Peter Johansen (disclosure: I worked with him at Everyday Music about a decade ago) has launched his Numeral Nine Music Blog with a post dedicated to defending the rebuked and scorned audio format known as the compact disc. Johansen gives five reasons for his positions and gets deep into mathy rationales in his argument for CDs’ merits, and then couples this audio science with his own well-argued personal preferences for the shiny disc. The man makes some fine points.

Here's one of 'em:

While MP3s are fine for ear-buds, the CD produces an objectively better sound when experienced on any decent loudspeaker or headphone. Using algorithms to remove data that is (hopefully) unnecessary, 256 or 320-kbps MP3s might not be significantly inferior to 1,411 kbps CDs, but few argue against the basic premise that lossless CDs can offer a superior sonic experience over compressed MP3s. The best that computer audio can do is to match CDs in terms of quality. FLAC, AIFF, and other file formats do apparently get there, though they represent only a small fraction of the music downloaded.

I prefer vinyl, but I will never be one of those people who jettison their entire CD collection. I don’t trust the cloud as far as I can throw it. Artifacts! I wanna touch ’em and hear ’em!

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This is a video from Youtuber Brusspup of a stream of water appearing to fall falling to the ground in a zigzag pattern. Presumably because it's hipster water and a regular flow would be -- wait for it -- too mainstream. I'll be here all week, folks.

The camera is set to match the vibration of the speaker so it's recording at 24fps while the speaker is pumping out a tone to 24hz. That creates this magic of zig zag.

I mean, sure, it COULD be that, or Youtuber user Brusspup could just be a sorcerer. If science has taught me anything it's that the simplest answer is often the right one. Now somebody cast a restrain spell on Merlin over here and let's see if he can't turn urine into gold. I have a ton of bottles from when the landlord cut my water my water got cut off. Hit the jump for the worthwhile video. Thanks to Jacob, who's been studying magic for years and can make water flow in smiley face patterns, so there.

BEST!

princessnecrophilia:

im a scientist and very important to know goat part

little ground tappers

A year ago Jarrod Glasgow was driving trucks for a living. Now he’s making awesome iOS apps. His first app, AeroPress Timer is a really good-looking app that holds some of the best recipes for making AeroPress coffee.

Each recipe has a description and overview, and then a series of countdown timers. Pour, stir, steep and press. It has inverted and normal orientation recipes, and describes the grind and amount of coffee to use for each.

I’m drinking an excellent cup of coffee made using the “Bold” recipe right now. It’s excellent. I used to accomplish this with the default stopwatch app and a lap timer, but this is a major improvement. There’s a great video of it in action on Vimeo.

Pick up AeroPress Timer ($1.99 US) on the App Store and make a great cup of coffee. If you don’t have an AeroPress, pick one up for around $30. You’ll thank yourself after your first cup.