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⬅️ Previous capture (2021-11-30)
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We just had another lovely afternoon picnic by the river. I loaded up the cargo box of the ebike with a blanket, drinks and food. The kids played the way kids do. Gathering sticks, using their imaginations, jumping over a small ditch over and over again. Meanwhile I laid on the blanket enjoying my coffee and listening to podcasts.
This brings me to some thoughts I have about my Odroid Go and using it as a podcast player. First off it is very quirky as an audio playback device but what can I say, I love weird underpowered stuff that takes some creativity to make do the thing. But what it can do actually fulfills a use case I happen to get along really well with. Casually listening to podcasts. Odroid Go has no headphone jack unless you do a hardware hack to add one or have an addon board with one that you can plug into the port on top. The addon route is not great for portability/pocketability. The built-in speaker's audio quality is not good but you know what? It's perfectly listenable for a podcast. So what I often do is load a handful of podcasts on the sd card and play them over the speaker with the Odroid Go in my lap or sitting next to me. At 50% volume and within a few feet of me I can listen to a podcast perfectly fine as long as there isn't too much loud background noise. I like doing it this way because I can be doing other things while I listen without having to fiddle with headphone cables or even remembering, carrying and charging wireless earbuds. The battery life while listening to podcasts on the speaker is also very good. I have not yet been able to listen to podcasts or music long enough in one day to drain the battery. Clearly not a solution that everybody will want but I enjoy it. Having the soft rustling of trees and birds chirping as the backdrop of your podcasts is also quite nice.