Goodbye, iPod Shuffle; it was fun while it lasted
JISHOU, HUNAN — I said goodbye to my iPod Shuffle today. I ditched it for a Chinese-made iPod lookalike, the Meizu Media Card.
It’s on the right here. Click on the image to get a better view. 
The battery on the real iPod, a first-gen 512 MB Shuffle, became incontinent and just couldn’t seem to hold a charge much longer than a few hours. I’d charge it up at night, and by morning the little fella was flat as a pancake. No lights, no music, nada.
So, two freshmen (YangQiu-Harry and GaoXing-Happy) helped me rejoin the iPod generation. We visited a shop downtown where Harry had bought his mp4 player. I didn’t want a player with video capabilities; my eyes want a larger screen. So we checked out the mp3 players.
I settled on a 2G unit by Meizu. It’s about the same size as a Nano, but without the trademark Apple touchwheel. Cost (with wall charger and gel cover): ¥399 or about $58. (Harry talked the sales staff to throw in the charger and cover for free.)
The Media Card does all I want it to, so I’m pleased. I had my Chinese language course on the iPod, so once it went south, I was again attached to my laptop to study Chinese. Not so much fun, or convenient.
Out of the box, the Meizu is plug-and-play with Windows, but I use Ubuntu. It took a bit of poking around the toobs to figure out why Ubuntu was not detecting the Meizu, even though it should.
Answer: install mtp-tools, mtpfs and libmtp7 and that’s all you need. Oh, and remember to turn the Media Card before connecting the USB transfer cable. Otherwise, the Media Card will just go into charge mode and Ubuntu will ignore it.
Once I had those, my music player, Rhythmbox, mounted the Meizu just like the iPod. Sweet!
We also located a little AM-FM-shortwave radio, so I can catch the Beeb and local programming. It’s by Tecsun and seems to work fine. I’ll know for sure tonight, when SW signals are easier to find. (It comes with a clip-on wire extension for the whip antenna, to increase the signal strength. Nice touch.) Cost for this item: ¥120 or about $17.50.
By this time, we were all hungry and the kids decided they wanted to eat at KFC. OK by me. Happy had last eaten at KFC in ChangSha and Harry in ShangHai, so it was sort of new for them. (They call the Cajun Chicken sandwich the New Orleans here, just so you know.)
As we left, my three senior guides (NianNian-Ava, MoDong-Christopher, and WangQian-Sophia) came in to order. They were on a mission to buy formal clothes, as in the kind you need to greet special guests, not evening wear. Typical of college students, their wardrobes did not include dress clothes. This weekend is the 50th anniversary of the university’s founding, so many out-of-town guests are arriving today. In this case, the seniors were to meet a representative of Auburn University.
Not much else to report here. I did ride in a city bus for the first time (fare is ¥1); the buses have conductors who collect the fares. Other than being crowded, the trip was about as quick as a taxi ride. Bus drivers can bull their way through traffic better than cabbies, I guess.
October 10th, 2008 at 3:23 am
[...] Random Feed wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptJISHOU, HUNAN — I said goodbye to my iPod Shuffle today. I ditched it for a Chinese-made iPod lookalike, the Meizu Media Card. Once my camera batteries are charged, I’ll include a picture. The battery on the real iPod, a first-gen 512 MB Shuffle, became incontinent and just couldn’t seem to hold a charge much longer than a few hours. I’d charg it up at night, and by morning the little fella was flat as a pancake. No lights, no music, nada. So, two freshmen (YangQiu-Harry and GaoXing-Happy) h [...]
October 10th, 2008 at 7:51 am
So I considered getting an iPod or some other musical device, but decided against it. It’s only helpful when I’m traveling, and I don’t travel much. I’m content with my laptop for listening to music (because all the damn radio stations play the same tape every hour (every day), so I can’t listen to it for long) and definitely for watching movies. Except I just bought two French movies (L’Americain, and Michou D’Auber) that my computer will ONLY play if I first change the DVD region to #2…and I can only change the region 4 times total, so ultimately it’s not worth it. When I refuse to change the region, Mac’s DVD Player program automatically ejects the disk. I downloaded VLC player per James’ advice and tried that, but it didn’t even recognize the disc. So basically I don’t think I can watch them on here unless I want to eternally set it up to European and neglect my American ones…and that’d just be stupid. I can at least watch the French ones on Ines’ laptop (like we did last night) or on their DVD player at the country house. Stupid regulations!
Hey, is “kickin’ ass and takin’ names” an idiom? I just used it when talking to Jacob, so I thought it might qualify…since it’s obviously not literal.
October 10th, 2008 at 9:13 am
I am also planning the same, perhaps I should try to turn my smart phone into video ipod. I am tired of carrying to many devices
October 13th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Darcy:
Try this: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/13801
It’s a download to fool your Mac into playing different region DVDs and losing count along the way.
I don’t know why VLC won’t play the disk. It’s usually pretty adept at playing everything. What model Mac do you have? I can poke around the toobs for an answer.
Chinese DVD players are all region-free, and can play all sorts of disks, including of course the many many pirated ones sold here dirt cheap. I have the complete oeuvre of Jackie Chan, for instance, most of which is in Cantonese. His US movies are in English. But I got it all for like $4, so I’ll shut up now.
October 13th, 2008 at 10:14 am
And, yeah, “kickin’ ass and takin’ names” is an idiom. A very American one, too.