Cereal Musings

So, you’ve heard an obscure song on your favourite internet radio / music streaming site that you can’t find anywhere else, but don’t know how to record it onto your PC?

Let me help.

• Macheads should download Wiretap (It’s shareware but unregistered versions are still perfectly functional; just with fewer options)
• Windows users should grab freeware Stationripper, OpD2d, or one of these.
• Lovers of Linux flavours can try Streamripper, which seems to already be part of the FreeBSD standard distro.

All the programs work in roughly the same way - you start the program, stream your audio, and press Record. Whatever plays on your computer’s soundcard gets recorded. Voila.

Audio is intercepted as it leaves your soundcard, but before it reaches your speakers. Those of you worried that someday soon, this avenue will be cut off to you, probably needn’t fret. A few years ago, my buddy SH and I were discussing ideas for a newspaper technology story when he pointed out that no matter what kind of DRM (digital rights management) is slapped onto your PC, audio still has to come out from an analog audio jack. Plug in any form of audio recorder - even one using primitive cassette tapes - and you can record your audio. Nothing short of a complete migration to digital audio cables will change that, so rest easy for now.

The Net interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it.
- John Gilmore (Electronic Frontier Foundation)

Most computer peripherals these days are connected via USB (universal serial bus) cables, which, as the name implies, are pretty darn universal. It doesn’t matter if you’re using a camera, phone, printer/scanner or external hard drive, just stick a USB cable into it, make sure the other end goes into your PC, and you’re good to go. Best of all, USB is hot-pluggable, which means you can (usually) connect/disconnect stuff while your computer is running, without having to reboot.

USB is so convenient I’ve almost forgotten the bad old days of traditional serial cables and parallel ports.

If only our bodies were that easy to disconnect and reconnect. I used to be a swimmer jock back in school, but in the years since, I thoroughly unjocked (yes, I just invented that word). These days, I’m busy rejocking (yes, another new word) while the good ‘ol metabolism still has a vague memory of healthier days, and hasn’t yet succumbed to Alzheimer’s.

Inspired by S.H.E’s magical installation of Mac OSX on her IBM Thinkpad I decided to try the same thing on my Intel-powered Mac.

Well, not exactly the same thing, since I already had both Mac OSX and Windows XP running natively on the computer. It’s just that now I have Mac OSX running on Windows running on a Mac. Now that’s meta!

Can you spot which one’s the “real” Mac OSX?

Well, I won’t tell you, though I will point out that Neverwinter Nights 2, the latest greatest Dungeons & Dragons RPG, is running on the second screenshot.

And, for good measure, here’s an extended screen capture across my two screens (I’m running a dual display setup):

A big thanks to FlyakiteOSX for making this happen, and all for free. There’s actually a way to do the same thing to OSX, but I’ve definitely had my fill of topsy turviness for a while, so I’m not going to try it.