5 minutes after I posted my entry on moving, I receive a comment from which I gather that a spamblog has hijacked/copied my post on an apparently totally new WordPress-spamblog of which I am not going to give the URL to prevent further idiocies…

Why? To install spyware? Have me click? Speaking of total wastes of times that make the world a worse place to live this sort of stuff must be in the top 10.

I was actually going to write that it’s not so bad with the Digitenne single tuner as I thought. I can turn on the timer of the videorecorder and turn off the tevee and still have it record. I just have to make sure the tuner is on & tuned to the right channel. Phhiewww. I’m not as stupid as I thought I was.

Oftewel de terugkeer van de literaire SF – en nog wel in het Nederlands. Omar Munoz Cremers’ SF roman is verkrijgbaar via Lulu: http://www.lulu.com/content/674262. Zie ook http://omc-par-omc.blogspot.com/2007/02/46-droomstof.html.

Eerst nog 200 pagina’s ATD….

I hate it. I hate it. Not even because of moving the actual stuff. I hate it because one has to move one’s connections, or getting new ones. And that is not so easy. Transferring the telephone and adsl of F. turns out to be a big deal. First one simply tells KPN to move the telephone + adsl to the new house. She did that on the 6th of january. There is a physical phone-line in the new house. So it should be easy enough. But according to the administration of the cables that line is taken by an old adsl-connection. (The formers tenants have canceled that months ago, but nevertheless it’s still in the administration). Because KPN does not have a monopol they are not allowed to put their signal on that line. Result: they have to physically make a new line. (Dutch: “bijlassen”). Okay, fair enough, although it shows how much extra useless work is created by this system. But, the KPN ‘lost’/forgot that an adsl signal should be put on the line too, because there was a problem and then xs4all and KPN were waiting for each other (or something along that line). I made a fair amount of calls about it today – and surprisingly I was helped quite well, although the result was mostly finding out that something had gone wrong in the process. Yesterday the extra line was made (physically). The analog thelephone signal was put on it. It works fine. But no adsl. Turns out that the whole administrative process of moving the adsl starts only from today. And that process takes 3 weeks. Sigh.

Second: there is no cable TV in this building. Well, there’s a coax cable somewhere in the cellar but that’s no use (this appartment is on the 5th floor). So I decide to go for Digitenne. I cannot live without cycling on tv. Digitenne has at least both Belgian channels. But here I make a mistake. I get the ‘single tuner’ and what I did not know (nor read about anywhere) is that it is impossible to programme one’s videorecorder to record a programme using a single tuner. Huh? It seems total nonsense to me – I mean, as far as I’m concerned one could put the videorecorder in between the tuner and the television. But that doesn’t seem to work with this system. So much for progression. Sigh.

For the rest it’s all plug’n’play. But well, I’d rather have a bit less plug’n’play and a bit more of simplicity. One doesn’t have a fight with technology – struggling to make it work – but with the (instutionalized) packaging of the technology. Grrr.

Suppose y’all know Openstreetmap: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Main_Page; and maybe you’ve seen the works of Christian Nold? http://www.biomapping.net/index.htm and Daniel Belasco Rogers? http://www.planbperformance.net/dan/index.htm.

Negrophonic generously provides us with a short text of Gregory Whitehead here: http://www.negrophonic.com/2007/mother-radio-cautionary/. There’s a Radio-salon at Mediamatic on the 15th: http://www.mediamatic.net/artefact-14055-en.html, and also a radio-to-go-workshop: http://www.mediamatic.net/artefact-13443-en.html.

But I’m on my way to the McLuhan-conference in Bayreuth: http://mcluhan.uni-bayreuth.de. Hopefully there will be internet-access in the conference-room, if so I’ll do some live-blogging.

Oh well, and thursday you’ll be able to catch a duo-performance of crazy-man Eugene Chadbourne with Kevin Blechdom at OT301: http://www.dnk-amsterdam.com/?dept=AGENDA&article=28.

“Political space has its neutral ground. But does Time? is there such thing as the neutral hour? one that goes neither forward nor back? is that too much to hope?” (ATD, p. 577)

Oorbeek-tribute to Karel Appel, movie made by Maarten Hepp – in 2005 –, now on YouTube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=sZQ6AWBlmKoM.

Zondagmiddag 12.45 – 15.05. Wind draaide in de ochtend van het noorden door het westen naar zuidoost. Wolken waar de zon doorheenbrak. Lekker fietsweer. Ik reed eens via een andere weg naar Halfweg: gewoon rechtdoor Jan van Galenstraat – Burgemeester Roelllaan en dan door dat mooie kleine stukje polder tussen Osdorp en Zwanenburg (dat er meen ik aangaat omdat er weer een snelweg doorheen moet). Slotermeer: zo’n stuk Amsterdam dat voor de meeste Amsterdammer volstrekt onbekend is: er is nl. niets, behalve huizen, scholen, wegen, wat water en prachtige groenstroken – plus, sinds kort, verbazingwekkende nieuwbouw. Eigenlijk een heel mooie wijk. Dan de dijk naar Spaarndam (altijd prachtig uitzicht), Inlaagpolder, naar de brug. Daar geconstateerd dat er ook hier sinds kort een fietsroutenetwerk is. Brug over, skiheuvel op en af (tjonge, met die Limburge heuveltjes nog in de benen schakel je daar niet eens voor terug – da’s echt een keer ademhalen en je bent boven). Bij Driehuis draaien twee echte wielrenners net voor me de klinkerweg op, aangehaakt en zo met een gangetje van dertig langs de duinen, de Duin-en-Kruidberg over, voorzichtig afdalen en tussen de wandelaars doorlaveren. Ze daarna laten gaan, al was de verleiding groot om ook nog via het Kopje van Bloemendaal te rijden. Via Santpoort en Spaarndam terug naar Amsterdam, blokje bij Osdorp om dan over een schitterend nieuw aangelegd vrijliggend fietspad langs het water heel Slotermeer door te rijden – schitterend omdat er geen autoweg naast ligt. Het fietspad is alleen nog niet af. Via Bos en Lommer naar huis.

Frederik Hendrikstraat – Jan van Galenstraat – Burg. Roelllaan – Geuzenveld – Halfweg – Inlaagpolder – Buitenhuizen – Skiheuvel – Velsen – Driehuis – Santpoort – Duin & Kruidberg – Santpoort – Spaarndam – Groeneweg – Batterij – Halfweg – Osdorperbinnenpolder – Slotermeer – Bos en Lommer – Frederik Hendrikstraat

Nu ben ik echt terug: een rondje Rondehoep op zaterdagmiddag. Schitterend weer, felle zon – zo warm dat het mogelijk was om op het terras van De IJsbreker een koffie te drinken zonder het koud te krijgen. Lastig noordwestenwindje bij 12 graden. 15.30 – 17.15. Waar ben ik meer thuis dan in dat rondje? Hoe vaak heb ik er al gereden? Honderden keren. Driehonderd?

En vreemd om nu pas vast te stellen dat de aanrijroute Leidseplein – Hobbemakade – Apollohal – Beatrixpark echt een stuk korter is dan het door mij altijd gereden Leidseplein – Weteringcircuit – Amstel. Die route was altijd ‘straightforward’ en duidelijk. Maar door de hopeloze afstelling – in beide richtingen – van de stoplichten tussen Weteringcircuit en Frederiksplein plus de volstrekt idiote en levensgevaarlijke verkeerssituatie op het Weteringcircuit zelf, is de aanrijroute over de Hobbemakade nu een stuk prettiger, al krijg je dan een “raar verkeersmoment” als je bij de Apollohal naar linksaf gaat. Ach ja.

Frederik Hendrikstraat – Leidseplein – Hobbemakade – Beatrixpark – Amstel (west) – Ouderkerk – Rondehoep – Ouderkerk – Amstel (oost) – Weteringcircuit – Frederik Hendrikstraat

It was a stunning DNK-concert (co-production with PSWAR), last monday at OT301. We’d hoped for a big crowd, we got more than the maximum audience of about 160 to 180 persons. There was no way to fit in more. People were sitting right up to the tables of the musicians and behind them even. About 20 people were standing outside, able to listen, but not see. And they were totally silent. Otomo, Doerner, Sachiko M and Brandlmayr played their music at the lowest possible volume. It was quite an experience.

And then after the break, ‘mayhem’ broke lose when Phô started to play, as if a short-circuit occurred: fireworks. Morten Olsen (by far my favorite drummer, maybe even of all time…), Nicholas Fields (who broke his bass-peddle halfway through) & Bjornar Habbestad on flute + electronics start at the highest possible intensity of playing & stayed there for more than half an hour continuously, without ever, not even for a second, bringing it down.

Yesterday (euh, friday) another great concert at OT301 – this one organized by Colin McLean. The well-known duo of Terrie Ex & Andy Moor kicked off, playing more subtle and more varied than I’d heard ever before. Then the floor was to a freejazz blow-out of Ken Vandermark (http://www.kenvandermark.com/) and Paal Nillson-Love – another stunning drummer from Norway. And a quartet of both duo’s to end. Very nice to hear some “good old-fashioned” freejazz…

And well, monday there’s another interesting night at DNK: http://www.dnk-amsterdam.com/. A double bill of Kapotte Muziek (‘Broken Music”) followed by the Libanese free improv trio of Mazen Kerbaj, Sharif Sehnaoui and Raed Yassin. Mazen Kerbaj is the new director of STEIM and was world famous in ‘the blogoshpere’ last summer during the Israel-Libanon war because of his drawings: http://www.kerbaj.com/ & http://mazenkerblog.blogspot.com/.

http://throat-singing.blogspot.com/index.html is the (very nice) blog of Robert Beahrs – he writes about his travels around the world, researching throat singing. He visited the Jew’s Harp Festival, last summer & saw Koichi Makigami performing with Oorbeek. He calls is a “life changing performance of honest musical dialogue”.

Wow.