Copenhagen, September 2015

This week’s Five Things…

1. Animals interrupting wildlife photographers

2. What a great word: “Dustsceawung (Old English): contemplation of the fact that dust used to be other things — the walls of a city, the chief of the guards, a book, a great tree: dust is always the ultimate destination. Such contemplation may loosen the grip of our worldly desires.”

3. How lava lamps help to secure the internet

4. Tim Harford has a new podcast series called How to Vaccinate the World . It’s very good!

5. I really enjoyed this Tiny Desk performance by Jon Batiste. He’s one of those annoying people that can seemingly play everything!

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Christiania, Copenhagen — September 2015

This week’s Five Things…

1. “Happiness & sadness are contagious, this study finds. Each person in your network who became happy increases your chance of becoming happy by 9%, an unhappy person drops it by 7%. If a friend who lives within a mile becomes happy, your chance of becoming happy goes up 25%.”

2. A very good explainer of hypnic jerks. A thing I have regularly experienced but not known the name of!

3. Not just any illusion, an award-winning illusion.

4. A fascinating episode of Lexicon Valley on how new words are formed from older ones, and how their meanings drift over time.

5. I didn’t have Sea Shanty’s down as a 2021 trend.

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Split, Croatia — July 2018

This week’s Five Things…

1. Switched on Pop break down Taylor Swift’s second album of 2020, Evermore. The podcast and album are both excellent.

2. I have another episode of Switched on Pop to recommend. This time on Auto-Tune and how it changed music, in particular pop.

3. A Perfect Planet, narrated by David Attenborough, is now available on iPlayer. The first epsiode was great, and looked stunning in 4K.

4. England is back in lockdown which means most of us won’t be moving very far for the next month or so. WindowSwap allows you to explore the world (or at least the view from other people’s windows) without leaving your sofa. Might come handy if you’re feeling the walls closing in!

5. A fascinating long read on Paul McCartney and why, despite being one of the most famous musicians of all time, he’s still underrated.

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Unfortunately I’ve had to pause in-person lessons at South Street Studios due to the Tier 4 COVID restrictions. Lessons will be moving online for the time being, follow the link for more information. If you have any questions, please get in touch.

I’ll update this post when lessons resume.

This week’s Five Things…

1. This teaser has me very excited for Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back film which is coming out next year.

2. This is fun. Blob Opera is a Google machine learning experiment. Hit the little Christmas tree, select a song and you’ll have your very own Blob carol singers!

3. What an amazing little word “got” is. A fascinating episode of the Lexicon Valley podcast (one of my favourites).

4. I’ve just started listening to series one of Mike Duncan’s podcast, Revolutions. If you like your history you’ll like this.

5. The New Wolsey Theatre’s rock n roll pantos are always a Christmas highlight and this year’s show is no exception. You can watch The Snow Queen from the comfort of your own home. Tickets are available here. Act fast as the last showing is on Christmas Eve!

That's all for this week and this year! Have a great Christmas. See you in 2021!