November 1, 2013

English colonial stamp sold for record amount

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 11:30 am

Originally valued at 150,000 euro, an African postage stamp from Kenya-Uganda has fetched 208,000 euro at an auction house in Weesp, North Holland this week. The stamp was sold for 170,00, but with a 20% commission on top, the total comes to the record amount of 208,000 euro, the most ever paid for a stamp at a Dutch auction.

The stamp features the portrait of British King George V who ruled over East Africa, and was bought by a German collector. The stamp was never hinged, with only four other known copies of such a high quality left in the world.

(Links: nos.nl, ed.nl, Photo by Wikimedia user Jonathunder, some rights reserved)

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October 31, 2013

Pimp up your camera with Kapsones lens hoods

Filed under: Design,Photography by Orangemaster @ 3:21 pm

Kapsones, the Dutch word for ‘putting on airs’, is a colourful line of custom lens hoods — a bit like covers for your smartphone — recently launched in design-friendly Eindhoven.

“There are four styles to choose from: Baroque (an old fashioned look), Knitted (self explanatory), Stealth (sharp and angled), and Street (looks like a cobblestone road). Each design comes in several colours that you can choose from when ordering.”

Since it is a start-up, the lineup of compatible lenses isn’t very extensive yet: Canon 28-80, 28-90, 18-55 mm IS, and 18-35 mm IS II. The price starts at 20 euro.

Check out their promotional video:

Kapsones from Van Alles Wat Ontwerp on Vimeo.

(Link and image: petapixel.com)

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October 30, 2013

Famous Dutch game show invites nudists to audition

Filed under: Weird by Orangemaster @ 3:55 pm

A few years back, we had going to church naked and naked fitness, and now it’s time for a naked game show on television, with words and balls.

The Dutch game show Lingo, based on an American game show, has been a household viewing staple for decades. It features guessing words of a certain length and unscrambling longer words. Winning a round entitles you to pick balls with numbers to be checked off a bingo card, hence the name.

Lingo is auditioning nudists for a special naked version of the television program. First thing the producers make clear is that participants won’t be chosen based on what they look like, which in TV land has to be partially untrue. And the popular game show host Lucille Werner says she will join in by taking it all off. The show is scheduled to air on May 2014.

Back in 2011 this episode of Lingo went viral, as a smart guy used the word ‘cumshot’ and everyone had a good laugh.

(Link: www.nieuws.nl, Photo of the first Philips colour TV from 1964 by Philips, used with permission)

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October 29, 2013

Dutch museums own some 139 contentious artworks

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 1:57 pm

According to years of research carried out by the Netherlands Museums Association on the origins of artworks, some 139 pieces of art acquired by Dutch museums between 1933 and 1945 (during the Nazi regime) are suspected of being stolen, confiscated or were sold to them by force. Some 41 museums have such artworks in their collections, many of which were owned by Jews.

The research, started in 2009, had as a goal of establishing what the extent was of the possession of contentious paintings after the end of WWII. Some 162 Dutch museums collaborated with researchers in order to help return artworks to their rightful owners and/or their heirs. A special website will go live at 4 pm has now gone live on Tuesday, 29 October (CET) for everyone to peruse and maybe even help.

The museum with the most ‘stolen’ artworks is the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (The Hague Municipal Museum), followed by Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Museum and Stedelijk Museum.

(Link: www.volkskrant.nl, www.museumvereniging.nl, (Illustration: Charing Cross Bridge by Claude Monet. Source: politie.nl)

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October 28, 2013

Runner’s chip took away the need to cheat

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 3:31 pm

On Sunday 17 November the 30th edition of the Seven Hills Run in Nijmegen will be held.

About 20 years ago I was a volunteer for the event and I had to guard one of the four starting cages, which taught me a thing or two about human nature.

The Seven Hills Run was and is an immensely popular race along 15 kilometres of undulating roads in and near Nijmegen. Both the global running elite and recreational runners take part. To ensure that the latter would not rob the former of fast finishes—the outdoor world records for 15 kilometre runs have been set at the Seven Hills course for both men and women—the runners were divided into four cages before the start, with the fastest group in the first and the slowest in the last.

At the start of the race, the cages would be opened back and front. The inevitable result was that the slower runners would not pass the starting line until minutes after the start, so that their official time would be composed of their running time and then some. My job at cage three was to make sure that only the people with the right starting number were allowed in and to redirect the others to their cage.

I received threats of violence that day and at one point a runner was so livid that he blocked the entrance to the cage and refused to go away. Thirty runners (my personal count) were sure that the faster cage was their rightful place. I got to redirect exactly one runner to a faster cage—I assumed that she was genuinely mistaken.

Around that time a company was founded by several students of the local university that produced an RFID transponder, the ChampionChip, that would make skewed race times a thing of the past. A computer would register the runners both when they passed the starting line and when they passed the finish line, and immediately spit out the right times. During the 25th anniversary of the race, the organisers even used the ChampionChip transponder (now owned by MYLAPS from Haarlem) to honour the 250,000th runner right after her finish.

I imagine that getting one’s exact time took some of the edge off the aggression and the need to cheat of some runners.

(Photo by Peter van der Sluijs, some rights reserved)

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A nice house in the dunes

Filed under: Architecture by Orangemaster @ 10:12 am

Dutch architects Jetty and Maarten Min of Min2 collaborated on a home in Bergen, North Holland they had built for themselves.

“The design includes a stunning arched rooftop, exposed tree-trunk columns, and clay tiles on the walls. The home offers breathtaking views of the surrounding dune landscape, particularly on the upper levels which offers large windows so the occupants can soak it all in.”

(Link: enpundit.com, Screenshot: min2.nl)

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October 27, 2013

Théophile de Bock, the tree photographer

Filed under: Art,Photography by Branko Collin @ 3:08 pm

Théophile de Bock was a 19th century Dutch landscape painter whose current claim to fame is that his makes such a good street or school name.

He was also a landscape photographer and interestingly it appears that he was the only Dutch landscape photographer at the time. Arjan de Nooy explains:

Customers were not interested and [landscape photography] was apparently not attractive to photographers. In comparison with international nineteenth-century landscape photographers (such as Timothy O’Sullivan, Carleton Watkins, Gustave Le Gray) De Bock’s photos are more intimate and small-scale. He was, literally, close to his favourite subject, the trees and in particular his tree trunk photos are unique in nineteenth-century photography.

De Bock was only a photographer for a short time and it seems that his photos were only recently rediscovered. De Nooy believes that the success of his paintings put a stop to De Bock’s photography.

De Nooy has curated an exhibit at Walden Affairs in The Hague until 22 November. (The exhibit is open during the weekends and on appointment.)

(Link: Trendbeheer)

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October 26, 2013

There’s a board game about the Dutch West Indies Company

Filed under: History by Orangemaster @ 3:41 pm

new_amsterdam

This past summer Texas game manufacturer Pandasaurus released a board game called Nieuw Amsterdam (New Amsterdam) about the earlier years of the 17th century Dutch colony that was run by the Dutch West Indies Company, which later became New York City.

New Amsterdam was founded by the Dutch West Indies Company in order to encourage the lucrative beaver pelt trade with the local Native American hunters along the Hudson River. To establish a trading post there, they needed a town and a fort, which was built on the tip of Manhattan Island. To encourage European patroons, settlers of means or noble birth to populate the colony, they granted them both land and indentured servants. The patroons became the lords of a new feudal system not unlike in Europe. In New Amsterdam, players are those patroons, and they bid on action lots in order to build businesses, work land for both food and building materials, compete in elections, ship furs to the Old World, and trade with the Lenape Indians – a process that gets more complicated as players claim more land and push the Lenape camps farther up the Hudson River.

It is apparently not yet available in the ‘old country’, but I’m sure it’s just a question of time.

Here’s a review of New Amsterdam:

(Links bright.nl, pandasaurusgames.com, Image: Castello Plan of the tip of Manhattan)

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October 25, 2013

Your life on a jumper by Olga van Zeijl

Filed under: Design,Fashion by Branko Collin @ 2:15 pm

One of this year’s graduates from the Design Academy Eindhoven, Olga van Zeijl, created personalised knitted jumpers for her graduation project called KnittID.

She takes aspects of a person’s life then incorporates them into the pattern of the sweater. Shown here for instance is Debby, age 26, from Dordrecht: “The parachute symbol stands for my biggest life experience. During one of my jumps the parachute didn’t open and I was falling down to earth, luckily I could use my spare parachute.”

Van Zeijl suggests on her website that she was inspired by fishermen’s jumpers which apparently incorporated personal details. You can get your own KnittID jumper by Van Zeijl or order one of the existing ones if you don’t mind walking around with somebody else’s life covering your torso. Bright reports that an existing pattern will set you back 150 euro.

(Photo: OVZDesign.com)

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October 24, 2013

Dutch comedian who plays up his blackness under fire

Filed under: Food & Drink,General,Online by Orangemaster @ 11:40 am

An advertising campaign featuring comedian Steven Brunswijk from Tilburg, Noord Brabant aimed at young people working in the hospitality sector (hotels, restaurants and cafes, aka ‘horeca’) has raised red flags with anti-discrimination groups as being offensive.

Brunswijk has been known for a few years as the ‘Braboneger’ (‘Brabant negro’ or ‘Brabant n*****’), which is his shtick. It is his stage name and his Twitter handle. What started off as a joke with Brunswijk and his friends making funny videos from a Black guy’s perspective on Noord Brabant (accent, culture, etc.) turned into a character that is on its way to becoming famous.

If anyone thinks that the ad agency came up with the character, then yes, that would be cause for alarm, even though the campaign is about young people getting proper working conditions and nothing to do with discrimination. The problem here is that people are now offended by Brunswijk’s own use of the N-word and therefore the ad campaign is considered to be offensive.

Brunswijk does use the abbreviation ‘BN’, which is also the Dutch abbreviation for celebrity (‘Bekende Nederlander’), again a nice coincidence. Maybe they could have used that instead, but others would see that as censorship.

Noord Brabant television station Omproep Brabant seems nothing but pleased that their guy is head of this campaign.

(Link: www.nieuws.nl, www.braboneger.com, YouTube screenshot)

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