Cache and Carry

I was listening to a CBS Flash Internet station in September. Something I'd been doing with my Opera browser since the summer. Just for kicks I opened the cache (C:\Documents and Settings\SprattsJ\Local Settings\Application Data\Opera\Opera\cache) and moved some files to another player. Not that I was expecting much.

Until last year Opera’s cache included file endings (which looked something like opr088LY.xyz), making it simple to access pictures, mp3s, video files and games, but no more. By version 8 or 9 they had joined other browser makers and eliminated the extensions, and what had been another in a long line of good reasons for using Opera as well. Now they're just indeterminate titles like opr088LY.

So when I dumped these mysterious little units into Winamp I didn't think they'd play. But they did. Of the thousand files loaded into Winamp, seven hundred worked. When I put them into Media Player Classic, they all worked. Bit rates varied but they all sounded consistent and punchy, due probably to the Orban processing the station uses.

About 15 new files came in each hour I streamed the station. So I did, running it every day from 8 am 'till midnight, until the empty space on my drive filled with 6500 tracks. After analyzing them with a free duplicate-file eliminator this week I wound up with 2700 unique songs. Then I made a playlist and randomized it for variety. Verdict? Sounds just like the station. Identical actually, without the breaks or announcements.

Next I gave GrooveShark a spin. I saw a poll on the most beautiful songs at a bulletin board. A reader streamed a few dozen submissions. I played it yesterday. When it ended I looked in the Opera cache and there they were, all thirty-nine of them. I moved them to a new folder called Most Beautiful and this is what I got:

opr016P5
opr016QY
opr016T8
opr016TC
opr016TI
opr016TN
opr016TS
opr016TV
opr016TZ
opr016U3
opr016UP
opr016V1
opr016V4
opr016V8
opr016VG
opr016VM
opr016VP
opr016VS
opr016VW
opr016VZ
opr016W4
opr016W9
opr016WB
opr016WG
opr016WK
opr016WP
opr016WT
opr016WX
opr016X0
opr016X2
opr016X6
opr016X8
opr016XD
opr016XH
opr016XK
opr016XP
opr016XS
opr016XW
opr016XZ

Pretty perplexing, right? But wait. I dragged them into my player, removed a few files I didn’t want, added a couple I did.

This is how Winamp then showed the very same file group:

1. Aphex Twin - Flim (2:53)
2. Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata (6:50)
3. Eva Cassidy - Over the Rainbow (4:59)
4. Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah (Grace) (6:55)
5. Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here (5:34)
6. Sigur Rós - Starálfur (6:46)
7. Radiohead - Exit Music (For a Film) (4:24)
8. Beatles - In My Life (2:27)
9. Imogen Heap - Hide And Seek (4:28)
10. Debussy - Clair de lune (4:53)
11. New York Philharmonic;Leonard Bernstein - Adagio for Strings from the String Quartet, Op. 11 (Instrumental) (9:58)
12. The Smiths - There Is a Light That Never Goes Out (4:02)
13. Sufjan Stevens - John Wayne Gacy, Jr. (3:19)
14. Iron And Wine - Naked As We Came (2:32)
15. Moby - Porcelain (4:01)
16. Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (3:22)
17. Massive Attack - Teardrop (5:30)
18. Beethoven - 9Th Symphony (11:20)
19. Pink Floyd - The Great Gig in the Sky (4:44)
20. Flaming Lips - Do You Realize?? (3:32)
21. Neutral Milk Hotel - Oh Comely (8:18)
22. Sufjan Stevens - Casimir Pulaski Day (5:54)
23. Wilhelm Kempff - Piano Sonata #17 in D minor "The Tempest", Op. 31 No. 2: 3. Allegretto (7:17)
24. Elliott Smith - Waltz #2 (XO) (4:40)
25. Okkervil River - Black (4:39)
26. Fleetwood Mac - Landslide (3:18)
27. Eva Cassidy - Fields of Gold (4:42)
28. The Beach Boys – Caroline, No (2:17)
29. Radiohead - Everything in Its Right Place (4:11)
30. Erik Satie - Gnossienne no. 1 (3:49)
31. Fleet Foxes - Drops In The River (4:13)
32. Ludovico Einaudi - nuvole bianche (5:57)
33. Original Soundtrack - Halcyon and On and On (9:24)
34. Bjork - Unison (6:47)
35. Deutsche Opera Berlin - The Marriage Of Figaro: 'duettino - Sull 'aria' (3:33)
36. Led Zeppelin - Stairway to Heaven (8:03)
37. Jonathan Edwards - Sometimes (2:47)
38. Delibes - Lakme (Flower Duet) (6:14)

Presto.

As you can see the ID3 tags survived the process and Winamp displayed them properly. Apparently as long as the stream had them it will.

I created another playlist and dropped it into MPC, merged it with the original 2700 song file and randomized it again. Simple.

Finally I put the whole thing on a thumb drive and stuck it in a small laptop I carry around. Outside, in the car etc. It turned out to be a very easy way to clone my favorite station and free it from the net.

- js.