The Duc Pond

Lately I’ve been consuming media like water (in my case, Mountain Dew might be more accurate, though I’m starting a plan to cut down). I just can’t stop reading, watching and listening to stuff. This applies to all kinds of things. Here’s a sample of what I’ve absorbed in the past month:

TV: Family Guy, Futurama, West Wing, MacGyver, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Modern Marvels (History Channel show), Amish in the City, Olympics, bunch of movies

That’s just a subset of what I want to watch. If I had more time I’d digest even more stuff. My Freevo allows me to record hours more TV than I have time to watch. My backlog is currently around 30 hours of unwatched shows/movies. Add to this a Netflix subscription and you can see I have plenty to keep me occupied. But that’s not all!

Audio: All Things Considered (NPR), Here and Now (NPR), BBC World Service, Car Talk (NPR), Talk of the Nation (NPR), audiobooks (My Life [Bill Clinton autobiography], The Da Vinci Code [cool conspiracy theory fictional thriller], The Wisdom of Crowds [masses actually make better decisions than “smart” individuals!], The Lexus and the Olive Tree [global economics stuff]), and of course music

I already listened to a lot of NPR on the radio, but once I got an iPod I also started subscribing to Audible.com. They have audiobooks and radio programs available for download so you can put them on your MP3 player. I can listen to stuff while I’m at work, or cleaning my condo, or walking on the Villanova campus. Any amount of time where I was previously unable to consume some kind of media can (meaning, not necessarily) now be taken up thanks to my iPod. It’s the best audio player ever.

Print: My wonderful girlfriend’s subscriptions (Time Magazine, Money, Kiplinger, Popular Science, Burlington County Times, Philadelphia Inquirer), countless websites (WeDidItMan, PlinkoMedia, Fool, CNN, MSNBC, people’s blogs, Linux sites, etc.), and a bunch of library books (Red, White, and Liberal: How Left is Right and Right is Wrong [Alan Colmes], Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them [Al Franken], Treason [Ann Coulter bitchiness], Against Love [love is bad]

I didn’t actually finish the last two, since they’re insane (although I feel bad grouping anything with Ann Coulter). I’m not done Lies either, but I’m getting there. Great stuff. Anyway, I’ve been trying to read a lot. And I’m going to read even more now that the semester has started. Damn graduate classes!

Gaming: Random NES and SNES games

I barely game anymore, unfortunately. Not for lack of love, though. Rather, lack of time and lack of the necessary equipment and cabling to get my entertainment center together. Soon, though. In the meantime, I did get the emulators working with my Freevo, so I can play classic NES and SNES games on my TV. I want to get back to my backlog of Game Boy Advance, Gamecube, PS2, and Xbox games, though.

This all sounds like madness and overload, but I think I’m OK. I really enjoy what I’m doing at work currently (Java GUI that uses JNI to interface with the existing C++ code), so I’m happy as far as that goes. And with Amy in my life I have more varied activities. I actually go outside once in a while! And visit cool places! And I hit the gym (not as consistently as I’d like, but I’m getting there).

I really do love all the media I consume, though. I love TV, I love movies, I love politics, and I love games. Basically I love being entertained and I love learning. I love it!

This post was worthless because I’m in class right now.