Rocking monk

Now this is the craziest thing I have heard for a long time. Listening to the radio (in Dutch) I heard about this Capuchin monk, brother Cesare Bonizzi, who is a grey haired, bearded 62 year old frontman for a heavy metal band. Infected by Metallica, he started up the band which has now produced two albums. Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll!!

(Well, not sex obviously because he's still a monk)

Wanna buy a house in Den Bosch?

In moving to Amsterdam, my house in Den Bosch became empty. I rented it out for a little while to test the market and to get settled in in the new life, but now that my tenants have moved out I have decided to sell the house. It's a beautiful apartment, right in the city centre. You'll love it.

There is a dutch language advertisment on Funda, see here. Otherwise you can mail me at majikthijs@gmail.com.


Everything must go!

Kiran on YouTube

Kiran is walking (with some help). I captured this video this morning (Queen's Day) and now it's on YouTube. Hello world!

Google: don't be evil

Google has shown its true colours and, like so many before, have abandoned the noble principles upon which they were founded in favour of market share and dividend. I am talking, of course about the search engine supplied by Google to China which supports the restriction of searches for information which is censored by the Chinese Government. I don't get wound up by many things, but hypocrisy is one of them. A company which purports itself to be based on noble precepts should stick to them. Google does not have the responsibility to ensure that information gets on to the web, but it does have the responsibility as a search engine to be able to find what is there. The whole idea of Google is that if the page is deemed important by other web users, then the page will get on top of the rankings. If one of these pages happens to be censored by the Chinese government, then the Chinese will be closed off from what everyone else apparently finds incredibly important.

So, follow the link, read about what Google are doing. Go ahead and cut and paste the letter to Eric Schmidt (Google's CEO) and send it. It will take you a few moments and cost you one sheet of A4 paper, a bit of ink and less than one euro postage (€0.81 to be exact). Ironically the link has a page rank of 6. I wonder if the Chinese will be getting it; probably not if Google has anything to do with it.

Furthermore, I realise that I am also being a hypocrite, using a Google based blog site and also Google ads, so I will shortly be migrating to another blog site; the ads, as you can see, have already been removed.

AdSense

Ok, in a brazen attempt to eek some money out of the internet, I have allowed Google to pollute this blog with a bit of AdSense. That means that if you click on the adverts on this page, I get paid for it. You don't even have to buy anything. Go on, you're probably only wasting your bosses time anyway, so you might as well reward me for allowing you to waste even more of it. Or, if you're at home and still using Windows Exploder as a web-browser, then use the link in the sidebar to download Firefox for free. I use Firefox myself (and its companion Thunderbird which is a step up from Outlook 2003). Support open source software (and me) and download Firefox and install it on your computer. For my Dutch fans, you can download the software in Dutch too and there are lots of cool features, like pop-up blocker, tabbed browsing, password manager and generally looking cool and groovy. And it costs absolutely NOTHING AT ALL! What a bargain.

A married man

Well, here I am, almost a dad and now a married man. We got officially married on the 10th of May. We bought rings from a goldsmith in Amsterdam. The name of the studio is Studio Matrix and it is located in the Prinseneiland neighbourhood, just to the north-east of Amsterdam central station. We had been there a few years ago during an open studio weekend. The area in question is home to quite a high concentration of artists and once a year they open their studios to the public. We went to look at the jewellery in this studio and I was so taken with the designs I started to ask the smith about his colouring technique. The majority of the jewellery contained titanium and having worked with this material in my Master's thesis, I was intrigued at how he had achieved such beautiful results.

I decided then that I wanted to buy a wedding ring from him one day, so when we decided to get married, I immediately thought of the studio and we went there on the Saturday before the wedding to choose a ring. Strangely enough we decided on more or less the same ring. I knew straight away which one I wanted, but Mrs. M wasn't so sure. After a while she tried on the one I had, (which of course was miles too big), but she liked it. After a bit of 'hmm'ing and 'aah'ing she asked if he could make a ring in her size before the wedding. He could and only three days later Mrs. M picked up the rings which we were to give one another the following day.

If you are in Amsterdam (or in the vicinity) and you want unique jewellery at a reasonable price, you would do well to look up Studio Matrix. The smith is a very modest man in the best sense of the word. He didn't rush us, was very supportive and critical in our choices and was also very accommodating in making a ring more or less to Mrs. M's specification.

It's a GIVEthing

Ok everyboy and everygirl, I want to tell you about a great idea created by my blogshares friend , StoryCharms, who has used Audrey Hepburn (IMHO one of the most beautiful women of all time) as her avatar.

Anyway, StoryCharms has started up a new 'community portal' website (clink the link) for people to discuss charities, fundraising events and basically anything which is related to GIVING (that's why it's called a GIVEthing, folks.) She has even designed buttons for people to say that they GIVE.

This is the sort of thing that we all think about as being a great idea, but it has actually been done and the site is quite user friendly and IMHO quite pretty. I especially like the little plaster icons used for the forum threads. So, go on, GIVE it a try, GIVE today. Or at least talk about it on StoryCharm's site.

And, a big

to StoryCharms, who also sent me this button.

My blogshares avatar

or is it this one?

BlogShares - my latest addiction

I have discovered the ultimate way to avoid work (and life) - mucking around on blogshares (see link). This is a tremendously ingenious idea: trading shares in weblogs, generating ideas and artefacts and amassing chips and karma. I have no idea how it all works really, but it's great fun, and if you have your own blog and claim it, then you get 1000 free shares in your blog to play with, on top of the B$500 just for joining up. The atmosphere is friendly and helpful and with the aid of some ultra-rich players, I have managed to scrape a respectable B$4billion (yes, you read it correctly, a 4 with 9 noughts) together in just 24 hours, giving me an overal ranking of 841 and a phenomenal growth figure with too many noughts to remember. I can now sit back and enjoy the fruits of my not-so-hard-earned cash trying to work out how the whole game works.

By the way the graph shows just how amazingly the share price of this blog is doing. Get some shares before they get too expensive, link your blog to this one and watch your investment grow.....

How will I die

Now this is what I call wasting time. Try this quiz and find out the manner in which you are most likely to meet your end. Apparently I will end up just getting lost and disappearing into thin air....

Haiku-a-go-go

Yipppeee, what can I say more? For the first time in my life I actually won a competition for my writing. I was absolutely flabbergasted to read on the rummaging blog that I had won the haiku competition of recent fame. The prize is so much more than the iPod shuffle on offer (which of course is also a bonus), but the fact that I have a fan out there in webland. I haven't been particularly attentive to my own blog of late, so I will take this momentous occasion to avail you of the remainder of my entries to the competition. If you want to know which of my entries won, then follow the link.

Feedback given for the tent (see earlier post)
Divine Contentment
I hope u like ur new tent
and a dry summer

The secret is that it was me in disguise. I had already sold the tent and rather than disappoint the bidder (whose bid was way below the value of the tent) I used my sannyas name (which means divine contentment) to open a different account and buy the tent from myself. Sneaky eh?

I gave myself the following feedback for this item:
Super ebayer.
Smooth as clockwork transaction.
Bring on the summer!

I mean, you can tell it's me, can't you?

So, on to a legitimate transaction, namely for a two player card game which I sold. What I didn't tell the buyer was that the reason I was selling the game was that my girlfriend and I played the game twice and each time it ended in a huge fight. I wish the buyer the best luck in the world with the game because I genuinely liked it, having won both times in a most ruthless manner, thereby offending my girlfriend's sensibilities and sense of proportion. Here is my feedback haiku:
A card game lover,
who lives in the neighbourhood,
will enjoy his buy

But whether his girlfriend will enjoy it is another matter.....

So, now I will just sit back and await the arrival of my iPod shuffle. The down side is of course that rummaging is stopping indefinitely and that is a big shame, but I wish him luck in his new ventures and maybe he will come back to haunt us one day. I mailed him my address so he could send the prize, but I already got the real prize: my own creativity and the appreciation of at least one of my peers. Pretty groovy, huh?

More haiku

I have been feeling in a very poetic mood recently, largely due to the e-bay haiku competition. It really inspired me to take a look at the things we take for granted in the world and to bring my creativity into even the most mundane actions, such as leaving feedback and selling my old gear to turn a fast buck (and clear out my appartment). The point is that it is precisely the performance of a purely aesthetic act that raises us above the ordinary. Beauty does not have to be superfluous nor secondary to function and indeed well designed functionality has a sort of beauty to it. This is why, for example, the Eiffel tower is both a work of art and a pinnacle of engineering excellence. This is a point that many designers and engineers of the post-war period appear to have forgotten. Just look at the post-war inner-city planning and architecture in any large European city and you will se many ugly, concrete blocks which have been thrown up without the slightest regard to the visual appearance. Even the functionality of such buildings can be called into doubt because they were generally badly lit and poorly laid out. I am not an architect so I will stop there.

Anyway, the point of this post was to add a few haiku to the collection and not to rant about aesthetics and form vs function.

So here they are, the haiku of the week:
Feedback left for a dvd seller after behind-the-scenes negotiations which resulted in a partial refund
Any transaction
successfully completed
brings joy to your life

Yes! I sold my first item on e-bay (but got stiffed with the postage)
Your hard earned money
as it hits my bank account:
the sun shines brightly

And the feedback from the buyer
Snelle levering,
verrassend leuke feedback:
een tevreden man

In English (amazingly it translated perfectly into a haiku)
Fast delivery,
surprisingly good feedback:
a satisfied man

e-bay haiku competition

A little while ago I was skimming the internet and I came across the rummaging blog. They are (were if you're reading this after the end of June 2005) running a haiku competition for e-bay sales within which a haiku poem is inserted. The haiku should not refer to the competition nor to rummaging, but should appear as though it was intended solely as a sales aid. I have submitted more than one haiku in the attempt to win an i-pod shuffle. Don't know if I'll win, but it's a great idea.

Selling a DVD of the first series of kung-fu
David Carradine
acting like a Grasshopper
should have been Bruce Lee

Feedback left for a seller of a well packaged dvd
you sent me a disc,
ingeniously packed,
like the spring blossom

And this one for my tent
open up the zip
when everything is wet:
a tent keeps you dry

For those of you who don't know what haiku is, try this website

I'll keep you informed of the outcome..

On the subject of swords...

After a visit to the Atsuta shrine (熱田神宮) in Nagoya, Japan I was inspired to dig into the history of the famous sword which is housed there. It is not possible to see the sword, or even enter the shrine: this is a privilege reserved only for members of the imperial family and high ranking priests of the temple itself. The sword is one of the three imperial treasures [1] of Japan and has a fascinating history, going to the very heart of Japanese Shintoism.

Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi (草薙の剣 Grass cutter) is a legendary Japanese sword, the history of which dates back to the legend of when the Japanese god of storms, Susano-O no Mikoto, encountered a grieving family headed by Ashi na Zuchi. The elder told that his family was ravaged by Yamata no Orochi, the fearsome 8-headed serpent of Koshi, who consumed seven of the family's eight daughters and was coming for his final daughter, Kushi-Nada-Hime. Susano-O proceeded forward to investigate the creature, and after an abortive encounter he returned with a plan to defeat it. In return, he asked for Kushi-Nada-Hime's hand in marriage which was agreed. Transforming her temporarily into a comb to have her company during the battle, he set his plan in motion.

He instructed 8 vats of sake to be put on individual platforms positioned behind a fence with 8 gates. The monster took the bait and put each of its heads through each of the gates. With the necessary distraction provided, Susano-O attacked and slew the beast. He decapitated each of the heads and then proceeded to the tails. In the fourth tail, he discovered a great sword inside the body of Yamata no Orochi which he called Murakakumo no Tsurugi (Two-edged-straight-sword-of-the-village-of-the-clustering-clouds). To settle an old grievance, he presented to his sister, the sun-goddess Amaterasu Omikami.

Amaterasu entrusted the Imperial Regalia [1] to her grandson Ninigi when he descended to the Japanese Islands. Ninigi’s decent to earth established the divine origins of the Yamato clan. He married a descendant of the storm god Susano-O and had a son Jimmu; he was the first Emperor of Japan. The Imperial Regalia are said to have passed from emperor to emperor until later in the reign of the 12th emperor, Keiko, the sword was given to the great warrior, Yamato-Dake as part of a pair of gifts given by his aunt, Yamato-Hime, to protect his nephew in peril.

These gifts came in handy when Yamato-Dake was lured onto open grassland during a hunting expedition by a treacherous warlord. The lord had fiery arrows fired to ignite the grass to trap Yamato-Dake in the field and have him burn to death. He also had the warrior's horse killed to prevent his escape. Desperately, Yamato-Dake used Murakakumo no Tsurugi to cut back the grass to remove fuel from the fire, but in doing so, he discovered that the sword enabled him to control the wind around him to make it move in the direction he swung. Taking advantage of the magic, Yamato-Dake used his other gift, fire strikers, to enlarge the fire in the direction of the warlord and his men and used the winds controlled by the sword to sweep the blaze toward them to kill them. In triumph, Yamato-Dake renamed Murakakumo no Tsurugi as Kusanagi (Grass cutter) to commemorate his narrow escape and victory. Eventually, Yamato-Dake married and fell in battle with a monster after ignoring his wife's advice to take Kusanagi with him.

At one time, the emperor possessed a real sword with this name. Along with the jewel and the mirror, it was one of the three imperial regalia until the Battle of Dannoura (1185), a naval battle that ended in the defeat of the forces of the child Emperor Antoku at the hands of Minamoto no Yoshitsune. Upon hearing of the defeat, the emperor's grandmother led the Emperor and his entourage to commit suicide (by drowning) in the waters of the strait along with three important artefacts which included Kusanagi. Although the enemy managed to stop a handful of them and recovered two of the three regalia of the Emperor, Kusanagi was never found. Emperor Sujin, ordered the fashioning of a replica of Kusanagi which can be found at the Atsuta Shrine in Nagoya. The actual Kusanagi [2] is likely to have been a sword in the style of the Bronze Age, typically double-edged and straight (very much different from the more recent sabre style katana, with its typical curved single-edged blade).

[1] The Japanese imperial regalia, "Sanshu no jingi", or "Three Sacred Treasures", consisted of the sword "Kusanagi no tsurugi", the jewel "Yasakani no magatama", and the mirror "Yata no kagami".
[2] The complete name of the Imperial sword is Kusanagi no-tsurugi which means "grass parting two-edged straight blade”.

Plastic charity wristands

Got slightly wound up about the above article (follow link) on the charity bracelet phenomenon that is taking the (western) world by storm, with the things being sold on e-bay for twice or three times the original price. There are several issues here, not the least being that not all the money goes to the charity. It can be as little as one third of the original purchase price, somewhere around 33 pence, in the UK. Secondly, the bracelets are available for multiple charities in different colours and they seem to have evolved from the 'friendship' bracelet idea. In short, they are a fashion statement for students, teenagers and trendies. The practicality of the thing is not an issue in my mind, it is a good idea and the charities are cashing in on it: if not to the full extent, it is still income.

The thing that seems to have caught the criticism of the Guardian (among others who will undoubtedly come along at some stage) is that the bracelets are actually being manufactured in sweatshops in China. Ironically (so it would seem) the company involved in this so called scandal, in fact produces bracelets for the Make Poverty History campaign. The Guardian, among others, would have us believe that it is scandalous for a company dedicated to ending poverty to actually use cheap labour working in terrible conditions. I don't know the campaign or it's policies for co-operation (ethical trading initiative) so I will reserve comment for the time being, but what I will say that having actually visited China and having seen how people chose to live and work (yes there are people with jobs and money), then it is not quite easy to imagine that the conditions are not what we would tolerate in the West. It doesn't necessarily mean that they are being exploited, any more than fair traders in the Windward Isles are being exploited for growing bananas in a traditional way (i.e. climbing trees without a safety net or harness).

The idea of fair trade is that you operate with companies and sell their products in a receptive market and you set some standards for wages and conditions that are at least as good, if not better than those of other local companies of a similar nature in that country. Ideally the next step is to gradually improve safety, working environment and conditions by education. There are always companies which operate outside of the ethical standards (this also happens in Europe), but just running away from them doesn’t solve the problem or help the employees to get better conditions and pay.

I guess my point is that I think we in the west have a very rosy view of the world and how it should be and we lose sight of the fact that not everyone in the world enjoys such luxury as we do and, surprisingly, that they get along quite ok without it.

More on this later......

Rummaging around on e-bay

On the subject of excellent blogs, if you are stuck for reading material whilst sitting bored at your computer desperately trying to look like you are doing some work, then I suggest this one. Be warned, spontaneous burst of laughter will probably alert your colleagues to the fact that you are not assiduously finishing your assignment on the financial structure of Enron, but rather reading about the next internet art scam: toast and text messages.

Darth Vader Superstar

I just discovered this absolutely brilliant blog. George Lucas, eat your heart out! This is truly the most creative Star Wars related item to have been launched in the last 10 years. If you do not love this blog then watch out for your trachea. Dark, clever and not just a little funny, this blog will win you over to the Dark Lord, if not the dark side.

The first post

Blankness fills my mind as I struggle to find something worthwhile to disturb the purity of the blank blog page which I have created. From here on in, it will only get worse, so enjoy the feeling of openness and space currently being offered by this blog.