Maps for where you’ve been in Europe and the US (via). Stayed means having spent a night there which means the only places I’ve visited and not spent the night are Slovenia (went over the border to hike a mountain there) and the Vatican.
I should probably upgrade Turkey to lived depending on your definition: stayed in your own house or registered as a resident.
My score for the US is negligible and I don’t see this changing any time soon (maybe ever).
In Germany for many transactions you need a proof of address which a Personalausweis provides for German citizens. Us foreigners don’t get one however often we ask for it. In the Netherlands moving through the country without a battery of chip cards (OV chipkaart, Bonuskaart, OV-fiets etc.), apps and associated services is costly and annoying.
The signs have been there for a while but China seems to be pushing this much further along. The question is whether it’s a deliberate move or that the number of people affected is so small that they’re a negligible edge case for the policy makers over there.
It’s been a bit of a grab bag year but overall not as bad as 2023 and a bunch of things seem to be on track.
Health
I got on the neurodiversity bandwagon this year.
First I got myself a self-paid diagnosis for ADHD. This result should not surprise anybody who knows me. I’ve forced myself to be very high functioning throughout my life but it can’t be denied that there were always some underlying issues. I’m on medication from the end of the year and have gone off caffeine.
I also got myself tested for giftedness and got a positive result there as well.
Both of these results were validating if nothing else and put a lot of things that happened in my life in a different perspective.
For anybody who’s not sure whether they should pursue this, my recommendation would be: You will only know how differently you can feel if you do.
I got a mole cut out of my skin. It’s a nice scar to have.
I’m fully vaxxed against FSME and got a booster for COVID in November. That brings me to six jabs in total.
Sports and Injuries
It could have been a great year for sports. After having a great time on our yearly trip to the Alps, I came back to Berlin and badly sprained my ankle after falling off some stairs. I didn’t need any surgery, thankfully, but it did set me back some 8 weeks of physical therapy and having to build up to walking again.
That notwithstanding, I managed to participate in three road cycling group rides this year. MAAP opening up a store here and organising open weekly rides has been really cool. The cycling and the coffee were lit. 🔥
I cycled up the Brocken for my first ever mountain and clocked 4201km in 2024 on Strava.
It’s my goal to weigh 75kgs and I’m still as far away from that as I ever was.
Movies
Letterbox does a good job tracking this and it was a pretty good year for movies. I review all of them over there in detail but I can say the non-Potter kids movies we watched were nice and the Japanese cinema on the whole was excellent. I saw Evil Does Not Exist two times with the second time in the local theatre live scored by its composer Eiko Ishibashi.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Dune: Part Two
Curious Tobi and the Treasure Hunt to the Flying Rivers
Glass Onion
Frozen
Tangled
Raya and the Last Dragon
Shoplifters
Luca
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Yojimbo
Drive My Car
Perfect Days
John Wick: Chapter 4
Evil Does Not Exist
How to Blow Up a Pipeline
Harakiri
Evil Does Not Exist
Die Hard
Television
Trakt is doing a great job keeping track of which episodes of which television series I need to watch. It’s the only way I can possibly stay on top of this.
The Last of Us
Spy x Family S2
Death Note
Frieren
Tour de France: Unchained S2
Vigil
The Peripheral
Kaiju No 8
Bluey
Arcane S2
Looks like I’m turning into a weeb just like everybody else in the culture. I watch anime in part as light entertainment and in part as Japanese immersion. It’s very hard to find anime that has any kind of thematic depth. Frieren comes closest because of how it twists the standard fantasy trope into a story about loss and reminiscence.
Books
It was a fair though not great year for reading.
Sheaf Theory through Examples, Daniel Rosiak
Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel
Min kamp 2, Knausgård, Karl Ove
Maria Stuart, Friedrich Schiller
Arkada Yaylılar Çalıyor, Melikşah Altuntaş
My Tender Matador, Pedro Lemebel
Kafka Connect: Build and Run Data Pipelines, Mickail Maison
Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season, Forugh Farrokzhad
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Michel Foucault
The Kubernetes Book: 2024 Edition, Nigel Poulton
Kafka Troubleshooting in Production: Stabilizing Kafka Clusters in the Cloud and On-premises, Elad Eldor
Conversational Capacity: The Secret to Building Successful Teams That Perform When the Pressure Is on, Craig Weber
I’m continuing my trend of reading one Knausgård and one Mantel book each year. No reason not to do that again this year.
I picked up some poetry at Perdu during my visit to Amsterdam and have been enjoying reading that.
Every time I see Maria Stuart (which I got put on to by Past Present Future’s fantastic Great Political Fictions series) in the list, I think: “I need to read more Schiller.” but then I keep forgetting to get the files off Gutenberg. Germans sure knew how to write back in the day.
Trips
Besides the trip to the Alps, I went to the Netherlands once in 2024 for Kars’s viva and we took a trip to idyllic Hiddensee after my foot was healed. Much more travel is slated for next year!
Other Culture
I don’t go to exhibitions for lack of time. Besides seeing Evil Does Not Exist in the theatre I managed to burn a ticket to the opera and one to a dance show due to conflicting commitments and forgetfulness. I’m not sure whether I’m going to retry this.
I took the kids to see Ronja at an open air show which was fun.
Miscellaneous
I was a member of the Greens but I cancelled that because even if they’re the least bad political party in Germany, they have been doing a lot of things that I do not wish to support from the inside. I wrote about that here.
I continued to learn and maintain my Japanese level in preparation for my trip in 2025.
I learned a bunch around Kubernetes and Kafka but would have liked to do more programming. I refreshed my algorithms a bit and picked up Factor to play with.
There was a brief period where Foursquare based recommendations were good and drawn from your wider social graph. Now we’ve gone back to Yelp and Google Maps where reviews and ratings don’t mean anything. A lower than 4 star review on GMaps has netted me a cease-and-desist e-mail for defamation.
That puts personally curated travel docs and word of mouth back in play as Thrillist describes here. Every Dutch person has or knows somebody who has a Berlin Google Doc with all the Geheimtipps. Dutch people’s tastes are fairly predictable and pedestrian, so these’ll mostly be cheap Asian eateries in Prenzlauerberg but that’s also fine.
For me the most interesting recommendations for Berlin but also for other cities come through TikTok. The algorithm is well tuned to my type of person and in the short videos it’s pretty easy to size up whether somebody knows what they’re talking about or not.
So I felt I couldn’t really bring myself to do Advent of Code this year since I have more than enough other things to do (and watch and play) and with work and the kids, it’s always pretty miserable to keep up.
I saw this thing called December Adventure though and that fits in nicely with my current push to release a major update for Cuppings. If I’m going to be programming until late this month, then I’d prefer it to be on something that I can release.
I can’t promise that I won’t do any AoC (Factor is looking mighty cool) but I won’t force myself to do anything. With that, let’s get going.
1/12
I started working on the map view which clicking around looked like it could be really annoying. I found some dead ends and was afraid I’d have to hack in Leaflet support myself but I found a dioxus example hidden in the leaflet-rs repository.
Yes, I’m writing this website in Rust/WASM, why do you ask?
That example required a bunch of fiddling with the configuration and a couple of false starts, but now I have a vanilla map view.
I can say that I’m amazed that in this ecosystem 1. an example exists 2. that example works 3. it works in my project with a bit of diffing and 4. it seems to do what I need.
I raised a PR to the project to advertise this example on its README just like it does the others so that others wouldn’t have to search like I did. That PR got merged:
Today I’ll see if I can tweak the map view to show the location of the cafe we tapped and get things to a point where I can commit the change.
To do this I need to figure out how to pass information along to a router when we tap a venue. That should be easy enough but the Dioxus documentation is between 0.5 and 0.6 now and a lot of it is broken.
A tip from the Discord said I need to put the data into a context from a parent and then get it out again in a child. It’s a bit roundabout and required some refactoring, but it works.
Done on time even for a reasonable bed time.
3/12
Turns out my changes from yesterday did not make it to the staging server. I’ll fix that and manually run the job again.
That’s these annoying wasm-bindgen version errors that keep happening and that require a reinstall of this: cargo install -f wasm-bindgen-cli --version 0.2.97 and the dioxus-cli. Dioxus which by the way is preparing its long awaited 0.6.0 release.
Other than that not that much will happen today since I spent most of the evening noodling around with Factor (despite my intention not to do any weird programming). It’s a nice language that’s very similar to Uiua which I tried out a while back but not being an array programming language makes it feel somewhat more ergonomic.
4/12
I can’t describe how nice it is to wake up and not have to deal with a mediocre story line involving elves and try to find time to attack a programming problem.
After today, I’m going to need that quiet morning, because I spent until 01:30 debugging an issue: Going to a detail view from the frontpage worked, but loading a detail view directly would throw an error.
There were two issues at play here:
Leaflet maps don’t deal well with being created multiple times so either we have to call `map.remove() or we have to check whether the map has already been created and keep a reference to it somehow.
I solved it by pushing the map into a global variable:
These are Rust constructs I would normally never use so that’s interesting. More interesting is that they work in one go and that they work on the WASM target.
Then the error was gone but the page was blank. Not entirely sure what was happening I poked at the DOM to see all the map elements there but simply not visible. Turns out that because of the different path, the path for the stylesheet was being added to the URL like this: http://127.0.0.1:8080/venue/176/main.css
It just has these two lines:
#map {
width: 100%;
height: 100vh;
}
But without a height the map is invisible.
Both issues are solved but not committed. I’ll see tomorrow whether I’m happy with the solution and how to package this up. Also I’m not sure how main.css is being served on production and whether the same fix will work there.
(I looked at day 2 part 2 but that just looked very tedious.)
8/12
Got in a ton of commits on Cuppin.gs today. After fixing the map, I wanted to see what would happen if I would add all 2000 markers to the map.
Performance seems to be doable but this is probably not ideal for a webpage. Dynamically rendering the venues is something for later. For now I can probably get away with filtering for the 100-200 nearest locations by distance and dumping those into the map view.
Now I’m back debugging Github Actions. I’m splitting up the build and deploy of the backend and the frontend into separate actions. Compiling dioxus-cli takes forever which is a step I hope I can skip with cargo-binstall.
Iterating on Github Actions takes forever and there really doesn’t seem to be a better way to develop this or a better CI solution that everybody is willing to use.
10/12
Spent some hours massaging the data that goes into the app. I had to add all new venues and after that I wanted to check whether any place in our 2k venue set had closed so we can take them off the display. This is a somewhat tedious multi-step process.
I have an admin binary that calls the Google Maps API for each venue to check the venue data and the business status (CLOSED_TEMPORARILY and such). But to be able to do that you have to feed each place ID into the API. The only issue with place IDs is that they expire from time to time. There’s a free API call that you can use to refresh them.
That expiration does not happen that often. What happens more, I found, is that a place will disappear entirely of Google Maps. For some reason it will be deleted. I don’t handle that case yet so there my updaters break entirely and the quickest fix around it is to delete the venue from the database and restart.
The only data issue that I still have outstanding is when venues move their location to a different address. I have a place around here that I think is still showing on its old spot.
11/12
Tried to run Cuppings in Xcode to be met with some weird compilation errors. Turns out that there’s an Expression type in Foundation that’s overriding my SQLite.swift Expression. It’s a pretty silly reason for code to be broken: Expression – name space conflict with Xcode 16/iOS 18
Also still fighting with the frontend deployments which seem to need a --frozen passed to them to not proactively go update package versions.
14/12
Love to have a crash on startup for the Cuppings TestFlight build and then sit down today to bake a new one and upload that and for that one to work. No clue what the issue was even though I took a look at the crashlog (that I sent in myself).
I’ve also automated building the iOS app to be done by Xcode Cloud which should making new versions (whenever the database is updated) a lot easier.
16/12
Upgraded the frontend to Dioxus 0.6.0 which just came out and has lots of quality of life issues. For my case, I did not need to change a single line of code, just change some version numbers and build a new dioxus-cli.
Nice TUI for serving the frontend
I hope that maybe solves the wasm-bindgen issues on the frontend deploy. The annoying part about the build is that it takes so long that it’s very hard to iterate on.
It’s too late even for me to see what this does. I’m off to bed. You may or may not get a new version of the website by tomorrow morning.
18/12
Spent some iterations running the frontend deploy and rerunning it but now it should be working.
22/12
I spent the evening doing manual data munging and correcting some venue locations that hadn’t been updated correctly through my data life cycle.
That forced me to clarify the two name fields the venues table has.
name was the original name field and was pulled from the Foursquare metadata
google_name is the name field that’s pulled from Google Maps and was effectively leading but not updated correctly yet when refreshing the data
So to figure that out I did a bunch of auditing in the list to see venues where there was a large discrepancy between the names. Something that happens is that a place will change its name but keep the same location and Google Maps place.
I also added a label to the iOS app to indicate whether this is a DEBUG build but that messed up the layout and I guess I might as well remove it. Sometimes I get confused what I’m running, but since it’s just me running DEBUG builds on their phone, I think I can do without.
I also started a rewrite that I’m not sure I’m going to pull over the line: I wanted to remove the search dependency on Alpine.js and replace it with htmx. For this I asked Cursor to do the translation which it did a stab at but ultimately rather failed to do even the basic steps for it. Then I did it myself and while htmx is super easy to setup, the data juggling I have to do with what I get from Google Maps is very fragile and needs to be cleaned up (which I may or may not do given that things are working right now).
23/12
Working with the backend was very annoying because every time the server restarts, it would log me out. To fix that I changed the persistency of tower-sessions from MemoryStore to FileSessionStorage and that fixed it without issues. There is now a .sessions folder in the backend which needs to be ignored for cargo watch but other than that it’s a drop-in replacement.
That means I will need to write a logout view at some point.
I painstakingly built a bespoke Rust web application to host the Cuppings venue data and to add Google place_ids to almost 2000 Foursquare location. That’s been done for a while now but now we have the announcement of Foursquare open sourcing their location dataset.
That has two direct consequences for me:
I was going to scrub the Foursquare data out of the database as a clean-up but that’s something I won’t do for now. In fact, I may recode the venues so I have ids in both worlds.
I was toying around with the idea of building a next generation Foursquare/Dopplr on top of atproto which is something that I think is a lot more feasible now.
A beautiful elegy for photographer Matthieu Chazal by Paul Salopek on the epic Out of Eden Walk.
On those bitter days afoot in the Caucasus, Murat and I would sometimes send Matthieu ahead to search for shelter in the snowy wastes. He was very good at it. Often, we found him at a tumbledown farmhouse or roadside inn, regaling a crowd with outlandish stories, and sipping from a jar of homemade Georgian wine. Last month our nomad friend left us, at 49, a casualty of aggressive cancer. Once more he scouts the road ahead.
I can’t believe I have to say this, but let’s do it anyway: Going to Mars is—just like the hyperloop—a distraction from the actual problems and solutions in front of us.
Looking back on 2023 I can say that we made lemonade out of an overall pretty shit year.
But not to worry. This is probably just one shit year in a sequence of many more shit years to come. No sign of anything getting better in our near future and lots of trends pointing downward. Does it have to be like this? Not in any way but the majority of people are stupid and we all suffer together.
ACL
I had messed up my knee in late summer of 2022 during a climbing accident and after a bit of stalling figured out that having my ACL reconstructed would be a good idea.
The surgery was scheduled for February 23rd of 2023. That made a lot of the beginning of the year waiting to go into surgery which was followed by getting the surgery (a supremely weird experience), then recuperating from it at home for a couple of weeks and going back to work while doing physical therapy.
The chronology as far as I could piece it together:
I got around mostly using ride shares during the first part which was fine. Turns out that I spent €474,55 on cab rides. A fair bit of that was thankfully reimbursed by my saved up mobility budget. I stopped taking cabs and started cycling on the electric Christiania on April 15th and then had my first outing on the road bike on June 18th.
During one of my final check-ups I told my physician at the hospital that if I didn’t rationally knew I had knee surgery, a lot of the time I couldn’t remember it. There was no noticeable difference anymore.
Of course there are still lots of situations where I notice it. The difference in strength between the two legs is still there and catching up very slowly. But that things are more or less back to normal is exactly what was promised.
I’m cleared to boulder again from around Easter if I choose to ever practice that sport again.
Kids
School
The kids started their school year with the German event they call the Einschülung, something that I disagree but I have no shortage of things that I disagree with about the German school ‘system’. That’s for another blog post.
The concept of the school and how classes are setup is very cool and the teachers are young and engaged. If everything worked the way it should, things would be amazing. The only issue is that most of the time there are staff shortages that fully destabilize whatever plans or schedules had been drafted. Those shortages stem from the deep dysfunction of the Berlin civil service and mostly because of a lack of funding for the schools that need it the most.
I’m not sure what we’re going to do there but for now we’re going to see if things look up in the second half of the year.
Let it be clear that Germany is a country that in no way values kids and their education.
Father
Related to our kids going to school, on their first school day morning my dad passed away suddenly in Amsterdam. We knew he was sick but we had no idea that things would progress this quickly.
The funeral was of course in Turkey so I took a flight to Amsterdam to be with my family and see him off and then flew to Turkey with my mother to do the burial in our village. It was the first time I was back in Turkey since 2015.
That was a difficult thing to do and after that everything is different.
Holidays
I heard the news about my dad’s illness on our holiday in the Alps this year. Our first family holiday in a long time and otherwise a resounding success.
After all the affairs were wrapped up we went to Amsterdam for a week during the fall break to keep my mother company and to have the kids experience a bit of the Netherlands again. It was good to be back and to see people we hadn’t seen in a long time.
Studies
I’ve continued the trend of unapologetically self-studying things that I fancy. I can recommend it.
Abstract Algebra
To continue to study category theory I diagnosed a gap I had on basic abstract algebra and tried to close it. I didn’t finish either of the textbooks (Fraleigh and Galian) because it seems that text books are bad for self-studying people.
I worked through a couple of YouTube lecture series on the topic which gave me much more value.
I kept studying Japanese for most of the year and on a whim I registered for the December JLPT. During registration I had a choice where I could either go for the safe but relatively irrelevant N5 level or stretch myself and go for N4.
I picked N4 and that turned out to be a lot tougher than expected. I had to push very hard on both vocabulary and grammar to get to a point where I even felt it was worth going to Düsseldorf to take the test. The 1-2 months before the test I was cramming flash cards throughout the day and studying most evenings.
The test itself in Düsseldorf was even harder than I expected and I think that it’s unlikely that I passed it, but who knows… Results are due end of January.
Even if I don’t get the certificate, stretching myself to N4 has made me study much much harder than I would ever have otherwise and I’ve advanced quite a bit. Also I got a quick trip to Düsseldorf out of it where I could eat Asian food at a level and authenticity that’s impossible to get in Berlin.
CulturaI
With everything else that was going on, I didn’t have anything significant happen here. No time, no energy, no relevance.
I don’t really know how other people manage to binge dozens of crappy Netflix shows. I can’t really imagine spending entire evenings watching television. Do people do this still?
There are lots of good shows still that I would like to watch (The Last of Us, The Bear, Succession, etc.) but there’s just no time.
Books
I only read 15 books this year with Galian, Genki and the sheaf theory book—none of which are listed below—sucking up most of my reading time.
Cold Enough for Snow was a nice book and it also happened to be the only piece of fiction I read this year. The rest of the books above are all highly situational and none of them are particularly interesting or made a lasting impact.
Video
I watched six movies this year. The only notable one was Heat which I first saw as a teenager in the City cinema in Amsterdam.
When it comes to television things look slightly better:
The Sandman: We did not finish it but enjoyed the episodes that we watched.
Spy x Family S1: Exactly the light-hearted fun anime that I needed to watch. Nothing serious here but a fun conceit well executed.
Tour de France Unchained: An epic dramatization of the world’s biggest cycling event that is a must watch if you’re even slightly interested in the sport.
The Witcher S3: Nothing of note happened in this season but it was still kinda fun to watch I guess.
Attack of Titan S4P2: It was good to watch the ending of this epic series but after such a long wait it was kinda hard to pick up the relatively complex storyline.
Death Note: An anime classic that I started which is well executed but tough as nails and not at all compelling.
Jujutsu Kaisen S2: The long awaited Hidden Inventory and Shibuya Incident arcs turned into a treat to watch despite the continuously escalating power levels and its sprawling cast of characters and villains.
Games
During my recovery from surgery I started and finished Breath of the Wild. The irony of having had a climbing accident and making Link free-climb epic cliffs on Hyrule was not lost on me.
That was the year. Let’s see what the new one does.
Finding time for side projects and putting out new versions of Cuppings is difficult as always, but I’m glad we have a new version out this week again.
The list of things still to do is long as ever but for now enjoy the newest most up to date version of your favourite coffee drinking guide.
But these subjects of the Islamic Emirate could not be kept from watching Stranger Things or Game of Thrones or Japanese anime; they had a better knowledge of Breaking Bad than I did. On Twitter—they, like so many Afghans, were avid users—shared soyjack memes and called themselves “sigma males.”They talked about feminism, “LGBTQ,”and pronouns—strange things to complain about in a country where women can’t go to school. They were becoming Westerners: culture war, America’s most successful soft-power export, was their induction. The younger members of the Taliban, online enough to follow Andrew Tate, were not immune.
Now he was getting excited. “Martyrdom,”he said, “would make me much happier than being a bureaucrat and working in the ministry. On the word of Sirajuddin Haqqani, we would happily blow ourselves up tomorrow!”
This is a wild piece about peaceful life under Taliban rule in Afghanistan.
I’ve had a number of amazing and unforgettable experiences with Couchsurfing mostly staying in Berlin way back in the day. This history of the site’s rise and fall fills in what happened after I lost track.
Als ik het verhaal over witwassen in de Amsterdamse binnenstad hier lees, denk ik dat het hier in Berlijn zonder overdrijven tien keer zo erg is (decennia armoede, corruptie en geen enkele prioriteit bij de lokale overheid).
Picked the countries where 50% of the people speak a language where I have at least B level of skill.
A couple of years ago, I remember seeing at IST airport advertisements for connecting flights to Erbil (أربيل‎). The city seems to have continued growing and by now developed a vibrant nightlife.
An interesting bit of news did the rounds last week but I’ve personally heard of multiple cases where people leaving online reviews have been faced with legal action.
Germany has a lot of lawyers and judges and the system finds work for them.
Not enough popcorn in the world to read this exposé on Booking.com.
Let’s just say that if almost everybody tells you not to write your website in Perl and you still insist on it, then you deserve all of the consequences of that decision.
But they seem to be making so much money than most of the dysfunctionality in the article does not really affect the company.
As the blisters develop and his feet start to bleed, Walton asks the right questions. What are the human and environmental costs of Singapore’s success, and are they sustainable?
His conclusions are more nuanced than either Singapore’s detractors or its cheerleaders would like. The island’s vaunted meritocracy is imperfect, especially seen from the perspective of its Malay and Indian minorities; and the pressures on citizens to perform and conform are so intense that those who do not fit in sometimes opt for voluntary exile.
Not having walked the length of the island (which sounds amazing) but talking about Singapore from afar, I came to many of the same conclusions. Still a fascinating place in so so many ways.
I recently refused to help some local tourists to call the bike share hotline in German. We were legitimately in a hurry but my flat out refusal was not appreciated. Next time I’ll tell them I won’t be helping them because I do not support tourism.
“The economic costs Airbnb imposes likely outweigh the benefits.”
I don’t think anybody will be surprised by this study whose conclusions are that AirBnB is a drain on society and should be taxed and regulated mercilessly.
A couple of weeks ago I took the train to Hamburg and back to present at the Good School. Here’s a picture of me in action courtesy of The Good School.
I used to travel between the Netherlands and Germany at least once a month and pretty quickly I grew tired of forgetting things. That’s why I made a list (in bold, comments added) with the things that I should take or at least consider taking. Whenever I pack my bag, I quickly scan the list and make sure I’ve covered the bases. Maybe it’ll be helpful to you as well.
This and clothes go into a Patagonia MLC bag.
Take knife off keychain
I’ve forgotten to do this more than a couple of times. What makes it weirder still is that TXL/SXF will allow me to fly out with a Swiss army knife but most other airports will not allow me to fly back with one.
Essentials
These are things that are irreplaceable and without which a trip usually cannot happen.
Laptop
Obvious. Macbook Pro 13″.
Power cable
Without this the laptop is pretty worthless. Replacements if you can find them in a local store are upwards of €100.
Passport
Without this traveling isn’t really possible.
Boarding cards / tickets
You could get these from the airport but I print out everything I can at home.
Toiletries
Sunblock
At some point it becomes silly to buy new sunblock at every sunny destination.
Toothbrush, paste Sometimes I don’t bother to bring any and buy them at the destination airport but it’s more reliable to pack. Often I also take the head of my electric tooth brush.
Lipbalm I put this on there after I once needed it and paid €11 for a stick at ZRH.
Assorted other toiletries
This is a pain with only a carry-on. I try to usually depend as much as possible on what is available at my destination.
Getting around
These are particularly essential for the Netherlands where you need to bring a card to be able to prove your identity to the various transit systems around.
Foreign SIM
Often this means just my Dutch T-Mobile SIM. I often have SIMs for destinations outside of Europe but those are so short lived that they aren’t reusable.
Foreign money / transit cards
I have ziploc bags per country with the currency leftovers as well as any transit card (Oyster, Suica) or SIM that may still be usable.
Power converters
The US and the UK account for most of my trips where these are necessary. I put these in the ziploc bags with the currency.
Paperclip
I used to need one of these to do the SIM swap. Now I have an Apple SIM pin in the box with all my SIM cards.
Keys
Keys to my parents place in the Netherlands or any other home/office at the destination.
Small backpack
The MLC isn’t very practical to haul around town. I have a tiny Bach day pack that is super basic but fits everything you could need during a day.
Canteen
I usually don’t bother taking this because of weight and bulk, but it is useful for longer trips.
Office
VGA dongle
Trips usually involve some kind of public speaking and as a speaker you should be self-sufficient. Don’t leave this at the venue where you’re speaking.
Pens
I need to carry some quality pens with me. I usually have a four color box of Staedtler fineliners and a couple of Japanese gel pens.
Index cards
Always useful but don’t bring too many because paper is heavy.
Business cards
Trips are usually for business and people appreciate a nicely designed business card.
Headphones with microphone
The standard Apple ones will do for most calls.
Noise cancelling headphones
You need headphones with some noise cancelling effect for during flights. I used to travel with my Sony MDR-7506. They are bulky but if you fly an easyJet to Berlin with those on your head, everybody thinks you’re a DJ. Now I prefer to take my Sennheiser CX-300 II in-ears.
Special wardrobe
Havaianas
Bring if the destination is hot.
Running shoes, pants
Nice to be able to do some sports while traveling.
Swimming trunks
Always bring these.
Sunglasses
I always take my Moscot Lemtosh with me.
Hiking shoes
Whether to bring my decade old pair of Meindls is heavily dependent on the type of trip and the environment.
Climbing shoes
If there are climbing halls nearby, I’ll take these instead of/in addition to running shoes.
Here are my notes from a couple of weeks of drinking coffee in Tokyo on a fact finding mission for Cuppings. With Cuppings we try to give you a guide of the best coffee places around the world based on our personal tastings. Some notable locales are still not as well represented as they should be. London and New York have their own excellent guides for coffee with Oliver Strand’s Coffee App and the London Coffee Map. Tokyo is one place that I thought we should fill in.
I had picked my hotel to be on the right side of the city to be off to a running start so I could visit places right from the very first day. So landed at Narita, got my Mifi and while waiting to checkin I made my way to.
Little Nap Coffee Stand
I had a quick lunch and walked to the Little Nap Coffee Stand (checkin, tip) which I had seen a video of over at My First Coffee and was totally smitten with. As promised the store was beautiful and the coffee was excellent.
Fuglen Tokyo
Then I walked over to this place recommended to me by Companion Coffee. This Fuglen (checkin, tip) is a sister to a store by the same name in Oslo1. This place turned out to be more of a cafe with an event program and cocktails in the evening and a diverse group of Japanese people and expats hanging around with laptops during the day.
The decorations are lush Nordic wood and the Kalita Wave pour over that I had was terrific.
Omotesando Koffee
Then after some more walking around at the end of the day I finally hit the promised place: Omotesando Koffee (checkin, tip) which had been recommended to me by countless people and where Eiichi Kunimoto practices his craft. I had an iced cappuccino here because —what I hadn’t counted on— the weather was extremely pressing and it was rainy humid and very warm all day. It stayed that way for most of my stay.
The iced cappuccino at Omotesando is more of a milkshake like concoction with the espresso shot put into a blender along with some ice and milk, the result is poured out into your cup and sprinkled with —I think— cinnamon. Drinking this at that moment in the idyllic garden of Omotesando was a near religious experience and felt like the best coffee I have ever had. I returned to Omotesando a number of times during my visit for the coffee, the amicable staff and the quiet ambiance of its garden.
Bear Pond Espresso
The next day I walked from my hotel to Shimokitazawa, a 20 minute saunter in the heat through the quiet residential area of Hatagaya. I don’t have any pictures of Bear Pond (checkin, tip) because of their policy but this was the other summit of my Tokyo coffee experience.
Katsuyuki Tanaka (and Eiichi Kunimoto of Omotesando) are very different and have a totally different style of coffee and shop but both elevate making coffee to a level which can only be called artistry.
The ambiance at Bear Pond is slightly forbidding but with the American radio playing it is rather easy to unwind on one of the stools and wait for your espresso to be served. That espresso when it comes out is one of the shortest shots you have ever drunk and probably also one of the most intense.
I ordered an espresso on an empty stomach which I normally never do because it gives me problems. But this espresso was so smooth that not only did my stomach not get upset, it was so delicious that I chased it with another one. With the reduced quantity it becomes something of an effort to get every last bit of taste out of the cup.
I brought back a bag of Bear Pond’s house blend ‘Flower Child’ and even when made in Berlin (by the heroes of Companion Coffee) after two weeks, it still had that characteristic deep chocolate like flavour.
Cafe Obscura
The next stop was Cafe Obscura (checkin, tip), a somewhat out of the way place with lots of nice leather sofas and good siphons on offer. Obscura also have a laboratory which I skipped in favor of this place. The siphon coffee is expertly made and really good.
Nozy Coffee
Then it was a quick visit to Nozy Coffee (checkin, tip) which is a small but very nice looking coffee place. I had a solid cappuccino and saw that they have lots of beans on offer. Unfortunately I had no time to come back and bring some of these with me, but this place is one to look out for.
Be A Good Neighbor (Sendagaya)
The following day started out at the tiny Be A Good Neighbor (checkin, tip) store in Sendagaya. The cappuccino and the cake were both excellent and the barista was very helpful in offering tips about where to get more coffee. Especially useful was his pointer to Paddlers which I started the next day with.
Streamer Coffee Company Shibuya
I then walked on to Shibuya to try the coffee at Streamer (checkin, tip). The type of coffee which they serve here and which I had is a latte. I normally don’t drink them but in the light of trying out the coffee as it is being served locally I had one. Shockingly this was the first place in Tokyo I encountered where the coffee was not fantastic.
What Streamer does do really well is to be a nice place to hangout. There were lots of people in the store with and without laptops having a great time and relaxing which is exactly what I did as well.
On the Corner No. 8 Bear Pond
The last stop this day was the Shibuya On the Corner Bear Pond No. 8 (tip) take-out bar which is a beautiful store front with attached coffee bar where you can sit on a handful of stools and recharge your phone or as it seems to be the intention: take out your coffee. You get an expertly drawn coffee with milk in it and a no photo policy is in effect here as well, so I can show you the cup I drank it from:
I did not visit the restaurant and instead had an awesome burger around the corner at Whoopie Gold Burger.
Paddler’s Coffee
The next day I trekked to the area around Sangubashi station in the morning and had a terrific start of the day at Paddlers Coffee (checkin, tip) a brilliant setup lunch place with Stumptown coffee on offer. I had a spectacular iced coffee in the stifling heat.
Cafe Kitsune
I then made it out to Cafe Kitsune (checkin, tip) whose presence I had just been alerted to. This is a fashion store in Omotesando where they have a fabled Slayer Espresso machine.
Then it was off to Kyoto to see some sights and sample the coffee outside of Tokyo. This was something of a disappointment, but we’ll get to that in a bit.
Specialty Coffee Unir
In Kyoto I found it rather hard to get a coffee that I would term drinkable. Most of the local brews are very dark roasted and ridiculously over extracted to a point that I can hardly drink them even with milk and sugar (or gum syrup).
One exception to his in Kyoto was Unir (checkin, tip) where they make a very nice cappuccino and which I visited a couple of times because of this.
アカツã‚コーヒー (Akatsuki Coffee)
Based on some research I found Akatsuki (checkin, tip) which is a nice place in a different part of town. This place gets the filter brew almost right and the shop itself looks beautiful.
Omotesando Koffee
What I didn’t know until my last day in Kyoto and after my camera broke down is that they have a branch of Omotesando (checkin, tip)in the city on the main shopping street in a fashion store of United Arrows. The same impeccable Omotesando branding and the same fantastic coffee. I’m half glad that I didn’t know of it before because given the Kyoto coffee scene I would have been at this place all the time.
Hood Cafe
Then it was off to Osaka to do the same. My experience here was a bit better than in Kyoto but not much. Hood (checkin, tip) is a very nice coffee shop which manages to hit all of the cultural paraphernalia associated with third wave coffee and also serves a bunch of different beans and methods but still it does not seem to hit the level of Tokyo. Still they serve very good coffee even without comparing it to the stuff on offer in the rest of the city.
Espresso Bar Millpour
Next up was Millpour (checkin, tip) which is a tiny place in the city where they make a near perfect cappuccino.
After that detour it was time to get back to Tokyo and to finish this visit.
The Monocle Cafe
I dropped by the Monocle Cafe (checkin, tip) in the basement of a clothing store and was disappointed by the coffee though the food was rather ok. The coffee is not terrible, but it does not have the quality that you would expect from Monocle which is more or less the same for the rest of the store.
Be A Good Neighbor Skytree
Then I made my way over to the Be A Good Neighbor (checkin, tip) store in the Skytree. The Skytree itself is a pandemonium of commerce where people are screaming at you all the time to buy something. Finding your way through the mall to the exact location of Be A Good Neighbor is no mean feat, but finally having arrived there the coffee is as excellent as in their other store. I would only recommend going here if you’re already in the area or god forbid entering the Skytree but then it is a welcome place to rest.
Sarutahiko Coffee
I also did a round of Ebisu and found two very nice coffee places in that part of town. Sarutahiko (checkin) is a small shop but it seems to have everything necessary and made a very nice coffee. Definitely worth a visit.
Hitinui Espresso Bar
A bit further on is Hitinui (checkin, tip) which is a tiny place and also doubles as a Tahitian dance school. I couldn’t check out the dance, but the cappuccino was excellent and the barista very friendly.
Identity Coffee Bar+Gallery
Identity Coffee Bar+ Gallery (checkin, tip) also in Omotesando is a rather nice store and has an excellent selection of both Intelligentsia and Handsome beans which they prefer perfectly.
That was the roundup from my Tokyo coffee experience. I visited a couple of the places several times and brought back some bags of coffee but I am extremely impressed with the coffee culture and I’ll definitely be back.
And Oslo with its coffee scene is still very high on my to visit list. [↩]
This was the week of getting a lot of things done and a minor John Boyd obsession. I read the biography by Coram and queued the PhD thesis by Osinga to read as soon as I finish Latour’s Aramis1. Frans Osinga is a rather impressive fellow if you look at his Ministry of Defense webpage. We were joking around that having a design event with him would be brilliant mind-expand. Unfortunately events take too much time to organize so that won’t be happening anytime soon.
One thing to keep in mind from Boyd’s tragic life is to make the decision to either Be Somebody or to Do Something. Most people I hang out with all want to Do Something, but it does pay to keep in mind how it will work out for you personally.
I made a brief stop in Aachen2 before heading to the Netherlands to catch up with local coffee, for some quality time at Hubbub HQ and meeting Amsterdam friends.
To prepare for that visit to the Netherlands I had to kill another two hours at the local Bürgeramt because the Meldebescheinigung I had was not recent enough for some stupid Dutch institution.
This is all a move towards reading more foundational works (I wrote about that here) instead of the pop-sci that permeates everything. [↩]
Small towns across Europe are scary places filled with old people and conservatism. [↩]
Oh, this week. This week was how to put it rather intense.
We got visits again from Peter Rukavina and this time Thomas dropped in as well to make it a proper Reboot reunion. I decided to join Peter (Bihr) to go to London in October to attend Playful and Mozilla Festival and potentially Gamecity too which is supposed to be an awesome conference in Nottingham. I’ve never been outside of London so that alone may be worth the trip.
I also had a visit of my old friend Bjorn who I worked with at a company that shall not be named but that was deep in the territory of the bizarre.
I spent the beginning of that week prepping for a client engagement which got me waking up on Wednesday somewhere before five o’clock to take a hellish cab ride into Tegel airport. You are never driven to Tegel in the same way twice, but I’ll definitely make sure never to take the highway again.
During the flight I also managed to spill coffee both over my clothes and my laptop and that was all before I even arrived in Munich. That was a rather terrible start of a day that turned out very well. That evening we celebrated our success with a Tsukemen ramen at a local Munich ramen joint1.
The next day we did another day at the client after which having been nicely friend I took an S-Bahn to the airport. Munich airport right now has the best feature ever. There is a beer garden in between the two terminals where you can cheaply load up on a local microbrew before you board your plane. Every airport should have this.
Then after having done all of this and with hardly enough sleep I dropped into our weekly Sheperditchi breakfast and then straight into a OpenGL ES course given by Stijn Oomes. Stijn has a PhD from my alma mater and we know many of the sam people even though I didn’t have too many interactions with the computer graphics group at my faculty. We had talked earlier that year about his current pursuit of 3D vision and about the potential of such a workshop for iOS programmers. It was a thoroughly enjoyable day of pure learning with a lot of hands on and a knowledgeable teacher at hand.
That evening I joined the Berlin Critical Mass which is changing for the better and after that I watched Only God Forgives. A brilliant contemplative orgy of violence, shades of which I am seeing in Hotline Miami which I’m playing right now.
And the next day I got my first sailing lessons —which I had half forgotten I was supposed to have— and after that I finally had some time to catch up on e-mail. Pretty odd how something that was such a critical part of infrastructure in this part of the world is nothing more than a pass time for well off people at the moment.
Who knew that Munich even had ramen places let alone a ramen place that serves an interpretation of tsukemen!? [↩]
A new coffee place had reportedly opened up in the area and I went out searching for it. Concierge is tucked into a gate on Paul-Lincke-Ufer and they are really nice guys pulling quality shots. It is amazing both that this part of Berlin which was quite barren when it comes to coffee is shaping up so nicely and also that
That week we went into our Open State board meeting where everything is picking up in pace considerably. After that I just made it to the drinks of the Upfront UG which was a lot of fun.
We started ideation and building of an app for the piazza+social media platform which I’m rather excited about. More on that over on the Hubbub blog soon.
I will be speaking at the Retune conference in my hometown on the subject of games with a purpose and our creative process. It looks like a super nice conference and I would love to meet you here.
Our office landlords invited us to join them in a celebration on our building’s roof terrace. It’s been a while since I was on one of those and they look like mandatory facilities for anybody living in Berlin. I’m putting it my list of required utilities for the next KANT office.
Just to prove the awesomeness of Berlin, we just had a Korean food shack opening here (besides the already rather large offering of Korean cuisine that Berlin has). I had my first Kimchi Fries there, which I think is indeed best described as a Korean kapsalon.
On Friday I just handled a last bit of business for the week and then went off to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (MeckPom) for a bit of kayaking and canoeing which is about all there is to do in that part of Germany. It is a state that is trying to cope with severe shrinkage and because of its sparse population lends itself particularly well to forays into nature. I saw lots of animals and their young and definitely learned the difference between a kayak and a canoe. Also: bringing an aeropress can make situations much more bearable.
Travel is making it hard to keep up writing these notes weekly (or write anything for that matter). So this blog is turning into an expensive affair.
Way back when this happened I was in the Netherlands for an appointment that was cancelled and because of that I had to fly to Munich from Amsterdam for a day of workshopping. The next night I flew back to Amsterdam to spend the rest of the week at Hubbub HQ in the Netherlands.
We did our strategic sessions about which I probably have written elsewhere already but this was as good a time as any to revisit this brilliant interview with Jack Schulze. They don’t make them like that anymore.
No one cares about what you think, unless you do what you think. No one cares what you do, unless you think about what you do. No one ever really cares what you say.
Advice to frame and put above your desk.
The last day I did a coffee tour of Amsterdam, which is in utter bloom at this moment with Third Wave coffee places opening up literally left and right. I paid a duty visit to BrunsNiks which is one of the best up and coming design firms of that city where most stuff is bullshit.
What is also brilliant are the new Hackers and Founders offices of the eponymous meetup group. My old office in the Volkskrantgebouw got evicted because they are turning that into a hotel (like pretty much everything in Amsterdam) so they got together with the neighbors of Bottlenose and some other friends and rented a nice floor smack in Amsterdam city centre. I can’t take any credit for what they did but still I’m half proud of what that turned into.
And that segued nicely into the speaker’s dinner for our Hack de Overheid event (which got a nice press release drop over at Wired thanks to Bruce). The event, the next day in City Hall, was one where all of the founders were present at one and the same location. That already was amazing. After the day was finished I spent the evening talking philosophy with Simeon.
And the next day it was back in the train to Berlin which has added a whole hour because the flooding has damaged a bridge and caused a large stretch of tracks to be dislodged. Deutsche Bahn says that reconstruction will take until December. That may be just in time for next year’s flooding.
Two weeks ago I headed towards Amsterdam where I’ll be the week after next again. I did a massive sprint on Cuppings and prepared my presentation for Sign of Times in Pakhuis de Zwijger.
I worked on a bunch of projects over at Hubbub on Tuesday and on Wednesday I was there again but then to prepare my presentation. That talk went really well despite the torrential rains of the day and I had a great time catching up with the people who had showed up.
I caught up with Daphne on Thursday and wandered around the city a bit looking for good coffe which I found at the newly opened Head First.
I finally ended up at the presentations of the Liquid Journalism masterclass and got to talk with Alexander and Laura.
On Friday Kars got married which was the other main reason I was in the Netherlands for.
But with the addition of Loustic, French coffee can finally be taken seriously again:
Most of these places seem to be run by English speaking expatriates and they are also mostly frequented by the same. This was something I also noticed at my coworking space in La Cantine. It seems that foreigners are a necessary mediator to introduce new things —digital or coffee— into French culture.
That Tuesday I worked at KANT and all of the people there presented roughly what they’re doing at the agency we sublease at Panorama3000.
I was thinking of writing a screensaver that does the live OSM viewer ‘Show me the way’, but it turns out there’s a way easier solution by plugging that URL into the WebView Screensaver.
That Wednesday I did a quick ignite for UIKonf on Beestenbende’s design aspects and the next day I was at Heimathafen Neukölln at 06:00 to help them with setup and registration. I managed to catch a bit of the conference and based on the content on stage and reactions in the room, it looks like it was a resounding success.
The next day I spent working at the office for most of the day, but in the evening I dropped by the UIKode hackathon to show the iOS project I had picked up again that week. More on that to be announced here soon.
This week was the week where we were in full sprint for the pilot launch of KAIGARA. Besides that we had a dinner off NEXT with some people involved and some speakers. What I managed to catch from NEXT’s program while working was nothing short of splendid. Bruce Sterling’s talk has been shared widely and I’m eagerly awaiting Anab Jain’s to be published as a video (the slides are already there).
On Thursday I managed to set aside a bit of time to go to the local multiplayer picknick at Amaze. The Amaze Indie Connect is the most fun event of the Berlin game scene and it always gets lots of very cool people to come out. Just sitting at the same table as Terry Cavanagh and Michael Brough left me a bit star-struck:
@amazefest#dgt13#AMaze2013 Thanks 2 all for that wonderful time. I wish u a successful year and hope seeing u 2014 back in Berlin.
It was also nice to see lots of old friends who I manage to see a couple of times a year. My highlight of Amaze was to be able to play Samurai Gunn. This game isn’t available yet and the video I’m going to post below does not nearly do it justice. It is one of the most gripping multiplayer combat games I’ve played to date.
Unbelievable how many weeks behind I am on these. That’s not wholly intended, but the last couple of weeks have been a bit busier than usual. This was the week of April 15th which I spent mostly in Amsterdam.
I spent a full day with the team on Tuesday working on KAIGARA:
I drank very awesome coffee that Angelo had brought back from his road trip along the west coast of the USA:
We celebrated shipping some projects that night with Kars and Simon and the next day I was back at Hubbub for another day of work. That night it was off to the Open State offices in Amsterdam for a bit of envisioning with our new managing director. A very solid and constructive session, well catered by our in-house team of Bite Me:
The Thursday I spent working at the Open Coop and preparing my Python programming course I gave on the now defunct Gidsy.
Friday I took the train back to Berlin and it was confirmed to me again that train companies are stupid. If I take a different train to Berlin I need to pay the difference in distance even if I start and end in the same place:
The week before this on Monday (almost two weeks ago), I went to a lecture by Graham Harman. Notes on that were blogged in a timely fashion.
That week also involved a one-day trip to Munich to present on the work we did for a client there. More on that on the Hubbub blog in due course.
Thursday I worked at the Kreuzberg Academy for Nerdery and Tinkering next door. I really love how Oranienstraße is coming together as a creative technological hub of import in Berlin.
Two week notes in one because last week seems to have been too busy to write any.
Week 313 was spent in the Netherlands with a somewhat hectic visit. I spent a lot of time at the Hubbub studio and at the Open Coop.
And of course the inevitable five (!) visits to the Village who were serving only Coffee Collective coffees when I was there:
And that Friday was Free Bassel Day in remembrance of our friend who is still imprisoned in a Syrian prison:
And then it was an ICE back to Berlin already:
I did manage to get some good writing in those two weeks. First one piece about why levying a tax on data is not a bad idea at all: Taxing data is not crazy. And the week after that about Jaron Lanier who is a crazy person with some interesting ideas: Who owns the future?
On Tuesday we had a big office lunch along with the people from Schnelle Bunte Bilder.
Wednesday we had our weekly German language class.
And that night I worked late to finish TORREON. A small project that took up way too much time as all small projects do.
That same night I helped a kid in the Netherlands do his maths homework. I think it is standard practice for kids in the Netherlands to share pictures of their homework issues on social media. This time I got caught by one and managed to help the kid out decomposing square roots.
@alper er zit een jongen in mijn klas die alper heet en hij helpt me altijd dus ik linkte voor de grap @ alper zonder te weten dat ik 1-2
Niels managed to hit another high with his contribution to Recess!. I think it may be about time to create a single serving website for tat serial.
Reading is something I still manage to do quite a lot though I have given up reading articles in Instapaper and have been reading a solid streak of books again. Some friends didn’t agree and they think the solution to this problem lies in craft beer.
On Friday morning we had a meeting with the breakfast gang. My blurb for TNW magazine was published on the open web.
And we closed off the week with a nice game of Citadels.
One recap of 2012 which was an odd year what with the international move and all. Still in the second half I managed to get a lot of travel in leaving aside the almost monthly trips to Amsterdam by train. Dopplr unfortunately does not give me a total amount of kilometers travelled for 2012 anymore.
The funny thing is that I visited a lot of capitals of countries that I hadn’t visited before even though I may have visited the country.
To Madrid in February: I had been to Spain often but never visited either Madrid or Barcelona.
To Athens in June: I had not ever been to Greece at all, so this was all new. A lot more fun than Madrid by the way.
To Paris in July: I’d been to France a couple of times but never to Paris yet.
To Helsinki in July: Another new capital and country, a visit which was very enjoyable both because of the company and because of the immense livability of the city.
To Beijing in October: A long overdue visit to China which was even more elucidating than it was enjoyable.
Not to (Canberra) in October: Though I did visit both Melbourne and Sydney which don’t count.
To Moscow in December: A nice combination of business and personal visits and a welcome confrontation with the weirdness of Russia.
Which makes my visited countries map look like this:
Last Monday was the last day in Berlin before the holidays so something of a push here and there to get things to go through. That night we had a vvvv workshop at the studio hosted by Joreg to teach somewhere around eight people the basics of node based graphical environments (the only other one I had used extensively before was Open DX and of course there’s Quartz Composer and Impure Quadrigram).
I messed around a bit with it and managed to produce this bit of media art. It is very interesting to have the power of DirectX9 under your fingers without having to program at all, though the whole fact of non-programming feels a bit strange to me.
Also there was this bit about the journalistic climate in the Netherlands:
I would recommend anybody interfacing with journalists to be wholly guarded and keep clearly in mind what’s in it for them in the interaction. The way it is played by most actors, it hasn’t been about the uncovering of the truth for a long time.
Tuesday was my travel day to Amsterdam where I wrote a bunch of stuff in the train and had an Open State board meeting that evening.
Thursday was also spent at Hubbub discussing business and getting work done. That night I had drinks with Kars and Lieke in a smashing new Utrecht establishment.
On Friday I met Edo van Royen at Studyflow, had lunch with Peter Robinett, coffee with Justus Bruns, dropped by at my accountant, had a beer with Thijs Niks and then drinks at the Open Coop with Lex and Alexander. Having said that: these visits to the Netherlands always tend to devolve into a flurry of errands that barely leave any time to think. That is going to change for the next one.
I picked up a Monocle at Sydney airport for a long flight without laptop (along with a book) and I was a bit disappointed1 in finding that the magazine hadn’t progressed much since I first read it years ago. It still is that strangely a-political collection of fluff pieces for the spendy class and because of the current realities of print publishing now also brimful of advertorials.
I do read and enjoy (in an odd way) Tyler Brûlé’s Fast Lane column in FT and it looks like Monocle itself is larded with his signature phraseology. A distillation from a single issue:
a country’s ability to [X] says volumes about its identity
The forthcoming generation needs help to be globally competitive
Infrastructure is lagging behind
To his nearby weekend retreat
A far cry from the polished décor and white-gloved service elsewhere in the area
Diplomacy and negotiations don’t just happen in airless meeting rooms
Like all good campaigns it flatters the consumer
The alcohol induced violence that often comes with bars and clubs
Prompting eager entrepreneurs to roll in while the paint is barely dry
The company is eyeing its prospects overseas
The diligent start at the helm of
The name never fails to raise a smile among [X]
[X] is not known for its subtle advertising campaigns
And has bureaux in London, New York and Beijing
Has caused a stir on several occasions
We’re all familiar with the trajectory
The problems are being discussed but significant government-sponsored solutions are yet to emerge.
with help from an expert panel of architects
has been developed by passionate fundraising
[X] feels like a resort
analogue ways of staying in touch are still the most popular
it’s a problem that needs to be addressed by the government, not just enterprising individuals
The architects tried hard to infuse a sense of warmth and comfort.
we need an attitude change
Buyers were successful businessmen with good taste
it must be the most laidback event in the design calendar
it’s remarkable that so little priority is given to the emotional impact of the interiors
the clever spatial design and careful choice of high-spec domestic furniture
The hope is that this is a model to be rolled out
it has also sparked a longing for restaurants where home-cooked, uncomplicated food is served in familiar settings
In retrospect I should have bought a New Yorker if they had them, but this was an impulse purchase and yes I too do aspire in a modest way. [↩]
After some weeks traveling to Beijing and Australia, last week I was back in Europe, touching down in Amsterdam Tuesday morning early. I had a very nice flight in from Sydney with the only annoyance being that my laptop had broken upon arrival there. This made me spend half a day of the two I had there in the Bondi Apple Store trying to figure out what the problem was.
The Genius there was less than helpful. Determining that it was my hard drive, he tried without avail to erase it and then load up a new version of the OS. I am more or less pleased that he wasn’t successful in doing that. In Amsterdam I tried another couple of things but finally handed it in at Maccare.nl who without touching it said ‘it was probably the cable’ and the very same day had replaced it for me. Since the Genius hadn’t even managed to erase my disk, I could incredulously resume working from where I was a week ago.
Niels van Hoorn from Brainsley provided support (as well as many many friends online) in the form of tools and a place to hangout while I tried swapping fresh hard drives in and out. The following day I handed my laptop in and while it was being fixed, I worked the day in Utrecht where using Chrome’s sign-in feature, I could resume most of my old work on an old Hubbub Macbook. It turns out the cloud is not a lie at all.
Thursday morning I got my Macbook Pro back and spent most of the day working at Brainsley’s offices which are small but rather cozy. I dropped by the Open Coop to chat with Lex and pick up my Open State business cards. And that night I met up with some old friends who work now mostly as hired guns in the Amsterdam startup scene for cocktails at the famed Door 74.
Friday I dropped by the Village (again!) and then got onto the train to Berlin where I am typing this right now.
I’m sitting here at Beijing Airport writing these too late weeknotes on their free WiFi1 which is an oddly implemented but still excellent service.
Last week was mostly spent with a scattered brain working on my ignite an various proposals. We had a studio meeting at Praxis to discuss recent developments and issues.
Thursday night I gave the Ignite to a packed Supermarkt Berlin. Thanks everybody for attending and listen to me rave about games for five minutes. Also fantastic to meet everybody in Berlin who I hadn’t caught up with for ages.
On Friday I finished off most of my paperwork before the trip. That night we went to see Werner Herzog read with the studio.
The next morning I got up at seven to see the market build up and watch the GSL Code S final together with Mustafa Işık and a colleague of his. You are either mildly serious about watching this or you are not. I’d already set up and tested the GOM Player before. That’s the bit of KPop you see above.
It was rather exhilarating to see a GSL event streamed live and I’m glad my light season ticket entitled me to view it. I’ve recently gotten into Star Craft because of Frank Lantz’s excellent “Drinking Man’s Guide to Watching Star Craft” and am greatly enjoying it as a highly complex, dense and therefore less boring alternative to most spectator sports.
Also: it is nice to still have a blog in a country where most social services are effectively a SPOF. [↩]
Last Monday was the end of the holiday with a leisurely train ride from Munich to Berlin during which I managed to chew through a lot of e-mails and revise a bunch of maths.
The rest of the week was spent mostly working through e-mails, meetings and social calls. Netzpolitik celebrated their birthday in C-Base with some nice drinks.
Virtueel Platform published the videos of our talks in Helsinki, so there you have me talking about open data:
With our Hubbub strength over at the Berlin studio doubled on Wednesday we finished saba. After that it was straight on working on buta all the while playing games at the festival.
On Friday I had another additional studio guest with Sebastian Deterding. That was also the day that I experienced the beautiful Our Broken Voice at Ostbahnhof.
The rest of the weekend was spent working on buta and playing games at Play Publik with nary a moment’s rest in between. It was nice to be finally able to play Starry Heavens by Eric Zimmerman. I and a lot of people had a lot of fun with Hit Me.
The final day there was a presentation by Kevin Slavin and we closed off the event with a massive game of Charge of the Rubber Ball Brigade. There are many awesome pictures online over at Facebook (which is a shame).
The last two weeks, after the brief trip to present in Helsinki were mostly spent on holiday in Avignon and the Alps (with some short stops in La Ciotat and Finale Ligure).
Fun was had. Relaxation not so much, but nevertheless, normal service has continued here again this week.
I spent two days in Ghent a Belgian city that is lovely in its own right, but really shines for a long week every summer when it has its own festival: the Gentse Feesten. I’d been there once before some ten years ago and had a lot of fun there. So Tourism Flanders gave me the chance to revisit.
Gentse Feesten is probably my favorite city festival / large scale celebration around. It manages to string together a wildly varied program in a nice city in a convivial atmosphere. It is nice to see how a festival can offer something for many ages and tastes and be an all round positive experience.
This visit was marred a bit by the rainfall plaguing most of Northern Europe this summer which put something of a damper on visitor numbers, but even in the pouring rain, many stages drew crowds and the after hours celebrations on the Vlasmarkt were as special as promised.
During my stay in Ghent there was so much rain, I managed to do some work on kohi in the hotel room. This being a self-commissioned project, it can hardly be named work in any of the regular meanings of the word.
Tuesday I travelled onwards to my AirBnB in Paris in the area of Porte de Saint Ouen. A neighborhood far away enough from the city center to be cheap and colorful (a bit like Delfshaven), but just inside the Péripherique boundary so not too threatening.
On Wednesday in Paris I went to La Gaîté Lyrique where a Joust tournament was due to take place. We had a lot of fun playing for an hour or so with all comers. I was going to visit la Gaîté anyway to see the games by Eric Zimmerman and Babycastles and as a nice addition I got to play Fez on one of the consoles they had on display.
La Gaîté Lyrique has as their tagline: ‘Révolutions Numérique’ which translates to Numerical Revolutions and nicely symbolizes the time we are living in right now. The venue hosts a number of events based in art, games, music and net culture that seem to be perfectly in tune with the Zeitgeist but also have the production values to appeal to a large audience. I wish a reboot of the Dutch electronic culture venues may approach this level.
On Thursday I did some preparations for my presentation in Helsinki at the end of the week in some beautiful but horribly expensive Paris cafés like Les Arts et Metiers and in the evening I met Peter Robinett and his sister at the University of Chicago’s Paris Center. There we listened to a lecture on Baudelaire and the bourgeois experience of the city in the 19th century.
I will also be giving a small workshop on Civic Hacking at the Campus Party where I will be sharing all the tricks we used with Hack de Overheid in the Netherlands and which we hope to deploy across Europe to make government more accessible and accountable using the internet.
Friday I flew to Helsinki for my first time over there. Helsinki is a lovely city though a bit empty in July and the Pavilion for the World Design Capital is a beautiful venue.
Saturday we attended the presentations on Transmedia storytelling with again a great report by Jasper Koning on VPRO’s Netherlands From Above project and on Sunday we presented for the social cities program.
The week before last I spent in Athens mostly hanging out, going to the beach and getting some work done.
That was also the week that I upgraded my Things client to to the Things Cloud Beta. I think I’m not supposed to say anything about it, but let me just say: ++. I have started moving large parts of my workload to Asana, so it remains to be seen if native apps like these continue to be a good fit for what is an inherently collaborative effort.
In Athens I crashed the local hackers event at the Colab Workspace Athens where the Ruby group were discussing the organization of the next Euroku. And another day I found the O.M.G. event, short for Overclocking, Modding and Gaming where lots of people gathered to play Call of Duty 4.
I spent last week in Athens because Lea was at work at the Athens & Epidaurus festival where the Schaubühne staged two plays. I spent the week relaxing, working and taking in the Athens air.
Athens Terrace Life
The temperature of 32-36C during the entire week was a good reason to spend all my time outdoors in the shade. Athens, being accustomed to this weather, has ample options to choose from to spend your time, from garden patios, terraces all over the place, drink and food stands and lots and lots of iced cappucini and espressi.
Interestingly almost every restaurant, café and terrace in the city has WiFi. One place near the hotel where we went regularly, Ambrosia, excused themselves for not having it saying ‘they were old.’ Given the proliferation of internet, I hardly saw any laptops in the various cafés neither during the day or night time. I’m guessing the WiFi is being used by smart phone users to supplement their limited data plans.
Oddly during the so-called economic crisis, almost everything at terraces was still pretty expensive (Amsterdam prices). Iced coffees went for €4 and cocktails from €9 upwards also beers were definitely not cheap. I didn’t see a lack of visitors either. Many of the very upmarket establishment where I was rubbing shoulders with the Athens 1% were bustling. Those that have managed to set aside enough savings (wherever they got the money) look to be casually riding out the current storm. I have no idea how those who are less well off are weathering this.
A lot of real estate around town looked to be for let with “Enoikiazetai” plastered on too many buildings to count. This seems to stem from a similar price locking where property owners will not cut their prices even though the market cannot support it.
Strolling around the city I saw parties and preparations happening everywhere. A party would consist of a DJ, a couple of speakers, electricity tapped from a nearby distributing box and a couple of coolers filled with beer. The best of these was one evening in a derelict construction site where in a gallery space artists were at work and downstairs a rave was taking place. Tons of people were drinking and partying on the street. At least crises are good for parties.
The Theater Festival
I dropped by the theater festival after the opening night to have a drink. This festival like so many others was located on the location of evaporated industry. Where there once were jobs, there now are cultural venues. The Peiraeus 260 complex was a rather successful example of this development. High profile theater festivals such as this one are almost exclusively frequented by a kind of elite who have an old-fashioned and status sensitive cultural taste. I briefly skimmed the program, but I could not find anything I wanted to spend my time on.
On that opening night, the location served Berlin beer, locally brewed but with a proper bear logo on it. All of the Schaubühne shows at this festival (and at the previous one in Athens a couple of weeks ago) had sold out even on the night that Germany was playing Greece in the EC. Greek people even were boastfully demonstrating their German language skills at anybody they could find. It looked to me as if the ruling class of Athens —fully aware where their money comes from— was cozying up to their new German masters.
This all is a bit surreal if you read reports about Greek ressentiment against Germans. We did not see anything of the sort here. If anything, in parts of Greek society Germany seems to be an aspirational value.
The Engaged
At the port of Peiraeus I saw a banner by SYRIZA claiming that the necessary changes in Greece have been made. I hope they don’t believe it themselves.
Then at the local Ruby programmers meetup they were discussing organization of the next Euroku, a rather large event in this scene. And like anywhere in the world programmers are in such short supply that they cannot lift their heads for the amount of work on their plate. This is good for them, but that same short supply means that they will not be able to change a lot.
Near the end of my stay I found Exarcheia square which seems to be the focus of the counter-cultural movement. No riots to be found, just a bunch of banners obscuring the square and a collection of nice cafés and restaurants that are a bit less glossy than those in city center. Probably the place where normal Athenians hang out. At night a large group of people gathered on the square. Music from a DJ and banners professing sympathy for Turkish anarchists accompanied the revelers who were mostly occupied trying to deplete the beer supply of the local drink stand.
Whatever you may think of it, the protestors, the politicians, the programmers are all busy doing things. At least they do not spend their days idling on terraces sipping pricy beverages.
The End
My final impression is that of a country locked in a strange kind of socio-economical stasis, very much resigned to the current situation and deeply divided on many levels. Change looks to be far away either going to require a long time or the breaking of a great many things. However difficult the Greek relationship with Europe may be, it has been the source of a lot of the local prosperity.
On my last day there I had my wallet pick-pocketed from me while returning from the beach. This is a common enough occurrence in the tourist centers of the mediterranean. Fortunately I suffered no worse damage than having to replace a stack of plastic, having no money on me to donate to the Greek cause.
During my visit to Copenhagen I tried to make use of the Copenhagen City Bike system. Although eventually successful, it turns out bicycle sharing systems without a digital component can lead to frustrations.
Where London’s Boris Bikes provide a digital readout of station occupancy in Copenhagen you need to walk around and see which (if any) station still has a bike in it. Late afternoon this turns up empty most of the time because it seems many tourists get one and then camp on their bike for the rest of the day or their stay.
As in any bicycle heavy city, spots for parking your bike are always scarce and underused bike share parking will be quickly appropriated.
After seven or eight empty stations (which when empty are rather hard to spot too) I finally found a somewhat functioning bike to take a tour of the city with. The map affixed to the bike shows the region with bikes and where you can take them (within the lakes and Christianshavn roughly). The bike itself is rather nice and can be made to perform adequately.
Some people also lock the bikes either short term or long term similarly to what happened to the Dutch attempt at White Bicycles for everybody to use pioneered by the Provos. Without accountability enforced by security measures it turns out any such material sharing system quickly falls prey to the tragedy of the commons. I am right now reading Bruce Schneier’s “Liars and Outliers” which treats exactly these kind of dilemma’s between individual benefit and social benefit and how to create systems which create globally optimal outcomes to support our complex societies.
The train just had its stop in Bad Bentheim entering Germany. At that stop we usually get a short break, a new locomotive and the German border police checking the train. Border police? Didn’t the Schengen Agreement abolish checks at the signing countries’ borders?
It did, but these informal spot checks are still being held by some countries. Even worse, they are not random by any degree. The German Bundespolizei deliberately checks those with a dark skin and hardly any others. Normally such an observation could be attributed to me being cynical. Here it unfortunately cannot.
It is a practice being supported up until the administrative court of Koblenz where a case relating to this policy came to trial recently. The judge maintained the obligation of the police to use ‘situational insight’ and ‘relevant border police experience’ (‘entsprechende “Lageerkenntnisse”und “einschlägige grenzpolizeiliche Erfahrung”zugrunde zu legen’). Lawblog.de writes it up with the obvious title “Der Neger ist verdächtig” and the post has over four hundred comments.
I didn’t get checked this time but sometimes they do check my passport. It probably depends on how foreign I happen to look on a specific day or if I have shaven recently. I can shrug it off easily as probably most people can who don’t deal with racism on a day to day basis. But when I see a black family of four traveling and being checked as the only ones in the compartment, I wonder what kind of an impression that gives their children about the justness of the society they are growing up into.
This month the NS opened up their data via an official API. And one of the first applications is this live train map of the Netherlands which is just wonderful. It simply exposes something that we knew implicitly and displays it very fluently.
This is just one of the many open data dominoes falling this year, but a very nice one and yes it looks like victory is within our grasp.
We spent last weekend having a veritable blast at the Cognitive Cities conference. It was a great spectacle of familiar faces, a nicely curated program and full frontal confrontations with the city of Berlin.
I cannot stress enough how much I enjoyed Cognitive Cities. It was crammed with beautifully designed views onto the city and a chance to catchup with old friends from all over Europe. The Copenhagen crew were present, Rebooters came back from withdrawal and we could congratulate Your Neighbours and Third Wave with their tremendous success in organizing such a conference.
But in the abstraction a lot of the reality was lost, I’m afraid. We are all of course striving to make our ghost boxes better but design cannot be a sterile, clean handed affair. Kars writes a fuller more balanced recounting of the conference, but my feelings are the same.
Walking around in the real cognitive city of Berlin and seeing the street kids in Neukölln and the party-goers in Berghain, I feel they are not within the myopic view of our design chique clique nor we in theirs. The street is a very messy and creative affair and it must not be disconnected from our digital cognition of it. At least not if we want to have any relevance and create real meaning for a significant number of people.
Ideas how to do this in quality and at scale are forthcoming, but like everything it should of course start with awareness.
In dat stuk betoog ik dat de gegevens van het openbaar vervoer vrij beschikbaar moeten zijn voor reizigers. Dit is onderdeel van een langer thema op dit blog en van een recente ontwikkeling voor open data in de breedste zin van het woord.
Hier de integrale tekst zoals ik hem heb opgestuurd (en die waarschijnlijk met kleine wijzigingen geplaatst is1) en nu mét links:
Ik wil een mobiele telefoon die me precies vertelt wanneer ik weg moet voor mijn volgende afspraak, waar ik moet instappen, waar ik eruit moet en hoe ik daarna precies moet lopen of fietsen. In Japan bestaan dat soort systemen al terwijl we hier vaak niet eens weten wanneer de volgende tram komt. We kunnen dat hier ook maken als we bij de gegevens mochten. Die zitten alleen vast in één van de informatie-goudmijnen waar Alexander Klöpping het hier over had op 27 juli.
In Nederland hebben de openbaar vervoersbedrijven bedacht dat zij de informatie verzamelen bij 9292 en dat wat zij aanbieden goed genoeg is voor iedereen. Helaas is dat het niet. Op 9292ov.nl staat een site uit de jaren ’90 waar je zo goed en zo kwaad als het gaat een reis kunt plannen. Tegenwoordig hebben sommige vervoerders ook applicaties voor de iPhone. Die van 9292 is werkbaar en de NS heeft er nu ook eindelijk zelf eentje (maar het is de vraag of die het blijft doen als het gaat sneeuwen).
Maar wat als je dan geen iPhone hebt? Dat is precies het probleem. Doordat de vervoerders op de gegevens zitten en poortwachter spelen ben je overgeleverd aan wat hun platform-du-jour is. Heb je een telefoon die niet hip genoeg is of te alternatief, dan heb je pech gehad. Nu hoeven zij natuurlijk niet voor iedereen een applicatie maken, maar wij mogen dat dus ook niet zelf doen. Ze zeggen dan dat: ‘de gegevens van hen zijn’. Alleen vergeten ze dan dat zij er voor ons zijn en dat wij al twee keer hebben betaald voor die gegevens: via de belastingen en via ons kaartje.
Je mobiele telefoon is maar één plek waar deze gegevens handig zijn. De mogelijkheden zijn eindeloos maar we weten pas wat werkt als iedereen die een idee heeft dat uit kan proberen. Als we moeten wachten op de creativiteit van onze vervoerders, wachten we op een bus die nooit komt.
In Japan zijn ze ver hiermee, maar bijvoorbeeld in de VS zijn deze gegevens ook al open en in Londen heeft Transport for London pas alles vrijgegeven. Wat ze daar zien is dat er een grote groep techneuten zit te springen om ermee aan de slag te gaan. Volwaardige applicaties waar wij jaren op moeten wachten worden daar binnen enkele dagen gelanceerd.
De vervoerders hoeven dus alleen maar hun gegevens vrij te geven, ontwikkelaars bouwen dan voor geld, prestige of plezier en de reiziger wint, want hij krijgt de keuze uit meer en betere applicaties.
Nu is onze overheid wel traag maar ook niet helemaal achterlijk. Er komt over een paar jaar —riant laat— een Nationaal Datawarehouse Openbaar Vervoer (NDOV) waar alle gegevens in moeten. De aanbesteding start binnenkort maar daar moeten een paar harde eisen bij als we mee willen kunnen met de rest van de wereld.
1. Alle gegevens in het NDOV wat betreft plannen, actuele locaties, vertrektijden en storingen moeten leesbaar zijn voor mensen (via een website) en voor computers (via een API). 2. De gegevens moeten voor iedereen vrij beschikbaar zijn zonder beperkingen. En 3. er moet altijd een basisplanner aangeboden worden die van hoge kwaliteit is, maar daarnaast en daarbovenop moeten anderen kunnen innoveren.
Nederland slibt dicht en de visie op mobiliteit zoals in de troonrede verwoord gaat niet verder dan meer en meer asfalt. Daartegenover staat de hard-core vouwfietsbrigade maar het hoeft niet zo zwart-wit. Met de juiste informatie op het juiste moment kun je de best mogelijke keuze maken, of dat nu het OV is, de fiets, de auto of een combinatie daarvan.
Goede informatie kan ons helpen om één vervoersnet te maken waarbinnen je zorgeloos reist. Denk aan het geweldige gevoel als je de trein en je aansluitingen haalt en wél op tijd bent. Dat kan vaker en makkelijker. Openbaar vervoer wordt misschien nooit een feest, maar het kan wel een stuk minder beroerd —en misschien zelfs leuk!— worden.
Gepubliceerd worden in de krant is natuurlijk fijn, maar ik hoop vooral dat dit stuk iets wordt om dit verhaal mee verder te krijgen en om bij de mensen op de juiste plek het inzicht verder te helpen.
Bedankt in ieder geval Alexander Klöpping voor de aanleiding en Reinier Kist en Antoinette Brummelink voor de feedback.
By the time you’re reading this I will have flown off to the Levant to spend three weeks mainly in Damascus, Syria.
Update frequency here and work/weeknotes will be very sparse depending on the weather and the network over there. Keep calm and carry on Get excited and start making things without me, I will be rejoining you on the 6th of November.
This week I had my yearly trip to the UK to attend the dConstruct conference in Brighton. Usually I add some time to visit London too and explore the things that need exploring.
This year (like last) I stayed at Cristiano1 and Melinda’s place near Canada Water but contrary to last year, Cristiano equipped me with all the material necessary for a roving networked urbanist. I got to borrow his MiFi and his Barclays Cycle Hire key and it made a ridiculous amount of difference. So much so that I don’t know if I’ll want to travel any other way.
Barclays Bikes or as they are commonly known, Boris Bikes, are a brand new cycle hire scheme similar to the Vélib’ system in Paris and not so similar to the Dutch OV-fiets (which I wrote on before). The rates are ridiculously cheap, cheaper even than the OV-fiets here though the model is different. A Boris Bike does not have a lock and needs to be returned to a station when you are not riding it. For a fee of 45/year you can get up to four hire keys and any trip shorter than 30 minutes is free.
Getting around in London becomes much easier using a bike despite the heavy traffic2. Trips that would take an hour using the tube take less than half of that time using a bike. London roads are congested, and it takes some adjustment to the traffic direction for a person from the continent but it is more than doable. Boris Bikes also seem to be contributing to the increase in critical mass that had already started.
The first time I rode the bike was nice (though intimidating) but when I then returned it to its station, drove it into the rack and felt it fit and the lock snap shut accompanied with the light turning green, I had a massive victory grin on my face. Anybody witnessing that must have concluded that I was deranged (or extraordinarily happy).
You can see an increase in the distance I covered with each subsequent ride. The MiFi was essential in making these trips. I needed to figure out quickly where to return the bike within the 30 minute window and for that the Cycle Hire iPhone app (there seem to be a bunch5 ) proved to be indispensable. Quickly pinpointing a station with empty spots6.
The Cycle Hire App is really nicely designed, uses a custom mapping layer which looks very good and lists the cycle hire locations nearest to you which you can also click to see if there are any bikes (or free spots!) available. This way it becomes easier to navigate the city and be able to also plan your drop off point.
The fact that all the cycle hire locations are fully networked and provide live updates as to their status not only enables properly designed applications for various platforms but also has sparked a lively visualization and analysis. Frankly, I’m fucking jealous especially compared to the shabby web and service experiences provided by our Dutch OV-fiets system (just check out this map).
Some conclusions:
If you build a service it has to be at once useful and user friendly and don’t forget the service touch points as well as the network connections are an essential part of that service. Of course we already knew this, but having real life examples where both the design and implementation have amounted to a clear success will only help tell this story and convince decision makers. Boris Bikes were a pleasure to use and I hope they remain so. Viewed in a broader perspective it is also an example of public services that can work and are a pleasure to use. It is what we should aspire to.
I noticed this already on my trip to New York but it became only more salient on this trip to London. Having a permanent connection to the internet along with an Oyster card and a Cycle Hire key expanded my latitude immensely. I crammed the stuff you would normally do over a 2-3 day span into a single day which had other consequences7, but for the kind of travelling I like to do it is a pretty nice fit. Flat rate internet along with access to the network of local services using that connection is the future of any travel experience. The time saved looking at maps, trying to decipher transportation schedules and waiting for vehicles is time much better spent doing other things both home and abroad. The high octane type of tourism this enables may not be to everybody’s liking8 but adding choice and removing friction should always be a positive thing —except in the most philosophical of cases.
Furthermore, adding cloud based network services such as these both of the informational variety as of the tangible one (objects becoming services) supported by a smartphone and a credit card has the potential to obliterate the difference between being a local and a tourist. Walk around a city supported by seamless payment and transportation, as well as real-time translation of all foreign language inputs, a global recommender system trained on you for the parts of the city —the very shops to visit and avoid, and a permanent connection to your social network to keep in touch and share experiences with; walking around a foreign city could be as familiar and pleasurable as walking around your hometown, probably even more so.
Lastly wandering around a city without aim or direction is a lot easier using a GPS assisted map (such as Google’s) than it is using a paper one. If you’ve ever walked around a foreign city using a map or guidebook, you’ll have experienced the cognitive load of keeping track on the map where you are. Not so with a GPS device. You can wander around as much as you’re comfortable with and as soon as you’re done with that you can open the digital map, pin-point where you are and look for the nearest bus/tube/exit to go somewhere else. GPS empowers and enables a much clearer choice of knowing where you are and getting lost. The true traveller’s way is of course getting lost on purpose and then asking a local the way back9, but seriously who ever does that?
Cristiano’s project Minutebox won an award while I was staying there. Check it out! [↩]
As a Dutch person, I was born on a bike and had little trouble navigating London streets. [↩]
Normally you have to walk some fifteen minutes through Kensington Gardens to get there. Currently there are two cycle hire stations next to the gallery. [↩]
Did that run in some twenty minutes, which I hear is pretty good time… [↩]
Just imagine that! Having several apps to choose between for a public service instead of one app that barely works. [↩]
Hard sometimes even though the stations are being rebalanced continuously. [↩]
Already completely knackered after the day’s exploring, getting 8+ hours of sleep becomes more important. Hardly any energy left for extended socializing at night time. You probably could push through, but I wouldn’t want to know how 5-7 days going at this pace feels. [↩]
Terwijl we aan de andere kant een strijd voeren voor vrij beschikbare openbaar vervoersinformatie is het openbaar vervoer zelf in een ‘wereldstad’ als Amsterdam nog een zooitje.
Op dit moment is de hele metrolijn van Amstel naar Centraal dicht vanwege onderhoud aan de roltrappen (!). Dat is op zich al WTF. Nog erger is dat er ruzie is tussen een aannemer en de gemeente en dat daardoor de metro volgende zomer weer dicht moet1.
Op de Wibautstraat rijden nu elke vijf minuten vier bussen heen en weer (dat is dus waarom iets als een NZ-lijn nodig is). De stad kan zo’n aannemer op zo’n punt dan niet breken, gek genoeg.
Dus missen de belangrijkste metro-verbinding in de stad maar het GVB maakt nog steeds bakken vol met winst (€150’000 per maand) mede door een geïntroduceerde gebruikersfout in de OV-chipkaart:
Een doorslaand succes die ov-chipkaart alleen niet voor de reiziger. Dat de OV-chipkaart slecht ontworpen is wisten we al. Er moet een chipkaart zijn, maar als we vastzitten aan hetzelfde slechte ontwerp zonder enige mogelijkheid tot verbetering dan liever niet.
If you fuck us, we will fuck you fifty times over lijkt mij het devies. [↩]
De grens tussen Turkije en Syrië is tegenwoordig compleet open en Turkije ‘groeit uit zijn voegen’1:
Aleppo is maar een half uurtje rijden over de grens en een totaal andere wereld. Samen met de bouw en handel die toenemen zal nu het toerisme waarschijnlijk ook groeien. Voorbij is het ongerepte Syrië waar ik drie jaar geleden met wat kunst en vliegwerk in kon reizen.
Ik had een Russische vriendin op bezoek, en we waren beland in een visrestaurant in een pittoresk Noord-Hollands kustplaatsje waar ik vaak kom. Nouja, pittoresk, op het centrale plein van het kustplaatsje komen regelmatig hangjongeren samen die bier zuipen en heel hard Heil Hitler! roepen. Maar het zijn geen Marokkanen, dus ze kunnen kun gang gaan. Ik ben helemaal voor het harder aanpakken van hangjongeren, maar dan wel alle hangjongeren. Maar dat terzijde. (Mighty Moscow)
Ga in de zomer maar ‘ns kijken in Harderwijk of Sneek of nog verder weg. Als je er wat van zegt wordt je in elkaar getrapt.
Het is natuurlijk een absurde gedachte dat de politie alle overlast veroorzakende hangjongeren uit de sociaal-economische onderklasse aan zou pakken. Daar is met geen mogelijkheid voldoende capaciteit voor.
De OV-chipkaart is een groot succes in de Amsterdamse metro. Het aantal zwartrijders is afgenomen en navenant ook het aantal geweldsincidenten.
Mooi en nog meer onbegrip voor de mensen die tegen de ov-chipkaart zijn. Hij mag nog wel verbeterd worden, maar de waarde van de chipkaart is nu duidelijk bewezen.
De GVB zegt in de pers dat het niet mogelijk is om de harde kern van zwartrijders aan te pakken. Ik denk meer dat het een kwestie is van niet willen of dat de kosten niet opwegen tegen de baten. Het is de vraag in hoeverre je de kieren dicht van een veiligheidssysteem.
Ik post dit even hier omdat de GVB een van de meest gesloten en niet web-savvy bedrijven van Nederland is, dus voor de lezers zonder enige hoop van wederhoor.
1.
Wat mij een paar keer is gebeurd is dat er een marginaal iemand vlak achter je mee door de poortjes glipt. Ik ben meestal te in gedachten verzonken met muziek op om het snel op te merken, maar de mensen van het GVB die bij die poortjes staan DOEN NIKS. Wat hebben ze dan voor zin? En wat kan ik er dan van zeggen als de mensen van het GVB het goed vinden wat er gebeurt?
2.
Evenzo mensen die poortjes intrappen: doorseinen via beveiligingscamera’s, metro waar ze in zitten subtiel vertraging laten oplopen en ze door politie op het volgende station uit de metro laten trekken, onder curatele stellen en dwingen schade te vergoeden.
Austin, first visit to SxSWi, definitely not the last
Copenhagen, yearly Reboot, this time crashing at Mark‘s awesome place
Amsterdam, moving house over from Delft finally!
Casablanca, flying in and out with Air Arabia on this Morrocan holiday
Rabat
Marrakech
Agadir
Essaouira
I hope to travel more in this coming year. Austin, Copenhagen and Brighton are definitely in again. A new visit to the Middle East is in order and a big trip.
Hier moet ik even een filmpje van schieten om het voelbaar te maken. Er staan tijdens de spits rijen voor de poortjes. Op station Amstel blokkeren groepen mensen de roltrappen boven op de perrons omdat ze daar in- en uitchecken (wat niet de bedoeling is). En de poortjes zijn gewoonweg niet snel genoeg.
Je kunt niet op spits-snelheid door een poortje heen lopen. Als ik dan probeer om het poortje open te beuken krijg ik een grote bek van de beveiliging die natuurlijk ook niet beter weet.
Woud van poortjes
Laatst kwam ik met de trein aan op Amstel en wilde toen overstappen op de metro. Inderhaast kon ik niet de juiste terminal vinden of lukte het chippen niet. Gevolg is dat ik bij het uitchecken bij de metro vervolgens €4 kwijt was.
In- en uitchecken bij het overstappen is een ronduit achterlijk ontwerpfalen en legt de complexiteit bij de gebruiker. Een gigantische no-no in user centered design. Verbeterscenario: je checkt op één plek in en ergens anders uit en het systeem berekent zelf de goedkoopste route tussen die twee punten en brengt dat in rekening.
Een automatisch betalingssysteem moet minder werk opleveren voor eindgebruikers, niet meer.
GVB-formulier
Nu wil ik die €4 terugclaimen bij de GVB (meer uit principe dan wat dan ook). Nu is het al bizar dat dat bij de GVB moet en niet bij de centrale betalingsafhandelaar: de ov-chipkaart.
Bij het GVB moet je een PDF-formulier downloaden, uitprinten en terugsturen. Als je ze opbelt, willen ze je wel een formulier met antwoordenvelop toesturen2.
De transactie waar het om gaat kan ik op ov-chipkaart.nl nog steeds niet zien. Daarvoor kreeg ik van GVB het nummer van TLS3 0900-09804 zodat ik met hen kon bellen over de website. Die website is zó slecht, dat het goed zou zijn als iedereen dat nummer belde over de website. Misschien dat ze er dan iets aan doen.
Kaizen
Het is niet erg dat dit allemaal niet perfect is gelukt in de eerste poging. Het is een complex proces en de eerste versie is redelijk goed gelukt. Het systeem heeft geen grootschalige outages gehad, en saldo opladen en reizen met de ov-chipkaart werkt.
Het is wel erg dat de ontwikkeling nu compleet gestagneerd is en er niet geluisterd wordt naar gebruikerswensen. Er was een forum waarop mensen hun ideeën, wensen en bezwaren kwijt konden, maar de terugkoppeling daar was bijzonder slecht en het is nu ook opgeheven5.
Het neerzetten van een ov-chipkaart is het begin, daarna begint een continu proces van kaizen, van het verbeteren van de dienstverlening, en het beter aanpassen aan de gebruikerswensen. Dat is de enige manier om een gebruiksvriendelijk systeem te krijgen en te houden en dat is toch wat we willen?
Excusez le mot, maar er is geen ander wat de lading zo goed dekt. [↩]
Ik doe niet meer aan printen of aan postzegels. [↩]
Dit nummer kost ook nog een schandelijke 10 cent/minuut en ze verbreken direct de verbinding omdat het ‘erg druk is’. [↩]
Wij hebben ook een aanbod gedaan om een workshop te organiseren met techneuten en ontwerpers om de huidige stand van zaken te verbeteren en innovatieve diensten bovenop de ov-chipkaart te bouwen. Nooit meer iets van gehoord. [↩]
De vervoersmaatschappij van San Francisco geeft de voorspelde aankomsttijd van het volgende voertuig op een willekeurige halte vrij in een handig XML-formaat. Daarmee kun je leuke dingen bouwen, zoals bijvoorbeeld een horloge wat de volgende tram aangeeft.
In Amsterdam leven we in vergelijking nog in de Middeleeuwen. Daar zit ik buiten de Coffee Company in de vrieskou mijn espresso te drinken om de lijn 4 aan te kunnen zien komen.
Ik ben eenduidig voor de ov-chipkaart. De cognitieve moeite die het bespaart bij het reizen in het openbaar vervoer (temminste als je simpele routes gebruikt en niet overstapt op de trein) is geweldig.
Maar er zijn toch nog wel genoeg irritaties. Dus ik ben voor de ov-chipkaart maar ik ben zeker ook voor een betere ov-chipkaart dan dat we nu hebben. In de implementatie hebben de ontwerpers van het systeem de bal grof laten vallen.
Brenno de Winter somt mijn irritaties en meer netjes op in dit artikel op Webwereld, met als belangrijkste:
24. De vervoerder staat centraal
Het hele systeem lijkt er vooral zo gemaakt dat het de vervoerders het leven makkelijker maakt en de reizigers maar ten dele, en soms geheel niet. De vervoerder krijgt ‘eerlijker’ betaald voor zijn geleverde diensten. Overal waar problemen ontstaan, wordt de hete aardappel naar de reiziger geschoven. Niet de klant, maar de leverancier is koning. (Webwereld)
Er heeft geen enkel inclusief, toegankelijk, gebruikersgericht ontwerp plaats gevonden (of als het dat heeft gedaan, zijn de resultaten bijzonder mager1 ).
Voor wie werken die vervoerders nu eigenlijk?
Ontwerp zonder borgen van de implementatie is hetzelfde als geen ontwerp. [↩]
I’ve recently used my first OV-fiets and it was a fantastic experience1. It’s a great way to bridge the last couple of miles on your transit experience and I think an important addition to the public transportation system.
Paris has its vélib system2 and other major metropolitan cities may have similar bicycle sharing systems, but ov-fiets (literally ‘public transportation bike’) is Netherlands wide and has a great service design backing it up.
The idea is you get a subscription (based on your id and bank account to prevent abuse) for €9,50/year which is hooked up to your rail card so you can use that same card to get your bike. With one card you can get up to two very decent bikes3 at any issuing point (most larger railway stations in the Netherlands and more). Payment is deducted automatically from your bank account, so that eliminates another step from the checkout process which is very quick indeed. At stations which don’t have a large bike facility and for return at night there are also unmanned facilities where you can get a bike from a locker using your secret code.
Most importantly for us Dutch, the system is very cheap. Renting one bike for 20 hours costs you €2,85. If you have multiple errands to run in a city, this is cheaper than using public transportation (and you have more freedom and you don’t have to wait for buses). Most people I tell about the system can’t believe how cheap it is. I do hope it is cost effective. I will gladly pay more per ride if it means the system will be around in the future.
OV-fiets is a great solution for me. I visit various cities irregularly. My method of entry, is almost always by train and that part of the journey is usually relatively quick, clear and comfortable. After that part comes the hell of navigating and waiting for local public transportation. There isn’t a city in the Netherlands that can’t be biked around, so a bike —if you have access to one— is almost always preferrable.
This is a great example of our urban future where objects that used to be our property4 are abstracted into a network of services.
San Francisco
An afterthought: When I was in San Francisco last year, I had some appointments in the Valley which I tried to do using Caltrain and then either taking the bus or walking. This turned out to be impossibly time consuming.
I tried to rent a bike to take with me on the Caltrain but most bike rental places were not open as early as I needed them to be. A system where you could rent a bike at the Caltrain stations similar to OV-fiets would have been perfect. (Hint.)
The fact that I used it to bike out to a theater festival in a nature reserve may have contributed to that. [↩]
Vélib has an odd pricing system, reflecting its focus on short trips and it has to deal logistically with the motions of Paris’s commuters through the day and the city. [↩]
Ik denk niet dat ik binnenkort nog met de trein naar Londen ga.
Het is al niet de meest aantrekkelijke propositie. Van Amsterdam naar London St. Pancras kost je toch een uur of zes en een half1. De treinen hebben geen stroomaansluitingen, dus je kunt niet voluit laptoppen. Verder moet je uiterlijk een half uur van tevoren op Brussel inchecken, anders mag je niet mee.
Waarom doen we het dan? Treinreizen heeft iets fijns, het is continu met minder wachten en veiligheidsmaatregelen dan je hebt als je vliegt én je komt middenin Londen uit in plaats van op een vliegveld ergens in een buitenwijk.
Het was tot nu toe allemaal nog wel te harden. Maar dit weekend ben ik naar Londen heen en weer geweest en vrienden zeiden het al, de internationale trein naar Brussel-Midi is gewoon te onbetrouwbaar.
Heenweg
Op de heenweg had mijn trein van Rotterdam naar Brussel 53 minuten vertraging. Vragen bij de Hispeed balie zorgde dat ze naar Brussel belden zodat ze daar rekening hielden met me met de checkin.
De vertraging die ik had was net genoeg dat ik direct de trein in kon. Tien minuten later en ik had hem gemist, maar dan kon ik me laten omboeken zeiden ze.
Terugweg
Terug uit Londen was mijn aansluitende trein naar Amsterdam op Brussel geannuleerd. Hij reed gewoon niet en de informatievoorziening was erg matig. Met wat hulp van de mensen op de balie via Antwerpen de volgende trein genomen met dus weer een uur vertraging.
Ik weet niet wat het is, maar de Eurostar zelf rijdt precies op tijd. Waarom Nederland en België dan geen fatsoenlijk rijdende treinverbinding in stand kunnen houden, is me een raadsel. Zeven-en-een-half uur plus stress voor dit korte stukje is niet acceptabel2.
De volgende keer doe ik het wel via Easyjet over Stansted/Gatwick/Luton. Het kost een half uur van Amsterdam af en is volgens mij nog goedkoper ook. Het milieu zoekt het maar even uit. Natuurlijk mocht er verandering komen in de situatie dan hoor ik het graag.
De Groene Keuze
Wat mensen die zich bezig houden met groene initiatieven vaak vergeten is dat de Groene Keuze minstens net zo goedkoop, makkelijk en mooi moet zijn als de ‘slechte’ keuze. Het is misschien moeilijk, maar mainstream gaan Ãs moeilijk. Als je niet voldoet aan die voorwaarden blijft de groene oplossing een marginaal alternatief dat alleen maar door eco-freaks gebruikt wordt3.
Update (21/12/2009): En ik ben blij dat ik het heb afgezworen. Deze week zijn een heleboel mensen door de vrieskou een uur of 16 in de tunnel vast komen te zitten (BBC News). Niet meer doen die trein.
En daarnaast is de informatievoorziening en de situatie in de treinen etc. ver onder de maat. Ik weet niet of het met de onderontwikkeling door die Westerschelde of wat dan ook te maken heeft, maar we boffen hier wel met de NS. [↩]
Of je moet het bij wet verplicht maken zoals nu met de spaarlamp is gebeurd maar volgens dezelfde logica kun je ook de auto verbieden… [↩]
Het lijkt me boeiend om de intensiteit van het wegverkeer in Nederland globaal te visualiseren, en het lijkt erop dat het NDW die gegevens beheert en aanbiedt. Nergens op de site is te vinden hoe je dan als potentiele afnemer aan die gegevens komt. Wellicht zijn hier marktpartijen hier —zoals wel vaker— nauw gedefinieerd als een soort ons-kent-ons clubje waar men elkaar wél weet te vinden.
Hier toch maar mijn vraag:
Beste,
Ik begreep dat het NDW onlangs geopend is. Ik zou graag toegang willen tot de actuele gegevens over het verkeer op de Nederlandse weg. Ik kan op uw site een verzameling vragen en antwoorden vinden: http://www.nationaaldatawarehouse.nl/index.cfm?page=FAQ
maar nergens staat uitgelegd wat ik moet doen om een afnemer te worden.
Via deze e-mail dus mijn vraag hoe ik afnemer kan worden van gegevens uit het NDW, welke gegevens ik dan kan verkrijgen en onder welke voorwaarden en in welke formaten.
Last week I got Rebooted in Copenhagen again. Drove up with Peter and Iskander.
After your fourth time attending such a great and small conference as Reboot, it becomes familiar like a reunion. This year’s action theme meaned the two days were completely packed. There was so much to do and so much going on that the first day was over already before you knew it.
The one thing that struck me as being odd was the fact that many speakers on the large stage weren’t asked any questions (I had one or two for Richard Falkvinge). If anything, Reboot does not strike me as an event where one person can rain down the gospel unquestioned. So for a next time more interactive maybe even adversarial formats may be nice.
Het is een beetje warrig maar wat Vincent Everts zegt is:
Ik denk dat als eerste stap om de ramen open te doen en te zeggen laten we samenwerken aan producten, hier heb je mijn basis-API maak er iets moois van. Ik denk dat dat veel verder doorgegaan moet worden en dat die API die jullie nu hebben waarmee iedereen dus een basisvervoersadvies kan krijgen en dat kun je dan zelf verrijken, dat dat een hele goede weg is en ik denk dat 9292 ook verder moet doorzetten.
Ruwweg hetzelfde wat ik ook zeg, met dien verstande dat die API waar Vincent het over heeft niet publiek of onder andere voorwaarden beschikbaar is. 9292 moet in ieder geval verder doorzetten, laat dÃt dan een mooie eerste stap zijn.
Verder ben ik erg benieuwd naar de inzendingen en de winnaars van de wedstrijd. Die worden op 2 juni bekend gemaakt.
Update: Even later een interview van Vincent met Gert Staal, de directeur van 9292 waarin hij vraagt of er een API komt voor vervoersinformatie. Staal verwijst naar de NDOV (waar Mark de Bruin het hier al over had) die ergens in 2011 operationeel moet zijn. Iedereen zou daar toegang toe moeten krijgen.
Ik heb meer vragen:
Onder welke voorwaarden en op welke manier krijgen we dan toegang tot het NDOV?
Wie bepaalt hoe het geïmplementeerd gaat worden en krijgen we daar inspraak op?
En 2011 is nogal ver weg; wat kunnen we doen als we vandaag aan de slag willen?
Ik vernam al dat de NS op de afgelopen Mobile Monday probeerde hun nieuwe reisplanner te pitchen. Dat was afgaand op de reacties via Twitter geen doorslaand succes.
Zojuist op de gvenkdaily (1, 2, 3, 4) wat referenties naar verslaggeving over dit onderwerp en fragmentarisch de argumenten waarom de NS weigert hun gegevens open te gooien.
Ik schreef hier eerder al over en mensen vragen steeds aan mÃj waarom de NS de gegevens niet zou willen vrijgeven. Niemand snapt het en de meeste mensen vinden het onvoorstelbaar dat de NS puur uit eigenbelang de gegevens voor zich zou willen houden.
Ik kan wel wat argumenten verzinnen waarom dit zo is, maar de misinformatie en verwarring die de NS verspreidt over dit onderwerp maken het er niet helderder op. Ik probeer het een en ander te reconstrueren.
De NS geeft als argumenten voor het niet vrijgeven van de gegevens: ‘Beveiliging’, ‘Kwaliteitsbewaking’ en ‘Merk en identiteitsbewaking’1.
Beveiliging
Zoals bij Emerce te lezen zegt de NS dat de toegang tot hun plangegevens buitengewoon beveiligd is en dat toegang hiertoe maanden zou kosten. Ze zouden in de tussentijd net zo goed zelf een iPhone applicatie kunnen maken.
Nu is het op zich niet in de eerste plaats ons probleem als de NS zichzelf in een hoek heeft geprogrammeerd met een buitengewoon inflexibele IT-infrastructuur. Het wordt nu op ons afgeschoven, maar zelfs dan het hoeft geen maanden te kosten om een machine-leesbare versie van het spoorboekje2 ergens online te zetten.
Daarbij zegt ze dat ze dan net zo goed zelf een iPhone-applicatie zouden kunnen maken. Ten eerste wordt dat niet gevraagd, die iPhone applicatie die komt er vanzelf wel. Ten tweede is het maar de vraag of de NS binnen enkele maanden een iPhone-applicatie zou kunnen produceren. De ervaring met Reisplanner Xtra spreekt niet in hun voordeel.
Kwaliteitsbewaking
Het argument over de kwaliteit moet ervoor zorgen dat de informatie overal hetzelfde is op de borden, de site etc.3 Ik zie hier geen conflict met het vrijgeven van de informatie via een API, eigenlijk juist het tegendeel.
Als de NS zo graag de kwaliteit van de informatie over haar treinen wil bewaken, dan zou ze ervoor zorgen dat ze een goede API neerzet waar iedereen die de gegevens nodig heeft er op één centraal punt bij kan. De huidige situatie waar iedereen zelf een manier verzint om het te scrapen introduceert juist risico’s en verdient niet de voorkeur.
Merk & Identiteit
De NS wil haar merk en identiteit bewaken. Dat mag uiteraard.
Het is alleen niet helemaal duidelijk waarom het bewaken van het merk van een monopolist ten koste moet gaan van de adequate informatievoorziening van treinreizigers en de innovatie op het gebied van reisinformatie in Nederland.
Naast deze drie argumenten kunnen we er nog een paar bedenken:
Controle
De behoefte aan controle blijkt uit de quote: “Wie wil er nou geen garantie voor 500.000 bezoekers per dag?”
Dit lijkt op een wat echtere reden dan de drie daarboven. De NS kan het schijnbaar niet hebben dat iemand anders voordeel heeft van haar gegevens.
Nu haalt de NS site misschien 500k bezoekers omdat mensen nergens anders heen kunnen en willen ze dat behouden4. Als de gegevens worden vrijgegeven krijgt niet iedereen een ‘garantie voor 500.000 bezoekers per dag’. Dat is nou juist het punt. Er ontstaat dan een ecosysteem van toepassingen en websites waar iedereen terecht kan bij die aanbieder die het beste aansluit bij haar wensen.
Dat de NS denkt dat ze in zo’n vrij ecosysteem relatief snel eruit ge-innoveerd zullen worden, dat is realistisch maar niet iets waar ze zich zorgen over zouden moeten maken.
Kosten
Verder wordt bij het opstellen van APIs altijd de kosten genoemd die ermee gemoeid zouden zijn.
Er zijn kosten om de gegevens te verzamelen maar aangezien dat toch moet gebeuren kunnen we die buiten beschouwing laten.
Er zijn kosten om de gegevens op de huidige sites (NS.nl, 9292ov.nl) toegankelijk te maken. Mensen kopen treinkaartjes en het lijkt me niet veelgevraagd dat ze dan kunnen zien wanneer hun trein gaat.
Er zijn kosten om de gegevens te ontsluiten via een API. Het ontsluiten van de gegevens via een API heeft bijzonder grote voordelen voor alle partijen, dus ook voor de NS. Dat weegt meer dan tegen elkaar op.
Dat de NS ongevoelig is voor al die argumenten waaronder die dat het goed zou zijn voor de reizigers en het openbaar vervoer in Nederland is één ding. Een partij die daar niet ongevoelig voor zou moeten zijn is de overheid. Als de NS niet wil luisteren, moet de overheid gewoon instappen en het opleggen.
Strategie
In ‘Unraveling the transit fabric’ schreef ik dat het vasthouden van de reisgegevens dé manier om langdurig controle te houden op je netwerk. Het alternatief is grenzeloze concurrentie en inwisselbaarheid van vervoersaanbieders, in het engels: commoditization. Commoditization is goed voor klanten, de nachtmerrie van elk bedrijf en iets waar de overheid op af zou moeten sturen.
Mis ik (tegen-)argumenten? Laat het weten in de comments.
En als je het ermee eens bent, vertel het dan door en kaart het aan waar je kunt.
Corine van Drunen van de NS laat het na om in te gaan op de vragen die gesteld werden en maak zich er daarna van af door te verwijzen naar het feit dat de NS haar planmatige gegevens ter beschikking stelt aan 9292ov. 9292 is een gezamenlijke site van de vervoerders waar de gegevens in een bepaalde vorm worden ontsloten maar die niet een herbruikbare toegang tot vervoersgegevens biedt. Daarnaast zou het handig zijn om de dynamische reisgegevens (de actuele posities van vervoersmiddelen) te hebben maar in eerste instantie zouden we al blij zijn met de planmatige gegevens.
De tijd in de uitzending was te kort om tot de crux van het argument te komen en om de halve waarheden waar de NS zich ermee van afmaakt te weerspreken2, dus daarom schrijf ik hieronder het geheel uit. Misschien handig als je vervoerders tegenkomt en je wilt ze overtuigen van het belang van open reisgegevens.
Open reisinformatie voor iedereen
Ik ben webontwikkelaar en ik (en velen met mij) erger me al jaren aan de geslotenheid van de reisgegevens in Nederland. Wanneer we mensen erop aanspreken dan worden we meestal afgeserveerd met vage uitvluchten en halve waarheden. Ik vind dat onacceptabel en ik hoop dat meer mensen met me dat vinden en zich willen uitspreken.
Openbaar vervoer is een essentiele publieke dienst die de inrichting van onze leefomgeving kwalitatief beïnvloedt3. Ik denk dat het belangrijk is dat de reisgegevens van het openbaar vervoer in Nederland vrij te gebruiken zijn en dat de huidige gesloten monopolistische situatie slecht en schadelijk zijn voor het innovatie- en leefklimaat in Nederland.
Aanleiding voor dit item was de nieuwe reisplanner “Reisplanner Extra” die de NS heeft laten ontwikkelen. Dit is een een mobiele Java-applicatie waarmee je de actuele reisgegevens op je mobiele telefoon kan opvragen.
Ik heb de Reisplanner Extra niet geprobeerd omdat deze niet werkt op mijn iPhone4 en dat is meteen ook het probleem.
Probleem: De NS kan niet voor elk platform en voor elk denkbaar gebruiksdoel toepassingen aanbieden.
Dit is ten eerste al ondoenlijk omdat de hoeveelheid tijd en geld die het de NS kost om één toepassing te maken redelijk groot zijn. Het schijnt dat de ontwikkeling van de Reisplanner Extra een jaar heeft gekost en ik wil niet eens weten hoeveel geld ermee gemoeid is geweest. Hierdoor kan de NS alleen maar voldoen aan de wensen van de grootst mogelijke groepen gebruikers.
En dan nog: als het een jaar duurt voor we ook een iPhone (en Windows CE, Blackberry, Palm Pre etc.) versie mogen verwachten dan schiet het niet echt op.
Daarnaast zijn er meer gebruiksdoelen dan we op dit moment ook maar kunnen beginnen te verzinnen. Misschien wil je op je eigen website een reis kunnen plannen of in iGoogle, of misschien wil je op je desktop een Gadget met daarop de volgende 5 treinen die vertrekken vanaf jouw station, misschien wil je een deel van het schema projecteren op een scherm in de publieke ruimte of misschien wil je de planner doorlichten om te zoeken naar scheve verhoudingen5.
Ik verzin deze gebruiksdoelen net zelf in vijf minuten maar de hoeveelheid creativiteit die mensen hierop los kunnen laten als de gegevens vrij zijn is potentieel gigantisch. De meeste toepassingen zullen niet de moeite waard zijn voor de NS om te bouwen, maar als een kleine groep mensen het zinnig vindt en het zelf wil doen, waarom niet?
Oplossing: Het vrijgeven van de reisgegevens (in eerste instantie planmatig maar daarna ook dynamisch) in een herbruikbaar helder formaat onder redelijke en vrije voorwaarden. En als problemen dat in de weg staan, duidelijk maken welke problemen dat zijn en hoe we kunnen samenwerken om deze op te lossen.
Het is nu al mogelijk om toepassingen te bouwen op de site van de NS (zie Trein.app) maar de moeite die je moet doen is te hoog en de onderhoudbaarheid is laag. Er is op dit moment teveel toewijding nodig om applicaties te bouwen.
Het vrijgeven van de gegevens zou de barrière om iets te maken bijzonder verlagen. Ik ken een hele groep mobiele ontwikkelaars die zitten te springen om deze gegevens6 en er zijn nog veel meer mensen die nog niet eens weten wat voor coole dingen ze zouden kunnen doen.
Vaak noemen de vervoerders het kosten-argument waar het de reisgegevens betreft. Ze spreken ook vaak hun teleurstelling uit toen bleek dat reizigers niet bereid waren te betalen voor vervoersinformatie toen ze wat initiatieven lanceerden op 9292ov. Nu is dat niet zo gek. Reizigers betalen al voor hun kaartje7 en ze zouden wel gek zijn als de dan ook nog eens gaan betalen om te weten waar en wanneer hun vervoersmiddel vertrekt. In elke redelijk opvatting hoort reisinformatie een integrale bij een reis horende dienst te zijn.
Het vrijgeven van vervoersinformatie is goed zijn voor iedereen.
Voor ontwikkelaars, omdat ze makkelijker toepassingen kunnen ontwikkelen en daar bekendheid en/of geld mee kunnen verdienen. De NS zou het niet erg moeten vinden als derde partijen met hun gegevens geld verdienen op bijvoorbeeld de App Store. Het maken van een goede applicatie en het onderhouden ervan kosten tijd en moeite waar best een serieuze financiele vergoeding tegenover mag staan.
Voor gebruikers, omdat ze potentieel makkelijker en op meer manieren toegang kunnen krijgen tot vervoersinformatie dan dat nu het geval is.
Voor de NS, omdat ze zonder veel extra moeite veel meer mensen kunnen bedienen van vervoersinformatie waardoor de reiservaring verbetert en ze meer kaartjes verkopen en meer treinreizigers behouden.
In de huidige situatie waarin de NS de vervoersgegevens voor zichzelf houdt verliest iedereen8. Kunnen we daar geen verandering in brengen?
Ik mocht het van tevoren niet echt Twitteren wat ik toch een beetje gek vind. [↩]
De iPhone heeft geen Java Runtime Environment en het ziet er niet naar uit dat deze in de nabije toekomst erop zal komen. [↩]
Waarom stoppen intercity’s hier en niet daar? Wat heeft dat voor gevolgen voor de reistijden? En meer van dat soort vragen. [↩]
We keken ook bijvoorbeeld naar Google Transit waar ze met plezier one reisgegevens op een gebruiksvriendelijke manier zouden ontsluiten. Als je kijkt op hun dekkingskaart zie je dat er Noord-Afrikaanse landen zijn die op ons voorlopen en dat wij samen met Oost-Europa één van de weinigen in Europa zijn die nog geen dekking hebben. [↩]
En alle vervoerders zijn toch gesubsidieerd door de overheid? Dat zou betekenen dat we al dubbel betalen (belastingen én kaartjes) aan de vervoerders en ze nog meer geld willen zien. [↩]
Als ik dan toch in de toekomst moet kijken dan weet ik zeker dat over 10 jaar of desnoods over 50 jaar deze gegevens wél vrij zullen zijn. Waarom dan nog wachten en in de tussentijd onze innovatiepositie laten verslechteren en iedereen die met openbaar vervoer te maken heeft in Nederland benadelen? [↩]
Here’s a list of some of my favorite things from SxSW:
Kicking it with the Wakoopa guys who I shared a room with. Nice to hang around with a Dutch crew and some crazy stuff happening in the nights.
It was very interesting to see how people would behave in an environment1 with adequate bandwidth and Twitter saturation. As noted intweets the immediacy of social interaction with your social subset, the people aimlessly wandering the corridors absorbed by their mobile displays and the HUGE backchannel were just symptoms of more to come.
For us Europeans attending an event such as this without a data plan is somewhat annoying2. After leaving the convention center, war walking will only get you so far.
Also the realization that you don’t need a laptop or a DSLR (thanks Derek!) to enjoy a conference was a golden one. An iPhone, a charger and a small notebook will do just fine and won’t wear you down as much. Most of the time you’ll be busy talking to people at parties, walking around or eating, which does not require you to lug a complete digital office with you.
Steven Berlin Johnson‘s talk on the Ecosystem of News (text) should not be missed. He painted a picture how the developments which look so bad for newspapers are actually good for news and journalism as a whole leading to a much richer and much more diverse ecosystem.
I almost missed the joint session by Jon Gruber and Merlin Mann but a quick tweet got me in the room shortly after it’d started. These are my favorite two bloggers and having them speak on the old theme of how to be yourself and do cool stuff was a lot of fun even if they’re both dicks (by their own admission).
The food all around Austin (more on it later) was great. I caught some burgers with the guys from Mangrove at Daddy’s which is a combined sports bar / burger joint and it was as awesome as a typical American experience can be.
The New Think for Old Publishers panel was odd in that the publishers did not do any of the new thinking but sollicited the panel for ways to go forward with their industry. Fortunately it had Clay Shirky on who’s usually right about stuff. I got to ask a question to the panel (on a Spotify-like service for books more on which later) which was well received by the audience and by Mr. Shirky (which was pretty damn cool!).
They handed out copies of “Here Comes Everybody” which I hadn’t bought yet for som reason or other. I started reading it in the plane and it is as good as everybody says it is. Compulsory reading for everybody who thinks they’re doing stuff on the internet.
The Fray Cafe 9 at the Red Eyed Fly was a very cool podium live speaking event where some awesome speakers told their true stories3. I don’t know exactly where or when the recording will become available but definitely recommended.
Of the parties around the event the Facebook party was one of the best. The two DJs they had spinning were very good and got the dance floor filled up and moving. Nice after that was drinking a bottle of vodka at our afterparty in the Hilton lobby.
There also was a Django4 lunch which is usually nice but it was extra interesting to meetup with a couple of guys from Sunlight Labs who are pioneering a lot of very interesting open government stuff in the USA.
Hearing Bruce Sterling talk makes his rambling essays a lot more bearable. He gave a very unadulterated piece of his techno-nostalgic cynical mind with some interesting perspectives on the future.
At the SxSWi closing party there was a mechanical bull and not being from America I of course could not resist the chance of riding it (movie). As they say, when in Texas…
No visit to Texas would be complete without some Tex Mex. Being fed up with the conference scene offerings I caught a cab and headed to Polvo’s on South 1st. I’d heard a lot of good things about it and it turned out to be a very nice place for Mexican food. I don’t get why people at SxSWi wait in line for the places near the convention center instead of rounding up some people and catching a cab.
On the last day I took the Wakoopa crew out for some good Tacos at Torchy’s Tacos on a recommendation from Nikhil of Turn2Live. I love the abundant availability of Mexican food in this part of America and it always makes leaving a painful experience.
The last night we were in Austin I magically found a group of Dutchies and we walked up 6th and Red River a bit randomly sampling bands in the cafes. The music festival hadn’t really started yet but still there were a lot of very cool bands (punk / speedrock) playing. The next day walking a bit along 6th during noon they were just building up and it already was really busy. Maybe next year I’ll stay a couple of extra days to see more bands.
And of course all the other people I met who are too numerous to list here. That is the real charm of the conference, the number of people I’ve just met randomly because they’re all there, has been staggering and is the real value of this event.
The convention center was big enough to be an environment unto itself. [↩]
Wasn’t there a cheap international data roaming plan somewhere? [↩]
I hear there’s something similar in Amsterdam’s Toomler but can’t find anything really. [↩]
Reisinformatie ‘nieuwe stijl’ is ook maar een woord om te verhullen dat de manier van informatie aanbieden die de NS hanteert jaren achterloopt en dat ze zelfs actief mensen die zelf dit niveau proberen op te schroeven zoals Trein.app het verhinderen.
De reis app die door de NS uitgebracht is werkt op Java wat mobiel niet het handigste platform is en waar ook niet de interessantste gebruikers zich bevinden. Versies voor iPhone en anderen schijnen nog te komen, maar deze versie heeft al een jaar op zich laten wachten, dus wanneer is erg onduidelijk.
Wat hadden ze dan moeten doen?
Het wil de NS en de andere vervoersaanbieders in Nederland niet aan hun hoofd dat hun core business het vervoeren van mensen is en dat het essentieel is dat de informatie over hun vervoersmiddelen zo wijd en vrij mogelijk beschikbaar is.
Mensen willen waarschijnlijk op ontzettend veel verschillende manieren vervoersinformatie tot zich nemen. Teveel om aan één aanbieder over te laten. Er zijn genoeg mensen die iets kunnen maken, maar het niet makkelijk beschikbaar zijn van de gegevens maakt het te kostbaar en ingewikkeld om aan de slag te gaan.
Als de NS de actuele treintijden en routes vrij zou geven via een API dan zouden de kosten voor andere ontwikkelaars om ermee aan de slag te gaan sterk worden teruggebracht en denk ik dat er een bloei aan interessante applicaties zou ontstaan. In zo’n situatie zouden er wel afspraken gemaakt moeten worden gemaakt in een gebruiksovereenkomst, maar de hoeveelheid controle die de NS op dit moment wil uitoefenen is onrealistisch en contra-productief1.
Reisinformatie
9292ov heeft pas iets slimmer maar nog steeds bijzonder kortzichtig een wedstrijd uitgeschreven waar studenten een reisapplicatie kunnen maken. Deelnemers doen wel afstand van al hun rechten (!)2 en er is hier ook geen publieke databron beschikbaar.
De noodzaak voor publieke data heb ik hierboven al beschreven en een volwassen reisapplicatie vereist een toegewijd team dat eraan blijft werken, niet een situatie waar deze overgedragen wordt aan een andere partij die de capaciteiten mist (want waarom anders die wedstrijd uitgeschreven?).
Usability
Uit de review van Raimo maak ik op dat deze applicatie ook weer nodeloos ingewikkeld is. Waar Trein.app ook de mist in gaat is het dynamisch reisplannen. In veel gevallen is mijn reis nogal flexibel: ik wil op een gegeven moment ‘s avonds weer terug naar Delft maar ik weet niet wanneer. Ik weet dus waar ik heen wil en de applicatie weet al waar ik ben en kan beschikken over een actueel reisschema.
De enige vraag die er voor een gebruiker dan toe zou moeten doen als je de applicatie opstart is: “Waar wil je naar toe?”daarna moet de applicatie me laten zien wat mijn opties zijn3. Dit is het simpelste geval wat opgelost moet worden, de rest is extra.
Update: Ik was net op Radio Online waar ik beknopt pleitte voor het vrijgeven van de vervoersgegevens. In het voorbereidende gesprek met Tonie vonden we het al frappant dat bijvoorbeeld Tunesië en Egypte betere Google Transit dekking hebben dan Nederland.
Dit doet denken aan de wanhopige pogingen van de Nederlandse internetaanbieders om niet te worden gedegradeerd tot inwisselbare data-aanbieders. De situatie bij de NS is nu nog anders aangezien de NS op het traject monopolist is en mensen niet snel iets anders zullen nemen. Punt is wel dat transparante manieren van informatie (data) en betaling (ov-chipknip) essentiele voorwaarden zijn voor concurrentie op het spoor (en eigenlijk ook de reden waren dat de vorige poging mislukte). [↩]
En krijgen een schijntje betaald. Capabele freelancers schijnen inderdaad kostbaar te zijn. [↩]
Dit is simpel taakgericht ontwerp in plaats van uit te gaan welke gegevens er al bestaan. [↩]
Ik ben even een weekje naar Austin voor een woestijn-retraite met vakgenoten.
Update: SxSW is met gemak één van de beste algemene events waar ik geweest ben. De hoeveelheid en in sommige gevallen kwaliteit van de sessies dragen daaraan bij, maar nog veel belangrijker is de concentratie van mensen die hier aanwezig is.
Er is een absurde hoge concentratie hier van mensen die werken in ons vakgebied, dit maakt spontane en geplande ontmoetingen erg waarschijnlijk en is de voornaamste reden om hierheen te komen (het is toch niet mogelijk om alle sessies te zien en ze worden ook opgenomen en binnenkort online gezet).
Absolute aanrader dus als je Engels kunt en zelfredzaam bent. We zijn nu al met een recordaantal Nederlanders hier maar ik denk dat dat aantal nog een paar keer moet verdubbelen.
Freshly one day back in from San Francisco some adjustments need to be made. The time difference has been reduced from 9 hours to 8 thanks to our splendidly European invention: DST. Along with the time difference there is also a slight difference in daylight and a large difference in temperature (15ź centigrade) and precipitation (nearly non-stop rain the past day).
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.
I’ve always wanted to go there and tomorrow I’m finally going. Some vague plans, tads of serendipity and friends pushing me over the edge were enough to have me book the ticket, I think, only three weeks ago. Tomorrow Lufthansa will take me over an ocean for the first time of my life1.
Halfway during the trip there’s a four day capoeira event celebrating Mestre Acordeon‘s fiftieth year of teaching capoeira with a Brazilian festival in Berkeley on Saturday. I’ll also try to get some surfing in and see if I can visit the local tech hubs and meet some people, so it’s not purely a holiday.
If this wasn’t enough to stress me out, today my laptop decided to not boot anymore. So I spent most of the day panicing and restoring a backup, after which everything seems to work again but no clue for how long. Maybe I should try to sneak a new Macbook past customs on my way back.
It’s nice to have friends who are pushing their bounds photographically to try and improve their skill and to see them improve leaps and bounds as a result of that.
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’ve been tremendously enjoying the stuff Jan Chipchase writes on his blog both current and digging deep into his archives1. A dream job if ever there was one.
His current piece is especially pertinent as the iPhone 3G release with builtin GPS and accompanied unlimited data plans will herald the location based revolution. Many of my friends say that they do not want to broadcast where they are and know where their friends are most of the time. That they would rather get together using premediated consensual communication.
I think in user research you have to adopt the same maxim that everybody lies maybe unknowingly or unwillingly. It remains to be seen how many people will not succumb to the temptation of total information. Broadcasting your location, but even more attractive knowing where your loved ones are at any given moment. The same initial reaction to mobile telephony didn’t prevent everybody I know from getting a mobile phone.
What this will do to the mystery of travel and unknown locations is a whole different question asked by Babak. I think unequality in economic, communications and political circumstances will always keep parts of the world shrouded in mystery.
Back to a time when comments were still allowed on his blog. [↩]
Back from holiday, the surf was mostly flat but a good time was had, judging from the pictures on Flickr1.
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.
Still sorting through the bunch from Apremont and Nantes. [↩]
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 Circus1. 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.
Reboot 10 is over and in my experience they simply get better every year.
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.
Thomas Vander Wal’s talk —always nice to have him over at this side of the ocean— gave us some great elements for social software to base our thinking on and concluded with a way to get organizations to think about the dichotomy between keeping information and sharing it.
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.
By the time this post has been published I will be on a train on my way to Schiphol to fly to Copenhagen to attend the 10th edition of Reboot1.
Copenhagen has become familiar territory and I’ll be there for only four days. Acclimatizing on Wednesday which kicks off with a boat trip. Thursday and Friday will be conference days during which I hope to see a lot of people and I have been alotted a small session where we’ll talk about Free Economies.
Saturday will be spent recovering, maybe a run along the lakes or a decent brunch or burger and Saturday evening my train will depart for the Netherlands. The train journey back I’m looking forward to a lot more than the plane ride in.
Maar ik heb er grondige vertrouwen in dat we hem kunnen repareren.
Ik zit nu in Londen1 bij @mseckington en @cbetta op de bank na een dagje conferentie bij geekyoto waar een hele serie mensen hun visie hebben gegeven de toestand van de wereld en hoe die te repareren. Erg inspirerend en er zijn veel mensen met goede dingen bezig.
Ik ga nog meer schrijven maar feit is dat veel van de oplossingen geen extra techniek nodig hebben en ook niet meer kosten. Het enige wat de boel tegenhoudt is menselijke inertie.
Nu wat eten, morgenochtend kijken of ik een capoeirales kan volgen en morgenmiddag terugtreinen naar Nederland.