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  • How long would it take to read Wikipedia?

    Almer S. Tigelaar 21 / 02 / 2012

    Wikipedia has become the de facto encyclopedia on the Internet. A traditional encyclopedia spans many textbook volumes which would take any normal person ages to read. Few people would likely engage in such an endeavor. However, since Wikipedia is readily accessible: should you take up the challenge?

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  • Life in a Day

    Almer S. Tigelaar 09 / 02 / 2012

    The premise behind the YouTube documentary “Life in a Day” is interesting: invite everyone around the world to shoot video on one specific day: July 24th 2010. Have people upload their raw footage and edit it so it becomes a short, ninety minute, documentary that chronicles a single day on our planet. Does this extreme form of crowdsourcing actually work?

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  • Top 8 Prejudices about Americans

    Almer S. Tigelaar 07 / 02 / 2012

    When travelling abroad it is difficult to go with an open mind. Despite our best efforts we bring with us an excess of prejudice shaped by our own culture and view of the destination country. So to it was for me when I visited the United States. When coming back, people at home are very insistent that you play into their prejudice regarding where you’ve been as well, perhaps as a means of reinforcing their own identity.

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Category: Music

Internet Memes

Almer S. Tigelaar 25 / 06 / 2011, 09:00

Internet memes are `cultural’ phenomena which quickly gain popularity and, as a result, rapidly spread across the Web. These usually take the form of images or videos. Although not the first, the earliest one I can remember is “All your base are belong to us”, based on a mistranslated Japanese video game. It became popular to put this phrase in all kinds of photos. An other particularly prolific meme is the so-called Rickroll: hidden behind a possibly interesting link is the video of Rick Astley’s song “Never Gonna Give You Up”. There is even an 8-bit and an Obama version.

Although I can give many more examples, a friend pointed me to the so-called Nyan Cat, which has recently become a very popular meme. It consists of an animation of a flying cat with a Pop Tart as body. This showed up on YouTube which even changed their video slider to mimic the shape of the cat and the rainbow trail! :


There is also a browser based version that keeps track of how long you have been listening.

The looped tune in particular, of Japanese origin, is an addictive ear pleaser, but one is left to wonder: why?

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