September 26, 2009

Nespresso most expensive cup of coffee

Filed under: Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 1:08 pm

Consumentenbond compared the prices of making a single cup of coffee in regular households and came up with the following figures, according to Z24 (Dutch):

  • Instant: 3 euro cent.
  • Regular (using a coffee filter): 4 euro cent.
  • Aldi pods for Senseo: 5 euro cent.
  • Albert Heijn pods for Senseo: 7 euro cent.
  • Official Douwe Egberts pods for Senseo: 9 euro cent.
  • Nespresso: 33 euro cent.

Of course, the real coffee snobs own (or want to own) their personal espresso machine. Senseo pods are called pads in the Netherlands, but when Philips and Douwe Egberts decided to export their product they wisely chose to avoid any associations with women’s hygienic products. The Albert Heijn figure was added by me.

I switched to Senseo myself, because using the regular method you never end up with just a single cup, and instant coffee is just vile.

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September 25, 2009

Women prisoners are sought after mates

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 4:04 pm
Prison

BONJO, a Dutch partnership organisation that defends prisoners’ rights runs a dating site for male and female prisoners. They started about half a year ago with the women by placing contact adverts and apparently it’s a hit: 1,300 adverts for just 450 female prisoners. They say the foreign female inmates are popular with Dutch men, which seems to paint quite a different picture that on the outside.

A dating service for prisoners is not odd, but then there’s a Dutch-language one for vegetarians.

(ad.nl, Photo of Alcatraz prison by Amin Tabrizi some rights reserved.)

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September 24, 2009

Set top box lets you surf the Internet on TV

Filed under: Design,Gadgets,Online by Branko Collin @ 10:10 am
metrological-settopbox

Rotterdam based company Metrological hopes to introduce a set-top box in November which will enable users to browse the Internet on their television sets.

Yes, that sounds very 1980s, but apparently the device also works as a regular TV tuner. At a price of around 400 euro, the Mediaconnect TV is somewhat expensive for a peppy tuner, the inventors admit, but they hope to sell the device to cable companies who can package it with subscriptions.

Inventors Jeroen Ghijsen and Albert Dahan have a background in designing telemetry systems for airports, and their new device is indeed based on software they wrote for controlling video cameras and lights on landing strips.

(Link: a fawning Parool. Photo: Metrological.)

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September 23, 2009

KLM personnel to go nameless in style

Filed under: Aviation,Fashion,General by Orangemaster @ 4:07 pm
co-pilots2.jpg

To protect the privacy of stewardesses (and stewards, I imagine), pilots and ground personnel, KLM has decided that they won’t be wearing any nametags anymore as of April 2010. Apparently, there’s no rush to protect them — odd. Their ‘title’ will still be displayed on a pin they’ll have to wear.

KLM personnel will also be getting new uniforms, as the ones stewardesses (and again stewards, I imagine) now wear date from 1990.

Yes, this is a silly picture of two co-pilots in an old DC-9 cockpit.

(Link: at5.nl)

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September 22, 2009

Hotel entirely made of key cards

Filed under: Architecture,Design,Weird by Orangemaster @ 9:22 am

The Key Card Hotel (tons of pics here) was recently opened in New York City, a hotel entirely made of key cards, designed and built by world record holder of card house building, Bryan Berg, aka The Cardstacker.

The hotel is 37 m2 in size and has a bedroom, bathroom and lobby, entirely made of Holiday Inn key cards. Berg says that it is his biggest challenge ever on a human scale.

(Link: telegraaf.nl)

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September 21, 2009

No crisis for speed skaters

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 10:03 am
Skates

Speed skaters have suffered no ill effects from the economic crisis, reports Z24 (Dutch).

The on-line financial magazine points out that sponsor contracts for long track speed skating teams tend to be long term. Insurers TVM and DSB for instance have sponsorship contracts in place until 2014. “Skating has loyal partners,” Barbara Peeters of Referee Sportsmarketing is quoted as saying.

But the main reason appears to be the loyalty of the fans. “Skating is not a sport, but a madness,” the TVM team’s manager Patrick Wouters said.

And what may also help is that skating matches generate an enormous amount of exposure. Whereas the most popular sport, football, is behind a pay wall with only an hour of summaries shown on public television, long track speed skating is shown 120+ hours a year. With only a few companies sponsoring the sport, logos tend to be on screen for a long time.

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September 20, 2009

Made from pig

Filed under: Animals,Design by Branko Collin @ 11:34 am

Christien Meindertsma documented 185 products contributed to by a single pig in an exhibition at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam last year, and in a book (also available in a pigskin bound version, of course). Pig 05049 won her one of the five 2009 Index design awards in August.

The list of good things coming from a pig includes bacon of course, yoghurt, pudding, paints, enamels (bone china!), cigarettes, brakes, bullets, and washing powder. The distinct smell of crayons is pig.

The Index Award prize money, 100,000 euro, will go in part to making the book available on the web, but if you want print copies you can buy them via Amazon and so on. The print version shows all the products life-sized.

(Via Jason Kottke. Source photo: Indexaward.dk.)

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September 19, 2009

Vote for your favourite Prinsjesdag hat

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 4:07 pm

Newspaper Spits is running a poll that lets you select your favourite Prinsjesdag hat.

Prinsjesdag (Day of the Princes) is the day that the government presents its budget for the next year, that the Queen addresses a joint session of both chambers of parliament, and that is always held on the second Tuesday of the year. It is tradition for female parliamentarians to wear outrageous hats during the joint session.

And rather than holding Prinsjesdag on a Monday, Tuesday was chosen because in times before the introduction of railroads, it could take a representative more than a day to get to The Hague, and travelling on Sundays was frowned upon.

(More hats at NOS Journaal. Source screenshot: Spitsnieuws.nl.)

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Lock picking increasingly popular hobby

Filed under: Sports,Technology by Branko Collin @ 10:49 am

The New York Times has an article (behind a pay-wall) about lock picking as a hobby almost exclusive to Germany and the Netherlands, and about Toool, The Open Organization of Lockpickers, which …

[…] is dedicated to picking locks for fun. The movement has been growing over the last five years, with a chapter now in Eindhoven, in the east of the country, and foreign branches in several places, including Germany and the United States.

[…] Its members see lock picking as a sport and organize annual competitions, a sort of Olympics of lock picking, at which entrants compete in various categories — padlocks, mechanical locks and freestyle, in which contestants confront a variety of locks with any tools they choose, as long as they do not damage the lock. The next tournament will be held in May in Istanbul.

At the hacker camps I attended the past 12 years, there always was a lock picking tent (where for some reason you had to take your shoes off, as if visiting a temple or Canadians), but I never imagined that what they were doing there was such a local hobby. According to the NYT, lock picking as a sport was invented by Steffen Wernéry of Germany, who in 1997 started the Sportsfreunde der Sperrtechnik club. The difference between the Dutch and German lock pickers is apparently that the former, in good security tradition, share their secrets with the lock makers.

(Photo of Kevin Mitnick‘s business card by Nathan Yergler, some rights reserved.)

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September 18, 2009

Cocktail hour with Dutch band videos

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 5:59 pm

It doesn’t happen very often, but we of the 24oranges are really busy. Here are some videos of Dutch bands in French and English to keep you entertained. Cheers!

First up, the video of Frenchman Serge Gainsbourg’s ‘Qui est in, qui est out’ sung by local favourites The Spinshots, but with the original Gainsbourg video. They will be performing this tonight at pop temple Paradiso in Amsterdam.

Next up, a Dutch-British collaboration Laura Vane & The Vipertones that is playing Amsterdam this weekend and have been getting rave reviews of their first album, which came out a few weeks ago. Here they are with ‘Steam’.

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