Fiber optic intarwebs

This happened in our street the last weeks and made me happy(ish):

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Advertising more than just a product

Maybe you’ve seen it, the Nikon commercial (about the new D3100 if I’m not mistaken). If you did, you must have noticed the music. The song got instantly stuck in my head, as some songs are known to do, and it took only a (surprisingly) short query on the internets to locate the artist. The song, Welcome Home, is performed by Radical Face and featured on the 2007 album Ghost. I like these rare occasions where you get introduced to an artist you might have otherwise not known about.

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Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas and / or happy Chanukah to all!

(This year we have the second white Christmas in a row in the Netherlands which hasn’t been recorded before!)

Bomb update

Recently an additional 9 bombs were found in the ground next to where the first bomb I wrote about earlier was discovered. This is all within a few hundred yards from our house.

Read more about the first bomb.

All bombs are 1000 lb. bombs dumped by a british bomber in distress around the end of the second World War (’44/’45).

If we weren’t away for the weekend (read about it here) we had to evacuate on sunday morning while the military was handling the bombs. The downside to being away was that we didn’t get a chance to take a look at the bombs in real life.

The following movie shows the bombs after being defused by the military. The commentary is in Dutch, it’s about the precautions that were taken (containers, evacuations) and what will happen with the bombs (detonated at sea by the navy).

The first bomb was detonated in a field, buried in the ground. Watch the explosion in the clip below:

1000lb WW2 bomb

Last thursday a 1000lb bomb from World War 2 was discovered just a few 100 yards from my house. The bomb was discovered on old farm land just 70cm (just over 2 ft) under ground while building preparations were being made for a new residential area.

The area was immediately closed for public with round the clock surveillance. Sand-filled containers where stacked around and over it as blast proofing while awaiting disposal. One side was left open for the pressure to escape in a safe direction, in the unfortunate case of a detonation.

This morning the military bomb disposal service (Explosieven Opruimingsdienst Defensie, or EOD for short) defused the bomb.

Because our house was in the shrapnel zone we were not allowed to go outside while they were working on the bomb. The families that lived even closer to the site were evacuated during that time.

The bomb was successfully defused and transported within 2 hours. It will be detonated on a safe location as is the custom in these occasions.