I’m up to my eyeballs working on the new book cover for “Toxic Ash.” As soon as I think I’ve gotten somewhere either the computer erases everything (shoot me, shoot me now) or I realize that I’ve done it all wrong and really need to do it this other way to get the look I want – that said, I’m pretty sure all the effort will eventually be worth it and I’m also pretty sure I’ve got nothing in my head right now except for photomanipulation techniques and that song that’s playing on the radio. So let’s go with internet radio!

I’m actually a pretty big fan of the customizable internet radio site, Pandora.com. Plug in your favorite band, or a song you really love and Pandora will bring you a bunch of music with similar ‘features’ allowing you to find tons of music you might otherwise never come across on your own.

However I’ve heard that some of my music loving friends hate Pandora because they seem to only get the same songs over and over again. So I’m going to share my trick to awesome diversity on Pandora. Are you ready?

Once you’ve created your station, use the down thumb button liberally but whatever you do do not use the thumb up button. Pandora’s thumb up isn’t similar to Facebook’s ‘like’ button, when you push it you’re telling Pandora that you absolutely love that song. You love that song so much they should rewrite the algorithms to include it in more constant rotation.

So if you can’t hit the thumbs up button when you hear a song you don’t hate, how do you tell Pandora it’s on the right musical track? Do nothing. Really. The down thumb tells them you hate the song and they should never, ever, play it again. The up button tells them you want to hear the song all the time. Do nothing and you’re telling Pandora it’s doing a good job and you’re in a great musical flow.

There you go! I hope you all get into awesome writing groves added by the awesome music picking algorithm of Pandora.

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