Roseyland

I bought my car 7 years ago. It’s a 2003 Honda Accord. I know, pretty exciting huh? The Honda Accord fits me perfectly. It’s a quality reliable car, and it’s not overly flashy. There is nothing about my Honda Accord that suggest I want to impress you or that I have anything to compensate for, and that’s how I like it. One of my favorite features of my car is the steering wheel stereo controls. Here is a picture of them.

The controls are a little dirty. That’s what happens when you touch something for 7 years. These controls let me adjust the volume, change the station/CD, and switch between FM/AM/CD all without taking my hands off the steering wheel or my eyes off the road. Awesome. In my old car, I didn’t have steering wheel stereo controls. Those were dark days.

A couple years after I bought my car, I got my first iPod. I didn’t think I would like an iPod that much, but like most new technologies, you don’t know you need it until you have it. It wasn’t long before I wanted my iPod to work with my car stereo. I did some research, but it seamed like the only option was an FM transmitter. I tried this on a few road trips, and FM transmitters work okay in the middle of nowhere, but not in cities. I also wanted a more permanent and clean solution that would let me store my iPod out of sight.

Eventually I found the Denison Ice Link. This was an adapter that connected to my iPod to the CD changer connection of my car stereo. Basically, it made my iPod act like a CD changer. When I hit the +/- Disc buttons on my stereo, the iPod would switch playlist, and the steering wheel controls would let me move up and down tracks and adjust the volume. It was wonderful. I now had an almost endless supply of music in my car at my fingertips. Not only that, this opened up the world of podcast to me. I love podcast. They are like talk radio, only not stupid. Currently my favorite podcast are The K&K podcast, The 404, and This American Life.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. After 5 years of faithful service, my iPod died. It had been acting a little weird for a few months, and then I think the extreme cold weather in St. Louis this January finished it off. I did some research, and the Denison Ice Link adapter in my car did not work with the newer iPods. Denison had newer adapters, but they no longer sold their products in the USA. Interesting. I tried to listen to the radio, but after a few days I couldn’t take it anymore. There is hardly any music on the music stations, and those 97.1 people, nuts, completely nuts (except the Dave Glover show, I like the Dave Glover show).

I did some more digging, and I found the USA SPEC PA15-HON2. This adapter makes iPods appear as a CD changer to my stereo like the Denison Ice Link, but it works with all of the new iPods and even the iPhone. It got good reviews on Amazon, so I bought the PA15-HON2 along with a new iPod nano (purple, I like purple). This cost me over $300 total, but I was desperate for my old life back.

Getting to the back of my car stereo is a little tricky. The first time I did this, I was fortunate to find a great post with pictures of a very similar install that somebody did. I couldn’t find the post again though, so this time I had to go from memory. I figured I’d post pictures of the process, in case somebody else out there wants to try something similar. The standard disclaimer applies: follow my instructions/advice at your own risk. I don’t know what the “right” way to do any of this is.

First, here is the inside of my car. The stereo is in the center, and below the stereo is a storage compartment with a silver door that slides back. This is where I’d like to put my iPod.

Here is the storage compartment with the door open. The cable is the old cable that attached my old iPod to the old adapter.

The first step is to remove the rubber liner from the ashtray shaped compartment that is labeled “Not An Ashtray”. It is held in by sticky glue, and you can pull it out fairly easily.

He is the rubber liner removed.

Under the rubber liner there is a plastic liner that is held in by clips. I removed it by prying a couple small screw drivers under it, and popping it up. You don’t really have to worry about scratching it, because it is covered by the rubber liner.

Here is the plastic liner removed.

Next, you have to remove the trim around that stick that let’s you switch between Park-Neutral-Drive-Reverse. What is that thing called anyways. You have to be more careful here, because you probably don’t want to scratch this part. The trim is held in by six clips (three evenly spaced along each side). I slid a screwdriver under each side and popped the trim up near each clip. You can kind of tell where they are when you do this.

Here is the trim piece removed.

In the ashtray like compartment, you can see two screws. Remove these and try not to lose the screws. Once you remove the screws, you can pull out the piece containing the ashtray like compartment and cigarette lighter. I just let it hang over to the side and out of the way.

Now there are two more screws at the bottom of the storage compartment. Remove these, and now the compartment is only held in by two clips on each side near the top of the compartment. Removing the compartment is a little tricky. You don’t want to force it, but you do have to apply a little force and pull at just the right angle. Just keep playing with it, and it will come out. Don’t get frustrated at this point, or you’ll do something stupid and break something, and that would suck, because Honda probably charges an arm and a leg for these parts.

With the storage compartment removed, we can get to the CD changer connection on the bottom of the stereo. This is also where the XM radio would attach if I had XM. The CD changer connection is the white female connector in the picture below.

Here is another view of the underside of the stereo and the CD changer connection from farther back.

I’d like the PA15-HON2 and my iPod to go inside the storage compartment, so I need a way run cables from the stereo into the storage compartment. It’s just a plastic box, so I drilled a hole into the top of it. The hole in the picture below was for the old adapter cable, and it was a little too small for the new cable.

I took the storage compartment up to my condo and drilled a bigger hole. I didn’t have a drill bit big enough for a nice round hole, so I just drilled a few small holes and then pulled it apart with some pliers. The result wasn’t pretty, but it’s out of sight, so I didn’t care. The cat loves to help.

Back in the car, I attached the new adapter cable to the CD changer connection of my car stereo. Like so.

Then I ran the cable into the storage compartment, connected it to the PA15-HON2 adapter, and then connected the adapter to my new iPod nano. I also tested it at this point, because it would suck to put everything back together and find out that it doesn’t work.

Once I knew everything was working, I put it all back together. Basically you just reverse everything you did to take it all apart. The only tricky part is getting the storage compartment back in place. You have to slide it in at just the right angle. I lined up the screw holes at the bottom of the compartment, and then pushed on the upper part until the clips slid into place. It took a few minutes to get the storage compartment back in it’s proper place. Also, the door of the compartment probably won’t open and close right until you reattach the screws, but once you reattach the screws, make sure you test the door. If you put everything back into place and the door isn’t right, you’ll have to remove it all again to get the door right. The picture below shows everything back together with the adapter and iPod neatly tucked inside the storage compartment.

Here it is after the install with the storage compartment closed. See, you can’t even tell I have an iPod in there. I love it this way, nice, clean, and simple.

I love the new adapter. I set up 6 playlist named HONDA1-6 on my iPod, and I can switch between them using the Disc +/- buttons on my stereo. “Disc 7″ lets me flip though all of the music on my iPod, and “Disc 8″ is a direct mode where I can use the iPod controls to select music. The adapter also charges my iPod. The only problem I have had is that once direct mode locked up my iPod and I had to reset it. This only happened once though, and I don’t plan on using direct mode very often.

As a bonus, the adapter even works with my iPhone. When you connect the iPhone, the iPhone says that the accessory is not compatible with the iPhone, but if you just click OK, it works. You can access playlist on the iPhone just like the iPod, and you can even listen to internet radio using the WunderRadio iPhone app. I tested it, and I listened to BBC Radio 1 and Le Mouv’ Radio (France) in my car. That’s so cool.

I’m going to finish this off with a video of my current favorite song. It’s Fireflies by Owl City. If you don’t love this song, something is wrong with you. Enjoy.

Yeah, so I blogged every day in November and not once in December. I have a number of excuses, but none of them are very good. In order to get back into the swing of things, let me try an easy blog post to update you on all things Roseyland. God bless the bulleted list:

• I put up a Christmas tree for the first time this year. I actually liked it a lot more than I thought I would. It felt like Christmas lasted for the whole month of December rather than just a day or two. Plus, it became a project where I had to make measurements, comparison shop, and then buy accessories. These are the things I truly love.
• I travelled to Florida to visit family for New Year’s. It was fun, but it should have been warmer. I think the state of Florida owes me a refund.
• I’m on a diet. I weighed myself after New Year’s and discovered that I weighed more than I have ever weighed. Go me! My BMI is about 28. Last year it was 24. Fortunately, I’m pretty good at losing weight. I watch my calories, work out, and magically I’m thinner. This time I’m using myfitnesspal.com. This is a website that let’s you track your daily calorie intake and calories burned from exercise. They have a large database of foods and exercises, and even an iPhone app. The website calculates how many calories you should eat to lose a certain amount of weight, and then as you enter food or exercise during the day, it lets you know how many calories you have left. I think the technical term is “Easy-Peasy”. I’m going for a loss of 2 pounds per week. I’ve lost 5 pounds in the first week, that never keeps up though. You can follow my progress by checking out the badge over on the right.
• I’m reading SuperFreakonomics. The book Freakonomics is the closest thing I have to a bible, and SuperFreakonomics is just as good, if not better. Freakonomics is basically an economist analysis of the world. I love these books because they show how many of our preconceived notions are just plain wrong. I think these books should be required reading for anyone who wants to have an opinion. I also recommend anything by Malcolm Gladwell.
• I’m pretty sure that I’m going to Italy in June with my Mom, Aunt, and maybe a cousin or two. After going to London and Paris last summer, I’m afraid that I want to see the whole World, and by the whole World I mean Europe and Australia. My plan is to fly to Rome and stay in a vacation rental apartment. We will have 5 full days in which I would like to see: The Vatican, Ancient Rome, Ostia Antica, Tivoli, and maybe even a day in Florence. I’ve also been learning Italian on livemocha.com.
• I need you to watch Chuck. It’s one of the best shows on TV and if it get’s canceled, I’ll cry. You don’t want that do you? It’s on NBC, Monday night, 7C/8E. You can watch previous episodes on Hulu. I’m also watching Big Love on HBO, which is another one of my favorite shows.
• My Mom and Grandpa had an interesting discussion about healthcare over New Year’s. I stayed out of it, but it did make me think of a couple things. One being that we are all part of a system, and every “personal freedom” you take affects the “personal freedoms” available to others. The other thought I had was about complexity. There are a million different ways you can analyze our heath care issues, but the ultimate problem is that our health care system has grown into a very very complex system. The only way we will get out of this mess is to transition to a significantly less complex system. I can’t say that the current health care reform bill accomplishes this, but it still has my support. Partly because it does fix some significant flaws in our current system (pre-existing conditions, benefit caps), and partly because I think this is the best first step we are going to get at this point. This would be a good topic for a whole blog post, maybe I’ll write one.

That is all. I’ll write a real blog post soon. I promise.