Cleanse, Tone, Defrag: My iPod is magic

Yes, this week it’s another column entry tapped out on an iPhone whilst waiting for a cab. Randomness will greatly ensue and…

… no, not my cab. We’re good for now. I could continue en-route, sure, but have you ever tried typing a coherent stream of consciousness whilst the back end of a vehicle goes over a speed-bump or down a pothole? Yeah, doesn’t do anything for my existing motion-sick affliction. Plus, the amount of autocorrected words would be insane.

My iPod is magic. No, really, it is. Over the last however many months I’ve really gotten into having it on shuffle. Sure, I could have actually bought an iPod Shuffle, but when you’ve got a music library that, the last time I looked, has a runtime of over a week’s worth of music, then really you need to have the beefy hard-drive one. And yes, I do need all my music about my person because I don’t know when the mood’d strike to flick straight from Nerina Pallot to Sparklehorse, but that’s beside the point. So, somewhere between it shuffling songs I’ve heard recently and golden oldies I’d forgotten I had, it has apparently acquired some semblance of psychic sentience as it near enough always selects tracks that happen to wander into my mind. Seriously. It’s just done it moments ago.

A person less cynical than I would be suitably impressed, but me? I think this is the tentative first steps to it trying to murder me with some sort of amalgamated sonic-boom from all the music and podcasts I have on it.

The Law of Averages in some way does come into play in that there is a slim chance that the next song that it selects is the one that’s currently on your mind. The only problem I see with that is that I have thousands and thousands of tracks, and yet it plays the one I’m thinking of next. If only my RNG dice-rollin’ extended to World of Warcraft then those sweet and shiny purples would all be mine. Even the ones that my Mage can’t use. Whatever my iPod’s intent, it’s definitely buttering me up for something.

Quite possibly it’s doing it as some kind of repentance for certain tracks and whole albums mysteriously vanishing off of my iPod and iPhone and others having their genres and compilation status changed. It’s a conspiracy. Either this is part of its plan, like a Cylon sleeper biding its time, or it’s some grand orchestrated mind-game being played upon me by a mate. That, or more likely, it’s some random error and or bug, because my mates wouldn’t do that to me for fear of me making with the evils.

So the next song to play wasn’t one I was thinking of, but I’m putting that down to my iPod knowing that I’m on to it.

About Rob

Rob Kidman is an aspiring writer, have-a-go designer, avid tea drinker and geek from birth. Oh, and he’s British. What he doesn’t know about Doctor Who, isn’t worth knowing. Sends text messages in full, perfect grammar, no matter if it costs an extra 10p, as he believes txtspk to be an affront to the Queens’ English. Partial to cheese and pickle, random gherkins, and a fan of the miniature sombrero.

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