Sssssh!

The three tenors are singing Ständchen!

I’ve always liked Domingo better than Pavarotti. Domingo just looks better. He’s fairly dry today (good!), but once he starts hamming it up, I turn the switch.

Been busy making new pages for gavinfriday.com, my other domain. Have a look at what the man reads.

I have links to on line shops like cdnow and amazon.com on my site. Does that mean I’ve lost integrity? Surely it’s ok to try and make people buy books and music? Let me know.

Big question

I played a friendly tennis match yesterday afternoon. I was 4-0 up in the first set when I lost my cool. Physically unfit, I could not concentrate long enough and my opponent got back up to 4-4. I won 6-4 6-1 after that. I hadn’t played a match in more than 10 years – and found out that at 35 years old I still haven’t mastered the art of playing for fun. I get nervous and impatient. I can’t control my temper. Every point has to be a winner and that makes me tense up. I was a bad loser as a kid… and I still am. How very disappointing.

So was the house I looked at today. Stunning on the outside. Dismal on the inside. I won’t even mention the cost of it. It was off putting and I must admit I find the whole idea of having to decide over something so radical totally daunting.

I’m trying to figure out what is more important for me when it comes to a place to live. Size? Beauty? Location? My friend S. claims that in England they say there are only 3 criteria to bear in mind when buying a house: ‘Location, location and location.’

I haven’t worked it out yet. Let me know what you think? I’ve put up a little vote on housing, go see.

Link of the Day:
http://www.kvetch.com
Got something to moan about?

Get a move on

I want to move house. I’ve been living in Utrecht for 16 years now and I’ve just about had enough. Utrecht is very much a student town, and I stopped being a student a decade ago.

Amsterdam is where I want to be. My city of birth. I love Amsterdam to bits – it’s got big city grandeur combined with village attitudes. It’s stunningly beautiful in places, it’s got all the art, cinema, culture you’d want to absorb. Amsterdam people are intrinsically nicer than those in Utrecht. They aren’t as suspicious, and they aren’t as provincial. The food’s a lot better too.

Today, I picked 3 houses from the newspaper ads, and I’m going to have a look at them tomorrow and Friday. I’ve never done such a thing before, so I’m happy my dad will come along to do what dad’s are supposed to do… be knowledgeble about stuff you don’t know anything about.

More tomorrow.

Link of the Day:
http://www.amsterdam.nl
The place to be!

Isn’t it ironic?

One side of the paper today is dedicated to the Orange legion at the World Cup in Marseille… the other side reported on the Orange Order’s stand off in Drumcree Northern Ireland.

While the Netherlands have moved on to fight their battles on the football pitch, 700 miles away a people who look the same, talk the same, eat the same, swear the same, are still trying to get the gun out of their politics.

I know nothing about Irish politics. From my comfortable home it all seems medieval to me.

Talking medieval: on the train today a couple of Dutch soldiers were discussing tonight’s match against Brasil. ‘The referee is an Arab, you know what that means, don’t you? He’ll be in favour of the Brasilians. They’re all muslims, like him!’

They should teach our soldiers how dangerous it can be to mix up your religions.

Link of the Day:
http://web.0sil8.com
Jason Kottke keeps redesigning his site. He says it’s now what he wanted it to be.

Break

Things break.

My stepmother broke her hand last week on holiday. Dutch football player Winston Bogarde broke lots of things in his leg. And my colleague was hit in the face in a brawl during football victory ‘celebrations’ last night. Two of his teeth were chipped.

I wasted a lot of money on a 2nd hand camcorder. It arrived today and looks like it might break any moment.

I’ve been taking a break from mailing lists. My own… and others that I’m subscribed to. It’s a relief. I felt terrorised by the constant arrival of new mail.

Copyright gets broken all the time. Web theft is a hot issue. Check how infetish.com stole code and design from glassdog.com . They even forgot to change the top left hand corner frame’s ALT tag.

Link of the Day:
http://www.zeldman.com/
Zeldman doesn’t need to break the law. He’s an original.

Past imperfect

Saturday’s probably an odd day for a museum visit. Especially when the rest of the country is getting ready for today’s match against Argentina.

I don’t go to museums often enough. The Stedelijk Museum is the most important museum of modern and contemporary art in The Netherlands – and this was only my second visit of the 90’s.

There were several interesting exhibitions. ‘From the corner of the Eye’ showcases 14 gay artists’ work. Humour seemed to dominate the installations, videos, sculptures, paintings and drawings. More serious were the photos of Boris Michailov – stark, real, sometimes sad but always powerful pictures of the USSR, a society fallen apart. Absolutely stunning was the Stenberg (‘mouseover’ to see a poster) exhibit: two brothers designing film posters in revolutionary Russia. Amazing drawings in deep blues, reds, yellows and blacks, announcing ordinary documentaries as if they were thrilling Film Noirs.

Outside, the match had started. Walking around deserted Amsterdam, we heard groups of people shouting, gathered in pubs and restaurants, looking up at the t.v. screens. We thought it would be a cool idea to go around town and photograph these people.

We kept up with the score like that, walking back to Central Station, stopping in for a coffee somewhere, gazing through windows whenever we heard them screaming. When Dennis Bergkamp scored in the 90th minute, a tremor could be felt. It gave me goosebumps.

When we got back in Utrecht, all hell had broke loose. The town was orange, people were drinking everywhere, driving around, honking horns. I can’t stand mass hysteria. I know just how quickly the milk turns sour:

When we didn’t cheer on demand, we were called ‘dykes’. (So I have short hair and wear trousers… dickhead men think I’m gay.) One car almost ran me off the road – a guy alone, waving his stupid scarf out of his window, slowing down when I gave him the finger. My friend got caught in a group of drunks playing football in the middle of the street – she almost got hit by the ball.

It was a perfect day. Almost.

PS. I bought two great books: 1. ‘the covers of Wendingen’: 216 covers of a 1918/1931 Dutch design magazine. 2. Lay In – Lay Out, an odd study of Dutch graphic design.

Links of the Day:

http://www.stedelijk.nl

The ‘From the corner of the eye’ exhibition comprises part of the cultural programme accompanying the 1998 Gay Games in Amsterdam.:
http://www.gaygames.nl

Pet hate

A friend asked me if I could help him find a scrolling Java applet. I’ll do my best for him, but…

I don’t like Java on the web. It usually takes too long to load, and more often doesn’t add anything to either the content or the design of the site. Macs have problems with Java and I can’t say it runs too smoothly on my Windows machine either.

The other day, my colleague was asked to ‘Come up with a solution for the problems the Macs are having with that Java application’.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! :-)

Word of the Day:
Uglet. n. The ugly grey patch on a web page which occurs when a Java applet is loading.