You are correct, sir. July, not June of course...I'm a little off my game. I edited the original post to give the correct date. Thanks for the heads up.

It was shocking for all of us. Since quitting Vintage, I kinda fell out of touch with Rudy, but I'm told that it completely blindsided even those of us who knew of his medical condition.

I understood that a service for Rudy will be held on Monday (July 9th) at 14:30 in the Crematorium in Heeze (near Eindhoven). It will be the most horrible kind of reunion.

Rest in peace, buddy. The good times we had will not be forgotten.

Here's a picture I just pulled from my hard drive. Never thought I'd have to add a black border to it. Not the best of pictures, but those who knew Rudy, will recognize him. In any case, this is how I'll remember him...

What he said.

Vintage is like herpes. You think you got it out of your system, and then all of a sudden it starts itching again.

Did I just take that metaphor too far? Either way, good luck in all your pursuits!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6yUCbqAGrg

"You're on the naughty list"

I was never actually gone. My keyboard broke and I coudn't post.

Yeah, I was actually thinking about my own documentary ambitions when I heard the guy say that. It sounds even more true in Italian. OK, maybe not more true, but at least more beautiful. And as well all know, there is in fact truth in beauty!

Thanks for the tips. I need to get Final Cut pro...I hear it's what all the cool filmmakers use. First, I need to figure out if it will run on my new Macbook Pro, or if I need new hardware. I saw a really well-equipped "old-model" XH-A1 on the Dutch equivalent to e-bay for a good price...I might pick it up off my Christmas bonus. I'm perfectly fine with filming being a lenghty process. I don't need to shoot it, I just want to, I guess.

I think it's beautiful how you chose to explore your cultural heritage through film. The Zampogna hook you use seems perfect, since it symbolises endangered local traditions, contrasts with modern life, makes for a great soundtrack and above all, has a personal meaning to you as a player. It's probably similar to writing - shoot what you know!

Additionally, I find it an interesting instrument in itself. I had never heard of it. I thought bagpipes were exclusively a Scottish phenomenon. It may help that I visited Sicily a few years back and became quite infatuated with the place. Good job adding your trailer link to the wikipedia page for Zampogna, by the way

I showed the trailer to my girlfriend yesterday (who, unlike me, has an actual artistic background) and she loved it, as well. I can't wait to see the whole thing - I hope some distributor picks it up!

I'll say again, that's totally awesome.

And inspiring, as well. I've had my heart set on documentary filmmaking for a few years now, but I just never got around to it (a little something I like to call atychiphobic procrastination ). I too have taken several courses in still photography ever since the arrival of the first digital SLRs, and I'm still quite an avid amateur photographer. Ever since getting my Msc in engineering, I've been dabbling in the arts of journalism, publishing a popular scientific article on average once a month or so. Obviously, that didn't quite pay the bills, so I took up a PhD position (which in The Netherlands, is an actual job ).

I just never got the "media bug" out of my system. I've seriously considered going to the New York Film Academy once I finish my PhD-thesis, for their 1-year documentary filmmaking course, but it's probably prohibitively expensive for me at this point in my life. It's great to hear that someone with photography experience and a good eye for framing is able to teach himself to shoot and edit documentary. And it's even more inspiring that you actually did it parallel to your education!

You use a pretty nifty camera there, by the way. I've been looking into camera's myself for a while now, and the XH-A1 seems to score very highly. The professionals all say it's increadibly low-priced for what it offers, but it's still a little over my current budget. Is this the first cam you used, or was it an upgrade from something that might fit better with my current budget? Also: what do you edit on?

Congrats on passing the bar, by the way

Thread necromancy record?

....and on topic: Venn diagram of bad things to say during sex.
 

Erm, that's totally awesome. I'm insanely jealous now, since I'd love to do something like that more than anything in the world. What do you shoot with? And where did you learn how to?

Good luck on the film festival circuit. You should totally submit it to the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).

Wow. All those are awesome. I especially like DA's short poem us beautiful and Webster's rather disturbing newspaper headlines are hilarious.
 Thanks & keep 'em coming, guys!

Hey guys!

Not back for more than a week, and already I'm enlisting your help for a weird little artsy project I'm involved in (details will follow at some point in time). I'm looking for sentences / phrases that would be abbreviated to H.L.M.N.D. An example: "He Likes My New Dress". (Sorry 'bout that - it's the best I could come up with, which is exactly why I'm in desparate need of your help )

Any suggestions? I need all the creative, blasphemous and/or poetic energy you can muster up in the thirty odd seconds it takes to post a reply

That's a nice little application. I'm gonna make something like that for the Dutch situation.

Another 30 billion dollar injection in the Dutch economy was just announced and utterly fails to counter the downward trend. The Dutch stock exchange has reported unprecedented losses for the 7th straight day. Media reports on massive amounts of people withdrawing their money from banks in Australia and Japan. Russian stock exchanges have shut down.The country (!) of Iceland is on the brink of bankruptcy and the 120,000 Dutch people that had deposited their life savings on the now bankrupt Icelandic bank of ICESAVE can no longer retrieve their money.

I have so much stuff to say about this mass panic from the point of view of my academic discipline, it's not even funny anymore. Every news report I see is a 'walking' case study into dynamics of trust, framing and performativity.  For those interested, I suggest reading this:

http://www.amazon.com/Economists-Make-Markets-Performativity-Economics/dp/0691130167

A pretty amusing Dutch commercial for all youse to watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRF8exj9BgU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSo1kCaUxQo

I wonder, could you get away with airing that over there in the US of A?

Financial catastrophe? You wanna know about financial catastrophe? I forget to sell my vintage staples collection when I quit playing two years ago, and yesterday I find out that what I used to think of as my nest egg is now no longer worth the paper it's printed on because the DCI banned or restricted half of it. OMG BR0KE!!1!

In other news: the financial crisis has hit over here, too. Since the Dutch have emulated everything American ever since the arrival of mass consumerism on our shores after WWII, it was inevitable that we followed suit towards financial ruin. Cultural imperialism FTW! In practice, this entails that on the very day that George W. Bush signed the historic $700 billion bailout plan, the Dutch government acquired all shares of banking and insurance firm Fortis (which itself had recently - and in retrospect perhaps unwisely - acquired the major international financial player ABN Amro) for the sum total of $23 billion. The deal replaces an earlier (failed) rescue attempt in which the governments of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourgh together would invest some $10 billion in order to prevent the firm's collapse.

Face it, my American friends, you are no longer unique in having a government that makes taxpayers bleed for greedy financial industry's mismanagement. It always makes me so happy when governments nationalize private firms. 

On the other hand, the four weeks I just spent in California were ridiculously cheap thanks to your weak dollar, so I'm not quite sure where I stand on this yet. Usually, long-term global economic effects versus short-term personal gain is a no-brainer (in favor of the latter, obviously).

OK, gimme a couple of Y's!

While the post in question in indeed awesome enough to elicit that sentiment, I just checked my bank account and it appears I'm not loaded yet.

Have you guys ever heard of this?

http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Dollar_Homepage

It's two years old now, but the guy pulled it off in under half a year. It's incredibly brilliant. So here's the thing - I wanna get rich quick, too. But since I'm a talentless, uninspired bastard, I wanna leech of your ideas (based on the assumption that you all are creative and brilliant, but talkative and endlessly lazy). They can be internet based business ideas or products, funny, brilliant, half-cocked, nonsensical - I'll take anything!

So far, I've got:

1. Sky Pimp (introduce in-flight prostitution)

What can you people come up with off the top of your heads?

Awesome!



<3 this one:



I've got some ideas, too. Think I can submit them?

I recently attended a lecture by Victoria de Graza, who wrote a fantastic book called Irresistible Empire that deals with how this has been happening thoughout the last century, but that violence (or even a clash of ideologies) was not even the primary means. Rather, the export of american consumerism, a sort of "cultural imperialism", was.


Note that, even though this has introduced a whole new array of problems, I would not say that this was necessarily A Bad Thing. And it is important to acknowledge the role of the media in general - and perhaps US news channels such as CNN in particular - in promoting the American consumerist lifestyle and standards of living.

I always say "hi all - have fun!" when a sng starts. I realize I'm one of the few, but I like being nice. Also, I occasionally say "sorry" when I win via a bad beat. Again, neither necessary nor common, but people seem to appreciate it - I've gotten a lot of "np, that's poker" replies. That's about all I ever use the chat window for. But then again, I agree that if you're multi-tabling, even this becomes annoying. And I'm obviosuly not a pro, so whatever

Plus, you can always post in this trhead if you have any questions ^^

This is not from personal experience, but I've heard lots of people read twoplustwo.com and pocketfives.com boards, which are apparently good (but I don't like internet boards that exclusively deal with card games myself ;-)

Everyone knows the Netherlands is a small country. But as we've been able to hear in the news this morning, it's likely going to be a little less small in the near future. After building islands off the coast of Dubai shaped like a palm tree and a map of the world, Dutch engineering companies are now going to undertake a somewhat more interesting task: building a 250,000 acre (about 400 sq miles) island off the coast of Holland, shaped (and here's the kicker) like a tulip. Imagine how that's gonna look on Google Earth. Oh wait - we don't have to:



The reasoning is that we need new places for people to love and industry to settle, and ground prices on the mainland have risen to the point where the cost of this island-building excersize is no longer prohibitive. So watch out, you Brits (and eventually Americans) we're coming your way! Again, this is in the spirit of that old saying: "God created the world, but the Dutch created the Netherlands".

For those of you not too familiar with Dutch geography: both of the lighter-colored island-like areas in the top right of the picture we already created from sheer nothingness before

Ya think?

Anyway:

Living Hell - Morcheeba (triphop)
Hell Is Round The Corner - Tricky (triphop)
Go To Hell - KMFDM (industrial)
Satan - Orbital & Kirk Hammett (dance/metal crossover)
Devil's Answer - Atomic Rooster ('70s rock)
Devil Inside - INXS (rock)
The Great Satan - Ministry (industrial)
Devil's Haircut - Beck (alternative)
The Devil You Know - Jesus Jones (rock)
Devil's Right Hand - Johnny Cash (country/rock'n'roll)
Deal with the Devil - Judas Priest (metal)
Devil in Disguise - Elvis Presley (rock'n'roll)
The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell - David Bowie (rock)
Heaven, Hell or Houston - ZZ Top (rock)
The Hell Song - Sum41 (poprock/punk)
Satan Rejected My Soul - Morrissey (singer/songwriter/alternative)

...and every song by
Hell Is For Heroes (emo)
Run Devil Run (hardcore)

There. That's a relatively varied list, now isn't it?

To paraphrase an old joke, before last thursday, when asked a legal question, you could answer in all honesty: "I don't know". But now you can say with great authority:  "It depends."

And also:



Grats dude

Lol yeah, "respect" works, too. As does "class" (and "style" and such). And it's usually the case for "lots of money", too

"A used grave" is the best one yet

Is it a herpes infection?

No wait, a hot girlfriend?

Oh man, I give up.




(obviously, I already PM'ed the correct answer to LotusHead, but "silence" is an alternative that kinda works, too).

Just wondering.

It's obviously been all the rage for a couple of years now, but topics on it pop up surprisingly rarely over here. A search for poker yields an age-old thread by Anusien, some comparisons between poker and mtg, and several references to a "red hot poker" and places people should shove one.

I've been playing hold 'em for about a year now, mostly online, on average maybe 5 online SNGs a week (usually either 5+0.5 or 10+1, 6 or 10 player no limit tables) and the occasional freeze-out at my local casino. Before that it was mostly some "bingo poker" games for laughs in between testing. I was wondering if anyone here plays the game casually (or even professionally?) as well, where you play, what forums/books you read, and what your ITM and ROI percentages are etc.

These if from a different forum. You'll no doubt already know some of these, but I really like this kinda stuff, so I was wondering if you guys had ever heard any more!

As a huge Transformers geek, I must say I enjoyed this movie. I went in with the correct expectations, which is to say: I didn't expect a Transformers film, but rather a "Super Morphing Outerspace Fighting Robots" film. This is because I was fortunate to see the following trailer review before the release date:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY9H8_nEPBA

I suggest you guys check it out, come to the conclusion that you all agree with it, and be done with the whole thing