[You know, I though about posting this on Wednesday, when it would have been an ayyyye-Pod update, but I decided to wait.]
I haven’t done an update on the status of the iPod in a week or so, because I’ve been busy getting it loaded. So where do I stand? As I type this post, I’ve 41.4GB of music on the iPod (slightly over half the space), with a total of 14,459 songs. I’m not quite done; I have some comedy albums and some jazz/world albums still to load. I guess I’ll be near 16,000 songs when I’m done. In all, I’m loading about 80-90% of all my CDs. Already loaded are all the “pop” music, the folk, the showtunes, the Jewish music, and the vocalists. There’s quite a range there, from Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett to They Might Be Giants and The Alan Parsons Project; from Peter Paul and Mary and Tom Paxton to the Rolling Stones and The Who; from Cass Elliott to Calliope music; from original cast albums to original TV themes to the Monkees (but I drew the line at The Partridge Family, even though I have the LPs burned to CD). I even have four compilations from talonvaki (complete with userpics for album art). Should be interesting to run this thing on shuffle. I have over 30 days of music right now.
I’m still working on the backup solution. Next week I’m planning on getting a removable hard drive (USB mount). I may just do a straight copy of the iPod’s file before I do anything else. Then, based on the recommendations of iLounge, I’m going to invest in a copy of CopyTrans, which looks to be the most appropriate option for rebuilding the iTunes database on removable media (remember, I’ve been deleting the files out of iTunes as soon as I copy them over to the iPod).
Using a gift card we got recently, I did try picking up an iBlaster for my daughter. However, it doesn’t seem to work; it cuts in and out. Email has been sent to customer service, but as we didn’t pay for it, I may not worry. At work, I’m just plugging an extra pair of computer speakers directly into the iPod.
I have noticed that the iPod changes how you listen to music. Before, my focus was on listening to albums from beginning to end. This was true for both cast albums as well as musical albums. Now I seem to listen all day on shuffle, going from this song to the next in a seeming careening path. As such, you listen to the songs as songs and not as anything else. In particular, for cast albums, you don’t listen to how they move the story forward, for music albums, how they tell the artists picture. I can’t tell yet whether this is good or bad, but it is different. I’ve also noticed I tend to play the game where I try to guess the song and the album as quickly as possible.
I also haven’t figured out the right approach for my car. There I currently have the Toyota factory 6-CD changer, with no AUX input. I can go for one of those radio things, but I’ve heard they don’t work that well in the Los Angeles area (but they sell them). A pricier alternative would be to have Toyota modify the car to allow plugging in something (ideally from the headphone jack, as that is most versatile. Suggestions, as always, are welcome.
Once I’ve got the music loaded, I’ll then start to explore podcasts. NPR, here I come! I’ll also do one of those “put it on shuffle and tell what comes up” memes, if anyone recalls the specifics.
