Comment by DrAwdeOccarim

Comment by DrAwdeOccarim a day ago

7 replies

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I love this! I really wanted to go down this road when my kids were younger, but the paucity of floppys and the low storage space made me go down the Avery business card print outs with RFID stickers on the back and a raspberry pi with an RFID reader inside. Of course, the author is using the floppys as hooks instead of as storage media...what a great idea. The tactile response and the art you can stick to them makes them ideal for this purpose.

SoftTalker a day ago

QR codes on cards would work as well, if I'm understanding what this project is. The floppy disk approach has some nostalgia maybe but seems quite fragile. I quickly learned to never let my kids handle CDs/DVDs (one of the worst physical media designs ever; they are totally unprotected) as they would quickly become damaged and unplayable. Floppy disks are at least sort of protected but the same idea applies.

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  • doubled112 a day ago

    I still have a large number of working CDs from when I, myself, was a kid. DVDs too but they were later and more durable.

    I’ve always wondered what people are doing to them? Maybe I just got lucky. Maybe I was just careful with them. Maybe I don’t remember the ones that failed.

    I don’t think kids are less careful now, although being screamed at for making the CD or record skip was probably a deterrent.

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    • sethammons 6 hours ago

      My little kids loved to slide discs on the ground like they were cleaning a mess with a rag. We lost many movies this way.

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    • vel0city a day ago

      Some people really get the idea of only handling it around the edges. Lots of other people just handle them however they want and have no problems touching the media anywhere. Especially kids, which often don't have the cleanest hands at any given moment.

      Lots of kids will handle them however they want. They'll pick them up with greasy, sticky hands right on the media section. They won't necessarily care about ensuring they're properly in the drive tray. They'll jam all kinds of things into the drive slots. They'll drop them on the floor and step on them, toss them in a toy box when told to clean their room, etc.

      Obviously not all kids will be this way, but many will.

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vanderZwan a day ago

I don't think I can get my hands on a floppy drive, but I still have an ancient computer somewhere with a DVD player in it. While not as cool, I had been considering turning into a simple media station for the specific purpose of letting my kid pick what music to play or video to watch by herself, without needing a screen to navigate it.

Like you, it never occurred to me that I can also just use specific DVDs or CDs as hooks for videos to be streamed, or media downloaded on a hard drive. So that suddenly makes the whole project a lot more interesting, and possibly easier too.

Buying a large pack of burnable DVDs is a lot cheaper and sustainable than using SD-cards like other commenters suggested.

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