Reaching for the volume knob no more!

Got me an iRiver FM Transmitter for my Malibu so Little Blue and I can rock to and from daycare. Ooh, also pick up a Handstands Sticky pad. It holds my mp3 player and cell phone on the dashboard and won't slip, even on 65mph curving on-ramps. :) Cap'n Barbossa was impressed with it.

Found a tool online that would show me unused radio stations in the 66212/66061 area codes, so if you've got one too, the best ones they recommend are 87.9, 100.5, and 102.7. And if your thinking about getting an FM transmitter, go with the one's that plug into the car. Battery operated ones suck. Oooh, and disable any playback settings you have on the MP3 player (bass, jazz, rock, etc.). I had to set mine to flat to keep the bass from popping the speakers, then adjust the audio in car with the stereo.

Today, I going about normalizing the audio of my MP3s. I hate the "in house" music library capabilities of Windows Media Player, so I organize my music based on mood or self-organized genre (c'mon, I've got trance remixes of Legend of Zelda and Phantom of the Opera, where in the heck is that going to go?) by using folders.

Since I've got them into folders, if I do normal play, it's going to go in alphabetical order, so I play on random so I'll never know what I'm going to get, which means the audio level is all over the place.

Enter MP3gain. It analyzes each track, then changes the file to play at about 89 decibels, give or take 5-6 (customizable). Takes about 3-5 seconds to analyze each track and about 1 second to save the settings. Pink tells me itunes does this, but only when you play in itunes.

The negative about this? You'll have to wipe your music player and re-upload everything. Either that, or reading for the volume dial every 3 minutes. Not cool when your son is trying to hand you a small container of Cheerios.

Next hack I'm going to test...probably next weekend? Take a huge audio file and break it down into small increments automatically without me handholding it the entire time.