Until a month ago, when @vanderwal mentioned it in a tweet. I follow Thomas Vander Wal on Twitter because he knows more about how information of all kinds is exchanged between people using internet technologies than just about anyone I know. That he’s from a Dutch background is a bonus.

The name of the book rang a bell, I looked it up and ordered a copy from Amazon the same day, 10 days into the World Cup.

It arrived just after the Netherlands beat Slovakia 2-1 to set up a quarter final against Brazil.

Brilliant Orange is subtitled “The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer“. This tells you that the author acknowledges the superior quality of football produced by players from a small European country, and wants to explore both how this unusually high skill level came about, and then why it hasn’t translated into continuing high level international success.

The context for David Winner is how the presence of Johan Cruijff transformed Dutch football in the 1970s, propelling the national team to consecutive World Cup finals – both of which they lost.

Cruijff, and the coaches who successfully figured out how to play him and build a team around him, revolutionised Dutch soccer at Ajax and with the national team and then later did the same at Barcelona.

Dutch football waned when he left, but his legacy did much to inform a revival of sorts in the late ’80s to early ’90s. And yet, the Netherlands could not grasp the ultimate crown.

The context that I bring to the book is that while I have been removed from the day-to-day soap opera of Dutch football since the 1970s, this year’s World Cup brought everything back into focus.

You may recall I picked the Netherlands to win WC2010, based largely on my belief that they could beat Brazil, and if you can beat Brazil you can beat anyone.

What Winner does in this book is to look in every cultural and historical nook and cranny to find out how the Dutch became so good, and why they’re never quite good enough.

It would be an interesting journey through any nation’s development of prowess in a particular sport, or other area of endeavour, but this particular trip is a fascinating one.

You couldn’t make up the Dutch obsession with beating Germany, nor Cruijff’s gifts, nor how Netherlanders will dress up like clowns to cheer their team on. Winner pulls in the physical constraints of a small, flat country, European wars, the physical characteristics of the Dutch, colonial influences, social changes, art, architecture, politics, prejudices, fears – anything that might explain why Dutch football is the way it is.

There is, of course, no ultimate explanation. The best you can say is that the Dutch are the way they are because they’re Dutch.

Winner does identify certain specific events and occurrences that played a part – for example, the legacy of  the Netherlands’s colonial past in delivering a generation of superbly skilled players of Surinamese descent in the 1980s.

And he’s gathered a great collection of quotes from people in and around the great Dutch and Ajax football teams.

I laughed, I cried, I gasped as I read. And I watched the Netherlands beat Brazil, and then Uruguay to set up another World Cup final, this time against Spain. And I watched them lose.

This is not the generation of Dutch football that invented Total Football, and it is not the generation that faced the trauma of reconciling black football and white football. And yet, like those two, this generation managed to get tantalisingly close to being called champions of the world.

As @vanderwal later commented, World Cup 2010 provided a fitting epilogue to Brilliant Orange, one that absolutely no-one would have predicted – and one that surprised absolutely no-one.

I should add that this book is ideal for people who like to see the connections between things. If you like Mark Kurlansky’s take on Cod or Salt, for instance, you’ll probably like this book, even if you’re not especially interested in football or the Netherlands.

But sometimes, it’s impossible not to either laugh out loud or groan in despair, or both.

David Campbell MP, the NSW Minister for Transport and the Illawarra, also happens to be my local member so naturally I get his four page, full colour, photo-rich, glossy Community News in my mailbox.

Among the various puff pieces touting the marvellous achievements of the walrus-like Campbell (which strangely doesn’t include how he is putting up fares for trains that are less frequent, less reliable, less patrolled and less clean than is acceptable), mentions that Towradgi Surf Life Saving Club is being funded for a new education training area in their clubhouse. Nothing bad about that, except the explanation of why surf life saving matters.

“The value of these services to our community cannot be underestimated.”

Read that again. At first glance, it seems to make sense. But it doesn’t, really.

It would have been correct to say:

“The value of these services to our community should not be underestimated.”

or

“The value of these services to our community cannot be overestimated.”

But the wording as it stands is actually saying it is not possible to value these services too lowly.

Yes, that’s really picky and pedantic. And, of course, Campbell almost certainly didn’t even read it before it went to press, let alone write it.

But surely such an egregious error should not occur. Surely somebody should read this stuff for meaning, not just whack it through the spellchecker and hope for the best.

As George W. Bush is quoted as saying, “You misunderestimate me”, and as Robin Williams is quoted as saying ,”No, George, we don’t.”

Celebrate the end of the  year in style on Friday 5th December, 2008.

Time: 6pm onwards
Where: Bar Broadway
Corner of Regent Street and Broadway, Sydney opposite UTS Tower
Tickets: $12 per head ($10 per head for WIPA members)
Tickets on sale: 9am Thursday 27th November at http://webblast.org/
Drinks: Free till the bar tab runs out
Food: Free finger food provided

Get in early before tickets sell out.

“Kate Vale and an engineer, Lars Rasmussen, at Google’s office in Darling Park.”

Being a Lead Engineer for Google Maps clearly didn’t impress the journos too much.

They probably wondered how a lowly engineer managed to muscle in on this photo opportunity in the first place.

That’s what understatement gets you.

Technorati Tags: Lars Rasmussen, Google

Sharing information like your mother’s maiden name (commonly used by banks etc as extra security questions) with even your close friends online is asking for trouble.

And Facebook does make it easy to do this, allowing third party plug-ins and apps to invite you to record that information and then enabling you to make it available to anyone you categorise as a friend.

But you have to choose to do both of those things: you don’t have to record any but the most harmless information (ie that which is easily available anyway), and you can set your profile to limit the information made available to various groups of users.

I find the media treatment of this issue to be unsurprisingly hysterical, in both senses. One story revealed how using a name and address from a Facebook page, journalists were able to find information on other sites which they then used to open a bank account in his name, set up credit cards, etc etc.

Well, you don’t have to go to Facebook to get a name and address, you can get that from the White Pages.

And what about these “other sites”?

The real risk factor lies in how a person uses Facebook. Few people bother to give it much thought or explore the how-tos, even though I think Facebook does a pretty good job of making the consequences of actions and decisions as plain as can be.

There is undoubtedly a percentage of Facebook users who are unwittingly leaving themselves open to identity fraud, even if only at the hands of dedicated journalists.

The thing with Facebook is that, with 42 million users, even 1% translates to a huge number.

Personally, I enjoy using Facebook to share stupid, funny things with a certain number of my friends. Other friends prefer Myspace, while some business colleagues use LinkedIn in the same way but for more serious purposes. They all have their risks, and they all have their benefits.

As with everything else, use your common sense, read the rules, accept responsibility for your actions and be careful out there.

I was picked up at Perth Airport and driven to a two hour meeting with Bam Creative about working together on a new web project.

Bam dropped me back at Perth Airport in time for a five hour flight back to Sydney, and an hour-and-fifteen taxi ride to be home by 11.30pm.

Eleven and a half hours air and road travel for a two hour meeting.

Call me shallow, but that was one cool trip.

Across the country and back. Six thousand eight hundred kilometres. Two thousand two hundred miles.

Answers to possible questions:

• The meeting went very well.
• The one hour time difference between the westward journey and the eastward journey is because of headwinds. I geekily checked the stated speeds at various times on the two flights: they varied from 1000kmh westward to 600 kmh eastward.
• Yes of course I took the laptop fully intending to get in some good work time while flying. No of course I didn’t get any work done. Virgin Blue provided free access to the seatback pay TV so I spent nine hours watching TV. Big treat for me.
• My client paid.

Now you mention it, I’ve actually had quite a bit of travel this year, all work-related. Three plane trips to Melbourne, another to Adelaide.

I like the whole airport vibe. I find it genuinely exciting, every time. And it’s great for people-watching, although I have to be careful not to watch the baggage handlers unloading a plane – it always shocks me deeply.

I’m trying not to get used to the luxury of regular air travel.

But I hope it continues.
Technorati Tags: Bam Creative, Australia, Sydney, Perth, travel, meetings, web design

I’ve previously sung the praises of my favourite online store REMO, purevyors of many nifty and beautiful things.

In a recent newsletter, REMO advised that they were offering a new t shirt featuring the Dvorak keyboard.

They even provided an excellent explanation of how the QWERTY keyboard was developed, why it isn’t particularly top notch any more and how Dr August Dvorak invented a better layout in 1936.

Despite the better functionality, the Dvorak keyboard never caught on.

But that didn’t stop REMO championing it – at least in the form of a t shirt.

The latest REMO newsletter now advises that they have managed to sell not a single Dvorak t shirt.

Not even being adopted by one of the coolest shops on Earth can overcome the inertia of market dominance. Or something.

Thus, the world of t shirt fandom reinforces a cruel world’s rejection of a demonstrably better product.

VHS v Beta leapt to my mind, PC v Mac, IE v Mozilla, even the current HDTV and disk shenanigans. I’m sure you have your own examples.

Among other things, it does make me wonder if standards-compliant, accessible web design has a hope in hell of catching on.

Best not put it on a t shirt …

Technorati Tags: Dvorak keyboard, QWERTY, REMO, t shirts, better products

There are few places better suited to this than Ruwenzori.

A friend of mine who’s a train buff has hauled some railway carriages to a hilltop just north of Mudgee (about four hours drive northwest of Sydney).

Scott and his wife Wendy have renovated these and transformed them into luxurious accommodation for people seeking an escape from city life.

And it is brilliant.

The 1890s Dining Car (full kitchen and dining facilities, TV, DVD, VCR, audio etc) connects to the 1920s State Car (sleeps up to 6, bath + shower) by a covered verandah with spectacular views.

Then there’s the separate 1899 Pullman Car (sleeps up to 6, bath + shower, TV, kitchenette), plus gardens dotted with old railway memorabilia and, of course, the wide open spaces – conveniently marked with bushwalking tracks.

It’s a fantastic area, steeped in goldmining and bushranging history, and more lately becoming home to dozens of wineries. Lots of short day trips on offer.

Personally, I reckon just hanging out at Ruwenzori is pretty hard to top – feet up, good coffee or a glass of wine, gazing out over the plains and mountains …

Technorati Tags: ruwenzori, train carriages, vacation accommodation, Mudgee NSW

Some things you just can’t get from a screen or a headset. Like the excitement of performers in the flesh, so close you can touch them, making magic happen.

That’s what The Village is about.

The concept is a deceptively simple one – as the best concepts are. The Village brings a bunch of tents, caravans, puppet booths, caravans and more to a local park, providing venues for a spectacular range of professional and amateur performers.

Actors, musicians, acrobats, puppeteers, clowns and comedians provide an ongoing series of performances between five and 30 minutes long over the course of several days.

It’s a carnival atmosphere, with food stalls, a bar and a cafe to provide physical sustenance while the various acts entertain and provoke.

The organisers note: The Village is an act of optimism in a cynical world. Our intention is to have artists and community members leave The Village with a strong sense of the essential goodness of people. We also strongly believe in the community building power of people seeing their own stories reflected back to them in the art that they see.

Their website gives more detail, including where to catch The Village in all its glory. It seems to travel pretty widely within Victoria, with the next one set for 22-26 November in North Fitzroy, Melbourne.

Technorati Tags: The Village, performance, arts, community theatre

I love REMO.

Call me retro, call me nostalgic – go ahead, call me old. I loved REMO when it was a shop on a corner of Oxford St in Darlinghurst (Sydney) in the late 1980s. I loved its print catalogue. I loved its window displays. I loved its staff.

Now, with the physical shop long gone to Gowings (don’t worry if you don’t know what that means, shed a tear if you do), I was surprised to see that owner Remo Giuffre was both a sponsor of the previously mentioned Web Directions 06 conference and an active presence (laptop showing some lovely design work) at the same event.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. What could be a better fit than standards compliant, cutting edge, user friendly web design and THE purveyor of stylish, essential ephemera that sought to address customers’ hitherto unknown deepest desires?

If none of this makes sense, or if it does, just go to REMO.

Technorati Tags: REMO, shopping, ephemera