Dave W. Smith

I was at a this party, and someone was passing around a podcast. I took a hit, and came to a year later, realizing that I’d pretty much given up on radio without ever noticing.

Actually, it was a co-worker who turned me on to podcasts. He’d figured out how to convert BBC shows from RealAudio to MP3, and then “rebroadcast” them using a small, portable FM transmitter so that he could listen to the shows during his half hour commute. The idea sounded good, so I gave it try. Now, aside from the occassional traffic report check, the car radio stays tuned to an otherwise dead channel, playing podcasts that I broadcast using a small FM transmitter plugged in to my MP3 player.

A year and change ago, it was hard to keep the podcast queue full. IT Conversations was just getting started, Odeo wasn’t around yet, and I hadn’t worked out how to grab the ReadAudio files from Car Talk and transcode them to MP3. Now, the problem is having too many choices. This week I’ve been catching up on the Ruby on Rails Podcasts, after a week of Venture Voice with a few Gillmor Gang food fights thrown in. There’s a lot of really good, freely downloadable stuff available now, even for folks who’ve so far avoided iTunes. While checking URLs for this post, I added two more podcasts to the queue.

In retrospect, radio was easy to displace. Music radio in the Bay Area has sucked for many years now, and AM news has been vacillating between irrelevant, shrill, and insulting. (Show of hands: who wants to hear about some manufactured favorite teen idol survivor’s boyfriend problems while you’re driving to work?) Before podcasting, I’d been doing so much inanity-avoidance channel switching that the numbers were wearing off the faceplate on my car radio. Certain radio voices get overused in obnoxious ad campaigns to the point of triggering an instant, Pavlovian reach to change channels at the first sound of their voices. With passengers, I’d either put in a CD or leave the radio off, lest my rapid channel switching alarm them. Now, I rarely have reason to change the channel, except to get a traffic report.

I’m sure that radio never noticed that I’m gone, though I suspect that the savvier advertisers are catching wind that their target audience is slowly dropping off the channel.

There’s nothing quite like having sewage back up into the kitchen to kickstart the weekend. Our plumbing snake wasn’t up for the job, and we don’t have the necessary tools for major surgery, so I called in the experts. Two hours (most of that spent waiting) and $139 later, we can flush the toilets again.

The decision to call in experts, whether for home problems or for project disasters, can be tricky. Experts are expensive, and they usually want you stop what you’re doing and get out of the way while they’re working. At then end, the problem they find is often something you could have either avoided or solved yourself, if only you’d had a bit more information.

I was on the fence about trying to do the job myself, but opted instead to go with an expert as a way of saving time, avoiding hassle, and buying information. While the plumber was using his industrial snake, I chatted with him about what kinds of problems he’s used to seeing in our area, proper plumbing care, and what kind of shape our pipes seem to be in. Get an expert talking, and you can often extract all sorts of useful information, including answers to “what do I need to do in the future to avoid having to call you in again.”

The local Borders Books has a unique method of organizing their technical section. They seem to follow a “when in doubt, sort alphabetically” rule, followed by a randomizing step. CSS books are right after C++, except for the one or two lurking amidst the Oracle books. Javascript books are mostly to be found after the Java books, except for the few scattered in the W’s (where most the Web Site design books are).

I’m suspecting that there may be method behind the apparent madness. Instead of being able to go directly to the book I want, and from there to the checkout line and out of the store, I’m forced to linger, knowing that the book I’m looking for must be there somewhere. By requiring me to make a complete scan of the entire section to find what I’m looking for, Borders increases the odds that some other book will catch my eye. I’ve ended up with several of the O’Reilly pocket guides that way.

Over lunch a while back, we tossed around fear scenarios. “Giving a speech, while naked, to an audience of giant spiders” was as far as we got.

Talking Heads fans: Finish the mouthful of whatever you’re drinking, move the drink to a safe distance, and read Once in an Agile Lifetime. Do not attempt this with a mouth full of coffee.