#300: Ypod

A propos my recent ranting about personal stereo earpieces and the cables that are always in a knot, why on earth do they have to be so long anyway? Are there people who insist on storing the player in their sock, and running the wires up their leg?

Anyway, today’s invention is a DIY answer to the eternal question of self-knitting ipod ear bud wires.

Basically, the idea is to get a long zip (something like a brightly coloured, plastic anorak one will do). On each side of the zip, fold the fabric around one of the wires and glue it back onto itself to form a long, thin sleeve.

With the player attached to the lower end of the zip, you can now join the sleeves by running up the zip keeper up between them. Voila, you have just created a low-tangle, Y-shaped, wearable keeper for your music player.

If you need something even slimmer, then you could consider asking a plastic bag manufacturer to embed a few million metres of wires in a few million metres of zip-close bag seal…just be careful not to a) make the chopped lengths too long and b) retain some width of material in the ‘zip’, otherwise the whole thing returns to spaghetti.