Five things #10

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!

Five things #9

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!

Five things #8
 

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!