Representation of the London Tube map if
Representation of the London Tube map if the stations were sponsored by products or companies. I love the Pizza Hutney, Upministry of Sound, and iPoddington stops. Rather DFWesque. (via bb)
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kottke.org posts about remix
Presenting the Bible’s Book of Genesis in
Presenting the Bible’s Book of Genesis in rap songs. For instance, the song for Genesis 21 — which tells the story of Isaac and Ishmael — is Big Poppa by Notorious B.I.G.
Chessboxing
Mashup sport: chessboxing.
The basic idea in chessboxing is to combine the no.1 thinking sport and the no.1 fighting sport into a hybrid that demands the most of its competitors - both mentally and physically. In a chessboxing fight two opponents play alternating rounds of chess and boxing. The contest starts with a round of chess, followed by a boxing round, followed by another round of chess and so on.
More from the LA Times and the Guardian.
De-Touch lets you step through how photos
De-Touch lets you step through how photos of models are retouched for publication. Announcement here. Made with Processing, source code is available.
Scott Nelson produces a “tribute brand” called
Scott Nelson produces a “tribute brand” called MIKE that’s an homage to Michael Jordan, Nike branding, and shoes. After looking at his products (photos and interviews here and here), I’m amazed Nike hasn’t sued him back to the Stone Age. Nelson’s site is mike23.com.
Averaging Gradius is a movie of 15 simultaneous
Averaging Gradius is a movie of 15 simultaneous games of Gradius layered on top of each other. Robin says: “So what you see, instead of a single ship going at it, is a fuzzy cloud of ships — bright where strategies overlap, faint where someone does something especially daring (or dumb).” Very cool; reminds me of Jason Salavon’s amalgamation of Playboy centerfolds.
Fan-produced video for William Shatner’s cover of
Fan-produced video for William Shatner’s cover of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. (thx, renee)
In the spirit of the reimagined trailer
In the spirit of the reimagined trailer for The Shining, here’s Brokeback Top Gun and Sleepless in Seattle.
On the copyright of recipes. Recipes are
On the copyright of recipes. Recipes are covered by US copyright law but not very well and very few suits get brought against those who republish them without permission. For the most part, it sounds like food folks recognize the essential remix culture of cooking. (via
A small collection of animated GIF mashups (
A small collection of animated GIF mashups (which are created by using DHTML to layer a bunch of animated GIF over each other).
iTunes Signature Maker analyzes your iTunes collection (
iTunes Signature Maker analyzes your iTunes collection (in the browser via a Java applet) and creates a short sound collage of the music that you listen to most frequently or have rated highly. Here’s the signatute it created for me. (thx, paul)
Consumer electronics mash-ups
As frustrated as one can get with the US sometimes, it is truly a marvelous land of plenty. In the past few months, I’ve run across some remarkable consumer items which I’d like to share with you.
- A microwave oven with a radio in it. With a little tinkering, you may be able to take the FM signal coming into the radio and convert it into microwaves to cook the food. Lite jazz will cook that baked potato nice n’ slow or crank the hard rock station if you’re in a hurry to scorch your Healthy Choice.
- A mounted deer head that sings and talks. I know you’re all familiar with that mounted bass that plays music, but this is a whole deer head we’re talking about here. I was too amazed to note any of the songs or whether the deer lip-synchs along, but I’m sure that when you plug this sucker in, whatever it does is wonderful. It’s singing taxidermy fer crissakes!
- A refrigerator with a TV. For that 3-4 seconds it takes you to get a glass of orange juice when you’re away from the TV just in the other room. Oh, and if the TV part breaks, good luck getting it fixed. Also, there didn’t appear to be a Refrigerator Channel for viewing inside the fridge to avoid letting that precious cool out while your teenage son stands with the door (and his mouth) open for three minutes deciding what to eat/drink.
Convergence is grand, ain’t it?
This Bird Has Flown is a tribute
This Bird Has Flown is a tribute album of The Beatles’ Rubber Soul on the 40th anniversary of its release. Includes covers by Ted Leo, The Fiery Furnaces, and Sufjan Stevens.
QuotationsBook offers its quotations and search results
QuotationsBook offers its quotations and search results via RSS. If someone were to write a plug-in for Movable Type for this, you could display related quotations alongside blog posts using tags (e.g. tag an entry with “friends” and you get a quotation about friends). Cool.
Fun bunch of Flickr photos from mleak
Fun bunch of Flickr photos from mleak depicting bugs and slugs shilling for the man: Pepsi Ladybug, Nike Water Strider, FedEx Grasshopper, Coke Slug, and Adidas Spider. (via bb)
Smart toast
I had this idea the other day that instead of having to open my laptop or turn on the TV to check the weather report, my toaster could burn that information onto my breakfast toast as a passive information delivery mechanism. I knew that people had wired toasters to print images on them, but I didn’t remember that someone had done the weather thing already. That got me thinking about what other information a toaster could print on bread. A graph of the previous day’s DJIA activity? Photo of your kids? The Red Sox score from last night?
There are constraints, of course. Bread is not exactly a high resolution medium. A course wheat bread would be difficult to print on while a dense rye might give you a couple dozen ppi to work with. But then you run into a contrast problem…toasted rye bread isn’t much darker than untoasted rye bread. Now, if you were to use Pop Tarts, they’re a little more high-res, a finer grained paper. You might even be able to print a few lines of text if the heating elements were precise enough…your stocks, meeting schedule for the day, top news stories, shopping list, the 5-day forecast, or a serial short story that you read over a few breakfasts (you could call them Breakfast Serials™!!). Or maybe toasters will be free in the future, with the toaster companies making their money from advertising printed on your morning toast, not unlike the free newspapers they hand out in the NYC subways.
Though what would be even better is wifi-enabled Alpha Bits. Just connect the box to your local network, pour yourself some cereal, and view the five most recent headlines from your RSS reader floating in your milk. Then right click your bowl to open up links on the screen in your refrigerator. That and a rocket-powered hoverbike, please.
Clip of Dj Spooky’s “Rebirth of a
Clip of Dj Spooky’s “Rebirth of a Nation”, a remix of D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” adapted from a Ku Klux Klan propaganda piece.
Cool video by the British group Hexstatic
Cool video by the British group Hexstatic for a song called Distorted Minds. It’s almost audiovisual hypertext.
Paul D. Miller (aka Dj Spooky) has
Paul D. Miller (aka Dj Spooky) has a new book out about remix culture called Rhythm Science. More on the book at MIT Press and it’s available at Amazon.
Announcing the world’s smallest mp3 player: the iPod Flea
Announcing the world’s smallest mp3 player: the iPod Flea. Love the Flea collar.
Directions for setting up a Bayesian spam
Directions for setting up a Bayesian spam filter to play chess.
A Japanese bank is putting a slot
A Japanese bank is putting a slot machine in their ATMs; get three 7s and the fee is waived. All they need is the sound effects from Super Mario 2 and I’m so there!
Video Games Live is presenting a series
Video Games Live is presenting a series of concerts featuring music from video games. Last week, the Los Angeles Philharmonic played in front of around 10,000 people.
Apple announces the Harper’s Special Edition iPod
Apple announces the Harper’s Special Edition iPod. “Number of media legends who came together to create this exciting new Apple product: 2. Chance that literary-minded American consumers will find this new iPod impossible to resist: 1 in 1.”
Age Maps
Age Maps. “Two photographs of the same person, from different periods of time (child and adult) are spliced together.” Very cool effect.
A list of mini golf holes based on movies
A list of mini golf holes based on movies. “Raiders of the Lost Ark: You must putt the ball precisely into the idol’s head, or a 15-foot-high, 1-ton golf ball comes rolling after you.”
Cassette tape DJ mixes music with his custom-built cassette decks
Cassette tape DJ mixes music with his custom-built cassette decks.
A visual history of sampling; who’s been
A visual history of sampling; who’s been sampled and who’s doing the sampling.
A DJ scratches out the Imperial March
A DJ scratches out the Imperial March from Star Wars on his decks.
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