April 8, 2015

Cat cafe to open in Amsterdam this month

Filed under: Animals,Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 11:06 am

catinbox

The idea of a cat café started in Taiwan in 1998 and got big in Japan, New York City, London, Paris, Berlin, and Copenhagen. This month it’s Amsterdam’s turn to have a cat café that will open on 22 April.

Amsterdam already has quite a few cats in their establishments to catch mice, but following international trends, it was a matter of time before the capital got an official hangout overrun with furry friends, which amusingly enough is not too far from 24oranges HQ.

The entire idea was crowdfunded with 975 cat lovers contributing 33,000 euro to the project.

(Link: www.nu.nl, Photo of Cat in a box by Hehaden, some rights reserved)

Tags: , ,

April 3, 2015

Elderly woman foils six stupid thieves

Filed under: Film,Weird by Orangemaster @ 9:12 am

Facepalm

You’re part of a gang of six guys who have robbed an elderly woman aged 84 of her bank card: what do you do next? You and your mates go and catch the movie ‘Fast & Furious 7’ somewhere in Breda, paying with said bank card and get caught because you all share the IQ of a tree.

The woman noticed her bank card was missing after having bought groceries and probably checked online to see if her card had been used elsewhere, like at the local cinema. The police grabbed the stupid six at the cinema because they bought numbered seats, which is a thing in the Netherlands, along with drinking beer while watching a movie.

A bit like a bad car chase scene, one of the stupid six managed to flee and lock himself in the disabled bathroom only to get caught as well because the cops saw him run into it.

(Link: nos.nl, Photo of Paris Louvre facepalm by Phelan Riessen, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , ,

April 2, 2015

Follow a badger family on the webcam

Filed under: Animals,Nature,Online by Orangemaster @ 11:40 am

Badger

‘Volg de Das’ (‘Follow the badger’) is a webcam that was set up by forest rangers Aaldrik and Pauline who are logging their adventures in Dutch watching a family of badgers. The badgers can be seen in the evenings and at night, and if you spot them you can send in your film clips.

In other badger news, our reality badger family is branching out and getting a second webcam soon, so more people can watch them. Who knows, maybe Dutch artist Bart Jansen who makes gadgets out of dead animals will have a eye on them too if they happen to die for his badger submarine.

(Link: www.volgdedas.nl, Photo of Badger by Tatterdemalion, some rights reserved)

Tags: ,

April 1, 2015

Anne Frank died earlier than recorded

Filed under: History by Orangemaster @ 3:23 pm
kastanjeboom

Anne Frank and her sister Margot probably died a month earlier than previously recorded at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. According to Erika Prins, a researcher at the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam, her death was placed in February instead of March. Both girls died of typhus, with most typhus deaths happening some 12 days after the first symptoms.

Anyone who knows the story of Anne Frank often has the feeling that if she had held on a bit longer, she could have been liberated, which was never really the case, but now even less so.

“The new date of her death changes little about the tragic lives of Anne and her sister Margot, who went into hiding with their family in an Amsterdam canal house but were eventually betrayed, sent to Nazi concentration camps and died in the Holocaust along with millions of other Jews.”

Jews hid in many places across the country (in Dutch). You can also see Anne Frank on YouTube in a film fragment, the only time ever apparently. As well, many people think Anne Frank was Dutch, but she was German.

(Links: phys.org, www.nu.nl, Photo of famous chestnut tree: annefranktree.com)

Tags: , ,

March 31, 2015

Eurovision gets Dutch pop singer Trijntje Oosterhuis

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 3:06 pm

With no controversy or mudslinging in sight, pop and jazz singer Trijntje Oosterhuis is going to represent the Netherlands at the Eurovision Song Festival 2015 in Vienna with the song ‘Walk Along’. The lyrics were written by pop singer Anouk who represented the Netherlands in 2013 with the song ‘Birds’ and took ninth place. The music for ‘Walk Along’ was written by Swedish-born California-based heavyweight songwriter Tobias Karlsson.

Last year’s second place win ‘Calm After the Storm’ by The Common Linnets, which received its share of criticism, is now the one to beat. Unfortunately, there’s nothing special about ‘Walk Along’: it sounds like typical Dutch radio music, it’s well interpreted by Oosterhuis and some say it’s a bit catchy. However, the chorus is too repetitive (‘ay ay ay’). I think it’s going to flop because it’s sound like everything else on the radio in many countries.

The song that popped in my head when I heard ‘Walk Along’ was Natalie Imburglia’s ‘Torn’, originally written and recorded by American band Ednaswap, which I had to look up and realised that version was way better.

I was wrong last year about The Common Linnets whose song went down really well abroad and the Internet has a lot of positive comments for Oosterhuis, so judge for yourselves:

(Photo of Microphone by visual dichotomy, some rights reserved)

Tags: , ,

March 30, 2015

Drone to deliver asparagus, ringing in the season

Filed under: Food & Drink,Gadgets,Technology by Orangemaster @ 12:55 pm

One-Michelin-star restaurant De Zwaan in Etten-Leur, Noord-Brabant likes to make a splash in spring once white asparagus season kicks off and what better way to do that than having a drone deliver the white gold to your door.

On 1st April (no joke), a drone with a 15-minute battery that needs to fly 12 minutes avoiding all kinds of buildings and bridges according to many rules will drop off a crate of asparagus at the kitchen door of the restaurant. There’s a backup battery and a Plan B to land nearby if the wind is too much.

It’s not the first time De Zwaan and its owner Roland Peijnenburg have marked the start of asparagus season by creating a buzz. They’ve also used a hot air balloon carrying the town mayor and once had an asparagus relay race.

When you mention asparagus in the Netherlands, people think white asparagus and not green asparagus first. Here’s a white asparagus cocktail appetizer recipe for you as well.

(Link: www.deondernemer.nl, Photo of asparagus by Stephan Mosel, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , ,

March 29, 2015

Warehouse echoes Rietveld’s famous weaving mill

Filed under: Architecture by Orangemaster @ 8:25 pm

Office-Building-by-B-and-O-Architectuur_dezeen_468_0

The jagged roof of this warehouse and office space in Meppel, Drenthe was designed by Dutch architect Arnoud Olie to reference a 1950s weaving mill, Weverij de Ploeg (photo) in Bergeijk, Noord-Brabant thought up by world famous Dutch architect and designer Gerrit Rietveld.

Olie wanted to avoid the traditional ‘square box’ buildings that are typical for the region and therefore went with an upgraded Dutch design classic.

(Link and photo: www.dezeen.com)

Tags: , , ,

March 26, 2015

Park in Utrecht dumps trash for team building

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 10:12 am

giro_trash

A park in Utrecht that apparently didn’t have enough trash in it had some trash added to it by the city to make sure that beer giant Inbev could have a proper team building session picking up rubbish.

Imagine being a neighbour watching city employees dump trash into a park for the sake of some company’s team building outing and busloads of white collar employees having fun picking up the trash like problem youth doing community service.

The city of Utrecht admitted it was a bad call to dump more trash in the park, although they still did. They are probably only saying this because they got caught doing it. The idea of putting trash into a park to then have it picked up again is retarded.

To make things worse Inbev claims it knew nothing about the extra trash and would not have gone through with it if they had known, which is plausible. Either way Inbev was stuck dealing with a load of rubbish. The employees, who were geared up to do a good deed, can now team build on the feeling of having been screwed over.

(www.welingelichtekringen.nl)

Tags: , ,

March 25, 2015

Are women afraid to use the self-scanner?

Filed under: Food & Drink,General,Technology by Orangemaster @ 1:26 pm

Rosie

It is a tendentious question, but what on earth is Rosie the Riveter being used to encourage women folk, who are the main food shoppers, that they too have enough brains to use the relatively new self-scanners at the supermarket? It says ‘We scan ourselves!’. If they had a picture of a tough guy saying ‘I can use a scanner, too!’ it would be condescending. The scanners also work in other languages, so the insult isn’t lost on the non-Dutch crowd.

Hang on: the message with a woman is condescending towards women! Retro is cute, but not like this. Rosie deserves a hell of a lot better.

This lame message is quite typical of corporate Dutch passive-agressiveness: use the fokkin scanners ladies, as we’d rather have our cheap students (mostly female by the way) lose their jobs to a self-scanner over time. Yes, it’s mainly boys that stock shelves because, well, boys. I bet Rosie could kick all of their asses.

As a representative of women folk, I don’t always use the scanner because when I buy alcohol, an employee needs to come over, verify my age and swipe their magic card through the scanner so I can get on with it.

If you don’t agree that the poster is insulting to women, fine. But you should agree that it’s fokkin unoriginal.

(Photo: Mariëlle Verbeek)

Tags: , ,

March 24, 2015

National alarms to be phased out in 2017

Filed under: General,Online by Orangemaster @ 6:38 pm

4502882649_57f3ea7bc8_m

The first Monday of the month at noon is when the entire country gets to listen to a modern-day air raid siren, a test to make sure it’s all working in the event of a flood or if zombies ever become a thing. The government wants to replace it with NL-alert, which was the world’s text message-based emergency broadcast system, as well as use social media, websites and the radio to warn people, probably in Dutch only.

Webwereld.nl points out a host of problems with NL-alert: it still doesn’t work with 4G mobile phones and doesn’t always work if your phone is too new, too old or not configured to receive NL-alert. If your mobile network breaks down, you won’t get a warning, either. If you don’t own a mobile or if something happens in one town and you work in another, which is most of the Dutch population, you won’t get a message until your commute home and it could be too late. If you’re driving in your car where it’s illegal to use your phone and you’re not listening to the radio, you’ll find out much later as well. If you’re a person that turns off your mobile at night to get some decent sleep you also won’t get the message, as disasters would then really need to happen during the day.

And if you’re a visitor or a tourist with no mobile or a foreign network, the zombies will get you first.

Sure, if enough people know something bad is happening you’ll find out as well, but it’s still patchy. The current alarm system seems to be the only ‘old school’ way to warn almost everybody, but it does cost 4 million euro a year and doesn’t always work, either.

(Links: www.parool.nl, webwereld.nl, Photo of Air raid siren by Tim Geers, some rights reserved)

Tags: , ,