About to hit the road

Here are the five things I thought were worth sharing this week: 

1. What is music? — A cool video and interview with Jad Abumrad (host of the brilliant Radiolab podcast) on sound and music.
    
2. NASA just succeeded at the hardest thing they've ever done — Getting the Juno spacecraft into orbit around Jupiter. National Geographic shared this animation showing the manoeuvre used to achieve this feat. I love all things Space, so thought this was rather cool!
    
3. Ever looked out into the night sky and thought "Where is everybody?". If your answer is "yes", check out this article on the Fermi Paradox by (my new favourite website) Wait But Why. The Fermi Paradox tries to explain "the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence and high probability estimates for the existence of extraterrestrial civilisations" (thanks Wikipedia). It's nerdy and a pretty long read, but for the curious amongst you, well worth the time.
    
4. Anki (a robotics & AI company) just announced Cozmo. It's smart (and emotional) toy robot and I really want one! I'm fairly minimalist so not one for just buying random junk, but Cozmo looks pretty awesome.
    
5. This is mainly going to be of interest to drummers, but even if you aren't one it's still an interesting read and has some good pictures too — History Of The Drum Set.

That's all for this week. If you liked this, check out my previous Five Things posts or sign up to receive future posts straight to your inbox. Enjoy!

Sunset over Ipswich

Here are the five things I thought were worth sharing this week: 

1. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the football, but yesterday I found myself listening to one Iceland's greatest exports Sigur Rós and their fantastic album Kveikur.
    
2. "What Is A Polyrhythm? — Beats Taking Turns" — Short video (less than 3 mins) with a graphic showing the polyrhythms... Very cool!
    
3. Nils Frahm on reinventing classical music: “I like to treat the establishment like a cushion... I don’t throw it out of the window, but I like to shake the dust off it. I want to expand what it can be.” 
    
4. Can we change who we are? One of my favourite podcasts, Invisibilia, returns with an exploration of personality.
    
5. Seth Godin is an incredibly wise man. I read his blog pretty much every day and Sunday's post was poignant given all the political goings on this past week. 

That's all for this week. If you liked this, check out my previous Five Things posts or sign up to receive future posts straight to your inbox. Enjoy!

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A Moon Shaped Moon

Here are the five things I thought were worth sharing this week: 

1. Ever wanted to see what a cymbal being hit looks like at 1000 frames per second? Today's your lucky day — Pretty cool huh?
    
2. I find Elon Musk absolutely fascinating. He's the real-life inspiration for Iron Man's Tony Stark, co-founder of Paypal, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla (the electric car company)... I could go on, but I won't. Wait But Why (my new favourite website) wrote a great series of posts on Elon, electric cars, space, his companies and what makes them so important.
    
3. "You never get it down. I don't know how to do this. You'd think I do, but it's not one of these things you ever really know how to do." Paul McCartney on songwriting.
    
4. "Tell Me Who You Spend Time With, And I Will Tell You Who You Are" A great article by Ryan Holiday (another really interesting guy). His book The Obstacle Is The Way is one of my favourites.
    
5. I listen to a lot of ambient music. It soothes my brain and helps me focus (here's an interesting article on that). Ben Lukas Boysen's new album Spells is excellent and has been keeping my ears well entertained as I work and read.

That's all for this week. If you liked this, check out my previous Five Things posts or sign up to receive future posts straight to your inbox. Enjoy!

Ipswich Waterfront

Here are the five things I thought were worth sharing this week: 

1. I hadn't listened to this album in a long time, but this week made amends. A real masterpiece — Bitches Brew - Miles Davis.
    
2. I enjoyed this rambling chat between Adam Buxton and Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood on Adam's podcast (which is always good fun). Which reminds me, I can't wait to get my hands on Radiohead's new album A Moon Shaped Pool which is released physically on Friday!
    
3. I'm not totally sure this is worth sharing, but it is quite amusing — Green Screen Queen.
    
4. Another gem from Brain Pickings — Einstein’s Brilliant and Unusual Life, in a Graphic Novel.
    
5. Yesterday one of my drum students reminded me of this hilarious scene from Wayne's World 2. It never fails to make me laugh! What a tale!

That's all for this week. If you liked this, check out my previous Five Things posts or sign up to receive future posts straight to your inbox. Enjoy!

Don't look down / sun-day drum-day

Here are the five things I thought were worth sharing this week: 

1. I don't think you need to be a drummer to appreciate how good this solo by JP Bouvet is. It's got a bit of everything and it's only a minute long — Oh, and it's in 7/8 in case you didn't notice! It's from the album Bubble & Squeak by Mike Linden, which is well worth a listen.

2. I've been really enjoying The Kills new album Ash & Ice. The first track is particularly cool, as is it's video.

3. Are we living in a computer simulation? Elon Musk thinks we might be! Crazy thought experiments like that are fun to consider, but even if we are in a simulation does it even matter?

4. I love this quote from this article on fixed vs growth mindset by Hazel Gale — “take yourself less seriously because your imperfections are the things that people really connect with. Learn to laugh at yourself and enjoy the fact that others can do the same.”

5. I've been making a conscious effort during the last few weeks to spend less time mindlessly browsing social networks and more time on my projects. This little app has been a great help to me — it allows you to block access to any website for a period of time that you choose. So bye bye Facebook for 3 hours, hello getting some work done!

That's all for this week. If you liked this, check out my previous Five Things posts or sign up to receive future posts straight to your inbox. Enjoy!