David Gardiner - Podcasts

Podcasts in 2025

2025-09-29T09:00:00.000+09:30

It's been three years since my last 'what podcasts am I listening to' post, so I think I'm well overdue for an update.

Pocket Casts remains my goto app for podcast consumption. One nice thing is that they recently made a change so that you can now also listen to podcasts via their web interface (previously this was a premium subscription feature). I've not used it a lot, but a couple of times when I've got back home and I'm almost at the end of a good episode it has been useful to switch over to the web interface back at my desk (rather than leave my earplugs in via my phone).

My morning walk around the neighbourhood before starting work continues to be the most common time to listen to podcasts. I'm usually out for about an hour, which allows time for 30-40 minutes from a second podcast after I finish the latest Daily Audio Bible episode. The other time is occasionally when I'm about to go to sleep. I'll put on an episode but set the sleep timer to stop playing after 5 or 10 minutes as I'll almost always be out to it before then.

Sidenote: I used this PowerShell snippet to process the exported OPML file (from Pocketcasts) to generate the list of podcasts for this post:

$xml = [xml] (get-content "PocketCasts 2025-09-24.opml")
$xml.opml.body.outline.outline | ForEach-Object { "- [$($_.text)]($($_.xmlUrl))" }

Podcasts

I've divided the podcasts I'm still listening to into two main groups - non-technical and technical. Within those I've roughly sorted them according to how often I listen to episodes.

Since the last post there's a few that appear to have gone dormant, are no longer produced, or they broke their RSS feed, so I'll likely be doing some spring pruning of those.

Non-technical

1 Year Daily Audio Bible. Still my first pick each day. As a Christian, I find this a really helpful way to start my day. Brian does a great job as a reader, and despite being American he tends to avoid political commentary (which is a bit of a minefield in the US at the moment).
Bizarre with Mick Molloy and Titus O’Reily. Titus and Mick with a humerous mix of sport and animal topics. Just started with this recently and enjoying it a lot.
Dr Karl Podcast. Science talkback. Always interesting.
Planet Maynard. Years ago I enjoyed listening to Maynard's "Sunday Afternoon Fever" show on radio station JJJ. His podcast is a mix of him chatting to various people today and some old recordings from his radio show.
From The Hideout. Tony Martin, Pete Smith (yes, the voiceover guy from Australian TV) and Djovan Caro. This is a delight, and very funny.
Seeds Aberfoyle Park Sermons. My church. Great option to catch up on a sermon if I was away and missed one.

Technical

Windows Weekly. Long episodes, so I don't always finish them. Useful to keep up to date with what Microsoft are up to.
Troubleshooting Agile. I was put onto this weekly podcast by former colleague Shaw. Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick produce some great conversations on all aspects of Agile software development.
Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman. I listen to most of Scott's episodes. They are usually around 30 mins, so a good length.
Scott & Mark Learn To.... Scott Hanselman and Mark Russinovich chatting to each other on a Teams call about the latest fun things they've been playing with, and we get to listen in. So far, so good.
RunAs Radio. More IT Pro-focused topics. I'm select about which episodes I listen to.
Coding After Work Podcast. A new one for me, hosted by Jimmy and Jessica Engstrom.
Software Engineering Radio. An old favourite. A wide variety of topics, some more interesting than others.
no dogma podcast. Hosted by Bryan Hogan. Mostly .NET focused
The Unhandled Exception Podcast. Hosted by Dan Clarke. Mostly .NET but some other topics too.
Tech World Human Skills. Hosted by Ben Pearce. Was originally called 'Elevated You' but had to change names as there was another podcast with that name. Started off interesting but I must admit I've not listened to it in a while. Might get pruned soon.
.NET Rocks!. I used to listen to everything from .NET Rocks! but now I'm much more selective. Hour episodes are a bit long sometimes.
SQL Down Under. Greg Low really knows his SQL stuff. It's been a while since the last episode though.
Adelaide .NET User Group Podcast. Most of the time I've already heard the episodes live. But just in case, it's good to know there's a podcast options for catching presentations.

Farewelled

Herding Code. Last episode was in 2020
One Dev Minute (Audio) - Channel 9. Last episode was in 2024 and the RSS feed is broken. Some of the video versions of the episodes can be found at https://learn.microsoft.com/shows/one-dev-minute/
The Idealcast with Gene Kim by IT Revolution. This was a great series with Gene Kim. Last episode in 2021.

Any others you can suggest I might be interested in?

Podcasts 2022

2022-06-14T08:00:00.000+09:30

Is it really 12 years since I last posted about what's in my podcast collection? Apparently so!

My current podcast app of choice on iOS is Pocket Casts. It works well, and it's pretty cool that it was originally developed here in Adelaide!

Most of my podcast listening is now done on my morning walk before I start work (now that I work from home). That's usually up to an hour walking. Previously I used to listen on the bus trip into the city (which was about an hour each way), so now with a bit less time I tend to be more selective about what I listen to for the "second half".

I've roughly sorted the podcasts by how regularly I listen to episodes. This is mostly how useful or interesting I find the episodes, but may also be because the podcast doesn't publish episodes that often. Links are to the RSS feeds for each podcast.

Daily Audio Bible". You might say I listen to this religiously! It's the first thing I put on when heading out for my walk. Episodes take from 20-30 mins, which usually means I have time to listen to something else before I get home.
RunAs Radio - Interesting IT topics hosted by Richard Campbell.
Windows Weekly - Weekly episodes with Leo, Paul and Mary Jo, that I don't always get through and sometimes miss altogether, but often interesting.
The Unhandled Exception Podcast - A newer addition to my list. Some good shows on .NET. Listening to Dan Clarke's interviews has inspired a few of our recent speakers for ADNUG (Kendra Havens and Simon Cropp).
.NET Rocks! - Carl and Richard. Usually an hour per episode, and if the topic isn't interesting I'll give it a miss.
no dogma podcast - Bryan Hogan (wonderful accent!) and some great .NET interviews recently.
Hanselminutes with Scott Hanselman - Scott covers a wide variety of software dev topics.
Dr. Karl Podcast - Always interesting science talk-back.
Herding Code - Episodes are sporadic, and even less often since the passing of K Scott Allen. But when they do come out they can be good.
Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers - a wide variety of software topics.
SQL Down Under - Greg Low's SQL podcast
Seeds Uniting Church - Good to catch up on sermons. Used to use this more often when I missed out when I was helping with kids' church (aka Sunday School).
One Dev Minute - Selective listening to topics from Raymond Chen and Larry Osterman (whose blogs I've been following for ages). No new episodes since last year though.
The Idealcast with Gene Kim by IT Revolution. Some really interesting interviews, hosted by Gene Kim. Some shows are recaps of older conference talks. If you're interested in DevOps, then can be interesting. Episodes can be quite long. I wish they'd didn't break them down into shorter episodes.
Coding After Work Podcast - Not sure how I got onto this one, not publishing that often now, but a few of the earlier episodes had some interesting guests.
Weekly Dev Tips - From Steve Smith (@ardalis), has gone quiet and I think he's stopped publishing?
A special mention should also go to Developer On Fire, which I listened to for the first few hundred episodes a few years back. It burned brightly for a while there. I gather Dave Rael wound it up after episode 452.

Finally, sometimes after listening to the latest Daily Audio Bible episode, I decide to "unplug" and just take in the sounds around me. It's ok to not be plugged in all the time!

2022-06-24 Updated broken links to 'Seeds Uniting Church' and 'One Dev Minute'

Windows Phone Podcast apps

2015-07-27T08:11:00.000+09:30

It seems such a simple thing to want:

A podcast app
One that doesn’t crash (too much)
Can list and play episodes in most recent order
Can download in the background

You’d think?

Way back in the day, Windows Phone 7 to be specific, podcasts were supported natively in the operating system. Except if you didn’t live in the USA. For some never explained reason, they never enabled this feature for non-US phones. Bizarre.

If I recall correctly, the original Windows Phone 8 was no different, but then eventually Microsoft released the Podcast feature as a separate app – “podcasts”.

It is a very basic app. Unfortunately I think that some of the developers of alternate podcast apps seemed to have given up when the official app came out – even if their own efforts had more features.

Carboncast

One of the first apps I tried on WP8 was Carboncast. The layout and design still impress me, but sadly it proved quite unreliable (and no background downloads). Unfortunately the developer apparently lost interest too – the last update was December 2013.

Podcaster

This was my next app of choice for a fair while. It aims to be more like the original built in app (as it was released before that app was made available to the rest of the world).

Background downloading was added in later versions, though I had occasional trouble with corrupted downloads.

Podcast+ Pro

I then moved to this app – Podcast+ Pro. Pretty good, but no background downloading.

Podcast Lounge

I came across this one earlier this year (I think someone recommended it on Twitter) and had been using it until recently. It is quite good, but alas it didn’t do background downloads. A recent release supposedly added this feature, but the implementation appears to be buggy as it never worked for me.

A few issues also with strange ordering of episodes and frustration with episodes previously ‘marked as played’ reappearing as unplayed. Feedback emails were sent, but no responses.

Castcenter

And so, another search of the store to see if there was anything else worth trying and I came across “Castcenter”. A free app, but you need to pay (in-app purchase) to unlock managing more than three podcasts. You can create custom playlists, and it does background downloads.

So far so good.

If you’re into podcasts and have a Windows Phone, let me know what app are you using?

My first Windows Phone 7

2010-12-10T17:19:00.001+10:30

On Sunday, I dropped by the TeleChoice shop at Marion, and purchased a shiny new Samsung Omnia 7 phone.

I've been reading up on Windows Phone 7 handsets since before their release, so felt reasonably well informed as far as what features were present and what was still coming. I ended up choosing the Omnia 7 because a lot of positive comments about the clarity of the Super-AMOLED display, and also that it was compatible Vodafone's network (my current provider and whose $20/month cap appeals to my budget).

On returning home, I inserted my SIM card and battery, plugged in the charger and turned it on. Starting up was simple and problem-free. I entered in my Windows Live ID, Google GMail, and Facebook details and a short while later, my contacts (aka People Hub) was populated with lots of familiar names. It also connected to my home wireless network without issue.

I've sadly been missing out on listening to podcasts since my trip to TechEd (and losing my old phone's bizarre non-standard earphones), so I was pleased to be able to finally resume my regular habit. I've previously made use of the Spokenword feed aggregator, but one downside to using this is that all the podcast files get lumped into what Zune thinks is one single podcast. So I just entered each podcast RSS feed individually. A pity Spokenword doesn't seem to allow me to export my feed collection, but it wasn't too tricky to re-enter them.

So far so good. I'll post an update in a few weeks including how I'm coping on just 100MB/month!

Select your Windows Phone 7 handset with Silverlight PivotViewer

2010-10-22T17:00:00.001+10:30

Windows Phone 7 devices are now available in Australia. I dropped into a Telstra shop yesterday and spent a few minutes playing with their demo model. At some stage I'm hoping I'll be able to actually purchase one of these things for myself! (A definite step up from my super-basic C3050, who's primary reason for purchase was that it could at least play podcasts*).

Of course, the main reason I'd like a Windows Phone 7 is to play Nigel's Word Puzzle game, but there's also the whole "smartphone" thing of email/calendar/podcasts etc. If they can fix the "just show only the default calendar for a single email source" limitation (so that I can retrieve all our Google calendars for our family), then I reckon I'd consider getting Narelle one too, so that I could finally solve my calendar problem.

Anyway, so how to choose from the "vast array" (slight exaggeration!) of new handsets entering the market?

Why not try out a new Pivot Collection I've created that lets you sort and filter by your requirements – just go to https://web.archive.org/web/20120516100942/http://pivot.lobsterpot.com.au/WP7/ and have fun!

Thanks to Rob for kindly hosting this on the LobsterPot Solutions site.

* – And I'm not even doing that right now as I've lost the earphones, and it has a silly non-standard plug so I haven't replaced them yet. Not that I'm saying the loss of earphones alone is justification for getting a new phone!

TechEd Friday

2010-08-27T20:45:00.001+09:30

Back helping out in the Hands on Labs again this morning. A long shift from 8.15am – 1pm.

Somehow I missed getting to DEV424 – "High performance, highly scalable applications on the .NET Framework", but instead I went to VOC208 – "Tech•Ed backstage 2010!". It was interesting to hear the hurdles that were leapt to roll out the networking infrastructure (particularly wireless access and IPv6) at the conference this year.

At lunchtime I managed to see Carl and Richard and their "64-bit question" swag giveaway. Nice to see the guys in person, and put faces to the voices from the podcasts.

Regarding IPv6... Apparently it wasn't particularly easy to roll out, and there's not much on the Internet yet that works with it (eg. not even Windows Update), but on the other hand, they reckon IPv4 addresses are almost all exhausted, so the need for IPv6 to become more widely available is growing.

Good to see Rob made the highlight reel at the closing session! The "locknote" was presented by Miha Kralj. It was another use of fast-paced PowerPoint slides, but again done very effectively. Very thought-provoking.

Rob Farley on Talking Shop Down Under

2010-03-31T13:17:00.001+10:30

LobsterPot Solutions' very own Rob Farley is this week's guest on the Talking Shop Down Under podcast!

Since my last post about podcasts I'm listening to, I've now added the following to my collection:

Talking Shop Down Under – Interviews with Australian developers
The Home Server Show – Latest on Windows Home Server
FranklySpeaking – Microsoft Australia's Andrew Coates and Michael Kordahi
Elegant Code – Quiet since November 2009. One contributor now appears to be involved in PluralCast
Daily Audio Bible – Brian Hardin reads through the entire Bible in one calendar year.

Getting podcasts onto my new phone

2009-11-03T22:49:00.001+10:30

I recently replaced my dead iPod Shuffle with a Samsung C3050 phone (Broken link, was originally au.samsungmobile.com/mobile-phone/GT-C3050-overview) that amongst other things has music playing as a feature. I bought an 8Gb micro-SD card to go in the phone to store podcasts on.

When I unpacked the phone from its packaging, I discovered that this phone uses a slightly annoying custom socket to connect to a PC, headphones or power jack. It also didn't come with a USB cable in the box (so when the box said "supported USB" it didn't mean "easily"). I ended up making my very first e-bay purchase and bought a $10 cable which did the trick.

Now to get podcasts syncing…

I had been using WinAmp with the Shuffle, but I found that its support for a basic USB drive (which is how the phone's SD card appears when connected to the PC) was not perfect. After scrounging the net to find a decent podcatching application. Some of the problems I encountered along the way included MP3 files getting filenames that the C3050 didn't like, MP3 files ending up in the wrong location on the SD card, and some software that just plain didn't like the feed – the "." in ".NET Rocks" seems to be a common cause of that.

I finally found Mediafly. This site offers feed aggregation as well as software for syncing podcasts to various devices.

I'd already started using SpokenWord.org to aggregate my feeds, so I just added my aggregated RSS feed URL - http://rss.spokenword.org/playlist/2940 – to Mediafly. It then started downloading the latest files, and I was able to sync them over to the SD card.

So far it looks like this is working pretty well.

The C3050 is a pretty basic phone (what do you expect for less that $100 from the local Vodafone shop), and the music player has a few annoying quirks – in particular it too easily forgets if it is part-way through playing a track, and there's no way to determine (from the PC) what tracks have already been listened to. But in spite of that it does the job, which is the main thing.

Catching up

2009-09-07T21:42:00.001+09:30

It's been a little while between posts, and there's been a couple of reasons for that..

That back injury has been persisting a lot longer that I'd hoped
My Grandma (Nanna) Jean was hospitalised and then passed away recently

Nanna was 96, and had pretty much been living independently in her house right up until she suffered a massive stroke. She hung on long enough for the family to travel interstate to Geelong Hospital to spend time with her before she died.

I flew over to say goodbye to her (she wasn't able to speak but was alert and had limited movement), and then returned to Geelong a week later to attend the funeral service. Then last week her body was brought back over to Adelaide where she was buried.

My back injury seemed to be healing well initially but a work field trip (spent largely sitting in a car) was not helpful and things seemed to plateau for too long. I've taken to avoiding sitting as much as possible – including standing on the bus to/from work and even standing in some meetings.

Some more "enthusiastic" (aka painful but effective!) treatment from my Chiro and a follow-up remedial massage session seem to be helping. I'm sure my work colleagues would prefer to see me being able to sit down for most of the day rather than doing yoyo impersonations :-)

Ironically my iPod Shuffle appears to have succumbed to the dreaded "flashing LEDs of death" – annoyingly on the flight home from the Geelong funeral service, so all those podcasts will have to wait until I come up with a replacement plan.

And to top it all off, tomorrow I'm heading off to the Microsoft TechEd Conference 2009 at the Gold Coast Convention Centre. I well may be the conference delegate who stands up in the sessions rather than taking a seat.

Oh, and additional congratulations to LobsterPot Solutions, as they are now a Gold Certified Partner. Was it that long ago they were just plain Certified?! I'll be proudly wearing a LobsterPot shirt at TechEd and lending my support to raise the profile of Rob's company.

No doubt I'll be posting more about TechEd in the next few days..

Media Browser for Vista Media Center

2009-08-19T20:54:00.001+09:30

I came across this useful Media Center plugin recently. As well as providing an alternate interface to browse media files it also includes an RSS reader which I've successfully configured to watch some interesting video podcasts:

dnrTV - .NET Rocks TV
10-4 – New features of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0
TED – Talks from the annual Technology, Entertainment, Design conferences
Scrap Time – A Scrapbooking video podcast for Narelle

It is free, and is being actively developed on Google Code.