Um, totally stupid idea here, but I figured I'd at least mention it.

One thing I've always tried to do is figure out how to get the player to shuffle tunes into a pseudo-random mix taking tag information into account. I sort of have this now using some very twisted playlists, but I keep thinking of ways to make it a little better (i.e. don't play two slow songs in a row, don't play songs by the same artist back to back, favor certain artists more than others, etc.) Some of these I've been able to do allright with, but I still don't have it exactly right (nor will I ever). Now to what would be too cool:

Could there be way to install a user created program that selects songs and puts them into "ad hoc" playlists? I realize this wouldn't benefit many people (read: only me), but man it would be cool. I haven't even tried to write programs for Linux (Well one, but it was using Kylix which I don't think counts), much less the Empeg- though I am very familiar with C. Out of sheer desperation I wrote a program for Windows to do this sort of thing and it worked great, then I got my Empeg and stopped using my PC for playing MP3s. I realize how totally bizarre this idea is and I wouldn't even mention it with any other product.

Out of sheer desperation I wrote a program for Windows to do this sort of thing and it worked great,

If you could re-implement that same code in Java, you could submit it to Mike Schrag for inclusion into Jemplode.

Sounds like something that would be cool to software-patent... "FerretBoy's Playlist Generator" or something.

Heh, I don’t have the code anymore, nor would it do me any good. If I were going to implement a good “playlist generator”, it’d have to be a little less hard-coded to my tastes (Although you might appreciate the weight I applied to Rush).

On top of that, for such an app to be truly useful it’d have to run on the Empeg to create new, psuedo-random playlists every time. Of course, I have no idea how difficult it would be to get at tag info for the information I’d need in code anyway. All I really want is a shuffle so flexible that I can control it by writing code. That’s not too much to ask is it?

how about writing a program that could be run from the HiJack menu, shuffles the tracks according to your preferances and writes them into here?

hmmmm, now that might work. Maybe I posted this in the wrong place.

I haven't even looked at writing a program for the Empeg yet because there hasn't been anything I could think of to write, but if I could do this . . .

I'll have to check that thread out a bit more while not at work.