Soapbox Time!

This one is near and dear to me, and has been for some time. Distracted driving has become more and more of an issue as the number of guests, gadgets, or food items increase in cars these days.

I have a long history of gadget admiration and consider myself to have been a bit of a road warrior in the past (how's Pascagoula, MS to Portland, OR solo in 52 hours?). After acquiring a wife, house, and two small children, the gadgets and road trips are much fewer and far between. I used to have a small, but delightfully overpowered Chevy Corsica that was near to invisible on the road. It was fully outfitted with counter-intelligence equipment for optimal "safe driving", which meant I had a good idea of where I could get away with speeding and where I couldn't. Here's what I had tucked away in there:

• CB radio: After throwing a rod (thanks Jiffy Lube) and getting stuck between Charlottesville, VA and the Blueridge Parkway with two guests, I didn't want to be without some form of emergency communication, should the need arise. The first thing I bought after getting the engine replaced for $95 (thanks Chrysler warranty) was to purchase an under-dash Citizen's Band Radio. The first one I had was a little large for the space available in my car, and was quickly replaced by a Cobra everything-in-the-handset unit once I read about my next "safe driving" aide. I purchased a cell phone mounting kit (for cell phones that had separate handsets, remember?) to keep it beside the center console, where I could hear it clearly and grab it quickly if I had anything to say (which didn't happen often). After getting a free paint job (thanks for the peeling paint, Chevy) I changed from a trunk lid mounted antenna, to an adhesive glass mount antenna on the upper right portion of the rear window. I had read up on how antenna placement can affect the directionality of your reception, so I compromised between ease of installation
  and center placement, with the antenna for the next gadget already being present on the left side of the same window.
• Mobile Police Band Scanning Radio: This was one was the most fun I've ever gotten from a "driving aide". It was my main reason for replacing my first CB radio, as there was no other adequate place to install it than under the dashboard, above my left knee. This was a revolutionary idea in police detection at the time. I had been living in and out of Virginia, where RADAR detectors are illegal, but wanted some fair way to detect the fuzz residing outside my naval. The Uniden Beartracker BCT-2 didn't have more than a two-digit display, but the trick it had was listening for mobile repeaters installed in the vehicles of state and local law enforcement. They have about a 3-mile range to make sure the officer's hip radios work properly. If somebody keyed their microphone on any of those systems and my BearTracker picked it up (with wild beeping and a bright flashing red light), then I knew I was close to old Smokey. I had to look around to finally find a store that had one, and it was at a Truck Stop, no less. A few years later, I replaced it with a BCT-7, which added a real scanner diplay, more monitoring bands (including CB), and fit in the same bracket. Not having seen any active use in a number of years, I recently loaned my BCT-7 to a friend who was in training to become a police officer. I like to think I helped, as he has since graduated from the academy he later attended.
• RADAR detector: I went through two of these too! Both from Uniden. Having been a fan of the Valentine One detectors since their inception, but not wanting to fork over the cash for one (thanks for never dropping the price, Mike!) I found a fairly capable Uniden 4-band detector (how many do they do now? this was back in 1993!) for my car. Having read and re-read any dectector comparison I could get my hands on, I was looking for optimal placement, that would not be too obvious to the casual onlooker as I was all about stealth, and keeping passers-by passing by. My decision was to cut the clutter of detector and power cord that would be found by attaching the detector to the base of the windshield, and put it just below the window tinting, on the right of the rearview mirror. I powered it by tapping the power to the map lights in the mirror, keeping the cord short, and minimizing the visual impact of the detector. Instead of suction cups, I used adhesive lock strips to anchor the mounting bracket of the detector to the windshield. I replaced this detector with a newer model later, featuring Voice Alert to verbally announce alerts.
• Stereo system: Nothing fantastic. No extra amps or processors. Just a Pioneer KEH-P8200 with 12disc CD changer. Before you dismiss this little-known head unit, know that it was the most complicated car stereo I have ever seen. Literally, you could not perform many basic functions, like track/station seek without using the remote control. The state of the world when I bought this "car radio" was such that CDs had not fully displaced tapes, and I was still using tapes on a semi-regular basis. The P8200 had a great tape transport that could actually repeat songs, and had a number of features to make tapes sound their best, including Dolby C Noise Reduction. How was the radio? Amazing! In the early days of RDS, with spotty usage at best, Pioneer came up with something less flexible, but more complete: Attached via fixed umbilical cord was a small box containing the entire list of FCC licensed AM & FM radio station, their format, and approximate location. You could tell the stereo what state it was in, and it could scan the bands to tell you what city you were close to. I could drive across the country listening to only the format of radio station I wanted.
• My last road gadget was not affixed to the car, but was always ready in the center console. It was one of the early pocket-sized highway directories. I could enter the state, interstate highway number, direction, and mile-post to find the closest services or find out how far to specific businesses. It was quite invaluable when used in concert with AAA Trip-Tiks.

My whole point here it that I had a few simple devices, and a few more that were rather complex. Today I was reading some opinions about cell phones, GPS, and other distractions on the road, and which ones should be allowed. One particular opinion struck a chord with me. They said that any driver should wanting do anything else while driving should take driving test doing that same thing, be it eating food, reading a book, fiddling with the stereo, or anything else.

I whole-heartedly agree. I think that anybody performing a task that could have a potential effect on anyone else should have some level of qualification for that task. If you are all alone in an empty parking lot, and can verify nobody else is present, then I say you can take that opportunity to play around. If not, then you had better be practicing your best "all business" driving. The latest benefits of technology can provide such great benefits, PLEASE make sure you are well versed in using them. Look for ways to minimize the requirements for your attention to leave the road, and keep your eyes open for the other folks not doing such a good job.

Thanks!!

kEnny's New Toy

My latest toy is finally almost fully operational. A few months ago I purchased a wireless phone on Ebay, which I had thought I thoroughly researched. I had read that the mechanism required to unlock this phone was rather complicated, and that it would cost a little more than most others. The combination of features offered by this phone seemed to be worth it to me. It’s the Sony Ericsson K790a.

I made the purchase from a Canadian seller who got the phone to me in good time. Being as it was locked to Rogers AT&T, I could not use it yet. When I set out to find the best place to get the phone unlocked, I seemed to be suddenly running across lots of places saying they could no longer unlock any of the Sony Ericsson db2020 phones (that’s the name for the encrypted locking technique or something associated with it). I made an inquiry to a business that had unlocked another phone for me before, and they said they could unlock it with no problem. Right there I was both happy and suspicious. Could they really do it, or did they possibly not know about the recent “Lockdown on unlocking?” It turned out to be the latter. They were able to unbrand (this removes the software limitations and new software installed for Rogers) the phone right away, but unlocking was a different matter entirely. I let them hang onto it for about a month and a half, so they could try new releases of whatever product they are using to unlock phones, with no success. When I asked for the phone back, it was returned promptly and I was refunded most of the money I paid. Half of it had been for the successful unbranding of the phone. I consider this to have been very generous, as I felt like I was taking advantage of their misunderstanding about their being able to unlock the phone in the first place.

Getting the phone unlocked was an interesting adventure. While there are many b&m stores inviting you to mail or carry your db2020 phone to them for unlocking, I could only find one that would perform remote unlocking of db2020 phones. They had all kinds of downloads available for connecting hidden USB devices, flashing, & unlocking phones. I followed their instructions to generate a file to email to them. My first attempt to send this file was thwarted by my choice of email service. I use Earthlink as my email address, but have it set to forward everything to Gmail, which is set to send messages with Earthlink as my return address. It’s great for dropping the spam, but not when the place you need to send a file to is expecting it from the domain you originally gave to them. I logged into Earthlink’s webmail interface to send the file and waited for about 8 hours for the return file to arrive. I was at work when I got it, and of course the unlocking software required access to the internet. My employer uses proxy servers to access the outside world’s internet, and of course the unlocking software did not have options for using proxies, so I drove to a local strip-mall where a number of businesses have free wi-fi. I sat there for almost an hour trying to get it to work. I finally figured out that I didn’t have all of the correct drivers installed, but by the time I got them running, my laptop had decided to turn off it’s wi-fi adapter. Doh!! I at lunch and tried it again. BINGO!!! I made a call, received an SMS message, and went back to work.

That night I spent a good bit of time getting to know the phone, the camera, and many of their various options. The Sony Ericsson website has lots of useful information, including a feature that will send an SMS message to you to automatically configure your phone for MMS, web access, and email. I used them all. Once I had everything working to my satisfaction, I (watch out!!!) changed my data plan from 200 SMS messages per month, to unlimited web/video & 200 messages (SMS/MMS/IM/Email) per month. Immediately, nothing worked. Coincidentally, my wife couldn’t send or receive MMS messages for the rest of the night either.

The next morning, I found I could send SMS messages out, even to email addresses. The return address was rejected when replying from email accounts, however. Using a specific combination of phone number and Cingular email extension, I was finally able to find an address that would get messages from my email account to the phone as well. I called Cingular with my now-specific complaint, and after spending almost an hour and a half explaining that the phone does the job fine, that they needed to fix the way they were handling (or not) messages for me after changing my data plan, I was left with two interesting things: The CSR I was speaking with didn’t really know what was going on as he told me I should not expect the addressing problem to be resolved, and that everything was going to start working okay again. Allison sent a message from her Gmail account, which I replied to, then she replied back and my phone saw it just fine. WOW!!

After some time getting to know how to navigate with the phone’s built in Netfront web browser, and playing with Opera Mobile, I still don’t know which one I like more, but I’m left to use Netfront more in general because the phone’s built in RSS reader opens links with it. I used to get an SMS message every morning to tell me what to expect for weather, but now I don’t have to waste messages on that, because the phone gets RSS feeds for weather and news headlines every day.

I’ll add updates later as I smooth out my day-to-day operations with this phone. For now, I’m gonna say that I love it, and am glad I waited for it.

HTPC-to-be #1

The parts are on the way. If you want to see what's on tap, you can go here, and click on the link for "My Home Theater" to see the HTPC components along with the rest of the home theater components.

The case will blend nicely with the rest of the home theater components' silver theme, and the PC can be tucked away inside the TV stand. I'm looking at auditioning MythTV for media feeding, DVD playback, and possibly handling TV recordings.

HTPC Dreams

While looking for something to do, and worrying about all the holiday shows and movies that were piling up on our DVR, I decided to bring my desktop computer down to the living room and see what I could do about connecting it to our home theater. I swapped out the older video card (Geforce 6600LE) for a newer model, a Geforce 7600GS, in the hopes of playing a few games at the TV's full resolution via DVI. The motherboard has optical digital audio output and firewire built in, so I can send Dolby Digital Live to the audio receiver and capture the transport stream from the DVR for temporary storage.

With a little tweaking I was up and running, playing Half Life 2 @ 1920x1080, and getting really scared at how immersive the game could be. Wow! I really loved playing it at my desk, but it was nothing like this. I'm literally too scared to play for more than a half hour at a time.

I was able to find instructions and software to capture programs from the DVR and save, view, or burn them to DVD from the HTPC. This is pretty cool in a time when there are so many good shows in HD and our DVR has a relatively small hard disk. While playing shows on the DVR to record them on the PC, I was able to watch the un-aired episodes of Vanished in near-HD quality by pointing my browser to the show's M*Space page. By dropping the display resolution to 1280x720, and expanding the streaming video in the browser, it almost filled the screen.

One of my reasons for wanting a home theater PC is to more easily control our television. One of its weaknesses is that it has no discreet remote-control command to switch it the second HDMI/DVI input. All other inputs can either be selected by their own code, or by toggling through each one in succession. The other weakness is that it ignores anything you tell it to do while it is switching between inputs, which takes a few seconds (we'll call it 4) to do.

The "exciting" new bit about having the PC nearby is that have been able to experiment with the serial port on the TV's back panel. I managed to find a program that would allow me to send commands to the TV, by manually constructing the words required for the TV to pay attention. I was able to send commands to switch between a number of inputs. Just about every function available from the remote control can be duplicated through the RS-232 interface. My Pioneer receiver has serial control, too. I have found a few references to controlling Pioneer components, and that will be the next challenge.

I am starting to see the Infra-Red Light at the End of the Tunnel. My goal is to have a small "not-quite-a-PC" appliance sitting in the entertainment center that can be connected to most of the devices there, that would receive a specific set of commands from my remote for which it responds by changing the TV and receiver's inputs, and be the main interface to the entertainment center's UPS. Until I have that device, I can use the HTPC for the same job, and develop the device using the HTPC. An interesting possibility would be to put the "intelligent" bits into the wireless router (a Linksys WRT54G currently running DD-WRT software) and connect an Ethernet accessed serial controller of some sort to it.


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Heroes Alert!!!
On Monday night, January 22nd, during a commercial break on Deal or No Deal, there will be a sneak preview of a new and previously unknown Hero. I can't wait!
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O where, o where's my Tivo?!

How long can we last? We don’t know. The Series 3 Tivo is out, and I’m leaving it for the early adopters for the time being. Why?

To put it bluntly, I’m cheap.

It took a large leap for us to justify making the previous home theater purchases, but the only big purchase was the TV, which we all love. None of the other components went beyond $250, and most were well below that. I don’t want to pay $800 + monthly fees for a new DVR unless it can do a whole heck of a lot more. The new Tivo has lots of great features, for which not a day goes by without my longing for each one of them. I want to have a DVR that responds quickly to commands. I want to have more space to store HD recordings longer than 4 days. I want to be able to set up recordings from my PC, so I don’t have to interrupt the show being watched. I want! I Want!

But, not so much that I would spend that kind of money on it. I guess we’ll be waiting a little longer for more HD trickle-down.

When I get over my current case of “poutrage”, I’ll post a few handy links I’ve found for HD and home theater information.