Captain's Dry Barbecue Rub

I was born and raised in Kansas City, arguably the barbecue capital in the states.  I've sampled some of the best of the bunch but keep coming back to Kansas City as the barbecue champion.  In a recent competition held locally, it was a square off between Memphis, Carolinas, Texas, and the fine people of Q39.  Needless to say, the ribs at Q39 took the judges by surprise and declared them the winner.  If you are even in Kansas City, you need to look them up.

So I've created a decent dry rub anyone can make and use.  It goes great on everything you would grill.  Try it out on some zucchini, onions, or even eggplant.

Ingredients

¼ cup granulated sugar

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup paprika

2 tsp chili powder

1 tsp cayenne pepper

½ cup kosher salt

2 tsp black pepper

1 tsp white pepper

2 tsp granulated garlic

1 tsp granulated onion

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp cumin

Combine all ingredients. Store in a dry area.

A buddy of mine asked why I use different types of sugars and peppers.  The reason, it adds a level of complexity to flavor.  Sometimes I will add a bit of local honey to change the sweetness a bit.  I've also tried playing with different paprikas but the result is too close to notice a change.

Roughly 8.5 hours at 225 after coming off the grill

So Labor day is coming up.  Time to get your grill things together and try out some rub.

Open Views on Android Auto

First Glance

Android Auto is a new in car entertainment most have not had a chance to experience for themselves.  It is fairly simple, a quick cable connection to the charge port on your supported Android phone and you are ready to go.

First time you connect the phone there is a set up process.  The set up includes installing Google's Android Auto app from the Play Store.  You have to accept a few conditions and you are ready.  If you are going to have access to Android Auto, now would be a great time to get it installed.

My test unit is the Pioneer AVIC-8100nex.  This beast is chock full of features, with Android Auto there are duplicate components like Navigation and Google Maps.  My focus is primarily on Android Auto.

Functionality

The front end is a little rough around the edges.  This is to be expected with nearly all technology found in its infancy.

One element of Android Auto is the simplicity.  The front end engine runs directly from the phone rather than on the head unit.  The benefit to this is if Android Auto is updated, the changes take effect the next time you connect your phone.  Not to mention, moving from one Android Auto unit to another it will be the same with the settings on your phone.

If you are already familiar with Google Now, then you will be right at home.  A quick tap of the microphone icon on the screen will give you quick access.  You can send quick text messages, have messages play back for you, pull up play lists

The Competition

Currently the only competitor to Android Auto is found from Apple CarPlay.  From what I have personally seen, Android Auto is leaps and bounds better.  With CarPlay, you are locked down inside the walled garden once again forced to use the built in apps found in iOS.  With Android Auto, you can customize what you want to use.  So if you don't like Google's offering of their Music app, there are many options to choose from.  There really is only a single benefit of CarPlay and that is the ability to connect via in car wifi.  Connectivity of Android Auto or CarPlay over Bluetooth does not look like it will happen with the current standings.

Accessing your phone

One part you will notice about Android Auto is the phone becomes locked down when connected.  This is for safety reasons.  You can still do quite a bit through the Android Auto functions on the head unit using voice commands or tapping the screen for what you are wanting.  However, what if the passenger wants to access something on the phone?  There is a work around, not an easy one mind you.  I don't doubt this will be patched up later.

After pressing the power button you will be greeted with the Android Auto screen.  Pull down from the top and you can access the menu to your notifications.  Pressing one of those will bring up the app obviously, but now you can hit the recents button to access any other app idling in the background.

Last Thoughts

Voice commands can feel slow when first acclimating to Android Auto. When touching the microphone icon on the head unit's screen you must wait for a tone after it asks what you want then speak. The timing of the tone can seem a bit “off” or slow sometimes. Patience and learning the rhythm of the voice commands takes a bit of practice but once mastered is a wonderful tool while travelling.  What I would like to see, is a setting to fine tune the delay.

You can not access your entire music library from the screen.  It can be helpful to build specific playlists and play them before leaving. The music feature only pulls up the most recent albums and playlists used on your phone.  There is a queuing feature which I have yet to utilize and master.

When booking travel plans that sync to with Google Now, Android Auto intuitively pulls your travel information. When traveling to a hotel in a different city it offers navigation as one of the suggestions when using the GPS feature. This efficiency is bar-none one of my most favorite features when taking a road trip.

During a trip to Chicago, I pulled up a route home through Bloomington/Normal Illinois on my phone.  The next morning when I plugged the phone back in, it wanted to route me through the Quad Cities, an hour and a half outside of my path.  Not sure what was going on, but after a little finagling we were on our way.

Overall, I’m impressed with this rather unpolished software.  I’m sure we will see lots of changes and improvements over the coming months.  The best part, you don’t have to upgrade the firmware of your car's stereo, the updates will come through your phone.

Let Silverlight Die

I was telling my son +Galen Seaton about this idea for a blog post and he looked at me funny.  He said "Silverlight, I don't think I've ever heard of Silverlight."  Just to give you an idea, Galen is a bit of a computer geek who swaps back and forth between Linux and Windows on a computer he built for gaming.  This really made me laugh.

For the uneducated of what Silverlight is, if you take Adobe's Flashplayer, add in some special buffering capabilities, wrap a DRM controller around it, then fund it with a few billion dollars of marketing and exclusivity, you end up with Silverlight.  When Silverlight launched back in 2006, it was doomed.  Web sites such as MLB.com used Silverlight on launch day as a marketing attempt by Microsoft.  Within six months they moved back to the Flash streaming but still offered Silverlight up to those who had it installed.

Mary Jo Foley over at ZDNet detailed the information where Silverlight 5 is the final chapter of this unfinished book.  This was dated back in 2011 with claims of Silverlight's demise going back as far as 2009.  Yet today we still fight with this dead media streaming software.

Over on the Linux side of the world, there is an api functional version available... albeit very dated called Moonlight.  This software uses the mono project to achieve functionality.  Mono is an open source .Net development platform by Miguel de Icaza.  The problem is, you couldn't use Moonlight for a lot of the web streaming services due to lack of DRM capabilities.  Before Moonlight could mature enough to be usable for such services like streaming Netflix, several work arounds had already been found.  The project became stagnant without full support from Microsoft and faded into history when Miguel created the company Xamarin.

What uses Silverlight

A lot of various web apps use Silverlight.  If you have a Netflix account, you have probably been asked to install Silverlight at one point.  Same deal with Amazon Prime and Hulu Plus (web).  The good news is these amazing media web streaming services have all been moving over to the industry standard HTML5.  There's one problem for those people still stuck on the now defunct Internet Explorer.  It seems IE doesn't fully support the entire toolchain of the industry standards (nothing new here).  So if you want to move away from Silverlight, you are going to have to move to a decent/better browser like Chrome, Firefox, or Opera.

There are other desktop applications which uses Silverlight unfortunately.  If you have TimeWarner cable and enjoy streaming TV Shows from the custom app they have, you will need Silverlight still.  I'm sure Comcast uses the same software.

But it's supported until 2021

A quick peek back at the official MSDN forums finds us this little tidbit: 

"If you're developing for Windows phone, then yes this is still your official development platform and your software lifecycle is so fast that the year 2021 is irrelevant.  If you are developing for anything else -- like a browser based interface -- Silverlight is as good as dead and all focus for interface development is now on HTML5. (ZDNet: Silverlight strategy direction)"

But wait, the Windows phone is still supported until 2021!  Not so fast, the latest in the rumormill from Android Headlines and TechRadar is Microsoft is going to ditch the Windows Phone platform entirely for Android devices.  This actually makes sense.  The contract Stephen Elop (former CEO of Nokia) signed is set to expire soon.  Nokia is already dabbling in the Android devices with their N1 tablet.  This is the natural progression similar to the death of many other services and platforms from Microsoft.  Silverlight can be considered officially dead.

So what's left?

There isn't much really.  Perhaps picking through the scraps at the very least.  My recommendation for you would be to remove Silverlight from your computer and see what apps are no longer functioning.  Whether those applications are online services or local applications you've installed.  What I've found from being a heavy Linux user for more than ten years; if you find an application with a dependency you can't use, there will be alternatives.

Wiring up the NC2 Miata for Android Auto

The Mazda Miata MX-5 isn't exactly new to the world, they released the 30 year anniversary edition just recently.  However, what I was wanting to change isn't exactly a simple plug and play.  Android Auto is something new from Google that I wanted to set up.  I also wanted to make sure all the existing features worked without problems like the steering wheel controls and the existing BOSE audio amplifier.  I've read up on multiple different locations but the documentation I found did not have everything I needed.  Instead, this was a piecemeal work to get everything working in a single shot.  Bear with me here as we are in for a bit of a technical ride.

Equipment

After reading a lot of different material about what headaches people have had, I made sure to get all the material I needed.

Head Unit: Pioneer AVIC-8100nex (Amazon was the cheapest I found)

Dash Kit: Metra 99-7519B (Amazon also available local in most areas)

Wire Harness: Metra 70-7903 (Amazon can be purchased locally, order two of these)

Line Level RCA: JL XD-CLRAIC2-SW (Amazon, but cheaper locally*)

Steering Controls: Metra Axxess ASWC-1 (Amazon best of the bunch by the reviews on several sites)

You may need some extra wire, soldering iron, solder, heat shrink (I used 3:1 with adhesive for a tighter bond), and electrical tape.  A side note on the JL RCA plugs, you can use any other brand you would like but be sure your grounds are solid to avoid alternator wine.

The main thing to make note of is the wire harness, you will need two of them.  Even if you are not going to be wiring up the steering wheel controls, there is a missing wire needed by the Pioneer AVIC units.  This is the speed pulse sensor wire which helps with the GPS positioning and speed warnings.  If the pins were not of a different size, you could have used one of the speaker leads but it just isn't possible.

Speed Harness

Pioneer Harness
Yellow: Constant 12V
Red: Switched 12V
Orange/White: Illumination
Black: Ground
Blue/White: Remote Switch (amp turn-on)
Light Green: Parking Break Switch (required)
Pink: Speed Pulse Sensor

The rest of them on this harness I was able to tie off and ignore.  The tips of the unused wire were bundled together and taped off to avoid possible electrical damage.

Metra Axxess ASWC-1 Harness (Steering Wheel Control)
Red: Switched 12V
Black: Ground
White/Green: Steering Switch

The remaining of these wires are completely unused.  However, keep them in case you ever decide to move to another vehicle.  For safety reasons, these remaining wires can be tied off and taped as well.

Metra 70-7903
This one is going to be the hard part of the wiring.  You will have to rob some of the pins from one harness to use on the other.  Using a very small jewellers screw driver you can remove the extra three wires you will need.  The colors used in the original harness are as follows:
Yellow: Constant 12V
Red: Switched 12V
Orange/White: Illumination
Black: Ground
Blue/White: Remote Switch (amp turn-on)
Gray: Right Front (+)
Gray/White: Right Front (--)
White: Left Front (+)
White/Black: Left Front (--)
Violet: Right Rear (+)
Violet/Black: Right Rear (--)
Green: Left Rear (+)
Green/Black: Left Rear (--)

As before, be sure to bundle the remaining unused wires and electrical tape as needed.  The speaker wires (Gray, White, Violet, and Green) are soldered to the Line Level RCA plugs.  This is done so the existing BOSE amplifier is not over powered by the high level line outputs.  Connecting this the wrong way will fry the OEM amplifier very quickly giving you a repair cost of roughly $900 for replacement parts.

Pinout chart of vehicle connector

This chart will help.  The missing pins you need are 1N, 1P, and 1I.  The wire for 1N goes to the Green/White wire of the ASWC-1 harness.  You will ground 1P by adding it to the existing ground at 1T.  The last of the missing pins (1I) will go to the pink wire of the Pioneer harness.

Here is a finished Metra 70-7903 harness

Getting it together

From here, getting the wire harness together is very simple.  Red to red, yellow to yellow and so on.  Pay close attention to the locations of the added pins and where they go.

The last bit is to bundle everything together as it will be a tight fit in the dash.  What I did was move the harness bundle off to the left side of the dash cavity.  The GPS antenna was positioned inside the dash as well.

In the middle of the test process

Last Note

One thing I did find out after putting everything back together, Android Auto will only work on the bottom USB port.  If you haven't set up Android Auto yet, you will need to make sure the parking break switch lead is properly grounded.

With everything installed, stay tuned for a real world review of Android Auto in action.  As always, feel free to ask any questions and I'll be happy to help.

Father's Day

As the father of three kids that I have raised I often look back asking myself if I've done well in raising them.  My father and I were not very close.  I thought of him as a weekend roof over my head more than anything else.  I had a lot of silent moments with him and was dragged to events I had no interest participating in or watching.  It wasn't always like that.  I have a few great memories with him.  One time he woke me up really early to fly out to Memphis, TN to tour Graceland.  I've never been a fan of Elvis, but this was so spontaneous it was actually fun.

Nethan is the oldest of the bunch and at the legal drinking age he strives to do the best he can on his own.  There is a bit of story behind Nate most people don't know about.  I met Nate around his fifth birthday and filled the role of father he never knew for himself.  I call him "son" and in return he refers to me proudly as "father".  There are many kids out there who don't know their biological father. . . but what it really boils down to, who is the person that is doing the hard work day in and day out?

Galen is my first born which drives me to worry a bit as a young driver of both four and two wheeled vehicles.  I have quite a bit of respect for the path he is going down, even though he is unsure of his direction in college.  I really can't argue too much as I was definitely the same growing up.

The youngest of the bunch is Zoe who has me wrapped around her little pinky.  She tends to be all over the place at times.  One moment she is all gung-ho over learning interior design, the next obssession might be musical instruments.  I remember when she out right refused to eat green beans but now willing to try new things.

I see myself in all of them, from my father to my kids.  I have learned a lot from each.  Hold on to those moments and cherish the times you have.  They may surprise you.

Landing in 3... 2...

A happy hello to this barren and vacant blog.  I'm building up some tidbits soon enough.  July 1st 2015 come back for more juicy bits of my weekly ramblings.  My plans are to share stories about computing, cooking, driving, music and more.  People have asked me to share a bit more, and so this will be all about things in my life.  Sometimes I'll post up some random bits of popular news or views about politics, but I'll keep the left/right sides under wraps the best I can.

Let me take you on a wild ride of what happens in my head.  I'm sure you will laugh, cry, and even find me weird at times.  It's okay to be weird though.  See everyone soon enough.