1. Automatic Backups. The OS has an automatic backup utility built into it called Time Machine and it’s pretty slick. Always protected, all the time.

2. Easy data management. If you pay the mac store reps $89 they’ll migrate all your info over from your old computer to your new one. Once you go mac, you can use the built-in Migration Assistant to move your info from your old mac to the new one with the click of a button.

3. Macs require no maintenance. They don’t get viruses, they don’t require defragmenting, they don’t need security software, and every utility you need is already included in the software. The only thing you’ll need to buy is Microsoft Office. The OS doesn’t come with stupid trial software (called bloatware) and you’ll never have to reinstall your OS. No bluescreen of death, ever. They’re just a hell of a lot more stable and secure in general.

4. All the compatibility issues of yesteryear are no longer issues. Macs can read any PC-formatted drive, they can read any open file format (.doc, .xls, .pdf, anything you can think of). PCs on the other hand, can’t read mac-formatted drives. And if you really really needed to, the new macs are intel based, so you could install windows on your computer as a dual-boot (but really, why would you? OS X is so much better!). The mac store reps call it Boot Camp.

5. These puppies are wicked fast. Scary fast. Snow Leopard, the OS is lightweight and the machines are so locktight. When you buy Apple, you’re buying a brand, yes, but you’re also buying a format. So everything Apple makes is custom built to work with everything else Apple makes. PCs are cobbled together by competing manufacturers and so you get driver problems and hardware incompatibility issues, but because Apple makes every component in their computers, it all works seamlessly inside that little silver case. This means it will all work seamlessly with your iPod too.

6. They last forever. I had a roommate that had her mac laptop STRUCK BY LIGHTNING and it still ran for four years. Mine is going on six years old and it still runs great. It just couldn’t keep up with the demands of HD video playback, a notoriously resource intensive codec and for work, I really need to be able to edit HD in real-time, without waiting around for stuff to render. I’ve converted my old mac into an entertainment system. I got a free OS upgrade, a free battery replacement, and lots of patient genius representatives that spent a good two hours trying to figure out why my USB bus suddenly stopped providing enough power to spin a 7200rpm drive (they fixed it, by the by).

7. Freebies. The Apple summer deal is going on, so if you buy this month or next you’ll get a lot of freebies. A free printer, a free iPod Touch, a rebate on MS Office, they do a lot of summer deals at the apple store and god damn if the iPod Touch isn’t a really fun little machine. Think of all the travel you do!

8. They’re incredibly usable. They’re just fun. They come standard with a lot of really fun features and you can do anything you want right of the bat really easily. You can make movies, download music from iTunes, stream netflix, record your own songs, make photobooks, all sorts of fun stuff. They’re pretty, they work well, and most importantly, they’re easy to use. The biggest thing you’ll have to learn how to deal with is using the command button (the cloverleaf) instead of the ctrl button. Other than that, almost everything else is the same nowadays.

9. Mac developers are awesome. We’re a passionate bunch, and the cocoa development group is incredibly dedicated to creating awesome, well-formed, elegant programmes and solutions. They’re so much out there that’s mac only and near-perfect software. The Panic team has some amazing applications, Daylite changed my life, and everything from Adobe to Skype is just so much prettier on a mac. The devloper base alone is reason to switch.

10. They’re cheaper. No joke. If you put a Sony Vaio, a Gateway, a Dell, and an Alienware PC with the exact same speeds and specs side by side, you’ll find Apple’s version is actually a better value. Sure you can’t get a mac for cheap, but you also can’t get a bad mac. I can find several $400 laptops that, pardon my french, blow chunks and are impossible to use. But even the $700 mac mini, the cheapest mac you can buy, runs like a dream. That’s what I call value.

There’s more too, the amazing possibilities it allows, the premiere software it offers, the de-facto status among creative professionals, but for now, 10 reasons are enough. You fanboys and girls out there, any other important reasons I’m forgetting?

I cleaned up this Christmas, taking home a ridiculously fancy rice maker, you know the kind that has all the bells and whistles: two timers, a computer chip that touts “fuzzy logic”, and, no joke, the ability to bake a cake. It even sings to you when your rice is ready, and I wish I was kidding. Short of mowing the lawn this thing can do everything and anything, including turn the girl that was addicted to pasta into the girl that eats rice with every meal.

I was always fairly hesitant to own a rice maker since I didn’t eat an overwhelming amount of rice, and even when I do it’s usually the boxed flavoured variety. Yet, I eat a lot of vegetables and often scramble to find something else to fill up my plate, something neutral, like a bread or a pasta or a potatoe. Then it dawned on me that perhaps I wasn’t eating much rice because making rice was such a hassle. My pans never heated evenly, so my rice never cooked perfectly, plus it took a hefty 55 minutes to get white rice sufficiently done, an hour and half for brown rice. Maybe, just maybe, if I didn’t have to maintain constant vigilance over a bubbling batch of rice, then perhaps I might eat more of it.

Dead on. I absolutely love rice in a way I never thought was possible, all because of a fancy machine. I have the timer set so my rice is ready when I walk through the door (and still kept toasty if I’m even hours late), and it takes me about ten minutes to saute up some veggies or heat up some leftovers (Korean-style soup is my current favourite). Some nights I’ll throw in some lentils, vegetable stock, and onions, set the menu to “mixed rice” and go to the gym. When I’m stretched and showered, I’ve a hot meal at the ready, no prep involved. It really is a modern wonder.

Let’s talk about congee (okayu or juk) for a second. The porridge setting. Experimenting with this setting has led me to a world of breakfast foods I didn’t even know I was missing. A bowl of rice porridge is like a blank canvas just waiting for whatever you want to add — miso and green onion for a savoury start to your day, dried cranberries and apricots with cashews and a drizzle of honey for a sweeter tooth, a few bits of cheese and fresh tomatoe make for good lunch, while coconut milk and pistachios or mango is a belly-warming dessert. Not into the rice part? You can also make steel-cut oatmeal with maple, oats in cream of asparagus soup with cracked black pepper, or even non-instant grits for my comrades in the south. It’s been an easy, cost-effective, super filling and very versatile option for me this winter. I’d highly recommend giving this setting a try.

I liken the rice maker to a fancy coffee maker. You can always drip coffee the old-fashioned way, and sure a $20 contraption will do the trick for your morning brew, but if you’re making coffee every day, why not invest in a nicer model, one that say, grinds the beans for you, or has a timer so your coffee is ready ten minutes after your alarm goes off? Why not have something that can brew espresso too if you’re in the mood for a double dose of caffeine? It’s the same with rice. Sure you can make it on a stovetop just fine, but you can also just press a button instead and have it be not only ready, but perfectly cooked every time. Curry taking a bit longer than expected to reduce? Your rice maker probably has a “keep warm” function that makes sure the rice is still nice and hot without overcooking it into a hard mass of starch. It’s brilliant, really. If you’ve been in debate over whether the micom/micro computer makers were worth the money, take it from me, they’re worth every penny.

There’s air travel and then there’s budget air travel, and if you live in the US, flying any distance is pretty easy to dread. Some of our domestic airline carriers leave you grounded on the tarmac for hours at a time, while others consistently delay flights, and still more are constantly overbooked. There’s nothing enjoyable about spending four hours in a cramped airliner seat, especially after you’ve had to pay your checked baggage fee, buy your own lunch, and purchase headset if you don’t want to accidentally cause bodily harm to the small child squirming in the seat directly behind you. Suffice to say, it’s not a pretty picture.

But in a world where nearly every carrier I can think of is committing more customer service sins then I ever knew even existed, there is a glimmer of hope, and that small ray of light isn’t gold, it’s purple. That’s right, it’s the in-cabin lighting of Virgin America’s ultra-posh Airbuses. Now, before I spend an entire article gushing about how Virgin America is doing things right, you need to know I am not taking handouts from Virgin. No one is paying me to write such wonderful things about the airline, and while at first it may seem like I must work for Virgin on commission, by the time you read through all the reasons why Virgin America is worth your pennies, you just might find yourself becoming a disciple. Your path to seeing the purple light begins with just that, Virgin America’s mood lighting.

Mood lighting in the main cabin, licensed by http://www.flickr.com/photos/crucially under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Like a well-engineered ride at Disneyworld, or a particularly trendy lounge, Virgin America has some pretty funky atmospheric elements. From the moment you check in at those ultra-fast kiosks to the moment you board past those blaringly white gates, greeted by Euro-coat toting stewards with spiky hair, it’s pretty easy to pick Richard Branson’s newest airline endeavour from the crowd. The plane’s ambiance is the best example of the company’s attention to detail, as the cabin lights go from discoteque pink to a cool purple, a change which is intended to be less harsh lighting that mimics the time of day, creating a more restful flight experience. And you just thought they were cool.

It’s the little touches such as daylight-timed lighting and the half-size boarding passes that provide an entirely different user experience than the average airline carrier does. In fact, the entire flight is filled with brilliant design left and right. For example, the headphone jacks usually found on airlines are of the two-prong variety, while on Virgin America they’re the standard, single 1/8″ jacks that allow you to use your own headphones. Imagine that, making headphone jacks compatible with headphones! Every seat on Virgin America, even in coach has standard-outlet electrical plugs, so you don’t have to ration your ipod battery anymore. Even better, every Virgin American flight now offers free in-flight wi-fi, so you can actually get something done next time you pull out and power up your portable computer. How much extra do all these little bits and bobs cost? Nothing. It’s included in every Virgin America flight. It’s like they actually care about their customers needs, and instead of cutting corners or trying to capitalise on uncomfortable two-prong headsets, have decided to accommodate the needs of the frequent flyer. What a concept.

Seat on Virgin America, licensed by http://www.flickr.com/photos/binderdonedat under CC BY-ND 2.0

I’m just getting started, too. Let’s talk about in-flight service. All the liquids you’d normally get for free on any other domestic carrier are the same — beer, wine and spirits for sale, and all the juices, pops, and hot teas and coffees you can drink are still gratis — but it’s not really the selection that’s so great. You order your drinks from your seat, saving you the frustration of A) having to wait for the drink cart to reach you in seat 26, B) not being able to return to your seat because of the damn drink cart, C) drinking when you are not thirsty because you only get one shot at hydration, D) only getting one drink. It’s a great system, and I imagine it saves the flight attendants because it spreads the drink requests out to a more manageable stream. The other great part about your in-flight services is that they don’t necessitate an endless stream of loudspeaker announcements. Virgin America flights go through the basic and required announcements, but they don’t pester you with duty-free shopping options, a list of things you can buy, or news about how to earn double points with the Elevate flyer programme. They’re quiet. They let you get on with your book, or your movie, or your nap, or your internet browsing, or your whatever. I swear they actually want to make your flight experience better or something.

That brings me to the food. I knew I loved Virgin America when I looked at the food menu and saw the words “extra crackers” in the description for the cheese and fruit plate, as if to indicate that instead of getting a one gram cube of cheese with a single cracker, you were going to be given multiple cheeses and more than enough crackers with which to gobble up the goodies. Virgin America was true to its word, for I received a serious wedge of Camembert, four slices of soft Swiss, two thick cut pieces of yellow Cheddar, and a hunk of Gouda, plus half a dozen Mozzarella balls with cherry tomatoes, red grapes, and a marinated artichoke. A serious cheese plate for $8. Moreover, I was excited that there even was a cheese plate. As a vegetarian, I often find that if I want to eat on a cross country flight, I have to bring my own lunch, which can get pretty tricky if you’re going through security somewhere like DC, where even dried apricots can appear suspect. Every Virgin America flight I have taken had a vegetarian option, and a pretty good one at that. I’ve eaten awesome caprese sandwiches and even seen the cold soba noodle salad with panna cotta and marinated shitake. There are thai beef wraps and arugula and goat’s cheese salads, and no shortage of fancy nutmixes if that’s your thing. Of course all of these are for sale, but aside from Continental, I haven’t been fed for free on a flight (in coach) since I wasn’t old enough to make my own plane reservations. Being able to pay via credit card, email your receipt, or even buy food you actually want to eat is one gigantic perk.

Vegetarian in-flight lunch, licensed by http://www.flickr.com/photos/santos under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The only bit we haven’t covered is the Red, Virgin America’s personal entertainment system, which beats the pants off of Jet Blue’s because not only can you order food, drinks, and snacks, watch live satellite television, and listen to music, but you can rent from a large variety of movies, instant message your mate eight rows up, and challenge another passenger to a multiplayer video game, like Doom. Most of it’s free, and all of it’s pretty comprehensive, making your flight much more enjoyable than staring at the seat head of you for six hours. And that’s another reason Virgin America earns some sizable brownie points: all their flights are nonstop, so when you fly to SFO from JFK it takes you 6 hours instead of 12, and with a 3-hour time change and a business meeting hours later, timed saved is everything.

Now, to any pioneering American, it would seem that so many amenities would come with a fairly hefty price tag, but it’s all included. Yes, you get the extra legroom, the electrical sockets, the normal headphone jack, the tetris and TLC, the peace and quiet, the gourmet meals, the funny safety video, and the mood lighting all for the price of a normal ticket. In fact, Virgin America is consistently and significantly cheaper than most airlines for the flights it does offer. For example, the average flight from IAD to LAX costs about $275 on a good day, usually has one stop, and is, well, not nearly as fun to fly. The Virgin America flight between IAD and LAX (which I have flown many times) is $205 on a good day, while many of their other legs, especially those out of San Francisco, can get ridiculously cheap. Their last holiday sale had flights between SFO and JFK as low as $39 each way. That’s all kinds of crazy competitive. The only downside is that Virgin America doesn’t fly everywhere. It’s picked some major cities and flies between them more or less exclusively: Los Angeles, Orange County, San Francisco, Seattle, Las Vegas, Boston, New York, Washington DC, and hopefully more to come (Philadelphia, Houston, and Chicago would be nice). If you’re like me and would rather be stuck on a United flight to Honolulu than take a propeller plane to Wyoming, then Virgin America is the carrier for you, but even if you don’t dig their ports of call, Virgin America is still doing quite a few things right.

Almost everyone who’s heard of polyphasic sleep thinks it’s both brilliant and insane. Well, in a nutshell, the idea is to sleep less, be awake more, and still get the same amount of actual rest (the REM sleep phase) as you would on an 8-hour, monophasic sleep cycle. Sounds ideal, right? That’s the sane part.  The crazy bit is your actual sleep schedule, the most famous of which involves sleeping for 20 minutes every 4 hours.  That equals 2 hours of down time out of every 24, and you’re still supposed to function like a normal human being for the 30 extra hours of wake time you’ve added to your week? With an execution that seems too dangerous to attempt and a payoff that sounds too good to be true, it’s no wonder polyphasic nappers appear to be totally off their rockers.

While there is precedent for polyphasic sleeping, most famously Leonardo DaVinci and Benjamin Franklin, there isn’t much of it.  The most extensive sources come from internet blogs and forums (a red flag if ever), and almost no research has been done on the long-term eaffects of polyphasic sleeping, mostly because not a lot of people actually DO polyphasic sleep in the long-term.  It’s difficult, it goes against what everyone else is doing, and it’s a huge adjustment to effectively double your waking hours so suddenly.  There’s also concern that there’s something about the 8-hour sleep process polyphasic sleepers will be missing that could ultimately hurt the body (sort of like how vegans and vegetarians have more health concerns because they don’t consume 7 essential amino acids that come from meat and meat by-products), just as easily as internal chemistry could be thrown by how so much waking darkness affects our circadian rhythms. But, as Steve Pavlina (another successful polyphasic sleeper) claims, the hardest part of any change is usually because your surroundings don’t support it. Yeah the world isn’t polyphasic, and that’ll always be the biggest deterrent. Of course, it doesn’t help that true polyphasic sleep is also really difficult to adapt to.  It requires an allegedly hellish few days of sleep deprivation before your body can fall neatly into the schedule, it mandates a huge psychological shift from having a quantifiable marker of days to now experiencing an endless flow of more or less uninterrupted hours, and it takes a certain type of personality to enjoy all the extra time, which is spent alone while the rest of the world is sleeping, let’s not forget. Polyphasic sleep, especially the 2-hours total model, is also really inconvenient.  The nap times are frequent and often inflexible, and most 9-5 jobs don’t allow for constant nap breaks, making it an extremely high-maintainence schedule.  If you’re in a mall, or a class, or a meeting, nipping out because you need to take a nap is some combination of both inconvenient and embarassing, not to mention oft impossible.

So why would anyone in their right mind do this? Polyphasic sleep has some pretty hefty benefits.  First of all, you gain six hours a day you are now spending NOT in bed while still feeling like you did.  In fact, the overhwelming majority of polyphasic sleepers feel BETTER — better rested, more awake and alert, with faster reflex times and more consistant moods — than they did as monophasic sleepers.  And if feeling superhero awesome and creating extra leisure time like a magician wasn’t enough, there are a bunch of other side perks to the process.  You become a lucid dreamer, and your dreams are more vivid and way easier to remember.  It’s easier to stay fit because your body’s in “I’m doing things!” metabolism more or less 24/7.  You will from then on be able to fall asleep anywhere with ridiculous ease.  And if you have any problems or anxieties about sleeping (e.g., insomnia, night terrors, restless leg syndrome, sleep apnea, and so forth), polyphasic sleep is said to cure all of them in one fell swoop. Well, I’ve done it, rather successfully if I do say so myself, and while I can attest to these perks, there’re quite a few amazing benefits beyond the obvious, five of which in particular are urging me to continue on the polyphasic path indefinitely:

If you think about it for a bit, monophasic sleep — sleeping in one single block daily — is a totally constructed modus operandi.  Yes, the majority of people in civilised society all go to their full night of rest once the sun goes down, but not everyone folows suit.  In fact, many indigenous groups believe humans are supposed to sleep in four-hour blocks twice a day, while scientists calculated the human internal clock’s ideal run-time is 31 hours to a day, not 24. We’ve all had sick days or aeroplane flights where we dozed in an out naturally.  Perhaps the best example of how polyphasic sleeping can work and can be a more natural schedule is infants.  Babies don’t sleep through the night, but instead have to take constant and semi-breif naps every few hours. Like a polyphasic sleeper.  And as a parent of a newborn, what are you advised to do? Sleep when the baby sleeps.  The idea of departing from the norm stems from our ability to toss and turn all night and not feel rested when you wake. Why is this? Because the essential part of sleeping, the bit where all the vital processes, dreams, and actual restoration occurs is in the REM cycle, or the fourth phase of sleep.  Normally, when you sleep for eight hours, you still only get a small amount of REM sleep, about only 1.5 or so hours.  With polyphasic sleep, you are teaching your body to get really good at going straight into REM sleep, so you’re actually getting the same amount if not more, without all that tedious mucking about in the theta phase. Furthermore, your body is self-regulating, so once it goes into REM overdrive, it eventually cycles back through all the phases of sleep again, depending on what your body needs at the time.  Essentially, polyphasic sleep is just a method to make sleep more efficient.

I don’t suggest polyphasic sleep for everyone, but if I haven’t scared you off with all the sciency mumbo jumbo and you’re still intrigued, than I’d urge to check it out. It’s fit my temperament and my personality so well that my quality of life has greatly improved since adapting to the schedule. You can read more about how I did it, and find some helpful resources about polyphasic sleep here.

A monumentally awesome blend of form and function, Uniqlo ranks high among my favourite companies in the world — panic, kudal, kiva, apple, and virgin among them — for hitting the target dead on, for innovative tactics and marketing, and for blending art and consumerism (at reasonable prices!) more seamlessly than anyone else has been able to.

Ambiguously international, Uniqlo is a Japanese clothing/culture company that makes outrageous basics in stock colours with occasional graphic tees thrown in. Think American Apparel meets Gap, but in more stylish cuts and with less suggestive advertising. With just a smattering of stores in Tokyo, Paris, New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London, Uniqulo garb can seem a little too bougie for the average hipster to finagle. Yet one step inside a Uniqlo retail spot will erase that assumption faster than scrubbing bubbles. Uniqlo is gloriously affordable, unabashedly trendy, and wonderfully unique. After all, the name is a slurring of unique + clothing. (Check out their introduction to see what I mean)

Surprisingly, it was not in Japan where I encountered the glory that is Uniqlo, but stateside several years ago that I came across the Uniqlock, an amazing mix of contemporary dance, good-old Fantastic Plastic Machine music, graphic and forward-thinking design, and advertising that absolutely worked. I spent the next several hours looking through the extensive catalogue and debating online purchases. It’s a clock, that changes music and colour to showcase their latest products, thusly changing every season or so…you’ll just have to see it for your self.

That was the moment I fell in love with Uniqlo, primarily for their design. It’s not just the Uniqlock, or the amazing music compilations, or the supreme scarf selection, but the Fashion Map, which is like a study in Japanese street culture, and the Jump project that illustrated just how awesome the staff is, and the types of artists the company attracts. It’s the clean style, the bold fonts, the sheer volume of outside-the-box projects pursued in the name of clothing that makes me go all gaga over something so seemingly out of character.

And we haven’t even started talking about the clothes. I’m a hard bill to fit; I like simple, fitted items that are modern, bold, and international. But fashion isn’t that important to me, so I’m rarely willing to pay all that much, even for something that fulfills the criteria, making it easy for me to fall in love with a product but hard for me to follow through. Uniqlo solved all my woes for the glorious few months I had access to the goods.

Strange, I know, that I’m so shamelessly plugging something like this in oh so many ways, but hey, you can’t help what you like, and Uniqlo is definitely something I like.

I get a lot of email. I get a lot of boring email (”let me explain the situation”), my inbox seems to attract daunting email (5-page calls to action), I regularly acquire worthless email (”improve your manhood by 4 inches!”), and I receive a fair amount of depressing email (generally bills). With all these unfortunate email types crowding my inbox, there isn’t much room for fun emails, or entertaining emails, or my favourite of all time, witty emails.

Do not confuse a witty email with a funny email, or with an interesting and engaging email, for the witty email exists in a world of its own. An email filled with wit exemplifies intelligence, humour, ease of life, and either endearing curmudgeonry or a level of sardonic skepticism I can entertain. A witty email contains no pictures and no links and does not begin with the characters “Fwd:” but nonetheless makes you stifle your laughter so as not to disturb your neighbours as you peruse the email text for every last morsel worth chuckling over. A witty email is something you show a good friend because it was too witty to keep to yourself. That’s a good witty email.

I doubt I’d like witty email senders if I didn’t already enjoy witty conversationalists, but I have so much more respect for ye who pens a cheeky email for a few reasons.

ONE it’s casually pithy, which says to me “I’m funny enough to be witty in passing” and I immediately want to make a coffee date with someone who is consistently comic enough to be free with their wit.

TWO a witty email instantly proves the sender has the long sought-after characteristic of banterability and a top-notch sense of humour, which also tells me they are an awesome human being. Don’t you wish every time you sent an email the recipient decided you were cool instead of micro-managing, or irritating, or even heart-felt?

THREE making someone laugh in person with a good story is one thing, but making comedy translate without intonation, gestures, or context is a much more difficult task. Someone who successfully writes a witty email is not only smart enough to use language so fitting it cannot be misconstrued, but is also truly and at their core witty. They are not just a witty presenter of information, but a witty synthesiser. And I have a lot of respect for witty synethesis.

FOUR a witty email is a tiny reminder that things can and sometimes do shake down right. Sometimes our fellows say the perfect thing at the optimal time, and hearing a refined funnybone on the other end of the line can be a highly reassuring thing that is as rare as it is rewarding.

FIVE a witty email is refreshing. It’s smart, it’s funny, it’s good. I don’t know about you, but amidst all that spam, items I now have to add to my calendar or to-do list, and endless chains of replies to a mass email, it’s nice to find something succinct, perfectly timed, and…well…witty.

Related Things I Hate: email forwards that make ridiculous requests such as, “email this to 14 people or…”

It’s a question I get asked often: what kind of music do you like? The query is a simple one, but the answer is a much more complicated matter. We’re not just talking about choosing your favourite from a pool of 1,000, or even 10,000, my music collections and tastes are in the hundreds of thousands range, and I don’t even own all the music I like. Sure you can look at my Last.fm page but the artists it says I listen to the most (Coldplay, Death Cab for Cutie, and Belle & Sebastian) are only a tiny slice of the pie, and more likely than not a few years outdated for my current musical tastes.

I’m inevitably asked such a tricky question idly in an elevator, or as an innocent attempt to start a conversation at the bus stop, but for someone who has played in a band, DJed for a radio station, and has more audio engineering experience than she has hair follicles, having to pick one examplary morsel from my music collection is just the tip of the iceberg. So, what better a venue to fully extricate the subtleties of my musical tastes than right here, right now.

What do I actually like? What do I look for in one of the new contenders I am seriously researching? How varied are my tastes, really? What flavour is my current jag? Many a gift-giver has made severe errors in my music preferences, and so I’d like to set the seemingly complex record straight. When you get down to it, there are only a few types of sounds I enjoy (really only 7), they just reappear in several different genres.

So if you don’t want the long answer, I’ll give you the short one now: I go for pleasant and non abrasive songs with strong basslines, synopated and world rhythms, synthesisers, and highly unusual lyrics.

If you want the long answer of my current tastes, read on to find out what I like, specifically defined and with copious examples and selections from my Pandora radio stations. I hope you enjoy this one-time tour through my musical tasetbuds, and I hope you find something new and good along the way because, while it would take a few hours of your fishing through my expansive music collection to fully understand the ins and outs of my tastes, this is a several-paragraph start to what is currently tickling my cochlia and pleasing to my pinna.

1) Upscale lounge and dub with world-music influences and an electronic edge:
Not all lounge is created equal, and while even I can’t flout the laws that require every American to have a soft spot for Sinatra and Crosby, there’s a whole other world of kickback to be taking in. I like chill lounge, with sweeping synthesised undertones and Latin-inspired percussion, accented with the occasional hindi wail or afrobeat polyrhythm, or even dotted with a french rap. But what I like best of all is when someone as talented and unusual as Rae & Chrisitan or Z-Trip gets their hands on a well-circulated classic, and turns something that was already awesome, like Bebel Gilberto or the Jackson 5, into something that is downright brilliant.

Examples: Thievery Corporation, the Latin Projekt, Quantic, Funkstarr De Luxe, Jazzanova, Noiseshapers
Mondo Grosso, Studio Apartment, Vincenzo, Clazziquai, Jazztronik, Ian Pooley

2) Dark and strangely soothing unclassifiable electronica with lots of blips, beeps, and layers:
Most electronica doesn’t walk the fine lines between so many styles it could be the star of a circus, but I find myself inexplicably drawn to the small subset of that which does. It could be so jungle that Squarepusher and Karsh Kale would have to think twice, or it could be so asynchronous even Kraftwerk would be lost, I’ll even take so bristol and laid back Portishead and Thom Yorke would have to think twice about getting up for a glass of water. As long as there’s enough variety in there, I’m happy to listen to all those pips, blargs, and whaings form themselves into strangely cogent melodies. But I firmly stand by the motto: if you’re going to be blippy, don’t do it halfway. My electronic beeps are all or nothing.

Examples: Aphex Twin, Console, Mr. Ozio, The Postal Service, Ms. John Soda, Safety Scissors, Schneider TM, Autreche, Junior Boys, Massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky, Mazzy Star, Goldfrapp, Sneaker Pimps, Groillaz, the Cardigans, Garbage, Future Sounds of London, Radiohead, Notwist, Boards of Canada, Bonobo, William Orbit, Rob Dougan, Flunk, Meat Beat Manifesto

3) Anything resembling the cheesy synth-driven pop of the ’80s with over-the-top kicks and crashes:
Preferably but not exclusively female-driven, I adore throwback ’80s-style pop/rock (think Duran Duran), but more dancable and with a greater variety in song structures. I like lyricists with a sense of humour; after all, they are duplicating tunes well past the “use by” date, but something about the boldness that comes from being out of sync with your own era allows some of my top artists a freedom the pop sensations of yesteryear never had. Phil Colins will certainly never be timeless, and I expect Pip Brown and Emily Haines to be no different, but it will be a long time before I stop enjoying the zany and unyeildingly upbeat tunes of up-and-comers like Yelle, New Young Pony Club, and the B-52s.

Examples: Metric, the Faint, CSS, Ladyhawke, Yelle, New Young Pony Club, Muscles, Honeycut, Fischerspooner, the B-52s

4) Movements that even remotely reek of having French in their past, especially French Touch:
I may not like their tourists, and I may be so-so on foie gras, but I have some serious passion for their music. I’m enamoured with Alliance Ethnik, Saian Supa Crew, and their band of delightful French rappers, appreciative of all the French lent to the Japanese Shibuya-kei movement I so adoringly follow, and downright head-over-heels for French Touch house musicians like Daft Punk, Cassius, and Dimitri from Paris. France offers a wide variety of music — from Tektonik’s birth Mondotek to the Daft Punk international superhero robots to legends like MC Solaar and IAM to the sweet and sultry spins of DJ Cam and Vinia Mojica — and I find myself having difficulty dispelling the incredible gift of influence one country has doted upon the rest of the world. So wether it’s peppy French Touch house duos with repetitive riffs that follow the 8-bar rule, or whether it’s the Fonky Family’s turn to keep it Simple & Funky, or whether it’s Pizzicato 5 and their zany bubblegum movement that gets you, French is the way to go.

Examples: Daft Punk, Cassius, Justice, Dimitri from Paris, Superdiscount, Mylo, Linus Loves, Thomas Baltanger, Stardust, Mstrkrft, MGMT, Cut Copy, Erland Oye, Royksopp, Air, Mondotek, LCD Soundsystem, Fantastic Plastic Machine, Pizzicato 5, Puffy Amiyumi, Ramrider, Comoestas, CHOCOLATE, Cornelius

5) Simple, beat-heavy, sample-based songs with strong jazz influences:
Surprisingly I am not a tremendous jazz lover. While I can appreciate the stylings of Ella Fitzgerald and Benny Goodman till the cows come home, the real jazz that moves me is the kind stolen from old ’50s vinyl and repurposed in a genre fusion, remix, or hip hop track. Essentially, I like jazz best when it’s lifted. So when Mr. Scruff invents his own subset of the genre and calls it Trouser Jazz, I’m on board. When Pete Philly invites cellist Perquisite into his studio lair, I’m all for it. And when Superiority Complex samples Vince Guaraldi, Buckshot Lefonque includes a Marsalis, and Mark Ronson covers the Zutons, my two thumbs pop up of their own accord. Give me some acid jazz, some nujazz, or some jazzy hip hop and I’m there faster than Louie Armstrong and bebop.

Examples: Mr. Scruff, Tony D, Jaywalkers, Shin Sight Trio, Pete Philly & Perquisite, Soul Position, Cam, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Mark Ronson, Nujabes, Fat Jon, Kero One, Jazzy Jeff, Pete Rock, Little Brother, Kero One, Dela, the Sound Providers, Lightheaded, Giant Panda, People Under the Stairs, Surreal, Panacea, Da Grassroots, Cunninglynguists, Ohmega Watts, Strange Fruit Project, Substantial, Five Deez, Science Fiction Underdogs

6) Disco and disco-era duplicates obsessed with brass sections and basslines that adhere exclusively to the 8-step:
It doesn’t have to be a golden oldie and it doesn’t have to be fresh off the assembly line, but it does have to have some boogie in it. I like an insane slap-bass that is impossible to replicate except by Victor Wooten himself, and the presence of a vocal lead is not nearly as important as the length of the horns solo. That’s right, I love disco. I love Leon Ware and Kool & The Gang and LTD. But I’m no purist. I love disco look-alikes just as much. I love Skyy and Jamiroquai and Jamie Lidell. So slap some funk on it and turn it up; Dexter Wansel and Root Soul are the same breed of cat, no mater how many decades elapse between them.

Examples: Earth Wind & Fire, Leon Ware, Kool & The Gang, Rufus & Chaka Kahn, Jamiroquai, Jamie Lidell, The Soul Investigators, DIM

7) Breathy vocal-driven pop with light melodious backgrounds and atypical yet pleasing forms:
This seems like this description would cover a large bracket of popular music, but in reality it’s limiting to a small subsection of singer/songwriters, mostly involved with startlingly talented one-man bands. I tend to like pop groups that constantly rotate instruments, dabble in a variety of side projects in different genres, and constantly experiment with their music. If they make allusions and similies so astounding you have to pause for over a minute to discern them, I probably already own it. If they change tempos too often to count, all the better. Are their song titles to ridiculous and too long to fit in your ID3 tags? Do they perform in costumes? If so, chances are high I’ll like them. I do not, however, enjoy whiny vocals. Sure the occasional Blue October song is well-placed, and I don’t mind some Decemberists or Neutral Milk Hotel every once in a while, but generally I like intensely pleasant vocalists who care an inordinate amount about thier songs and spend more time being prolific musicans than is probably wise.

Examples: Obi Best, the Bird and the Bee, Feist, Frou Frou, Death Cab for Cutie, Belle & Sebastian, Rilo Kiley, Ben Folds, Regina Spektor, Sufjan Stevens, Sia, Of Montreal, Tally Hall, Half Handed Cloud