Tag Archives: radio

Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me – Golden anniversary Edition

This post could also be titled: Why Carl Kasell is the greatest guy in the world!

If it hadn’t been for my mom’s passing last week, this Sunday would be my parents 50th wedding anniversary.

My brother Mitch, the really creative one in the family, pulled out all the stops.  He got a letter from Senator Dick Durbin, a card from Barack & Michell Obama, and to top it all off … he arranged to have Carl Kasell to record a special greeting for the event.

The original plan was to do a “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” (WWDTM) format game during the anniversary party (which had been scaled back from a big even to a much smaller affair, for obvious reasons) … and Mitch thought that the only thing missing was Carl Kasell’s intro.  So he sent an email to the producers of WWDTM, explained the situation and asked if it would be possible to get Carl to record a message, and they agreed.

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WBEZ Traffic made me laugh

I was listening to WBEZ this morning and the traffic report came on … The reporter indicated that a particular road was very icy, but the city was sending out a salt truck to “make it better”.

Immediately the Beatles song “Hey Jude” popped into my head with slightly altered lyrics …

“… take a salt truck … and make it better …”

OK, yeah, I am easily amused.

iPhone Buzzing

Radio InteferenceEver since I got the iPhone, I’ve noticed that it causes nearby speakers (radios, desk phones, etc) to emit a buzzing noise.

The odd thing is, my boss Brian’s Blackberry does the same thing.

I finally found the reason why:

The cause of this buzzing has to do with GSM’s “time division nature. The ever-knowledgeable Keith Nowak, spokesperson for Nokia, explains it as follows: “[[With GSM]] the RF transmitter is turned on/off at a fast rate, and that ‘pulsing’ is often picked up by nearby devices that don’t have good RF shielding. In the case of GSM the pulse rate is 217 Hz, which can be easily heard.

That Crazy GSM Buzz

When I put my iPhone in the clock radio / iPhone dock that Ginny got me for the holidays, it does the same thing. Luckily the dock isn’t recognized as being 100% iPhone compatible, so the iPhone offers to shut off the radio (go into Airplane mode) whenever I dock it. This eliminates the buzzing (mostly) because the phone isn’t transmitting.