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The other day while getting my techno/breakbeat fix on Boombox, an awesome Fatboy Slim remix of Brimful of Asha came on. Of course, I had to begin searching everywhere for the MP3. Finally, I was actually able to locate a custom video for the song on YouTube...that's when this topic's website came into play.

Vixy.net allows you to provide a url to a Flash Video (FLV) and convert it into several formats, one of which being the audio to MP3!

It's not perfect, but hey...it's free. I had a couple attempts fail with a default error message like YouTube.com being down (yeah, right!), but persistence prevailed.

Check it out at vixy.net.

I enjoyed reading my last book so much, that I went and bought another!

This time, I opted for a fictional depiction of a group of software developers working for a video game design company in Vancouver. The book is actually pretty damn funny! I literally found myself LOL'ing and getting strange looks from my wife as I tried to explain the joke behind the text. I mean really, who wastes 15 pages of print to list 8,363 prime numbers between 10,000 and 100,000 anyway?!

Geek humor is throughout this book...contests to see who can woo Ronald McDonald from his sad, lonely, a-sexual existence; characters writing their bios as if they were items in an eBay auction; finding the one incorrect digit in pi taken to the first 100,000 places! Especially funny are the ridiculous demands of marketing...I know some marketing people (I should probably be one), several of whom read this blog...WHACK-O! ;-)

Coupland's writing seems twisted, manic, and scattered...just the way I think! I'm planning on picking up another of his books very soon.

Once again, another good read available from Amazon. Check it out!

Also, check out the official book website...hours of entertainment!

I hadn't read an actual book in a while, so I picked up this offering. I recommend it as a decent read for those who are interested in the discovery and pursuit of a hacker.

The book is about an actual incident circa 1986. The author was a System Administrator with a university in Berkely, CA. While investigating an accounting issue for network usage charges, he discovered that a hacker had obtained root access to his systems using a security hole in GNU Emacs. From there, the hacker was able to use the school's network as a gateway to hack into other systems, including military networks. The book also shows how, at the time, laws and jurisdictions for cyber crimes weren't really in place.

You can find the book on Amazon.com.

A neighbor has setup a site which is beginning to get some legs on it. Check it out and sign up! Be sure to sign up using me as a referral so I can get free stuff!

http://www.irank1.com/profile/paul

This site is a lot of fun. They even provide widgets to hook into other social network sites like MySpace.com and Facebook.

A friend stumbled across an interesting blog entry estimating the cost of running a computer 24/7. He passed it along to me knowing that I have about three machines running all the time at home---one for my server, another is my kids' (they forget to shut it down), and another is my wife's "public access" machine. I also have some peripherals running, like my network storage device and printers.

Between all of these, I'm probably spending roughly $700 a year in electricity!! I'll probably pick up a meter and calculate a more accurate estimate.

And here, I thought I was somewhat of a "green-friendly" guy!