Month: June 2005

I just had a funny experience that I thought others might like. I recently downloaded what I thought was a RAR file containing some MP3s. I soon realized that was not the case.

I checked the file with a hex editor to try to determine what the file type was but could not find any discernable signatures with which to identify it.

On a whim I renamed the 64MB .RAR file to .MP3 and dropped it into XMPlay. Lo and behold I could hear music—albeit rather garbled. I put it aside for a few days thinking I’d try and figure it out later.

Last night I tried renaming and dropping other file types into XMPlay to see what the results were (WAV, EXE, etc.) but they did not do the same thing. I then tried dropping the renamed RAR file into WMP to see if it could play it like XMP did but was surprised to see video playing (and clear audio).

It turned out that the file was an MPEG video—surprise, surprise, a porn video; not even close to what I hoped it was—with MPEG-1 video and (44100Hz, 224KB/s, Stereo, 6:27, MPEG-1, Layer 2) audio.

I guess it sort of makes sense that XMPlay was able to play the audio part although XMP displayed little information about the file (just that it was 44100Hz). MP3-Info gave more information although other than the frequency it was all wrong (44100Hz, 160KB/s, Stereo, 56:10, MPEG-2.5,Layer -).

It was annoying to not get what I was hoping for but it was still a fun learning experience. 🙂

As I sit here with my window open I keep getting distracted by the birds. There is a tree fairly close to my window so sometimes birds sit there and chirp just a few feet from my head, so I really notice it. However when I pay attention, I realize that all the birds seem to be chirping very, very loudly. I suspect they are indeed chirping louder than they did a few decades ago, most likely in response to the increasingly louder society that humans have made. With all the noise that humans make with their mouths, televisions, cars, and such, it makes sense that birds have to shout. While the birds may be quite loud, they pale in comparison to the even louder, never-ending noise of cars constantly passing by.