Optimizing podcast playback on Optimus

I ran CyanogenMod Froyo 2.2.1 on my old G1 but am trying to keep the vanilla 2.2 on the Optimus T.

The only thing I miss is the CM hack that allows you to do a no-look skip to the next track by holding the VOL UP button even when the screen is locked. I have reclaimed 90% of the CM podcast goodness using $3 of android apps.

ButtonRemapper (~$1) will remap your hard buttons to your liking. I remapped my completely-unused Search hard button to be Next Track. Works great.

WidgetLocker (~$2) replaces your lockscreen and lets you put widgets there. This way you can interact with the widgets without having to unlock the phone. I put the Music app widget on there so I can start/stop music from the lockscreen. If I had another hard button I wasn't using I'd map it to Pause so I could do that no-look, too.

The little bluetooth-badged droid up there is the BTmono ($1) widget for routing audio over a regular mono BT earpiece. I started using that after the author of BT Super Mono decided he didn't need to make his menus fit on screens anymore. He says this is because he only has hi-res screen Android devices to test with now. My responses to that are:

1. emulator in the SDK
2. stop hardcoding things like that. You introduced the problem for no good reason. Android allows you to let the device handle the display of such things.

Here's what it looks like now:

survey: the autoblog podcast

"What do you like least about this show?"

Dan's incessant interruptions. If this is going to be The Dan Rant Show, let us know.

Seriously, if he wants to talk 100% of the time he needs his own d*mn podcast. Somebody needs to cut his microphone and ONLY turn it on when they want his input. He is incapable of letting other hosts finish their thoughts. If you don't believe me, pick ANY episode and listen for 60 seconds.

Dan is to Autoblog Podcast as Dvorak is to This Week in Tech.

decent music on KXT 91.7FM

First website ad I've ever clicked on; it was for KXT 91.7FM.

Been listening a bit for the last week or so. The website says:

KERA's public music station features acoustic, alt-country, indie rock, alternative and world music.

It reminds me of the music used to play in the early 90s before they took my pledge money and dumped music the next freaking day. I don't have very good luck with this kind of thing. I pledged to KETR who promptly dumped Joe Frank and radio drama and went all freaking bluegrass the next week.

Podcasts are going to kill NPR, anyhow. I'd much rather pay $5/podcast/year to support a handful of public radio podcasts (Left Right and Center, Planet Money, It's all Politics, etc) and let the rest collapse under its own weight.

churchmouse indicator

Each podcast episode of the (highly recommended) NPR Planet Money podcast starts out with a Planet Money Indicator, an isolated numerical datapoint.

For example, the most recent indicator went like this: "85,000. This is the net number of jobs the economy lost in Dec 2009." They briefly put the indicator in context then start the real podcast.

As I was putting away the two small bags of carefully selected, heavily couponed and compared groceries I bought today I noticed my own indicator, hereafter known as a churchmouse indicator. We have one of the dispensers that holds plastic grocery bags so you can reuse them around the house. For the several years we've owned it it's been so crammed full that we've recycled the bags that would not fit. There are holes on the side of the dispenser that let you pull bags out. There are 8 holes top to bottom. In the past it was full up beyond all eight holes. For the past few months the dispenser fill level has been falling and is now at 1.5 holes. This suggests that the stuff we buy in plastic grocery bags has fallen about 80%.

That sounds about right. That's analagous to the decline in my income in 2009 compared to 2008. I've bet my mortgage (and marital bliss) on my confidence that I can get a teaching job, be an effective teacher, and return to a semi-normal income. So far that confidence has not been justified but we're not yet starving. Perhaps this is The Universe teaching me how to be more in tune with the kids whose families are, financially, treading water.

Further Reading: PM's iPod index and Big Mac index.

Planet Money podcast

There is a fantastic NPR finance show called Planet Money.

They've really helped me understand the complex financial instruments and power plays involved in our current economic fsckup.