Today I went to copy my music library from Banshee to an old iPod mini. I found out the hard way that the Ubuntu 11.04 upgrade tool uninstalls the necessary programs for MP3 encoding support, causing Banshee to fill my iPod with WAV files. This is most likely a [philosophical decision](http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/our-philosophy “Our philosophy | Ubuntu”) stemming from the ongoing debate between [open-source pragmatists and free software idealists](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software_movement#Criticism_and_controversy “Free software movement – Wikipedia”).

I recently took on the task of digitizing our old VHS tapes. While digging through the tapes I came across an old, region-2-encoded DVD copy of *Rocketman*, starring Harland Williams. I bought it years ago before it was available on region 1 DVD. In those days I had a DVD drive which I kept set to region 2, but no longer. It’s time to get rid of this thing, but not before we make ourselves an MP4 copy.