Overheard at boat drill yesterday morning (a nice looking Australian blond to her friend): “The first thing I do after I get up, before coffee, before even showering, is get my iPod. I have to have my music.”

Everyone on the ship, it seems, has an iPod these days. Except me. So far, anyway. That may be about to change.

I do not understand people who “have to have my music”. But they probably don't understand me, either. I have to have my talk. The only .mp3s I brought with me are interviews with various people concerning Delmart Vreeland, a man-in-black type probably known to lbpas contributor Moresby, who occupied a jail cell in Toronto for awhile (Vreeland occupied the cell in Toronto, that is. Moresby's was in Florida). It's a long and unlikely story.

Other than that I still tune in my listening material on a trusty short-wave radio. When everyone else was out buying iPods, I was combing the streets of St Maarten looking for a good price on a shortwave radio to replace an inferior model I picked up a couple of years ago because it looked cool (manufactured in China for Grundig, but designed by the Porsche group).

For anyone interested, the radio I bought in St Maarten is the best SW receiver I have ever had (and I've had several). It's a Sony ICF-SW7600GR. It has several features, including a 'line out' in addition to the headphone out, and lower- and upper-sideband sync useful for eliminating interference from adjacent signals. This is in addition to SSB and a phantom powered external antenna jack for connecting an active antenna. It also has an antenna attenuation control to reduce sensitivity for quicker frequency scanning. In Canada this radio sells for $325, but I got it for $175 (US) in St Maarten. A good price, I figger.

When I tune in RCI (Radio Canada International) on this radio Michael Enright comes through loud and clear. Unfortunately.

I like shortwave because it is essentially talk radio. There's very little music (that stuff I don't have to have...) and what music there is is often interesting. And there's some crazy stuff out there I find entertaining. For example, FreedomRadioUSA can be good listening (check www.freedomradio.us for more info and a schedule of times and frequencies). It's sort of evangelical-Christian conspiracy-theory radio.

You can almost always find English language broadcasting and interesting programing on the venerable old stations such as VOA (Voice of America), American Armed Forces Network, BBC, Radio Nederland, and Deutche Welle. And if you like listening to fire-and-brimstone preachers, there's no shortage of them on SW.

Although RCI has cut back its programming due toi budget cuts, and there was talk of shutting it down as a waste of taxpayers' money, it still provides a valuable service, and I don't think SW is going to disappear soon. It will still be here when the digital superstructure implodes one of these days.

And speaking of digital, I've been checking out some of the new digital radio services coming online, like Sirius. These services provide a couple of hundred stations via satellite. But they charge a subscription fee, similar to satellite television, and I don't know if coverage extends into the Caribbean. I'm not really interested in subscription services anyway. I like to pick and choose, and you can't with these services. Also, you're still locked to programming schedules, which I'd like not to be.

I had bought a cheap, headphones-only DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) receiver from Radio Shack when I was back in Canada last summer, because several stations broadcast DAB, including CBC. But I found that it was very difficult to pick up a signal at my house in Oakville. It would NOT work indoors at all, and even outdoors it was spotty. I took it back.

Re-enter the iPod.

The popularity of the iPod and similar devices has created a new demand pool for audio, and not just music. Podcasting, as I think it will be called, is the automated distribution of audio programing for listening offline, or on-demand, using your trusty mobile audio device.

Now, you don't need an iPod to listen to podcasts. You can listen on your desktop computer, or your laptop. But an iPod is a mighty convenient device for this, and the advent of podcasting may just encourage me to buy one. Depending on what sort of podcasting will be available, of course.

This would be perfect for me on the ship, where I have access to broadband services for downloading only a few times a week. When I'm ashore and connected I could load up on programing and listen to it at my leisure onboard. Lie in the sun up on deck 5 with my iPod. Perfect!

The other thing this opens up is the ability to create your own programing for podcast, which is essentially cost-free. At least it's a lot cheaper than setting up a shortwave transmitter, and a lot easier than trying to syndicate homemade programs for radio broadcast yourself. I'm thinking about how to further pursue this. Any ideas are welcome.

In my opinion, this could be one of those 'big things' – a paradigm shifter, if you will. Take a look at www.podcast.net for a glimpse of what's to come.

And stay tuned...