The last two weeks, before this entry begins, I killed two cars, my
shoulder, nearly my job, and a house.
I've got lots of plans for my car... Providing it holds together.
On Saturday I spent a few hours with a multimeter and a soldering iron,
wiring up my new Blauplunkt MP3/CD player for my, which sounds fantastic.
I'm gonna keep it until I've got $400 to blow on an uberw00t
Kenwood headunit. I had to cut the wiring head thing and re-solder it to
new, standardised plugs. Now I just need a subwoofer and I'll have
decent all-around sound... I foresee spending a lot of money on car audio
gear in the next few years.
I've got plans for a second (and third) CarPC already!
Thinking of getting/making a cheap KVM switch to switch between CarPC1a and
CarPC1b, and then CarPC2 will be used for the next car...
8" Touchscreen with KVM switching between two laptops:
CarPC1A (laptop - 1ghtz, 256mb RAM, 40/80gb HDD):
- WinAmp for MP3's
- Movie watching
- Speech-recognition controls for both of the above
CarPC1B (laptop - 1ghtz, 256mb RAM, 14gb HDD)
- USB video camera mounted under front bonnet set up with a rolling buffer
(as in, records maybe 5gb with of a movie then deletes and starts again,
but if I press a button it saves it)
- speech recognition controlling the above
CarPC system 2:
Same as above setup (2 laptops to balance the load) but with a newer engine
in a better car, I'll be able to use the speech recognition to command
the cruise-control, as well as hooking the ECU (the cars in-built computer,
controls everything in the engine) up to the second laptop and
simultaneously recording everything the ECU can measure as well as
everything that's happening in front of the vehicle :-)
I've already setup CarPC1A ready to plunk in, just fine-tuning the
speech-recognition. Haven't ordered the touchscreen yet, but I know
where I can get one for $200 including postage, so that'll be in the
next 2 weeks plus another 3weeks for postage time =P
I've got some spare laptops (of that cpu/ram/hdd) with which to setup
CarPC1B, but they've both got power-supply and/or battery issues...
When I had (finally) finished working on my car stereo system, it was time
to head down to my hometown, Bridgetown. I love it, down there, it's
so beautiful. Every sight is a teary-eyed memory, every smell a nostalgic
sigh.
The Blues festival was fantastic, especially compared with the last two or
three. There was easily twice as much random street entertainment and three
or four times as many bands playing on the street as there was last year,
and the QUALITY of the musicians had been restored, too. Last year there
was little more than a couple of 20-something's playing acoustic
guitars on the side of the road, this year there was bass and lead guitars,
two vocalists and a drummer for some of them.
There were of course a few one-man-&-a-guitar-type outfits, and one we
stopped for 30min or so to watch to play the some form of (possibly
home-made) banjo, he was awesome. Certainly had me bopping my head,
stamping my foot and dancing slightly. Even had my fiancee toe-tapping
away.
There was another guy (pictured below) who called himself 'The
BadPiper', dressed in 80's skin-head punk apparel, who played the
bagpipes to classic-rock songs, presumably written by himself. He also had
a raven-haired, absolutely scorching-hot young lass strutting around the
crowd (also in spiked combat boots), holding CD's for people to
buy.
We couldn't get enough of the whole thing, but if we didn't leave
sooner we wouldn't get back to Bunbury in time for a mate'
I-have-a-job-so-now-I'm-buggring-off party.
We took some extra time out to drive around the Bridgetown/Nannup
countryside, though, a decision that I'm glad we made. With it's
spectacular vistas, I love this land.
Sunday was full of people inviting us to do stuff, but unfortunately we had
routine homely things to do, dishes, cleaning, repairs, etc.
Which was of immense disappointment to all, really, as I'd like to
just hang out with friends for a while, something I don't seem to be
doing much of these days. Saturday I'd been telling people the Blues
was on, and had been telling people for weeks, but no-one seemed
interested, everyone was busy. The day AFTER, everyone all of a sudden
seemed to want to be social. I don't get it.
It's SATURDAY that you socialise and do fun stuff! It's like a
universal rule!
Dammit people, get it together!
The day was going to end with swimming and a BBQ out near Belvedeire beach,
but instead it ACTUALLY ended with the car in front of us (containing two
of my fiancee's sisters and their respective partners) had a head-on
collision with a Daewoo 4WD vehicle driven by a P-plater.
Only cuts and bruises all-round, but most of them were pretty
nasty-looking. Like, four days after and skin-colour is white with a streak
of vibrant red and purple. And those are just the bruises.
my fiancee's sister was in hysterics, and didn't calm down until
she got to the hospital.
my fiancee's sisters' fiance's car was a write-off, the
front-end a mangled mess.
The 4WD had a dented front-bar, and a cracked radiator. I should look into
getting one of those.
We spent until 2230 that night in the waiting room of Emergency, waiting
for them to come out. Then we went home. They got out about 15min after we
left, apaprrently.
This weekend, there will be my fiancee's sisters' engagement
party held at our house. That will be interesting, as it's
blues/rock-themed. Not entirely sure how I feel about the whole plan, but I
like them both, and am willing to accommodate.
A few people have mentioned that I've been a lot quieter since being
with my fiancee, partying less, socialising less. I object to that, but not
much... It's more of a gradual thing that's come from having a
full-time job and debts, rather than a part-time job giving me money purely
to spend on alcohol and boatloads of free time.
For the majority of my life I was what would be called a geek or a nerd,
whichever is the "cooler" one these days. I was very antisocial
outside my circle of one or two friends. Then I got out of highschool and
decided I want to try and, well, be cool. I found my own niche or
halfway-point between the two extremes, but over the last 6-12 months
I've toned that down a lot. I've worked on projects rather than
just getting drunk. And I like that. My projects are enjoyable for me to
work on.
I've done the social, people thing, and now I've come back to the
beginning of the circle, or helix, and want to do my own thing.
I'll still be maintaining a balance between the two, I won't be
"going hermit"... just, meh... I like my projects =P
posted by Azrael on Thursday 15th November 2007, 06:33:09
krustyDC (62.224.128.*) on Thursday 15th November 2007, 08:03:51 (#58328)
1 (1)
We definitely need more of that "killed two cars, my shoulder, nearly
my job, and a house"-stuff...and some unrelated pics always push it
some more too.
Are those CarPC things prebuilt, or just some old laptop junk you have
laying around? If the latter, just pick up a better single unit instead,
maybe an actual tablet PC so that it has all the software set up for it
(like the keyboard input). The KVM thing is a bit... well... ghetto
sounding.
If you're feeling especially DIY, you can rig up some controls for the
rest of your car as well, by sending signals (and receiving them) through
the parallel ports and stuff.
There's not a chance in hell I could afford a tablet PC. It would
cost more than what I bought the car for, anyway.
No, the point of doing this is that I want to do it all myself. The
"Junk" laptops aren't entirely crap, as per the specs
above, 1ghtz processor, 256mb RAM, etc.
If you're not doing any hardcore gaming or data processing (like
rendering 3d images) there's absolutely no reason to have a more
powerful computer.
And yes, I can rig up controls for the rest of my car as well... the
only thing is, my car is too old to do much with. I'll need to
put in a newer engine with more sensors and a more complex ECU / TCU.
As it is, I've mapped a lot of the computer that controls the
cruise control, so I should at least be able to control that via
on-screen controls, if not speech commands.
This was not quite as long as it was meant to be.
