what do you do when you have access to an endless wealth of musical information? you remix it. if you needed any more proof that remix culture and the share-and-share-alike ideas behind creative commons are alive and well, look no further than Mother of All Funk Chords by Kutiman.

Perhaps the finest piece of viral material ever to sweep the Intarwebs. If you didn’t love kittens before, well… then you are dead to me. If you don’t love them now, I’ve already eaten your brains.

I’m not writing this post so much because I love the song (though it’s pretty good).  Nor do I really think the video is spectacular (but certainly worth watching).  Nope, I’m writing this because I want to talk about Topspin Media.  Or more precisely, I want to point out what a fantastic idea the “self contained embedded player cum music store” is.

Simply put, imagine every viral media chunklet you’ve ever seen transformed into a fully functioning music store (literally) in a box.  Not only is it a fantastic step in removing control directly from the major distribution channels, but it utilizes the fundamental strength of digital media: the ability to produce infinite copies for free. By this I don’t mean that they’ve created some new monster of illegal filesharing, nor did Topsin really create a new way to download music; instead they’ve leveraged the way people already discover new music, through embedded and shared media.

Congrats to the Topspin folks.  I’ve been following this company for a while, and hope to see really great things from them in the future.

(Video via fistfulayen, the blog of Topsin CEO Ian Rogers)

Legend of Zelda fans are gonna love this.

when i got into the space game, i never had any idea how difficult it might be.  sure, the old adage is that ‘it’s not rocket science,’ but in reality it goes a lot deeper than that.

it’s not just the rocket science that is difficult.  it’s the logistics.  it’s the politics.  it’s the bugs and quirks and anomalies that can cause catostrophic failure.  it’s the show-business.  it’s the pageantry.  it’s the stunning beauty of a machined nozzle spewing gas at ungodly temperature and pressure.  it’s the defeat.  it’s the victory.  it’s everything in between.

if i didn’t believe that i was making a difference in the world every single day, i would never keep doing what i do.

for your enjoyment, i present a video of what exactly i’ve been up to this past week.

while driving through the barren landscape of the new mexico desert, we stumbled upon an awesome oldies station (i think i heard maybe two commercials the entire trip).  and this little gem came on, which i hadn’t listened to in a long, long time.  i couldn’t help but post it here.

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