Radio Shows And The Spoken Word

These days, I don't listen to the radio. I'm not driving, I don't own a physical radio, and I don't bother going to websites of radio stations to listen. It's just too easy to find the exact type of song you want to listen to on the web. But the one thing that I miss out on because of this is spoken radio: news stories, radio shows, the sort of thing my parents would play in the car on long drives.

The best radio station for this in America was (and still is) NPR, National Public Radio. When I was young, I was annoyed at my parents when they put it on. Why would they want to listen to news all the time? It's usually either boring or depressing. But then, I discovered something I didn't expect: radio shows with interesting stories, interviews and in-depth accounts of interesting things that have happened--and some that haven't. I started to ask my parents to turn to NPR, or to stay on listening to it after the 20 minutes of news were over. Sometimes, it was a happy surprise after flipping channels, with no interesting music playing. You'd think that radio shows like this were out of fashion, no one did them anymore, it was for a time without computers and TV. But podcasts still live and there are still people who listen to the radio in their cars. The work of reading is gone, someone is speaking to you in their best storyteller voice, and you still get to picture everything in your imagination. I love it.

I'll give you my three favorite shows, all available online. A Prairie Home Companion has been my favorite. It's hosted by Garrison Keillor, an amazing writer with a unique and captivating voice. I imagine he'll be hosting the show till he passes away, and what a sad day that will be. The show is largely humorous, which I think was what drew me to it in the first place. My favorite segments are ones like "Guy Noir, Private Eye" and "The Lives of the Cowboys," little made-up stories with recurring characters and largely ridiculous shenanigans, with both the characters' voices and the sound effects done by actors. Other segments include different bands, usually small and little-known, and most of them in the genre of country, blues, and bluegrass. The main segments are monologues of Keillor's, such as "The News from Lake Wobegon" which I've never believed were completely true stories, and other interesting tidbits, different in every show. There are recurring made-up ads for "Beebopareebop Rhubarb Pie" and "Powdermilk Biscuits" which always make me chuckle. It runs once a week, and I make sure to catch it when I visit America--and sometimes online.

Another one on NPR that's worth listening to is This American Life. On their site, they say, "There’s a theme to each episode, and a variety of stories on that theme. It’s mostly true stories of everyday people, though not always." The stories have always managed to grab my attention, and I can't stop listening to one once I've started. A now-famous radio host Ira Glass hosts it, whose voice I also like listening to. Once I hear it, I know it's time for a good story. I listened to one today because I heard Neil Gaiman had written a short story for it at the very end of the hour--but the entire hour is worth listening to. The first part is about an American man who ended up in a Chinese prison, and the rest is short stories of adventure, both creepy and whimsical. The theme is "Adventure" and is available here.

Lastly, The Vinyl Cafe. This show isn't on NPR, but instead on a Canadian radio station. "The stories and misadventures of Dave, the owner of the "Vinyl Cafe", the world's smallest record store, where the motto is 'We may not be big, but we're small.'" I frequently listened to this show on weekends at home with my mom, eating breakfast and listening, lingering in the dining room and living room longer than I would have otherwise. This is similar to A Prairie Home Companion, except there is more of an emphasis on stories, though there's music too. They were always fun stories, both entertaining and gripping.

All of these are available on their respective websites for download, and are subscribable via RSS feed or iTunes podcasts. NPR has other interesting programs, so I recommend you check out their site as well. I highly recommend you listen to at least one of these shows, and perhaps leave some time in your day for stories. We all need them.

Fall Term Classes

The new term is now in full swing, and I'm enjoying myself. I finally get to choose (all but one of) my classes this year, and I find them all both engaging and challenging. Here's as understandable an explanation I can make of all the classes I'm taking:

Artificial Intelligence (AI): Speaks for itself, mostly. I'll be learning everything from decision-tree algorithms to how we can make robots think, learn and be "intelligent." I don't know what our project will be yet, but last year's was to create the "mind" for a robot like a roomba. Ideally, if attached to a real roomba "body," it would be able to navigate a room's floor and vacuum it in the most efficient way possible. I've heard from last year's 4th years that this project--and class--was quite challenging. It interests me enough, though, that I'm just going to put my nose to the grindstone and hope for the best.

Constraint Programming (CP): Consider a Sudoku problem. You have spaces for numbers, some of which are filled in. Then you have "constraints," where each row, colum, and 3x3 square must all have the numbers 1-9, no repetitions. A solution program to this constraint satisfaction problem, or CSP, would consider the empty spaces, the ones filled in, and the constraints, and using built-in algorithms, would be able to solve any Sudoku problem. These are the sort of problems I'll be learning about. I won't have to write the algorithms, but instead will use software called Choco to write these programs and then look "under the hood" at the algorithms themselves so that I understand how Choco works, and can write more efficient programs. We'll be first writing a Sudoku solver, which is actually small and straightforward, and then be doing something more complex, which I don't know yet. This is a branch of AI, so a few of the topics overlap with my AI class.

Functional Programming (FP): In this class we will be learning a programming language called Haskell, which is classed as a "functional" language. Languages like C++ and Java are considered "imperative." It's too complex to explain what these mean if you don't know much about programming. Essentially, functional languages are more mathematics-based. Many banks use them for their software, but they can usually be used for anything imperative languages can be used for. The important part is that you have to think differently when programming, which can be quite challenging if you're not used to it. As a programmer, it's always good to learn new languages, and I enjoy the challenge.

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI): This class is a bit less technical. We will be learning about different ways of interacting with computers (not just visually, but including touch and hearing/audio) and how to write a user-friendly program. This includes things like, where will the button/menu bar/text field go so that the user instantly knows what that thing does? Sites like Twitter, Facebook, even Google and Apple probably have an HCI expert or team helping their website designers choose how things look. This applies to programs like Word and Excel, games, even Android and iPhone apps. The project in the class is to create any program, just as long as it follows the HCI rules we learn in the class. Next term I'll be taking MHCI, which focuses on Android programming. Apps are definitely the thing to know about these days.

Those were the classes I've chosen for this term... hopefully they were fairly understandable to those of you who aren't technically-oriented. The class I'm required to take is Professional Skills and Issues, where we learn about ethics in the software world and write essays to learn how to argue and hone our writing skills. I don't think I need help there, but completion of the course means getting accredited by the BCS (British Computing Society), where otherwise I'd have to take a test, do a presentation, and pay something around £150. I guess it's worth it.

Fun stuff.

Side note: I've started using Tumblr again. So check out my page of pretty books and cute things and fun quotes (link on the left near the top of the page).

Oh, and Happy October! It's almost All Hallows Read.