sophinisba | iPod and Pandora

I've now had my new iPod Nano for a week and I totally love it! It is so delightfully small but it holds all the songs I have in my iTunes so far. (There are still a lot of CDs I haven’t saved yet but whatever.) It is blue and really very pretty. I’ve never had an iPod before and I’m just so pleased.

I've taken it to the gym for walking and (a wee bit of) running on a treadmill a couple times and found that works pretty well but not perfectly. I have this armband that is designed to carry a classic iPod so it was a little big for the Nano but mostly okay. More of a problem is that it's always slipping down on my arm, sometimes even wanting to slip past the elbow, which makes me want to bend my elbows more, which is not great when you're trying to relax your arms and save your energy for the running and all. Plus it’s in a bit of an inconvenient place as far as adjusting the volume and skipping songs. I don't think it would work to just hold it in one hand because I'm always having to press buttons on the treadmill and I'm scared I'll get confuzzled and fall off (as I once did years ago while holding a Discman – not fun!). Anybody have advice or ideas for this?

Speaking of music and technology, I've also been having some fun with the website Pandora.com. The way it works, you tell it the name of a song or an artist that you like, and it makes a "radio station" with similar music. You can add more songs or artists as "seeds" to influence what kind of station it is, and for every song that they play you say whether you like it or not, so it keeps refining as you go, and meanwhile you're usually listening to a lot of music that you like, some of it familiar and some new. If you like a song you haven't heard before you can get more information about the artist really quickly and there are always links for you to buy the song from Amazon or iTunes.

I’ve found that it works especially well for finding artists that match other artists, not quite as well for the feel of a particular song. The variety is not as big as it would be with an actual radio station but sometimes that's okay. The most pleasant surprise for me has been how quickly it figured out my tastes for my Latin American rock station, and after that I was disappointed with how little African and Arabic music they seemed to have.

The other thing I've been doing for music lately is borrowing CDs from the public library and copying them to my iTunes. I know this is not especially ethical but it's just so easy I don't really want to stop.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That sounds like a really cool site. I hope you have fun with the new player, too!

Yeah, Pandora is neat for finding out about artists you might like without having to buy them first. (I like it way better than the Genius feature on iTunes.) I was listening to it a lot last week but now that I have my iPod I'm listening to that even more.

Can you wrap it around your forehead instead of your arm? Or stuff kleenexes in so that it fits as snugly as it if were a larger iPod?

The problem is more that the band is bigger than my arm. Yesterday I tried stuffing my t-shirt sleeve under it but that just made my t-shirt hang weirdly. Eh. :)

I was so uncomfortable with the idea of arm bands that I have a different kind altogether. It clips onto my pants waistband!

That website sounds awesome!

And the pants you work out in are sturdy enough that that works? I think it could work with the pants I use, but probably not the shorts, which are more loose. I do love that the iPod is so tiny and light though!!

I either clip my iPod to my pants waistband, or put it in a pocket if I happen to have one (my shorts have pockets). Never even tried the armband, just didn't seem like something that would work.

Hewene

The shorts and pants I exercise in don't have pockets but I will look into getting a clip for the waistband, because that seems like it could be useful in a lot of situations. I'm a little disappointed with the armband thing.

Does your treadmill have a compartment to hold things? I do this with mine (which is a big mother of an 8GB video iPod) on the exercise bike at my gym -- I just tuck it in one of the storage openings and then peddle away. Of course, I'm stationary in that I'm not moving away from the monitor appreciably like you might when you run. Your ear cords should be long enough to try it tho.

I have done that with an exercise bike and my CD player, but the treadmill is a lot scarier to me for some reason... maybe the idea that if I don't keep up it would send me back and off, and if I'm still connected to this thing that's sitting on the treadmill the fall will be messier. But I'll check it out again tomorrow morning and see if that could work.

And duh, that should've been "pedal". Anyway.... ;)

My complex also has a little gym room, and the treadmill they have in there has a cord you're supposed to attach to your clothes so you can't get too far away.

Hee, I did not even notice the pedal thing. :D I tried just setting the ipod in one of the little water spaces on the treadmill today and it worked okay! I'm going to keep taking the armband with me because it's nice for stretching and some other things.

I'm glad to hear that that worked. And I had another thought for you -- I have an iPod case that has a clip on the back. If you find something like that, you could clip it to your pants/shorts.

iPod and Pandora

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject