Making an MP3 into a SMAF (.mff) file on OS X for lulz

Did you understand that title?
I'm hoping someone out there sees this post and has a lot less trouble than I did. In case you don't know, this is about getting a ring tone onto your Japanese cell (I have a Vodafone phone (I know, the company name changed)). Anyways, I converted a file to .mff with this free application. That's all there was to it in the end, but it took me forever to find out. Just convert your song to an AIFF or WAV and you're good to use this. BTW, my phone only accepted 4Khz or whatever.

The good news is: I have a real chakushin ari ring tone! She's gonna call, right? Let's hope.

"Clay, nobody ever knows what the hell you are talking about." --Colin (paraphrased)

oh irony

The day I drop my iPod and it decides that is one drop too many was today. Maybe it will come back after the battery runs out, but that will be a while since it is displaying a paused song and doing nothing else (yes hard rebooting does nothing).
This is also the day I discovered the podcast feeds for writer's almanac and prarie home companion, so no iPod listening to them, but thankfully I have a mac with a remote, and a comfy coutch to listen to Mr. Keilor on rainy days, just like home. Speaking of which, gotta love the smell of spring's first rains in the mountains of Japan.
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Can you see my new favicon? If not, what os/browser do you have?

wii internet

Wii have a video for you

BTW, if you want your mac to talk to your wii, try this link.

Mac vs PC in Japan

Remember those Raamens fellas that did the net-famous sushi vid? Well, they are back, and bringing the Mac vs PC ads to Japan.
The Japanese version doesn't seem to have the problem the American commercials do; the PC is arguably more charismatic and loveable in American commercials (d'oh, shouldn't have gotten such a cool commedian to play him, Mac overlords), and the Mac in America is a bit of a douche. Anyways, enjoy, the same thing, only different...

Japanese dictionaries

Someone got me ranting about these. Anyways here's my recommendations. For more useful Japanese, see the links (scroll to the far right if you have a small screen and/or resolution.

WWWJDIC
This one will let you do romaji, but you gotta remember to click the box. I recommend starting to type in hirigana asap anyways; it helps out more than you can imagine.

ALC
This one is intended for Japanese people who are trying to figure out american idioms and such. But it works even better for us. Now you can look up crazy phrases like "TGIF" (Yareyare yatto kinyobi da!). And it also works as a good dictionary and example sentence finder

But Clay, ALC uses kanji! Well, I recommend getting Firefox and the rikaichan plugin. Wiki firefox if you haven't seen the light, the wiki Firefox plugins too. BTW, Rikaichan is a dictionary in it's own right, and a powerful one at that,just don't forget to download the appropriate dictionary file too, or it's useless.

Useful registry trick

If you are having problems getting your USB devices to come up, or with installing QuickTime (and maybe getting error:-3 ), chances are a registry cleaning will do ya good. I used the trialware Smart PC to fix my computer this weekend. It runs loads better now. I post this cause I know someone will be desperately googeling the problem, like I did. If you are that person...Every company has a guy like Nick Burns.