August 2007 Archives

I recently got an email from Library Elf that one of the books I checked out from the Austin Public Library was overdo. I had forgotten that I had signed up with the Elf (over a year ago), since this is only the second email I'd received from it (Jfer is good about returning my books on time).

The Library Elf is way cool: you sign up with information about the libraries that you've got an account with (they support a ton of them), and a couple of days before a book is due in any of them they send you an email reminder. It's as simple as that and works like a charm. And it's especially great, if you've got a bunch of different library cards.

Now, personally, I don't really mind paying overdue library fees -- I figure it's just supporting a good cause -- but it's still nice to know about them in advance without having to keep track of yet another thing myself.

Until this spring, most of my time spent "listening to stuff" was in my car -- usually to or from work. Invariably I'd be tuned into whatever was playing on KUT, or if it was stuff I wasn't into (they do have some weird programming at times) I'd listen to some country. Anyways, I never quite understood the concept of listening to a podcast. I mean, if I'm on my computer, I'd rather read stuff than listing to it -- it's much easier to skim and skip that way.

But, once Jfer got me an iPod and I started using it for jogging, I suddenly had big chunks of time where reading wasn't really an options. I've got plenty of music on the iPod, but for me listening to it gets boring after a while. So I explored to world of Podcasts.

I started off with Meredith's My Inner Athlete, seeing as she's family, I'm hosting her site, and the podcast was relevant to me starting to exercise. It was actually pretty good, alas, like so many other podcasts out there, it sort of petered out.

The next thing I subscribed to was This American Life. I liked listen to the program on radio if it happened to be on while I was in the car, but getting it serialized on the Podcast is way more predictable.

After that, I subscribed to Escape Pod, a Sci-Fi podcast that publishes a short story every week. I'm also subscribed to its sister-podcast, Pseudopod which does horror short stories.

And finally, I discovered Radio Lab, a sciency-philophy type radio program from WNYC.

So now, when I go running, I see which podcasts have new episodes and add those to my On the Go play list. Usually, I add them in the following order of preference: Radio Lab, Escape Pod, This American Life and Pseudopod. Though I do tend to mix them up a little.

As an end result, I hardly ever listen to music on my iPod anymore -- except if my playlist gets finished before my run and I let it play random music (nothing like jogging to Christmas Carols in August).