Here is a little tidbit you might like to know: a couple of days ago Orangemaster posted the thousandth 24 Oranges posting: Trading in your old bras for new ones.

We almost let this milestone pass unnoticed, mainly because we originally failed to notice it ourselves. This because Orangemaster is fighting both a nasty cold and a web radio server, and because I am currently hired (”kept off the streets,” as we say in Dutch) by a company that demands lots of my attention.

If you only hopped on board recently, here are some of my favourite postings of 2008 and 2007, but do not hesitate to add your own favourites to the comments, as mine is but one voice.

We have upgraded our Flickr account to the pro version, which means we can now put more and larger photos there. We use a lot of CC licensed photos as illustrations for our posts, and we’re returning the favour by publishing our own photos on Flickr using an equally liberal license.

We once set ourselves a goal of reaching 20,000 unique visitors a month (no one shot posting about something woohoo and then back to 6,000 or something) and thanks to everyone out there, we did it!

But first, about this photo: this is Gibeau Orange Julep ’stand’ in Montréal, Québec. It serves orange julep, hotdogs and the likes. It’s a huge orange and the weather has a Dutch thing going for it.

As for what got 24oranges this far besides nicely pressed content, two words: Twitter and Flickr.

1) 24oranges is on Twitter and is getting lots more mobile phone and PDA visitors.

2) 24oranges is on Flickr. We share the photos we take ourselves and are proud to say that other blogs and sites use our photos.

Of course, the recent addition of 24oranges to Globalpost will definitely count for something soon.

Cheers!

(Photo by Bah Humbug, some rights reserved)

We started in February 2007 with a posting about Dutch comics website Clogwork.net, which by the way is still going strong!

I just updated the code that runs in the background of this website. The improvements are mainly useful for the editors, so nothing much should change for you, our readers. If you come across any anomalies, I’d be glad to hear about them. Thanks!

A short selection of my favourite stories of 2008, some of them funny, some sad, some just weird:

• Sixties slaughterhouse how-to finally aired, made by a vegetarian and censored because of the children
• Murder scene straddling the border, local Poirots could only collect evidence from their side of the line
• The man who disliked traffic signs, unnoticed in his home country (Dutch)
• Frenchman can marry a Dutchman and still stay French (follow-up), it’s all Greek to me
• Van Gogh discovered, Frans Hals discovered, Brueghel the Younger discovered, it’s been a good year if you’re into Dutch painters
• Iranian Muslims get free asylum, but only if they convert to Christianity
• Quacks get legal recognition, so now they can be prosecuted for malpractice
• Dutch sports fans as seen from space—the Orange, oh the Orange!
• 1970’s Junior Woodchucks guidebook, teaching kids how to clean their own clothes
• Jewish WWII interior discovered (follow-up), you saw the photos here first
• Coin designed using only open source software legal tender in the Netherlands, all your mintz are belong to us

So, which 24 Oranges story of 2008 would top your list?

Over the years we have illustrated many of our articles with photos from Flickr and Wikimedia Commons, released by their authors using liberal licenses. Now it’s payback time. We have started to upload the photos that we made ourselves and that we used here at 24 Oranges to Flickr. Most of these will be posted using an equally liberal Creative Commons Share-Alike license.

Often these are larger versions of what we posted here. And sometimes there are extra photos that would have added little to the story, but that we uploaded just to “complete the set,” so to speak. See www.flickr.com/photos/24oranges/.

You can also find this link in the menu on the right.

Photo by Orangemaster.

The anti-leeching saga continues, but for now and by popular request I’ve switched the images back on in the feed. More here.

We’re experimenting with a leeching blocker, and as a result you may see our regular images replaced by one that says “I am a bandwidth thief.” These images should only appear on the websites of leeches, not on 24oranges.nl itself. If you nevertheless see these images popping up, please report so here. Mention the web- or RSS-browser you are using, including version number, operating system, and how you are connected to the internet (proxy? firewall?).

Update: I’ve changed the RSS feed so that online feed readers no longer display images. Good or bad?

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The European Football Championship 2008 kicks off on Saturday, 7 June. If you want to discuss tactics with your mates or if you just want to show coach Van Basten that you know better than he does, and if you lack a fridge and the right player magnets to play coach, I’ve created a web page that will let you come up with your own formations for Oranje to your heart’s content. Just drag around the ‘magnetic’ players onto the virtual, pitch shaped ‘fridge door’ until you’re satisfied.

Once you’ve created your formation, a link will be created by background magic, which if you click it will recreate that specific formation. Bookmark it, e-mail it to your friends (just click Uitleg(’Explanation’) and copy the link that starts with Kopieer(’Copy’)), or post it here in the comments to discuss with other readers.

The play dates for Oranje this year are: Monday, June 9, Friday, June 13, and Tuesday, June 19.