April 4, 2016

Dutch robots on top again in Eindhoven

Filed under: Technology by Orangemaster @ 10:34 am

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The Eindhoven University of Technology that keeps on winning prestigious prizes with their football-playing robots took first place in the Robocup European Open held in Eindhoven last week.

According to team coach Lotte de Koning, they made a tactical switch to shoot at the goal faster and more often in the second half to make it a 2-0 victory against Portugal.

And that’s not all. Amigo the robot that usually helps with household chores won some sort of chore competition that consisted of taking orders and fulfilling them. Some 15,000 spectators came and checked out the robots, including 2,000 just to catch the football final.

Team Eindhoven is now in a good spot to come into the Robocup 2016 this June in Leipzig, Germany.

(Link: nu.nl, Photo of RoboCup2013 in Eindhoven by RoboCup2013, some rights reserved)

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March 31, 2016

KLM passengers can check in using Facebook Messenger

Filed under: Aviation,Dutch first,Online by Orangemaster @ 6:00 am

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As of March 30 KLM has been letting its passengers check in online using Facebook Messenger. Passengers can get their boarding cards and flight information as well as ask KLM any questions they may have directly instead of having to use Twitter or post their story on KLM’s Facebook page for all to read. A boarding pass that used to have to be sent per e-mail or text message can now be sent by Messenger.

Although a world premiere in aviation, we’re calling this a Dutch first because car service Uber was the first company to use Messenger. You can now order an Uber as you land at Schiphol if you wanted to. In the future, other companies will follow suit as well, according to Facebook. KLM is also talking to WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, to extend their services.

(Link: www.nu.nl, Photo: Steven Straiton, some rights reserved)

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March 30, 2016

3D printed chair created on a cellular level

Filed under: Design by Orangemaster @ 8:10 pm

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Here’s another super scientific 3D chair by Joris Laarman who created some revolutionary chairs back in 2010 using algorithms.

This aluminum gradient chair on display in New York in 2014 was the second in a series of three chairs that researched microstructures for furniture. According to Laarman, it was designed and directly laser sintered in aluminum, basically creating a lightweight aluminum foam that is engineered on a cellular level to address specific functional needs for different areas in the object. The solid cells in the design create structural strength and rigidity while the more open cells create material reduction and lightness, all within one printing technique.

(Link: www.designboom.com, Photo: www.jorislaarman.com)

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March 29, 2016

Live grenade found in old folks’ home

Filed under: Weird by Orangemaster @ 9:27 am
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World War II grenades pop up on the beach, at flea markets and even in potatoes here in the Netherlands, but this time a grenade was in fact sitting in an old man’s cupboard with its pin out.

A resident of an old folks’ home in Amsterdam East has had a live grenade for years that everybody thought was a fake. Sadly, the man recently passed and when his belongings were collected, the people that found the grenade among his model boats and books had it checked out by the police.

The staff of the home just assumed it was a fake, but once the police checked it out, they realised it was in a fact a live grenade. The bomb squad came and picked it up and had it detonated. All we know is that it was an English grenade that finally came out of the closet, although thankfully not with a bang.

(Link: www.waarmaarraar.nl, Photo of grenade by macspite, some rights reserved)

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March 28, 2016

Ukraine bashing is making a comeback

Filed under: Animals by Orangemaster @ 9:33 pm

Last summer we told you about a new law that allowed Dutch citizens to call for a non-binding referendum, in this case to veto Ukraine’s entry to the European Union. On 6 April, the Dutch will vote on a non-binding referendum on the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, a vote and campaign that happens to fall at the same time as the Dutch presidency of the European Union — as if they didn’t have enough on their plate already.

One things the Dutch Party for the Animals doesn’t want on their plate is chicken, so they’re encouraging people to vote ‘no’ in the video below. One of the baddies happens to be one of the world’s biggest producer of broiler chickens for starters. As well, a lot of people throw around the word ‘oligarch’ without knowing what it means, now you can learn more about it and hear how horrible it sounds in Dutch.

“According to Transparency International Ukraine is the most corrupt country in Europe. Ukraine is ruled by oligarchs. Take Myronivsky Hliboproduct (MHP): it is one of the biggest poultry producers in the world and annually slaughters 332 million chickens.”

Long story short, billionaire Yuriy Kosiuk owns it, puts his money in tax havens in Luxembourg and Cyprus, is friends with President Poroshenko and has his fingers in way too many pies. The Dutch Party for the Animals considers him and the Ukrainian government corrupt, and wouldn’t be totally wrong in saying so. MHP’s motto is “if you want something done well, do it yourself”, and that seems to include bullying the government.

Ukraine has always been the doormat doorway to Russia, stuck between maintaining old Soviet relations and sucking up to the European Union. The people of Ukraine are the real losers of any deal, chickens and all.

Dutch companies have a reputation of trashing Ukraine using gross stereotypes like they did during the Euro 2012, which makes any normal dialogue unproductive.

(Links: dearkitty1.wordpress.com, gianalytics.org, european-times.com, Photo of Ukranian woman by my3colors, some rights reserved)

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March 26, 2016

Creating crunchy patterns on modern ceramics

Filed under: Design by Orangemaster @ 9:07 am

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For anyone like me who usually finds ceramics dull, Dutch designer Floris Wubben of Eindhoven has found a way of making ceramics cool. He created a rotating flame-throwing device that makes exciting textures on his ceramic pieces.

A wet ceramic piece is placed on a rotating central stand, where an adjustable semicircular arm holds a blowtorch. The blowtorch then applies a flame directly to object’s surface, creating all kinds of patterns.

Wubben is able to control the flame, the distance and the speed at which the blowtorch hits a ceramic piece, creating cooler patterns than you’d normally see on ceramics. Wubben has produced bowls, pots and cups with different glazes in collaboration with Cor Unum ceramics studio of Den Bosch, Noord-Brabant.

(Link and photo: www.dezeen.com)

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March 21, 2016

Drones take your order and bring you drinks

Filed under: Food & Drink,Technology by Orangemaster @ 10:20 am

During the Dream and Dare festival on April 22 through 24 at the Eindhoven University of Technology to celebrate their 60th anniversary, they’ll be tech, innovation and debates as well as art, music and food. The food part will have drones acting as waiters, happily combining tech and drinks.

At the drone café, visitors will be able to order drinks from one drone while its drone colleague brings the drinks to you. It sounds way easier than it is to have drones flying indoors instead of outdoors. They need to fly much more accurately, they need to make way less noise and they need to not clip off any fingers when you grab your drinks from their talons. As well, the drones can only handle 300 grams of weight at a time.

Tessie Hartjes, of the student workgroup Blue Jay Eindhoven, says the combination of navigating and grasping is a big deal. She explains that although the drones use speech recognition software (and I’m assuming it only understands Dutch), the café is too noisy for that to work properly so you can order from the bar, old school. The drones also fly a certain route that you cannot walk into for fear of causing an accident. You can also pay to the drone, and tipping them might actually make them tip. I’m kidding.

(Link: www.tue.nl, www.bright.nl, Photo of Drone by Karen Axelrad, some rights reserved)

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March 19, 2016

Denim obsessed brothers make their own jeans

Filed under: Fashion by Orangemaster @ 9:21 pm

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They say the Dutch are really big on denim, with big Dutch names such as G-Star, Denham, Scotch & Soda and Kuyichi competing with the rest of the world on the jeans front. Even American brand Tommy Hilfiger, which also makes jeans, has its international headquarters in Amsterdam.

The Dutch can dress quite informally at work as compared to the rest of Europe, making denim a common occurrence at the office for both men and women. There’s no need for casual Friday over here.

A new small-scale jeans brand from Chèvremont, Limburg called Grivec Bros could very well be a brand to watch out for. Twin brothers Marcel and Roger, 44, are huge denim fans and owners of Jeanpaleis in Kerkrade, Limburg, which they inherited at age 18 from their parents when they got divorced. Even though Amsterdam can claim to be the ‘jeans capital of the world’, the brothers explain that the first jeans were sold to mine workers in their mining area way back when, linking Limburg to the US as far as jeans go.

Grivec Bros jeans are made in Portugal and cost 209 euro, with names like ‘Cool Pete’ (above) and ‘Hower’. They just started selling them in their shop, and they will be available online soon. Marcel says he can’t wait to see someone with his name on their ass. Their motto is “we eat, breathe and shit denim!”

(Links: www.limburger.nl, www.euromonitor.com, Photo: Grivec Bros)

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March 18, 2016

Anne Frank themed escape room in Valkenswaard

Filed under: General,History,Weird by Orangemaster @ 10:39 am

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Noord-Brabant, one of the Dutch provinces that unwillingly served as a doormat for invading troops during WWII, now has its very own Anne Frank themed escape room advertised with “Hide before the Germans find you!”.

Located in an old WWII bunker, ‘Het Achterhuis’ (‘the shed’ or ‘back room’ and also the original Dutch title of ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’) is the theme of this espace room, and its 19-year-old owner Thijs Verberne swears it has an educational purpose. The Valkenswaard escape room lets you ‘walk in Anne Frank’s shoes’ and fuelled by fear of being sent to the camps you need to find a way to get out of it that I bet doesn’t involve writing in your diary.

On Facebook there’s people totally into it and there’s a lot of disgusted folks as well. The espace room apparently looks like the Anne Frank’s house, the original of which is about 87 kilometres away in Amsterdam, although there are others around the country.

The city of Valkenswaard, which was always planning to do something with the bunker, will make sure the escape room is being run properly, although this sounds like something you would say to the media. The Anne Frank Foundation has not yet made any statements about the escape room.

UPDATE: The Anne Frank Foundation is not amused in the slightest.

(Link:www.ed.nl)

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March 16, 2016

Women in Amsterdam council told what to wear

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 9:52 am

An e-mail written by the team leader of the district council of Nieuw-West in Amsterdam has told women they cannot wear ‘skirts/dresses above the knee’ and ‘knee-high boots’ if they work at the council office counter, where citizens come and get municipal permits and documents. By extension, if this were to be applied, they might have to fear for their jobs. And a happy belated International Women’s Day to you, too.

Assuming the team leader is a man, although their identity is currently being investigated, he has no power to tell women or anyone else what to wear, which clearly goes against the regulations of the city of Amsterdam as a whole. Questions are being asked by local politicians we know personally about these ‘absurd’ rules that target women. The assumption being made is that Nieuw-West, a district with a large Muslim population, is trying to spare them the view of decadent Western women as spring approaches, but nobody asked their opinion. Assumption number three is that the team leader saw a short skirt with knee-high boots that ‘bothered’ him, to use 1920s parlance, and so he decided to attack all women and offend a lot of men in the process.

Why fill in an entire group’s opinion without asking them? Not a single letter of complaint can be found at the offices, either. Sadly, Nieuw-West is the butt of many jokes, despite having a vibrantly diverse community. If it had more bars and wasn’t so far from the city centre, it could be my kind of ‘hood. It’s cheaper that most places, has big green parks, world-class street art, and food markets that makes you feel like you’re not in Amsterdam. But it takes one absurd e-mail to give the Dutch Internet a reason to trash Nieuw-West and attack its Muslim community.

Maybe this team leader needs to take a course on how to deal with his 1950s view on women in the workplace and not try and change the world around him to suit his backwards views.

UPDATE: The team leader was actually a woman who saw a colleague wearing a skirt she found too short, but instead of communicating with her one on one like a normal person, she felt an email that would cause an unnecessary stir was the way to go.

(Link: www.nu.nl, Photo of wilted tulip by Graham Keen, some rights reserved)

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