May 29, 2010

Million digitized newspaper pages available at kb.nl

Filed under: Dutch first,General by Branko Collin @ 1:34 pm

newspaper_ad_2000_04_01_sportsLast Thursday, the Dutch national library opened its repository of digitized Dutch newspapers from the period 1618 to 1995.

So far the library has digitized 1 million pages from 70 papers, which can be viewed at http://kranten.kb.nl. It plans on scanning 7 million more in the next two years in order to cover 5% of all newspapers ever printed in the Netherlands.

For the occasion, the oldest copy of a Dutch newspaper in existance, Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt &c, is on display at the library, on loan from the Royal Library of Sweden. The name, meaning “‘currents’ from Italy, Germany, etc.” stuck around, and now courant—krant in its modern spelling—is the word for newspaper in Dutch.

The Dutch national library is not the first with an online newspaper archive, and there are some genuinely cool archives out there such as the Australian one that lets you proofread OCRed texts (much like Wikipedia). The range of the Dutch archive is actually impressive.

(Links: Webwereld, Trouw.)

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May 28, 2010

Dustbins open with any magnetic strip card

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 10:08 am

After posting a video a on how a public transport chip card opens dustbins in Eindhoven, now there’s a sequel and prequel of dustbins in Amsterdam North that can be opened with a selection of cards.

In the video, the dustbin in question can be opened with any card that has a magnetic strip, even without a chip in it.

Big hairy deal? Well, if you lose your dustbin pass, you have to pay some 20-30 euro to get a new one, one of the guys in the video explains. You also need to pay money to actually get extra ones for your household. The point is to pay to put out your trash, as some municipalities let people pay this way instead of collecting taxes for rubbish. In Nijmegen we used to have to buy special bags at one guilder (pre-euro currency) a pop to use for rubbish, otherwise we could have been fined.

And the fun doesn’t stop there. A few days before this video, Amsterdam telly station AT5 also shot a nice video of a five-year-old working some dustbin pass magic, using a discarded public transport chip card. The whole point of the Amsterdam North district installing these dustbins was so that the locals could dump their trash in it and not just anybody. In this video, which was more about the privacy issues surrounding the public transport chip card, you’ll see that someone managed to order a legit card using a foto of Osama Ben Laden.

The little boy sums it up well: ‘It just crazy that it can be opened that way.”

(Link: at5.nl, Photo by Franklin Heijnen, some rights reserved)

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May 27, 2010

Bags made from old transport belts

Filed under: Bicycles,Design by Orangemaster @ 2:30 pm

Amsterdam designer Dinand Stufkens and his recycled bag company Kazmok makes bags by recycling transport belts from manufacturing plants. Every belt is different, as is every bag since only 10 or 20 bags can be made with one belt.

First, there was The Principal, based on the traditional leather school bag. There’s also The Tutor with various accessories like laptop sleeves and belts. A totally different model is the Bulkcarrier, which fits in a milk crate that is usually the front basket of a Dutch city bike.

(Link: bright.nl)

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May 26, 2010

The Ice Man is a freak of nature

Filed under: Nature,Weird by Orangemaster @ 3:45 pm

Wim Hof (aka the Ice Man) holds many records, including being able to ‘chill’ in ice for 1 hour and 13 minutes. Last week, two Dutch scientists tried to measure his bodily responses to cold and concluded that what he can do “is medically impossible”. The more I read up on this, the more I realise that crediting Tummo-meditaion for his talent is just a freaky coincidence.

Professor Maria Hopman explains that Hof is apparently able to influence his nervous system, which is supposed to be impossible. Hof also appears to be able to consciously open and close his blood vessels. Professor Mihai Netea has shown that Hof’s blood cells react differently than normal blood cells even after six days.

In 2009, Wim completed a full marathon of 42,195 kilometres above the polar circle in Finland in temperatures close to -20 degrees. Watch the video.

(Link: webregio.nl)

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May 25, 2010

First Dutch online bicycle manufacturer

Filed under: Bicycles,Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 11:52 am
Pink bike

Tulpfietsen.nl sells sturdy city bikes online that clients can design themselves, like mix and match outfits. (Here, just a picture of a totally unrelated cute, pink bike). The bikes are delivered within one week and are put together at your place, live. Tulpfietsen will also give you a free tune-up after four months.

For every bike sold Tulpfietsen will donate 2 euro to the 1WE Rickshaw Project, which offers rickshaw drivers in Bangladesh the opportunity to buy a fixed-up rickshaw with a microcredit.

(Link: zibb.nl)

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May 24, 2010

Walking across the Wadden Sea

Filed under: Nature,Sports,Weird by Branko Collin @ 11:40 am

Legend has it that when God created the Groninger, the Groninger said: “Get off my land.” And as if to prove a point, Groningers (and Frisians) still walk across dozens of miles of sea each day, as New York Times reporter David Corn attests:

After about an hour, Mr. Kraster comes to a stop. He says he has some good news and some bad news. For the next stretch, the ground will be less muddy — but the water will be higher. He points in the direction we’ll be heading. I still see nothing but sky and water before us. He could be leading us anywhere — including into deep water. He takes a step, and the water is close to his waist. The rest of us realize we are standing on a ridge and about to take a plunge.

The activity described here is mudflat hiking, wadlopen in Dutch, and is possible because of the unique properties of the Wadden Sea. At high tide the area is a sea, at low tide it is land—partly—and you can cross from the mainland to the Wadden Islands over some of the muddy watersheds. This is exactly what 30,000 people in the Netherlands do each year. Mudflat walking is also possible across the Wadden Sea portions of Germany and Denmark.

(Photo by nl.wikipedia user Marieke78, some rights reserved.

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May 23, 2010

Richest self-made men and women of 2010

Filed under: General,Sports by Branko Collin @ 3:17 pm

Glossy money magazine Quote presented its 100% Selfmade list last week, an overview of the 100 richest self-made Dutch people of under the age of 40.

The Top 5 is:

  1. David Slager (37), 270 million euro, stock trader
  2. Reinout Oerlemans (38), 73 million euro, TV director and producer
  3. Roger Hodenius (38), 60 million euro, stock trader
  4. Andruw Jones (33), 54 million euro, professional baseball player
  5. Ruud van Nistelrooij (33), 53 million euro, professional football player

Quote regularly publishes a list of the 500 richest people of the Netherlands, including those who inherited their fortunes, and the difference with the self-made folks is stunning. The latter only lost half a million euro per capita in the past 12 months, whereas all the rich combined lost 17.8 billion, which comes down to 36 million euro per person.

In fact, only the losses of one man, Maasbert Schouten (banker, 38), who saw 200 million of his 235 million euro evaporate last year, stunted the growth of the self-made rich. Collectively they went from 2 billion euro to 1.95 billion euro.

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May 22, 2010

Bicycle rush hour in Utrecht

Filed under: Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 1:05 pm

In this time lapse video of the traffic at a busy intersection in Utrecht, the participants are weaving in and out in almost perfect harmony. The effect is positively hypnotic.

I am given to understand that what makes this video by Mark Wagenbuur special is that the main form of transportation in it is the humble bicycle. As a result, the video has gone viral among treehuggers.

Link: Metafilter. Video: Youtube.

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May 21, 2010

Favela chic and colourful in Brazil

Filed under: Architecture,Art by Orangemaster @ 11:20 am
welcome

On 29 March 2010 we finished work on the latest favela painting and our first part of ‘O Morro’: Praça Cantão. It is central square at the foot of the community of Santa Marta, a favela in the heart of Rio de Janeiro.

Livening up slums in Brazil is a project by Haas & Hahn – Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn. They once filmed a documentary on hip hop in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and São Paolo for MTV, after which they decided to bring funky works of art to unexpected places, starting with painting enormous murals in the slums of Brazil together with the local youth.

The goal is to have the ‘O Morro’ project sponsored by a community of supporters who will finance the infrastructure, materials and people needed to complete the work. You can donate through their site in a number of ways, including one text message every month for just 3 euro a pop.

Find out more about this project on Facebook and Twitter.

(Link: trendbeheer.com, Photo; favelapainting)

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May 20, 2010

Bookies rate Dutch Eurovision entry as ‘hopeless’

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 8:56 am

I already called the Dutch Eurovision entry for 2010 cultural suicide, but as the big day approaches, the plot thickens. There’s been some accusations of plagiarism against song writer Pierre Kartner and Sieneke has had some voice problems. Luckily, she’s OK. However, Sieneke is currently ranked 36 out of 39 with ‘zéro points’ (pronounced in French, eh).

The big favourite this year is Lena from Germany with a dance number featuring some really lame lyrics I couldn’t get through (I heard the word ‘underwear’). Her voice has a quality resembling Iceland’s Björk, which probably helps and yes, she’s pretty. Georgia is a close second with Sofia Nizharadze and some love ballad with the name ‘Shine’ (ironically the name of the Dutch entry in 2009) that I didn’t get through, also with a very pretty woman. In third place, Sweden with a pretty blonde named Anna Begendahl accompanying herself on the guitar and some serious tremelo in her voice that’s not my thing.

But back to Sieneke: she’s friendly and warm on stage by Dutch standards, but she’s just not pretty. And it does matter. Dutch celebrity gossip show (RTL Boulevard) went around Oslo about two weeks ago, showed people a video of Sieneke and asked people to guess how old she was. I heard 32 and ‘not bad for 36’. Sieneke just turned 18. Ouch. The gay side-kick of the show politely said, “I think she needs a stylist”. Sieneke is the younger version of famous Dutch star Marianne Weber whose Wikipedia page isn’t even in English, the point being that outside of the Dutch speaking world, no one has a clue who she is.

Watching this year’s Eurovision Song Contest will be like watching a slow train wreck and I can’t wait, sorry Sieneke.

Let’s go back to the Dutch winner of 1957, the lovely Corry Brokken with ‘Net als toen’ ‘(Just like then’).

(Link gelderlander.nl)

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