Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

With the fifth book in the series J. K. Rowling takes a step backwards. While the first book was very simple with extremely flat characters, she has added depth with each successive book. In this one we return to characters who are so clueless and/or so evil that it simply isn’t believable. At the end of the fourth book Harry Potter tells the world that the leader of evil, Lord Voldemort, has returned to power. Rather than raise any alarms he is ridiculed as a liar by both the governing Ministry of Magic and the wizard media.

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Sony Car Stereo and iPod

I’ve put together a web page about how to connect an iPod to a Sony car stereo. I had bought a Sony head unit in 1998 with cassette and a CD changer in the trunk. I had been using a cassette adapter but had some problems. So I wound up getting a Sony XA-300 auxilliary input adapter. This is a successor to the XA-107. The web page has other work-arounds that might be useful and it seemed more appropriate for that information to appear on its own web page instead of a blog entry.

http://igirder.com/ipodsony.htm

LineX FM Transmitter

A guy on Ebay saw that I bought this FM transmitter and asked me what I thought of it. I’ve been happy with it. Here’s what I wrote:

I got mine for my iPod as well. I tried two different transmitters that I got at Best Buy and neither one worked very well but they were only $20 whereas this one was $36 including shipping. I thought with 3 batteries and a claimed range of 150′ that maybe the Linex would have more oomph. It is adequate, but not powerful.

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SI Link FM Transmitter

This is a review I posted on Amazon for a FM transmitter that would let me play the iPod over any FM radio. I gave it one star.

I use a cassette adapter with my MP3 player in the car, but was hoping to have something I could use in the house that would let me keep the MP3 player close by for skipping songs, pausing, picking albums, and changing the volume. Wiring the MP3 directly into the stereo I had to get up any time I wanted to do those things.

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