Second: numerical rating + single space + file name.

Useful for command line tomfoolery.

Update: while we’re on the subject, an interview.

We were extremely fortunate to have sixth row seats in orchestra right. There was one talker/singer directly behind me who thought she was having a conversation with Ani, but other than that the crowd was pretty good. Hell is still other people. Set list follows.

1. God’s Country
2. 78% H²0
3. Napoleon
4. Present/Infant
5. Studying Stones
6. Akimbo/Manhole
7. Modulation
8. Red Letter Year
9. Coming Up
10. The Atom
11. Good Luck
12. Fire Door
13. Way Tight
14. Smiling Underneath
15. Both Hands
16. To The Teeth
17. Shameless
18. Gravel (encore)
19. 32 Flavors (encore)

Also, I need to check out Over The Rhine‘s studio stuff. Their opening set was good.

And for the search engines: February 28, 2008.

It was a great show. Khaela is a good storyteller and showman, and very funny. It was neat to see how she added some level of improv to the prerecorded beats. I’m not all too familiar with her library, but I think she hit most (if not all) of the songs off Paper Television, plus Come On Petunia as the encore. It was a solo show, with Jona off doing his Yacht thing, and her last northeastern date of the Paper Television stuff. I got the impression she wanted to leave it behind after the split with Jona.

So, thanks, The Blow, as well as Justin for including C2 and I. Let’s do it again some time.

1. It’s an iTunes-like music player for Linux (is this nee sumi?), and I want to remember it.
2. The website runs on MediaWiki.

Todo: find a wiki page that list websites that are styled like websites, but run on MediaWiki (or other wikis). Alternately, start a list on Bwerp.

This post is a work in progress, and will be messy for a time. It’s a followup to my previous post, Saving iTunes Music Store Videos in Windows, updated for iTunes 5.0. We have good news and bad news.

The good news: iTunes does not exclusively lock the files. The bad news: we’re no longer working with simple movie files with .tmp extensions. Apple has switched to some sort of QuickTime cache file, and a quick rename is no longer an option.

iTunes cache files have moved slightly: C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Apple Computer\QuickTime\downloads1\11 or C:\Documents and Settings\abackstrom.STONE\Local Settings\Application Data\Apple Computer\QuickTime\downloads\tmp. I assume the 01\11 in the first path changes, but that gives you the basic framework we’re dealing with.

I still had the old download of Alanis Morissette’s Everything. Here is a comparison of the files, filtered through xxd(1). First, the old file:

0000ee0: 6f52 9e37 b977 527f 93c6 17e5 fce9 9212  oR.7.wR.........
0000ef0: 8349 6b94 d4df a8fd 255d 57e2 3fa9 3fe9  .Ik.....%]W.?.?.
0000f00: 8ac2 538e 23e5 5b7a 6779 6efc 5cdf 97b9  ..S.#.[zgyn.\...
0000f10: 65ef 4aca e928 4748 fbf7 cfcd 7b9a f6bd  e.J..(GH....{...
0000f20: a89c 483a 77c6 8952 8bd2 d56a f9bd ce5d  ..H:w..R...j...]
0000f30: 41b5 307d b27f aece 4649 7522 ca3b a36a  A.0}....FIu".;.j
0000f40: 7054 bd8d ba7f 3ab4 ac57 9237 a79c 7f3a  pT....:..W.7...:
0000f50: 5324 d58b f054 f95d 5ad9 df4f 7115 743e  S$...T.]Z..Oq.t>
0000f60: 49d7 9631 25e5 587a b0cc 6352 dd4b 5afb  I..1%.Xz..cR.KZ.

Next, the new:

0000ff0: e5fb 98a9 4ced c135 d746 32b3 de1b 7393  ....L..5.F2...s.
0001000: 8396 5685 d5e9 8c1f 8a48 7bde 0a55 6bca  ..V......H{..Uk.
0001010: f2bb 7ac3 9463 1d6d 9762 b117 b5b8 3bc8  ..z..c.m.b....;.
0001020: 65ef 4aca e928 4748 fbf7 cfcd 7b9a f6bd  e.J..(GH....{...
0001030: a89c 483a 77c6 8952 8bd2 d56a f9bd ce5d  ..H:w..R...j...]
0001040: 41b5 307d b27f aece 4649 7522 ca3b a36a  A.0}....FIu".;.j
0001050: 7054 bd8d ba7f 3ab4 ac57 9237 a79c 7f3a  pT....:..W.7...:
0001060: 5324 d58b f054 f95d 5ad9 df4f 7115 743e  S$...T.]Z..Oq.t>
0001070: 49d7 9631 25e5 587a b0cc 6352 dd4b 5afb  I..1%.Xz..cR.KZ.

Notice how the data streams align midway through the pasted sections. This is not a coincidence. At first glace, I would assume the underlying movie data has not changed, only the header of the file. The big question here is whether or not an old header can be applied to a new movie. The end-of-file segments are identical, so there is no trailer that needs modification.

Next steps:

1. Do an additional comparison of old and new files.
2. Compare and old and new header for length and content.
3. Compare two old headers for length and content.
4. Compare two new headers for length and content.

With any luck, the last step will be cutting out the new headers and dropping in the old. More data forthcoming.

As an aside, I like reading through and picking out places Mike Doughty and Ani DiFranco have mentioned in their songs. (Ludlow St., Astor Place, etc.) I do not know New York City, I would not survive there, but I still have an emotional reaction to these places because of music.

Thank you, Lord, for sending me the F-Train.

Serious.

And I guess I’m pretty different now,
Considering…

Ani DiFranco – Knuckle Down.

As a self-professed digital packrat, I can’t stand the thought of ever losing some piece of information or media. I download, I checksum, I archive, I store for all eternity. I do not like to be at the mercy of others, and I positively sweat at the prospect of having some previously-available datum taken away from me. So when I couldn’t save music videos from the iTunes Music Store (aka iTMS), I got a little agitated.

Saving these videos under Mac OS X is practically trivial. Step to the other side of the fence, and you’re in a world of pain:

The cached videos themselves are easy enough to find: C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Local Settings\Temp\ contains a “.tmp” file for the currently-playing video. iTunes maintains an exclusive lock on this file, and other programs are not allowed to read the file in any way. This means no opening, no copying, nothing. Well, not quite nothing. (Did you forget who you’re talking to here?)

I’ll start from the beginning. Here is the iTunes Music Store’s Music Video section:

Further clicking brings the user to the videos themselves:

At this point, the video is saved in the Temp directory mentioned above:

But, as I mentioned, it’s seemingly impossible to copy the file:

“Seemingly impossible” is not the same as “extra mega impossible,” though. Studious hackers will remember the Windows Backup Utility, located in Start Menu → Programs → Accessories → System Tools → Backup. (Windows XP Home users will need to install this application.) This tool has a “shadow copy” backup function that backs up locked files, allowing backups to take place while the computer is in use. A little misappropriation, and this music video will be liberated.

Dig down to the Temp directory and select it for backup:

You’ll notice that you can’t selelct a single file to back up. The default file exclusion patters for the Backup Utility prevent this. To change this setting, select “Options…” from the “Tools” menu, and click on the “Exclude Files” tab. Scroll down to the rule about files in the Temp directory, select it, and click “Remove.” (This amount of destruction is OK for me, since I use the utility for archiving music videos and nothing else.)

Start the backup using the default settings:

At this point, you can start doing other things in iTunes. Backup Utility has a death grip on the file, and it will be backed up. The progress bar should be well on its way:

And restore the file back to your drive using the newly-created backup file. I haven’t included all the steps for the restore process. I’m sure you can figure it out. I prefer restoring to the Desktop, myself.

After the restore, give the file a .mov suffix so it’s associated with QuickTime Player. You now have a nice, clean video with which to do as you please:

Remember: as we learned in Spider-Man, “with great power comes great responsibility.” Apple made this hard for a reason: they don’t want people throwing around all this copyrighted media willy-nilly. I can’t control what you do with this information, but please support the artists as well as Apple’s Music Store. Lord knows I do.

Speaking of the Lord, Happy Birthday, Baby Jesus. This is my Christmas present to all you anonymous Internet folk. Enjoy.

Updates to this post:

• March 23, 2005: Added note about renaming *.tmp file.
• April 6, 2005: Added file exclusion list information. Added link to Microsoft’s site on installing Backup Utility. Confirmed that this process works in iTunes 4.7.1.