Not everyone likes to use his or her iPod shuffle in, well, shuffle mode. In fact, some anal-retentive people need to hear everything that they listen to on a daily basis in a specific order, kind of like the same old order in which most of us go through our morning routines: shower, dress, coffee, newspaper, brush teeth (I hear the ordering of that one is controversial, though), go to work.

So, to appease those people who only use an iPod shuffle but are addicted to routine, MacOSXHints has a handy little AppleScript that loads up your iPod shuffle with stuff like podcasts and music in a specified order... kind of. This isn't just like creating your own playlist for the shuffle, because it involves a few randomly-generated musical selections in the middle as well. For example, the person who wrote the script says that he likes to hear newsy podcasts first, then a randomized list of music for his cardio workout, then more talk podcasts.

The script seems simple enough, although in order to make use of the podcast-syncing parts, you have to first make sure that you have no grayed out podcasts in your list (ones that iTunes gives you the option to download still) or else the script will get very confused. A playlist is then created in iTunes called "shuffle" in the specified order that you want, but with a random list of music stuck into the middle.