I'm one of the few people I know that still wears a watch, but I'll never stop — I feel naked without one. This Seiko was a gift for my college graduation, and it's both a perfect accessory that makes me feel a little like James Bond, and just a really good way to tell the time. You know what's the worst? Asking someone the time and waiting while they dig out their phone to tell you. Smoked by David's watch.

The worst part about reviewing gadgets for a living is the stark perspective it gives you on how crappy all your stuff is. After all of five seconds of listening to $1,000 headphones, the crappy Apple-supplied earbuds wouldn't cut it anymore. The Bose IE2 earphones might not be $1,000-quality, but they sound great (if a little bass heavy at times). They're also the best mix of secure and comfortable I've ever seen, thanks to the goofy silicon wings attached to them. The in-line controls work with Android, iOS, and everything else I've tried, too. I'm never going back to bad headphones, ever.

I was just turned on to Andrew Bird recently, and he's quickly climbing my Rdio charts — partly because the music is good, and partly because Bird is just astonishingly talented. (Check out this Pitchfork performance, for instance, which Thomas Houston showed me recently.) Start with his album Noble Beast, and the song "Anonanimal." His music is an ethereal mix of folk, jazz, and rock, and holy hell can that man whistle.

Mike Birbiglia’s story has been told in a one-man show, at the Moth, on This American Life, in a movie, and in a book. The book’s my favorite piece of the puzzle, though — a hilarious, bizarre read where you spend a lot of time wandering around inside Birbiglia’s head as he tries to figure out why he’s so terrible at everything, how he got a gold medal in dust-bustering, and pretty much everything else about his life. Birbiglia’s amazingly good at being self-deprecating without being obnoxious (a rare skill), and it makes Sleepwalk with Me a really fun read.

I'm kind of obsessive about checking the weather, and I've been through just about every app in the store before finally landing on Solar. It's gorgeous and ultra-minimalist, but does everything I need: you swipe your finger upward to scroll through the next 24 hours' forecast, swipe down from the top to see a three-day forecast, and move left and right to go between locati***. I don't need to know what the Dopplr says, I just want to know if I'm going to need a jacket or umbrella today — I can't find out faster any other way.