Some maintenance

Just did some maintenance on the template of this weblog. I removed a lot of buttons in the right bar that didn't had much use anymore. It seemed that they didn't generate much extra traffic to this weblog. I also brought down the number of posts that is shown on the homepage. This all together makes that the page loads much quicker is my impression.

From next Saturday on I will visit the International Film Festival of Rotterdam. Before that I will try to post the rest of the pics of our visit to England from last month and some pics that I made a week ago on an early Saturday morning when it was freezing weather.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to everybody. A happy, healthy and in many ways prosperous 2008.
The past December have been crazy with no postings, but I'm going to make that up to you. The next week and maybe the week after that I'll post some stuff I'm preparing now both here as on my musicweblog BrownNoiseMusic.

Hopefully this is the first of many postings this year.

Updates

My Bavaria postings part 2 and 3 have been updated with some extra backgroundinformation about the pictures and subjects related to the pictures. I also added a few extra pictures. There are also new Bavaria postings in preparation plus postings about other (day)trips that were made after our Bavaria trip, which will be posted the next coming days. So feel free to come back and check.

A little more patience

It's been a while since my last posting. About 7 weeks since my last post. The keyword was (and still is): BUSY. And when there was a bit time I didn't had the energy. It's not that I didn't had anything to post. On the contrary I would say. Still have more pictures to post from our trip to Bavaria, Germany and pictures from a visit to Camp Westerbork, the zoo at Emmen, a daytrip to Maastricht and a 4-day visit to Vienna, Austria last week and I shot pictures this weekend at an open house of Theo Jansen a fascinating engineer/artist who makes socalled kinnetic art. You'll find out more about it later.

I'm preparing some posts this week, so I hope I've catched up by next weekend.

See ya later!

Bavaria (part 1)

Currently there is a problem at Blogger which makes it impossible to upload images. So unfortunately I can't upload any pictures yet. So please have a little more patience. As soon as the problem is fixed I'll start uploading pictures to my weblog.

Just a bit more patience

It's been a little while since my last post. We came back last night from a 10 day trip to Bavaria, South-Germany. The first 5 days we spend with my friend Frank (Mr. Superfly for close friends), who I met 11 years ago at the kibbutz in Israel. He drove us around and took us into the Bavarian Alps to some sightseeingplaces (mostly castles/pallaces and countryside). After that we spend 5 days in Munich from where we made a few more trips. Mostly to places related to King Ludwig II of Bavaria, because my wife N. is very much interested in this fairytale and (in my opinion a bit tragic) king.

Anyway, as soon as I sorted out the pictures I will post a selection.

Just a rainbow

Not so much to show this time. Just two lucky shots that I took with the Canon Ixus 850 right outside our frontdoor short after a heavy rainshower. Lucky in a sense that the rainbow appeared just outside in front of our place.

A total view of the rainbow

And a close-up

Pubcats again

In this, this and this posting I posted about pubcats before. Last Thursday we met another pubcat in our hometown Utrecht. Like most pubcats this one was spoiled too. He or she (we didn't check and we didn't ask) was treated like a king/queen by the pubowner. While the cat was sitting next to us on a chair he/she was brought water at the table, shortly followed by some catfood. It was funny to watch. The cat obviously enjoyed all the attention from the owner and from us and behaved like a regular customer of the pub.

After some time he/she thought it was about time to get some fresh air and the cat walked out of the window. You should know that the pub is next to the canal and the groundfloor of the pub is about 7 or 8 metres above the water. Outside the window in the back at the canal there was only a small sloping roof with a windowsill. The cat looked very relaxed and confident and did this obviously more often. So the cat just sat down the end of the windowsill and enjoyed the view over the canal.

N. and I mangaged to take some funny and nice pictures from the cat and from the view on the canal from the window. Some of the results will be shown below.

Utrecht sunset

Just a few pictures that I took last Mondaynight from the sunset as seen from our conservatorybalcony with the outlines of the playground, the railways, and the children's farm.

For a second the sun was gone

Advertising new weblog and one preview pic

Just a quick note. First I want to advertise my new weblog BrownNoiseMusic which I started last Monday. If your familiar with BrownNoisePhotos the name doesn't need much explanation, I guess. BrownNoise is of course the nickname I choosed when I started this photoweblog in August 2005. In this post I explained where the name BrownNoise comes from. So when BrownNoisePhotos is about pictures and photography then it won't surprise you that BrownNoiseMusic is about music. At BrownNoiseMusic you'll find future reports about new musical discoveries I did (old and new stuff), reviews about new CD's I've listened to, music-DVD's I've watched, interesting or fascinating musicvideos I found on the net. You can find posts about classical music, jazz, pop, rock, indie, singer-songwritermusic, world music etc...

In the near future I also might start a weblog about movies and one about books/literature. It probably won't be hard to find out what the name of those weblogs will be.

To finish this post I'll end with a preview of some pics I will post within a few days. This one was made a week ago during a cyclingtrip I've made through one of my regular routes next to the river Vecht. It is a remarkable and noticeable markingpoint in the landscape, although I must admit I didn't notice it during one of my previous cyclingtrips. But because it was on the other side of the river Vecht and I probaly was paying attention to the traffic on my side of the river I didn't saw it before. It's some kind of electricity distribution house.

Today I also went on a cyclingtrip in the early morning. During this trip I shot mostly pictures of birds with newborn babies. I'll post some pics from this trip also later this week.

More pictures will follow soon during the upcoming week.

Yamato - Impressive Drumgroup from Japan

Basically this is a photoweblog. So besides some short announcements most of the time I post pictures with some backgroundinformation. But occasionaly I'll make an exeption. Once I wrote about the Egyptian weblogger Alaa and several others who were detained by the police while demonstrating peacefully in support of the independence of the judiciary in Egypt (see here). And I wrote e few times about the International Film Festifal (IFFR) in Rotterdam (see here).

Tonight I want to write something about a show that a friend and I visited Sundayafternoon in our hometown Utrecht from Yamato, a Japanese percussion/drumgroup from Nara. Unfortunately my girlfriend couldn't join because she had to work.

Nara was one of the former capitals of Japan before Kyoto, Kamakura and current Tokyo, although stricly speaking Kamakura was officially not a capital city, but the chief city during the Heian period of one of the shogunates. BTW Heian in Japanese means peace or tranquility. But don't let's go to deep into that.

I was talking about Yamato. I've seen them twice before during a previous worldtour about 6 years ago. I was very much impressed then as I was again this Sundayafternoon. It's a combination of a visual spectacle, with good use of light and a very energetic and impressive performance of musical skills. They are now in the middle of their European Tour. You can check Yamato's schedule. If you have the chance to visit I would highly recommend to go.

Judging by the number of performances in Holland (41), I guess Yamato has a special relationship with Holland. Maybe it has to do with the long relationshp between Japan and Holland which started 407 years ago on 19 April 1600 with the Dutch ship "De Liefde" (Love) which was the first Dutch ship that reached Japan and marked a long intensive trade relationship. For more than 200 Years the Dutch were the only Westerners allowed in Japan. During that time they were staying at Dejima, a small artificial island in the bay of Nagasaki.

Anyway, enough history lessons. I have embedded a video I found on YouTube from Yamato where they are performing on German television. If you have a subwoofer connected to your PC, I would recommend to turn it on. Be prepared that you could end up in an argument with your neighbours. It gives you a bit of an impression. But nothing beats a live performance by Yamato. If you want to feel the air move and experience goose bumps as a chemical respond on the moving air I would suggest that you visit a concert of Yamato. Enjoy!

Here you can check some more videos of Yamato.

Vote for me

Just a short request to my regular visitors and to the visitors who get here by coincidence. If you visit here and if, for some odd reason, you like what you see, please hit the "Vote for me"-button in the right sidebar. It looks like this:

It will give this weblog a higher ranking and I've notice on my webstatistics it will draw some more visitors.

Other buttons that involve blogdirectories are:

and:

You'll find these buttons also on the right sidebar a little below the "Vote for me"-button. Clicking on these buttons also will give me a higher ranking and possibly more visitors.

There is no pricewinning involved. It only will make me a happier weblogger.

Thanks!

Listen to the radio (update)

Update: made some changes in paragraph 3 of this post.

My Girlfriend was on Japanese national radio yesterday. She appeared on NHK-radio. NHK is Japan's national broadcasting company, to compare with the BBC in Great Britain. My girlfriend's contribution was recorded last week on the phone and was broadcastred yesterday. It's a programme about Japanese living abroad. The persons who appear on the programme give a short report about the hometown or country they are living or answering questions. Some time ago she was asked to prepare a report for the programme.

My girlfriend's report was about our hometown Utrecht and about the famous Dutch designer and architect Gerrit Rietveld and his Rietveld-Schröder-house. This house is also on the Unesco's world heritage list. During the broadcasting of my girlfriend's report the radiostation showed webcamimages on the internet of the studio and at the same time they showed some pictures my girlfriend provided. She made some screenshots of it which are shown below. In her report she also mentioned the artist and graphic designer Dick Bruna, another famous person from our hometown Utrecht, known worldwide for his creation Miffy or in Dutch Nijntje.

The radio programme can be heard here. I've replaced the original link to the streaming audio file of the radio programme by a MP3-file with my girlfriend's performance. Of course it's all in Japanese. The programme was available until Friday March 16. I manage to record the streaming audio, so my girlfriend's contribution is now available as a MP3-file. Now you have to download the file. I'm still figuring out how to to play the file as streaming audio. Don't have much experience with that so far. So if someone has any suggestions, please feel free. BTW, the title of the post was inspired by a song from Tom Robinson, "Listen to the Radio"

After the screenshots you can see a few pictures I made myself of the Rietveld-Shröder-house. I visited here twice. A very interesting place. It's visited by tourists and mainly students from all over the world who study design or architecture. Although the house was built in 1924 it still looks modern in 2007.

Some maintenance and some animalpics

I have been doing some maintenance on my weblog. Since January I'm using the New Blogger. One of the new features is the use of labels. The past few days I went through all my previous posts, added labels and added also some extra links to backgroundinformation related to the subject(s) of the post. If you click on a label you'll get all the posts with the same label.

This time some animalpics that were shot in our hometown Utrecht both by my girlfriend and me with her camera. She took care of the dog pics and I took care of the cat pics

Looks like I've created a monster. A typical case of shooting a picture at the wrong moment. If you didn't know better you would think that the cat was very vicious and ready to scratch my eyes out. But she was only yawning.

This is how the cats looks like when she's not yawning.
I've posted about the cat and the bulldog before in this post.
The dog didn't look very clever, but he compensated it with his friendlyness and enthusiasm

If my owner would tie me up to the bicycle and went for shopping I would thought: "Screw you guys I'm going home". (With thanks to Eric Cartman from Southpark)

The end of an era

Last Saturday we went for the last time to our favorite pancake- and poffertjes (tiny pancakes) shop in our hometown Utrecht. The place was called Victor Consael and was a well known local place. Due to a new restructuring plan around their location and because they didn't want to fight (again) with the local authorities about a new location, they decided to quit. The stand and the household furniture have been sold. They will start a new place, but unfortunately it will be outside Utrecht. I wish them well and hope their new business will succeed.

This is too bad. Little by little the city is taken over by property developers turning characteristic city centres into the same looking boring shopping centres with the same store chains you find in lots of other cities.

I also feel disappointed because of nostalgic reasons. Victor Consael is already existing since 1850 (!!). They use to have a mobile stand traveling from fair to fair. Since 1974 they have a stationary stand in the city centre and I start visiting there as a kid of 8 years old, 33 years ago. It was a characteristic place in the city centre. It was the best pancakeplace of the Utrecht area and probably the best poffertjes place of the Netherlands.

Here are some pics taken by my girlfriend of what we ate through the years. The picture of the stand I got from internet.

Just removed some stuff

Welcome and a happy New Year to all my visitors!

I just removed the Neo Counter- and the Neo Earth- banners. I knew when I signed in I could try the paid version for two weeks and after that it would change to the free version. But I didn't expect that the free version would look that crappy, so I just removed the banners. Although the paid version looked nice, there is no way I'm going to pay 30 Dollars ( a year) for some nice banners.

Some maintenance and Blogger trouble

The past three, four days I had trouble logging in at Blogger. This is pretty annoying. The past weeks I hardly had time to post and now I have time I can't log in to post. I'll keep it short for now. You never know how long this will be working.

I did some maintenance on the template. I removed a banner on the right side, which was slowing down the loading time of the weblog very much. Instead of this banner I add banners from Neo counter and Neo earth. These banners show the flags of the countries of your visitors and the Neo Earth banner shows a map with the location of the city of your visitors. You have some flexibility to change the lay out of the banners. I think they look pretty nice.

To all my viewers/visitors I wish everybody a merry X-mas and for later of course a Happy, Healthy and prosperous New Year.

See you later!

Update: The problems still remain. I had to post from a different computer. Have no idea what the bottleneck is which cause this problem. Anti-virus/firewall software, provider, hardware (modem/router)?? I'll hope this will be solved soon.

Anyway, have a great New year celebration and see you back next year.

Advertising other websites/blogs

I didn't took much new pictures the past weeks and I also didn't scan much slides or negatives. So this time I would like to make some advertisement for two weblogs. I also added their URL's on the sidebar on the right.

The first one is a cartoonweblog made by my partner and future wife Noriko. I copied three images from her cartoonweblog. The rest of her cartoonweblog can be checked here. The story based on the daily life in Utrecht is in Japanese right now, but maybe there will be an English version in the near future.

The style of the comic is known as Manga, the Japanese word for comics or print cartoons.

This is just an example of three images of the cartoon. the rest of the cartoon can be seen here.

The second weblog is a photoweblog run by my mother in law in Tokyo.

I copied a few images to here but there are loads of pictures overthere, so if these copied pictures here made you curious, you can check the rest here.

There are some really nice pictures on my mother in law's photoweblog. Photography is one of her hobbies and I think she often has a good eye for things.

Christmas atmosphere in Tokyo, Japan.

I have no idea where this picture was taken, but I like it for some reason.

A gorgeous autumn view from Japan.

This one was taken at Lafayette a huge departmentstore in Paris.

This is Hana-chan a semi-straycat that's getting feed for some years now by my mother in law. In the beginning she was a bit frightened for people, but nowadays she is less shy.