July 12, 2016

Hospital fends off Pokémon gamers

Filed under: Gaming by Orangemaster @ 8:37 am

A few days ago when Pokémon Go launched, some Dutch fans took to a police station in Amsterdam North to try and catch some Pokémons where the cops were not amused in the slightest. Apparently in Australia and the United States, police stations have been ‘overrun’ by gamers trying to catch whatever it is that is hiding at the cop shops. A possible reason why it’s not that bad here yet is because the game is only available to people with an American Apple ID and not yet officially in the Netherlands, which should be in a few days.

If that wasn’t inconvenient enough for the police, the AMC hospital in Amsterdam is said to have a sick Pokémon in their basement, where groups of people have been spotted even though they have no authorisation to be there. The situation is bad enough that security has been alerted in case gamers show up in sick people’s rooms. The hospital said, “if we find the sick Pokémon, we’ll take good care of it”, which is doctor speak for ‘please piss off and let us do our job’ on behalf of the hospital.

Back in 2009 one of our most popular stories ever was about a gamer in a hospital basement playing Silent Hill and shutting down all the electricity in the building.

(Link: www.at5.nl, Photo of the old building of the Sophia hospital (1884) by Wikimedia user Arminiuzz, some rights reserved)

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July 11, 2016

The fresh faces of the Dutch art scene

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 3:30 pm

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Last week marked the graduation exhibitions of the art academies of Amsterdam and The Hague, and since I had the Wednesday off, I grabbed my camera and raced through the labyrinth that is the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague in two short hours.

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My time there was way too short to form any solid impressions—I saw maybe a quarter of all the works on display. I dare say that there seemed to be minor themes running through the exhibition. A lot of works were displayed in relative darkness. The psychological phenomenon of hoarding came up a couple of times. The bedroom from hell was also something that seemed to have inspired a number of students.

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Art blogger Niek Hendrix noticed something else:

Certain fashionable trends are copied almost verbatim. […] The boundaries between Instagram photos and well thought-out art works is getting thinner and in some cases, you can already speak of proper kitsch. KABK looks like Rietveld in that its artists will seamlessly find a spot in the commercial circuit.

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Apart from Niek Hendrix the bloggers of Mr Motley and Trendbeheer have also visited the nation’s art academies to return with bushels of words and armfuls of photos.

My photo report can be found on our Flickr page.

(Photos from top to bottom depicting works by Daniel Dmyszewicz, Mateusz Tkaczeń, Azra Sudetic, and Olivier Turpin)

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July 9, 2016

Christmas music terrorises Arnhem shopping mall

Filed under: Music,Weird by Orangemaster @ 7:00 am

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There’s this weird tradition at camp sites where I’m from in Québec called ‘Le Noël des campeurs’ (‘Campers’ Christmas’), which is basically celebrating Christmas in July at the camp site, where some of us spent our entire summers because that was the family vacation. I especially remember Santa Claus on the back of a pick-up driving slowly through the camp site throwing candies at us kids, not unlike the Pieten do at Sinterklaas.

The Netherlands doesn’t do Christmas at the camping, but shopping mall Rijkerswoerd in Arnhem has been forced to listen to Christmas music for three weeks now, which is horribly annoying to customers and shopkeepers alike. Thanks to the incompetence of a manager in solving the problem and a florist seeking media attention to get it fixed, the entire system was replaced and there’s normal hits coming out of the music system as of today.

After three weeks of chanting ‘we’re looking into it’, the manager in question had announced that the problem had been solved on Thursday, but on Friday, Jingle Bells and Last Christmas were back in full swing. On Friday afternoon, cables were yanked out of the system to be repaired to make sure Driving Home for Christmas hit a brick wall of silence before the florist got too creative.

Mood Media, the company who supplies the tunes, has apologised for the music terror and placated the shopkeepers with actual Christmas-themed gifts, which went over well.

(Link: www.gelderlander.nl)

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July 8, 2016

Dutch students set world record with solar-powered boat

Filed under: Dutch first,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 3:03 pm

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This week, the Delft University of Technology’s Solar Boat Team has set a world record of 50.5 kilometres per hour on Day 5 of the Dutch Solar Challenge in Drachten, Friesland. There wasn’t any previous record, making this a sweet victory for the students.

This world record will also be added to the Guinness World Records as the first record ever set for a solar-powered boat. Second place in the challenge was 42 kilometres per hour set by a team from Leeuwarden, Friesland and 30,3 kilometres per hour was clocked by a team from Slochteren, Groningen.

The Delft team also won ook the innovation award thanks to the technology it used, which included two hydrofoils placed one behind another instead of next to each other, which had the boat ‘skating over the water’.

(Link: tweakers.net, photo: www.solarboatteam.nl)

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July 6, 2016

Opening the racist door: Monsieur Cannibale part deux

Filed under: General,History,Music by Orangemaster @ 9:02 am

The ball of this story got rolling back in 2014 when an American journalist was ‘shocked’ at an amusement park ride from De Efteling called ‘Monsieur Cannibale’ (French – new and improved explanation coming up) that features a black cannibal-like character with a bone through his nose cooking up unsuspecting children.

The racist door has now opened up as the Stop Oppressive Stereotypes (SOS) group published an open letter to the amusement park accusing it of featuring racist rides, one of which is Monsieur Cannibale and the other Carnaval Festival that features Asian stereotypes. However, Efteling asked SOS for a sit down and SOS haven’t responded yet – to be continued.

One side is telling the other to get a life and ideally a job and the other is having a ‘hey’ we never really saw things that way and it makes us feel uncomfortable moment, akin to the debate about Zwarte Piet. The Efteling says it mostly gets complaints about serving unhealthy food, but not about racist stereotypes.

I love Sacha Distel, the French singer and guitarist who sang this 1966 racist and sexist song that the Efteling chose to subject to children: it matches the ride perfectly in its bad taste. Distel’s song is about a white man captured in Africa by black cannibals who thought he was a spy, trying to politely plead the head cannibal (hence addressing him as Monsieur) not to eat him, but negotiates his way out of it by offering him porno magazines. The head cannibal laughs, brings the guy back to his harem for a week after which the guy lose 20 kilos and refuses to leave. The man basically shagged all the presumably black ladies who were all “hungry for it”.

Here’s a version of the song with a decent Dutch translation:

And since the French playback performance I posted in the original post was removed, here’s the same offensive performance sung in Spanish. He still pulls his eyes sideways to indicate the Chinese language at the beginning, so the Asian stereotypes are conveniently addressed by Distel as well.

(Photo: Photo of an Efteling dragon by Jeroen Kransen, some rights reserved)

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July 4, 2016

Dutch robots win Robocup 2016 on penalties

Filed under: Technology by Orangemaster @ 9:32 am

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Eindhoven’s Tech United team has won the Robocup 2016 in Leipzig, Germany, a team that keeps on supplying us with stories of victory thanks to their sweet robotics.

Their match up was against the Chinese team ‘Water’, defending their 2015 title. Eindhoven was ahead 2-1, and after regulation time, it was tied 2-2. In overtime both teams made it 3-3 and much like some games in Euro 2016, it came down to penalty kicks.

However, Water missed all five shots, nicely stopped by Tech United’s goalkeeper, while Tech United putted one in for the win.

(Links: www.bright.nl, www.nu.nl, Photo of RoboCup2013 in Eindhoven by RoboCup2013, some rights reserved)

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July 2, 2016

KLM to serve Heineken draught beer on flights

Filed under: Aviation,Dutch first,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 8:42 pm

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Two years ago Heineken developed the Brewlock tap system, which addresses the issue of delivering draught beer at the right level of carbonation. And if KLM is to serve beer high up in the air, it needs to be tapped properly and not spray out of the keg due to a lack of carbonation.

The system will be fitted onto a trolley for serving and will be pre-cooled before takeoff and then kept cool for a maximum of eight hours with insulating material. KLM plans to serve beer on tap on a few selected flights and then eventually roll it out.

Roll out the barrel, and we’ll have a barrel of fun – in the air.

(Link: www.telegraaf.nl, photo by Steven Straiton, some rights reserved)

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July 1, 2016

Rotterdam gets piano stairs in metro station

Filed under: Architecture,Music by Orangemaster @ 6:57 am

Piano stairs

First Rotterdam Central Station had the giant staircase built by architectural firm MVRDV that goes from the station’s plaza all the way to the top of Rotterdam’s ‘Wholesale trade building’ (‘Groothandelsgebouw’), and now the entrance to Rotterdam’s Central Station’s metro has piano stairs as well.

The whole piano stairs affair started in Stockholm, and now there are quite a few of them around the world. Apparently, more people will take the stairs instead of the escalator or lift if they can make music, 66% more as was the case in Stockholm.

Rotterdam’s piano stairs, which will remain for one year, are pre-programmed with Ludwig van Beethoven’s ‘Für Elise’, although you can compose your own number. Rotterdam alderman Hugo de Jonge would have rather had ‘You’ll never walk alone’, but then said the programming sounded a lot more difficult that you’d think. “The idea is to get people to smile when they use the stairs”.

(Link and photo: www.rijnmond.nl)

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June 30, 2016

Biggest bakery in Europe being built in Aalsmeer

Filed under: Dutch first,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 4:46 pm

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Belgian company Montea from Aalst, Belgium, which specialises in really big warehouses, is currently building the biggest bakery in Europe in Aalsmeer, North Holland, a city known its world-famous flower auction and proximity to Schiphol Airport.

The bakery will be the size of eight football pitches, use 8000 m3 of concrete and cost 40 millions euro. Construction should be done in October and family business Borgesius-Bakkersland, two recently merged Dutch companies, will start producing some 600,000 loaves of bread and pastries to supply supermarket chain Albert Heijn.

One of Montea’s last big Dutch jobs was the development of the biggest Internet pharmacy in Europe located in Heerlen, Limburg, of which the warehouse was a “mere” 14,800 m2.

(Link: www.lecho.be)

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June 29, 2016

Dunglish fest on major Dutch online shop

Filed under: Technology by Orangemaster @ 10:54 am

It’s true that many non-Dutch people don’t buy from Dutch online shop Bol.com because their products are often more expensive than ‘that other website we all use’ and it’s all in Dutch. However, Bol.com is currently beta testing an English version of their site, which is a total Dunglish fest done using Microsoft, and so far it’s crap. Instead of hiring proper translators, Bol.com would rather be a laughing stock and insult its non-Dutch customers. I can’t wait for them to make a French version.

I barely got past the disclaimer: “Bol.com uses cookies (and similar techniques) to visit and shop at bol.com for you even easier and more personal. These cookies can we and third parties your internet behavior within and possibly outside our website. This allows us and third parties modify ads to your interests and you can share information through social media. By using this website, you go.” Using American English spelling and in other places British terms is a classic mistake as well.

– There’s a “Baby, Child & Mama” section, which sounds like a lost soul-funk number.
– “Products for every day: The sharpest drugstore and animal actions”. Ouch.

Go have a laugh. Remember they can’t be arsed to hire humans to do this, but I’m sure they have real staff for their programming, accounts and shipping. As they said themselves, “Please bear with us, we do not have it under the knee yet.”

(Link: www.entertainmentbusiness.nl, Photo of wilted tulip by Graham Keen, some rights reserved)

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