October 12, 2009

Alcoholics wanted as tour guides

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 11:51 am

A tour company in Amsterdam claims it wants to hire alcoholics as guides, writes Z24 (Dutch).

Amsterdam Excursions believes that habitual drunks know where to find the bars for its tour of Amsterdam watering holes. In order to test suitability the company lets applicants fill out a questionnaire, open a beer bottle without an opener, and do a breathalyser test.

So far it appears only people who drink in the street or quietly at home have shown up, not the ‘kroegtijgers’ (bar flies) the tour company was hoping for.

This is the same company that organized an economic crisis themed tour.

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October 11, 2009

Boijmans museum lanches ArtTube

Filed under: Art,Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 12:13 pm

Rotterdam’s Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum has just launched an online art channel called ArtTube, making them the first Dutch museum to do so. ArtTube features current and historic films about art and design. Next year, a part of the museum’s collection will be on ArtTube as well.

The films are subtitled in English. I picked one at random about pottery maker Royal Tichelaar Makkum (Koninklijke Tichelaar Makkum).



(Link: noordhollandsdagblad)

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October 10, 2009

Public Enemy to produce next album through Sellaband

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 11:41 am

Legendary rappers Public Enemy are taking the fan-financed route.

The group will try and sell their next album through Sellaband, according to the Guardian. The Amsterdam based website works by letting users buy shares of an album to provide musicians with the money to produce an album.

Chuck D’s crew have turned to an independent Dutch website to raise $250,000 (£157,000) for recording and promoting their 13th studio album.

On Tuesday, the group began selling $25 (£15) shares in the as-yet untitled, as-yet unrecorded album. By selling 10,000 shares, Public Enemy hope to cover “complete recording costs and expenses … [and] fund a strategic marketing plan for [its] worldwide release … in 2010”.

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October 9, 2009

Rain barrel with built-in watering can

Filed under: Design by Branko Collin @ 11:40 am

Like the top glass in a pyramid of champagne glasses, the watering can at the top of Bas van der Veer’s A Drop of Water is always filled the first, so that a gardener has ready access to rain water for their plants.

Excess water simply flows into the barrel, from where it can be released by a simple tap.

The 24-year-old, 2009 Design Academy Eindhoven graduate will display this project and his Bioplastic Planter at the Dutch Design Week, which starts October 17. According to Bright.nl (Dutch), the young inventor has not yet approached companies to take his designs into production, but he hopes to get a lot of attention during the exhibition where he will be all week.

(Source photo: Bas van der Veer.)

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October 8, 2009

The Pirate Bay moves in to a Dutch bunker

Filed under: General,Online by Orangemaster @ 12:21 pm
outside16

The Pirate Bay, the Swedish website that hosts all those torrents and was ordered to shut down, has found a new crib in our water-ridden little country. The Cyberbunker is a former nuclear bunker built by the military in Goes, Zeeland. It has everything a modern-day pirate needs, including surveillance, fresh water, sea and mussels, room to chillax and an allure blowing many cheap Hollywood hacking-cyber-nerd movie sets out of the water.

Pirate Bay had tried to buy the even cooler and more controversial micronation of Sealand a few years back, a no man’s land on a sea platform off the coast of England. The obvious Zeeland-Sealand pun is just one of life’s little linguistic coincidences.

(Link: torrentfreak, Photo: cyberbunker)

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Viktor & Rolf’s credit crunch couture

Filed under: Design by Branko Collin @ 8:36 am

Viktor & Rolf make cheeky fun of the crisis by taking a chain saw to the tulle of their 2010 Spring and Summer collection. Style.com has the whole story + more photos.

You really ought to see that second dress against a dark background.

(Source photos: the viktor-rolf.com video of the show)

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October 7, 2009

Amsterdam-like scent leads to destruction German cannabis field

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 12:09 pm

German police destroyed a marijuana field in Ruhrauen near Duisburg after they were tipped by a passer-by that it smelled “just like Amsterdam” there, writes Der Westen (German).

When the police checked out the nearby water protection area, they discovered and impounded 47 plants with a sum weight of 117 kilos. The plants were chopped up by city employees for “easier transportation” and further processing.

(Photo by Eric Caballero, some rights reserved.)

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October 6, 2009

Engineering shorts

Filed under: Automobiles,Aviation,Online by Branko Collin @ 8:48 am

soyuz_clogNews from the tech trenches.

– The Nuna 5 solar powered car ran into a ditch last Saturday while preparing for the annual World Solar Challenge, writes Telegraaf (Dutch). The student-built car was driving at a speed of 110 kph at the time. Driver Jelle managed to get out unhurt, but several components of the car, including the solar panel, turned out to be damaged. The team from Delft University expects to have repaired the damage before the October 25 start.

See here for a drag race between Nuna 5 and its predecessor, Nuna 4, during happier times.

– Layar (augmented reality) includes an application that will let you spot the houses of the famous called BN’er Verkenner (Celeb Scout). US actor Brad Pitt, enjoying a quite afternoon in his Amsterdam canal house, was its victim in this video posted at Engadget.

Layar is a mobile phone tool that adds a geographic layer to your Android phone’s operating system, letting you check out what’s available near your current location.

– The Netherlands has its own space organisation. The NSO (Netherlands Space Office) was kickstarted last Wednesday by Minister Maria van der Hoeven (Economic Affairs) and astronaut André Kuipers. The NSO is supposed to help design and build a Dutch space programme, according to Algemeen Dagblad (Dutch).

Kuipers was recently selected for a half-year stay at the International Space Station starting December 2010.

(The illustration is a mock-up by me, not an actual NSO lifting body design space craft on top of a Soyuz rocket. Photo of a Soyuz rocket by NASA.
Photo of a big clog by Jocelyn Kinny, some rights reserved.)

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October 5, 2009

Anne Frank film, Miep Gies asteroid

Filed under: Film,General,History,Literature by Orangemaster @ 12:47 pm

“Here you can see Anne Frank leaning out of the window of her house in Amsterdam to get a good look at the bride and groom. It’s the only time Anne Frank has ever been captured on film, according to the Anne Frank House.”

Remember that if the people over at Dutch copyright collection agency Buma Stemra have their way, we won’t be able to show you fun vids anymore because it would cost us thousands of euro a year. Feel free to sign the petition: petitiononline.

Also in Anne Frank news, an asteroid between the Mars and Jupiter has been named Miep Gies last Sunday in honour of the Dutch woman who preserved the diary of Anne Frank. “The International Astronomical Union (IAU) said it wanted to draw attention to the steadfast courage of the now 100-year-old last surviving helper of the Frank family who hid in a building behind a house in Amsterdam during World War II.”

(Link: Presurfer, earthtimes.org)

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October 4, 2009

Press releases are not spam

Filed under: Online by Branko Collin @ 1:23 pm

letterbox-roy_parkhousePR agencies and journalists alike have been screaming blue murder the past few days over the perceived consequences of the new anti-spam law. Laurens Verhagen of Nu.nl, the website known for never writing its own stories if it can help it, whines (Dutch) that “an unintended side-effect is that PR agencies are no longer allowed to send press releases.”

Other journalists cheer on the new law. NRC.next’s Ernst-Jan Pfauth hails the death of the press release (Dutch): “Press release are old-fashioned, unnecessary and often misused.”

But as the here-often-quoted Internet law specialist Arnoud Engelfriet explains at De Nieuwe Reporter, the law has a provision for e-mail addresses that have been explicitly designed for receiving bulk mails. Also, the spam prohibition only pertains to advertising, informative e-mails are not part of the law.

That means that from now on only advertisements dressed up as press releases are out, but I cannot imagine that even Laurens Verhagen would bemoan such an intended consequence.

A tempest in a teapot.

(Photo of a letterbox by Roy Parkhouse, some rights reserved.)

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