Room with a view

Every Wednesday I share five things I liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

1. As technology makes interacting with the outside world easier and easier, it's too easy to get distracted from what's important. "I worry that the closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts."
    
2. A fun thing I learnt last week. My favourite drumstick manufacturer, Vic Firth, used to make rolling pins and pepper mills!
    
3. Something I've been asked more than once.. What makes Ringo Starr such a great drummer?
    
4. This is such a great idea — A farm from a box.
    
5. Stephen Hawking putting our problems into perspective. "We are at the most dangerous moment in the development of humanity. We now have the technology to destroy the planet on which we live, but have not yet developed the ability to escape it."

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, sign up to receive future posts or check out my previous Five Things posts.

It's almost December?!

Every Wednesday I share five things I liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

1. OK GO do it again — Another incredible music video. Shot in just 4.2 seconds, I imagine the preparation included a lot of maths.
    
2. I have no idea where I found this site, but I'm glad I found it. LightNote is packed with interactive lessons on music theory. It explains tricky concepts in a clear and concise way. It looks great too, which is always a bonus.
    
3. Another cool interactive site — Google's A.I Experiments is a place to explore machine learning through a series of simple and entertaining experiments. Quick Draw (which I'm TERRIBLE at) and The Infinite Drum Machine are my favourites.
    
4. "The best way that we can grow our intelligence is to embrace tasks where we might struggle and fail." Sal Khan of Khan Academy on the growth vs fixed mindset, including an important reminder "You can learn anything".
    
5. It's not often that an advert gets me feeling Christmassy. However, Wes Anderson's very Wes Anderson H&M advert did just that. It's put a smile on my face each time I've watched it. 

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, sign up to receive future posts or check out my previous Five Things posts.

A selection of music that I've been listening to over the last month. I don't listen to a particular genre so it's a bit of a mix.... Enjoy!

Here's the playlist on Spotify.

Thought for the day

Every Wednesday I share five things I liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

1. An excellent exploration of The History Of Rhythm from the BBC World Service. As a rhythm nerd, I loved this!
    
2. "Change what you know, change what you believe, and you change the actions. Learn to see, to understand, to have patience, and you learn to be the kind of person who can make a difference." — Education is the answer
    
3. A while ago, I deleted Facebook and Twitter from my phone in an attempt to reduce the effect of external events on my day and mood. The temptation to check them was always too much for me. My next goal is to quit paying attention to the news at all.. which won't be easy. — Want to Really Make America Great Again? Stop Reading the News
    
4. I'd never really considered how much sound influences the design of our manmade surroundings. 99 Percent Invisible's episode on The Evolution of Architectural Acoustics was really fascinating.
    
5. "How did the day pass? I didn’t even feel it passing; it stole away from me and escaped." How to get important things done.

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, sign up to receive future posts or check out my previous Five Things posts.

Fly

Every Wednesday I share five things I liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s five things…

1. A fascinating conversation with Pedro Domingos on artificial intelligence and machine learning. His thoughts on why white collar jobs are more threatened by AI than blue collar jobs are particularly interesting.
    
2. Derek Sivers on how to be useful to others [1m 22s]. Food for thought and a really cool animation.
    
3. More food for thought from Ryan Holiday — Tell me who you spend your time with, and I will tell you who you are. If you aren't familiar with Ryan's work check out his books Ego Is The Enemy and The Obstacle Is The Way. Both are excellent.
    
4. The greatest rock band on earth. 1000 musicians perform David Bowie's Rebel Rebel.
    
5. Finland has plans that will make it the first country in the world to get rid of all school subjects and move towards a model of studying events and topics in an interdisciplinary format. I'm so excited by this idea. It's crazy how little schooling has changed in the last 100+ years and time it's brought into the 21st century. Go Finland!

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

Shadows 

Every Wednesday I share five things I liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s five things…

1. If you're a fan of Serial or true-crime stories, check out the In The Dark podcast. I started listening last week, it's very good. 
    
2. After recently finishing series three of Black Mirror, the news of Adobe's Project Voco (the photoshop of speech) freaking me out just a little.
    
3. Given today's (rather shocking) US election news and general chaos of 2016, we could all probably do with a little calm. I found reading this helped. It's a bit of a long read so just pick a section, take what you need from it and then stop... Or get comfy and read the whole thing like I did!
    
4. On the theme of calm, I just discovered the ambient/ drone/ postminimalist music of Rafael Anton Irisarri. Spotify summarises it well "His recordings heavily utilise field recordings, bowed guitars, strings, and electronics, creating dense clouds of blurry, hypnotic sound that often have a mournful, elegiac quality." His album A Fragile Geography is a good place to start.
    
5. This video might be the best thing on the internet. Watch and smile.

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