Red Bull Stratos - freefall from the edge of space

Today hopefully the weather condition will not impede Felix to make the stratospheric jump he has planned. Good luck!

Hattrick

In the other "bad" post I forgot to mention the on-line football management game: hattrick. I play since 2003 and changed about 3 teams. Now a manage fc crossroads, newly relegated after a disastrous season. The league games are on Saturdays and the cup games / friendly games are on Wednesday. However this season I have been defeated in the cup only at the second round so maybe I'll post some news about the team on late Saturdays.

The ugly will cover some aspects I have encountered in my travels, from houses which have been badly constructed to roads or just human gestures.

I'll start with to of the most impressive (at least for me) - two careers, one of sulfur and the other of gold.
First is situated in Calimani mountains and a year ago it looked like this:

Calimani mountains sulfur career

Now it is rehabilitated. Long story short: a peek (Negoiul Romanesc) was erased to extract sulfur for the chemical industry. the extraction took place from 70's to aproximately 2000. More info about this subject you''ll find at http://carieradesulf.blogspot.ro/
We got in that zone three times and the sensation was awful even if the surrounding landscape is one of the most impressive in the country..

The second place I want to mention is one that nowadays is quite famous: Rosia Montana. There is the only mayor in the world that doesn't want that a place in his administration to become a UNESCO place. It's about a gold career. It has been shut down by the government for years and now a private company want's to buy it. The problem is that the company wants to extract gold using cyanide. Also 7 peaks from the area will be erased with the human settlements. UNESCO want to add this site to it's heritage because of existence of the longest networks of roman mines.
For now, the company and some ngo's are fighting each other.
Some pictures from the career taken about a month ago:

I seems humans just don't learn anything from history.

As i said in the first post, in this category I'll put some of my habits that annoy me but without i can't live (at least not yet). In the first place it is football, but decreasing (fortunately). I used to be some fanatic supporter of football teams and put a lot of heart in this. Now I struggle not to involve myself anymore. So far I can't.
So, which teams drive me close to hearth attack? First, the national team - Romania, which from the performance in 1994 World Cup keeps disappointing everybody. Now it stands in 46'th position (accordingly to FIFA.com ranking) below nationals like Panama (no offense, I'm sure they have some quality players). Tonight we have a difficult game against Turkey away from home.For now, in this campaign, we have two wins, with Estonia away and Andorra home.
Details from FIFA site.

Match Detail

Turkey

Romania

20:30

Match Info

• Istanbul - Sükrü Saracoglu

Officials

• Referee: WEBB Howard
• Assistant Referee 1: MULLARKEY Michael
• Assistant Referee 2: CANN Darren
• Fourth official: MARRINER Andre

 

 I hope... the victory will be ours.

The second team close to my heart is FC Steaua Bucharest. It has been years now since they haven't won the championship (in the 2005-2006 season). This season I hope it is the year of 24'th title won by them. So far they are doing nice in the championship but I have seen them close before and loosing the title in the end, so I'll have just to wait and keep praying nothing bad happen. 

 

The third team is AC Milan which seems to be right now just how Steaua was in the few past years (but at different level of course).  I'm a Milan fan since Andriy Shevchenko arrived at San Siro. He is one of my favorite football players (others are: Gheorghe Hagi, Gabriel Omar Batistuta, Filippo Inzaghi, Paolo Maldini, Ivan Zamorano, Marcelo Salas, Jardel, etc.).

 

And of course i like FC Barcelona (and there is nothing to say about that).

 

This passion for football led me towards football games. First the ones like FIFA and then to football management games. The first was USM, followed by World Soccer Manager, Championship Manager(2000-2001 season)  and finally Football Manager. The last one keeps me busy for hours trying to make some unknown team beat Man United or Real or Barcelona. Usually I don't succeed but it seems to be an endless fight.

 

These things occupy a great part of my spare time and that is the reason I classified them at The Bad section. I'm sure I can do more interesting things in that time, but it's like drinking or smoking, you know it is bad on the long termn but you enjoy the moment.

 

First good things to share

The main reason for this section is to show and get useful information in domains that are my interests. Mostly it will cover GIS, CAD, travel, tourism and a few other things.
For now in matter of GIS I am at the beginning but with the numerous resources over the internet I hope to achieve at least an acceptable level of quality.
The tools I use in present are: ArcMap, AutoCAD, QGIS, MapMaker, Global Mapper etc.
Some of my work done for a town in my country:

Flamanzi - Hydrographic Map

Flamanzi - Network of settlements and communication routes map

Flamanzi - Hypsometric Map

Note: The map elements are in romanian.

Hello world!!!

Although I have started these project years ago, only now I took the courage to start writing.

What it's this blog about? The good things- things that I do with pleasure: maps, travel and other stuff. The bad things - things that are not so good but I still do it (watch football, play football management games), which take a lot of my spare time and produce an equal amount of discomfort sensation (who knows how it feels like when your favorite football team loses even if it had two goals ahead, knows what am I talking about). The ugly section will be populated with dumb things that I see or hear/read about in my day by day life.

The (A) team:

 Me and my girlfriend Catalina.

Our bosses: Bubu (near) and Sasha (far).

The presentation:
Me - the geek IT addicted type who also enjoys endless walks/camping in wilderness. Currently employed as CAD technician in an architecture firm. By the next year (I hope) I'll be a geographer.
Main interests: geography (with special interests in mineralogy, cartography, tourism), travels and more.
Catalina - the artist - the handy-woman, very good at crafting various items, from jewelry to clothing. Geographer, master degree in GIS and territorial planning. currently employed as pedologist.
Bubu - the love me, feed me and never leave me type of cat. Always trying to sit in your lap. It belong to Cata.
Sasha -  the leave me alone stupid!!! type of cat, the independent one. Tolerates humans only because they have the power to bring food. It belongs to me.