It's Also A Mobile mp3 Player!

My new car, in its natural habitat, one of the last cars in the parking lot at work:



As for the headline, the stereo does include a line input for external sources such as iPods, which is cool, but the CD player will also play mp3 CD-R's, which is an acceptable alternative to a CD changer in terms of having several hours of music randomly accessible. Last week I figured out that this will also give me the opportunity to listen to a mess of podcasts on my commute that I've accumulated but never found the time to absorb. Actually listening to someone (or several people) talk doesn't quite make it when I'm trying to get some work done. I don't ususally walk around the house with headphones on, either, so playing a Talk CD-RW instead of listening to Talk Radio in the car is working pretty well this week.

I'm about half way through the dozen or so Instapundit / Instawife "Glenn & Helen Show" podcasts I cleared off the hard drive onto a CD-RW. (Along with the Barry Lyndon soundtrack, an Island records sampler called Bumpers, Dave Cousins' Two Weeks Last Summer, Cat Stevens' Mona Bone Jakon, the Doors' Other Voices and a preview single from the next Who album I threw on for the occasional necessary change of pace.)

The thing plays wma's in addition to mp3's, but I suspect it won't handle m4a's, so I'll have to manage listening to Lileks' The Diner podcasts some other way. Once I get through a backlog of TMBG, Coverville, Ricky Gervais, and Althouse. There's people out there making Dylan's Theme Time Radio available to folks lacking satellite radios, too. And there's almost a half a Gigabyte of DGM Hot Tickles and Firesign Theatre Archival Podcasts awaiting further attention, too. If gas prices were lower, I might start looking for a longer commute!

Finally, just to complete the panorama, here's the stacks of pallets casting the late afternoon shadows in the previous picture:



Panoramic photos created using "Autostich" software.