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A few months ago, my 5GB iPod mysteriously stopped working. First order of business was to complain about this to anyone in my office who happened to be seated in front of a Macintosh computer. After repeatedly being informed of the “reset” key combo and attempting said combo several times to no avail, I decided to move on to Plan B, aka despair. I left the “Pod” on the bookshelf in my bedroom, and pretty well forgot about it. There it sat for several weeks gathering dust and occasionally being shifted around to accomodate new comic books and/or glasses of water. Once in a while, I’d notice it, plug it in and attempt the key combo. Still no dice. One day, boingboing.net made mention of a short film created by some other disappointed iPod owners. For awhile, I was excited. Perhaps my problem was not unique? Could this be solved with a simple, 3rd-party battery replacement? After looking at some support boards, I decided this was not the case. My Pod had been working ok (not _great_ battery life, but passable) before the “incident.” and was now being completely unresponsive. No menu, no “charging” indicator, nothing. So I sprung back into inaction, pursuing my other interests (eat… sleep… poop…) as the iPod slumbered peacefully. Finally, today during a large-scale desk cleaning effort, I came across the Pod. It looked to be in pretty bad shape. Weeks of disuse had left the screen covered with a thick layer of dust. The gleaming metallic case was riddled with scratches and smudges, but truth be told, these had probably been incurred prior to the initial dysfunction. I’ve never taken particularly good care of the Pod’s surface, working as I do under the assumption that the purpose of a digital music player is to play music, not skip and be as small as possible, and not, as some have suggested, to look “cool.” But I digress… Seeing the Pod again brought a flurry of thoughts to mind. First, I thought, “Oh… there it is.” Next, I was reminded of how pissed I had been when it stopped working. Finally, I decided, “What the fuck… Let’s give it a try!” I tracked down the AC adapter (floor of my bedroom… also quite dusty) and plugged it into the socket. When what to my wondering eyes should appear, but the Apple logo, followed by the Menu Screen! My iPod had been resurrected! For a moment, I thought about plugging in the earbuds to test it’s ability to play audio, but then I thought better of it. The Pod must be tired after it’s long journey back from the Undying Lands of the West. Best to let it sleep a bit longer and gaze upon it’s once more luminous face.

Success!! I finally got my wireless home-audio setup configured the way I wanted. If I know you personally, I may have talked your ear off about this at one point or another, but in case you’ve forgotten, here’s the deal:

1. I didn’t like any of the off-the-shelf solutions available, i.e. SLIMP3 / Squeezebox or Linksys’ Wireless Media adapter because no matter how easy to use and readable their on-screen menus or web-browser interfaces might be, they certainly couldn’t compete with my laptop running Winamp for legibility and playlist flexibility.
2. What’s more, although I have a fairly large TV in my living room, I don’t always want it turned on and displaying some faux-tech graphics when I’m entertaining!
3. These things cost some serious $$$!

To my way of thinking, the perfect solution would be as follows. I play MP3s, CDs or whatever on my laptop, which is set up in another room or someplace out of sight, and the output streams via WiFi to my living room stereo. This way, I can edit playlists, play audio from multiple network sources or even download and add new items without having to make a big production out of it. Last night I finally figured out how to make this work without purchasing a single piece of hardware or software (though I did have to reposition my existing MP3 server =). Here’s what I did

1. Placed my MP3 server machine next to my amplifier and connected it with a stereo-mini to RCA cable. (This machine is connected to my switch via a standard, wired connection)
2. Installed Icecast listener on this machine. (Make sure to check the configuration text file and set the passwords and etc. as appropriate. I didn’t mess with any of the other settings)
3. Opened Winamp and added localhost:8000 to the playlist.
4. Hit play and set the playlist to loop (This is important, b/c when there is no data coming in to Icecast, it disconnects all the clients, so you need to keep reconnecting!)
5. On my (WiFi connected) laptop, I installed the Oddcast Winamp plugin and set it to stream audio to the Icecast listener on the MP3 server. I also made sure to check the “Record from Windows Recording device” box in the settings, so I can play stuff that’s not from Winamp, too. (Your computer is already configured to use “Stereo Mix” or something like that as it’s recording source, right? Well, if not you’ll have to change it… =)

Boom!! That’s it! I clicked the “Connect” button on Oddcast and start playing audio on the laptop. After a brief latency delay (any suggestions on how to eliminate this?) audio started pouring out of my stereo speakers! Of course, it’s not a perfect solution. Due to the latency issue, I can’t use it to play synched audio and video, but that’s a small price to pay for a mobile audio control center, if you ask me. Good luck to anyone trying this with their system. Let me know if you find any hang-ups or improvements!

We’re goin’ swingin’.
We’re gonna swing in the crowd.
And we’ll be clingin’,
And floatin’ high as a cloud.
The phones are ringin’.
My mom and dad are so proud,
I’m on Bandstand (Bandstand!).

That’s great, but what brand of phone was it?

Not Godley and Creme, but: Squeegee & Creme! (It’s a hair removal product I saw at Walgreens…)