BasBasBas.com

Category: life

  • Best practices of the online promotion of new musical content

    As the regular readers of my blog probably know, I’m writing my graduation thesis about the future of music distribution. Due to some setbacks and unforseen circumstances, this thesis has suffered some delays. However, using the knowledge and insight I gained in the past month, while studying my thesis’ topic, I have compiled a paper called the Best Practices of the Online Promotion of New Musical Content.

    It looks at artists like Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse, Mos Def, and Groove Armada, and analyzes what they’ve been doing right and wrong and why they’ve been doing it in the first place.

    So while you wait for the thesis and the launch of FutureOfMusicDistribution.com, how about going through this 20 page paper? 🙂

    To download and read the whole paper, just use this link:

    http://www.basbasbas.com/online_promotion_of_new_musical_content-Bas_Grasmayer.pdf

    And feel free to redistribute it, it’s licensed under a Creative Commons license!

    Love,
    Bas

    Image by Gary Simmons, shared under a Creative Commons license on Flickr.

  • Ouch, my calves! (A lesson about barefoot running)

    Alright, lesson learned. If you’re going to start barefoot running, start slow. REALLY slow.

    If you’re following this blog, I bought them. Not just that, I even started a site dedicated to barefoot lifestyle. I’ve become convinced that going barefoot is a very interesting experiment (plus it feels great) and that it’s an upcoming trend. Why? Well, I ended up buying the Vibram Five Fingers. When I first saw them, I ridiculed them, more or less like everybody else. However, I bought these shoes for a great reason and my reasons make sense (you can read about this on my Squidoo lens). The product itself catches the attention of people, just before they start ridiculing it. I’m quite evangelical about my choice though (as with all my choices), so once I have their attention, I explain WHY I bought it, creating interest. Suddenly I find people quite open about  the shoes and suddenly not ridiculing them anymore. As a matter of fact, they’ll start asking questions instead.

    That’s the positive side of the experience. The other is a lesson. If you’re going to start barefoot running (or using minimalistic, barefoot simulating shoes, like the Vibram five fingers), then START SLOW. Imagine how slow you should start. Then HALF that. I normally do a 2 kilometer lap every two days or so. Just a 10 minute run, because I enjoy it. So when I went to try out the shoes, I loved the new way in which I was running. I ran about half and walked the other half, but I overdid it. Next day: terrible muscle ache. Day after that: STILL terrible muscle ache.

    Really, do yourself a favour and start slow! But not before doing yourself a bigger favour: go barefoot! 🙂

  • Ugly Shoes, an Ethiopian Hero, and a Mexican Tribe of Long Distance Runners

    I’m an information junkie. I don’t think I can say that I love reading, but I adore absorbing information. Today I read a great review of ugly shoes, which led me to look into a Mexican tribe and into the achievements of an Ethiopian athlete hero.

    It started with a review on CrunchGear. It’s basically about a type of shoe that wraps around every toe and why it’s so great for running. The article argued that we’re natural long distance runners and that before we had weapons, we’d chase animals for such lengths of time and distances that the animals would collapse after which we could kill them and eat them. This is no longer necessary for us in the west (both the running great distances to get food and the killing animals to use their meat for survival), but it doesn’t take away the fact that we have evolved as long distance runners.

    Five Fingers

    Next I looked at a book called Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen which is in part about athletes that run ultramarathons, which are 40 miles instead of 40 kilometers. One of these athletes joins a tribe of Native Americans in Mexico who are known for their long-distance running abilities.

    Isolated by the most savage terrain in North America, the reclusive Tarahumara Indians of Mexico’s deadly Copper Canyons are custodians of a lost art. For centuries they have practiced techniques that allow them to run hundreds of miles without rest and chase down anything from a deer to an Olympic marathoner while enjoying every mile of it. Their superhuman talent is matched by uncanny health and serenity, leaving the Tarahumara immune to the diseases and strife that plague modern existence.

    So the author trained with them and he learned a great deal. The Tarahumara Indians run barefoot, which apparently means less injuries and better running. Why? Modern shoes apparently cushion our heels so that we start running on our heels, sending shocks up our ankles, knees, hips and spines. Man is not supposed to run this way naturally, but instead we’re supposed to use the balls of our feet. We’re endurance runners by nature.

    Abebe BikilaSo I explored if there were any famous athletes that are barefoot runners and one story in particular amazed me. It’s the story of Abebe Bikila, an Ethiopian athlete who was the first black African to win an Olympic gold medal and the first athlete to winning the Olympic marathon twice. The first time he was a bit late with picking out his shoes and the pair he had were uncomfortable, so he couldn’t run a marathon with them. He decided to run barefoot, since that’s how he had practiced in Ethiopia anyway and he ended up breaking the world record. Four years later, just before the Olympics, Bikila had a case of acute appendicitis and was operated on. He then started practicing again almost immediately and won the marathon a second time.

    There’s surely something to be said for barefoot running. We are born as barefoot endurance runners, with tons of nerve endings in our foot to give us stimuli and instincts to help us interpret and act according to the stimuli. Now I want to start trying it out… I’m sure my neighbours must think I’m crazy running through their street on my bare feet, but not as crazy as if they’d see me in those shoes. I could always cycle a bit out of town of course. 🙂

    Love running? What do you think? Ever seriously tried barefoot running? What are your experiences? Will you consider barefoot running?

    By the way, in case you didn’t check out the link to the book I mentioned, you really should. Read the description and the interview with the author, it’s so fascinating. This will be the next book I buy! 🙂

  • Troogle Attempts Creation Google Conspiracy… but Fails!

    I just had my attention directed towards ‘Troogle‘, via Pixites, who are uncovering the truth about Google on a WordPress blog. The first post on their page basically states Google (and 4 other companies) are conspiring to take over the internet (mirror) and they’re going to start talking about it on a site called The New Web Project (mirror). It urges people to keep an eye on that site. That’s when my bullshit alert went off. Maybe earlier. Someone dropping some secret papers right in front of the feet of an anti-Goole blogger seemed a little too convenient.

    So I looked up who registered The New Web Project. A quick Whois (mirror) showed John Nijenroode. So I figured I’d check out who he is. So I ran his name through Google (ironic, I know) and found his Twitter account, even the username matches his email address. In his bio he claims to be a blogger for Troogle (mirror) and the Troogle blog says the same (mirror).

    If you’re gonna invent conspiracies, at least be more crafty and make it believable… And turn on domain privacy!

  • The Yambol buscrash and my dream

    Yambol bus crashI should be working on my thesis right now, but I feel I would work more effectively once I get this out of my system.

    Yesterday there was a tragic accident as a 30 year old bus cut its way into a group of tourists in Southeastern Bulgaria. Brake failure. 16 people died. 4 are still in the hospital. For the specifics, see Martin’s blogpost. Now this of course made some impression on me, but not as much as what happened after I learned about the accident.

    I continued working for an hour, maybe two. I decided to take a nap. By now, the newsstory had already left my mind or at least gone to the background. While I took my nap, I had a strange dream. Just before I woke up, we were in a coach pulled by horses. There was one carriage in front of us with two women riding it which crashed into the shrubs in the roadside, but it didn’t look bad, so I didn’t think much of it. What stuck with me most, is what happened inside the coach I was in. We were about 6 people in there, two families – mine and another it seemed. A girl of about my age was on the phone with a friend of her and said: “Sofia is doooooood” (dood is Dutch for dead). She said it in a strange way and her parents commented on it, disapprovingly. Shortly after, I woke up.

    I immediately started thinking… Does this have something to do with the recent tremors and earthquakes here? Will something bad happen to the city of Sofia? But this was maybe 2% of how I felt, because for the other 98% I felt that Sofia was a person… So I thought of the bus accident again. I tried to see if there were any names of victims released yet. Not yet. I became convinced that something happened to Sofia – either in this bus accident, or in some other way. As I woke up this morning, there was a list of names of the casualties.  Including a Sofia.

    Creepy. On the one hand I’m a very logical person, on the other I do have a believe in the paranormal and spiritual. And I have been experiencing a lot of synchronicity lately… Which I haven’t really experienced in nearly a year (and I’m very happy it’s back – it’s a good sign in my eyes).

    Don’t know what to make of it. Given the increase in synchronicity, I have a feeling I’ll be able to put it into perspective through future experiences. For now… It will remain a mystery.

    😉

    How about you? Have you experienced such things before? What do you make of your own experiences?

  • Prague, Greece & Bulgarian countryside! (Video!)

    As promised, here is the video of my recent travels in the last month. One month ago I was in Prague for a conference and some sightseeing, then went to Greece for a weekend a few weeks ago and I spent last weekend in the Bulgarian countryside! I’m having a great spring!

    Since I didn’t upload any pictures yet, I decided to 1 UP my promise and to deliver a video. 🙂

    Enjoy!

    Or go see it on YouTube or Vimeo.

  • A Few Updates & a Request

    How’s it going, everybody?

    Over the last weeks I’ve been in Prague, in Greece and have also been working hard on my thesis about the future of music distribution, which is due in about 2-3 weeks. This weekend I’m going to the Bulgarian countryside, which I’m very excited about, since I’ve lived in this country (off and on) for a year in total, but have never seen the core of Bulgaria. The countryside is very important to Bulgarians and I love seeing it, because you see some old practices that have left our western societies for decades.

    When I come back, I’ll make a video compilation of all the pictures we took in the last few weeks, in Prague, Greece and then the Bulgarian countryside. It will be great. I promise!

    And now a request

    I’m doing a survey for my thesis about the future of music distribution. It takes about 9-10 minutes to fill it in and as a reward I offer you 9 free songs of a great variety, one for every minute you spend on the survey. 😉

    So go fill it in: http://survey.futureofmusicdistribution.com/

    Do me a HUGE favour and spread this link around a bit, to music lovers or people that don’t care much for music… It doesn’t matter, I’m interested in all of them. Please consider blogging about it, putting it in your Facebook or Twitter status, etc. and give your friends some free music and help out a student in the name of music and education! 🙂

    Thanks a lot!

    Speak to you after the weekend 🙂

    Bas

  • Looking for artists to sponsor my future of music thesis survey with a song/track to reward the participants!

    Hi everyone!

    As you all know, I’m writing my thesis about the Future of Music Distribution. For this thesis I’m going to be doing a survey to add more authority to the findings of my thesis so far. As an incentive for people to fill out the survey, I figured it would be appropriate to offer them FREE MUSIC! 🙂

    The idea is as follows:

    After filling out the survey, the users will be shown the end page.

    I’ll get some cover art, plus 10 tracks. I’ll put the cover art at the top, then tracklist:

    1. Artist – Song (Download)
    2. You – Your song (Download)
    3. Artist – Song (Download)
    etc.

    The word download will link directly to the song, whereas I’ll make the artist name link directly to the profile page / website of the artists. It should be a good deal for everyone involved I believe 🙂

    I’ll also offer the whole thing in one ZIP file, and will include an information file with all the websites etc. I’ll also edit the artist websites into the ID3 info of the MP3’s.

    Will do my best to make this a good promotion opportunity for all those involved!

    Please get in touch with me asap, because I want to launch the survey within the next 36 hours!

    Thanks,
    Bas

    P.S. More travel stories soon!

  • Prague Public Transport’s a Rip Off!

    So, before I write about the joys of Prague last week… I want to get something off my chest first.

    The public transport in Prague is not too expensive, although some people would disagree with me. The problem is the availability of tickets at night. There’s no machines available, no shops open, metro stations where there are offices: closed. If you can reach machines, but don’t have exact change: good luck. Even the guys from the tram/metro service won’t change money with you. Oh, and the tramdrivers don’t sell tickets.

    So if you don’t have a ticket already, sometimes you’re more or less forced to ride the tram illegally, or put yourself in danger by walking through a city filled with junks and bums for 1.5 hour. So you get on the tram, but a lot of trams at night have police officers in them… who help to enforce the public transport company’s rules. By helping controllers fining you for more than 25 times the price of a ticket. That, by my book, is fascism. Using state security forces to enforce corporate interests at the cost of civilians.

    There’s the option to send an SMS to a number to buy a ticket ‘code’ or something, but we were told this only works with Czech numbers… and at the information display at tramstops, the number to SMS is not mentioned. Great job, guys.

    Yes, we got fined.

    More about Prague soon! It was awesome. So was the 24 hour busride through Europe 🙂

    Photo by Tsvety.

  • 24 hour trip to Prague

    A busride through EuropeI’m about to embark on a 24 hour busride to Prague with my girlfriend. I’m invited to speak at a conference about social dynamics and hope to change some lives with the speech I will give there. I’ll be staying with a friend of mine who’s a DJ and who’ll be playing at 3 gigs that weekend, but before having a blast in Prague, I’ll have to make the best of my time in the bus.

    I believe it will be a wonderful trip. Instead of flying across Europe from the south east to the center and seeing only clouds, we’ll be driving through a bunch of countries of which we’ll be able to see the beautiful landscapes and nature that they offer. Last summer I got in a car that was going from Holland to Bulgaria and even though it was exhausting, it was a great experience to witness the diversity of Europe. It made me feel a lot more European at the same time.

    Also, when we arrive, a day after leaving, we’ll really have the feeling that we’re somewhere else – which I sometimes miss after a 1 or 2 hour planeride. Let’s hope all goes well and it won’t be too boring. 😉

    I’ll be publishing some pictures of the trip if I manage to get any interesting shots and else expect a bunch of pictures from Prague up soon!

    Wish me bon voyage and I’ll speak to you soon!

    Image by René Ehrhardt, shared under a Creative Commons license on Flickr.

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