Category: music

Well, it's about that time of year again. Mardi Gras? Valentine's? Nope, it's time to renew my Sirius contract.

I've loved having it over the past year. It's made roadtrips that much more enjoyable. Any news I would otherwise miss I can get on CNN, Fox, NPR, Bloomberg and the list continues. As for music, which was the reason I got it, almost always has something fresh that I want to listen to. No more scrolling through pre-made selections of mp3s for me. In fact, I don't even think I've used my CD player more than a few times over the past year.

I love my Sirius so much I decided to go for a lifetime account. The website claims $499.99 but it's currently $399.99. The payments are spread out over a few months. They take into account any time left on your current plan (I should've done it sooner!) and knock that off your first bill. The lifetime account carries over to the merging of XM and Sirius, whenever that happens, and I'll only see more content on my channel selection, no additional payments required. I'm excited and you should be too.

As some of you may have heard, the pre-eminent virtuosos of alternative rock, Smashing Pumpkins are re-uniting (at least the members that matter) for a new album entitled Zeitgeist, which is set to be released July 10th, 2007.

I heard the first single last Friday on Sirius, got it ripped, and have posted it for your listening pleasure. It's called "Tarantula" and it's fast, heavy, with a raw sound.

Here it is, Smashing Pumpkins - Tarantula.mp3. (3.51 Mb) Enjoy!

I got the coolest Valentine's gift today (from my Valentine). Jennifer bought me the SIR-JVC1 Sirius satellite radio tuner for my car stereo. Back when I got my stereo, I found out there were several adapters I can get. You can choose from the standard CD changer, an iPod dock(KSPD100), Auxilary input (Car PC?), an XM tuner or a Sirius tuner (SIR-JVC1).

Notorious has had Sirius for a while now, and I've always enjoyed listening to it when I'm in his truck. Coupled with the fact that the local broadcast stations either play ghetto rap, Top40 and/or Nickelback; I was growing tired of the radio. I wasn't really exposed to new music very often, so my music collection was going stale. To top things off, sometimes the stations out of Shreveport aren't very strong and I can barely hear them. I had told Jenn I wanted Sirius, and at the store the other night I pointed out the adapter I would need for my car. I installed the system over the course of this afternoon, interspersed with my classes, and activated it around lunchtime with a one-year subscription.

I mounted it under the passenger seat and routed the cables under the carpet so it's out-of-sight/out-of-mind. Needless to say the music selection is awesome, and, like you always hear, the sound quality is amazing for being a radio signal.
That's all for now, going for a drive!

After selling some stuff I no longer want/need/use, I saved up enough money to purchase a new car stereo. I had been eyeballing a neat radio I saw at Walmart, it has a USB port on the stereo itself, allowing you to play MP3s directly from a thumbdrive. (Something I thought was unique to that model.)
{Apparently, they were introduced in mid 2005, but only recently went mainstream.}

The particular model I was looking at was the VRCD400SDU from the same people that made the FM modulator I got for Christmas. The FM modulator is pretty neat, but it is lacking in some areas. It resets your song back to the beginning whenever power is lost. It plays the songs in reverse alphabetical order, and you only get FM quality sound (not the full range of the music). I needed something more, and the VR3 stereo at Walmart seemed alot nicer than the modulator. The stereo with built in USB port would fast forward through MP3s, let you browse by folder and other options.

I stopped by Best Buy one afternoon to see if they had anything comprable to the novel idea of having a USB port on the stereo - and they did! They had a couple of generic stereos with USB ports that looked/sounded better than the VR3, and 2 JVC models. One thing I didn't care for on the VR3 was the display, it would only dislpay about 8 characters at a time, then the next 8, then the next. It didn't smoothly scroll the text, not to mention that it was using the alphanumeric segmented display.

After seeing the dotmatrix LCD, I realized the JVC KD-G820 was the one for me. It has a beautiful display, smooth scrolling, MP3/WMA playback, sounds 100x better, more sound control, front USB port, rotary dial, ability to connect to either XM or Sirius satellite radio or hook up an iPod interface.

I purchased the stereo, and installed it last night. (I soldered all the connections, used heatshrink to seal the connections and tiewrapped the cables into a neat bundle - very OCD, but it looks nice) It works/sounds/looks great. If you want to check one out yourself, load up your USB thumbdrive with some MP3s, head to Best Buy and pop it in, you'll be impressed.

update: As it turns out, as pleased as I was with the G820, I found that JVC makes an all-black model of the same stereo, with a couple of added features, under its Arsenal line. It's the JVC KD-AR870. I happened to find one on ebay for about $100 less than the one at Best Buy. Best Buy has a 30-day money back guarantee, so I was able to return the G820.

The guy selling the AR870 on ebay is located in Sugarland, TX. It just so happens that we were coming to Houston anyways, so he overnight shipped it across Houston at no additional fee, and I received the package today (the very next day). Since the connection and chassis are the same on both stereos, it was a snap to pop in the new stereo. I packaged the G820 up, good as new, and returned it to Best Buy for a full refund. Sweet! Now I have an awesome black stereo that blends in a bit better with my dash, and has auxilary inputs too. (bonus!)

Well, I'm a late bloomer I guess. About two weeks ago I finally tuned into Last.FM, one of those "if you like _____ band, check out ______" type of sites. They recommend (and stream) music from other musicians based on your preferences. Sounds familiar?

About the time I was really digging LastFM, one of my friends told me about Pandora, another site with a much simpler interface and no need to install any "player" or anything. I've since been using Pandora exclusively. I've found several new songs on Pandora that I otherwise wouldn't hear while living in the Piney Woods. A few of you I know have satellite radio, another excellent source for new music. However, Pandora and LastFM allow you to rate a song good/bad/hate it and will fine tune your selections based on musical criteria put forth by the Music Genome Project. (Besides, it's free to use these online services!)

rant: I might continue to use Pandora more if I weren't being slapped with a monthly 3Gb transfer limit by the LeTourneau IT Department. (All students will be given 3Gb of free transfer, $100/semester if you want 10Gb/mon... and the prices go up from there.)