Sources of Intelligent Audio for Commute?

confusus writes "Trapped in the daily routine of commuting for 1-2 hours every day, I started to ponder different ways of recycling commute-time waste. I tried listening to the radio, but 9.9/10, it ends up being just 'duh-whatever.' Then, I tried listening to audio books: it is really hard to find audio books that are tailored toward nerds. Thus I decided to find audio of interesting/geeky/nerdy/sciency interviews, talks, lectures. What would be the websites which provide such content?" I'd really like to find more informative downloadable audio content, too. Perhaps informed commentary and self-guided tours of historical and other sites, like national parks and significant buildings in the U.S. and elsewhere, basically self-guided audio walking (or driving) tours. Can anyone recommend a source?

Record your next D&D game

[Timesprout]

Then relive the glory on your way to work

An elegant solution...

[Faust7]

Put a laptop with wireless Internet access in your car, hook it to your stereo, and install some software that speaks the text of websites. Then point your browser to Slashdot commentary.

You'll be laughing so hard that you'll drive into a telephone pole, and you won't have to worry about commuting for a while.

Re:How about just paying attention to the traffic?

[Delta2.0]

If it's something that makes you think, then it's reducing the bandwidth you have to be putting towards the road.

Only on slashdot will you see your level of concentration refered to as "bandwidth."

Re:LUG Radio

[Anonymous Coward]

A quote from their website:

"LugRadio contains language and topics that some may find offensive."

I guess they are talking about Perl?

Here's the usual traffic report.

[Kjella]

Car 2 meters ahead of me, stalled
Car 2 meters ahead of me, stalled
Car 2 meters ahead of me, stalled
Car 2 meters ahead of me, stalled
Moved 5 meters
Car 2 meters ahead of me, stalled
Car 2 meters ahead of me, stalled
Car 2 meters ahead of me, stalled
Car 2 meters ahead of me, stalled
Moved 5 meters
Car 2 meters ahead of me, stalled
Car 2 meters ahead of me, stalled
Car 2 meters ahead of me, stalled
Car 2 meters ahead of me, stalled

You just got to have some priorities, know when it is time to stop paying attention and concentrate on the road ahead. There's usually plenty of dead time in the typical commute. (Unless you work odd hours).

Kjella

Re:You're kidding, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tom Clancy is targeted towards "nerds"? I always though the target audience was 30 year old mall security guards who like to read Solider of Fortune (while waiting for their mom to pick them up after work) and talk about how they would have enlisted in the Army and qualified for Special Forces if they didn't have a "medical condition" that kept them out.

President's Radio Address

[Anonymous Coward]

Live on Saturday's at 10:06 AM
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/radio/

Slashdot

[Eternally optimistic]

A slashdot poster with any pride would play a reading of their own posts and congratulatory resonses. Each one twice.

Real nerds

[StikyPad]

That's a no brainer. Download your topics of interest and record the dialup audio. Any real nerd knows that. Naturally, that requires learning binary -- at least the printable ascii characters. You shouldn't have any problem removing the parity bits, ACK/NAKs, and other overhead data from the audio stream by hand, or with a custom algorithm of your design. Since you're a beginner, you'll probably just want to start out at the oldschool 75bps. As you improve, you can step up to faster bitrates. Since modem speeds generally double, you might want to set the playback speed variably to give yourself more of a natural progression. Once you get up to 28.8kbps, you can listen to War and Peace in under 20 minutes. I would highly suggest you don't go beyond 33.3kbps though. One fellow tried to make it to 56k, and now he's locked away. Poor guy thinks he's a tangerine. Anytime someone opens their mouth to speak to him, he tries to flee in terror to avoid being eaten. It's even worse when he gets hungry himself. Naturally they have to keep him away from mirrors.

But I digress. Good listening to you!

Re:How about just paying attention to the traffic?

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

How about just paying attention to the traffic? Seriously... I see way too many people that are doing who-knows-what behind the wheel...

Yeah like once i saw this guy looking at everyone else in their car... when he should have been paying attention to the traffic ;)

Re:How about just paying attention to the traffic?

[Mantorp]

I want my in-car entertainment to be duh-whatever.

So it's you they've been targeting with all the crap morning shows.

Re:Record your next D&D game

[digitalgiblet]

"I ask you, what better way is there to spend a Saturday night?"

You, sir, need to discover a woman with +5 Ta-tas.

Re:What about text to MP3. Re:podcasts

[digitalgiblet]

"Use voice sinthesizer software to turn text into aoudio stream."

GREAT! Now I can listen to that debate between Stephen Hawking and a Speak'n'Spell! I've been wanted to sit through that one for YEARS.