Cat Guardians‘ annual Chocolate Sunday fundraiser will be held February 1st, 2009, 1-4pm, at the VFW hall in Villa Park.

Come enjoy a buffet of desserts, including quite a bit of chocolate. There will also be a raffle and silent auction.

Admission is a $10 donation per person.

Proceeds benefit Cat Guardians, a no-kill, cageless shelter in Lombard, IL.

Villa Park VFW Hall
39 E. St Charles Rd
Villa Park, IL

My retro mood continues…

I’m in a retro kinda mood this weekend, and this video by “threetails” (Justin Herndon) fits the mood perfectly.  In 2006, he wrote “an original retro-electronic soundtrack” to the 1902 film classic “A Trip to the Moon” (”Une Voyage dans la Lune”).

The soundtrack is available on his CD Taa Daa!, in case you want to sync up the music to your own copy of the film.

Part 1

Part 2

Amy and I are big fans of the Doctor Who audio adventures put out by Big Finish.  I think the 8th Doctor (Paul McGann) got a shitty deal, only appearing in the Fox/BBC TV movie in 1996.  But, Big Finish just signed him up for a third season of audio dramas.  They also have adventures with the 5th, 6th, and 7th Doctors, voiced by the actors who played them on screen.  Each of their adventures is available on CD, and now you can get them as MP3 downloads.  They’re definitely worth the price, and they could use your financial support.

But, this isn’t supposed to be a review of Big Finish.  I set out to write something about Splasm Software’s Audiobook Builder, but I wouldn’t be using Audiobook Builder if it weren’t for Big Finish.  I listen to pretty much everything on my iPod these days, and it has extra functionality for “audiobooks”.  First, they appear in a separate menu, so they don’t get mixed in with your music.  Second, they are broken up into “chapters”, and you can put “bookmarks” anywhere in the story.  Lastly, you can speed up & slow down the playback, letting you breeze through a book if you want to.

When you rip a Big Finish CD or download their MP3s, you end up with a bunch of files for a particular “book”, and iTunes wont let you just highlight them and say “this is a book”.  That’s where Audiobook Builder comes in.

The UI is simple.  The first step has you give the project a name (for the temp files), pick an audio quality, and pick a format (basically, “bookmarkable” and “not bookmarkable”).  Next, you give it a title & author, and drag in a cover image.  The third step has you drag in files or pick files you already have in iTunes.  Each file becomes a chapter in the finished product.  You then review everything you did and click the “build” button.  Audiobook Builder then goes to work, and once it’s done, it’ll even import the finished audiobook into iTunes for you.

Splasm Software offers a demo version of Audiobook Builder for free, and you can purchase a serial number online for only $9.95.  If you’re going to be downloading audiobooks from sources like Big Finish or even Librivox, it’s well worth the $10 to improve your listening experience.

More free ambient music!

This one’s a little edgier, not as relaxing as General Fuzz. But, still, great background music for programming. And, best of all, the artist offers a few EPs for free download.

Check out Access to Arasaka