For this weekend, I’m relaxing after a rather failed attempt to gain interest at the design show at my university. Been playing a lot of EVE Online as well.

If you’re interested in keeping up to date with my work, then check out my Twitter feed and I tend to keep my Flickr feed up to date these days

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To:

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Problem is, DirectSong employs DRM through wma. And of course I quickly run out of licenses, I’d already requested more licenses before, and only had rental licenses left, no fear, I’ve already stripped the DRM before, I just have to download the packs and keep the essential .DLLs for the music to work in-game and overwrite with my NoDRM versions (I’d hoped).

But drats, I realise the new files are bigger, he’d upgraded them ALL to 320kbps, gotta love him, but hate him too as I want these versions now, which means one thing… getting licenses and stripping them.

Stripping them is easy thanks to a handy app called FairUse4WM. Which means you can take the protection off if you actually have a license for the content by simply decrypting using the keys in the licenses and leaving you with the same file, minus the DRM.

Now here’s the fun part of the story, IT TOOK ME 4 HOURS TO GET DRM WORKING ON MY MACHINE. MS havedecided they want to force people to Windows Media Player 11 by not letting WMP10 to validate the security updates needed to license my files. So while I figure this out, find a way of installing WMP11 without Windows Genuine Advantage, install the update, reboot my system 5 times and then roll back the HARD way

C:\WINDOWS\$NtUninstallwmp11$\spuninst\spuninst.exe

I finally found I couldn’t restore licenses I hadn’t backed up, so had to download the rental ones just for the purpose of LISTENING TO MUSIC I PAID FOR.

Downloaded the license for one pak and found that DRM refused to license my second pack, I had to restart Windows Media Player for it to allow me to license the second pack. So many bugs, and so much time wasted. By that point I checked every file I stripped, so I wouldn’t have to go through that process again.

[thumb:176:c:l=f]

Jeremy Soule, you are a musicianal GENIUS. But DRM is dead, wake up. Find an alternative. I’m not gonna hand out stuff I PAID FOR, and it hasn’t stopped other people from doing so, so please stop punishing me ;_;

Oh and non-DRM files work with the directsong stuff too. So I have my music working ingame in yummy 320kbps goodness. Many people say that they can’t hear the difference at 128kbps, but I can. At 320kbps it’s like the music is having sex with my ears! (*ahem*).

Eh, I can be silly sometimes. But interesting tool, especially to see the hidden digits behind those pokemon you’ve been working hard on or just recieved.

Just for shits and giggles I ended up saving the change

Only now, with the power of the internet I can learn the secrets behind this series, like how it was originally french, and the UK version was completely re-written and all the characters had new names and dialogue, but the american version stayed true to the original french version. (What the hell? My world is turned upside down. Isn’t it normally the other way around?)

Of course there were other shows I enjoyed as a kid included ReBoot (anyone see a pattern here?) but also classic animations such as Danger Mouse, Bananaman and Freakazoid. Then there was Animaniacs which was in a class of it’s own. And thanks to the internet we have the power to learn about these great peices of entertainment which used to be so rare, but now thanks to downloads we can watch at will.

Well mostly, some of these series are VERY rare and finding copies to download of Insektors is nigh impossible. ReBoot came out on super-limited edition DVD. Animaniacs DVDs are out there, but downloadable they are not, at least not all of them. But no releases for Freakazoid. Strangely though, Bananaman is readily availible.

So for now, they are still just magical memories, mostly. The only last resort is youtube, but who wants to bet how long they’ll stay on there for, even private videos get taken down for non-compliance. Youtube has come, and gone now and the community has sharded into many different sites. But if you know of places to see these awesome little animations which fascinated probably not only my childhood, but many others, then please let me know =)

Youtube has stuff (For how long is the question).
Youtube: Insektors – Frogbucket – Part 1 (UK Version)
Youtube: Insektors – Frogbucket – Part 2 (UK Version)

It took a little research, but I managed to find the sim again, but not before it was too late, the day after the sim was taken down, but with notice, so I decided to get snap happy and at least keep a record of this sim before it dissapeared into cyberspace.

One of the problems was that the sim had been brought out by the company that now owns uru and whores it out. So there was signage all over the place that just got in the way, like these:

But I did my best to snap away in ways that would leave these out. I also took “scrapes” in which I just took shots of the scenery, this was in fact for Ina Centaur who wanted to use the island at a later date, but now couldn’t.

It is a shame, but it’s one of the problems where each sim costs about $300 a month to keep running, so if it doesn’t make enough money or serve it’s purpose, it’s gone, and the Lindens no longer preserve historical content due to the expanded nature of SL. That’s a service only for those who signed up in 2003.

Well the two ages in the sim, if you don’t know about Myst and Ur, are the King’s Garden and the D’ni Residential Area. The King’s garden even coming with the Bahro Cave

Then the grand D’ni City residential area, even complete with the secret balcony (which you can only get to through a linking cloth in Uru) which has the the Bahro stone. And then there’s the egg room…

Well it’s a shame to see this island go, but it’s not surprising either. Well at least I have pictures, and I think they do the sim justice. You can view these pictures and more at the gallery. Just follow this link: http://flickr.com/photos/pyrii/sets/72157602001288479/

But I suppose like tanyoko.nu, I can redirect for a short while before it expires.

I don’t know, should I afford it or should I stick witht he plural version. This site seems primarily for myself now.

Although admittedly my floor looks just as bad right now. But the result of this was thankfully a merit/distinction achieving piece of work. It was a happy results day.

5 distinctions, 5 merits and 4 passes! The ony catch is none of this counts towards the second year, and so I have my work cut out for me in putting in all the effort over the next year. I’ve been doing my work experience over summer, working for a company called Beta Technologies down in Second Life. But procastination is a bitch, whatever you do.

Anyways, I leave you with more pictures I took during the process, you can view the end result here. Later!

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I’ve had to add a CSS rule in the k2 stylesheets to make the background match the editor’s which is kind of annoying and not as good as you can see.

If you’re interested in nabbing this highlighter, throw some comments, I might post it up if there’s enough demand.