Journal tags: mp3

Staying at home triggered a memory for me. I remembered reading a short story many years ago. It was by J.G. Ballard, and it described a man who makes the decision not to leave the house.

Being a J.G. Ballard story, it doesn’t end there. Over the course of the story, the house grows and grows in size, forcing the protaganist into ever-smaller refuges within his own home. It really stuck with me.

I tried tracking it down with some Duck Duck Going. Searching for “j.g. ballard weird short story” doesn’t exactly narrow things down, but eventually I spotted the book that I had read the story in. It was called War Fever. I think I read it back when I was living in Germany, so that would’ve been in the ’90s. I certainly don’t have a copy of the book any more.

But I was able to look up a table of contents and find a title for the story that was stuck in my head. It’s called The Enormous Space.

Alas, I couldn’t find any downloadable versions—War Fever doesn’t seem to be available for the Kindle.

Then I remembered the recent announcement from the Internet Archive that it was opening up the National Emergency Library. The usual limits on “checking out” books online are being waived while physical libraries remain closed.

I found The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard and borrowed it just long enough to re-read The Enormous Space.

If anything, it’s creepier and weirder than I remembered. But it’s laced with more black comedy than I remembered.

I thought you might like to hear this story, so I made a recording of myself reading The Enormous Space.

I’ve recorded each chapter of Resilient Web Design as MP3 files that I’ve been releasing once a week. The final chapter is recorded and released so my audio work is done here.

If you want subscribe to the podcast, pop this RSS feed into your podcast software of choice. Or use one of these links:

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Or if you can have it as one single MP3 file to listen to as an audio book. It’s two hours long.

So, for those keeping count, the book is now available as HTML, PDF, EPUB, MOBI, and MP3.

Hot on the heels of the work for St. Paul’s School, I’ve been tweaking the media queries for the Salter Cane website. I was switching the site over to using HTML5 structural elements anyway, so I figured I’d meddle with the CSS while I was at it.

Once again, the fact that the site was already using percentages made the process very straightforward. Depending on the viewport width, the layout changes from three columns to two columns to one column.

And once again, I didn’t remove any content for small screen devices. The natural language navigation at the top of the page—now correctly ensconced in a nav element—really comes into its own in the linearised layout, allowing for quick access to different sections of the document.

The timing of all this optimisation is fortuitous. The second Salter Cane album has just been released: it’s called Sorrow.

It already has some fans. Shaun said:

The Truth Is Nothing sounds like Leonard Cohen, Johnny Cash and Arcade Fire had a musical transporter accident. can’t stop listening to it.

Lachlan is equally enthusiastic. If you like what you hear, you can buy the physical album from CD Baby or buy the digital album from iTunes. It will be available on Spotify and Amazon soon.

All the songs are licensed under a Creative Commons attribution license which means that they are podsafe. I’m looking forward to seeing where they end up.

You can listen to the whole album on the Salter Cane site using a Flash MP3 player. The documentation for Audio Player reads:

To insert a player on the page, place an HTML element and give it a unique ID. This element will be replaced with a player. If the browser doesn’t support Audio Player, the element will not be replaced so use it to show alternative content (maybe a message telling the user to download Flash).

The example code looks like this:

<p id="audioplayer_1">Alternative content</p>
<script type="text/javascript">
AudioPlayer.embed("audioplayer_1", {soundFile: "file.mp3"});
</script>

But rather than using a P element, I used the HTML5 audio element:

<audio id="audioplayer_1" src="file.mp3" controls="controls" preload="none">
</audio>  
<script>  
AudioPlayer.embed("audioplayer_1", {soundFile: "file.mp3"});  
</script>

That way, browsers with Flash installed get the plugin while other devices—like, say, the iPhone, iPod and iPad—get the native audio player.

Whatever device you’re using, enjoy listening to Sorrow by Salter Cane.

Amazon is selling MP3s. Right now it’s US only (and I’ve got a sneaky US account on the side) but hopefully this will reach foreign shores before too long. Straight out of the starting gate, they’ve got about 2 million songs on offer. Every single one of those songs is encoded at 256kbps with no DRM. It’s that last detail that makes this such a big deal.

I’ve never been able to get my head around the justifications for DRM. In the past, I have been literally sitting in front of my computer with my credit card in hand, eager to spend money on music I love. But rather than greet me with open arms, services like iTunes instead treat me with suspicion, demanding that they get to call the shots about how I can use music that I’ve bought.

For a really egregious example of where this can lead, take note that Virgin Digital is shutting down:

All tracks used Windows Media DRM, and therefore were only playable under Windows and on WMA-compatible devices. The site now advises its customers who have purchased tracks to back them up, as they will not be able to download them again once Virgin Digital has closed. It’s unclear whether the purchasers of individual tracks will be able to access their songs without burning them to CD and reimporting them as MP3s, but it’s better to be safe than sorry if you’re one of those customers. And naturally, subscribing members will lose access altogether once their subscriptions lapse.

DRM-crippled suppliers treat me like a criminal. That turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophesy. It’s precisely because of the DRM that I resort to using peer-to-peer networks or other illicit means of music acquisition.

Make no mistake, the design of the iTunes music store trumps Amazon on just about every level. For most of the purchasing process, the user experience is far superior on iTunes. But the user experience doesn’t end with a financial transaction. The user experience of interacting with the purchased song continues long after leaving the store.

I haven’t bought anything from the iTunes music store because of the DRM. I have used it though: I’ve been given gift certificates for iTunes downloads. This is what I have to do after completing a download:

1. Pull out the read/write CD I keep just for this,
2. Burn my new music to the CD,
3. Rip the music back as MP3,
4. Erase the CD in preparation for step 1.

And that’s perfectly legal allowed by the terms of service*. But I can’t just convert from DRMed AAC straight to MP3—that would be illegal.

Now, it’s pretty clear that this kind of “copy protection” isn’t going to get in the way of anyone who seriously wants to make copies of the music. All it does is place frustrating stumbling blocks in the path of legitimate customers who want to listen to their purchased music wherever they choose.

I hope that the launch of the Amazon MP3 store is a sign that record companies are finally beginning to realise that people who want their music to be open and portable aren’t criminals—they’re music lovers.

John Gruber puts it best when he says:

Given the Amazon MP3 Store’s audio quality, prices, and user experience, I can’t see why anyone would buy DRM-restricted music from iTunes that’s available from Amazon.

In a wonderful twist, the current number one bestselling song on Amazon is 1234 by Feist— the very song that Apple uses to promote the iPod Nano. And why not? iPods and MP3s have always been a great combination (it always frustrates me when I read reports by lazy journalists that contain statements such as “only songs purchased from Apple’s iTunes music store can be played on the iPod”). I suspect that the vast majority of iPods are filled with un-DRMed music, mostly ripped from CD. Now, thanks to Amazon, there’s also an easy way to fill them with un-DRMed music downloaded from the tubes of the internets.

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* Matthew points out that back-ups, archiving, shifting format, all currently illegal in the UK. Here’s the petition to change that. Even the government agrees that the current situation is pretty stupid but the law hasn’t changed.