Using Icedax and LAME to Rip Music CD

This short guide will help you rip a CD with a few command-line tools. Download the following files and put them in a folder, such as C:\WINDOWS.

• cygwin1.dll
  
• icedax.exe
  
• lame.exe
  

Insert your music CD into the CD-ROM drive and open a command prompt (cmd.exe). First, run the following command to find your CD-ROM drive.

icedax -scanbus

The following command will display the contents of your CD:

icedax dev='D:' cddb=1 -J

The following command will save the second track as track2.wav:

icedax dev='D:' cddb=1 track=2 track2.wav

The following command will save each track as track##.wav:

for %i in (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10) do icedax dev='D:' cddb=1 track=%i track%i.wav

For brief help on icedax command, type:

icedax -h

Using LAME to encode MP3 from .WAV files

LAME is a free MP3 encoder. I've written how to compile LAME in a previous post. The numerous options of LAME can be confusing to new users. After reading the output of lame --help, lame --preset help and lame --longhelp, I decided to go with one of the following presets and the -h option:

• fm/radio/tape => 112kbps
  
• hifi => 160kbps
  
• cd => 192kbps
  
• studio => 256kbps
  

The following is options related to ID3 tagging:

  ID3 tag options:
    --tt <title>    audio/song title (max 30 chars for version 1 tag)
    --ta <artist>   audio/song artist (max 30 chars for version 1 tag)
    --tl <album>    audio/song album (max 30 chars for version 1 tag)
    --ty <year>     audio/song year of issue (1 to 9999)
    --tc <comment>  user-defined text (max 30 chars for v1 tag, 28 for v1.1)
    --tn <track[/total]>   audio/song track number and (optionally) the total
                           number of tracks on the original recording. (track
                           and total each 1 to 255. just the track number
                           creates v1.1 tag, providing a total forces v2.0).
    --tg <genre>    audio/song genre (name or number in list)

Here's an example LAME command using my favorite preset hifi:

LAME --preset hifi -h --tt "House Party Remix" track3.wav PartyRemix.mp3

This converts track3.wav to PartyRemix.mp3 using ABR 160kbps hifi encoding.

Korean short story: Death of a Prostitute

Death of a Prostitute is a Korean short story about a young prostitute found dead on a street. The ebook is written in Korean and meant for testing Korean on a digital reader supporting EPUB format.

• Death of a Prostitute

Vietnamese Novel 'Thoi Xa Vang'

Thoi Xa Vang is a Vietnamese novel in EPUB format. It will work with Adobe Digital Editions, Nook and Sony digital reader.

• Thoi Xa Vang

Embedding Russian/Cyrillic/Unicode Fonts in EPUB books

I'd like to read Russian literature in its original language. So I downloaded Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and put it in my Nook.

1. The original format of the book was a Word document. I had to save it as text file and convert its character set from Windows Cyrillic (CP1251) to UTF-8 using Iconv.
   
   

   iconv -f CP1251 -t UTF-8 annakarenina.txt > annakarenina-u.txt

   
   
   
2. I opened the text file with Sigil, formatted it and saved it as EPUB file.
   
   
3. Put Unicode fonts in the EPUB file that have a cyrillic range. You can do so with 7-zip. I recommend Book Antiqua, MinionPro or DejaVu Serif.
   
   
   • antquab.ttf
   • antquabi.ttf
   • antquai.ttf
   • bkant.ttf
   
   
   
4. Edit content.opf so that it has references to the fonts:
   
   

   <item id="font.bold" href="fonts/antquab.ttf" media-type="application/x-font-truetype"/>
   
   <item id="font.bolditalic" href="fonts/antquabi.ttf" media-type="application/x-font-truetype"/>
   
   <item id="font.italic" href="fonts/antquai.ttf" media-type="application/x-font-truetype"/>
   
   <item id="font.regular" href="fonts/bkant.ttf" media-type="application/x-font-truetype"/>

   
   
5. Edit the stylesheet.
   
   

   @font-face {
     font-family: "Book Antiqua";
     font-weight: normal;
     font-style: normal;
     src: url(../fonts/bkant.ttf);
     }
     @font-face {
     font-family: "Book Antiqua";
     font-weight: normal;
     font-style: italic;
     src: url(../fonts/antquai.ttf);
     }
     @font-face {
     font-family: "Book Antiqua";
     font-weight: bold;
     font-style: normal;
     src: url(../fonts/antquab.ttf);
     }
     @font-face {
     font-family: "Book Antiqua";
     font-weight: bold;
     font-style: italic;
     src: url(../fonts/antquabi.ttf);
     }
     a {
       color: inherit;
       text-decoration: inherit;
       }
     em, i {
     font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif;
     font-weight: normal;
     font-style: italic;
     }
     strong, b, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {
     font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif;
     font-weight: bold;
     font-style: normal;
     }
     p {
     text-indent: 2em;
     margin-top: 0pt;
     margin-bottom: 0pt;
     }
     body {
     font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif;
     margin-left: 5pt;
     margin-right: 5pt;
     text-align: justify;
     }
     .sgc-1 {text-align: center}
     .sgc-2 {text-align: right}

   
   

To see how a Russian ebook might look on your Nook or any other reader, download and try my ebook Anna Karerina.

How to embed Unicode fonts in EPUB ebooks

I own a Barnes and Noble's Nook and recently had a trouble reading a Vietnamese novel on Nook. But I resolved the issue by hacking the EPUB ebook as explained below:

1. Get the Unicode fonts that you want for your ebook. The following fonts come with Adobe Reader and cover enough Unicode ranges.
   
   • MyriadPro-Bold.otf
     
   • MyriadPro-It.otf
     
   • MyriadPro-Regular.otf
   
   With 7-zip, put the Unicode fonts in your ebook.
   
2. Extract content.opf from your ebook and insert the following lines in the manifest section:
   

   <item href="MyriadPro-Bold.otf" id="embedded.font.bold" media-type="font/opentype"/>
   
   <item href="MyriadPro-It.otf" id="embedded.font.italic" media-type="font/opentype"/>
   
   <item href="MyriadPro-Regular.otf" id="embedded.font.regular" media-type="font/opentype"/>
   

   Put content.opt back into the ebook file.
   
3. Extract stylesheet.css from the ebook and append the following contents:
   

   @font-face {
   font-family: "Myriad Pro";
   font-weight: normal;
   font-style: normal;
   src: url(MyriadPro-Regular.otf);
   }
   @font-face {
   font-family: "Myriad Pro";
   font-weight: normal;
   font-style: italic;
   src: url(MyriadPro-It.otf);
   }
   @font-face {
   font-family: "Myriad Pro";
   font-weight: bold;
   font-style: normal;
   src: url(MyriadPro-Bold.otf);
   }
   a {
       color: inherit;
       text-decoration: inherit;
       }
   em, i {
   font-family: "Myriad Pro", sans-serif;
   font-weight: normal;
   font-style: italic;
   }
   strong, b, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {
   font-family: "Myriad Pro", sans-serif;
   font-weight: bold;
   font-style: normal;
   }
   body {
   font-family: "Myriad Pro", sans-serif;
       margin-left: 5pt;
       margin-right: 5pt;
       text-align: justify;
   }
   p {
     text-indent: 2em;
     margin-top: 0pt;
     margin-bottom: 0pt;
     }
   

   Put stylesheet back in your ebook.
   
4. Try and read your ebook with Adobe Digital Editions or your favorite ebook reader.