Defeating Drudgery

Like most people, I've never been one for chores. I've certainly evolved from the mildew-loving dustpig of my early twenties, but my tolerance for tile grout is still fairly high and if the sink is full of dishes, I see nothing wrong with heading out for dinner. These things do need to be done though, so I was pretty chuffed to find a little something to help with my motivation. That little something is podcasting.

The term podcast is a merging of the words iPod and broadcast, and refers to audio or video files being served up over the net for later playback on a mobile device. There's also the aspect of scheduled downloading through RSS, but I'm not really interested in that sort of trickery just yet. I feel quite swanky grabbing individual MP3 files and plonking them onto my iRiver by hand whenever I feel like it, instead of trying to keep up with an ever-growing portfolio of weekly shows. I simply don't clean up that often.

Podcast content seems to engage me much more than mere music, with its conversational, radio-show style. Doing dishes while listening to music is still pretty dull, but if I'm listening to a good travel, games, book or technology show, I often finish up the last plate and start looking for other chores to do while I'm listening. For a chore-hating bachelor, this is akin to discovering the Holy Grail.

As for recommendations, I've enjoyed the Diggnation podcasts, and I really liked Bruce Sterling's chat about the Singularity (26MB OGG) at The Long Now Foundation too. Slice of SciFi also has me interested. All I need now is a Super 14 podcast, and I'll be set. Now, back to the vaccuuming.