So, here is a condensed list:

Steam locomotives are “good things” for an engineer. Whatever your specialty (I come from electronics), the mechanics of these humongous metal things are exhilarating. And this technology has been at the apex of all technologies for about a century in western Europe and many other countries. It even was a major driver for the industrial revolution.

Then, it went the way of the dodo. Poof!

But many people still keep the boilers hot and make sure that steam locomotives and classic trains are not forgotten. So, let me share some examples I collected on the web. Just to feel the heat of the white vapor clouds.

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!

E-paper means that it behave like paper and does not need LED lighting from behind (like the Kindle Paperwhite).

Color means that you can do much better than the Kindle Paperwhite which is only black and white.

Flexible means that you are going to see those on everything including bracelets or gorgeous smartwatches (probably with an enormous battery autonomy).

I can’t wait!

I spoke about small computers that can easily become a network server (Raspberry Pi) and Android boxes which ease publication of videos onto our TV set(s). And, here comes a comment about Marion’s old Vaio laptop having not enough of a battery (please, understand: “What could you do to avoid hauling the ugly laptop to the TV room?“).

So, I started looking for a TV decoder box and a video solution.

I quickly came to the easy conclusion that I would have to use an Android TV box relying on Android TV 8.1 (or better), with Kodi as a video player (I had tested it successfully on a Windows 10 PC a few years ago).

TV box

First, I must select a box. The cheapest ones start aroudn $25. So, there is no budget reason to doge the request. But, if you want to keep a little margin for future expansion, it’s worth looking at 3GB of RAM memory, and if you think about 4K video, the processor must be helped with a small graphic GPU.

All these boxes come pre-configured with Android TV. Even if version 7.1 is enough, you can easily find boxes with version 8.1 (or even higher). But, please, forget about earlier versions. they will be outdated in terms of performance and features. Everything will be short, including compatibility with modern applications.

Suppliers are plentiful. But avoid those who do not even bother printing their name on the box: They are in the business of selling “dumb boxes” and will not support you in case of the slightest technical difficulty. If they don’t even dare naming the box, think about any other business presence.

You can also avoid boxes marked as using chips from Rockchip (strictly no Kodi support – see below) or Allwinner (known for not even developping its own software code…). Source: AndroidPCreview.

Finally, you want a box shipped with a recent version of Kodi (THE reference software for media management) and a “launcher” (a simple user-friendly graphic interface to launch Kodi and/or other applications from the remote without needing a keyboard to key commands in (Remember: this is a family-level application not a geek arena!))

According to my analysis, Android boxes under $50 are usually not feature-rich (or on sale for some bad reason). But between $50 and $95, you’ll easily find good-enough boxes (sometimes even with a small wireless keyboard along with the remote, even if this is not very useful after the first install).

Personally, I chose a cute little plastic hexagon from Evanpo: the T75Z plus, for 63€ at Amazon.fr (you may find it with a small wireless keyboard too).

• Android 7.1
• 4K support
• Processor: Amlogic s912 octo-core ARM Go
• Graphics processor: Mali-t820mp3
• 3GB RAM & 32GB storage
• 5GHz WiFi
• pre-installed Kodi
• 1000 Mb/s Ethernet
• Kodi button on the remote control, to directly launch Kodi.

It’s ready right out of the box.

Kodi and the Synology NAS server

I wanted specifically to use the box to show videos stored on my good old Synology DS413j network server which is hosting all family sensitive or shareable data.

At first, I tried to share files using the Windows sharing (aka Samba/SMB), but I could only get error messages from the Android TV box. So, I moved to another easy solution: Install le NFS file sharing on the NAS and ask the box to grab files from the server using this protocol (Kodi knows both of them; Just click the next option).

I got inspiration (and a very detailed tutorial) from TechJunkie. But the posts from TrendBlog or Esau Silva are quite good too.

No doubt about it: A NAS server is a perfect solution to provide media to the whole family. If you use Kodi (or even VLC) on the box, you won’t even need a NAS with transcoding capacity (it would just be more expensive, not more useful).

It appears that a hacker introduced itself into our web site through an insecure WordPress plugin. The security defect has been corrected relatively quickly, but it left a wide open gap during a few days. The hacker was able to

1. create several privileged access points into the web site (administrator accounts).
2. modify posts and pages to add a script susceptible to bring a malware infection (that I could not more precisely identify).
3. modify the web site to point back to another infected web site.
4. modify the web site to create himself an additional backdoor entry point.

this most probably happened during the Friday November 9th night (or very early on Saturday November 10th). It hit four of my web sites in a row (on four other sites I caught the infection before it could become extensive or dangerous for the users/visitors).

The corrections I implemented allow me to assure that the incident is now (Sunday November 11th at noon) closed for all four infected web sites.

The consequences for you, the visitors:

1. it is possible (though quite unprobable) that some personal data have been taken, but it was not a clear objective of the hacker.
2. all users with an account on the web site have been informed, their passwords force-modified to a safer value (it appears nobody had really fragile or re-used password – my advice: never re-use one web site password on another web site).
3. during a few tens of hours, Roumazeilles.net was used to propagate one or more malwares to visitors of our pages and posts. My advice: Immediately check your computer with a good anti-virus.

I hope (and I believe) that this is all.

Technical details on this specific attack (we were not alone in the list of victimized web sites).

wouldn’t it be great if we had a simple way to recognize them? Yes, of course. The simpler solution? Put a different name on each drive, but this is very small step. We know that graphical interfaces work better. Why not replace all these ugly grey icons with something ore meaningful (and more pleasant)?

A simple process

The only requirements are:

• Access to Google image search (but you can use another one, of course)
• Use of a simple image editor able to save to “Windows .ICO” file format – I use IrfanView which is very feature-rich, but simple to use and perfectly free (as in free beer).

Step-by-step:

1. Define an image which is representing the drive well,
2. Collect this picture,
3. Set it to the right format,
4. Set it up on the USB drive.

Step by step

Define the image for your icon

I recommend several possible and complementary approaches. Keep in mind that the objective is to easily recognize the USB thumb drives or the disk drives connected to the computer USB port(s). Nota bene: This works with internal hard drives too.

Solution #1: If the USB thumb drive is very recognizable, you can find on the web some good photo representing it nice and well. You can even collect a press release photo form the manufacturer if you have the manufacturer name and the product model. For example, I can look for photos of external hard drives from Western Digital, MyPassport model, red color. Google result is offering a wide choice of good pictures:

AEven if you don’t have the exact name of the thumb drive (not all of Chinese-sourced drives are named properly), it is quite easy to look for a good description like “orange USB drive”. Less precise, somewhat more error-prone, but it works astonishingly well.

Solution #2: With the same Google Image Search, look for a nice photo that would represent the disk contents (or its name). Try looking for “cinema” or “movies” or “old movies” or “1980 movies” for a hard drive you expect will hold your movie collection You will be surprised by the available choice.

Choice reduction

Faced with so many options, I recommend limiting yourself with some specific search filters. (on the Google page, press the “Tools” button and choose the following filters):

1. Only take large size images (you’ll see it is important)
2. Select public domain pictures that you can modify: “Labeled for re-use with modification” (Why steal a photo when you can use one its author wants to share?).
3. Most critical: Chose a very simple, pretty but easily recognizable picture (an icon may be very small).
4. Last recommendation: It is often better to start from an image with a white or very lightly colored background (it “works” better in most cases, as you will see).

Collect the picture

Download the image you found on Google.

Create the icon

After all, an icon is merely a square image brought down to a small size and in special ICO format. the walkthrough is rather simple, you’ll see.

Load the image in IrfanView.

Modify the size of the picture to move to a square ratio (change canvas size). You can do it by either enlarging or reducing the canvas size (choosing the right background color).

The result should be a nice square picture but you may feel that it is rather large for an icon.

As a matter of fact, size does not matter much here. The larger, the better to keep the icon looking good when changing display sizes. Now comes the time to make sure that the size is exactly a multiple of 2 (eg. 2048×2048 pixels). It is not useful to go further than 4096×4096 pixels, but do not go below 1024×1024 pixels. IrfanView will do this easily, from Image>Resize/resample... menu.

Then, you need to save the picture as .ICO file (be sure to use “Save as type” with the “ICO – Windows icon” option).

Setup on the USB drive

This icon (this ICO file) must be saved at the root of the USB thumb drive (in the  D:\ directory), preferably under the autorun.ico name (but we can accommodate any other name like Lynx.ico).

Last, copy or create a text file named autorun.inf with the following contents (also in D:\ directory), :

[autorun]
ICON="autorun.ico"


This small file will allow Windows finding the icon named autorun.ico (or any other name that you previously chose)).

Result

Now, your icons will be perfectly distinguishable. Like here with drawings, pictures, photographs, logos, etc.

Bonus: this is applicable to your company logo. If you give USB thumb drives away, better than putting any photo, install your company logo for a fully personalized thumb drive!

1. Shot the scene in a correct exposure according to our usual workflow;
2. Repeat the shot now reducing shutter speed by 4 f-stops that will be corrected in the RAW development (this grossly over-exposed shot will keep shadow details without digital noise);
3. Blend in some way both images obtaining a free of noise final image.

Guillermo Luijk had published his software application and I did not mention it. So, let me correct this error and give you Zero Noise.

I recommend specially both the novel and the movie.

Source: Bibliodyssey

No need for an engineer’s degree!

And a ship on a ship on a ship?

This video from Bill Hammack explains it all in details.

Lien YouTube

Bravo à Philippe L.

Compressed 01 from Kim Pimmel on Vimeo.

Here is how they made books in this long-gone era:

This white paper explores the aspect of reliability for this relatively new and specifically difficult soldering technology used in the manufacturing of boards of electronic components soldered according to the newest regulations requiring not to use any lead (even in soldering where it has long been the basis for solder paste because of its low fusion temperature).