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In the 2.0 update for Convert to FLAC I added support for converting from Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) files. Part of the process of converting formats involves copying existing tags and metadata wherever possible, and in order to do this with ALAC files I use a separate utility called mp4info. This utility originally came from the MPEG4IP project, but unfortunately that project now seems to be defunct. As a result, I've switched over to the libmp4v2 project, which is still active and provides its own mp4info utility.

Unfortunately, the output from the two versions of mp4info is slightly different. As a result, I had to modify Convert to FLAC to support the new syntax. This change will only affect you if you're trying to convert ALAC files to FLAC. If that's the case, please note the following:

• You must use the libmp4v2 version of mp4info with convtoflac 2.0.2 and newer
• If you cannot, or do not want to, switch away from MPEG4IP, you must continue to use convtoflac 2.0.1
• convtoflac offers no error checking for this beyond verifying that the mp4info binary exists; if you do not follow the advice above, your files will be transcoded, but any metadata will be lost

Sorry for the inconvenience. To download the new version:
Convert to FLAC home page and downloads
Convert to FLAC ChangeLog

Feedback and Support

I just pushed out an important bugfix release for Convert to FLAC. When testing the new multiple input file support, I apparently never bothered testing it on files with spaces in their names. Oops. Version 2.0.1 fixes this oversight.

Relevant links below. If you've already upgraded to v2.0, please download this new version ASAP. Sorry for the inconvenience.

For more information:
Convert to FLAC home page and downloads
Convert to FLAC ChangeLog

Feedback and Support

I just posted updates for apeinfo and Convert to FLAC, which is the first update in quite some time for both of them.

The apeinfo update was mostly to address compatibility issues. It's been updated to properly support GCC 4.x (which almost all Linux distributions ship with today), and I've also included a 64-bit binary for those of you running 64-bit Linux distributions. The older 32-bit still works fine if you'd prefer to use it, but using it on a 64-bit distro will require installation of 32-bit compatibility libraries.

Convert to FLAC received a much more significant update, and has been bumped up to version 2.0 as a result. The highlights include the ability to accept and process multiple input files, support for Apple Lossless (ALAC) and True Audio (TTA) input files, dynamic path setting for "helper" binaries (so you no longer need to edit paths in the script), and a rather import bug fix to ensure that both the decode and encode steps in the transcoding process are completed successfully. Anyone using Convert to FLAC is strongly encouraged to update to this new version.

For more information:
apeinfo home page and downloads
apeinfo ChangeLog

Convert to FLAC home page and downloads
Convert to FLAC ChangeLog

Feedback and Support

Enjoy!

Someone recently e-mailed me about the about being unable to download AutoFLAC. It turns out that some changes I made about a week ago broke some of the download links for software on this website, which I had not noticed in my testing. As far as I can tell, only AutoFLAC was affected. I just fixed that issue, so AutoFLAC can be downloaded once again.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

This post is only relevent to users of the SSL (https) site and LegRoom.net e-mail users.

As part of the server rebuild process that I mentioned in my last post, I've created new certificates for my web server and mail server. Accessing these services will likely cause various security warnings to be displayed in your browser or mail client. This is expected. To resolve this issue, please perform the following steps.

The new LegRoom CA certificate can be found here: http://www.legroom.net/legroom_ca.crt

Firefox

1. Click on the CA certificate link above
2. When prompted, check the "web sites" and "email users" options, then click OK

Internet Explorer

1. Click on the CA certificate link above
2. Click Open
3. Click Install Certificate
4. Click Next, Next, Finish
5. Click Yes
6. Click OK
7. Click OK

Thunderbird
If you use Thunderbird to check your LegRoom.net e-mail, you will be shown a "Website Certified by an Unknown Authority" message when you next attempt to login. Select "Accept this certificate permanently" and click OK.

I apologize for the complete outage for the last day and a half. I had to unexepctedly perform a complete server rebuild, which took a while to get everything installed, configured, and properly tested. In the process, I also upgraded the website to the latest version of Drupal. As of about 6:30am CDT this morning, everything should be back up and running. Please let me know if you find any problems.

A lot of users register accounts on this site for the sole purpose of spamming. One of my usual "maintenance" tasks is to delete all inactive accounts more than 1 week old. These are accounts that were requested by users, but were never activated after receiving the confirmation e-mail. Most often, these types of accounts are created either by scripts, or by people using fake e-mail addresses during registration.

There are a whole lot of other accounts that are created and activated, but then then go forever unused. Most of these are created with the intention of spamming, but because I have decent spam controls on my site they give up and move on to easier targets. Since I'd prefer not to have a whole lot of unused, potentially malicious accounts sitting out there indefinitely, I'm going to begin deleting all accounts that have not been used since initial activation and are more than 3 months old.

In the (unlikely) event that any legitimate visitors are affected, please just create a new account. I apologize for the inconvenience.

I'm currently having some issues with DNS for the UniExtract download links, which is preventing downloads. Until this issue is resolved, you can download UniExtract from the following links:

Update: As of sometime Thursday night, normal downloads appear to be working properly again. I'm removing the temporary download links.

A number of visitors have posted to the LegRoom.net Forum over the past few months (mostly about Universal Extractor), but unfortunately I've been rather lax about responding to the posts. Just as I haven't been able to spend much time on developing UniExtract lately, I also haven't been able to spend much time on support.

Last weekend I spent some time going through all of the unanswered posts and replied to each. If you had made any posts to the forum in the last few months, please check back to see if your question was sufficiently answered. If you need anymore assistance, please post a reply and I promise I'll get back to you much more quickly this time. :-)

For anyone else with comments or questions about UniExtract, this website, or any other apps hosted on this site, the LegRoom.net Forum remains the best place to seek help. Just keep in mind that it may sometimes take me a couple of days to reply to your post.

All of Legroom.net was offline from Monday through Wednesday morning. This is because my truly dumbass server colocation provider:

1. sold me a new colo plan hosted in a data center that was being shut down
2. neglected to warn me at the time of sale that it was being sut down
3. neglected to warn me at any point before it was shut down, taking out my server in the process
4. disconnected technical support / customer service numbers for the data center
5. failed to mention the shutdown on their website and network status pages (which, btw, was also broken at the time)
6. failed to respond to the urgent ticket I had submitted about the mysterious server outage in any reasonable amount of time
7. when they did finally respond, about ten hours later, sent the reply to my e-mail address hosted on the very server that was shut down

Once I finally got someone on the phone, and was informed of the extremely unexpected data center shutdown, I was told that all servers were being moved to their Dallas data center facility. All Chicago customers were supposed to have been notified 60 days ago of the move, which didn't do me a whole lot of good as I wasn't yet a customer 60 days ago. Not that it stopped them from selling service in that data center anyway. Fucktards.

So the server was supposed to be available again Tuesday afternoon. Needless to day, Tuesday afternoon, evening, and night all passed, and still no server. Finally I called again Wednesday morning to see wtf was going on, and was told that the server had already been powered up (since about 9:30pm Tuesday night, according to my logs), but nobody bothered to connect a damn ethernet cable.

Again, fucktards.

Everyone I spoke with during this ordeal (once I finally figured out how to get in contact with them) was polite and seemed genuinely surprised and regretful that I had not been contacted about the relocation, and moving an entire data center in two days is no easy task, so it's hard for me to be upset with them on that level. But the complete and utter lack of notification, the fact that I was sold a plan in a data center that was already scheduled to be shutdown, and the apparently lack of competence necessary to connect an ethernet cable to bring the server back online is just flat out unacceptable.

Alright, I'm finished my rant. For now. Just wanted to let everyone know what happened. With any luck (well, a lot of luck with these people), Legroom.net stay online without any more unexpected outages.