Here’s a snippet using find and xargs‘ multi-threading support to recursively find all M4A files and convert them to MP3 with as many threads as you want.

First, here’s the convm4a script that is called from the find/xargs line. Call it with a single argument, the location of an M4A file. The script with change to that directory and convert the file to a similarly-named MP3 file. Put this somewhere on your PATH (possibly in ~/bin/) and be sure to chmod +x convm4a.
#!/bin/bash

DIRNAME=`dirname "$1"`
FILENAME=`basename "$1" .m4a`
#echo "$DIRNAME"
cd "$DIRNAME"
faad -o - "${FILENAME}.m4a" | lame - "${FILENAME}.mp3" &> /dev/null

Test out that script to make sure it works. Then, run this line from the top of the directory full of your M4A files:

find -name '*\.m4a' -type f -print0 | xargs -P 4 -n 1 -0 convm4a

The -P 4 means to use four concurrent executions of convm4a, and the -n 1 means to only pass one argument to each invocation of convm4a. Change the number 4 to reflect the number of threads you want to run. You probably don’t want to exceed the number of CPU cores in your computer.


sudo perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Bundle:CPAN
(press enter a bunch of times to allow CPAN to access the web and do updates)
reload cpan
install Module::Whatever


Repeat that last line for each package the perl script requires. Takes a lot of trial-and-error to find all the packages you need to install. Good luck.

Palo Verde is the only nuclear generating facility in the world that is not located adjacent to a large body of above-ground water. Instead, it evaporates water from the treated sewage of several nearby municipalities to meet its cooling needs. The water consumed by the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station represents about 25% of the annual overdraft of the Arizona Department of Water Resources Phoenix Active Management Area.

via Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The reservoir is called Franklin Delano Roosevelt Lake, named after the United States President who presided over the completion of the dam. The foundation was built by the MWAK Company, a joint effort of several contractors united for this purpose. Consolidated Builders Incorporated, including industrialist Henry J. Kaiser, completed the dam. The United States Bureau of Reclamation supervised the contractors and operates the dam. Folk singer Woody Guthrie was commissioned by the Bonneville Power Administration to write songs about the Columbia Basin Project; the songs Roll On Columbia and Grand Coulee Dam are part of that series.

The Grand Coulee Dam is almost a mile long at 5223 feet (1586 m). The spillway is 1,650 feet (503 m) wide. At 550 feet (168 m), it is taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza; all the pyramids at Giza could fit within its base. Its hydraulic height of 380 feet (115 m) is more than twice that of Niagara Falls. There is enough concrete to build a four-foot wide, four-inch deep sidewalk twice around the equator.

via Grand Coulee Dam – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Hedelmae made a character LCD demo for the Assembly 2003 wild competition. It uses a 20×4 character LCD. Nice work!

I used a modified LCDproc (for Linux) as the backend. Only the character set and the update speed were changed. All the actual graphics and animation was custom code. The effects were written into a 1bit 20×12 buffer then converted to 20×4 and finally LCDproc updated the image on the display.

YouTube – LCD megademo by Hedelmae

via Fish ladder – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

via Peshtigo Fire – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Arduino Mandelbrot Set Viewer

via Two Generals’ Problem – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The practice was first common in ancient Mesopotamian, Hittite and Canaanite temples. Later, soothsayers from Ancient Roman times used the entrails of a bull to determine the advisability of a particular endeavor and Etruscans used patterns seen in the livers of sheep to assess their future. There exists substantial evidence to indicate that this was the main form of divination within classical cultures.

Organ models and extispicy manuals in cuneiform script are widely found in archaeological excavations in the regions, showing the prevalence and significance of extispicy. Commonly, (in antiquity) the majority of the divination was wrought from viewing the intestines and the liver.

Although extispicy would commonly be viewed with skepticism by the modern mind, some 20th century scholars suggested that this technique was also a valuable and legitimate form of, essentially, autopsy, which might indicate internal disease tied to poor environmental factors, information that would be important to nomadic peoples.

via Extispicy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.