Archive for 2009
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »It’s Not Easy Being A Mashup Addict
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 28, 2009 by admin in Popular Media
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009It Can Leave You All At Once Sweatin’ Like a Farm Animal, and Cool as a Daisy
Radiohead Meets Dave Brubeck |
The other day a friend turned me onto this Pulp Fiction Audio Mix mashup, which reminded me that it’s not easy being a mashup addict. For a long time I complained about how musicians were getting lazy and building whole songs around a single sample (like Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz Deja Vu ), and now I’m whining because I can’t find sample-based material fast enough! I’m not even always sure what I’m looking for; the word “mashup” wasn’t in the OED last time I checked. My favorites are probably the purely musical ones like the the rather brilliant Dave Brubeck/Radiohead clip featured at left, or this Beatles/Kinks/LCD Soundsystem clip, but this medium is pretty broad. Consider the early 90′s EBN mashups like Rock This Base or the more recent Golden Age of Video by Ricardo Autobahn. Both mix the audio and video of multiple sources to pretty good effect. I’m still probably most impressed with artists like YouTube remixing genius Kutiman for his sheer devotion to musicality, but face it. Even William Shatner explaining why Kirk climbs a mountain has some merit, as does a meme-remashing like Christian Bale takes David to the Dentist or the utterly insane Sweatin’ Like a Farm Animal, Cool as a Daisy. If mashups are a totally new concept for you, check out our previous pieces on the topic. Read the rest of this entry »
Happy Hollowmeme!
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on October 27, 2009 by admin in Holidays
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009This year, take an easy out and go as an Internet meme. We all know Halloween is really here to remind us that there are only 55 shopping days left ’til Christmas, and that Dachsunds taste great with mustard.
The other day, a friend asked me: “What are you gonna be for Halloween?” to which I replied: “Happy I survived another Michigan October!“. Let’s face it, the real purpose of Halloween is to remind you that there are 55 shopping days ’til Christmas, and that it’s time to pull out your Turgooduccochiqua recipe. My only Halloween plan this year is to call all my weight-conscious friends November 2nd and ask them if they want me to take all the mini chocolate bars off their hands, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have some costume ideas! A few of our ideas from last year are still pertinent; I have yet to see the amazingly simple-to-execute Surreal Homer Simpson getup at a party. But for this year, why not go as an Internet Meme? The folks over at Rocketboom have assembled a list for you, complete with product links to all the things you’ll need. To dress up as the Flying Spaghetti Monster for instance, all you need is rope
It Takes A Pillage
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on October 26, 2009 by admin in Politics
Monday, October 26th, 2009The public has been slow to react to investment banks’ plundering of the economy, but some protests are finally taking shape in Chicago.
If you’re amongst the nation’s 14 million unemployed, maybe you should see if you can get a job delivering the plasma screen TV’s and cases of champagne that bailed out bankers will be buying to celebrate another year of million-dollar bonuses. Finally, even people like billionaire investor George Soros say you should be angry about the obscene bonuses received by Wall Street. In spite of the fact that the White House “pay czar” Kenneth Feinberg is imposing restrictions on certain companies’ compensation, it’s largely agreed that this is pointless, because what bank executives don’t get in salary and cash bonuses, they get through stock options and other benefits. So while New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo releases a study (see No Rhyme or Reason: The ‘Heads I Win, Tails You Lose’ Bank Bonus Culture) that looks in detail at how bailout recipients Merrill and Citigroup both lost more than $27 billion in 2008 but still somehow justified paying nearly $9 billion in bonuses, and while Treasury Department watchdog Neil Barofsky continually points out the appalling misuse of bailout funds, 2009 bonuses at companies like Goldman Sachs will be double what they were in 2008. Call me naiive, but I remain astounded at the idea that one can run global economy into the ground and get a bonus for it. I was originally going to use the analogy of a man with gambling problem for today’s little rant, and thought it a little corny. But Nomi Prins – author of It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street
The Measured Musical Madness Of Moondog
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on October 25, 2009 by admin in Music
Sunday, October 25th, 2009Moondog is probably the most famous street musician you never heard of.
DJ Mr Scruff’s “Get A Move On” Is Little More Than Moondog With A Beat |
Somehow I managed to listen to an exhaustive variety of music my entire life and not hear about the astounding genius of Moondog until yesterday. Chances are that like me, you’ve heard Moondog and not realized it. His song Stamping Ground
Social Search: Who Gives A Twinglebook?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 24, 2009 by admin in Technology
Saturday, October 24th, 2009Will Social Search be an awesome new way to search the web, or a sewage-filled spam hose?
I was wondering why no-one seemed to give a twinglebook about the fact that Microsoft struck search deals with Twitter and Facebook, and that Google not only has their own deal with Twitter, but plans to launch their own “Social Search” in the near future. Then I remembered that the average person doesn’t know their Firefox from a hole in the ground (YouTube link, video is also below). Well, I have to admit that I care; depending on how both Microsoft and Google choose to integrate real-time search results from social networking sites, this could either be really interesting, or really annoying and/or paranoia-inducing. More so the annoying part; ever since SEO became a parasitic, opportunistic business instead of an integrated part of web site development, search results have become less and less useful on a steady downward curve. The beauty of Twitter Search is its real-time results; the ugly downside is that all those results are spam-infested Tweets! Who cares how fast you can search multi-level marketer’s tweets (see Will the Twitter Firehose Become a Sewage-Filled Spam Hose) ? In my opinion, the only real value of these relationships the two search giants are building with Twitter would be real-time search of everything but Twitter noise. Hopefully they’ll pursue that, but Bing’s beta version of Twitter search appears to be just, well, Twitter search. How mixing this stuff in with regular results is going to benefit anyone is beyond me. These moves also come at an odd time, when both Facebook and Twitter’s growth are flattening out. And the paranoia mentioned earlier? Google’s Social Search will require you to be logged in with a Google Profile, and will connect additional search results via your existing “friends” on various social networking services, thereby tracking all your searches and connecting them with people you know. But perhaps I fret about this sort of thing too much. After all, Googoo has a excewent pwivacy powicy. Read the rest of this entry »