Virtualization, Cloud, Infrastructure and all that stuff in-between

Since starting at VMware I find myself driving a lot more on one of the UK’s greatest national landmarks – the M25, it’s such a delight to tourists and locals alike I really encourage you all to check it out (unless you actually want to get anywhere fast of course ) infact if you click here you can check it out on the webcams – particular “highlights” are just before 8.30am and around 5.30pm.

it’s very much a case of this

rather than this

Although there are occasional moments of entertainment…

I can only listen to Radio 1, Capital or Kiss or even Radio 4/LBC for so long before I want to poke pencils in my ears (think I’m getting old) and my CD collection, whilst vast and conveniently encoded onto my iPod in my car offers entertainment for only so long and is tricky to navigate and stay on the road at the same time.

I’ve been a train commuter into central London for a long time rather than a car commuter and I have come to value this time (if not personal space) for reading books/websites and generally educateralizing myself (yes, I made that word up) – this is kind of tricky in the car as reading a book whilst driving is frowned upon, and to be honest my hands are already tied up with my mobile phone, coffee and … (I jest, seriously road safety is important).

So, in an effort to make more use of this “dead” time; I started investigating podcasts.

I discovered Greg Ferro’s Packetpushers (Etherealmind.com) Podcast via his blog and from bumping into him at VMworld, I’ve always known enough to be dangerous with networking stuff but this is really useful as I (and a lot of my colleagues) live in a server/software centric world, it’s so easy to forget that networking is more than just a bit of copper and some IP addresses (although let’s not forget that cuts both ways and both sides are guilty of that!); It’s really useful to get the network-side perspective of the industry at a good from the trenches technical level to expand your knowledge, plus it’s a nice change of pace from day-day work – I’ve been listening to the IPv6 stuff recently and it’s very interesting.

Other good podcasts I regularly listen to (and occasionally participate in) is the VMware communites roundtable podcast; although as Mr Troyer says himself sometimes it’s better experienced live, as the real-time chat that accompanies the dial-in show is quite entertaining.]

Check them out