Piping Audio from Phone to Car

I am listening to a great audio book (Beton by Thomas Bernhard) in my phone. I actually have a few queued up in the phone to listen to them when I jog or otherwise have time. But my car has a CD player and radio and no easy way to get at the audio content in my phone. What I currently do is play CDs from the library or burn CDs with audio book content. But then I cannot continue listening to the same book and have a few going at the same time.

So my thought was to have the car stereo bond via bluetooth to my phone as a stereo headset. And I looked around for some way to bluetooth from my phone to the car stereo. My product search came up with some bluetooth to FM transmitters but they were rated poorly because the FM transmitters are too weak. And they were quite expensive. So I looked around for other alternatives. I finally decided to get a "full range" FM transmitter that has an audio-in jack and a 2.5 mm --> 3.5 mm converter to plug in to my phone. My wife had an old mounting bracket that mounts on the vent tines on the car's air conditioning vent and my phone mounts snugly onto it, just above the cigarette lighter. I ordered this device with some trepidation because it costs only $11.50 (including shipping and handling).

It arrived this week and it works perfectly! I am now playing audioboks from my phone through the device. And it has a built-in mp3 player that plays from SD cards or USB flash drives. I tested both and they work perfectly as well. The "full range" FM transmitter has no static at all at the lower range (87.5) but had a bit of static at 107.9. I am really thrilled with the device. Now I need some way to pad it when I pack it up for trips where I rent cars.

It's really cool. I love it.

Yofiel graduated Elementary School Today

It was not as protracted or boring as the High School graduation and the refreshments were fantastic. Some of the parents put together a great slide show, chronicallying the school year. They even passed out copies. Another professional photographer parent put a flickr URL on the event program flyer. I suppose it's another milestone event for our family, sigh.

The shift from Jr. High to Middle School does make sense. I know Yofiel and his friends are ready for the changes.

best fathers day ever

Slept in late. Yofi made me a mushroom omelet for breakfast. Celebrated Laura's birthday with cake. Played paint ball all afternoon in great weather with Yofi and his class-mates at another birthday party in Puyallup. Went running 8 miles. Played in the backyard and built a big bonfire in the bar-b-q. Indian food for dinner. Started watching a Netflix rental (Flawless with Michael Kane and Demi Moore) with all the teenagers and a whiskey / sprite. Wonderful!

Vegas, baby! (part 5) KA

KA was fantastic. It is the best show I have ever seen in my life. My expectations were high because I had seen excerpts on youtube. The show exceeded my expectations. There were many, subtle, impressive details. The costumes of the ticket handlers and their stage awareness were amazing. The theater setting and stage setting had amazing fit, finish, polish, and attention to details that were awe-inspiring, especially the color and texture. The $150,000,000 stage was, of course, spectacular but the work surrounding it was, to me, even more amazing. The actors and the show itself were great and they were, of course, the core of the presentation. But you expect that kind of super-human circus capability in a Cirque du Soleil show. The martial arts movements were on a par with "crouching tiger, hidden dragon" or "forbidden kingdom" and the fact that it was live was amazing. Some of the "flying," "vertical" martial arts scenes were not enhanced by the flight and acrobatics, especially the last fight scene. I plan to go to more Cirque shows now that I have seen one.




Wrap up


After KA, we took the monorail home and drank whiskey in Robert's room. We went to sleep relatively early and a bit tipsy because our flights went out early Sunday.

I had breakfast at Denny's Sunday morning and was a bit late coming back to the bus but they waited for me. The flights back were just as uneventful as the flights out. Eitana and Gab picked me up at the airport.

In LAX, one of the monitors (running windows) has an embarassing modal dialog box showing. We should have one global setting that disables all such embarassing displays. I believe Win7 will fix this family of problem.

Vegas, baby! (part 4)

Saturday I got up early and ran six miles in my new running shoes. Although I was not the only runner out on the strip that morning the revelers out-numbered the runners by over 100:1. I ran to the end of the strip out past the hotels and wedding chappels where the small strip malls became sparse. I wanted to run until the pavement turned to sand but I also wanted to be back on time for breakfast with David and Robert so I turned around after a bit over 3 miles.


On my way back I noticed this drive through wedding chappel (click the photo to enlarge it):






Notice the sign on the side of the roof:




I did not enjoy running on the strip. The car exhaust fumes were pretty bad and the streets are not bicycle / runner friendly. Drunk people stood in long lines at all the restaurants. Robert, David, and I stood in a long line at a casino whose breakfast was rumored to be good.



...and we were not disappointed. The food was very good, fresh, and prepared according to our requests. I was not hungry again until dinner Saturday night. After breakfast we walked around some more to see museums. I really enjoyed the car museum in the Imperial Palace.


















We spent Saturday afternoon at the pool where I got sun burnt. People were drinking in the pool, literally. I swam laps around them.

Then we hopped on the monorail and went to the MGM to eat dinner at the food court where I had rice and vegetables again. Joel's restaurant costs $350 per plate. But it was too crowded and you need a reservation so we ate at the food court for $7 instead. We wandered around the MGM, lingered over a big dessert at Haagen Dazs and then went in to see KA.

Vegas, baby! (part 3)

In addition to the dancing fountains, treasure island show, and other casino displays on the strip, we walked through the "Venice" area and saw the gondala boats. It was quite nice not that impressive.

Late Friday evening we retired to the platinum club private bar in the Imperial (the only place where there was not too much noise, smoke, and large crowds) and I had a glass of red wine while Robert and David continued knocking back Kamikazis. At around midnight they kicked us out of the platinum lounge since we are not platinum club members and I went to sleep.

Vegas, baby! Part Deux, the videos

The camera I was carrying around has a video feature that is useful sometimes. I have uploaded some videos to youtube at http://youtube.com/mzzw/ .

Here is a (long-ish) video of the dancing fountains in front of Belagio. Robert is singing in the background. It's a catchy pop tune that I had never heard before.

The original video is too big to upload so I chopped it up into 30-second pieces.

And here are some smaller videos:

The staff of the rocketeer burger place in the food court mall does a line dance to "Johnny Be Good." It was slightly too big for upload so I chopped the video up into 2 pieces:

Vegas, baby! (part 1)

My flight through LAX to LAS was late enough in the morning that I was able to drive some of the kids to school. Simeon had taken my car to participate in some junior statesmen event that started early. The shared van ride service was on-time and traffic was light. The driver was an air force brat from the SF Bay area.

Security was crowded, slow, inefficient, and incompetent.

LAX is large, smoggy, crowded, and my time there was uneventful. I sat in the departure lounge eating the veggie-burger lunch I had packed and listening to "The Forever War" audio book in my phone. I tried the MacDonald's iced coffee and it was disappointing.

Landing in Las Vegas the local temperature was 97-degrees Fahrenheit. I took one of the $6 buses to the strip. It's interesting how everything is air conditioned and all loading / unloading bus / taxi / car / limousine areas are covered. There is never more than 30 seconds where you are outside and even then there is air conditioning blowing at you from some large building. Vegas is also very crowded all the time with people trying very hard to "have a good time." They are constantly smoking, drinking, forced-laughing, shouting, or otherwise expressing some primal, base desire.

Arriving at the Imperial Palace, I discovered a long line to check in and a bustling crowd of gambling guests. The primal, base, carnal idd desires are on display everywhere. You are surrounded by ads for in-room entertainment. Many women and a surprising number of boys are showing off their bodies, undulating and posing. I found the music and fleshy displays nauseating and disgusting. I started regretting going to Vegas. Most people wore the same "uniform," men in shorts and Hawaiian shirts, women in short cocktail waitress-like dresses. Standing a few people behind me in line was David! He has grown a mustache but looks just the same as when we lived in Fremont. We called and messaged Robert who was in his room.

My nice, large room was missing standard business traveler amenities such as a mini-bar or coffee machine. The tv had a screen smaller than my laptop. We met at a bar downstairs and went for a walk along the strip. We had dinner at a food court where I got my favorite (rice and vegetables) dinner. We saw the dancing fountains, played the penny slots for $1 to get free drinks. We walked a few miles along the strip to see the free shows in front of treasure island and the dancing fountains. I bought a great pair of running shoes because I forgot to pack my own. Many of the casinos have look-alike rock stars from the late 20th century, including Elvis, Tina Turner, Freddie Mercury. Others have more primal, base T&A shows with "pole dancing." Many of the guests and gamblers had little kids with them.

direct neural impulse (brain control) for games now on store shelves

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews.php?/input_devices/ocz_neural_impulse_actuator_nia_-_the_log/1

 

The device enables you to play video games without hands or voice.  Just think about cursor movement or “fire!”  game play and it happens without physical manipulation.  The reviewer was able to play a game of pong the first time.  I hope to live long enough to get my brain implant to use machines by thinking.

 

But we should also remember what killed the Krell!

 

 

 

Kite Flying in Bellevue Downtown Park

We flew Eitana's kite today in the Bellevue downtown park. There was a brisk wind that kept the kite up until Eitana got bored. We watched the R/C boats on the pond and then played on the big play ground. It was a refreshing outing.

Cascade Striders Track Meet Network did not work

The great plans we had for applying technology did not work very well. It took 90 minutes to get the printers to work. The HP jet-direct card was invisible on the network. The wireless network broke down during registration. We needed to move all six machines and three printers into the finish-line tent. Next year I shall have three wireless routers strung out around the field with a repeater in the middle cranked up to 250 mW. Next year I shall make sure all the laptops have pre-installed printer drivers and pre-configured ports for the jetDirect and other print-servers. Next year we shall test under more extreme conditions and simulate network outages to accelerate recovery. Next year we may attach the WAN port of one of the routers to the public Internet, instead of using a coach's phone as a modem. Next year we shall keep the .mdb master Access database on a very fast flash drive so that the Microsoft Access transactions can flow faster.

Meet Manager does have some cool features. The fact the Microsoft Access can handle fifteen transactions per second from eight separate machines on a high-latency network is cool. Meet Manager enabled us to upload all results to the public Internet in two clicks. All results can be posted in real time. And using a phone in the announcer's booth to read the results from the public Internet did indeed work. The photo finish stuff enabled us to resolve a tie (going down to the thousandths of a second from the photo finish). And meet manager's interface to the electronic finish line stuff was flawless.