Give Life A Soundtrack

Posted by Rev. Mitcz

April 12, 2005

Bought a few things last week, and they all arrived today. It was like a mini-X-mas. Well.. not quite. But it was cool.

I finally got a replacement mirror for my Altima. Instead of paying the dealer $300 plus the cost of labor, I found one on Ebay for $60. Which makes it $71 shipped. I was able to install it myself in under 5 minutes, so I’m back in business there. I just need to hit the dealership this weekend to get a matching casing for it, because right now it’s an off-white and my car’s a burgundy red. So.. aesthetically, it ain’t perfect, but otherwise it’s fine. God, if I’d have known it was so simple I’d have done this months ago. *smacks forehead*

Also got me a 1GB iPod Shuffle and the Arm Band (for jogging, which I’ll be taking up prolly starting tomorrow). Let me tell you something - whether you already have a "full-size" iPod/iPod mini or not, you should really go out and pick up a Shuffle. It’s fuckin’ sweeeeeet. I’ll admit I was one of the first one to bash the thing, even before it came out. I remember saying "A 1GB player with no screen? What’s the point?" and wrote on forums "leave it to Apple to consider ’shuffle-play’ and ‘no screen’ to be ‘features’ of the new iPod."

So, I’m admitting I was wrong. I love this little thing.

Here’s a few things I love about the thing. This is why I love Apple sometimes. Their attention to little details is unsurpassed. And, it’s what marks the difference between reading a spec sheet on a product and actually using it. Their products are much more than the sum of their spec sheets. Satan Bless ‘Em.

Non-Stop Music

Oh sure, it’s probably obvious that the thing’s gonna just keep shuffling (when in "shuffle" mode) and repeating ad naseum until the battery wears out (which is supposed to be about 12 hours). What you might not know, however, is if you, for instance, pull the headphone cord out - like to plug the bitch into your living room stereo after a long jog - it will pause itself until you plug something back into the headphone port. This is doubly great if, say, you’re jammin’ on a track and your roommate gives you a weird look and you say "here, check it" and immediately plug it into his stereo for that perfect moment in the chorus of Faith No More’s "Caffeine", without ever missing a beat.

Beyond that, even, is that I was listening to Love And Rockets "So Alive" before writing this entry. I switched the Shuffle off, unplugged the headphones, and set it on my desk. That was about 10 minutes ago. I just turned it back on after putting in the headphones and guess what? Yup, it started right up from where I left off. How do you beat that?

I have no idea how long it retains that in its little memory banks, but that’s pretty fuckin’ cool right there.

Update Whenever - Synch Later

You can keep the iPod Shuffle as a source in your iTunes playlist, even when it’s not plugged in. Since I was annoyed that it had to "synch up" with every song I dropped into it while the thing was plugged in, I simply ejected it from iTunes so it could charge but wouldn’t synch, and dropped some 120+ songs into the playlist. When I was done, I unplugged it and plugged it back in and in a few seconds - all 120 songs were loaded up and ready to go. Again - fuckin’ nice feature to have.

Also Doubles As A Portable USB Drive

Self-explanatory. You tell the Shuffle how much of its internal drive you’d like to set aside purely for data, and it will only occupy however much is left over for MP3s. It mounts on the desktop like any regular hard drive (in OS X, anyway) and voila! It’s an up to 1GB external USB drive. I used to carry a 64MB USB keychain drive around, so I could carry a given client’s website with me in my pocket, to upload from their office after they sign a check over to me. Now, not only could I deliver a website and it’s support files to a client, but I could rock out while walking through their office to deliver said files.

The Lanyard

They include a lanyard on a separate USB cap for use w/the iPod Shuffle (meaning you don’t have to use the lanyard - you can just as easily use the default USB cap without lanyard). I thought at first "ohhh how fuckin’ lame", but I found that since the Shuffle is so damned small and thin, I can tuck it (and the headphone cord, as well) into my shirt and just walk around with little earbuds in. It’s pretty unobtrusive, actually, and it just looks like I’m scratching my tummy when I pause/play/shuffle tracks.

Random - Yes. Forgetful? No.

The most annoying thing about the "shuffle" feature on most electronics, or most anywhere else you’re likely to find a "random" or "shuffle" feature is that it uses some constantly-changing algorithm to determine what "random" is. This might be fine once in awhile, but what happens if you were listening to Skinny Puppy’s "The Killing Game" and then it shuffles over to Venus In Furs "Tumbling Down" but now you’re sharing an elevator up to your apartment with your roommate’s girlfriend and she loves that Skinny Puppy track? Well, buddy, without a display, you’d be fucked. Thankfully, no matter how many tracks I "shuffled" forth to, I could always return to "Killing Game" with a few touches of the back arrow. So, it apparently shuffles once and then just remembers. Gotta love that feature.

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Goddamn, I wish these babies were cheaper. I love making mix CDs for people. Imagine if I could load up 200+ tracks of amazing music, perfectly melting into one another. The ultimate seemless mix. Since the shuffle can also play tracks straight through from the playlist you created for it in iTunes, you could probably make one helluva romantic gift to someone by making "their" playlist and giving it to them on a Shuffle. After they hear the composition the way you intended it, they switch it over to Shuffle mode and voila! Rock out randomly. See how fuckin’ COOL that would be?

If they were just a bit cheaper, and got even more popular, I could really see people copying playlists from one person to another. "Come over and synch up, dude… I made the perfect playlist for Saturday". Since it only holds 1GB (or 512MB, if you go the less expensive route), most people aren’t keeping their entire playlist on there, so it’s not a big deal if all those songs get deleted upon a synch with another machine. I know I could stand to swap all this music out for someone else’s playlist - and then just synch back my own songs when I get home. Factor in 3rd party "From iPod back to Computer" software that exists, and really… you could keep those songs, too. But, that’s a whole different tangent altogether.

I haven’t done much with the Shuffle yet, having just received it upon coming home today. But, I did take a few walks around the halls in my complex - making something so simple an almost surreal experience, and it soothed my nerves while putting on the new mirror for the Altima. I’ve even got an "in the bathroom" soundtrack now, too. I’m even considering getting the waterproof "Sport Case" for rockin’ out while I shower, actually. Life itself has a soundtrack. Played at random. Based on my favorite songs of the day/week/month.

Oh, sure, I’ve had a walkman before - but it doesn’t hold a candle to having a device so fuckin’ tiny that you can be wearing it under your shirt and no one even knows. No skipping if you jump up and down too fast. No flipping the tape after 30 minutes of play. No worries of scratched discs, or spending a fortune on AA batteries. Also.. no worries of where the fuck to carry some massive personall music device. It’s practically weightless.

I’ve got songs on the Shuffle now that, I just know, if I walked to the top of Hollywood Hills (a steep, but short 5 minute walk from my apartment) in the late evening, just before the sun sets, and chill out up there and kicked on some Tom Waits, Skinny Puppy, Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Faith No More.. you name it - and just looked out and chilled out… I’d be in my own little world and it’d just be perfect. Talk about a way to relax. All the comforts of being outside, looking at one of the greatest views in the Western World, without all the fucking noise of Hollywood.

Keeping with that line of thinking - I could really go for synching up 2 Shuffles with the same playlist, to play straight through, and walking to the afforementioned top of the hills. Being up there, with someone else, listening to the same track at the (relatively) same time… it’d be like sharing a private concert. Passers-by would have no idea, but you’d both feel it personally. Bleh. Where’s a girlfriend when you need one? That whole thing doesn’t go over quite as well w/one night stands or male friends. Just seems weird. Though, I could see Nad and I rockin’ out to some oldschool Metallica that way and reminscing about high school. We do that when we take the Altima up and around the hills, though, so it wouldn’t be much different.

The only problem now is that I feel so guilty being filled up with music, hearing the perfect song for the perfect moments that play out in front of me - and I just wanna share it with everyone around me, but I can’t. They prolly wouldn’t "get it" anyway. They’d be like "what the fuck is THAT noise all about? Who cares if that weird singer taught the Killing Game??".

Makes me think Apple really oughta do an ad campaign based on that whole "perfect moment" feeling. The Shuffle’s not intelligent, just a random computer. But, somehow.. it picks out the perfect track, damn near every time. The new slogan oughta be..

"Give Life A Soundtrack".

(on a last note : the Shuffle might actually make ya look sexy, too.)

no, really… it might