I didn’t suspect that this time it would be permanent. It happened before that Instagram would lock me out of my account because they claimed I had infringed a not-specified guideline. I would open a support request, they would have me jump through some hoops and then re-enable my account.

Not this time.

Now why does this happen in the first place? A first name account like mine is considered OG (see this episode of Reply All). Lots of people—mostly from Turkey—would really love to have it. I know this because I get messages from them all the time. I ignore these messages. I also get lots of password resets from people trying to break into my account. I have the account secured.

What they then most likely try is to claim that I’m impersonating somebody. I don’t think I can impersonate myself but let’s just go with it. Instagram does not do any due diligence and if they get the right kind or right amount of reports, they just suspend my account. I guess that is the first step in a process through which the attacker believes they can get me kicked off the account permanently and then maybe later acquire the username.

Normally support would give me back my account in a couple of days. This time all my support requests have been black holed.

Instagram support is very well hidden but if you search around you can find three web forms in the support portal for a situation such as this one. I filled those in multiple times. I got in touch with people who work at Instagram through various channels. This dude followed me so I asked him about my account (no reply). I even had people open Facebook internal support tickets which still remain open. A support agent replied to me once but then ghosted me.

Speculation

#

If they would usually give me back my account, why don’t they do it this time?

One theory is that Instagram support is overwhelmed because of COVID. They seem to have difficulty even normally with the number of support requests so it could be possible that if things get worse, stuff just gets ignored. I don’t really buy this but it’s possible.

My theory is that somebody with some actual clout has put a hold on my username. People and agencies with access to Instagram sell services such as support or verified status illicitly. Maybe somebody is selling access to my username or they are using my username to trade for something more valuable. Facebook is under a lot of pressure to make advertising targets at the moment.

Resolution

#

By now I don’t think I will get my account back anymore. I’m waiting to see if it gets recycled and who will be using it after me.

It’s a weird feeling losing something that other people think carries significant monetary value.

But it’s a lot more annoying to lose your identity and sense of place. I’ve started a new account but without access to the old one, getting it to the same place has been a very slow and arduous process. I’m still cut-off from several hundred people who I would communicate with over Instagram, for some of whom this was the only communication channel.

Of course I knew that none of this was mine to start with and it could be taken away with the press of a button. I just ignored it. Don’t make the same mistake I did.

Update

#

I thought I would do a round of submissions of all the support forms again but it turns out they are broken. They request you to login to Instagram before you fill them in which is impossible if your account is suspended.

Let’s see how this develops but it looks like this is deliberate stonewalling.

https://twitter.com/EstherSchapira/status/1106548312222638080

I submitted it to Reddit with the source attached in the comments.

https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/b1q9bg/fridays_for_future/

That is now at 15k upvotes and still counting.

Het hele resultaat staat hier.

Ties shines on this classic laptop shot (the stickers do add a nice touch):

Martijn in a similar stance has a razor sharp glance (and curls):

James’s essence is captured quite nicely in this picture:

Peter came out a bit under-exposed but turned out nicely with some brushing up (and burning):

The tallest of former coworkers Tim comes out nicely too:

All in all, that is five usable frames from twelve shot which is a more than decent score. It looks like I should shoot more portraits. Any volunteers?

These are too narrow to accomodate people walking along them side by side, let alone when the sidewalk is obstructed by plants, bikes, scooters, furniture and other things.

“Sidewalk width is invariable sacrificed for vehicular width, partly because city sidewalks are conventionally considered to be purely space for pedestrian travel and access to buildings, and go unrecognized and unrespected as the uniquely vital and irreplaceable organs of city safety, public life and child rearing that they are.”—Jane Jacobs

Add to that the fact that Amsterdam city politics is hostage to the car and you get this.

I so wish that the icons in the app made more sense and that the flow between states was clearer, but my wishes really don’t matter that much.

Color has flow. You can just keep doing stuff and you go fluidly from one screen to the other even though it may not be clear what every screen is for or why the various elements on the screens are where they are. You can do a lot, it all moves and feels rather magical. It’s more like a game than anything else.

Better yet, the spatial dislocation forces you not to be anal about organizing or sharing or any of the other features photo sharing apps would normally bother you with (and force you to learn). Indeed that is the promise they make: don’t find/add your friends, don’t organize your pictures, just snap away as you will and Colour will take care of all the rest.

This is smart, gutsy, well executed, it promises to Not Make Me Think and I’m almost ready to let go. Almost.

Here again are my brief notes (quotes are paraphrases at best):

He shows a clip from the Godfather (‘He made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.’) to illustrate the split personality of architect. Partially analytical partially emotional. Also partially doing what is right and partially pandering.

Son of Joop van Stigt, would play at his father’s firm from a young age on

Was greatly disappointed by the architecture school in Delft. All his architecture heroes only were talking about right or wrong. There wasn’t room for dissenting thought. One librarian would still buy all the wrong books (eg. Richard Meier).

His teachers were technology averse because they said that would ruin the creativity.

Marianne, his now wife, graduated on a concept for Amsterdam Damrak to integrate progress within the old city.

He graduated with a plan for the Wibaut-/Weesperstraat similar to a plan that is only now being executed. He called it the most beautiful street in Amsterdam (It is now commonly called the ugliest. -AÇ).

Finally they added Adriaan to add even more 1+1=3 synergy to the office.

They started a firm and they wanted to have done entire projects from front to back including interior, direction and management to have a feel for how it all works.

Overview of the Work

He says they also do technical direction and management. The number of people is fluid, they focus on the projects (Compare what I wrote about modern agencies and Spry Fox recently. -AÇ).

Talks about critical regionalism by Kenneth Frampton, arhitecture should unify with cultural layering and without prejudice and dogma.

‘Al onze gebouwen beginnen met een verhaal dat gelinked is aan een plek en waarom het zinnig is om het daar te doen.’

‘Je moet altijd je rokje optillen als je als architect werkt wilt binnenhalen.’ (illustrated by Zomergasten Helmut Newton clip)

‘Architecten die bij een opdrachtgever een leuk plaatje doen en de dunheid van ons vak laten zien.’

Coins the term voodoo architects: voorlopig ontwerp, definitief ontwerp (preliminary design, definitive design)

Be curious, see it through, be engaged with an assignment, be best not in but for the world.

Don’t work with separate stakeholders but mix them all together and create a chemistry.

Densify

‘We have HAD a very rich tradition in managing our public space.’

It takes a tremendous amount of resourcefulness and asking and talking. You have to make sure the mix is right on all levels to be able to densify.

By waiting for everybody and not deciding you also decide. Proactivity is often necessary.

In the end we have a lot of fun to create a beautiful building.

Bouwfraude

How difficult it is to get rid of a contractor. The lowest one usually stays in the race with the price he quoted. You can’t legally see the quotes the others have made.

They managed to get rid of their contractor and tender it under the table. When they finally were allowed to open the envelopes with the other quotes, it turned out these were stuffed with newspapers.

Concept & Analysis

Craft

It takes a lot of energy to convince people that certain things are doable. It is fun to show them it is doable if you are confident it is.

You can’t have yourself be guided by the specialists who say they know it all.

Shows prototypes they made before constructing the building.

It demands a lot from the building parties. The right builders.

Of course it’s nice to build a cool tower, but we don’t want a cool tower for a cool tower’s sake.

We already have enough architects who create their own problems.

Solving these things in a simple and right way is fun. It is our work.

A great talk though it took some time to get started. Referencing the Godfather clip: Jurriaan van Stigt is pretty gangster. Many of the client issues he named are directly transferrable to for instance the web profession. Many of their practices are indeed the best practices the best web agencies employ. Anything else yields lesser results.

The concept of not working with separate actors and stakeholders but getting them all together to create a chemistry is a must.

The designers who make a quick mockup and don’t follow through, we probably all have seen. The idea of designing and having a different party execute it almost never works either. Being engaged in your work and following through is a must.

Not trusting the specialists with their expertise when they say certain things are doable and others are not is also very wise. Having done every step in a project at least once and still being able to do it when called for is very useful.

Projects being quoted exorbitant amounts (especially when dealing with government) even accounting for organizational inefficiency five times over, that have no foundation in reality, we also have seen. As a designer having a notion how much something costs and being able to scope that is also very useful.

So both an architecturally very interesting talk and also very applicable to any kind of creative client work.

Last week was a short one due to a multitude of other engagements and a weekend trip to Malmö-Lund-Copenhagen from which I returned yesterday.

Project mérida which concerns a collaboration with Buro Pony took up some time and we had a meeting on that on Wednesday.

A bunch of updates on PLAY Pilots were also on the roster and my first (and quite succesful) play at the Stereoscoop during the Film Festival.

An opinion piece I’ve been writing for a national daily has been accepted, but the urgency of the topic has been pushed aside a bit by current political developments in the Netherlands. Here’s hoping it gets published sometime soon.

Wednesday was also the office warming for Lev Kaupas new haunts which was a very lively and entertaining event.

Dat balletje is om in te knijpen als de afname te langzaam gaat. Dan kun je dus bloed helpen eruit te pompen. Maar als je nogal ongeduldig en competitief bent ingesteld en je krijgt zo’n balletje in je handen gedrukt, ga je natuurlijk direct knijpen. Wedstrijdje wie het eerste een pint bloed eruit perst?

Over 10 weken weer. Nu nog de Sanquin Foursquare Badge ¹.

Doe hier de test of je ook bloed mag geven.

The functionality we envision helps ad-hoc groups of people who find themselves in the same location/venue/party to compare their music tastes and see where the overlaps and where the holes are. The table would be a turn-taking jukebox with tangible interactions and nice visuals for all users and spectators.

Easier said than done, of course. We spent a great part of the week and most of the weekend hacking, building, eating, drinking coffee, staying up to the wee hours, literally stabbing ourselves with scalpels, cursing a great deal and drinking whisky to get the thing together, when finally on Sunday in the last hour before the presentation we managed to integrate everything to the level that we could shoot a demo video.

Pictures of the proces and demo videos below:

What we built was just an initial step on the way to the jukebox I described above, but it seemed to look promising enough to net us the first prize from last.fm at Music Hackday for which we were very happy.

We like to thank last.fm, the organizers and the participants of Music Hackday. It was a great event and for us it was a great occasion to finally get this project started.

We will develop the table further and build out the functionality we had envisioned to make it a real locus for social music discovery. It should be hanging in one of our studios soon, so get in touch and visit if you want to try it out.

Some pictures:

There’s some confusion at Delft Science Center whether the exhibit is really open to the public, but it isn’t locked, so just head there and take the first door on your right. Maybe because of the confusion, the machines aren’t turned on, so it’s a rather static display of interactive environments.

Some pictures:

A long held dream came true for me with the delivery this week of my first light stand and umbrella combination. I wanted to play with studio photography longer already, but what really brought it home was following Dustin Diaz’s Project 365 where he did an interesting strobist setup for every day of 2009. I learned so much from that.

So now I can shoot portraits with off camera soft directed light. This is just the beginning:

I had been interviewed for this event a couple of weeks earlier talking about how TipiT could be a business model for new online media initiatives. Video (in Dutch): Alper Çugun (TipiT.to): Micropayments werken als je maker webcontent kent | Show me the Money #2 from Mediacontainer on Vimeo.

It was a nice event, with some very interesting keynotes. A lot of fun was to see a large part of the Mediaminds together for a live taping of the podcast:

Matt Thompson had a great talk:

But I would recommend you watch the video for Chris Thompson’s talk (twitter) about the Guardian Platform. The things they’re doing there are really very inspiring:

My biggest takeaway from these industry events is that the industry is in nowhere near as bad a shape as they claim to be. The whole ‘the media is dying’ thing is mostly fear mongering. Money is still being made in the media industry, just not the same ridiculous amounts as they used to make and not wholly by the same people. I understand that this may upset some incumbents, but it’s not the disaster it’s made out to be.

Het leek me boeiend om dat hier ook te doen, dus kocht ik afgelopen vrijdag twee gedrukte exemplaren van nrc.next en wegens tijdgebrek knipte ik ze dinsdag aan stukken.

Ik kwam daarbij wat interessante dilemma’s tegen. Wat Shirky hard nieuws noemt komt voor, maar daarnaast staat er in onze kranten ook veel lifestyle-achtig achtergrond materiaal. Het is dus een beetje onduidelijk in sommige gevallen waar dat bij zou moeten.

Maar hier eerst even de resultaten van mijn steekproef: nrc.next totaal103g100%Advertenties19,5g19%Anders37,5g36%Nieuws46g44%Nieuws uit eigen productie34g33%

Ik vind dat er nogal wat dingen in staan waarvan ik vrij zeker weet dat het niet behoort tot de ‘iron core of news’ zoals een stukje over de inhoud van het kerstpakket, wat over freefighting, een pagina grote illustratie en een dagboek van wat politici in Suriname. Als ik die weglaat, dan hou je 18,5g (18%) stricter nieuws uit eigen productie over.

Het is de vraag of we hier dezelfde conclusies uit kunnen trekken als Shirky doet voor zijn krant. Maar zijn betoog dat er weinig origineel nieuws is en dat de verslaggevers gered kunnen worden in non-profit instanties is misschien zo gek nog niet.

Kranten maken een herdefinitie door offline en online en de hoeveelheid écht eigen nieuws wordt minder. Wat ze dan wel doen: becommentariëren van nieuws op blogs, smaakgids zijn voor mensen met weinig tijd, lifestyle magazine spelen. Daarnaast wordt er strak gestuurd op de kosten en weinig geïnvesteerd in digitale infrastructuur vanwege het korte termijn-winstoogmerk. Terwijl het volgens sommigen niet eens zó slecht gaat met de krant.

In ieder geval kan ik hier nog wel veel over schrijven maar ik ga zaterdag op vakantie en bewaar het voor volgende posts. De gegevens van het verknippen wilde ik alvast publiceren.

Last weekend I went to my fourth —I guess, I lost count— annual capoeira camping in Wapse and it was again a resounding success. I’ve got the pictures to prove it.

And added to that I’m completely untrained and have hardly any experience with this stuff, so who knows how much improvement is still possible. Here’s to film in a digital age.

Took a stroll around the house and happened upon some contemporary dance (more).

And to finish off the week, yesterday evening we had a nice ride through Rotterdam during the alleycat. I’d never done the Maastunnel before, nor seen most of Zuid, the Cuyp and the Brienenoord on bike before, so it was a great day of discovering Rotterdam.

Unfortunately no pictures of glorious Rotterdam during the golden hour as I crossed the Erasmus bridge for the last leg of the race. Too busy biking.

Tuesday morning I went to foam to see the last couple of days of the Avedon exhibit and I’m glad I did. Spectacular work! The exhibit is done in Amsterdam, but maybe you can catch it somewhere else (tweet) ¹? It is very much worth it.

Then I went to report on an event about practical applications of OpenID. The event was heavily suit oriented which struck me as interesting. My report in Dutch is posted on Frankwatching (tweet).

Wednesday morning was filled with a symposium on Context Mapping at the local faculty of Industrial Design (tweet). Interesting collection of people and great content on the topic (tweet, tweet). I picked up the thesis “Brining the every day life of people into design” by Froukje Sleeswijk Visser (tweet).

Friday morning had a ridiculously early start (tweet) at the Rijksmuseum for a ‘hard hat tour’. It is interesting enough to see the construction and reconstruction from the inside. The reconstructed artwork is quite beautiful and I’m anxious to see the end result. For some of my friends this was the first time they had ever set foot in the building at all (which is a shame), and this will stay the only opportunity for the following year or five.

After more coffee (like I said, it was an early start), it was off to the soldering irons at Mediamatic for the RFIDuino workshop given by Marc Boon. After a lot of fidgeting and my first real soldering experience in I think 15 years, some of us managed to build a working RFID shield for their Arduinos. Lots of unpredictable behaviour (tweet) though ².)). Where is that post-mortem debugger with hot code replace for your hardware setup?

Check out the details in the set.

Great way to end a first visit.

Adjusting to the superficials will be easy enough, but as after every big trip and after having seem some truly splendid natural and metropolitan vistas, adjusting the mind to a realignment of the world brought about by new experience will be somewhat more difficult.

And now my days are filled with:

Tomorrow it’s back to the city and doing some last things before flying back early Sunday morning.

One such friend is Mony and during his yearly holiday ¹ to Bulgaria he has produced a very nice set of street photography out of Sofia:

For me it’s of particular interest to see pictures of a city neighboring my love Istanbul. I have just this one picture I would call a good street photography shot. The effort it takes to get even halfway decent shots is staggering.

On a different photograpic note, I’ve brought away the 120 film I shot this weekend for development. I hope the repairs on my Yashica worked out and the pictures are in focus. Shooting manual metered medium format film is a very different experience and pace than I’m used to from my 350D and something I could very well get used to. The digital set is still being edited and should go (partly) up tonight.

I had prepared a bit for the day by listening to the photographers’ commentaries on their pictures. As is the case with many artists, the artist should not try to explain his art but in some cases the commentary really adds a lot to the picture.

I would recommend Platon about his portrait of Poetin, John Moore about the Bhutto assassination and Brent Stirton about the preservation of gorillas.

Normal service will resume here at least until half of August when I will break shortly for Wapsen and maybe thereafter a bit longer for the former Yugoslavia.

Seasoned travellers as we deem ourselves and busy as we are, we have dispensed with most of the preparation one would think would be necessary. We have some camping equipment, surfboards and roof carriers and lots of good humour to go around. That should be enough for any holiday.

That’s also a reason I won’t be getting my iPhone 3G right away like a lot of people are. I’m planning on travelling some more and this device is more of a hindrance ¹ and a risk than it is a benefit on the road.

I’m still debating whether or not I should take my laptop. Odds of us finding solid power let alone WiFi are slim and 7GB of CF memory should be enough for a week’s holiday: 1GB/day. And a week of disconnection will probably do me more good than I realize.

The second day started off with a talk about Free by Jerry Michalski which reminded me a lot of the topics that I had covered the previous day in my talk. Jerry’s talk being in the main hall made this turn out a lot differently than my talk.

David Recordon followed with a talk about the open web and reminded us that not that much has changed in the last six months since I saw him on the same topic in Berlin. The big social conglomerates that have each other in a chokehold make for glacial progress.

I dropped in on the Arduino workshop which was a very nice introduction into building electronic stuff. Because I was already somewhat familiar and I wanted the freedom to bounce around the conference, I hadn’t registered but I did get some questions in to further my own ideas.

Joshua’s talk proved to be one of the best of the conference —with this great quote— marred slightly by the fact that his partner could not make it for a more complete stage presence. His work and vision how technology works towards freedom is very relevant and interesting though we usually stare ourselves blind at Silicon Valley and the likes.

After the conference we made a yearly chaotic meetup somewhere in the city trying to get something to eat more or less succesfully after which we made our way to Vega. The party in the bar was quickly replaced with a party outside with tipping beers and music where everybody had a great time. Even the arrival of police could not really stop our party.

The next day I was going to get some coffee at Kafeplantagen when I remembered that some people were having a post-Reboot brunch at Pussy Galore’s Flying Circus ¹. I was a bit hesitant to join after having already spent two days with these people but I’m glad I went inside. I got to catch up with Chris Messina, Brynn Evans and Janetti Chon and talk about the differences between the USA and Europe.

I’d signed up for a session and got slotted on Thursday morning so I spent a good part of Wednesday preparing and running through the story. Of course after having gotten over my early flight and having eaten something at the Laundromat.

My session on Free Economics was filled over capacity while it was meant to be a cosy conversational session. Fortunately that also meant more than enough people willing to participate and add information, so I think it went well and it proved a good starting point for the rest of the conference. My stress relieved could follow the rest of the sessions.

There were a number of other Dutch presenters most notably: Kars, Ton, Ianus and Iskander. Unfortunately I didn’t see any of them present, but I’ll catch up on that when the video’s are posted. Being programmed against Andy Budd meant that I missed his presentation as well, but maybe I wouldn’t have fitted in the completely full small room anyway.

It was a joy to hear music in the presentation on Tradition by Jeremy Keith. More music is usually a good idea as we would also see in the final party.

On Reboot I never can keep up going to sessions and usually it’s better not to. The interactions in the hallways and the lobby especially during the lull when there are sessions going on are more interesting on a personal level than anything else.

The first day’s talk got concluded by a fun treatment of information by David Weinberger. During dinner it was also very interesting to get a preview of his session from Siert Wijnia about his Fablab and what the commoditization of the production process will do to product design and manufacturing.

And I had a lot of fun shooting a set with the girls: