Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Until this Morning, I Had no Idea That I Liked 'Flight of the Concords'

There is some thing seriously wrong with the Music folder on my G1, and I just haven't had time to fix it. The only things showing up on my play lists are recently added tracks, even though I can see a bunch of older stuff on the SD card. Big deal though, at least it got me from Primary Phase to Quintessential Phase. So, because I didn't feel like listening to the White Stripes again (ironic, I think. But more on that later... ) I decided to test out Pandora on the EDGE. [Yes, T-Mobile still doesn't have 3G out here, one reason we're switching back to F*N Verizon in the spring] I'd installed it a while back and completely forgot it was even there, so all my stations, etc. were already set up for me.

I am pleasantly surprised.

Pandora actually works pretty well. I randomly selected a station as I pulled out of the garage and playback started immediately (Was still connected to my homes WiFi). The one I picked was an oldie [hadn't used Pandora for almost 2 years] "NERDCORE/Misc..." which, from what I can remember, tried to start with either mc chris, or the Front. Can't quite remember, except that whoever it was at the time wasn't listed, so a replacement was used to start it, and I probably added some random stuff at one point to spice it up. In this case, mc chris' Pizza Butt started my commute. Hit Thumbs UP! Next, They Might Be Giants, Istanbul (Not Constantinople). Awesome. One of my all time favorite songs in the known universe.


Then it got better, and weirder.

Up until this morning, I had no idea that I liked Flight of the Concords. Also, there was an MC Lars song that I'd never heard before (ridiculous you say), GirlTalk, and some other stuff I, can't remember. However, the tone of the 'station' changed as I drove. For some reason it started going more and more into mid-90s-Early 2ks style alternative stuff, like Cake (who I love) and other rock songs. Have to dome tweaking with my ups/downs. The Final Irony though, was that it gave me The White Stripes after all, in the form of Seven Nation Army. That bassline just kills me every time.

Overall, good experience. Only issue I really had was going through a 2+ mile stretch where the cell reception always sucks and being cut off in the middle of a good song, then jumped into another song which cut off again into yet a 3rd song... You'd think there would be more buffering for that kind of thing. I did try to 'share' a song to myself when I pulled into the parking lot, but it just crashed the program. Also, the damned thing takes AGES to load up. The splash screen is there for at least 45 seconds, sometimes longer, and you tend to get the feeling that it's taunting you and your patience. (I'm sure that these minor glitches are worked out on the newer phones, with super-awesome 1Ghz+ procs, not to mention a better network!)

I give Pandora on Android a thumbs up.


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1 comment:

  1. Unfortunately those glitches are still there on my brand new 1ghz Droid X on Verizon's 3g network. Cell coverage around here sucks no matter what network you're on.
    I listen to Pandora every day on the way home and get cut off or paused for buffering in quite a few spots.
    My nerdcore station did the exact same thing to me. Started out with MC Chris and Frontalot, but eventually went to late 90's alternative. I just started thumbs downing everything that wasn't nerdcore, and it cleared up pretty well.

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