That’s a great advantage for me, because I really don’t have much interest in sport, and outside of office hours the radio is pretty much wall-to-wall sports shows.

I thought I might share my links to some of the shows that I listen to, for the benefit of most and the detriment of some.

Arguably the best tech podcast from the UK was LugRadio, but it’s dead now.

• The first recommendation is This Week in Tech, which is presented by the Mr. Rogers of Podcasting, Leo Laporte. TWiT is the flagship of a whole huge list of podcasts and live content, with Laporte in the middle. He was a presenter on G4/TechTV along with Kevin Rose and others, and he makes extensive use of that echo chamber network to get good guests. http://twit.tv/twit
• The Second recommendation is actually a radio show, but since there is no NPR station in Ireland, I opt for the This American Life podcast. It’s lefty and urban-centered, but the stories they tell are usually fascinating, and they stick with topics for more depth than most journalism gives. Recent episodes have included a great overview of the financial crash, and a day spent with the employees and customers of a rest stop off the interstate. The main component in all their stories is a first-hand account from the people involved. It feels more genuine and more interesting than a third party account. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Podcast.aspx
• This American Life put me on to The Moth, which is a story-telling forum where people give accounts of outlandish events in their lives, like participating naked in an on-stage Bacchanal at Burning Man, or the tale of a lone American woman crossing through African civil war territory and what happens when the soldiers stop the truck and take her away. The stories seem more fantastic, but the requirement that they be told without notes makes them spontaneous and amusing. http://www.themoth.org/podcast
• This Week in Law is hosted by Denise Howell, and is a podcast about legal issues that have come up in the tech domain. It’s particularly interesting to get the lawyer’s-eye-view on DRM, copyright and cases like the recent MySpace Harassment Saga. http://www.twit.tv/twil
• The Economist and The Guardian both have excellent podcast directories with content both short and long. http://audiovideo.economist.com/ http://www.guardian.co.uk/podcasts
• Finally, two gaming podcasts are worth a listen. All Games Considered won the Ennies for best podcast, and they seem to get really good interviews and coverage of what’s going on in the P’n'P RPG world. Yog Radio is specifically concerned with Call of Cthulhu and includes some brilliant guest talks and coverage of scenarios and source books. http://www.agcpodcast.info/ http://www.yog-sothoth.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=60

I like to keep this site for more substantial content, so this gives me a place to put up all the random stuff that otherwise just disappears into the gamers forum shoutbox.

These are important skills.

He was on The Daily Show, and was brilliant.

And to my total joy, he was on one of my favourite podcasts, This American Life.

Guess what? He was brilliant.

Each TAL is a themed set of vignettes of interesting people living curious lives. It’s definitely firmly part of the NPR, SBUX, iPhone, Bleu-State hipsterism for which I am renowned; I wholeheartedly suggest it to you, even if you only listen to the piece on Cuervo Man, and then give up.

I’m not quite sure, because its late and I’m muzzy but there must be something profound to be said about the time/money axis and the web; much like ‘free electricity’ like we know in the first world allows things like bit torrent running on always-on computers.

So, is the whole thing about mobile internet the fact that since the capital requirements for the web; power, connection, gizmo – are essentially nil, or at least a tiny increment after the start-up costs, and so now the fat to be trimmed is in time-to-access?

What will happen when time-increment to access digitised data is negligible? How much net overlay will people habitually use?

For those of you that haven’t seen it, President-Elect Obama has posted his first video. It’s more opposition talk, which I suppose is fair enough since he’s not yet been sworn in.

On the other hand, I find it kind of hard to see what he’s pointing to here. The notion of something that will relieve the squeeze is nice, but it’s really not clear to me what he’s talking about in concrete terms. He seems to point to a new New deal by putting people in work in road-building (middle class?) and greening up 5 million people.

I really don’t expect him to outline something in detail in a 4 minute youtube piece, but this really feels vacuous.

However, one can only listen to the back catalogue of Gamma Ray so many times and thus I have decided to turn to the Intarwubs. You there, intarwubs, tell me what good podcasts are out there – preferably music without talking – TED or Long Now Foundation, while excellent, are not what I am looking for.

Any and everything from Hayseed Dixie through some new Trance would be welcome. In particular, if someones got a line of where I could get Type O Negative – Cinnamon Girl (I have the 1min version from the Duke Nukem OST) that would be spiffy.

Also – I’ve decided to resharpen some of my sadly rusted guitar and piano skills – cause gee, not like I won’t have time. There’s a music room here with all sorts of stuff, which should provide entertainment – but if someones got a line on a good tab/score site that lets you download and print that would be good – so far its week five and no sign of any mail – not boding well for my ‘I can get books off Amazon’ plan…

In the interim, I have a few fun internet things to post. None of them is a post of its own, but together, they might be nice.

Irish Lawyer Fergus O’Rourke points to interesting figures from the Economist, that explore the details about the mind of the Irish electorate.It seems that Europe is still popular in Ireland, and the final analysis seems to point to the notion that the case was simply not made for the treaty. It points to the fact that there is a clear need for an Irish political body which is pro-Europe, but more skeptical than our current parties.

Techdirt has an article on university patents and how they have harmed basic research. It’s an area of considerable interest to me, especially as I am moving towards a big research project. There is huge pressure in Ireland to get IP income out of research, but it seems to me that since most of the IP goes to startups, and that very few patents anywhere make money, the restrictive nature of the current model *is* hurting innovation. On the other hand, patents can work. The University of Nottingham has MRI (I think) machnes to thank for being differentiated financially from a whole slew of Universities in the UK.

You probably missed Hug a Developer Day, if you did, shame on you. Code Monkeys are people too.

Ok, I know everyone is sick of the election already, so I held these to the end: Hating Obamawith Gerard Baker in the Times. McCain is a lying liar by Krugman in the NYT.

What is interesting is that we do do well on some topics. This month, our top search has been for the Nigerian Embassy in Dublin, for which we have received several hits to said HP-fan’s entry about €40 well(?) spent.

All sorts of weird crap appears when I google my own name, so I think I will probably spend more time explaining which ones aren’t me than accounting for what I have written, if the Tavrchedl’ ever take me in for an interview.

(*Ok I probably made that up)