NOT the law-bomb lobbing Bob Loblaw Law Blog.

Dear Lazyweb,

I have a lot of MP3s. A *LOT*. They're on a network share. I had originally organized them using iTunes, (Artist/Album/Song directory and file structure) but now that they're on a network share, iTunes refuses to add them to its collection and manage them.

My required minimum features:

-Windows (sorry, no Mac at home)
-Can handle 100,000+ songs

I don't care if it has a built-in player- I just need this to organize the files and tags.

Extremely nice to have features:

-Moves MP3s based on tag changes (like iTunes does when you let it manage your library)
-Has no problem with network drives- the MP3s are on a file server (iTunes on Windows refuses to work with MP3s that live on a network drive). This is not absolutely required, as I can try and fool some programs into not seeing the network drive as a network drive... iTunes just seems to be extremely uncooperative when it comes to this.

Media Monkey looked OK, and it pulled in all the MP3s from the network drive. Unfortunately, it also went down in flames once I tried to actually start working with making changes to song tags- I think its internal file database wasn't able to work very well with that many songs.

Now that its customer base of EarthLink employees have been laid off, Starbucks is closing its store at 17th and Peachtree.

Some might also wonder when the Madison Grill deathwatch begins- though the remaining folks at ELNK certainly have every reason to drink, so things might not be as bad there as one might think.

An America-centric view of warfare, told using the food of each country.



It's brilliant. Especially the pita bomb, the arms race between the US and USSR, and the World Trade Center hamburgers.

There's a cheat sheet that tells who is who- I didn't know the matzo was a matzo, for example (I was wondering who in the world the Wheat Thins were supposed to be). They also have a list of the battles on their website.

MC Hawking should be pleased.

For those who don't get the reference, please see the following MP3 and lyrics

An excerpt from an email I received about the opening of Atlanta's new "monument", the Millennium Gate:


The Millennium Gate, which is located at the Atlantic Station in downtown Atlanta, is a 73-foot arch that will celebrate the history of Georgia.


What is the Millennium Gate? It's a monument-like thingy that's been built in the middle of Atlantic Station (the shopping center built where the Atlantic Steel mill used to be). Its website is full of high-minded speechifying about how it's the largest monument built in the US since the Jefferson Memorial.

I think it more appropriately celebrates the history of Atlanta rather than Georgia as a whole. Atlanta, a city where we tear down beautiful buildings constructed of real stone and brick so we can put up cheap condos made of faux materials.

Why? Well, because the Millennium Gate is partially constructed with... stucco. Over foamboard. Quite a monument for the ages. As one writer to the AJC's editorial page said:


[...]
The Millennium Gate is a selfish exhibition of form over substance, replete with the puffery of a Latin inscription and made in part of stucco, a construction material found more often in faux suburban mansions than enduring monuments such as the Arc de Triomphe.

I love grand artistic statement, bold landmarks that spring from creativity and design in tune with the surroundings. In all its pomposity, the Millennium Gate is out of whack with Midtown Atlanta. The front-page photo says it all: a flip-flop-shod foot with the monument in the background. Banal fashion meets banal art. ED HULA, Atlanta


Its design really is out of place in AS. Piedmont Park or somewhere downtown would be a much better place.

Aside from the Cyrillic alphabet, things are going well.

I took a bus from Istanbul to Sofia last Saturday. I got into Sofia after dark (always a wonderful time to arrive in a strange city with a new language in a new alphabet), found the tram station, made some lucky guesses about where I should get off (Lonely Planet and Rough Guide have terrific maps of Sofia- sadly, their street names are in Latin text, which does you ABSOLUTELY NO GOOD AT ALL when the street SIGNS are in Cyrillic), and eventually found my way to the Art Hostel, where I got a bed in the dorm. It's a funky place that fancies itself an artists hangout, but it's a little rough around the edges, and I've heard others in the city making snarky comments about it. Still, the staff is friendly and since this is my first hostel, I don't know any better.

Since arriving, I've walked all over Sofia, been chased out of a cathedral because one of the priests doesn't like visitors wearing shorts, and eaten lots of good Bulgarian food that I can't name (I just go to the cafeteria and point at things). Last night I was in Veliko Tarnovo, a city to the east of here that is an incredibly scenic city with lots of hilly streets to hike up and down. I'm now back in Sofia at the Art Hostel again. Tomorrow I'm hoping to take a trip to the Rila Monestary south of here with a group from another hostel. Thursday morning I'm going to head south to Plovdiv, where I hear the city is pretty, and there might be some hiking to do (I'm staying at the Hiker's Hostel there, so I can only assume..). Then it's back to Istanbul for a day or so of semi-idle time (possibly involving another hamam) before the flight home eeeeearly Monday morning.

I've managed to resist the incredibly strong urge to hop on a bus or train for another country. Romania, Bosnia/Serbia, and Macedonia are only a few hours' bus ride from here (and the tickets are well under $80). But I decided to spend some more time here rather than sitting on buses all week. Bulgaria is cheap. A beer is about $1.50. A good lunch or dinner in a local restaurant or cafeteria can be less than $5. A first class bus to a city three and a half hours away is $12. My bed at the hostel is $15 a night, and includes breakfast (in Veliko Turnovo it also included dinner and a beer a day). And the touts don't hassle you here like they can in Turkey or other places.

Saturday afternoon I'm heading to Istanbul (not Constantinople), Turkey. After a few weeks in Turkey, we're heading to Bulgaria and then Greece. The trip to Syria didn't work out- airfare to Damascus from Istanbul (not Constantinople) was $600. Thanks for the information anyway, practicecactus.

See everyone in June!

In Nigeria there's an evangelical church called the Mountain of Fire and Miracles. They have locations all over Nigeria and the world- in fact, there's a congregation here in Atlanta. The church puts out newsletters/flyers that publish testimonials from their members, as well as articles about demon possession, satanic food, etc.

While I was in Nigeria, I typed up a "greatest hits" collection of the most amusing and interesting excerpts from the collection of newsletters I had access to (MFM members frequently bring their newsletters to work and will happily let you read them, so if you know anyone who goes there, just ask and they'll bring you all the newsletters you can stand). I sent it out to the Mob mailing list in Sep. 2001. Here it is again for your reading pleasure. Note that spelling errors are reproduced as printed in the newsletters.

( Read more... )

Hat tip to Peach Pundit and Creative Loafing..

I'm sure we've all sat next to crazy people on MARTA or other public transit before. But this lady is way beyond anything I've experienced before. The old lady the girl is going berserk on is pretty calm through the whole thing.



And if she doesn't get her hair or her do-rag back, she's gonna press charges. It's times like this that you really have to realize just how crappy a job the MARTA cops have dealing with nuts like this all day, every day.

Gravel courts Obama Girl..



On a serious note (not that anything related to Gravel is serious), why would you even want Obama Girl's support? It's not like she's actually going to vote or anything.

I have to wonder how well he's going over in the Libertarian Party, especially considering that he pushed national health care when he was a Democratic candidate. Any of my Libertarian peeps want to comment?

Heather has been overworking herself at her job, so she took Friday off. We decided to get in the car and go exploring the state.

Friday we headed out I-20 east to start a driving tour in a book we had- Touring The Backroads of North and South Georgia, which we highly recommend. We started one of the tours in Oxford, and then went through Covington, Rutledge, Madison, Eatonton, Greensboro, Union Point, Crawfordville, War Hill, and Washington. We also saw our first Georgia Revolutionary War site at Kettle Creek, as well as the home of the first female US Senator.

We had dinner at a restaurant next to a renovated hotel on the square in downtown Washington. After a glass of wine, it dawned on us that a two or three hour drive back to Atlanta wasn't terribly appealing, especially since it was 9:30. So we got a room at a local hotel, and since we had such a good time on Friday, we decided to drive north to Elberton and do another driving tour out of the book (though we did it backwards).

We finally got to see the Georgia Guidestones. Apparently there are some religious nuts who think they're part of some occult conspiracy. There were some burnt-out black candles on the southern side of the stones, but there was also a granite block with a "JESUS" label someone had left on the north side of the central stone, so the spiritual craziness probably all balances out in the end. It was an all-around weird site- and since Elberton is the "granite capital of the world", lots of road signs are made from granite, which makes it look like there are little tombstones everywhere. It was impressive at first- local cemeteries have impressive granite tombstones, but when you get to downtown Elberton and see the prominent display of six tombstones on the main drag through town, it really starts to get creepy. There was apparently more information on the Guidestones at the Granite Museum, but I think if I saw any more granite today, I might go nuts.

From Elberton, we went on to Carlton, Comer, Watson Mill Bridge State Park, Danielsville, Ila (from the Choctaw word Ilia, meaning dead, an appropriate name for the town), Commerce, Jefferson, Winder, and Fort Yargo State Park, whose fort could more accurately be called a shed.

We saw some cool stuff, but we want to revisit some sites in particular that we didn't get to spend enough time at. The old Greene County jail in Greensboro looked cool- according to the book, you can ask the dispatcher at the sheriff's department for the key and take a self-guided tour, but it was late in the day when we got there, so we decided not to ask. We might also revisit Elberton to see the exhibit at the historical society about the Georgia Guidestones. The Stephens State Park and historical site in Crawfordville might also be interesting (but the rest of Crawfordville is a pass, especially Heavy's BBQ, which was bad. As in, parts of the food were impossible to eat without gagging), and Madison was a really pretty town that had lots of homes on a walking tour we didn't have time to stop and take.

The LIVE This American Life theather-show-thingy is tonight @ 8pm EST. Maybe we can pick fights with the boneheads in line to see Ben Stein's intelligent design screed.

Also, I think the new season of TAL on Showtime starts Sunday.

Jeff Carter has posted an insider's overview of his father's trip to the Middle East and his talks with Hamas.

Last week I bought a group of Nigeria-related fiction and nonfiction books that were sold as a lot. They were all from the 1950s-1960s. The price was reasonable, and when the box came yesterday I was very pleased. Almost all of the books had the owner's name, the date they acquired the book, and (I assume) the city they bought it in written inside the front cover.

The name in most of the books was "Robert LeRoy West", and it looks like he got almost all of his books in either Ibadan, Nigeria or London. There's one book that has "Dee West" inside the cover, and it was bought in Maryland in the '70s. One book has a Sabena boarding pass for "Mr. West" on a flight from Leopoldville (Kinshasa) to Matadi in 1959. The pass sleeve has large ads for Martini beverages and Philips Electronics in Congo (complete with pre-Zaireification city names like Leopoldville, Elisabethville, and Stanleyville).

Thanks to Google, I now know who he was. According to another obituary, he "virtually ran the Congolese economy in 1960". I can only assume that his wife died recently, and the family is clearing out his inventory of books. Very interesting guy- I'm browsing through some of his journal articles on Jstor now.

There's another, smaller, lot of some of his Congo books on Ebay now, but the price is a little unreasonable (IMO) and they're almost all in French. I also suspect that that these are his Nigerian art and poetry books, but I'm less interested in them (and again, the price is less reasonable- $20 more than I paid for my box).

Underachiever moment of the day: just doing some quick calculations, if he died in 1991, that would make him 34 in 1960. So, when he was my age, he was running the Congolese economy.

A South African radio morning show has a difficult time getting information about the Zimbabwean election from the embassy's phone system:



This is hilarious.

"Our office hour is 11:00-11:30 Tuesday"

Hat Tip: Ethan Zuckerman

Nobody can design a get out the vote effort like Robert Mugabe. Unfortunately this time it looks like he forgot to send out his enthusiastic armed teams of thugs^H^H^H^H^Hparty workers to threaten^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hencourage Zimbabweans to vote for him and the ZANU-PF.

But it's not too early to get a head start on drumming up support for the next election.

There were rumors floating around last week that Mugabe was in private talks with the MDC to quietly leave office. Considering all the heat he's under, and his age, that would certainly seem to be a reasonable option. I was never completely convinced that he'd do such a thing, though. He's way too much of a firebrand to just quietly walk away. And now, with his supporters running amok again while the electoral commission continues to delay releasing any presidential vote results, any chances that he might be using this election as an opportunity to retire gracefully are fading very fast.

Also- late last week, there were reports that ZANU-PF "war veterans" were occupying white farms again. Are there actually very many white farmers left in Zimbabwe?

So Congress is finally considering removing Nelson Mandela and the ANC from its list of terrorists and terrorist organizations.

It's nice to see just how well maintained the government's no-fly lists are, considering that the current administration is putting more weight on them (while making their operations less transparent).

Mira Aroyo, one of the singers in Ladytron, has a Ph.D from Oxford. In what, you ask? Literature? Nope, molecular genetics.

If you saw their first attempt at singing, I don't need to say anything more for you to understand just how bad this one is gonna be.



From Wonkette: "The McCain Girls are working overtime to ensure that their candidate never, ever gets elected, by anyone. Watch their latest installment in their thousand-year campaign to secretly crown Hillary Clinton America's permanent dictator."

Since having two cats isn't enough craziness, we now have a puppy:



He's a mutt, pulled out of a canal in the Bahamas. Apparently in the Bahamas, they don't call their mutts "mutts", so they call him a Royal Potcake dog. But he's a mutt. ;-)

See what happens when you go shopping without a list? Damn Petsmart for putting the impulse buys out on the front curb :)