August 9, 2015

Coffee house photographs developed using coffee

Filed under: Art,Photography by Orangemaster @ 2:04 pm

gewoon-koffie

The Netherlands is known for its coffeeshops (the ones that sell soft drugs), but it also has a lot of places that just serve coffee, called coffee houses or if you want to be cool, ‘coffee tents’, the equivalent of ‘stand’ or ‘joint’, as in place, not the soft drugs.

Amsterdam photographer Gijs van den Berg has a collection of pictures he took of coffee houses with actual film, which he then developed with the coffee of the places in question using the caffenol process.

The project is called ‘Gewoon Koffie’ (‘Just Coffee’) and currently includes 11 coffee houses, highlighting the interior, owners and patrons. “Caffenol gives the prints a natural yellow and brown tint, and the different coffees produce an ever-so-slightly different look for each of the prints,” Van den Berg explains.

For anyone in Amsterdam, you can see Van den Berg’s photographs at the Werkplaats of the Volkshotel in Amsterdam for free through 28 August.

(Link: petapixel.com, photo: Gijs van den Berg)

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August 8, 2015

Elderly Dutchman collects old dentures

Filed under: Health,Weird by Orangemaster @ 12:00 pm

HansW

Hans van Wijland, an elderly man from Enschede has an interesting yet odd hobby that is getting some summer press: he collects dentures. In his living room window he has a collection of some 117 dentures on display that makes some neighbours laugh and others disgusted. Knowing this full well, he once placed the dentures on a Christmas tree using lights.

Like many collectors, he didn’t just stop at dentures, he’s now branching out into used hearing aids, prosthetic legs and ocular prosthetics. He finds all his fake teeth at flea markets and cleans them thoroughly.

(Link: www.waarmaarraar.nl, Photo: Hans van Wijland’s Facebook page)

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August 7, 2015

FBI releases video of unsolved historical art heist

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 10:20 pm

Boston-museum

A video of one of the biggest art heists of all times, which took place in 1990 Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, has been released on YouTube (bizarrely marked as ‘unlisted’) in order to help the FBI find any new leads.

On 18 March 1990 two men dressed as Boston police gained entrance to the museum by telling a security guard they were responding to a disturbance. The guard should not have let them in, got handcuffed, as did his two other colleagues.

The 13 works stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, included paintings by Rembrandt and Vermeer, which to this day have not been recovered. Now that the main suspects are deceased, the FBI wants to find these cultural masterpieces. The museum is offering a cool 5 million USD to information leading to the recovery of the stolen artwork as long as they are in good condition. The total amount of artwork stolen is estimated at about 500 million USD.

Look at the surveillance footage linked to the heist:

(Links: www.crimesite.nl, www.thenewstribune.com, Photo: www.thenewstribune.com)

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August 6, 2015

Children play beer pong on makeshift beach

Filed under: General,Sports by Orangemaster @ 12:39 pm

For two weeks now Amsterdam Central Station has has a beach with sand left over from the World Cup Beach Volleyball that took place on Dam Square in front of the Palace down the street.

The beach features activities for children, and today it’s about beer pong or as the Dutch put it #kiddybeerpong. The activity has elicited responses that include WTF, kids shouldn’t be encouraged to drink beer and it looks like it’s being promoted by a beer company although it’s not.

The organisers assure us that they will use 0% beer, which is still very questionable and that we should get over the beer part and see it as a game and an excuse to discuss drinking alcohol, the latter sounding like someone who doesn’t have young children.

I wouldn’t want a child chugging any kind of soft drink, juice or fake beer in the sun for a game that is meant to get practice for drinking alcohol in college. If you take away the drinking, I could be OK with it, but I feel this is in bad taste.

(Link: www.at5.nl, Photo of the sea at Katwijk by Michael Brys, some rights reserved)

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August 4, 2015

Church roof terrace artwork divides opinions

Filed under: Architecture,Art by Orangemaster @ 5:20 pm

OudeKerk

Japanese artist Taturo Atzu, internationally renowned for his temporary art projects that touch upon monuments, statues and architecture, has transformed the historic weather vane and small roof turret of the Oude Kerk (Old Church) in Amsterdam by constructing a roof terrace enabling people to gaze at the city below.

Entitled ‘The Garden Which is Nearest to God’, Atzu’s first public project in the Netherlands, the artwork provides a unique chance to see Amsterdam, which otherwise would not be possible. The roof terrace is open until September 6.

However, not everyone is happy with having ‘artwork’ attached to this national monument, least of all the Friends of the Oude Kerk Foundation who have it out for the church’s director. Well-known Dutch author Geert Mak said that the church should not become the plaything of some art elite, while composer Elmer Schönberger said the church provided one of the ‘oldest silence of the Netherlands’, which this artwork, although temporary, has taken away.

(Links: oudekerk.nl, www.parool.nl, Photo: www.parool.nl, Tip: John)

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August 3, 2015

New type of orchid discovered on an island

Filed under: Dutch first,Nature by Orangemaster @ 5:20 pm

Orchids.jpg

Last June a new type of orchid was discovered in the Netherlands on the island of Schiermonnikoog by orchid expert Hans Dekker who spotted it just in time to add it to his book on orchids in the Northern Netherlands published recently.

The orchid in question is the Dactylorhiza purpurella that usually grows in European coastal regions in the United Kingdom and Scandinavia. It’s surprising to the experts why nobody saw this orchid before, maybe it simply hadn’t been noticed according to some.

(Link: natuurbericht.nl, Photo: Hans Dekker)

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July 31, 2015

Overijssel home to rare three-colour calf

Filed under: Animals,Weird by Orangemaster @ 9:16 pm

In the very religious town of Staphorst a three-colour calf (link to picture) has been born, which is said to be very rare. The Dutch called it a ‘lapjeskoe’, or ‘quilt cow’. The mother and father of the calf were white and black, but the calf also has reddish brown in its coat.

The Netherlands has about 10 ‘quilt cows’. In Noord-Brabant there is also a three-colour calf that people come and visit from far away just to take pictures, called Toos55:

(Link: www.rtvoost.nl)

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July 30, 2015

Aircraft that could fly Amsterdam to Perth non-stop

Filed under: Aviation,Design by Orangemaster @ 1:34 pm

KLM-AHEAD

KLM and Delft University of Technology have presented designs for an aircraft that could transport passengers non-stop from Europe to Australia. It looks like a flying squirrel swallowed a hammerhead shark and then an Airbus or a Boeing, you choose.

This AHEAD (Advanced Hybrid Engine Aircraft Development) aircraft, would carry 300 passengers over 14,000 kilometres, about the distance from Amsterdam to Perth. Its design features two sets of wings – a small pair by the nose and a large set at the rear – that blend into the body. The team also proposes a hybrid engine to replace conventional turbofan engines.

KLM has previously worked with Dutch designers Hella Jongerius and Marcel Wanders to create cabin interiors and tableware.

(Link and photo: www.dezeen.com)

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July 28, 2015

Americans try and sing Dutch summer hit

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 5:35 pm

To all the unilingual English speakers who keep saying they can’t learn Dutch after years of being here, maybe you should take a page from these American kids: fake it until it sounds vaguely Dutch. Top tip: don’t be afraid of sounding or looking stupid, either. Half way through the video the guys get asked questions about the song, a bit like a Dutch exam, but with more adult content.

‘Drank & Drugs’ (‘Booze and Drugs’) by Lil Kleine & Ronnie Flex is going viral, and we’re joining in. The first guy can at least says something remotely Dutch on the beat, while the second guy can’t seem to get it right. OK, the ‘spaghetti’ bit is funny.

It’s not ‘impossible to translate’ as the link suggests, considering many words are Dutchified English words anyway, but booze, drugs and bitches (“if they are bitches,” says the first guy) is common fare, pardon the pun.

And for the fans, here’s the original version:

(Link: www.deondernemer.nl)

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July 27, 2015

Students repurpose fruit and veg for designer products

Filed under: Design,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 12:32 pm

Fruitbag

A group of students at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam is currently working on making leather out of fruit and possibly vegetables for their graduation. The ‘Fruitleather’ project claims to deal with ‘one of Rotterdam’s biggest social issues, food waste’.

The group claims that market sellers in and around Rotterdam throw away approximately 3500 kilos of rotten or other unsellable fruits and vegetables on a daily basis. The goal of the project is to repurpose all that food that isn’t trash in their view by producing large-scale amounts of fruit leather and turning them into different products.

Do the products smell of fruit? Won’t they be eaten by bugs or animals? How sturdy are they? What about actual vegetables? It would be nice to know more.

(Link and photo: fruitleather-rotterdam.com)

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