Sunday, May 24, 2009

G1 Cupcake and Stereo Bluetooth Headphones

I picked up a set of bluetooth headphones (Motorola S805 Bluetooth 2.0 DJ Style Stereo Headphones) off of Amazon and waited patiently for Cupcake to Arrive on the TMobile G1 Android phone. After much waiting, I finally got the update and voila: Cupcake (technically Android 1.5) was installed.

I had already added a 16 GB microSD card and loaded all of my music collection. With the new headphones I was ready to try out the music and headphone functions. Boy, was I amazed.

The sound is good (DJ style headphones almost always sound good after listening to earbuds). The range is decent (across a room). And, most surprisingly, the volume and controls on the headphones work as advertised. The next track, previous track work fine. The headphones also allow me magically answer and hang up on phone calls all without ever touching my G1.

This is a sweet setup and just had to share my good first impressions. I'll post more in the weeks ahead as I get more time on the setup. Now this is true wireless bliss.


Update:

Well, I have had the setup working for a while now and I am ready to add some new info.

Ok, first up, it appears that my Cupcake G1 will skip music once in a while. It seems to happen primarily when I have wifi enabled. Under normal operation (not on wifi) it seems to work great.

The sound quality, which I have to assume is influenced by the MP3 quality, headphone quality, and playback under the G1, is not as good as I would like sometimes. I think I miss having the typical equalizer settings on my PC which probably compensated for some of the limits of the MP3 quality and headphone quality. The MP3s sometimes sound a bit flat. The beat/bass sounds a bit off sometimes too, which is a little disappointing with such large headphones, though I am betting the source is probably the MP3 quality.

The headphone battery life seems good. I have noticed that low batteries reduce the range of the bluetooth. The other day I had a problem with bluetooth cutting out with the headphones on my head and the phone in my pocket. I charged the headphones for a bit and they worked flawlessly again.

Overall, my experience is still very positive. I love the wireless setup. It is true music freedom.


Update (Jan. 2010)

I've had my headphones for several months. I had just a few more notes:
  • Pandora is really awesome with these headphones on the G1. I definitely recommend using 3G if possible. The G1 seems pretty maxed out while playing Pandora, but less so on 3G.
  • Headphone controls don't work completely properly with Pandora. Volume works.
  • An extended life battery for the G1 really makes the music player more useful. If you don't have one, a USB charger near where you use it most can be helpful.
  • I wish there were a way in Android to send only media to the headphones. Sometimes I don't want to use the headphones to answer the phone. Maybe Android 2.x will add this -- no idea.
  • Overall, I am still very pleased with the G1 with Motorola headphones.

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Horizontal Tomato Cages

For years, I have been wanting to install horizontal tomato cages, but I never got around to it until now. The basic idea behind horizontal tomato cages is that you place the wire mesh horizontally so you don't have to reach through it to get tomatoes. It also features mesh that can be easily moved for tilling and dead plant removal at the end of the season.

The design is fairly straight-forward. You need a minimum of four posts. Each of the posts should be placed in the ground deep enough to secure them. You can set them in concrete if you so desire. The width should be matched to your tomato plants at full size or to whatever is convenient. I chose a couple inches wider than my rototiller, so I could fit it between the posts. The posts have small pieces of wood screwed on as ledges at each mesh height.

The mesh is put onto frames. I used pressure-treated 2x2s for my frames. Vinyl-coated mesh also is a nice feature.

The frames set on the ledges on the posts and can be secured in place by 4 screws (1 into each ledge on each post). To remove the mesh and till between the posts, you only need to remove these 4 screws in each mesh frame.

Here are some views of the finished product:

Fig. 1 A view of the mesh frame sitting on the post ledge.


Fig 2. A side view of the cage.



Fig. 3. The finished product.