Last night, when I should have been doing schoolwork,
I wrote a little perl program to rename and retag multiple
MP3 files based on information about a music album from
an ASCII representation of a MARC record. MARC is a
data format developed by the Library of Congress to
store bibliographic data, and one can download MARC records
for various albums from allmusic.com
by clicking on the "Click here to see this album in MARC format"
link on a album's page.

This program would be good if, for instance, an album's worth
of MP3 files that you ripped from your CD got their filenames
or ID3 tags corrupted and you wanted to fix them fairly quickly.

The program is here, and you'll need Perl and the MP3::Tag
Perl module to run it.

This was originally written 16.02.2002

When I got back from the movie, Iain's mate Chris was down from the 'Deen and they were both pretty pissed and listening to metal in Iain's room. Though they were both drunk, I hung out with both of them for a while, and it was totally cool. Iain when drunk is totally different than most kids I know. He's super laid back and funny, and at worst just talks some extra shit. This is a far cry from Marco's drunken antics earlier in the week which, I'm told, resulted in Marco throwing himself on the hood of an oncoming car and Rob throwing a chair at Marco, missing, and leaving a hole in the kitchen wall. I'm so glad I just stayed in my room that night. I like Marco, but he was being a bit of a jerk that night.

But as I was saying, Iain and his friend were both totally cool and fun. The best moment of the evening, however, was when Iain's friend related an anecdote from Iain's primary school days. Now I'll offer this disclaimer, Iain's friend was pretty drunk, so this story might all be total crap, but allegedly, and 11-year-old Iain whipped out his half inch penis back when he was in primary school. So, of course, the joke became that Iain still possessed a diminutive phallus and hilarity ensued. Well, you heard it here first kids. Iain has a half inch penis.

This was originally written on 16.02.2002

So I basically spent today pissing about. I turned in my computer architecture assignment (at last and I'm glad to be done with processor pipelines for a while) and spent the rest of the day screwing around, reading The Onion, and skating. I had finally settled down to read the paper that introduced BAN logic (a logic used to formalize the analysis of security protocols) and work on my BAN logic practical, when Agatha came down to see if anyone wanted to go see Monsters, Inc. I figured what the hell and went out with the girls to the Odeon to see the flick.

I really liked the movie. It's probably my favorite Pixar movie, though I have enjoyed all of Pixar's previous releases as well. Even though all manner of studios seem to have entered into the CG animation game, Pixar still, at least in my opinion, leads the pack, not only for the superior quality of their animation, but also for the attention to detail which adds a level of subtle humor and sophistication that is absent in so many animated films. So Monsters, Inc. had all of the Pixar magic one would expect: stunning animation, clever devices, an entertaining plot, and genuinely funny jokes.

I might be going out on a limb with this one, but for me, the thing I liked best is that the movie seemed, at times, to be a thinly veiled allegory for US energy policy. Hey, it's not all that far fetched. Pixar is, after all, in the heart of energy crazed California, and I'm guessing those animation nerds are probably at least a little left of center. In the film, the monster city is undergoing an energy crisis. To get energy, the monsters have to scare human children and capture their screams. It seems, however, that this resource is no longer able to satisfy the monster's energy needs. So, some of the monsters plot to use a horrifying device to torture innocent human kids in order to increase energy output. It is only through the power of love and the ingenuity of the monster protagonists that an alternative, child-friendly, source of energy is found. Ok, so lets get this story straight. There is an energy crisis. Big business plots to exploit an already depleted resource, completely ignoring any negative implications and remaining ignorant to the exploration of alternative energy sources. US petroleum dependence, people! The freaking movie is about US petroleum dependence. Well, maybe not, but it sure would be cool if the similarities to the real world were intentional. Political commentary or not, the film is still worth checking out.