UPDATE 3/27/2008: 

This appears to have been disabled.    If I had to guess, Apple sent down some kind of an update which disabled this capability.  On the bright side, my photos screen saver is no longer showing a white screen after a few days of running.  You can still use AppleTV as an AirTunes speaker and stream it through iTunes, so that's the workaround I have for now.  Hopefully, they'll enable Internet Radio Playlists in a future update.

ORIGINAL POST 2/13/2008:

Woo hoo!

I just downloaded the 2.0 update for my AppleTV.  My Internet Radio playlist synced up to it and now there are actually entries in it!  So finally, I can enjoy Radio Paradise throughout the house. 

To make this work with any internet radio stream URL, you can do the following:

1. Load iTunes.
2. Create an empty playlist.
   
3. Click on menu: Advanced => Open Stream...
4. Enter your favorite internet radio station stream URL.
5. As you are listening, click on menu: File => Show Current Song
6. Drag the highlighted item (which should represent the internet radio stream you are hearing) over to the playlist you created.
7. Sync the playlist over to your Apple TV (must be running 2.0).
   

If the stream is in the iTunes Radio directory, you can also drag it over to your playlist...  but for unlisted streams, I have yet to find an easier way to do this in iTunes.  If you know of one, please respond with a comment below... 

At this point, I'd now recommend AppleTV to anyone.  Using a combination of iTunes Library Updater, J River Media Center (my favorite music organization software), and iTunes, I'm a happy camper.

I'm a PC guy... (Amazingly, I haven't purchased an iPod yet!) Apple TV is the first Apple product I've bought and used in many years. I was originally considering a Mac Mini, but the Mac Mini simply doesn't have the TV connectivity options that Apple TV has.  For the most part, I like the Apple TV. It does what it is advertised to do, but there are a few major problems with it.

I used J River Media Center for organizing my media on my PC for years.  It is an incredibly powerful media program.  But since I bought an Apple TV, I've been forced into using iTunes. iTunes is required to be running in order to sync or stream from Apple TV. iTunes is not a bad program, but due to Apple's desire to provide a simple interface, they fail to offer some of the more complex features available in other music players. The main feature I find myself missing is per-podcast settings. (For example, only download and keep the latest newscast, but keep all episodes of my favorite radio show until I delete them). Other than that, I'm pretty happy with iTunes.

I have a large library of music files. Both Apple TV and iTunes handles my library quite well. It synced to the TV very quickly over my hardwired network... in just over an hour. So long as you have your music organized, you can find what you are looking for easily on the TV. Of course, it's not as easy as typing in an artist name in iTunes.  Also, I also had to download two pieces of software to help me whip my library in shape.  It's too bad iTunes doesn't do this for you:

• iTunes Library Updater - Why Apple doesn't provide the ability to update your library from a given location is beyond me!
• FixTunes - Whether you use iTunes or not, this is a pretty cool little application.  It fills in the blanks on your MP3 tags, including cover art images.  Unfortunately, you have to pay $25 to use this application on more than 50 files.
  

After tinkering with iTunes some more, I discovered it allows you to create a playlist with internet radio stations in it.  Handy!  I have a few internet radio stations I love to listen to, so I place them in this Radio playlist. The playlist synced to Apple TV, but showed no entries. In addition, there is no way to manually search iTunes radio directory from Apple TV. It wouldn't be hard for Apple to add these features, and hopefully they will in future software update. As far as I'm concerned, this is a glaring omission from the Apple TV feature set.

Overall, I'm fairly happy with the box. And my concerns can be fixed with future iTunes/AppleTV software updates. I've got my fingers crossed. Then again, if I get impatient, I can always hack the box. Of course, this would void my warranty.  <sigh>

And about the stereo... A good chunk of our electronics were struck by lightening just before we headed out on our travels.  So we don't own a digital receiver anymore.  That's about to change.  It is kind-of annoying to be paying this much for stereo equipment again, but American Power Conversion did manage to honor their connected equipment guarantee for my fried equipment.  I just have to remember I got that payment back in 2005.  Normally, I'd never spend so much on a stereo.  I blame this on my father.  He keeps giving me his old high-end equipment, and I figure I should at least connect it to gear that doesn't totally suck.

With recommendations from a good friend, I finally settled on the Onkyo SR-TX705 A/V receiver to drive our TV room, and an Onkyo TX-SR304 (connected to the main receiver via digital coax S/PDIF) to drive our outdoor speakers and living/dining room.  I also inherit my dad's old wide screen HD CRT TV... well, kinda HD in any case... it doesn't do 1080p, but it is better than Teresa's ancient Proscan TV.  The Apple TV will be used to drive the music + podcasts + internet TV programs through the system.  We've also added DirecTV DVR to the mix (no HD).  I'm not a big fan of TV, but Teresa put her foot down... "If you're gonna spend that much on stereo equipment, I want my TV!"  Thanks to the DVR, at least we can watch what we want when we want.  In the meantime, Teresa's ancient Yamaha desktop stereo (no digital input/output) is driving my dad's old Mirage M3si's quite nicely.  It will nice to be digital again, AND be able to broadcast music throughout the house. 

Happy holidays to us...

My Kyocera 7035 smartphone has died. Sometimes my phone will be at 100% signal strength and drop to zero. When I restart the phone, I get this message:

My best guess is that something in the antenna shorted out. In any case, the timing was fortuitous.  Alltel does much better with reception in the Arkansas Valley of Colorado where I currently reside.  In addition, there is speculation that EVDO high speed cellular wireless internet is going to arrive here via Alltel at some point.  So I decided to switch to Alltel and get their "best reception phone" for now.  I ended up with a Nokia 2865i.

Overall, it's a pretty impressive phone for the inexpensive price ($30 w/2yr contract).  It's tiny and sports features such as bluetooth and quite a bit of memory (12mb).  At least, that's enough to store my entire 450 something entry phone book and a few ring tones!  Since it had bluetooth, and my new laptop has bluetooth, anytime it gets within range of my computer, it syncs thanks to the free Nokia PC Suite. 

Well... I don't mean offer much gratitude to Nokia PC Suite actually.  It is a system hog, taking up plenty of memory and running a number of processes.  It's customization capability is horrendous.  IE, there is none.  I'll go into more detail below, but fields just don't sync up right on my phone.  But hey... it's free

I'd wager that this suite was probably designed for a variety of phones, including smart phones.  Most fields probably sync up just fine with some of the more expensive phones, but not so with my little cheap phone. For example, Nokia PC Suite has decided that the company name field in Outlook isn't important on the Nokia 2865i. I have plenty of contacts that do not have anything in the Full Name field, but have a populated Company Name field. Outlook is pretty smart in providing a "File As" field. Using this field, you can store/sort items just as you want to look them up... IE last, first for people, and company name for companies. Assuming that if the "Full Name" field is empty, "File As" properly defaults to the "Company Name" field. For my phone, Nokia PC Suite should simply pick up the "File As" field and stuff it in the "Name" field on my phone, but instead, it just throws a blank name in there. Lovely... so I have bunch of address book entries on my phone with a blank name. Not very useful. Support gave me an unhelpful answer: "Put the company name in the last name field." So I'm supposed to screw up all my Outlook data for Nokia PC Suite?  I don't think so.  lookOut screws with my data enough as it is, thank you very much.

So I have written a macro to copy off the contacts to a new folder, and stuff the "File As" field into the "Last Name" field so the contact name is properly written to the phone. 

More details plus the download can be found here:

http://www.koransky.com/Consulting/OutlookNokiaSyncFix.html

Another technical update... Here's how all of our parts and pieces that make our trip possible are doing:

Digital Camera: Our Canon S70 camera started acting up in May.  A spring went bad in the slide mechanism that covers the lens, making it somewhat difficult to keep the camera "on."  We sent it in for a warranty repair in June.  But because it had a very small dent in the body of the camera, they would not cover it under warranty.  They determined the fix cost on it was $123 and we decided to pay it.  But unfortunately, a few weeks later, the camera lens would not retract into the body of the camera.  No amount of coaxing could get the camera lens to close.  So, with mixed feelings, we bid our Canon S70 adieu.  We wandered into a Circuit City and ended up purchasing a 7 megapixel Olympus SP-320 for $200.  We also had to buy a 1gb xD card for it.  It seems to be a great little camera.  It's a lot lighter than the Canon, and doesn't have the stupid slide mechanism that will, according to my mom, the professional photographer, eventually break.  It has superior video capabilities to the Canon.  (We are still taking videos, but just haven't had time to edit them.)  My only complaint on the Olympus is that the wide angle capability is limited.  Oh well... we also have my Minolta Dimage 7.  It's only 5 megapixel, old, slow, and sucks down batteries faster than some of my friends can finish a beer, but it works and takes nice wide-angle shots once you figure out that it's auto white balance setting is useless.

Garmin GPS 10: This isn't what you might think of as your typical GPS.  It is basically a box with a single button on it (for power) and two lights.  It communicates wirelessly via Bluetooth.  It worked great 99% of the time, but it did occasionally die in the most bizarre manner.  If we left it out to bake in the sun, we'd occasionally "crash" the device, with no way to power off or reset it.  (Depressing the power button had no effect.)  Basically, the lights would indicate that the device was on, and the Bluetooth wireless link was functioning.  We could even browse to the device and connect to it in a Bluetooth browser.  But no GPS data was sent on the wireless data link.  It was as if the Bluetooth side of the device was working just fine, but the internal GPS had died.  Our only way to resolve the problem was to wait for the device to run out of battery power!  We called Garmin tech support and described this to the gentleman on the other end.  He'd never heard of such odd behavior, and unbelievably, they offered to replace our out-of-warranty device.  Wow!  I've always liked Garmin products.  Now I love the company as well.  Thanks Garmin!

On the less technical side of tech...

Thermarest: (a camping air mattress)  I sleep on one thick Thermarest, while Teresa sleeps on no less than three thinner, light weight Thermarests.  One of those is my lightweight backpacking Thermarest, approx. 8 years old.  We took it to the REI flagship store in Seattle.  They were willing to send it into the manufacturer, Cascade Designs, for us, but we didn't have the time to wait on it.  So they told us we could bring it into Cascade Designs ourselves... and they just happen to be in Seattle.  On a separate trip down into Seattle, we took it in.  They cut it open right in front of us (Teresa asked, "does this void our warranty?" ) and explained it had started to de-laminate from the inside.  There was no repair they could do, and it was only going to get worse.  They gave us a brand new Thermarest right on the spot.  Thanks Cascade Designs!

Thule bike tray:  (attaches to roof rack)  Apparently a bolt fell out of this where the metal tray connects to the plastic piece up front that holds the fork mount.  We repaired this ourselves with some hardware store replacements.

Propane Tank:  (1 gal) We picked this up during a jaunt into an REI store on our desert Southwest run.  It saves us a ton of money ($4/gal), and we don't have to deal with the earth-unfriendly 1 lb disposable canisters. After only two refills, the overfill protection device got stuck.  This is basically a little float that dangles in the tank that stops the flow of propane from the propane pump as the propane level rises.  Basically, this meant it couldn't be refilled, and we had to run off the incredibly wasteful and earth-unfriendly 1 lb tanks.  REI in Grand Junction, CO replaced it without problem, although we had to wait to pick it up until we passed through again on our way out to Alaska.

Thule box:  Somehow, this tough plastic box was starting to show signs of wear.  We ended up with a hole in it, and a crack near where it mounts to the roof rack.  We took it to REI, and if you can believe it, they gave us a brand new Thule roof-top box... an upgrade!  Thanks REI!

Too bad Canon doesn't stand behind their products like REI / Cascade Designs / Garmin does.  But such is the technology industry.  :-(

Bikes:  Our bikes were starting to show some wear from being on top of the truck.  We also weren't riding them as much as we thought we would.  We got them fixed up while in Moab, but we decided to stop carrying our bikes with us.  We figure, if we are ever really desperate for a bike ride, we can always rent.

Tires: As mentioned in a previous blog entry, our tires, 10-ply Bridgestone Dueler A/T Revos, picked up a nail, proving that they are not "bulletproof."  <sigh>  We actually knew this of course, but at least they hadn't failed us yet on any of the more serious dirt roads out in the middle of nowhere.

Truck Cap: While at Nomadic Research Labs, Ned and I worked on securing my camper shell so it would stop splaying out (creating a bad seal in the rear).  We'll have to see how well it holds, but it looks promising thus far.  Did I mention before, Jason truck caps aren't of the greatest quality?

Truck:  Big Red, our beloved Toyota Tundra, went in for its 90,000 mile checkup in Everett, WA.  We had to replace a plastic front seat lever and rear window latch.  Although we are taking a ferry to Alaska, saving the mileage, we will be driving back.  You can bet we'

Time for a Tech Update!  I hope to use this space to type of musings about how all the various bits of technology are functioning on our trip.  It's been a while since my last post, but I hope to be more regular now.  Sorry about the size of this entry.  Now, let's step back in the time machine for a few minutes and bring everything up to date.

Rig

When we packed the truck in Atlanta in 25 degree weather, we didn't take the time to really sort through things properly.  We kind of tossed the stuff in the truck and we'd figure out where it goes later.  Well, "later" was in Florida, 12-23-2005, when we literally unloaded the entire truck onto Dianne's (Teresa's sister) driveway and sorted through it all.  We had a couple of folks inquire about our "yard sale."  We produced 3 boxes of things to store before we head out west, but it should really make the truck much more livable.  We had so much stuff taking up room.  One of the things to go, which I have mixed feelings about, is our DV cam.  It was big, bulky, and our camera (Canon S70) does a fair job of taking videos (no zoom or exposure change while taping!), so the DV cam had to go.  I did bring my old Minolta Dimage 7i for situations where Teresa monopolizes the little camera.   Anyhow, we've dropped off all this stuff in Atlanta/Birmingham.

Things in general seem to be working out fairly well storage-wise now.  But every time we go shopping, we appear to fill our cupboards to the brim, which makes finding things a bit difficult at times, but overall, I think we are happy.

The Jason Truck Cap is still a bit problematic.  We moved it to get a slightly better seal while at Colbert's in Valdosta, but I've noticed that the sucker is too darn short to get a good seal.  AND our window is still leaking (although not bad... a few drops here or there).  However, we have a tube of silicone.  And the back is still bowing out a bit, so we don't get a good seal on the back window.  Oh well.  I think it will probably be good enough for our needs.

We've had one problem with the truck thus far.  We stopped in Denver at a Jiffy Lube to have the truck "winterized."  The last time we had it services was in the Florida panhandle where they mentioned that the washer fluid might need replacing as we headed north.  The yahoos working there in Denver said we'd probably be fine; just need to top off the windshield washer fluid.  Well, on our VERY snowy drive out to Edwards over Loveland and Vail pass, our washer fluid completely froze up.  For those of you in the south, windshield washer fluid is a must when driving snowy roads.  Trucks, cars, snowplows all kick up nasty dirt and gravel, and that dirt makes looking through your windhsield a real problem without an operating windshield washer.  I suppose the guys at Jiffy Lube should have drained it and refilled it, which is exactly what I did the other day when we hit 50 degrees at the house.  We are thankful that no tubes broke and washer pump didn't burn up while I was trying to drain the fluid.

I also should drop a quick note on our truck's mileage.  We've been averaging ~14mpg.  Ick!  Our truck should be able to do 20mpg on the highway, but with the roof rack and extra weight, what can you do?  Maybe I should have looked at a biodiesel truck? 

Software Update

Some software we've purchased recently:

• Mapping Software:  We run a variety of software for mapping. Unfortunately, none of them show forest/wilderness boundaries.  It would be nice to know when we are legally "resting" on public lands!
  • Microsoft Streets and Trips 2006 for updated maps on our PC - very easy to use software... Microsoft definitely has the market on this one, but over time, they have removed some information from the maps such as the forest boundaries.  Great for planning!
  • Garmin MapSource CitySelect v7 for updated maps on our PocketPC.  Garmin Que running on the PocketPC is GREAT while underway.
• TaxCut 2005 Deluxe - Oh joy!  I switched from TurboTax when they put spyware in their software and haven't looked back.
• SureSync - I'm using this as a backup solution.  It's multi-mirror sync doesn't work so hot (where you have multiple sync sources), but its mirror (single sourced) sync is great.  It will work with whatever sync targets it has available, which is a key feature as I don't always have all the backup targets "online."
• Cakewalk Sonar Home Studio 4 XL - I haven't had a chance to use this as much as I would like, but once I get all the various bits and pieces of the website up, I hope to record some music a little bit while travelling.
• Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0 - This is what Teresa has been using to produce our videos.
• QuickTime Pro - to convert to MPEG4.
• Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 - For serious photo editing.
• ACD See 8.0 Photo Manager - Incredible software.  The best photo manager I've seen.  We recently upgraded to take advantage of batch rename, advanced EXIF property editing.  I've been using an older version for years... It's definitely the fastest thumbnail/picture viewer on the market.
• J River Media Center 11 - I've been using J River since the early Media Jukebox days.  It's the best "all in one" MP3 software out there IMHO.  I upgraded because the latest version supports Podcasting!  Woo hoo!

As everyone has noticed I'm sure, we launched adventure.koransky.com on Community Server 2.0 Beta 3.  Very nice software with a lot of potential.  The Forum software, which I'm not even using, is VERY impressive.  There are still a few bugs, but it's still only a Release Candidate.  I just upgraded to Community Server 2.0 RC1 and had a bit of a scare in the process, but things seem to be going smoothly, and they've definitely cleaned up alot of the confusion in the admin interface.  I made a few minor mods to the ASPX pages so the navigation makes a little more sense, and obviously, I changed the logo.  :-)  They will release the source code for 2.0 when the official release goes out which will be a nice touch.

I am currently working on geoblogging software.  I have purchased the domain geowander.com, but haven't put anything up on it yet.  I hope to do two things with the software:

• photo geoblogging, matching photos to track points visible on a map.  Hovering over a photo will center the map on where the photo was taken.
• a map log of where we have slept every night... I hope to update this every night so everyone knows where we are.  This site will be password protected for our security.

I want to get to a state where I can call this software good enough so we can get into the desert soon.  As always, I'm sure it will be a work in progress.

Hardware Update

We purchased a DMC Xclef 500, for playing/storing all of our mp3s.  I put a 100gb Seagate Momentus 5200.2 in there.  100gb!  The great thing about this device is that it acts as an external hard drive when connected via hi-speed USB.  However, the UI/interface on this thing is pretty horrendous, and to make matters worse, they have stopped upgrading the firmware.  Nonetheless, it plays music, as it should, and did I mention, it's 100gb??!  And we don't have to turn the computers on while underway anymore.  We have the PocketPC for mapping, and the MP3 player for music.

We purchased a wireless card/account for the laptop so we can be online while driving down the road.  How cool is that!  It works like a champ.  All the way down to Florida, I think I pretty much had broadband access.  Very nice.  Unfortunately, they have yet to upgrade their towers near Cordillera/Edwards, but even legacy CDMA, at (20-30k download speeds) still beats dialup (where I get less than 7k usually).  It's our main connection while at the house.  When we need high speed, we head to Cordillera Market and enjoy a cup of tea/coffee while we work on the web.

Whew!

Sorry for the large update.  I hope to post these more regularly now.

- Andrew

Between my last set of lengthy automotive travels and this upcoming trip, I have owned two pop-up truck campers. The first camper was a Sunlite Skyhawk SB… quite nice… it had an auxiliary battery, propane system, a fridge, fan, heater, etc… It insulated you quite a bit from the great outdoors (which was a disappointment actually) and it weighed a ton (IE it did not perform very well off-road.) I really did like the fan however… it was a godsend on a warm evening. More on that later. Anyhow, we sold the Sunlite and purchased an Aliner Truck Cabin which proceeded to fall apart on us. The saga was so horrendous, I devoted a whole web page to it here. So now we are back to some basics here… a simple truck cap, a home made sleeping platform, and some ingenuity.

Because both Teresa and I really enjoyed the fan in our Sunlite, I decided to try to make something work in our new truck. I would need to be able to run a fan all night long to stay comfortable in warm climates and that would require some power. Of course, because I’m such a geek, I also plan on bringing a couple of different electronic items with me including a laptop, an external USB hard drive, a digital camera or two and a printer. So I’ve got to figure out a decent 12v/120v electrical system for our rig.

Let me note that in my past travels, I’ve had some electrical problems. I traced my problems down to a couple of things:

• You really need to use a high quality deep cycle battery if you want to get any life out of your auxiliary battery. (One of the batteries in my old rig leaked acid all over the place and destroyed some carpet… Ick!)
• Battery isolators do not do a very good job at keeping your auxiliary battery charged, and they can overcharge your battery.

I was determined not to have these problems again. So I consulted with an expert. My friend had worked on hybrid cars in the past so had a good bit of experience with batteries. She recommended that I get a battery charger and run it through a second inverter. I spoke with other friends who suggested a secondary alternator, but that presented more of a mechanical challenge than I was willing to deal with. Here is what I came up with (I’m not an electronics engineer so bear with my horrendous drawing and the misspellings.)



The Vector 700 watt inverter (VEC062) is directly wired into the main battery and I have a Vector 35 amp smart battery charger (VEC1092A) running off of the 700 watt inverter. I can use this setup to charge my main battery. For my auxiliary system, I ordered a high powered 70 amp SPDT relay… it actually shipped from India! Apparently, a 70 amp relay is pretty darn rare. This relay automatically switches power from the alternator/main battery (when the key is in the ignition) to the auxiliary battery (when the ignition is off). My 350 watt inverter (VEC061) plugs into the relay so it has power full time from the highest capacity power source. I purchased an Optima Yellow Top 55 amp/hour deep cycle battery for the auxiliary battery.

I also built an electronics tower to hold all this stuff. Here are some pics of what it may look like when completed.

 

Any electronics engineer would have cringed when they heard what I did next. I drilled a hole in the truck’s firewall and ran a wire through it from the main battery. Basically, I had a wire, going through the firewall, without a grommet OR a fuse. I could have totally destroyed my car’s main battery if that wire touched ground (IE any part of the car frame). Oops! Anyhow, I did eventually get the grommet and an 80 amp fuse. And yes, my main battery still works.

Anyhow, tonight I’ve actually got the tower completely wired up and ready to rock. I have the wires in their proper places in the truck, I’ve done some continuity testing on the tower of power, and I have verified the relay is working as it should. I’ve hooked the aux battery to the tower and verified that all the things that should be getting power are, and things that should NOT be getting power are not. So tomorrow, I will wire the “tower of power” to the auxiliary battery and the truck. If no wires melt and no batteries blow up, we should be in good shape!



Note the all important empty beer glass on the table.