The Treehouse Blog

I am by no means an audiophile, but being able to listen to music from a source other than the radio is still a requirement for longer trips by vehicle.  I’ve been using a cassette adapter in my car, connecting it to whatever the audio source of choice has been:  laptop, Axim, G1 and sometimes even the Pro-95 scanner or HTX-202 radio.  My truck presented an obstacle to this in the form of a CD player.  I had no intention of trying an FM radio transmitter, so a new radio was needed.  So, really, the only requirement for the new radio was an external input.  To make things interesting, I focused my search on hardware supporting A2DP, which led me to the Clarion CZ509.

The install was straight forward and relatively painless.  The hardest part was getting the wiring connector detached from the factory radio.  I used the kit from Crutchfield since I wanted a no-hassle return option, mostly.  The USB connector is a cable emerging from the back of the radio, while the 1/8″ miniplug external input is on the faceplate.  It would have probably been more useful to have both on the back, or swapped.

The basic functions work as expected.  CD audio sounds fine.  AM radio reception seemed to have the same sensitivity as my factory radio, despite comments elsewhere on the web indicating problems with this.

The USB and CD are capable of playing back MP3 audio, of course, as well as the similarly encumbered WMA and AAC formats. Naturally, for ideological reasons, a decent amount of my audio is in Ogg Vorbis and FLAC formats, which this unit can’t play on its own.

Bluetooth audio sounds pretty good paired to my Android G1 running cyanogenmod, though it can be skippy at times which I blame on the G1s underwhelming RAM and CPU.  The G1 running cyanogenmod has the ability to play my Ogg Vorbis and FLAC media.  The menu interface for pairing the phone is incredibly unintuitive on the CZ509 – have the manual and patience handy when attempting.  The radio does have an auto-connect feature which should cause the CZ509 to connect to your Bluetooth device upon powerup, but I have never had this work.  I’m not sure which device is at fault for certain, but I suspect the CZ509 isn’t doing something right.  Fortunately with the help of a shortcut on the G1, manual connection is only a few screen presses away.  The Bluetooth playback only has play/pause/forward/back controls and has no song title text.  I’m guessing this means the CZ509 only supports AVRCP 1.0.  I’m not currently using the phone audio capability of the CZ509 – I’m not sure where the microphone would go.  Sometimes the G1 will not produce any audio despite an established connection which is readily solved with shutting down Bluetooth on the G1 and starting it back up.  I’ve not had this happen in the middle of a connection.  It would also really be nice if the headset volume controls and Bluetooth volume controls were stored separately in the G1 as I need it full-scale for A2DP and near the bottom for wired headphones.

I’m overall pleased with the purchase.  I certainly could have gotten a more featureful or less expensive radio had it not been for the A2DP experimentation goal, but this radio should serve my needs.

Last night I finished reading Ender in Exile , the “mid-quel” that is essentially the hub in the wheel of the Enderverse, despite it being the most recently published.  As is apt to happen in any prolific series, it does suffer from some continuity issues the author describes, but since I more recently read the shadow series and least recently Ender’s Game, I really didn’t notice them.

It was good to read more of Ender following the war before his transition to the much older character found in Speaker for the Dead.  The journey to Shakespeare Colony and Ender’s work there was a great story line, and one that I think could have been expounded upon further.  The book also gives a much more complete picture of Colonel Graff that was welcome.  The story line surrounding Ganges Colony and the Bean-offspring-raised-to-be-Achilles seemed more forced and interested me less.

What stories are yet to be told in the Enderverse?  Well, apparently one is in the works.  My hope is that it will continue Bean’s story.  If I remember right, we last see him departing Earth on his own relativistic voyage.

Upon the mention on podpolia, I began reading The Roadmap for America’s Future.  After more than a week of intermittent reading, I’ve gotten through the parts that were interesting to me.   Two sections that were particularly intriguing were those on Social Security, Budget Process Reform and the Business Consumption Tax.  It’s really a shame that the Republicans did… well, nothing, really, towards any of these seemingly practical reforms of government during their majority tenure in the last decade.  Funny how balanced budgets are always the battle cry of the underdog party, but never considered prudent by those in power.  The only time in recent history it actually happened was when power was divided between the parties, right?  Maybe we can try that again.

Also heard an interesting quote today:

“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” – Ben Franklin.

I think there is some wisdom there.

I recently finished watching the DVD version of The National Parks: America’s Best Idea from Netflix.  First of all, there were many parts that would have looked much better in HD, but alas Netflix doesn’t have the Blu-ray version.  I had also been thinking this would be more of a tour of the parks, forgetting that this was a Ken Burns film.  It turns out to be a thorough history of the parks, which was interesting for the most part.  Trying to place yourself in the America that still had unclaimed wilderness is challenging, though I guess you can still see that in a trip to Alaska.  As to whether national parks are “America’s Best Idea” … I would say that’s a massive exaggeration, but “one of the best ideas” might qualify.

I’d love to see some of these places in person!

I’ve been giving some thought recently to educating myself about the studies behind climate change.  It’s a very charged issue and one that could have profound impacts through either its effects or the effects of trying to combat it.  It’s also one that’s difficult to discuss.  The term “global warming” has lost its literal meaning and now connotes the heat-death of the world with dead Polar Bears and permanently flooded coastlines.  But what are models really predicting and with what certainty?  What data are these models based on, and with what accuracy?  I’ve just about concluded that I can’t trust anyone but myself look at the primary sources and not the distilled summaries, but that sounds like a massive undertaking.

It was brought to my attention recently that the late Michael Crichton had given a speech about his skepticism of “global warming” (the non-literal term) and I had to give it a read.  In case you don’t know, he’s the author of books such as Jurassic Park which I thoroughly enjoyed for their technical detail.  Not to mention he was working on the movie adaptation of his book The Andromeda Strain while still in medical school, if I remember correctly – so a pretty gifted guy.  While I think his speech makes some oversimplifications (just as Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth does – yes, I have seen it), there is one point he makes that I emphatically agree with: “I [regard] science as the business of testing theories with measured data from the outside world. Untestable hypotheses are not science but rather something else.”  If I do manage to do some reading on this, that sentiment will be the standard I measure against.