The Saga of a Carputer

Filed Under Gadgets & Hardware, Geek on 2008-08-11, 19:34 | 3 Comments

Carputer In Living Room

As technology advances, soon you find that your homegrown solutions are readily available in prepackaged purchasable form. Almost 10 years ago I started building carputers. They were exactly as their name sounds, a computer in a car. Back then it was absurd to think of mp3s in a car as many people didn’t even know what mp3s were. The only real in-dash product on the market back then was the Empeg Car, a linux based unit that payed mp3s off of a laptop harddrive to the tune of $1,000+. Rather than save up the cash for one of these units I decided to build my own based on what I had laying around. My carputer started as an old Packard Bell 66mhz machine that used DOS and a command line mp3 player to supply my car with tunes. It had no display and instead I had a list of songs in my library, and typed them in with memorized keyboard commands. It wasn’t fancy, but the fact that I could take me couple of gigs of music on the road with me was exciting.

Old Packard Bel Carputer

Over the years, I watched as the mp3 + car community grew. MP3Car.com exploded and soon was a wealth of knowledge as others around the world had similar ideas. My carputer also grew and morphed as I upgraded things, still refusing to spend a ton of cash on it, and instead using what I could find laying around. Laptops, desktops, inverters, multiple cables, power inverters, and more random equipment passed through my car. At one point I had an old eMachine 400mhz machine and an 10″ IBM PS/1 monitor that I think may have just been able to support 640×480. When I turned on my car, the chorus of beeps from inverters, monitors, and computers was kind of ridiculous and the number of fuses I went through must have had the local auto shops wondering.

Of course all this hardware was sitting in plain view in my Honda CR-V along with a rather large bandpass box, and as to be expected my car was eventually broken into and someone made off with my equipment. Luckily the bandpass box, being too heavy to carry more than 15 feet was found at the end of the parking lot, intact. And with the help of insurance, I was able to upgrade my machine to the last revision.

This final revision was comprised of the following parts:

    Lilliput 7″ touchscreen
    An 80GB harddrive containing music, maps, and software
    A Buffalo wireless card with external attenna (for loading new stuff on the computer without running a cat5 cable out to the parking lot)
    A simple Deluo GPS receiver with a strong magnet so I could stick it on the roof when I needed a better signal

I went through various software solutions, ranging from stripped down Windows 98 + Winamp, to full-featured front-ends like MediaEngine and Frodoplayer. I always had a couple different versions of mapping software available, whether it was Destinator (nicely integrated into most front-ends) or Delorme Street Atlas.

When the motherboard came, I was so excited to get to work on this project, that I just used the box it came in as a case and had to repeatedly short the pins with a screwdriver in order to boot it because I hadn’t ordered an On switch. Eventually I realized a CD-ROM would be handy, so I upgraded from the EPIA box to the Kikwear shoebox. Four and a half years later and it’s the same shoebox (with some extra electrical tape to hold it together) that I’m retiring.

>Shorting the Carputer Motherboard to boot it
Carputer in Kikwear shoebox

In San Francisco, it’s highly unintelligent to keep anything of value in your car. Cars are broken into so regularly that you see signs inside windows stating there’s nothing of value. After making the long roadtrip moving here from Chicago and utilizing the carputer one last time, I pulled it out so that it wouldn’t be temptation to anyone walking down the sidewalk. Now I have phones that can stream internet radio, more handheld GPS devices that I can count, and should I ever want a full carputer back in my car, multiple options on the market.

Looking back though, it was less about having mp3s and maps in the car, and more about a project that was rewarding. Putting together a carputer was definitely not without it’s challenges and pitfalls. I remember embarrassingly having to pull over on the highway, somewhere between Ohio and North Carolina, to “reboot” my car because Windows had blue screened at 80mph. Shortly afterward, I wired a switch in the dash to power-cycle the machine so I didn’t have to do that again. The hours of frustration trying to reduce engine noise in the audio lines, struggling with horrible Lilliput drivers that occasionally allowed the touchscreen to work (if you were lucky it was calibrated right too), and of course always having to wait for my car to shutdown before I turned it off.

On the flip side, there was all the times that I got to show it off to people who found it fascinating, the hours and hours on the road that I never had to flip through a CD book to find the next hour of music, never being lost, watching TV on my lunch breaks at work, and of course all the chicks that I got. Well maybe not so much the last one. It was a great project and I kind of miss not having it to work on. Luckily I have other current and future projects to satiate these geek desires and occupy my time.

Unfortunately I can’t find a good pic of the actual carputer _in_ my car, other than this one from the roadtrip from Chicago to San Francisco and a couple taken by my Sidekick:

Carputer on SF Roadtrip
Carputer in Honda CRVCarputer in Honda CRV

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Loud Explosion Wakes Up San Francisco

Filed Under SF Bay Area on 2008-08-05, 23:45 | 7 Comments

It was a few minutes after 11pm and Heather and I had just parked the car at Lyon St and McAllister when there was an incredibly loud boom and a flash of light out of the corner of my eye. Just suddenly, out of the blue. The alarm for the car across the street was set off by the shock wave and quickly windows and lights started turning on in the apartment buildings. I could be completely wrong, but it felt like we were incredibly close to the source of whatever this was as there was no measurable time between the flash and the boom, and that a car alarm was set off. If this had been further away, we would have seen the flash and then heard the boom, and several car alarms would have gone off if it was capable of setting the one across the street off.

As usual, I quickly Twittered it and then jumped on Twinkle’s “Nearby” view and Twitter’s Search page to see if anyone else had heard it. A couple twitters popped up quickly. GGJeffy, rockbandit, jklmnt, dewitt, and shannonk all reported hearing it.

We briefly heard a quick siren about 5 minutes later, but not the barrage of fire trucks and cops one would expect from an explosion as large as it sounded. I still have no idea what it could be. There was no smoke, just a white flash and loud crack. There doesn’t appear to be any damage on transformers of anything around here. It happened just as a bus was passing by, so I wonder if there was some kind of crazy electrical arc since it was a white flash, no damage, and no smoke. Others are suggesting a rogue firework or stick of dynamite. I’ve set off my share of fireworks, and this was much louder than even most mortars. Other theories point to a transformer blowing up. And the weird thing was there was no echo. Aliens.. must have been.

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Iphone failures – Uploading Photos

Filed Under Apple on 2008-07-26, 22:49 | 9 Comments

So I took a couple photos as we walked around Monterey this afternoon with my new 3g iPhone. It seemed like I got some nice quality shots with the 2mp camera as far as I could tell when looking at them on the device. I downloaded Shozu, an app that looked really promising as far as features go. In short it interfaces with a number of sites and allows you to upload photos and browse the sites from a streamlined interface. I installed this free software so I could upload photos to Flickr from the car.

It kind of worked. My photos are indeed on Flickr, but not exactly as I expected. First off, I had to upload some images twice before they would show on my Flickr stream even though Shozu said they uploaded fine. Then I go to check to see how close to our actual location the iPhone was able to geotag the photos. There were no geotags. Hmm, ok maybe the gps wasn’t able to get a strong signal on a clear day, by the beach, while we were outside for an hour. But why doesn’t it have any other exif data? Also, why didn’t it upload a full size 1600×1200 image? A 2mp camera is worthless if my photos are sent in 640×480 resolutions.

At first I thought all of this was Shozu’s fault, but then I tried emailing a photo to Flickr and saw that it was posted without exif data, meaning no geotagging. At least it got posted in 800×600 though. It’s still not the full 1600×1200, but it’s a step in the right direction. But this doesn’t mean Shozu is off the hook. Shozu did something I think really sucks. They added their own tagline to my photo description without asking, plus they tagged my photo with “Shozu”. The lower resolution, auto-tagging, and photo description spamming means I’ll be uploading my photos to Flickr via email or a better app in the future.

All in all, I’m very disappointed in how the iPhone handles sending images. What point is there in geotagging photos if that info (along with all the other exif data) is stripped out when you send them? And why can’t I send a full resolution photo? Limited to only one photo attached to an email? Oh, and one last thing.. Apple, why the hell do you keep correcting exif to “exit”. Exif is a completely valid word in the realm of cameras. I wish you would let me add words to the autocorrect bug feature. iPhone for the fail when it comes to mobile uploading of photos.

photo

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Dance Dance Immolation on Forbes.com

Filed Under Fire Art on 2008-07-25, 15:17 | Leave a Comment

Dance Dance Immolation

As many of you already know, Dance Dance Immolation is a project from Interpretive Arson, a fire art group I’m part of. It was originally built by a talented group of friends and is now maintained and improved by a number of people. We try to bring it out a couple times a year to run and show it off. Every now and then this results in some press. Occasionally we’ll get some random out of the blue mention in an article somewhere. The latest is a small blurb in a Forbes.com article entitled “Geeks Get Their Game On”. It’s an article about the different and unique games and activities geeks engage in these days. Here’s the blurb on us:

For those that like their fun with a frisson of fear, there’s “Dance Dance Immolation,” a game that pairs the hit music videogame “Dance Dance Revolution” with balls of flame. Participants boogie along with the game–a kind of Twister set to music–while covered in firefighter gear. Missteps activate blasts of fire, often to the face. The brainchild of Interpretive Arson, a California-based “fire art troupe,” DDI is mostly played at outdoor festivals.

It’s always cool to see DDI/IA in the news somewhere, and the kicker for me in this case is that Forbes decided to run my photo (original on flickr) with the article.

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WordPress app for the iPhone

Filed Under Apple on 2008-07-22, 00:05 | 5 Comments

The app that I (and ever other blogger) has been eagerly waiting for is finally here! WordPress has released what looks to be a full featured app for the iPhone for all us on the go bloggers. I had to jump on iTunes to grab it because I wasn’t finding it in the app store on device, but I’m posting from it now. :). Oh, and the best part? It’s free!

UPDATE: After 2 posts via the WordPress app for the iPhone I have the following to say:
– It’s awesome.
– I wish it posted an image before the text instead of after.
– It made a weird test post that got picked up by TwitterTools plugin at first.
– It’s hard to make valuable posts without being able to copy and paste urls from the browser.
– Writing html markup in the post is amazingly annoying with iPhone keyboard.
– I really like the “local draft” feature in addition to saving a draft on the server.

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It’s time for iPhone Apps

Filed Under Apple on 2008-07-20, 23:58 | 11 Comments

iPhone 3G

Yes, I went out and did it. One and a half hours in line last Wednesday at the San Francisco Apple store on Stockton and I walked out with a 16gb iPhone 3G. So far I’ve been very impressed. It has it’s downsides, things that the Sidekick still does infinitely better, but it does do some things better than the Sidekick. The 3G speeds, integrated GPS, and App Store with tons of apps (500+?) are what finally sold me. I’ll be going into detail more on various aspects in the near future I’m sure, but in the meantime, here are the apps I’ve loaded in the last 4 days:

Pandora: #1 reason to get a 3G iPhone.

Twitterific: When it works, it’s good. Not great, but good. Likes to crash and reboot my phone every now and then

AIM: Blows. Sidekick is far superior.

MySpace/Facebook: Maybe I’ll actually keep in touch with friends when I can log in while in a stall.

Last.fm: Was buggy and not working last time I tried.

WeatherBug: A little more info than the normal Weather App

Movies.app: Was kind of neat to be able to pull up all the info on The Dark Knight, including directions to the theater in less than a minute

Yelp: Have yet to use this even though we use the website all the time. I doubt it’s handy much outside of the Bay Area from what I hear though.

Epocrates Rx: You never know when you might need to look up drug interactions

Remote: Controling iTunes and having album art on the remote is pretty neat, and will be handy for parties, but would be more useful if I had a dedicated iTunes machine and not a laptop I have to hook up to speakers

Exposure: meh.. Flickr access, but it needs work

Google: nice and quick Google searching, quicker than safari

Graffitio: augmented reality ftw! This is straight out of some cyberpunk novel, I just hope more people start using it, and the app gets improved.

Spanish/Mandarin Audio Phrasebook: I could use some freshening up on my foreign languages.

Urbanspoon: Haven’t used this yet, but I know one night we’ll be sitting around saying “Where should we eat dinner?” and I’ll bust this out, watch my girlfriend roll her eyes, and randomly select a place to eat.

Shazam/midomi: Haven’t used either of these yet, but figure they’ll come in handy sometime when I need to identify a song. I will be real curious to see if they’ll be able to pick up on songs in dj mixes that need identifying.

MealSplitter: probably worthless

PayPal: Will definitely come in handy. Another step towards this cyberpunk novel future where physical money starts getting phased out. How long before you can but vending machine snacks in the US with your phone?

TouchTrain: Damn, I’ve got some big fat thumbs.

Loopt/Whrl: I’m really interested in all the location aware apps, need more time to check them out

Tuner: Streaming shoutcast stations? yes please! BassDrive without a computer = awesome

JirboBreak: Figured I needed at least one game for when I’m really really bored

myLite: obligatory (free) flashlight app

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Violet Blue and Boing Boing Debacle

Filed Under Geek, News, Pranks, SF Bay Area, Websites on 2008-07-02, 17:03 | 6 Comments

For those that don’t know, Violet Blue is a well-known sex educator and Boing Boing is one of the most(?) popular blogs on the internet. If you haven’t heard about Violet Blue’s posts getting pulled from BoingBoing, there’s more than enough press out there about it. Even the LA Times picked up the story. I don’t want to get into a long post about my thoughts on the matter, but I did want to share something I thought worth sharing.

I setup VioletBlueVioletBlue.net to house all of the Boing Boing posts that had been “unpublished”. These posts are all taken directly from archive.org where the old versions of the posts are kept. Boing Boing publishes their stuff under Creative Commons, so I am redistributing their work with attribution. I wanted this content to remain around and in a form that is easily locatable, i.e. not buried in archive.org’s wayback machine. If you have a blog post that previously linked to the post on Boing Boing, then feel free to link to its equivalent on VB2. These posts aren’t getting unpublished any time soon.

If I missed anything or made any mistakes on the site, please let me know. I make no claims to being perfect by any means.

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Domain Buying Scam?

Filed Under Scam on 2008-06-05, 13:27 | 4 Comments

I got the following email today:

From: Anne Gaskins <shuja@emirates.net.ae>
Subject: Your Website

Hello,

Browsing on the Internet I came across your website [domainname.com] . If you are interested in selling it, please email me back your phone number, so we can discuss it.
I have cash to buy today!

Thank you in advance

My first thought was why in the world do they want to buy this domain? It’s old, outdated, and the comments have been spammed to hell so it hardly even ranks in Google. Yes, it’s a site I totally neglected because a) I tossed it up in 20 minutes and b) it has only made $224 in Google Adsense in the 2.5 years it’s been up. I was planning on emailing them back just out of curiosity, but then I saw this post pop up in my news reader. Looks like I’m not the only one.

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Incredible contact juggling video

Filed Under Video on 2008-06-05, 09:27 | 2 Comments

We interrupt your regularly scheduled posts of Ed complaining about computers to bring you this amazing video:

via Rubin

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Debating the QNAP TS-209 II vs building a PC

Filed Under Gadgets & Hardware, Geek on 2008-06-04, 00:42 | 4 Comments

So I’m at a point where I feel like I need a good solid server in my apartment again. Something that I can use for the following:
– Media storage for serving to PS3/xbox
– Backup storage for photos, files, and whatnot
– Version control system for website development
– ssh server for tunneling back through my network connection
– Download machine for large files and torrents
– General Windows machine for video conversions and and other CPU/harddrive demanding tasks

I have basically two options to go with in my eyes: Build a solution or buy a prebuilt one.

Build a solution:
Pros:
– Completely customizable
– Upgradeable
– Limited only in price
– Can reuse existing IDE drives
– My choice of operating system (dual boot?)
Cons:
– Significant time investment
– If it breaks I have to troubleshoot
– Possibly overkill for what I need
– It’s been awhile (5 years?) since I built a machine

Buy a solution:
Pros:
– No building and only minor configuration needed
– Technical support available
– Minimal time investment
– Cheaper
Cons:
– Limited in hardware
– Not customizable
– Probably stuck with a custom linux distro

As far as building a solution, I quickly spec’d out this setup.
– It has both IDE and SATA ports so I can use old harddrives and new ones
– It’s a pretty decent system as far as CPU is concerned
– It will be large and probably loud
– It will consume a significant amount of power

And for buying, I was thinking of going with the QNAP TS 209 II (feature lists)
– It’s preconfigured with just about everything I need (except version control) and has ipkg to install whatever else I need
– It’s small, quiet, and consumes very little power
– It’s a wimpy machine under the hood
– It seems to do everything I think I’d need and then some, and I don’t have to set everything up manually

For those not following along, my life right now is kind of busy as I juggle a job, a web business, a relationship, and a fire arts group. At this point I’m more willing to spend money than time configuring something, so the QNAP is looking enticing. But the thought of paying a few hundred more, putting in a bunch of hours, and having a much more powerful machine is tempting.

Thoughts/opinions/criticisms? Any other suggestions?

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