Monday, August 04, 2008

listen freely

Maybe one of these days I'll get an iPod. I've gotten by with the mp3 player on my cell phone and by listening to an occasional podcast on my TiVo or my laptop. Over the weekend I went along on one of my wife's many shopping trips during the sales tax holiday. While our son picked out a silicon cover for his iPod, I looked at the other accessories and got to thinking about how convenient it would be to use a little FM transmitter to listen to podcasts in the car or on my clock radio. I'm not really interested in using the earbuds.

Today I started downloading a free audiobook from Project Gutenberg. Last month I had the idea to listen to something by Mark Twain during our upcoming road trip to Arkansas. At the suggestion of blog reader Clay, I limited my search to only human-read books rather than those done with a computer generated voice. Although the selection wasn't as good as I had hoped, I thought "Chapters from My Autobiography" might teach me about my distant relation. I downloaded most of its 25 chapters today. Tomorrow I'll get the rest and start burning them to a stack of CDs. I hope the disc player in my wife's car works better than the one in mine. Months ago I burned a CD of a podcast by a GMU economics professor. The disc is still in my car's player, unwilling to play. I think it's too long for the machine to read.

Reader John suggested I pry open my wallet and buy some of Chris Addison's CDs. Perhaps next year. For this trip I'm sticking with the free downloads. John's idea did remind me to look for some NPR podcasts for the show "Radiolab" that I discovered in June. There's still time for you to nominate a free download for my travel playlist.

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5 Comments:

Blogger Jennifer B said...

If you don't want to spend the money on an iPod (or even if you do), www.woot.com, shopping.yahoo.com (the woot section) and www.dealcatcher.com can all help you find mp3 players at a cheaper price than retail. Most of them have an accessory available to transmit through FM. Even though it's not the cool brand, I love my Zune. And I love it more that I got 30GB with video for $80. Good luck.

8/05/2008  
Blogger Mr. Kazinec said...

Frank,
I think you should legally change your name to frugal. Thats got a ring to it...Frugal Murphy. j/k

8/05/2008  
Blogger Frank Murphy said...

I found more Mark Twain titles at LibriVox.org. I'm downloading "The Innocents Abroad."

8/05/2008  
Blogger the_fool_monty said...

Believe it or not, you are not the last person to buy an MP3 player. I don't have one yet.

8/06/2008  
Blogger Frank Murphy said...

I'm also one of the first people to have an mp3 player. I got one back in 1999 and listened to it on several flights between Burbank and Knoxville. I gave it to the kids a long time ago. I could ask for it back, but it wouldn't hold one chapter of the audiobooks I've been downloading.

8/06/2008  

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