Mix tapes rule

Earlier in the year our trusty Toyota Echo was unfortunately in a motor vehicle accident and needed to go to rust bucket in the sky.

Fortunately, our friend was selling his old Honda Accord in order to contribute towards a mini-van for his growing family.

However, the vehicle was of a vintage when cassette tapes were still standard equipment for car stereos.  This was bad timing as when I was packing up to move, I decided that I no longer needed my cassette deck and various tapes and had sold all of this.

We got one of those cassette adapters but it has an annoying his and bit awkward to use with the funny cord hanging out.  I spread the word that I was in need of cassettes and several friends forwarded what they had which was cool.

However, it was only yesterday that re-aquired a cassette deck, just $20 on craigslist.

So, this morning I connected it up in "mission control" and got everything working.  My son and I then sat down to record some music.  It is very easy now with youtube as compared to 15 years ago with a stack of CDs.  We just think of a song, go to youtube and find it.

It was a good teaching moment too as I had to show my son how to use a pencil to wind the leader up to the start of the tape and then blanking the first part of the tape.  Then showed him how to set the level on the cassette deck so that all the songs would be roughly the same loudness, saving one from jumping to the volume control if a sound was too loud or soft.

There are some benefits to old technology and to be able to spend an hour quietly with my son was great because he's approaching his teens and by then hanging out with dad might not be on the top of his priorities.

If you're going to make your own, I like this set of rules.