Mercwear.com – Curtis Morris

Shortly after getting my ipod and transferring some of my mp3s to it I noticed that the ID3 Tags of my songs were in total disarray. At first glance many people would say ?so what? well once you have the files transferred to your ipod you will discover what a nucance this is.

These are just a few problems I had because of messed up tags:

* The same artist showing up two or more times on my ipod menu (example would be an id3 tag with a misspelled name or an artist with a ?the? in front of their name like ?The Beastie Boys?, some people would only put ?Beastie Boys?
* Albumbs that contain songs that don?t belong on them
* Incorrect song names
* Incorrect artist names

I guess this was to be expected, a lot of my mp3 collection was built during the golden days of Napster. This meant that I was depending upon other people to provide the correct ID3 tag information on the songs which simply was not going to happen.

So here I am with thousands of mp3s that need to be “cleaned”. I started this nightmare by using Apples Itunes to edit the tags, the process went like this:

1) Use the Itunes “get info” option on the song I wanted to edit which would bring up the ID3 tag editor interface.

2) Lookup the song on Amazon.com and copy the info from there to the ID3 tag of the song.

3) Start the process over on a new song.

As you can imagine this was quite a nightmare, on average I was doing about 1 song a minute and have more than 2,000 songs to do. It does not take a math whiz to see that this would take a LONG time (over 30 hours), so I set out to find a better solution.

A quick Google search lead me to Tag & Rename, a self proclaimed ?Powerful and easy-to-use program for organizing and archiving your library of music files.? I would later find this quote to be a huge understatement.

After using Tag & Rename for about 10 minutes I knew it was the answer to all of my MP3 organazational problems.

A few features include:

* Batch (mass) processing of file name changes based on the ID3 tag info of the mp3s

* It will automatically go out to Amazon.com and auto populate the ID3 tag info for songs with the correct information (I only download full albums so this was a HUGE time saver)

* Downloads the album art

With the help of this program I was able to edit the ID3 tag info on over 1,000 songs in less than 2 hours – If you are in the same situation I was in I would recommend getting this app ASAP.

This dude summoned a creature from a high level area of the game (Molten Core) to a VERY low level highly populated area of the game (the auction hall in Iornforge) once he released the pet it exploded killing almost every player in the auction hall.. This is by far the best World Of Warcraft video I have ever seen – it even made the screen savers tonight!

Watch The Video

I have been thinking of getting an ipod for a while now however the cost was something that I just could not come to terms with, $300.00 for a music player seemed excessive. This all changed when I first set eyes on the U2 Special Edition ipod, it was like a red and black mind control device that was spamming my brain to buy it – all of the sudden cost did not matter all that much (not because I like U2 all that much but because it’s so damn cool looking).

I had yet to tell my girlfriend what I wanted for Christmas (Yes I know it’s February) and had received a Best Buy gift card from my grandparents so with this in mind I had made my decision: The ipod would be mine.

After work on Friday I stopped by my “Main” Best Buy and found that they were sold out of the U2 ipod. Having use to work at Best Buy I knew that there were probably some Open Box Ipods that were not in plain view of the customer so I asked a sales associate who showed me the hidden inventory – what a mess. The ipods that they had accepted back looked as if they had been used by a professional rock climber while he was on the job – these things were scratched all to hell and one even had a huge dent in it.

I asked the associate if any of the other Best Buys in town (we have three) had the U2 ipod in stock and he said that the inventory system they used showed 4 at the store closest to my apartment. Still wondering why on earth Best Buy would accept such mistreated ipods back with any expectation of reselling them I headed to the other store.

On arrival I see that this Best Buy had 4 of the U2 ipods, one on the shelf as a display and 3 new ones in the locked case. I grabbed one of the sales people and asked if they had any other open box items other than the ones that were in the case (the only used ipod on display was the new iphoto which is $500.00) he said no and with that I told him I would take one of the new U2 edition ipods.

I knew what to expect next, a little something I like to call the “Warranty Speech”. When someone at Best Buy sells an electronic item that they offer their extended warranty plan on (they call it PSP which is short for product service plan) they are obligated to try and sell it to you, management pushes the employees VERY hard to sell them so if they don’t ask it is quite possible they can lose their job. As I mentioned above I use to work at Best Buy so I know exactly how to neutralize an warranty speech without ever having to hear another word about it: Simply tell the associate that this purchase is a gift and that if it was for you that the warranty would definitely be part of your purchase. Then, they will let you know that the person you are giving the gift to can return and get the warranty within 15 days and that will be the end of the speech.

The purchase was complete and I had my ipod, check out the specs and additional pictures below:

Specs:
* Holds 5,000 songs
* Signed by U2
* 12 hour battery life
* Special colors
* Comes with U2 poster and $50.00 off coupon for the complete U2 collection from itunes

“Touch” the ipod (3d QuickTime VR movie that will allow you to move the ipod in real time):
View (Requires QuickTime)

I have yet to write a review on this movie however I would like to say that this is by far one of the best movies I have seen this year. I can guarantee that it will have a cult following for years to come similar to that of Pulp Fiction and Boondock Saints. If you have yet to see Napoleon Dynamite please close this page and go rent it at Blockbuster Video right now, better yet save yourself the $5.00 it cost to rent it and just go buy it.

Anyway let me get to the whole purpouse of this post – I recently came across a soundboard for the film over at Collegehumor.com, check it out at the link below:

Napoleon Dynamite Sound Board