Ted's Blog

I got back from Colorado Sunday night. We spent two days in Denver and then two in Manitou Springs (Pike's Peak) and the last three near Granby in the mountains. I had a reunion of the Peace Corps group I was in while in Thailand. There were 13 of the original group of about 40, but with kids and everyone else it came out to 28 people and two dogs. On the way back we drove through Rocky Mountain National Park on roads that still have been cleared of up to five feet of snow. I'll start work on a web page pretty soon but I'm still going through the pictures. For now here's a sampling.

Near Manitou Springs is a park called Garden of the Gods because of the large oddly shaped rock formations.

While we were staying near Granby at the cabins we took a hike to Lost Lake where we first came in contact with snow. That afternoon Susan and I went to Adams Falls near Grand Lake. Above the falls there was a very serene marsh:

The next picture was taken from Trail Ridge Road which is the highest paved road in the US. Eight miles of roadway are above elevation 11,000 feet (roughly the tree line).

Also saw some interesting wildlife like magpies, 13-striped ground squirrels, mountain goats, elk, a moose, and possibly an antelope.

Posted by Ted at 9:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I found these on 99-X's website today.

Posted by Ted at 11:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Griffin Technology, maker of the iTrip that Eric has, makes something called the AirClick, with one piece that connects to the top and receives signals from the other piece, a remote to control the iPod. That way you can hook up the iPod to the stereo and still skip songs and control volume from across the room. Also you can keep the iPod in your pocket or somewhere that isn't that convenient to get to and then use the remote to control it. It uses radio signals instead of infra red to control it, so it doesn't need a clear line of sight to work. The remote comes with a strap you can attach to your bike or steering wheel.

I decided to celebrate a raise I got at work by buying an AirClick. I ordered it on May 10 from Amazon (who estimated a 1-2 week wait) and it finally arrived today. It is tiny and works as advertised almost. Griffin says it works through walls but with only about a 10 foot range, you'd have a hard time getting a wall in the way in that space. I was hoping it would at least reach from my dining room table to the next room where the stereo is, but it doesn't.

Still, it should work from the sofa to my other stereo if I want to read and listen to music. And I took it on a walk with the dogs today. I could leave the iPod in my pocket and then clip the remote to my watchband and skip songs, pause, or change the volume without reaching in my pockets for the iPod (and possibly dropping it or inadvertently pressing a button in doing so). Though the iPod came with a wired remote that added a couple of feet to the headphone cord, this is a much better solution: it's like having a 20 GB iPod Shuffle in your hand.

Posted by Ted at 9:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last year I wrote a blog entry about connecting an iPod to my car stereo. Sony had come up with an ingenious system for the CD changer to talk to the stereo, but it was proprietary and made connecting 3rd party sources difficult. Some newer car stereos (like Aiwa) have an input jack right on the front so you can connect any source you want. Anyway, after using a cassette adapter for a while, I decided to spend my as yet unpaid Ad Sense money (I might get my first $100 check at the end of this month; stay tuned) on an adapter.

At first I just added some new information to that old blog entry. But then I decided it should be its own page. And it might as well have ads on it too. I posted it last week and then shortened the blog entry with a link to the web page (AW stats revealed that there were a decent number of people visiting that page). I got 3 or 4 hits a day referred by the blog until a couple of days after I submitted the page to Google. Today I was up to about 40 hits.

I also changed my Ad Sense settings to start tracking ad views and clicks by URL for each of the four pages I have with ads. I don't have enough data to tell much, but I do know that one person has clicked the Sony page. And, today at least, I was getting more hits on the Sony page than on the battery pack pages. But the Dejumbler still rules them all.

I put a lot of links on the page, but now I want to add some pictures. If I'm going to get traffic, the page needs to look good at least.

Posted by Ted at 6:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)