Friday, December 30, 2005

Last Name First First Name Middle Name Last

Whose big idea was it to file all the music on the internet by first freakin' name? I don't know if it's Gracenote's fault, but they're the database that virtually everybody uses to fetch the data when you plug a CD into your computer.

I've just spent the last three days fixing the 60GB of music transfered from my CD collection to my in-house server, and I know I'm going to be continually frustrated by nearly every album I add.

You'd think some librarian's association would have had a fit over the Last Name/First Name crap, and for that matter, articles (A, An, The, Le, Los, Las, etc.) shouldn't be in front of titles and band names either (actually, I'm not so sure about some of those -- I still have Los Lobos and Los Lonely Boys with the "Los" first).

At least give us a choice, please, perhaps add another set of tags, called "Album Artist The Right Way" or "Fileable Title."

My suggestion is, pick an album, and go to Gracenote (link above), and submit corrections. If everybody does a couple, we'll fix it all in a couple of weeks.

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Spicoli gets some respect!

The national film registry listed its annual set of films to be preserved.
Some well-justified items (Cool Hand Luke - it rules!, Giant, Hoop Dreams, French Connection, Miracle on 34th Street, The Sting), but a few surprises.

Rocky Horror Picture Show?!? Yeah, it's a counter-culture icon, and gave us our current King Arthur, but worth preserving? I dunno.

Toy Story is only ten years old, and it's 100% digital. Does it really need preserving?

Fast Times at Ridgemont High - Sean Penn's major debut. Who'dathunk that he'd be Oscar bait, a director, considered this generation's De Niro? It's still shlock, and always will be. How many other films on the Library of Congress' film registry feature bouncing breasts, anyway?

What should be preserved? The 1977 version of Star Wars of course. Greedo didn't freakin' shoot first!