I’ve been thinking about getting involved in podcasting for a while now. So when I saw a favourite blogger of mine asking for contributors to a new podcast he was setting up, I thought it was the ideal opportunity to dip my toe in the water.

The podcast is the idea of James O’Malley, a fine chap with a jolly good blog. His thinking is to have a number of contributors chipping in to a weekly podcast which will be around 15–20 minutes long. The podcast will be along the lefty / liberal / atheist / skeptical / rationalist lines. Read James O’Malley’s explanation for more.

What was missing was a name for the podcast. A bit difficult to come up with a name for something that only exists in your brain. But with the vague template in mind, I set to work, along with the other contributors, to think of a suitable name.

Suddenly, it came to me. After I had been lying in bed literally unable to sleep for hours, it suddenly came to me: The Pod Delusion. Yes, I know. I’m a genius. Not quite a living legend like James O’Malley though. Nonetheless, the fact that I came up with the excellent name means that The Pod Delusion is definitely my podcast. The fact that I put no effort whatsoever into creating it, producing it or commissioning pieces for it is frankly neither here nor there.

Anyway, I am quite excited about The Pod Delusion. With the stellar line-up of contributors, it seems like it’s going to be ace. If everything goes to plan and this week’s pilot goes down well, you can expect a new episode every Friday. My plan is to publish all transcripts of my contributions, or an accompanying article, on this website as and when each podcast is published.

Here is the first episode of The Pod Delusion. I have just listened to it myself. Since it’s the first ever attempt, it is a tad ramshackular, but that will get better over time. All-in-all, I think it’s a fine listen.

Hopefully sometime soon it will be available over iTunes too. You can follow @poddelusion on Twitter.

My first little piece for The Pod Delusion is about product placement. When I first set about doing it, my intention was to try and make it serious. I had actually been planning to write here about the product placement hoo-ha, but then decided I could kill two birds with one stone by making it my Pod Delusion contribution too.

Unfortunately, I got a little bit carried away with the fact that I was working in an exciting new audio medium. I inserted a few audio jokes which won’t work in writing. From then on, the whole thing became just a collection of bad jokes about product placement, strung together by the flimsiest of wafer-thin serious points.

So, bearing that in mind, here is my contribution to this week’s Pod Delusion.

It was announced last week by Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw that product placement will soon be allowed on commercial channels. I suppose there was an inevitability in this. After all, commercial broadcasters finding it harder to sustain themselves through traditional advertising in a multichannel world. Plus, we are living in an era where so many people use PVRs to fast-forward through the adverts anyway.

There has to be some way to fund commercial television. After all, what would we do without ITV? Okay, that’s a bad example. But what would we do without Channel Five? Well okay, but you get my point.

Many worry about the effects that product placement will have on the viewing experience. With product placement, there will be a question mark over the purity of the programmes we watch. Will our programmes be peppered with subliminal advertising that attempt to brainwash us into changing the brand of soap powder that we use?

I’m not so sure that will be such an issue. After all, we are well used to product placements in major films. Television programmes from other countries are filled with product placements already. I am sure that most people are savvy enough to tell what’s going on.

For instance, it can be disconcerting to watch an episode on Neighbours when one of the characters decides to open the fridge. Inexplicably, the fridge is filled from wall to wall with nothing but cans of Sprite! That is obviously a nonsensical scenario. It would have been far more realistic if the fridge was filled from wall to wall with cans of tasty Dr Pepper — “what’s the worst that can happen?”

The odd thing about imported programmes is that due to the stricter laws in the UK, our broadcasters have to blur such product placements out. But this only brings attention to the fact that there is an alien blob floating around on the screen.

Focusing on the blobs on American Idol, for instance, you can clearly see that the judges have large cups on their desk. These cups are predominantly red but with a distinctive white swirl that can only be associated with Coke. Mmm… fresh, ice cold Coke.

The new product placement rules do not affect the BBC. But it would be interesting to consider what it might be like if one day the rules were relaxed for the BBC too. After all, is there anything more ridiculous than the slightly awkward attempts to avoid using brand names during makes on Blue Peter? Referring to “sticky back plastic” may be quaint and traditional, but it is also distracting and sets off a klaxon in your brain that sounds something like: “SELLOTAPE! SELLOTAPE!”

I once saw a Blue Peter make where you had to use a “crisp tube”. What on earth is a crisp tube? Crisps come in packets don’t they? What they were talking about was a pack of Pringles. Given that Pringles are the only make of crisps to be sold in that style of tub, you can more or less guarantee that sales of Pringles went through the roof anyway — all because of the BBC’s massive abuse of power.

Well I think I have said all there is to say about product placement. I think what I will do now is take off my Specsavers glasses and shut down my Asus Eee PC. Then I think I will listen to my Apple iPod, while eating a fresh sandwich from Subway.

Or perhaps I will just go for a piss in my Armitage Shanks toilet.

I like to think that it is a function of my age rather than my popularity that I got only one birthday present this year! If I stretch the concept a bit, it was announced on my birthday that Formula 1 coverage was moving back to the BBC. But not even I am egotistical enough to believe that Bernie Ecclestone would arrange such things for my birthday.

Anyway, the present I got was from my brother. He got the hints I dropped (before Christmas, mind you) and bought me an AeroPress coffee and espresso maker. (Apparently he almost bought me a Stylophone, which would have been even cooler.)

I first heard of it on Boing Boing TV.

As much as anything else, I thought the mechanism was just ingenious. It would be great enough as a toy. The amazing thing, though, is that the reviews are right — it makes a great cup of coffee. It has a very smooth taste — probably the best coffee I’ve been able to make at home.

I normally use one of these mugs that act as their own little cafetière. This is an improvement over instant, but sometimes coffee granules escape through, leading to a mouthful of grit. It can also sometimes taste quite bitter.

The other method I use is an automatic drip-brew coffee maker. The cool thing about this is that it has an alarm timer on it, so if I have an early start I can be really lazy and lie in for five more minutes while the coffee is made for me. The disadvantage is that it doesn’t taste all that great, although it’s difficult to put my finger on what is wrong with it. Also, these things are not labour saving in the slightest in the long run. Preparing them beforehand and cleaning them afterwards is a faff I could really do without.

I am not a coffee geek. I think if I started to research coffee too much I would become like one of those audiophiles who get fleeced into buying expensive snake oil in the fruitless search for perfect audio. Nevertheless, I take note of anything that promises a better coffee, especially if it is gimmicky.

It did take me a couple of goes to get the hang of the AeroPress, but in the end it has turned out to be quite a fuss-free method. The best part is that the clean-up process is so quick and easy it just feels wrong. You just push the plunger all the way out, and out plops the coffee in one clean ‘puck’. You just need to give the bottom of the plunger a little rinse and that’s it, all set for the next time you want to make coffee.

There are a couple of downsides. One is that it needs a filter. The AeroPress comes with 350 filters, but you can re-use them several times. Some have even reported re-using them up to 20 times, which would make the package good enough for 7000 uses. Not bad.

Another thing is that it seems, from my perspective, to use up an awful lot of coffee. The scoop that comes with it is rather large compared to other scoops I have used, yet the coffee that is produced still tastes about the right strength (once the espresso produced is diluted to make an Americano).

I imagine if I used the AeroPress more than my other methods of making coffee, I would soon find myself spending a lot more money on coffee. On the other hand, the taste is worth it. Maybe it would be best for me to use it as a kind of luxury, like having an occasional glass of wine or something. Sundays, special occasions, tough days and so on. It also looks like it would be excellent if you are travelling.

If you like coffee, I’d definitely give the AeroPress a shot. It only costs around £25.

I have never really got into student life. Despite the fact that I hate summer, I love the holiday aspect of it. This is not because I am a lazy bum, because in my opinion I have actually been quite busy this summer. And the busiest bit (two weeks in Cumbernauld) was the bit I enjoyed the most.

Ever since I started at university I have noticed a pattern. The first Christmas after starting university felt amazing. I couldn’t work out why, but I just went along with it. After all, you oughtn’t worry about feeling good. Then, between Christmas and New Year it hit me again: I realised that I would have to go back to university in a couple of weeks.

Since then, every university holiday has felt the same. It’s not just having time off. Like I said, I am just as busy when I am away from university, just doing different stuff. But just not having to be there is such a weight off my mind. I must really hate university.

At this time of year a lot of people ask me if I’m looking forward to going back to university. The answer, “Actually, I’m dreading it,” is mostly met with confusion. It’s a bit like the “how are you” conversations. You’re not actually allowed to say what you actually feel about university. Student life is meant to be amazing — the best years of your life. I have spent them depressively gazing at my feet.

Student life is way overrated if you ask me. Maybe part of it is down to the fact that I still live at home, so I don’t get to sample much in the way of student life. I don’t get the fun bits. I just get the work. Plus three hours of commuting hell every single day. I don’t get to do all the cool things students do, whatever they are.

But even if I lived in Edinburgh I doubt I would be into it much. Student culture is probably one of the biggest stains on humanity. When it doesn’t involve getting horrendously drunk for the most tenuous of reasons, it seems to be about “ironically” watching Neighbours, “ironically” saying “retrooo” at anything that is vaguely more old-fashioned than an iPod Touch and “ironically” being a total and utter twat.

Plus, for a section of society that is meant to be well-educated and open minded, students are an incredibly reactionary bunch. You meet extremists of all sorts — right- as well as left-wing. I find myself wandering around going, “Where are all the reasonable people?” I can’t remember the last time I heard a student say, “On the one hand… On the other hand.” [Insert obligatory dig at excessive bansturbators People & Planet here.]

All-in-all, it is enough to make me want to “ironically” reach for the nearest gun and “ironically” shoot myself so that I could go to “ironic” hell, because that might be a little bit more pleasant than a university campus.

This year, the dread came a bit earlier than previous years. It came over me like a massive black cloud on a visit to Edinburgh a month or so back. I used to quite like Edinburgh, but now it just reminds me of university dread. On top of all of the usual stuff, I have to contend with a couple of factors that are making me more scared of this year than usual.

First there is the dissertation. Because of my unexpectedly busy summer, I have not done as much preparation over the summer as I would have liked. The deadline is March, but still. I have not come much further forward since April. And next week I have to meet my Director of Studies who is the same person as my Dissertation Supervisor. Meep.

Then there is the fact that I have still not worked out what the hell I am going to do once I have finished university. Given that this is my final year, I had better think of something quickly.

The thing about careers is, you really need to have a good idea of what you want to do from a young age. If you haven’t worked it out by the time you’re about 15, I reckon you are screwed (like me). I used to say to people, “It’s a bit worrying, I don’t know what I’m going to do once I leave education.” Invariably people said, “It doesn’t matter. Nobody really knows what they want to do. You still have plenty of time to think of something.”

This is bullcrap. I found this out the hard way by actually believing it. The thing is, the advice stays like that until you reach the age of about 20. At which point the general advice becomes, “Well you should have decided before then, shouldn’t you!” True, but unhelpful. And then you are stuck with it, all set for a life spent wandering around like a headless chicken.

So given that I have to think up a profession quick-smart, I am going to have to attend every Careers Service event under the sun this year. To have this on top of the dissertation, I have a feeling it’s going to be a pretty tough year.

One of the strangest things on the entire internet (and that really is saying something) is the BBC News feature, Most Popular Now. It can be found in the sidebar of most pages on the BBC News website. I often have a glance at it because often you do find some interesting stories there.

But it is really weird. Sometimes you see stories in there that are literally four or five years old. And it is not as if they are particularly interesting stories either. Okay, so that story about the bloke who was forced to marry a goat (and the goat’s subsequent suffocation on a plastic bag) was quite funny.

But the other day a rather unenlightening (and distinctly not very newsy) article about how to write a CV was right up there in the top five “most emailed”. Why would you email that to someone? To “gently hint” that you think they might be bad at writing CVs?

Today, for seemingly no good reason, this three-year-old story about a link between milk and ovarian cancer is the second most emailed story at the moment.

I realise that it is quite banal to point out the often contradictory nature of scientific studies on the various health effects of food. Red wine makes your heart happy but your liver sad. We all know it, and we are bombarded with so much contradictory information that we really might as well not bother.

You remember that advert that showed a girl guzzling down five litres of cooking oil because that is just what eating crisps is like (if you eat your annual consumption of crisps all in one go)? Almost put me off eating crisps. The next day I visited the dentist. He told me to eat more crisps and less chocolate. Not that I eat much chocolate anyway. I eat about three packets of crisps per day, so it’s a wonder I don’t constantly pee cooking oil.

Anyway, to veer back from that self-indulgent tangent, the point I am trying to make is this. It is slightly funny that the story about milk maybe possibly perhaps causing ovarian cancer was gazumped by a story saying that milk could cut the risk of getting diabetes and heart disease.

Helpfully, the related stories are: Milk in tea ‘blocks health gains’, Drinking milk ‘no risk to heart’ and Milk linked to Parkinson’s risk. So now you know.

So the EU has dropped its plans to invent the metric system, which means that we will be forced to use imperial measurements by those mad Whitehall bureaucrats. Or maybe not, says Nosemonkey, because the plan was not to abolish the imperial “system” once and for all. Oh well.

Evan Davies had a really interesting post on his blog about the possibility of converting from imperial to metric measurements. He notes the benefits of the metric system that we are surely all aware of — mostly that multiples of 10 and 100 are damn convenient.

Imperial, on the other hand, is a right mess. I put the word “system” in scare quotes in the first paragraph because there is no system to it. I had always assumed that a mile had to be a certain number of yards. That would only be sensible, right? Apparently not. It’s just an arbitrary distance.

The benefits of the imperial system? Evan Davies says that it’s partly down to the British being stubborn because metric wasn’t invented here. There are also the obvious costs to converting. An obvious example is the fact that if we were to change from miles to kilometres, every single road sign in the country would have to be changed at tremendous cost. There are other costs like having to get used to the new measurements.

I am a fan of the metric system, just because of its simplicity. And it was also what I was taught at school. But here is the problem. While I spent my whole time at school learning all about centimetres, hectares, litres and the like, as soon as I walked out of the school grounds everyone was talking to me about inches, pints and miles.

The end result is that I have a bit of a mish-mash of knowledge on vital measurements. I’ve never really taken inches on board, and I find that this is a particular problem. Because it seems as though everybody uses inches rather than centimetres — even people who went to school at the same time as me.

Moreover, whenever I mention centimetres or metres at work, I feel as though I might be judged for that. Under their breath, people might be saying I’m a cheese eating surrender monkey or similar, or they might think to themselves, “bloody youth of today”. The whole situation is like having a conversation where one person is speaking English and the other is speaking French (I guess that would be me, which is amusing because my foreign language skills are non-existent).

And for all of the merits of the metric system, what of the humble old British pint? As if pubs weren’t bad enough for social awkwardness, no doubt having a half litre would be too girly, while ordering a litre of Stella would make you an über wife beater or binge drinker. (Mind you, how often do you go to the pub and have only one pint?)

Evan Davies suggests that there should be a major study investigating the costs and benefits of moving to metric. But I suspect we all know what the answer is. Stick with what you know, because that’s what everyone uses. Economics textbooks look at the QWERTY keyboard layout as an example of these network effects, but people are probably more aware of VHS versus Betamax.

At the end of the day, this is about social conventions. Conventions don’t change overnight, and certainly not at the whim of governments. They have taken the whole of history to evolve to where they are today, and it is probably easiest to stick with the way things are — even if we suspect that moving to metric would be better. If only something would happen to make everyone wake up tomorrow morning and start using metric, we would all be better off.

It’s probably quite well known that QWERTY (man that’s an awkward word to type) keyboards, despite being the standard, are bloody terrible. Designed back in the days of typewriters, the QWERTY layout is said to have been designed to slow down typing to avoid the little arms clashing with each other. But look in front of you. No little arms; just a bunch of buttons in a silly order.

Part of me is tempted to just bite the bullet and switch to the Dvorak layout, which some say is more efficient. But of course I couldn’t do that. I would have to re-learn the keyboard layout when I’ve been using QWERTY all my life. I would keep all of the habits that I have developed while learning QWERTY. And perhaps most worryingly of all, if I had to use a public (or anyone else’s) computer I would have to use QWERTY anyway — which means using two systems in tandem.

Everyone is in the same quandary, but we all stick with QWERTY because we wouldn’t be able to shake off all the issues that would arise from switching. Likewise, imagine if some time in the 1980s the government said, “right, enough of these inferior VHS machines — you’re all using Betamax from now on.”

The same goes with metric. Even though most suspect a metric world would make more sense, we would all still measure short distances in inches and order drinks in pints.

Update: The Hard Sell…: Penny for your martyrs.

I also feel like pointing out right now that I have no idea what an ounce is, nor can I imagine what any value of Fahrenheit feels like.