myMojo

Weekend Project: ipod2car

Ever since I got my first car – ipod integration was a necessity.  My first car only had a cassette player so even CDs were out of the question.  Not being mechanically inclined (I don’t even change my own oil, which reminds me…) I opted for the FM transmitter route.  Plug one end of the cable into the cigarette lighter, the other into the ipod, tune both the transmitter and the stereo to the same change and presto you can listen to your ipod in the car.

There was 2 major downsides though – a) driving into another city and occasionally in the same city you would get interference and 2) my gps also needed to use my one and only cigarette lighter when it was low on power.  Obviously trying to drive and change frequencies was out of the question (especially on the highway) and my gps ended up taking a backseat to my ipod.

So looking around for other options – new stereo that had an auxiliary in or ipod hook-up and then I saw ipod2car.  Sure enough they had one at my local BestBuy for my VW Golf ’03 and reading the back of the box it seemed easy enough.  AndI figured if I found that I was out of my element then I would get it “professionally” installed. 

The ipod2car connects to the back of your factory (guessing also aftermarket) sterio, meaning you will need to disassemble your dash.  Did I meantion I don’t even change my own oil.  After a little bit of search vwvortex.com, I figured out that I need some special key that fit into the slots circled below and you will need 2 – one for each side.    I opted for just 2 pieces of metal fit though mangled up my fingers pretty good.  Once both keys are in the stereo will just slide out with a little pull.

The ipod2car connects to the back of the CD player so I also had to slide that out (easier once the stereo unit is out).  Now there are 8 dip switches on the ipod2car box thingy you will need to set first.  The manual that comes in the box is pretty clear on which ones need to be in which position for your model. 

Once I had the ipod2car box thingy connected to the back of the CD player, it was a matter of running the wire from the box out to the dash so I could attach my ipod.  Back to vwvortex.com and I figured out how to detach (hint: there are 3 screws on the bottom) the glove box just enough to get my hand in so I could pull the wire through.  Now VW was nice enough to leave a hole in the top the glove box that I just pulled the wire through.  Seems like they were anticipating this… 

And then running the cable from the glove box to the centre dash

And the finished product

Now for my actual setup, I don’t actually have the ipod mounted like that.  I don’t want to have to tuck away the ipod each time I park and it gets in the way of a bunch of the controls and the cup holders - but don’t let me persuade you from trying it out.

In order to use my ipod, I have to set the stereo to CD and then select CD Changer which isn’t a huge deal since it remembers.  It is possible to control some aspects of the ipod from the stereo buttons – really just next, previous, skip forward and skip backwards.  Everything I read online seemed to indicate that it wasn’t possible to have the song title or artist display on the stereo.  This may be possible with newer stereos…

Pros

• Sound quality rivals playing a CD
• Discrete
• Easy enough to install (a most likely fairly inexpensive to have installed – think case of beer to your car friend)
• Pauses when you turn off the car and resumes from where you left off
• Cigarette lighter can now be used for other things
• Charges ipod when not playing
• Compatible with most car stereos and ipods (believe 1st & 2nd gen ipods aren’t supported)
• Widely available

Cons

• Next and previous on the stereo skip a song (i.e., next will go 2 songs ahead) – this may because I didn’t set the dip switches properly or one got flipped while trying to install it behind the CD Player
• Replaces CD Changer and/or Satellite Radio??
• Not as inexpensive or easy to install as the FM transmitter or cassette deck options

Next step, voice activation…

re: http://euro-mac.com

Worst New Feature in C# 3.0 – Implicity Typed Variables

I’m all for adding new language constructs but this one I just can’t endorse – implicity typed variables.

Now, I’m not a fan of scripting languages (perl, javascript, python, etc) and am pretty sure I’m not I’m ever going to use this.

So instead of writing

string url = "http://mymojo.ca";
int port = 80;

you can write

var url = "http://mymojo.ca";
var port = 80;

 And everything is suppose to just work as if it were strongly typed.

var x = 5;
var y = "11";
var z = x + y;

And what is the result of z - 16 or “511″?

Software Doesn’t Work – WordPress

Out of the box WordPress install.  Downloaded, unzipped it and uploaded to my server and then started moving over my existing posts from BlogEngine.NET.  But I couldn’t add an image to the post!  Pretty sure I wasn’t doing anything abnormal though figured I wasn’t understanding how to upload and insert images into posts.

Fine, read the documentation – http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Image_and_File_Attachments

Complete Usage Instructions

These instructions assume you are in the Admin back end of your WordPress site.

1) To create a new blog entry, click “Write.” To edit an existing post, click “Manage” and click “Edit” next to the desired post.

2) Beneath the text-editor window you should see a section with “Upload” as its heading. If the file/image you wish to attach to the blog entry has already been uploaded in a previous posting and you just wish to use it again, then you should see a tab next to “Upload” which is labelled “Browse All.” Click this tab and then skip to step 10.

Step 2 and I’m stuck – I don’t have an “Upload” section beneath the text-editor window.

Back to the drawing board.  Now I have 2 ways it seems to add images – a button on the toolbar of the text-editor to insert an image based on a url and an Add an Image button under the Add media area (for lack of a better term).

The Add an Image button seemed like it would work though I would have to know where wordpress uploaded the image to when I attempted to use the Add an Image button.  And the issue I was having was if I used the Add an Image button, I would get a pop-up window where I could upload an image and I confirmed the image was uploaded and it would appear that there was a new image under the Gallery but I couldn’t actually insert the image into the post – which felt broken and I also noticed there was a javascript error when I would use the Add an Image button. 

So with a bit of searching, there is a fix and to prove it wasn’t me – http://wordpress.org/support/topic/163902 (go all the way to the bottom).

And sure enough, applying the patch (found here) and now everything works.

I suck at Photoshop

I’ll admit it, Photoshop is not where my skils are. I can select stuff, resize it, save it – anything more and I’m hunting for a tutorial online.  May not be exactly what you want to do in Photoshop but worth a watch.

http://www.mydamnchannel.com/Big_Fat_Brain/You_Suck_at_Photoshop/YouSuckatPhotoshop2_399.aspx

And in case anyone is wondering the header is suppose to look something like this the one here

http://psdtuts.com/interface-tutorials/how-to-create-a-stunning-vista-inspired-menu/