Pepijn Lemmens' Blog

Yay for the call-to-action button!

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 23:29:37 +0100

tpdsaa:

Submitted by @greenmelinda.

Preso 'Web Zeitgeist' for NAI

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:47:00 +0100

(Sorry, in Dutch!)

99 Things me

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:15:00 +0100

Via http://voorerbij.blogspot.com/2009/01/99-things-meme.html I found these 99 things to do in life.

So the rules are:
Things you’ve already done: bold
Things you want to do: italicize
Things you haven’t done and don’t want to - leave in plain font

Here we go—

1. Started your own blog. (you’re reading it)
2. Slept under the stars.
3. Played in a band.
4. Visited Hawaii.
5. Watched a meteor shower. (don’t you need an awfully big bathroom for that?)
6. Given more than you can afford to charity.
7. Been to Disneyland/world.
8. Climbed a mountain.
9. Held a praying mantis. (If I ever run into one, sure, I’ll hold it)
10. Sang a solo. (On stage. With all my friends & loved ones watching. Once)
11. Bungee jumped.
12. Visited Paris.
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea.
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch. (Is web design an art?)
15. Adopted a child.
16. Had food poisoning.
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty.
18. Grown your own vegetables. (Once you’ve grown your own tomatoes, you’ll never enjoy supermarket tomatoes again)
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France. (Been in Paris more than once, why didn’t I see the ML?)
20. Slept on an overnight train.
21. Had a pillow fight.
22. Hitch hiked.
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill. (Is my boss reading my blog? Mmmm)
24. Built a snow fort.
25. Held a lamb. (That’s lamb with a ‘b’, I misread it the first time)
26. Gone skinny dipping.
27. Run a marathon. (Honestly swear I never will)
28. Ridden a gondola in Venice.
29. Seen a total eclipse. (of the heart?)
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset. (Would there be anybody in this world who hasn’t?)
31. Hit a home run. (Full disclosure: playing softball)
32. Been on a cruise. (When I’m old & wise)
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person.
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors. (My ancestors? How far back is that?)
35. Seen an Amish community.
36. Taught yourself a new language. (But been thought 6, not counting HTML ;-)
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied. (To be honest: almost every day)
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person. (But am looking at a model of it right now, thats should count for something?)
39. Gone rock climbing.
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David in person. (I think)
41. Sung Karaoke. (There’s even a video of that, I’m not too proud to say)
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt.
43. Bought a stranger a meal in a restaurant. (A homeless guy, I’m like a saint you know ;-)
44. Visited Africa.
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight.
46. Been transported in an ambulance. (No I don’t want this, but If I lie bleeding on a street I might think different)
47. Had your portrait painted. (A caricature)
48. Gone deep sea fishing.
49. Seen the Sistine chapel in person.
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
51. Gone SCUBA diving or snorkling
52. Kissed in the rain.
53. Played in the mud.
54. Gone to a drive-in theater.
55. Been in a movie.
56. Visited the Great Wall of China.
57. Started a business. (Although I do freelance work)
58. Taken a martial arts class (I can kick ass in 3 sports)
60. Served at a soup kitchen.
61. Sold Girl Scout cookies. (Mmmm, don’t think that would be a good idea)
62. Gone whale watching.
63. Gotten flowers for no reason. (If I don’t do it, nobody buys me flowers ;-)
64. Donated blood. (Do vampires count?)
65. Gone sky diving. (Close to the top of todo list)
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp.
67. Bounced a check.
68. Flown in a helicopter.
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy. (But there’s some things lying around my parents house)
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial.
71. Eaten Caviar.
72. Pieced a quilt. (A quilt. Really…)
73. Stood in Times Square.
74. Toured the Everglades.
75. Been fired from a job.
76. Seen the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace.
77. Broken a bone. (Not my own)
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle.
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person.
80. Published a book. (Co-authorized does count?)
81. Visited the Vatican.
82. Bought a brand new car.
83. Walked in Jerusalem.
84. Had your picture in the newspaper.
85. Read the entire Bible. (when I’m old & wise)
86. Visited the White House.
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating. (But only with Ray Mears present)
88. Had chickenpox.
89. Saved someone’s life. (Again: I don’t want to, but if somebody needs saving when I’m there…)
90. Sat on a jury.
91. Met someone famous.
92. Joined a book club. (Bad, bad idea)
93. Lost a loved one.
94. Had a baby. (well, not me personally)
95. Seen the Alamo in person.
96. Swum in the Great Salt Lake.
97. Been involved in a law suit. (Long story)
98. Owned a cell phone. (I’m on my 11th one)
99. Been stung by a bee.

So, is that the story of my life? Not really, but is is great fun. Would love to see yours.

Found a neat Photoshop trick to make planet-like orbs from...

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 23:27:00 +0200

Found a neat Photoshop trick to make planet-like orbs from panoramic photos. Here’s planet Rotterdam.

Twitter is down. Now what?

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:32:00 +0200

Twitter is down. The official Twitter status blog states that the site is under a Denial of Service (DOS) attack and will be up again soon.

It is a known fact that you don’t know what you’ve got until you loose it. This is typically the case with Twitter: I feel cut of from the world, missing the permanent flow of updates, interesting links, fun, the little ‘divertissement’ Twitter is on a long day.

Expecting most Tweets when the site comes back will be something like YOOHOO, WE’RE BACK, I MISSED YOU ALL. Mine will ;-)

Cool. Catching laser with your hands.

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 23:51:37 +0200

Cool. Catching laser with your hands.

How personal will our museum get?

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:32:26 +0200

Interesting discussion in our 2 weekly web meeting, and later on in the Twitterverse: If you comment on an external web service, e.g. Flickr, from the museum perspective, do you use your personal account, the corporate account, our a combination of both?

When I look at my own behaviour in web 2.0 services I always look for actual people, not anonymous organisations. So if I respond to a photo on Flickr, even in my museum ‘role’, I use my personal account. Most of my team disagreed: when you present yourself as a represetative from the museum, you should use the museum’s account. @pollekes even mentioned it as a way to create a corporate fan base.

Which is all good and nice, but aren’t social networks about people, not organisations? What do you think: personal or company?

Amazing 3D illusion media screen on Hamburg Kunsthalle. More:...

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:57:24 +0200

Amazing 3D illusion media screen on Hamburg Kunsthalle. More: urbanscreen.com

God has a Mac

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 20:16:00 +0200

This weekend I spent camping with my family (as you can see from my previous post, which in incidentally posted here, some setting, somewhere, but I’ll keep it it up to prevent topicide). Over a glass of wine at the camping table we were discussing what Saint Peter would say to each of us when we would present ourselves at the pearly gates. We imagined he would open up his big book, look up your name and…

That really does not make sense. Why would st. Peter, or God for that matter, still use an old-fashioned book, while all of us here below use computers to look up stuff? Surely there would be a HWW (Heaven Wide Web) by now?

So OK, we decided, st. Peter does not have a big book at the gates, but a computer. So what sort of computer would st. Peter have? Of course: an Apple! Big laughs at the camping table, we were all amazed we never saw the obvious biblical reference in the Apple logo.

Mac Museum
Today I looked it up (on the WWW ;-) and there is actually some truth in this. On the amusingly dull Apple Museum site I found he story behind the Apple logo

“In 1977 Jobs asked the art designer Rob Janoff to design the new Apple logo. The new logo had a simple shape of an Apple, bitten into, with the colors of the rainbow in the wrong order. The bite symbolized knowlegde (in the bible the apple was the fruit of the tree of knowledge) and the bite could also be pronounced “byte”, a reference to computer technology.
When Jean Louis Gassée was asked about his thoughts to the Apple logo he answered: “One of the deep mysteries to me is our logo, the symbol of lust and knowledge, bitten into, all crossed with the colors of the rainbow in the wrong order. You couldn’t dream of a more appropriate logo: lust, knowledge, hope, and anarchy.” (via)

The part of the story that made me smile the most however was another piece:

“Steve Jobs came up with the name in early 1976. At the time, he was often visiting and working on a small farm friends of his owned. It was a hippie commune where Steve spent a few months of the year.”

So Jobs started out as a hippie and ended up the president of one of the most shamelessly capitalist companies in the world. Mmmm…

Video

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 18:08:48 +0200

Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody - Quotes

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:49:04 +0200

Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody - Quotes:

I just finished reading Here comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. Great book on the changes of groups and organizations due to new media. Was planning to make a list of good quotes to use in presentations, reports etc., but of course the web has already done this for me ;-)

Getting intimate with our data

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 13:18:00 +0200

At the moment I am working on web functions to add to our museum’s new permanent exhibition. Since we are an architecture museum, we figured that the best way to show our stuff, is to show it were it stands, on location, the real building. But how do you create an exhibition that will spread out all over the country, and even beyond the borders?

We started out with Points Of Interest (POI) you can download on your navigation device and get extra info on some architectural highlights. But POI’s only can contain limited info and visuals, so might not be the best way to create an exhibition experience.

Augmented reality
What we are looking at now is the next step: Augmented Reality (AR): using a smartphone with GPS and a compass to overlay reality with extra info. The idea is that you point your phone’s camera toward a building and it shows an overlay with the architect’s name, building year, other plans for this same building/location, photos and video of the building process, etc.

Augmented reality is hot at the moment. One app especially gets a lot of love: Layar. Last week we talked to a group of developers about how to create and architecture Layar app. Apart from an app we of course need data, so the logical question of the developers was: what data is available? My honest answer was: I don’t know. I never counted the number of buildings in our database, have no idea of how many of these have geodata, let alone visual material.

So that’s my job for the coming week: getting intimate with our data to figure out what we have, how we can use it and how we can improve it to have a better user experience. Did I tell you I love my job?

Creating the websiteless website

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:42:00 +0200

Today I finally got around to sort of fixing my personal page, pepijnlemmens.com. This is the first little step towards an idea I have been playing around with the last couple of days: the websiteless website.

The goal is to create a single page website which feeds off all sorts of underlying, mostly free, services: Wordpress, Flickr, Twitter, etc. My personal site would then be the connector between all them, without hosting any service or data itself. Simple RSS-feeds can go a long way, but most services have API’s today, which opens up a lot of exciting possibilities.

I started off simple with a basic grid and a Flickr map with my latest images and links to other services I use. In the coming days (weeks, months), I’ll start importing data from these services, that are now merely linked, into the page itself.

Nirvana vs Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit up....

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 18:04:32 +0200

Nirvana vs Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit up. Brilliant. The nineties were all the same, in hindsight.

Museum Marketing - Creating a social media plan for a museum

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 22:05:30 +0200

Museum Marketing - Creating a social media plan for a museum:

Interesting stuff. I particularly like the 5 step plan: Stop, Look & Listen, Goals, Prepare, Launch, Monitor. Made me realise that our museum is already on step 3, but most of my co-workers skipped step 1…

Hello world

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 21:45:00 +0200

Yes he also needs a blog…

This is my first blogpost. Ever. Which may seem kinda scary, it being the midst of 2009 and all. But I never felt the urge to blog before. Almost my entire working life I have been working on the web. As a editor, editor-in-chief, webmaster, project manager, team coordinator, etc. It always felt like working on the web for 16 hours a day was enough, no need to do even more web stuff in my spare time.

But it turned out I do need I blog. As it happens I like my work. And I like to communicate about it. Not just one-on-one in meetings, not just by email, via Gtalk, via Skype. But in a more public space. To ponder upon what the web is, can be and is becoming. To communicate with others whom I may never meet in another way.

Along came Twitter. A fantastic platform for sharing and communicating. But 140 characters sometimes just isn’t enough. This is the place for the rest of it.

Language
And than there’s the language thing. I am Dutch, living in the Netherlands, most of my friends are Dutch en speak perfectly good, erm, Dutch. My professional network is another story. Most of my time I spend working on a website for a museum. There’s not a whole lot of museums in the world that can afford to have somebody working on their website full time, which means to reach a decent group of professionally like minded people, and hopefully have them reach me, I need an international outlook.
Most of you don’t speak Dutch. Which is a pity, but it is just more convenient to adapt my writings to you than the other way around.

Beside Museums and the web I do have other hobby’s. I am an active member of the Greens Party, love traveling an tinkering around with geek stuff.

So there it is. My Hello world. Let the blogging begin.

About me

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 20:03:14 +0200

Born in 1974
Living in Tilburg, The Netherlands
Webmanager at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI)
Museum webalist
Freelance web everything: editor, designer, project manager, master; allround tinkerer
Active political Green
Traveler (Lonely Planet, Flickr)
Island enthousiast (More Flickr)
Twitterer
Single
Moderately happy ;-)

Contact

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0200

redactie [at] pepijnlemmens.com

http://twitter.com/Pepijn_L

lemmens [at] gmail.com (GTalk)

Me!

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:35:07 +0200

Me!