The Flight of Icarus

The day after

HaBre — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 18:13:00 +0000

I’ve got mixed feelings about the defeat of the Dutch team in the World Cup finals. I should be proud of the team reaching the finals, but they haven’t played a good match in the whole tournament. Oranje football is world wide known as attractive and offensive football, but I’m afraid they lost that status. Both Germany and Spain played ‘Dutch’ and they actually both deserved to be the finalists. The final itself was terrible, the Dutch team played very aggressive and defensive, the referee was also bad and even the Spanish team was weak, actually I think it was Spains weakest match of the tournament, probably due to the very aggressive way of playing by Oranje. Within 15 minutes both Van Bommel and De Jong should have received a red card. I’m very embarrased about the foul play of the Dutch. The Dutch had the opportunity to play fair and clean using strength and ball control, and perhaps defeat the Spanish team. But they decided instead to play dirty and rough, losing the rest of the world respect with a very intimidating style. People were bored to see a very disappointing show where Karate ruled over football technicality. That is why I found Spain the fair winner. Also the best Dutch football player of all times Johan Cruijff tells a Spanish newspaper the Dutch played ‘hard and rough’. Despite the defeat the players will get a full-blown welcome, including a boat trip around Amsterdam, when their success is celebrated in the capital on Tuesday.

On personal note: I never want to hear any vuvuzela anymore, and I hope Paul will end as an ingredient in paella….

Firefox 4 beta released

HaBre — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 10:03:00 +0000

Mozilla released the first beta for Firefox 4 on Tuesday, introducing a new interface design to a wider Windows audience, support for multiple technologies that aim to be essential to Web browsing in the future, and a plan for updates far more aggressive than those of the past.
Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux machines, Firefox 4 beta 1 is Mozilla’s first official peek into the future of the world’s second most popular browser. The interface changes in this first beta version are the most apparent, and they might take some users time to get used to. The Tabs are now on top, by default, at least in the Windows version.I have to admit I’m impressed by the speed, but disappointed in the layout; you must turn the menu view on to minimize the browser.

Weird, weirder, weirdest!

HaBre — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 09:53:00 +0000

Dutch pornostar Bobbi Eden twittered that she and her girlfriends will give out free blowjobs to her followers if Oranje (Dutch football team) wins the cup. I don’t think she will have many female followers…
The links below say she had 5,000 followers, now 20,000, but I just checked and she’s up to 120,536. I say, recruit some more girlfriends.
Off course this is a trick to get more followers, and get more people on her paid website. The word ‘blowjob’ is abbreviated as BJ, so it could as well be meaning something else…
If that’s not weird enough, we’re all waiting for Paul the psychic octopus to make his predictions for the final, Netherlands vs. Spain. Paul, in an aquarium in Oberhausen, Germany, predicted Spain would win the semi-final against Germany and they did. “He correctly predicted all five of the team’s previous World Cup games – including a shock defeat by Serbia in the group stages.”

Watch Paul (not Bobbi) in action:

(Link: rtl.nl and hyped.nl)

Torture Joran van der Sloot

HaBre — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 09:10:00 +0000

Off course we were all waiting (were we?) for a game about Joran van der Sloot. In the online game it is the goal to torture Joran van der Sloot to get his confession. It’s called “Torture Joran”, if you manage to Joran van der Sloot to confess, you have won the game. Especially in Peru, the game is a big hit, but also in the U.S., the game is already big in the news. The game play is here.
Joran is the suspect of the murder of Stephany Floor in Peru and the murder of Natalee Holloway in Aruba. He is trapped in the Castro Castro prison. Sad for him, he can’t play the game because he doesn’t have internet over there no internet. It is not known if Joran will take action against the game.

What’s sad is the fact that Joran van der Sloot is the most well known (and probably only known) Dutchman in the USA, I don’t think the World Cup will change that. Anyway, I do think it is a bit sick to create such a game, but I did make him confess!!

Oranje reaches the World Cup finals!

HaBre — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 09:51:00 +0000

The Netherlands qualified for the finals of the 2010 World Cup with a 3-2 win over Uruguay in Cape Town on Tuesday evening. The first goal game from Giovanni van Bronckhorst in the 18th minute with a long left-foot shot into the top corner.
Diego Forlan equalised for Uruguay in the 41st minute, but the Netherlands pulled back to 2-1 with a goal by Wesley Sneider, 25 minutes into the second half.
Three minutes later, Arjen Robben scored to make it 3-1 with a header in off the post. Maximiliano Pereira pulled one back from a free kick in injury time to make it 3-2.

The Netherlands will take on the winner of Wednesday’s second semi final between Spain and Germany in Sunday’s final. Oranje has twice qualified for the final before: in 1974 when it lost to Germany and in 1978 when it lost to Argentina.

For the BBC match report, click here
For a picture gallery from the match, click here

Some 80,000 people crammed on to Amsterdam’s Museumplein to watch the match on giant screens:

A collection of Dutch World Cup commercials

HaBre — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 19:55:00 +0000

Tour de France in Hellevoetsluis

HaBre — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 12:29:00 +0000

It’s really incredible and unique that two of the biggest cycle events in the world visit a town the same year. And what makes it even more unique is the fact that this town is not in France or Italia, but in the Netherlands. A few months ago Giro d’Italia visited Hellevoetsluis and today it was the Tour de France. I decided to watch the Tour de France a few miles outside Hellevoetsluis, because inside Hellevoetsluis it was very crowded. I decided to go to the Haringvlietdam and was surprised to see so many people. Incredible! It weren’t only Dutch people there, there were Germans, people from UK, French, USA and I spoke to a spectator, who was from New Zealand!
I made a few photos and videos, okay, I admit the quality is below average, but it does give you some idea how great it was to be a spectator.

IE9 Platform Preview 3- HTML5 Video and Canvas Support

HaBre — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 16:48:00 +0000

The third preview version of upcoming Internet Explorer 9 from Microsoft is released and available for download. It comes with better performance and also more features on HTML5. The new version features HTML5 audio and video support, as well as hardware acceleration for the canvas element. The third platform preview continues to support more of DOM and CSS3 standards that developers want.

IE9 Preview 3 also improves on Acid3 tests, it improves from 68 to 83. More details on IE9 platform preview available here.

From Orange to Yellow

HaBre — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 11:21:00 +0000

One day after the glorious victory of the Dutch team there is a big sport event starting in Rotterdam, my birth town. The Tour de France starts with a time-trial which was not included in the race programme for the last two years. With the Grand Start of the Tour de France, Rotterdam confirms its reputation of sportiest city in The Netherlands. The city’s record is impressive: the yearly international Fortis Marathon, the Bavaria City Racing with Formula 1 cars, the Red Bull Air Race, the final game of the Euro 2000 football championship won by France, the Davis Cup and the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament, the Champions Trophy Hockey, to name just a few… With three professional football clubs, including the famous Feyenoord, Rotterdam boasts a great football tradition. And since top-level sports could not exist without mass sports, the people of Rotterdam can choose between more than 400 associations to do sports. Rotterdam has also proved several times that it is the Dutch city of events. Large sports and cultural events such as the Ortel Summer Carnival, the World Port Day, the International Film Festival, the North Sea Jazz Festival (starting next week!), the Dunya Ortel Festival and the national celebration of New Year’s Eve on the Boompjes Avenue attract large crowds.

It’s a bit strange tourists always visit Amsterdam instead of Rotterdam because Rotterdam has so much more to offer, okay we don’t have a red light district or as many coffeeshops as in Amsterdam or a Anne Frank House (all touristical attraction in Amsterdam) but we do have so many other things to offer. Personally I don’t think Amsterdam really is representive for the Netherlands. The coffeeshops and red light district is only excisting because of the tourist industry.

Tomorrow the Tour de France will go through my home town, Hellevoetsluis. Off course I will go and watch. It’s really unique both the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France go through Hellevoetsluis and I’m proud to be able to whitness them both!

Blowing the vuvuzela

HaBre — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 16:17:00 +0000

The incredible has happened. The Netherlands beat Brazil in a exciting match. Still the Dutch team hasn’t played their best football, but it was enough to beat Brazil. Oranje was one goal down but an own goal in the second half by Felipe Melo made it 1-1. A header by Wesley Sneijder gave Oranje the victory.
The Netherlands will play the winner of Ghana Uruguay for a place in the final. They play on Friday evening,

For the BBC match report, click here

UPDATE: Uruguay will be the next opponent