Podcasts

I am still listening to a lot of podcasts. My 35 minute drive to work gives me a solid 1 hour a day of solid listening time.

What am I listening to? Here's the list! (my top podcasts are at the top of the list):

1. This Week in Tech - Let's face it. Leo is a fantastic facilitator, and it's a nice brainless podcast to listen to. Without Leo, this should would probably be further down my list. But with Leo in charge, and a revolving cast of characters on the panel, this podcast gives me a nice light view of consumer and end-user technology.

2. Security Now - Steve Gibson is just fantastic. This show goes from light and fluffy news about the latest security patches on Windoze to hard-core bit twiddling and crypto. Honestly... anyone even remotely interested in security should just start listening at Episode 1.

3. Blue White Podcast - This gives me my fall fix of PSU football.

4. Penn State Football Podcast - I like this podcast as well because it's done by two former PSU football players (that quite often give an interesting different perspective on the game and team).

5. Stuff You Should Know - It's kinda like listening to Wikipedia for 20 minutes. Great all-purpose knowledge podcast.

6. FLOSS Weekly - Leo's a great facilitator, and Randal and the Ubuntu guy are really enthusiastic. It's great hearing from a lot of folks in the open source community talk about their projects.

7. 60 Second Science - These are quick fillers when I have a few free minutes int the car. At 1 minute a piece, it's hard to turn this down.

8. LostCasts - These guys are *really* annoying, but they do a great job on keeping up with all of the latest theories on the message boards.


Stuff on my iPod that Used to be higher on my list that I don't have the time to listen to:

1. This Week in Google - I liked the two episodes, but then I found it was just taking too long to listen to. I wish truly more about cloud computing and more technical content rather than "this is how you use this google product". I hope to give this one another try in a few weeks.

2. Diggnation - I used to *really* like this podcast. And then there were the live shows that were unfunny. And then there were more advertisements. And then there was listener feedback. It seems like every Diggnation show only covers only 5 top stories. I've gone 2 months without listening to Diggnation.. It will probably leave my rotation.

3. Java Posse - As a Java developer, I *really* wanted to like this podcast. And I think that I really used to like this podcast, but I'm not sure why I drifted away. Was it the fact that I do so much Java programming during the day and I really don't need another dose of Java during my commute? Was it the bland banter of the hosts? Was it the sickening way these guys seem to get along? Was it Joe Nuxoll? Was it the fact these guys are a little too obsessed with language design? Was it the crappy audio from their open space conferences? I suspect all of the above. Don't get me wrong -- these guys are doing a great service, and I think I'll try listening to them again over the holidays (when my other podcasts run dry).

4. Windows Weekly - Boy the Windows world is really in a world of hurt when the key content contributor for this podcasts feels like he's continually beaten-down about Windows and he's more excited talking about Apple products. I like Paul, but he's really losing my interest.