For point #5, listening to music, I'd like to emphasize sticking away from vocals. It's weird, but my brain can listen and code just fine to non-lyrical music, or music which has repetitive samples (they meld into the background like another instrument). Once you start adding in someone singing though, it all changes for the worse.
Psychedelic trance, like Infected Mushroom or Psycraft, is my favorite stuff to code to at the moment. In fact most electronic music lacks lyrics and is favorable to coding IMHO (if you haven't heard of it, check out "Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music" to find some electronic songs/genre's you might like - http://bit.ly/10ZP9). Beastie Boys is ultimate death, unfortunately. Too much damn lyrical style.
Small hack: I've found that you can listen to vocal music without distraction, but only if it's sung in a language you don't understand. But for the life of me, I can't find any songs about Assembler... ;)
I like Podrunner (http://podrunner.com). Intended for runners, but it's got a good beat. Occasional remixed lyrics can be a bit distracting, but much less so than pop (not all tracks have vocals, and they're repetitive so it's easy to tune out). Also, the mixes are an hour which is a great chunk of time to disappear and come up for air later.
Comments
For point #5, listening to music, I'd like to emphasize sticking away from vocals. It's weird, but my brain can listen and code just fine to non-lyrical music, or music which has repetitive samples (they meld into the background like another instrument). Once you start adding in someone singing though, it all changes for the worse.
Psychedelic trance, like Infected Mushroom or Psycraft, is my favorite stuff to code to at the moment. In fact most electronic music lacks lyrics and is favorable to coding IMHO (if you haven't heard of it, check out "Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music" to find some electronic songs/genre's you might like - http://bit.ly/10ZP9). Beastie Boys is ultimate death, unfortunately. Too much damn lyrical style.
Small hack: I've found that you can listen to vocal music without distraction, but only if it's sung in a language you don't understand. But for the life of me, I can't find any songs about Assembler... ;)
I like Podrunner (http://podrunner.com). Intended for runners, but it's got a good beat. Occasional remixed lyrics can be a bit distracting, but much less so than pop (not all tracks have vocals, and they're repetitive so it's easy to tune out). Also, the mixes are an hour which is a great chunk of time to disappear and come up for air later.