Aldeburgh, May 2017

This week’s Five Things…

1. Thoroughly enjoyed Palm Springs (starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti). If you have Amazon Prime, you’ll find it on Prime Video.

2. The Talking Politics: History of Ideas podcast on philosopher John Rawls

3. One for the drummers. I’ve been updating a lot of my older drum transcriptions. You’ll find all 67(!!) of them here.

4. I’ve just finished reading A Gentleman In Moscow for the second time. If you haven’t read it, you should! I can’t wait to read it again. Maybe next year!

5. Kurzgesagt on why we need to embrace nuclear energy to stop climate change. Kurzgesagt are so very good at making these videos. Informative and entertaining, with great animations. What’s not too like?

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Šibenik, Croatia - July, 2018

This week’s Five Things…

1. “The Killers’ Mr Brightside has set a new chart record, after spending 260 weeks - or five whole years - in the UK’s Top 100.” 🤯

2. I really enjoyed this mini series on conspiracy theories by The Panpsycast podcast.

3. Eat less meat! — Your Diet Is Cooking the Planet

4. Don’t try this at home. How to safely remove bees from an old shed.

5. Max Richter has a new album!

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Berlin, April 2015

This week’s Five Things…

1. National Theatre’s film/theatre hybrid Romeo & Juliet was excellent! If you missed it, it’s on again on Sky Arts on Thursday at 10pm.

2. I really enjoyed this episode of Ryan Holliday’s Daily Stoic podcast with Agnes Callard on Socrates and Wisdom.

3. Can you steer a ship through the Suez Canal?

4. This clever little music app can isolate different instruments in a song. Upload a music file (like an mp3), and you get back a drum track, vocal track etc. It’s not perfect but still very impressive. I’m sure I’ll find it very useful when transcribing songs!

5. This is a very weird story: I tracked down my impostor

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In line with the easing of COVID restrictions, drum lessons will resume at South Street Studios from 12th April.

Lessons at the studio will initially only be available on Tuesday mornings, Thursday after school, and 10-5 on Saturdays and Sundays. This is due to building and redecorating taking place at the studio.

Parents and students, I’ll be in touch in the next week to arrange lesson times.

Split, Croatia - July 2018

This week’s Five Things…

1. Adam Buxton interviews Kazuo Ishiguro. My new favourite episode of Adam’s podcast.

2. An AI’s attempt at pickup lines. Picking a favourite is tough but it might be this one: “I love you. I don’t care if you’re a doggo in a trenchcoat.”

3. I want a Plantyflutesizer!

4. The Depths Of Wikipedia instagram account is dedicated to highlighting the weirdest and most wonderful parts of Wikipedia. Did you know that “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” is a grammatically correct sentence in English?

5. Nils Frahm has a surprise new/old album. Graz was recorded in 2009 but was released yesterday to mark Piano Day 2021.

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