Since we moved to San Mateo a little over a week ago, my commute shrunk from about 25-45 minutes (depending on traffic) to less than 10 minutes. This in itself is great, and I really don’t miss driving. However, it does have a minor downside: I can no longer catch up on podcasts while commuting.
Until about two years ago, I commuted to work by train, about 1 hour each way. I hated wasting so much time on commuting, but on the positive side I was able to get a lot of reading done, both professional as well as personal literature. When I started working in San Mateo, I first listened to the radio but quickly got bored of it and bought an iPod instead. Initially I was quite happy to enjoy my music collection on the road, but I later got into podcasts, and I now have enough podcasts that I regularly listen to to keep me busy for about 4-5 hours each week, about the time I used to spend on my commute.
Oh well, I guess I’ll get into the habit of listening to podcasts at home, while reading email, etc. Now I just have to make an effort to make more time for reading books again…
What podcasts do you listen to?
Hi fellow Hobbit
Funny you should ask. I’ve actually been meaning to post about my favorite podcasts for quite a while, but haven’t gotten around to it yet. The ones I most regularly listen to are Geek News Central, Diggnation, Engadget, the Ruby on Rails podcast, Cory Doctorow’s Craphound.com podcast, and the Real Synthetic Audio EBM / Industrial music podcast. I also like Slashdot Review, but since it is a daily podcast and I often don’t listen to it for several days in a row, iTunes always stops my subscription. I’ll have to see if the most recent iTunes update addresses this, as it is quite annoying…
Eventually I’ll try to blog about my favorite podcasts in more detail. Do you have any recommendations for additional podcasts I should check out?