Monthly Archive for March, 2006

Another conundrum…

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on March 31, 2006
in The Truck-Puter
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First, on my way home from a client’s office today, I stopped by a small Car Audio/Electronics store in town to see if they happened to have the speaker brackets I need. They didn’t. So I’ll be placing an order with Crutchfield today and maybe get the speakers installed next weekend.

But the real issue is one I have had in the back of my mind for a couple of weeks now, but just haven’t had time to think about it. Let’s see if I can explain this in such a way that it will make sense.

I ordered a Radio Xtreme USB FM-Tuner, which arrived today. This FM-Tuner, as do all USB FM-Tuners and XM/Sirius Satellite receivers, requires the use of the Line-In port on the PC to deliver the audio. Good so far?

Well… in the CarPuter, in order to get sound to all the speakers and the subwoofer, I had to enable the "Smart5.1" technology supplied with the AC97 drivers for my Via Epia M10K motherboard. Normally, on a PC at home, you use the one stereo Line-Out port and would plug your computer speakers in here. But when you enable "Smart5.1", it changes the MIC and Line-In ports to be output-ports too. The normal Line-Out port becomes the Front Right/Left channels, the Line-In port becomes the Rear R/L channels and the MIC-In port becomes the Center/Sub channels.

Did you catch my dilema?

As all my ‘input’ ports are now ‘output’ ports, I no longer have a Line-In port to connect the FM-Tuner.

I read some articles about using the on-board CD-Audio connector as a Line-In port by building a special cable. I guess I’ll give that a shot this weekend since I won’t be busy installing new speakers. :-(

Speaker install (attempt #1)

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on March 30, 2006
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So tonight after my drive home in the beautiful (finally) spring day, I decided it would be a good day to start installing my Infinity speakers.

First step was to rip off a door panel and see what I had to work with. I don’t know how I missed ever reading this before, but the factory speaker is a 6×9. My 50.7’s are 5 1/4" and the 60.7’s are 6 1/2" round speakers. With the hardware I have, there’s no way to mount either. Damn!

And Crutchfield.com said the 60.7’s wouldn’t fit in the front doors. I think with the right bracket, they would fit easily.

So I put everything back together, and will try again another day.

Argghh!

My Second Week as a Consultant

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on March 29, 2006
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I guess I’m finding out why consultants are paid so well. :-)

It’s not bad. In fact, it’s really good. It’s just exhausting.

For the past week-and-a-half, I’ve been focused on 3 things:

1.) Gather as much information about my project as I can,
2.) Deliver the specifics that have been requested of me (mostly documentation at this point), and
3.) Gather as much information about the company, its dynamics, politics and ‘how to get things done’ as I have time left-over to do so.

I think the expectations for 1 and 2 above are MUCH higher than they would be for a new employee. And regarding 3, while an employee would take 3-6 months to figure it out, and no one is expecting/requesting that I do it, I think that’s going to be key to my success.

Anyway… it’s good, but it’s certainly not easy. While I’m being well-compensated, my client is definitely getting their money’s worth.

I’m already ready for a vacation. :-)

War Propaganda

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on March 27, 2006
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No, this isn’t about the "War" in Iraq. Nor the "War" on Terrorism. This is about the war on propaganda.

My friend, John, turned me on to this atrocity. If you visit the Human Society of the United States’s website, you’d think there was a world uproar about the senseless slaughter of cute, fluffy white-haired baby seals.

The fact is, several of those restaurants, chefs, and companies "taking part in the boycott" against Canadian seafood were never asked… and in some cases weren’t even aware… that such a boycott was taking place.

The Humane Society keeps posting pictures of the white, fluffy animals despite the fact that hunting these less-than-3-week-old seals was outlawed in 1987. From CNN.com, "The pups also must be over 2-3 weeks old and have shed their white downy fur before being killed."

The Harp Seal population in Canada isn’t the fault of the seals. It’s the fault of humans. Their ‘protection’ by environmental groups has caused an unnatural surplus, completely disrupting the natural ecosystem. If humans are going to take responsibility for protecting these species, they must also take responsibility for their overgrowth.

Monitor… installed!

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on March 26, 2006
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First, I started with the "monitor/head unit box" I built for the dash of the Miata. I decided I would be better of just starting from scratch, so I ordered this empty Xenarc LCD casing.

I did a test fit with the empty casing, and I think I got lucky. There really wasn’t much to do, and I didn’t need any bondo. I cut down the box so it was still the same height and width dimentions as the factory head unit, but about 1" inch shorter front-to-back. Then I attached the factory brackets that held the head unit in place. I also needed a way to attach the monitor to the box, and surprisingly, the little stand that came with the original monitor worked perfectly. I just screwed it to the bottom of my box, and then locked the monitor in place.

At that point, it was just a matter of plugging in the VGA and power cables, mounting it to the factory brackets in the dash, and replacing the bezel. Sweet!

Subwoofer installed!

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on March 25, 2006
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Ok.. I was waiting on my girlfriend who called to say she was running a few hours late. So there was time to install the sub afterall.

Very simple. Very nice.

Sounds good too. Can’t wait to get the other Infinity speakers in.

Sub Box

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on March 25, 2006
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Today I received the custom subwoofer enclosure I ordered from SuperCrew Sound. You’re looking at the bottom, as this is a down-fire box. It will fit perfectly under the rear seat on the passenger’s side.

I just pulled things out of their respective boxes to see what it looks like and test the fit. I probably won’t get around to installing it until tomorrow at the earliest. As I have a 6-channel amp and a dual-coil sub, I’m researching whether it’s better to hook up the amp "bridged" and the sub either in parallel or in series, or hook up the amp straight through in stereo, treating each coil as a seperate sub. Any advice?

I also upgraded my front-end to Centrafuse 1.6.

Baby Fight Club

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on March 25, 2006
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We’ve all heard of ***** fights and dog fights (and if you want to know more, follow the links).

But now… stand back and prepare yourself for America’s newest, fastest-growing underground blood sport… Baby Fighting!

Monitor backlight fixed

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on March 24, 2006
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I’ve been in a daze all week. But on the way to work this morning I was pondering the problem with my monitor. Earlier in the morning, I had tested all the connections, pulled out the infrared sensor so it was ‘available’ and grabbed the remote control. After getting on the road, I found the brightness of the backlight was turned all the way up. But… as I found… turning it down had no affect. It wasn’t on at all.

So I thought about it and whether I really wanted to spend $50 for a replacement backlight, or just get a new display. Last night, while going through the forums at Mp3car.com I remembered reading something about how the backlight takes a lot of power. So I was trying to think of what I could have done to break it, or what was different with the current setup than in the Miata. Then it hit me. For power, instead of using the 12v rail from the computer, I was using a universal, adjustable power adapter plugged into the lighter socket. I looked, and wouldn’t you know it… it was set at 6v. Apparently that’s enough to turn on the display and USB for the touchscreen, but not for the backlight.

So I turned it up to 12v and voila!

The test fit (cram) into the dash

Published
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on March 22, 2006
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Here is a picture of what I referred to in my last post. I basically didn’t do anything but some temporary wiring and shoving the thing in there. Putting the dash bezel partially back in place holds things in.

As I mentioned, it looks like crap, even if there were no finger-prints. But it’s given me some ideas.

Also… the brightness issue… it partially corrected itself on the ride home. I think I may have damaged the backlight (or hopefully just have a loose connection).