June 27, 2014

Dutch detect major flaw in airplane autopilot system

Filed under: Aviation by Orangemaster @ 11:03 am
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The Dutch Safety Board has detected a pattern of aircraft autopilot systems misinterpreting radio signals given by airport instrument landing system (ILS), which has led to minor incidents so far, but could lead to disaster if not addressed. And just like computer programmers trying to reproduce bugs to be able to identify a problem, the Dutch Safety Board ordered test flights and were able to reproduce the dangerous conditions that were unknown to the international aviation community until now.

On May 31, 2013 a Boeing 737-800 landing at Eindhoven airport was given instructions to land, and as usual, upon approach it switched on the autopilot for ILS landings, which uses radio signals: one type of signal says ‘pitch up’ and another says ‘pitch down’. Due to the steeper than usual approach of the Boeing, the autopilot went ‘pitch up’ instead of ‘pitch down’, while the plane already had the brakes on, the landing gear out and was decreasing its speed, a recipe for stalling the plane. The pilots took control of the plane, did a go-around, and safely landed the aircraft with the autopilot off.

In this case and other similar incidents elsewhere with different planes, the crew had a limited response time to disconnect the autopilot and recover the aircraft, a potentially dangerous situation according to the Dutch Safety Board. About 1,500 to 2,000 major runways worldwide use an ILS, while planes all around the world use an autopilot system that has this glitch.

Someone’s fear of flying just got real, but not mine though, I love flying.

If you want real details, watch this English-language video:

(Links: phys.org, www.aeroinside.com, www.onderzoeksraad.nl)

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April 9, 2014

Eindhoven to premiere innovative swimming device

Filed under: Dutch first,Sports by Orangemaster @ 2:29 pm

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The 10th annual Swim Cup Eindhoven, held from 10 to 13 April, will feature the world premiere competition use of the Omega Backstroke Start Device (video in English).

Backstroke swimmers will no longer have to worry about their feet or toes slipping at the start of a race, which has been an issues for ages.

Starting platforms for swimmers are constantly being adapted so that swimmers don’t slip, so I can imagine it’s about time the backstroke crowd got their ‘starting device’ as well.

(Link: www.ed.nl, Photo of Olympic pool by diamond geezer, some rights reserved)

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January 17, 2014

A chip linked to your ID to drink in Eindhoven

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 12:52 pm

There’s this street in Eindhoven called Stratumseind or ‘Stratum’ full of cafés that mostly cater to students. The cafés are so close to each other that people walk around like it’s one big café, at least that was my memory of it a few years back.

As of mid March, the cafés owners have decided that patrons are to wear bracelets with a chip in them linked to some ID, like pigeons in the park. People will be tagged so that the cafés don’t have to constantly check if they are old enough to drink, something apparently the city has come up with. Making sure people are old enough to drink means the cafés lower the risk of selling alcohol to minors.

As of 1 Jan 2014, the drinking age went up from 16 to 18, although 16 and 17-year-olds could not buy or be served hard liquor. The cafés that refuse to go along with this scheme will be monitored à  la Big Brother more closely — surprise, surprise.

You can’t possibly force anybody to wear anything to drink in a café, but you can ask them to produce ID. As well, this totally ignores anybody from out of town like tourists or visitors, how very forward-thinking. Guilty until proven innocent, someone please challenge this in court, it’s ridiculous.

(Link: www.ed.nl)

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December 20, 2013

Artist has been making pee eagles for 16 years

Filed under: Art,Weird by Orangemaster @ 7:20 am

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Theo, 32, from Eindhoven has been peeing against buildings for half his life, but does it creatively by making eagles. The art is of course ephemeral and apparently peeing the claws is tough.

Theo says the eagle is a strong symbol, something that reminds him of Germany, while it reminds me and probably others of the United States or Russia. He usually aims (ha pun) to make the German 2 euro coin (the 1 euro has the same eagle), but he says that he is usually drunk and it looks like a peacock or a seagull.

Peeing on walls is illegal in the Netherlands, and Theo got caught once in Tiel. The cop did let him finish because he appreciated the artistic value. Follow Theo’s pee eagles on Instagram.

(Link: www.vice.com, Photo: supertheo6000# (Theo) on Instagram)

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November 11, 2013

How to sabotage freedom of information requests in the Netherlands

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 10:51 am

Two angry blog posts in as many months show the state of freedom of information in the Netherlands. Long story short, the government wants everybody to be transparent except themselves.

In the past year political blog Sargasso directed 30 or so freedom of information requests at all levels of government. Their report of how they fared (the first court victories are expected next year) reads like a how-to for civil servants—how to sabotage freedom of information requests:

  • Be late in everything you do.
  • Split requests into multiple parts and reject them all separately.
  • Send ten-page-long rejection letters full of legalese.
  • Let the complaints committee reject the inevitable complaints.
  • Once forced by a court of law, redact the information you return to the point of illegibility.
  • Wash, rinse, repeat.

Dealing with all of these things takes time and money, of which the state possesses infinitely more than the average citizen or reporter.

Sargasso also noted that they had no troubles at all with FOI requests for non-sensitive subjects (e.g. how many restaurant permits does a city have). Only once they started digging into things like the presumably fraudulent past of the former mayor of Helmond, Fons Jacobs, did they run into a wall.

In August the Retecool blog made minced meat out of the argument that the fines governments have to pay for refusing to perform their legal duties were too high and the result of systemic fraud. Both the Vereniging Nederlandse Gemeenten (Association of Dutch municipalities) and Minister of the Interior Ronald Plasterk had argued as much.

Retecool (a not always SFW blog) pointed out that many municipalities only had to pay one or just a few fines in 2012 which hardly points to systemic abuse. The few cases where abuse seemed real ended up before the courts who had no troubles finding for the municipalities when the facts warranted it. The city of Eindhoven (200,000 inhabitants) paid the highest amount of fines of any place in the Netherlands. The 119,060 euro in fines they paid last year were for all requests they failed to process in time, not just FOI requests. Retecool contrasts this to the severance packages the city handed to its former employees, which was 150,000 euro in just the first 9 months of 2012. The blog contrasts Eindhoven’s fines with the cost of The Hague’s new year’s party, 125,000 euro in 2013. Sounds to me like the fines may not be high enough.

See also: No fees for freedom of information requests says Dutch Supreme Court

(Photo of the closed city of Severomorsk in Russia by Sergej Shinkarjuk, some rights reserved)

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October 31, 2013

Pimp up your camera with Kapsones lens hoods

Filed under: Design,Photography by Orangemaster @ 3:21 pm

Kapsones, the Dutch word for ‘putting on airs’, is a colourful line of custom lens hoods — a bit like covers for your smartphone — recently launched in design-friendly Eindhoven.

“There are four styles to choose from: Baroque (an old fashioned look), Knitted (self explanatory), Stealth (sharp and angled), and Street (looks like a cobblestone road). Each design comes in several colours that you can choose from when ordering.”

Since it is a start-up, the lineup of compatible lenses isn’t very extensive yet: Canon 28-80, 28-90, 18-55 mm IS, and 18-35 mm IS II. The price starts at 20 euro.

Check out their promotional video:

Kapsones from Van Alles Wat Ontwerp on Vimeo.

(Link and image: petapixel.com)

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September 7, 2013

Kid Baltan’s experiments with electronic music

Filed under: Music,Technology by Branko Collin @ 12:12 pm

In 1956 Dutch electronics giant Philips decided to see if there was a future for electronic music. It created a Studio for Electronic Music (STEM, also the Dutch word for ‘voice’) and let composers/engineers Tom Dissevelt, Dick Raaijmakers and others work there.

The studio was part of Philips’ famous research facility NatLab, a name which aided Raaijmakers in finding the stagename Kid Baltan (the reverse of Dik Natlab). From 1956 to 1960 composers had access to the most sophisticated technology and used tape splicing to combine sounds into musical compositions. Raaijmakers explains on Youtube how it worked.

Somewhere during that time Edgar Varése worked for nine months at STEM on his Poème électronique.

Philips lost interest in the project. STEM was moved to the university of Utrecht and Dissevelt and Raaijmakers moved on to other projects. Today STEM lives on at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague where Raaijmakers taught Electronic and Contemporary Music from 1966 to 1995. Last week Kid Baltan died at a retirement home in the same city at the age of 83.

(Links: Weirdomusic, NRC. Photo by Wikimedia user Rosemoon, some rights reserved.)

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August 6, 2013

Netherlands net exporter of football players

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 8:33 am

This year Dutch football clubs are getting at least 91 million euro for breaking up contracts with players who are set to move to foreign clubs, Volkskrant reports. That number is likely to become even higher since the 2013 summer transfer window doesn’t close until 2 September.

Midfielder Kevin Strootman from PSV (Eindhoven) earned his club the most money. He will move to AS Roma for 20 million euro. Volkskrant points out that the Dutch competition, the Eredivisie, has been drained of attackers. Out of the players that are leaving, five were in the top ten of top scorers last season. PSV had Dries Mertens and Jeremain Lens in that list—the Belgian and Dutchman are going to Napoli and Dinamo Kiev respectively. Ivorian Wilfried Bony of Vitesse (Arnhem) was widely considered too big for the Dutch top competition—his move to English mid-table Swansea seems a bit unambitious.

The budgets of Dutch clubs typically do not extend far enough to retain top players. In the previous season, the ‘poorest’ English club, Queens Park Rangers, had 35 million British pounds to spend on player wages alone. By contrast, Feyenoord, the Dutch number four in spending, has a budget of 34 million euro for the current season—including but not limited to wages. It will come as no surprise that in Volkskrant’s list, England is the top importer in Europe of foreign players, having spent 316 million euro so far. Oddly enough, Spain, a country whose clubs are not exactly poor, beats the Netherlands as an exporter of football players. Its clubs earned 106 million euro at the time of writing.

See also: How to create a football star

(Photo of striker Wilfried Bony by Wikimedia user Ailura, some rights reserved)

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July 6, 2013

Police officer sews Twitter handle onto uniform, forced to remove it

Filed under: Fashion,Technology by Branko Collin @ 3:33 pm

Sergeant Fred Stork is a beat cop in Eindhoven and is also on Twitter. He thought it would be fun to sew his Twitter handle, @brigadierSTRYPi onto his uniform, but after a reporter tweeted about needle work, his superiors told him to remove it.

A spokesperson told Algemeen Dagblad: “There are national regulations for a police uniform that an officer may not deviate from.” The spokesperson liked the initiative though and added, “who knows, one day this may be possible. But ‘The Hague’ must first give permission.”

The word ‘brigadier’ in the handle @brigadierSTRYPi means ‘sergeant’ and ‘STRYPi’ is likely a reference to the Strijp neighbourhood which is part of Fred Stork’s beat.

Interestingly, sergeant is the lowest police rank in the Netherlands where the insignia does not consist of stripes, but of a sword over a crown surrounded by laurel.

See also: Neighbourhood cops that twitter.

(Photo: politie.nl)

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May 7, 2013

Amsterdam tops list of best biking cities in the world 2013

Filed under: Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 10:00 am

Although they say it took them more time than they had expected, Copenhagenize’s 2013 Index of bicycle-friendly cities is out, and Amsterdam is the orange on top.

“We ranked 80 cities in 2011 and increased that to 150 this time round. Although this time round we had the help of over 400 individuals on every continent – our eyes and ears on the ground – to assist with the ranking. Lots of changes in the Top 20 what with the addition of 80 new cities. ”

Some interesting bits about the list:
– Utrecht came in 3rd and Eindhoven 6th.
– My home town of Montréal came in 11th (tied with Munich and Nagoya), as the only North American city.
– France and Germany each have three cities in the top 20.

All in all, most top biking cities are European ones. I mentioned in passing on French Belgian radio last week how dangerous it was to cycle in Brussels, so I am glad to see Antwerp in the list.

From what I have seen and read, in the United States and in many parts of Canada, fitting in cyclists so late in the game is more of a nuisance and a diluted green affair than actually making cycling a valid and accepted mode of transport like it is here. It could make more sense in the long run to concentrate on electric cars in countries where the distances are greater than trying to get people to cycle two months out of the year when the weather is nice. Winter has to be a major factor worldwide for using a car over a bike. Copenhagen and Malmö have serious winters and are pretty far up the list, but they have relatively small city centres and apparently very good cycling infrastructure. I know for a fact that it took a lot of lobbying to get my home town of Montréal to build bike paths at the end of the 1980s.

(Link: www.copenhagenize.com, Photo by Flickr user comedynose, some rights reserved)

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