ID3 tag update issue

This may be helpful to someone else down the road ... I had to go in change a registry (couldn't get read only setting to stay unchecked) setting and manually to an attrib -r +s at the command prompt ... then still couldn't access the categories to change the tags ... and found this solution. Not sure if the the read only issue but would be willing to bet that the tag issue was caused by iTunes ... it's their MO ... ;-(

Amplify’d from social.technet.microsoft.com

Windows Client TechCenter > Windows 7 IT Pro Forums > Windows 7 Media > Cannot edit file properties for mp3 files in Windows 7

Cannot edit file properties for mp3 files in Windows 7

Monday, December 21, 2009 5:13 AMmanu2012

I recently upgraded from Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Ultimate. Now I can't change the artist, album, genre, etc. info on any of my music files when I go to the file's Properties and under the Details tab, or with the tags at the bottom of the Windows Explorer. If I try to change something and click apply or OK, it just changes right back. I have all the permissions checked under my account. I tried unchecking the Read-Only attribute of the folder and files, but it after I click apply or OK, again, it changes back when I reopen the dialog box.There are several other threads with the same problem, but none have a satisfactory answer/solution. I had no problem with this before I upgraded. Please help, it's very frustrating. Also, I'd rather a SOLUTION from Microsoft rather than a way around it with third party tag software. Thanks.

Saturday, January 16, 2010 2:53 PMGeoff81D

I had this exact same problem and spent all day yesterday trying to solve it, finding no help on any of the sites I searched. However, today I have SOLVED the problem and so have registered here so I can post the solution: THIS IS NOTHING TO DO WITH USER ACCOUNT CONTROL!!!!! The problem seems to be with the ID3 tags in the files. I suspect in my case iTunes has caused some conflict with how the ID3 tags are handled but I'm no expert on all that to be honest. I was however able to use iTunes to easily solve the problem. All I did was open the problem file in iTunes, right click on it and select 'Convert ID3 Tags' then from the drop-down menu in 'ID3 Tag Version' select 'v2.2' (I didn't try any of the others maybe they also work?) You can select multiple tracks at once to convert them all. If you go back to windows explorer you will find that the song information is now back and fully editable. I'm sure there are other programs you can use to convert the ID3 tags but iTunes worked for me. This is a bit of a long and laborious process if you have many tracks to do but worth it in the end. Read more at social.technet.microsoft.com

 

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The Story of Bottled Water (2010)

Talking Cat - Cat Nip Trip

Words matter

Came across this through a link on Twitter - there is more at the page ... wanted to capture the main jist of it since this blog seems to not have updated since 2008 ... this is an important message - one I don't think many think about.

Amplify’d from radicalmasculinity.blogspot.com

Can We Stop Using the Term Ally?

We really need to stop using the term ally. This applies to all of us in anti-oppression work, whether in the work in question we are part of the oppressed or oppressor class*. This is not about people who self-identify as allies and don't work on their privilege and refuse to listen to members of the oppressed group, but to all people who might self-identify as an ally to an oppressed group. Ally is an inherently problematic. It:

1.) Presupposes you are doing a good job, and by its very use, is a coercive request to members of the oppressed group to give approval to the person in question, and more so, it is linked to an expectation of gratitude for attempting to do two things:

a) Acknowledge and work on** one's privilege as a member of an oppressor class.

b) Helping to make voices of the oppressed class heard, and actively standing up in solidarity with the oppressed class.

a) is just part of being a decent human being. If you are not acknowledging your various privileges and trying to understand what it is to be a member of an oppressor class, you going from benefiting from an oppressive system (which, as a member of the oppressor class, you can't help but do) to contributing your energies to maintaining and strengthening that oppressive system. (b) is working in solidarity, and working in solidarity is a necessary part of a strong, broad-reaching anti-oppression movement.

2.) Distracts attention from members of the oppressed class and focuses on the self-identified ally. Anti-racist, anti-cissexist, anti-sexist, anti-ablist, anti-classist work needs to focus on the voices and experiences of the oppressed class, not the members of the oppressor class who are attempting to be decent human beings and/or working in solidarity.

3.) By self-identifying as an ally, you are building an identity on others' oppression. This is profoundly appropriative, because it is making oppression you do not experience part of your own identity. It also furthers the Othering of oppressed classes, as it once again has people defining themselves in terms of not being the Other, and reinforcing the view of the Other at the margins. Read more at radicalmasculinity.blogspot.com

 

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Twitter 'lecture' to newspapers

A series of thinking points from a twitter feed of a talk to newspaper executives ...

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@jxpaton's Twitter lecture to newspapers

by Jeff Jarvis, 7 hours ago

#JRC CEO John Paton gives a talk to newspaper executives in a series of tweets

From MediaXchange 2011 stage my Ten Tweets To Transform Newspapers - starting now #naamxc11 #jrc

“the newspaper model is broken & can’t be fixed” #fail #naamxc11 #jrc

“newspapers will disappear in less than10 years unless their biz model is changed now” #changeordie #naamxc11 #jrc

the ne

“the new newspaper model must become digital first and print last” #customerswantdigital #naamxc11 #jrc

“the new newspaper model must now only allocate resources to the new news ecology” #slaytheproductiongod #naamxc11 #jrc

“stop listening to print people and put the digital people in charge - of everything” #printnogoodatdigital #naamxc11 #jrc

“newspapers must invest in content, sales & disruption – sell or outsource everything else” #linktotherest #naamxc11 #jrc

“trust the crowd & especially your youngest employees they will lead the needed experiments” #naamxc11 #jrcbenfranklinproject #idealab #jrc

complaint: newspaper dollars becoming digital dimes #naamxc11- response: start stacking the dimes #stopwhiningaboutreality #naamxc11 #jrc

“digital first works #jrc digital audience grew 75% now more digital audience than print in less than 1 year” #newspaperscanchange #naamxc11

“digital first works: #jrc digital revenue up 70% Q1 ‘11 vs Q1 ‘10 – real growth not newspaper voodoo bundling metrics” #naamxc1 Read more at storify.com

 

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Interesting article Amplify experiment

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Friday, March 25, 2011

Beast + Angel = Mensch

I hope you'll forgive my mania for diagrams lately.  I'm just practicing for stuff I have to do for work.  But a couple of years ago I put up a reflection piece on Steinbeck's East of Eden entitled "Shrewd as Serpents, Guileless as Doves." About a year before I reread the Brothers Karamazov.  I don't know the secondary literature well enough, but I'm sure others have made the connection between the two books.  This diagram shows how the two map onto one another I think pretty neatly, and it gives me a chance to riff on a theme I've been thinking a lot about lately.

I don't want to make too much of it; it's just an opportunity for me to make a diagram, but the diagram summarizes a basic Kierkegaardian idea that I doubt either was aware of, and it is in the background of my piece Metaxis--to be human is to be pulled in two opposite directions at the same time--toward the eternal and ideal on the right, and toward the particular and finite on the left-- and the people who reach what I think of as "Menschhood" are those who live in the space between these opposing forces, hold them together, and over time marry or integrate the two.

Those who don't hold it together tend toward either Hell West--which is the conventional idea of Hell--the realm of the seven deadly sins, the human life driven by instinct unmixed with grace. It's where Papa Karamazov and Smerdyakov are situated in The Brothers K, and Cathy, the sociopath madame of the local brothel and mother to the two brothers, Aron and Cal, in East of Eden. But Kierkegaard, Dostoyevski, and Steinbeck point out that's only the western wing of hell; the east wing is occupied by those who are seduced by angelism. Both Ivan and Aron live there, and Adam, the brothers' father, spends a lot of time there as well.

People who are in angelism hell are generally more socially acceptable than the transgression prone people on the other side.  Adam is a "good" person in the common sense of the word, but he's in deep despair in the Kierkegaardian sense of the word. He's the polar opposite of Papa K. and his wife Cathy, but is in just as much trouble. His hell is a different kind than the one inhabited by Papa K. and Cathy, but it's a hell nevertheless.  It's also inhabited by everyone who thinks that some kind of discarnate purity is the goal, and while religious and ideological fanatics inhabit this hell in the greatest numbers, it's inhabited by fussy control freaks of any stripe--judgmental types in general who demand that the world conforms to their ideal template for it, whatever that template might be. Katarina, like Ivan, fits this description. So does Ferapont the monk. The longing for purity and control is the longing to live in the east wing of hell.

I think that both books in the final analysis are asking the same question: In The Brother's K: how do you become someone like Zossima; in East of Eden: how do you become someone like Sam Hamilton? People often complain how difficult it is to write an interesting "good" character, and so our fiction and movies abound with interesting villains. Goodness is thought of as being boringly, predictably well behaved, but real goodness is not like that. Both Zossima and Sam are interesting, and they are so not because they're well socialized, but because they're mensches. The Yiddish word best captures what they are and what the goal is--to be a fully realized, grounded, radiant, particular human being. They're wise and generous and and free, and there isn't an alienated cell in their bodies.

Mensch-hood is the goal, and it's realized in the course of a life well lived.  It's not achieved in a snap of the finger or in a satori moment, but in the slow cooking of the instinctual life by the heat of grace, and the grounding of spiritual life in a particular, finite, mortal life. The main task is to hold both sides together long enough so they can work on one another. You fail in this regard if you are, like Alyosha or Abra, temperamentally inclined toward the angelic side and you reject the instinctual side.  And the same is true if you are like Dmitri or Cal, which is to be more temperamentally inclined to the bestial side.

The failure lies in rejecting the other side.  Zossima and Sam are images of what it looks like to have achieved this kind of integration. Lise and Alyosha, and Cal and Abra are at the beginning of the process. I think that both books are interested in people who are attempting to make this beginning--on the instinct-driven side, Dmitri and Cal; and on the angelic side Alyosha and Abra. Dmitri and Grushenka are both on the instinct-driven side, and my guess is that it's harder for people so much alike to make it work, Cal is better for Abra than Aron, Abra needs someone like Cal to ground her; Aron would take her with him to the east wing of despair and hell.

It's interesting that the monk Zossima tells Alyosha that he has to leave the monastery and marry. Is this D's indictment of monastic life? I don't think so, but I'd say D. thinks that someone like Zossima, who in his younger life was a lot like the instinct-driven Dmitri, could benefit by becoming a monk because he starts on the left side of the diagram and needed to reach toward the right. A life as monk is legitimate path for someone like him. Alyosha, temperamentally angelic, would not do well as a monk, because he needs to reach toward  the left side; he needs to be grounded.  And marrying Lise will almost certainly be grounding for him. Abra in East of Eden, a figure a lot like Alyosha, was on a track to marry the angelic Aron, but she realizes that he's not grounded and cannot give her the grounding she needs.  Cal needs her, and she needs Cal.

But the point is that for both Sam and Zossima, mensch-hood is an achievement, but not a project like body sculpting or other narcissistic self-improvement projects are.  It's a different order of achievement because it comes from submitting oneself to an authority that transcends one's narcissistic tendencies. For Zossima it was his life-defining commitment as a monk. For most people it's their life defining commitment to another human being in marriage, and this kind of commitment almost always requires a certain amount of constraint, some times suffering, of going where we would not otherwise go. "Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing," says Zossima, "compared to love in dreams."

I think there are innumerable ways that people have the opportunity to discover this in their lives--and these choices present themselves in so many different ways--but the challenge is to avoid commitment phobia, to live a life in which the key is to keep one's options open, because in the end it doesn't matter how many options we have, but whether we have chosen to become something real, concrete, particular.   But I'm convinced that it's this kind of life-defining commitment that is for most of us the main way available for us to hold together the angel and beast in us. It's the work that both grounds and uplifts at the same time and heals the riven soul.

More on this theme when I have more time.

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MADISON

Spacecollective.org ... ;-)

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