November 27, 2012

Hop on an electric scooter during the week instead of a taxi

Filed under: Automobiles,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 11:09 am

According to our sources, Amsterdam has just launched an electric scooter taxi service called Hopper, although Hopper’s press release mentioned as of October 1. “For a fixed rate of EUR 2.50 a ride, as long as the final destination is within city limits. The project is a private-public cooperation with the City of Amsterdam, Dutch Railways (NS) and the Ministry of Infrastructure & Environment and helps solve metropolitan transportation problems.”

Hopper apparently took five years of planning, is only available downtown, the Zuidas business district and the RAI exhibition hall area, and runs on weekdays from 8 am to 8 pm. You can order a Hopper by phone or a smartphone but not yet (they don’t say iPhone or Android). The goal is to expand to Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht, aka the Randstad conurbation.

Although A+ for effort, the part I have to chip away at is when they state that, “scooters in Amsterdam are limited to a top speed of 25 km/h, which means customers (and their drivers, for that matter) can ride without helmets.” Yes, the helmet bit is true, but the last thing cyclists in Amsterdam need right now is more scooter traffic on bike paths. This year Amsterdam’s parking enforcement officers set the worst possible example by doing dangerous things such as driving over the limit and against cycling traffic. The amount of scooters that go over 25 km/h on bike paths is surely more than half. I’m not saying Hoppers drive too fast, but I’m not convinced they won’t try.

I would consider making use of this service, although in the weekend and surely after 8 pm, but that’s just me. If anyone out there has actually used or even seen one of these, let us know. It’s all nice and green to have electric vehicles on the streets of Amsterdam, but like any other means of transportation they also cause their own set of problems. It would be great to be able to pay so little to get around town regularly, as taxis start at EUR 7,50.

(Link: green.autoblog.com, Photo by Facemepls, some rights reserved)

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November 26, 2012

New design to go live today

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 10:29 am

Sometime during the day we will introduce a new, temporary site design.

We needed a redesign first and foremost to give space to advertisements. Fortunately we have found a way to do this without sacrificing editorial space. In fact, we have managed to put our main menu and search bar in a much more prominent place than before, and as a result all our other editorial sidebars have moved up a bit.

The biggest victim of this redesign has been the large photo of oranges at the top of the page. The main content column has remained exactly the same.

All in all we hope you will be satisfied by the result.

We hope to bring in a professional designer in the near future who can take a look at the entire site.

If you notice any problems using 24oranges.nl, please let us know.

The old design (2007-2012) started to look a bit long in the tooth.

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November 25, 2012

Worst Christmas decorations in the world?

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 1:53 pm

Last year the store owners association Rotterdam Centrum came up with remarkable Christmas decorations, namely LED-lit plastic jerry cans.

An actual design agency called M.E.S.T. (the name means ‘manure’) came up with the idea, and of course they also came up with a back story. The use of jerry cans apparently highlighted the fact that Rotterdam is a port in which brawn is typically rated above brain and it also stressed environmental commitment. Perhaps unsurprisingly the brawny citizens of Rotterdam ignored the intellectualizations and thought the decorations were naff.

This year the store owners association of the Jan Evertsenstraat in Amsterdam took a long, hard look at the Christmas decoration dilemma and decided to take the same disastrous direction.

Amsterdammers were not amused. Unlike their brothers and sisters from the city on the Rotte they used stronger terms to display their displeasure: “This is an outrage, it is horrible,” one man told AT5. Another said that the decorations had to be done on the cheap, “and it shows.”

The district paid for the decorations with tax money so it is not surprising that they crow about the results, although even their copywriters had a little trouble coming up with language that didn’t sound sarcastic: “And this really is unique, you cannot even call them real Christmas lights.”

Our very own Orangemaster had a chat with the owner of trendy Bar Baarsch on the Jan Evertsenstraat and asked him what he thought of the lights. “I think they’re great”, he said. He liked the fact that they were festive but not Christmassy. I told him that it reminded me of a Mexican fiesta like atmosphere, with more of a summer feel to it. He also liked the idea that people didn’t like it because the publicity is great, too.

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November 24, 2012

World record martial arts kick by 15-year-old

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 2:31 pm

Lisa Coolen (15) from Heel in Limburg shattered the world record for the highest martial arts kick on 12 May.

She managed to kick 2.35 metres high with a Mai Tobi Geri (‘jumping front kick’).

The previous record stood at 1.98 metres and was held by actress and martial artist Zara Phythian from England and by Bhawna Purohit from India.

Karateka Lisa Coolen broke the record at Kick for Hope, an event raising money for cancer research. Earlier that day taekwondoka Malissa Doppenberg from Urmond, also Limburg, had already improved the record to 2.20 metres.

The record for martial arts high kick unassisted for men stands at 2.94 and is held by Jesse Frankson from the USA.

(Link: Kick for Hope. Photo by Flickr user Thedianna, some rights reserved.)

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Murals by Booyabase in Zwolle

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 12:16 am

Painters Remko Koopman and Tamme de Boer, who cooperate under the name Booyabase, painted murals on four walls of a bridge in Zwolle in 2008, and last week they started on two new walls.

Trendbeheer’s Niels Post went to take a look and a lot of photos. He’s even got a couple of pics of the work in progress, even though that work in progress was halted due to “leaking porous asphalt”.

(Photo by Trendbeheer/NP, some rights reserved)

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November 22, 2012

Concert hall advertises by using its acoustics in amusing ways

Filed under: Architecture,Music,Science by Orangemaster @ 12:35 pm

To prove that ‘everything sounds better in the Concertgebouw’, Amsterdam’s beautiful 125-year-old concert hall, some amusing adverts were made, albeit not every one of them brilliant or believable. I find the showering one a bit boring, and I don’t need to hear burping children either.

In the video below, the acoustics were tested using three scooters, which sounded much less annoying than they do on the street whizzing by on bike paths. The three scooter guys are pretty typical for Amsterdam’s streets, and they had never been in the Concertgebouw before. Having attended concerts there myself, all I can say is that the hall is very live sounding and makes brass and strings sound very vibrant, as long as you have good seats.

(Links: www.improbable.com), www.amsterdamadblog.com, Photo of Concertgebouw by Ben Rimmer, some rights reserved)

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November 21, 2012

An easy to build and use anti-personnel mine detonator

Filed under: Design,Technology by Orangemaster @ 2:14 pm
Afghanistan

Afghan-born Dutch student Massoud Hassani has designed artificial tumbleweed made to detonate leftover mines. It was his graduation design project at the Design Academy Eindhoven. It continuously broadcasts its location, captured by GPS, plotting out safe, mine-free paths through fields.

It was based on some wind-power toys he made as a boy from discarded paper, plastic and the likes, as you can see in the video. His ‘Mine Kafon’ costs a mere 40 euro in lightweight materials and when it detonates a bomb, it loses a minimal amount of ‘legs’ and just keeps on rolling like tumbleweed.

Mine Kafon | Callum Cooper from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo.

(Link: boingboing.net, Photo of Uruzgan province, Afghanistan by Remko Tanis, some rights reserved)

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November 20, 2012

No more weed pass, but registering patrons remains

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 1:13 pm

Many people thought that a weed pass for NL residents only implemented earlier this year was not going to make it nationally on January 2013 — and they were right. After forced down the throats of the provinces of Zeeland, Brabant and Limburg, giving other provinces an unfair business advantage, the cities of Haarlem and Amsterdam in North Holland started poking holes in the legislation, finally watering it down. Yesterday, the Minister of Justice Ivo Opstelten scrapped the plans and has decided to let municipalities deal with it locally.

Asking a coffeeshop owner to keep a database of weed smokers already raised privacy issues as did a legitimate business refusing customers based on their nationality and residence status. Now that bigger cities with more tourists have said they can’t be bothered to burden coffeeshops with screening clients, some NL residents will still have to prove their status to buy weed by way of a proof of residence document obtained at city hall, which costs some 10-12 euro.

Since such a document is only valid for a few months, the law would imply that smokers have to continuously stand in line and pay to get this document in order to continue to buy weed, which sounds like a bureaucratic waste of time. As well, some argue, it means the city knows you smoke weed legally, while ordinary smokers, fans of prostitutes or alcoholics, also legal habits, don’t have to register themselves anywhere.

Regardless, it was all a big waste of time and we’re back to square one seven months down the road.

(Links: www.elsevier.nl, www.nu.nl)

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November 19, 2012

Dutch Prius drivers use too much petrol

Filed under: Automobiles,Sustainability,Technology by Branko Collin @ 11:25 pm

A study by broadcaster NOS shows that owners of plug-in hybrid eletric cars use “80 percent more fuel than the fuel economy estimates found in the manufacturers’ specifications”, Autoblog writes.

The article suggests that car owners buy their Priuses for the government rebates more than for saving the environment. Government incentives include “no purchase tax, zero percent additional tax liability and no road tax until 2016” according to the article. Car owners can request charging stations near their house according to Verkeersnet. The city of Utrecht even throws in a free parking spot.

On average the drivers in the study paid 73 euro more per month than expected by using petrol when they could be using electricity.

Some of the people in the study managed to only achieve a petrol use of 13 kilometres per litre, others got to a far more respectable 250 kilometres per litre.

(Photo by DaveOnFlickr, some rights reserved)

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November 18, 2012

Rumble in Limburg over fake accents on children’s TV show

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 2:39 pm

Yesterday the city of Roermond in Limburg played host to the official reception of Saint Nicholas in the Netherlands, and the city was the centre of attention in the week before in children’s news show Sinterklaasjournaal.

One of the features of the show are street interviews with a band of jolly Limburgers that turned out not to be Limburgers at all, but actors from Holland that could not be bothered to learn the local accent well.

Sinterklaasjournaal broadcaster NTR told De Gelderlander that they asked all of two (!) actors from Limburg to appear on the show, “but they both couldn’t come. The list runs out at some point.”

Limburg has a rich stage tradition, producing many great actors and directors. Perhaps these actors were too expensive for a two-bit (but still tax-funded) operation like NTR?

Children from Roermond told another public broadcaster, NOS, that “they are mocking us, and that is just wrong.” Another child had a practical solution to help heal all wounds: “I think Saint Nicholas should give more gifts to the children of Limburg this year.”

(Photo: screenshot of Sinterklaasjournaal. Link: Marc van Oostendorp)

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