Of iTunes and Podcasts

So I'm a big fan of iTunes, I hate downloading music illegally and much to the disgust of my friends am more than willing to pay for the privilege. With that out of the way...

I use the iTunes store as a good way of finding new music, the 30-sec sample of every song means you can get a good idea of the music before committing any money to it. The week's tune of the week available to download for free (from the UK store) is Silence in Space by Undertheigloo, very good tune. Either way, imagine how pleased I was when I noticed the brand-spangly new "Just for you" section that makes recommendations based on what you've bought. So I eagerly click-through to find a whole load of recommendations ranging from Bon Jovi to Gwen Steffani - not exactly my sort of stuff. Fortunately it told me what had given them the stupid notion that I may actually like Faithless, apparently it's because I bought the Scissor Sisters!

So anyway I continue to browse through recommendations based on tracks I bought well over a year and have no intention of ever listening to again, and yet I have no way to stop it making recommendations based on it. What's worse is most of the suggestions they do make are things I've already heard - I mean really, I bet almost every single person using iTunes knows if they like Robbie Williams - so why does his album keep turning up?

Anyway moving away from that.

Podcasts, not strictly iTunes but I use it to download them. Currently the No.1 podcast is The Ricky Gervais Show, now I'm not a big fan of Ricky's, The Office just annoyed me beyond belief and any mention of it just brings back memories of the time I had impersonate "the dance" (you know!) to someone who had no idea who he was. But anyway we digress, I subscribed to Ricky's podcast which found it's way to my iPod which found it's way to my jeans before I found my way to the bus.

It was the ultimate test, could I listen to 30 minutes of Ricky Gervais in public without embarrassing myself?

In short, no, I could not. Things began so well, I went probably 10 minutes raising nothing more than a smirk to myself. Then all of a sudden out of nowhere "you go into a toffee shop" - that was it, I was gone. I spontaneously laughed to myself in the middle of a bus. Everyone looked round. I continued to listen without any further embarrassment, until I was walking the final stretch to college. Lots of students around. Great.

This time I pulled my headphones out and pretended to sneeze.