So you wanna make a ringtone…

For a Sony Ericsson phone, a ringtone music file must have a bitrate of 112 kbps or less, and the file itself cannot be more than 30 seconds long. Within iTunes, any mp3 can be converted into a ringtone in 10 easy steps.

1. Find and listen to the song you want blaring out of your phone when your loathsome friends bother you.
2. Identify the portion (30 seconds or less) that would make the best ringer, and write down the timestamps of the beginning and end of it.
3. 'Get Info' on the song, whether through the contextual menu (right-click on it), or by hitting command-i while the song's highlighted.
4. Click on the 'Options' tab in the Info window and enter the timestamps into the start and stop boxes located therein. Hit 'OK'.
5. Doubleclick on the chosen song to see if only that portion plays and if it's the right portion. Hone the timestamps to tenths of seconds to get the ringtone to start and stop exactly where you want. e.g. 3:43.8 is the format for 8 tenths of second after 3:43.
6. Open iTunes Preferences, either under the iTunes menu or by hitting command-, and then check your 'Importing' preferences. They may be in different places (usually under the General or Advanced tabs) depending on what version of iTunes you have.
Set it to — Import using: MP3 Encoder — Setting: Custom (112 kbps).
7. Go back to the song you have chosen and time constrained. Highlight it and go to the Advanced menu above. Click on 'Convert Selection to MP3'. If it doesn't say MP3, check your import preferences again.
8. Once the song is finished converting, you should have a mini-retarded version of your originally chosen song sitting right above or below it. Give it a listen to make sure it turned out.
9. Put the lil' guy on your phone and choose it as your ringer.
10. Then wait for said loathsome friends to destroy your solace.

That's how I would do it. Here's to not having to pay exorbitant fees for lower-quality snippets of songs that only annoy you in a matter of weeks anyhow.

Kevin Haas hits a brown note

Kevin and I went to grade and high school together. This shit has me rolling… "So you're not a poop expert… We're gonna have to find someone else."

Lasting sustainable value?

From Fred Wilson's blog, "A VC":

I am all for trying to protect the small inventor, but solo inventor who does not commercialize his/her technology does not bring nearly as much economic value (and jobs) to our society as the entrepreneur who actually takes the risk, starts the company, hires people, commercializes the technology, raises the necessary capital, and builds lasting sustainable value.

Do venture capitalists expect that creating lasting sustainable value is an option or a possibility? I thought it was about a decent rate of return. Of course the problem with even beginning to discuss this matter is the word "value." Few people would define it similarly, much less agree on a definition, and even if the general concept were settled in some imaginary homogenous parallel universe's society, few people share the same set of values or even any of the same individual values. Except for one: persistence, if that is a value.

I want to persist. You probably do too, unless you are seriously contemplating suicide while you read this commentary (don't do it). We exemplify our shared valuation of persistence in many different ways. Some of us chase tail like a one-eyed retarded dog, driven to pass down genes by yanking down jeans. Some of us religiously avoid risk of bodily harm, choosing to imagine life in a bubble of downy safety. Some of us exercise obsessively, honing our physicality to a razor's edge of fitness. Some of us eat compulsively, storing up energy as tremendous blobs of immobile survival. Some of us fight race, gender, or class wars, seeing threats to our persistence in those different from us, or defending against those we threaten through our persistence. And some of us seek to build a corporate legacy, "lasting sustainable value," or at least amass a fortune in this corporeal plane. How do you persist? Why do you?

I persist because I live and vice versa. While that may seem like a nonpoint, I can find no other explanation for my persistence value. It's an automatic response to existence as far as I can tell. Beyond that, I observe many people who attest to having "something to live for" or what I would interpret as an alternate reason for persistence (besides existence). Rubbish! Actually, strike that, I would like know what others imagine to be the reason behind their desire to persist. Or as usual, have I generalized this commentary to an atmospheric altitude incapable of sustaining discussion or interest?

Oh to be hopelessly myopic!

Lame Semantics

Social or societal? What the diff…err…ents?

No opinion here. Just wondering why we have two words where one could lie, sleeping in the OED comfortably.

Also come see benny lava poop on my knee? nipple nipple. Your pundit got armor. Taught me about Tamil, soramimi, etc. Wikipedia is a good kind of brain virus.