Radio dial just too small

Posted on July 31, 2015 by Steve Mays

podcasts Been thinking some more about broadcasters lobbying for mobile carriers to turn on the FM receiver chip in phones. Never gonna work. Radio dial just too small. A little back-story:

Since getting my first iPhone several years ago, I’ve always listened to music with earbuds when in the car. The 4Runner didn’t have a good way to interface and I just never bothered when I got the MINI. Apple Music has me listening more these days so I purchased an aux cable to play iPhone music through the MINI speakers.

Lo and behold! The MINI has really good speakers. Way better experience than the earbuds. (Yes, everybody told me that) Anyway, back to the radio dial…

With the unlimited data plan (ATT) on my phone, I can listen to (almost) all the music there is. And the playlists. And the customized “stations”… as well as the half-dozen podcasts I follow.

“Hey, Siri. Podcast. Tech News Today.” Voila!

No radio station can match this. ALL the radio stations can’t match this.

Recall? What recall?

Posted on July 30, 2015 by Steve Mays

While getting my car serviced (at the MINI dealership in St. Louis) earlier this week I mentioned the Takata airbag recall and the young man at the part window got puzzled look on his face.

“You’ve heard about the exploding airbag canisters and the big recall, right?

Nope, he insisted. He hadn’t heard about any airbag recall. About that time another young man came up to the next part window so I asked him. Same response. Had no idea what I was referring to.

I’m certain they weren’t fucking with me. Somehow they had missed seeing/hearing/reading _anything_ about this long-running story. I find that amazing.

Unless I’m missing something here, this means these two men could not have watched a network or cable newscast, read a newspaper, or spent 2 minutes on an online news site for the past 6 months (longer?).

How is that possible? And what else is going on in the world about which these young men are oblivious? I assume they’re on Facebook and would have seem some reference to this story there. No?

Charlie’s Mix-Tape

Posted on July 29, 2015 by Steve Mays

charlie-mixtape
Want to take your music with you? Then you’re gonna have to work for it. This is Charlie making a mix-tape back in 1974. Amp on the left. Turntable in the middle. Two-deck cassette recorder on the right. When the cassette if full, there was a “high speed” dubbing mode so you could crank out extras for friends.