2 posts tagged “project”
I've always wanted to learn another language. (Spoken, not programming - you geeks!) I've never really put much effort into doing so, however.
Today I discovered the Foreign Services Institute language courses. Some awesome people have started digitizing the courses the US Government puts together. Apparently they're pretty decent? They're not flashy, they're designed to get things done.
I don't really know if the systems are very good, but they're interesting. Figured I'd share. I just went through the first chapter of the first section, Pronunciation and Romanization, of the Standard Chinese (Mandarin) language pack. (I now know about four different tones, and can reasonably tell them apart - at least in their mini-quizzes! Hurrah!)
Today after I was done messing around with MogileFS for the day, I decided to go install the XM Radio kit in my car. A little background! Recently I bought an XM Radio head unit and subscribed to the service. It's really great! Until you get to the city and you realize that there are so many radio stations that the little transmitter in the head unit isn't strong enough to overcome them. Sad!
On a recommendation from a friend, I went to Best Buy and picked up this happy device that sits between the antenna on the car and the stereo and wires into the XM head unit, enabling it to disconnect the car antenna when the XM radio is powered on. Cool
To the right you can see the picture of the front panel off. I read up online about how to remove it, and everybody suggested buying a special tool designed to help remove the panel. I examined the pictures of the tool online and found a proper substitute around the house. A little bit of prying, very gently, and voila! Cover was off.
I used the disco ball hanging from my rear view mirror to tether it into the air. The panel has wires coming from the back so I couldn't just remove it and set it aside. (I could probably have disconnected the wires, but I didn't want to mess with it too much.)
Once the radio was out, it was a simple matter to hook up the XM connection kit. Amazingly, there was a very nice channel that allowed me to run wires down by the baseboard up into the back of the radio area, allowing the whole thing to go nicely back together.
Of course, when I did put it back together, I forgot to screw the radio back into the supports. I realized this an hour later, when I was sitting inside congratulating myself on a job well done. D'oh! Back outside I went to pull the dash apart again and screw it back in. Went much faster this time, I guess I'm a dash removal expert now.
Oh yeah, and someone vandalized my car, sorta. They threw a plastic bag of something yellow and viscous at the hood, it splattered all up the front and all over the window. Now it looks like someone puked on it. I had to throw away the bag, no idea what it was. Can I move out of cowboy-hats-and-Mariachi-music land? Plzkthx.
