AshF

Bummer. I Lost a lot of CD's in a similar incident... Thankfully I've managed to build them back up over the past 5 years...

honestly you won't see any benefit in going from mp3 > AAC, as you're starting with a lossy compression to start with. So really what you need to do is go back to square one and rip to AAC in iTunes from the original CD's... Which is what I did. Now everything in my lib is AAC, bar a few indie tracks/other odds n sods that were digital downloads to start with... Otherwise, I'd go with what Mulletman said. That'd be the easiest way.

Well crap... they stole my idea

I will have a look around my backups at home over the weekend... See what I can find.

ChrisC: I designed an IT Ninja T-shirt, which i should really put up on CafePress now they print on black. I could never bring myself to get it printed on white... it seemed... unnatural.

You can, in theory, stream at one high quality, then transcode down other qualities. Or just run in multiple encoders. I'm not sure how easy/possible this is in IceCast, as its been a long time since I played with it. What are you planning to stream, incidentally, as licensing is a big thing now. Edit: There's also http://www.oddsock.org/tools/ which includes some transcoding tools and other useful plugins for WinAmp.

In our two bedroom flat, we have my Powerbook G4 12", which travels everywhere. A Toshiba Satellite Pro which is my wifes main computer, The Desktop PC, which is also part of the Internet Broadcasting setup we have (hooked into a small mixing desk). There's also the Xbox which for the most part streams media off the desktop, the Wii which is just fun, and the PS2 which runs all its games off the internal HDD, which means it can be kept out of sight. Ok, to up the ante, last halloween I built a proton pack replica for my costume. And it now sits in my living room, as I can't bring myself to give/throw it away... And as a result of this I've just called the PowerMac I'm testing 'Gozer'.

The Geek will never leave you... You can try and paper over it all you want...

IceCast is a pretty good free solution, and on a multitude of platforms... Whilst not free I feel obliged to mention SAM (http://www.spacialaudio.com) if the whole thing takes off, as it is the closest you will get in software only to the whole workings of an actual radio station that i've seen at an affordable price. Multiple decks, playlists, the whole shooting match, all music/etc is stored in a SQL driven database, and it's very easy to set up, and very robust. It also has some very nice scriptable 'autoDJ' options and provides all sorts of report of what was played, when, etc. I use it twice a week and it just makes my life so easy.

Ok, I've gone back and lowered the bar... Just forget you saw that first one...

Who is the geekiest of them all. It's friday, and I'm really wondering... Who has skeletons in their closet? Who is the geekiest of them all? Who secretly wears Starfleet PJ's. I'd really like to get to know more people here, and I feel most comfortable amongst my Peers when I know at some of them are at the same level of geekdom (in areas other than IT), as me. So anyone? I've got a few geeky skeletons that I'll air... I'll start off with something small. **EDIT** Ok, too much too soon on that one... I er... hm. I have a deep love of Japanese Monster Movies.

I'm hoping the Office 2k7 rollout won't happen in my lifetime at this job... Certain staff have already seen it, and the reaction is abject horror. I'm getting to know it. Outlook is good and fine. Word is taking a little longer to get used to. I'm taking the plunge and installing Vista on a workstation to try and use 'Live', now I have the workspace (I found a desk under my junk today). See how it goes.

finish.... early... what do those words mean?

Life or Death man... Life or Death.

I've not had any problems like that here per se... at the last school I worked at, a member of the D&T department did that, and not only let a student use his logon, also the kid saw what the password was over his shoulder, *AND* later on tried to get a copy of the Viglen Classlink software out of Viglen by impersonating an IT Tech and saying that it needed to be sent to his home address as he was 'out of the school on medical leave and needed to work from home'. I don't miss those days.

This is rapidly devolving into a Monty Python Sketch... "Woke up half an hour before we went to bed... handful of hot gravel.... dancing on our graves screaming 'Hallejulah!'"

Logic hates working with networked home directories, btw. I've spoken to Apple on this and basically the response was 'yes, yes it does.'

We currently run a music suite with a mixture of iMacs (G5 and Intel), and have two studios with Quad G5 setups in them thats used for the 'hardcore' editing and recording. Running Sibelius and Logic Pro. The iMacs are running with 1GB, and the Quads are running with 2 or 3... i forget off the top of my head. They're generally managed by the music technician, who only comes to me when something goes drastically wrong.

Senior Information Technology Technician Full-time: 36.42 hours per week, 52 weeks per year Hours: 9.00 am – 5.00 pm, Monday to Friday Salary: £17,726 - £19,521 (Points 23-26) including Reigate College Allowance) An experienced and suitably qualified I.T. professional is required to deputise for the Network Systems Manager. The post holder will be required to develop and maintain the College network and equipment. Training will be available for a candidate who has the relevant aptitude and experience. Information Technology Technician Full-time, 52 weeks per year 36.42 hours per week: 9.00 am – 5.00 pm, Monday to Friday Salary: £15,861 - £17,726 (Points 18-23) including Reigate College Allowance The College wishes to employ an experienced and suitably qualified I.T. professional. The successful applicant will be working with a small team of trained technicians who are responsible for providing I.T. back-up and maintaining the College network which consists of approximately 1000 terminals. Further details for all the above posts and an application form are available via the College website or from Caroline Loughlin, Personnel Officer, to whom completed applications should be returned by 9.00 a.m. on Thursday 1st February 2007. Interviews are expected to take place during the week commencing Monday 5th February 2007. Reigate College, Castlefield Road, Reigate, Surrey, RH2 0SD. Telephone: (01737) 221118. Fax: (01737) 222657. e-mail: [email protected] website: http://www.reigate.ac.uk You can also contact me for more information either via PM here or [email protected]. If you do apply as a result of this post here, i'd be interested in knowing so as to guage the sort of response it has gotten.

Seeing the puppeteers was something I thought would bother me, but at the end of the day you focus on the puppets, and that's what's important. It's a weird experience. They do so much chopping and changing with characters it's really impressive. I one day hope for Avenue Q: The Movie. Where they can digitally remove the puppeteers.

I dunno what sort of chaos you reign over , but here we have 1000 or so terminals (desktops, laptops... and, er, misc), 20 servers, 1600 students, 200 staff... and so on and so forth... And currently with a team of 3 (me, Snr, Jnr) we're just pulled every which way but loose atm. Hence the appointment of another Junior Technician, so it'll be me, snr, jnr x 2 and there'll be more of a chain of command thing going on. Hopefully this will lighten the load and bring the ration down to 250 machines per technician (including me) and the 3rd person will give me more time to work on that whole 'planning' aspect. Something I don't get nearly as much time to do as I'd like. Most of it seems to be spent reacting... The main problem we have now is the office is quite small and will for a period of time have 6 people in it... As for flexi-time. I get moaned at if i don't claim the O/T (this is a surprise to me), but since september I think I've worked more 11hr+ days than I really should for my own health. But this is why we're getting another tech. Assuming anyone wants to work here.

We split the shifts here, so we basically have coverage from 7:15(ish) till 5pm. So one of us (me) works 7:15-3:15 (this is, at times wishful thinking and i'll be the last one out at 6pm), another works 8:30-4:30, and a third works 9-5. Of course how this works once we appoint a new senior tech and an additional junior tech remains to be seen. It can be rather pleasant in the summer though being able to get out that early and still have so much of the day left to enjoy... However getting up in time to be in for 7:15 is a pain in the ar*e.

Oh I didn't feel that bad, it was more a feeling of 'bloody hell, that seems familiar'. And yes, they are informed ahead of the interview that there will be a short technical test.

The Peek Freens Trotsky Assortment? # Revolutionary Biscuits of Italy, Rise up from your box, you have nothing to lose but your wafers... Yum, yum, yum, yum yum! *ahem* I'll get me coat also.

I havn't created a cast iron 'answer' list. A lot of the questions are copied from actual faults on our database. What I want to see is really how they will deal with a problem, how their brain operates. My favorite question is the last question. Which I won't post here right now in case anyone on these boards applies. As for arguing about justifying themselves... It's 10-20mins of their time that could secure them a job I assume they actually want. The only time I've ever felt bad about the technical test was interviewing a young chap last year. He was incredibly nervous and I felt very bad. Mostly because I felt the same way when I applied to Tewkesbury School for my first Educational IT job. It was my first real 'on the front lines' support job. Most of the previous experience had been in small computer shops, private work, and on helpdesk. I worked for Tiny (via a third party company). Please don't hurt me.