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Dan Maynes Aminzade (aka Monzy; born Daniel Maynes-Aminzade in 1979) is a Nerdcore hip-hop artist and software engineer at Google.
Professional history
Dan received his PhD from Stanford University in September 2008. His PhD is titled Interactive Visual Prototyping of Computer Vision Applications.
Dan received his Master's degree from MIT, where he was a member of the Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Lab under the direction of Professor Hiroshi Ishii from 2001-2003. There he worked on the Actuated Workbench, a device that uses magnetic forces to move objects on a table around in two dimensions.
Dan received his Bachelor's degree from Carnegie Mellon University, where his research advisor was Randy Pausch; his Undergraduate Honors Thesis is titled "Techniques for Interactive Audience Participation".
From 1997-2001 he was a member of Stage 3 Research Group, based at Carnegie Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute. There he worked on new techniques for interactive audience participation.
Aminzade has interned at six companies during summer breaks from higher education. In 2000, he worked for Walt Disney Imagineering with Robert Swirsky where he helped to develop Enhanced TV for ABC and Go.com. The following year he was an intern at Adobe Systems where he assisted in the development of plugins for Adobe InDesign. In 2002, he was employed by Microsoft as a developer for MSN Messenger. He interned at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories in the summer of 2003 and at FXPAL in the summer of 2004. In the summer of 2006 he worked as a software engineering intern at Google's New York office, and was there full-time until 2011, when he transferred to Google's Mountain View headquarters.
Nerdcore hip-hop
Monzy made his hip-hop debut with Drama in the PhD which called out his musical rival MC Plus+. It gained large popularity after being described as "the best fucking thing I've ever heard" by LiveJournal creator Brad Fitzpatrick. It eventually made it into a Wired magazine article , and Monzy was interviewed for a segment on the German television program Taff. He was also mentioned in the February 2006 issue of EE Times, an academic and industry-oriented publication dedicated to issues in the field of Electrical Engineering.
On January 10, 2006, Monzy performed at the DivX, Inc. booth of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, along with other nerdcore artists. With Karl Olson acting as a mediator, Monzy and MC Plus+ finally ended their rivalry and performed together on the same stage.
- "Kill Dash Nine" (appears on Rhyme Torrents Vol.1 )
References
External links
Media coverage
- Zipern, Andrew. "At MIT, Making Fun of the Alma Mater" The New York Times December 3, 2001.
- Newitz, Annalee. "Sex Studies at MIT" San Francisco Bay Guardian December 13, 2001.
- Orlowski, Andrew. "WCs meet PCs: converged tech toilets show promise" The Register May 27, 2003.
- Maxim Magazine "Streaming Video" Maxim Magazine August, 2003.
- TechTV Hot Click TechTV October, 2003.
- Andrews, Robert. "Rap Marketing Comes to Nerdcore." Wired June 23, 2005.
- Reed, Bryan. "Nerdcore Hip-Hop" The Daily Tarheel December 8, 2005.
- Clendenin, Mike. "Geeksta Rappers Rhyme Tech Talk" EE Times February 13, 2006.
- Nguyen, Thuy-Dzuong. "Nerdcore rap helps dorky losers spit mad game" Gonzaga Bulletin March 24, 2006.
- Darling, Cary. "Beats and Geeks" The Fort Worth Star-Telegram February 18, 2007.
- Silverberg, David. "Beats, Geeks, and Freaks" NOW Magazine April 26, 2007.
- Neill, Huw. "Nerdcore for Life" Canvas Magazine April, 2007.
- Miranda, Jeff. "Refrain of the Nerds" The Boston Globe November 4, 2007.
- Ding, Mike "Only for the 'Nerdcore'" The Stanford Daily November 14, 2007