November 25, 2011

Banner vending machine world premiere at Schiphol airport

Filed under: Dutch first,General by Orangemaster @ 4:46 pm

A Facebook friend of mine just tried out the new banner vending machine at Schiphol airport to decorate a colleague’s desk for when she comes back on Monday. Nope, she’s not on Facebook, so it’ll be a surprise.

The banner vending machine is billed as a world premiere, or at least the first ever installed in an airport. The vending machine can be used in English, Dutch, Spanish, French and German, and offer three products: a name board (3.95 euro), banner (9.95 euro) and a big banner (14.95 euro).

The demo woman made a Welcome Home (why in English?) with windmills and clog trimmings, which she then tried to give away to some Dutch person waiting for loved ones. The first man flatly refused, saying it wouldn’t be appreciated, while the second person thought it was odd. The entire outside lettering of the machine is in Dutch, which means it’s not really aimed at foreigners. You can only use bank card (maybe credit card), but not cash it seems from the video.

The banner vending machine seems like a great idea, but I for one was greeted by surprise at the airport two weeks ago coming back from Cork, Ireland with my roller derby team and I wouldn’t trade in their homemade signs for the world.

(Link: rnw.nl, Photos: Marie-Claude Falardeau-Dekker and Kirsten Gesink)

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November 24, 2011

Bert and Ernie will guide you there

Filed under: General,Technology by Orangemaster @ 11:52 am

TomTom records Bert and Ernie’s navigation voices from AmsterdamAdBlog on Vimeo.

True, after the ones with John Cleese and Darth Vader and Yoda, the format is getting repetitive. The adverts are long, but Bert and Ernie make it work for me. This one was created by Pool Worldwide, based in Amsterdam for Dutch product TomTom.

I heard a story (by story I mean I have no facts to back it up) from a Dutch friend that the product was named TomTom because in the United States, obviously their main target market, you cannot have a product named after a person, like Bob or Michael. Feel free to comment on this.

I’m not a fan of the TomTom anymore for a few reasons: it totally went blank on me once as I drove into Germany. Every other European country was on that thing, but German vanished. Bad road trip.

My smart phone does a better, more accurate job. Sure, I have make sure the phone stays plugged in while driving, but the instructions were always on time and the female Dutch voice didn’t sound like she wanted to be euthanized. I actually have several Dutch friends who use the Flemish voice on their TomTom’s because that’s how depressing she sounds.

But then there’s always Ernie and Bert.

(Link: www.amsterdamadblog.com)

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November 23, 2011

A child and a cat as carbon monoxide detectors

Filed under: Animals,General,Health by Orangemaster @ 2:19 pm

A family in Edam (yes, where the cheese comes from) and a couple in Heerhugowaard have recently escaped death by carbon monoxide poisoning, according to Radio + TV Noord Holland who can sometimes be hard up for hard news.

Last week, the family in Edam was woken up in the middle of the night by their little boy who wanted to pee and in waking up the parents, he also saved them from dying, although the story offers little detail. They assume their house needs to be renovated, while the housing corporation denies it, but will check it out.

The couple in Heerhugowaard had noticed that their cat was acting very weird when in fact he was presenting with the early symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning. Thanks to the cat acting as a carbon monoxide detector, they discovered a straight leak of gas into their house from the upstairs neighbours, and in turn saved a few neighbours from death.

(My old cat Pussyminou couldn’t monitor anything but her own sleep)

(Links: rtvnh.nl, www.rtvnh.nl)

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November 22, 2011

Mayor of Haarlem got his bling stolen

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 2:12 pm

Bernt Schneiders, the Mayor of Haarlem, or Burgomaster (‘Burgemeester’) as it is called in the Netherlands, has had his silver livery collar stolen from his office. Schneiders knew about the theft, but kept it quiet, hoping someone would return it. That plan obviously failed.

Amsterdam City Council has tweeted that it was willing to lend out their spare livery collar. I mean otherwise this appointed and not democratically elected mayor couldn’t do his job, right? He’s the man who wrongly lectured the Chinese about the printing press a few years back.

It’s only worth about a couple of hundred euro (in my ‘hood that’s a lot of cash) and yeah, it can’t be that easy to pawn off in the Netherlands.

The concerned citizens of Haarlem are brainstorming ideas to get it back:
– Offering a 1,000 euro reward (sure).
– Throwing it at night in Town Hall’s mailbox – that’s not about getting it back.
– Sending it to the Haarlems Dagblad newspaper – that’s not about getting it back either.

Let’s think out of the lunch box now.

(Links: www.haarlemsdagblad.nl, Photo of the mayor of Haarlem, Mr. Bernt (B.B.) Schneiders)

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November 21, 2011

iPad grandpa died at age 87

Filed under: Technology by Branko Collin @ 10:51 am

Mr. Strubbe, the man we wrote about earlier because he had this delightful approach to buying computers, has died, Bright reports.

‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ was his motto, and so until recently he still used WordPerfect on an old, perfectly functioning MS DOS computer that was not troubled by virusses. “Why would I say goodbye to such a dear friend?” he asked the camera crew of consumer watchdog Consumentenbond. But then the Apple iPad came along, and the second stage of his philosophy kicked in: if something truly better comes along, why hold yourself back? And so Mr Strubbe bought an iPad.

Earlier this year Consumentenbond visited Mr Strubbe again to give a hands-on review of the iPad 2, and he seems to have liked it:

(Unfortunately, no captions this time it seems.)

(Video: Youtube / Consumentenbond.)

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November 20, 2011

Cancer research charity Pink Ribbon donates zero percent to cancer research

Filed under: Health by Branko Collin @ 5:33 pm

Sometimes it is best to shut up. When news show Nieuwsuur reported that Pinkribbon.nl spent only 1.8 % of the donations it received on cancer, the charity threw a hissy fit. The findings of the show were far from the truth, they claimed, and the makers of the programme obviously prejudiced.

This led writer and breast cancer survivor Karin Spaink to do her own research. Last Saturday she dove into the annual reports of Pink Ribbon, and discovered that the numbers Nieuwsuur had dug up were indeed incorrect — the real numbers were worse!

According to Spaink, Pink Ribbon Netherlands has spent exactly 0.0 percent of the money it received through donations on cancer research. The foundation has collected approximately 18 million euro between 2007 and 2010. In that period it has built up a reserve of 7 million euro, and spent 3 million euro on the costs of running its organisation. About 6 million euro has gone to ‘psych-social care’, and 1.5 million euro to education.

Since the Nieuwsuur report, Pink Ribbon Netherlands has been trying to twist the meaning of the phrase ‘cancer research’ to fit its expenditures. Money that Pink Ribbon received from fellow cancer charities KWF and A Sister’s Hope and that was earmarked for research, is now suddenly supposed to count towards to its own goals.

Spaink has been critical of Pink Ribbon Netherlands before. In 2006 she lambasted the foundation for not publishing its annual reports, which it has since done. Earlier this week she criticized the whole pink ribbon phenomenon as a form of consumer indulgence.

Earlier this year activists the world over criticized the practice of ‘pinkwashing‘, where companies whose products and services increase the risk of cancer pretend to be supportive of cancer victims by donating money to Pink Ribbon.

(Photo by Clyde Robinson, some rights reserved)

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November 19, 2011

“On the beaches of Texel only left shoes are ever found”

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 12:16 pm

The producers of the above video write:

Flotsam & Jetsam is a documentary based around the beachcombers of Texel, one of the largest Frisian islands north of Holland.

Due to Texel’s geographical position, tidal system and strong winds, an estimated two tons of Flotsam & Jetsam washes up on its beach each day.

The film follows the lives of the beachcombers (or Jutters as they are known), exploring their relationships and history as extraordinary people in extraordinary situations.

Beachcombers are people who ‘harvest’ flotsam and jetsam from beaches. I am not quite sure what the legal status is. Wikipedia claims beach combing is illegal in the Netherlands, but the only law text I could find (Book 8 of the Burgerlijk Wetboek, articles 550 and onward) seems to suggest that beach combing is a form of marine salvage, meaning that the owner of the goods can come and collect them up to two years after they were found, but must pay a decent wage in return.

The documentary is only 13 minutes long, and well worth your time.

‘Jutter’ Jan Uitgeest (73): “There are only eight of us left. Beachcombing is getting less popular because there aren’t that many finds any more. We are dependent on storms. Last year Terschelling had a large find of wood, and a container filled with snacks. On Ameland and Schiermonnikoog they found a container with mountain bike wheels and a couple of thousand coats, so that now the inhabitants of Schiermonnikoog are walking around in coats with nice fur collars.”

Link: Trendbeheer. Video: Vimeo / Flotsam and Jetsam.

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November 17, 2011

‘Knitting graffiti’ wins best neologism for 2011

Filed under: Art,General by Orangemaster @ 1:32 pm

The Dutch verb ‘wildbreien’ (literally ‘wild knitting’, but really meaning ‘knitting graffiti’) was chosen as the neologism (new word) of 2011. Instead of something negative or lowbrow, knitting graffiti should makes us all feel warm and fuzzy inside. I know I did when I snapped pictures of it in Amsterdam’s Jordaan district. It is also referred to as ‘straatbreien’ (‘street knitting’) because it livens up the streets.

If only it could keep them warm.

(Link: inl.nl)

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November 16, 2011

Goose meat croquettes made from airport geese

Filed under: Animals,Aviation,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 12:47 pm
geese02.jpg

We’ve written a lot of croquette stories on this blog, made from meat leftovers, questionable vegetarian variants and about general croquette awareness.

A goose meat croquette sounds to me like a Dutch Christmas appetizer or even a fancy French one. However, the geese in question are some of 100.000 geese a year that are shot to stop planes at Schiphol getting geese in their engines.

Beach side café Beach Inn in IJmuiden, North Holland is serving goose meat croquettes made from the geese shot down at Schiphol airport. As I also saw recently on telly, a goose hunter for the airport said catching and releasing would mean hiring an army (they fly back to the airport anyways, a waste of time) and poisoning their eggs is just not done anymore and doesn’t really help.

The geese are usually destroyed or sometimes end up in cat food. Rob Hagenouw, an artist from Amsterdam, contacted some hunters, score some goose and worked hard at creating his own recipe. He says that with his croquettes, the flavours really come out.

Eating goose, or turkey for that matter, is not really a Christmas thing in the Netherlands for many reasons. First, many people do not have ovens due to a lack of living space. They have combination microwave and and oven devices that barely fit a decent sized pizza. Second, even if you do have an oven like I do, a goose or turkey won’t fit. Guineafowl or chicken is the best you can hope for. Another reason is that it’s just not a Dutch tradition to shove a big bird in the oven.

(Link: www.telegraaf.nl)

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November 15, 2011

Dial 114 when the neighbour kicks his cat

Filed under: Animals by Orangemaster @ 12:15 pm

The Dutch emergency number is 112, but thanks to a political party that has more in common with animals than people who don’t look Dutch, they’ve set up the emergency number 114 144, opening today, to report animal-related accidents, abuse and neglect. Calling 114 144 will send specially trained cops over to that puppy farm that sells cute puppies illegally ‘imported’ from Albania and what have you.

If you read the information from 114 Red een dier (114 Save an animal), the site tells you to dial 144, which has to be a mistake is confusing to say the least.

Of course, it sounds like a great idea, just like training ‘animal cops’ to catch people who mistreat animals and hand down tougher sentences against people who abuse animals. It remains ironic that although the current government promised 3,000 additional regular cops on the streets to handle crime, it welched on that and managed to scrounge up 500 animal cops to appease their ‘silent’ coalition partner, the one that likes furry animals and dislikes humans of the non-Dutch persuasion.

Just remember, a few years ago the Dutch finally outlawed sex with animals, but before that was a top distributor of animal porn worldwide.

Some animals are more equal than others. Just like people.

UPDATE: According to newspaper De Volkskrant, the animal emergency number is 144, but it used to be 114. Nobody knows why and the government hasn’t provided an answer yet. What a mess.

MORE UPDATE: According to nu.nl news site, it was controversial member of Parliament Dion Graus, also of the not so non Dutch friendly political party who personally reserved the domain name ‘114redeendier.nl’. He was planning to push his animal friendly ideas through for a long time, and his day came. The irony of him having been accused of beating his ex wife and making threats against his ex stepfather (justice dropped it for lack of evidence), but wanting to defend animals makes him quite the colourful politician.

(Link: www.rnw.nl)

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