It can be so easy.

Tags: Metro

Everybody knows Mario Kart cheats.
But the cheatiest level of all was N64 Bowser Castle.
And that championship was only one I hadn't won on mirror mode yet.
Every time it did a combination of blue shelling at points where I got into the fire
Losing 7 or 8 places
But this time I prevailed.

I jumped up.
And the cord between the Wiimote and the Nunchuck swept above my Lamp.
This was the result.



Videogames are bad for you....r house.

I didn't know what to expect of Bucharest
Was it still Little Paris, as it was in the Interbellum
Had Ceaucescu destroyed everything in the Ceausima?
Or did Kapitalism finish his job.

I arrived in the rain
On a november night.
In a taxi, through an Arc de Triomph
On our way to a very western hotel



We had management committees
Workgroups, and a conference,
But in the mean time, we could expercience a bit of the city.

The metro, with wide modern carriages, but small platforms.
with a rather west-european line-network.
Plata Victoriei, with incredible big buildings.



I went Steaua stadium, was in the south-west.
I took the most filled tram in history,
Through communist blocks to get there.
It was time for Unirea-Rangers.
As i had noticed, when having breakfast with fat guys in blue



We walked throuh Micul Paris,
It's lovely Atheneum,
Surrouind by this weird romance language
And painted Ceilings.
Dancing with Romanian Tango-girls.



We went to a sports bar.
Watching Steau with the faithful,
Feeling the latin-passion, when they equalised Fenerbahce.
Noticing Ajax & Roma banners with consent.
And imagining the tension of the Marele derby



We went to drink beer at Ceauceascu's
Strangly seeing,
That the square before his megaloman palace,
Was used for a Wedding-fair
And BBQ meals.



I am still confused what to think of the city.
It is warm., it is cold, it surely is a true city.

Tags: Link

The old cultural capital of Poland.
Was more cheerful than 11 years ago.



The had a highspeed tram now.
And lots of bike for rent in Civitas.
As well as a networking event.



And that showed us Boats in Poland,
Pecha Kucha in Bologna,
And shared space in Drachten.



And perhaps more importantly.
Meeting the might Wisla in the mud
Dinner in saltmines,
And beers with the pride of Serbia.



More photos

It is a good Italian Tradition to write the name of the cycling "Campionissimo" you support on road where the Giro or Tour passes. Even 5 years after his dead, you will find Pantani's name written down. And Myself, coming from an old cycling country have always dreamt to see my name written down on the streets of the Gavia or the Galibier.

You can imagine how great it felt when playing the much-criticised cycling event on Wii Sports Resort (Nintendo, €49 incl WMP) and to see my name on the streets leading to the top of the mountains on Wuhu island - the resort in the title. Added to normal Mii-support (my wife in the audience, Osama as my basketball team mate), I felt at home.

Not many reviewers really understood Wii Sports. They complained about the lack of depth. For them "Depth" was the addition of lots of options to be tweaked, or a table or two. But the depth of Wii Sports was in allowing to constantly improve yourself, by giving you many different opponents.

And this depth has transferred to WSR, and to that it adds an island to link the sports together, and giving them a common theme. You skydive onto it, you wakeboard next to it, or you cycle through its villages and mountains. Furthermore it adds a lot of new sports.

And the greatness of these new sports, all implented in very different ways, while being true to the nature of the sport they represent, is another thing where WSR shines. There are not many more satisfying feelings, then waving your improved wiimote like someone from Kill Bill. You are almost like a conductor, waving your Hanzo sword around while chopping the hordes.

Archery is another highlight. The feedback of your bow has to be experienced. Table Tennis makes you forget you are playing on a console. Cycling is fun, because it is both tactics (recuperation behind other cyclist) and exercise. Wakeboarding makes you cheerful. Kayakking does the resistance of water impressively. And all those things are even more fun in multiplayer.

Sure I would like overall statistics, online play, and online tables, but as a true Wii game, as a sequel, and as multi-player experience, it is amazing. And for making on of my old dreams comes true, it deserves a statue.

Ranking: A 4.5/5
Wii Sports Resort allows you to experience sports you never did, and therefore makes dreamers happy, while providing multiplayer fun for the rest of us

Tags: Wielrennen

My first iphone/ipodtouch app!.. sort of. They have ported the Palm/mobile internet app Metro (which contains most public transport stations in the world) to the iphone, and i provided the utrecht database somether in 2002

Still, small claim to fame, as a user actually asked when meeting me "are you the rick lindeman of the utrecht database, thank you). The App is a bit dated now, still feeling like 2002.

Tags: Metro

Just look how beautifiul that screen looks.
It is from a game,with a 50s look
It is not retro but looks and feels that way
Stewarddesses aboard planes you have to land.
Many airplanes.
And then they crash.
Then it is over.

Maybe it is because i was born so near Schiphol
But It's more addicting than crack, flight control
My profile is here
5/5

All photos

It felt like coming home.
Not that everything in the city is perfect.
A post-fascist major. To much new centri commerciali.
There were still laziale


Rent-a-cycle, now in Rome too

But a true relationship is more than admiring,
It is dealing with the troubles of the times,
And experiencing them together.


Luigi, a Laziale (but still great)


10 years after I found my place there.
It still was la mia città
Those months in rome really were some of the most important in my life.


Lorella e Giulia

My friends had graduated now. Having kids and cars.
But still the warmth was there.


Daniele, Testimone

I visited some old spots, like the cat's sanctuary and the facoltà.
And some places I had never been to, like the place a day later Italy was soundly beaten
Stadio Flaminio had been close, all the time, but hidden.



Italy-France 8-50. Ai, Still Rugby is getting more and more popular in Italy

Tags: Rome

For Fleat i went to Milan, sat on Seedorf's seat and enjoyed some Milanese food. San Siro does look weary these days. The city was in a rather relaxed mood, the first days of spring. As I just was in Madrid's metro two weeks ago, Milan's looked rather poor by comparison


All photo's

On the right Beckham sits. he just went away for a beer


Debating in the sun


I have my own bar in Milan

All photos

Maybe it was because my ex-girlfriend came from Barcelona.
That my image of the city was rather dark.
I was to be proven wrong.

I arrived at the Ciudad very early on monday.
With as a first priority naturally the stadium.
Where Ajax played two of its best games in history.
That november day in 1995, i will never forget



But work had to be done.
An expert meeting,
At Cedex, the Spanish experimentation center for public works.
It lay near Atocha. On a hill



Atocha station might just be the most beautiful place in the world
With its interior garden, built as the old hall was obsolete,
after the building of the new TGV-station.
And what happend in March 04
Makes the garden erven more important



Night life in Madrid is something famous.
And even though we only got to experience a tiny bit.
It tastes deliciously.



But we cannot leave,
Without saying something about the second largest metro in Europe.
Efficient and all the time growing and growing.
Why does one simple line in Amsterdam take that long

I made it onto the BBC Radio. In their football-phone in on tuesday, they have a section for the Totalitarian league. Here they imagine what would happen if there were only 20 teams allowed in Britain. I made the case for AFC Ajax. Listen what happened.



The original mail? Read More...

Tags: Interview

When Tim Burton realised “The Nightmare before christmas” at the end of 1993. He succeeded in many ways. One of the most peculiar was people loving and even adoring a macrable black gothic vision.Fifteen years later a video game achieves this same feat, but it is only one of the reasons World of Goo just might just be the perfect video game. Read More...

All frankfurt photos

I've been to Frankfurt am Main for Link.
Well to the airport, famous for its integration with high-speed rail.



Although at night we went into the city, with the S-Bahn
Experience Local Cuisine.


Sachsenhäuser Wursteplatte

And the second day, i got to experience the Skytrain.


Skyline from Rick Lindeman on Vimeo.

I got fifa 09 now, which sees the Fifa series, after becoming acceptable again last year, making lots of progress. The new Team Be a pro mode, where you can be one player and your friends the others in a 10 v 10 match is excellent. I play in BeEx United

This goal is my most important, as it
A) won me and Roma the coppa italia
B) got me the achievement for heading
C) got me the achievement for wing play
D) and as a bonus got me the achievement for uploading a video.

I felt a bit like Maris Janssons yesterday.
He is the Latvian conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam.
Gramaphone declared it the best Orchestra in the world this week.

So this was a good thing.
I was waving my Wiimote.
And the orchestra played Carmen, the great Opera by Georges Bizet
My wife Celine played the Violin. Osama some horn and Zardoz did a bit of percussion.
I got 68 points, and was very happy.

Classical music sounds quite good in the Midi Nintendo chose.
Pop songs less.
But Midi makes the game flexible, allowing for all those instruments.

I say game, but i'm not sure of it.
It has three mini games: the aforementioned Orchestra, a standard rhytm game with cowbells, albeit with few songs and a Wiiplay-like quiz, making you choose Mii's with the right pitch, or putting them in the right order, which makes good fun.

But the main thing is just jamming.
While real artists frown upon Guitar Hero,
You have far more control there over a single instrument than in Wii Music.

The variety here, makes it fun though, and also the arrangements to make different songs of the same basics,
And playing all the different parts in a row.
One person on the flute, and one on the drums is excellent fun.
In a very different way than Rockband.
The drums by themselves are special too, as you use the Wii Fit boards as foot pedals.



Other good things: The first Wii game i have seem without a seperate friends list
Which i noticed when one of the world famous Pickford Bros appeared in my list.
Still, you can only send them videos.
Mii integration is as allways wonderful, Having a band full of people you know makes it a bit more fun

Bad things: You're not that much in control, I would love more Guitar Hero like stuff.
The music sounds rather bad, and the selection is very limited.
Surely Nintendo, with all that DS money, you could have licensed some songs.

A conclusion is hard to draw, and probably depending on your expectations.
If you're expecting Guitar Hero with Mii's you are going to be dissapointed.
If you're want to have some fun with friends making a song together, and actually learning a few things about music too, you're going to like it.
If you always wanted to direct a big orchestra like me, you're going to like it for some swallow fun.

Ouendan remains the best rhytm game in history, and Guitar Hero/Rockband do the rockstar thing miles better, but I've got a few nights of fun of it, and felt more that i was doing something with music than i did with the aforementioned games. I am happy that i overcame my doubts and spent 30 pounds on it. It's does what it sets do do rather well, and if you can appreciate that subniche of music games, i can recommend it. Some of you are going to hate it though.

790 bananas
3/5
7/10

All stockholm photos

For Link I went to Stockholm in mid-october.
The lights and leafs were tinted with a beautiful autumn color.
I went to VTI, in the Royal Technological Institute, KTH, with the Tunnelbanen



I was in Sweden, so icehockey was a necessity.
In Södertälje, there was Stockholm's derby
SSK- Djurgårdens in the Elitserien.

Södertalje is the birthplace of Ajax-Winger Kennedy
It is a horrible industrial town.
It also contains more Iraqi's than any other place outside the middle east
SSK is their only hope.



The got a 1-0 headstart.
But lost 2-4
Djurgården's fans reminded me of Vak 410
With a Capo, and some of the same songs



Next day we went to the Paliament, the Rikstagen
And did some work.
The Green party presented a new tramplan.
To combat situations as the horrible Slussen,
One op stockholm's main hubs.



My video of SSK-Djurgården

Tags: Icehockey, Link

All Innsbrück photos
Vienna photos

At the morning that Austria and Bavaria woke up after a day of shocking elections
I landed at Munich Airport.
Luckily, some traditions were still there, and all Mädchen were dressed as Dirndl



The train brought me in 2 hours to Innsbrück, on a journey filled with mountains
But we were not in the city themselves and were transported to Kematen,
A hamlet in Tirol

There we talked about Greener Fleets, and alternative fuels.
The night brought us a Tyrolean meal, with 8 courses.
Our Swedish partner was surprised at each of them.



After another day of meetings,
I went to Vienna,
Crossing the country in 5 hours.
Arriving at Westbahnhof, I took my tradional Wiener Schnitzel at Stephansplatz.
The next morning i went to the Bundesministerium VIT (Traffic, Innovation and Technique)
For a meeting for Link



Afterwards, I could do but one thing.
Visit the Holy place werehere Ajax conquered its 4th European Cup.

Tags: Link

Link brought me to Praha this week. I'm not sure what to think of the of the city. The suburbs are quite relaxed, I had a great meal at Bileholva. It was on a boulevard, with passing Tram 22s under leafy trees. It this part of Prague not many flats were communist barracks.



The public transport system is quite nice, with a typical Eastern European Metro-Triangle in the centre. Travel information isn't that good, with lots of horrible looking maps. I did get a chance to drink a cappuccino in an old Tram though, amidst Soviet tanks for the Prague spring (1968) remembrance. Do avoid the rest of the centre. It looks nice, in a Habsburg way, but it is too filled with tourists for my comfort.

Tags: Link

More photos

The joys of low cost travelling made me touch down in the city of the 5 times European Cup winner long after midnight. Luckily the proponent of Umihara Kawasa, Matt, stood on John Lennon Airport with a sign Rick "Mario" Lindeman. He brought me to my hotel.

It would be a short visit, I would spent only 16 hours in the lands of her most royal majesty, Elisabeth II. Thursday, a rainy morning as one would expect on the shores of the Irish see, I had to work. John, from Austin Analytics picked me up, and brought me to an English breakfast bar. Brown, and wood, and without presumption. The corner stone of English Society.


Duke Street

We went to talk with the boss of Mersey Travel, so naturally we used Liverpool's underground. It was a combination of older rail lines, refurbished some 30 years ago. The boss himself was approachable and told us about all his new projects, his submarine and South Parkway Station. He would join us at Link

I went to see South Parkway Station. It lay lush in the green fields, and really open and sustainable, but without many passengers. I had forgotten how England looked, with its typics stone houses and streets. The city was filled with Lamb Bananas, decorated copies of a a famous sculpture, made for Liverpool Culture Capital 2008.


Lamb Bananas at Lime Street

Back at Lime Street, after train trip through an impressive gorge of Lime Stone, Matt was there and went to Sapporo, a Tepanyaki restaurant. This was good food and good for my understanding of Liverpool. As we set there, 3 girls, who could be footballers wifes joined us at the table. They were dressed up, a bit sleazy but up to alevel, and i will never forget their accents.

We enjoyed the cheaper Video Games, at Liverpool One, the new mega real estate urban renewal (good or bad, you decide) in the centre of the city. Later we went to see both Goodison Park and Anfield road, mere metres from eachother. Matt had been a blue boy all his life, but explained being blue didn't mean you had to be that anti-red, just during derbies. Respect was given to the victims of the Hillsborough disaster.


Bar at Anfield

It was almost time to go home, we drove through Penny Lane, back to John Lennon Airport. Meanwhile in Peking, we won the Waterpolo and marathon swimming. We competed at our own Olympics, getting our DSs out and playing New International Track and Field, and of course Mario Kart.

Tags: Link

I don't have words to decribe it, it reminded me of Deportivo-Milan, so over to correspondent, myoptika



Bloody hell, what a dramatic semi-final day at the BeeX Stadium.

After an action-packed "friendly" (I use quotation marks as I managed to get two players sent off) which finished 2-1 to myoptika's Forumites, we both had problems connecting to each other, which resulted in a bizarre situation where we both saw different teams on the same player selection screen and the game crashing out when the players arrived on the pitch! Read More...

Lego Indiana Jones

I went to Indiana Jones the other day.
The film wasn't as big a succes in the Netherlands as excepted.
So one could only see it in a cinema, tucked far away in Hoog Catharijne.
The horrible 60s shoppingmall of Traiectum ad Rhenum.
But hey, my father loves archeology.
Read More...

Tags: Films

The best way to view a football game is to go to a stadium. While watching a race or baseball might actually be more rewarding from your special 156" HDMI Bravia Super Flat Wide Turbo TV, for football you have to be in the stadium. And I'm not talking about the lovely atmosphere I felt when I was at the Curva Sud or in the Maracana. I'm talking about the overview you have when being on the stands. So why do most football games try to look like a footy match on TV? Read More...

Urban waste is one the largest problems in developing countries. Some time ago I wrote a study together with Katja Martins and Audrey Sluiter, about how to deal with this problem. As a case they take the city of Kumasi, Ghana. With a population of 1,517,000, Kumasi is the second-largest city in the country.It is located near the Lake Bosomtwe, in the Rain Forest Region about 250 km (by road) northwest of Accra. Kumasi is approximately 300 miles north of the Equator and 100 miles north of the Gulf of Guinea. It is popularly known as "The Garden City" because of its many beautiful species of flowers and plants.

You can find the report here


Read More...

Bhutan is as you might know a little country in the Himalaya. The Bhutanese call it the land of the Thunder Dragon. Last month for the first time ever, there were general elections. The Bhutanese don't measure their succes in a Gross National Product, but in the Gross National Happiness. Both competing parties pledged to support this. Last year they had a mock election to train the people. They understood better than the American government that democracy isn't just about elections.. Read More...

Tags: Amsterdam

Ricklindeman.nl hereby officially endorses Barrack Obama for President of the United States of America



Nieuws (in Nl)
Amerika.nl
Nos site

Polls
Pollster
Tanenbaum

Democratische Sites
Dailykos
Obama

Other
World of Stuart Thread
NY Times

Tags: Stati Uniti

There is obviously no greater game in the world than football. The passion, the bitter rivalries, the hate, the plain dumbness, the eternal discussions.. and what better way to go into a stadium. So who still does this? And even further has gone to strange matches, lets talk about it in this.. Read More...

Tags: Ajax

This position paper shows the dilemmas facing the Dutch government and especially its agency on participating in European research and energy efficiency programmes. We will use the case of SenterNovem, the innovation agency of the Dutch ministry of Economic affairs to illustrate this. Read More...

Aangezien het nog niet bestond, heb ik hem maar gemaakt. Een CD32 versie van een van de leukste twee speler spellen ooit, Gravity Power

I made a cd32 combatible ISO for Gravity Power, a great freeware two player game
De CD-Image (iso) vind je hier
You can find the ISO here

Trains have held a fascination to me ever since I was a child. As my parents didn’t have a car, the train was our main form of transportation. When I was small, places like Groningen or Maastricht seemed to be exotic locations from the other end of the universe. Later we found ourselves in the great Termini of Europe: Paris Gare du Nord, Budapest Keleti or Milano Centrale. My dreams of travelling have always been connected to trains. Read More...

Tags: Metro

I wrote a new review for WOTR

Some people will tell you Basketball is a bit like football, where you score goals, and he, who scores the most goals wins. They are wrong. Basketball is more like a race, where you have to keep up scoring, and not fall behind. The individual goal is reduced to a necessity, instead of a moment of ecstasy. No Peter-Crouch-Robotic-dance here.

Read More...

Rick was interviewed by Retrogamer. I was about his mac emulation site www.macretro.tk. Click the cover for scans.

You may have heard rumours about a cheerleading game from those crazy Japanese. Well, put aside any fantasies you may have about being the highschool quarterback who got to take the cheerleader to the prom, dozens of girls with pompoms dancing in the aisles – although you can probably buy just that game if you look hard enough and, no, we won’t tell you where to look you filthy pervert - what we have here is a professional cheering squad, Men in Black style.
More - Original article
Published in Way of the Rodent

I have been a Fluminense fan since i first heard of the legendary Fla-Flu derbies. In the early 90s there was no way of obtaining information about them in the Netherlands. Luckily, in 1994 Sensible World of Soccer arrived. the first great football game to include teams from all over the world. I played the Fla-Flu derby with heroes like Rogerinho and Ricardo Rocha.  Read More...

was in Vigario Geral, last month. It’s a favela – or shanty-town – in Rio de Janeiro, near to the International Airport.

In August 1993, 21 civilians were killed there, when a group of hooded, heavily armed men fired indiscriminately at residents for a couple of hours. The attack was carried out by military police officers in revenge for the killing of four policemen at the hands of Vigario Geral-based drug-runners. At one point, they gunned down a family of seven in their own home. Read More...

The link between Brazil and our beloved mind-sport may not be apparent on first sight, as Brazil is foremost the country of Carnaval, Samba and Futebol. Nevertheless, the metropolis São Paolo hosts the South American Go Center. Rick Lindeman went to have a look. Read More...

Tags: Go

It was 1983. I had just turned seven. In the summer I went to my first Boy Scout camp in Den Dolder. It is a sleepy village near Traiectum ( Utrecht ) which is famous for three reasons. It is all nice and green. It has a large mental institution. It is ‘ Europe 's Sauce capital', its skyline being dominated by a large factory of Remia, a Unilever brand, which proudly boasts that claim. Somehow these facts seem to be related.
Read More...

Tags: Utrecht

I wrote my master thesis about the Urban programme. This is a programme of the European Union to renew cities. The cases were Utrecht (Holland) and Salerno (Italy)

The Report (in PDF) Read More...

Tags: Rome