nuxx.net
Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.

Category acquired things

Honda Update

Well, it seems that someone from Honda called me to answer some questions I had about the Honda Music Link iPod Adapter. Instead of answering my questions, they got about a 10 minute earful regarding how bad the product is. Supposedly it all, plus the URL of my website, has been logged as a complaint. We’ll see what happens…

Maybe next I’ll address a letter to someone a bit higher up at Honda.

acquired thingsautomotivemoved from livejournal

Contacting Apple re: Honda Music Link

Well, let’s see what this gets me. The people it’s addressed to are Jaime Schopflin and Tom Neumayr, Apple’s PR contacts for ‘iPod’ and ‘Manager, iTunes & iPod’, respectively.

From: "Steve Vigneau"
Subject: Honda Music Link iPod Adapter Review
Date: Mon, January 9, 2006 9:20 am
To: jaimes@apple.com,tneumayr@apple.com

Hello,

I have recently come into possession of one of the Honda Music Link iPod
Adapters which was announced in an Apple press release on September 7th,
2005 (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/sep/07ipod_auto.html).

Due to my extreme dissatisfaction with this product I have been
maintaining an ongoing log / review of my experiences with it at the
following URL:

http://www.nuxx.net/hondamusiclink.html

Due to the apparent disparity between Apple's hopeful-sounding
announcement with regards to this product and my actual experiences with
it I wanted to make Apple aware of this information. I am also interested
in any comments which you may have with regards to my experiences with the
product.

Thank you,

Steve Vigneau
admin@nuxx.net

acquired thingsautomotivemoved from livejournal

Whee! (Canon EOS 20D)


Tired: Nikon 5005 · Wired: Canon EOS 20D
(Click for more… And please forgive me…)

Actually, that’s not completely accurate. The Nikon 5005 would simply be outmoded, although I will definitely be hanging on to it. I’m supposed to be getting some film processing equipment soon, so I may use it to play with B&W, even though the lens is kinda crap.

But, yeah. It finally got here… Yay! Now to get a better understanding of it. Last night when I took the photos which were mentioned in the post titled New Camera I made a number of mistakes, least of which was specifying the image’s size as 640×480 instead of the actual 640×427. Whoops… I also left the ISO waaaaaay too high (1600) which with the low light in the kitchen all conspires for a nicely (and unnecessarily) noisy image. I may try to re-shoot it again tonight. If anything, I could use the practice. I must say, the 5Canon EF 50mm f/2.5 Compact Macro lens seems really nice thus far. My only complaint about it is my not realizing how narrow (comparitively) a 50mm macro lens is, and it made taking this photo of the Bell’s Wheat Two, Sparkling Ale, and Wheat Six a bit tight. It seems like it’ll be *great* for real macro work, though. And I can always use the 17-85 for these kinds of photos.

I only briefly played with the Canon EF-S 17-85MM f4-5.6 IS USM zoom lens last night, but it too seems pretty great.

Oh, one other thing… I have to strongly recommend picking up a remote shutter release. I’ve wanted one for a few years, but they were prohibitively expensive for lots of Nikon gear. It seems that on the EOS series of cameras Canon just uses a simple three pin interface. One is ground, the other is a half-press of the shutter, and the other is a full press. If one could get the connector themselves it would be trivial to make a shutter release, but I instead grabbed an ADIDT M1 off of eBay. It was only for US$14.25 shipped (as opposed to ~US$50 for the Canon RS-80N3). The cable doesn’t lock into the connector the way the Canon one does, and it does feel a bit cheap, but it also works.

Oh, one last thing? B&H seems to be a pretty good place to order camera stuff from. The order went smoothly, I had no problem changing the order when I needed to, and everything shipped promptly. My only complaint was that everything shipped in a giant box which barely fit in my car. It was packed quite well, though.

There was also an interesting bit of fraud check which B&H pulled when I called to change my order. I was transfered to someone who’s job it was to “confirm my order” who went over everything with me, then asked me some questions about data available in various public resources to see if I was who I said I was, if the phone number on my order matched the one on ‘record’, etc. It was interesting, and clearly understandable seeing that cameras are one of the items most commonly ordered with stolen credit cards.

Anyway, yeah. Can you tell I’m bored here today? I’m the only person at work from my group, and the only person within 100′ of my current location. That should make taking a decent lunch all right, though. I think I’ll run over to Camera Mart Inc. and look into picking up a grey card so that I can get the white balance dead on when I’m in someplace weird. I want one of Digital Gray Cards because they are plastic and the whole slab of plastic is appropriately colored, but I don’t have time to wait for it right now.

Yep, I’ll stop babbling about cameras now.

acquired thingsmoved from livejournal

Car Stuffs


Honda Bass System Kit — Installed
(Click for more…)

Well, despite not having found any reviews about it, I ordered the Honda Bass System Kit back on the 25th when I found out that my new car was about in. Well, I have to say, it is a bit of a pain to install, but worth it. I still need to do a bit more tweaking, but it seems to fill out the bottom end nicely, making the factory audio system quite acceptable.

The only problem I had was that I thoroughly screwed up a gasket-like part and stuck it on the wrong side of the amp. I pulled it off cleanly, but I (stupidly) allowed it to fold over on itself, making a mess of the padding when I stuck it back on. I had some spare self-adheasive foam left (a spare EPT sealer) so I used that to fill the gap.

Other than that, the install went pretty well, including replacing the factory Honda speakers in the rear deck. All in all, I’m pretty happy with this kit. Now I just have to wait for the iPod connection kit to come out and (hopefully) things will be all set.

In addition to the Honda Bass System Kit I also ordered a touch-up paint pen, all-season floor mats, and splash guards. I’m hoping that the splash guards will help cut down the frequency of road tar and such getting thrown up on the body, and hopefully the all-season floor mats will keep the interior a bit nicer. I also got those installed today. The splash guards were a bit of a pain to install due to how close I had to work to the tire, but they came out pretty well. Although I am being a bit silly and worrying about how they’ll affect the aerodynamics of the vehicle on the whole.

The floor mats were literally a drop-in replacement for the carpeted ones. Even the plastic hooks which I was supposed to install on the driver’s side to keep the mat from sliding up under the pedals wasn’t needed, as there was already a pair there used to retain the normal floor mats. They even match the inside of the vehicle pretty well and give it a nice grounded feel.

There was one casualty of the work today, though: My Haujobb t-shirt. I should have known better than to wear it while working on a car, but I guess it is getting pretty old already. See, part of installing the splash guards requires one to use a paste wax behind where the parts will be installed. Well, I got some paste wax, and due to a poorly designed package, I ended up opening the main part of the container and subsequently dropping it against my shirt when I was just simply trying to remove the top cover. (The wax container is of this design and I was trying to remove the yellow part, but the whole thing opened.)

Along with the H and A Accessories order I received three large Dell boxes containing a computer which I let someone have delivered to my house. (I won’t say who it is for, because the recipient could be reading this. Maybe it’s you!) I tested out this computer and it works out great. There will likely be a post about it tomorrow, because it is the first BTX (Balanced Technology Extended) (Warning: PDF) machine I have been able to poke around. I must say, I’m pretty impressed. It’s nice and quiet, and the layout inside makes for much better airflow. More on that later.

Also, right as I was finishing everything up, and his girlfriend Angie (photo here) stopped by to hang out. It was really nice to see them again and sit around and talk and visit and whatnot.

Well, now I think I’ll look into going to bed. I had today off of work (acquired an extra day for coming into work the day after Thanksgiving) but tomorrow is back to normal. Goodnight. :)

Oh, I forgot one other thing… Today I received my electrical bill (DTE Energy) for the month of November and it was only $29.55. That’s really low, in my opinion. I don’t know if it was the two weeks I was gone or the new fridge, but I’m really happy about that. I guess next month I’ll find out what made the difference. I’d expect a $50 – $60 bill, and if it’s any less, I’ll be really happy. $10/less per month will really make the new fridge worth it. Woo!

acquired thingsautomotivemoved from livejournal

Dell 2005FPW


Click for more…

On Friday I came home from work and rather unexpectedly found the box containing my new monitor, a Dell 2005FPW, sitting on the front porch. This wasn’t supposed to be delivered until Monday, and it had a light dusting of snow on it, so I brought it inside to warm up. I let the monitor sit until today (well, Saturday) and after getting home from visiting and in Ann Arbor I decided to go set things up. So, the photo you see up above is the result of tonight’s efforts to get a new monitor set up on my desk. I have to say it went pretty well… The area remains nice and clean, and with the removal of the keyboard drawer and pushing everything back towards the wall, I can type a lot more comfortably, too It’s quite similar to my desk setup at work. I like it lots.

Today while out and about I also purchased my first tank of gas for the new car and got a first car wash. I’ll get a better handle on this number after a few more tanks and a bit more mixed driving, too. I also grabbed some photos of the car outdoors and in the daylight (photo gallery retired), both in an unwashed state and after getting it all cleaned up.

Oh, one last thing? Those two monitors that I want to sell? They can be seen in this photo and are a pair of IBM P260 displays with perfectly flat (vertically and horizontally) Sony tubes. They are really, really nice, and after doing a bit of research into market price, I’m going to ask for US$200 for the pair. So, if you want them, let me know and I can bring them to you or whatever. They work quite well. Also, please note that the color is off in the photo I linked to because I figured the white balance based on the room and the lights currently in there, not on the displays. So they will naturally look a bit off. But, yeah. $200. Not bad at all.

Hrm, now I think I’ll go start thinking about bed. It’s getting late.

acquired thingsautomotivecomputersmoved from livejournal

Uggh! DVI!!!!

Well, I got my new monitor today. For some reason Dell has chosen to put a DVI-D connector on the monitor, not a full DVI-I. (See Wikipedia’s DVI entry for more info) on their monitor, meaning that I have four extra pins to contend with. Uggh! Why couldn’t Dell just use the DVI-I connector and ignore the analog bits?

I think my best route is to simply break the four extra pins off of the cable. They aren’t needed, anyway.

UPDATE: Fuck. After removing the four extra pins from the DVI-I cable, I have realized that the wide, flat pin on a DVI-I connector is wider than the one on a DVI-D cable. Uggh. So now I need to order a 15′ DVI-D cable in order to use my new monitor properly. Poo.

UPDATE 2: Ahh, it’s working now. I just needed to operate on the cable. Woo! Better than waiting a few days for a new one.

acquired thingscomputersmoved from livejournal

Whee!


Click for more…

Yes, this is a bit of bragging: I finally got the new car today. And, thus far, I rather like it. The in-dash navigation system / audio / whatever thing is quite nice to use. I don’t understand all the voice commands yet, but it seems good thus far. I just need to finish reading the manuals.

It is raining tonight so I was only able to grab a few photos in the garage (along with a few of the documentation for archival purposes). All of those are available here (photo gallery retired).

I think they are all decent to glance at, but some of the better ones are here:
· 2006 Civic EX Engine Compartment.
· 2006 Civic EX w/ Nav Dashboard as seen from the back seat.
· The wiper blades are really long and move in an interesting pattern.
· The speedometer sits a long ways back from the rest of the instrument cluster.
· 30 / 40 MPG!
· The Honda Navigation System comes with DVDs for both Canada and the US.
· My iPod is already kinda connected. (There is a stuff holder space in the front of the dash which almost perfectly holds the iPod adapter I made and is located directly below the power and aux in connectors.)

So, yeah. This seems pretty nifty thus far. :)

acquired thingsautomotivemoved from livejournal