Podcasts

I haven’t really been much of a podcast-subscriber, but since getting an Ipod nano, I found them entertaining and practical. I tried subscribing to a couple of radio-podcasts (RadioResepsjonen, Pyro, Tinitus) from a few Norwegian station. This worked out pretty nicely while I was at work, but seeing that I’m now on paternal leave, I have no time to listen to them.

The Space-Time Continuum

Paternal leave gives me tons of time with my 10 month old son, but it exhausts me totally. So when he sleeps, I find myself on the sofa trying to get back my energy. I’m really, really loving the fact that I have the opportunity to spend so much quality time with my family, but I find that i don’t have the time to deep-dive into code and experiment, which was part of the plan for my leave. It seems that there’s always something that comes up that takes up the time, and I’m guessing this is just the start of it since we’re expecting number 2 in August ;)

Devcasts

I came over a blog by Scott Hanselman, and found his podcasts, Hanselminutes. I listened to one of the top-rated episodes: Be a better developer in 6 months. This was one of the largest motivational factors that inspired me to start this blog, and has really given me a strong drive to endorse myself in coding.

So..a strong interest for developing, and “no” time to endorse it.

Devcasts to the rescue! These podcasts by Scott really covered vast amounts of topics and gave good insight into coding techniques, patterns, technologies and much, much more … BabySmash!

I found that I could subscribe to these devcasts, rather than those radio shows, and listen to them while walking with my son in his stroller. It was, and still is a great way to really get my curiosity going and has given me a drive to make time to code :)

More Devcasts….

So Hanselminutes was the start, but it’s obviously good to get inout from other people. More variation, more opinions, more learning… That’s when I came across a great blog by Einar Ingebrigtsen, a Microsoft MVP situated in Vestfold, Norway. I first came across Einar through a dev-evening arranged through IKT-Grenland where he held a great session on silverlight 2.0. Einar also podcasts, or rather videocasts, which really are great. I listened to him interview Scott Hanselman the other day, and was hooked.

So now I’m a regular on Scott’s and Einar’s devcasts. Through these I’ve discovered several really, good blogs and also a podcast by StackOverflow

Devcasts, blogs, twitter…

So now I’m following blogs by Scott, Einar, Jeff Atwood (StackOverflow) and several others on a regular basis. Alongside this I follow several devs on Twitter that give me small 140 characters of inspiration (bite-size!). Twitter is a great way to keep get heads-up info on new topics, techniques, tips or just get solid good information.

So I’m slowly trying to expand my network, gathering more information from more devcasts, tweeple, blogs. I strongly recommend anyone who hasn’t listened to devcasts to give it a try.

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