New Gear...

Over the years, I've managed to amass more than 3,300 DVDs. I've also maintained a catalog of all of the titles in my collection. Every year the movie list gets bigger and bigger and producing a printed version becomes more difficult. I've looked into print-on-demand services and the results would be really, really nice, but, the costs are bit higher than I would like. I've also tried my hand at self-publishing, but, I can't really produce anything more than a flat list of titles and, surprisingly, to produce even a bound list of titles actually takes a lot more effort than I would like.

After some consideration, I've decided to go to an electronic alternative. At first, I thought that I might try a electronic picture frame, loaded with cover art, but, in practice, it would take someone about six hours to peruse my library using an electronic picture frame.

Eventually, I settled on using an e-reader. I looked at a variety of devices. Color was high on my list of desired features, but, ease of use, durability and cost would have to take precedence. An absolute, must have feature was support for alternative formats like PDF. Frankly, there are better alternatives to the Kobo that are in color and have a support for more file formats, but, in this case the winning factor was cost -- Kobo was the cheapest e-reader that I could get for the money I wanted to spend.

After some experimenting with the Kobo's PDF rendering engine, Mom and I found a page layout that we could live with.  At 20 points, the real-world, print size in the PDF is extra-extra-large, but, when scaled down to fit the Kobo's screen, the print is small enough to accommodate several titles per page, but, large enough to read comfortably.

The entire movie list, with images and descriptions would be around 800 pages, so, to minimize the amount of page turns required to find an entry, I've decided to divide the list into manageable chunks. I could either make several documents or create one document with several chapters. The chapters method would seem to be the ideal way to go, but, it also, seems to be the more complicated method to actually pull off successfully.

Recently, there was a Josh sighting. Josh and Tony stopped by for a few minutes and Tony got a chance to see the new gear. I got the movie list loaded and I broke down the list by title and by category. At Tony's urging, I added a page for new items. Since the entire movie list is now in a database, it's a simple matter to query the database and display the results. Tony would have preferred a touch screen interface (as would I), but, was generally pleased with the latest evolution of the DVD list.

On an unhappy note, it looks like our DVD of Joan of Arc has wandered away from its case and will have to be replaced. We suspect that it's been missing for at least a year. We don't believe that it was intentional. But, on the bright side, according to Amazon, the DVD is still in print and shouldn't be that difficult to find in stores.

On another interesting note, while researching some of the titles on the DVD list, I noticed that someone is endeavoring to sell two documentaries on comic books (Comic Book Confidential and Comic Book Superheroes Unmasked) for $500. It's been said that a fool and his money are soon parted. If feel sorry for the poor fool who would spend his $500 on these two documentaries. Don't get the wrong impression. I enjoy watching and re-watching these documentaries. They're really good, but, in my humble opinion, they're not worth $500.