A Cabo Pause With Android Solves

It's going to take me so long to tell the Cabo story that I'm going to forget what happened.  However, my next installment may be a few days coming as I am traveling to Fort Stockton today and won't be back until Sunday.

This week, I solved one of my ongoing Android problems.  It seems that the Android OS has a "built in" music player which is very difficult (if not impossible) to uninstall.  Once it starts, you can't exit out of it.  I'm not sure the reason for this, but I suspect it contains the code necessary to translate various inputs into audio outputs so all music players use it indirectly.  This is my logical guess anyway.

The frustration happens when you get a new music player (like Pandora) and the "built in" music player always starts up automatically when you plug in headphones or attach to a Bluetooth audio device (like in my car).  Basically, every time I got in my car, the "built in" music player would take off and start playing the one or two songs I had stored locally and when you're halfway down the road realizing you are listening to one of the few songs stored locally, it's too late to fix.  I'm not a fan of the "play with your phone while you drive down the road" mentality.

Earlier this week, I downloaded an app called "Tasker".  It basically is a logic program.  Almost a scripting engine for the Android.  If you can setup tactics in Bioware games like Mass Effect or Dragon Age, then you should be able to use Tasker.

I setup Tasker with one profile.  When it detects that I have connected with my car's Bluetooh signal, it starts Pandora, turns up the media volume, and kills the built in music app.  This easy little script fixed all my woes.  Now, every time I get in my car and the Bluetooth connects, Pandora starts up and begins playing over my car stereo.  Sweet.  You can do a lot more with Tasker.  I found a nice little write up about it here.

Incidentally, you save about a dollar if you download the app directly from Tasker rather than through the Android market.  I'm not sure that the savings justifies the trouble of downloading it directly from Tasker.