SonicChicken blog

In this post I lamented the fact that I couldn’t realistically use my iPod Shuffle to listen to podcasts. Well, I finally broke down and bought a “real” iPod to give podcasts another try.

I’m listening to Mark Johnson’s Boardgames To Go podcasts, trying out the features I wasn’t able to access with my iPod Shuffle. I beat my head against the wall trying to find out how to place a bookmark using my new iPod until I discovered that this feature isn’t available on non-AAC encoded material. (BGTG is MP3 encoded.) To find out which encoder was used for a podcast, control-click (or right click) on the podcast in iTunes and select the “Get Info” or “Properties” item. To change an MP3 file into AAC, select the “Convert to AAC” item from the same menu. My PowerBook G4 does this conversion about 18-20 times faster than real-time, but even so it takes 2-3 minutes to convert each episode. (I foolishly selected all 29 episodes for conversion–18.4 hours of material took almost exactly an hour to convert.) I made sure that I sync’d an AAC-encoded podcast and started playing it, but I still couldn’t find any way to bookmark it using the iPod. I think I’ll just post this in it’s current state, because I’m getting a little frustrated.

I’m still waiting for a microphone for my iPod, so I can’t even try making audio notes about podcast content. I’ll put some more notes up when I get to that stage, hopefully in a few days.

I had to reset my iPod while fiddling with it. (In fact, I’ve had to reset it relatively often since I started listening to podcasts.) I found this site, with instructions for resetting a “white iPod”, which didn’t work for me. I tried the iPod Mini instructions, which did work. I would guess that the distinction isn’t white vs colored, but rather how new the model is. I have one of the newer color-screen iPods. Anyway, here are the reset instructions which work for it:

1. Turn the hold switch on, then off.
2. Hold down the menu and select buttons for a few seconds, until the Apple logo appears.

One more thing I want to include on this post is a link to podsites. I haven’t spent much time on this, but it looks potentially interesting, and I’d like to come back to it later.