A Conflagration of Randomness

The shadowing is not quite right because it doesn’t shadow the face, but that’s why I hadn’t uploaded it.  I did this over the summer.

Windows 7 was released yesterday to retail.  Although I have been using it for well over a month in a virtualized environment on my Kubuntu OS, I installed the full version on my desktop yesterday.  I bought my copy of Windows 7 from the student discount website at http://www.win741.com/.  They offer Windows 7 for a low $30!

I found out today that the Virginia Tech upload limit has been increased to 4.7 GB per 24 hour period!!! This is a big improvement form the 650 mb limit before.

http://computing.vt.edu/internet_and_web/internet_access/exceedlimit.html

The winner is: Dirpy - “Dirpy Studio transcodes high quality YouTube videos to mp3s in real time for download”

Today I will tell you how to make youtube videos into mp3s. I have been asked before how to do it and have done it on several occasions if a video on youtube has video unobtainable by other means. Usually this should be a last resort as the quality of youtube video audio is poor. When I say poor I mean it. Typical iTunes downloads range from 128 kilo-bits per second (kbps) – 192 kbps. Very good quality is at the upper bound of mp3s which is 320 kbps. Youtube videos are down to about 64 kbps…not very good, about the quality of an audiobook. Of course the more kbps a mp3 has the more range of sounds it can produce and thus have much higher quality. MP3s already cut the quality of CDs by taking out the higher and lower frequencies, which usually are not able to be heard by most people. Certain audio file formats such as FLAC are called lossless because they allow the audio to be played back on the computer with the same quality as on a CD. However, MP3 is not a lossless format because it compresses the audio to make a much more manageable file size, usually 2-20 mb compared to about 30-100 mb for a FLAC. Anyway, enough about file formats. If you still want to download that rare song from Youtube here’s how:

Method 1:  Let a Site Convert for You

This is a very easy step.  Simply go to the video page on youtube.  Then copy the url of that page from the address bar.  Go to Google.com and enter the search query: convert youtube to mp3.  Usually the top few sites work well.  They will have a form to enter the url of video and then all you have to do is press “convert” and voila, in a moment you have a link to download the mp3 of the video.  A very short and simple method to get the mp3 for your favorite song. 

Recommended sites:

http://www.youtubetomp3.net

http://www.listentoyoutube.com

http://www.video2mp3.net

http://www.vidtomp3.com

http://www.dirpy.com/

[UPDATE]: In the last few months, a new website called Dirpy emerged, and this is the program I highly recommend.  It allows you to edit the metadata tags describing a song, such as Artist, Album, Year, etc.

Plain and simple photoshops:

Halfway Done:

After: