The Scriptures in Audiobook Form, and How to Do It Yourself

also called "How Shell Scripts Saved the Day".

As I'm sure many of you know, I'm a Mormon, and as a Mormon, we are taught to read and study the scriptures. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has provided many ways to bring the scriptures to the people. In addition to the print edition of the scriptures, the Church provides them online, in mobile applications, and in audio form as a set of compact discs or a set of MP3 files which can be downloaded gratis and played on an audio player (e.g. an iPod).

The thing is, that they're provided as a set of MP3 files, with one MP3 file for each chapter of all the scriptures. This is fine if your MP3 player can only handle MP3 files, but if you have an iPod, iPhone, or iPad, your device supports audiobooks with the M4B extension, which are much nicer to manage, and they can remember your position as you listen to them. They can also be divided into chapters, but these chapters are in a single file, which is nice if you're listening through a book, so that the chapters play together in order as opposed to them playing in a random order. They also appear as audiobooks in iTunes, as opposed to music.

This is how I have it with my copy of the scriptures in audio form. I did this a few years ago, using a shareware app whose name I don't remember, on Macs in Queens College's computer labs (as I didn't have my own Mac at the time, and you could only make these audiobooks with chapters on a Mac). I was on these computers a few hours at a time, entering information by hand and the rather slow book-by-book process (and by "book" I mean the subdivisions found in the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Pearl of Great Price). After a couple of weeks of this, I had a complete set of the Standard Works in audiobook form, for my enjoyment.

Flash forward to a couple of weeks ago. My mom asks me if I can put a set of audio scriptures – in Spanish – on an iPod for someone. I figure, "Well, I might as well give it the same treatment."

An iRant

With the popularity of iOS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad), why are there so many people out there misspelling or incorrectly formatting the names of these devices? For instance, I noticed on a message forum a thread about a new app for iOS devices. The title of this thread not only had a hyphen jammed in the name of an iOS device, but the wrong letter was capitalized!

Let me break it down for you. The name "iPhone" is spelled LOWER-CASE i, CAPITAL P, H-O-N-E! Keep in mind that the i is ALWAYS lower-case, the P is ALWAYS capital, and there is NEVER a hyphen! Never! Looking at the back of my iPhone, I do not see "i-hyphen-Phone" printed on the back, but I see "iPhone" – lower case i, capital P, no hyphen.

Oh, and one more thing. What the heck is an "iTouch"? If you answer that it's a product designed and sold by Apple, and could be described as an "iPhone without the phone," you fail.

Pushing Daisies is on iTunes!

Last year, I made a post that talked about a show called Pushing Daisies.

Well, fans of the show should be pleased to note that all nine episodes of the first season (truncated due to that writers strike) are now available on the iTunes Store.

This wouldn't be a big thing, if it weren't for the fact that it didn't appear on the Store until this week. If it had appeared during the season (much like my other favorite from that season, The Big Bang Theory), I wouldn't be making this post at all.

Don't know why it was held back for so long, but glad to see it's here.
And in case you're wondering, yes, I bought the whole season.

Two New iPod Games… It's Strange…

The other day, I was playing chess on my Palm Pilot, and I think to myself, "Wouldn't it be cool if they make a chess game for the iPod?"

A moment later, I think, "You know what, I haven't played Backgammon in a while."

Tuesday morning, I check out the iTunes Store, where lo and behold, there's a new iPod game: Chess & Backgammon Classics. This was like wishful thinking realized. I instantly bought and downloaded it. The controls are a bit weird on the iPod, but given the limitations of the iPod's click wheel, they try to make moving the chess and backgammon pieces as simple as possible by limiting your actions to legal moves. That can be said for both games.

The other game that was released is called Naval Battle: Mission Commander. It's like Milton Bradley's Battleship, but different.

Chess and Backgammon for iPod. They must have been reading my mind.

Speaking of which, sometimes, it seems like you can influence your iPod to play a certain song while shuffling so that it plays sooner than it would otherwise play. Here's what I did.

1. Began playing a song from a playlist, making sure that under Settings, Shuffle Songs was selected.
2. Go back to the playlist that's playing and highlight another song in the playlist.
3. Set the hold switch.

After one other song, the iPod played the highlighted song.

Then again, I tried this again with no success.

Either it only works some of the time, or I have such an intimate knowledge of my iPod that I know what it will play before it plays it.

iTunes Bugs

Well, in case you haven't read the story on iLounge yet, iTunes users (including myself) have been having issues downloading content from the iTunes Store. I made a couple of purchases on Wednesday and they were stuck in download limbo for over 24 hours. It wasn't until yesterday I was able to download them, even though the receipt for my purchase showed up in my e-mail inbox almost immediately after buying it. I also received credit for 5 song downloads from the Store. I wonder how many of these credits they were giving out after this episode. During this fiasco, my opinion on Apple dipped into the red, but it's now back in the black… just barely.

Note in the image (click on it for a larger view), that this credit doesn't expire until 31 December 2099.

I have inserted this countdown timer to tell everyone how much time is left for this credit.

EDIT: I've used up the credit already, but I think it would be fun just to leave it up here.

A New Version of iTunes is upon us

With Apple releasing the iPhone on Friday, they also released a new version of iTunes, version 7.3. One of the "features" of the new version of iTunes is an "improved" sorting method. It now takes those songs, albums, artists, etc. which start with a number or punctuation character, and sorts them to the bottom of the list. For example, it would sort "311" after "ZZ Top" instead of before "Ace of Base." Now, I'm very particular with how my library is sorted. I actually like the numbers on top. So when I found The Veronicas' "4ever" somewhere after The Cranberries' "Zombie," I wasn't too pleased with it. I basically spent about 20 minutes changing the sort order back to something I could live with. Otherwise, I'm quite pleased with iTunes 7.3.

The “End of March” Post

General Conference is going on strong. The latest session was held in the Tabernacle. Awesome!

I started to use that new feature where iTunes takes your library and backs it up onto CD or DVD. I brushed off the figurative dust from my DVD burner and inserted a blank DVD to start the process. Then, I got this message.


Looks like I'll be needing to take another trip to J&R! Actually, I tried using another blank DVD, and the huge number you see there was replaced by a more reasonable single-digit number: 5.

iTunes 7 Headaches!

Last week, Apple released iTunes 7, in conjunction with other changes in the iTunes Music Store. So far, it's given me many problems. I've read about what other users are saying about iTunes 7, most of it being negative. I've read everything from "iTunes 7 is the biggest memory hog in history" to "iTunes 7 made a paperweight out of my brand-new iPod." Pardon me while I vent.

I installed iTunes 7 on the two computers at home, both Windows XP machines. On my computer (which I call Compy 786. I'll admit now that I'm a HomestarRunner.com fan), it wasn't as big a memory hog as some people have said, I did experience one MAJOR problem: iTunes wouldn't recognize my iPod. I searched Apple's knowledge base and found this. I tried it, and it worked…once. Subsequent attempts to get iTunes 7 to recognize my iPod failed. That's when I gave up. Good thing that the iTunes 7 installer made a backup copy of my iTunes library.itl file, even though I made my own backup copy of that and the corresponding .xml file. I downgraded back to iTunes 5.0.1 and restored my iPod to factory settings and re-synced it.

I installed iTunes 7 on another computer at home, this one being the one with a connection to the Internet (Compy 786 currently has no Internet connection). Before doing so, I added a song to my shopping cart using 5.0.1, and I was basically forced to upgrade, so I did. After upgrading, I commenced downloading. I ran into another problem. To basically describe what happened next, I'll express it in terms that appear in Mac OS X.

The application "iTunes" has unexpectedly quit.

So I reported the problem using the prescribed method, and I received an e-mail from iTunes Customer Service.

Dear Robert,

I'm sorry to hear that your purchase didn't download successfully. It looks like the content is still available in your account and awaiting download, so you should be able to restart the download by following these steps:

1. Make sure you're using the latest version of iTunes, then choose "Check for Purchases" from the Advanced menu.

2. Enter your account name and password when prompted, then click the Check button. Your purchase should begin downloading. If you receive an error message while downloading, try again after turning off any firewall or web-accelerator software that you may have installed...

I followed his instructions, even though the menu commands were different. It turns out the "Check for Purchases" item was in the Store menu, not the Advanced menu. but I found what he was talking about, and the song downloaded as it should.

I also found out another workaround, using the following commands.

net stop "iPod Service"
pause

This basically stops the iTunes service. I don't remember the exact process, but I got iTunes 7 not only to recognize my iPod, but to sync with it. Then it started to analyze the songs on my iPod for iT7's gapless playback feature. It's a nice theory, but I've yet to experience it for myself. There was an error generated in the process, and after I had ejected the iPod from the computer, and went to Settings > About, I got the following:

ROBERT M
Songs	0
Capacity	18.5 GB
Available	11.8 GB
Version	3.1.1
etc.

Yup. iTunes 7 turned my iPod into a paperweight. So, I reverted back to 5.0.1, and tried to get iPod Updater 2006-06-28 to work with it. The hard disk would spin and then it would click. And this click was an abnormal click, not the usual clicks. Anyways, after working with many Macs at both Queens College (where I have a major issue regarding the number of Macs on campus computer labs) and the Apple Store, using the Disk Utility app, I was able to get iPod Updater to recognize my iPod on Compy 786. I restored and began re-syncing.

While doing so, I discovered a way to get it to sync. It's a line from a G Love & Special Sauce song. The line is "Stick it in the fridge." The name of the song it comes from is Cold Beverage, but what I needed was a cold iPod. I put the iPod in the fridge, and lo and behold, it worked! I was able to sync and load my songs onto my iPod! Worst case scenario averted…for now.