2008-04-15 A Distant Mirror

I’m listening to A Distant Mirror: Comparing the 14th Century to the 20th by Barbara Tuchman. eMusic had a promotion allowing me to download 25 songs and one audiobook. This was the audiobook I picked.

A Distant Mirror: Comparing the 14th Century to the 20th by Barbara Tuchman

eMusic

I like history, but I’ve never been too interested in medieval history. But I’ve slowly been working my way up from AncientHistory to Byzantine history and on to the medieval ages. My renewed interest is certainly also due to the incredible 12 Byzantine Rulers podcast.

AncientHistory

Byzantine

12 Byzantine Rulers

Maybe I should look at the Medieval Sourcebook again. Back in the days – when the web had just started – this was an incredible collection of links.

Medieval Sourcebook

Also note how lousy it is to name your files as follows:

Barbara W. Tuchman_A Distant Mirror_359_Part 359 of 541.mp3 Barbara W. Tuchman_A Distant Mirror_35_Part 35 of 541.mp3 Barbara W. Tuchman_A Distant Mirror_360_Part 360 of 541.mp3

I’m listening to the audiobook on my iAUDIO instead of my iPod because I didn’t want to import the entire 700MB of the book into iTunes. The reason being that I want to keep my iTunes library on my primary harddisk because the external disk’s ventilation is just so damn loud. The primary harddisk has only 60GB of space, and the iTunes library is already taking 33GB. Hence the complication. I’m assuming this would not have bothered the iPod. But then again, who knows. My iPod still has tons of free space. But I can’t copy the audiobook to it without breaking iTunes synchronization. I think. Maybe I’ll look into this again.

​#Audio ​#Books ​#Byzantium ​#Gadgets

Comments

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So I reorganized the 542 files into folders containing ten files each using some shell scripting and some sed power. Cool!

Today I pulled the iAUDIO G3 out of my pocket and wanted to listen to it. I was greeted with a blinking logo. WTF? Uhm... Some googling around leads me to hints about limitations of the little bugger – “limits of 650 song files and 50 folders.” I download the manual and scan it... Nothing is mentioned.

But there it is, on their forum: “There are limitations in total number of PLAYABLE media files including folders supported by iAUDIO players: [...] 50 folders and 650 files. ¹

¹

Uhhh... 542 files, ten per folder... That’s right. 55 folders!

I think I just got teleported back into the electronic dark ages.

Oh and firmware upgrade? Needs Windows.

This is insane.

– Alex Schroeder 2008-04-16 17:12 UTC

Alex Schroeder

Tags: tag(iAUDIO) tag(Music) tag(Gadgets) tag(MP3)

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Isn’t wine’s ASPI good enough to do firmware updates ?

– AlokSingh 2008-04-17 08:40 UTC

AlokSingh

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Wow. Apparently Wine does in fact support OSX. I’m surprised. The Wine download page seems to support OSX only as the commercial CrossOver by CodeWeavers, however. ²

Wine

Wine download page

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– Alex Schroeder 2008-04-17 14:53 UTC

Alex Schroeder

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Next try. Rename the files. Create twenty subdirectories. Go through all the files in order using some shell scripting.

`ls B*.mp3 | sed 's/^\(.*\)\(Part .*\)$/mv "\1\2" "\2"/' | sh`

`for d in`seq 19`; do mkdir $d; done`

`i=0; d=1; for f in *.mp3; do ((i++)); mv "$f" "$d"; if (($i==30)); then ((d++)); i=0; fi; done`

I think it’s working now! 😄

– Alex Schroeder 2008-04-18 16:32 UTC

Alex Schroeder

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Oh and did I mention I think I like muCommander?

muCommander

Norton Commander!! 😄

– Alex Schroeder 2008-04-18 16:33 UTC

Alex Schroeder