Bring Back the Floppy Disk! (Sort of)

You may think I'm a bit of a nostalgiac (and I am) for saying this, but we need to bring back the floppy disk.

Okay, no.

I don't mean the 1.44mb piece of plastic and metal that you used to hoard in the early nineties to store your compressed Weird Al Yankovic songs on. No, I'm saying we need to bring back something like floppy disks and make them BETTER!

Why would I dare say that? Why, in the world of these flash drives and SD cards and blu-ray discs and crystal data storage, would we dare bring back THOSE things?! Those horribly SLOW, LOW-LATENCY, NOISY..... THINGS?!

Why? This is why...

In today's world, we have three major types of data storage (not counting magnetic tape cartridges - which are actually, like, almost ten gazillion times better than HDDs): magnetic hard disks, flash disks (like usb flash drives and SSDs), and optical discs (those round lasery things that my Pawpaw can't pronounce the name of). In truth, these are all pretty good mediums with their differences. The thing is, hard drives and flash drives are relatively expensive, and while CDs are cheap, they aren't what I'd use to read and write data (if you buy the rewritable ones at all).

So what's the deal with this "breeng bahk duh floppeh" business? Well, with all the different data storage mediums today, none is really cheap. And the only one that is really cheap is only really good for writing to once, and it gets damaged easily. But what was so great about floppies? 1) They were cheap, 2) they could hold smaller amounts of data, which was usually all you needed for some documents, and 3) they were rigid.

If I was to write a program or get some funny pictures or whatever, and I wanted to loan it to a friend, I'd want something cheap and low-data to give it to him on. I'd never trust them with a 4GB or 32GB flash drive. Of course, I'd need more than 1.44 megabytes - maybe around 30 or 50 on a disk. I'd also want it to be rugged so that I wouldn't have to put it in a ziploc bag or case just to hand it to him on. I also wouldn't want to spend anywhere between ten and twenty dollars on one - I'd really want something between 25 cents and two dollars. That's why disks would be a great medium!

Look, if we started making the same little square floppy disks that we were using back in the day today, we'd be able to store a whole lot more data on them and make them a whole lot cheaper. They'd be the perfect format for small stuff! That's what they were a long time ago! Face it people - this is what we don't have, and it would be pretty nice to have it. Not to mention that tape lasts longer than flash drives or hard drives (even though I have a nice 20 year old Apple 20mb hard drive still working).

Alright, folks. I've made my point. I just wish someone would make my disks. Adios!

Yes, Internet: You CAN Scar People

Ah the internet... it's a world completely within your browser, ready for you to explore. Ain't it great?

If any of you can remember dial up and your first switch to high-speed internet, you might enjoy this article. This is about my initial change to dsl only 6 years ago next month in 2007.

That's right! Up until '07 I had dial up internet along with analog TV. I have fond memories of static and slow, slow internet. I mean, they weren't all fond, but you know... nostalgia. Anyway, we finally got DSL in August of 07 at my mother's house when I stopped going to daycare in the evenings after school (I had to be dropped off there until my Pawpaw could come get me, but we worked it out where the bus would just drop me off at his house). After all, daycare was 30 dollars a week even though I only arrived in the evenings. It's a great daycare, but that's not really a fair price for being there less than an hour for five days a week. 120 dollars a month was a good bit of savings, so satellite and high speed internet were then options.

Like many, the first place I visited with this new, faster way to travel the world was YouTube. That was a big mistake. The first video I saw that caught my attention was "Happy Tree Friends." It looked cute and friendly, so I decided to watch it. Well, the cute squirrel ate some Easter Eggs and his stomach exploded with chicks coming out of him. Mortified, I went along my way. I had obviously heard of at least one YouTube video before and wanted to finally be able to watch it. It, unfortunately, had to be "What Happened to the Magic School Bus." The animation was terrible (like if it had been drawn at 2FPS in MSPaint), but the voices were actually pretty close. I can't find the video now, but I watched it then. Basically, the class cuts open and dissects Arnold, Ms. Frizzle is sent to jail, and the bus is crushed into a small, yellow cube at the junk yard. This was my first impression of YouTube. I hated YouTube and avoided it for more than two years before finally creating an account to share content - which is no longer there, by the way.

Keep in mind that I was nine years old. I was practically eight, since I had just turned nine. I was freaking SCARRED. I didn't care if some idiot drew the video in his Mom's basement - I was SCARRED. I couldn't watch the Magic School Bus for years. When I had to watch it (like in school), I just beared it. Unfortunately "Happy Tree Friends" still exists. Gyeh.

So yes, internet - you CAN scar people. I was an unsuspecting child who was exploring the quick new world of 1mbps internet. If you're online and all you do is make crap, just get off - or at least warn unsuspecting users that they're about to watch something extremely stupid.

9 Story, Please Don't Ruin Season 17 of Arthur

Like many people, I hold near and dear to my childhood. And most things from my childhood I still enjoy - The Brave Little Toaster, Arthur, etc. And some things that I didn't care for much when I was a kid, I like now (i.e. Mister Rogers). And some things I just plain out don't like anymore (half of the stupid Disney movies we had to sit and watch in Daycare - or Barney.... definitely Barney). And yet others I have been mortified to never fully enjoy again, but that's a story for another time.

So like some others, I still watch some PBS Kids shows that keep me entertained (mainly the PBS Kids GO! shows; I've got to stop using parentheses after every sentence). One of these shows is, indeed, Arthur, as you may have guessed by the title.

Well, Arthur has had many different voice actors (and I mean a LOT - check out the list on Wikipedia) and a few different animation studios making it. The most recent of these animation studios is 9 Story Entertainment - or as I like to call them, 9 Macromedia Flash Animators working from a storyboard and whom produce no enjoyable entertainment. Okay, I've never actually called them that before now, but I should have.

Most of the shows that they animate are stupid anyway (like Half Naked Animals). But the thing is, for half of these shows - their horrid Flash crap (and believe me, I've seen some GOOD Flash work - but it looks like these shows were made by a team of lazy animators in Flash) works because the animation style fits the show. The thing is, it doesn't fit Arthur, especially not after 15 years of GOOD and FLUID animation.

They did bad enough on season 16 (you could very seriously tell the drop in quality of the show. It's not a small change like the last time they changed studios). I just hope they don't do the same thing for season 17.

I am not an animator and I know that animation is hard work (REALLY hard!), but there are animators out there that can do a better job than 9 Studios did with Arthur.

This ends our broadcast for tonight, folks.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf Designs

I'm a gamer, and I really love the Animal Crossing series. I also like to draw, and I've made a few different designs on ACNL that I'd like to share via the QR Code feature. So, here they are.

Wii U Shirt

3DS Shirt:

Agricola Shirt:

I thought someone might enjoy these. I'll be posting them to the Bell Tree Forums too.

Why Blu-Ray Discs are Amazing

Optical discs are pretty great. They can store a good bit of data on a round, cheap piece of plastic. They certainly aren't perfect, though. They get scratched and broken and are a lot more vunerable than flash drives or say... VHS tapes. But, they're still pretty amazing.

For some odd reason, however, most of the world seems to be moving away from optical discs. Even though with proper care these things can last for years and years and years and years and et cetera years, everyone seems to think that their hard drive, solid state/flash drive, or floppy drive is much better. I guess people just want to rely on servers across the country to hold their valuable data.

The thing is, though.... they're cheap. Incredibly cheap. Amazingly cheap! Okay, maybe not THAT cheap, but they are an easy way of storing permanent data or selling things. After all, unless you have Google Fiber or a really fast connection, downloading things like 5GB games are a pain in the rear end. Actually, it's more like smelling a donkey's rear end, except the download still isn't complete when you wake up from your coma and the word "Downloading..." has been burned into your good ol' reliable CRT television.

But this isn't what this whole blog is about. No no no no... This is about Blu Ray discs. When the first laserdiscs came out, they were these enormous sewer plates that secretly held movies that you could watch if you bought a $25,000 dollar player. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but the things weren't cheap and they were about as big as a good plate. They eventually went extinct, and the era was called the Plate-lasareian period. Okay, seriously, just kidding.

Even though these dics held superior quality, the Walmart dads still puffed out their hairy eighties mustaches and said in a firm voice, "NO." So, years later, someone put their precious laser disc collection in the washing machine and then dryer, and they came out shrunken to around 12 cm. These were called compact discs. Mysteriously, more data could be held on these "compact" discs. But, seriously, they made smaller discs with more data storage - all using the same red laser.

The tech industry soon moved to these discs, storing music, movies, and even video games on them. After a while, McDonalds started putting more salt on their french fries and every one enjoyed them more. Uh, I meant to say: after a while, these discs kept getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, with some being made rewritable with even more storage capacity.

Now we're to the good part. A couple of years ago, Sony changed up the standard discs. Instead of using a red laser, they used a blue laser. This meant that the disc could hold more data than before, because the data could be written finer and closer together. Also, since DVDs turned people from the VHS era into scratch-a-holics, blu rays were given a special coating that resists scratches much more than normal CDs and DVDs.

Turns out, these discs are actually pretty amazing. I actually didn't care much for them at first because all the early adopters were actually technoligically-illiterate hippies who declared that "dah kwalatee is higha". Of course, this made all of us tech nerds out here do fifteen hundred face palms and reject the technology first-hand. The early adopters that were tech-literate obviously ignored the hippies and bought players anyways. Probably because they had enough money saved from not buying things like a laser disc player. Or life insurance.

The truth is, yes, blu ray discs can hold higher quality videos. But WHY though? Not because "they're the hip new things, maaan," but because they can hold more data (up to 25GB a side if I'm not mistaken). These discs are also more scratch resistant and actually feel pretty cool in your hands. The only downside is, most computers don't have built-in blu ray players and some companies are being quick to abandon optical media. Also, since we're still in the relatively early days of blu ray players, they cost a good bit more than DVDs and DVD players.

Plus, they're the hip snazz dawgs, maaan. 1080p, yolo, and whatnot. Alright, fine. I just really like the extra features of my Doctor Who blu-ray.

Maybe you learned a little bit of something from this article today. Then again, maybe you have a twisted sense of humor and you cried your eyes out laughing. Either way, I'm fine.

Have a great day, folks!

Weeeell

Time to get this blog set up o3o

... or not