Paul Kimbrel's Musing

I think I speak for all consumers when I say… we hate your menus.

You know what? When I plop down $10, $15, even $20 for a movie… you know what I’m interested in?

THE MOVIE!

Not the 15 minutes of menu introduction with swooshes and bangs and clips from the movies and pretty music. Nor the lousy video game graphics. If I wanted a video game, I would not have bought…

A MOVIE!

Now, it’s forgivable if I can hit the skip-forward button and get to the guts of the menu. To Disney… kudos to you for making sure we can skip previews and the lengthy menus. To the rest… shame on you!

My kids just acquired an old movie about a certain rangifer with a nasal disorder. Just like many of their other movies… there were several previews that could not be skipped, and a lengthy (though not the longest I’ve seen) menu which could not be skipped either!

I dare say if we could find the people who produce these things, put them in a room with a whiny child eager to watch a movie, and give them their own DVD to start - things would change.

Please, please! If you produce DVD’s and are responsible for these menus, read the DVD spec. Become familiar with the skip feature. Use it. Disney figured it out. You can, too!

The consumers of America would appreciate it.

I just can’t give up on this one… Okay, I’m reading the description of this $1500 power cable.

“The Clairvoyant’s signature is engaging, energetic, and bristling with light and microdynamic life”; “lifelike timing and pace” coupled with “clarity, definition, lithe touch, and articulation throughout the lower registers.”

WHAT!?? It’s a frigg’n power cable!

Oh, and it gets better… Now there’s a $2200 version of the cable:

http://www.audio-magic.com/Prod-Clairvoyant4D.html

Still, I had to go back and re-read the first cables description a little more…

Despite their lack of social standing and diminutive presence, there are select power-cord lines that have become popular among audio explorers — and no, not because of the politics, payoffs, or consumer naiveté’ to which skeptics ascribe their success. The most competently engineered power cords on the market will audibly reduce AC-borne noise in a system.

It’s good to know there’s a cable out there that will properly preserve the noise generated on the thousands of miles of power lines between the power plant and my studio.

So, I need a 10′ USB cable to get from my computer to my printer with out tripping over things. Tonya was on her way to the store, so I asked her to stop by and pick up a cable at Best Buy.

10′ cable.
$28

What’s with that store, anyhow?? When she called me to ask if that price sounding right, I replied, “no… find someone and ask where the the regular cables are.” So, she did. He led her to the same aisle and pulled a $40 cable down and handed it to her!

$40 for a 10′ USB cable???? I justed looked one up on New Egg and they have one for $2.59! Oh, but wait! That one’s not gold plated! Sheesh. I thought it was stupid when Radio Shack started gold plating their audio connectors. I own a professional recording studio, folks. None of my equipment ever came with gold plated connectors. Why do consumers think they’re equipment’s any better. But now, USB cables? What… do the prints off my laser printer look better because the the one’s and zero’s are clearer on the wire?

Man. That just nuts. I’m going back to Computer Deli.

Okay, so the title is a bit extreme… but I’m really getting fed up with a few things in CSS. Why is it that it takes me an hour to get things aligned? Why is it that I have to bend over backwards to get the same page to look the same way in more than one browser??

I’ve drunk the whole “web standards” coolaid - I know the value in staying away from tables for layout, and trying CSS tricks for drop shadows and nifty corners. But at what cost? So I can join the “elite” CSS gurus in the ivory tower of tableless webpages?

Well - poop on it.

I’m using tables again. No, I’m not going gang-buster like the folks at Slashdot and use a zillion tables to do everything. But let’s face it - when you want things to line up - rows and columns kinda do the trick. And it ain’t that hard to do. Oh, suuuuure, my code is little messier - but NEWS FLASH! USERS DON’T CARE ABOUT THE SOURCE! So why do WE care so much?? Why do I care so much?

Sorry - I’ve just been banging my head against the wall trying to get two boxes side by side. Simplest thing in the world, right? Sure… if I didn’t have a copyright footer at the bottom that keeps popping up right smack in the middle of my boxes. I was beating that dead horse for hour and then just threw it in a two-column table. BANG! Everything lined up - in both major browsers. Geesh, I feel so… dirty. Eeww… tables are evil!

Well, I once I got over my oh-my-gosh-I-used-a-table guilt, I pulled up good ‘ole IE (I develop with FireFox) to view the same page.

Yea, see… I was trying to use pure-CSS corners to round out my boxes. Works great - till you put it in a table - and then IE screws it all up.

Well, now that’s pickle, ain’t it? Is it any wonder that all the major e-commerce sites use tables for their layout and images for their “nifty corners”?

Oh well, I guess one doesn’t make money by being a purist.

*sigh* Now my head hurts.