Just another nerd.
Via BoingBoing.Net comes a link to an excellent FM radio broadcaster on a PC card. The PC Max comes in ISA and PCI flavors and can accept an external 5W amplifier and antenna, so you could just broadcast your MP3 collection throughout your house, or reach out and touch your nearby neighbors (and get that lovely knock on the door from the FCC).
The geek in me says I need one of these.
I could not agree more with Donald Norman’s assessment of the sad state of DVD menus. Sometimes it seems like DVD manufacturers are in a competition to see who can produce the most convoluted and unhelpful DVD menu.
But Norman leaves out what has to be the single most annoying that about DVD menus — most of them break the hardware controls. Norman writes that,
Some DVDs require the viewer to move the cursor to the desired spot on the screen using the remote’s directional control. The actual action is then activated by depressing the “select” key (called by different names on different remotes). But on some DVDs, the action is initiated as soon as the cursor is over the item.
But an even bigger problem is that many of these DVDs will not function with the controls on the front of the DVD. For example, one of my favorite DVDs is The Wizard of Oz, which has a menu designed a lot like the infamous Windows 95 “Start” function. To play the DVD you first select “Play” and hit “Select” on the remote. But this doesn’t actually play the movie — instead it brings up a submenu where you again have to select “Play” and then the movie will start.
The upshot, aside from the extra annoyance, is that if the remote control is temporarily unavailable (and the remote gets lost a lot at my house), it impossible to play the movie. You can press the “Play” button on the front of the DVD player as often as you like, but nothing’s going to happen. In fact, most of the DVDs I’ve bought completely break the “Play” button on the front of the unit.
This is also annoying when combined with the animation DVD menus now add. For example, my daughter loves Shrek, but the menu for Shrek features Eddie Murphy’s character bouncing up and down shouting. When I’m scrambling trying to find the remote to play the movie, the last thing I want is 5-10 minutes of uninterrupted shrieking from Murphy.