Road tripping guide part 1
I've learned a few things on this trip, and i thought it would be useful to start writing them down. So here goes the first installment: Road Boredom
1) Get an MP3 player.
The first thing you realize on a long road trip is that 12 hours of driving in a day is excruciating without something to listen to. I was lucky enough to acquire an iPod shortly before leaving on my trip, and I don't know what I would do without it. Even a nano would be enough to hold a day's worth of listening, and if you have a laptop with you and a wireless interent connection, you can always download more content overnight and load new stuff every morning. Burning MP3 CDs that will hold 10 hours and can play in the newer car CD decks would work, too.
2) Mod your MP3 transmitter
If you have a car without a tape deck or an iPod-in jack, you'll have to buy a radio transmitter that turns your iPod into a weak radio station, allowing you to tune-in your iPod through the radio. The trouble is, FCC regulations require that commercial devices be crippled to prevent interference with commercial airwaves. What this really means is that whatever transmitter you buy, its going to suck. You'll get static constantly, and the audio will sound muddy and crappy most of the time. The good news is, its easy to de-cripple most any transmitter by cracking it open and soldering a long wire where the (embarrasingly short) stock antenna is. By adding a wire about 35 inches, transmission in the lower area of the radio band will be drastically improved and will even reach the surrounding cars. Just look for a contact point on the circuit board labeled "ANT" or if there is no such area, just turn on the transmitter and touch one end of a 35 inch wire to various spots on the circuit board until the signal gets stronger. Here are some links for the more popular transmitters:
Belkin Tunecast II: http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/07/how_to_modify_t.html
Monster iCarPlay: http://www.ipodwizard.net/showthread.php?t=7496 (download the zip file attached to the post)
3) get some music.
A few weeks prior to leaving, rip as many of your favorite CDs as you can. This is a good opportunity to rip some of your less-favorite CDs, too... you know, the ones you've always wanted to get into, but never found the time to. Thats the nice thing about road tripping: You will have nothing but time. Its kind of like prison...
4) Get spoken-word audio
After 30 hours of listening to your hand-picked music, you'll start to realize your music selection is narrower than you ever knew. In fact, your taste in music sucks. Hard. The perfect antidote for this temporary self-loathing is a change of pace. Audio books are a great way to kill a huge chunk of driving time, entire days, sometimes. The problem is, they are super expensive on CD and on Audible.com. There is a small selection of pirated MP3's on torrent sites (just google "audio book torrent." Youi'll need a BitTorrent client software to download them), but its usually pretty sparse and the download speeds are less than blazing. A better idea is to go to the local public library or university audio-visual archives and check out their audio book stock. Take five or six home, rip them with i-tunes, and go back for more. They usually have a pretty good variety of cheap paperback fiction, self help, and comedy. Not exactly Shakespeare, but distracting, at least. Speaking of Shakespeare...
A great (and free (and LEGAL!)) alternative to ripping audio book CDs is downloading radio broadcasts. One of the best radio broadcasts in history was Orson Welle's The Mercury Theatre on the Air radio show. Many old hollywood stars got their start here, re-enacting classic works of literature (yes, Shakespeare, too), including the infamous "War of the Worlds" broadcast. They're all available as public domain for download: http://www.mercurytheatre.info/. Also, NPR and a number of other news sites make their broadcasts available free as iTunes podcasts. The NPR Talk of the Nation: Science Friday podcasts was my favorite pick, and the NPR Top Emailed Stories of the Day is always a good hour of content. Other popular web blogs have podcasts, too, like Slashdot.com, Make magazine, the Onion and US Senator Barack Obama. Some content requires paying, but $45 for a year's worth of This American Life seems worth it if you can afford it(available on Audible.com).
Thats all for now...
1) Get an MP3 player.
The first thing you realize on a long road trip is that 12 hours of driving in a day is excruciating without something to listen to. I was lucky enough to acquire an iPod shortly before leaving on my trip, and I don't know what I would do without it. Even a nano would be enough to hold a day's worth of listening, and if you have a laptop with you and a wireless interent connection, you can always download more content overnight and load new stuff every morning. Burning MP3 CDs that will hold 10 hours and can play in the newer car CD decks would work, too.
2) Mod your MP3 transmitter
If you have a car without a tape deck or an iPod-in jack, you'll have to buy a radio transmitter that turns your iPod into a weak radio station, allowing you to tune-in your iPod through the radio. The trouble is, FCC regulations require that commercial devices be crippled to prevent interference with commercial airwaves. What this really means is that whatever transmitter you buy, its going to suck. You'll get static constantly, and the audio will sound muddy and crappy most of the time. The good news is, its easy to de-cripple most any transmitter by cracking it open and soldering a long wire where the (embarrasingly short) stock antenna is. By adding a wire about 35 inches, transmission in the lower area of the radio band will be drastically improved and will even reach the surrounding cars. Just look for a contact point on the circuit board labeled "ANT" or if there is no such area, just turn on the transmitter and touch one end of a 35 inch wire to various spots on the circuit board until the signal gets stronger. Here are some links for the more popular transmitters:
Belkin Tunecast II: http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/07/how_to_modify_t.html
Monster iCarPlay: http://www.ipodwizard.net/showthread.php?t=7496 (download the zip file attached to the post)
3) get some music.
A few weeks prior to leaving, rip as many of your favorite CDs as you can. This is a good opportunity to rip some of your less-favorite CDs, too... you know, the ones you've always wanted to get into, but never found the time to. Thats the nice thing about road tripping: You will have nothing but time. Its kind of like prison...
4) Get spoken-word audio
After 30 hours of listening to your hand-picked music, you'll start to realize your music selection is narrower than you ever knew. In fact, your taste in music sucks. Hard. The perfect antidote for this temporary self-loathing is a change of pace. Audio books are a great way to kill a huge chunk of driving time, entire days, sometimes. The problem is, they are super expensive on CD and on Audible.com. There is a small selection of pirated MP3's on torrent sites (just google "audio book torrent." Youi'll need a BitTorrent client software to download them), but its usually pretty sparse and the download speeds are less than blazing. A better idea is to go to the local public library or university audio-visual archives and check out their audio book stock. Take five or six home, rip them with i-tunes, and go back for more. They usually have a pretty good variety of cheap paperback fiction, self help, and comedy. Not exactly Shakespeare, but distracting, at least. Speaking of Shakespeare...
A great (and free (and LEGAL!)) alternative to ripping audio book CDs is downloading radio broadcasts. One of the best radio broadcasts in history was Orson Welle's The Mercury Theatre on the Air radio show. Many old hollywood stars got their start here, re-enacting classic works of literature (yes, Shakespeare, too), including the infamous "War of the Worlds" broadcast. They're all available as public domain for download: http://www.mercurytheatre.info/. Also, NPR and a number of other news sites make their broadcasts available free as iTunes podcasts. The NPR Talk of the Nation: Science Friday podcasts was my favorite pick, and the NPR Top Emailed Stories of the Day is always a good hour of content. Other popular web blogs have podcasts, too, like Slashdot.com, Make magazine, the Onion and US Senator Barack Obama. Some content requires paying, but $45 for a year's worth of This American Life seems worth it if you can afford it(available on Audible.com).
Thats all for now...
posted by Kyle at 3:23 PM
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