May 24, 2012

Dutch couple sells expensive Belgian castle for 1 euro to municipality

Filed under: Architecture,History by Branko Collin @ 10:39 am

The Commandry of Gruitrode, containing a castle and farm built in approximately 1400 AD, has changed hands.

The Dutch owners decided to sell it for 1 euro to the municipality of Meeuwen-Gruitrode in the Belgian province of Limburg.

Telegraaf quotes one of the owners, Cornelia ter Horst: “We have no children and feel that such a beautiful castle belongs to our fellow villagers. My husband always says that everything in life is borrowed.” The couple is in their eighties and will be made honorary citizens by way of thanks.

A lovely story, but personal experience makes me wonder if there isn’t a catch. My parents were able to buy castle d’Erp in Dutch Limburg in the 1970s, also for a very reasonable price, namely one guilder. The snag then was that the castle needed extensive repairs that would cost about one million guilders. The municipality of Maasbree ended up buying the castle and used it to house the mayor.

(Photo released into the public domain by Wikimedia Commons user Wasily.)

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May 23, 2012

Art or vandalism? Jurjen Semeijn turns public objects into furniture

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 9:02 am

Artist Jurjen Semeijn says this about his Street Furniture project:

This is a series of unique pieces of furniture as art created from materials found and appropriated around the city of Amsterdam. On the spot where the materials were found these seemingly worthless road signs, fences and planters were freestyle (yes, without any plans) sawn, drilled, cut, screwed and put together as quickly as possible, turning them into extremely valuable pieces. Eventually they were left for lucky collectors to find.

Each object is accompanied by before and after photos, the time that it took to create the piece, and a list of the tools and machines involved (typically a saw, a measure, a felt pen, a screw driver, some screws, and ‘imagination’). Semeijn calls this type of forging art ‘guerilla upcycling’.

(Via: Trendbeheer. Photo: Jurjen Semeijn)

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May 21, 2012

Two inventions—a charger in a safe, and a power strip in a book (and a bonus invention)

Filed under: Design,Dutch first,Gadgets by Branko Collin @ 11:58 am

Two recent products by young Dutch inventors are all about keeping your electronic gadgets well fed.

Bright reports about the Plugbook by Dave Hakkens, which is a power strip disguised as a book.

The Plugbook contains two outlets and two USB ports and is available in three colours. Dave is still looking for backers over at Kickstarter. He needs 45,000 USD in pledges before he can start manufacturing Plugbooks. Backers get to co-decide on a fourth colour. When the power-strip-meets-book hits the streets, it should retail at 30 USD.

Meanwhile, business news site Z24 reported on a cross between a safe and a charger, the ChargeCase.

Arif Yilmaz and Ersin Cumsit from Zaandam—the ingenuity of its townspeople already impressed Tsar Peter The Great of Russia in the 1700s—are aiming for traditional financing through banks, and will sell a closet with three safes and connectors for all current mobile phones for “a couple of hundred euro”. While the Plugbook is aimed at consumers, the ChargeCase seems to be a product for businesses.

Yilmaz explains: “I have worked in restaurants for years when I was a student. Customers asked every day if we had chargers for their phones, but we didn’t have them. I suggested that my boss would get some, but he didn’t know which type to get because there are many different phones and at that time every phone had its own unique charger.”

“We experimented with speed charging, but that turned out to be very bad for the phones. The ChargeCase does not charge the phone completely, but will let you get by for a couple of hours.”

Production of the ChargeCase in Turkey has commenced, albeit slowly (“it is a very bureaucratic country”), and the first shipment should arrive this week by truck.

If those inventions aren’t enough to get you through the day, check out the multiple bun slicer by YouTube user Idea Ed. The Internet is making fun of him and his inventions, calling them Dutch chindōgu, but I say that it’s better to have invented and built, than to have perfected and never built at all.

(Illustrations: Dave Hakkens and ChargeCase respectively. Video: Idea Ed.)

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May 20, 2012

How to defend your thesis at Leiden University

Filed under: General,History by Branko Collin @ 6:59 pm

Australian law blogger Kevin Jon Heller got his PhD in Leiden and describes the process of defending his thesis in a recent posting:

My casual attitude didn’t last long — only until I began to put on my tuxedo, complete with tails, in the room in which candidates change. My interlocutors for the viva, kindly known as ‘the opposition committee’, were changing on the other side of the room. The solemnity of the occasion finally penetrated my thick skull — this was my rite de passage into an academic tradition that had been taking place in Europe for centuries.

Once I had changed, Leiden’s pedel (registrar) explained the viva process to me and my two paranymphs, Mirjam and Bianca. The role of the paranymphs is now purely ceremonial; they sit and stand beside you during the viva. Traditionally, however, they served as the candidate’s protectors, intervening on his behalf if the opposition committee was being unfair or physically abusive (!).

The defense traditionally takes place in the Senaatskamer (Senate Room, 1733) which is adorned with portraits of the professors of the early days of the university and seats 64.

(Photo by Wikimedia Commons user Effeietsanders, some rights reserved)

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May 19, 2012

Christian providers attack Dutch net neutrality

Filed under: IT,Technology by Branko Collin @ 12:23 pm

The Dutch legislation to safeguard net neutrality as it was originally drafted had an escape clause for filtering on ideological grounds, but that clause was struck when the Senate passed the new telecom law last week.

Christian providers Solcon and Kliksafe, who filter the web on evangelical grounds, are now planning to sue the Dutch government as the new law threatens their business model. Webwereld quotes Kliksafe CEO Bert Jan Peters as saying, “this law actually limits a customer’s freedom.”

Although the Dutch telecom law forbids filtering at a network level, it leaves customers the opportunity to use their own filters or a proxy. Peters said, “some of our customers just don’t want to be tempted to disable the filter. They want security and peace of mind.”

Before taking legal action, the providers will first talk with the economics ministry.

Although I can somewhat sympathise with the providers’ stance, you have to wonder where net neutrality will end up if you leave the tiniest of loopholes open. If the providers were allowed to filter on ideological grounds, there should be strict limitations of what they are allowed to offer. In my mind, such a provider would have to a) offer an unfiltered version of every service at the same price or lower, b) advertise these unfiltered services just as prominently as the filtered ones (advertise the difference, for all I care), and c) allow a user to switch from filtered to unfiltered services at no cost.

See also: Court forces paedophile to move to Christian Internet provider

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May 14, 2012

Silver coated bag shields you from phone calls and e-mail

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 8:46 am

Amsterdam based artist Sarah van Sonsbeeck came up with the Faraday bag, which is according to Bright magazine made of “silver plated polyester which will protect the contents against electromagnetic data, including wifi and mobile networks”.

No idea what that means. The artist herself explains that “my world is less silent because of […] technological advancements. That’s why I created portable silence.”

The bags were made in a limited edition of 100 copies which sell for 129 euro each.

If that is a bit too steep for you, several department stores sell cooler bags that may produce the same effect for a couple of euro or even less. Van Sonsbeeck’s website does not tell whether the Faraday bag runs afoul of local anti-shoplifting legislation that states that it is illegal to carry a prepared bag with the intent to shoplift—that is, bags that cause exit scanners to fail to detect RFID tags. Distrifood.nl reported in 2008 that 60% of all shoplifting is done with shielded bags.

(Illustration: Sarah van Sonsbeeck)

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May 13, 2012

Dutch Repair Cafes take sustainability to your neighbourhood

Filed under: Design,Sustainability by Branko Collin @ 5:09 pm

The New York Times has a story about Dutch ‘repair cafes’:

At Amsterdam’s first Repair Cafe, an event originally held in a theater’s foyer, then in a rented room in a former hotel and now in a community center a couple of times a month, people can bring in whatever they want to have repaired, at no cost, by volunteers who just like to fix things.

Conceived of as a way to help people reduce waste, the Repair Cafe concept has taken off since its debut two and a half years ago. The Repair Cafe Foundation has raised about $525,000 through a grant from the Dutch government, support from foundations and small donations, all of which pay for staffing, marketing and even a Repair Cafe bus.

According to the article there are currently thirty repair cafés spread around the country (several cities have more than one of them) . The idea was conceived by journalist Martine Postma in 2009, and implemented for the first time in October of that same year in Amsterdam West.

I totally dig this idea, as I always have broken stuff lying around that is cheaper to replace than to repair, which bugs me no end.

What’s more, sometimes you have devices that are impossible to replace. There is currently, for instance, no substitution on the market for my Canon Powershot A620 digital photo camera (2005), at least no substitution that combines all the useful features of that little device (see note below). If I brought it to a commercial repair shop, they would charge me just 50 euro to look inside. I have tried taking it apart myself, but being completely inept when it comes to electronics, I had to stop when the chance became real that I would accidentally touch the flash unit’s capacitor and shock myself.

(Note: before you mention it, I am aware that the Canon Powershot G12 and the Nikon P7100 come close, but both are considerably larger, taking them to the extreme of what can still be considered pocketable. The Canon Powershot S100 on the other hand lacks a viewfinder.)

(Link: Repair Café)

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May 12, 2012

Portrait of a red cabbage

Filed under: Art,Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 12:02 pm

Margaretha de Heer painted this red cabbage sometime during the seventeenth century (she lived from 1600 – 1665 in Groningen and Leeuwarden).

The painting fetched 61,000 euro at an auction at Christie’s in Amsterdam last Tuesday, three times the price that was originally expected.

Historiek.net says the auction house had several explanations for the high price. For one, it is the only antique painting depicting a red cabbage. For another, it was painted by a woman, which seems to have been unusual in the age of guilds.

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May 7, 2012

Mobile Rube Goldberg machine for stamping postcards

Filed under: Design by Branko Collin @ 8:40 am

Eindhoven based design studio Hey Hey Hey came up with this intricate mobile device called Melvin the Machine. It stamps postcards. No, that is not a Dutch post box you see in the end (at least not a current one, to my knowledge), although that is a real Hema alarm clock starring in the clip.

Via The Pop-Up City. Video: Hey Hey Hey.

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May 6, 2012

Using boats for transport in the canals of Amsterdam

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 11:18 am

Bright reports about an inner city shipping company that uses an actual ship in Amsterdam.

The electronic freighter of Mokum Mariteam, the magazine writes, “replaces five trucks, and is quieter and cleaner.” (The company’s estimate is more conservative: “a boat of 20 by 4.25 metres, [and a] nett volume […] of 85 cubic metres (four compact trucks)”.) The batteries can power the boat for an entire day.

The canals of Amsterdam were dug originally at least partly for transport, but that function seems to have fallen into disuse, until recently. Bright adds that German logistics company DHL (originally American) has been using a canal boat for delivering packages “for years”. (Since October 1997, Binnenvaart.nl adds.)

The text on the side of the City Supplier, ‘vracht door de gracht’, simply means ‘freight through the canal’. The word ‘Mokum’ in the company name refers to the Yiddish name for Amsterdam, Mokum (Alef), literally meaning ‘city A’.

(Photo: Mokum Mariteam)

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