The pain, the pain! (on a scale of 1 to 10 reviews)

[fluffy]

Anyone got some morphine?

[Spud]

Thanks fluffy. And art too! Yay. Working on the post...

[Spud]

OK people. Time for a little game of spot the errors.

Here's what's in my inbox this week:

berkeleysocialscene_1to10.mp3
darricklucas.mp3
For Rachael.m4a
Grill_Shotz-On A Scale of 1 to 10.mp3
JamesOwens_OASOOTT.mp3
ledford_oasfott.mp3
lightningshark_1to10.wma
pacodelstinko_1to10.mp3
paulhubert_oasoott.mp3
tobyroktot_so1210.mp3

To hell with the music. Whoever finds ALL the errors in this week's list wins.

There will be several additional awards. Most errors caught overall without catching them ALL (because it is highly unlikely that anyone other than me will catch them ALL). Most errors identified in a single entry. Most errors by a single band spread over multiple entries, etc., etc., etc. In case of a tie, award will go to the first correct answer in each category.

SPUD

[Lunkhead]

The file naming instructions don't explicitly cover how to handle it when the title contains numbers, e.g. "1" and "10". Should people use the numbers? Should they use the first letter of the spelling of the numbers...? It's not clear. That may have something to do with the errors.

[Lunkhead]

I'm referring to this, just to be clear:

http://www.songfight.org/faq.html#file_name

[Spud]

There's always the pre-fight thread:

http://songfight.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9369

[Lunkhead]

Just for fun though:

berkeleysocialscene_1to10.mp3 - fine
darricklucas.mp3 - missing "_1to10" before ".mp3"
For Rachael.m4a - no band name, no title, upper case letters, space in the file name, wrong file type/suffix, used the optional challenge instead of bandname_title
Grill_Shotz-On A Scale of 1 to 10.mp3 - upper case letters, spaces, dash instead of underscore, band name has underscore in it, wrong format for title
JamesOwens_OASOOTT.mp3 - upper case letters, wrong title abbreviation
ledford_oasfott.mp3 - wrong title abbreviation
lightningshark_1to10.wma - wrong file type/suffix
pacodelstinko_1to10.mp3 - fine
paulhubert_oasoott.mp3 - wrong title abbreviation
tobyroktot_so1210.mp3 - wrong title abbreviation

[Lunkhead]

There's always the pre-fight thread:

http://songfight.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9369

That's assuming that everyone who submits is on the boards. I don't think there is a link to the pre-fight thread anywhere on the songfight.org homepage either. Just sayin'.

[Spud]

Well, Lunkhead, you're in the lead so far!

[glennny]

berkeleysocialscene_1to10.mp3 _ incomplete title abbreviation should be " _oasoott"
darricklucas.mp3 _ missing title
For Rachael.m4a _ capitals, band name named after optional challenge, space in band name, no title, wrong format
Grill_Shotz-On A Scale of 1 to 10.mp3_ captials, illegal underscore in band name, spaces in title
JamesOwens_OASOOTT.mp3 _ capitals in bandname, capitals in title
ledford_oasfott.mp3_ wrong title, preposition confusion thinks "of" is "from"
lightningshark_1to10.wma_ incomplete title abbreviation, wrong format
pacodelstinko_1to10.mp3_ incomplete title abbreviation
paulhubert_oasoott.mp3 _ CORRECT!
tobyroktot_so1210.mp3 _Prince violation: using 2 instead of "to" in title abbreviation, also numbers should be beginning letters in title

[Paco Del Stinko]

attachment: yourbandname_1to10.mp3

Uh, no, Glen.

[AJOwens]

OK, for one thing, the tip says "and then an acronym made of the words in the title," so if you want to change the rule to "1to10" for some random song with no warning, I'm not taking the hit for that.

For another, any editor worth their salt will tell you that 1 to 10 are always spelled out, and how do you spell them? Hint: you don't use the numerals!

For another thing, you Unix people and your case issues! What, are you all e.e. cummings wannabes or something?

And underscores! Cripes, have you heard of Windows 95 yet?

[fluffy]

And underscores! Cripes, have you heard of Windows 95 yet?

Do you REALLY want to have to go down the rabbit hole of filename/URI encoding issues?

[fluffy]

I'm definitely not the first to see all of these but let me take a stab anyway:

berkeleysocialscene_1to10.mp3 - song was submitted from an alternate dimension in which cats rose to become the dominant sentient lifeform on Earth (or, as they call it, Purrrrth)

darricklucas.mp3 - missing _1to10, and also didn't come with the requisite $5 entry fee

For Rachael.m4a - AAC format, and the band "For Rachel" did not spell their name correctly or include the fight name (also last week they were called "For Derrick" and that really mucks with the archive)

Grill_Shotz-On A Scale of 1 to 10.mp3 - underscore and mixed-case band name, - instead of _, full name instead of the 1to10 shortname, also this band is really an As Seen On TV product being shilled by Zombie Billie Mays

JamesOwens_OASOOTT.mp3 - CamelCaseName, all-caps song identifier, and Oat Antelope's Sore Ordeal, Over The Terrain is next week's title

ledford_oasfott.mp3 - Didn't even initialize the title correctly, unless the title was "On a Scale FROM!!!!!!!! One To Ten," I mean what a maroon

lightningshark_1to10.wma - entry came from an alternate universe where people actually use WMA.

pacodelstinko_1to10.mp3 - You're not fooling anyone, Salman Rushdie. Enter under your own name.

paulhubert_oasoott.mp3 - This song consisted entirely of the sounds of someone chewing on marbles for an hour.

tobyroktot_so1210.mp3 - "That's So 1210" was the fight commemmorating when the former king Sverker II of Sweden was defeated and killed by the nascent king Erik X in the Battle of Gestilren, and that was a skirmish that happened last Tuesday.

[Spud]

OK, for one thing, the tip says "and then an acronym made of the words in the title," so if you want to change the rule to "1to10" for some random song with no warning, I'm not taking the hit for that.

For another, any editor worth their salt will tell you that 1 to 10 are always spelled out, and how do you spell them? Hint: you don't use the numerals!

For another thing, you Unix people and your case issues! What, are you all e.e. cummings wannabes or something?

And underscores! Cripes, have you heard of Windows 95 yet?

You Unix people? Are you talking to me? If it weren't for the historic precedent set by Narbotic back in the early aughts, we would be using 8.3, which I greatly prefer. Anyway, what's it to you? Sorry for the hardship dude. No matter what the naming convention was, people would abuse it, and I am the one who has to fix it. For you, it's one damn file. For me, it can be dozens. It's not like I disqualify anyone, anyway. In fact, I go out of my way to convert these .wma and .m4a (and other) formats to .mp3 and get them posted. It just adds to the wait time, and you get to hear me grouse about it once in a while, OK??? Geez. Get off my lawn.

[AJOwens]

Sorry, Spud, I didn't mean to get on your nerves. I was just joking around. In bad taste, I guess.

I appreciate what you do, and no, I don't want any OS flame wars! Sorry.

Let me just add that I screwed up the file name with caps. Sorry! To that I will cop. And I'll be more careful next time, and I'll read the opening post through, and I'll go back and read the Tips now and then just in case I forget. It was slack of me.

As for some of the other entries, well, on a scale of 1 to 10, I feel your pain.

[AJOwens]

There's always the pre-fight thread:

http://songfight.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9369

That's assuming that everyone who submits is on the boards. I don't think there is a link to the pre-fight thread anywhere on the songfight.org homepage either. Just sayin'.

That's a good point. And the (tips) link is well-designed, but small enough that some might miss it. Just giving out the actual filename somewhere prominent (with MP3 in flashing text -- oh right, they took that out) -- would probably help solve a lot of these problems.

[fluffy]

Or there's doing technological fixes like not using email for submission, or at least scripting the ingestion of the emailed file attachments into reasonable filenames with format validation, or whatever.

[AJOwens]

Mine is like, way easy do. Somewhere near the title and due date, you put:

This week's file name:
[mybandname]_1to10.mp3 (So if you are Keith Richards it's keithrichards_1to10.mp3. And we said MP3!)

Where the name links to the Tips.

This is just applying technology of a different kind.

[Spud]

Or there's doing technological fixes like not using email for submission, or at least scripting the ingestion of the emailed file attachments into reasonable filenames with format validation, or whatever.

The only technological upgrade that will work is an upload form that renames the files to the standard. Otherwise, people will always screw it up, no matter how clear you make it. And even then, .wma?

[fluffy]

Or there's doing technological fixes like not using email for submission, or at least scripting the ingestion of the emailed file attachments into reasonable filenames with format validation, or whatever.

The only technological upgrade that will work is an upload form that renames the files to the standard. Otherwise, people will always screw it up, no matter how clear you make it. And even then, .wma?

A technological measure can also tell people "hey we only support mp3, please resubmit in that format"

and it would check the file based on its content, not just its file extension, because believe me I know what kinds of asinine shit people do to make error messages go away like uploading product images in BMP format (which we don't accept) by renaming it to some_product_image.bmp.jpg or whatever (and still complaining that it doesn't work).

[Spud]

A more advanced technological solution would convert the file for them...