How does DJ Nano keep bringing the rawk?

ORN: Four miles in 42:03. I biked to work today, so add 16 miles of cross training. Biking the eight miles to work took me about 40 minutes. I know that is slow by most standards [about 12 MPH on average]. But a) it's the best I can do with the luggage — work clothes and whatnot — I have to carry, b) that's about as quick as my car commute or a bus ride, and c) it's saving me $3 per day. Not much, but if I can do that every work day, I would save myself about $60 per month in fuel costs.

As you might have noticed, when I run, I like to rock out. DJ Nano spins the electrons, and I throw the goat down the street looking like I am having some kind of episode. But you might wonder how I manage to cram my voluminous music collection into a puny 4 GB Nano. Short answer: I don't. I let iTunes smart playlists do the work.

First off, I have a master playlist from which subordinate playlists are derived. It's like inheritance in object-oriented programming. Or life. Anyway, the main playlist is set up to select all tracks played less than 13 times [play count < 13] up to a limit of 3.8 GB. This setup allows a sliding window of tunes, if you will. Once a song is played the 13th time — an admittedly arbitrary number — it slides off the list, and one or more unsynchronized songs takes its place.

The beauty of it is that when a podcast is updated, like the CBC Radio 3 podcast, it automatically muscles its way onto DJ Nano's turntables, temporarily booting off a score or so songs. Then, when I delete the podcast, those songs [or others] move back on.

The downside of this plan is that it takes longer to synchronize the iPod. I guess this is because the playlist is slightly different each time. Conceivably, as many as a couple hundred songs could get shuffled on or off the playlist as it randomly selects 3.8 GB of music. But this isn't really a problem for me, because I never synch under any kind of deadline pressure. It's worth it to me to be guaranteed fresh tunes.

Regarding the "subclasses" of the master playlist, these are derived from this master playlist and filter for such things as highly-rated tracks, tracks I haven't heard in a few weeks, tracks of a certain genre, etc. iTunes is set to only synchronize DJ Nano with these specific playlists. I am good to go.

Sound off in the comments if you'd like more details on how to set this stuff up. I realize I am speaking in Greek to those who don't understand how to do smart playlists in iTunes. I didn't know this stuff until I started farting around with it. I'm no expert, but since I started tackling playlist management like any other data management problem, I've sorta gotten good at it.

1. No Fun - The Stooges
2. Every Dog Has Its Day - Flogging Molly
3. Stars & Stripes - KMFDM
4. Losers - The Cardigans
5. Long Long Ago - Cab Calloway and His Orchestra
6. Headhunter (Substanz T. mix) - Front 242
7. The Crowd - Operation Ivy
8. Eronel - Thelonious Monk
9. Guest List - Screeching Weasel
10. Sleep Now in the Fire - Rage Against the Machine
11. Clint Eastwood - Gorillaz
12. California Man - Cheap Trick
13. Let's Submerge - X Ray Spex