Archive for August, 2007

littles3 works with S3Fox Organizer

Friday, August 31st, 2007

S3Fox Organizer and “littles3″I have successfully used S3Fox Organizer with the current “littles3” source code. S3Fox Organizer is a Firefox extension which provides a simple interface for managing files with Amazon S3. To get it to work, I needed to control the resolving of “http://s3.amazonaws.com”, which is the URL that S3Fox Organizer is coded to use. I edited my machines “hosts” file, C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts on Windows, to have s3.amazonaws.com resolve to 127.0.0.1, localhost. I have “littles3” running within Tomcat. I have it running as the “ROOT” application so that there is no application context. I also have Apache running with mod_jk connecting to Tomcat.

This definitely takes advanced skills to get running and “littles3” isn’t complete yet, but this is a good integration test. The current “littles3” source code has ACL support now. It still needs to implement metadata and the ability to “provision” user accounts. But it is at a personally usable state now.

St. Pius X Sunday School calendar

Friday, August 31st, 2007

I have made available a Google calendar for St. Pius X Sunday School for the 2007-2008 year. Click on the button below to access it.

Flac to MP3

Sunday, August 26th, 2007

I have been ripping my CD’s to FLAC format for some time now. I use FLAC because it is a lossless compression format. But the Sansa Express doesn’t support FLAC. What to do?

I use foobar2000 as a player of FLAC media. Well, come to find out, it can be used to convert FLAC to MP3. Using lame with foobar2000, it is very easy. I first load the FLAC files into foobar2000. It is convenient to load up a directory of files. I use a format of “[artist]/[album]/[track] [song].flac“. This makes it easy to load an album at a time into foobar2000. I select all of the files in foobar2000, right click, select “Convert >”, “Convert to Same Directory”. A status dialog opens up showing the conversion process. When done, it has created “[artist]/[album]/[track] [song].mp3“.

Now I have files to download. This was one of the selling points of the Sansa Express. You just plug it into a USB port. The computer recognizes it as an external drive. I then drag the MP3 files from my hard drive to the Sansa Express. That’s it!

SanDisk Sansa Express

Saturday, August 25th, 2007

SanDisk Sansa ExpressI just purchased a SanDisk Sansa Express.

I purchased it because it was small, charged via USB, and had a radio. I was looking for a player that I could listen to while I run. (I also bought a Digital Lifestyle Outfitters Action Jacket, which is an arm band and neoprene case for the Sansa Express.)

I have to get it loaded with music for my morning run on Monday. I will have to provide an update afterwards. I suspect that I may have to invest in some sports earphones instead of the ear buds provided.