So, here is a condensed list:

In this post, I offer to detail how to use EAC v1.6 (the most recent version while I wirte). First, to best configure it, then to use it fast with an efficient repeatititve but simple routine.

Exact Audio Copy (EAC) configuration to rip into FLAC

Before working, you need to first configure your EAC copy in order to reach a smooth operation mode. You’ll do this only once and it will stay put for all the rips afterwards. You can use the EAC “Configuration Wizard” (it’s easy to use at first), but I will go through option menus one after the other while highlighting a few critical aspects.

EAC > EAC Options…

I will prioritize quality over time in the “Error recovery quality”. After all, why use FLAC if the data is poorly recovered on old discs? High is for up to 5 batches of 16 re-reads.

The third selection is a time saver: You always want to have the metadata from the database.

Let’s avoid showing status at the end of extraction for the sake of time and efficiency (we don’t want to close another dialog box for each CD).

At the bottom, you can change the interface language, but I will keep English here.

The top two options are simply useless if your CD drive does not support reading UPC/ISRC codes. But it’s nothing to worry much about.

Depending on the use of your collection of rips, you may want to extract a .m3u playlist file. I don’t.

I am personnaly oppposed to normalizing sound (and it is quite dangerous to classical music) since it creates much damage to the low and high sounds that may be importnat on your music. Here we are generating quality lossless backups, not transforming the audio record.

The safer choice is “%tracknr2% %title%” but it’s your choice.

I prefer to store each rip in a separate directory…

EAC > Drive options…

Here, it may require a little technical experimenting.

The top part should have been auto-configured by the AccurateRip configuration. No need to change anything.

Here, CaptainRookie recommends method A, but I think method B is the most tolerant in case of some CDs with very long gaps.

EAC > Compression Options…

Here we come to the heart of things: We want to produce FLAC files from your audio CDs as fast and as efficiently as possible.

All external “FLAC compression” program options have been provided by CaptainRookie. They are safe to use and efficicent. I auto-decreased slightly the bit rate but it seems to be without any observable impact.

“Delete WAV after compression” will remove useless intermediate files.

I strongly recommend to always use the “Test encoder” button before moving to the next tab.

So, nothing original in the last tabs.

EAC > Metadata Options…

I recommend using the simplest opton for metadata: Freedb. even if you may have to open a free account on their web site.

You may have to provide your own free authentication data.

I choose not to enable the last option, but you may want it to keep working even in th event of a server error. I prefer more visibility/transparency; It’s up to you.

How to use Exact Audio Copy (EAC) to rip a CD-A into FLAC?

Now, is the time to start your own personal ripping routine. Nothing original, nothing really hard, not instantaneous, but deeply satisfying and efficient. I apprecaite that this can be done from the keyboard, which is more reproducible.

Open exact Audio Copy (EAC) from Windows, and insert a CD. EAC will start reading the CD, then connect to FreeDB in order to collect the metadata.

It is time for you to check the metadata (track names, album and artist names, etc.) You can immediately make needed corrections.

If this is the first time you are using EAC, I recommend reaching to the Action menu to enable “Append Gaps to Previous Track (default)”. Next time, for the other CD you will want to rip, this option will stay put and you won’t need to go back and click it.

Now, you can start with pressing F4 (for Action > Detect Gaps) and let EAC detct the useless empty spaces between tracks (the so-called gaps). A few seconds and you’re back to the previous state, but ready to rip.

Press Shift-F6 and let EAC do its job. It will ask where you want to store the FLAC files (the waveform). It’s up to you, really.

This next steps is the longest (EAC must read the whole CD from start to end). It may be quite long if it finds the CD quite degraded and must read the tracks several times to recover a perfect image of your prefered music track. Let it do its job and be patient, this is worth it.

When it’s finished, it will eject the disc, play a little sound and wait for the next CD.

Technical thanks

I must heartily thank those who helped me build this guide. All original ideas come from them, all errors come from me.

• CaptainRookie guide.
• TechRadar FLAC rip guide.
• A Quick and Easy Guide on How to Rip CD to FLAC.

Conclusion

Now is the time for you to do it by yourself. It’s not that Exact Audio Copy is ripping your audio discs by itself, or that it takes no time. But I believe that this guide may help you (like it did for me) spend minimal time on this overly tedious task of ripping all your music into good FLAC files.

But when I wanted to transfer ma CD library to a more user-friendly form (did you notice that the CD player has disappeared from the new cars, like the dinosaur audio tape player?), I came to consider that the MP3 recording format has a slight issue for the audiophile (even the amateur): It is a compressed data format, that is reducing audio quality (supposedly an inaudible reduction though). Oh! You can choose the compression ratio (or rather the more imprecise data flow rate in kbps). But I’m still convinced that this a way to inelegantly balance between an unsavory compression and the space used on the storage media.

While it is a pity admitting that after the near-Earth-shaking launch of a CD-A able to faithfully record (within limits sets by 16 bits and 44kHz), here we are back to state where we are stuck with a technical solution invented to solve the problem of many years ago when thumb drives were so small… Today, any recording storage you will find (USB thumb drives, MP3 players, partable discs, smartphnones, etc.) contains so many gigabytes of space that you can store as many albums you’d like to.

So, why not come back to the original quality? This is exactly the proposition from the FLAC recording format. It reduces the original size by 50% (sometimes a little more), via a lossless compression algorithme wich is faithful to the original. Moreover, except some prehistoric MP3 players of dubious origin, no reasonable MP3 players will rejct FLAC files (some other lossless recording formats exist but they less well globally accepted; And we still want the ease of use when got used to wiht MP3).

FLAC: Try it once, keep for life!

Check the second video and observe the hunting technique. Look at how the orcas use their tail to stun fish (you should hear the noise of the tail hitting fish). I knew about it, but this is really easy to observe here.

Nick Brandt, famous wildlife photographer, wanted to render this fact more visible showing the conflict through a photo series (titled “This Empty World” – as it would be without wildlife) where it created superb photo compositions mixing animals and human industrial contexts.

Those are not photographs of these encounters, but pictures assembled on a computer. But these images speak louder than words. And they tell the underlying reality in a spectacular way.

• Worried about WordPress and GDPR? Start Here
• GDPR: What Does the New Data Regulation Mean for Your Website, Business and Data?
• How to make a WordPress website compliant to GDPR
• Automattic and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
• GDPR Compliance and WordPress Forms: Everything You Need to Know

Have a nice read!

Please, note: I am not a lawyer or your Legal Department, it all merely comes from my reading and my understanding.

Deployment

Cookies

First step (normally, this should be in place for quite some time already, since this started a long time ago): Add an informative message to inform visitors that you are collecting cookies.

I simply used a small plug-in (you can find others too) : Cookie Notice from dFactory.

Pros: It is working in various languges (and in English), it has been tested on more than 500,000 sites before mine, it starts in less than a minute.

Contact form

For many reasons, you will need to have a decent contact form (including to be able to answer GDPR-related requests). I recommend a simple and small (and free) forms editor like Ninja Forms.

In two minutes, you will have a working contact form. Don’t forget to add the checkbox with “By using this form you agree with the storage and handling of your data by this website” (This should be present on all your forms).

Then, you need to create a “Contact” page in WordPress. You will include the specific code to include the form you just created with the following shortcode:

Small GDPR support: Ninja forms allow you to setup forms without storing any data on the web site, reducing the load to comply with GDPR in simpler forms.

But, don’t forget to enable the sending of the confirmation message to the comment author (all the more because the post-form message includes mention of this confirmation – be consistent).

On top of this, if your web site includes a comment system (quite common fact), I recommend using a plugin to include the standard reminder checkbox: WP GDPR Compliance from Van Ons. Bonus: It makes some recommendations on various GDPR-related cases.

Data Protection Officer

Name somebody (with an email address) as the internal interface for all private data issues. It is not compulsory (for smaller teams) but it is so much clearer (and recommended) that somebody feels i charge of this (even the CEO). This person will be contacted bu visitors willing to know what data you collect and how to remove all their personal data from the web site (these are legal requirements).

Make sure that this person is reachable through a very easy interface (including the contact form or some other form).

Privacy policy

Above all, you must make sure that you can explain simply what are your intentions about private data you will collect (private data include email, name, IP address, etc.) and how you intend to comply with your legal obligations. This page must tell it all simply.

Try and write it right on the first attempt. You are legally bound to inform all your users any time you make a change (even simple ones)…

This is a WordPress page, rather than a poost (it must stay readily available and easily reachable by all even in the future).

I recommend to -more or less- follow the GDPR themes (it’s easier):

• Existence (or not) of a Data Protection Officer, in charge of the whole process of personal data handling
• Definition of data collection, handling, storing, transfer and removal processes
• Creation of a process to notify any data breach
• Explicit consent to data collection
• Right to access (and removal) of personal data

Access to personal data

You must give full access to any user’s personal data stored on the web site. This is realtively easy using a plugin (GDPR compliance from Scribit) and a specific page where you will only write the shortcode:

[gdpruserdata]

Of course, you can add some more details (refer to the plugin help information for more options).

Then, you can direct the requests to this page which will display the full breadth of personal data. As this is not a very nice page (rather dry reading), I recommend to keep it masked (I don’t feel it is necessary to show it permanently to all – answering requests should be enough).

Annoncement

Maybe not the worst or the most complicated, but I finally added a small message on the web site to announce the deployment of this whole process. Explaining is better than waiting for people to ask. And the message is positive: You care about your users and visitors.

1. A Privacy Policy.
2. When you submit a comment on the site, it is now explicit (through a checkbox) that you understand that this will imply our storing of some of your personal data, and that you consent to it.(« explicit » and « positive » consent).
3. Creation of a Data Protection Officer (that’s me!) in charge of answering questions and requests of modificaiton and removal of your personal data if you ultimately want to revoke your consent.

the objective is to make more explicit and fully compliant, the choices that we already made to respect our visitors, and their privacy. Like we do since the beginning.

• A slightly modified MicroEmacs (coming from Dave G. Conroy and modified by Christian Jullien in 1987).
• I used it as a basis for some time to have my own YR-Emacs (up to v1.30a).
• What appears to be a MicroEmacs v3.12a (original v3.12 from Daniel Lawrence, but slightly modified by me in a pitiful attempt to extend it for my own use).
• Ed Davis addition in 2018: A very old (14 Dec 85) version of MicroEmacs, and a minimally updated version, to get it to compile on Windows 7 and Linux.
  • readme.txt     – this file.
  • uemacs.message – 14 Dec 85 21:31:29 GMT message posted to net.sources, with uemacs v2.0 source.
  • updated.zip    – updates of the same, to get it to compile on Windows 7 and Linux.
  • changes.txt    – changes from original to whats in updated.zip

I am not sure that this is more than history. It looks like nobody would be using these versions today, but I don’t want to let this go. I am mainly assuming that some source code historian would find this useful in 2050 (if this web site survived until then, and the word Emacs still has a meaning).

2020-02-13 UPDATE: modified all inks to make sure that they are HTTPS, in order to avoid compatibility issues with modern web browsers.

Now, Roumazeilles.net helps you and can be transparently accessed through both addresses:

https://www.Roumazeilles.net/

http://www.Roumazeilles.net/

For most people, this will change nothing. For those who prefer to keep some of their browsing (a little more) discreet, it may help.

Useful reading: HTTPS Everywhere | Electronic Frontier Foundation

If you really want to go into more gory technical details, I can mention that this move was made possible (easy) by my web hosting provider (OVH) who provides a free SSL certificate that I only needed to enable in my administration interface.

• A scientific research vessel from Russia reconverted into an expedition ship, Akademik Ioffe,
• a few tens of passangers,
• a staff of more than twenty people (zodiac pilotes as well as polar bear scientist from the San Diego zoo),
• a trip bringing us from Iqaluit (South of Baffin Island) to Resolute Bay (base camp for many North Pole expeditions),
• for:
  • wildlife observation,
  • encounters with the Inuit culture and people,
  • discovery of the history of Arctic Canada arctique by the pionneers coming from Europe.

I will publish here some of my best photos from this trip (wildlife is not really dense in the Arctic, but we met many animals: Polar bears, sea birds, seals, musk oxen, whales (both toothed whales and baleen whales), etc.) but I would like to thank the staff right away. The whole staff and crew offered a warm welcome during these 2+ weeks; All stars converged to make this trip memorable.

In the coming days: trip images, to allow you sharing some of the strongest moments we lived through.

But it may be less nice that that. And much more complicated according to Mike Hearn, one of the designers of Bitcoin.

Food for thought: “The resolution of the Bitcoin experiment” (relatively geek content, but clearly built).

Recommended.

The author does no really answer the question he asks but I find it mind-opening to start from his postulate: Daesh is not automatically going to disappear because we want it to (or because this is a monstruous group). It may take much more than that to avoid the group which proclaims itself “Islamic State” or “Califate” really becoming an islamic state, stable and well poised between Irak and Syria, which may be what it is doing despite international efforts.

As Stephen M. Walt, I absolutely do not like this perpsective, but we’d better start exrecising our intellect on the worst hypothesis in front of us. And I hope that some other authors will be able to bring some fairly good/intersting (or even mind-blowing) answers.

1. As all black-and-white approaches, it does not allow understanding,it does not allow determining where Daesh or ISIS is coming. It’s happy with just condemning, preferably in reference to the bloody demonstrations (which are a key part of their own propaganda, which we fall for).
2. Worst, without understanding what ISIS really is, there is little hope to stop them, to contain them or to reduce them.

With this in view, I found two remarkable articles which try and bring some light on this very complex issue. One tries to determine the operating modes of ISIS (a sectarian organisation, but not an arbitrary lack of logic; A rigid organisation directed by rules extracted from the Kuran) in order to define pragmatic orientations to oppose the Islamic State with some efficiency (and which gives explanations on why some strategies are/were so blatanlty inefficient). Written by Graeme Wood, published in The Atlantic, What ISIS really wants is a realtively long paper, but worth all your reading time.

The other looks more specifically into power structures of the organization. This is a barely understood side (even if newspapers sometimes speak about the Coalition efforts to eliminate some of ISIS leaders), and it is written by Adrian Lewis for BBC: Islamic State: How it is run.

Each of these require your taking time and concentration to draw most of their contents, but I believe that they are useful for all who want to understand first, before building an opinion and before proposing an action plan.

We could think that this is very far from us but there is a way you can participate thanks to the Internet. A web site, Kiva, offers you to also lend money (at no interest for you) to people from around the world (maybe in your own country too).

Kiva recruits small credit banks all other the world and puts them in contact with people willing to act, from US$25.

You will earn no money, I don’t. There is a small risk seeing somebody unable to reimburse (weather, sickness are common causes I could observe). But how could you not feel obliged to use a few dollars/euros to help people who have no other chance to invest in their future since they have no access to big international banks (the same ones who hesitate to lend money to people like you and me or Ben Bernanke)?

So, since 2011, I lend small sums, I get reimbursed, I lend again. Twice, the money did not come all back. Once, it took a real long time before I got repaid. But I fear I am considering this as a very small price to pay for changing a life or transforming the future of a family or a group of people.

Why wouldn’t you try too? Just go to Kiva and send them 25$ (or 50€?)

PS: Don’t worry! I will earn nothing if you click on the links here, except the small egotistic satisfaction of seeing people following my advice.

this time, the intent is to share Marion Jonchères’ passion for cold, ice, snow and altitude. Here, you will only find extreme sports, high altitude mountaineering, North Pole or South Pole. But this is based on detailed commentaries and spectacular pictures.

I recommend you to go and see Ice-Altitude.com (and don’t hesitate to stop and leave your email to receive her information letter – in French).

Some of the photos shot by Gordon are in the article published in the Daily Mail Online.

You can listen to the interview and read more to form your own opinion by visiting Benswann.com article on Snowden and the interview the US government does not want you to see.

So, you’ll find here -day after day- snapshots from the mythical National Parks of this beautiful country:

• Serengeti
• Ngorongoro crater & conservation area
• Seronera

I’ll try to show you some beautiful shots.