By Robert. Tagging is a game started here and has been around on whole Dutch blogoshpere now. The idea is that I tell you 5 things you didn’t know about me.

1. Svirsk after which this blog is named is actually a place in Siberia. Years ago it was on the news on the Jeugd journaal because central city heating went down, and left people living in houses with -20 degrees. When my midlife crisis comes i would love to make a trip to there
2. When I was young(er) I dreamed of having my own sport car company. The most famous model is the Stimmer 14. If anyone is interested in setting up a factory, please let me know.
3. I love to listen to old lp’s I think I have more lp’s than cd’s now. There are several collections that I’m trying to get complete. All the (regular) albums of Queen, Pink Floyd and Electric Light Orchestra. My Electric Light Orchestra collection is almost complete. Only the first and the last are still missing. Queen is almost complete too, if some one has the last album Made in Heaven on lp, and would like to give it away, hey you now me
4. I grew up in a tiny village on the island Texel. It is called De Waal. It’s surrounded by some forrest and endless grazing fields. Certainly not a bad place to grow up.
5. In my passport it says that I’m 200 centimetres, so I’m probably taller than you.

And happy new year to you all!

As some of you might know, I’m still doubting about going to do an extra master. I did some research already, and the only real conclusion should be: There are too many masters and there is no real good overview. So in an attempt to help others in the future, I’ll put all my gathered information on my blog

Some guidelines I made up are: It should be a master about digital / new media. It should be or in The Netherlands, so I don’t have to move. Or it should be in an English speaking country. It shouldn’t take longer than a year, and it should be more theoretical than practical. It should be more or less affordable and it should look like fun

Based on these criteria’s I came to two options, one hard, one easy

MA in Digital Media: Technology & cultural form
costs are: £3,500
funding: download
Application deadline: 7 February 2007
Application form: download
More information: British Council - The Netherlands
Wilweg.nl (doesn’t work in firefox, tsk..)

And off course the easy option: Stay in Utrecht
And try this one: Master nieuwe media en digitale cultuur

For those interested: 16 en zaterdag 17 februari 2007 Masterbeurs in Utrecht

Ok, next time a todo list..

A few months ago I suddenly had the inspiration for a domainname. (Well the conference The New New internet helped a bit). Newnew.nl is the name I came up with. It’s a wink to the idea that every new idea/concept/product will always be followed by a newer, faster and better idea. The second connection is to the abstract concept of “New Media”. Can new media only be defined by the fact that it is new, or are there more underlying structures in which we can divide new media from the other media?

For quite some time, I’m allready thinking about starting a second, thirth,fourth, fifth Dutch weblog for some months now. Inspired by the fun I had in writing my thesis and my current writings for BlueAce and Frankwatching I thought it might be a good idea to have a personal but work related dutch language blog. Which wasn’t directly linked to my own portfolio, so I could easily ask other people to write with me.

So where is it all about? At first the social aspects of New Media, perhaps even some stories about Reputation and Reputator. Next I want to put myself somewhat more on the background so also other people could join as writer for the blog. And as a third, I want to use more other media input like videos from YouTube, photos from Flickr, slides form Slideshare, links from del.icio.us etc. And as last I want to visit and write more about events. In short:

• Articles about newmedia
• Video from YouTube
• Agenda from Upcomming
• Short link blogging from Del.icio.us
• Multiple writers

Possible problems: Time, where do i get it? There are allready so many blogs, why add one more? How can i get create any value, that will one day possibly pay a part of my rent?

So what do you think is there still space for one blog more?

(Related newnew logo on Flickr)

Al weer een tijdje geleden dat ik voor het laatst iets geblogd heb. De rede daarvoor was mijn eerste na-afstudeer-freelance opdracht. Het bouwen van een website die weer een beetje meer gelijkheid in de wereld moet gaan brengen.

Vandaag werd namelijk MijnBoekensteun.nl online gelanceerd. Lousewies van der Laan en Bart Chabot waren aanwezig om de door hun gesigneerde boeken aan de website aan te bieden.

MijnBoekensteun.nl is een initiatief van Peter Joziasse van de innovatie afdeling van TNT. De website heeft tot doel geld in te zamelen voor world food programme. Deze stichting van de Verenigde Naties zal dit besteden aan voedsel voor schoolgaande kinderen in Malawi. De website werkt als volgt:

• een boek wordt geplaatst
• een geïnteresseerde vind het boek
• neemt contact op met de aanbieder
• prijs wordt vastgesteld en het bedrag overgemaakt naar de aanbieder
• boek wordt verstuurd, en aanbieder maakt het geld over naar het WPF
• geïnteresseerde ontvangt boek, en TNT maakt nog 1,50 extra over

Om meer bekendheid te generen is er ook aan bekende Nederlanders gevraagd om een boek te doneren. Deze boeken worden vervolgens geveild op de website. Als tweede is er ook een blog van TNT medewerkster Dorien die momenteel in Malawi vrijwilligers werk doet.

Mijn inbreng bestond uit het maken van een ontwerp en het maken van de xhtml pagina’s (en ouderwets crossbrowser css-en). Verder samengewerkt met Erik van boekwinkeltjes.nl voor het integreren van de verkoop-, aanbied- en veilingmogelijkheid. Een leuk project om aan te werken, en ik hoop dat het een succes wordt!

I still have some doubts about how to call myself in a professional way. For most of the people it would just be webdesigner. But since the LOI is also a offering awebdesign course it makes me wonder why I spent four years working and learning.

Yesterday I came across this post on Bokardo, where he writes about why most webdesign books are more about development than on design

Part of the problem is that HTML and CSS ain’t easy. No matter what people tell you, the CSS layout scheme is not for the faint of heart.

Which leads him to his second point in which I have to agree too. Way to much time isn’t spent on solving interface and user problems. But on fighting browser-errors in order to create some user-interface in the end.

Which still doesn’t solve to problem how to call my self, webdesigner because that is what I like to do, but is used by so many. Or something like Front-end webdeveloper which has that scary feeling of wasting way to much time on coding..

Last night i start looking for sites that are clean but colorfull, that can be or are used for websoftware. And have something special at them.

Good Creative

Tijs Vrolix

Pronet Advertising

Basecamp HQ

Tick Spot

Odeo

Traineo

Yahoo Bookmarks

BrdCast

From experience in the past I know that I’m good in creating ideas and not so good in bringing ideas into real activities. Nonetheless I will write down my possible plans for the future.

Education

For some reason I just like the relaxed environment of schools and universities. It gives you the (false) idea that there is a greater goal in this world than just your own.

I already did some search for Media masters (preferable Msc/MA in “New” Media) and wrote a blogpost about it:

conclusion, if I want to be lazy I can stay here in The Netherlands and do a master at the UVA or UU
UVA: Master Nieuwe media
UU: Nieuwe media en digitale cultuur which even has its own weblog NewMediaStudies.nl.

Problems with these masters is that i would feel pretty lazy just staying in the Netherlands. That’s why i also did some research for English masters especially in London.

In London i found:
Goldsmiths College: MA in Digital media
LSE:MSc New Media Information And Society
Open day at Goldsmiths are at 8 November and 14 February. In which 14 February would be a possible option.

Problems with study abroad is that its expensive, and although I can make my self understood in English I don’t have the illusion that it’s good enough to write a master thesis in English.

English language course

For every problem off course there is a solution, one is Study English in London like Maarten is doing now. If i work a few months full time than I would be able to go for 6 weeks London. Still a lot of research to do on this subject.

Ok i’m a bit slow, but now my first movies are online (the problems where that youtube didnt allow movies bigger than 100mb, and that I didn’t had any movies to post)

The first one is an experimental video based on 2 seconds interview with Linda Wagenmakers.

The second and tirth are some try outs i made in Adobe After Effects

The last one is a hidden “kabouter”