{"id":31,"date":"2008-03-12T20:16:58","date_gmt":"2008-03-13T02:16:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blogwoods.net\/roadtrip\/?p=31"},"modified":"2008-03-12T20:16:58","modified_gmt":"2008-03-13T02:16:58","slug":"technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogwoods.net\/roadtrip2008\/technology\/","title":{"rendered":"Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few words about the technology we brought with us. As the duly appointed Entertainment Director on our voyage, I made sure we were prepared with all the electronic comforts of home. We used a Christmas gift from my aunt to purchase a DVD player<\/a> — one that plays not only DVDs, but also can read from a USB drive! Cool. So we not only brought along a few of our favorite DVDs, but I also loaded a few USB drives with music and video.<\/p>\n

Several of the kids have cameras with SD cards, so I found a nifty card reader<\/a> at MicroCenter that can read them. This makes it easy to upload pics to the web site.<\/p>\n

The portable DVD player is useful in the car, but what if we want to watch a show in the hotel room? It sure would be nice to use the TV, so that’s what we’re doing. Televisions, of course, take a coaxial cable, but the DVD player has RCA ports for output. The solution: a VCR! I brought one along. \ud83d\ude42 I run RCA cables from the DVD player to the VCR, then a coax cable to the TV. Presto, instant movie.<\/p>\n

The VCR has an additional feature: recording any KU basketball games that may be on while we’re out experiencing history.<\/p>\n

All this technology takes up space, so I have a gizmo bag, complete with cables, adapters, extension cords, CD players, headphones, more cables, batteries, and a microphone. A microphone, you ask? Yup. On trips like this, or even around town, we like to read aloud. I want to sit in the front passenger seat and read to the kiddies, but they can’t hear me in the back. So I rigged up a cheapo lapel microphone to connect to a battery-powered amplifier, and from there to a FM transmitter. We tune the car radio to the right channel, and voila! I can be heard throughout the entire car. My favorite part.<\/p>\n

Right now we’re reading Peter and the Secret of Rundoon<\/em>. Highly recommended, but it’s third in a series, so read them in order. We also have the latest Redwall<\/a> book (we’ve read all of them), and another I’m trying out, the Alex Rider<\/a> series. I’ve only read the first one; if anyone has read them and wants to share an opinion, please do.<\/p>\n

This blog is running on a computer in my basement. For the one or two of you who care, it’s running WordPress<\/a> on a fedora core 3 box — very old technology, but it’s working. It’s configured so that all our phones get a text message whenever anyone posts a comment — so we’re up to date while we’re out and about.<\/p>\n

We’re off to the Virginia Aquarium tomorrow. Zane seems to have mostly recovered, so we think we’re up for a long day. Time for the Entertainment Director to head for bed. Thanks for joining us! It’s been a fun addition to the experience, being able to share with you all what we’re doing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few words about the technology we brought with us. As the duly appointed Entertainment Director on our voyage, I made sure we were prepared with all the electronic comforts of home. We used a Christmas gift from my aunt to purchase a DVD player — one that plays not only DVDs, but also can… Continue reading Technology<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1015,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogwoods.net\/roadtrip2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogwoods.net\/roadtrip2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogwoods.net\/roadtrip2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogwoods.net\/roadtrip2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1015"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogwoods.net\/roadtrip2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogwoods.net\/roadtrip2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogwoods.net\/roadtrip2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogwoods.net\/roadtrip2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogwoods.net\/roadtrip2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}