Darkoshi

Trick or Treat

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 03:04:49 GMT

This is Halloween. Now that I've turned on some appropriately-genred radio, it feels a bit more like it.

I didn't buy treats to give out, nor decorate outside this year. I had a few reasons. I am still reminded of last year, putting up the decorations, and then Serena dying a few days before Halloween. So few kids even come in a normal year (last year 6 kids in 2 groups). It's in the middle of the week. The current hours I keep have me working till late at night. I have to get up early tomorrow morning.

Yet now I am procrastinating finishing my day's work, because I want Halloween to be more Halloween. Halloween is such an ephemeral holiday.

Earlier this month I applied an orange/purple/green color scheme to the tree of lights. It is in the other room.

Scrolling through the whole over-the-air FM radio dial, not any Halloween music, not even on "Steve FM". One PBS channel is playing what might be vaguely Halloween-themed music, but not of the chipper kind. I'm switching back to streaming.

Oh, it is also the start of Diwali. Happy Diwali! Happy Halloween!

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Halloween Radio

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 00:38:51 GMT

In case you aren't finding enough Halloween music:

Halloween Radio.net

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listening to over-the-air radio vs internet streaming radio - energy use

Sat, 27 Jul 2024 19:20:44 GMT

I wondered about that yesterday, as I switched from listening to a local radio station via the Audials streaming app on my phone, to my (over-the-air/OTA) portable radio.

Some parts of that, I could measure myself with my "Kill-a-watt" meter - the energy usage of the radio, and of the external computer speakers that I often connect my phone to. Measuring the energy usage of the phone itself is harder due to its built-in battery. I could check how much it uses while charging, but that wouldn't tell me how much extra it uses when streaming music vs being in stand-by mode.

The broadcast side can also be considered. With over-the-air transmitters, the energy required for the broadcast is the same regardless of how many people tune in to listen. With streaming, I imagine the energy usage increases depending on the number of devices that connect to the stream. If a station transmits both ways at the same time as many do, choosing to connect to the stream won't reduce the power used by the OTA broadcast.

There are many variables and things to be considered. But I did a web search and was pleasantly surprised to get several on-topic pages in the results. Of course, I don't have time to read them all, but it looks interesting.

BBC Radio Services: How much energy is used to deliver and listen to radio?

...we explored four ‘what if…?’ scenarios over 20 years, from 2018 to 2037, which were:

Business as Usual - All platforms retained
Digital Only - Switching off AM and FM from 2030
DAB/IP Only - Switching off AM, FM and DTV radio from 2030
IP Only - Switching off AM, FM, DAB and DTV radio from 2030

All switch-off scenarios showed energy-saving potential compared to ‘Business as Usual’. Out of the scenarios modelled, the ‘DAB/IP Only’ case led to the largest energy reduction of 599 GWh, which was almost twice as much as the second-largest saving from ‘IP Only’ at 301 GWh. For the ‘Digital Only’ scenario, we estimated the smallest reduction of 176 GWh compared to ‘Business as Usual’. However, our results were sensitive to which devices people migrated to after switch-off. For example, a greater uptake in listening via television sets reduced the energy-saving potential in some scenarios.

Our most notable finding, demonstrated in both the baseline and scenario results, was that the biggest factor driving energy use was the standby power of radio sets and smart speakers - more so than the power of devices when they are turned on. Therefore, as a potential intervention, we simulated the removal of this standby energy across all our scenarios from 2021. In practice, this would mean people unplugging devices from their power source when not in use.
By testing this, we found an average energy saving of 38% across our scenarios, which was unprecedentedly large.

In that article, I also found this surprising:
The total energy required to prepare, distribute and consume BBC radio in our 2018 baseline was estimated to be 325 GWh, equivalent to 0.1% of UK electricity use that year.

0.1% is a small number, but still more than I'd have expected to be used just by the BBC radio services.

StackExchange: What is the energy efficiency between FM radio tower broadcasting over an area vs point to point streaming via Internet?

Techsurvey 2023 Shows Gap Between OTA And Streaming Listening Is Shrinking

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Skipping Girl Vinegar - Hand to Hold

Sun, 09 Jun 2024 22:17:22 GMT

The local college radio station, WUSC, played a catchy song today around 3pm. I checked the station's online playlist but none of the songs matched. Searching on the song lyrics only returned results for other songs. So I finally called up the DJ to ask what the song was. This is it:

The album is available on Bandcamp. It lists the genres as "pop rock power pop folk twee Australia". The "January 1, 2000" date shown on the Bandcamp page is not correct.
Per Discogs, the album was released in 2011.

I still haven't found the song lyrics online anywhere.

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Last weekend, I was playing the radio in one room while also making the baklava in the kitchen. I thought of ways to play the music in both rooms at once. I first thought of playing it from the station's webcast on my laptop (which was in the other room), and connecting it via Bluetooth to the radio by the kitchen. But the webcast was out of sync with the over-the-air audio.

Then it occurred to me, that I could just tune the radio by the kitchen to the same over-the-air station, duh!!! The old school way. LOL

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western music

Wed, 22 Mar 2023 02:58:43 GMT

WUSC, the University of South Carolina's college radio station, is having a fund-raiser week with a Wild West/Cowboy music theme.

I've been enjoying the music tonight. It's nostalgic for me.
Their home page (link above) has a "Listen Live" button at the top and a "Recently Played" playlist towards the bottom.

Every once in a while I wish their playlist stored more history, as I want to check what was playing at so-and-so time, since I enjoyed it but didn't check right away.
I think it shouldn't be hard to write some script to query the webpage every so often, and save off the data to a file, and post it somewhere. Maybe I'll have time to do that some day.

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TV and radio apps

Sat, 04 Sep 2021 09:02:23 GMT

I bought a FireTV stick and set it up today. Installed many apps. Mostly wanted it for some German news and shows, but also installed other apps to try out.

One app is iQIYI, and on it I watched the first episode of I Don't Want to Be Friends With You. It's a 2020 Chinese series, free to watch, with English subtitles. The first episode was cute, funny and entertaining. I don't want to spoil it for anyone by describing the plot, as I had no idea when I started watching it. But this page has some details if you want, and lists its genres as: Comedy, Romance, School, Youth, Fantasy.

I admit, one thing that appeals to me about the show is the androgynous appearance of the lead character, a teenage girl.

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Recently I installed the Audials Android app on my phone. It's got radio stations from all over the world. Unlike some apps, the radio links all seem to be up to date, no hunting just to find stations that will play ok. It also lets you record songs/shows to your phone. (This feels like taping songs from the radio to cassettes like in the old days, except it's to your phone instead.) That can be useful for stations that don't list which song is playing. If I hear a good song, I can save a clip to help in figuring out what song it was so I can later buy it and support the artists.

The "record songs" option didn't work for me when I tried it. With that, the software looks for distinct gaps between songs before it will record or save them. But the "record show" option worked fine - you can select that and then click to stop the recording whenever you want.

Now I find myself listening to our local college radio station WUSC more often again, as I can simply tap on my phone to start playing it.

I'm also getting to listen to college radio station WUML again. I used to listen to it in Massachusetts during my high school years, when it was called WJUL.

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Radio Shack SCR-58

Sat, 14 Nov 2020 10:07:27 GMT

Radio Shack Radio Cassette Player model SCR-58.
Might add photos later.

This is the radio I got at work (last year?) when they were cleaning up old cubes and giving stuff away.

The tape player was working fine when I got it, and worked for letting me record the audio from I'm not sure how many cassettes to my computer. But then something in the tape mechanism started making a rattling noise whenever I press Play or Fast Forward.

So I opened up the case to see if it was something I could fix. The screws holding the back of the case on were each a different length, quite odd. Then I needed to remove a circuit board to get to the cassette parts. The screws to remove are all helpfully coated in a red color to make them easy to see. I got the one screw on that top circuit board removed. The only other red spot was on one of the wire connections of the varicon (aka variable capacitor tuner, from what I looked up). But I couldn't figure out how that piece could come out without possibly breaking things. It has several tiny screw heads on top, but they seem to be adjusting screws, not mounting screws. The bottom of the varicon and surrounding parts were coated in a waxy substance.

So I gave up on fixing the cassette player part of it and put it back together. It's still a great little radio. On the AM radio (which I don't usually tune in to as I never find anything good playing there), before it was even picking up some people talking in French! No one anywhere near here broadcasts in French that I know of. Could it be all the way from Cajun country? Or Haiti? Or a Caribbean island? Who knows. It was too faint to make out much and now I turned the dial and lost it.

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the most sensational, inspirational, celebrational...

Fri, 18 Jan 2019 06:38:36 GMT

I had my headphones on a few days ago at work, listening to my music, and the Muppet Show Theme Song came on. It had a strong effect on me, a sudden welling up of emotion. It was like I suddenly felt what things felt like when I was a child. Feeling content, maybe happy, anticipatory, cozy. All the feels instead of hum-drum monotony. It brought tears to my eyes.

It's like when I'm driving in my car with the radio on, and the radio reception improves so that it switches from regular stereo to HD radio. Until you hear it, you can't really fathom what you are missing. But the moment you do hear it, the regular stereo version sounds so very inadequate.

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oddiyo yo-yo

Tue, 27 Mar 2018 04:17:44 GMT

And then I almost went to work without my laptop. But luckily, I noticed before driving off.

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Yesterday I wanted to play some internet radio through my stereo system's speakers, via the audio cable I usually use for that purpose. The cable connects the laptop to the equalizer. The equalizer connects to the receiver via another cable with phono connectors. The speakers are connected to the receiver's speaker outputs, which are the spring-loaded kind that you stick the bare speaker wires into.

I noticed how much white noise was coming from the speakers, before turning the music on. There was also an annoying intermittent rumbling sound. With the radio playing at a low volume, the noise is still audible.

So then instead of listening to music, I messed with my audio system for a few hours. In the process, I came across this term: audio nervosa, which seemed amusingly apt.

The problem seems to be the receiver's speaker connections, not the speakers themselves. I cleaned all the dust out of the receiver's case, but that didn't help. Now I'm using my older set of speakers, which have phono connectors, connected to the equalizer's main-out jacks. The receiver's tape-out jack is connected to the equalizer's audio-in jacks. The laptop audio cable is connected to the equalizer's tape-in jacks.

This way, the speakers are blissfully silent until I turn the music on. A down-side is that I can no longer turn the receiver's radio on with just my remote control; I have to walk over and turn on the equalizer too. Before, I wasn't using the equalizer for the radio.

Another problem is figuring out where to position these speakers. I had been using these to prop up the other speakers (which are smaller and don't have a flat top) up higher, rather than them being directly on the floor. As a temporary solution, I now have the left speaker balanced on an open drawer, to put it at the same height as the other speaker, which is on the same table as the receiver.

A more significant downside is that the receiver's volume control doesn't control the radio volume at all now, and it is fairly loud. How did I not notice this yesterday? Maybe I'll need to change things around again after all, or replace something, or get an extra volume control (amplifier?) box.

Or sheesh, just put it back the way it was to begin with. Maybe.

Update: I now had the idea to connect a cable from the receiver's headphone output to the equalizer's input, as that should be controllable by the volume dial. I'm pretty sure I had done it that way before. But today, I'm not getting any sound that way. Although the sound does work with actual headphones plugged into the jack, but only the left channel... because I'm using a mono 3.5 to large jack adapter instead of a stereo one.. where did I put the stereo one...

Update #2: All fixed now. Found the stereo adapter. Laptop connects to receiver's CD-In jacks. Receiver's headphones-Out jack is connected to the equalizer's Audio-In jacks. Equalizer's Main-Out jacks are connected to the speakers. The receiver's volume control (including the one on its remote) can control the volume for everything. I can even still switch between the laptop audio and the radio with the remote, like I was able to do before. The big speakers are now sitting on top of the smaller speakers which are on the ground; they do have a flat enough surface after all. And no static noise coming from the speakers, woo-yeah!

Pink azaleas:

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80s

Sun, 09 Jul 2017 06:36:59 GMT

Am just now watching a CNN series on the 1980s.

The first part they showed was about MTV. I didn't know that MTV refused to play black artists in the beginning. Back then we were living in Germany, and the only American channel we got to watch was AFN, the Armed Forces Network. I didn't get to watch MTV until 1985 or later, when we were back in the U.S. But nonetheless, it seems like nearly all the music that was popular in the 80s is among my favorite music, even without me having seen the videos for those first years.

There was a segment about the space shuttles and the Challenger disaster on Jan 28, 1986.

I had a memory of being at home, listening to my radio in my bedroom, and hearing about the Challenger accident on the radio... as if I was hearing it live*, or right after it had happened. The apartment/bedroom of my memory matches the year, 1986. Both the year before and the year after, I lived in other places. So the memory must be at least partially true.

But I just looked it up, and the accident was on a Tuesday, at 11:39am in the same time zone as I was. So surely I would have been at school when it happened. I don't remember hearing about it at school though. If I was home that day, what could the reason have been? Even if the school day ended fairly early, it wouldn't have been that early. So surely I must have been at school, gotten home at the normal time, and then heard about it on the radio after the fact. Unless we had a half-day for some reason...

Surely if I had been home at the time of the launch, I would have been watching it on TV, not listening on the radio? Or were space shuttle launches not televised live back then? ...

When a national disaster unfolded live in 1986

If you were an American kid in 1986, you probably remember exactly where you were: That's because so many classrooms were watching the shuttle launch live via a special NASA satellite feed to showcase what would have been the first American teacher in space, Christa McAuliffe.

No, I don't remember watching it live in school. Gah, no way to verify my patchy memories.

*I do think it likely that I listened to the launch live, probably on PBS, because I was into astronomy and NASA and things like that. Maybe we didn't get CNN at the time, or maybe I didn't know it was being televised too. I remember listening to other launch attempts on the radio, including aborted ones. (But as this post shows, I no longer trust such old memories. Maybe I only heard replays, not live broadasts?)

This morning I was lying in bed trying to figure out how long ago Qiao bought his house - was it 2 or 3 years ago? And how long ago was his accident? 2011 or 2012? And when was my brother living in my house? etc., etc. All that only within the last 7 years or so, and I'm already getting it all mixed up in my mind. At least now I have ways of looking up what happened when in my life. But not for 1986. I did occasionally write in a diary back then, but not about the space shuttle.

Update (7/10): I think I figured out why I was not at school that day. According to historical weather sources, it was a very cold day. In my area, it was under 20 degrees until 9am, and didn't go above freezing until the afternoon. Such weather is not usual in the South, and school was probably cancelled to keep kids from having to walk to school or wait for the school buses in such cold.

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Sanyo M1950F Clock Radio Cassette Player

Wed, 23 Nov 2016 09:16:45 GMT

I've had this radio since about 1981. It still works well. It's much more viscerally satisfying to scroll through stations by turning the tuning knob, compared to modern radios with their seek and scan buttons. And it sounds just as good to me as my larger stereo receiver system does.

The clock display is blank in this video as the button battery went bad and I had to remove it. But after cleaning the battery compartment out and putting in a new battery, the clock still works too.

Video title: Sanyo M1950F Clock Radio Cassette Player
Posted by: Darkoshi
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qExlCPD_Ypk

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to dehiss or not to dehiss, that is the question

Thu, 28 Nov 2013 06:21:09 GMT

I have embarked upon converting my audio cassettes into mp3 files.

Found a working cassette player. Check.
Found a spare audio cable. Check.
Decided which program to do the recordings with. Check.
Adjusted my laptop's microphone settings. Check.
Figured out how to apply noise reduction to reduce hiss on the recordings.

Now I can't decide if I actually should apply the noise reduction to the songs, or not. The music sounds much cleaner after the noise reduction. But compared to the noisy versions, it seems to be missing something. I can't figure out if the noise reduction is removing some of the important high frequency sounds of the music along with the noise. Or if it's simply that my cassettes have always had a background hiss, so that I am not used to the songs without that noise being there.

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I also have a CD version of one of these songs I recorded from this first audio cassette. The quality of the CD version is totally different from the cassette versions. Yet I can't say that the CD version is definitely *better*. They're just *different*. The cassette version is perhaps more nostalgic, as I heard this song on cassette more often than on CD. Yet, when I first heard the song on FM *radio* back in the 1980s, I wonder if the sound quality was more like the CD version than the cassette version? Perhaps the cassette versions even sounded better back then, before they were partially degraded by time and repeat playings.

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devil game music

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 05:45:30 GMT

Qiao's been playing Diablo III as part of this weekend's open beta test. It took several hours to download, and he had some server connection issues, but was able to play for a good part of the day. He's pleased with it. He had already suggested to me before that the game would make a good birthday present for him.

Me: Heard an unfamilar version of a familiar-sounding song on the radio, and liked it a lot. Decided to buy an MP3 version of it, if I could find it. Went online, found it, but listened to several other versions of it, because I liked it that much. Found 2 more versions of it that I liked. But now I'm having a hard time getting the tune out of my head, and feel sort of sick of it.

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like a time warp

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 03:54:42 GMT

Two different radio stations in my presets are playing Christmas music.

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