NOTE: For a full backstory on this project, please see my blog post here which explains the absurd mathematics behind this unique music album. I hope you enjoy it!
I made a small Python program to solve a completely unnecessary problem: listening to Gescom's 1998 'MiniDisc' album in every possible order.
The album has 88 pieces, which gives us:
88! = 1.8548264225739844 × 10^134
possible sequences.
Obviously, making a playlist containing all of them would incur a slight storage problem!
So instead, 'Gescom Runner' generates one 88-track M3U at a time, hands it to VLC (or player of your choice), waits for the playlist to finish, records where it got to, and generates the next permutation.
It can resume after rebooting, jump directly to a particular permutation, and doesn't need to store the astronomical number of playlists.
The complete journey would take approximately 2.37 × 10^130 years, so I'm reasonably confident nobody will be filing a completion report anytime soon!
For transparency, I used AI and Wolfram to help write and document the code, and I've included that disclosure in the repository readme.md.
The music isn't included — you provide your own legally obtained copy.
I am no mathematician or hardcore developer, just a (very amateur) curious hobbyist, but I am particularly interested in whether there are interesting ways to improve the permutation generation, playback handling, or the general absurdity of the project.
Blog Post: https://ei3lh.eu/2026/09/13/gescom-minidisc-and-mind-bogglin...
Hello!
I made a small Python program to solve a completely unnecessary problem: listening to Gescom's 1998 'MiniDisc' album in every possible order.
The album has 88 pieces, which gives us:
88! = 1.8548264225739844 × 10^134
possible sequences.
Obviously, making a playlist containing all of them would incur a slight storage problem!
So instead, 'Gescom Runner' generates one 88-track M3U at a time, hands it to VLC (or player of your choice), waits for the playlist to finish, records where it got to, and generates the next permutation.
It can resume after rebooting, jump directly to a particular permutation, and doesn't need to store the astronomical number of playlists.
The complete journey would take approximately 2.37 × 10^130 years, so I'm reasonably confident nobody will be filing a completion report anytime soon!
For transparency, I used AI and Wolfram to help write and document the code, and I've included that disclosure in the repository readme.md.
The music isn't included — you provide your own legally obtained copy.
GitHub: https://github.com/EI3LH/Gescom-MiniDisc-Runner
I am no mathematician or hardcore developer, just a (very amateur) curious hobbyist, but I am particularly interested in whether there are interesting ways to improve the permutation generation, playback handling, or the general absurdity of the project.
Thank you!
EI3LH