Pod Me

I was thinking about pods today. Not Podkayne of Mars, which I read years ago, and remember liking; not seed pods, which won't be seen again in this area for weeks or months; not groups of classrooms in freeform school layouts; not even pod people, even though, from the looks of the political scene, they're already lining up to fight the good fight in the 2008 election. Or failing that, to fight the fight, period. No, what I was thinking about was podcasts.

I had the time to think about this because this morning I opened up a severity 2 problem with IBM technical support to find out why my job to apply system maintenance had failed so incredibly badly, and I actually got someone on the phone who could talk me through researching it (a delight: I was talking to a by-god actual techie, not a level one question taker, and he was coherent, understanding, and patient with my ignorance of these procedures). We talked for almost an hour, and at the end of it, when he asked me to FTP some material to him, I was actually able to do it, and it worked, which is the most trivial of accomplishments for other people, but made me almost giddy with delight. I was jazzed, as they say.

So since I had pushed that problem into the hands of someone much more competent than I, and I had done the other things that I needed to do, I had the chance to think a little bit about podcasts. And what I was thinking was that it was too bad that I had never really followed through on finding some to listen to routinely, because it sounded like such a delightful and useful idea. The problem was, I thought, that I did not have the time to go out and get these things, and download and listen to them. Heck, I didn't even have the time to get them. And then my eye fell upon my PC -- don't worry, I picked it up -- and a little switch in my head went CLICK! And I thought hey, why can't I download podcasts to THIS pc during the day, and then bring it home and transfer it to something that I can listen to as I wish? Or even just plug into this pc, or use the speakers? Well, sure, but how would I find this stuff? Oh, I remembered, there are several podcast directories that you can find via the most simple Google search. Well, but how would I get them? Because, though I may not be the busiest guy around, I do spend time at work actually doing stuff. What I needed, I thought, was something like my Feed Demon news aggregator, but for podcasts. Hmmm.... I wonder....

Yes.

Feed Demon can download podcasts, at a scheduled interval. Which means that I could set up my work PC to do it in the background while I was working, if I wanted. I could even set up my home PC to do it, provided I was willing to leave the PC on during the day. But either way, yes. Its possible.

Oh, boy!