Timothy J. Trace:
> Hi, I have managed to load my wife's 1GB shuffle without using iTunes.

> This is on a Windows XP system.

AKA the Typhoid Mary of OS's.

> Let me summarize for you...

This is only a summary!? My sincerest sympathy if old age took your
dearly beloved wife while she was waiting to listen to her music. About
20 years ago Apple introduced a thing called "Drag and Drop" to
personal computers. Using that clever little innovation, it takes my
wife less than 60 seconds to load her 1GB Shuffle -- all by herself, no
less -- from iTunes!

> First I formatted my shuffle as a FAT32 drive. I left it completely
> blank.
>
> I created a folder on the root of the shuffle, and copied 600MB of MP3s into the folder.
>
> Then I unzipped this file to the root of the iPod:
>
> I installed Python: http://www.python.org
>
> I extracted the rebuild_db.py file from this archive to the root of
> the shuffle: http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...roup_id=136446
>
> I ran rebuild_db.py from the root of the shuffle. I had only to
> double-clicked it because I had already installed Python.
>
> I disconnected the shuffle and rocked out to 106 songs

You Windows guys are a real trip -- always reliable for a laugh! You
might have better spent your time working on this
<http://tinyurl.com/8hcl9>! January is going to be a great month for my
little consulting business!

Davoud

Expert consulting: Mac, Windows. Friend? Get a Mac. Paying me by the
hour? I *highly* recommend Windows.

--
usenet *at* davidillig dawt com

Davoud wrote:
> Timothy J. Trace:
>
>>Hi, I have managed to load my wife's 1GB shuffle without using iTunes.
>
>
>>This is on a Windows XP system.
>
>
> AKA the Typhoid Mary of OS's.
>
>
>>Let me summarize for you...
>
>
> This is only a summary!? My sincerest sympathy if old age took your
> dearly beloved wife while she was waiting to listen to her music. About
> 20 years ago Apple introduced a thing called "Drag and Drop" to
> personal computers. Using that clever little innovation, it takes my
> wife less than 60 seconds to load her 1GB Shuffle -- all by herself, no
> less -- from iTunes!
>

<devil's advocate>
What if one thinks that iTunes is a piece o' crap? Since python is
multi-platform what if one doesn't have a Mac or Windows?
</devil's advocate>

Greg

--
"All my time I spent in heaven
Revelries of dance and wine
Waking to the sound of laughter
Up I'd rise and kiss the sky" - The Mekons

G.T. <getnews1@dslextreme.com> wrote:

> Davoud wrote:
> > Timothy J. Trace:
> >
> >>Hi, I have managed to load my wife's 1GB shuffle without using iTunes.
> >
> >
> >>This is on a Windows XP system.
> >
> >
> > AKA the Typhoid Mary of OS's.
> >
> >
> >>Let me summarize for you...
> >
> >
> > This is only a summary!? My sincerest sympathy if old age took your
> > dearly beloved wife while she was waiting to listen to her music. About
> > 20 years ago Apple introduced a thing called "Drag and Drop" to
> > personal computers. Using that clever little innovation, it takes my
> > wife less than 60 seconds to load her 1GB Shuffle -- all by herself, no
> > less -- from iTunes!
> >
>
> <devil's advocate>
> What if one thinks that iTunes is a piece o' crap? Since python is
> multi-platform what if one doesn't have a Mac or Windows?
> </devil's advocate>

But he did - he was using windows XP.

--
Woody
Alienrat Design Ltd

In article <11rdpf6c157o3a@corp.supernews.com>, G.T.
<getnews1@dslextreme.com> wrote:

> <devil's advocate>
> What if one thinks that iTunes is a piece o' crap? Since python is
> multi-platform what if one doesn't have a Mac or Windows?
> </devil's advocate>

Or...the guy could simply be a retard.

Woody wrote:
> G.T. <getnews1@dslextreme.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Davoud wrote:
>>
>>>Timothy J. Trace:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Hi, I have managed to load my wife's 1GB shuffle without using iTunes.
>>>
>>>
>>>>This is on a Windows XP system.
>>>
>>>
>>>AKA the Typhoid Mary of OS's.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Let me summarize for you...
>>>
>>>
>>>This is only a summary!? My sincerest sympathy if old age took your
>>>dearly beloved wife while she was waiting to listen to her music. About
>>>20 years ago Apple introduced a thing called "Drag and Drop" to
>>>personal computers. Using that clever little innovation, it takes my
>>>wife less than 60 seconds to load her 1GB Shuffle -- all by herself, no
>>>less -- from iTunes!
>>>
>>
>><devil's advocate>
>>What if one thinks that iTunes is a piece o' crap? Since python is
>>multi-platform what if one doesn't have a Mac or Windows?
>></devil's advocate>
>
>
> But he did - he was using windows XP.
>

Yes, I know, but his instructions would apply just as well to this
laptop running OpenBSD so I'm glad he went to the trouble of posting his
summary.

Greg

--
"All my time I spent in heaven
Revelries of dance and wine
Waking to the sound of laughter
Up I'd rise and kiss the sky" - The Mekons

On Sat, 31 Dec 2005 19:37:31 +0000, usenet@alienrat.co.uk (Woody)
wrote:

>So you got an iPod shuffle at 9:30, thought 'for some reason I want to
>use this iPod shuffle without iTunes' and by 9:36 you had all your songs
>on it?

Thanks for not being mean :>

In your example, I would say that the time from 9:00 to 9:30 was spent
opening boxes and trying to figure out the shuffle paradigm. Once I
had all the ducks in a row, I performed and repeated the procedure
twice to be certain that it was working before I trained my wife. No
more than 6 minutes in either instance.

I'm a previous iPod owner. I've had a 4G 20GB and 1 1G Mini 4GB for
nearly a year. I've never used iTunes. From the very start I've only
synced my players using Ephpod, and I wanted the wife's new shuffle to
sync with Ephpod, also. Unfortunately, as I discovered last night,
Ephpod does not support the iPod shuffle, and there are no plans to
add that compatibility.

One reason I sync with Ephpod is that I prefer to keep all of my media
in a single server-side directory where my LinkSys WMA11B can see all
of it. Another reason is that keeping everything on the server allows
me to access my music from whichever of my workstations or notebooks
that I happen to be logged into at any given moment.

Unless iTunes has changed, and *please* correct me if I'm wrong, songs
that you download to the player are not backed up on the host PC. Lose
the player, lose the music. Or, to stretch the analogy, no WMA11B
connected to the player, no iTunes songs on the home entertainment
system. And, no, I don't believe you can connect a WMA11B to an iPod,
anyway.

Admittedly this leaves me out of the loop with regards to cutting edge
music, and stuff that is not represented in my collection. I
currently don't buy downloadable music. I'm making a statement of
some kind. Well, perhaps: I've ripped almost 500 discs from my
collection using Exact Audio Copy and LAME, and I populate my players
from those rips.

The last thing I need is an outlet where I can toss away $1 per song
on new stuff and rarities...I'll be broke within a week :>

As for missing out on the functionality of iTunes, that's not a huge
concern, but I'll grant that I don't know much about iTunes. What I
have now with Ephpod, etc, works well and is not all that much more
complicated than what I imagine iTunes to be.

Timothy J. Trace wrote:
>
>
> Unless iTunes has changed, and *please* correct me if I'm wrong, songs
> that you download to the player are not backed up on the host PC.


I have no idea what you're asking. iTunes plays songs that are stored
in the iTunes library on the computer's harddrive or on a network
attached drive. What host PC are you talking about?

> Lose
> the player, lose the music.

Lose the harddrive, lose the music.

> Or, to stretch the analogy, no WMA11B
> connected to the player, no iTunes songs on the home entertainment
> system. And, no, I don't believe you can connect a WMA11B to an iPod,
> anyway.

Well, you can't install iTunes on a WMA11B.

Greg

--
"All my time I spent in heaven
Revelries of dance and wine
Waking to the sound of laughter
Up I'd rise and kiss the sky" - The Mekons

Timothy J. Trace <tim@nospam.co.uk> wrote:

> On Sat, 31 Dec 2005 19:37:31 +0000, usenet@alienrat.co.uk (Woody)
> wrote:
>
> >So you got an iPod shuffle at 9:30, thought 'for some reason I want to
> >use this iPod shuffle without iTunes' and by 9:36 you had all your songs
> >on it?
>
> Thanks for not being mean :>
>
> In your example, I would say that the time from 9:00 to 9:30 was spent
> opening boxes and trying to figure out the shuffle paradigm. Once I
> had all the ducks in a row, I performed and repeated the procedure
> twice to be certain that it was working before I trained my wife. No
> more than 6 minutes in either instance.
>
> I'm a previous iPod owner. I've had a 4G 20GB and 1 1G Mini 4GB for
> nearly a year. I've never used iTunes. From the very start I've only
> synced my players using Ephpod, and I wanted the wife's new shuffle to
> sync with Ephpod, also. Unfortunately, as I discovered last night,
> Ephpod does not support the iPod shuffle, and there are no plans to
> add that compatibility.

I would imagine that as the shuffle is a very different device, it would
probably complicate ephpod (which I have used) to add it.

> One reason I sync with Ephpod is that I prefer to keep all of my media
> in a single server-side directory where my LinkSys WMA11B can see all
> of it.

I keep all my media on my server, although I keep subsets of it on other
computers as well for convenience.

> Another reason is that keeping everything on the server allows
> me to access my music from whichever of my workstations or notebooks
> that I happen to be logged into at any given moment.

Same here.

> Unless iTunes has changed, and *please* correct me if I'm wrong, songs
> that you download to the player are not backed up on the host PC. Lose
> the player, lose the music.

Are you refering to music bought from the iTunes music store? They are
wherever you put them. Lose the player and the songs stay wherever they
were to start with, although if they are itunes files, you might lose
one count of them (I don't know - I don't have any downloaded files
apart from the free ones).

> Or, to stretch the analogy, no WMA11B
> connected to the player, no iTunes songs on the home entertainment
> system. And, no, I don't believe you can connect a WMA11B to an iPod,
> anyway.

I am not entirely with you here. iTunes and the music are separate
entities. There are files downloaded from the iTunes music store which
are protected, and there are files ripped from your CDs that are mp3s or
aacs or whatever. They are all independant of itunes or your iPod.

> Admittedly this leaves me out of the loop with regards to cutting edge
> music, and stuff that is not represented in my collection. I
> currently don't buy downloadable music. I'm making a statement of
> some kind. Well, perhaps: I've ripped almost 500 discs from my
> collection using Exact Audio Copy and LAME, and I populate my players
> from those rips.

I don't buy downloadable music with drm on it. I have bought some music
from artists websites as mp3s ( i recently bought a sarah mclachlan
album on mp3 from her website) but if the only choice is drm it is
easier to buy it from play.com and rip it - If I am going to buy music I
don't want to be told where I am going to play it.

> The last thing I need is an outlet where I can toss away $1 per song
> on new stuff and rarities...I'll be broke within a week :>

Same here.

> As for missing out on the functionality of iTunes, that's not a huge
> concern, but I'll grant that I don't know much about iTunes. What I
> have now with Ephpod, etc, works well and is not all that much more
> complicated than what I imagine iTunes to be.

I think you are mistaking what iTunes is - it is just a music player,
that can connect to the iTunes store, but it doesn't have to.
You stick a CD in, press the import button, it rips it and puts it in
your library (where you have told it to put them). You can get it to
sync with your iPod if you want or you can just pick up tracks and dump
them on the iPod (which appears in the list when connected). It also can
sync contacts/photos/videos etc.

I have 4 computers with iTunes and 3 iPods - none of them sync with each
other, I just copy tracks around (and cross convert to make mp3 cds for
my car stereo). iTunes works well and is not a problem on either the Mac
or the PC.
It also completes the whole iPod experience - yes, you can download
whatever and write scripts to copy things and set things up if you want,
but with iTunes, you just rip files and dump them on the iPod, job done.



--
Woody
Alienrat Design Ltd

In article <11rdrad6ulj2cf9@corp.supernews.com>,
"G.T." <getnews1@dslextreme.com> wrote:

> Yes, I know, but his instructions would apply just as well to this
> laptop running OpenBSD so I'm glad he went to the trouble of posting
> his summary.

It probably would have done more good had he posted it to an openBSD
newsgroup than to Mac and Windows newsgroups.

--
Stop Mad Cowboy Disease: Impeach the son of a Bush.

In article <53qdr15u41ridh8brdbhi0tg24qo6qgoji@4ax.com>,
Timothy J. Trace <tim@nospam.co.uk> wrote:

> Unless iTunes has changed, and *please* correct me if I'm wrong,
> songs that you download to the player are not backed up on the host
> PC.

You are wrong, and things have not changed; they've always remained on
the host computer.

--
Stop Mad Cowboy Disease: Impeach the son of a Bush.