I am easily distracted. Now that I’ve joined the (supposed) productive working world, I find myself distracted by people talking around me. To combat this, I bought some new headphones last night. Ideally, I should have bought some high-tech active noice cancellation headphones, but I’m also vain… I don’t want giant earmuffs. So I bought Sony Fontonia Earbud headphones that go inside your ears. I got the white ones because they were there, NOT because they match the iPod - in fact, I am trading Chris for his black ones.

I really like them. Not only am I reducing the noise from fellow co-workers, the sound seems richer - I’m enjoying the extra bass. I swear I can now tell the differenc ein bit rate in some songs in my collection. Maybe that’s just in my head. Much like ear plugs, I can use them without music to block out some extra ambient noise (and make it look like I’m listening to music). But I am listening to music at a low volume, I want to keep my hearing. :)

Today, I am listening to Pandora. It’s a “music discovery service” for those of us looking for something new. You create a channel by telling it what bands/songs/etc. you like, and based on the “musical genome” of that info, it finds other things you may like. It’s streaming, so the quality is decent but not beautiful (I’m okay with that). You can pause, but can’t go back to a previous song. So far it’s selection has been fairly kind to me, but you can give “thumbs down” to the things you don’t like (and “thumbs up” to those you do). After feeding it some of my favourite artists like Dave Matthews, Sarah Harmer, Josh Ritter and Sarah McLachlan, it’s given me some gems like Ben Harper and Colin Hay, and a lot of live stuff from various artists (apparently it has decided I really like acoustic music, which I do). I’d suggest you check it out!