May 28, 2013

Retro handheld consoles to be featured in photo book

Filed under: Design,Photography by Orangemaster @ 9:21 am

From the guy who made a series of bright yellow video game consoles, a 21st century reworking of the very first arcade console, Martijn Koch plans to crowdfund a book entitled ‘2kB of Fun’ featuring his large collection of handheld electronic games.

Koch, an architect, started his collection by first using old eighties game consoles while redesigning an old bank building set to house 40 small gaming firms. “To give the floors their own identity, I bought a couple of bright coloured handhelds from the early eighties and photographed them. They ended up being too retro for the interior, but they asked for a nice treatment! I was missing a true celebration of these magnificent toys from 1976-1985.”

Feel free to like his Facebook page and of course, sign up to buy a book, which will hopefully be ready by December 2013, in time for the gift-giving season. Oh, and check out his personal pitch.

(Links and Photo: www.indiegogo.com, www.retrospace.nl)

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May 23, 2013

Musical instrument shop snubs its rock ‘n’ roll clients

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 3:58 pm

A musical instrument shop in Groningen, a city some call the real rock city of the Netherlands (surely a bone of contention with the people of Eindhoven), is looking for someone, male or female, to sell guitars.

They proudly tell us in their advert that their main clientele are rockers, you know, the kind of people who wear black concert shirts, have piercings and tattoos, and favour loud rock music. The shop called Tonika Music wants the ideal candidate to really look like they enjoy selling guitars, have the right qualifications, be convincing, and all the stuff you would expect from a good salesperson, but not have anything in common with the average rocker. They also mention no beards and mustaches, which potential female candidates read as not really wanting women either, but are too daft to say out loud for fear of discriminating!

Blatantly discriminating against people, which goes against Dutch law, the shop will refuse candidates with piercings, visible tattoos, ‘wild hair’ or a predilection for the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. You shouldn’t be a smoker, which they consider as being ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ in a negative way and ideally you should still play in a band and understand musicians. I am sure there are people that fit this description and want to work there, but I’m more worried about the drop in sales that is soon to follow.

A keyboard player on Facebook said it best: “The dumbest sales tactic there is, is valuing your opinion more than you value your clients’ opinion. Luckily, clients are able to discriminate and take their business elsewhere.” The company, currently being trashed on Facebook, has removed their advert, which pretty much proves how stupid they’ve been. People have offered to help them with their PR and give them social media classes. Insulting your clientele has to be the dumbest crisis move ever.

(Photo of Slash, top, by Florex007, some rights reserved. Bottom: partial screenshot of the offending advert via Facebook)

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May 22, 2013

Spending the night in revamped trams and trains

Filed under: Automobiles,Aviation,Design,Music,Weird by Orangemaster @ 9:02 pm

Named after a house that is in turn named after the Prince album Controversy, the Controversy Tram Inn in Hoogwoud, North Holland features overnight stays for the entire family in city trams and railcars converted into five rooms. As well, there are all kinds of other vehicles strewn throughout their farm estate.

Frank and Irma Appel have restored a four-berth train carriage and four themed tram bedrooms in either end of two city centre tram railcars that used to run on the streets of Amsterdam and Germany. You can’t help but join in the lifestyle that Frank and Irma have created! They themselves sleep inside a London Double Decker bus, installed in the living room, and their kitchen and breakfast area is a converted French van. Their house is decorated with cars, and motor paraphernalia.

You can’t miss the house, it has a Mig fighter plane right outside.

(Links: www.controversy.nl, www.unusualhotelsoftheworld.com, Photo: Controversy Inn)

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May 21, 2013

Dutchman wins a round of Britain’s Got Talent with 80s music

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 9:29 pm

A 23-year-old guy from Amsterdam living in England with what has to be a fake Dunglish accent won a round of talent search show Britain’s Got Talent with an 80s parody called ‘Back Door Lover’.

Wanting to bring the keytar back to its former glory, Maarty Broekman, sporting a Michael Jackson style leather jacket won sympathy from jury members to make it to the next round.

He can’t sing and is pretty bad on the keytar, but for being desperate for attention, he scores pretty big.

(Link: www.standaard.be, Photo of keytar by Thomas Beck, some rights reserved)

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May 17, 2013

Winning Eurovision is costly, losing seems like a better option

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 9:25 am

It’s hard to believe that after eight years of international humiliation the Dutch Eurovision’s entry for 2013 actually has a chance. National rock chick Anouk made the cut this week with the song ‘Birds’, which she had lying around and not with some Dunglish-gone-wrong cultural faux-pas like many of her recent predecessors.

Although TROS television station director Peter Kuipers is thrilled that Anouk is going to the final of the Eurovision Song Contest, he’s already grumpy at the idea of forking out some 10 million euro for hosting the show if she wins. TROS is currently in talks to merge with the AVRO television station to save both their financial futures.

A straightforward, well-written ballad (as in no mistakes because we’ve done that before) seems like a good choice. TROS skipped having a television show to determine who would go to Eurovision as Anouk said either you pick me or forget it.

Seems like Anouk helped the TROS save money after all.

For a quick comparison, here’s Sineke – Ik ben verliefd (Sha-la-lie) – 2012.

Here’s the “trommelende trutten’ (roughly, ‘drumming bimbos’) with their made-up language (kicks in at 0:42) Treble – Amambanda – 2006

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

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May 16, 2013

Printing human skin in 3D to help burn victims

Filed under: Science,Technology by Orangemaster @ 11:16 am

The concept of SkinPrint, thought up by a group of students at Leiden University, uses a 3D printer to print pieces of human skin for skin grafting. SkinPrint has won the Digital Award, the country’s most sought-after student award.

“SkinPrint could mean a revolution in medicine”, explains team leader Ingmar van Hengel in the press. A healthy piece of skin is removed from a burn victim and then printed, ready to be used for medical procedures. SkinPrint must undergo a lot more scrutiny and certification before it can be used, say about five years.

There are many scientists around the world working on printing human body parts such as skin, ears, livers and what not. Have a look at 7 Cool Uses of 3D Printing in Medicine.

(Link: www.parool.nl, Photo of an Ultimaker)

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May 15, 2013

Guessing age and gender based on tweets

Filed under: Online by Orangemaster @ 5:56 pm
Pink bike

Dong Nguyen, a doctoral student in computer sciences is part of a group of researchers at Twente University near Enschede which have compiled lists of words and sequences corresponding with different ages and specific genders, albeit in Dutch for now. Based on almost 3,000 tweets, users simply enter their username into the online programme which calculated age and gender by comparing the last 200 tweets with the words and phrases in its database.

“We note that users use more uniform language from about 35 years and older. There are larger differences between a users aged 15 and 20 then there are between users aged 45 and 55,” Nguyen said. The difference between men and women is apparently very stereotypical.

(Link: phys.org)

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May 14, 2013

Police accused of brokering a wedding to save a girl’s family’s honour

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 12:09 pm

Dutch police in Amsterdam Zuidoost have been accused of acting as ‘matchmakers’ for two underaged Dutch Muslims of Pakistani and Hindustani background. Together with Fier Fryslan, a Friesland-based organisation specialising in ‘relationship violence’, the ones who were involved in redesigning women’s shelters to put them out in the open, had their hand in a religious wedding performed to save the girl’s family’s honour.

Dutch law apparently forbids religious weddings, and the couple have agreed to attend a civil ceremony when they turn 18 to make it nice and legal, but the critics aren’t happy with that at all. They argue that traditional Islamic marriages put women in a subordinate role by denying them equal rights such as divorce.

Both the police and Fier Fryslan say that the media attention is being taken out of context, as they would not actually have agreed to a forced marriage. However, a social worker in Amsterdam Zuidoost has accused both parties of acting as if they have ‘saved the day’.

(Links: www.amsterdamherald.com, www.volkskrant.nl, Photo by Anthony Kelly, some rights reserved)

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May 9, 2013

Amsterdam, the city that knows no boundaries

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 10:46 am

There’s a new trend that has been brewing in Amsterdam when it comes to branding the city to tourists, and that’s making tourist attractions that are not actually in Amsterdam part of the city when it is convenient to do so (*cash register sounds*).

The cities of IJmuiden, Bloemendaal and Zandvoort on the coast are now just ‘Amsterdam Beach’, although they are closer to the bigger city of Haarlem, which is sometimes casually annexed to what is now being referred to as ‘The Greater Amsterdam Area’ by city marketing people. Schiphol Airport has been called Amsterdam Airport for ages although it is not in Amsterdam and the ‘Bulb Region’ again closer to Haarlem is the ‘Amsterdam Flower Strip’. Oddly enough, the most ‘bulbous’ region of the country is actually north of there, but that’s just inconvenient.

The lovely castle of Muiderslot 15 kilometres from Amsterdam is being sold to tourists as ‘Amsterdam Castle Muiderslot’. The number of foreign visitors doubled in 2012 from 10,000 to 20,000 (*cash register sounds*).

Although Amsterdam is the capital of the Netherlands, it’s never really marketed as such, probably because the Dutch refer to Amsterdam as that big city over there and not as ‘the nation’s capital’. However, this absorbing of non Amsterdam attractions makes many an Amsterdam resident uncomfortable. What gives Amsterdam the right to poach tourist attractions? Money? I mean Schiphol, OK, it’s tough to pronounce, but the beaches 20 kilometres away? That’s overstretching boundaries.

According to Amsterdam FM radio, Amsterdam presents itself abroad as being a city that is much bigger than its actual municipal boundaries. If the locals of other cities don’t mind the poaching and enjoy the money like Muiderslot does, then fine, Amsterdam just got that much bigger (*cash register sounds*).

While us mortals in Amsterdam still have to use normal city limits, we are all the dupe of some city marketing we can’t believe in ourselves because we know it’s not Amsterdam. Why are the 1.5 million tourists that come to Amsterdam every year being treated like morons? It almost looks to me as if we are ashamed of quaint villages like Zaandam with its famous windmills and its having housed Russian Tsar Peter the Great for a week. And will this branding go so far as to make the city of Utrecht 30 min away by train a suburb of Amsterdam? Don’t laugh, that’s where this megalomaniac trend is headed.

To quote any good Dutch person talking to tourists and expats: Amsterdam isn’t the Netherlands. Hell, Amsterdam is not even itself anymore.

(Link: www.amsterdamfm.nl, Photo of Muiderslot Castle by Coanri/Rita, some rights reserved)

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May 8, 2013

Northern radio stations to broadcast live ambulance sirens

Filed under: Automobiles,Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 10:44 am

If you’ve driving around the North of the country and listening to certain local radio stations, you will soon be able to hear ambulance sirens through the radio, a partial solution to people in their cars not hearing ambulances due to car noise or loud music.

The system will cut off radio signals from about a 300-metre radius around the ambulance and broadcast its siren for a short period. However, many radio stations are weary of this system, as they fear loss of advertisers. Another obvious concern is for anyone living near a hospital and hearing every siren that goes off from incoming and outgoing ambulances.

In true Dutch fashion, they’ll give this system a whirl for a year and see what happens.

Here’s what a Dutch ambulance looks and sounds like

Here’s a Dutch ambulance trying out an American sound

And for anyone who didn’t know, “You hear the high pitch of the siren of the approaching ambulance, and notice that its pitch drops suddenly as the ambulance passes you. That is called the Doppler effect.”

(Link: www.waarmaarraar.nl, Photo of a Dierenambulance (animal ambulance) by Alberto Garcia, some rights reserved)

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