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Minor Strangeness (IHTM)

I don't know if this is minor strangeness or major annoyance: My desktop radio suddenly went silent today. In fixing the thing, the station I usually listen to, National Public Radio, has been reset to a Christian station, which are usually on the opposite side of the political spectrum, and I can't unset it now.
If I were vulnerable to conspiracy theories I'd think some fascist trolls were sabotaging my liberal listening habits. However, the wind is vigorous today, and the NPR antenna here isn't powerful, so I assume my (cheapo) radio isn't able to grab onto the preferred but disrupted frequency and has glommed onto the strongest nearby station instead. Tarnation, I don't want to be saved!
 
Iris said:
For some strange reason I keep thinking of the name Alaric.
I googled it and he was a visigoth who attacked Rome. I have no idea why I should think of him.
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My eldest son narrowly escaped being called Alaric. Thankfully his dad stepped in - I can only blame pregnancy hormones.

He's called Tom.
 
IbisNibs said:
I assume my (cheapo) radio isn't able to grab onto the preferred but disrupted frequency
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Is it a 'regular' radio that picks up signals in the air or one of those damned DAB abhorrences?

If it's a 'regular' sort then you could just try increasing the aerial size to 'grab' more signal.
I mean, I know that's not really exactly how radio works, what with frequency and wavelength etc, but altering your devices reception abilities by repositioning away from other metallic objects, electrical interference etc and putting the aerial somewhere that it has a better chance of receiving the weak signal should all help.
 
IbisNibs said:
I don't know if this is minor strangeness or major annoyance: My desktop radio suddenly went silent today. In fixing the thing, the station I usually listen to, National Public Radio, has been reset to a Christian station, which are usually on the opposite side of the political spectrum, and I can't unset it now.
If I were vulnerable to conspiracy theories I'd think some fascist trolls were sabotaging my liberal listening habits. However, the wind is vigorous today, and the NPR antenna here isn't powerful, so I assume my (cheapo) radio isn't able to grab onto the preferred but disrupted frequency and has glommed onto the strongest nearby station instead. Tarnation, I don't want to be saved!
Click to expand...
Are you using a standard FM radio? Over here in the UK, many analogue radio stations are being replaced with digital radio - maybe something similar is happening over there? Time to buy a DAB radio, perhaps?

Edit: My Mum had similar reception problems, so I bought her a really simple DAB radio and tuned in all her favourite stations for her. It works a treat and gives a better sound quality.
 
DAB is okay for a home set-up as long as you aren't surrounded by tall buildings which give multiple reflections of signal and make it hard for the radio to process the digital stream correctly.
Equally, DAB is next to useless in a car for much the same reason if you drive through the city centre.
 
Trevp666 said:
Equally, DAB is next to useless in a car for much the same reason if you drive through the city centre.
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Same applies to analogue radio. My previous car's radio experienced lots of blackouts in certain areas.
My current car's DAB is actually better than that, but it still occasionally finds dead spots as I'm driving about.
 
Iris said:
When I was pregnant with my youngest if she had been a boy I rather fancied the name Gareth. That is until my cousin's boy went around saying I was going to call the baby Carrot.
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My uncle Barrie was called 'Hank' all his life. The is because he was born at home (in the 1930s) and his sister was so excited about her new brother's arrival that she misheard the name Barrie as 'handcart'.
A handcart was a wooden push-along trolley that would be used to move goods around.

So little Joyce ran into the street shouting 'The new baby's come! He's called Handcart!' which she'd pronounce as 'an'kaar'.
There was a small crowd outside as my grandmother and the baby had not been expected to survive. The cobbled road had been strewn with straw to damp down traffic noise. That'd be mostly horses and carts, and handcarts of course.

Luckily all went well after all and the new baby Barrie was stuck forever with the nickname 'Handcart', or 'an'car. Soon shortened to Hank outside the family.
 
My mother's two sisters, Esme and Peg, were known throughout their lives as Bubbles and Dollsa. Bubbles. because, apparently, she blew a lot of bubbles as a tiny baby, and Peg (who was the eldest) called the baby 'Bubbles' and it stuck. Peg was called Dollsa because she looked, apparently when newborn, like a little doll, and someone looked at her and said 'she looks like a little dollsa!'

It was so normal to call them Bubbles and Dollsa that I didn't realise that these weren't their real names for a very long time.
 
I forgot to mention that I saw one of these on Sunday morning.
A white tailed Eagle. Rare as there are not many breeding pairs (fewer than there are Golden Eagles) but they are distributed widely across the UK (unlike the Golden Eagle which are pretty much only found in Scotland and 'the north').
As they are large predators they can cover a huge distance thanks to their 2 metre (ish) wingspan.
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Iris said:
For some strange reason I keep thinking of the name Alaric.
I googled it and he was a visigoth who attacked Rome. I have no idea why I should think of him.
Click to expand...
Wasn't there an Alaric in Dr Who? killed tragically despite having a red star for maths? You've not been watching old sci-fi?
 
catseye said:
:chuckle:My eldest son narrowly escaped being called Alaric. Thankfully his dad stepped in - I can only blame pregnancy hormones.

He's called Tom.
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I would probably teasingly call a kid with this name "celery":)

Iris said:
When I was pregnant with my youngest if she had been a boy I rather fancied the name Gareth. That is until my cousin's boy went around saying I was going to call the baby Carrot.
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I see someone got to the naming of vegetables before I did:cynic:
 
Eyespy said:
Wasn't there an Alaric in Dr Who? killed tragically despite having a red star for maths? You've not been watching old sci-fi?
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Yup, and I saw that episode. The death wasn't exactly graphic as it was down to a space ship blowing up. Everyone was very sad. :(
 
Eyespy said:
Wasn't there an Alaric in Dr Who? killed tragically despite having a red star for maths? You've not been watching old sci-fi?
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I think Adric's star was gold, and was used to poison the Cybermen. Sadly, the tragedy of his death (they even rolled the credits in silence) was lessened by the fact that the character was pretty whiny and annoying. Still, it brings back memories - was that the one where Peter Davison threw a cricket ball in space to get himself to the Tardis? If it wasn't, I realise that the last sentence will be even more bizarre than it is.
 
Peripart said:
I think Adric's star was gold, and was used to poison the Cybermen. Sadly, the tragedy of his death (they even rolled the credits in silence) was lessened by the fact that the character was pretty whiny and annoying. Still, it brings back memories - was that the one where Peter Davison threw a cricket ball in space to get himself to the Tardis? If it wasn't, I realise that the last sentence will be even more bizarre than it is.
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Not sure it was the same episode, but certainly that series. And yes, Adric is almost universally hated because he was such a know it all and a brat. But it was almost the first time that the Doctor had lost a companion to death (not quite the first, but the first time a long term companion died), so it really made an impression. Also it was a sacrifice, because Adric knew he would die on the crashing cybership, so it was a suicide mission, basically.

I really do need to get a life, don't I?
 
I woke up at 0411 today. It was already daylight and the birds were in full 'dawn chorus' mode (Dunno what the hell they're so bleedin happy about anyway!).
I expect that what made me most likely to wake up though was the sudden extreme hayfever that I was experiencing, with my nose very itchy and running, needing to sneeze, and generally 'feeling it'.
That and also the sound of a couple who were fully enjoying the warm night by having energetic loud sex in their back garden about 200yds away. (Either that or they had large open windows/doors onto a terrace of some sort.)
Still better than the usual sound of foxes going at it and sounding like a murder is being committed.
 
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