In the course of my travels over recent days — which included a 7 hour drive back home from Thredbo — it was necessary to sing along to some music. This is my usual habit when driving long distances in order to stay awake, and it seems to have the same effect for me as coffee does for others. Instead of using CDs as I’ve done in the past, though, this time I used my iPhone connected to a little FM transmitter, and in so doing I discovered the “Shuffle” feature. To be honest, when I say “discovered”, I lie a little, because I knew it existed but I’d never really used it because I like the comfort of listening to my songs in their usual order. For a long drive, however, the shuffle feature is good … and it was reassuring to know that I like my taste in music (!), because very few of the successive pairs of songs jarred with each other.
There was a weird exception, however.
Now I know that the “Shuffle” feature is not random in the true mathematical sense, but I was intrigued to find that on three separate occasions it played, in succession, two different versions of the same songs that I have on different albums.
…
And now, having investigated this feature further, I have discovered that I wasn’t using “Shuffle” at all but was actually going through my song list in alphabetical order. That would explain everything, including why the third version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” that I have was not played with the other two since they are named “Over the Rainbow”.
I feel so stupid.
[While I am admitting my technological lack-of-savviness, can anyone explain to me why Facebook puts its news feed posts in such a random order?!]
I use ‘Most recent’ for the newsfeed posts in FB – and assume that means they are in time posted order, most recent first. They seem to be. The ‘Top news’ option, I think, pushes up to the top the most commented on/liked posts.