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Rockbox

I'm sure that you have noticed that now-a-days almost everything can be found in an open-source version. Everything from software for your computer, to textbooks for school can be found free and open source. Now you can even get the awesome perks of open source on your very own iPod!

Rockbox is open source firmware for your iPod, or many other types of mp3 players. This means that everything is free, new, and extremely customizable. Rockbox has everything from awesome themes, to an iPod version of Doom. With Rockbox the limits of your pocket music player are endless!

Installing Rockbox on your mp3 player is fairly simple. You can either go the automated route, or the manual route. Personally, I went the automated route, even though it is not guaranteed safe. In most cases, it is still probably safer than digging around in your iPod's file system. To get the automated installer go here. Then installing is as simple as running the file, choosing your player, and pressing go!

Upon starting up my iPod (4th Gen Grayscale, and uber old) I found that the Rockbox display was pretty bland. This was a pretty quick fix, though. Simply go to the settings menu and choose one of the many pre-made themes for your player. You can also choose from different sizes and different fonts in your settings menu.

The interface while playing music with Rockbox, although odd when first starting with it, is actually pretty great. It displays all of your track info, including artist name, song name, album name, next song, and other information about your kbps on the current song. By holding down the Menu button it takes you to an easy to use interface for choosing your shuffle, repeat, and other listening settings.

For all of you people that are not just contented by just listening to music wherever you go, Rockbox also comes with tons of games. You can play everything from dice, to chess, to Doom! Simply go to Plugins > Games and choose your favorite game. For most games, your music will continue to play while you play the games.

Open source things, although usually pretty good, are not entirely without flaws. Twice in my three days of using Rockbox, I found that it was saying I had run out of battery. After getting this message I would have to do a manual restart (menu + select for 6 seconds) and it would restart just fine. If you find that you can't get Rockbox working, it is fairly simple to get back to the original firmware. Turn off your player, and turn it on. As soon as it turns on switch on the hold button and it should restart to the original firmware.

The Breakdown:
Pros:
- Open Source goodness ensures easy customization.
- Themes, fonts, and sounds for every personality out there
- Easy installation, and just as easy uninstallation
- Plenty of documentation on the website, if you get stuck

Cons:
- Having two seperate firmwares will use extra space
- Seems to have bugs telling how much battery is remaining
- Many themes have an odd number-based volume display
- Although it won't break your warranty, you will not be able to get any support while you are running Rockbox

All in all, Rockbox is definately worthwhile if you want to get away from the crowd, and make your mp3 player very personalized. Easy installation, easy customization, and easy interface makes it a win win win decision. Check out http://www.rockbox.org/ to get started.

Shopping Online Frugally

Shopping online is a great convenience, because you can get everything you need without ever leaving your desk. Moreover, you can easily compare prices at different merchants, to make sure you are getting the best value. Here are a few more little online treasures to help you save a nickel or two:

• Google Products / Yahoo! Shopping: This is generally the starting point for all my shopping trips. Both of these sites index products at a vast array of vendors, so it's easy to search and sort by lowest price. Amazon has a similar feature with it's "Marketplace," but I believe it's a little more exclusive about which vendors it lists.
• Ebay / Craigslist: Of course, if you don't mind a little dust, everything's cheaper when you buy it used. Ebay has just about everything you could want being auctioned at very low prices. You can generally save even more with Craigslist, because it cuts out the middle-man, and personal listing are grouped by locality.
• Slickdeals: If you're just browsing for deals, this is the place to go. Slickdeals is a community based on aggregating the best deals on the 'net. Check back daily for limited-time offers, which often include products free-after-rebate.
• PriceAmbush: This is sort of the opposite idea; if you know what you're looking for, but in no hurry to get it, enter the product here. This site scans online stores for the best prices, and emails you when your product falls below a certain target price you set. Pretty cool.
• RetailMeNot: And finally, this is often where I go right before checkout. RetailMeNot is another community-driven site, that compiles a list of coupon codes for all sorts of online retailers. Often you can get a quick 10% off or free shipping on a product you were already intending to make.
  

Backup DVDs with dvd::rip

(screenshot source)
I've always been a little unorganized with my DVDs-- some are in their original cases, some live in a case amongst some other software CDs, some are just completely lost. I've been meaning to get organized with my DVDs, but I just never got around to it.

Instead, I decided to back them up on my computer. This is convenient because I generally watch them on my computer anyway. Also, I'll never have to worry about them getting scratched or lost.

Which brings me to dvd::rip, the DVD ripper of choice on Linux. I started using it earlier this week, and am very happy with it. It's a little rough around the edges, because it's so feature-rich. The program itself is basically a GUI wrapper for a number of command-line utilities, and each option refers to a command-line flag you can set. As a result, you can very carefully fine-tune the results of your rip-- from target size, to resolution, to subtitles.

One of it's best features, in my opinion, is it's "Cluster" daemon. Basically, you are able to distribute the job of transcoding the video amongst as many machines as are available. The job is broken up into parts, and many computers can get the job done together much quicker. Furthermore, you can schedule many jobs on the cluster, which will all be pooled together and processed by the cluster. Once again, it's an advanced setup, but I was able to backup 10 DVDs overnight.

Crazy Shift-Drag

Ok, so I found another interesting little feature in Ubuntu by accident today. I was trying to drag a window across the room, and it would jump sporadically, moving only to the edge of another window. It was really weird, until I realized that my shift-key was stuck down. Apparently, if you hold down shift and drag a window, it'll only move to the edges of other windows-- cool for tiling a lot of programs on your screen.

Politics: I voted, and it feels GOOD

I am not going to discuss which candidate is better than the other. I'm not going to discuss which political party is better than the other. All I want to talk about here is how relieved I am to finally feel like my vote mattered.

Let me give you a bit of voting history here.

I am from California and I am 22 years old. My first real election was Bush v. Kerry. Talk about a terrible first experience. Californians love flip flops, but Kerry almost made us change our minds. And Bush...well we've seen the results of his re-election. Not only that, but the way Bush won was so controversial that I almost lost faith in how the American election system is structured. All of this right on the heels of California voting in the terminator for governor. Sometimes I wonder why certain people are allowed to vote.

After those 2 botched voting experiences I end up living in the bible belt just before the most important presidential election of my life. This is a big deal since I tend to think (socially) Democratic, and the bible belt in general is highly Republican.

Great, so now my vote for president won't be heard no matter what since Georgia is obviously voting Republican!

In come the most closely watched presidential primary race in the history of the United States. I would have never thought the primaries would be my savior. Even if my state is going to end up supporting the Republicans, my voice can help pick which Democrat stands up to that Republican and hopefully beats them. Also, since less people vote in the primaries and the votes are split between Republicans and Democrats, my vote holds more weight. 1 vote in a total 300,000 (that's a guess) means a lot more than 1 vote in 18,000,000 (another guess).

So to wrap this up, I am happier than ever to have a voice in politics after years and years of frustration. My vote matters and I am re-energized politically. I now feel like going to the polls is important and plan on voting on everything that comes my way.

LaTeX is Beautiful

I started using LaTeX for a few of my classes this semester, particularly because they were offering extra credit. But now that I've learned it, I've fallen in love, and am ready to apply it to more scenarios.

So what is LaTeX? Well, it's a markup language, similar to what you might be used to for editing wikis and such. But, it's more robust, and very capable for mathematical or scientific articles. I've only scratched the surface so far, but it can automatically keep track of references throughout your paper, for automatic numbering as well as bibliographies. Also, it is very clean in the way it lays out math. And the biggest reason to use it, is that it's cross-platform, and it'll always look the same, no matter where it's rendered. You can't say that about Word documents.

So, if you're in school now, or you're ever planning on going to grad. school for engineering, I recommend learning LaTeX-- it'll make you life easier in the long run. I'm sure it would overkill for a high-school math class, but I bet your teacher would be impressed.