Maybe life isn't so random after all…
I've had my iPod shuffle for a couple of months
now and have noticed a couple of minor oddities. Firstly, the unit actually
takes a few seconds to boot up and shut down. I noticed this because pressing
the play or battery buttons immediately after switching it on or off doesn't
seem to do anything, but if you wait a few seconds it works as expected. Not a
big deal, but worth knowing.
More
strangely, when replenishing my iPod shuffle with a new selection of (supposedly
random) songs from iTunes, I have noticed that certain tracks seem to come up
more than others. Maybe this is just a coincidence, but I have had some of the
same tunes come up two, three or four times in a row,
and in exactly the same order as
before, whilst I've never heard even a single
track from other albums. It seems that life may not be quite so random after
all…
OK, having implemented a few random number
algorithms in my time, I realise that, despite appearances, computers are never
truly random. However, with a good algorithm and suitable 'seed'
value—such as the current date and time—it should be virtually
impossible to discern any sort of recurring or regular patterns. It's also very
rare for iTunes to choose a single album track on its own. They normally seem to
show up in pairs, so perhaps iTunes is trying to do something clever (or perhaps
I have just seen
Pi
too many times!).
I'm also in the
process of converting my entire iTunes music library to QuickTime AAC format
(that's MP4 to you non-Mac users) because the quality is so much better than MP3
and it means that I can squeeze more songs onto my hard disk and iPod shuffle
(not that I've ever found this to be a limitation). It really brings it home
just how much information a computer can hold these days. I've been feeding it
stacks of CDs for days now and there's still room for more.
Amazing!
Posted on Wednesday - June 15, 2005 at 11:41 AM
