March 31, 2020

Woman claims prize, a (now) antique radio, after 80 years

Filed under: Gaming by Branko Collin @ 1:32 pm

A woman from Rotterdam won the first prize in an 80-year old competition that she had forgotten to enter as a girl.

In 1940 a then 11-year old Tjits Drenth solved a rebus of the Jamin candy chain store, but then the war broke out and she either forgot or ignored the competition.

Earlier this year, when cleaning her place, she discovered the old rebus and decided to send it to Jamin as a historical memento. The company saw a marketing opportunity (or so I assume) and decided to award a prize.

Jamin wasn’t able to find out if the prizes for the competition had ever been awarded, its archive having a big 1938-1950-shaped hole in it, so they decided to give the now Mrs. Den Tuinder-Drenth the main prize. An original Erres tube radio KY 188 was found on Marktplaats, an Ebay owned classified advertising site, and fixed up—although it also gained bluetooth in the process somehow.

The competition asked entrants “What does baron Benjamin say?” The first prize was a radio, the second a sewing machine, the third a vacuum cleaner and the fourth a bicycle—all from Erres, a company from The Hague later bought by Philips.

Mrs. Den Tuinder – Drenth was glad she won first prize, which she received on 3 March from Jamin CEO Maarten Steinkamp. She told AD.nl: “I do not know how to sew, so the sewing machine would have been of no use to me. I am very happy with the radio, however, because I listen to the radio a lot.” Her favourite channels are NPO1 and NPO5.

(Illustrations: AD.nl)

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April 23, 2019

The Happy Hour, 24 Oranges goes on the air

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 2:28 pm

About two years ago, we promised we would put out a video, and we really tried to do something, but besides great conversation, we didn’t get around to doing it the way we would have wanted to and we shelved it until something better came along, and it did.

After much hemming and hawing about how to go to the next level after 11 years of blogging, me and my co-blogger Branko want to invite you to tune into The Happy Hour, every Wednesday from 17:00 to 19:00 Amsterdam time on broadcastamsterdam.nl.

Think of it as a extension of 24oranges, but then aimed more at Amsterdam, with lots of Dutch music in English (and other languages), great guests, banter, puns, and lots of fun. We enjoy talking about hot topics such as housing, politics, food, drinks, cycling and articles we’ve written about.

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March 5, 2019

Dutch radio temporarily bans Michael Jackson

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 5:14 pm

After finding out about the documentary Leaving Neverland released a few days ago, a film that focuses on two men who claim they were sexually abused by singer Michael Jackson as children, NH radio from Amsterdam has decided to temporarily stop playing music by the American pop singer.

The radio is worried that the demand for Jackson’s music will increase because a documentary about him will be aired on Dutch television on 8 March. “We won’t be able to listen to his music in a neutral way and we want people to listen to his music with an open-mind,” the station explained.

In any case, the ban will last a few weeks. I have no clue if that will change anything or what purpose it will serve in the long run. And I wonder if other radio stations will do anything similar.

(Link: nhnieuws.nl, Photo of Microphone by visual dichotomy, some rights reserved)

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May 21, 2018

Dutch radio aboard Chinese space mission

Filed under: Dutch first,Technology by Orangemaster @ 9:40 pm

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Today, the Chinese space agency launched a relay satellite to an orbit behind the Moon with a Dutch radio antenna on board, the first Dutch-made scientific instrument to be sent on a Chinese space mission, opening up a new chapter in radio astronomy.

The Netherlands Chinese Low-Frequency Explorer (NCLE) is a radio antenna developed and built by engineers from ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy in Dwingeloo, the Radboud Radio Lab of Radboud University in Nijmegen, and the Delft-based company ISIS. The instrument will measure radio waves originating from the period right after the Big Bang, when the first stars and galaxies were formed.

“We cannot detect radio waves below 30 MHz, however, as these are blocked by our atmosphere. It is these frequencies in particular that contain information about the early universe, which is why we want to measure them,” explains Heino Falck, Professor of Astrophysics from Radboud University and ASTRON.

(Link: phys.org)

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December 4, 2017

Radio pranks singer with streaker, artists outraged

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 10:40 am

On November 17 during a live radio show where young singer Maan de Steenwinkel was performing, the show’s male DJs thought it would be amusing to have a male streaker run through the studio. What happened is that 20-year-old The Voice of Holland winner Maan was on the radio singing live, panicked, and burst out in tears for all to see and hear.

Although the incident happened a few weeks ago, it was published extensively on social media yesterday. And even in November, Dutch singer Tim Knol had already tweeted his outrage right after the incident, saying “Shit radio. UNBELIEVABLE BUNGLERS. That’s not how you treat artists. Nobody should go to that shit station anymore to promote their music. Sod off.” Dutch columnist Sheila Sitalsing answered more eloquently, but in the same vein: “And to sell her music, she’s dependent on this type of station with creepy men who think that creepy men’s fantasies are amusing. Urg”. A Dutch business radio station manager said that if the DJs worked at his station, he would have fired them.

But yeah, that’s all nice to hear after the fact, but someone somewhere thought it was hilarious to trash an artist’s performance for the sake of a laugh. The Dutch radio station in question is indeed an outdated white Dutch male frat boy outfit who also thought it was fine to promote the Olympics this way a few years back.

(Links: nos.nl, parool.nl, nu.nl)

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March 22, 2017

Vote for your favourite ugly public art

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 9:46 am
Photo by Peter Cox

Photo by Peter Cox

Dutch radio station 538 is asking their listeners to vote on the ‘Ugliest artwork of the Netherlands’. The nine nominees include a ‘pooping skater’ in Pijnacker, the awkward arch in Amstelveen and something I actually like, the ‘Big Funnelman’ (their spelling, not mine) in Breda.

Click here to vote!

(Link: amstelveenz.nl, Photo of ‘Big Funnelman’ by Peter Cox)

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November 20, 2015

Paris peace pianist plays in Amsterdam

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 11:14 am

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Germany-based pianist Davide Martello who famously played John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ outdoors in Paris recently to comfort listeners travelled to Amsterdam and played next to the National Monument and the Nieuwmarkt downtown this week.

Known as Klavierkunst, Martello wants to travel to play the piano in all the capitals of the world, sometimes suggested by fans. He can now cross Amsterdam off his list. I really like the idea of a bicycle able to cart a piano around the city and calling him the ‘peace pianist’. He also played on Dutch television, which you can watch here.

Other pianists took to the free piano in Amsterdam Central Station before and after the one minute of silence held throughout the country on 16 November, playing ‘Imagine’.

Why ‘Imagine’? The slogan ‘Pray for Paris’, which was surely well meant, bothered many French people and others, such as French cartoonist Joann Sfar (some stuff is in English) – I’ll let his points speak for him. Considering the attacks were religiously motivated, ‘Imagine’ has lyrics that suggest we imagine there’s no heaven or religion, which would imply that if religion wasn’t around we would be better off, something French secular society strongly believes in.

There was once an episode of late 1970s American television show ‘WKRP in Cincinnati’ where a reverend comes to the rock radio station and tries to have a bunch of songs censored, specifically ‘Imagine’:

The reverend: This is typical of the kind of secular liberal humanist point of view that gluts our airwaves.
Station manager: Yeah. But we’re not talking obscenities here anymore, we’re talking about ideas, political, the philosophical ideas. First you censor a word and then you censor the ideas.
The reverend: But the idea is man-centered, not God-centered. The Bible tells us to put our reliance in God, not in our fellow mortals. This song says there’s no heaven.
Station manager: Ah, no, it says just imagine there’s no heaven.

(Links imdb.com, www.at5)

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March 27, 2015

Dutch spies thwarted by German windmills

Filed under: Sustainability,Technology by Branko Collin @ 2:58 pm

don-quixote-gustave-dore-pdGerman windmills are disrupting the proper spying on Dutch citizens by the Dutch military secret service MIVD, or so the latter complains.

The Ministry of Defence has complained to the municipality of Vreden (Germany) about the fact that it allows the placement of wind turbines so near to its spying antennas (14 kilometres), Ravage reports. Vreden has already limited the height of its turbines and is currently amending its rules for the placement of new turbines.

According to Webwereld, 25 Dutch citizens lost their jobs in 2009 and 2010 when the Ministry of Defence destroyed their employer’s business model of providing medium distance, high speed wireless internet (wimax). After the ministry had told Worldmax that it was forbidden to roll out its services in the entire north of the Netherlands, the wimax provider had to close its doors, losing dozens of millions of euro in the process.

Vreden is planning a farm of 24 wind turbines in or near the Crosewicker Feld nature reserve and is getting some resistance from its citizens, according to Münsterland Zeitung. The locals don’t share the concerns of the Dutch military, but are unwilling to have to look at the turbines all day. They want the distance from the turbines to their house increased from the proposed 400 metres to at least 500 metres. (This has led to an interesting legal paradox where the council members who live too close to the proposed wind farm are not allowed to vote on what constitutes ‘too close’. The Germans call this conflict of interest Befangenheit.)

Illustration: renowned windmill fighter Don Quixote by Gustave Doré, 1863.

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May 21, 2014

Dutch radio DJ nails Guinness world record

Filed under: Dutch first,Music by Orangemaster @ 10:14 am

Started on Monday 12 May, 3FM radio DJ Giel Beelen has broken the world record for the longest, continuous radio show with 190 hours, breaking the older record of 189 set by Belgian radio DJ Lennart Creël only two weeks ago.

To celebrate Beelen’s 10 year anniversary on the airwaves with his morning show, going for a world record seemed fitting. Although the show was non-stop, he was allowed to sleep five minutes an hour if needed and every second day he could get three hours of shut eye.

Giel Beelen is well known by the Dutch audience for regularly taking part in the Glass House (‘Het Glazen Huis’), a glass house with a radio broadcast set up on main squares in different cities every year a week before Christmas. The DJs go without anything to eat to collect money for Red Cross projects.

(Link: nos.nl)

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March 19, 2014

Dutch artists cover current pop hits, good or bad?

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 8:00 am

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Radio station 100% NL broadcasts Dutch music sung in Dutch or from Dutch artists and has recently decided to expand its reach by commissioning Dutch-language versions of currently English-language pop hits. The project is called ‘Let’s Go Dutch’ and was launched last week. First up is Charly Lusky with ‘Ik heb iets’ (roughly, ‘I’ve got something’, ‘there’s something happening’, you get the idea), a cover of Pharrell Williams’ Happy, see the first video below.

Covering current English-language pop hits to have more to play on the air is fine, however the comments on NU.nl are mostly negative to put it mildly. I have nothing against the voice of Charly Lusky in this music video, but then I’d rather hear Pharrell Williams. As a non native Dutch speaker the lyrics of the Dutch version sound insincere and artificial, something a Dutch artist would never have written on their own. It’s like there’s no added value in the Dutch version.

Many people feel the translation sounds like it’s for dummies, level-wise. The background singers still sing ‘happy’, a word the Dutch have been using for a few years now instead of the Dutch word ‘blij’ or ‘gelukkig’, which means they left in some English after all.

As a Dutch blog puts it in English, is it a hit or is it shit? Give it a whirl and tell us what you think.

Charly Lusky – Ik heb iets

The original Pharrell Williams – Happy

(Links: www.nu.nl, nlpop.blog.nl, Photo by Quistnix, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 1.0)

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