[HOWTO] Grab MP3 From Youtube FLV File

Posted by Mr. IT Guy | Filed under Howto, IT in General

First of all, youtube shows video clips and not audio clips. When you grab a file from YouTube it’s usually an .FLV file. You may grab it from online services like GrabFlv.com or use applications similar to TubeTV. The FLV is a video file and we need to grab the audio portion of it. The software I use is call iExtractMP3. This software feature a drag and drop and single button clicking to extract (NOTE: I emphasize the term because the software uses extraction method rather than re-encode the audio. This results in higher quality audio since whatever the poster put, this is the same file you get).

Alternatively, there’s also another file conversion service offered by Zamzar. I have not used the service before, but it seems that the process is simply point the URL to the video that you want and you’ll receive the link for the audio.

Tags: , , ,

Read more | Comments (0) | January 18th, 2009

[HOWTO] iPhone Hacking – Custom Ringtone and SMS Notification

Posted by Mr. IT Guy | Filed under Howto, IT in General, Mac OSX, Microsoft

Following up on the earlier iPhone hacks is customizing the most common audio: ringtone and SMS notification. Apple has locked down custom ringtones and profit from them. The biggest problem is, their selection is scarce and sucks. Here’s a simple guide on how to upload the Ringtones:

  1. Choose an MP3 file and trim it to 30 seconds or less – I use Audacity (download link) to do it
  2. Import that MP3 into iTunes
  3. Goto iTunes -> Preferences (for Mac) or Edit -> Preferences (for PC)
  4. Navigate to Advanced -> Importing tab and set the “Import Using:” to AAC
  5. Find the trimmed MP3 file inside iTunes, right click and choose “Convert Selection to AAC”
  6. Right click the AAC version of the file and choose “Get Info”
  7. Note the path to the file as indicated by the “Where” section under the “Summary” tab
  8. Navigate to the location of the file and copy it to desktop
  9. Change the extension of the copied file to “.m4r”
  10. Open the files in iTunes and it should be automatically inserted under Ringtones category, which then can be transferred to iPhone

NOTE: I have tried to use “SoundConverter” and set the file type to be m4a. This actually doesn’t work. When I did it that way, the file will be uploaded but won’t be able to be played. It might have something to do with the file size generated by “SoundConverter” being too large. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , ,

Read more | Comments (9) | September 9th, 2008

[HOWTO] Log Apache to MySQL on Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron)

Posted by Mr. IT Guy | Filed under Howto, Linux, Operating System

Installing the Software
Run the following commands in terminal:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-log-sql-mysql libapache2-mod-log-sql libapache2-mod-log-sql-ssl

Create DB & User
Run the following commands in MySQL:

CREATE DATABASE apachelogs;
GRANT INSERT,CREATE ON apachelogs.* 
  TO apachelogger@localhost 
  IDENTIFIED BY 'insert_passwd_here';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Add Entry to apache2.conf
Add the following entry to apache2.conf before the VirtualHost settings (commonly before

Include /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/

):

LogSQLLoginInfo mysql://apachelogger:insert_passwd_here@localhost/apachelogs
LogSQLCreateTables on
LogSQLDBParam socketfile /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
LogSQLTransferLogFormat AabfHhmRSsTUuvI

Modify Each Virtual Host
For each virtual host that you want to log to SQL, add the following line:

LogSQLTransferLogTable this_site_com

where access_log is replaced by any table name; to differentiate many different virtual host, you can use the name of each virtual host here by replacing each dot (‘.’) with underscore (‘_’)

Tags: , , , , ,

Read more | Comments (0) | July 3rd, 2008

[HOWTO] Forcing Windows to Change Priority & Processor Affinity on Processes Ran by SYSTEM

Posted by Mr. IT Guy | Filed under Howto, IT in General, Microsoft, Operating System

I encountered a problem when trying to change the process priority & processor affinity for my VMWare. The problem is that this process is ran by SYSTEM instead of my username. In order to run ‘Task Manager’ at elevated level, make sure all ‘Task Managers’ are closed do the following:

  1. Open a ‘Command Prompt’ window by going to Start -> Run then type ‘cmd’ then press enter
  2. Type 
    ntsd -c qd taskmgr

    in the command prompt

After that, a new ‘Task Manager’ will popup and you should be able to modify the settings.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Read more | Comments (1) | May 27th, 2008

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »