I grew up with books, TV and radio. I recall listening to radio shows such as The Archers and The Goon Show. Childhood TV favourites included Star Trek, Dr Who, Bonanza and many others.
I was an avid reader from the time when I learned to read until, I guess, 10 or 15 years ago when reading books pretty much fell off my list of things to do in a day. Now I have 10 or 15 books in my drawer, each begun, each very interesting. I just never seem to get around to finishing them.
TV has largely fallen by the wayside. Bones, Numbers and House have all started new seasons this week, but that about covers my viewing. (OK, I confess to Futurama at 6pm too.) I despise reality TV, the so-called News drives me crazy, and current affairs programmes are a joke.
No, today as I see my monthly 20Gb Internet allocation has run out with 3 days to go I’ve been examining my usage charts. Downloads and uploads seem to average more than 500Mb most days, sometimes well more than that, and only occasionally less. For the next 3 days I pay $3 per Gigabyte (or part thereof). I need to use 10Gb before it’s worth springing the extra $30 per month to move up to the 20Gb plan. But I hate this restriction.
I’ve turned off DropBox for a few days in case that reduces Internet traffic. Podcasts are on hold. Software updates can wait. My spare Mac with webcam is off.
But it’s probably the podcasts that are the biggest user — I subscribe to many. For most video podcasts I download all episodes, though I do skip some if I think they won’t be so interesting or relevant to me. As for the audio podcasts: I pick out only a few items from the Radio New Zealand feeds: science, technology and other occasional interviews.
But yes, the list is rather long and clearly shows that I’ve moved away from live radio, from TV, from books and to the Internet for my audio and visual information and entertainment.
Video podcasts:
- Aperture 2 Quick Tip
- Apple Quick Tips
- GeekBrief.TV
- Mahalo Daily
- NASA’s JPL Video
- NASACast Video
- Rocketboom
- ScreenCastsOnline
- SkyGuy
- TEDTalks
- Tekzilla
- TERRA: The Nature of Our World
- WebbAlert
- Wild Chronicles Digital Shorts
- Wild Flicks
Audio podcasts:
- Nights with Bryan Crump
- Nine To Noon with Kathryn Ryan
- This Way Up with Simon Morton
- Saturday Morning with Kim Hill
- CBC Radio: Quirks & Quarks
- This WEEK in TECH
I currently have around 18 hours of content waiting for me, with a good expectation of high interestingness. Match that, television!
KnowIT by RSS
Yes, TV has a lot to live up to in these days of on-demand, user customised content. So do our internet broadband plans.
If you consider a family, all subscribing to custom content, then it doesn’t take any time at all to chew through 10 Gigabytes of data, you can almost do that in the first few days of the month watching video on-line or downloading podcasts.
I’ve curbed our usage with the Actrix CyberJet Double Happy plan – 350MB daily limit, reset at 6pm and 2am – about equivalent to a 20 gig plan or 30+ gig if you leave the podcasts to download overnight at lower speeds. Sadly our ADSL line speed is maxed out at 1.6Mbps – so it is difficult to watch ‘live’ video.
My TV lives in the cupboard most of the time, although I haul it out on Sundays for David Attenborough.
My evenings are now spent mostly listening to podcasts (I prefer audio to video) and I’m currently on a sciency-skepticy kick at the moment. I think for me, learning is more entertaining than “entertainment” and standard broadcast television just doesn’t do it for me.
Thanks Jo. It must be very hard for families, especially with kids. The Double Happy plan with daily limits sounds very useful.
Sarah – I think I saw a trailer for David Attenborough the other day which reminded me of many an hour in my youth watching his programmes. There’s barely any real content these days. Must catch up on the Attenborough though. Like you, I’m on a bit of science journey at the moment.
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