Things received

Well, finally got a partial refund in the form of store credit at DVDSoon.com. Again, no contact, no notice and if I hadn't happened to login this afternoon, I would have merrily sent off my Visa and RECOL reports.

I'm highly tempted to do so anyway, as they had the gall to only partially reimburse me for something they never should have overcharged for in the first place. I've contacted them again regarding the missing amount and if they don't give that back, as well, it's chargeback and fraud reporting time for me.

Did my taxes on Sunday and sent them off today. Also got my order from McNallyRobinson.com, for which I am glad, as the two books I bought are considered either out of print, or much more expensive elsewhere.

Spies and other untrustworthy types

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by espionage. Codes and ciphers, tracking and trailing, the methods and possibilities of living a double life.

I remember reading a book that had been written by an ex-spy, which basically was a sort of self-help manual to see if one had the right qualifications.

It was a long time ago, and while the local library no longer has a copy of Wolfgang Lotz' How to be a Spy, the not so local library did in fact keep theirs, which I recently reread.

I also checked out his biography, which I'd never actually read before, which was fairly interesting, and another book on the various secret services of the nation he worked for, from which I take the following quote-

Another Soviet technique was to use hidden cameras to film espionage targets making love, and to use the film for blackmail. According to a story circulated among Israeli and other diplomats, President Sukarno of Indonesia had an affair with a KGB plant, but when Soviet agents came and showed him incriminating photographs Sukarno did not give a damn. He is said to have nonchalantly pointed at the snapshots, saying: "I would like six of this picture and a dozen of that one."

Every Spy a Prince — Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman

Something that really disappointed me when we finally got cable again was to see the listings for a show on PBS— "Cooking Secrets of the CIA". I was fairly excited when I sat down to watch it, only to find out it was for the Culinary Institute of America.

But a few weeks ago, I found in the library "Spies, Black Ties, & Mango Pies: Stories and Recipes from CIA Families all over the World" and this time it was indeed about the Central Intelligence Agency, and a moderately entertaining read as far as the anecdotes went.

Speaking of disappointments, Monday before last, I sent yet another inquiry to DVDSoon regarding the refund they owe me for the DVDs I returned, and yet again, no response whatsoever. Because of the then-upcoming holidays, I gave them a full 12 days to reply, but still nothing. So, I'll be assembling all the evidence for not only the Visa chargeback, but also the RECOL report, because studiously ignoring every request I make for simple information and acknowledgment on the status of the return of money I am legally owed counts as fraud.

I hope they end up going bankrupt for real, this time.

(Incidentally, today, on the very day I have given them as a deadline for communication, I started getting spam at the address I use for contacting them. I've had this address for years, only use it for online purchases with proven companies, don't publish it anywhere, and have never received spam from it before. Happenstance, coincidence, or conspiracy...?)

Update: Well, went through my user account page at DVDSoon.com and saved records of everything in both iCab and Safari web archive format with PDF printouts. The important thing when dealing with a company so dishonest is to document, document, document. Also applied to refund the 28.98 they owed me when they charged my card in full while promising that the promotional compensatory "rebate" they offered would be applied to 50% of my order, which it wasn't.

God only knows if I'll ever actually see that money, as it was shortly thereafter deducted from my existing store credit and I have yet to receive a confirmation notice or any sort of acknowledgment on the website. Judging by the previous experiences of others on various formus, the prospects are not good.

If I don't get it, it'll be yet another thing to add to my case.

Not all ports are created equal

Finally solved the cdparanoia/Firewire DVD burner problem. It lay in the newer port, which apparently queries for drives in a different way. When I tried recompiling the older port, I didn't install it, so when I tested it from the source folder, it called upon the libraries built by the newer version and thus, was doomed to failure.

Once I trashed the first set and installed a fresh compile of the original port, everything worked fine again.

I figured all this out after going through a round of installs and updates on an external drive, on the assumption that I'd screwed something up by using Monolingual to strip out the superfluous Intel-binary portions of OS X and should therefore try on a fresh system.

Good thing I caught it before I went so far as to wipe and reinstall the PowerBook.

On another note, finally started using Ogg Vorbis for converting my cds now that there's a working Quicktime component so that I can listen to them in iTunes.

Compile once, configure repeatedly

So, sometime between upgrades, something changed to make cdparanoia stop working properly.

The newer OS X port ignores the firewire DVD-RW and insists on only ripping from the internal drive, and only if the disc is unmounted.

I never had that problem with the original quick and dirty hack, which happily read any disc and drive, mounted or not. But now it refuses to compile, and I can't figure out why.

The last time it worked was before I re-organised my laptop for a bigger system partition, which was probably at least two 10.4.x updates ago.

Probably the advent of Universal Binary compatible frameworks has changed something crucial.

In the interest of possibly helping another who's experienced compilation frustration, here's a few tips on how I got a number of stubborn packages to work-

• ImageMagick — during ./configure, select --disable-shared (you may also need to do --without-perl and --without-magick-plus-plus)
• par2cmdline — switch from gcc 4.0 to gcc 3.3
• mac — same as above, I think (there was another program which required a compiler switch, and I can't remember if it was this or something else)
• libjpeg — some additional programs which use this library will complain that it's out of date or not installed during the config process. If that happens, cd to wherever you've put your libraries and do a "ranlib libjpeg.a", which should fix things.

If you've installed items in a non-standard place and want to be able to call upon them during compiling, add it to your DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH, then before you run configure or make, then for each of the following, do an export:

• CFLAGS=" -I/path-to-your-install/include"
• LDFLAGS=" -L/path-to-your-install/lib"
• CXXFLAGS="$CFLAGS"
• CPPFLAGS="$CXXFLAGS"

and most problems should be taken care of.

Update: Figured out why the original cdparanoia hack wouldn't compile: I incorrectly gunzipped the diff, thereby applying a blank file to whatever needed to be patched.

Even with the newly compiled older version, the other issue remains unresolved.

Also, to make Mac OS X index manpages installed in non-standard locations, do a

• /usr/libexec/makewhatis /path-to-your-manpages/man

as trying just makewhatis will only lead to annoyance, since it's in a directory which is not automatically in one's PATH.

Batman and Beyond

Finally received my more than a month overdue DVD shipments, with no explanation for the delay. It's likely that it was somehow linked to the local identity/mail theft ring which was busted last month, but I'll never know for sure.

I still haven't gotten word back on the refund for the returned shipment from DVDSoon, so again, I avoid recommending buying from them unless you knew exactly what you were getting into, but at least they did send out my stuff, eventually. I was worried that they'd taken to charging for and not mailing orders, especially since the last two payments were credited to different subsidiary company accounts.

Among the items received were, at long last, Batman: the Animated Series volumes 3 and 4, and Superman: the Animated Series volume 2. I've been watching them a few episodes at a time, in a sort of nostalgia-fest.

Well, a nostalgia-fest on the part of Batman, at least. I remember watching a lot of the episodes when they first aired, and I used to stay up until 3:30 am in order to record the YTV reruns a few years ago. Until the DVD releases, I'd only ever seen one episode of Superman, the episode with Maxima, which won't be out until the 3rd and final set. I still have a vivid impression of Maxima dragging Superman off by his cape, his head bumping with every step. Hilarious.