De VWA schrijft dat zij het toezicht op veetransporten, slachterijen en vleesverwerkers dit jaar tot een minimum zal terugbrengen.De autoriteit kan ook niet voldoende toezicht houden op toevoegingen aan vlees. Bovendien wordt 25 procent van de geregistreerde bedrijven niet meer ten minste één keer per jaar gecontroleerd, zoals wettelijk verplicht is.
bron: nu.nl

Herbivoor, carnivoor of omnivoor goed eten is belangrijk en de controle op ons voedsel is van levensbelang. Als bovenstaande correct is, vraag ik me af hoe dit wordt verantwoord. Wellicht een goed moment om voor de zekerheid vegetariër te worden. Tenminste totdat bekend wordt dat er ook te weinig geld is om toe te zien op de verbouwing van groente en fruit. Bizar.

I really enjoyed Iron and Wine playing in Paradiso Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Luckily they allowed Fabchannel to record the show so you may enjoy it as well. Most of their songs were in a completely different arrangement than on their records which made it even more interestingly for me. Just one minor remark: There was virtually no interaction between the band and the audience.

Last year around this time I wrote an article about a new conference in Amsterdam focussed on creativity called Cross Media Week/Picnic. This year Picnic will be organized for the second time and I would like to share my thoughts about this conference from last year.

Picnic was initiated by Marleen Stikker, director of Waag Society and Bas Verhart CEO of Media Republic. An interesting match of two -usually- more distant worlds. Waag Society, a foundation mostly working on cultural and a bit more experimental ‘arty’ projects and Media Republic, a more corporate and commercial entity. At that moment I was still working at Waag Society and at first I was thrilled by the prospect of seeing these two worlds come together at this conference called Picnic. However my enthousiasme was soon replaced by astonishment.

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Yeah! The wordpress mu tags plugin I’ve built for the Dutch public broadcaster VPRO is live at Radio 6.

Henry Rollins, one of my hero’s of the 80′ and 90’s has a thing to say.

I still dig his way with words, some people might find him offensive, but just look beyond it and you’ll see a linguistic artist with a message to convey. He certainly has the same passion and drive as he had while singing for THE punk hardcore band Black Flag and later on The Rollins Band.

Thanks Maarten

…and I agree with that critique. The whole LiveEarth thing was in my opinion highly questionable on all accounts and I feel sorry for all those really striving towards a better future.

Lately it sounds like environmentalism and sustainability are becoming a fad and everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. Most of those actually should really just start with – the the old saying- “practice what you preach ” and  as we tend to say here: A better world starts with yourself.  Jonah Golberg put this into a column of which the introduction is hilarious if it wasn’t actually probably quite accurate and therefor sad.

‘IF YOU WANT to save the planet, I want you to start jumping up and down. Come on, mother-[bleepers]!” Madonna railed from the stage at London’s Live Earth concert Saturday. “If you want to save the planet, let me see you jump!”

You just can’t beat that. What else could capture the canned juvenilia of a 48-year-old centimillionaire — who owns nine homes and has a “carbon footprint” nearly 100 times larger than the norm — hectoring a bunch of well-off, aging hipsters to show their Earth-love by jumping up and down like children?

Read the rest of ‘Live Earth: Dead on arrival‘ by Jonah Goldberg

I need a new phone.

No, I don’t want an iPhone.

I want a phone that does whatever I want it to do. I want a phone that allows me to create software for it without having to pay large sums for SDK’s (which usually don’t work on anything but Windows!). I want to phone that allows me to call. I want a phone that allows me to hook-up a keyboard, so I can send text messages just as fast as my friends or faster. I want a phone that allows me to sync my data back and forth with other appliances.

I hope the openmoko will be that phone. I just have to wait another three months.

I’m on my way to the iSummit in Dubrovnik (Croatia). Thanks to the scholarship I got from the iCommons organisation I will be able to participate in the event for those involved in Creative Commons and related topics.

Last year I also participated at the iSumit in Brazil as part of the Dutch Creative Commons team and it was the anxious long trip (I really dislike flying! Kinda like B.A.) to Brazil more than worth! I hope this year will be just as rewarding. I will be discussing some of my ideas regarding the commons and open formats. Ideas which have been brewing for the last three months or so and which have lead to the start of Spreadopenmedia.com together with Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves (involved with Xiph.org among others) and more recently Jon Philips (involved with Creative Commons .org). At this moment Spread Open Media is still more an idea / thought than a working project and I’m looking forward to discuss these indeas at the summit!

I plan to blog about these thoughts as soon as I have the time.

Recently we moved into a new nice appartement. Besides that moving is not my cup of tea I’ve also put a lot of strain on my back. This resulted in a bit of stiff back, but nothing to serious. Then I also moved into a new nice office together with Marten Timan (with whom I usually work together on things like Simuze) and during this move I completly screwed up my back. Lifting some table resulted in having to tolerate a pain I never had before. It felt like somebody putting in screws in between my vertebrae while pouring hot lead between them. In short: it hurted like hell!

Since then I’ve been undergoing fysio therapy and I got the advice to move a lot. It has gotten a bit better as I can now sit for short periods at a time. Whereas before I could hardly sit at all and I was basically either lying down or (more or less) walking. All of this caused a lot of frustration.

Today I got behind my computer and I finally managed to do some work without too much pain. I’m terrible slow (due to the regular intervals of walking around and excercise), but I’m mighty glad to be able to do something at least.

I’m just really happy with my clients who have all taken this very well and supportive and I hope to be completely better as soon as possible.

So if I haven’t heard from me, now you know why.

ps: And yes, the previous post were automated, so now you know my secret to more or less continues blogging

It will be a bit quiet here until I’ve moved out of my old room and into our new appartment…