Download MP3 songs from Soundclick in Chrome

My beloved Firefox has stopped working, and I’m temporarily using Google Chrome. The one thing I perhaps miss most about Firefox is the ability to easily download files through Video DownloadHelper, which is, sadly, not yet available as a Chrome extension.

Anyway, here’s how to download songs from Soundclick using Google Chrome:

1. Open the Soundclick song, and lay it in hi-fi, like this one, and start playing it.

2. Open a new tab, and type about:cache in the address bar.

3. At the top of your cache registry, you’ll see an MP3 file called something like this:

http://4708.nyc2.soundclick.com/jarry_lo/14/01/freemp3/eugeniakrivitskaia+toccataandfugueindminorjsbach.mp3

4. Copy the link.

5. If you right-click the link when copying it, you’ll get the prefix chrome://view-http-cache/ before the link. The link might also have a suffix, something like ?random=37. Just delete those if you see them, and you’ll have a working MP3 link.

6. Paste your link in a new tab, press enter, and choose Tools -> Save page as…. The download from Soundclick is usually pretty slow.

Sony Walkman NWZ-E430: Shuffle and fast forward tweaks

I have a Sony Walkman NWZ-E436, and it’s generally an awesome MP3 player. It charges quickly, has great storing capacity, and is durable.

However, its “shuffle” function leaves a lot to wish. Basically, pressing “shuffle” just means it’ll create a randomized, but static, new playlist. And whenever you use the “shuffle all” function from the main menu, you have to listen to or skip your (alphabetically) first song before that playlist even starts.

My solution to that problem was to add a one-second silent MP3 file, with a name that’ll put it on top of my list ($$.mp3, song title: $$). Then the actual (albeit static) “shuffling” can commence.

I uploaded my file here. Download, rename it $$.mp3, and place it in any folder. Or just google for a silent mp3 file.

Another problem I had was fast forwarding when listening to podcasts. It’s slow. Anyway, I found that it’s much faster if you pause the audio track, and then fast forward. To my knowledge, that feature is undocumented.

How to uninstall Crawler Parental Control without a password, or reset or restore the password

I downloaded and installed Crawler Parental Control for Windows Vista the other day, and then found myself in a peculiar situation when my Internet connection was blocked (“Limited or no connectivity”, even though I’d entered the correct WLAN password) while I at the same time had forgotten what my Crawler Parental Control password was.

I snooped around a bit, and found a solution. So, if you forgot your Crawler password, or just wanna uninstall the sucker, here’s how to first reset or restore the password, and then uninstall the application:

Go to C:\programdata\parentalcontrol – and delete everything in it. Empty out the trash can (better safe than sorry), reboot, and you’ll get a dialog prompting you to reset the password.

You can then easily uninstall the application or change its settings.

Swedish: Rippa SVT Play

SVT kan vara den bästa tevekanalen i Europa. Reklamfritt, med kulturella ambitioner, och med högkvalitativ underhållning också från icke-engelskspråkiga kulturer.

SVT Play är ännu ett bevis på hur stolta och glada vi borde vara över att betala TV-licens. Men hur tankar man ner film därifrån? Hur konverterar man SVT Play till en AVI som kan sparas för framtida bruk? Det är faktiskt ganska lätt — du behöver inte ens ladda hem något program som rippar den streamade filmen (och annars klockrena Firefox-tällägget Video DownloadHelper går ju ändå bet just här).

1. Välj ut det klipp du vill tanka ner, till exempel ett avsnitt av den lysande dramaserien Det Nya Landet.

2. Klicka på knappen “Inställningar” till höger om filmrutan. Längst ner kommer du då att se texten “Länk för extern spelare”.

3. Högerklicka på länken som heter “Windows Media (asx)” och välj “Copy Link Location” (alltså, kopiera URL:en till .ASX-filen). Du kommer nu att ha en länk i stil med http://media.svt.se/download/mcc/vision/20090713/090713DETNYALANDET_EP3_tote.asx

4. Gå till sajten Media-Convert. Välj “Conversion From Url”.

5. Klistra in adressen till ditt SVT-klipp i fältet “File”, välj ett Output format (förslagsvis .AVI) och klicka på “OK”.

6. Nu börjar Media Convert att ladda hem klippet från SVT och konvertera det. Det här tar ibland ett tag, men du kan välja att fylla i din e-postadress för att få ett mail så snart det är klart med en länk till filen.

Och där är det färdigt! Nu kan du njuta av SVT-klippet hur länge du vill, dela med dig av det till vänner eller ladda upp det på YouTube. Ibland har jag varit med om att Media Convert inte har lyckats nå SVT:s server, och ibland har klippet jag fått nerladdat bara varit hälften så lång som programmet, men för det mesta verkar det funka!

Free Wireless Internet/WiFi at Oslo central station

Oslo Central Station (Oslo sentralstasjon or simply Oslo Sentral/Oslo S in Norwegian) in the lovely Norwegian capital offers WiFi through The Cloud. That isn’t free, though.

There is however free WiFi at a cafeteria called La Baguette. No password required. The WiFi network is also called LaBaguette, and you can access it by simply sitting close to the cafe or ordering one of their reasonably priced coffees while you read up on, say, Dag Solstad on your laptop. Gratis WiFi til alle!

A ’90s dance song with church bells

I heard a ’90s dance/techno song the other day, but had no idea what it was called. It had prominent church bells in the chorus, a female singer, and it had the words “she’s gonna look like with a chimney on her” — or something like that — in its chorus.

When I googled for the title of the song, I found that several others looked for something similar.

I finally found out today, so I thought I’d share for future googlers: The song I was looking for is Feel It with The Tamperer featuring Maya. They were an Italian group, apparently, and were also responsible for “If You Buy This Record Your Life Will Be Better”.

YouTube: The Tamperer feat. Maya – Feel it.

Swedish bonus information: Sången parodierades också av Rally i låten “Var har jag lagt min telefon”.

IBT and Spartacist League RSS feeds

I’ve created two more RSS feeds, for “What’s New” sections on the websites of the Spartacist League and the International Bolshevik Tendency. Both groups have pretty crisp websites (despite the Sparts’ anti-Internet stance), but they could do with a 2.0 update. (I’ll say nothing about their ultraleft politics, though.)

International Bolshevik Tendency:
http://feed43.com/ibt.xml

Spartacist League (ICL-FI):
http://feed43.com/iclfi.xml

SeeqPod down for scheduled maintenance

SeeqPod, the search-and-stream application, is down for “scheduled maintenance”. While you wait, go try Skreemr. Smaller index, sure, but they also offer direct download links.

RSS feed for 27bslash6.com

I used the free, and kick-ass, service feed43 to create an RSS script for Australian humorist David Thorne’s (of spider email fame) website, 27bslash6.com. Seems to work, for Gmail Web Clips and your RSS reader.

http://feed43.com/27bslash6.xml

Warning: Greetingcardgarb.com virus spam

I recently got an email from a “Karen” (ajosie@laporte.com) with “Regards from Karen” as topic. The email was as follows:

Karen has mailed to you a postcard.
Click here to view your card:
(link removed)
Your eCard will be available for the next 40 days.

The link goes to a malicous website, greetingcardgarb.com, which displays a picture that, when clicked, will download an .EXE file — most likely, a virus or trojan, to the computer.

I didn’t find any information on this, so I decided to post this info here. Some googling gives us information on the domain holder:

Technical Contact:
Name: JIANCHENXIAN
Organization: JIANGCHENGXIAN
Address: CHENTINGLU17
City: wuhushi
Province/State: anhuisheng
Country: china
Postal Code: 241159
Phone Number: 86-0553-45190052
Fax: 86-0553-45190052
Email: JIANGCHENGXIAN_1@SINA.COM

DNSStuff says that the registrar is “XIN NET TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION”, which is, apparently, a known spam host.

Besides from — natch — not downloading the virus .EXE file and reporting the message as spam in Gmail, I guess there’s no more one can do; unless you’d want to hunt down the email address through Sima’s abuse function, or report the malicious domain somewhere.