Wednesday, July 22, 2009

iPod update.

While the video feature is neat, the iPod has mostly been used for lawn-mowing, snow-shoveling, or the occasional bike ride on the Monon.

I'm not the kind of person that listens to music a lot. While I like music, I don't much listen to it while doing other things. If I'm sitting on the porch or in front of my computer, I'm either reading or writing, and neither of those activities needs a soundtrack in Tamaraland.

The one place I do listen to music is in the car. I don't listen to radios, because I like to pick the music I want to hear, and there's no radio station around here called WTAM FM. Also, DeeJays and commercials both bug me. More accurately, bad DeeJays and commercials bug me, and amusing ones are few and far between.

Even after in-dash CD players made their appearance, I generally preferred cassettes, because I could make my own mix tapes tailored for my mood and the kind of driving I was planning on doing. Writeable CD's and multidisc changers fixed that.

And now comes the iPod...

I picked up a little Belkin cassette adaptor for mine last weekend. Sweet Shiva on a surfboard, this is what I've been looking for: put that little Nano on shuffle and it's like WTAM FM, with no commercials and no DeeJays and only songs from albums I liked enough to buy. And I can just hit the skip button if I'm not in the mood for the Sex Pistols or Cowboy Junkies or P.O.D. or whatever it's served up. I just have to ingrain the habit of taking the iPod with me when I get in and out.

So this is what all you people have been all excited about for all these years! I am liking your exotic world of the future.

16 comments:

Jeff the Baptist said...

Yup. My ipod lives in the center console in my car. Comes indoors to get synced with the latest podcasts about once a week, then back to the car on my next trip out. I can see why you wouldn't want to do that with convertible though.

The Freeholder said...

Wait until you discover podcasts. You'll invent roadtrips just to have time to listen to them.

Joe Huffman said...

Podcasts and tons of stuff from Audible are what I listen to on my Zune (and before that an iPod) while I driving, walking to/from work, or at the gym.

I have some music on the Zune too, but I don't listen to it very much.

Priest said...

So what type of music is on WTAM FM?

Buck said...

Took my shuffle to Indiana to visit family and everyone thanked me. It kept my hyper acting niece busy the whole three days.

staghounds said...

That's what I did when I converted to mp3 discs five years ago, haven't heard a song I don't like in the cars since...

Heath J said...

WTAM 1100 is the station I catch up on all of my talk radio, out of cleveland.... It's an AM, but the call letters fit ya..

Anonymous said...

If you're so inclined, there is some pretty good content on Sirius, too.

Jim

David said...

The best part of ipods, outside of driving music is podcasts.

There are some great gun podcasters out there.

Check out Tom Gresham's Gun Talk, The Urban Shooter podcast, The handgun podcast, etc.

--------------------
Guns only have two enemies - rust and politicians.

the pistolero said...

Glad to see I was not the first to mention Sirius. I've heard all sorts of great music I hadn't heard in YEARS before I got it, and I've been introduced to a lot more. If it had not been for satellite, for example, I might well have never found out that Deep Purple had other songs besides "Smoke on the Water." And that Queensryche recorded a lot more than just "Silent Lucidity" and "Jet City Woman." (They recorded a LOT more good stuff besides that, actually.) So it took me 20 years to discover it. Better late than never! But yeah, Sirius is good stuff. I tell people all the time that it's the best $12.95 a month I've ever spent. I do like my iPod too, though.

the pistolero said...

Oh, and Sirius makes for a damn good backup when your iPod craps out on you after you forget to take it out of your pocket and it goes through the washer. Ask me how I know. On second thought....don't. :-) Let's just say I keep the new iPod clipped ON my pocket instead of sticking the iPod IN it...

Top of the Chain said...

Welcome to the future Tam. While we don't have anti grav skateboards and banana peel fueled cold fusion reactors quite yet, you can carry a jukebox full of songs on your hip. Right next to your S&W. Ditto for podcasts. Gun Nuts is even downloadable as a podcast.

As for Pistolero, Welcome to Operation Mindcrime.

Anonymous said...

Don't forget audio books. Great for the long car trips and they pass the time even better than music.
Robert

wv: famme - female member of the family?

theirritablearchitect said...

"So what type of music is on WTAM FM?"

Taking a wild-assed guess here, but I'd say most anything after about '95 or so is too, um, errr, youthful for her to get.

I'm much in the same boat.

I prefer to listen to the engine noise in my four-banger truck than listen to the effin' radio. Good god.

the pistolero said...

"...there's a job for you in the system, boy, with nothin' to sign..."
Mindcrime was the first Queensryche cd I ever bought, after hearing "Spreading the Disease." I followed it up with Empire -- the one, of course, with the aforementioned hits -- not long ago. O:M was in a class all its own, but even with its more mainstream sound Empire is great too -- just in different ways.

ibex said...

> the iPod has mostly been used for lawn-mowing, snow-shoveling, or the occasional bike ride on the Monon.

Doesn't using your iPod in those ways void the warranty?