Episode: 2165
Title: HPR2165: Get the most out of your commute with these great audio suggestions.
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2165/hpr2165.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 15:11:03

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This is HBR episode 2,165 entitled Get the Most Out of Your Commute with the Great Audio Suggestions.
It is hosted by ITWI's and is about 36 minutes long.
The summary is ITWI's talks about ways to stay entertained during your commute to work
by listening to podcasts.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by an honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15.
That's HBR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at An Honesthost.com.
Hello Hacker Public Radio.
This is Nightwise from the Nightwise.com podcast.
I'm not casting or recording where I'm usually recording in a driving car and I decided
you know what?
I'm on my way home.
Anyway, let's just record a show for HBR about what I do when I'm in the car.
Just a little bit of background for the people who don't know me, I am an IT consultant
and I have been a IT consultant for about well almost 20 years now and the last for the
last 12 years of that I have been doing long commutes.
It started out all in 2004, 2005 when I was asked to do an assignment in Antwerp which
is about an hour drive away from where I live.
So this little farm town boy who never worked anything more than 20 minutes away from where
we lived suddenly had to take on these pretty long drives to Antwerp and beyond.
Now to stay sane I did a couple of things.
I tried listening to CDs which got old really fast and I tried listening to radio which
got old even faster and then I discovered podcast and I started listening to podcast
and I've been listening to podcasts in Macon ever since for the longest time and this
year marks the 12th year of me being on the road and in my recent assignments I have gotten
a one hour and 15 minutes commute to Gondig which is also near Antwerp which means that
I get up at the crack of dawn and I leave for work early and I come home pretty late and
I kind of spend two and a half hours, sometimes three hours, sometimes even more in the car
and there are, you know, not a lot of things you can do in the car and that's sad actually
because it's wasted, it's time has really wasted.
I haven't had the chance to have an assignment where I could go to work by public transport
like train or something which would really be a big change for me.
I would be able to sit in the train and watch videos and study and God knows what but when
you're doing that in the car well it doesn't really work that well, does it?
So I'm always challenged with the fact of what do you do when you're in the car, how
do you take your commute time and use it as productively as you can and I've got throughout
the years I've gotten a couple of tips and pointers that you guys and girls might find
interesting if you're just getting started on doing more commutes or you're absolutely
done with morning talk shows or listening to your own CD or MP3 collection.
Now of course, the number one thing you can do in the car is listen to podcasts.
That's, you know, I don't know if I should explain to you what a podcast is, it would
be a very awkward situation because you're listening to them.
I have been listening to podcasts since 2004, 2005, I think I got the first, I picked
up at the first 20 episodes of the Daily Source Code and you know, listening to podcasts
is a very interesting way to kind of make that commute that you have as productive as possible.
There are podcasts on all kinds of topics just, you know, think about it and it exists.
What you need to do is make sure that when you're listening to podcasts you have enough,
you know, attention left in your attention span to focus on the road while still listening
to something that is interesting and if possible, something that helps you learn.
When I started listening to podcasts, we had the iPod and we used to have pod catcher
applications like, for example, juice that would download podcasts through the hard disk
and side load them onto your iPod and then every morning your iPod would be loaded up
with fresh content and then you could leave for your commute listening to that and sometimes
there was no fresh content or that sync didn't work and you didn't get your fresh content
which was really annoying but hey, you know, that's what it is.
These days we all have smartphones at 90% or 95% of those smartphones have the ability
to download a podcast catcher or pod catcher that does it all on its own and you can subscribe
to podcasts, it will download the podcasts, it will store the podcasts, you don't need
a computer, you don't need to synchronize.
The only thing you need to know is that it is available, you know, that you have a connection
to the internet so your podcasts get downloaded automatically.
If you're using a pod catcher on your phone, like, for example, dog catcher or, let me see,
I forgot a name of the iOS one, maybe you're using the native iOS pod catching app that
can also be a thing, make sure that you have your phone connected up to Wi-Fi in the morning
and that you download your podcast before you leave.
The second thing that you want to do is make sure that those podcasts get deleted automatically
because, you know, otherwise your phone will fill up with podcasts you've already listened
to and most pod catching clients have the ability to either delete shows that are older
than two weeks or for example, delete shows that you already listened to.
I found that streaming podcasts, most pod catchers like, for example, dog catcher and
pocket cast on Android also allow you to stream the episode so you don't have to download
everything.
This might be an issue if your internet connection is metered or you have a bandwidth
cap, it might be an issue but, you know, streaming them is going to eat away your data
cap on your mobile subscription and you might not want that.
Now what can be interesting is doing a combination of both where you download the shows that you
listen to regularly and where you stream the shows that you only listen to when there's
a topic that is interesting and most pod catchers allow you to set how many episodes you
want to download per podcast feed so that might be a nice trick for you because you don't
have to download every podcast but, you know, it's just a couple of megabytes who cares,
you never know.
The second thing that's important is of course the quality of those podcasts.
I mean, there is, there are a lot of brilliant podcasts out there and let's face it, there's
a lot of junk out there and a lot of podcasts these days are basically radio shows, sound
like radio shows, have ads like radio shows and get produced by radio shows, which sometimes
is fine but the thing that I've always thought it to wonder is then what's the difference
between listening to a podcast and listening to the radio?
Okay, for me it's interesting to listen to stuff like NPR and God knows what because,
you know, I live in Belgium and Europe and we don't have NPR.
So downloading a NPR show is fine but, you know, is that really, you know, something
you're interested in?
I always have a hard time with picking the right amount of shows that I want to listen
to.
Always make sure that you have enough podcasts on your phone or podcast player but also make
sure that you just don't have too many on there that you never listen to.
You know, stuff you subscribe to because you subscribe to it.
You don't really have to have to do that, to be very, very firm with that, only subscribe
to the ones that really interest you and I go even one step beyond, I only listen to
the ones that really interest me.
One of the things that I used to do is I used to be subscribed to a bunch of podcasts
and I would listen to them even if the topics were not very interesting.
I have pretty much learned to let that go.
If there's a topping on there that interests me, I listen to it and if there's a topping
that doesn't interest me, I'll just skip that one show.
I have enough shows on my podcast to compensate and keep you busy.
The second thing that you want to be able to do is skip ahead and skip back because
a lot of podcasts have ads and I know, you sit back, you're driving, you're kind of
gazing in front of you and there's an ad about shaving cream or God knows what.
You know what?
Skip that ad.
You can't do that on radio, but you can do that in a podcast.
So just tap tap quickly forward and skip those ads because yeah, they make money off
the ads and that's why the podcasts are free, but there are also a lot of podcasts that
get supported by other means and the one thing that I think is very important to
listening to podcasts as opposed to listening to the radio is that you can really
be the master of the content.
You can say what kind of content you want to listen to.
You can crawl into the darkest regions, you know, I didn't care if you want to listen
to a podcast that deals with fan-fixed stories about
Transformers, about Hentai Transformers, writing Pink Fluffy My Little Ponies through
time and space using a steampunk S&M leather version of the Tartus.
I mean, there's got to be a podcast out there about that.
And if that's your thing, listen to that, but make sure that you really determine the
quality of what you want to listen to.
And if there's a podcast that doesn't interest you, if there's a topic that doesn't interest
you, skip it.
If there's a podcast that isn't really interesting anymore, delete it, choose something else
on subscribe.
And if there's content in a podcast that you don't find very interesting, just skip it.
The thing that you want to do is maximize the time that you have in the car, listen to
the podcast.
You know, gather as much useful or interesting information as you can, because you can,
because it's not linear radio, because you don't have to listen to the ads, because you
don't have to listen to a radio DJ talking on and on about himself.
So yeah, the second thing that you want to do with podcasts, and this is something
that the big podcasts don't do anymore, and I think that that's sad, is, you know, get
audio feedback from their listeners.
There used to be a time where it'd be so great that you would, you know, get an MP3 recording
from a listener, and you could play it on the show, and there it was the show that you
really liked, and you would listen to it, and you would send in your comments and a podcast
would think, that would be great, and you would play it, and you would be swell, that
you were on that podcast and stuff.
That was a really fun time.
You really got to interact with other, with podcasters, with other podcast listeners,
and you know, podcasting is such a great, great meeting, that it allows you to do this,
you know, sending in your own MP3, it's up a standard small MP3 recorder on your phone,
to record a voice memo, and just, you know, when you get to work or when you get home,
you just send that MP3 file to the podcaster with your thoughts and comments, because, you
know, it's the listeners' comments, the listeners' contributions that really make a
shine.
So, I've had, yeah, do it, I've had the greatest fun doing stuff like this, I've done feedback
for Linux podcasts, for all kinds of techy podcasts, I've even recorded a Klingon ad
for a car repair guy on a Mac podcast, you know, the people you meet and you interact
with by giving feedback to a podcast is amazing, you get to interact with your favorite
podcast here, a kind of podcaster, you form a bond, you produce something together, very,
very valuable, and because podcasting is such a great medium that allows you to do this,
don't just sit there and listen and don't say anything, I mean, I find your feedback,
it's the feedback of the listener that enriches the podcast behavior, the podcast experience.
Support your shows, if your show has a donation button, if you're listening to it and you
really enjoy it, support them, if they're a Patreon show, you know, get them something
on Patreon, these people put these podcasts together for you, and if you can't contribute
your content, because that's valuable, and you can't share the podcast with your friends,
because that's also very important, share the content that you like, bring more listeners
to the podcast, that's also very important, you want to give them a tip, money is always
good, but, you know, contributing to the podcast and sharing the podcast, getting more listeners
out there is even more important than just giving them a tip, giving them a donation,
which is nice, but, you know, it's just that, it's just money.
So yeah, that's the whole podcasting thing, and if you are tired of listening to podcasts,
there are also, of course, a lot of other things you can listen to.
One of the things that I found is that while I'm at work, or while I'm at home, or when
I'm out and about, I find this really interesting article on the internet, and I go like,
this is a really interesting article, and I want to read this, but I don't have the time.
So yeah, I'll bookmark it, and you know, you bookmark it and you never read it.
So what I've started to do is, you know, put these things into pockets, market is this
little web service that stores web articles for you, so you can read them offline and, you know,
keep track of them, and store them in archive them. But this is nice, but the great thing about
pocket, and I think Instapaper supports this too, is that it will actually read those articles
out loud for you. And that's awesome, because then you can, you know, put together your own kind
of audio feed and have the articles read out to you. Now, it's a robot voice that does it.
It sounds pretty good, especially with some of the voices in what's it called in pocket.
But it's still a little dirty, but you know, if there's really that one piece of content that you
want to listen to, that very specialized article, you can build your own article feed just like that.
That's perfectly possible. I bookmark a lot of articles on pocket, and whenever I have a shorter
piece that I need to drive, not the one and a half hour commute that I'm doing normally,
I hit a pocket, and I just, you know, select some of the articles that I want to listen to,
and then have them read out loud. There are, of course, other alternatives to this, you can roll
your own if you want to. You can set up an if-distant.script that gets the RSS feed of your favorite website,
dumps the text of that article into a text file, and you can output that text file to whatever text
the speech engine that you're using, for example, on a Mac, I think it's the speech command, and you
can just, you know, take that text file that you created using an if-distant.rule that says,
when there's a new article on this RSS feed, pipe out the content into this text file,
and pipe out this text file into this text-to-speech MP3 file, and then you can listen to it online.
So you can roll your own if you want to. That's also a great way to kind of make your own audio
podcast if there's no audio feed for that website that you can listen to, and that way you can still
have, you know, website content, written content in an audio format in your car.
Also a great way to pick and choose whatever you want to listen to.
Another option is to learn. There are a lot of cool apps out there that allow you to learn stuff
while you're in the car. I wouldn't say stuff like Jewellingo that let you, you know, learn
another language because most of them involve typing and stuff, and I wouldn't do any typing
while you're behind the wheel. You're not only responsible for your own safety, you're also
responsible on the safety, and for the safety of all the drivers around you, so, you know, don't
tap around on the screen. Everything that you have to experience while you're doing your
commute is, has to be completely hands-free at completely audio center. That means that
there are great apps out there like, for example, the Khan Academy where you can select a certain
topic that you want to learn something about and just watch, you know, have a video play or an audio
file play about sit topic and learn something. And Khan Academy is really great when it comes
to learning about stuff that has to do with math or physics or computer science. And there might
be things out on there that are really interesting. So, I would be very careful with watching videos.
Don't, if you can, don't do it because never mind that you're still watching the road. And if
there's a video playing on your phone and your phone is mounted on your dashboard, your attention
will be distracted and you will be watching the video. So, don't do that. Just choose the audio.
Speaking of audio, if you are on iOS, why not go for IQU, which is this great service, this great
platform that you can use to download content from universities regarding all kinds of crazy
things you want to listen to. And I really like stuff like IQU because you can listen to a professor
doing a lecture at MIT or at Cambridge or at Yale about this crazy subject like, for example,
math or science or politics or quantum mechanics. And it's free and you can download it and you
can listen to it in the car and learn something. So, you know, just think about this. While you're
driving, the guy next to you, you know, he's driving as well. And he's listening to the radio.
And he's listening to this morning DJ that has this toothbrush stuck in his mouth,
brush his teeth while humming a pump song. And people calling and have to guess the pump song.
So, that's what this guy's listening to. And you, you are listening to a professor talk about
quantum mechanics. And it's a professor that's, you know, teaching at Yale. This prestigious
university that only, you know, that you never had a chance to go to, but you can listen to it in
your car on your way home. That is, that is so crazy. And that is so cool that you do not have an
excuse to listen to the radio DJ brushing his teeth while humming a pump song. You've just
got to listen to this other thing that is way more interesting. And you're a geek. So,
there. So Khan Academy, I choose you both great services to listen to. What about crazy things?
The other thing that you can do, of course, is listen to audiobooks. Get yourself an
audible description or download some audiobooks or look for some free audiobooks or look for some
free e-pub books. And see if you can convert them to an empty three. And you just listen to a
book in the car. Now, these audiobooks go on for hours and hours. And they might be very, very
entertaining. I know that, you know, when I have a pretty stressful time or have a really long
commute to get through. And I kind of want to relax and wind down. I'm not going to choose the
quantum mechanics talk that I just downloaded from MIT. I might just want to go for something more
relaxing. So sometimes I download a book that's fiction, you know, a Star Trek audiobook with some
sound effects or a Star Wars book or some other book that's novel. And it's really nice and
entertaining to listen to that. You know, you're getting gulfed in the story and there might be
different voices and sound effects. And it's nice. It's not very monotonous. So, it's pretty
entertaining. And still, you're listening to something that really interests you. So, not
the guy with the toothbrush. I mean, the pop song people have to call in to get the pop song.
Better. You can take it one step beyond and go for, you know, a book that you really want to learn
something from. So, for example, I've been listening to some books that are biographies,
which are really cool. They're nonfiction and they're still entertaining to listen to. Because
if you have to listen to the audio book about CCNA or something like that, I don't know,
that might be very dry material to get through in the car. And we don't want to put you to sleep.
But I especially like listening to biographies while I'm in the car. So,
I listened to Ghosts in the Wires from Kevin Midnick a couple of months ago. I listened to some
books from Malcolm Gladwell, Blink and the Outliers and all of those classics. And at the moment,
I'm listening to the innovators from Walter Isaacson, who talks about the history of the computers
and where he came from. So, these are all interesting thoughts, things that you can listen to.
And you can try to download the audio books via Audible or you might want to go out there and
seek your own audio books on whatever tour inside that you want to. I don't care what you do with it.
But there's a lot of content out there that can keep you entertained.
And those are kind of the important things that you can do. The third thing that you can do is,
talk to people while you're in the car. There are a lot of cool apps that allow you to do voice
communication with people all over the world I've had. By the way, before we go into that,
I just want to say that on Android, Mort Player, that is M-O-R-T Player, is a great player for
audio books. It offers you variable speeds. It picks up where you left off. It's a really good
audio player for these long audio books that you want to listen to.
And then, of course, there's talking to people. You can talk to people in the car. I mean,
you can phone people up. That's great. But I leave for work at 5.45 in the morning. So, I don't
call up my friends at 5.45 in the morning. That's not really pleasant for them. But, you know,
take that time in the car to call your friends and your family. And you can also talk to people online.
And it doesn't have to be a synchronous communication. It can be an asynchronous communication.
Like, for example, there are cool tools out there like boxer and telegram and WhatsApp
that allow you to send a voice message instead of typing something out.
Because typing something out on your phone is texting and texting is illegal when you're driving
and it's dangerous and you might run into a tree. The chance that a tree is running into you is
kind of small, but that is because I've never seen a tree texting while being a tree.
So, I have this theory that says that texting makes you run into a tree with your car. And if you
don't text, you don't do it because trees don't run into your car because they're not texting.
But that's a whole other issue. But what I was saying, not texting to communicate is a good thing.
Send voice message every single instant messaging app these days has a voice mail option.
And I know you might be a little self-conscious, but what the hell get over it.
Once you are in a discussion with somebody else and you hear them talking and they hear you talking,
your self-consciousness will go away. I don't know, Facebook Messenger has an audio option,
Telegram has an audio option, Boxer has an audio option, WhatsApp has an audio option, so
use voice messages. And the great thing is you can communicate with people who aren't awake
at that moment. They'll get the message when they're online and they can just send you a message
and when they get when they're awake. And that way, this way I've spent hours in the car talking
back and forth to people all over the world. You can even take it one step beyond,
but this kind of depends on your data plan, but you can set up a mumble server at home.
You know, mumble is a free VoIP server that you can call into and it is actually used
for a voice over IP voice communication network for, for example, gamers. So you're gaming and
you need all the bandwidth that you have and you have a very low ping, and you want to keep it that
way. So you need a way to talk your teammates, you know, and counter strike, or you want to say
the terrorists are over there, or the counter terrorists are over there, or go, go, go, or rush,
rush B, rush B, you know, you want to do things like that. So you want to talk to your friends,
one of the apps that is used a lot is mumble. Mumble is free and open source.
Mumble allows you to do voice conferencing with other people, with multiple people in the same
room and your different chat rooms and stuff like that. So that's cool. And what you want to do,
what you might want to do is use that in the car because mumble is built to function under a low
bandwidth. So you can set up your Raspberry Pi with a mumble server and invite your friends over
to that server and install the mumble client on your phone and just talk real time with people from
all over the world. So that is also a good use of your time. You can even record a podcast while
you're in the car over mumble, should you want to. So also that communicating with people,
interacting with people, doing discussions with people in the car is also a great way to have
a productive or at least a sensible commute. There were some other geeky things that we might,
you know, get into, you might want to, I don't know, parse the logs of your favorite IRC
channel and, you know, pipe them into an MP3 file and listen to the logs of your MP3 channel
while you're driving in the car. That might be your thing. There are also some IRC channels that
IRC apps that do text-to-speech mumble, even those text-to-speech so you can chat in the chat box
typing on mumble and it will read you out of the chats while you're in the car so you don't have
to type. Stuff like that. They're really, really nerdy, nerdy things that you can do but I'm not
going to go into the depth of whatever. I don't care if you, if you have your var off log file and
you want to read that out into an MP3 file and you want to listen to that at six o'clock in the
morning while you're stuck in traffic, listening to a robot voice reading out all the missed
authentication attempts against your SSH server. Well, if that's your thing, fine. The great
thing is you can, you can turn information into audio and listen to said audio. So rounding up,
what is very important is that time spent in the car is time that is important because you have
to pay attention. If you don't pay attention, you run into a truck. That is not what you want. You want
to pay attention to traffic and you want to make sure that you are a sensible and a safe driver.
That's good. But all the rest of that massive brain of yours is basically idling. It's doing nothing.
There are like four cords in your little brain and three of them are just sitting around going
like, Jesus, what are we going to do? So you might, you know, sit there and be bored and or start,
you know, really grinding down some bad thoughts in your head, you know, worrying about stuff
or or, you know, just, you know, basically getting yourself depressed by worrying a lot or
getting very anxious or getting very nervous. You don't get happy by yourself, seldom do you do that.
So you might want to not want to do that. So you want to have a distraction. Yes, that can be
the radio. And yes, yes, yes, you can listen to the DJ brush, Steve, then sing a pop song. And people
have to call in and guess the pop song. And, you know, that might be your thing. That's okay. If you
think that that's exciting, fine. But you're, when you're doing this and you're listening to the ads
on the radio and you're listening to, I don't know, the new head from Katie Perry or whatever pop
artist is, is, is, is popular that day. Probably the one that the DJ with toothbrush was just humming
and the guy called in and he said, that's a Katy Perry song. And then the DJ said, yes, it's a Katy
Perry song. And now we'll play the Katy Perry song. So, you know, what I'm getting at is that
basically it's a waste of time. There are three cores in your brain doing nothing. Why not do
something sensible? So try to cultivate the content that you consume during those commutes and
get the most out of it. Try to find that balance between something that is productive or efficient
or at least entertaining. You know, it doesn't have to be nuclear physics, 101,
red by professors, Stephen Hawking, all 3,000 page volumes. So that might be kind of dry,
but it doesn't always have to be as as futile as I will now brush my teeth with a toothbrush while
humming and song. And you get to call in and guess that song. And if it's a Katy Perry song,
will play the Katy Perry song, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So kind of try to find the
balance between entertainment or something light and something that lets you learn,
but make sure it's something that entertains you, that keeps you on your toes,
but make sure that it's something that matters. You have got the time to listen to whatever you want to
because you're in the car on your way to work, probably alone. That time is wasted if you just
drive. That time can be used to do something more productive or entertaining. And you have
access to the technology to make sure that you choose the content that you want to consume,
and you even have access to the technology that helps you, you know, communicate and produce
content. I've been doing this for the longest time, well, not since, you know, dinosaurs,
but since 2005 or something. I have just spent 30 minutes of my daily commute, which I can drive
with my eyes closed, but I don't, because when I close my eyes in the car and I continue to drive,
you can bet your ass that the trees are going to start texting and they're going to run into me.
So what I was saying, what I mean is, I just spent these 30 minutes at the car, which otherwise
would have been an uneventful 30 minutes listening to a radio DJ, brushes teeth, humming glaze,
and you would call it and say, it's my lyrics, sorry song. And then you would play the
my lyrics, sorry song. That's not, that's not what I'm going to do. That's not what I did with
these 30 minutes. I decided to do something else. I decided to contribute to you guys,
and girls, to kind of put my thoughts out there and make a piece of content that you can listen to
when you want to, perhaps on your commute. So if I have, you know, given you some inspiration,
taught you something, or kept you entertained, or stopped you from listening to a radio show,
or the DJ is bloody brushing his teeth while humming a mylerary sire song. And then you call
in and he said, it's mylerary sire song. And they played a mylerary sire song. If I've kept you
from doing that, that I have done something good. I hope mylerary sire's might not agree.
I don't care. But that being said, until next time, let technology work for you.
Make sure that you keep yourself entertained in the car while you learn something or at least
spend your time wisely. So I don't care if you want to listen to content, or if you want to
produce content. The only thing that you need to remember is that you have the technology
to make it happen. And the only thing that you need to do is make that technology work for you
instead of the other way around. See you guys. Bye-bye.
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