Martijn Kamstra offers PDFs and JPEGs of a grim paper robot called Grumm. Print, cut, fold. There are two versions: a textured one (see photo) and a blank one that you can draw over yourself. Kamstra has also documented the design process of this papercraft project. BoingBoing mentions that “Kamstra wants photos of your own coloring jobs”.
October 13, 2007
Grumm the foldable paper robot model
Tags: cool things, paper robot, papercraft, robots, toys
Free newspaper delivered to the office
There are three free newspapers in the Netherlands: a Dutch edition of Metro, Spits (by the publishers of the Telegraaf), and De Pers. In the fight for market share the latter has now come up with a new scheme: free delivery to the workplace. Any office that has more than 50 employees can request free delivery of a free newspaper. And of course for De Pers this is a nice opportunity to figure out where the companies are that can afford to advertise.
Tags: media, newspapers, press
October 12, 2007
Biggest irritant: jumping the queue
Multiscope, a Dutch online marketing agency, has polled 1,970 Dutch people to find out what their biggest sources of irritation are. Most of the complaints were about anti-social behaviour: for instance 68% of the people gave “jumping the queue” the top spot. When asked what sort of remedies people would agree with, stricter, harsher, and more immediate punishments were at the top of the list. Almost half of those polled agreed with the suggestion that the Dutch police force could take a leaf out of the book of the para-military police force of Spain. (Is it me, or do these measures sound a bit harsh for “jumping the queue?)
The entire top 10 was:
- Jumping the queue
- Dumping waste
- Dog poo in the streets
- Cars not keeping their distance
- Spitting
- Loud portable music
- Loitering
- Second hand smoke
- Loud mobile phone conversations in public
- Not receiving right of way
Although a lot of countries believe they are the number one complainers of the world, there are differences in what people actually complain about.
(Photo by Diliff, and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license version 2.5.)
October 11, 2007
Bacteria from Groningen into space
Today a big ol’ bunch of bacteria gets a tour of space. The Groningen company Bioclear is sending them into space in order to test a new type of biological air filter.
The bacteria is hitching a ride with the Russian Soyuz capsule (probably not this one) being launched from Kazakhstan. Within two days, the Soyuz will be coupled to the International Space Station (ISS) and will remain spinning around the earth until 23 October.
Of course, if you read Dutch, the comments related to this news story poking fun at other recent news in Groningen (HIV party, the slogan ‘nothing tops Groningen’, etc.) is a real gas. Feel free to ask us.
(Link: nieuwnieuws.nl)
October 10, 2007
Donald Duck in Amsterdam
Albeit an American export, the Donald Duck comic is something typically European. For some reason, Donald Duck comics haven’t done much in their country of origin. In the Netherlands however, Donald Duck magazine — subtitled “The merry weekly” — is considered the blueprint of how to make a successful magazine. It has existed for well over 50 years, and has always been a hit, not in the least because grown-ups kept buying the magazines for themselves and their children long after they supposedly should have grown out of comics themselves.
Donald Duck’s adventures often take place in Duck Town, which is a generic city in the US. Whenever couleur locale managed to creep into a locally produced comic, it would be an exception. But the Dutch magazine is now sending its main characters on the road, and is working on a story that takes Donald, Scrooge, and the three nephews to Amsterdam. Daily De Telegraaf reports (Dutch) that there will be gables, canals, and the royal palace on Dam Square (so-called because it is where the actual dam was built in the river Amstel).
Disclaimer: I have co-written a few stories for Donald Duck magazine myself in the past, but I have no ties to the magazine.
Tags: Amsterdam, Dam Square, Donald Duck
October 9, 2007
You’re Dutch when it suits us
In the Top 200 list of most influential Dutch people, there are three people of ethnic origin. They are Dutch-Moroccan René Dahan, Moroccan-born Sadik Harchaoui and Princess Máxima, who is Dutch-Argentinian. All three of them are Dutch and coincidentally all three have dual citizenship as they cannot do away with their other nationality legally. That’s all fine, I plan to do the same soon.
What bugs me is that they are Dutch when it suits the press and in this case, indeed the best case, they are from a minority group. So you can play both sides when it suits you. No wonder the Dutch identity is not a constant.
(Link: allochtonen.web-log.nl)
Tags: famous people, influential Dutch people, minorities, Princess Máxima
October 8, 2007
Lou Reed to open photo exhibition in Amsterdam
On 10 October, musician, rock singer and photographer Lou Reed will open his photo exhibition entitled “Lou Reed’s New York” in Amsterdam at gallery Serieuze Zaken Studioos. The exhibition will be open to the public from 11 October through 15 November.
Why were all the photos from New York in this exhibition? “I think Leonard Cohen had a line, `I would travel anywhere in the pursuit of beauty’. And this is the beauty of New York. I just wanted to take pictures of that, with no other motive than that.”
Galerie Serieuze Zaken, Bilderdijkstraat 66 in Amsterdam. Opening hours: Wednesday through Saturday from noon to 6 pm and the first Sunday of the month from noon to 5 pm.
(Link: Persberichten.nl, photo: loureed.nl)
Tags: Amsterdam, Lou Reed, New York, photo exhibition
October 7, 2007
World’s biggest croquette gets a party
Croquette company Van Dobben has announced that it is going to make the world’s biggest croquette. The snack producer has also asked fans what they wanted as filling in it on their site grootstecroquet.nl. The 1,3-meter-long croquette weighs almost 250 kilos and has a circumference of more than 1,5 metres. It will be unveiled on Saturday 27 October, on the Thorbeckeplein in Amsterdam. Guess who will be giving a special performance for the occasion? Dries Roelvink of course!
Have a look at the making of as well.
(Link: vleesmagazine.nl)
Tags: croquette, Dries Roelvink, record breaking
October 6, 2007
Rats cannot tell between Japanese and Dutch
Weird science! The Ig Nobel awards are tongue-in-cheek awards given to the people doing very serious scientific studies that make you laugh before they make you think. Last Thursday, the 2007 awards were presented at MIT in the US.
Prof. Dr. Johanna van Bronswijk of the Eindhoven University of Technology came to pick up the prize she had won in the category biology for doing a census of all the mites, insects, spiders, pseudoscorpions, crustaceans, bacteria, algae, ferns and fungi with whom we share our beds each night. See also “Huis, Bed en Beestjes” (House, Bed and Bugs), J.E.M.H. van Bronswijk, Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde, vol. 116, no. 20, May 13, 1972, pp. 825-31.
Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés, of Universitat de Barcelona in Spain, won the award for Linguistics by showing that rats sometimes cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards. See also “Effects of Backward Speech and Speaker Variability in Language Discrimination by Rats,” Juan M. Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, vol. 31, no. 1, January 2005, pp 95-100.
Other winners were the US military apparatus for trying to make a bomb that turns its victims into homosexuals (no-one turned up to accept the award); Mayu Yamamoto, from Japan, for developing a method to extract vanilla fragrance and flavouring from cow dung; Brian Wansink of the UK for investigating the limits of human appetite by feeding volunteers a self-refilling, “bottomless” bowl of soup; and more.
Tags: Dutch language, Eindhoven University of Technology, experiments, Japanese language, rats
October 5, 2007
Peeping ‘Tons’ at the beach
One-way rest room mirror is a ‘good joke’
The new toilets at popular beach pavilion Parnassia close to Bloemendaal have a one-way mirror which allows men to spy on women using the ladies’ rest room, the Parool reports.
Owner Hans Slewe tells the paper he does not see what all the fuss is about. ‘We’ve not seen any naked women,’ he says. And no, he says, the mirror has not led to more men using the toilets.
‘It is not a peep show,’ he argues. ‘You look through a window and you can see the dunes and women washing their hands and checking their hair. The actual toilets are closed off. It is not sexist.’
But women, cannot look into the gents, the paper points out. And nor are the women aware that they are being looked at.
‘That’s the joke,’ says Slewe. ‘And 99% think it’s a good laugh. We’ve got 30 to 40 women working here and none of them have complained.’
(Link: Dutchnews.nl)
Tags: beach, Bloemendaal, peeping toms, sea