I was looking for a "right angle" USB adapter to connect thumb drives to the "stereo" in the car (piss-poor industrial design!) and stumbled onto this:
I can't imagine how there could be a need for such a thing!? Unless you have something thin (tablet? phone) that sports a USB A connector? Otherwise, how would you mate the "adapter" *and* have the "other end" still viable?
It could plug into a cord with a female end. An extension cord. I have one of those. But I'm not sure when it would help.
It is made to connect to a "usb port on a router" - I suspect a specific router - likely celular and portable because it makes it " convenient to surf the Internet in the subway or bus"
Plugs into the router, doubling the cable back UNDER the router rather than sticking out.
I had the same problem with my wife's lincoln. The USB plug is in the console compartment and she kept breaking the thumb drives. The right angle thing wouldn't work either because there wasn't't room under the slot and I couldn't find one that "bent" the other way.
The fix was to buy "stubby" drives that only stick out about 1/4". I found 8g drives pretty cheap and that is a shit load of music.
The OP should try a SanDisk Cruzer Fit. The only drawback is that their tiny size makes them easy to lose.
I thought those words just came from a dream someone had, but you're right, they probably refer to a real, specific router.
Yes...... ^^^^^^^^^^^ Had it been exposed someplace, it would be easier to work-around. But, in a little "box" (compartment), you're constrained as to "what you can put where".
I currently have a male-A to female-A adapter with a sort of "universal joint" between them. I.e., I can orient the (male) A-plug vertically (to mate with the socket in the car) and the (female) A-socket horizontally, vertically or either of these "flipped" (IIRC).
So, I just orient it vertical-vertical which attempts to keep the thumb drive parallel to the front surface of that compartment.
But, the size of the adapter means the thumb drive is now ~1" INSIDE the compartment -- instead of flush against the "front wall". So, rummaging around in there for *anything* ends up disturbing the thumb drive and it's connection to the vehicle.
I have a short (3"?) male-A to female-A but that just moves the thumb driver and still leaves the plug of the male end jutting into the compartment (along with this length of cable).
I also have a right-angle (6") male-A to female-B which gets the cable right up against that front wall -- at the expense of requiring another adapter: male-B to female-A
I use those little nubs on some of my diskless workstations. But, there, they remain in place indefinitely.
In the car, I have a "tin" (think "Altoids" and their ilk) with five 16G drives. Each is labeled so I know what sort of music it contains and can find the type of music I'm interested in by examining the labels on the drives.
Depends on how your MP3's are ripped. Mine are all 320Kb/s; so, the 10G used on one particular thumb drive is really only 36 "albums" (an album may be multiple CD's). I could make a point of "reducing" all MP3's as I move new music onto thumb drives. Or, just leave them "as is" used by my other PMP devices.
[The balance of the 16G drive is unused because the material that might get crammed into that space won't *entirely* fit -- so it will spill over onto another drive, regardless -- and, as such, would be tedious to locate: "which drive has this particular album??"]It's already annoying that the car doesn't apply an alphabetic sort to the drive's contents; so, I have to explicitly reorder the contents to ensure albums appear in the correct order (and tracks within an album appear in their correct order!) AFAICT, there's no provisions for playlists to impose order (and that wouldn't help with perusing the contents).
Soas not to have to swap drives with SWMBO for her driving/listening preferences, I've installed her music on the "disk drive" that is built into the vehicle; that way, she doesn't have to muck around with CD's or thumb drives.
Thankfully, neither of us has a *phone* that we'd plug into that connector!
[And, HAVING that connector -- along with the ability to load data from it (used to update the wallpaper on the display as well as uploading points of interest for the navigation system) -- why the hell doesn't it have a provision to "dump current configuration" onto a thumb drive plugged there? Create an ASCII file (XML) that you could then *edit* on a PC to more conveniently enter settings, etc.??(sigh) I guess they're still thinking in terms of horses and buggies...
And impossible to LABEL (with printed text that you could readily read!)
Jazz, Rock, Comedy, Talking Books, etc.
Or, do you paint them different colors and try to memorize which is which? And, grab each with the tips of your fingers to extract and replace (while sitting at a traffic signal)?
Putting the USB socket along one EDGE of the "console compartment" would have moved the thumb drive (or anything else plugged into that outlet) out off to the side, out of the way. Instead, someone was obsessed with symmetry and wanted it centered?
[Hey, if you want symmetry, why not put one on each side of the compartment so TWO devices could be plugged in -- a phone and a thumb drive; two phones being charged; two thumbdrives of music; etc.?]320kb/s ends up being about 1.4 meg a minute so 8 gig will get you almost 100 hours of music. That seems like plenty if you are in your car. When your play list gets too long, you will spend a lot of time listening to things you are not ready to hear. I also find that in a car, it is hard to tell the difference between 320 and 160 or even 128
A lot will depend on how your player works. Some will honor a M3U playlist and most will break out a drive by directory. If you can use a playlist you have the ultimate control.
I really prefer using MPXPLAY on a PC platform because it works in jukebox mode and you can select songs or playlists by number from a key pad. That is far less distracting than having to look at a display.
I don't like playlists because they have to be maintained. I, instead, prefer to just put music that I will (eventually) want to hear onto a medium and then let it play out.
I drop SWMBO off at a class on some days. Half an hour there; half an hour coming back. Then 3+ hours I kill while she's in class -- either driving to attend to some of my chores around town *or* sitting in the car reading, working out a technical problem (pad and pencil)... but with music playing in the background.
Weekly groceries usually represent another couple of hours in and out of the car. I.e., it's relatively easy to go through 5 or 6 hours of programming in a week WITHOUT any time spent listening on other devices (e.g., the "Dave's Picks" thumb drive is installed in this computer as I'm typing this)
So, I should rip new copies of all of this music JUST FOR THE CAR?
Regardless, I could put all of this material onto a larger thumb drive (e.g., 64G). But, then I'm still faced with poor control over my listening choices! I would then have to rely on the (shitty) browsing/selection capabilities of the car's infotainment system to select individual "titles/albums" -- instead of just letting it "play through everything, sequentially".
E.g., do I want to listen to Rock; then, when that's exhausted, listen to Jazz (assuming that's "next" on the medium); then Comedy after those offerings; then audio books, etc.?
Using different media is analagous to picking from among different CD's to install in your player. I can plug the Comedy drive into the socket and then pick which artist/bit I want -- without having to deal with the Jazz, Rock, Live Performances, Audio Book, etc. entries that are also "available" on the medium.
Playlists require effort on my part to decide what order to play titles/albums/collections. I label titles on a CD using a form: # - Title.mp3. So, a left-right alpha sort keys on the "#" field (which will have leading zeroes if the maximum field width exceeds one digit) instead of (alpha) sorting by "Title".
Similarly, an "album" that contains multiple "CD's" will have each CD labeled "CD#" -- so the alpha-sort will arrange them in their natural order.
For live performances, the "performance title" is of the form YYYYMMDD - Venue so these naturally sort into chronological order (within a performance's folder, individual titles are listed using the "# - Title" form).
For collections/series, each is labeled "# - Venue"; again, so they naturally sort as you'd expect (there's no sense in having "Boston" before "Hartford"; when a "Chicago" release comes along, it should appear in its "series order" and not be inserted between Boston and Hartford!)
So, I can just keep track of the most recent "series number", "performance date", etc. and I can revisit a particular medium without worrying that I'm listening to something that I *just* listened to, recently; nor that I'll skip over something that I've not heard!
Listening should be an aural experience. I.e., press PLAY and forget it.
If I don't like a piece of music, then why have it in my collection?? If I let the player "randomly" select titles, then there's nothing that constrains how much I'll enjoy the material that it picks.
As much of the material that I listen to is live performances (or, "albums" that I've learned to recognize the order of their individual constituent titles), I can fondly look forward to tunes that I *know* will be "coming up".
Regardless of *where* I'm actually listening to them!
The Fit has a hole that accommodates a thin string.
If you need to do a lot of storage swapping with 8GB (or more) of compressed audio, maybe you should look into a new dash unit that supports satellite radio.
So, add a *tag* on a string? :<
Thumb drives are an excellent form factor for ease of replacement. The problem lies in how the car was designed -- not with that sort of issue foremost in their minds!
Existing unit came with an XM trial. Not what we were interested in. And, Sirius has been hounding us to "take advantage of our NEW, REDUCED rate" (lest they NEVER have us as customers).
We have our own particular tastes. None of them are "mainstream". E.g., today, as SWMBO drove off, she was listening to 100th "anniversaire" (birthday) of Edith Piaf. Not likely to stumble on that in the course of normal events!
I'd be happy listening to the audio track from Coupling, SOAP, etc. (I can envision what would be happening "on screen" so the audio would be sufficient to elicit the corresponding laughs) Again, not something I'm likely to encounter *anywhere* (without a *display* to watch the associated video!).
[E.g., Watching the "Who's on first?" routine adds practically nothing to the humor it contains. Listening to one of Gallagher's Sledge-o-Matic routines is just as entertaining as WATCHING it. Which Sirius channel *will* have those bits? Will I be driving at the time they air??]Don Y posted for all of us...
No worries *sold out*
Not interested in buying one! Rather, trying to imagine how it can be of use! Imagine a molded extension cord with a similar topography; what VALUE would it have to justify someone making them in LARGE quantities?
Or, a 5V USB power adapter that screws into a lamp socket. Sure, I can understand how to make such a thing. But, who would
*need* it -- that couldn't just as easily use one that plugs into a wall outlet??
I often have to deal with the opposite problem. I arrange the files in the order I want, then the stupid &*#@ ALPHABETIZES them, making a mess of the list.
[snip]
Use voice command. Just say what song you want.... Works pretty good. Maybe there is option to disable sorting the song in ABC order? Nowadays infortainment system manual is thicker than one about the vehicle.
That's why I preface each with "# - ". I can't count on the OS (wherever I have the filesystem mounted) disclosing ID3 tags, honoring playlists, etc.
And, why I add leading zeroes (some OS's sort "2" after "1" and both before "10"!)
The problem isn't selecting or displaying song titles but, rather, ensuring they get played in an OBVIOUS order. I.e., what song will be played *after* the song that you've announced?
E.g., the RDX plays the songs in the order they are encountered in the selected folder. So, if you copy the songs onto the medium in the order: Fred Bob Mary then they will play in that order! Likewise, if they are named: 2 - Fred 1 - Bob 3 - Mary they still play in this order.
Ideally, you want to be able to display them in the order they will be played -- regardless of WHERE you are examining the medium!
(I have a little utility that reorders the files on the drive in their "sort order". So, on the car, they play in this sorted order. And, on my PC, they *list* in this order -- as well as on my other UN*X workstations. The fact that *I* have to do this extra step is annoying)
I do a lot of that, and shouldn't have to. I already put them in the order I wanted, then this "helpful idiot" messes that up. For example, I may want to create a playlist with 3 MP3 files called "A", "G", and "Z". I want to start with "A", then play "Z", and play "G" last (NOT A, G, Z).
BTW, I'm listening to some netcasts right now, and renamed the files with prefixes of "00, 01, 02, .... 19" to enforce the order I selected.
Ah, but how did you "put them in that order" -- if they are just a bunch of "files" in a "container" (folder/directory)? Most such containers make no explicit guarantees about order -- they're just "bags" that hold things.
Some *implementations* may impose some particular order on the way those items are stored, within. E.g., FAT/FAT32 implementations tend to store items (in the container) in the order in which they were added to the container (folder).
OTOH, if the intermediating OS wants to impose a caching layer above the actual file system, the order that files actually get placed in the REAL container can vary -- based on the actions of that caching mechanism.
I.e., for a media player to rely on some order THAT MAY NOT BE VISIBLE to the user (after having created that "order" by his/her actions) is just stupid. When you place eggs into a SACK, you don't expect them to remain in the same order that they were when you inserted them (they may settle, roll around, etc.). And, when you place eggs in an EGG CARTON, you expect them to stay where they were placed -- yet have no way of figuring out what that initial PLACEMENT order was when you examine the carton some time later ("Hmmm... did I start filling from THIS corner? Or that? Or, did I get creative and fill in some 'random' order?"
In addition, when that order can "silently" be altered by some other, unsuspecting actions on the user's part, then the principle of least surprise gets violated: "WTF? I deliberately copied those files onto the medium in a specific order; and, now, that order has been changed!"
"Yes, grasshopper. Do you remember when you edited the tags in the file? Each time you did so, the original file was REPLACED -- deleted and recreated -- by that editing tool. So, the place that it previously held in the directory structure was forfeit and another chosen in its stead!"
The "file name" is the logical choice to sort on -- as it is always visible no matter what device you're using (though iPods corrupt this as you copy the file onto the device!). The "Title", "Track" or some other embedded ID3/APE tag could also be used -- though that makes any interface to them as "files" less useful (the interface would have to expose those hidden, embedded tags to be useful).
Yes. I've been editing the tags in my files as the media player in the car as the car makes many of these tags visible in the display. It's annoying to see a file deliberately named "03 - Watusi Wedding" appear as that in the title display -- yet listed as track 18 (because someone tagging the file started counting tracks from the first disc in the collection and this happened to be the
3rd track on disc #2!)Of course, as mentioned above, each time the program touches a song/file, it's location in the folder gets altered! So, I have to discipline myself to run a little script when I'm done mucking around that deliberately rebuilds the folder, copying the files into it in the order I've chosen!
Had the car simply opted to play in the alphabetic order of file names (the name of the file appears with the MP3 extension so it's exposing lots of details to the driver!), then this effort wouldn't be needed.
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