Monthly Archives: June 2010

Experiments with audiobook speed

I love audiobooks.  I’ve found that, especially with big, fat history books, I’m more likely to finish it if someone reads it than if I have to read it myself.

The drawback is that audiobooks are usually .. read .. very .. very .. slow .. ly.  So I’ve been experimenting with how to speed them up, more than the +25% my iPod can do.  I’ve found a solution.  It’s not easy, but it works.

Step 1 – Remove the DRM. I buy audiobooks from Audible, and you can’t just open those in an audio editor.  You have to convert them to an unprotected format such as mp3.  I use Daniusoft Digital Music Converter to do that.  There’s no magic: It just plays the audio silently, for itself, and records it.  This means that converting a 20 hour book takes 20 hours.  It’s kind of crappy, but it more or less works.

Step 2 – Change the tempo.  I use Audacity, an open source audio editor, which allows you to change the tempo – how fast it plays – without changing the pitch.  How much you can increase the tempo depends on the narrator.  I’ve managed +60% to +90%, ie. almost twice normal speed.  Some sounds disappear at higher speeds, but you may still be able to understand the words.  There’s no right answer: Just experiment.

Step 3 – If you’re using iTunes, select “Remember playback position” on the options tab for the file, or it won’t remember where you are.

And that’s it.

If you want to hear what this sounds like, here’s a sample from Revolution 1989, at normal speed, +50%, +75% and +100%:




40′s movies marathon – best of 1947

Here’s to 1947, a year inbetween other years.  1947 also happened to be the last year of the so-called Hollywood “golden age”, by which movie historians mean the period when the major studios could do whatever the hell they pleased, because they owned the stars and the movie theaters, and had no real competitors.  In 1948 the studios lost an anti-trust suit and had to sell off their theaters, and then television took off, which eventually gave us MacGyver, the culmination of all entertainment history, but that’s all in the future.  Here are my favorite movies from 1947, by category:

Wtf was that?!

Black Narcissus

Fun and dancing

Good News

It Happened in Brooklyn

English (and Irish) gangsters

Brighton Rock

Hue and Cry

Odd Man Out

Noir

Ride the Pink Horse

Out of the Past

T-Men

Railroaded!

First-person shooters

Lady in the Lake

Dark Passage

The funny humor

The Senator was Indiscreet

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

The Sin of Harold Diddlebock

Domo arigato, mr Kurosawa

One Wonderful Sunday

Other

Monsieur Vincent

Crossfire

An Ideal Husband

The Fugitive

A Double Life

Nightmare Alley

Dreams that Money Can Buy

40’s movies marathon – part 106

One Wonderful Sunday (1947, Japan, Kurosawa) – A young couple tries to find a place to live, but they have no money, and are too proud to bend the rules.  They feel like they’re the last honest people in Japan.  Watched it all.  This is a really bleak movie, but what separates it from many bleak movies is that these people actually have a lot to be depressed about.  No phony existential dread like in the Bergman movie earlier.

Dear Ruth (1947, USA, Russell) – Look at that eager young girl who’s interested in politics and believes in equal rights for women.  She’s so stupid!  Ha ha!  Watched: 6 minutes.

Boomerang (1947)

Boomerang (1947, USA, Kazan) – A priest is murdered on Main Street, and the city goes mad.  Won’t somebody please just arrest someone wearing vaguely similar clothes, and torture him until he confesses, so we can all put this behind us?!  Watched it all.

Song of Love (1947, USA, Brown) – “In this story of Clara and Robert Schumann, of Johannes Brahms and Franz Liszt, certain necessary liberties have been taken with incident and chronology.”  Oh dear God no!  Watched: 2 minutes.

Dark Passage (1947) - Humphrey Bogart, Clifton Young

Dark Passage (1947, USA, Daves) – The citizens of San Francisco are inexplicably eager to help escaped convict Humphrey Bogart avoid the police.  They direct him straight to the nearest plastic surgeon, who change his face so that he looks like Humphrey Bogart.  Watched it all.  Another 1947 use of the first-person gimmick.

Fear in the Night (1947, USA, Shane) – This is crap, but – wait, the crazed killer is DeForest Kelley?  OMG!  Watched: 7 minutes.

Gazademonstrasjoner og Tea Party-bevegelsen – samme sak?

Bjørn Gabrielsen anklaget nylig Erlend Loe for å være en nyttig idiot for islamister, fordi han deltok i en demonstrasjon mot Israel hvor det også vaiet Hizbollah-flagg.  Loe forsvarte seg med at han ikke var der for å støtte Hizbollah, men for å vise sympati med Gaza.

Spørsmålet er altså: Når en sak tiltrekker seg mennesker med ekstreme synspunkter, hva er viktigst: Å markere avstand til ekstremistene, eller fokusere på det ikke-ekstreme de har til felles?  Burde Erlend Loe forlatt demonstrasjonen, eller burde Bjørn Gabrielsen vurdert demonstrasjonen utifra det deltagerne hadde til felles, nemlig avsky for Israels behandling av Gaza?

Dette høres kjent ut. For noen måneder siden hadde jeg den samme debatten.  Da gjaldt det den amerikanske Tea Party-bevegelsen.  Jeg skrev at en slik grasrotbevegelse burde vurderes utifra hva de alle har til felles, økonomisk liberalisme, ikke utifra ekstremistene de også tiltrekker seg.  Andre mente at det var viktigere å markere avstand til gærningene.

Jeg mistenker at noen av de som mener det ene når det gjelder Gazademonstrasjoner, mener det andre når det gjelder Tea Party-bevegelsen.  Men det er samme problemstilling.

Og det blir galt uansett hva du velger.  Den strenge linjen er ryddigere, men den betyr også at du i praksis setter en stopp for alt grasrotengasjement.  Du kan ikke lenger holde en løst organisert demonstrasjon mot Israel i Norge, for den vil alltid tiltrekke seg jødehatere.

Prisen for folkelig engasjement er at du i blant havner i en demonstrasjon ved siden av gærninger.  Det er kjipt, men jeg tror alternativet er verre.

40’s movies marathon – part 105

Nightmare Alley (1947) - Carnival geek

Nightmare Alley (1947, USA, Goulding) – Carnival crook Tyrone Power discovers the power of cold reading, and decides to become a fake psychic for the social elite.  Watched it all.  I think Bob Dylan sang this movie once.  Ignore the last few minutes.  The movie properly ends with the line, “mister, I was born for it”.

The Paradine Case (1947, USA, Hitchcock) – Hm, I was looking forward to the yearly Hitchcock, but here I am feeling bored.  Courtroom drama blah blah.  Watched: 12 minutes.

Skepp till India Land (1947) - Birger Malmsten

Skepp till India land (1947, Sweden, Bergman) – A sailor returns to his old home town, where he finds nothing but existential dread and memories of his evil father.  Watched it all.  It’s refreshing to see a movie that doesn’t follow the usual tropes of the time, but this movie has its own clichés.  Basically everyone suffers because they behave like complete idiots, and we’re supposed to empathize. I don’t.

Down to Earth (1947, USA, Hall) – Everybody loves those movies were the dead are sent down from Heaven to do good deeds.  And let’s throw in some musical numbers!  Watched: 6 minutes.

The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947) - Harold Lloyd

The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947, USA, Sturges) – Fired after 20 years as an accountant, Harold Lloyd has his first taste of alcohol, which brings out the old go-getter in him.  He becomes a wild and crazy guy who buys circuses and wears loud clothes.  Watched it all.  Whatever happened to Preston Sturges?  Nothing for years, and then “California Productions”?  Did the major studios kick him out?  But it doesn’t matter: This is hilarious.

Valgfri meningsbredde

Jeg har ikke tenkt å skrive noe om den israelske bordingen av hjelpekonvoien til Gaza, fordi Midtøsten-konflikten er enda en sak jeg er lei av at nordmenn later som om de er eksperter på.  (Vær litt originale: Velg side i Thailand-konflikten eller noe!)

Men det slo meg akkurat hvor mye bredde det er i meningene om denne hendelsen blant nordmennene jeg følger på Twitter.  Alt fra total fordømmelse til forståelse.  Det rare er ikke at nordmenn har delte meninger om Midtøsten-konflikten, men at det var så lett for meg å få oversikt over bredden.

Jeg er bekymret for at internet gjør det lettere for oss å stenge ute alle andre kilder med informasjon og meninger enn de vi er enige med.  Men dette går begge veier: internet gjør det også lettere å følge med på mange ulike kilder.  Hvis du vil.  Valget ligger hos hver og en av oss.

Midtøsten-dekningen i mediene har litt bredde, men ikke mye, og er for det meste ganske forutsigbar.  Og aller viktigst: Det er lite du som TV-seer eller avisleser kan gjøre med det.  På nettet bestemme du selv hvor mange alternative virkelighetsforståelser du vil bli eksponert for.  Det er farlig, for du kan lett velge kun én, men også spennende.

Det som overrasket meg litt var at det var nettop på Twitter jeg fant bredden i denne saken.  Dekningen i bloggene jeg leser har vært smalere.  Årsaken er kanskje at det er lettere å beslutte å følge noen på Twitter enn det er å abonnere på en blogg.  Lovende!

Bøker og markedskultur

I Liberalerens sommerserie om bøker og markedskultur har turen i dag kommet til meg.

I motsetning til enkelte andre ting jeg skriver, tror jeg ikke de som frykter det kulturelle verdensbildet til FrP-sympatisører vil føle seg så veldig beroliget etter å ha lest dette.

The life of Walt Disney (in 256 words)

Neal Gabler - Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination

From the late 1920′s to the early 1940′s, Walt Disney did something revolutionary every other year or so.  Sound.  Color.  Feature films.  Stereo.  Characters you could empathize with.  People would watch The Skeleton Dance (1929) or Three Little Pigs (1933) and have their minds blown.

Disney’s ambitions were limitless, and for a few short years after Snow White (1937), his studio was the most creative place on earth, or at least in Hollywood.  Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi, Dumbo was artistic history.  Disney knew it, viewers knew it, everyone knew it.

Two wars ended the golden age.  One with the Axis powers, which made Disney almost a branch of the government, and another with the unions, whose 1941 strike permanently destroyed the trust and shared sense of mission that made the earlier work possible.  Young Walt was a cult leader, demanding but inspiring.  Old Walt was Uncle Scrooge, an anti-communist who would randomly fire people just to keep everyone on their toes.

Even in the 40′s, Disney did weird and interesting things, such as Victory Through Air Power, but when they returned to real features in 1950, it was not as perfectionists on a holy mission, but as a corporation doing what the public expected of it.

Walt’s attention had shifted elsewhere, to television, and to Disneyland.  Disneyland was not a merchandising opportunity, but a continuation of his vision from the earlier years.  One last holy mission, before he ascended in 1966, and became a secular god – immortal and a little bit frightening.  The god of human emotions, and of an eerily close substitute.

40’s movies marathon – part 104

It Happened in Brooklyn (1947, USA, Whorf) – Frank Sinatra is growing up.  Now, at 31,  he looks maybe 21-ish.  And then he starts singing, and suddenly he’s ageless.  Watched it all.  Favorite scene: The kids who hang at the music store, where you can sense this whole new youth culture waiting to explode, with hysterical fans and everything.

The Voice of the Turtle (1947, USA, Rapper) – Think how weird it would have been if Ronald Reagan was just some guy who starred in a couple of 40′s dramas.  Watched: 11 minutes.

Odd Man Out (1947, USA, Reed) – James Mason performs robberies to support Irish nationalism in Belfast, but his heart’s not in it any more, and his men are incompetent, and he ends up wounded, staggering around the city, looking for help.  Watched it all.  Favorite scene: The mad painter who wants to portray the face of a dying man.

The Unsuspected (1947, USA, Curtiz) – The least you can do when you’re being murdered while on the telephone is to give some information about the killer before you perform your final bloodcurling scream.  Watched: 11 minutes.

A Double Life (1947) - Ronald Colman

A Double Life (1947, USA, Cukor) – Ronald Colman is an empty shell who takes his personality from the characters he play.  When he’s the butler in a farce, he’s lovable and friendly.  When he’s Othello, well ..  Watched it all.  It’s a mirror of Laurence Olivier’s Henry V, where we start in real life but are gradually sucked into the play.  Here, the characters from the play gradually walk out into real life.