As I mentioned here, I was looking for a new car stereo. I ended up buying a Panasonic CQ-1300U for Mary for her birthday. Yeah, her birthday was a few weeks ago, but we are just now getting to the installation. Well, this morning, I got out the box, read the instructions and had at it. I bought it from Crutchfield, on the recommendation of my friend, Paul, as they have great customer service and they provide you with detailed installation instructions for your specific car. Well, Mary has a 1993 Ford Taurus (given to her by affore mentioned friend and his wife), so we got instructions for it.

The removal of the old receiver went very well, thanks to this great DIN tool, which made the removal simple as anything. When I got everything disconnected, though, I noticed that the plugs were different: the ford had two flat plugs, while the panasonic wanted a single plug. I looked in the boxes, and, sure enough, there was a plug that would fit, but it only had wires on the other end. So, I got out the instructions, found the technical support line and called them.

While I was on hold (not long at all; another kudos to Crutchfield), I noticed that there was another set of wires with plugs that would fit the existing ones. Ta-da! I had an adapter! All that was needed was to solder the two plugs' wires together and I could just plug it in. Well, I figured color-to-color, which looked about right, except there were a few wires that didn't have partners. A guy came on the line and, very politely and helpfully, guided me through the pairing of the wires and told me which ones didn't need to be attached. Mary and I sat down and soldered the wires together, alternating turns, since it was so much fun. Then, I put some electrical tape on them, and we took the newly built adapter to the car.

At this point, it was trivial to put the new radio into the dashboard, and we connected the negative pole to the battery again (did that at the beginning to keep myself from setting the car on fire), and the stereo came on and we listened to Cat Stevens' Teaser and the Firecat.

Now, we are ready to take the car to Annapolis this weekend for my friends, Jeannie and Todd's, 5-year wedding anniversary party!

Wow! Code Rush is being talked about all over the blogosphere, and Scott Hanselman has a great merging of it with a new input device, the ErgoDex Alternative Keyboard. I'm always up for increasing my productivity, and this keyboard seems to have some things going for it. Have to look into it.

[via Scott Hanselman]

Well, my second-hand teched backpack from last year is falling apart (thus, the second-hand, as Microsoft sent the guy a new one). Unfortunately, my laptop has a 16” screen, so I can't just get any old laptop backpack to carry it. Anyone know of a good one that I can look into buying that will hold a large laptop and a lot of other stuff? Maybe some organizational stuff, pockets and the like?

[Note: I already wrote this once, but I lost it when I went to submit, some sort of hiccup between my computer and the server.] I got paid for my last teaching gig this week, so Mary and I are getting new car stereos with the money. Mary's car, a great Ford Taurus, doesn't have a CD player in it, which makes it difficult on long trips, so we need to get her something. My stereo suffers from "someone tried to steal it a couple years ago and messed it up royally trying to get it out of the dashboard, so it is has been flaky and skipping ever since"-itis, and I am tired of hearing Carl and Rory sound like Michael Palin. So, time to get new ones. As usual in my product searches, I'm listing out my requirements and nice-to-haves, so I can keep track. I'll also keep a list of the models that I look at and the places that I go.

Requirements:

• CD/CD-R/MP3/WMA support - I have almost all my music collection ripped onto my hard drive, which is very nice for home listening, and it doesn't make sense to take original CD's anywhere anymore. In the car, it is much easier and safer to have 10, or so, burned CD's that have my entire collection, rather than 100+ original CD's that could get lost or stolen.
• Satellite ready - I'm not intending to sign up for XM right now, but I could see it happening within the next couple years, so it only makes sense to get a radio that supports it now. Of course, most of the stereos that I've seen support this, so I don't think this is going to be a big deal.

Nice to haves:

• Removable/Exchangable faceplates - Okay, it is a superficial thing, but wouldn't it be cool?
• Customizable backgrounds - I think it would be neat be able to put a picture of my choosing on the LCD.
• Auxiliary Input - Very nice to have if someone in the car has an mp3 player, or something, and we want to listen to it. I also have my pocketpc, which I could use to hold music, as well.

As is my custom, I like to look around at stores, get a feel for what I'm dealing with, then go online and buy it. I figure that I can install a car stereo with little problem, so that's the plan. While driving, we stopped at the Radio Shack that my friend, Paul, works out, on the off chance that he might have some or at least know of a place. As usual, Paul came through for me, and directed me to a place around W110th and Lorain (Family Pagers, I think?) and Crutchfield.com. He said that crutchfield is the best place online to get car audio stuff, plus they ship extensive directions for how to install the radio into your specific car. Needless to say, that would be great to have.

So, we headed over to what I'm going to assume is called Family Pagers and took a look. The only one that met the requirements was a Clarion ProAudio DXZ545MP. They were selling it for $219.00. Well, a quick look on crutchfield has it for $199.00. That's already a plus for crutchfield. I haven't had a chance to look at other there, and I'm heading over to help/watch Mary's sister put in new windows in their new rental property. I'm going to need to replace a bunch of windows in the near future, so this is going to be good knowledge to have.

Watch this post for more updates on the great Car Stereo Search of 2004!

Well, what do you know, I've been talking lately (about the last couple months) that my next project will be to build myself a home entertainment pc. The main reason is to get TIVO-like functionality with added multimedia capabilities. Plus, no monthly fee! So, as I did with my PDA search, here's a list of requirements for what I want. I figure this is the best place to do it, since I'll (hopefully) get people's ideas and opinions on it.

My goal is to have one central PC attached to my television/surround sound that can control everything, including watching DVD's, recording television, playing music (with visualizations), surf the web, watch mpeg's and quicktime movies. In effect, I would like to have one computer to rule them all!

Requirements for Corey's Home Entertainment Multimedia PC:
PVR capabilities, including pausing of live television, rewinding, scheduled recording and series recording;
CD/DVD playback and recording;
Music playback - CD / MP3 / WMA / etc.
Able to upgrade hard drive, memory, etc.
Remote Control

I've looked a bit at Microsoft's Media Center PC, but I really don't like the idea of having to buy a pre-built machine to get it. The operating system looks cool, basically XP with some extra cool multimedia stuff. However, I can't bring myself to buy a whole computer from a dealer for it. Plus, the price tag seems a bit high, usually starting around $1000. I figure that I can build myself a better computer for that.

So, it appears that NVidia and ATI both have a system packaged with a graphics card that ostensibly can do what I want.

NVidia's offering is the NVidia Personal Cinema. The key points are there: Watching / Recording / Controlling live TV; Full Media Player; DVD Recording. I watched their little video today, and it looks pretty cool. I'm still trying to find some reviews of it. I haven't looked at ATI's offering, yet, but I'll update this when I find more information.

Update:

My friend at work, Mark McElroy, just stopped by my desk to say that he picked up a media center pc and is loving it. He searched around, figuring that he could undercut a pre-built, but found cyperpowerpc.com had a media center pc at a great price that he couldn't beat by enough to justify building it himself. So, he picked one up, sounds sweet! So, I'm going to look at them and perhaps pick one up. Mark said that I could come over and fool around with his after work one day, see how it works. Naturally, I'm a bit nervous about chipping out the bucks and then finding that I can't hook it up nicely to my existing sound system. But, from talking to him, it looks like it has all the outs that I need.

A cool side note is that I can then install Virtual PC and run Longhorn on it, as well.

Well, I'm thinking it might be a good idea to get a keyboard for my iPaq. I spend a bit of time writing stuff on it, probably much more if I had a better way than with the little onscreen keyboard. I think it would make it much easier to take notes in meetings at work, too, if I just had a nice little keyboard. So far, the Targus Universal Wireless Keyboard is the front-runner. Their price is $79.99, Pricewatch has it for $69, Amazon has it for $59 (plus free shipping), Buy.com has it for $63.73 and, of course, there is always eBay. Maybe I'll bid on one, see if I can get it for cheaper than Amazon has it.

Well, for those of my ever-so-many readers who have been following my PDA stuff, I believe that I have found a winner in the great PIM search. And the winner is.... Pocket Informant.

This program is really pretty awesome. Yes, it seems to have earned its many awards. Lupin's Diary, which was the other contender, suffered from being just a pretty face over the default calendar/task/notes database in Windows CE. Pocket Informant, though, takes the whole concept of organization to a new level, giving me exactly what Lupin's Diary was missing: links between tasks, calendar entries, notes and contacts. So, I can set up a task, such as moving all my stuff from Seattle, then link it to notes regarding my research on moving companies, then add a note for the company I chose and link it the original task. Then, when I finally get a date for pickup, I can create a calendar entry and link it to the task. This way, I can keep all of the information together.

Another outstanding feature is hierarchical tasks. The afore-mentioned “move my stuff from Seattle” task has several subtasks that need to be completed, so I can actually make child tasks that comprise the parent task.

As I've been reading the manual, it appears that the views in it are totally customizable. I've played a tiny bit with it, and it definitely does seem like I'll be able to come up with a bunch of custom views to show my business stuff and my personal stuff.

So, I'm still on the 14-day trial, only on the first week of it, but I am pretty sure this will be purchased.

Well, ever since I found out about fingerworks' touchpads and keyboards, I've been thinking more and more about it. Roryb talked about the mousepad replacement, but I'm sorely tempted to try go all out and get the keyboard/mousepad all-in-one. It can sit on my laptop keyboard. It is $339.00, though. Yikes! I'd like to get a trial version, or something. I haven't looked at their return policy, yet. I need to find a magazine to write a review for. :)

Plus, they have a gesture editor, which could open up the whole world.

Judging by past experience, I should probably have this within a month. :)

Tim Bray talks about a new IBM mouse that seems pretty sweet. Definitely bounce over there and take a look. Come back here, though. :)

I'm looking for a mouse for mary's machine, so I might get one of these and pass her my super cool Nyko air flo mouse, which I love by the way. The fan is surprisingly nice.

Update: In the comments, RoryB points to the iGesture pad by Fingerworks, which looks like a large pad that allows both mouse and finger movements to control things. Says these are the shit! After looking at their website, I'd have to agree that it could be really nice once you the hang of it. There are many gestures that use all your fingers, some that only use one. I'm definitely intrigued. Could it be time for a change of input paradigms? They also have keyboard/gesture pad combinations, although the price for those is larger.

The retail on the website is $159, but a quick search saw them at around $129. Could find any on eBay, though. Perhaps they are so great that people don't want to sell them?

Take a look at Fingerworks. If you have a little extra money and want to try out something that has the potential to change the way we interact with our computers, this might be for you. This is when I wish I had many more readers, so I could contact them and ask for a review copy. :) Maybe I could find a local 'zine, or something, to write a review for.

Well, the HP iPaq 5555 was the winner. I bought it tonight and spent an hour setting it up, installing a couple more apps, getting activesync installed, putting a new picture on the back of the today page (a picture of Mary and me while christmas tree hunting) and just sort of playing. The thing looks great and feels great. Of course, I sat on my sofa, turned on the wireless and surfed the web a bit. Hurra! I'm very excited. Now, the organization starts!

As I get more used to it and set it up properly, I'm sure I'll be updating the blog fairly frequently with more details.

Many thanks to RoryB and ABC for their help.

Well, I was talking to my friend, ABC, who knows way too much about everything, and it appears that the HP h5555 looks great. It is a slight bit out of what I wanted to spend, being $649 on the HP site, but it definitely looks to be worth it. Plus, with a big enough memory card (I know, a couple hundred more), I can watch divx movies on it. :) And, with an expansion (I think), it can read compact flash cards, which is what my camera uses. So, I can view my camera pictures on a decent sized screen easily and use it as a backup if I take too many pictures and don't have my laptop with me. :) I could also make use of the 12 months no interest deal, which I always like doing. Just pay it off within a year and no worries!

Plus a quick look on some of the comparison sites shows it for around $560, which isn't too much over what I wanted to spend. The one thing I'm not totally sure about though is whether the h5550 and the h5555 are the same? On this site, they don't differentiate. I guess I'll call customer service and make sure.

[Update: Are they even called PDA's anymore? Pocket PC's, or are those just the windows CE ones? I haven't really looked at these in a long time, so I don't know much about them.]

Well, I am finding myself a bit over my head, organizationally, when it comes to the apartments and all the little things that need to be done. There are several small little tasks that I need to do. I keep them written down in a notebook, but, being me, I don't really look at the notebook too often, plus having the tasks scattered around on different pages doesn't work either. I tried using a spreadsheet on my computer, but I then have to remember to print out the list, prioritize it, and, most importantly, type the tasks in when I get home or get a phone call (wherever I may be).

So, I've decided to buckle down and buy myself a pda-type device. My initial thought would be to use this to justify purchasing a tablet pc, but I can't really afford it right now, especially since I just bought this laptop. So, I'm going to get a normal pda-style device. Now, I'm starting to compile the list of requirements I have for it, so I can start to refine my search. My timeframe for purchase is the beginning of January (hopefully I can get some sort of discount at an after-christmas sale).

I'm going to keep a list of requirements in this entry, so that I can keep track of what I want and need. This will make it a lot easier to choose one, as I can make sure that it satisfies all my needs, then get maybe the next higher model. :) I've still got to have a little geek fun.

So, I've been talking about getting a Tivo now for a couple months. I've off-and-on done some research to look into it, especially concerning how it gets along with digital cable, specifically Adelphia. A quick google search shows a few things, mostly message boards.

There are a couple alternatives that I want to look at. I read about Scientific Atlanta's DVR and am really interested into looking deeper into that. Also, just getting a decent computer with a television tuner, possibly Microsoft's Media Center, and just using that. Personally, I like the last option the best, as I could then have a little more control over it, perhaps even turning it into the heart of a full-blown entertainment center. I've done some one-off shots at transmitting computer to the television using X10's Lola, which I got cheap after sending in my “Real Life Use For X10” story and getting a gift certificate. I like Lola, although I haven't used it too much lately. It definitely was cool to watch on my television the Animatrix episodes I downloaded.

In any case, I'm still doing research into it, and I'd love to hear people's ideas. I'm guessing that January or February will see me finally enjoying the benefits of recorded television. I love watching television, but I'm sick and tired of making sure that I'm home to watch the shows I like. Plus, there are many thing I'd love to watch, but I just can't bring myself to stay at home on Friday night just to see Stargate SG-1 (one of my favorite shows).