You Can't Take My Joy Away!

The chours of Terry and The Pirates by Elim Hall is "You Can't Take My Joy Away!" It's also what my Razor sings when you call it. Last weekend I caved and retured to having an electronic leash. Payphones have become rare, and many are broken and repairs are few and far between. Of course you know I'm going to customize my leash. Fido let's you select the last four digits, so I picked 4359, IDJY. The chourus to Terry and The Pirates seemed to fit the theme, plus Elim Hall has remained a favorite of mine since the days of listening to Things Break on my first walkman. It's Canadian content, and you won't find Elim Hall on any Ring Tone site. Indeed Glen (of Elim Hall) confirms I'm the first the to let him know I have an Elim Hall ring tone.

I got a Razor V3, with blue tooth and MP3 Ring Tone support. Unlike Bell, Fido doesn't disable the file transfer via blue tooth so a custom ring tone was just a mater for finding a good MP3 Editor and sending the MP3 file to my PDA then using blue tooth to send the file from my PDA to my phone. All without paying a dime to the cell company.

Finding an MP3 editor was bit of pain, google Free MP3 Editor and you get a ton of garbage. So much so that I was thinking of writing one. While googling for Java MP3 encoders I found a wired article Stop Paying for Ring Tones.

The article boils down to this: Download Audacity and Lame (helpful install tips). With the software installed:

1. Make a copy of your MP3 (for the paranoid)
2. Load in Audacity.
3. select a 15 second section of your fav MP3
4. use file /export section as MP3
5. send to phone.

That last step will depend on your carrier, as I mentioned I used my PDA ab both my Razor and my IPaq have blue tooth file transfer. With out that you'll need a data cable that can sync with your PC or pay the internet charges to download to your phone.

- Peace