I have a reasonable daily commute to work for the DC region: about 60-90 minutes each way. (Pretty soon, we just might surpass LA as the most horrendous commuting and traffic patterns in the USA.) So I'm always hunting for good stuff to read, but more importantly good stuff to listen to as I drive around or try to block out the noise on the train.
Since I started listening to MP3s, my music collection has grown. A lot. Because I can listen more widely, I want more variety. So I started buying CDs again, especially in genres like Jazz where my CD collection was always quite light. And now I try to buy no more than 2 CDs a month from the iTunes store.
A while ago, brian pointed to a lecture series entitled How to Listen to and Understand Great Music while he was in the sandbox. The company that publishes that course has a full catalog of interesting courses, mostly undergraduate survey courses that are good enough to fit the pieces together or get you started on a deeper exploration of a topic. And even if you don't go any deeper, a nice 30min lecture is a more pleasant way to wake up or wind down that listening to some playlist of songs you've heard a thousand times already.
More recently, I've been going through IT Conversations. The quality varies, from a stupdendous conversation with Bruce Schneider, to lackluster product fluffery from JavaOne. So far, I've found dozens of interesting things to listen to, all freely downloadable. Many of the keynotes from recent O'Reilly conferences are available there as well.
Today, thanks to William Grosso, I stumbled across some free lectures in San Francisco sponsored by the Long Now Foundation. These lectures are available after the fact in MP3 as well.
Ya know, commuting to work isn't nearly the chore it used to be 10 years ago. ;-)
