May 2006 Archives
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a CNET company
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Fun site by ex-Emotional Fish
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Dutch newspaper website redesigns. I love it, it's very easy to use. I think the type in the menus is a bit fuzzy, that's a shame.
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Listing kids doing as well or better as their musical parents
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'Badges are so web 2.0. You simply can't be a modern site with out a badge you know!'
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'Ikzelf fotografeer steeds op Aperture Priority, zo groot mogelijk diafragme (klein f-getal) en 1 stop onderbelicht. Bijna nooit moet ik dit bijstellen.'
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Doug Bowman accepts offer to join Google as Visual Design Lead, a position that did not previously exist there.
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Cute sign in Anchorage
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A triptych of self-portraits hidden from public view for 26 years is to be auctioned
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New *double* album due in October
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6 minute EPK
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Aw, the lovely cast
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Great impersonations of George Clooney, Kevin Spacey, Owen Wilson, etc
Nothing, absolutely nothing subtle about this gig. Girls were pulled on stage throughout to kiss birthday boy Leo, then brought backstage by a roadie. Other women needed no coaxing to fling themselves at the band (mostly MC Leo Lhenacho) and support act the Mitchell Brothers. Skinner poured brandy from a bottle down kids' throats and asked girls to make 'sexy noises'. A spectacle.
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Dutch musicians re-record old Adrian Borland demos
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Season 2 starts June 12th. HmmRamsay goodness.
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Dutch news show NOVA asks why he's singing 'We shall overcome'
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'... and all their songs are sad'
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Interesting unsigned band from Dublin
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Free download
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'a spectacle of fabulous corruption'
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'Nikolaus Günther Karl Nakszynski'
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He has tv stage fright. Why the hell did he agree to do the show?
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'Sartre asked Miles why we weren't married. He said he loved me too much to make me unhappy'
Sad but true: I'm refreshing my favourite bittorrent page every few minutes, because I want to see David Hasselhoff cry on American Idol. right. now.
As for other bad television... I have succumbed to Big Brother (UK). Oh noes!
My only previous experience with the show was the finale of BB 1 (NL), seven (?) years ago. Yes, I have been strong for the best part of a decade. Anyway, not going to explain myself. Just... freakshow! They must all die a thousand deaths, these uncouth members of Generation Beck's, these loose moraled bullies, these sluts and dunces. Vile Sezer in particular, with Nikki 'want a pony or I'll hold my breath till I explode' a close second and Richard the scheming bastard third.
I feel dirty. Time for some expressionist art.
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'Typographical fashions change, and since the digital age overtook typesetting and graphic design, many of the fonts common in the time of Lovecraft have fallen into disuse. We've revived many of them from vintage sources.'
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'My neighbor accidentally put a .44 Magnum round though my wall.'
The otters at Blijdorp Zoo weren't happy with the European wild cat in the adjacent cage. They took out their aggression on each other and the visitors and made a wonderful spectacle.
At the Oceanium, I watched a diver punch a shark in the nose.
The fish at Happy Sushi smelt as rank as parts of the zoo. After three dishes, I went for dim sum next door at Grand Palace.
Travelling back, I texted back the answer to the question: 'What's 'You are beautiful' in German?
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With director's son A.A. Gill cameo. Free download.
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Nice looking new blog with familiar (?) voice
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The funny thing is, the site's name now suits the content even better
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'Danny and I are taking over the show.'
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Artists
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With Marc Almond and others
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A directory of public toilets in The Netherlands. We have very few, which is a bitch.
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'I first danced Salome in school, naked but for some toilet paper'
'Who are you voting for,' he says, rounding off our call before dashing out the door with his rowdy friends. I say televoting's a waste of money. But I don't tell him I almost succumbed to sending a few votes towards good old Brian Kennedy. That would be silly, after the slagging we gave him only minutes earlier.
'He's not aged well, has he?'
Have we?
Brian was quite a dish back in the day, a Northern troubadour with Van the Man's approval in his pocket and the voice of an angel to boast. There was a time I had his song 'Captured' (mp3) on repeat. He must be desperate for a gig, why else would he be representing Ireland in the Eurovision? A quiet gem among those amateurs, despite that dreary tune's he's wrought. Every song is a cry for love? Oh, Brian.
'Sorry', he says,'My mates are here, I have to go, I'll call ya in the morning.'
I hear his old pal's familiar growl and the line goes dead just before the fucker gets the chance to grab the phone.
Woman yields to boys' night out.
I watch the voting with half an eye. My country's pathetic trio won't make it. But Brian's through.
Unexpectedly my heart swells.
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Labels designed by Hirst, Emin, etc
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I need the typeface used in the titles of this film
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REM's first ever television appearance, before this song even had a name
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German artist Joseph Beuys sings...
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to add to my blogroll
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Life. Death. Salami.
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Troubled Diva's debut at Slate
The Dutch commentator of the semi finals of the Eurovision Song Contest in Athens just made a classic slip of the tongue. Introducing Bulgaria's backing singer he says:
'He sings from his underpants. Um... that should be underbelly. And in his spare time, he's a transvestite.'
Armenia, Bulgaria, Andorra, Belarus... all fantastically out of tune and out of synch with the rest of the planet.
Three hours to go. I'm doing this for work. Honest.
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New navigation, new organizr, new search
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I can't believe this site (I built) is still online, since offficially nobody has been paying for it since about 2001
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Yeah, it wasn't great. Too bad they couldn't have got Sorkin to write it.
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What IS that
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Scaling the heights
Watching this week's House I was surprised by the likeness between these two actors, though D.B. Sweeney looks very different from Stephen Rea in his (younger) IMDB profile picture.
We (I'm talking we as in work, not we as in 'the u2log team' or, 'the whedonesque.com team', or 'me, myself and my royal I') launched a new version of one of our most succesful sites yesterday and held a press conference for (mostly) technology magazines and sites.
Much of this morning was spent passing on URLs, reading the articles and in some cases sending in corrections to the journalist in question.
The one article that stuck out for me, because it captured our product, did not need corrections, contained all the relevant information, written clearly and unambiguously, was the one written by the guy who - back in the day - made his name as (one of) the country's first / best weblogger(s).
How's this for a bold statement: 'webloggers make good journalists'.
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digg, delicious, furl, flickr, youtube etc, all on one page.
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from the 'Red' issue of the Independent
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Our new site goes live
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Popmusic is 50 years old. Watch music documentaries (may 13-19) online. (Click 'start het kanaal')
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Using live p2p-streaming technology by Danish company Octoshape. Plugin required.
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Reuniting Enfield and Whitehouse... doesn't sound like a good idea.
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£10 of each sale goes directly to The Global Fund to help eliminate AIDS in Africa. 5 per cent of your normal call and text charges donated too.
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Tune in and prosper
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Great timing! This keeps me from bawling over last night's end of The West Wing
But, but... I wanna know what happens to the goldfish!
Some quotes to remember the West Wing.
Abbey Bartlet: Hon, is this like nerd hot talk?
President Josiah Bartlet: Who's your Commander in Chief?
Abbey Bartlet: You are.
Josh Lyman: You went over my head and you did it behind my back.
Amy Gardner: Quite the contortionist am I.
Sam Seaborn: About a week ago I accidentally slept with a prostitute.
Toby Ziegler: [pause] Really?
Sam Seaborn: Yes.
Toby Ziegler: A prostitute?
Sam Seaborn: A call girl.
Toby Ziegler: Accidentally?
Sam Seaborn: Yes.
Toby Ziegler: I don't understand. Did you *trip* over something?
Josh Lyman: All I'm saying is, if you were in an accident, I wouldn't stop to get a beer.
Donna Moss: If you were in an accident, I wouldn't stop for red lights.
President Josiah Bartlet: I was watching a television program before, with a kind of roving moderator who spoke to a seated panel of young women who were having some sort of problem with their boyfriends - apparently, because the boyfriends had all slept with the girlfriends' mothers. And they brought the boyfriends out, and they fought, right there on television. Toby, tell me: these people don't vote, do they?
President Josiah Bartlet: [to Josh Lyman] You know what the difference is between you and me? I wanna be the guy; you wanna be the guy the guy counts on.
Bruno Gianelli: [after hearing the President give a inspiring speech] When did you write that last part?
Sam Seaborn: In the car.
Bruno Gianelli: [pause] Freak.
Charlie Young: Sir, I need you to dig in now. It wasn't a nightmare, you really are the president.
Bartlet really was the president. For those of us who like to live imaginary lives.
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Cute 'minipop' animation
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Taken May 13, 2006
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Bossa Nova video by the greats.
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As seen on TOTP
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Surreal advertising. I'm so Adidas's bitch.
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Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is green lighted!
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A british tv blog
Cremaster, schmemaster, what about the good old idiot box, eh?
Veronica Mars's Season Finale
Gosh, that would have been brilliant if I gave a crap about these characters. Which unfortunately, I don't. Plus... hate the editing on this show, it looks like a rush job every time. So here we have the strange phenomenon where in a comparison of V.M. and The O.C., V.M. should by all rights win. But I'd rather watch the O.C., because strange as it may seem, it's easier to care about Summer than about the entire cast of V.M. put together.
The West Wing - 'Institutional Memory'
My favourite show redeems itself after the previous week's snorefest. I mean, come on. Vinick? Santos? Does anyone really care? How on on earth John Wells could have imagined it was a good idea to spend the second to last episode almost entirely sans regulars is beyond me. Thankfully the penultimate, *sniff*, episode, penned by Deborah Cahn, delivered. With lots of Danny goodness. And Toby and CJ. 'There's a typo in the constitution.' And CJ and Danny. 'Because I like the sound of your voice.' And Margaret, at the door. Did I mention Danny? I shamelessly cried through the last ten minutes of the episode. Hurray for Timothy Busfield being in the Studio 60 cast. Anyway. Fingers crossed the finale (*chokes*) doesn't bomb.
American Idol - Final III
Huh? America gets it right? Goodbye grunge!Chris, glad to see ya go. Still waiting for Taylor to really rip it up, I'm beginning to think he hasn't got it in him. Elliot's an odd one. On the surface, I don't like his voice, but it *does* give me the shivers at times.
House - 'Forever'
I'm sorry to say it, but.. bored now. Hugh Laurie is great as House, though not half as rude as he was even at the start of this season, but the rest of the cast - bar Cuddy - doesn't quite float my boat.
Lost - Two for the road
Oh, good riddance!
The Apprentice U.K.
Sir Alan picks cold and mysterious over loud and upfront. None of the contestants this year were particularly eloquent. You know, I keep expecting brilliance, but all we get is half baked attempts.
Actually, that is the biggest disappointment of my adult life. As I looked forward to being a grown up and having a job, I thought there'd be more knowledge, more skill in the work place, more vision in the board room, more fire in the hole. But I find that with every different management team and every changing of the guards there's only different theories, different consultants with contradictory advice, a constant reinventing of the wheel and a whole lot of fumbling in the dark. I thought there'd be more than that.
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Seen: 4 and 5.
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with Photoshop
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127 meters up on a broadcasting tower in the south of the Netherlands, a couple of peregrin falcons are tending to their nest of four.
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A tutorial from... Microsoft. Huh.
Watching Matthew Barney's Cremaster 4 and 5 at the Filmmuseum on Tuesday, we kept thinking 'I get it now', and 'Oh, that's symbolic for...', and 'Surely that must mean...', "OMG, beyond Freudian...', but mostly, 'Um... maybe not.'
I kept looking for clues, for... story, rather than meaning, in these dialogue-free films, but the images and sound, though mostly compelling, made the kind of sense that's, well, not. A tap dancing satyr, a diva, Houdini, a hero, motor cyclists, the Isle of Man, water, Ursula Andress singing in Hungarian, a horned ram, goo, Budapest, doves and wandering gonads...
Did you know 'Cremaster' is the name of a muscle? To be precise, it's the muscle that raises and lowers the scrotum.
Barney, according to the booklet we picked up from the theater, is obsessed with the human body and the cycle of life. That much was clear. We came away from the films impressed and bewildered, but convinced that perhaps there was no story to either film, and that the imagery was just what it was.
How wrong we were. The synopses on the Cremaster cycle website reveal the elaborate truth, the complex mix of myth and biology. It's all bollocks, 'course but isn't that art? Beautiful bollocks? I buy it.
Unfortunately, I won't be able to catch part 1 and 2 (though there's a remedy), which are only on in the daytime, but I've booked to see part 3 next Sunday. Did you know Barney is Mr Björk? 'Course you did.
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VPRO special about Google and other search engines (Dutch)
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Brief review of my site and it's 'biography' in particular. 'decent (if somewhat cluttered) design'. I can live with that. I *am* cluttered.
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Look at the top of the screen... my brief bio thingie is conquering the interwebs!
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This takes up so much of my time
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Thinking of getting this for a walkaround lens. Tired of schlepping three around all the time.
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All things Quentin Crisp
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Bountiful cuteness
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Song ('The Dolphins') heard on The Sopranos, interesting voice
Took a ferry from Amsterdam CS to Velsen, and a bus to IJmuiden, in search of photographs and fresh fish.
Ended up on IJmuiden beach and at a fair on the promenade, awash with other day trippers.
Everything was ugly. Cheap ware on sale. Burger joints and football jerseys. People.
A seamen's choir was murdering Irish traditionals (Fiddler's Green, Black Velvet Band, translated in Dutch.). Hoompapa, hoompapa.
I picked a restaurant, ordered Redfish, ate and watched the other, mainly elderly, people there.
At the table behind me, a man was telling a story about a woman who had lost control and had let everything go. Couldn't cope with anything. Hadn't opened her mail, hadn't paid any bills, or taxes until she was declared bankrupt.
A nasty scale stuck at the back of my throat. I ran for the bus, but the driver wouldn't stop.
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BBC covers Royal de Luxe's performance in London.
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My new shoes
view it large
A Flemish waiter and customer discuss the rowdy Brits in the square. 'I thought the Dutch were loud, sir, but the English, they are worse, eh?'
The Filipino barman in the hotel lounge starts talking to me simply because he can see I am 'Asian'. An ex-policeman, he isn't proud of his former employers and corruption in general. Glad to be making an earnest living, aiming for citizenship in four years time. Very American dream-ish. But in Belgium. Says he: 'You were lucky to be born here.' I am?
Young Englishman on stag night sticks head around the corner to tell us, restaurant guests, to go ahead and hurl abuse at the Brits at the other tables. Followed by older Englishman who says: 'That's not my son.'
view it large
Long, rambling and mostly unintelligible monologue by James Hong look-a-like, trying to get me to eat in his recently opened restaurant: 'seats 120' and 'from Hong Kong' is just about all I understood of his broken Flemish.
A 12-minute film by Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken at the Photo Museum. Shot, by himself, during the final stages of his illness, he prepares to say goodbye to the viewers. He has become too weak to work: 'Be well, all of you. Be strong. Do your best. Show who you are. Bye.'
Hello from absolutely roasting Antwerp, where the mussels are a little overcooked and the keyboards are funny.
Two things accomplished: shopping and the Zoo, the first being a treat, the second a little disappointing. Especially since I had forgotten to bring my free entry voucher. The Emperor penguins and the sea otter were great, but.
I have a strong urge to go home sooner than planned. Depends on how I (or rqther, my legs) feel in the morning.
We'll see.
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'sarcastic to a point of cruelty'. Moi?
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Need to buy this.
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Lost clues
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'Lost' viral
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Shoplifting from Selfridges
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Royal de Luxe are putting on their giant puppet elephant show in London. Wish I'd known, I'd have gone.
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Awesome 22 minute interview (in Dutch) with actor Rutger Hauer. In his 60s now, still looking great.
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Sung for a charity event in 1979. (Wave file)
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"It tastes like rabbit, like dry venison, or like veal - just drier."
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windows media file
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Useless and slow
A friend asked me to list my ten favourite German songs, any genre, for reasons undisclosed. This is what what I came up with, mixing kitsch with kult.
BAP - Kristallnaach
Spider Murphy Gang - Skandal im Sperrbezirk
Schubert - Ständchen
Schubert - Erlkoenig
Einstuerzende Neubauten - Feurio!
Richard Mey - Gute Nacht, Freunde
Kurt Weill - Ich liebe Dich nicht
Robert Schumann - Die beiden Grenadiere
W.A. Mozart - In Diesen Heil'gen Hallen
Liaisons Dangereuses - Los Ninos Del Parque
Heintje - Mama
La Pat - Keukenhof
Deutsch Amerikanischer Freundschaft - Die Fesche Lola
OK, that's 13, not 10. I left out the bleeding obvious, like Lili Marlene and most of Kurt Weill's catalogue. I really wanted more Schlager on it, but couldn't think of any this early in the morning.
Remind me of any good ones I may have missed. (And feel free to meme this.) And does anyone (Martijn?) have an mp3 of Vicky Leandros' 'Theo, wir fahren nach Lodz' for me?
This is Gibson. He's 'my' dog. I share him with a lot of other people who have 'adopted' a puppy. Gibson, a golden retriever, will be trained to become a guide dog and we're paying for his education: (7.50 € per month).
Gibson's daddy is called Orion and him mum is Iris. He has two brothers and one sister. At the moment, he's still with his mum and dad, but come December he will be placed in a puppy foster home.
During the first year of his life he'll receive basic training, and grow up to be a 'social' dog. He'll learn standard commands like 'sit' and 'down'. He'll also get used to shopping, public transport and other animals. All the while the staff of the Royal Dutch Society of Guide Dogs will keep an eye on Gibson's development, and help the foster home when necessary.
As a donator, I will receive a monthly newsletter (Huh, no blog? No rss feed? C'mon, get with the programme.) about Gibson, and I'll have access to a photo album. Two years from now, when Gibson graduates, I'll receive a picture of him, wearing his guide dog gear.
(Course, it's all BS. I haven't really adopted *this* pup. It's symbolic. It's just something they've cooked up to get more donations. But hey, puppy, pictures of puppy, updates of puppy, and a worthy charity... works for me.)
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Cool Audrey Hepburn poster
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A weblog about newspaper design
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All the albums to be remastered, box set imminent
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Extras for the Sixth Season DVD. The John Spencer bits are heartbreaking.
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Finally located a higher quality encode
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Picked up one of these for 40 euro. It's in beautiful condition, including the original manual
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And one of these for 5 euro. It's v. pretty. Now... how to use it?
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Great song, frumpy dress