Podfade (fading out and fading in)

I’m a bit sad that a bunch of my favourite podcasts have gone off the air recently:

* [CBC’s Search Engine](http://www.cbc.ca/searchengine/) announced they wouldn’t be renewed for a second season. Jesse’s still going to be posting new stuff come September, but the sophisticated news magazine about the interaction of the Internet and society is gone.
* On [Have Games Will Travel](http://www.havegameswilltravel.net/), Paul Tevis said that after his eleventy-first episode, he was going off to Rivendell to live with the elves stopping the show. He’ll still be posting an occasional audio diary thing, and he’s still on [The Voice of the Revolution](http://www.thevoiceoftherevolution.com/), but I’ll miss HGWT. Not that he’d been posting a whole lot, but his last few shows were actually really good.
* And [LugRadio](http://www.lugradio.org/) just announced they’re breaking up the band after their upcoming LugRadio Live UK show. I’d only started listening to them around Christmas, looking for a Linux lifestyle show kind of like [MacBreak Weekly](http://twit.tv/mbw), but for free software (and without all the iPhone bullshit). They were fun, and I’m sad they’re gonna be gone.

Also, while they’re not ending, [Fear the Boot](http://www.feartheboot.com/) lost Luke, who was my favourite host. They’re changing things up quite a bit too, but I don’t begrudge them that.

So I’ve been adding some new feeds to fill the void. Some I added a while ago, but I’m on the lookout for new shows to fill similar niches. There are a few that look promising:

* [The Ubuntu UK Podcast](http://podcast.ubuntu-uk.org/) doesn’t have the same sort of fun chemistry that LugRadio had, but I like the Ubuntu focus and they’ve got some fabulous interviews already. I’m trying other Linux podcasts, but a lot of them (I’m thinking specifically about the [Linux Action Show](http://www.linuxactionshow.com/) here) are way too influenced by American talk radio and are incredibly obnoxious.
* [Master Plan](http://masterplanpodcast.net/) is kind of interesting. I picked it up because Ryan Macklin did [Have Master Will Plan](http://havegameswilltravel.net/index.php?post_id=332719) with Paul Tevis a few months ago. I don’t have any aspirations towards game design, but he does have some neat discussions and interviews about how to make role playing work, so that’s much appreciated.
* [Writing Excuses](http://www.writingexcuses.com/) is a great, 15 minute weekly podcast about writing. I picked it up after seeing Howard Taylor at Ad Astra. It’s fun, funny, thought-provoking and makes me want to write more. You can’t really ask for more than that from a writing podcast.
* I’m trying out a few of CBC’s short summer series, including [Between You and Me](http://www.cbc.ca/radiosummer/betweenyouandme/) and [Diet for a Hungry Planet](http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/hungryplanet2.html) (I ♥ Michael Pollan). [Spark](http://www.cbc.ca/spark/), which is off for the summer, but will return next season, is much more of a technology lifestyle show, compared to Search Engine’s technology analysis, but it has occasional interviews with [Merlin Mann](http://43folders.com/), who is awesome.