www.NewVentures.ca

So once again, Google saves my butt… but let me start at the beginning.

I love Ebay. It is without a doubt one of the best shopping resources in the world. If you can’t find what you are looking for on Ebay, it probably can’t be found. As a result I usually drop in at least once a week to see what’s new, what’s hot and hopefully find a deal or two that I can’t refuse.

So about three weeks ago I dropped in and was checking things out. I stumbled across a vendor selling a twin gamepad set that used just one USB port called cryptically, a “Double Shock Controller PC USB Game Pad.” This item would allow me to have two game controllers plugged into my computer using only one connection (replacing my single joystick with two gamepad controllers instead!)

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You know how sometimes life is good and you can do no wrong?

Well I just had the opposite – NOTHING went right for me over the last 4 days!

I should have paid closer attention to a CD I received recently. If I had, maybe I would have missed this little groundswell of unpleasantness that I just experienced. Now to be truthful all the following can really be linked back to just one source – me – but being a guy, well, you just gotta find another reason…

So about that disk…

I was evaluating some software that a friend of mine had loaned me recently. Instead of the original, he gave me a copy (he obviously knew I was going to have a bad run and didn’t want to chance his original…)

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So I was so successful creating MP3 disks that my wife is now putting in orders and special requests. The problem was, she was asking for something that I hadn’t found yet. Recordings from the old Wayne & Shuster show.

Now without a doubt Wayne and Shuster were one of our greatest Canadian exports. In my opinion they eclipse some of our other best exports: Paul Anka; William Shatner and Peter Jennings. They were favorites and regularly appeared on all of the leading television shows of my youth, Dinah Shore and Ed Sullivan, to name just two.

To me, they really were the kings of comedy and they haven’t received much respect outside our own borders now that they are gone. So finding any free MP3 recordings of any of their shows was going to be a pretty tough job. But I hit Google anyways, hoping for the best.

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Well I guess I am slowly starting to become noticed out on the web. While I still haven’t had a plethora of real comments and feedbacks, I have noted that the SPAM comment attacks are starting to increase. I am deleting about two to three a day now. I’m not sure if I should be pleased that others have found me, or angry that it is happening.

I really would have liked to keep this blog as open as possible, but unfortunately there are some people out there who would prefer to use someone else’s work as their own advertising board. As a result, I have now instituted a slight lock-down ( by tightening up the WordPress configuration ) on all future comments and postings.

In future, postings from anyone not authorized to comment will be put into  a hidden queue for my authorization (for new users it will look like it has disappeared.) Once you have made a comment that has been ok’d by me, all future comments will not require authorization and will be posted immediately.

Again, your first comment will not appear until it is ok’d by me. Once that occurs, all future comments and postings will immediately and automatically appear. At this point anyone may still register and post immediately, here is hoping this minor change allows this to continue.

Again, my apologies for having to tighten up things here – but hopefully this will lead to a better and safer blog to visit in future.

Rick

So last week when I was normalizing all my downloaded mp3’s I found yet another problem. It would seem some of the old radio sites that I was downloading from kept their audio’s in Real Audio format (indicated usually with an ra or rm file type – the part after the “.”.)

I actually had already downloaded and used what was supposed to be an excellent and free tool called dBpoweramp. The last time I used it (months ago) it worked great – so function wise I certainly could not complain. They actually refer to it as “the Swiss army knife of audio™.”

However, for whatever reason the built in coding that they use to convert material to mp3 is, according to them no longer freely available. In their own words…

dBpowerAMP’s mp3 encoder (writer) is on a time limited 30 day trial license, illustrate has provided a 100% free encoder for many years, but a legal challenge (claims of patent infringement) has forced a change, the world cannot have a free mp3 encoder so it seems. This license is purchased through the Power Pack license (a series of enhancements to dBpowerAMP: Faster CD Ripping, Handles Compilation CDs, Preview CDs, ID Tag Editing, DSP Sound Effects and more)…all for $14

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