Ok, so now you know that RockBox allows me to use my Ipod like any other USB drive. But how do I manage my podcasts? Well, I’m glad you asked because the answer is the power of the command line.

Hpodder is a command line utility that can keep track of podcasts for you. To add a feed I tell it to hpodder add http://feed.xml and then run hpodder without arguments to download all the episodes. But how do I keep track of which ones I’ve listened to already? The obvious solution is to delete them once I’m done with them. The problem with that is that those deleted episodes will be downloaded the next time I run hpodder. The solution to that is easy. I simply run hpodder catchup after downloading new episodes, so that subsequent runs will only download the episodes I haven’t listened to yet.

So now the next (and trickiest) question is how to synchronize the files on the Ipod with those on the hard drive. Rsync did a great job of copying a mirror image of the hard drive files to the mp3 player. But then when I deleted an episode that I was finished with (on either the hard drive or the Ipod) rsync would put it back again. Luckily I found another tool that was able to do what I wanted: Unison.

Unison’s website explains that it “allows two replicas of a collection of files and directories to be stored on different hosts (or different disks on the same host), modified separately, and then brought up to date by propagating the changes in each replica to the other.” It took quite a bit of reading and experimenting before I found the magic combination of arguments to make it play nicely, quickly and silently with the Ipod’s fat32 file system. But once I got it all figured out, I wrote a quick shell script to automate everything:


hpodder
hpodder catchup

unison -batch -fastcheck true -pretendwin -perms 0 /home/daniel/audio/podcasts/ /media/ipod/audio/podcasts/


So after all that explaining, my podcast solution is extremely simple. After I’m done listening to an episode, I delete it. Then, when I run out of stuff to listen to I run the above script and I’m good to go again. I’ve been doing it this way for several weeks now, and I just can’t get over how uber convenient it is for me. It’s way better than what I was doing before. Another win for Linux and Open Source Software!

While exploring my options for using an Ipod with Ubuntu, I came across a comment extolling the virtues of Rockbox. Basically the idea is to get more advanced functionality than what ships with your mp3 player by installing different firmware. And it’s not even scary to do, considering that the process is reversal, and there is a dual boot feature if you want it. Although I have to admit I’ve never tried it because I’ve been happy with the functionality that RockBox provides.

So, why do I like it? Number 1 is the ability to use my player like any other usb drive. I have all my mp3 files organized on my hard drive in a directory structure that makes sense to me, and now with RockBox I can simply copy everything over exactly as is, and navigate through the same file structure on my mp3 player to find whatever it is that I want to listen to.
There are also a bunch of other features that allow you a lot more control in how your mp3 player works. For example, one of the first things I did was switch to a bigger font size. I also switched the battery meter from graphical to numerical and made a bunch of other little customizations that make the device mine in a way that was impossible before.

I do have to admit that the switch hasn’t been entirely euphoric. The interface is new, and obviously doesn’t have a bunch of Apple usability experts behind it, so occasionally I still press the wrong button. I have a harder time reading scrolling text, and the battery life meter seems a little random. Probably the biggest thing I miss is that I can’t fast forward through a track with the scroll wheel anymore. But it’s not that big of a price to pay considering the extent to which I can customize the behavior (speed, acceleration, etc.) of holding down the forward button. As you can tell, I’m a big fan of customization. And features. I may not have any intention to ever use my mp3 player to record audio or be an alarm clock, but I find it very comforting that I could if I wanted to.

While I used Itunes on my Windows laptop without an Internet connection, I got my podcasts in two ways. I would either have to lug the computer to a free wireless network, or download separate mp3 files with a public computer and transfer them with a USB stick. Then Itunes would redownload episodes that I had already listened to and otherwise confuse matters. When my laptop died, I was more than ready to make the complete switch to Linux and bid Windows and Itunes goodbye.

I was actually quite surprised when I first plugged my Ipod into my Ubuntu machine and without any coaxing, it recognized the device, popped up a music player, and listed everything I had on it. It was equally easy to copy it all to the hard drive and then organize it to my liking. Unfortunately, however, I didn’t find a good way to sync the changes back. I tried both Rhythmbox and GTKpod, and was initially impressed with their similitude to Itunes, but I just couldn’t figure out how to get the control over the podcasts and syncing that I wanted. Besides, with Itunes, I just had to live with the limitations. Now that I was on Linux, I figured there should be a way to make things work the way I wanted them to.

I wasn’t disappointed.

The goal: Conveniently and easily staying on top of a few quality podcasts.

The hardware: A third generation Ipod. A Dell Ubuntu machine. (No Windows!)

The solution: RockBox, Hpodder and Unison.

The verdict: A little complicated to set up, but now it’s working like a charm.

The details: Coming Soon!

UPDATE: Here are the other posts in this series:
Part 2: Things that didn’t work
Part 3: Box Rocking
Part 4: The Script