I build spreadsheets. For fun. Okay, after letting that sink in for a moment, allow me to share the love. For spreadsheets. There's not an awful lot for which I haven't built a spreadsheet at some stage in my life. I mean, from spreadsheets calculating the best place to live, to spreadsheets linking real estate prices to a map of Ireland, to spreadsheets keeping track of my cycling adventures, to... well... anything you can dream of and then some. My favourite spreadsheets are often the ones that are completely useless and are built from completely useless data sets. Latest one in this series is... my 'Vegas Index' spreadsheet. (I'll let that sink in for a moment as well) I receive spam. Most of the time, it's the usual spam that we all get, you know, how to get products like C1al15 or V1@gra for fr33. But some spam triggers the imagination. Like the ones offering cheap hotel rooms in Las Vegas. For some dark reason, I held on to those instead of immediately tra
With the great success of 'Eelrock' in the 60s and 70s, Holland was ready to create a second genre and add it to its Musical Heritage. We're talking early 80s and the concept of 'Nederpop' is invented. Musically at least as renewing as the 'Eelrock' genre, Nederpop arrived with a bang with a band called 'Doe Maar' (freely translates to 'Go on, make my day, I don't mind either way, so you might as well go ahead with it, but do understand that you won't get my complete support, simply because I don't care). It's a concise language, Dutch. Doe Maar brought a ska-ish, reggae music to the Dutch public. Combining typically Dutch subject matter ( drugs , television , eternal doom , existential crises , and of course the secret love for your night nurse ), the colours of the early 80s (bright pink and an incredibly hurtful shade of neon-green) and a combination of boyish good looks with a naïve desire to make 'adult music', the ba
Up until the mid 70’s, air travel was very limited. The planes were the same size, but there were simply a lot less of them. People travelling by plane were business men, rock groups or people going somewhere where no bus could travel. The large travel agencies were still very much focused on buses, trains and cars. Life on board of an airplane was almost like a Roman food orgy. More stewardesses than passengers, more food than one could chew and alcohol was flowing as if there was no tomorrow. Finally a transportation method where it wasn’t merely allowed to get drunk, no, the stewardesses spent all their time and energy in actually getting you drunk. Ok, you had to wear a seat belt when landing and taking off, but during the flight it was one big party. Cigarettes, cigars, wine, gin, vodka, it didn’t matter; air travel was all about getting to your destination in a cloud of alcohol and smoke. Then, we’re talking end of the 70’s, there was a change. A British travel agency, we’re not
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