Posts
-
Mac mini
read more
Dad and I bought mom a Mac mini for her birthday, to try to get her to use a computer.The first reaction of anyone seeing the device is of course something like, “Wow, that’s small, how do they fit it in there?”. In fact, they don’t. It is basically a laptop without screen, so all the components are already very small and can be crammed into a small space. Nevertheless, the design of both case and internals are impressive and it might very well be a successful companion to an iPod for current PC-users (since that is wat Apple is aiming at).
I don’t know how one would call going from no computer-user at all to a Mac-user, but would Apple consider it “switching”? More about the “switch” of my mother will come in a few weeks.
-
Herman van Veen
read more
It has been a while since I wrote something here. Yesterday I was surprised with a visit to Herman van Veen, a Dutch singer and one of the creators of Alfred Jodocus Kwak. The school where my dad teaches is merged this year with another one and one of the festivities was this special gig of Herman van Veen for every employee with their partner.It was a nice evening, Herman is doing his 60th birthday tour this year together with band; Erik van der Wurff, Edith Leerkes and Wieke Garcia and two more who’s name I couldn’t make out. He’s doing old songs and new ones, the new ones being partly political, partly emotional. He is rethinking his life, thinking back about his mother, about his daughter as a baby, but also letting Edith sing a funny song about what she would have done should she’d be a man.
I won’t try to translate some lines into English, since he can do it very much better than I.
Maar mocht ‘t nodig zijn, ik haal je uit de diepste
de diepste kraters van m’n hart, m’n lijf, m’n liefde.
Dat je me één keer vasthoudt heb ik liever
dan heel de wereld bij mekaar. -
Sigur Rós in Paradiso!
read moreA nice surprise yesterday when I came on the Sigur Rós website. They come to the Netherlands on their 2005 tour! 13 July is the day, Paradiso Amsterdam the place. I’ll be there, who’ll be joining me?
-
Happy Easter from Düsseldorf
read moreI’ve been visting family in Düsseldorf this weekend, it was my uncle’s birthday and we went to his party in an Altstadt (downtown) café.
Easter Monday we went to walk along the Rhein to take a look at the new quarter called MedienHafen. Modeled after the London Docklands, this old harbour area got a thorough restyle and is now becoming a vivid (and probably expensive, judging by the many Porsches, Jaguars and one Hummer) place to live and work.
Behind the WDR Funkhaus building (which existed there quite some time already), three buildings designed by Frank Gehry called Der Neue Zollhof are the first pieces of modern architecture to appear in this area. Some old warehouses got a restyle, others were torn down and got replaced by glass boxes. Most of them aren’t very interesting, but it is the “Gehry-Bauten” as they are called by the Düsseldorfers which are the landmarks of this newly developed quarter.
Some photos I took: First an impression of the Rhein-Promenade, which was created around 1990 with the building of a tunnel between Oberkasselerbrücke and Kniebrücke (both bridges can be seen in the first picture). Before the tunnel existed, there was no real possibility to get anywhere near the water from the city center. Photos 11 and 12 show the Landtag building, the administration of Nordrhein Westfalen, of which Düsseldorf is the capital. The tower is called the Rheinturm and was built in 1981, it features the largest decimal clock in the world. The rest of the photos are all buildings part of MedienHafen.
-
Newest acquisitions
read moreToday I picked up Dancer in the Dark (starring Björk) and Ãgætis Byrjun (by Sigur Rós) at the Free Record Shop, which I ordered two weeks ago. Both took a bit longer than was to be expected.
Since I was in the city anyway, I decided to hop by the local Apple Centre to take a good look at the Mac mini. On my way back I went to Van Leest and bought Homogenic by Björk.
In case you’re wondering what he’s doing with all this Icelandic stuff lately… Indeed, I’m intrigued by this little country in the northwestern corner of Europe and its people, language, culture… I would really like to go there some day and see for myself, maybe even do an internship? Esther must have infected me with the Iceland virus ;-)
Meanwhile in Eindhoven, the weather is nice, it’s not too hot, yet warm enough to sit on a terrace in the sun. Knowing Dutch weather however, this isn’t going to last long and the weather will change in a few days.