May 31, 2008

Mamma Mia gay night and goody bags

Filed under: Film,Music,Shows by Orangemaster @ 11:33 am
mammamia1.jpg

The girls have had their girls’ night out at the movies, now the gays will get with a Mammia Mia! evening to make them feel all warm and peach fuzzy inside. The week before the première of the musical film Mamma Mia!, tons of movie theatres in cities such as Amsterdam, Utrecht, Groningen, Tilburg, Delft and Haarlem will hold special ‘gay nights’ on July 9.

What’s the big hairy deal? The gays get a goody bag after the show and a free drink at the nearest gay bar.

So the question remains: what’s in a gay goody bag? Condoms is the quick and dirty answer, and the mother of all clichés. A small bottle of raspberry Absolut vodka? Beauty products? I want to know.

(Link: fok.nl)

Tags: ,

May 30, 2008

Record gift voucher to be replaced by chip card

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 10:39 am

The Nationale Entertainmentbon, colloquially still known as the Nationale Platenbon (national record gift voucher), has been given its sentence. At the end of this year, the voucher that would have celebrated its 50th anniversary next year will be no more, Dutch Cowboys report (Dutch). On 1 September, the voucher will be replaced by a chip card that gives its buyer a couple more options. Choices. The buyer can decide the amount (up to 150 euro), and can use the card to shop on the internet.

The Dutch Cowboys also mention that the association for Dutch music stores has seen its membership dwindle from 1600 to 400 stores in the past few years.

Tags: , ,

May 29, 2008

Christians get knickers in a twist over cereal advert

Filed under: Religion by Branko Collin @ 12:56 pm

In Veenendaal, part of the Dutch bible belt, the local chapter of the SGP is “shocked,” “insulted,” and “hurt” over an ad for cereal which depicts a famous scene from the Old Testament, reports RTV Utrecht (Dutch). The Kellogg’s advert that so outraged the conservative Protestant party displays a prudishly covered Eve amidst a sea of apples, watched by a snake, and under a banner which reads “Meer fruit dan vroeger” (more fruit than before).

The SGP, known mostly for its extreme misogynist stance for which it undoubtedly borrowed heavily from the Old Testament’s Garden of Eden myth, has asked the city’s executive to condemn the campaign to Kellogg’s, which must be rubbing its corporate paws in glee for such a predictive gift of free advertising.

The manufacturer’s campaign features a second ad which also depicts a scene from a fairy tale (Snow White, to be precise), but as far as I know no one has protested that one.

Via Geen Commentaar (Dutch).

Tags: , , , , , ,

May 28, 2008

Booties for cows with sore feet

Filed under: Animals,Science by Orangemaster @ 12:29 pm
morecows1.JPG

A veterinarian in Winterswijk, Gelderland has developed slippers for cows with inflamed feet. Ron Jansen made the slippers using foam rubber and velcro. The cows need to wear them for five days, during which the footwear will ease the pain and allow the inflammation to heal quicker by shielding it from manure.

We could not find a picture, but we did find a nice cow photo shoot.

(Link: www.agd.nl)

Tags: , , ,

May 27, 2008

Cargo bike with 8 seats for children

Filed under: Bicycles,Design by Branko Collin @ 8:00 am

This cargo bike (bakfiets) concept seats eight children and a hapless grown up who has to somehow keep an eye on that merry bunch and pedal too. Luckily for the cyclist, an electric helper motor is part of the plan, which was thought up by amongst others Henny Grave from Deventer (Dutch) and Gazelle’s Van der Veer Designers.

The design was originally born as part of a project to help parents fetch children after school. Grave has bigger plans though, and hopes to transport the elderly from and to the railway station with this bike, tourists around town, and garbage to wherever garbage needs to be.

Source sketch: Van der Veer Designers. Via Dagelinks (Dutch).

Tags:

May 26, 2008

Wikipedia upload manager for photos of the rich and famous

Filed under: General,Photography by Branko Collin @ 9:00 am

Contributing text to Wikipedia is as easy as clicking on the “Edit this page” link at the top of an entry. But contributing photos is harder. To write text about Leeuwarden, you don’t have to be there, but to take a photo of Leeuwarden you do. The quality of a text is only limited by your own skills, but that of a photo also by the quality of your equipment. And finally, your text is your own, but who owns a photo is also dependent on what’s in the picture.

It’s no wonder then that there is a shortage of good imagery at Wikipedia. While working on setting up a local version of the Wikipedia photo scavenger hunt which aims to remedy this, I stumbled on a similar project that tries to get portraits of the notable into Wikipedia, Wikipotrait.

The Dutch initiative, hosted at wikiportret.nl, also has an English language counterpart at wikiportrait.org, and is basically a wizard for uploading photos and sorting out the rights situation. The resulting photos will be hosted at Wikimedia Commons under a permissive license. Wikipotret is an initiative of the Werkgroep Vrije Media (Dutch, Working Group Free Media). The site’s been live for a few months now, but was officially announced on May 5.

Tags:

May 25, 2008

Knitted sausage at MAMA

Filed under: Art,Design,Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 3:15 pm

Here, have some knitted sausage:

Proef founder Marije Vogelzang is exhibiting these knitted sausages amongst others at her first (and perishable) solo exhibition at the MAMA showroom in Rotterdam. Proef is two food design studios / restaurants in Rotterdam and Amsterdam.

(“Proef”, pronounced proof, is the imperative of to taste, or as a noun means test. Two languages separated by the North Sea.)

Photo by Proef. Via Trendbeheer (Dutch).

Tags: , , ,

May 24, 2008

National Song Festival 1975

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 7:38 pm

Tonight is the latest episode of the world’s biggest schmalz fest, the Eurovision Song Contest, and for another year the Netherlands are not participating due to lack of quality. In fact, the last time we won was in 1975 with Teach In’s Ding-a-dong.

The song was performed in Stockholm in English, but during the national competition it was sung in this Dutch version. The national competition was set up so that three competitors all had to sing each other’s songs. As a result, there are also recordings by Albert West and Debbie. Which one do you like best?

Tags: , , ,

May 23, 2008

Man wins 980,000 euro in casino poker game

Filed under: Gaming,General by Branko Collin @ 6:26 pm

Last Tuesday a man won 980,000 euro in a poker game at the Holland Casino in Rotterdam. The man, who wishes to remain anonymous, played a relatively rare variant of the game called Caribbean Stud Poker in which part of the winnings go into a jackpot. A royal flush managed to help pry loose the contents of this jackpot.

Owner Holland Casino, the state-owned and only legal casino company in the Netherlands, declared that this was the highest jackpot in Rotterdam ever.

(Link: Z24 (Dutch), Photo by Jam Adams, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , , ,

May 22, 2008

Talking pillbox for the visually impaired

Filed under: Gadgets,Science by Orangemaster @ 7:55 am
pillbox1.jpg

It’s not yet on the market (and it will look different than this picture), but two inventors from Breda, Noord-Brabant hope that it will be soon: a pillbox that reads the directions folders of medicine. Once the box is opened, it will start reading automatically. The box makes sure to state that it is medicine and not sweets, a good idea when children are around.

A text can be up to 4.5 minutes long, and a 60-second text can be read some 150 times.

Let’s hope that the direction folders are properly written (an issue about two years ago in the Netherlands), properly translated (always an issue) and not too long (nobody needs to hear an entire disclaimer in 27 EU languages).

(Link: rtl.nl)

Tags: , , ,