::A Geek in Korea::

Well, I’ve gone and made myself podcast-famous again. I sent in an overheard from work this week that made it onto episode 91 of Stop Podcasting Yourself. This is the second time I’ve gotten content on their show. I was listening to it while I was spending time with my daughter, and when they read my overheard I started laughing very hard. I made the cut for a written overhead! YES!

While I highly recommend Stop Podcasting Yourself itself, there is another podcast I discovered through their forums. Five Tacos and a Taco is another “Two dudes talk about funny stuff” podcast. These particular guys are Americans that live in Dallas, Texas. They have a pretty good show that I’ve started listening to only recently, and there was plenty to enjoy.

Since I like shows with a themed structure to them, it’s no surprise that this show also follows a general routine in each episode. They have a topic for each show that takes the form of a five point list that is created by each of the hosts. For example, the first episode I listened to they talked about their Top 5 “Childhood Misconceptions”. (Where do babies come from? Watermelons grow in your belly if you eat a seed…etc.)

They used these lists as segues to each new idea when one of their conversations started to meander. They’d get off topic a lot, but due to their lists they had a means to keep the show tied together. I appreciated that. They also read and discussed some humorous news stories, answered email, and created a fictitious society to answer people’s questions based on stereotypes, all in one episode! I can’t claim every episode will be as good, but I’ve been giving them a listen and I like what I hear.

I already listen to a lot of other podcasts of a similar ilk, but this one has got a lot of archives for me to listen to during my time off.

One of the best things to get to learn how to play a roleplaying game like Dungeons and Dragons is listening to other people play it. I learned a lot from the first series of official D&D podcasts done with the guys from Penny Arcade when the 4e system was brand new. Listening to a bunch of guys roll some d20s might seem boring, but with good editing and some funny people it’s just like a story as long as you’ve got some familiarity with the system. I had listened to the latest series to completion, and wanted some more adventure gaming podcasts to listen to.

The Tome Show is good for reviews of classes and new book materials, but I was looking for someone that talks about and plays through a campaign. I hadn’t found anything that was up my alley until I discovered Return to Northmoor. This podcast is exactly what I am looking for that it’s almost like I willed it into existence with my mind unconsciously.

The first thing I like about the show is that it’s well put together. It’s got tight editing and doesn’t waste time. I do not have time to listen to 7 dudes roll dice for 200 minutes a week. The two hosts have a laser focus on exactly the show they want to make. In their first episode they explain that they are busy professionals that only game biweekly. They have mentally taxing jobs, families, and not a lot of free time. (Wow! Sounds familiar!) They have been playing D&D since the age of the Red Box and know a lot, but don’t come off like a bunch of grognards. Their goal is to help a busy person set up a campaign as easily as possible, even if they are busy adults with children and not a lot of free time.

The set up of the show is brilliant for teaching new DMs how to start. One episode is dedicated to outlining a scenario for the DM. The next episode is that very same scenario being played by their group. This is a practical guide to what can go right and wrong during an encounter. They limit the gaming to the highlights of the campaign, and don’t bother to tell what every die roll might be. A well edited gaming episodic D&D podcast with a focus on game building, playing, custom worlds and designed for busy adults? YES! THANK YOU!

What I really like about the show is that there is a plan and reason to their content. I’ve listened to the first three episodes and learned a lot about how to DM and play. They’ve set their goals in a reasonable fashion. They let the listeners know how they made their custom campaign setting, and offered tips for people looking to set up their own custom world. Not only that, but they provide the materials they discuss in their podcast in addition to their audio, so you not only get a campaign being read to you, but the materials to run it as well! Knowing how the game might turn out before you even run the campaign saves tons of time and lets you balance the encounters in ways you wouldn’t have thought of without a prior experience with the materials.

I’d recommend starting at the beginning as they are attempting to go 1 through 30 levels in their campaign, which is an epic accomplishment if they manage it. I only get to game Play by Post style these days online, when I can squeeze in some time in front of a computer without the baby demanding attention. (Amount of times I was stopped by Glow needing attention for this post? Approximately 20 times.) If I can get a little more gaming in while on the bus going to work, I’m all for it.

I hope the quality of this show continues and improves as I listen. Even in the first three episodes there was a lot to like about their approach to both D&D and podcast gaming in general. I’ve got a few more of their shows in queue and can’t wait to give them a listen and catch up on this show.

A friend on Twitter said that I should check out a podcast about video games in the This American Life style of radio show called “A Life Well Wasted“. I always take long time friend’s suggestions on podcasts seriously, as any recommendation from them is worth a listen. For all the podcasts I do happen to listen to, This American Life is not one on my podcatching software, despite it’s high quality production and noted acclaim. The whole “This is a story of some guy” style of podcasting isn’t what I get into when I’m listening to a podcast. It’s too ranging and broad. I like tightly focused themed shows. I was wondering if I had time for a video game podcast.

I don’t follow video games very much anymore. I mean, I probably follow them more than most people I know, but it’s just because I hang out places that have a strong game background cultural aspect to them on the Internet. I only listen to one game themed podcast, The D&D Podcast put out by Wizards of The Coast because it has tightly edited, funny people playing D&D. I don’t have the time to play video games, or the interest in new games like I once had. Perhaps I’m just going through a phase. I’ll be more into games when my daughter can enjoy them too… probably.

Right now, I’m more interested in the interactions between gamers, but things like Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons, where half the game is about interacting with other gamers, and the other half is about your own imagination. Interactive storytelling and shared experiences is much more my style these days. They can take as much, or as little time as you can to play too. A game where you sit down and twiddle your thumbs for a few hours in front of a television seems like a waste of a good imagination. I bet if I went back and told myself that 5 or 10 years ago I would have been shocked to hear those words coming out of my mouth, but priorities change.

Anyway, A Life Well Wasted is a video game culture themed podcast, but different than a “Let’s talk about new/old games” sort of thing. It’s made by a 30 year old guy examining the gaming subculture and wondering, “Why do we game? Why do we spend hours twiddling our thumbs?” He’s looking back on this thing that was clearly an important thing in his life and wondering why it meant so much to him. He clearly still loves the subculture, but has some distance to reflect on it now that he sees it changing, and how he relates to it. Games as art. Games as culture. Games as a lifestyle. It’s very interesting stuff. I relate to a lot of it on a deep level. It’s not judgemental or critical of people that still identify with games, but it’s more of an exploration of what these people have in common.

This is a relatively new podcast, and it’s got a tight production, good interview style, nice music, and a very good approach to the topic. I’m very interested in what this turns into in the future. It reminds me a lot of RadioLab, if everything they did was about Gaming instead of Science.

I was struck by how similar the editor’s take on video games is to my own. I used to be that kid that hauled around video game magazines and poured over every detail of every game no matter how silly. I used to play games at friend’s houses just because my parents wouldn’t let me have a game console at home. It used to be the reason I got out of bed early in the morning and the reason I stayed up late at night. Occasionally it still is, but not as much as before, and I’m okay with that.

For anyone that considers themselves a gamer, but is looking back at spending their life in front of a video game console and wondering if they should have any regrets, check out A Life Well Wasted.

Radio Lab, which had been doing a series of podcasts about the Afterlife, interviewed Mary Roach, who wrote Spook, which is a book I really enjoyed about the topic. She also wrote Bonk, which I recently finished.

(Wordpress just ate my last post. I’m not writing it all again.)

Today was my weekly “long walk” with my dog. This is when I load up on podcasts, eat lunch, and walk till my feet give out and I exhaust all my podcasts. On the docket today was a political podcast bonanza:

On weekdays, my go-to News Analysis is usually in the form of The Rachel Maddow show . I adore this show’s snarky sense of self. It’s got sharp criticism for the dumb stuff that goes on in the world, but is not as unfair and fear based as other pundits. I’m in total awe at how geeky Rachel Maddow is, and yet she still gets to host a national news program on cable television. It’s a good show, but still amusing at the same time. It breaks down the news into issues that I find important to focus on, but also keeps a lighter side so that listening day in and day out doesn’t overwhelm me. I’ll likely delay a walk with Yoshi if I know that this podcast will be availble to listen to if I wait a few minutes.

The most “Inside Baseball” podcast I follow happens to be “It’s All Politics” from NPR. It’s one of my newest finds, and it’s a very niche, very hardcore sort of politcal program. If I had grown up in some sort of alternate universe where politics was discussed around me from my youth instead of baseball box scores (shudder), this is how I would have ended up sounding when discussing things I’m interested in. Basically, this is a Poli-Sci nerd dream in audio form. The hosts of this podcast talk with a political shorthand and don’t slow down to explain issues all that often because they have only 15 minutes or so to discuss an entire week’s worth of news.

This can’t be the first podcast of the week you listen to, because if you don’t keep up from week to week you won’t understand a damn thing these people are talking about.I like this podcast because I’ve become a political junkie over the past year or so and go out of my way to keep up with issues now. This is a quick, no-BS podcast that is a giant hodgepodge of predictions, results, and pondering of how current events will affect the results of the wild world of politics. It doesn’t play favorites, and is usually very calculating in it’s predictions, so it’s a short and to the point sort of show.

I still listen to Slate’s “Political Gabfest” every week. The hosts here are all journalists that write for Slate Magazine. I’ve been listening to this podcast for years now, and it’s always refreshing to get their take on the news. I don’t always agree, but seeing it from multiple sides in the same podcast, and also discussing how the news is reported is usually very interesting. They also introduce the topics into their show and give a background to some of the stories you might have missed that they deem important. I like it, and it’s something I go out of my way not to miss each weekend on my walk.

My final “event” podcast for the walk is The Bugle. The entire state of the world gets me down sometimes, and listening to straight “serious business” podcasts sometimes winds me up pretty tight. The Bugle is when I get a grip on the fact that bullshit is funny, and lots of bullshit is hysterical. I’ll occasionally laugh out loud while I walk around town listening to this podcast. I find walking in a park helps minimize the amounts of stares I get. If I’m in a crowded place while listening, it’s probably going to cause a scene. It’s worth it for the consistently hilarious stuff on this podcast. My weekly politics walk isn’t complete with an episode of The Bugle to decompress with. It’s part of my routine now, and this is the only podcast I archive and listen to back issues of when I’m bored.

Just like The Bugle winds down my week, Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! starts it back up. I listen to this on Monday or Tuesday, getting ready to go to work. This gets me into a slightly competitive, but mostly silly mood that I find soothing for getting ready for whatever it is that the students are up to in any given week. They take a self-depricating look at the news, and know that they are a silly part of the whole spectacle that is the “New Cycle”. Wait Wait is one of thos rituals that I maintain because I really enjoy listening to the humor, no matter that it’s not as edgy.

This is the majority of my podcast listening these days. I’ve trimmed several podcasts from my queues, and if I had more time I’d probably be running out of things to listen to these days, instead of having too much stuff on my plate. I think my interests have narrowed a little, but also I don’t have as much time spent commuting or walking these days to follow it all.

I was listening to a Jordan Jesse Go! episode where Jordan Morris was talking about what he did on a typical day after work. He talked about watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 on Google Video, playing his advanced copy of Super Smash Brothers (I’m waiting for mine to be delivered!) and watching Futurama.

This is basically what I do to spend my free time too. It’s UNCANNY and a little unnerving to think someone spends their time the exact same way I do most days. The one thing he mentioned he’s made and effort to check out when he has the chance is The Venture Brothers. I had never seen the show before, but on the strength of his recommendation, I decided to check it out.

I’ve only watched a few episodes of The Venture Brothers so far, but I know I’ll be watching it from start to finish already. It’s great. It’s funny and it has a great sense of humor about itself. It could be that I’ve seen a lot of Johnny Quest, so I appreciate what they are doing with the show. There are a lot of jokes I’m catching up on that I’ve seen on the Internet that must have originated on this show.

I’ve been watching two episodes a day now, and I’ve enjoyed them all. I’d recommend it to anyone looking for an adult, funny, but not serious sort of show. It’s very “Adult Swim”. It’s violent without being too graphic, comically sexual, and very funny. The animation looks great too! I was skeptical going in that it wouldn’t be my style, but Jordan has good taste.

Thanks JJ go!

As a former college Subway employee, the current Pseudopod horror podcast entitled “It’s Easy to Make a Sandwich” had me chuckling in a far too disturbing way. This wasn’t straight horror, but more of a messed up nihilistic revenge fantasy.

The idea about the disconnect the hands sometimes make from the brain when working in low wage jobs is completely true. I could have made a sandwich in my sleep after a few months at that job. The lifers, the daydreams, the contemplations of the different customers, the tuna stink…all of it seemed way too close to home.

The only poisoning we ever did was unwittingly selling bad crab salad a few times. Honest.

A long time ago, after I started reading Boing Boing, I delved into Cory Doctorow’s personal website craphound to listen to a few podcasts. Actually, I treated his older material like audiobooks, as they were released before I ever knew about them, and I simply used a podcast aggregation too to organize and download all the material easily. That was one of the things that got me started listening to podcasts a few years ago.

Things were going well for a while, but then he started reading “The Hacker Crackdown“. While this is an important book for real life hackers and the culture of hacking, I quickly grew bored with this material. This I tolerated for a few weeks, until finally I gave up caring about the minutiae of the different cracking rings and the dated terminology. I went off to discover different podcasts, which is ultimately for the best.

Low and behold, 30 weeks later, Craphound.com is back in my podcasting queue once again as there is a new science fiction novella being read week by week. This story, True Names, is about Post-Singularity Entities fighting for all the available computational cycles left before the Entropic death of the universe. In other words, really interesting speculative science fiction just like I used to enjoy.

A lot of Cory Doctorow’s speculative short fiction is Post-Singularity, Cyberpunk sort of stuff. I can take my Science Fiction is a lot of different flavors, but this story still feels somewhat fresh for me. If you want most Post-Singular podcasts from the same author, try this, or this (with mechs!). As long as Cory Doctorow’s pumping out the Creative Commons stories, I’ll probably be around to listen to them.

Korean Class 101 fills a dual role for me. It’s an interesting podcast, so I enjoy listening to it, and it’s also a great way to study Korean. I’m not a paying member of their service, and I’m not getting paid to plug this podcast, but anyone with an mp3 player and a desire to study Korean should check out this site.

Keith and Seul, the hosts of the show, introduce the topic and context for the podcast. Usually there is a set of characters we are introduced to over the course of the conversations, and they remind listeners what the story has been about so far. After the topic has been introduced, they begin the dialog.

The dialog is done in Korean. There are different difficulty levels. The beginning level is basic Korean that is survival level “WOW! I remember when I didn’t know this! How did I survive here?” sorts of things. The intermediate level is harder stuff that can introduce more advanced grammar and slightly longer dialogs. The advanced stuff is a Korean audio blog that is a lot more challenging.

After the first dialog, they slow down and read line by line. You can get a better grasp on the syllables spoken to help with pronunciation. The third reading is Korean, followed by an English translation word for word.

After they finish the dialog, they chat a little about the topic. The basic chat is done entirely in English, while the Intermediate chat is 50% English and Korean. Advanced is entirely in Korean. They break down the vocabulary word by word. They tell the dictionary form, the politeness rules, and how to conjugate the words found in the dialog.

Once they explain all the vocabulary, they move into grammar. I find this extremely helpful. I know 90-95% of the vocabulary for every basic and intermediate lessons, but I don’t know what the root words are, or why they are conjugated in any particular way to form sentences. They give examples of words in different sentences. I usually am always able to translate them to myself the first time I hear them, but when I’m walking my dog or waiting for a subway I can repeat things to myself to improve.

Keith and Seul also explain the CONTEXT in which certain words are used. A lot of the silliness I get into with Korean is that I’m around female Korean coworkers and my wife more than another other speakers. Learning which words are used by a guy, or how they’d react differently to a situation helps me become a more natural speaker and also lets me fit in.

Even though the basic and intermediate dialogs aren’t extremely difficult, they keep my interest because they are presented as a cohesive story, and the commentary on the different situations by the hosts is funny and charming. The chemistry between the two hosts also makes for a funny podcast.

The advanced podcast is beyond my level at the moment. I can only listen to it, and I’m not good enough to catch everything the first time. If I wanted to study using their advanced audio blog, I’d need to subscribe and pay to get their scripts and higher level help. I need more grammar practice and a bigger vocabulary.

Right now I’m getting around twenty to thirty minutes of Korean practice a day because of their free feeds! Their beginner and intermediate programs are great for people living in Korea that want to practice and live more comfortably. It’s incredibly awesome that this is a FREE service that does such a great job teaching the basics needed for survival, or review of basics to improve skills.

I’d recommend this podcast to anyone interested in the Korean language that wants to study using conversational dialogs. A lot of foreigners I know could use this podcast to get better at their job, getting around town, or with a Korean boyfriend or girlfriend. It’s improved my conversation skills with my Korean wife too.