I don’t make a practice of this kind of thing, but I like to play my CDs through the media player of my choice, my way, and this was the first really annoyingly protected CD I’ve bought in quite some time. That said…

Yesterday I bought the Switchfoot CD “Nothing is Sound“. Today I put it in my computer to play it. As may be more common than I’d like to think, a ‘custom’ media player came up. To be shorten this story, I deduced that this was a Macrovision TotalPlay CD. I hate custom players. ARG! Which set me on my path…

Normally I would just use the freeware program AudioGrabber, which has ripped other copy protected CDs I own without a hic-up. In this case, the last track (Daisy) gave an ASPI error when ripping. Had I completely disliked the track, I might have gone on my sweet little way, but that wasn’t the case.

As is my secondary try, I open up (the now defunct) Cool Edit Pro – great audio editing software, on the cheap, that has the ability to pull audio from CDs. [CoolEdit is now an Adobe product called Audition]. For some reason (I’m not that nerdy) this has been able to get certain tracks that AudioGrabber couldn’t get. In this case, however, the track list wouldn’t load. Oh, well.

So, the ‘custom’ media player allows one to copy the media files to “your library”, and to burn the CD up to 3 times. I assumed that the burned CD would include copy protection, but I decided to experiment.

I opted to rip the tracks to my library, and being the audiophile that I am I chose the Windows Media Lossless format. Hopefully you already assumed that the only available formats were WMA.

Once the rip was complete, I simply went into Windows Media Player 10 and used it’s built in burning capabilities to select the tracks I had just ripped to be burned to a new CD-R. Sure enough AudioGrabber had no problem reading and ripping all of the tracks from the new CD to good ol’ (unprotected) MP3 files.

The extra step is only an annoyance, but the upside is that I now have two CDs I can play in my car/house/computer/wherever.

Now, to quickly answer some questions: No, I will not distribute these files in any way. This was simply an exercise for personal pleasure. No, I will not get you a copy of the CD. No, I will not answer your questions about how to rip your own CDs. This wasn’t intended to be a lesson in getting around a copy protection scheme so that you could put all your songs on some peer-to-peer network somewhere. (In that case, I would have given you step-by-step instructions with screen shots to follow along with).

I was excited that I got around a top-of-the-line CD copy protection by using elementary tools, and thought I would brag a bit about how simple it seemed.

The End.

Proud to say that since getting broadband (again) I’ve updated the music on the Just Roger page at Download.com. If you didn’t just click that link, here it is in plain text: http://www.download.com/justroger

It’s an experimental “eclectic electric” project that me and a friend of mine do. You’ll notice the download/plays counts are ‘teh suck’ because after the original mp3.com died – and switched over to music.download.com – I uploaded a couple of the not-so-good tracks (because that’s what I had sitting on my drive at the time) and haven’t touched the site in almost a year.

I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be worth keeping an eye on now, though. Check it out if you dare.

The End.

I still have a list of things I’ve been meaning to write about, but at the moment only the last hour makes the cut. I stumbled on a couple of cool websites, which is rare, but aren’t worth links right now.

The most exciting news of the moment is that I might be a real band type band again soon. Yes, I have a permanent type gig with my Church in the youth praise band, which is awesome, but if you’ve ever done that you know it’s just not the same. Not that it’s not as good. But it’s much less original material and the rush of playing in front of people you will probably never see again. Not to mention that in one instance you’re preparing the ‘crowd’ and their spirit for the upcoming Word, whereas in a band band – you are the word. And then there’s performance versus ministry, and all that bunch of grey area. Gosh, I’ve brought up at least three things already that deserve their own book worth of discussion – so I’ll stop now.

Speaking of grey area though, I thought of something interesting today that never really hit me before. [Begin back-story] – working in a Christian environment, theological and philosophical and other-o-sophical discussions get brought up a lot, sometimes for fun, others for wisdom. Today someone asked “do you believe everything is black and white?” – as in to say “is there always a right OR wrong?”. [End back-story] To which my reply was short – “no!”.

I’ve never really thought of how I back that up, and I’m not even sure it’s scripturally sound. I did think for a few minutes though, and realized something (a reason for believing that there are grey areas, which I will repeat in the least educated way possible…

If God is a three person, trinity thingy, one person, all God, one God, three people, one person thing… I find it hard to believe that everything is always “black and white”.

If you absolutely, positively do not understand that, just think for a minute.
Done? Good. liar.
Now read…

If the creator of everything is something so far beyond comprehension, why on earth would everything He/It (I say ‘it’ only because of previous reference to “the trinity”) created be in a constant black and white? How could that be? And of course it absolutely could be. I mean, if He is above comprehension in the first place, who am I to think that the laws of the universe that He created would be comprehendible? Psh!

Like I said – I’m definitely not going on any Biblical standards or anything here. I just think that there are things, sometimes big things, in a “grey area”. I think that many situations in life should be taken on a ‘case-by-case’ basis. But before you think I’m super-liberal with my beliefs or standards, let me tell you that I do absolutely believe that there are many, many absolutes. Many things are absolutely wrong, or absolutely right. One thing that I do not believe falls into a grey area is abortion. [This is where I would normally say - in a sad but non-apologetic tone - "sorry"].

One thing that I do, however, believe falls into a grey area is what kind of car I drive to work, if I skate, or if I play guitar with an immense amount of skill.

I would end it here but I have to ask that you please do not confuse “grey area” with “it’s okay to do”. Some people might use the term that way, however here it is intended to mean that whatever happens in that area should be considered, weighed, and done in the right timing, place, moderation, or whichever word correctly applies.

But then I guess you could say that that process would be deciding if something fell into a black or white category. And then I would have wasted all this time typing. So quit listening to me, go read a Bible and find out for yourself.

The End.

Whew! Today the ‘praise band’ hmm… maybe we need a name… did about an hour long set on a float in a nearby town’s Christmas parade. We did a bunch of the praise songs we normally do on Wednesday nights… only we were on a float, in a parade, in (approximately) below freezing weather. If any of you play in school bands, or have ever played an instrument in conditions like that, for extended periods of time… I feel your pain.

It was fine when my hands went numb – I knew what I was strumming because I could still feel and control my right elbow, and I was able to tell that I was playing the chords correctly… but when that frost-bite-sinking-in pain started to shoot through my fingers – it started getting annoying.

Actually, I’m making it sounds worse than it actually was. I’m pretty sure I could feel my hands the whole time. Sort of. But they were getting very numb and painful in the cold.

Other than that, it was a great day.

As far as accomplishments in my life… I’m about to do a really awesome study of Angels for the Junior High Sunday School class that I and Laura run. So I went to BibleGateway.com, typed in “angel” and told it to give me every result. This, of course, also brings back every instance of Angels, and any other word that starts with A-N-G-E-L…

It defaults to the NIV, which wasn’t a big deal – not the translation I use all the time, but I also knew that not every place in the Bible that talks about angels is going to come right out and say “angel”, but it was a start. I’m now proud to say that as far as the New International Version of the Bible is concerned, I have read every verse that contains ‘angel’ and it’s various other forms.

As part of the lesson, I have 3 very large garbage bags full of Bubble Wrap, in many of it’s various sizes, of which I need to count every bubble. That sounds absolutely ridiculous, I know, but…

a) it’s for the kids
2) it’ll be totally awesome

I’ll tell you more after it happens, because I wouldn’t want one of them to be reading this and spoil the effect.

And that’s it.
The End.