#one of these usb mp3 players

[the-solar-system52]

big fan of USB sticks. what secrets do you hold little slab of plastic?

[semiprofessional-cheese]

I just saw a tiktok tutorial for burning a mix cd, and I have never felt older.

[nhaneh]

I don't miss the bulk and hassle of old physical media - being able to bring massive music libraries with you pretty much wherever you go pretty much effortlessly with no skips and minimal seek times is much superior to what we had before things like mp3 players became basically ubiquitous.

But I'll admit I sometimes miss the kinetic feel of things like minidiscs or cassette tapes.

Like don't get me wrong, SD cards and USB thumb drives not only house *vastly* more data than the 3.5" diskettes and tape datasettes of my childhood, but even most of the really cheap ones also tend to be significantly more reliable, especially compared to the 3.5" floppies which picked up sector faults the way magnets pick up metal fragments, but there was something satisfying about all the mechanical noises and action that was involved with some of those medias.

[magentas-dystopia]

Something I really lament is the move towards digital media. Slowly we start to never own the things we like. Even if we "buy" a digital game, or movie or show. It's locked behind a certain platform or service. Once it shuts down we lose it forever.

(me when big booby anime girl explosion Is taken off of Netflix)

I also feel like there's a certain charm to owning physical media, like things you can hold and the satisfaction from pressing a clicky button or putting a disc or cassette in and seeing it work.

(oooh so classy so retro so.. expensive in the modern day)

More people should try to make copies of what they own digitally, or try to buy physical media before it's lost from streaming services and digital storefronts forever. Like the case with certain games like Godzilla 2014 and Transformers War for Cybertron. They don't exist digitally anymore. Only hard copies exist outside of emulation and at insane resell prices like... INSANE ones for a mediocre Godzilla game

So yea. Buy some more CDs of those albums you have on replay! Buy a DVD of that niche obscure anime you like! And most importantly PLEASE PLEASE START MAKING HARD BACKUPS OF SHOWS YOU LIKE THAT YOU PIRATE!!! media preservation is important!

(me downloading every episode of Daredevil onto my hard drive to burn to a DVD later so I can give it to all my friends)

This is now going to be a Comprehensive guide on how to rip a CD

POLL TIME!

Burning and Ripping Disc's❤️❤️💕💕🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️

STEP ONE:

BUY A CHEAP BLU-RAY/DVD DRIVE FOR YOUR WINDOWS COMPUTER

here are some I recommend!!!

i personally use this pioneer one :)))

DVD drives in general are relatively cheap from 30-20 smackeroos, but Blu-ray drives are around 80-100 bucks depending on the manufacturer but offer better support for copying HD video such as on a Blu-ray.

STEP TWO:

FIND A PIECE OF MEDIA YOU ENJOY.

in this case its gonna be a CD!!

i really enjoy Vespertine by Bjork, but i wanna have it on my computer just in case anything happens to my CD. SO. ill open Windows Media Player

(she hasn't changed since 2011 <3333 be urself girl)

NEXT

ill insert the disc into the player. and it'll start playing!

Pause the disc and go into Rip settings

NEXT!! select the format!

if you want to conserve space and don't mind sacrificing audio quality select MP3! if you want to hear the same level of audio quality as preserved on the CD, select a format labelled LOSSLESS. I recommend .WAV files as they'll work with most devices including an android phone or iTunes on PC (more on that later ;3 )

NEXT!

create a folder on whatever u wanna save ur music to! (u can call it whatever u want the world is your oyster bestie)

THEN!!! FINALLY

go into more options on the Rip Settings menu!

select ur folder and press Rip CD!!!!

the fun thing of this now, is that you can pull these files on your computer and put it onto your Android device so you can listen to your hearts content without lugging around your CD in a player at high quality without any subscription service with free reign of who you can give your download to!

But Magenta! what if i have an iPhone?

ohohoo fear not bestie because iTunes on PC has an even EASIER way to do it

because simply putting in a disc with iTunes downloaded prompts THIS

(oooo so new age)

and if you have apple music on your iPhone this will sync to your phone if you logged into iTunes on PC!!

thank you for coming to my TED talk

[tarisilmarwen]

RobStar Week, Day 7 - Playlist

(Last one! I had fun with this. Set sometime during the Titans' long road trip chasing the Brotherhood of Evil. IDK when exactly but this is an underexplored time period in fanfics so I thought it would be fun to set one in it. And yes, all the songs referenced were on my own ipod RobStar playlist.

Enjoy!)

---

Starfire's taste in music was... eclectic, to say the least.

Her interests ran the gamut from basic pop starlet to the screechiest of death metal bands (which she claimed reminded her of the "great musicians of the Tolothian Praxxus") and, it sometimes seemed, everything in between. She even, somehow, had music from other planets. Robin had absolutely no idea how she had obtained a recording of her favorite childhood Gorka pipes band, nor how she had digitized said recording into MP3 format and gotten it onto the same ipod holding the Becky Wilder TV soundtrack and Rachel Tanner's latest album. Frankly the shuffle felt a little bit like playing Russian Roulette.

So Robin sympathized a little with Beast Boy when the song changed, once again going from one genre to something diametrically opposite, causing the changeling to clutch his temples and throwing his head back with a groan.

"Can't you stick to one genre?!" he complained. "I'm getting whiplash from these mood changes!"

Starfire turned to glare at him where he was squashed in-between Robin and Raven, in the middle of the backseat of the T-car.

"Whoever has shotgun seat decides the music," she reminded him, her voice unusually clipped and irritated. "Those were the rules you set. And I am also the only one who has music in my collection that you all enjoy," she pointed out.

There were mumbled noises from Cyborg and Raven as they conceded some agreement.

Starfire sighed, pushing hair out of her face tiredly as she lifted her ipod, plugged into the T-car's music system via aux cable.

"I only wish this were better organized," she said. "I can never find anything I am looking for in this library. It is impossible to scroll through to the songs I know we can all tolerate." She skimmed down the songlist, the ipod clicking and clicking and clicking as it proceeded down the endless track names.

"Oh that's easy to fix, just make a couple playlists," Cyborg suggested, flexing his hands a bit on the steering wheel as he signaled to begin passing a semi.

Starfire looked up from her scrolling, face an expression of blank confusion.

"A... what?" she asked.

Robin straightened and scooted forward a little bit in his seat. "Here, I'll show you," he offered. He reached between the driver's seat and shotgun with an outstretched palm.

Hesitant but curious, Starfire paused playback on her ipod and disconnected it from the aux cable, handing it over.

Now Robin leaned down, bending almost in half as he searched near his feet, the seatbelt digging sharply into his shoulder. After a moment of fumbling in his bad he slid out his red laptop and propped it open on his knees, also fishing for a USB cord.

Within minutes he had the music player open to Starfire's extensive library and was clicking through artists and genres, trying to tap very carefully on his mousepad with the vibrations of the car. She watched him fiddle for a few moments, eyes inquisitive, hand curling around the side of her seat.

Robin concentrated, his brows pinching cutely until he gave a nod of satisfaction. Turning the computer around he showed her what he was doing.

"Right, so, see here, where I've basically added a folder to the device storage?" he asked, leaning forward, trying to stretch to show her.

Beast Boy held back a complaint as he was pushed against Raven by the gesture. Starfire nodded in rapt attention.

Robin pointed to the screen as he demonstrated. "So you take any song that you want to go on the list and just kind of... drag it over from the wider library."

He clicked and pulled one of the Gorka pipes tracks to the new playlist, then clicked to open it.

Starfire gasped in delight, grabbing up both sides of Robin's laptop and bringing the device up closer to her face.

"Oh this will make things so much easier!" she cried.

Robin smiled and pointed over to the sidebar. "And see how you can name it pretty much anything you want? You can basically put any number of songs on the new list—"

"—And then they can share a common theme!" Starfire interrupted in conclusion.

"Exactly! You can do love songs, songs that make you happy, work-out songs..." Robin started listing.

"Songs to listen to while rocking it out at the club," added Beast Boy.

"Songs to set the mood with your date," Cyborg put in, grinning. "Lotta R&B on mine for that one."

"Ew," Beast Boy said, wrinkling his nose.

Cyborg shot him an offended look. "Don't be hatin' until you try it."

"What about you, Raven?" Starfire asked back, interrupting the brewing argument. "What kind of playlist would you suggest?"

"Songs to make you contemplate the existential dread of the universe and your own role in it and wonder if you really are as small and insignificant as you seem or if you just need a sandwich," came Raven's monotone contribution.

...

There a long awkward silence at that, and the boys blinked at Raven in concern and mild alarm.

"That is... oddly specific," was Starfire's inadequate response.

Raven shrugged. "Are we pulling over soon?" she asked towards the driver's seat. "I'm hungry."

Cyborg glanced at the next billboard. "Shakes n' Steaks coming up on our right?" he offered.

The empath waved dismissively. "Sure."

"Aw man!" Beast Boy complained. "Not the Shakes n' Steaks! You know they put meat chunks in the salads?! Who does that?!"

Robin nudged Starfire's arm as the debate on their food stop continued, whispering under Cyborg and Beast Boy's arguing. "Why don't you keep playing around with that for a while?" he offered kindly.

She nodded once, vigorously, mouthing a 'thank you' as she turned around.

-TT-

One pit stop later—Beast Boy wound up outvoted and sullenly resigned himself to picking chicken bits out of his caesar salad—Starfire finally emerged from her meticulous organizing and dismissed herself to the bathroom.

She unplugged her ipod, but left it on the table by his laptop, easily accessible.

Robin slurped through his straw, his eyes falling across it. He set his cup down and stared at the lit screen, mildly curious.

Glancing around as if to check for unfriendly eyes, Robin let his hand snake over to Starfire's place and slid the ipod into his palm, picking it up surreptitiously.

He paid a quick peek at the new playlists in Starfire's library. Sure enough she had "Tamaran" as a category, and "Dancing Music", and "To Cheer Raven Up" and a couple others. He had to smile and chuckle a bit at that last one.

His amusement was drowned out by confusion as he spotted on that read:

"Me and Robin"

He stared at the title for a long moment, visibly wondering, then his curiosity compelled him beyond his reason and he clicked to open it.

His eyes read off the titles as they scrolled alphabetically, slowly widening with realization.

"All You Wanted", "A Thousand Miles", "A Thousand Years"...

Wait a minute, his brain kicked in.

These were all love songs.

Suddenly feeling like he was doing something he very much shouldn't, Robin quickly set the ipod back down in its former spot, heat rising to his face as he was confronted with the knowledge that Starfire his Not Girlfriend (they still hadn't quite figured that out although after the whole alien planet stranded thing they at least both acknowledged they had feelings for each other) had been picking out songs that she felt defined 'them'.

Like an actual girlfriend would.

Hoo boy he hoped he wasn't going to have to clear up another misunderstanding.

-TT-

He was still nervous while he waited his turn to pile into the backseat, after Cyborg's annoyed, "Yo! If we want to make it to Atlanta before nightfall you better get your butts back in the T-car!" shout had cut short their lunch.

Starfire claimed shotgun again, much to Beast Boy's whining and complaining, but Raven picked him up with her telekinesis and stuffed him into the backseat ahead of her and shut the door, pointedly going around the other side and leaving Robin standing there awkwardly with Starfire.

The princess handed him his laptop back.

"Thank you for the usage of it," she said. "I believe I have arranged things to my liking."

There was something coy in her words, and her grin was a little too... knowing.

Robin coughed and tugged at his collar and rubbed his neck, tapping a steel-toed shoe. "Yeah, well... good. Good, that's... I'm glad."

"All right, enough committee meeting," grumbled Cyborg, ending the moment with a pointed shove to Robin's shoulder. "Get in the damn car, I gotta fill her up."

The moment the door was open Beast Boy popped out again. "At least lemme have the window seat this time!" he yelled, and Robin found himself jostled and bumped as he was shoved none-too-gracefully into the car and squashed into the narrow middle seat, pushed right up against Raven on one side and Beast Boy on the other.

Raven tried to pull her elbows in closer and failed.

"This isn't uncomfortable at all," she said dryly.

Robin had no reply, no real thoughts of any kind really, because as soon as she was comfortably seated and Cyborg was turning the key in the ignition, she looked back straight at him with a wry grin and pressed play on her once-again-connected ipod.

And when the first song off 'their' playlist started, Robin's throat closed with a pitiful embarrassed squeak and he turned a very bright red.

[sunnylolli]

Tiktok has been accused of creating short attention span in people, especially children, and Instagram is starting to look no better after 'reels' came out. My best advice would be to delete these apps completely. And if you still wanna keep your account just in case, then you just delete the app and not your account.

That's true, I've seen the statistics as well!

I did try to delete tiktok for a while, and I luckily only use intagram to talk to friends and keep up with what they're doing in their day to day -

It might be a bit of a controversial opinion- particularly going against science and all - But in my experience, deleting Tiktok entirely, just made it harder for me to keep up with certain friends. They'd send me tiktoks that I couldn't see, they'd reference videos I hadn't seen;

and fomo isn't all it is, as much as it's feeling a bit like I'm falling behind a socialisation process.

Because I can delete tiktok to clear my head, but I can't make every one of my friends do the same thing, you know? And there are content on tiktok that inspires me or gives me ideas for art or writing, as well!

Corecore videos for example.

Or art references, Spooky Lake Month, where a creator covers 31 days of spooky/haunted hydrology every october etc. Or how to crochet better, stuff like that.

So I find that in order to not be entirely out of the loop with my siblings and some of my friends, as well as simply enjoying specific things on there, I would rather put boundaries/time-limitations on the content I consume on there, rather than removing it entirely!

To throw back to a previous ask I replied to - I find that removing the source of my 'addiction' entirely, simply makes me want it more and makes it more likely for me to 'relapse'. I end up overconsuming it, because I've deprived myself of it rather than easing myself into a routine without it!

But I do understand where you're coming from, thank you anon. And I do wish it was as easy as that to get rid of it.

I miss when I didn't really have anything outside of like, youtube, tumblr and deviantart on my computer. And listened to skrillex and nickelback on my usb-pen mp3 player back in my emo-phase in 2013 😔 Genuinely, that's not a joke

[arbitrarygreay]

So I'm an old fart that still uses an mp3 player that transfers files via USB or SD card, and since changing to Linux, updating that thing has been PAINFUL due to the loss of MediaMonkey. Absolutely none of the modern Linux music players do proper playlist-based file syncing. (That is, you select the playlists to update, and sync both the files and the playlist m3u to the target device, even if the target device uses a different file folder structure from your computer.) Rhythmbox pretends to, but in practice you can only do it once and all subsequent tries error out. Having to wipe the entire gigabytes of data every single time I want to update the player? Um, no. The closest I got was using Strawberry to transfer files, but it doesn't sync the playlist itself, which is a huge hassle. And I know, another major old-fart moment, as the younguns these days just use cloud servers and dynamic playlists and service-based playlists and shit. Which is therefore what all of the non-dead Linux music players focus on. But I think I have finally got a working solution, by running 32-bit Foobar2000 through Wine with the OneWaySync component. (Although, I will still have to use a bash script to do auto-edits of the device playlist filepath, since Foobar is exporting Wine-assigned filepaths. Thankfully I already have one basically good to go from my Strawberry setup.)

[amazing-spiderling]

Favorite Murderdock headcanon? :D

It's canon that in E-65 the Beatles are still alive and producing music as a band (so presumably their post-band careers do not exist). Gwen actually gives Miles a USB of music from her earth at some point which is HONESTLY??? the kind of multiverse stuff I'd like to see happen more.

That being said, I have amused myself imagining Gwen encountering Matt as some point post-main series and chucking an mp3 player full of 616 music at him and being like, "Here, listen to Imagine and maybe you'll calm down." I kind of like the idea of her reaching out to him with like, the one *positive* thing they have in common and him begrudgingly accepting and appreciating it.

[tomatosoupgroup]

HELLLLOOOOOOOOOOO

i hope you are all having a good 11:53 PM EST

what have i got this week?

well...

a FUCK ton. (i think.)

first of all uh

new logo

i made it myself!!! rigged it and everything

really proud of this!!!!!!! i'm not really good at 3d modelling so this is awesome

also it leaves a good first impression ya know

if you follow my twitter, you've probably seen this:

this, my friend, is the Mighty Controller Tester™

it only has support for this specific controller

this is the controller i use to test the game

no, i'm not kidding. it's literally the only usb controller i have

so yeah i can confirm this is the optimal way to play el

speed run hack

hey y'know what would be super funny

if i just put a bunch of random shit that i made but didn't explain any of it

have fun with those stinkyyyyy LMAO

what else???

oh right, i made a new dialogue box !

pretty proud of this one too!!! i feel like i'm getting better at this.

one last thing

got myself an mp3 player

gonna use it as a reference for like

the y2k/frutiger aero aesthetic

ANYWAYS

that's gonna be it for this week

love you all

-Callie

[thirst2]

It's been said, before, and I think anyone remotely familiar with open-source has experienced or heard it but I'm still always taken aback by how much technological infrastructure was built to be general-purpose and malleable by the common user and how much corporations obfuscated and erased this.

Even in the tagging system for .mp3 files – ID3, an open standard –, I'm finding all kinds of functionality they accounted for that makes a lot of sense for a music file to specify (like lyrics synch.ed to timestamps and being able to specify events in the song like the outro or intro or the refrain or an interlude).

And I was just completely unaware of them because no music player on Windows ever offered them (alright; I mostly used iTunes, at the time, but the point stands).

iTunes saves any ratings you apply to songs in its own database; I never used the system in part because I've never found a need but, primarily, because I didn't want to invest a bunch of time and effort into something I'd lose the second I switched music players.

Oh; but did you know ID3 (v2) has a rating tag? One that iTunes could have used and then I'd take my ratings wherever I take my files with me?

Not only that but rating for a song are marked by an E-mail of the person rating; I expect it was largely to provide a unique identifier of some sort (and very 90s/00s to assume an E-mail is one's primary form of unique ID) but that means that songs can be rated by multiple people.

When your friends give you a copy of their favorite songs on a USB drive, those songs would've had their ratings.

Like a lot of tech. (especially early) architecture, this part fails to account for the presence of bad actors and spam but it also means you could reach out to those who rated the song, before you; their E-mail's right there.

Back when we traded AOL handles and the notion of communicating with those you knew but weren't nearby was exciting and new, we could have reached out to the friend of a friend of a friend at school who'd rated the song before handing it off until it reached us.

Even – now –, accounting for not wanting to attach your E-mail to a file that you'd, then, have to worry about getting into hands which might abuse that personal info. about you, being able for multiple people to tag a song is cool.

If I setup a Raspberry Pi at home and setup the Music Player Daemon on it for Jude and I to both put our songs on to listen to, etc., we could both tag the songs with our ratings and see what the other thought of the music we were sharing.

Like…this is some cool functionality ideas; this is some nice architecture. You just need the players to implement the functionality.

But they didn't; iTunes setup their own rating system (whether to tie people to their music player or not, I have no idea) and I never bothered to use what could be a sort of communal feature.

When I get excited about tech., these are the things that initially drew me to it – the ability to not only make my life, as a spoonie, easier but the ability to make all kinds of stuff we do everyday easier and with more people and to connect us all even more.

From the ability to making things more accessible without having to rely on others as much for it to…I dunno; the possibilities are endless.

Instead, the sheer joy so many of my generation had at creating their personal web pages by playing around with HTML and CSS became harder to construct because these businesses didn't care to make these experiences accessible because they didn't make them money.

I will never not be angry about that.

In any case, I'm at the point where anything further I might say is something I've already said before here on the subject; but I'm going to have these other tags be more accessible in my player. There's some really neat functionality in there that someone might want to utilize if presented in a more user-friendly manner (the original job of the music player implementations, to begin with…).

[smileymoth]

when i was abt 11 and in my hollywood undead fixation i obvs downloaded every single song they had in their discography, so i could listen to them on my phone when going to school and back etc,

i had downloaded the el urgencia mp3 a bit later since i didn't discover it right away. i usually removed all my own files from the download folder because i was shy and i liked my things being in MY folder on the family pc. this time i forgot, tho. and my dad accidentally put it on a usb stick with all the other russian/estonian songs he had downloaded.

and then one time we were at grandma's place and he put the usb into the player and when el urgencia came on i begged for him to change it but he was like. why. i like it. so i was forced to listen to the song that i was embarrassed about liking infront of my entire family T_T they probably didn't realise it was me who had downloaded it, and neither would they have cared. but i was so shy about the music i listen to and that song specifically felt so "mature" to me so i. yeah. just got reminded of this

[y2klostandfound]

Sony Memory Stick and AIBO on Telecom magazine (Hungarian magazine)(2002-04)

Translation in English:

Slowly expanding memory

Sony MemoryStick has not yet been renewed in the manufacturer's product range in terms of memory size. Although we have already seen the prototypes of the 256 and 512 MB cards at one or two exhibitions, unfortunately they are not available yet! The current maximum memory size of blue cards is thus 128 MB. On the other hand, the 128 MB version appeared on the line of white MagicGate MemorySticks, so you can take up to 4 hours of music with you on a single card. The MagicGate circuit takes care of copyrights and checks the right to use electronically stored music. For example MP3 and ATRAC3 players can be found in Network Walkmans and the CDM-MZ5 GSM phone. What is new is that Sony now also manufactures a USB card reader equipped with a MagicGate circuit for copying digital music. You can buy 32 and 64 MB of the white MG cards. If we don't use them to play music, they are used exactly the same as the blue cards! There is also a pink MemoryStick card, for now only in the 8MB version: this is the AIBO electronic dog expansion card. This is an electronic pet card for your pet, which can be used to teach your pet a lot of things by writing the appropriate data on the card with its software. The robot dog reads his new type of tasks from this. Another use of the pink memory card will probably be training home robots in the future.

[belsaas]

An ode to the iRiver iHP-120

For whatever reason, I've found myself deeply nostalgic for high school as of late. And for me, that is intractable from nostalgia for what is perhaps the peak mp3 player ever made:

The iRiver iHP-120 was released in 2003, my sophomore year of high school, and it changed my life. This thing held an astounding 10GB of music—for comparison, most mp3 players at the time were flash based, and held 128 or 256 MB of music. The only big competitor at the time was the 1st generation iPod, a mac-exclusive device that transferred data over firewire and had to be synced using the fledgling iTunes. Juxtapose that to iRiver, who took what I like to call the "we don't give a fuck" approach:

When you plugged in the iHP-120 with USB 2.0, it just showed up as an external hard drive—you could throw whatever you wanted on there. Naturally, it could read mp3 files, but this thing introduced me to the world of audio codecs and processing in a way nothing could have prepared me. WMA files worked fine (a big deal at the time because of DRM issues, during the heyday of KaZaA and Limewire). You want to play uncompressed .WAV files? No problem, put them on there. FLAC files? Absolutely, let your audiophile freak flag fly. Fucking OGG Vorbis files played on this thing. Hell, you could put text files on here and read them.

(The firmware for these was also basically open-source, and people did even crazier stuff with them. By the time I retired my player, it could do gapless playback, crossfading, 10-band equalizing, normalization and more. I think I also changed the boot screen to a picture of Sailor Moon.)

But the magic didn't end at uploading music to the iHP-120—controlling this thing was more intuitive than any other device around at the time. All of your music was displayed on the player in whatever folder structure you loaded onto the device—navigating the music was as simple as using Windows Explorer. You had your standard play/pause, skip forward/back and volume controls on the front joystick, but what are the other buttons for?

Yeah. This thing was also a portable recorder. At anytime you could just hold down the Rec button and start recording with the onboard mic, or using an external input (more on that later). On the right side, an A-B Interval control. You ever wanted to just listen to one part of a song on repeat to learn the lyrics? Just hold down the button. Lastly a hold switch to disable control inputs while it was in your pocket—no accidentally pausing the music.

Okay, back to the external input mentioned before. The top of the iHP-120 is wild.

The top I/O panel of the iRiver iHP-120, with 4 jacks.

From right to left, you have a 3.5mm headphone jack (naturally), a 2.5mm microphone jack, the remote control port (more on this in a bit), and in white you have Line In/Out jacks which you could use to record as well as just plug in a second pair of headphones for a friend—jacks which support both 3.5mm analog input, as well as 3.5mm TOSLINK optical cables.

The TOSLINK 3.5mm male plug. A plug I only ever encountered on this device and the Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium, a sound card I wrote a review of in 2009 which seems to still be up at PC Gamer and reading it now I don't know how any of my writing was ever published, let alone in print.

Chances are good you've never encountered this, it's phenomenally uncommon, and TOSLINK as a whole largely died with the emergence of HDMI—but this fucking mp3 player could both record and transmit fiber optic audio in uncompressed stereo or lossy 7.1 surround sound. In high school, I would plug the iHP-120 into our home theatre and listened to Porcupine Tree's Stupid Dream on repeat (side tangent, I'm pretty sad 5.1 album recording never really caught on, but the Dolby Atmos music format is better in every way, and I'm grateful Apple is bringing it into the mainstream).

"Okay, so we have an music player/text reader/voice recorder with optical audio, and basically every codec under the sun, what else could you go on about Erika?"

-you, the person reading this

THE REMOTE

Let me take you back to 2003. I was a depressed theatre kid teenager who would listen to Rooney on repeat on my Koss UR40s while crying over a girl who wanted nothing to do with me.

The Koss UR40 Headphones I wore like a fashion accessory everyday.

The other thing I wore everyday besides those headphones? Baggy cargo pants (it was acceptable at the time, I swear). Inside the right cargo pocket was my iRiver iHP-120, and clipped to the velcro flap of that cargo pocket was the iHP-115R remote control.

The iHP-120 remote unit

Every function of the iHP-120 could be controlled from this little fucker. Play/pause and stop buttons. Volume, skip track and recording are all here on rocker switches. You could even change the fucking bitrate of playback on this little thing, all without taking the actual mp3 player out of your pocket because the LCD screen on the remote has all the same info you'd get on the main unit.

The remote itself connected to the iRiver with that big plug you can see in the picture above (shamelessly stolen from Nathan Edwards who I worked with at PC Gamer in the late 2000s and only while writing this post discovered has already written a much more professional ode to the beauty of the iHP-120 this year).

You would plug your headphones into the remote, (or in my case you could also plug in your 1988 Chevrolet 2500 suburban's tape deck adaptor and have controls at your fingertips. No more distracted driving).

An image of a 1988 Chevorlet 2500 diesel Suburban. Not super relevant but god I miss my high school suburban. We would take the rear and middle benches out and put a queen-size mattress in the back, which 9 of my friends would ride on as we went to Little Caesar's for lunch. Also, cars just looked way fucking better back then.

I think I'm about done waxing nostalgic, but I really do miss the days of discrete devices—I kind of find myself fighting back against my smartphone. I have a camera I carry around, a pen and paper planner and writing notebook, and a kindle for reading. There's something appealing about not having my phone be my access to music either—rather, having a device that I just threw my music on and it plays it really well was rad. The iHP-120 was really fucking rad.

[theabyssthatsetsmefree]

I've been even less present than usual lately because I'm having computer problems.

TLDR: New (to me) laptop is excellent for writing but rubbish for going on the internet, and figuring out how to do online stuff is kind of a work in progress.

The thing is, I recently acquired a computer called 'Lappy the Haunted Laptop'. It's a Toshiba Qosmio that's had an amazing list of problems, and in the process of fixing them I've found that it's completely different looking at the older-style screens. So, now that I've fixed most of the problems with Lappy, I end up wanting to use it rather than Amalthea, my usual laptop.

The problem is that I've fixed most of Lappy's problems. There's one I can't fix, which is that it heats up really quickly under heavy CPU load. That means it works fine as a word processor and MP3 player, but it struggles with browsing the web. I guess that makes it an excellent low-distraction word processor, though.

Because of using Lappy, I've realised that either I'm getting less able to handle certain types of light, or something about Amalthea is getting worse. Amalthea has some kind of mystery hardware/software problem that means the USB is unreliable and every time you restart it turns the number lock back on (annoying for a laptop with no number pad), so it's very possible that there's something wrong with the computer. Whatever the problem is, I kind of don't want to use Amalthea at the moment just because it's so much harder to read things on that screen, so I'm doing a lot less internet-type stuff. That's probably going to continue until I can either figure out how to cool Lappy more effectively, do something about Amalthea's backlight, or some other solution that gets me a computer that doesn't overheat browsing Tumblr.

TLDR: New (to me) laptop is excellent for writing but rubbish for going on the internet, and figuring out how to do online stuff is kind of a work in progress.

PS - I wrote about 'the mystery of the haunted laptop' on Dreamwidth here:

[orangameelectronics]

Slim Power Bank 10000mAh 22.5W/66W Power Built-in 3 Cables with Dual LED

So, you're in the market for a new power bank, huh? Well, let me tell you about the Slim Power Bank 10000mAh with 22.5W/66W power output and built-in 3 cables with dual LED. This bad boy is a game-changer when it comes to keeping your devices juiced up on the go.

## Cell Type: 10000mAh Li-Polymer Battery

Let's talk about the heart of this power bank - the 10000mAh Li-Polymer battery. This high-capacity battery is perfect for charging your smartphone, tablet, laptop, camera, GPS, MP3 player, and more. With such a large capacity, you'll never have to worry about running out of battery when you're out and about.

## Support LED Lightning and Display

One of the coolest features of this power bank is the LED lightning and display. The LED lights indicate the remaining battery level, so you'll always know when it's time to recharge. The display shows you important information like the charging status and power output, making it easy to use and understand.

## Protection: Over-Discharging, Short Circuit Protection

Safety first, right? That's why this power bank comes with over-discharging and short circuit protection. These safety features ensure that your devices are protected from any potential harm while charging, giving you peace of mind when using this power bank.

## Application: Smart Phone/for iPad/Laptop/Camera/GPS/MP3

Whether you're a smartphone addict, a tablet user, a laptop warrior, a photography enthusiast, a traveler relying on GPS, or a music lover with an MP3 player, this power bank has got you covered. Its versatile compatibility makes it the perfect companion for all your devices, no matter what you use them for.

## Interface: 1*Micro, 1*Type-C, 1*USB Cable

With 1 Micro, 1 Type-C, and 1 USB cable built into the power bank, you'll never have to worry about carrying around extra cables again. These convenient cable options make it easy to charge multiple devices at once, saving you time and hassle when you're on the move.

So, there you have it - the Slim Power Bank 10000mAh with 22.5W/66W power output and built-in 3 cables with dual LED. It's the ultimate solution for staying powered up wherever you go. Say goodbye to low battery anxiety and hello to endless device usage with this powerhouse of a power bank.

[dirtbag-linecook-kyloren]

UPDATE ON THE MP3 PLAYER I MAY END UP WITH T W O

In which case the black one will be for my more metal leaning music and the pink will be for my pop and folk. I cannot stress how cool I feel, I’ll have to buy a usb cd ripper and start getting my cd collection on my computer