Like horror movies or just horrible movies?

Remember The Giant Spider Invasion? Want more? You're in luck. I'm not sure it's good luck, but you're in it. This time it'll be a UFO picture. I don't know which is more disturbing, that Rebane is making another movie or that there is a DVD documentary about his moviemaking.

An Elegant Solution

Last year I mentioned what my ideal (automotive) digital music player would be like. My ideal still seems not to exist. However, considering the price of the item I picked up tonight I'm willing to compromise a bit. I now have an automotive mp3 player - or at least most of one. I still need to get a USB memory stick or four.

Tonight jmaynard and I went looking for a few items at Wal-mart and I noticed this gadget which sells for about $30. It doesn't need batteries since it plugs into the car power (cigarette lighter) socket. It transmits on the low end of the FM band, on one of seven easily selectable frequencies. It will transmit audio from a cable so I could use a CD player or such if I desired. But the neat part is that it plays mp3s from a USB memory stick. I can put whatever mp3s I want on a memory stick with whatever operating system I prefer. Jay and I tried this tonight in the office and he used Mac OS X to put a few tunes on a memory stick of his and they all played fine.

This gadget isn't perfect. Even with only playing mp3 files (we tried an ogg file which it merrily ignored, as we had expected) it has a couple limitations. It doesn't remember its own transmitting frequency through a power cycle, nor does it resume playing at the same point it stopped if power is removed. Combine that with not having any navigation beyond [Previous file] [Play/Pause] and [Next file] and it means that a big USB memory isn't really a good idea. Who wants to tap the forward button through a few hours of music? Instead, a few smaller USB sticks would be better. With a play rate of roughly one minute per megabyte a 128 MB stick would be around two hours of play - which is about the longest I am now willing to drive without stopping for water or just to move around a bit. So a few 128 MB sticks (which sell for about $15 each now) seem to be ideal for this. The order of play is very simple: the first file put on the USB stick is the first file played and so on, so put things on it in the order desired.

The limitations aren't too big of a deal. It allows me to play mp3s in the car without any real installation issues. It allows me to use my preferred operating system - or any machine with a USB port. I can change media as I see fit. If I wanted to, I could get a 512 MB stick and use this in the house with a 12 volt power supply and have about eight hours of music. Or I could use the cable and play from the computer and use a good set of stereo speakers.