Feross.org

Nerdcore! Aww yeah!

Last Tuesday, I got to hang out with “the world’s 579th greatest rapper,” MC Frontalot, before and after he performed at a Stanford concert! He is best-known for coining the term nerdcore and basically defining the whole nerdcore hip-hop musical genre. As you can tell by picture above, I dressed appropriately for the occasion.

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I wish you all a happy new year! Best of luck in 2010!

Ridin' Dirty with Chamillionaire

I just saw Chamillionaire and Quincy Jones III talk about entrepreneurship at Stanford!

Chamillionaire is most famous for his single Ridin’ Dirty and the Weird Al parody that followed it. Unfortunately, he didn’t rap for us — instead, he gave us a bit of hustlin advice. Ahhhh YEEEAH…

My favorite part of the event was when Stanford president John Hennessey asked the audience “How can we change the world?” and someone in the audience yelled “By ridin’ dirty!” Anonymity for the win.

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Because I’m grownup now, and it’s my turn to decide what that means.

(Thanks to XKCD for giving me something to do with my extra 123 balloons.)

Pictures from the DragonForce Concert I went to in San Francisco.


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I’ve long believed that modern hip-hop and R&B suffers from too much post-production. Average singers can wail away in front of the microphone yet sound amazing on the radio, after the post-production techs have fixed all the mistakes. This is why all the music on the radio sounds so similar — it’s all pitch-perfect.

Today, I discovered just how little talent it requires to make a modern pop song.

MacBook Pro + Built-in Mic + GarageBand + AutoTune + 1 hour =

Feross Aboukhadijeh - Amazing

VS.

Kanye West (ft. Young Jeezy) - Amazing

Go ahead and click PLAY above to give my cover song a listen.

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I just read an interesting opinion column about technology illiteracy over at TidBITS. The author, Adam Engst, argues that as technology becomes easier to use and hence more transparent, society has lost the ability to converse about technology.

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The Free Software Foundation’s latest free software campaign is hilarious and awesome!

In case you’re unfamiliar with the FSF, they’re a nonprofit corporation founded by free software activist and GNU hacker Richard Stallman. Their goal is to promote free and open source software. Their tactics often include comical publicity stunts to bash proprietary software.

This is the email I received this morning from the Free Software Supporter mailing list:

Hi everyone,

This Wednesday, August 26 at 11am, the Free Software Foundation will be launching its Windows7sins.org public awareness campaign, drawing attention to the threats posed by the adoption of Microsoft’s proprietary operating system. We have a launch event here in Boston on the Boston Commons from noon until 3pm, and we need everyone in the area to come along and help out and join in the ceremony as we conduct a ceremonial trashing of proprietary software.

**We’ll be launching our Windows 7 campaign with pomp and fanfare, with a giant 12 foot trashcan being filled with boxes of proprietary software.**

The event promises to be lots of fun, and with thousands of people passing through the Boston Commons every day we hope you will help us connect with the public by handing out information and explaining the benefits of free software. There will be camera crews and photographers capturing the event and we will be getting these images up online as soon as possible on the day.

Let us know you’re coming and bring along your friends and work colleagues – mail campaigns@fsf.org if you have time to help us set up, or just turn up at the Boston Commons near the entrance to the Public Gardens from noon.

If you’re not in the Boston area, there will be plenty for you to do to help us launch the campaign and get the message out. Stay tuned for upcoming instructions…

Thanks for your support!

–
Peter T. Brown
Executive Director
Free Software Foundation
www.fsf.org www.gnu.org

I think I’d go to the event — if not to dump my proprietary software, then to witness an event unlike any other I’ve heard of. Too bad I’m not in the Boston area.

This is some of the coolest art I’ve ever seen, courtesy of Josh Keyes.