8th of July - my birthday.
Not too fancy of a birthday party. Went downtown drank some beers with friends. Nothing spectacular really.
Bottomline: now 24. It doesn't feel much different though.
I registered krosnov.org and krosnov.net some two days ago. Family members will get email addresses at krosnov.org. The webpage on krosnov.org will be family relations related. Krosnov.net will be my place on the net. More of a techie corner than a personal site, which should go to boyan.krosnov.org. The page will consolidate the various small projects (bulgarian AS112, ip.ludost.net, etc) that I've done in the past in one place. This blog will then eventually move to boyan.krosnov.org/blog or something like that.
blogs vs. wikis:
The major drawback I see in the blog format is that it is explicitly ordered and organised by date. I very much like the "search, don't sort" paradigm and I noticed that with a simple wiki I can implement a hybrid between a thought process helper for me, a real-life fueled social network and a blog, that will eventually become the primary media for exchanging throughs and ideas with the world and keeping track of what's really going on in my head. Self-organised stuff is what I like.
Most people don't notice how much they forget. Some of us have problems with remembering names. Some of us tend to forget the meaning of a new word they've learned recently. Some of us tend to find amazing stuff on pages in 5 year old notebooks. Some of us believe we can really work as a social network node in this real-life society. It is only a matter of organisation and contacts. I've seen it working and I want it to work more. It is a Good Thing(tm).
Well, I believe I found the cure for my struggle against my lousy chaotic nature.
There is still a lot of work to do before this dream of mine comes true.
I went to a Metallica concert here in Reykjavik. It was the biggest concert I've been to. Imagine 18000 people packed in a football field sized hall, almost no sitting places and almost no place to move around. Huge. I had a good spot some 25 meters away from the stage right behind a fence. The sound was not too good, but the peformance and the croud were great.
This is the first time Metallica comes to Iceland. They played for two and a half hours. James promised they'll come again soon.
Metallica is selling MP3s and FLACs from that concert here
Recently I got seriously pissed off by people, who think they understand the issues surrounding nuclear energy and by stupid Bulgarian politicians are not willing to work on THE conflicting issue in Bulgaria's Euro integration - the closure of 3rd and 4th block of NPP Kozloduj.
You can see the forum here
Read my opinion in the extended section of this entry below.
After that I found pretty interesting stuff in Wikipedia regarding nuclear reactor designs. CANDU and pebble bed reactor designs especially caught my sight.
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This is an extract form a longer forum flame go here for the complete version.
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Get some reality first.
Global scale
Global warming is THE environmental issue.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,912530,00.html
http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=698
When you get the head of a huge oil company talking directly against his business interest, you know it is important. I'm more worried for global warming than land, sea and air pollution or even extinction of certain top of food chain species. See the numbers before commenting on this further! Until humanity stops burning stuff for energy and transportation the future of the planet does not look good. Not good at all. In as little as 100 years the northern polar ice cap will completely melt. Glaciers are disappearing right _now_ and it is not only sad, it changes the environment drastically in some places. The fact is that not every nation is capable of sustaining its energy balance with clean energy sources as water dams, geothermal, solar and wind energy. Most countries burn coal or oil based fuels to produce energy. And some countries use nuclear energy in addition to that. It is absolutely clear that throwing huge amounts CO2 in the atmosphere is much worse than storing the nuclear waste for another 50 to 200 years. And by the way have you seen burnt coal ashes? It takes quite a lot of space for the amount of energy produced. In some countries, as Bulgaria, this space would otherwise be used for woods or arable land. And again it takes another 1000 years to reclaim the land for use.
I live in a small nice country in the northern Atlantic Ocean - Iceland. Iceland only uses water dams and geothermal energy. But Iceland is really abundant in energy and has so little population, so it does not need anything else to sustain the energy balance of the country.
This is not only because of our nuclear plant it is for the good of the planet.
Misinformation
Greenpeace and other wackos spread misinformation on this. And the public in countries as USA has accepted as a fact that nuclear energy is bad for the planet. Absolutely not true. Well it is a dangerous technology. But statistics show that both nuclear power plants use and nuclear waste storage is a clean business with NO environment affecting incidents, when you do it in a politically stable place OR don't try to push the technology beyond its limits OR follow the procedures precisely. ANY of the three is enough to prevent incidents.
The cumulative dose received by all earth population by air flight radiation is much greater than the cumulative dose received by nuclear plant or waste emittions, including incidents. Get the facts!
Local scale
On a local scale after the closure of the 3rd and 4th block Bulgaria will have to significantly increase output of the thermal plants or import energy in order to sustain the energy balance.
Bulgaria is still an exporter of energy. Cheap (including waste storage!) nuclear energy is keeping us competitive on the Balkans energy market. Close 3rd and 4th block and the picture changes dramatically. Referendum would be an obvious choice. People just don't want the reactors closed. And why not wait until 2010 for Belene to come online?
It sure bugs me.
Boyan Krosnov
now in Iceland
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end of quote.