A Public Apology To Chris Bertelsen And Other Randomness
Sorry about the lack of updates. It's a lot of trouble sometimes to share meaningless events in my life with whoever happens to randomly wander through here. This may be kinda long and rambling as a result.
The Against Me! show a couple of weeks ago was incredibly good. The Epoxies opened, and I liked 'em, although other people around me appeared flummoxed. Against Me was kind enough to play all four of my favorites, opening with "Pints of Guinness Make You Strong", and throwing in "Rice and Bread" and "You Look Like I Need a Drink" before throwing out "Walking Is Still Honest" for an encore. Really, though, they played just about everything I could have asked for, and were generally awesome. Here's a picture, because I love you.
Obviously, I don't love you enough to take a decent picture.
Recently, I came into possession of a bunch of college lectures in MP3, produced by The Teaching Company. There's a pretty wide variety, everything from critiquing poetry, to life in the middle ages, to special relativity and quantum physics. I had figured they'd be perfect to listen to while driving home for Thanksgiving, but when I looked at the one on relativity, it was almost ten hours long...not really practical to burn it to CDs, but any decent MP3 player would hold a bunch of them. I don't really have any other huge use for an MP3 player, so I really didn't want to go out and drop $150 on one, plus some way to play it through the WRX's stereo. So imagine my joy when I happened across this thing...
The VRFM7 MP3 FM Modulator, it is called. That picture links to where you can get one on Amazon, but honestly, I got mine at Walmart, for about $30. Basically, you plug this guy into your car's cigarette lighter, then plug an MP3 player or anything else with a stereo out (i.e. a headphone jack), and it transmits that via FM to your car's stereo (XM Satellite Radio works like that, too, just so you know). That's pretty handy for those of you with MP3 players...the quality is generally held to be higher than those cassette deck adapters. But that's not what I found to be neat about this thing. If you have a USB flash drive, you can load that thing up with MP3s and plug it directly into the VRFM7 (also known as the VR3, for whatever confused reason). The VR3 will read MP3s off your flash drive and play them, no separate MP3 player needed. It's not perfect, mind you...if the cigarette lighter stops powering it, as is pretty common when you shut off the car, it will reset to the first song, and it doesn't have any sort of randomize feature - play, pause, stop, forward, back, that's about it. However, for audiobooks, it worked awesome for me, especially for $30 - and if I ever do pick up an MP3 player, I'm already car-enabled.
So I listened to lectures on Einstein's theory of special relativity all the eight-hour-way to Tennessee, which was pretty awesome. Got to hang out with all the family people - my niece and nephew are way too cute for something that started with my brother. Tried to take a bunch of pictures of their horses for a website I'm supposed to be whipping up, but they weren't very cooperative, the lighting wasn't very good, and I pretty much suck at photography, so that was pretty pointless. Still, it was fun.
I stopped to see my grandmother in northern Tennessee on the way back, like we always do. She recently moved into her sister's old house, since the one she's always lived in is pretty big, and sort of a pain for one person to keep up, especially when that person remembers WWI. Anyway, before she moved in there, some dude had been renting it, but they kicked him out for running a meth lab or something. He left behind some stuff, and my aunt gave the music equipment to me while we were there, including a Les Paul. Now mind you, it's an Epiphone Les Paul, and basically the lowest end model they make, but I hooked it up last night, and it works just fine. It plays really well, and sounds totally hardcore. I'm going to use it on the next song, which I'll finally be starting tonight with any luck. It's kind of a boring white, but I have plains to remedy that. Muahaha.
Anyway, that's why I owe Chris Bertelsen an apology, because I always kinda wondered why he played one of those cliché Les Pauls, but now having played what is basically the retarded younger brother of his, and finding it to be an extremely worthwhile instrument, I guess I understand. So Chris...haha, I'm not really gonna apologize! Sucker! I'll buy you a shot of Rebel Yell next time we're down that way, though.
On that note, I really feel like there was something else I was gonna talk about, but I sure as hell don't remember what it was, so...
Currently listening to: "Queen of Hearts", Juice Newton
Moonlight, you're just a heartache in disguise. Yeah, Juice...go, baby.
The Against Me! show a couple of weeks ago was incredibly good. The Epoxies opened, and I liked 'em, although other people around me appeared flummoxed. Against Me was kind enough to play all four of my favorites, opening with "Pints of Guinness Make You Strong", and throwing in "Rice and Bread" and "You Look Like I Need a Drink" before throwing out "Walking Is Still Honest" for an encore. Really, though, they played just about everything I could have asked for, and were generally awesome. Here's a picture, because I love you.
Obviously, I don't love you enough to take a decent picture.
· · ·
Recently, I came into possession of a bunch of college lectures in MP3, produced by The Teaching Company. There's a pretty wide variety, everything from critiquing poetry, to life in the middle ages, to special relativity and quantum physics. I had figured they'd be perfect to listen to while driving home for Thanksgiving, but when I looked at the one on relativity, it was almost ten hours long...not really practical to burn it to CDs, but any decent MP3 player would hold a bunch of them. I don't really have any other huge use for an MP3 player, so I really didn't want to go out and drop $150 on one, plus some way to play it through the WRX's stereo. So imagine my joy when I happened across this thing...
The VRFM7 MP3 FM Modulator, it is called. That picture links to where you can get one on Amazon, but honestly, I got mine at Walmart, for about $30. Basically, you plug this guy into your car's cigarette lighter, then plug an MP3 player or anything else with a stereo out (i.e. a headphone jack), and it transmits that via FM to your car's stereo (XM Satellite Radio works like that, too, just so you know). That's pretty handy for those of you with MP3 players...the quality is generally held to be higher than those cassette deck adapters. But that's not what I found to be neat about this thing. If you have a USB flash drive, you can load that thing up with MP3s and plug it directly into the VRFM7 (also known as the VR3, for whatever confused reason). The VR3 will read MP3s off your flash drive and play them, no separate MP3 player needed. It's not perfect, mind you...if the cigarette lighter stops powering it, as is pretty common when you shut off the car, it will reset to the first song, and it doesn't have any sort of randomize feature - play, pause, stop, forward, back, that's about it. However, for audiobooks, it worked awesome for me, especially for $30 - and if I ever do pick up an MP3 player, I'm already car-enabled.
· · ·
So I listened to lectures on Einstein's theory of special relativity all the eight-hour-way to Tennessee, which was pretty awesome. Got to hang out with all the family people - my niece and nephew are way too cute for something that started with my brother. Tried to take a bunch of pictures of their horses for a website I'm supposed to be whipping up, but they weren't very cooperative, the lighting wasn't very good, and I pretty much suck at photography, so that was pretty pointless. Still, it was fun.
I stopped to see my grandmother in northern Tennessee on the way back, like we always do. She recently moved into her sister's old house, since the one she's always lived in is pretty big, and sort of a pain for one person to keep up, especially when that person remembers WWI. Anyway, before she moved in there, some dude had been renting it, but they kicked him out for running a meth lab or something. He left behind some stuff, and my aunt gave the music equipment to me while we were there, including a Les Paul. Now mind you, it's an Epiphone Les Paul, and basically the lowest end model they make, but I hooked it up last night, and it works just fine. It plays really well, and sounds totally hardcore. I'm going to use it on the next song, which I'll finally be starting tonight with any luck. It's kind of a boring white, but I have plains to remedy that. Muahaha.
Anyway, that's why I owe Chris Bertelsen an apology, because I always kinda wondered why he played one of those cliché Les Pauls, but now having played what is basically the retarded younger brother of his, and finding it to be an extremely worthwhile instrument, I guess I understand. So Chris...haha, I'm not really gonna apologize! Sucker! I'll buy you a shot of Rebel Yell next time we're down that way, though.
On that note, I really feel like there was something else I was gonna talk about, but I sure as hell don't remember what it was, so...
Currently listening to: "Queen of Hearts", Juice Newton
Moonlight, you're just a heartache in disguise. Yeah, Juice...go, baby.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home