n3wjack's blog

don’t let the EU censor your internet: stop ACTA

n3wjack — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 10:50:49 +0000

You might have heard that SOPA got stopped (for now) in the USA, a bill to censor the internet and limit online freedom for everyone. An even worse deal is going down on our EU-side of the globe unfortunately, where ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) has already been signed, but not yet approved (luckily).

ACTA – a global treaty – could allow corporations to censor the Internet. Negotiated in secret by a small number of rich countries and corporate powers, it would set up a shadowy new anti-counterfeiting body to allow private interests to police everything that we do online and impose massive penalties — even prison sentences — against people they say have harmed their business.
- avaaz.org

So it’s about time to do something about this before this bill gets voted in the EU Parliament and gets adopted globally.
First you can start by reading about ACTA, find out what’s wrong with it, sign the petition and act against it.

For those in the US, you can go sign the White House petition. Do it, because this deal is worse than SOPA, as it spans beyond the internet and deals even with regulations on medication and food.

The oppressively strict regulations could mean people everywhere are punished for simple acts such as sharing a newspaper article or uploading a video of a party where copyrighted music is played. Sold as a trade agreement to protect copyrights, ACTA could also ban lifesaving generic drugs and threaten local farmers’ access to the seeds they need. And, amazingly, t he ACTA committee will have carte blanche to change its own rules and sanctions with no democratic scrutiny.
- avaaz.org

Spread the word, sign the petition, just do something so this is stopped just like SOPA was.

Afterwards, you can get back to your memes and lolcats. :)

free music to end the year with

n3wjack — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:27:02 +0000

Here’s some more free mixes to end the year with, full of hard and fast beaty goodness, as usual.

Evol Intent put up a great 2011 overview set on their Facebook page. You have to “like” it to be able to download it, but for once I knew that I was going to really like it even before I heard it.

I tweeted this one already (so if you’re not following my feed yet, what are you waiting for?) but I thought I’d drop it here as well because it’s so good. Every now and then the lads from the Ad Noiseam label drop some freebie live sets on Friday like this latest ones from Enduser and Niveau Zero. Great stuff well worth spending some bandwidth and disk space on.

I hope you all had a great 2011, and may 2012 be even more awesome.

Photo by Paola Comparin, cc-licensed.

WCF service throws an msmqBinding error on a http binding

n3wjack — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 20:08:11 +0000

So you have this WCF service with a typical HTTP binding on it. When you try to use it with a client, or when you simply open up the .svc file link in your browser, it throws an error message telling you your MSMQ binding is incorrect. MSMQ!

Contract requires TwoWay (either request-reply or duplex), but Binding ‘NetMsmqBinding’ doesn’t support it or isn’t configured properly to support it.

But it’s a HTTP binding! Of course it’s two-way!

It took me a while to figure out what was happening, but apparently it was all caused due to a typo in the binding configuration for the service in the web.config.
So when you run into this, check your web.config binding configuration for that service. An incorrect class path or class name in the service’s name attribute can be causing this effect. Also check for mismatches between the used class in the binding and the class used in the service’s .svc file.

I’m guessing the “missing binding” is causing WCF or WAS (which is installed) to try and activate the MSMQ protocol as a default oslt. I don’t get it really. So if someone reads this and understands why this misleading error occurs, feel free to enlighten me.

Photo by greg biché, cc-licensed.

albums so good you should buy them

n3wjack — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 14:32:14 +0000

I’ve got a few albums for you I bought this year, that are so good you should buy them too. So what do we have here? How about some hard-stepping drum’n'bass? Oh but that’s not all. It also has some, wait for it… dubstep influences! Or drumfunk, or whatever they call it these days.
Anyway, Peer to Peer Pressure by the duchies Eye-D and DJ Hidden is full of tunes with hard beats switching between tempo’s and genres making it one of the most original drum’n'bass/dark-electronic music albums I’ve heard in a while. When it comes to dnb they are certainly pushing the genre another notch up.

Not hectic enough for you that drum’n'bass stuff? How about turning up the tempo a notch or two, cut the breaks up into nice tiny slices and then stick them back together in a different order and use some non 4/4 patterns? Sounds good enough? Well, then you should check out the Frenchy called Ruby My Dear with his excellent Ginkgo album. Think bastard child of Venetian Snares and Mr. Oizo after a champagne orgy in the Moulin Rouge(*). If that doesn’t make sense (and it shouldn’t) you’ll just have to check out what it sounds like to find out.
This lad has released some equally sweet beats for free under the name of Doc Colibri btw.
(*) He’s French remember?

“What’s up with all the fast shit?” I hear you complain? Alright, here’s some good ear-dope to unwind after getting all souped up on the breakcore stylee. The first track I ever heard featuring Hecq was Spheres of Fury and it just blew me away. When I checked out his latest and debut album avenger, it did the very same thing. Calling this album dubstep would be insulting if you think of the typical wobbly bass-line stuff that gets pushed out by the ton these days. But this is a kick-ass album with tracks full of bass, growling and moaning synths, intricating chopped and stuttering beats which sounds quite dubsteppy at times. There, I’ve said it. But it’s a solid electronic piece of music here to stay.

Photo by hep, cc-licensed.

massive breakcore mix archive

n3wjack — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 19:32:25 +0000

It’s been a while since I posted a breakcore mix or live set here, but this post will certainly make up for that. After the jump you’ll find a huge list of breakcore/raggacore/jungle/dnb mixes and live sets from lots of well-known and some lesser known names in the scene.
The sets aren’t the most recent, but hey, who cares if you can get hours and hours of free breakcore mp3′s to stuff your pods and players with. On the list you’ll find sets from Aaron Spectre, Abelcain, Baseck, Bong-Ra, C64, Cutups, Diskore, Donna Summer, Doormouse, Dustrickx, Droon, FFF, Hecate, Larvae, Mark N, Parasite, Paul Blackout, Producer Snafu, Rotator, Sickboy, Xanopticon and many many more.
Yes. That name dropping is mainly to pull in some Google hits on the topic. Cause I just want to share this with all you breakcore lovers out there. I’m that nice indeed.

You can start your downloading frenzy right here.

Photo by craigCloutier, cc-licensed.

getting the old Acrobat Reader back on Android

n3wjack — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 16:28:57 +0000

Acrobat Reader is as far as I know the best PDF reader on an Android device. So every time an update was available, I gladly downloaded it from the market to check out the new features and it’s usually fancier layout.

After the update to Acrobat X however, I found out that they killed the most important feature to easily read PDF’s on a phone. From now on there is no way to have the text of a PDF reflow and resized on that small mobile’s screen. What. The. Fuck?

Without this it becomes extremely annoying to read any PDF, since none of them have been adjusted for reading on a tiny handheld phone’s screen. Reflow & being able to adjust the font size allowed me to use it as an e-book reader. Without that, it gives me instant RSI from constant pinching and scrolling left, right, up & down to be able to fit the text on-screen. And I don’t like RSI.

None of the other PDF Readers seem to have a text reflow feature, except BeamReader. Although this is damn good app, it’s only free for evaluation for 10 days. I didn’t feel like spending 7 Euro on something that I used to have for free, so I kept looking for another solution.

So how about getting the old version back of Acrobat Reader? That would fix it right? You can’t do that through the market unfortunately, but I did find a copy on a website called freewarelovers.com. I know this is something to be wary about, so take care if you’re following me down this path. Downloading apps from websites like this is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get. I did get the 9.0 version of Acrobat Reader from it though, and so far nothing funny happened and I have my text reflow back. Hurray!

Being able to restore/install older version of apps would be a nice feature. Not all updates are going to turn out as they should, or as you’d want them to on your phone. I’m wondering if you guys and girls have another way of dealing with this kind of thing too.

Photo by Miguel Michán, cc-licensed

android ringtones, alarms and notifications the easy way

n3wjack — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 20:46:18 +0000

Lot’s of smartphones come with software tools from the phone’s manufacturer to easily sync data, add ringtones, media etc. Most of those tools however suck so hard, they can suck a golf ball through a garden-hose.

With Android however you don’t need to install that crapware as you can get access to your sd card easily by hooking it up using a good old USB cable (miniUSB probably). But how do you add those nifty mp3 ringtones you so carefully crafted from your favourite top-40 breakcore hits?
Or how about notifications when you receive a new text-message, a tweet or whatever? How about those alarms? I mean, waking up to that dreadful rooster or old-fashioned analogue ring is only making it worse to get up in the morning to go to work.

Well, all that can be done by simply creating some folders in the root of your SD card and putting some mp3 or wav files in it.

So those folder names to use are:

Ringtones
Alarms
Notifications

That’s it!
Once your phone has re-indexed the sd-card’s content, you’ll see the files appear in your ringtone, alarm & notification lists.

Photo by postbear, cc-licensed.

how to edit mp3 id3 tags with free software

n3wjack — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:05:41 +0000

So you’re putting those cool mp3′s online filled with great music. But when people download them, all they get to read off their fancy smartphone, iPod or mp3 player’s display is an ugly ass file name. Bummer.
Wouldn’t it be sweet as pie if you’d see an album title scroll by, maybe even an artist name, or a track title for example? Think of the possibilities! Well, thanks to the awesomeness of ID3 tags and some freely available open source/free software this will soon be within your grasp! If you keep reading of course.

Here’s how you can do that after downloading and installing the open source audio and video player VLC.

Open up VLC into playlist mode (View > Playlist).
Drag a file into the playlist.
Right-click it, and choose “Information”.
Edit the properties with your infoz. Make it sounds awesome.
Click the Save Metadata button when you’re finished. That’s it!

Don’t like VLC? Well how about the free, not quite open source, but never the less equally awesome music player extraordinaire Foobar2000:

Start Foobar2000, and open an mp3 file in it.
Right click the mp3 file in the playlist, select Properties.
There you have it. Just edit the fields, and click OK to save. You’re done. Can you feel it? Awesome isn’t it?

But maybe you also want to edit your files in a bit more potent type of sound editor. Well, the FOSS audio-editor Audacity can do just that for you. You have to setup Audacity with the Lame mp3 encoder first however, and requires you to save the mp3 under another file name. Not so handy to edit tags quickly, but if you’re doing some editing and mastering on your mp3′s first you can use this baby to add the necessary tags right here.

Open the mp3 file in Audacity.
From the File menu, select Export.
Select where you want to export the mp3. A screen will pop-up where you can enter the ID3 tag info. Easy peasy.

So there you have it. 3 options to edit those mp3 tags without having to spend a penny software.
Foobar2000 is definitely worth checking if you’re in need of a good music player anyway, and VLC doesn’t hurt to have around either as that baby plays about any video format ever invented.

Be gone ugly ass file names I say! Be gone!

Photo by altemark, cc-licensed.

fanu – breakbeat liberation army

n3wjack — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 19:18:09 +0000

Fanu is one of those junglists that keeps the oldskool spirit alive while giving it a new and modern twist.
I found this great Fanu set on this Grindthieves blog and since everything is right there I’m just gonna link to it cause I don’t feel like being too copy-pasty.

Anyway, be sure to get it and check it out and Say hi to the Grindthieves for me.

break out of the search bubble

n3wjack — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 19:53:18 +0000

Did you know that when you search on the popular search engines these days you’re actually doing that from inside a “search bubble”? Google, Bing and Yahoo all do it, to give you more tailored and “relevant to your interest” results.

Let’s take Google for example, since most people are using that one anyway. They are tracking your searches and clicks, if you’re logged in or not. They do this to compose a profile on you so that they can give you more specific search results the next time you look for something. They try to determine your sex, age and location (just like on IRC) to feed you the search results your are probably looking for. They are filtering the information based on a profile they’ve created on you.

The damn thing is that this actually works quite well. As a software developer I search a lot for technical, programming related topics. Google knows this and will give me those before any other possible hits. But what are you missing? What links are not included in your personal bubble just because Mr Google finds them irrelevant for you?

So how do you bust out of this bubble? You could use a browser with privacy mode but as long as you’re still using Google to search, or Chrome, you can’t be sure.

Another way is to use a different search engine. I know! A different search engine. It’s been ages since that happened right?

Enter DuckDuckGo. Beside the funny name and the mascot (A duck! Who would have guessed!) this one doesn’t put you in a bubble, doesn’t track your info and uses SSL by default.
Give it a try, and you’ll see that your results are quite different from Google’s. I have to be honest here and say that in some cases, the Google results are “better”. But that’s the bubble at work here.

DuckDuckGo also has a ton of specific search goodies like a built-in calculator and conversion engine, some specific tech goodies (whois queries, md5 hashes etc) and the !bang searches which allow you to search sites and topics directly.

As you can see, there’s plenty of reasons to try this new duck on the block out and burst out of your search bubble. The goodies alone make it worth checking out imo.