I recently installed a Parrot Evolution CK3000 bluetooth adapter in my MINI. I didn't like the bluetooth solution that MINI provides as it didn't use the two phone buttons on the steering wheel. This solution uses them quite nicely. Plus it requires no cutting or splicing of the car wiring so it was plug and play.

The MINI harness came from www.newministuff.com located in Great Britain. The exchange rate sucks at the moment so the harness ended up costing more than the Parrot module (which coincidently I bought at QVC.com).

The install was pretty easy (I had some help from Jim) and only took about an hour from start to finish. The hardest part is stuffing all the cable and connectors behind the radio and under the dash.

The result is very slick– I can place a call by pushing the phone button on the steering wheel and announcing the name (that I have trained in my phone). I can also answer the phone by pushing the same button after hearing the subtle ring tone over the speakers. It pauses the CD while on the phone (the radio display says “RADIO” ).

Link to PDF version of install instructions I converted from newministuff.com.
Link to my small Flickr set of install pics.

I recently received the AppleTV that I ordered about two months ago at work. The size was surprising– it's shorter than a Mac Mini but wider and longer. The first problem I ran into is I don't have a display at work with component or HDMI in on it. So I connect my composite TV monitor to the green component output to at least get some idea of what the OSD looks like. This resulted in a black and white image (and this worked because sync is also on green).

So I took it home over the weekend. I had to update iTunes to get it to connect together. All content stored in iTunes is available to the AppleTV (provided your computer is turned on) and it can pull content from multiple machines in your house. It will play anything an iPod can and won't play the things an iPod won't. So, no streaming your VIDEO_TS folders to it.

I'm not 100% into the whole iTunes-as-your-video-organizer yet so I had to add a few videos to my library to get a sense of how it works. And it works well, the video looked great and it never stuttered while streaming (I was connected via 100baseT ethernet).

Time will tell what the USB port on the back really is for.

Link. Thanks, Jeff!

The folks at PhillyMINI.org hosted their annual member meeting this past Sunday. Although I couldn't make it, they showed a wonderful 2006 year in review video that is now on Google video.

See if you can spot yours truly!

Link.

The great thing about open source is where one person leaves, someone else can pick up and continue. It's been over a year since we've seen an update to the venerable Handbrake, despite the fact the author plead his case for people to contribute money so he could purchase an Intel Mac and continue updating it. Some one else has taken the torch and forked the project, now called MediaFork. I look forward to the changes and hopefully some bug fixes along the way.

Link.

While asking myself “how do ski resorts 'make' their own snow?” and after Googling the question, I came across a company that sells the tool to do just that, but on a smaller, more home owner-sized scale. Meet SNOWatHOME.com, a snow making stand that will set you back anywhere between $400-800 depending on size. This doesn't include the cost of an air compressor or pressure sprayer. Something tells me this is all just waste; wasting water, gasoline for the pressure sprayer and electricity for the air compressor. But still, I'd give it a try once (all in the name of science, of course).

Link.