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I recently had several tracks stop playing in iTunes and they all had one thing in common, a duration of 789:57:13. The recommended solution for this problem is to re-rip or re-download the track. That wasn’t an option for some of these tracks because I purchased them through iTunes and the official Apple stance is that you are only allowed to download a purchased track once and I didn’t want to re-purchase the tracks. Restoring from backup also wasn’t an option for some of the tracks because they were munged in even my oldest backups.

The solution I found was faad and faac – Freeware Advanced Audio Decoder/Coder. It will decode unencrypted AAC/MP4 files and will happily ignore and correct the munged frame duration in the MP4 wrapper. I recovered a damaged track like this:

faad "09 This Devil's Workday.m4a" -o "09 This Devil's Workday.wav"

mv "09 This Devil's Workday.m4a" "09 This Devil's Workday.m4a.bad"

faac -w --artist "Modest Mouse" --title "This Devil's Workday" --album "Good News for People Who Love Bad News" --track 9 --disc 1 --year 2004 "09 This Devil's Workday.wav"

As faad was decoding the original track it showed that the MP4 wrapper’s duration was, but it corrected as it decoded it.

MP4 seems to have incorrect frame duration, using values from AAC data.
Decoding 09 This Devil's Workday.m4a took: 1.62 sec. 85.94x real-time.

When faad/faac were done I was able to re-import the track into iTunes and play it successfully.

Caveats

I lost some of the iTunes metadata from the original track, mainly the cover art. iTunes automatically added the cover art when I re-imported it, but that only works for music in the iTunes library. In those cases, faac has an option to import cover art from an external image file. You can do the same thing with iTunes as well.

If you have a lot of tracks to repair, adding the metadata manually on the command line is tedious. However, it could be automated with a simple script that captures and processes the output of faad since it displays all the track metadata as it is processing.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. Bacon
• 3 tablespoons Brown Sugar
• 1 tablespoon Chili Powder
• 1/4 cup Pecans, diced

Directions:

Place bacon in slices on a broiling pan, bake at 425F for 10 minutes. Mix up the brown sugar and chili powder, remove bacon from oven, and sprinkle the mix on the bacon. Return to oven, bake for 5 more minutes or to desired crispness.

Source:

Matt Springer, Bacon and Asimov

Ingredients:

• 1 quart Jalapeños, sliced (peeled Cucumber or Zucchini can be substituted for Jalapeños)
• 1 cup Onion, sliced
• 1 tablespoon Salt
• 1 cup Vinegar
• 1 ½ cups Sugar
• 1 teaspoon Celery Seed
• 1 teaspoon Mustard Seed
• ¼ teaspoon Turmeric

Directions:

Cover Jalapeños (or peeled Cucumbers or Zucchini) and Onion with water. Add salt. Let stand 2 hours and then drain.

Add remaining ingredients. Boil 10 minutes and then pack in sterile jars and seal.

Note: 5 pounds of jalapeños is approximately 6 quarts when sliced.

<Download Recipe>

Summer Art Sessions With Artists Erin Pollock and Steph Kese

Session 1: Investigations Into Art-Making

This 3-day intensive will combine art studio and gallery visits with hands-on investigations into different art-making techniques. We will tour private art studios around Anchorage and have the opportunity to interview the artists. We will then return to the studio and incorporate these new influences into our own projects.
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On Wednesday, May 27th from 5:30 to 7:30, the House Democratic Campaign Committee is hosting a fundraiser at Café Del Mundo [map]. Read the rest of this entry »

I took a few pictures at the Spenard Spring Social. I also set up a group pool if anyone else has any pictures from this event, or even from any of the Spenard Spring Socials from the last ten years or so. We had to leave early, after One Blue Wall finished, because the kids had to leave after their set since they’re minors. And also because we had a babysitter waiting for us. So we didn’t get to see all the bands. Maybe next year.