Very Easy Listening

I'm beginning to think I might seriously need to get myself up to speed, well, walking pace at least, with all this stuff on computers about mp3s and podcasts and real players and the like. So far I've steered clear on the reasonably sensible grounds that I have easy access to so much good listening, of so many varieties, that acquiring more would be simply over-egging the pudding. And typing those words I realise that part of me (the busy man bit that doesn't want to get much busier) still thinks that way.

But another bit of me, the seventeen-year-old devil-may-care enthusiast-for-anything-and-everything, has recently exploded into life (he's always lurking just below the surface) as a result of a visit to the Yellow Room. Said room is the blog of one Sidney Smith, a place I drop into pretty regularly. (I exhibit a caution similar to that regarding expanding my capacity for being able to access more stuff to listen to regarding blogs & webpages I drop in on. I have a limited, and, I'm happy to say, eclectic range of a few favourites - less than ten - and that's it.) Now Sid has been posting some very tasty looking podcasts, featuring the kind of sounds I enjoy more than somewhat, for quite a while. But I've never been able to open them (is that how you say it?) to get to listen.

And then last week I was idly browsing one of Sid's posts about his latest podcast when, blow me, the thing started to play of its own accord - and it was as good, if not better, as I'd imagined it to be. I suppose somewhere along the line my computer has mysteriously downloaded whatever it needs to get these things to work. After that I found I could get to play most of the previous ones I accessed as well. I'm luxuriating in Episode 16 at this very moment, the funkily mellifluous sounds of Nik Bartsch. Thus, it now occurs to me that if it's this easy to get to listen to such wonderful stuff I really should be doing it more often.

So that's my dilemma for the evening, delightfully unresolved.