i’ve written before on the non-random nature of my ipod shuffle.
i have an 512mb ipod shuffle, and itunes loads songs randomly onto it. the shuffle has a small capacity (about 120 songs) and i have thousands of songs in itunes, so i should get a good variety of music. problem is, i’d swear that my ipod plays favorites, because certain songs get loaded onto the ipod all the time.
and, further, the ipod shuffle itself has a shuffle feature, so that the randomly loaded songs should be played in random order.
it doesn’t though, i swear. certain songs are loaded every time, and those same certain songs are randomly picked every time i switch the damn thing on.
back in july of 2005, when i first wrote about this, the earworm song was “money back guarantee” by the five man electrical band. it got so bad that i deleted the song from my itunes playlist.
my ipod shuffle’s current obsession is “hallelujah” by leonard cohen. a much better obsession, to be sure, but nevertheless one gets tired of a steady diet of mr. cohen.
i’ve taken steps to minimize the damage–i don’t put the ipod shuffle on shuffle. in other words, i don’t randomize the random loading of songs anymore.
all this is prompted by today’s wall street journal article about one man’s quest to get to the bottom of the randomness.
he’s a computer science lecturer and a random numbers expert, and he’s bought an ipod and promises to get to the bottom of all this.
good luck, dude.
i’m betting the ipod wins the battle.