January 20, 2021

Delft puts artist’s work in the bin by mistake

Filed under: Art,Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:19 am

Chess table

Delft artist Tijn Noordenbos produces art for public spaces, and admits he’s used to some of his artworks disappearing. However, the city of Delft trashing his socially-distanced chess table and chairs came as a bit of a surprise.

Around New Year’s Eve, the city of Delft, South Holland picked up the artwork, looking for stuff they could burn. The idea was to get rid of anything that could be set on fire before New Year’s Eve, owing to the fact that fireworks had been banned and people would set (and did set) other stuff on fire.

Noordenbos is not upset, and is already working on a giant Scrabble board, with letters that will be 60 x 60 cm. He hasn’t asked the city permission, which is why his artworks sometimes disappear. It’s part of the game.

And he’s never been fined for leaving his art lying around. His two dolls in the city centre’s Binnenwatersloot have been there for two years, illegally, and have not been removed.

You win some, you lose some.

(Link and photo: omroepwest.nl)

Tags: , ,

November 16, 2018

Grand piano takes to the skies in Delft

Filed under: General,Music by Orangemaster @ 3:34 pm

A Bechstein grand piano has been hoisted from the 16th floor of a flat building in Delft, using the highest crane available in Europe. The crane had to bridge a distance of 57 metres and a height of 54 metres.

The company doing the moving claimed that this was not something they do every day. They considered using a helicopter, but that was too complicated with the permits and all. How did the grand piano get up there in the first place? Maybe the lift was bigger a long time ago, the company speculated.

And since it’s good Dutch form to state the price of things, the move cost about 6,000 euro, with 5,000 paying for the crane rental.

The piano is being moved, as the person who owned it is deceased and the family has left it to the Dutch Musical Instrument Foundation in Amsterdam. It is a special piano the museum is very happy to have.

There’s even a video of the operation:

(Link: nos.nl, Photo of Bechstein Art Nouveau grand piano, 1902 by Count de money, some rights reserved)

Tags: , ,

September 14, 2015

Dutch engineers create huge artificial waves

Filed under: Sustainability,Technology by Orangemaster @ 5:37 pm

Delta works

Engineers at Deltares Research Institute, an independent institute for applied research in water and subsurface near Delft, South Holland are claiming to have created the largest artificial waves in the world.

Created in a huge concrete tank called the Delta Flume, the waves measure five metres high. The engineers say they can get even bigger waves. The tank holds nine million litres of water, pumped in from a reservoir at 1,000 litres a second. This new facility cost 26 million euro and took two years to build.

What’s the actual use of this facility? To be able to create waves to test life-size water defences. We’re always told that two-thirds of the Netherlands could be flooded, and back in 1953 it was heavily flooded, making water defences essential. Generating bigger waves is the only way to find out if flood defences can cope with rising tides.

(Link: www.bbc.com, Photo of Delta Works by Coanri/Rita, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , ,

October 22, 2014

Simple and soothing time lapse film of Dutch cities

Filed under: Architecture,Film by Orangemaster @ 12:39 pm

“In ,’7685 Frames of Netherlands’, filmmaker Pengcheng He documents the beauty of the old cities of the Netherlands in a charming series of tilt-shift time-lapses. He shot the video in Delft, Rotterdam and Amsterdam.”

Many people don’t see Rotterdam as one of the old cities, mainly because few old buildings were left in the city after the WWII. Delft and Amsterdam join cities like Haarlem and Nijmegen as old cities.

Amsterdam’s IJ river ferries kick it off, then the Stopera, but I’ll let you play guess the city on your own because I could possibly describe the entire video location by location (yes, that is a bit scary) having lived extensively in all three cities. Sometimes, the film even has a miniatures feel to it.

(Link: laughingsquid.com, Photo of Rotterdam, KPN building by Roel Wijnants, some rights reserved)

Tags: , ,

April 18, 2014

Startup invents ankle bracelet to avoid sprains

Filed under: Sports by Orangemaster @ 1:47 pm

Presented at the YES!Delft Network Event a few days ago, the Delft startup EXO-L has invented an ankle bracelet that stops sprains. It is custom made (even the colours) and contrary to tape or a brace, you can continue to move.

Inventor Marcel Fleuren has ankle problems himself, and tape and braces were not working for him, either. Since he wanted to continue playing football, a sport with a multitude of sprained ankles, he invented an alternative during his studies at the Delft University of Technology.

Using a 3D scanner, the EXO-L is made to measure as it comes off the printer.

Listen the testimonial of a young football player (in Dutch).

Exo-L Testimonial Micha from Exo-L on Vimeo.

(Link: www.omroepwest.nl, Photo by Wikimedia user Carolus Ludovicus, some rights reserved)

Tags: , ,

May 5, 2013

Dutch programming whiz kid raises the bar that much higher

Filed under: Online by Orangemaster @ 3:30 pm

Problably best known for Puckipedia, 13-year-old Puck Meerburg from Delft has been coding since he was six. Meerburg has developed apps for a range of different mobile platforms already, including iOS, Android and BlackBerry.

Although Puck hasn’t quite mastered the art of giving interviews, which is maybe a lot to ask from a 13-year-old, he speaks better English than many of his adult counterparts. I like the way he ‘slags’ Apple for him not knowing how many copies of his apps he has sold. Apple lets people offer them apps that costs them no money at all to develop, which has hundreds of thousands of people (let’s cut the PC nonsense: mostly boys and men) around the world working day and night like slaves in the hopes of being picked up by Apple who apparently takes a whopping 30% off the top.

The Next Web tells us that, “His latest release, CatStacker is based on the growing hype around, you guessed it, placing items on a domestic cat and sharing them via photographs posted online.”

(Link: thenextweb.com, Photo: Photo by William Hook, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , ,

March 26, 2013

Dutch still own most bikes per capita in the world

Filed under: Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 10:11 am

With a population of some 16.6 million inhabitants, the Netherlands still topping the list of most bicycles owned is not very surprising. However, when it comes to calculating the actual amount of cyclists, this quirky list has some issues, as not everyone who owns a bike is necessary a cyclist and other leaps of logic.

I also noticed that the picture used to represent Amsterdam was not right, and now I see it is Delft (to the right of the train station is my guess), a major student city.

In the Netherlands 27% of all trips and 25% of trips to work are made by bike. About 1.3 million bicycles were sold in the Netherlands in 2009, at an average price of 713 euro each. Amsterdam, the capital and largest city of the Netherlands, is one of the most bicycle-friendly large cities in the world, with 400 km of bike lanes and nearly 40% of all commutes in Amsterdam are done on bike.

And no, we don’t do bike helmets and yes, please get over it. You didn’t point that out about Asian countries now do you? Reads like a major cultural bias to me. The Belgians who cycle a lot as well have to wear bright yellow vests to get around and if you’re ever cycled in Brussels or Antwerp, you’d be wise to do the same, especially considering the constant construction.

I had to laugh when a good friend from Canada suggested that cycling was a great way to meet new people and that I should do it to. I told her that would be like her driving a car to work to meet people. We had a good laugh.

(Link: top10hell.com)

Tags: , , ,

November 29, 2012

The ultimate condom is a Dutch Wingman

Filed under: Dutch first,Science by Orangemaster @ 10:13 am

Two engineers from Delft, Paul Breur and Adnan Tunović, have finally solved decades of issues that men have had with using condoms. The Wingman condom is easy to use with one hand that doesn’t even touch the condom, it’s extra thin and it’s safe. The 30 second film doesn’t need any voice over or music to get its message across and even in the dark you cannot put it on the wrong way.

The condom was invented almost 100 years ago and very little has been done to make its use easier or more pleasant. All the colours, textures and scents have done absolutely nothing to improve condoms. Now, the use of the ‘wing’ to roll down the condom means no more condom odour on your hands. You still need to open the package with two hands, but they claim to be working on that bit. They have one size available, but will be launching the Wingman in more sizes once it takes off.

(Links: ans-online.nl, www.wingmancondoms.com, Photo of Condom dispenser by Quaziefoto, some rights reserved)

Tags: , ,

September 25, 2011

Dutch klezmer: L’Chaim with A Goet Vol Glezele

Filed under: Art,Music by Branko Collin @ 10:56 am

Delft based klezmer band L’Chaim uploaded a video of their song A Goet Vol Glezele to Youtube last month. The video was recorded at coffeehouse Uit de Kunst, which is also the site of the country’s smallest art gallery, Voor de Kunst, housed in an old phone booth.

Why a phone booth? Owner Tijn Noordenbos explains to Bright.nl: “The quay had collapsed, which caused a tunnel to the houses to be exposed. When it turned out that I had to pay for the repairs, I decided that I got to determine how those repairs were going to be executed. [There is now a hatch covering the tunnel.] You don’t throw a phone booth as easily into the canal as you do a flower box.”

(Video: Youtube / L’Chaim)

Tags: , ,

December 7, 2010

An interactive history of KLM’s house-shaped genever bottles

Filed under: Architecture,Aviation,Design,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 1:29 pm

First you follow the link to the cute little Delft blue houses, and then you can click on any of the 91 bottles and find out what house it is and where. Most of them can be found in Amsterdam, but a few of them are from towns like Amersfoort, Delft, Breda and Schiedam.

I spontaneously clicked on number 81 and got ‘proeflokaal’ (roughly ‘tasting pub’) De Drie Fleschjes (The Three Bottles) in Amsterdam pictured above (here is what it looks like today). Ironically, it is a place to sample gin and have a drink.

What I thought was odd though is that there is the same house twice (11 and 23), another ‘proeflokaal’ in Amsterdam, Wijnand Fockink. I think the makers of the site made a mistake, as 90 is a much nicer number.

(Link and image: klom.com, via amsterdamadblog.com)

Tags: , , , , , , ,