Initially I spotted this delivery van on the J.M. Coenenstraat in Amsterdam simply because unlike most of its brethren it lacked any form of advertising on its sides. Only when I looked closer I noticed the URL. No, that is not ‘shopped.
July 31, 2009
Anne Frank diary added to Unesco world register
Anne Frank’s diary has been added to the Memory of the World Register by UNESCO. UNESCO launched the Memory of the World Register to protect documentary heritage reflecting the diversity of the world’s peoples, languages, and cultures from ‘collective amnesia’.
Although often mistaken as a Dutch girl by many probably because she wrote her diary in Dutch, Anne Frank was a Jewish Germany girl who wrote about the two years she and her family spent in hiding in the Netherlands during WWII.
I still find it fascinating that Anne Frank is seen a source of Dutch pride — with good reason of course — while the growing amount of populists in the Netherlands do not think any Dutch person with a second passport qualifies as ‘part of the club’.
(Link: unmultimedia.org)
Tags: Anne Frank
July 30, 2009
Cool-looking compact bicycle storage system
Although the Bikedispenser has been around since 2007, designed by Dutch firms Springtime and Post&Dekker, we thought it was high time to point it out, being the cycling fans that we are. We recently wrote about the modular Bike & Chill, which also shows how important cycling is as a mode of transportation.
“Bikedispenser noticed that bike use once people got to their destination by train was really taking off, which is why the lack of bike storage at train stations is a huge problem. Bicycles are just 17 cm apart in the Bikedispenser, while in regular bicycle racks they are 37,5 cm apart, or more like 75 cm, as they are in the Vélib system (see photo below) in Paris.” In a land with more bikes than inhabitants (more than 16 million) and a population density of 395/km2, space is everything in the Netherlands.
The Bikedispenser site also explains how interested it is in foreign markets. Convincing the Dutch to cycle to work or school is a no-brainer, but getting people to do the same in much bigger cities like Paris, Brussels or Barcelona requires having inexpensive, freely accessible bikes around town at people’s disposal.
The system in Brussels ressembles the one in Paris, but there, cyclists are required to wear specific glow-in-the-dark construction worker vests, an indication of how uncommon and even dangerous cycling around town still is. Paris took to their Vélibs and own it, cycling rather carefully but proudly the few times I was there. In Barcelona, the bike loan system together with the amount of Dutch-owned businesses renting out bikes to tourists has contributed to the sharp decline in stolen bikes.
(Link and photo: BikeDispenser.com, via The Presurfer. Vélib photo: Orangemaster)
Tags: Barcelona, bike dispenser, Brussels, Paris, storage
July 29, 2009
It’s anarchy here, Fox News said so!
You’re a cesspool of lies, Fox News. And you’re going to hell for all eternity.
Check your facts, you pathetic puritain morons.
We know you’re jealous.
Tags: Amsterdam
Cross-border speeding: Dutch cash in on Belgians
Down South in soft-spoken Maastricht, Limburg, the police raked in a cool EUR 2.5 million from Belgians caught for traffic violations last year, 37,417 of which were speeding violations.
And what about the Dutch on the Belgian side? An estimated 15,000 Dutch people brought in EUR 1.5 million according to the Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws, which is a lot less.
The amusing part is that Belgian Limburg has twice as many speed cameras as Dutch Limburg (Yes, both countries share the name of a province).
As an exercise in pure unfounded speculation, the Belgians have more physical room to get their motors going whereas in the Netherlands you’ll miss four exits if you bat your eyelids too long. Germans often get caught speeding into the Netherlands because slowing down is not fun and takes time. When you’re going a roaring 220 km for like an hour (been there, done that, yes it sucks petrol fast), slowing down to 50 km feels like going backwards in time.
(Link: blikopnieuws.nl, Photo by Wikipedia user Naaldenberg, some rights reserved.)
Tags: Belgium, Limburg, Maastricht
July 28, 2009
Zone 5300 in the land of the Dadas
The Summer edition of Zone 5300 contains a large retrospective of The Cramps, the psychobilly dinos that put the fun into punk, because of stiletto-heeled front-man Lux Interior’s death earlier this year. Writer Eric van der Heijden handcuffs you, then shows all the clean versions of rock ‘n’ roll and the dirty parents they sprang from. Guess where The Cramps belong?
Lars Fiske reports on a 1922 visit of Dada to the Netherlands (illustration).
What do you do if everybody is already shooting nice pics of microbes, hell, if nice pics of microbes are really old hat in your country? Stereoscopic photos of the creepy-crawlies! Plus you try to get American art schools and Dutch museums to believe your story that art can only be objectively enjoyed after you have dunked classic works and instruments in a bath full of micro-organisms. Such is the wondrous sense of humour of Wim van Egmond.
Maaike Hartjes tries her hand at photography. Eerie! Cute! How does she do it? (Maaike’s got a new blog by the by, so go check it.)
And finally a long comic of Fool’s Gold contributor Milan Hulsing about collected collectors, so you know he knows what he is talking, er, drawing about.
(Illustration: Lars Fiske.)
Tags: Dada, Fool's Gold, Lars Fiske, Maaike Hartjes, Milan Hulsing, punk, rock, The Cramps, Wim van Egmond, Zone 5300
July 27, 2009
Dutch apps for iPhone: useful and useless
Although this September you could take a course on how to design iPhone applications in the Netherlands, I would suggest you start thinking about what kind of apps you want to unleash onto the world today. Here are three totally different Dutch apps to get you going. Tell us about more Dutch ones and we’ll check them out.
First, a silly app called Walk The Line, a ‘playful sobriety test’ from a well-known beer brand (no, the other one with big green bottles), which is fun if you’ve had a few and totally useless if you’re seriously thinking of driving. If you can count, you’re better off. You cannot legally drive after two beers. If you’ve recently obtained your licence, it’s one beer. If it’s me, drink something non-alcoholic.
The world’s first augmented reality browser Layar by Sprx mobile in Amsterdam is something useful and original. Looking forward to its bright future.
Then, there’s Trein (‘Train’), the still buggy but useful app that pissed off the Dutch Railways. Anyone know more about this one? We’re curious, as if it is still being developed, the big bad railway must have lost or given up.
(Link: trendhunter.com, Photo: Photo by William Hook, some rights reserved.)
Tags: iPhone, Layar, trein, walk the line
July 26, 2009
Carel Struycken’s spherical panorama photography
Carel who? Well, only the most famous Dutch actor bar none.
You may not recognise his name, but you will surely recognize the characters he played: Lurch in the Addams Family films, the butler in The Witches of Eastwick, Star Trek TNG’s Mr. Homn, the Giant in Twin Peaks, and so on. He’s played countless roles in high profile films and TV series such as Men in Black, St.Elsewhere, and Babylon 5, where he is easily recognized because of his large-looking face. (Wikipedia says he’s exceedingly tall at 2.10 metres, but that’s only tallish for a Dutchman.)
But apart from appearing in almost every major Hollywood production, Struycken spends a large chunk of his time making spherical panoramas—that is to say, panorama photos that can be viewed in any direction—in the US, on Curaçao, and in the Netherlands and Germany. I seem to remember from an earlier visit to his website that the crop above is of a panorama photo from an indoor swimming pool somewhere in the Netherlands, but Struycken keeps track of his panoramas in at least three different places, and I could not find metadata for this one in any of them.
(Source photo: www.sphericalpanoramas.com. Carel Struycken’s IMDB page)
Tags: actors, panoramas, photographers
July 25, 2009
Invalid car failure as getaway vehicle
Last Sunday the Utrecht police caught a 37-year-old thief who had stolen two car radios.
Witnesses had spotted the man breaking into a car and called the police, who had no trouble whatsoever taking over the thief’s low-speed microcar to stop and arrest him, reports Telegraaf (Dutch). The article doesn’t tell whether the man was actually disabled or whether he merely used an invalid car as a decoy. Still, I am sure there is a lesson in there somewhere.
Those with reduced mobility often use a microcar to get around in the Netherlands. These cars are typically rated as mopeds, and cannot go faster than 40 kilometres an hour. A popular brand is the Canta.
(Image based on a public domain icon from the US FHWA Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices.)
July 24, 2009
iPhone developer course starts in September
Competence Factory, the job education branch of Randstad-based employment agency Appoint, has started to offer a course in developing Apple iPhone ‘apps’.
The training starts in September, and has separate courses for programmers, designers and marketers. It costs 5800 euro to participate.
The course’s web page suggests developing iPhone apps may be “the new gold rush,” but programmer Adam Martin has some sobering data. The median turnover of an iPhone app developer was between 1000 and 5000 USD in May of this year, although Martin doesn’t say whether this is for one app, for one month or year, or for an entire career. Some 10% of those polled said they had no formal training whatsoever, so the numbers for trained app developers may be more uplifting.
(Link: Bright. Photo by William Hook, some rights reserved.)
Tags: education, employment, iPhones, schools