Great video of Amanda Palmer doing Brel with ‘Dans le port d’Amsterdam’. Especially half way into the video it gets really good, although you have to have the video with, just the sound doesn’t make it complete…
The video is from a blog call Blogotheqeu a French site with lots of what they called ‘Concerts a Emporter’. Great little vids of indie bands doing their thing outside on the street while being filmed by the Blogotheque crew.
This just in: Florian Schneider left Kraftwerk. Apparently this was already known in November from their official website, but never got out in the news much. Now the official statement is that Kraftwerk is continuing their tour without Florian, but does this mean the end of a era?
One of their most prominent works was Autobahn.
Wir fahr’n fahr’n fahr’n auf der Autobahn
Vor uns liegt ein weites Tal
Die Sonne scheint mit GlitzerstrahlDie Fahrbahn ist ein graues Band
Weisse Streifen, gruener RandJetzt schalten wir ja das Radio an
Aus dem Lautsprecher klingt es dann:
Wir fah’rn auf der Autobahn…
Music I have been listening to the last few weeks:
No, those are not the essential things in life… It’s what kept me busy today though.
I started out today by doing lots of stuff in front the computer, from reviewing documents, to setting up training material, to preparing presentations and more stuff like that. At 4.30 I kind of was a bit tired of it and went out for a while. I figured I should get some books. I’m starting a world tour in a few days (well, that’s maybe exaggerating it a little bit, but I will be traveling quite a bit the next few weeks) so there was a definite need for some reading material. I got myself the following books:
Then as I walked home, I decided to take a different route and came across a new take-out place creatively called the Food Shop. It’s on the Oude Gracht opposite the Rembrandt Cinema. I’m eating the food they prepared for me as we speak (still busy reviewing some documents) and it’s quite good. There was some potato gratin, beef stew with onions and tomotoes and some mixed grilled veggies and a salad. Pretty edible 
Last but not least in about an hour, I’m heading towards Laren, to have one of my kites repaired. Tomorrow the winds are blowing again (about 20 knots) and although I won’t be able to use my 8sqm I guess, I still have to have it repaired after I ripped it a bit… The place I’m heading is called Kitereparatie.nl. It’s just a guy who’s good at fixing kites…
In the meantime, Boards of Canada started playing, which reminds me of the last few songs I heard on Last.FM. I subscribed to Last.FM by the way. It doesn’t bring you a whole lot, apart from your loves songs now being a radio station you can listen to, but well, I think the service is really useful, so I’ll gladly pay up.
Tonight I’m not going to do a whole lot. I’m going to have a few beers with Jack (a friend of mine). Tomorrow it’s kiting day. I’ll also drop by at my parents. They just got back from a holiday and then I’ll be going to Amsterdam to have a few drinks there… On Sunday, I’ll probably do some kiting again and later in the day, I’ll fly to Copenhagen. Denmark and Sweden, that’s what it’s going to be this week.
– cool Japanese ambient music
– some really cool Swedish electro!
Today I had a great session at Slufter. I’d never been there before. This spot is close to the ports of Rotterdam, so has a pretty industrial feel to it. There are some waves, areas with chop and also some very shallow and butter flat water.
There’s also a small sandbar quite close by and with today’s wind we could go there. There I ran into a stupid kiter that didn’t speak any Dutch. He couldn’t even body-drag upwind, but had lost his board. Asked me if I could get it for him. I did it, but straight after he got up again, he crashed his kite again and lost his board again. Then he pulled his safety (depowering the kite, but still not completely without power). Relaunching the kite apparently was something he’d never learnt. The rescue brigade had to get him (and his kite) and bring him to safety. Pretty stupid, to go so far off shore if you can’t even body-drag upwind to recover your board.
Anyway, the progress on the jumps is quite okay. Lars was impressed seeing me make airs of at least 4 meters. I landed some of them, but was also quite happy that I had bought an impact vest; half of them I didn’t land and crashing into the water after having jumped 4 meter high can be quite painful.
Hoping for some more wind next weekend!
Some music I listened to this week. Mostly quite unknown, but also quite cool:
). Anyway there music is great. Especially the older album with title song Barb4ry. I like that album most, for example the song title Obssd or Phantom Land.
I guess you can see what kind of mood I’m in now
By the way, to see what I’m aiming for (in terms of kiteboarding), look at the following video: http://www.kiteboardpro.nl/?p=86.
I saw Factory Girl yesterday. For some reason the movie is almost two years old, but has never been released in the Netherlands yet. This weekend it went on display in the Louis Hartlooper cinema in Utrecht. The movie tells the story of Edie Sedgwick who travels from Cambridge to New York and ends up being one of the girls doing their thing in The Factory, Andy Warhols studio.
Edie died age 28 after having lived a pretty wild life. The pictures I know from Edie show a very charismatic, radiant woman. Sienna Miller in the movie however doesn’t really know how to convey Edie’s personality and charisma at all. When she’s first introduced to Andy, the scene even gets a little childish as opposed to what people tell about the first encounter between Edie and Andy. Sienna’s lack of being able to personify Edie shows throughout the movie and really has a negative impact on the movie.
All-and-all, I don’t think the movie was very good. It doesn’t get boring, so it was entertaining, but it wasn’t a movie I would not want to have missed or so.
Some music:
I updated the firmware of my camera (Pentax K10D) yesterday night. All of a sudden, the AF of my new lens was about 4 times as fast. I wondered why that was and after searching for a bit, I found out: only the 1.30 firmware supports the fast AF drive my new lense has. So, if you have a Pentax K10D and have bought a Pentax DA lens, update your firmware!
In the meantime, I’m listening to Cake as I’m writing this. I got a recommendation for this song through Last.FM and I hadn’t heard this song for a long time. What occurred to me is that the lyrics of this song are pretty weird. So, here goes, the lyrics for Frank Sinatra, performed by Cake.
We know of an ancient radiation
That haunts dismembered constellations
A faintly glimmering radio station
While Frank Sinatra sings “Stormy Weather”
The flies and spiders get along together
Cobwebs fall on an old skipping record
Beyond the suns that guard this roof
Beyond your flowers of flaming truths
Beyond your latest ad campaigns
An old man sits collecting stamps
In a room all filled with Chinese lamps
He saves what others throw away
He says that he’ll be rich someday
We know of an ancient radiation
That haunts dismembered constellations
A faintly glimmering radio station
We know of an ancient radiation
That haunts dismembered constellations
A faintly glimmering radio station
While Frank Sinatra sings “Stormy Weather”
The flies and spiders get along together
Cobwebs fall on an old skipping record
Just yesterday I received my DVD box with all episodes of Buurman and Buurman. For those in Holland, if you’ve never seen Buurman and Buurman you really should. It’s a Czech puppet series, all filmed in stop motion.
Buurman and Buurman literally translates to Neighbor and Neighbor and that’s exactly what it’s about: two neighbors doing a bunch of do it yourself projects. I’m not sure if there are English translation around. The texts really do make it hilarious, so I’m not sure if without those, it works that well…
In the meantime, some music:
Hey, today I’ve turned 30, 1 month and 6 days. Somebody asked for my age today and for the first time I mistakenly said 29. Then I corrected myself and for some reason, I didn’t like doing that… Yeah I know, it’s nothing turning 30, it’s just like any other birthday… The thing is, you can’t say you’re in your late twenties anymore… So in a sense, it’s not nothing
Anyway, I hosted a party a few weeks ago, to celebrate. All and all it was great, although a bit weird. Around 100 people turned up, so you would expect he dance floor to be quite filled. On the contrary, the dance floor was completely empty even though I hosted the party in the F L E X B A R, one of the more popular places in Amsterdam these days.
The thing is that finally, the public smoking ban in bars and restaurants (in addition to all other public places, where it was already forbidden to smoke for ages) went into effect on the 1st of July. The weekend I hosted my party was the first weekend out for many with the new smoking ban. Combined with some nice weather, this caused everybody to stay outside for a long time…
So at first I was a bit disappointed since I had hoped for the dance floor to be full and all, but after a while I began to enjoy the party outside as well… Eventually the dance floor filled up anyway and we had a great night…
Some music:
I finally finished reading One Big Damn Puzzler by John Harding. It’s about a lawyer ending up on a tropical island where he comes across a native tribe. Some of the tribespeople have lost legs, arms or are otherwise disabled because of mines, left by American and the lawyer is there to start getting the tribespeople compensating. The tribe didn’t ask for compensation and it’s not clear whose doing it is to send the lawyer there and arrange for compensation. The book starts off quite funny, but along the way it’s all more of the same I think. Not highly recommended…
Then on to some other books. A friend of mine works in a shop selling books for kids and since my nephew and niece are celebrating their birthday tomorrow I dropped by to get some books. Unfortunately Geertruide wasn’t there, so I had to phone here up to get some advice. She told me first of all to read the Gruffola. This book is simply great. It’s about a mouse, an owl, a snake a fox and the gruffalo.
The second book I got for my niece is a priceless one. It’s ‘written’ by Thé Tjong-Khing. The book is titled ‘Where is the Cake’ (’Waar is de Taart’ in Dutch). In the book, a cake gets stolen en then a hunt begins for the two animals that stole th cake. The great thing about this book is that it doesn’t have any words at all, it’s just drawings. Along the way, a lot of stuff happens in the drawings, and that’s what makes the book very special I think.
For my nephew I bought ‘De grote kleine kapitein’ (literally translated as the big small captain), about a boy setting sail with a boat he built himself. Fun stuff for Mas, who’s spending most of his holidays on the boat of his daddy (my brother).
In the meantime, some music to finish the day with (the ones via Last.FM are in the recommendations in my profile).
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