Vortices of Extelligence

Rest and quiet at the Rila Monastery

Another weekend, another trip away from Sofia - this time to the Rila Monastery. A great night spent at a motel several kilometers above the monastery, at the Cyril meadows; a misty morning - well, okay, a rainy morning mostly spent sleeping in; a somewhat rainy trip back to Sofia. And, of course, some pictures :)

Two rainbows over Sofia

A bit overdue, since this happened on Monday, but - better late than never, I guess :)

Anyway, on Monday morning Iva and I woke up to a wonderful view of two rainbows over smog-clouded Sofia - yep, not one, but two!

These images were downscaled to 1024x768; you can download the full downscaled archive here, or the full-sized version here. Enjoy!

More of Dobri's place near Tryn

This weekend we took another trip up to Dobri's place near Tryn. It was sunny, it was fun, it was all about the beautiful sights and fish and pork cooked over an open fire, it was even a bit of a thrill (in the 'thriller' sense of the word ;) when Andrey told us we had a flat tire, and quite a bit of a relief afterwards, when it turned out to be just a loose valve, it was a great night out (well, we *did* sleep in-house *and* in the sleeping bags), it was a great trip down the canyon of the Erma river, and here are the pictures!

(as usual, if you don't have the username/password to access the Ringlet gallery, just drop me an e-mail, I'll gladly provide them to any interested parties. The point is, anonymous/crawler access is disabled)

Drinking and driving...

Several days ago, Irina Marudina wrote about driving "under the influence", referencing a SEGA newspaper article (all links in Bulgarian). Basically, the article's author wonders - and with good reasons - why no other Bulgarian attorneys, district or otherwise, have picked up on the example of Rossen Dimov at the Plovdiv district, who issued an order last year mandating overnight detention and "fast-track" court action for drivers with more than 1.8 parts per thousand alcohol in the blood stream. Apparently, this has had some effect - as it well should, since would-be drunk drivers now face the possibility of spending the night locked up :)

I myself have absolutely no tolerance for drunk drivers, even without the "empirical evidence" of a close friend who brought down several sections of a fence one night, and another one who pretty much totalled his engine as he drove his car into a lamp post - thankfully, neither of them was harmed in any way, the damage was to the cars (and the surrounding objects) only. Still, it was interesting to read some more hard facts on the subject, presented by the State University of New York in Potsdam on their alcohol information pages. The most striking part was this Drinking doesn't affect my driving mini-presentation which actually led me there, as Tony Finch linked to it:

I don't think there's anything more to say...