heironymouscoward's Journal: Mummy I'm Not Bored Anymore, Vol 1.

Around the age of five, I asked my mum: "Mummy, I'm bored, what can I do...?" She gave me a cardboard box, glue, pair of scissors, and I became a cardboard box nerd.

I think that was the last time I was bored, except for a brief 8-year spell at school that my brain has consigned to the "incompatible disk partition, any attempt to fseek may cause physical harm" section of life.

The problem - familiar to many - is the total lack of time to do even a few of the zillions of interesting things I'd like to try.

So, this section of my journal will describe things that I'd like to make or do, but don't have time. It's a bit like MDPA except that I won't restrict myself to brilliant inventions.

What I want to make today (but I can't find the glue) is a new kind of multimedia. The physical format is a DVD, capable of storing 4.something GB of high-quality compressed music, say 70 hours' worth. Poor people can use the CDR format, with 12 hours of music. The magic comes, as usual, from the software, which is probably a media player plugin. What it does is to play selections, in sequence or randomly, and pull up web pages that describe the music being played.

I'm proud of my CD collection, mainly because it's filled with artists I never heard of, music that comes from random corners of human culture I never visited before and never could visit except through the magic of voice and instrument. Like right now I'm playing "DFA - The Dreamtime Remixes", a bizarre electronic album of half-trance/dance, half-stoned, completely eclectic stuff.

Music makes much more sense when you can pull up a web page that discusses the album, where people explain which tracks they like, and why.

So, my little XMMS plugin (which I repeat, exists only in the space between my ears) pulls up various web pages discussing and reviewing the music being played, overlaying the screen with the current artist and title being played.

I don't want to get this functionality from a commercial vendor because I don't want to see marketing material and ads.

For use at home, I guess, where it will put a definite end to the "what the HECK is that music?" questions, or for wifi-enabled plasti-flat-screened MP3 players of the future.