[insert witty title]

I just saw this video and my mind was completely blown, the only description on the video’s page is this:

Originally built in 1901, this walkway now serves as an aproach to makinodromo, the famous climbing sector of El Chorro.

This really doesn’t do it justice, just check this out:

I think I could probably have followed along up to the point where he WAS WALKING ON RUSTY PIPES THOUSANDS OF FEET ABOVE SOME ROCKS.

Balls of steel.

late edit: I just realized that this is exactly like a level out of Half Life

This is probably the best roadsign I have ever seen:

It got a smile out of me pretty much every time I drove past it. Have you seen any better roadsigns?

This is really amazing, and also really creepy

I can’t even begin to imagine how long it took to make this using only a digital camera

I read this article today, it’s about how archaeology isn’t actually as exciting as Indiana Jones makes out.

“There are codes of ethics in archaeology, and I don’t think he would be a member. Not in good standing, anyway,”

“I spent a lot of time walking in cornfields and soy bean fields in the Midwest, and nothing very dramatic ever happened while I was out looking for artifacts,” said Rose of the Archaeological Institute

“I wish he’d take more notes and things. What’s his publication record?” Zimansky said. “But I don’t think anybody ever bought the ethos of Indiana Jones as a real career track.”

The cynical side of me thinks that perhaps these guys are just trying to keep down the number of people that become adventure-archaeologists. Seriously, there are only a certain number of minotaur filled labyrinths, holy grail death temples and zombie filled pyramids. They want to keep the goodies for themselves.

I’d also like to see a series of articles like this on different jobs, for example astronauts could explain that a shuttle flight isn’t really like Star Wars, a zookeeper could explain that chimps are not actually as big as King Kong and a computer programmer could tell us that you don’t program computers like in the Matrix (he can see through the code, man).

Finally, probably my favourite thing about the article is that it lets us know that the only people who do any real archaeology in the films are the nazis, and Indiana Jones kills loads of them and steals artifacts

“The one thing we do worry quite a bit about is the looting aspect, because archaeological looting is really a serious issue,” Murowchick said. “This kind of glorifying of breaking into a tomb and snagging a crystal this or golden that feeds into the notion that these are valuable objects, and we should all get it while we can.”

I noticed the other day that the Dutch words for many articles of punctuation are really literal, and just describe what the symbols look like. For example:

# = hekje = little gate
* = sterretje = little star
() = haakjes = little hooks
^ = dakje = little roof
@ = apestaart = monkey tail
: = dubblepunt = double full stop
; = puntcomma =full stop comma
& = en-teken = and symbol

I like this a lot, it’s a lot easier to remember than the unintuitive English equivalents (colon, ampersand, asterisk). I want to start using the English versions of these in everyday conversation:

“Ok so my email address is cmb, then the monkeytail button…”
“To unlock your phone press the little gate button, then 07 then the little star button”
“Yeah it’s the text between the little hook things that you’re looking for…”

Today I fell off my bike, and it got me thinking about all the different times I had managed this feat since arriving in Holland. I remember three different occasions, it seems that I am very accident prone (read: shit at biking), and here they all are:

Crash #1: I’m like the sail on a boat

About two months ago a good friend of mine was leaving Holland for England. She didn’t have enough packing boxes, and I just happened to have a whole pile of the things sat mouldering away in my shed, naturally I volunteered to donate a couple of them to her. To give you some sense of how big these things are, they are full size tea chests, made of very thick cardboard. When they’re flattened down they’re easily over a meter square.

I decided that I would ride my bike with one box under each arm, as walking to her house would take rather a long time. The first section of the journey went just fine, I was riding slowly but surely, whilst cursing the strong wind blowing directly into my face. At one point I clearly recall thinking: “I’m glad this wind isn’t blowing sideways, it would probably knock me off the bike”. Somehow that thought had already left my head when I turned a 90 degree corner, was caught by a strong gust of wind, and was pushed hard into a hedge.

Damage done: Luckily thick cardboard boxes provide a comfy landing mat and I was unhurt.
Lesson learnt: If you have the profile of a ship’s sail do not ride perpendicular to the wind

Crash #2: I can ride through sand!

Riding along the shorefront at Katwijk shortly after a big windstorm I noticed a big pile of sand covering the bike lane, it was around a foot deep, it covered the bike lane left to right and went about 10-12 feet back.

“It’s only sand! Surely my bike will glide over that, for am going very fast” I thought without really thinking. It turns out that in reality roadbikes do not glide over sand drifts. Bikes actually plow into sand drifts, the wheels sink quickly and get choked with sand, the bike begins to skid, if the rider tries to brake his weight is shifted forwards giving the back wheel free reign to go whichever way it chooses, it probably does not go in a straight line, in fact from experience it jackknifes out sideways, and the rider is unceremoniously deposited on the ground.

Damage done: Bruised ego, found out that I did not actually have magic levitating bike powers.
Lesson learnt: You can, in fact, not ride through sand on a road bike.

Crash #3: Shopping Trip (today)

Returning from the Hoogvliet (supermarket) with a heavy load of shopping in a plastic bag gripped by the handle in my left arm. I glance down at my shiny new speedometer, you know, because it’s nice to see how fast I’m going. As I glance down I notice that the handle is slowly tearing from the shopping bag and my shopping will shortly be dashed over the floor. Rather than stop the bike and take care of it I decide that if I lift up the bag, rest it on the cross bar of the bike I’ll be able to readjust my grip lower down on the bag.

Turns out that trying this apparently simple maneuver was not such a good idea. As I lifted the bag up a car pulled out in front of me and I had to brake. The shopping bag swung forwards knocking my left handlebar forwards and causing me to swerve right. At the same time my left knee was raised by my pedalling motion, jamming the bag hard into the underside of the handlebar. I noticed that I was swerving towards a brick wall and leaned hard to the left, simultaneously trying to pull the only brake I could reach (my other hand still stuck in the shopping bag) at the same time I was backpedalling, trying to get the shopping bag free from underside of the handlebar. It almost worked, but by then it was too late and I was out of control, one handed, braking with only the back brake, and drifting closer to a brick wall.

At this point I have a very vivid recollection of what I thought, it was: “Oh, this is not good”

Then I hit the wall. Then I hit the floor.

Damage done: Left elbow is bleeding a lot, my left ankle is looking pretty manky, and my kneecap momentarily popped out of its socket, now I can’t support my own weight on my left leg and it hurts like buggery
Lesson learnt: If things begin to break you probably do need to stop, rather than fix them whilst travelling at 25.3 km/h

Ok so this guide is perhaps the most important thing I have ever written, and contains information that can change pretty much any life for the better. How to dress as a robot.

Here is what you need to look like a terrifying metal killing machine:

• One big box (body)
• One small box (head)
• A lot of aluminium foil
• Packing tape
• Two CDs

The pictures should be pretty much self explanatory, just cut some holes in the boxes and wrap them in aluminium foil.

That’s it, all done! You are now (if you weren’t already) a soulless killing machine.

This particular costume was left at a friend’s house after a Halloween party. A few days later he held a second Halloween party for his 4 year old son and some of the neighbourhood children. To get the kids excited about the celebration he wore the robot suit to collect his son from nursery that afternoon. As expected the kids all loved it and freaked out. However, in the evening one of the parents arrived at the party without his daughter because she was “too scared to come, because of the robot”

Hells yeah!

I have been planing on doing this for quite some time now, but it has finally happened. [iwt] is back. Over the past couple of months I really have missed writing on the internet every day, but really wanted a break after having done so for almost two years.

Now I am refreshed, ready to resume twatting about on the internet and aware that nobody reads this page any more!

Since I have a bit of spare time today I started by replacing the horrible header image. And then cleaned up the admin side of the blog, which got seriously messy over the past two years of installing every single plugin I could find, and never bothering to delete crap that I don’t use. In doing this I stumbled over the Search Stats. Every time somebody searches for something on the blog (the box to the top right of your screen) it keeps records. Here are 50 recent searches, I have bolded my favourite search terms:

smallville, lock, sex, layered liquids, bears, “i did not draw”, research paper, research paper, draw, draw, photoshopped pictures, photoshopped pictures, the shield, deformed cat, BigDog, tiger, science projects with house hold items, advert, muscular girls, yoghurt, what american state ends with three , trailer park boys, trailer park , corn , corn flour, knox cap, fishpondbubble07, shopper discounts, shopper , 24, cornstarch balls, heroes, asimov, easyjet, hero fountain, raptor jesus, blind cat, wikipedia, wikipedia, shopperdiscount, trinity, human weapon, plot, lethal weapon, urban exploring, time , Funny Farm, podcast, map, FOOD TEST, springer, hero’s fountain, mark steel lectures, mark steel lectures, mark steel, mark steel, tremendous kitten, liquid, liquid, layers, WHICH AMERICAN STATE HAS A NAME THAT ENDS IN 3 VOW

[iwt]: Your source for information on deformed cats, tremendous kittens and muscular girls.

…come to think of it I’m going to add that into rotation for the random taglines.

The Dutch government today asked me to fill in a large questionnaire concerning my experiences working for them. Everything was going fine until I ran into probably the most horrendous compound noun I have ever seen:

loopbaanontwikkelingsmogelijkheden

Gaaaaah! What. The. Fuck. Is. That.

Turned out that after the initial bafflement it was actually pretty easy to understand by splitting the word into pieces (loopbaan ontwikkelings mogelijkheden):

loopbaan = loop baan = the course of your work = career
ontwikkeling = development
mogelijkheden = possibilities

career development possibilities. I am actually very happy that I managed that without a dictionary

In other “things that amuse me about the Dutch language” news, the Dutch word for asparagus is asperges. Every single time I read that I just think of Aspergers syndrome.

Just because multiple people have complained about the creepy-ass gibbon gif having been at the top of the blog for months on end…

…[insert witty title] will return in the very near future.

The Gibbon has just become one of my favourite animals, mainly because they seem to take great delight in being absolute pricks towards other species. Check out a gibbon tormenting a dog:

I think the reason this video is so funny is that the gibbon actually looks like an ugly little human, and when he runs away with his arms flailing everywhere I can’t help but think of a mischievous little child. Second, and much more hardcore, a gibbon takes on two tigers:

Thank you Mr. Gibbon for being an absolute bastard to the other animals and really making me laugh.

When you want to present a message, the first thing people see, before even the words themselves is how they look. Consider, for example the following picture. Imagine it’s part of an advert for some clothes. What sort of shop would sell them? Would you expect the salesperson to be young or old?

Consider also a second example, our good old friend Comic Sans. The following sign is, to my eye, absolutely terrifying and I would not set foot in here in a million years:

also I would just be plain confused by:

I think it’s an uncontroversial fact that the appearance of a piece of advertising (be it billboard, website or powerpoint presentation) has a great effect on how we interpret the message.

A while ago I heard about a documentary called Helvetica, which explores where Helvetica came from, and how it is used today. On the face of it this sounds like the most mind-numbingly dull bit of TV ever, but I actually found Helvetica to be incredibly engaging, and it managed to weave an interesting and understandable story. After watching the documentary I noticed that Helvetica is everywhere, from warning signs to shops. If you keep your eyes open, it’s almost like a secret code (”Hello. We want to look modern and/or unobtrusive”). Here are a few photos I grabbed from the web in about five minutes:

Helvetica clearly and unobtrusively gives us information and commands. We’re surrounded by Helvetica to the point that we don’t even notice it any more. Below I have collected together a couple of clips from YouTube, showcasing Helvetica. Firstly, here is a short and pretty but completely uninformative trailer:

^{The font used throughout this trailer is not Helvetic, but Arial, Microsoft’s Helvetica-a-like font designed to avoid paying licencing fees. I guess this qualifies as probably the most subtle joke I’ve ever picked up on}

And here is a very nice two minute clip from the film itself. The two designers who are interviewed do a really good job of explaining how the choice of typeface can drastically change how people are going to perceive a message:

Watching this film has made me actually pay a bit of attention to typefaces in the world around me, and upon reflection I realize that somewhere along the line my mind took a real liking to the ‘Helvetica style’. To me seeing facts presented in this way brings to mind the sleek, clean lines of a Mac (where Helvetica is actually the default typeface in a lot of programs) and the cheap efficient design of Ikea (where Helvetica is used in almost everything). Grey Helvetica on a white background is pretty much the de-facto “clean, modern” look at the moment.

I would recommend Helvetica to anybody who has even a passing interest in aesthetics, it really made me think about how our emotional responses are tied to how information is presented, and taught me that when I give a powerpoint presenatation I can’t go far wrong by using Helvetica.

Mostly, though, I am glad that in watching this documentary I finally had chance to think through and articulate exactly why Comic Sans is a pile of shit.

edit: nearly forgot: http://www.helveticamovie.com

Browsing YouTube this morning, I noticed the following comment on a music video:

i am a heron. i ahev a long neck and i pick fish out of the water w/ my beak. if you dont repost this comment on 10 other pages i will fly into your kitchen tonight and make a mess of your pots and pans

That is pretty awesome. I hope posting the comment here counts as ten YouTube videos, because I don’t want my pots and pans to get messed up

comic source: xkcd

In the morning at work I usually take the lift to get to my office, recently I happened to glance at the writing on the lift control panel, here it is:

I’m riding in Schindler’s Lift!

edit: the title of this post is the first part of a Dutch tongue-twister, and translates to “the [good, precise, learned] barber cuts well”