Author Archives: Linerd

Fixing Variable Bit Rate MP3’s With vbrfix

Some MP3 encoders fail to create the proper file headers when encoding variable bit rate MP3 files. When that happens, the song length displayed will often be be incorrect when playing the song back. One of the ways this can be handled is by adding a Xing header to the MP3 file. One tool that’s available on Linux to do this is vbrfix.

To install vbrfix in Ubuntu, first make sure that the universe repository is enabled in your software sources. Then you can install it through one of the graphical package managers, or from the command line with: Continue reading

Batch Converting Audio With GStreamer

I recently got a new TV that allows me to stream audio and video from my computer to the TV. I tend to archive music from CD’s I’ve purchased in FLAC format. Unfortunately, FLAC is not one of the formats supported by my TV. I decided to write a little script to convert my music archive into one of the supported file formats. Continue reading

Command Line Basics: Create And Extract Tarballs

In the Linux world, tarball refers to a compressed tar archive file. The most common type uses gzip compression and the file typically ends in tar.gz or .tgz. The tar command itself has its origin in Unix systems where is was used to save files to magnetic tape. The name tar stands for Tape ARchive. Continue reading

Server Move Complete

OK, the move to a new server is now complete. Hopefully, having the site on a more powerful server will prevent my account from being suspended due to high server loads. I’m not sure if the site performance will improve at all.

Comments are now re-enabled.