Gardening & Radio Automation

I know, Blogger; I'd almost forgot how much I used to post here. Some thoughts just don't really fit in a typical social media post, so here we are.

Coming in from harvesting some leaf lettuce last night I was struck by the idea that while they seem very different, there are some definite parallels between my gardening hobby and my career in radio automation, especially when considering the concept of managing unpredictable elements, such as studio failover.

Here's how they can be compared:

• Planning and Setup (Initial Automation/Garden Design):

  • Radio Automation: You design a system, set up playlists, schedule content, and configure rules for how everything should run automatically.

  • Gardening: You plan your garden layout, choose plants, prepare the soil, and set up irrigation systems. You're trying to create an environment where things grow "automatically" once planted.

• Automated Processes (Growth/Scheduled Broadcast):

  • Radio Automation: Once set up, the system runs autonomously, (or should...) playing music, ads, and pre-recorded segments without constant human intervention, especially during "automated hours."

  • Gardening: Plants grow, flowers bloom, and vegetables ripen through natural processes (sunlight, water, soil nutrients) without you needing to actively pull them up each day.

• Unpredictable Elements (Weather/Studio Failover):

  • Radio Automation: In certain scenarios, or other unforeseen issues (like a server going down, a network glitch, or a software bug) can cause a failure or disruption. These are external factors that the automation system itself can't always control or foresee.

  • Gardening: You cannot predict the weather (droughts, heavy rain, unexpected frosts, pests, diseases). These are external factors that can severely impact your garden's automated growth.

• Manual Intervention / User Definition (Troubleshooting/Adaptation):

  • Radio Automation: There are times a human may need to step in, assess the situation, and redirect the system to the correct, active studio to restore normal operations. In the event of a major unpredictable event, an automation system still needs a human touch.

  • Gardening: When unpredictable elements hit (a sudden pest infestation, a plant wilting from lack of water, or an unexpected heatwave), you "manually define" what needs to happen. You intervene by applying pest control, watering, providing shade, or even replanting. You adapt to the unforeseen.

• Goal (Smooth Operation/Healthy Growth):

  • Both: The ultimate goal is to maintain a smooth, continuous operation (radio broadcast) or healthy, thriving growth (garden), despite the inherent unpredictability of the environment.

So, just as a gardener needs to be ready to intervene and adapt when nature throws a curveball, radio automation, despite its sophisticated programming, still requires human oversight and "user definition" when the unpredictable happens, especially during critical moments like a studio failover.

Radio Show Prep in the 80's and 90's

 

While cleaning out an old briefcase (remember those?) I came across these pages of my KUDL-FM (Kansas City) show prep from 1994. I’m not sure whether to just throw this out or submit it to a broadcasting museum.

In the mid to late 80’s I would research my show prep by heading to the local public library to use their computerized card catalog to show synopsis of various entertainment magazine articles which featured artists my station played. I would then have to write the information down, take to my father-in-law’s house since he had a Compaq IBM PC compatible “luggable” with Lotus 1-2-3 where I could add to my show prep spreadsheet stored on a 5.25” floppy and print on tractor fed paper with a dot matrix printer, the result you see above.

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In the early 90’s I had a PC clone with a 2400 baud dial up modem. This allowed me to access the library’s BBS to perform the same searches, but with the advantage of being able to cut and paste the text into my spreadsheet. Even better, the radio station at which I was working had CompuServe. I would get to the station a bit early to sign in and search for more articles on the artists and songs we were playing and add to the spreadsheet.

 

The first studio with a computer with internet access that I remember was in 2000, and that was always plagued with a virus of some sort. 

 

The things we take for granted, right?

 

Do I Really Need My Car?

Reading Elly Blue's book Bikenomics got me to thinking, how much am I spending per month to own my car?

I bought a new car two years ago, right before the pandemic shut things down. Since that time, I've driven a little over 4,800 miles, or 194 miles per month on average (I work from home and if the weather's nice and the trip is shorter than a couple miles, I'll ride my bike).

I've now done the math and with car payments, insurance, and the 13 times I've had to buy gasoline, my average monthly cost to own this car is $477.33.

If I break it down to what it costs me per mile, the total is $2.46 of which $0.12 is gasoline.

If I use the IRS standard business use mileage rates for 2022, which is 58.5 cents per mile, and subtract that $112.91 from my monthly total of $477.33, it is costing me $364.42 a month to have my car spend most of the time sitting in the garage.

If I use Uber's rate calculator, a trip to and back from one of my grandsons' soccer games would cost me $50 without tip. $16 round-trip to go to church. So, with other trips factored in for times when I need to go somewhere, and my wife's vehicle isn't available, I could maybe save $100 or so a month by using a ride service.

All of this is an oversimplification, of course. I like my car; I don't like using a ride service. I like being able to drop everything and do something for my wife, kids, or grandkids without having to book and wait for a ride. At some point the car payments will go away and for what I'd pay Uber to take me to a soccer game, I could pay the insurance. I'll have a low milage car with a really high resale value. 

I've talked myself into keeping the car.

A Life Changing Internet Search

I was listening to an episode of Jordan Raynor's The Call to Mastery podcast where he was talking with his Editor, Becky Nesbitt. Jordan made a comment that if you ask people about life changing moments, they typically either point to a person or a book. That prompted me to do several Google searches for "This (x) changed my life" and books are clearly the winner. Here are my results:

Competitive, or Just a Jerk?

My wife and I were watching a quiz show the other night where the presenter stated as fact that hermaphroditic banana slugs sometimes bite off their partner's penis after copulation in order to prevent the amputee from being able to be the one to mate as a male. I wish I could have been there to ask how they got that information; did they conduct interviews with the biters? Were some sort of slug police reports filed? Isn’t it possible that some banana slugs are just super jerks?

The More Things Change...

When I was away at college in the late '70's and early 80's, my mother would send clippings from the newspaper which she thought I would enjoy, or from which I would benefit. Had she lived during the advent of the internet I am sure she would have sent me links to similar stories, or forward those multiply-already-forwarded emails that I used to receive from other older relatives. Sure, as a young man at the time I rolled my eyes on occasion; still, I have found recently that I have kept some of those clippings...and they were really, really good.

I came across the passage below while reading Malcolm Muggeridge's autobiography (part 2) this morning and thought it was something I would like to pass along to someone. If you've stumbled upon this post, I guess that's you. So, in some ways, I truly have become like my parents.
Watch out kids.

Anyway, I hope you'll find this at least partially as interesting as I did. Keep in mind, this was published back in 1974.

After returning to London in 1934 after 18 months working in Geneva at The League of Nations:

“Everything looked differently to me; especially the assumption on which I had lived from my earliest years, that such and such changes, brought about peacefully through the ballot-box, or drastically through some sort of revolutionary process, would transform human life; making it brotherly, prosperous and just, instead of, as it had always been, and still was for most people, full of poverty, exploitation and conflict. I no longer believed this, nor ever would again. The essential quality of our lives, as I now understood, was a factor, not so much of how we lived, but of why we lived. It was our values, not our production processes, or our laws, or our social relationships, that governed our existence.” ~Malcolm Muggeridge in The Infernal Grove

 [Edited on 2/25 to add]

He also made the following statement which reminded me particularly of this last year:

"This was to be increasingly an age of polarized loyalties."

Broadcast Radio's Product Life Cycle

The normal product life cycle looks something like: 

Development > Introduction > Growth > Maturity > Decline

So, where does broadcast radio fit within this cycle today?

The 1996 Telecommunications Act eliminated the cap on nationwide broadcast radio station ownership resulting in a move from mostly locally (or regional) to mostly national ownership. As a result, in my opinion, programming became more and more homogenized, and less and less local. 

When I started doing doing product support for radio automation software back in the early 90's, the industry focus was on setting stations up to run satellite delivered programming with the intent to make it sound as local as possible. As the cost of computer data storage dropped and technology advanced to where audio data could be shared via the internet, stations started running their own music and could allow their DJ's to do voice tracking (where the jocks pre-record their segments) in the studio or remotely. This allowed a smaller number of DJ's to be on the air and allow them to track for numerous radio stations in different markets across the country. When the pandemic hit calling for stay-at-home orders fell into place, we started getting calls from some of the rare stations that still had live, local DJ's, asking to set them up so they could voice track from home. This showed radio groups that voice tracking can be reliable and effective, and resulted in reductions in force for radio station employees (and radio automation software employees...). 

So, radio has become less and less local and more and more like a streaming service, except that it still runs long blocks of 60 and 30 second commercials in the second and fourth quarters of the hour. 

I like this quote from Tim Wu's book The Attention Merchants; "Knowing how to keep the pot simmering without boiling over in public protest, [William S.] Paley proactively set limits on CBS's [radio] advertising; among them, he cut its share of airtime to 10 percent and banned commercials considered offensive. At the risk of giving him too much credit, one could say that such policies not only kept critics at bay but also showed a shrewd awareness of the attention merchant's eternal dilemma: too little advertising and the business can't grow; too much and the listener grows resentful and tunes out."

It may be worth mentioning that monitoring some random stations from across the country recently indicated that their normal commercial airtime at times fell within the 20 to 27 percent range.

If broadcast radio is to continue in, or perhaps get back to, the Maturity phase of the product life cycle, it should take this to heart. #buticouldbewrong

Injured? Try These Replacement Ads!

 Like most people these days, I don't watch very much broadcast television in real time any more. My daughter and I continue to have a Daddy/Daughter night to watch the Bachelor or Bachelorette so we can add our own sarcastic commentary. My wife and I watch some local news and AFV (and, recently, The Hustler), but that's about it. Most of our other entertainment viewing is streaming of some sort.

The advertisements seen during these shows sometimes seem dubious to me. The examples that stand out: the pervasive ads for various prescription drugs, facial creams touting the benefits of hyaluronic acid, and attorney advertisements which were, wisely, prohibited from the early 1900's until the 1970's.

I'd like to come up with an app for smart TV's that would allow them to swap those ads with print ads from the late 1800's and early 1900's (with the exception of lawyer ads due to the reason noted above). For example, when a commercial for various prescription medicines begins, it would be replaced with something like one of these:

Quick reminder: If you're allergic to Snake Oil, don't use Snake Oil.

For skin care creams with hyaluronic acid, or some other rejuvenation miracle: 

Just remember, according to this ad, to work this cleansing, antiseptic lather into your skin always with an upward and outward motion. AND THEN rub your face for several minutes with a lump of ice.

And let's talk about attorneys...

And finally, the choice of a replacement ad for an attorney is an important decision that should not be based solely upon websites, blogs, or Warren's opinion.

Search Engine Optimization for Radio Stations

 With time on my hands, I've been thinking about SEO strategies for radio stations and tinkering with data. Came up with this which I thought some of my radio buddies might find interesting. This first chart shows a comparison of keyword searches on Google which, at first glance, looks like good news. The search phrases included were "Radio stations," "Radio online," and "Streaming music."

Next I compared "Radio stations" to "Spotify" and "Pandora" and the results weren't as encouraging. Note: there was an anomaly regarding the "Spotify" search due to a data breach they had toward the end of November (something radio listeners don't have to worry about...) causing their search numbers to spike to 100. I blanked out the data for that week, thus the broken line.

Then, I decided to narrow the search from "Radio stations" to just "Radio" because the previous search seemed a bit unfair and got the following. 

Bear in mind, "Radio" is a very broad keyword search and brings up results that certainly aren't specific to terrestrial broadcast radio stations. In fact, (and this is not great news for my radio buddies) the top results return URL's for streaming services. The thing to take away from that, however, is that if you're working on an SEO strategy for your radio station, prioritizing "Radio" over "Radio Station" would be a good idea. And remember, SEO is a constantly moving target, so what works today may not work next month.

Some Thoughts on Barnes & Noble

Barnes & Noble's new boss tries to save the chain -- and traditional bookselling

 A couple things:

Barnes & Noble Inc. is abandoning the strategy that made it a bookselling behemoth two decades ago -- uniformity designed to create economies of scale and simplify the shopping experience. Instead, the company is empowering store managers to curate their shelves based on local tastes.

Good! Now instead of going to the store, not finding the book I'm looking for, ordering it from the person at the customer service desk...and then never hearing back; perhaps they'll be better able to help me in person.

In Mr. Daunt's view, the very survival of bookstores is on the line. "I don't think we have any God-given right to exist," he recently told a group of publishing-industry professionals. "How is it that bookstores do justify themselves in the age of Amazon? They do so by being places in which you discover books with an enjoyment, with a pleasure, with a serendipity that is simply impossible to replicate online."

Don't get me wrong, I really like my Nook, but the last couple of years I've tended towards more paper over digital. Not that anyone cares, but in 2011 and 2012 I read three times as many books on my Nook as I did paper books. 2013 through 2016 it was pretty much 50/50. Since 2017 I've gone back to reading two or three times as many paper books rather than digital. And yes, there is something special about spending some time browsing in a brick and mortar bookstore.

What's the opposite of 'wonderful' I wonder

 What walks down stairs, alone or in pairs and makes a slinkity sound?
A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing!
Everyone knows it's Slinky.

It's Slinky, it's Slinky, It's fun, it's a wonderful toy.
It's Slinky, it's Slinky, it's fun, It's a wonderful toy.
It's fun for a girl or a boy.

For those of you, like me, whose formative years were the early 1960's, you probably had, at some point, a Slinky. I'm sure the only reason I wanted one was due to the television commercial with the clever jingle noted above. I hope your experience was better than mine, although I doubt it could have been.

The commercial I recall showed at least a couple Slinkys in a lively march down a long staircase. I grew up in a modest single-level ranch house where the only thing approaching stairs was the single step between the kitchen door and the garage floor. Later, when my parents had added on a Family Room in the back of the house, there was a similar single step down to the patio. So the jingle's premise fell apart quickly. What walks down stair? 

So the number of things this "wonderful toy" could do were limited. You could place each end in your outstretched hands and raise and lower them in a see-saw motion. That was good entertainment for ten to fifteen seconds and actually did result in a "slinkity sound." Or, you could stretch it out to see just how long you could make the thing. This required the assistance of a friend, I should say a TRUSTED friend. And then one of three things was going to happen: this marvelous spring would be stretched so far that it would never go back to it's original coil, your trusted friend wasn't really trustworthy and you got a face full of metal springy recoil, or, more likely, the spring would twist a bit in the middle creating a stress point and then break resulting in a piece of what I'm convinced they use for razor wire screaming back into the bodies or face of you and your now former friend at the speed of light.

Why did I ever want one of those things? More importantly, why did I think it would be a good idea to get one for my kids ... even if they were plastic now. Broken jagged spring is just as deadly if it's plastic as it is when it's rolled steel.

Fun for a girl or a boy, or lucrative for emergency room staff? I don't know. Now, where did I put my old chemistry set?

Cheerful Greeting or Smirking Insult?

While out walking the dog I smiled, raised my hand in greeting, and issued what I thought was a cheerful "good morning" to a passing neighbor. No cheerful hello was returned. Perhaps that was because earlier I had dutifully picked up dog poo in a plastic bag which was held in the hand I was waving. I may never know. 

True, Not True

Sometimes you wake up and have a thought that you think is funny or profound. If you write it down to look at later on you notice that it wasn't as funny or profound as you thought...

So, I woke up this morning and, for some reason, asked myself: What is something that is true and then immediately untrue? I came up with this:

I have never, that I can remember, used the phrase "totally radical" in a sentence.

Funny? Profound? I don't know.

Not that kind of bug

Out on my bike this morning.

To the person who drove up next to me at the stop light and thought I shouldn't be out in public because I coughed: Yes, it was due to a bug, but not due to Covid 19. I'd just swallowed a flying insect. Different kind of bug.

Bike to Work Day 2020

Time to swap tires

Once again it was time to swap out tires on my back wheel. Fortunately I still had one of these Michelin City (City Reflex, I think) tires in the attic. I really like these tires, but I don't think they make them any longer. Too bad. They've always served me well.

My current set should last me a while since I don't ride nearly as much as I used to a few years back.

On the other hand...

See the previous post where I said 'no thanks' to taking my grandson on a ride on the Indian Creek Trail on a weekend. He's not ridden that much, so we rode a mile on the trail adjacent to Metcalf since there aren't normally many people riding that stretch. Then we ducked down to ride next to the creek for another 3/10ths of a mile so we could look for ducks and other wildlife (and maybe see if we could skip some rocks on the water).

That last 3/10ths of a mile was a challenge as we were met by or passed by several other cyclists. But he had fun, and that is what actually matters.

Bike Buddies

So, while 2.6 miles doesn't sound like a lot … we were out of the house for close to an hour and, hopefully, he'll have some fond memories down the road. We're already planning our next outing.

Reconnaissance Ride

My wife and I are going to watch two of our grandsons for a couple hours tomorrow and I thought it would be fun to go on a bike ride with Beau, the seven-year-old. It was so nice out this morning I decided to take a reconnaissance ride on the multi-use path that used to feature so prominently in this blog.

I'd say I couldn't remember the last time I took a ride on the Indian Creek/Tomahawk Creek Trail, but I've been keeping a spreadsheet of my rides since 2006, so that wouldn't be true. I used to ride that trail pretty much daily. I am a bit shocked to note that the last time I rode it was in September ... of 2018.

So... we won't be riding on the trail tomorrow. We'll ride the residential streets in our subdivision.
I have NEVER seen as many people on the trail as I saw today; not even during the Pokemon-Go craze. There seemed to be an equal split of pedestrians and cyclists and most of the people on bikes seemed to be families with kids Beau's age. So, again, no thank you.

I did take a moment to stop at my favorite bench which has been one of my favorite places to go to get a little quiet. No longer. I guess I'll have to go to an airport terminal or something to get some peace away from the house. But someone did leave this little stone with a nice message.

I am happy. Thanks. I hope they are too.

Vainglorious Arrows

If you've stumbled upon this post, you're welcome to read, but please understand I'm actually creating this for our Tuesday morning men's group as a way to give them a link to an illustration that I, as will hopefully become clear, was reluctant to put on social media.

Our inner life—what makes up our inner being of will, thoughts, emotions, social connections, and even the dispositions of our body—will constantly entangle us and defeat us. Paul’s penetrating description has never been improved on: “For the good that I wish, I do not do; but I practice the very evil that I do not wish” (Rom. 7:19). Paul, of course, did not stay there. He knew the bitter reality, but he also knew how to move on. ~Dallas Willard in chapter 2

I was playing Skyrim one day when my Archery skill level increased and I remembered a quote from Mary Roach's wonderfully entertaining book Packing for Mars:

“No one goes out to play anymore. Simulation is becoming reality. But it isn't anything like reality. Ask an M.D. who spent a year dissecting a human form tendon by gland by nerve, whether learning anatomy on a computer simulation would be comparable. Ask an astronaut whether taking part in a space simulation is anything like being in space. What's different? Sweat, risk, uncertainty, inconvenience. But also, awe. Pride. Something ineffably splendid and stirring.”

I figured if I'm going to level up my archery skill, I may as well do it in real life. I'd been shooting again recently anyway and decided to start keeping track of my progress in a spreadsheet I keep regarding my various workouts.

During a recent workout then, I happened to have a really good volley. I'm only shooting from a distance of 45 feet from the target, but was satisfied with the result of volley number 8 and took a picture with my cell phone.

Having recently finished Glittering Vices: A new look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies by Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung I was convicted that posting something like this on social media would amount to vainglory. You see, this is what I want to world to see. This is what I want people to think of me. This is the type of thing social media seems to be filled with. But...

Here's the result of the very next volley

This, on the other hand, is what I don't want to world to see. Sometimes I fail. It's not that I want to miss the mark. Even though I try my best, sometimes I'm just off. It is comforting to know that even Paul had to struggle with this at times.

So here's the reality

The spreadsheet doesn't lie. This is my average; I hit the circle 40% of the time. Am I happy with it? No. That's why I'll keep trying. That's why I'm moving on.

So why not post this on social media? Posting the first picture alone would be misleading and vainglorious. I thought about posting this story for "friends" on social media, but what would be my goal there? To have people 'like' it? To impress them with my humbleness...?

St. Bernard of Clairvaux comes to my rescue with the following:

But to seek praise for humility is to destroy the virtue in it. The truly humble man prefers to pass unnoticed rather than have his humility extolled in public. He is happy to be overlooked; if he has any pride at all it consists in despising praise.

Quiet Time

Remember when people used to blog?...

I've been off the bike for a while but am slowly getting back in the groove. When I say I'm taking it slow I mean that even though my knee feels fine now, I'm not going back to riding 20 miles or more a day. I started with 6 or 7 and have stretched that to 10 to 12 without any resulting discomfort.

Here's part of my morning quiet time routine now:

This spot is half way through my ride and where I like to stop, read, and drink my coffee.

And, according to my dB meter app, this is the quietest spot during the ride:

It may seem counter-intuitive, but it is a nice spot to stop, get off the bike, and just stand there for a few before finishing up and sitting down in front of a computer for work for the next 8 or 9 hours.