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A 'random' option

Sat Aug 09, 2014 12:17 am

Whilst I am coming up with things I want :) - a 'random' button would be great, if I can't decide what to watch (from a complete collection, or from a subset, action movies or sci-fi series or whatever), click a button and the program would pick one for me...at the moment I can do it myself by exporting a list, importing to excel and having it pick a random entry for me, but this is very clunky :)

(and to continue with slightly being a wind-up merchant :), both Collectorz (http://www.collectorz.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=17489) and MyMovies (http://kb.mymovies.dk/KnowledgebaseArticle50044.aspx) offer this functionality :) )

Re: A 'random' option

Sat Aug 09, 2014 1:20 am

I don't know what to say... I have a todo list with tons of features that I want to add to Coollector. Enough to keep me busy for many years! But a random picker? That's not on my list, not even at the bottom. That sounds gimmicky. I've never understood how someone could find this useful. It's really that hard for you to pick a movie at random that you need the help of Excel?

Re: A 'random' option

Sat Aug 09, 2014 1:33 am

if I want to genuinely pick a random show, 1 out of 9000, I need something external that can read my exported coollection, then pick one at random (and excel is the easiest thing to do that which I have...I think powershell could do the same with a text file, a little bit simpler, but still fairly clunky)

Sure, I can scroll up and down the list with my eyes closed, and pick whatever is in the middle when I finish, but even then I know in my head roughly where I am in the list (and I will never get number 1 or number 9000). Even if there was some visible numbering in the database (file 1 is "1000 eyes...", file 9000 is "Zygon"), you could just pick a random number and look at that entry, but there's nothing like that either.

it's not a big problem at all, but it's the same with any large collection of anything - if you don't have some kind of randomness available, you tend to pick things you know or things you've heard of, and you'll never end up with something completely new...

Re: A 'random' option

Sat Aug 09, 2014 2:22 am

Orclev wrote:Sure, I can scroll up and down the list with my eyes closed

Sorry, I honestly don't understand. I clearly don't work like you. Different personalities... :roll:

I don't understand why you close your eyes. When I want to pick a movie at random, I scroll _with_my_eyes_opened_, until I stumble on a movie that makes me say "that's it, that's the movie I want to watch". It's quite random because I'm not always in the same mood. It also depends on what I've watched the days before.

If I'm in the mood of watching a movie that I've never seen before, I can use the filters "owned + not rated". If I'm in the mood of watching a great movie for the Nth time, I can use the filters "owned + positively rated". If I'm in the mood for a blockbuster, I can order by IMDb popularity and focus on the top of the list. If I want to watch an old or a recent movie, I can order by year. Maybe I'm in the mood for a western. Or a french comedy. Etc...
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