody” video, Microsoft Redesigns the iPod Package, but since it involves the iPod, I thought I’d call a little more attention to it.

!/images/ipod/ms-ipod-pro-packaging.png(Microsoft Redesigns the iPod Package)!:http://youtube.com/watch?v=UADizYtTrAI

It’s funny because it’s true, and because the music is perfect. But it’s also interesting because it perfectly illustrates the differences between the Apple and Microsoft design aesthetics — and I’m not talking about packaging. The iPod is so well done not because it’s had so many features added to it, but because it has had so many taken away. The saying “Less is more” is no less true for being cliché.

Which iPod for Audiobooks?

I’ve just published a ridiculously long explanation of why the iPod Nano is the best playback device for audiobooks. If you’re interested, here’s the article:

“Which iPod Should I Buy?”:/audiobooks/ipod-recommendations/

I’ve just published in Aldo on Audiobooks a ridiculously long explanation of why the iPod Nano is the best playback device for audiobooks. If you’re interested, here’s the article:

Which iPod Should I Buy?

I am frequently asked, “Which audio player should I buy to use with my audiobooks?” At first I would reply with a great deal of information, most of which is completely irrelevant to the question. I’ve come to realize that the answer is quite simple. You only have to make one decision…

Add Sender to Address Book

I continue to use and love “Eudora”:http://www.eudora.com/ as my email client. This despite it being a little long in the tooth, and with a visual style straight from 1999. I’ve been waiting for a new version with some new features for a while, and I finally got tired enough of a specific missing feature to do something about it. Here’s an AppleScript to tide me (and possibly others) over.

Update: The latest version of the script is 1.1, released 15-Nov-2006. Download link below. See the ReadMe file and script version history for changes.

I continue to use and love Eudora as my email client. This despite it being a little long in the tooth, and with a visual style straight from 1999. It may look like a Classic application, and it might not have had a major release in a while, but it works, and is highly usable, especially for people like me, with a huge archive of email messages.

On the Windows side, a new version of Eudora was released late last year. From what I’ve read on the Eudora discussion forum, Qualcomm is working on an all-new release of Eudora for Mac OS X, which will bring a great many improvements, including one that I’m eagerly anticipating, use of the OS X Address Book to maintain the email contact list, instead of Eudora’s nicknames list (which is also confusingly called Address Book in Eudora, but it used to be called Nicknames in earlier versions, so that’s what I’ll call it here).

But, Eudora 7 for OS X is apparently behind schedule (it was supposed to start appearing in beta in the fall of 2005), and not having that feature is driving me nuts. Eudora can already read addresses out of Address Book, so all I need to tide me over is a way to easily add a new sender to the Address Book.

I looked for a while to find an existing AppleScript to add a Eudora sender to the OS X Address Book, but as far as I can tell, nothing exists. Indeed, it looks like people stopped writing AppleScripts for Eudora years ago. But by stitching together ideas and techniques from old scripts, scripts for Apple Mail and Address Book, and some new code, I was able to create a script which pretty much duplicates Eudora’s Make Address Book Entry command, except sticking the new entry in the system level Address Book.

!/images/clickscriptlarge.jpg(Download the Add Sender to Address Book AppleScript)! “Download the Add Sender to Address Book AppleScript”:/resources/dist/Add-Sender-to-Address-Book.zip

The distribution includes a ReadMe file with much more detail, but here’s the basics: To install, download and decompress the script distribution archive. Then move the script file to your ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Eudora folder. To use it, select a message in your Inbox, or open a message, which is from someone you’d like to add to Address Book. Choose Add Sender to Address Book from your Scripts menu. Edit the sender’s name and address in the dialog, click Add to Address Book, and voila, Address Book should come forward with the new entry displayed. Add further information to your contact there, if you wish.

There are a number of limitations to the script; see the ReadMe file for details. Hopefully this will be useful to someone besides me!