David and I listened to this follow up story Thursday on the retired Thiokol engineer who tried to stop the Challenger disaster, and had a parking lot moment of our own. We were meeting Dad and Linda (my father-in-law Sheldon and Shel’s girlfriend Linda) for dinner. As the story ended, we listened, pausing before getting out of the car. NPR listeners evidently had their own driveway or parking lot moments, and responded quickly to the original story. It’s nice to report so many acts of kindness to try to comfort a dying man. After NPR reported Bob Ebeling’s story on…
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I listen to a LOT of music via Internet radio streams, and until August, I used to be able to put a nice list of "Listening" tracks on my various blogs. That was courtesy of Last.fm, which used to be the main place people could gather or "scrobble" their personal music libraries as they listened to iTunes or CDs on their computers or listened to radio stations online that provided the right kind of track medadata.
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My iPhone died today. I’m not sure why, but it couldn’t have been good when the speaker dock I’d been using started making more squawky noises than usual – sometimes with shocklingly loud humming and buzzing that came through the speakers. It somehow managed to charge the phone where my older docks did not, but it was never a happy marriage, and David had remarked that it was unshielded, so there’d always be interference. So he’d already found a little wireless speaker called “Mini Jambox” that would be my Hannumas present, and he’s getting a GoPro. But the iPhone? It’s…
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On a whim, I looked once again to see if there’s a way to set WinAmp up to “scrobble” streaming radio, and it appears not… but one word at the Last.fm support site said simply “clementine” and that seems to do the job nicely. Built in support for Last.fm, Grooveshark, Spotify, and a few other services. There’s a ton of Internet radio stations to explore, and it’s relatively simple to set up playlists with my favorite Radio Riel streams, plus stations I’ve encountered on trips and local stations too. The Last.fm feed is put into my sidebar using a plugin…
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I spend a lot of time listening to radio via WinAmp over headphones while goofing around on my computer at home. I happened to tune in to WBEZ and caught the last few minutes of an interview between CBC Q’s Jian Ghomeshi and somebody that sounded a lot like a very peevish David Sedaris. However, the conversation was all about the lack of manners shown by Americans in everyday life, and the voice and accent didn’t quite have the languid edginess of Sedaris’. How surprising to find that it was actually Fran Lebowitz speaking. She approves of cigarette smoking, but…
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I had no idea that some of the original members of classic 60’s group The Zombies were playing together again, but I happened upon a repeat of the World Cafe show where they sang some songs from their new album, accompanied by piano. And then they sang their classic, it’s a rough version but live, live, live. Actually, there’s something about their voices that reminds me a lot of much more contemporary groups, they’ve still got a compelling sound. In today’s World Cafe session, Argent tells the story of his attempt to meet his idol, Elvis Presley, in 1965 by…
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Just listened to @WaitWait with Dick Van Dyke, who totally rocked “Not My Job” with his comprehensive knowledge of vans and dikes. What a delight when he SANG the “Dick Van Dyke Show” jingle! Still testing WooTumblr – David DOES need to edit the tags in the theme so that it picks up photos, links, and so on. I’m adding a link via the RTF buttons in the normal Article function this time. Also, the time stamp is not updating. UPDATE: And the link did not work either. No point in testing further until David gets a chance to update…
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Of all the many tributes and stories remembering the life and career of Dan Schorr, Scott Simon’s was the one that that moved me most. Schorr wasn’t a teddy bear; he pissed presidents and premiers off, as well as colleagues, columnists, and Congressmen. NPR’s Scott Simon Remembers Daniel Schorr : NPR No other journalist in memory saw as much history as Daniel Schorr. He was born the year before the Russian Revolution and lived to see the Digital Revolution. He was there before the Berlin Wall went up and there a generation later when it came down. He was born…
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I’m off for the next couple of weeks, and today I’m out of the house, spending time at Panera while “the ladies” do their twice-monthly thing. It seems the clientele here this time of day is older than I’m used to seeing in the evenings, but there are plenty of people using laptops and taking advantage of the free Wi-Fi. One guy has a small monitor and full-size keyboard set up with a dock; pretty serious gear. No doubt more than a few are unemployed or between jobs. Several are chatting with each other as if they’re regulars. Me, I’m…
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…woke up to the sound of Carol Burnett’s voice on NPR this morning, which caused an instant and very pleasant flashback to our 70’s-era family/dining/TV room. Her variety show was always a favorite in our family, and even now I can remember many loud belly laughs caused by their particular brand of tongue-in-cheek sketch humor. We got hysterical most weeks watching that show; laughing helplessly at the famous “Went With The Wind” dress, but also at Tim Conway trying to close a door by sitting on its unusually large doorknb. Most of all, there was poor Harvey Korman, trying not…