Total Basketball

June 28th, 2009

2009-06-28: I meant to post this over a month ago!

Malcolm Gladwell has a really fascinating article about underdogs using full-court pressing to win in basketball: Annals of Innovation: How David Beats Goliath. He looks at the larger question of underdogs beating better supplied, prepared – whatever – opponents and how it is often because the former don’t respect the (unwritten) rules and are willing to just work a lot harder.

It’s not the same thing, but I think you could make a connection with Total Football.

California

June 28th, 2009

If you haven’t heard, I am in California the entire summer to work on a startup. If you’re nearby, come by the Bay Area and say hi!

Mashups, the Funky Kind

May 21st, 2009

While I’ve been focusing a lot on web mashups recently, even closer to my heart are music mashups. I introduced friends to bunch of my favorite tracks last night and I figure I should share them here. Here are my favorite mashups and remixes from across the web. Enjoy!

One of my all time favorite tracks, period, is Soulwax’s remix of Six Days. There are a lot of great versions of this song, which I’ve discussed earlier.

Pheugoo makes some fantastic mashups. I’m particularly into Dip It Joe. La Naughty Femme and Robot Wars (Release the Beast) are also classics.

DJ Earworm has some great stuff. You’ve probably seen his Reckoner Lockdown mashup:

However, you should go beyond that track and check out Fedde Le Freak, Brazilian Diamonds and Got to Give Up the Dancefloor.

World Famous Audio Hacker has some fun tunes: 1520 Sedgwick (Part 2) has some real bounce to it while What’s That Sound? gets pretty crazy. L.E.S. Artistes (Pause Button Mix) is also good.

DJ Z-Trip is incredible. His Live in LA album is so much fun and his remix of I Want You Back is TIGHT!

Gangstagrass is a majestic mashup of just that, gangsta rap and bluegrass:

Gangstagrass cover

The Summer of Love 2008 mashup album is lots of fun. Get your glow sticks out!

Summer of Love 2008 cover

If you like David Bowie you’ll love Ziggy Stardush Remixed:

Ziggy Stardust Remixed cover

The Music Remixed project has done some great remixes of albums, specifically The Chemical Brother’s Push the Button and Prodigy’s Always Outsiders, Never Outdone

Flip the Switch cover

Always Outsiders Never Outdone cover

Speaking of The Chemical Brothers, Brother’s Gonna Work It Out is a fantastic mix album. Check out Makin’ A Living/Hot Wheels:

Continuing the theme of more mainstream remixes, Everybody Hertz is a fantastic remix album of Air’s 10000 Hertz. I’m particularly partial to Don’t Be Light (Malibu Remix). Blippy, bouncy, sleazy!

The Chant Down Babylon album has some OK Bob Marley remixes, except for Survival AKA Black Survivors with Chuck D, which is fantastic:


BOB MARLEY - Survival A.K.A. Black Survivors (feat Chuck D)
Uploaded by henrifonda - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

For the M.I.A. fans out there, check this DFA remix of Paper Planes:

And to make things even easier for you to dive into the wonderful work of mashups and remixes, I’ve created a Mashups and Remixes set in my Twones library. Email me if you would like a Twones invite.

The Crystal Method also has a great album of remixes of other artists they’ve done. I’m particularly partial to their Smashing Pumpkins, 1979 (New Originals 1799 Remix). On the same Community Service II album you can find a good Reign remix.

Bonus: If you don’t know it, check out Lounge Against the Machine. Hilarious!

A nice problem to have

May 19th, 2009

nrc.nl: “Netherlands to close prisons for lack of criminals”

That’s some fantasy!

May 16th, 2009

Jack Kerouac ran fantasy baseball and horse racing systems of his own devising for decades!

Pakistani Fetsh Wear

May 14th, 2009

The NY Times has a fascinating video profile of two Pakistani brothers that have a successful business exporting fetsh clothes to the US.

Funniest. President. Evar.

May 10th, 2009

Link: Obamaspeechwh

Stasi Art Critcism

April 19th, 2009

I just read a fascinating story about a photography book of Berlin than so enraged the Stasi that they went through page by page writing up snarky criticisms.

Interesting but incomplete

April 15th, 2009

Mottram Station - Obama the Pirate Killer, in graph form … …

I bet other Presidents have seen pirates killed on their watch – in fact, all of them may have. In addition, Jefferson and several of the early Presidents can surely be said to have killed many pirates.

Anchovy Math

April 8th, 2009

The quality of a Caesar salad on a scale of 0-10 can be calculated by the following function:

qcs(a) = 10 log 2a

Where a is the number of anchovies per individual serving. This means that the optimal number is 5. QED.

Note: This equation needs some work, so I plan on updating it.