Shuffle stops playing occasionally, 5 green blinking lights

hi,
my 4th generation ipod shuffle occasionally stops playing a song, seemingly caused by a minor movement of the shuffle or the headphones. when this happens, the indicator light blinks green exactly 5 times. the behavior is otherwise like clicking pause (which blinks green 30 times) in that clicking play again fixes the problem. it happens pretty commonly when running, though some days it never behaves this way and other days it shuts off almost constantly. putting the shuffle into lock mode doesn't help. it also seems unrelated to the battery level.
it's behaved this way for some time though i'm past my coverage period. anyone else encountered this and/or know a fix? i've already got the latest iTunes and shuffle software installed.
thanks.
-mike

I tried the cotton swab approach from http://techtips.salon.com/ipod-pause-itself-3299.html. I took a Q-Tip, ripped off most of the cotton, dipped the Q-Tip in rubbing alcohol, and cleaned out the ipod shaft and the headphone jack. You could tell it was lubricated when I put in the headphone jack, as it swiveled pretty easily. After doing this, I had no playback problems. Where before a slight movement of the headphone jack would stop playback, now I was unable to stop playback short of removing the headphone jack completely.
I also was pleased to discover that the 5 green blinking lights are exactly what happens if during playback you remove the headphone jack completely. So that's consistent with some type of connectivity problem between the ipod and headphones.
Sadly, later that day, after leaving the headphones connected to the ipod for a few hours (turned off), I found I was back in my initial state where a slight movement of the headphones turns off playback. I really thought I had found the permanent solution, but it seems like I might be routinely using rubbing alcohol and a cotton swab to make the ipod work normally.
-mike

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