Recently, I’ve started listening to audio Bibles in the morning as I get ready for class and then at night as I’m drifting off to sleep. The Bible says we should meditate as we rise up, walk along the way, and as we fall asleep, so I’m trying to do that.

I found the NIV Audio Bible Dramatized which looked like an awesome audio Bible. So, I scoured the Internet trying to find a place where I could purchase a mp3 version. Zondervan has an mp3 CD version but that’s not what I’m looking for. Since I’m currently in China anything involving shipping is a bad idea. Of course there where tons of places that I could download it via torrents, but I decided to be good and press on looking for a place to purchase it.

Finally, I saw that Audible was a incensed reseller of Zondervan material and had the audio Bible. It was normally $41.99, but Audible had a special deal where if you signed up for the Gold membership of $7.99/month you got one free audio book/month. So I plunked down my $7.99 and then used my one free audio book purchase to get the audio Bible.

With Audible, you can’t just download the audio books, you have to use their special downloader (which of course there is no Linux version). No problem, says I, WINE comes to the rescue!! After fighting with wine, I finally get the Audible downloader installed and happily add the first audio book. Problem #1 was that it was in an encrypted format that Linux couldn’t play. I could have used the Audible downloader to export to an mp3 or burn it to a virtual CD and then rip it, or try to find some kind of converter. But, there are like 4 books of the Bible per audio file, which is rather dumb. I like to listen to one chapter at a time, not 4 books of the Bible / time. I could have fired up Audacity and then cut the file into chapters … but that would have taken FOREVER.

So what did I do? I did what I was tempted to do in the first place: download them from bittorrent. Not only did they come in MP3 format, but also every chapter had its own mp3 file and they were nicely grouped together in folders by book of the Bible. Some people might frown at the “illegal” activity. However, I payed for the book, they make it impossibly complicated, I dumped them and did it my own way. It made me wonder, though… why I even bothered to give them money since I just wasted a lot of time and ended up just download it on bittorrent.

When will company’s learn DRM kills? Just let me use the data I bought, for crying out loud.

~Peter

My camera has been broken for about 4-5 months now and I’ve been missing a lot of pictures. I’ve been thinking about buying another camera for a long time, but I decided on buying a camera phone instead. Laura has a good camera and I can use those to take high-quality photos. However, a camera phone is really nice as you always have a camera with you.

One of the nicest things about the phone is the Chinese/English dictionary. Since the system is stylus-based, I can look up characters that I see on the street by writing them into the dictionary. It helps a lot when I’m texting in Chinese, too

The phone usually runs for about $350 USD, but I was able to buy it in China for a little over $200 USD

This should also mean that there should be more updates to the photo album and blog!

Oh, and the cellphone is Linux based (yay!)

As the common English saying goes, “Practice makes perfect”. When learning a new language, practicing your new found language will allow you to learn at a faster rate, while retaining things that you’ve already learned. For me, practicing is extremely important. Since I have a poor memory, I have to use and hear/see words over and over until I finally get it.

在英语我们说”practice makes perfect”.那个意思是如果你想学习一个新的东西，你应该练习很多。你学习一个你的外语时候练习是一个非常好的方法。我学习汉语的时候，我记得很慢，妄了快。所以我也应该练习很多！

Fortunately, there are a TON of language exchange websites out there. I’d thought I would take a moment and review some of the larger ones.

在上网友很多的语言换的网页你可以用练习你的外语。

《请用下面的按钮继续读》

I have a bunch of new pictures to upload, but I took a really funny one today I wanted to share with you all.

On my way home from school, I saw this small bicycle carrying a HUGE load of Styrofoam. I passed the bicyclist and then took a picture for you all. I later saw the same guy with the bike parked at a street corner. However, the load was so large that the Styrofoam was laying on the ground and the bicycle was pointing up in the air, lol.

It’s kind of strange, here in China. People use cars to transport people and bicycles to transport goods. Since there is so much traffic, you hardly see any trucks on the road. You’ll see people with a boat load of hula-hoops, shoes in shoe boxes, etc, etc on the back of their bicycles.

W00T! I finally got some of my pictures online. You can see them here: Peter’s Chinese Pictures.

Sorry for the short post, I’ve written a bunch on the picture’s captions I don’t have much to write here right now

~Peter