Calvin

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 08/06/2019 at 10:28 • Filed to: None

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Remember when cassette decks were cool? I still remember the first car we owned that had one: a 1982 Chevy Caprice. What luxury!

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 10:33

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ttyymmnn > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 08/06/2019 at 10:36

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Dad. LOL.

“I love the cape, honey. Keep it on.”

Ash78, voting early and often > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 10:37

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I have one in my car now. There’s actually a cassette in it right now, probably some children’s music that we played for the kids 5-6 years ago (after my wife discovered her own collection of children’s music from the early 80s). Everything still worked great...and a ton of it never made it to CD or digital, so they’re one-of-a-kind.

Hot take: Cassettes in an average car (moving) sound almost as good as CDs because there’s already so much ambient noise around.

Just don’t leave them in direct sunlight...

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 10:38

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Calvin’s dad is my spirit animal more often than I’d care to admit.

ttyymmnn > Ash78, voting early and often 08/06/2019 at 10:41

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My 2001 Golf had a cassette player, which I used to play my portable CD player through, and later my iPod. I have a CD player in my Odyssey that hasn’t had a CD in it in 10 years, since I plugged an old iPod into it. Technology marches on.

ttyymmnn > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 08/06/2019 at 10:42

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My favorite is when he gives complete bullshit answers to Calvin’s questions. I may have done that myself a few times.....

merged-5876237249235911857-hrw8uc > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 08/06/2019 at 10:44

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Agreed, and Calvin is me in childhood, and now my three sons embody his personality in different ways.  Poetic justice I suppose.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 10:46

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The gold standard is probably this one:

...with silver being this:

Ash78, voting early and often > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 10:46

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I try as much as I can, but neither of us can move over to digital completely. I’ll stream Amazon or Pandora in the car, but the whole playlist/download/stream/etc combination of possibilities just causes a lot of delays for me. Ironically, my impatience and need for portability is exactly why I still use CDs. That, plus not wanting to take up all my storage on my phone.

It’s probably mental, too — I’m still an “album person” and almost never use Random or Shuffle on anything. I like to listen to a band for an hour straight, in most cases. The kids are a different story, but they’re usually watching a movie in the back...

ttyymmnn > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 08/06/2019 at 10:52

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“A lot of great artists were insane.” LOL

“Near Flagstaff.”

W atterson must have been a photographer.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 10:55

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Recall also that Calvin destroys his dad’s camera by accident at one point.

ttyymmnn > Ash78, voting early and often 08/06/2019 at 10:57

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You sound much like me. I don’t stream anything in the car because I won’t pay for unlimited data. I’ve got a couple hundred albums on an old click wheel iPod in the van, and I listen to that exclusively. So it’s always albums for me. One of these days I’ll update it with newer things I’ve downloaded, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. I might do some (free) Spotify streaming when I’m working in the house, but it gets repetitive when you don’t pay, and I don’t feel like cultivating a play list. Too much work. 

In the early days of iTunes, I still bought physical CDs. Growing up with vinyl, I still wanted the feel of something in my hand, a jacket to read, something that couldn’t be lost in a HD crash. But I have since gone full digital. I can’t remember the last CD I bought. A few years ago, I ripped my entire CD collection into the computer. My wife said, “You can get rid of them now.” No, I said, you never know. And then the HD shit the bed and I had to rip them all again. I’m glad I kept them.

ttyymmnn > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 08/06/2019 at 10:58

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I still read Calvin every day. 

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > Ash78, voting early and often 08/06/2019 at 11:07

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Cassettes sound so much better with the windows open!

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 11:09

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Rest assured after the kids go to bed I just watch a show on netflix that is rated for mature audiences .

Ash78, voting early and often > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 11:14

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I still buy CDs from Amazon because most of them include a free “Autorip” copy that goes straight to your Amazon Prime account for streaming or downloading. That’s about as close as I’ve come. Best of both worlds.

Despite ripping over 200 CDs once, I never really did anything with them, so they’re on an external PC HDD somewhere...

OTOH, I have bought a lot of movies (and paid a premium) to have them available for streaming. I wish Amazon did the same thing with DVD/Bluray as they do for CDs. I like the idea of having a physical copy of something, but even that is no guarantee that some DRM fight won’t lock you down in the future. Those days died a long time ago.

Ash78, voting early and often > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 08/06/2019 at 11:15

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Nothing like adding some real wow and flutter to the existing ones!

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 11:19

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I upgraded the stock stereo in my Mazda with the better one with the 6-disc changer; I found it on eBay for $10, so I figured ‘why not?’ Like my original iPod that still has the same music on it that I put on there in 2002, the same discs that I put in  five or six years ago are still in the changer. Part of the reason is that one disc is loaded with MP3s of my favorite music, part of it is because my commute is only 2.3 miles so I rarely listen to music on the commute and part of it is because I found a great local radio station that plays all sorts of eclectic music.

Cash Rewards > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 11:28

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They just drive bigger and bigger trucks over the bridge until it collapses , then build it again the exact same way

Cash Rewards > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 08/06/2019 at 11:28

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This x1000

ttyymmnn > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 08/06/2019 at 11:29

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I used to play in an orchestra in Abilene (TX) and it took about 4 hours to get there. I used to stand in front of my CD shelf and try to decide which CDs to take. Then my wife bought me my first click wheel iPod for Christmas and I could take all of my CDs with me. Of all the technologies that have entered my life, I think the iPod had the biggest impact, and I still use a click wheel iPod to this day. It’s a shame they stopped making them. 

For Sweden > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 11:39

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I still remember when cassette decks were cool!

My car doesn’t have Bluetooth or an auxiliary audio jack.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 11:50

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I still have a ton of iPods, but I don’t use them very often, with the exception of when I take airline flights; good music and Bose noise-cancelling headphones makes that misery borderline tolerable . The headphones were $4 at a thrift store (!) and the iPod was a cheap eBay purchase.

I have modified many of iPods  over the years, with the standard work being battery replacement and swapping out the hard drive for memory cards, usually CompactFlash; this usually makes them quite a bit lighter and really extends the battery life. Back when I used an early digital camera that could only accept SmartMedia cards ( which were limited to just 128MB) , I modified an iPod Photo with a 16gb CF card and a memory card reader. I could shoot a ton of pictures, dump them to the iPod and then fill the card over and over again. The only limiting factor was battery life as that camera sucked down the juice from a set of AAs like it had a drinking problem.

The next experiment will probably be making a cheap 512GB iPod. I have a CF ada pter that lets you combine two microSD cards into one card, and I’ve got a couple of 256GB cards sitting around. It’s complete and total overkill, but I want to see if it can be done. The 160GB drive I put in a 5G unit was too much (it came out of a co-worker’s Classic that I did the CF conversion on) , and most of the time I’m using a 7G Nano that’s only half filled; that one was a bargain because it was listed incorrectly on eBay as a mini; I was the only bidder and got it for $40.

HammerheadFistpunch > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 11:57

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fun story, my 2008 has a tape deck, my 97 doesn’t.

Roundbadge > Ash78, voting early and often 08/06/2019 at 12:08

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I buy CDs pretty regularly, and usually rip them right after. I use flash drives for music, and each of us has a drive with music for each car...just so we always have it available. She uses her phone too, but I don’t like using my phone for music. I refuse to buy music through Apple, and when I allow iTunes to look through my library and load AAC versions of my MP3s, only some of them ever come across.  Admittedly, it’s been a few years since I attempted to use iTunes, but my home PCs are all Linux now and Apple doesn’t support Linux.

My friends laugh at my semi- luddite ways, but to heck with ‘em.

ttyymmnn > For Sweden 08/06/2019 at 12:10

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The factory radio/CD player in my 2003 Odyssey had neither. I upgraded it probably 12 years ago to a deck that could have an iPod stashed in the glove box. It has an audio in, but we use that for when we’re watching movies on long trips on a laptop. We run the sound through the van so it can be heard. My life is nothing short of making older tech work when there are more modern, simpler solutions. But those cost money.

ttyymmnn > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 08/06/2019 at 12:15

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The old click wheel iPods made fantastic portable drives. I had never thought of lacking one with an SD card. That’s intriguing. 

ttyymmnn > HammerheadFistpunch 08/06/2019 at 12:16

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By 08, cassette decks had probably become standard, while in older days they were an option. Kind of like CD players were. Now Bluetooth is a minimum requirement. 

RallyWrench > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 12:31

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I’m sure my kids think I’m boring, but at least I have a cassette deck in my car. 

MiniGTI - now with XJ6 > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 12:35

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And probably better than satellite radio. The XM in a friend’s Yukon at least sounds like stuff people downloaded from Napster in the 90s. It’s unlistenable to me even with the windows open on the highway. 

HammerheadFistpunch > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 13:13

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2010 was the last model year vehicle to offer a tape deck, it was of course a Lexus.

Originally my 97 came with tape and CD, but it was replaced with a double din unit of much better performance.

The 2008 GX on the other hand...

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 20:52

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I had a ton of mix-tapes which turned into a ton of CDs. I skipped the iPod era and went straight to streaming since my company pays for unlimited data. These days I’m usually listening to podcasts or audio books. I won’t even get a book if it isn’t at least 10 hours long and part of a trilogy.

I have a TON of music on a hard drive that a DJ gave me. Full albums of just about every genre. I keep threatening to set up a media server at the house, but streaming is just so easy.

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 20:56

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Long trips deserve an audio book. Back in the day I would check out audio books on cassette from the library. The trip home from college was 9 1/2 hours.

ttyymmnn > TheRealBicycleBuck 08/06/2019 at 21:36

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Never got into audio books or even podcasts, though I did listen to a few Car Talk podcasts back in the day.

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 21:40

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I tortured my kids with Car Talk when they were little. :)

M y son loves to listen to audio books on trips . My daughter prefers to read. I hate taking a long trip without a good book to listen to!

ttyymmnn > TheRealBicycleBuck 08/06/2019 at 21:45

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My boys just glue themselves to their video games until we make them stop and look out the window. 

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 08/06/2019 at 21:48

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I guess it’s harder with boys that can play against each other. My son has to play online. When I don’t want him to play, I just throttle back the internet speed. It’s hard to beat someone in Smash Bros when your ping rate is over 150.

:)