A running joke.

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

1. An interesting read on the benefits of silence — This Is Your Brain on Silence
    
2. Fantastic podcast by Invisibilia on how our frame of reference shapes how we perceive the world — "Alix Spiegel and Hanna Rosin interview a woman who gets a glimpse of what she's been missing all her life – and then loses it."
    
3. Are you a procrastinator? If yes, go check out Wait But Why's great series on procrastination. Do it now... Future You will thank Present You for it! Here's the first post.
    
4. This album by Rival Consoles was one of my favourite releases of 2015. I hadn't listened to it ages until yesterday!
    
5. One of my favourite musicians Ólafur Arnalds is doing this awesome project — "Over seven weeks, he's travelling to seven different locations in his native Iceland to record and release a series of new compositions. At every location he's collaborating with a local artist or group to create and perform a new song which is then released each Monday."

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!

Yesterday I arrived back home after playing my first couple of shows with CoCo and the Butterfields at Moonbeams Festival in Yorkshire and Wonder Fields near Exeter.

It was a fun weekend, playing and hanging out with some great musicians. The photos above are from the gigs and my epic journey from Ipswich to Yorkshire, Yorkshire to Exeter and then back from Exeter to Ipswich via London... I don't think I've ever been to so many train stations in such a short amount of time!

I'll be playing at Moonbeams Festival on Saturday and Wonder Fields on Sunday with Coco and the Butterfields this weekend. Really looking forward to it.

For gig info and music check out their website!

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!