Proof of Concept: Converting YouTube videos to audio files using VLC media player

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce to you a good friend of mine, tPenguinLTG. I’ve mentioned him many times on several of my posts before. He’s a genius, well, on everything really. He’s the one who recommended me to work on a blog on WordPress and thus, Tech Gum was born. I recommend that you check out his blog The Penguin Says… and support his blog!

—-

You’re on Youtube and you come across a song that you just really have to have. You don’t want to use those “YouTube to MP3” sites because they’re a little shady. How do you get the song? Well, you could just go out and buy it, but you don’t want to pay for anything not on a physical medium. Then you remember you have VLC media player (and if you don’t, go get it!).

I present you with a method to convert YouTube videos into audio files. Note that I present this only as a proof of concept, since there may be conflicts with YouTube’s Terms of Service, specifically sections 4C, 5B, and 5C. If you choose to execute these steps, you do so at your own risk.
This post is by no means an endorsement of YouTube.

Dear Google

Dear Google,

Why are you trying to shove Google+ down our throats? I mean, seriously, we don’t like Google+. Maybe a few people may like your Google+, but truth be told, I don’t think it can compete with the leading social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Also, why the heck did you change your commenting system on YouTube? First, you change the rating system from stars to likes and dislikes. Then, you put advertisements on each video. Now you’re, once again, shoving and choking us with Google+. The fact that there are over 20,000 people actually signing a petition to ask you to change back the commenting system should be enough of a sign.

Please fix your freakin’ system with YouTube. What the heck is this?

Monkeys? Is that why your servers are terrible? Because monkeys manage it? Seriously Google.

I understand that you’re trying to get Google+ off the ground. What you’re doing — is not working. At all.

For a guy who just wants to watch YouTube videos, comments do not matter much to me. I’m more of a guy who’s just there for the video. Sure, comment wars are entertaining, but I didn’t go to YouTube for that.

Also, fix your servers! Your advertising servers are better than servers you have for the actual video.

I do, however, like your search engine. Keep up the good work on that.

Love, the Internet.

Keep Chewing!

——

I haven’t done a rant in quite a while, and I believe this situation is definitely worth writing about. I hope you enjoyed the rant!

Red Bull Loves Physics

As I struggle and crawl through this subject we call Physics, Red Bull loves it. It’s a great way of getting their product out there.

About a week ago, they released this video of the Red Bull Stratos jump by Felix Baumgartner. It’s a point of view video with all the information any interested engineer/physicist/geek would want to know like biomedical information, airspeed, altitude, G-force values and Mach speed.  It’s epic.

WARNING: FOR THOSE WHO ARE AFRAID OF HEIGHTS, THIS VIDEO MAY NOT BE RIGHT FOR YOU. VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED

Keep Chewing!

I Love Firefox Extensions

Mozilla Firefox is the most powerful, add-on friendly browser out there. It has almost 3,000 extensions and it continually grows! It’s amazing how useful these tools are for the typical and power user. You have so many to choose from and most of them are great! Here are my personal favourites. I use these, so I know that they’re good.

FlashGot

When it comes to YouTube, I love collecting videos that I find very interesting. You can use FlashGot as a tool download any video, audio or media file from any website. This is powerful because it finds whatever media file is running on the website and allows you to download it. I’ve personally used this to download a few videos, Physics videos that I find really useful for the future, computer videos, spoken word poetry videos and all four Pokémon Origins episodes.

It’s stable right now considering I haven’t had any problems with it. One flaw that I find in this extension is that it doesn’t allow you to download MP3 files from YouTube. You can only download its actual type (videos will be video files, music will be audio files etc). Other than that, I recommend it!

Easy YouTube Video Downloader Express 7.0

What a mouthful!

This extension allows to download MP3, MP4, FLV and 3GP. It’s useful for me because I need music. MUSIC!

For those who love music, this should be a very useful extension for you. Also, it’s an alternative to FlashGot.

I do recommend it. I’ve only had one problem with it because it was one of the reasons why Firefox crashed once. It only happened once. After that, it’s been smooth sailing.

AdBlock

Everyone hates advertisements. It’s a stupid, yet profitable, way of getting people’s attentions. Most of the ads online are malware and viruses too.

AdBlock blocks all of the advertisements that flash, pop or annoy you when visiting a website. It also blocks advertisements on YouTube (including the ones that run before a video). Not only does this help speed up your browsing, it also “protects” you from possible website threats.

It also allows you to block ads yourself. If you see something that you think is an ad, use their blocking tool and delete it from your screen. Not only does it take it off, but it also sends it to the developers to check it out and see if it is an advertisement. Think of it as a “REPORT” button. It’s very useful.

Roomy Bookmarks

Bookmarks are handy because it’s an easy shortcut to a website that you often go to.  The Bookmarks toolbar (default for Firefox) shows both the logo of the website, but also its name. I think that takes up a lot of space on my toolbar. I have Facebook, YouTube, Wolfram, Tech Gum, WordPress, League of Legends, ODB, Bible Gateway — the list goes on.

You can modify the bookmarks to only show the logo, but that means you have to delete the name. This won’t help me when it comes to me actually looking at the bookmarks manager.

Enter Roomy Bookmarks. It only shows the logo of the website, without actually deleting the name and title. It may not be a big deal for some of you, but it’s pretty big for me. I like having a nice, clean bookmarks toolbar.

Classic Compact 

Classic Compact is a classic (ba-dum tsss). It lets you revamp your Mozilla 24 and make it look like it was when it was nice and clean. I like this look probably because I’m a huge nostalgia guy. Anything that can bring back old memories, I’ll do it.

With its toolbar features and icon customization, you have many options to choose from. This is actually a theme that comes with an extension. The theme designs the browser while the extension gives you the customization options.

All I need now is an Windows XP theme for my Windows 7 and I’ll be happy again.

My “Two Shades of Classic” theme that I customized myself. You can also see (here) the Roomy Bookmarks and Classic Compact theme for Firefox.

 These extensions are great! I love them!

Keep Chewing!

The Ultimate Star Wars Prank

This has just entered my bucket list. After watching this, I can’t just simply let the “gullible people in an elevator” opportunity go to waste. I have to do this before I die.

The force is strong with this one.

Keep Chewing!

Geek Week and Shark Week

From August 4 to August 10, YouTube will be running Geek Week!

It’s their first geek week and I can’t wait for all the awesome content from all the famous YouTube stars! I already saw Ryan Higa’s Official Fake Trailer for Naruto!

Also, for some kind of coincidence, it’s Shark Week! It’s my second year watching Shark Week! I am very excited!

The commercial is just completely sad, terrifying and HILARIOUS!

This is a good week for geeks!

Also, happy International Beer Day! (check your Geek / Nerd Calendar)

Keep Chewing!

Mozilla Firefox 22

Recently, Mozilla Firefox sent out Mozilla Firefox 22. Of course, I downloaded it so that I can have the most up to date web browsing experience. I was wrong.

It’s so frustrating and annoying for me. I would be watching a YouTube video and it would crash. This constantly happened and I’m beginning to think that I should return to using Chrome. I still haven’t changed, however, it is an option.

For some reason (including Mozilla Firefox 21 and 20), the browser would always crash and each time I put my laptop on hibernate or sleep, once I resume my computing, Firefox would be slow to respond. At times, it would literally lag and crash. The Firefox “send bug” message box appears, asking me if I want to send a bug report to Mozilla.

Recently, I did a few tests. I took out a couple of my plugins and extensions (recommended by tPenguinLTG). It did not work. One thing I’m currently doing right now is using a different theme or appearance on Mozilla. It seems to be working. All I can hope for right now is for it to work properly.

Now, I’ll be reinstalling all of my plugins – only hoping that it won’t crash anymore.

Here’s a good article about Firefox and its logo changes by tPenguinLTG.

Firefox Changes its Logo Again!

Keep Chewing!

Operation Blue Bird and Operation Red Rover!

For the celebration of our 500 chews, Tech Gum is going public with its two new accounts: Twitter and YouTube!

Twitter: @DR34DNOUGHT
YouTube: TechGum

Please follow my Twitter account (Tech Gum’s base account) @DR34DNOUGHT. Also, subscribe to the YouTube account TechGum. Our Twitter will be tweeting any new posts and updates. Our YouTube account will be posting all videos that I will be making!

Once again, all I can say is:

You guys are great! Thank you for the 500 chews!

Keep Chewing!