February 28, 2007

Second Life? Get a life!

Been partying for five days, after a three year Carnival sabbatical, unlike most of my colleagues. A joker under them acted an instant seizure when he met me on Saturday morning at the newspaper, my NapoLeon hat on my head, finishing some paper work before running to Beyerd or Bommel.

Never mind, he's a nice guy and he can run, be he is from north of The Moerdijk, calls French fries patat, and doesn't know a thing about Carnival.

I've never understood the people born and raised over here who hate Carnival, must be a missing link in their education, but I couldn't care less.

Anyway, came Ash Wednesday, a big hangover, nothing else or decent to do, perfect day to make my first visit to Second Life.

in Dutch at @ BN/DeStem

I mean, I had to do it at least once, because everybody over here is talking about nothing else, and to some people not having been in Second Life looks even stranger than going to the Carnival.

Right, I hear you can become a millionaire over there, en if that doesn't work out right away, there are girls galore. But be aware they might be younger than they are looking, cause the cops have gone to Second Life too, since they've discovered child porn over there.
A few more posts like this and everybody is over there and the real streets and pubs are empty.

So I fired up my iMac and the Internet, and I went to Second Life. First thing that surprised me is that yo have to choose a surname from a preferred batch.

As there are more than a million and a half Second Lifers already, most first names are in use so from now on my virtual ego is Leonardus Larsson.

Having said that; don't try to contact me over there, because after an hour or so I've redirected the whole Second Life kit and caboodle hype to the trashcan.

What a nonsense, what a useless poverty.

I have to be careful over here, because the same things I've heard about Carnival last week.

Do you like Second Life?

Well, for a start try to get a real hangover over there, stiff legs from doing the letkiss and the samba, tears in your eyes from laughing about Carnival jokers performing practical jokes.

Second Life? Get a life!

 Posted: February 28, 2007, 09:01 AM | Comments (0) |

February 22, 2007

When in China: Internet Freedom

The Internet promised unlimited access to information and the free flow of ideas across borders. Yet, in China with an internet population of 137 million users and 2.5 million bloggers, internet censorship seems to tighten in the run up to the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

‘The requirements of doing business in China include self-censorship – something that runs counter to Google’s most basic values and commitments as a company.’ (Google representative Elliot Schrage) What dilemmas are Internet corporations facing in China? What choices are they making?

- Invitation by the The Dutch Journalist Association (NVJ) -

Are Internet companies part of the censorship problem or part of the solution? Can Internet companies work together effectively and influence the way the Internet is used in China so as to bring about positive outcomes for human rights? Can they offer services towards improving the human rights situation in China?

Internet corporations such as Microsoft, Google and Yahoo offer a variety of web services in China. Through their activities they have encounters with the Chinese censorship system. Compliance with government laws and requests conflicts with their own corporate ethics, with international standards for free information flow and with customer and individual human rights.

This panel discussion examines the scope for non-compliance and ways to improve the censorship situation that corporations encounter in China. We will discuss possibilities, pitfalls and responsibilities regarding Internet censorship for ICT corporations.

Participants: Garrie van Pinxteren (former NRC China correspondent), Nicholas Dearden (Amnesty Irrepressible campaign), Dr Jens Damm (E-government in China at Freie Universität Berlin) and Peter Olsthoorn (Web journalist on ICT).
Debate leader: Jolanda Polderman (RTV Noord Holland).

Time: Saturday 3 March 2007 at 14.15h
Place: Passenger Terminal Amsterdam, route

Registration: To attend please register in advance.
Inquiries: Maurice Sistermans, 020 7733785 of m.sistermans@amnesty.nl
Thomas Bruning, secretary general NVJ, 020 6766771 or tbruning@nvj.nl
Website: www.MadeinChina2007.nl

Background information:
· Undermining Freedom of Expression in China: The role of Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google
· Multi stakeholder initiative on online human rights
· Yahoo’s and Amnesty International’s position on the Shi Tao case
· Yahoo’s data contributes to arrests in China: free Shi Tao from prison in China!
· irrepressible.info

 Posted: February 22, 2007, 05:56 PM | Comments (0) |

How Blogs define themselves

Never hurts to Google Yourself every once in a while. You'll be surprised how many old links seem to live on forever, and will probably still be there, long after you're gone to the big cyberspace. Comforting idea or not, there's not much you can do about it. A question about my Matrox Millennium posted in 1996 by Martijn van Breugel on the Dutch Linux Users Group, still pops up in Google. Some of the links to my name or my domain I've seen before, but I've missed this one, some six months back:
The Fifth Estate On The Journalistic Aspects Of The Dutch Blogosphere by Arjan Dasselaar

It's 123 pages, and I'll print and read them all later this week, but Google found this one for me:

3.2. How Blogs define themselves

A recurring metaphor chosen by many bloggers to describe thier online activities is the diary. Indeed blogger Leon Krijnen (www.krijnen.com) defines a blog as 'a website in the form of an online diary containing thoughts, opinions and hyperlinks (Krijnen, 2004).

 Posted: February 22, 2007, 02:56 PM | Comments (1) |

February 21, 2007

The Carnaval is over . . .

It's all over for this year. We've got the Bommel & Beyerd Blues over here: a headache, a sore throat, and a stirred and shaken stomach. Back to a another kind of life as from today: no more bars or booze until may 18 - second climb of Alpe d 'Huez - biking and fasting instead.

Cees, the Bommel Boss - by the way is he looking over here the right decision - is going into retirement, going to play golf instead of serving beer. We'll probably see him in South America later this year . . .

Check out: the pics of the last day

Say goodbye my own true lover
As we sing a lovers song

Though the carnival is over
I will love you till I die

The Seekers (produced 25/11/1965, 3 weeks at #1 - 17 weeks on chart).

 Posted: February 21, 2007, 11:18 AM | Comments (0) |

February 20, 2007

Day 4: Big Parade @ De Beyerd

Not too many pictures today; after I've shot two video's my flashcard ran out of gas. This one is the band playing on top of the Beyerd balcony, the second one Prins Carnaval's band trying to outplay the boys on the balcony. Click here for the second video.

 Posted: February 20, 2007, 10:10 AM | Comments (1) |

February 19, 2007

Day 3 and stil going strong . . .

Beyerd, Zwarte Schaap, Bommel, and some more places probably . . .

New pics in the Carnaval 2007 album

 Posted: February 19, 2007, 11:50 AM | Comments (0) |

February 18, 2007

Carnaval 2007 @ day 2 . . .

I haven't plotted the saturday night bar trek on my GoogleMaps, so the big question is where I shot this one. Anyway, by the way the girls look, I guess I wasn't behaving too bad . . .

More pics: in the Carnaval 2007 album

 Posted: February 18, 2007, 10:29 AM | Comments (0) |

February 17, 2007

Carnaval 2007 @ The Beyerd: day 1 . . .

Sjakie doing a Dutch Delilah (top video), Gijs performing Johnny Be Good (bottom video),

One day down, four more to go . . .

More pics in the Carnaval 2007 album

 Posted: February 17, 2007, 01:10 PM | Comments (1) |

February 12, 2007

A change of climate?

I wonder if my biology teacher from the seventies is still alive. In his left hand holding 'The Report To The Club Of Rome', with his other hand slamming his desk, predicting that we would never see the daylight of January 1, 2000.

Some ten years later we were daily showered with stories about acid rain en leafless woods, an now, in 2007, the climate is the hottest issue.

in Dutch at @ BN/DeStem

It doesn't make me warm or cold, but I wonder were Al Gore is lecturing these days. His own country is - even in California - struggling with the effects of an extreme severe and vicious winter. That doesn't mesh with his 'Inconvenient Truth' , but if you look somewhat further than your own nose is long, you will find scientists and researchers galore, who call Gore's movie a 'Convenient Lie'.

Climatologist Hans Labohm and professor Salomon Kroonenberg don't call Gore a white liar, but they produce some refreshing sounds.

Both are pointing out the possibility of an approaching small ice age.

According to Labohm about one quarter of his fellow craftsman has a suspicion of global warming, about twenty percent thinks it's all rubbish, while the rest simply admits they don't know if or what's going on.

Kroonenburg suggests in his book 'De Menselijke Maat' (The Human Size) that we maybe better put some extra carbon dioxide into the air for those who live in the next millennium: some extra heath might be welcome by then.

By the way: according to Gore's measuring rod there's also global warming on Mars. To remind you: there's only one car driving on that planet, and that's powered by solar energy.

Meanwhile NASA satellites show us that the ice cap on the south pole is still growing, and that a new small glacial period might as well smack bang begin somewhere between 2012 and 2020. We hardly ever read anything about it, but when an ice floe as big of Vermont breaks loose - daily practice over there - it's on the front page of every newspaper in the world.

'But why', asked an anchor woman with a red hot flushed face Hans Labohm, 'do we never read about what you are telling us?'

Labohm kept his cool: 'because you never ask us . . .'.

The complete answer therefore is that we, the media, only lend our ears to the doom mongering minority of climatologists and parroting politicians.

You'd better buy some warm sweaters while they're still on sale . . .

Link: Woudhuysen and Kaplinsky: A man-made morality tale

 Posted: February 12, 2007, 12:14 PM | Comments (0) |