Saturday, November 9, 2013

Running and technology

So I'm a music junkie.  I have about 13,000 songs on my iPod, most of which I bought at one point or another in my life.  Yes, I'll admit that I pirated a few albums to see if I would like them and haven't deleted them yet.  They will either go or I'll pick up the CD.  I feel fairly strongly about that.

BUT, I will say that with my new running regimen (up to three miles three times a week, btw) I am getting a bit tired of listening to music so decided to branch out a bit.

There are some decent podcasts out there.  Dave Ramsey (almost typed Gordon) and his financial advice show is interesting,  Aaron Clarey always good for entertainment (language warning), and I've recently started listening to Stefan Molineux, self described market anarchist.

Some podcast are only available in video however, which takes up a lot of valuable space on a smart phone or music player, so I started looking for an easy way to strip the audio out of a video file.  Well, turns out it's super easy.  Youtube Video and Audio Downloader add-on for Firefox.  One stop shopping.  Browse to the video you want, there is a "Download" button right there by the video,  you choose the format you want and whether you want video or audio or both, and Bob's your uncle.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-video-and-audio-dow/

Disclaimer: This post typed in Google Chrome because it saves my open tabs better than Firefox.

PS I may have spoken too soon.  The audio downloader portion doesn't really work.  It gives me an error almost every time.  Pulled ten podcasts, three of them played (they were downloaded in mp3 format, the other seven were downloaded in m4a format and they would neither play nor convert to a playable format.

I now have also downloaded DVD Videosoft's Free video to mp3 converter and that seems to be doing the trick. I "quick download" the video, then have the converter change it to mp3.  Now, just maybe, Bob's your uncle.

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