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Minor Strangeness (IHTM)

blacksekhmet said:
...This happened when I was about 12 or so... Anyway, in my house at the time, the radio was pretty much always on in the kitchen, and had been since I was born... I had another radio/tape deck that I used to place outside the bathroom door whenever I had a bath/shower. The cord wasn't long enough to reach in the bathroom, so it always sat outside the door turned up full.
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Not sure how old you are or when the story is set, but could Radio 1 have been broadcast on FM and MW an you had a radio tuned to each? Would that account for a lag in transmission?

I also heard that live TV uses a 2-second "safety zone" in case crank callers get through an insult the guest band (famously, Matt Bianco), radio ever operate such a policy?

Possibilities?
 
Yep, some TV stations on the same network have different lag times of a few seconds as well. Also, different setups take different times to produce sound - if I listen to my TV directly through its speakers, and have the home theater on as well, there is a quite a noticeable lag from the home theater!
 
Thanks for the replies Henry and mark!

To answer the question, this was about 1989 so R1 had been broadcasting in our area in FM for just over a year, IIRC. It was still quite a novelty at the time, and I know for a fact both radios were always tuned to the local FM frequency.

Added to that, both radios had worked synchronously time and again before this occurance, and every time after. This was definitely a one off event, for me at least.
 
Welcome! Interesting problem - here is a list of Radio 1 transmitters around 1988-89 http://www.radiorewind.co.uk/images/transmitfm_sht1.jpg - is there any chance that where you were was within range of two transmitters? Some of them are quite close in frequency so if you had analog dials you could have been tuned to different transmitters without you knowing it.
 
Tacolneston (or "Tackleston" as it's said round these parts) is definitely our local transmitter. 99.3 FM (East Anglia), not something you forget, especially when you're driving round the countryside in a car! Going by that info there, it's probably set the date of this more toward April/May 1990. I know I was 12, and my b-day is in late May (I just hit the big 3-0). It was a warm and sunny day. No atmospheric interference from rain or storms. Well, in my opinion anyway.

While there's a slim chance that my radio was tuned to AM rather than FM, that wouldn't really explain the sudden jump I don't think. Besides, I'm almost 100% sure they were both on the FM frequency. I remember both radios had that clear stereo sound, not like the old AM transmissions.

Oh, and I know from living in that area for 20 years that we weren't between transmitters. It's always been a solid transmission, as far as I can remember. This incident happened just outside Bury St Edmunds, about 25/30 miles from the Tacolneston transmitter.
 
blacksekhmet said:
Oh, and I know from living in that area for 20 years that we weren't between transmitters. It's always been a solid transmission, as far as I can remember. This incident happened just outside Bury St Edmunds, about 25/30 miles from the Tacolneston transmitter.
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when we talk about "the tacolneston transmitter", do we mean one unit or a transmission farm? could it have been a fault with one transmitter at the station, which when corrected saw the signal "pick up" to real-time.

bury st e., that takes me back. i was at UEA.
 
Hello, 1st post, hope this is the right thread for it.

While I was cycling by the river with my daughter we un-strangely saw some swans... stay with me on this, there is a song by 'the fall' called 'bingo masters breakout' in which the opening lines are '2 swans in front of his eyes', 2 swans being the number 22.
My chain of thought went through the 1s t verse of the song till I got to 'it's number 1 for his 'Kelly's Eye'. then I wondered why number 1 was 'kellys eye.
then the strange bit... the 1st canal boat I came to was called...
Kelly's eye!
I tried telling my daughter the coincidence but she's 9 and didn't know anything about 'the fall'...but she had fallen off her bike just before into some nettles. poor love, Dad to the rescue.
 
We have a ship's figurehead over the door of our shop.
Yesterday we had a visit from the great grandson of the ship's first captain, doing some family research. Luckily we have a small booklet on the ship, which gave him new information.

And today I'm pretty sure we had a well-known TV presenter in the shop.
I wasn't sure of the etiquette of confirming his identity, however -
"Oi, aren't you that bloke off the telly? How's your old Swingometer doing?"
might have seemed a bit rude...!

I wonder who we might see tomorrow...?
 
There are flowerbeds outside my living room window. On the RHS the flowers were well above the level of the window sill. Today I suddenly realised I couldn't see them any more.

Going up to window I saw that all those plants were flattened, away from the building. My first thought was of an intruder, but the plants weren't trampled, just laid flat, as if by a mighty gust of wind. (And there are a couple of things on the window ledge that could just have been nicked through the opening, but they were still there.)

Now the window was slightly ajar (the hinge is at the top), but a huge gust of wind from inside the flat seems pretty unlikely (even my bowels aren't that bad!). My current theory is that during one of the recent heavy downpours, the rain must have been pouring down the window pane, and the slope of it gave the waterfall coming off it enough outward force to knock the plants down.


Here are the flattened flowers (window wide open):

IMG_0019.jpg


This shows the window partly open, as it was when the flattening happened:

IMG_0020.jpg
 
rynner said:
There are flowerbeds outside my living room window. On the RHS the flowers were well above the level of the window sill. Today I suddenly realised I couldn't see them any more.
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Have you any oversize feline interlopers that visit you?

The pics do look a bit like there are two flatter areas as if someone was trying to gain access. :shock:
 
I'd have suggested window cleaners (the ones who come out monthly to my mother's complex don't give a damn about respecting peoples' flowerbeds) but you say they haven't been trampled. Other than that, the flattened plants are crocosmia - the 'Lucifer' variety I planted for my mam were getting on quite nicely regardless of the battery of rain we've been having in the Mids for the past couple of weeks.

Now, they're are almost horizontal (they're in a similar place to yours, too - just underneath her groundfloor window) so it could well be down to the weather.
 
'crocosmia - the 'Lucifer' variety'

Well, at least I've learned something! I shall have to post pics of all the other flowers here, as apart from the roses, I don't know what they're called!
 
Tropospheric Ducting!

blacksekhmet said:
Thanks for the replies Henry and mark!

To answer the question, this was about 1989 so R1 had been broadcasting in our area in FM for just over a year, IIRC. It was still quite a novelty at the time, and I know for a fact both radios were always tuned to the local FM frequency.

Added to that, both radios had worked synchronously time and again before this occurance, and every time after. This was definitely a one off event, for me at least.
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I was driving along the north shore of Lake Ontario the other day, listening to NPR on 89.5 when it started lagging a few seconds then coming back in sync - I realized what was happening was I was picking up the signal from a nearby and then a distant station - NPR uses 89.5 in many places across the USA. (For a while it was picking up a Minnesota station, which was about a thousand miles away) - so probably your radio was picking up a distant station for a while - usually this is caused by tropospheric ducting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropospher ... ropagation
 
wabbey said:
Hello, 1st post, hope this is the right thread for it.

While I was cycling by the river with my daughter we un-strangely saw some swans... stay with me on this, there is a song by 'the fall' called 'bingo masters breakout' in which the opening lines are '2 swans in front of his eyes', 2 swans being the number 22.
My chain of thought went through the 1s t verse of the song till I got to 'it's number 1 for his 'Kelly's Eye'. then I wondered why number 1 was 'kellys eye.
then the strange bit... the 1st canal boat I came to was called...
Kelly's eye!
I tried telling my daughter the coincidence but she's 9 and didn't know anything about 'the fall'...but she had fallen off her bike just before into some nettles. poor love, Dad to the rescue.
Click to expand...

Fantastic Anecdote!
Bear with me here, But a couple of years ago a similar thing happened to me in NYC with a Fall song, I need to recall and sort inside my head :D
 
Today I had a shower, got dressed, and shortly afterwards caught a bus.

Went into Witherspoons for a coffee and a muffin. While eating the muffin (chocolate), I noticed a smell of perfume on my right hand. It was only on the back of the hand, not the palm. There was no smell on my left hand.

Now I hadn't held or shaken hands with anyone since my shower, and hadn't even sat next to anyone on the bus. If I'd gripped a handrail, or the like, any perfume should have been on the palm, not the back of the hand. The smell persisted for quite a while.

So, odd, in a minor way!
 
Your hand might have brushed by a fragrant plant at some point on your travels?
 
Something similar happened to me yesterday too:

I grabbed my jeans from the dryer, intending to wear them to the pub. But, despite being dry, they smelt like they were MARINATED in dettol.
I don't own dettol. I never have. I hate the smell too much (give me isocol any day).
And my dryer is inaccessible to anyone but myself and my husband (who, conincidentally, ALSO doesn't own dettol :lol: ).

Needless to say, I wore different daks. :roll:
 
Two minor oddities, both probably with logical explanations, but they both happened within an hour, yesterday morning.

I was waiting at the bus stop. A woman left her house, and walked past me in the direction of the shops and post box. I didn't see exactly what she did, as I was looking the other way for my bus. But when I did glance round, shortly after, whe was already walking back. If she went to the shop, I thought, she was very quick. She went back home, and then re-emerged with a bunch of letters, and passed me again as she went to the post box.

So did she forget the letters the first time? But there was no rush, since the collection was not due for many hours (post strike permitting!)


The second oddity involved a woman on the bus, a regular traveller. She got off as usual half-way into town, while I rode the whole way. I had a coffee, and then walked off to work. And then this same woman appeared, walking in the opposite direction to me!

Now I guess she could have walked into town in the time available (while I had coffee), but if she did, why? Why not stay on the bus? And there's no other bus that would have got her there in the time either. Maybe a friend gave her a lift, or she took a taxi - but if so, why did she get off the bus where she did?

Small things, but They Happened To Me! 8)
 
1) She went to the shops to get stamps for the letters?
2) Stopped off for a quickie with her lover before work?
 
plusk said:
1) She went to the shops to get stamps for the letters?
2) Stopped off for a quickie with her lover before work?
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1) There's a P.O. in the shops, so she could have taken her letters straight there - she didn't have to use the post box.

2) The lady is of a certain age, so that's unlikely! And it really would have been a quickie anyhow, if she got down into town by the time I saw her later! (Perhaps her toy-boy is a rally driver!)
 
Hi rynner,

a) What I was thinking is that some post boxes have little coin-operated machines to dispense stamps (must admit I have'nt seen any in a while). It would be more convenient to pop out - get the stamps and go home to stick them on rather than fiddle about in the open.

b)I'm of a certain age too and yes that does mean its over very quick - or so my wife said when she popped out this morning..
 
Three odd events here, too:

1. The "passenger not using seatbelt" alarm came on in my auto even tho there was no passenger (visible, at least ;) ). I pulled over, turned the engine off, then restarted. The alarm went out.

2. Same day, the wireless (not cell) phone in our house kept turing off although the battery had plenty of charge. Then, suddenly, it started working normally.

3. Last night, time seemed to jump forward by about a half hour. The battery-driven clock in the living room went from 10:20 to 10:25 p.m.; but programs on the tv that normally end on the hour were suddenly ending as if the time were 11:00 p.m. I checked other clocks in the house, and they all agreed with the living-room clock. Probably a glitch at the cable-tv provider, but what a glitch!

All these events seem to involve electronics, which kind of has me worried about our earthquake-prone area.

Wish us the best.
 
Turning off Japanese, I really thought so!

When I turned off the DVD recorder Saturday night, the sound system made a noise that sounded exactly like a woman saying "Yes" in Japanese. (hai). Just one syllable - The last conversation I had before returning home was with a Japanese woman partly in Japanese so I'd imagine that it was just an electronic squawk that I'd interpreted as speech....
 
EEEEHHHHHGHGHGHG!

Now it's the brand-new hybrid Toyota (not the same auto that had the passenger-belt alarm problem mentioned above). When I tried to start it tonight, it kept insisting that the emergency brake was on. After three restarts, it changed its mind and decided to let me drive it home.
 
Ages back my phone completely spazzed out. It started mesaging/calling people randomly and turning on and off.
This didn't surprise me too much because it's a bullshit Motorola hunk of overpriced scrap metal, but what DID surprise me was that after I'd left it alone for 6 months and turned it back on again to demonstrate its shittiness, it worked perfectly. :furious:
So I started using it again (thank god, coz my old nokia had finally bitten the dust earlier that week) and then the other day it shat itself again. It started keying in buttons randomly, certain buttons, when pressed, would activate others instead, and the 3 button wouldn't press. I kept trying to use it for a week or so, until I finally faced the music and left it at home last night.
When I got back it was working perfectly. :splat:
 
Rynner

The woman forgot her letters and the other one walked half way to town for extra exercise.
 
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