Amat victoria curam!

Again I was member of the jury for the Dutch Interactive Awards 2014. It was a great line up with innovative ideas, beautifully designed and realized. My favorites this year were the "Vaarwater app" and "De Correspondent". We had a fun dinner at Krasnapolsky with surprising good food and (less surprising) awesome company.

At the Houston Nasa Space Command Center - earlier this year.

A fun test on time: how popular will your name be in 25 years? Not so much it seems...

Now that the weather is still a bit gloomy what better time to re-watch some of the best Michael Caine movies? We started with the Harry Palmer series and see where we will end up. And even after 50 years or so - these movies are quite enjoyable and Michael Caine is great as ever :-)

Cute new idea from the BMW design center: a solar powered car port for the BMW i3 made from bamboo and solar panels . It is useless here in Amsterdam so I better stick to parking inside our garage...

Doesn't surprise me: Drawing on in-depth interviews with forty student-athletes at a British university, it was found that thirty-seven participants have cuddled with another male.
I am willing to help to expand this research to - let's say - 1000 more students...

Le1f (pronounced: leaf) a.k.a. Khalif Diouf makes some interesting tracks. Listen to Soda e.g. it has some very different vocals. Not sure if I could compose this - or listen continuously to it for that matter...

Strange name - but clearly the best song at this year's Eurovison. A mix of Olive's "You are not alone" and at the end a Skrillex dub-step. He wrote it him self - so that is a change from other countries (like Russia and Ukraine) who ordered their songs in Sweden.

I am not a fan of smartphone cases - but with my unfortunate experiences with my Nexus 5s - I had to take precaution measures: in comes the Ringke Fushion bumper. That will provide my hopefully with more grip and some protection when my phone drops the next time. (it also give me back my red rim)

Today after exactly 10.000 days Eddie and I returned to (almost) the place where we first met. The opera was closed - so we had to settle with café l'Opera - next door. Wow those days went really fast which is very logical when you're having fun :-)
Hopefully we can make it all the way through the next 10.000 days together in good health and with our ongoing love.

Our (yellow) rose has finally bloomed :-)

Thanks to U-break-I-fix (what's in a name?) I got my Nexus 5 repaired within 30 minutes only thing is that there seem no red nexus screens available in the aftermarket - so I now have a hybride black/red Nexus. Which actually is that bad at all... But boy am I happy with my phone back. I had to rely on my old iPhone 4s - which is returning to the stone ages compared with the Nexus.

When it fell - my Nexus took this picture :-)

Auw!

While taking some pics in Germany I dropped my Nexus and the screen was a goner. hmmm.. I could buy yet a new one or see if someone can repair my baby. last time the time that it took me to set up my new nexus was way longer then I had expected...

But then just the flower...

Lot's of curves, hills, forests and... dandelions!

Because of the Kings' day madness in Amsterdam we escaped to sauerland for a short motortrip. There are many many dams and lakes over there - like this one: the sorpesee.

Thanks to my friends at Twilio I had dinner at REM eiland, an old North Sea Platform. The view of the harbor is great - as is the restaurant actually.

Why would they take all this to space? Well they did: on their first missions. (A compass in space?)

Makarov pistol and ammunition
wrist compass
18 waterproof matches with striker
machete; fishing kit
strobe light with spare battery
8 fire starters
folding knife
antenna
3-pair wool gloves
signal mirror
NAZ-7M type medical kit
penlight
R-855-YM or R-855-A1 radio
two “Priboy 2S”, ПРИБОЙ-2С radio batteries
three wool balaclava hoods.

Ha! Fun: Yohio as vocaloid. Should be a succes in Japan. I hope that Yamaha will bring vocaloid as a general plug-inn on OS X and not only for Cubase so I can give it a spin.

Even Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje can not safe this one...

I knew it would be a bad movie (sort of super B) but Paul Anderson really beat everyone's expectations in delivering the worst movie of this decade. Everything is wrong: the script, the acting, the action, the special effects. What were they thinking when making this movie? Trying to beat the real Pompeii disaster? Well they surely succeeded...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/17/automobiles/ford-marks-the-original-mustang-with-a-new-model.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0#slideshow/100000002828581/100000002828605

October 1965

To mark the 50st anniversary a 2015 Mustang was placed on the Observation Deck of the Empire State Building.

Joe's first selfie on IG with a buddy... I like his handle too: @vp...
http://instagram.com/vp

The Finnish postal service Itella is to release a set of stamps commemorating Tom of Finland. I am wondering what happens if you sent a postcard to Iran with this stamp or to Russia...

Because of the broken screen of my previous (black) Nexus I ordered a new one: bright red. And you can say that again: SUPER bright red. I like :-)

I had this day today were everything I tried just failed. The mount for my new Garmin 350 GPS on my motorbike didn't fit - so I had to order a replacement and while doing that my Nexus slipped out of my hands on the (concrete) garage floor. Which was the end of the Nexus' screen... Not sure to repair it (€200) or order a new one (€349). What I do know that I stick to the Nexus 5: it is by far the best phone I ever had.

In the Meermanno Book museum a nice exhibition about the comic magazine from the 60's and 70's: PEP. I remember longing for the moment in the week that the new issue would come out and fall in our letter box. All my heroes started in the PEP: Blake & Mortimer, Tin Tin, Le Franc, Luc Orient - well everyone...

Stefan Verkerk showing of his Steel Blue MacBook Air. It looks very beautiful. It is done by Colorware. Pricy though... but worth it. Maybe if the new (retina?) MacBook Air is released later this year?

Betabrand is crowdfunding for its "gay-jeans" which is a pair of jeans that over time when broken in shows rainbow colors threads. I stick to my 511.

Marijn and I had a brainstorm day at the beach and it did storm not only in our brains...

"Host" by Peter James was published back in 1993 on 2 floppy disks. It sold 12.000 copies - not bad at all. However it was not the very first: Project Gutenberg had been going since 1971 and a lot of books had been published on CD-Roms (think of all the encyclopedias). And what is a book anyway? So maybe we will never know what was the first E-Book - it was probably just a story / blog post on line in txt format.

What is better then dating yourself? On tumblr boyfriend twin you can see guys who put that idea into practice.. Little scary isn't it?

OK so there we have it: Normcore - the new trend which is actually to dress as inconspicuous as possible... Basic like in the late 80's. GQ even has a feature about the 10 essentials you should have in your normcore collection. And even brands like Dolce and Gabanna have essential basics in their collection (for none basic prizes).
So what do you need?

white T-shirt
501 or similar
fleece jacket
white tube socks
grey walking sneakers
novelty T-shirt
light washed denim shirt

Yep: I have got everything....

Remember that after my latest flight from Houston my Rimova suitcase was terribly damaged? Well the lifetime guarantee made everything more then OK - Rimova fixed my case - they renewed everything while leaving the vintage look intact - KLM has already reimbursed me for the transportation costs - so things turned out good after all. Thanks Rimova!

I have written a couple of times (in Swedish) about Readly and why I am a huge fan of this "all you can read magazines" service. But now lately Readly has become even more interesting: They added tons of US and UK magazines and this week I was surprised with (swedish) books.
Now for books alone I would not take a all-you-can-read pay monthly subscription - because how many books will you / can you actually read in a month?
But when added to a magazine offer it is great. They only thing now left to do is to add some newspapers and we're done: everything you ever wanted to read in one beautiful service: Readly!
You can try it out one month free...

Wes Anderson lastest movie "The Grand Budapest Hotel is inspired by Stefan Zweigs' "Rausch der Verwandlung" which also plays in a Grand Hotel and is narrated as a story within a story, one of Zweig’s favourite devices. I also had to think of "Die Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull" of Thomas Mann, in which a lift-boy in a grand Parisian establishment charms and seduces the wealthy guests. Anyway it is a must see movie - really funny.