Audio Overload

I've been inundated in the spoken word! Let me explain. After my wife and I were joined in holy matrimony nearly two years ago, we decided to euthanize our cumbersome Sony Discmans, and take a step towards the digital age by purchasing ourselves a couple of Ipod Nanos. Such frivolous spending was justified, since we were literally bombarded with Target gift cards. Anyway, my initial sole reason for wanting an MP3 player was simply to make exercise less of a burden by enjoying a truly, skip-free stream of audio while toiling away on the treadmill or elliptical machine. What my Ipod has become however, is a steadfast, constant companion. It makes me grimace to regard an inanimate object with such affinity, but I don't think I've ever been quite so enamored with a single piece of technology before.

Since purchasing the portable device, I've aggregated a growing list of weekly podcasts and other audio material that I'm frankly having a hard time keeping up with. I started out listening to a podcast of comedic drivel called The Ricky Gervais Show and a weekly/biweekly British B-movie review show called Mondo Movie. Since then, I've added Filmspotting; Fresh Air with Terry Gross; Wait Wait Don't Tell Me; Skeptoid; This American Life; and last but not least, Radiolab. And recently a number of friends have bequeathed a number of relatively lengthy audio books to me that I'm eager to get to. Maybe my podcast addiction is spiraling a bit out of control. The other day, I noticed myself putting my headphones on to roll the trash bin out to the curb (about 25 feet from the front door), but I've got a lot to catch up with. Some friends of mine have said things like, "don't you enjoy a little quiet time here and there?" Yes, I really do, but I can honestly say that I feel somewhat more informed on certain subjects (particularly movies and current events) than I ever have in the past. I guess my point here, if there is a point, is that this now ubiquitous device has literally revolutionized the way I take in a good deal of my information. I guess I'll have to volunteer for dish duty more often to provide an excuse to keep the information flow coming!

Quite addictive

Gracious! This blog was almost not to be, due to my newfound, maniacal obsession with ESPGame! Okay, maybe "obsession" is a bit of an exaggeration, but nonetheless, I'll be returning to site before retiring this evening. Since a link for ESPGame was listed in this week's content, and described in Lambeck's article Trouble in Paradise, I'll refrain from going into too much detail about the little group classification exercise, but this seems to be a relatively novel approach to social indexing (as far as I'm aware, anyway). Unlike sites like Wikipedia or Flickr.com where conflicts often arise due to disagreements over an article's content or what tags are the most appropriate for a particular item or image, ESPGame maintains total anonymity between its players and leaves no means for the members of this "community" to exchange information. However, this probably doesn't mean that those taking part in this tagging project are immune to moments of contention. Personally, there were numerous times throughout the game where I was cursing my anonymous teammate on the other end for not coming up with an "obvious" descriptor, and I'm sure these feelings were reciprocated.

I wish the folks behind this game were a little less reticent about how the overall process works. For instance, what constitutes an official tag assigned to an object? Does this take place anytime two individuals simply agree on a term, or must the same terminology be agreed upon by a number of participating couples? Well, now it's time to see if I can redeem myself and shed this preposterous "novice" status.