November 14, 2011

Underwater bridge by Ro&Ad architects recreates attacker’s eye view of fort

Filed under: Architecture by Branko Collin @ 8:58 am

This bridge crosses the moat to Fort de Roover in Halsteren, Noord-Brabant, which was part of a series of defences called the West Brabant Water Line.

Gizmodo writes, “it is made from sustainable Accoya wood treated with a non-toxic waterproof coating that protects it from decay, and since the moat is too shallow for boat traffic, there’s little risk of waves splashing up over the side.”

The bridge made the shortlist for the Building of the Year Award 2011 (which was ultimately won by the parking garage of the Windesheim College in Zwolle).

Water lines were defences that worked using inundation. Large tracts of lands were flooded, making them impassable to advancing armies. The West Brabant Water Line is the oldest of the country and was built in 1628. The main function of later water lines was to maintain the province of Holland as a national redoubt. The introduction of the tank in modern warfare put a stop to their use.

(Photo: ro-ad.org. See there for more photos, or follow the Gizmodo link.)

Tags: ,

November 13, 2011

Sailor boycotts prize because teenage girl Laura Dekker is also in the running

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 1:40 pm

Somebody called Lucas Schröder has rejected his nomination for the prestigious Conny van Rietschoten Trophy, nauticlink.nl reports.

Schröder does not want his achievements to be compared with those of Dekker: “Many will inevitably see Laura’s nomination for the Netherlands’ most important sailing award as a collective opinion of the sailing community. This makes me feel so uncomfortable that I request you no longer consider me a candidate for your trophy.” Dekker’s solo global circumnavigation attempt has stirred controversy both inside and outside the Dutch sailing community.

It is unclear to this blogger what Schröder’s achievements are supposed to be. Nauticlink mentions his participation in an endurance race called Mini Transat, in which sailors cross the Atlantic Ocean in 6.5 metre boats. Schröder recently achieved a tenth place in that race.

The foundation that awards the trophy writes on its website that it regrets Schröder’s decision, and abstains from further comment. Schröder, whom I had never heard of before, managed to get a lot of free press with his action.

Laura Dekker in the meantime is busy crossing her third ocean in a row, the Indian Ocean. She is keeping mum about the route she is taking, as she doesn’t want to put ideas into the heads of Somalian pirates—which to me strongly suggests she is going for the Suez route.

Update 14-11: it turns out Laura is taking the South-African route after all. She has just arrived in Durban.

See also: Teenager attempts sailing solo around the world record.

(Photo of Laura Dekker by Wikimedia Commons user Savyasachi, some rights reserved)

Tags: ,

November 12, 2011

Most optical fibre connections are not being used

Filed under: Technology by Branko Collin @ 12:25 pm

Webwereld reported last Wednesday that 72 % of all optical fibre connections in the Netherlands are currently not being used.

In September 844,000 households in the Netherlands were connected to fibre by Reggefiber, 38 % up from last year. Only 240,000 households were actually customers using the network.

Telecom analyst David Yoshikawa told Webwereld that Reggefiber probably needed to step it up a notch if it wanted to remain able to pay its bills. He also offered a number of explanations for the low ‘activation’ rate:

  • Cable internet companies put in a lot of work to woo customers.
  • Reggefiber lowered its self-imposed limitation on the number of interested households that are required for a neighbourhood to be hooked up to the network from 40 % to 30 %.
  • On a number of locations, especially in big cities, Reggefiber started digging without measuring interest first.

A comparison: I can get 60 megabit downstream internet over fibre at XS4all for 65 euro per month, including telephony and television. UPC offers the same speed over cable for just 52 euro. For fibre to be worthwhile, it needs to offer both higher speeds and applications that people could use that higher speed for. Already having the fastest internet connections of Europe is not going help acceptance of a marginally faster connection type.

As an aside: at least digging up the roads is well regulated here. Anybody who wants to lay cables and pipes can, but they need to coordinate with other stakeholders using a government run web app called KLIC, so that roads remain as unmolested as possible.

From the KLIC website:

Excavators must notify Kadaster-KLIC before starting excavation work. Instructions for submitting a notification are presented below in the section ‘Submitting a Notification of Excavation Work’.

Your notification will be passed on to the network operators who have underground cables or pipelines in the area where you intend to excavate. These operators will send the relevant information about their cables or pipelines to Kadaster electronically, which then compiles the information and emails you a link to download the relevant information for your excavation site.

You must consult this information when undertaking excavation work to avoid damaging cables and pipelines. The maps must be available at the excavation site.

See also: Gigabit internet connection to the houseboat.

(Photo by Mephisto, some rights reserved, based on a photo by Daniel Mayara)

Tags: , ,

November 11, 2011

The King of Indo-Rock is no longer

Filed under: History,Music by Orangemaster @ 11:57 am

Rock and roll guitarist Andy Tielman, the figurehead of the Indo-Rock scene and frontman of the Tielman Brothers band has died in Indonesia at age 75.

Before immigrating to the Netherlands, the Tielman played for the Dutch military in Indonesia in the early 1950s. They quickly became famous, having been invited to play the World Expo in Brussels in 1958, just one year after landing in the Netherlands.

Later in their career, they also toured much of Germany. “At that time, bands could only play on weekends for little or no money at all, but in Germany they could get a contract for a month or at least a couple of weeks and make scandalous much money.”

Tielman fans also call him an innovator. He took a six string electric guitar, added four extra strings and tuned them in a way nobody had done before, in search of the big sound he wanted, which became the band’s tight signature sound. The bass players also had two different sounds that complimented each other through the use of different strings and specific amplifier setting, making the Tielman sound very wide on stage.

However, it’s the way Tielman brothers played their instruments live that people wanted to see and here is a video of them rockin’ out.

(Link: nos.nl)

Tags: , ,

November 10, 2011

The Schokker, a new Dutch currency

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:50 am

The municipality of Noordoostpolder in the province of Flevoland run by the Christian Union (‘centrist’ Christians) and SGP (fundamentalist Christians) is seriously considering issuing their own currency, the Schokker. The name comes from a type of Dutch ship that comes from Schokland, a village in the Noordoostpolder.

An April Fools’ Day joke it isn’t: “our own currency in the municipality would strengthen the local economy, as residents would spend more locally. Of course, you could still pay in euro.”

It wouldn’t be the first time zealous Christians closed themselves off from the real world to cause more problems for themselves and others, so we’ll keep you posted.

(Link: datditkaninnederland.nl)

Tags: , ,

November 9, 2011

The well-off like free and cheap weddings, too

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 1:07 pm

First, Beuningen boasted about its free quickie marriage between 8:45 and 9 am, now the city of Arnhem down the road is whinging about ‘rich’ people abusing their freebie wedding time slot. Ironically, newspaper De Telegraaf doesn’t write ‘rich’ (self-censorship, anyone?), but ‘highly educated’, as some sort of clever euphemism for people with actual jobs versus the state subsidised couch sitting set.

In Arnhem the waiting list for a free ‘I do’ is more than six months. Offering free weddings was to let the ‘less fortunate’ marry with or without a ceremony, common fare around the country, but come on, if you’re offering it for free in a country that thrives on free stuff, you have to expect your altruistic ideas to fail.

The Monday morning speedy wedding is popular with the ‘richer’ folks, although it’s very dressed down. To marry at another time costs 99 euro and the full monty service with separate room and guests costs 399. Just expecting people with more money to spend more is cute, but not realistic, crisis and all.

There’s really no story here except that some journalist apparently cannot wrap their brain around the fact that people with actual money have choices. They should either bone up on the finance section or move to a communist country.

(Link: telegraaf.nl, Photo by Anthony Kelly, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , ,

November 8, 2011

My name is Cohen at Jewish Historical Museum

Filed under: History,Photography by Orangemaster @ 12:46 pm
annefrankstatue1.jpg

Starting on 25 November 2011, Amsterdam’s Jewish Historical Museum will feature the exhibition ‘Mijn naam is Cohen’ (‘My name is Cohen’), a series of portraits made by Amsterdam photographer Daniel Cohen with texts by unrelated Editor-in-Chief of magazine Vrij Nederland, Mischa Cohen.

They got together and found 25 people with the same last name, but of different generations, backgrounds, gender, views, Jewish and non-Jewish. Former mayor and politician Job Cohen is mentioned as is journalist Jisca Cohen thanks in part to whom I got to meet Daniel Cohen (unrelated to each other) and found out about his project first hand. I also know he plays a good game of football.

The quick and dirty version is that Amsterdam (aka Mokum, its Jewish name still very much in use by everyone) had lots of Jews and today for Holocaust reasons has very few.

(The picture of Anne Frank, the most ‘popular’ Jewish figure of Amsterdam who was German and not Dutch.)

(Link: www.jhm.nl)

Tags: , , ,

November 7, 2011

Mobile restaurant modelled after apple crates

Filed under: Design,Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 8:42 am

One of this year’s Eindhoven Design Academy’s graduation projects was Ardie van Bommel’s Pure Nature.

The project consists of a group of tables, chairs and kitchen islands that were all made to look like they were made out of apple crates. Van Bommel originally wanted to use actual apple crates, but that approach did not lead to the desired results, Man and Public Space Magazine wrote.

Van Bommel even made, it seems, a diorama of her apple crate restaurant inside—you guessed it—an apple crate. Her website suggests that this restaurant was made for the Philips Fruittuin (a former job creation project initiated by the local electronics giant), although it’s not clear to me whether the set-up has ever been in actual use.

Via the Pop-Up City which has been running a series showcasing “ten great designs spotted at the Design Academy’s graduation show“.

See also: Mirrors that look like holes in the wall and other Eindhoven Design Academy graduation projects.

(Photo: ontwerpstudiobomm.nl)

Tags: , , , , , ,

November 6, 2011

Internet thugs Realnetworks lose case against Hilbrand Edskes

Filed under: General,Online,Technology by Branko Collin @ 4:53 pm

In what looks like a typical case of trying to silence somebody, American company Realnetworks with the aid of the Dutch public prosecutor, the Dutch police and the Dutch courts has managed to bully webmaster Hilbrand Edskes into running up over 66,000 euro in legal costs, losing all his spare time, and putting off his hopes of one day buying a house.

What Realnetworks did not manage to do is win its lawsuit against Hilbrand Edskes. The latter won last Wednesday. Edskes had a link to software (Real Alternative) competing with Realnetworks’ product (Real Player) on his website, which the company alleged was illegal. The court thoroughly dismissed all of Realnetworks’ claims.

Realnetworks won an ex-parte case against Edskes in August. An ex-parte case is one where the defendant is not allowed to defend himself, so it wasn’t strange that Realnetworks managed to ‘win’ that one. Remember how Louis Vuitton tried to keep the world in the dark about its involvement in the Darfur genocide? They used the same legal crowbar.

Realnetworks, you may or may not remember, used to produce a piece of software called Real Player with which you could play videos and music. Almost nobody uses it because it is not nearly as good as VLC or Quicktime. One wonders if perhaps suing small fry is Realnetworks’ latest business model.

That a supposedly democratic country like the Netherlands lets anyone with deep pockets abuse the court system to bully others is a disgrace, and judges who see no problem with ex parte cases ought to be deeply ashamed of themselves.

The court only awarded Edskes 48,000 euro in damages, because both parties had agreed to this amount beforehand, according to the verdict (Dutch).

Tags: , ,

November 5, 2011

Croquette giants Mora, Kwekkebek and Van Dobbe considering a merger

Filed under: Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 4:29 pm

The two parent companies of three of the best known snack brands in the Netherlands are considering a merger.

Ad van Geloven from Tilburg (Mora) and Royaan (Kwekkeboom, Van Dobben) would form a company with a combined turnover of 246 million euro and almost 1,100 employees. The new company would be led by Ad van Geloven CEO Peter Doodeman (55), whereas Royaan’s CEO Bart Bakker (43) would lead the merger process, Z24 reports.

Whether the merger will become reality is dependent among others on a verdict of the European Commission which will have to see of the new super company will not form an illegal monopoly. I do not think that ought to be a problem, as there will still be ‘lekkers van Beckers’ (Royal Wessanen, 700 million euro turnover, 2,100 employees).

Croquette purists can breathe easy, “There will be no fusion croquette” Doodeman told Omroep Brabant.

(Photo by Photocapy, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , , , , ,