Funk Babblings

Over a year ago, featherynscale announced the 2009 CD Swap. The participants were divided into groups, and were to send out mix CDs to the rest of their group. The primary rule, besides being playable on a normal CD player, was that the CDs must have a theme.

I had participated in 2008, and since it took a couple months to get my CDs out that I made that my theme: It's About Time!

I had no idea that I'd be much much later with my 2009 CDs. I finally mailed them out yesterday morning. I ended up making two mixes this time:

(I did make a few extras, if anybody else wants one.)

• 09:00 Listening to Indigo Girl Amy Ray rock out solo on Sound Opinions. Sounds like Melissa Etheridge. Who knew she has 3 solo rock albums? #
• 18:46 Eating before facing a dark snowy drive home. Hoping to avoid speeding 22-year-olds. Not to mention ice. #
• 22:11 made it home without incident. At least I no longer live in the snowy northeast. #

I've been a fan of podcasts for nearly four years now. If you don't already know, those are online radio shows with subscription feeds. I add the RSS/XML feed URL to my "podcatching" program, and my computer automatically downloads MP3s of shows as they're released; then I periodically copy them over to whatever is the most convenient player. Over the past few years the medium has become more well-known (mostly thanks to support in iTunes), and the selection of shows has changed, mostly increasing but of course some of my old favorites have either stopped or severely curtailed their frequency.

At first I tried to grab the latest shows every morning, and listen to them at work. Now I have a better system, partly thanks to working at home. I first separate the podcasts into two major categories, music and talk (there are some gray areas though, as seen below). For the music podcasts, I grab up to two weeks' worth of shows at a time (depending on how far behind I am), and mix those in with random songs from my personal collection so that I never go more than about 60-90 minutes without getting a few songs I already know I like; this way I get a good mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar. Then with the talk podcasts, every Monday I update a CD-RW with the new shows from the past week, then listen to those in the car throughout the week. Often I'll add a few episodes of a new show, to check out in any extra time at the end of the week.