The influence of my younger colleagues is starting to affect me.

For years, I’ve looked at my home computer, and now my Smartphone, as sources of information. I go on the website of my hometown paper, read through several college football websites for updates on SEC football, and read certain sections of papers like the Washington Post and several journalism magazines online.

But over the past few months of hearing about different websites for music and videos, I’ve become adventurous, spending more time exploring the Internet looking at different programs to entertain me in my leisure moments as I relax at home and when I get bored reading the news and sports websites bookmarked on my laptop at home.

My searches have revealed several discoveries, some very good, and some, well, good manners and a sense of decency and embarrassment prohibit me from discussing. But I made two wonderful discoveries: Pandora, a music service and YouTube, a website I’ve been familiar with for years, but has only recently become a new resource for some of my favorite programs from years gone by.

Pandora provides music for my ears. For sometime, I’ve been trying to find a source on the net that could offer the music genres I enjoy, like Big Band, classical — primarily Tchaikovsky — Rock, Cajun and Zydeco, soft jazz and Frank Sinatra (I’m a Sinatra fan. One of my greatest tragedies from Katrina was the loss a four-CD set of Sinatra recordings beginning when he was with Tommy Dorsey.)

I enjoy the ability to pick my music and set up channels that allowed me to choose a music format and listen to it. I also like the fact that I can reach my Pandora app with just a few taps on my Smartphone.

My rediscovery of YouTube has done more to make my down time at home more enjoyable. I can play videos of old Monty Python skits, pull up music and comedy routines from years gone by.

YouTube has provided me another blessing. I can now watch the BBC’s serialized versions of two of my favorite John LeCarre’ spy novels, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” and “Smiley’s People” in full whenever I wish.

It also allows me access to my favorite detective series, the BBC’s “Inspector Morse,” giving me another source for my “Morse addiction” besides the Warren Count Library, where I’ve exhausted its cache of Morse episodes. I’ve also been able to find movies I haven’t see in sometime. So when my wife or daughter, or both, are watching something on the tube I’m not interested in, I retreat to the bedroom and watch Morse and his sidekick, Sgt. Lewis solve a crime or call up an old black and white war movie I haven’t seen in a while. More recently, I’ve added Turner Classic Movies to my online repertoire.

I still don’t have the interest some of my younger co-workers have in social media, and that, I believe will never change. But I do owe them a thanks for increasing my Internet interests through osmosis.

And I’m glad I did a little exploring. This old bengal tiger is still young enough to learn a little something new.