See the actual audio track of and M4a file is identical to the 3gpp file. Both are compressed using  AAC. Only the container and the tags (i.e. album, artist etc.) are different, so it’s easy and lossless to convert one format to the other –  no transcoding necessary.

The following Powershell 2.0 script converts an M4A file to 3gpp, preserving the tagging in the file. Two dependencies are requred: Mp4Box and AtomicParsley. Drop the binaries with the script.

The one parameter the .ps1 script needs is the input mp4 audio file.

Param ($m4aFile = "sample.m4a")
$regex = [regex]'(?x)Atom[^\w]+(?<key>\w+)[^:]+:\s(?<value>.+)'
$tags = @{ }
.\AtomicParsley ($m4aFile) -t |
    foreach {$regex.matches($_)} |
        foreach {
            if (!$tags.Contains($_.Groups["key"].Value)) {
                $tags.Add($_.Groups["key"].Value, $_.Groups["value"].Value)
                }
            }
$newFile = [System.IO.Path]::ChangeExtension($m4aFile, ".3gp")
$newFile
$map = @{
    "nam" = "--3gp-title";
    "wrt" = "--3gp-author";
    "ART" = "--3gp-performer";
    "gnre" = "--3gp-genre";
    "desc" = "--3gp-description";
    "cprt" = "--3gp-copyright";
    "alb" = "--3gp-album";
    "day" = "--3gp-year";
    "keyword" = "--3gp-keyword";
}
[void] (.\MP4Box ($m4aFile) -out ($newFile) -brand 3gp6 -3gp -isma -psp -new)
$a = @($newFile, "-W")
$tags.Keys | foreach {
    if ($_ -ne $null -and $map.Contains($_))
    {
        $a += $map[$_]
        $a += $tags[$_]
        if ($_ -eq "alb" -and $tags.Contains("trkn"))
        {
            $a += "track=" + $tags["trkn"]
        }
        if ($_ -ne "day")
        {
            $a += "UTF16"
        }
    }
}
[void] (.\AtomicParsley @a)

For your convenience here’s an archive with script, dependencies and a sample file.

1. Install Vista (I use x64 and manually sliced the disk in a 40GB boot partition, and left the rest for a data/recordings partition).
2. Allow automatic weekly updates (on Wednesday at 03:00).
3. Install your network.
4. Upgrade to latest BIOS (you might wanna skip this).
5. Uncheck all components in “Control Panel, Programs, Turn Windows Features On or Off”.
6. Install your chipset driver (I installed the Intel package).
7. Download and install SP1 (choose x86 or x64 and your installed language).
8. When finished, run vsp1cln.exe to clean up after SP1 installation.
9. Start Windows Update and install all important updates.
10. If you have a 2GB 150x USB stick or better, plug it in and configure 512MB for ReadyBoost, and use the rest for timeshifting in your Media Center application.
11. Right click Computer, then “Manage, Configuration, Services”. Set to disabled startup and stop the following services, that is useless on an HTPC:
    1. DFS Replication
    2. Diagnostic Policy Service (change to manual)
    3. Distributed Link Tracking Client
    4. IKE and AuthIP IPsec Keying Modules
    5. IPsec Policy Agent
    6. KtmRm for Distributed Transaction Coordinator
    7. Offline Files
    8. Remote Registry
    9. Tablet PC Input Service
    10. Windows Error Reporting Service
    11. Windows Search
12. Download and install graphics drivers (I installed ATI’s Driver Only option) 
13. Download and install TV tuner drivers (I installed Hauppauge’s Driver Only option).
14. Configure your sound card and select your speaker setup. Note Vista comes with a cool room correction feature you can take advantage of if you have a surround sound setup and a microphone.
15. Download and install Haali’s MetroskaSplitter to support .mkv files (free).
16. Download and install AC3Filter to support surround sound streams (free).
17. Open” Programs, AC3Filter, Configuration” and select your speaker setup.
18. Download and install Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 8 to support HD content (commercial app, trial).
19. Click “Control Panel, Add or Remove User Accounts”. Create a standard user with a password, and allow auto logon. Supply the user/password you just created.
20. Restart.
21. In the bottom of the Welcome page, uncheck the “Always show…”
22. Right click desktop then “Properties, Display Settings”, then adjust the resolution to match you flat panel screen, typically 1366 x 768 or 1920 x 1080.
23. Update Windows Experience Index by right click Computer, then “Properties, Windows Experience Index”, 
24. Vista Home does not include Terminal Services. But you can install Mesh and connect the box to your mesh, to enable it.
25. If you have DVB-C (cable) or DVB-S (satellite), you cannot use Windows Media Center as it only supports DVB-T (terrestrial):
    1. Download and install DVBViewer Pro (commercial app, no trial available).
    2. Launch DVBViewer’s options and check fullscreen, always on top and configure your hardware devices and directx filters. Choose the EVR renderer to enable DXVA2.
    3. Download and install EventGhost to support remote control, and this eventghost configuration. 
    4. Add EventGhost to Startup folder. 
    5. Launch EventGhost and load the configuration. 
    6. Add an action to the Autostart event of type “System, Start Application”, executable: “taskkill”, parameters: “/f /im ehtray.exe” to prevent Windows Media Center from stealing the remote control commands. If you have no keyboard connected and you are an absolute purist, you could also add “taskkill”, “/f /im explorer.exe” to shut down the Windows Explorer and free up extra resources.
26. Activate Windows.
27. Enjoy!

I got the HTC P4350 pda smartphone. Its Windows Mobile 5 has a mobile version of MSN Messenger called Pocket MSN. I just had the most alarming experience chatting with a friend, where Pocket MSN displayed the wrong display name: While Pocket MSN said I was talking to ‘A’, I was actually talking to ‘B’!!!

Needless to say it was a very weird conversation, and it’s the last time I ever use Pocket MSN. iPhone anyone?

Recently I added another one of these disks to my box. I have an Asus A8N-SLI Premium motherboard, that have a nForce4 and a Silicon Image 3114 based RAID controller installed. The nVRAID is faster than the SI controller, so decided to go with nVidia’s.

I started out with only the new hard drive cabled, and changed the bios to enable RAID on the controller. In RAID bios I then added the drive as a stripe (yes that’s striping on one drive).

I have an XP installation CD with my motherboard drivers prepared with nLite, so Windows setup immediately recognised the RAID controller and installed Windows onto that.

In Windows I copied data from my old harddisk to the new one. Went back to the bios and added my old drive to the raid drive pool. In nVidia’s MediaShield application I could then add the drive to the stripe, and immediately started rebuilding the RAID.

Pretty easy setup, and it’s blazing fast.

Update: See http://kli.dk/2007/06/18/nvraid-errors/

Instead I made this little VB script that runs though my inbox and forwards every single mail to my Gmail account (and of course a filter to automatically archive and categorize it).

It takes a while to process a large inbox, but the pause is required to avoid flodding the SMTP server.

Put this in ThisOutlookSession:

Sub ProcessInbox()
Dim ns As NameSpace
Set ns = ThisOutlookSession.Session
Dim ib As MAPIFolder
Set ib = ns.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox)
Dim item As MailItem
For Each item In ib.Items
Dim fwd As MailItem
Set fwd = item.Forward
fwd.Recipients.Add “[INSERT ACCOUNT NAME]+import@gmail.com”
fwd.Subject = Replace(fwd.Subject, “FW: “, “”, 1, 1)
fwd.Send
While ns.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderOutbox).Items.Count > 5
Dim i As Integer
For i = 0 To 1000
DoEvents
Sleep 15
Next i
Wend
Next
End Sub

And this in a module:

Public Declare Sub Sleep Lib “kernel32″ (ByVal dwMilliseconds As Long)