So I noticed these incoming links from Technorati, all of which appear to be from automatically-generated Blogspot weblogs. They all appear to steal entries from a legitimate Typepad weblog, The Last Minute. I’m guessing this is another attempt at gaming search engines, but I can’t figure out the details. Take a look at the sites and let me know if you have any theories.

http://digitalvideo.blogspot.com/

http://digitalvideoediting.blogspot.com/

http://appleg5.blogspot.com/

http://homestarunner.blogspot.com/

http://thelastminute.blogspot.com/

http://ipodjack.blogspot.com/

(I’m not linking to them because I don’t want to help promote their Pagerank.)

Update: The creator of the cloned sites contacted me… He was experimenting with techniques for improving the Pagerank of his own website. He now understands the problems with this sort of cheating and promptly took them all offline.

It may not be Episode 3, but the Star Wars Kid makes a cameo in Tony Hawk Underground 2. (Thanks to Dan Beckett for the tip and original video clip.) Update: Here’s a high-quality video of the appearance with audio, thanks to Erik:

tonyhawk_starwarskid_high.wmv (WMV, 5.5MB)

Here are instructions for finding him, courtesy of Travis Ogdon:

“On the Boston level if you ollie through the glass windows on one of the buildings (it’s one or two to the left of the one where Ben Franklin is hiding) you land in a living room with a flat panel tv on the wall. If you stand in front of the TV Ghyslain gets up and shouts something about watching Star Wars (which you’re now preventing). Hitting O (on the PS2) will result in him showing off his moves.”

October 13, 2004: Joe Ford confirms that you can unlock the “Geeky Kid” character by beating the all goals in all levels in Easy Mode. They don’t refer to him as “Star Wars Kid,” which indirectly answers the question about whether he was compensated for his likeness. (He wasn’t.)

October 14, 2004: The THUG2 SWK video was featured on G4TechTV’s Screen Savers show yesterday. Erik has the video of the Screen Savers appearance. No mention of my site, and they mistakenly assume that Ghyslain was paid for his appearance. Tacky!

The Kleptones’ A Night at the Hip-Hopera is one of the the best mashup remixes I’ve ever heard, a fluid blend of classic and modern hip hop with Queen’s epic catalog. Please don’t miss the last track, Question.mp3. It’s like a plunderphonic call to arms against bad copyright law.

The official site is having bandwidth problems, so I’m mirroring the entire album, as individual songs and an uncut 110 MB MP3.

As far as I can tell, nobody has listed the sample origins online yet. I don’t have the time to locate the short samples, but here are most of the primary sources. If you can fill in any gaps (in bold) or have any corrections, leave a comment!

September 24, 2004: The sample list is almost complete, except for the source of the vocals in Stop.mp3. If you can identify the artist and song, please let me know. Found! Shane did some expert Googling and identified the sample as Looptroop w/Chords & Timbuktu, “Heads Day Off.” [MP3, 6.4MB]

Continue reading “Kleptones, "Night at the Hip-Hopera"” →

Last year, I wrote an entry about karaoke songs on Usenet, focusing on the oddball subgenre of indie and alt-rock karaoke. Well, a year later, not much has changed… Here are some of the recent hipster hits found in alt.binaries.sounds.karaoke:

Modest_Mouse_-_Float_On_[Karaoke_Version].mp3

Yeah_Yeah_Yeahs_-_Maps_[Karaoke_Version].mp3

Franz_Ferdinand_-_Matinee_[Karaoke_Version].mp3

The_Streets_-_Dry_Your_Eyes_[Karaoke_Version].mp3

The_Streets_-_Fit_But_You_Know_It_[Karaoke_Version].mp3

Snow_Patrol_-_Spitting_Games_[Karaoke_Version].mp3

Jet_-_Cold_Hard_Bitch_[Karaoke_Version].mp3

Badly_Drawn_Boy_-_Disillusion_[Karaoke_Version].mp3

Which raises the question, is there a big overlap between karaoke fans and indie-rock fans? I can understand requesting Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” at a karaoke bar, but Franz Ferdinand?

As predicted, many of the Athens 2004 Olympics events are being digitized and uploaded to the Internet. The quality is good, often ripped from HDTV and international sources. (Many of the clips are from Brazilian television, with commentary in Portuguese. Those darn Brazilians again!)

To judge the video quality, here’s a sample clip of yesterday’s controversial judging of Russia’s Alexei Nemov, in which the audience’s vocal protests shut down the Men’s Gymnastics High Bar Finals for a full ten minutes.

Video: Alexei Nemov – Male Gymnastics High Bar Finals (Sample) (.MPG, 25MB)

Like Yahoo’s Most Popular, there’s an emphasis on women’s beach volleyball and women’s gymnastics. But many other events are represented, as well. Below is a list of every event posted to the alt.binaries.olympics Usenet newsgroup since the Olympics started on August 13.

Continue reading “Olympics 2004 on Usenet” →