Strainu onLine

This is a simple DYI project aimed at soldering beginners (like myself :P). For more experienced tinkerers it should seem like really simple and short, but I hope it will help some of you avoid spending money on a new extension cable (and pollute the environment in the process).

So, we have a classic, cheap extension cord with a power indicator in a translucent case. When the extension cable is under tension, the light is lit. Unfortunately, the button was damaged and the light was always on, consuming electrical energy for nothing and generally being useless. I was hoping to remove the light but keep the switch, but that proved impossible.

Below you have the schematic of the circuit of the power strip. As you can see, this is a very simple circuit. The part in red is what I was trying to remove, but unfortunately the switch had to go too, because it was too badly damaged.

The first step is to remove the back panel. It is usually screwed with 6 or 8 screws, depending on the size and the quality (read: price) of the power strip. After removing it, we can see this strip is in pretty bad shape: the metallic strips are al over the place and some of the kid-guarding plastics are broken.


The image above shows how the kid guard works: the red plastic covers the holes. When the plug is inserted, the spring is compressed and the plastic bit gets out of the way. Unfortunately, in cheap power plugs, this doesn’t work as intended. In order to introduce the plugs, you have to use a considerable amount of force, eventually breaking the fragile plastics around there. If you have such problems, you can just remove the red plastic and the springs, leaving the holes uncovered.

Also, before we go on to actually unsoldering anything, I want to show you the light encasing opened. Notice how the translucent switch has melted or was somehow broken, thus rendering it useless. You can also see the 25KΩ resistor linked to the neon light. In other power strips, you could have an LED instead of the neon. This resistor could be reused if you have some other project requiring such a large resitor, but I’m not sure if the light still works.

But let’s get back to the problem at hand. Looking closer at the light, one can see that the connectors are soldered to the light case. In more expensive power strips, the cables could be attached otherwise, making your job easier.

Another important step is to determine which wire is which. In domestic AC power, there are normally 3 wires: live (phase), neutral and ground. If the system is unpolarised, like this so-called „Schuko” (aka CEE 7/4) system, the the live and neutral wire are interchangeable, which means we only have to identify the ground wire. Normally, the wires are color-coded and the ground is yellow-green, but not in this power strip.

In the image below, you can see the green wire is connected to the metal strip from the center of the plug, which means that this is the ground wire. One of the other wires is directly connected to the metal strip, so we only need to unsolder and reconnect the remaining wire.

Here is how the power strips looks after unsoldering all the wires and removing the light case. You can also take a better look at how the wires are connected. One can easily notice that the top black wire is now superfluous, as that particular metal strip is already directly connected to the power cord.

The soldering itself should be fairly quick and does not require special tools or skills.

That’s it, we are ready for a test! The wires are visible through the hole left by the light casing. This is not really nice, so we can just remount the case, which is hold in place by two clips. Of course, the button is now only decorative.

If you look closely, you will notice one of the corners of the button is melted. It wasn’t like this at the beginning, but I accidentally touched it to the soldering iron. You should always be careful when using soldering tools, as they do get very very hot.

Într-o plecare de la sfârșitul lunii trecute, despre care o să scriu mai multe mai târziu, am avut ocazia să constat apariția pe multe din drumurile naționale din Oltenia și Banat a unor indicatoare spre diverse monumente istorice. În principiu, asta este o veste foatre bună. Dar ce faci după ce cotești de pe drumul național (relativ bun) pe un drum comunal plin de gropi sau mai rău, pe o potecă îngustă?

Acum doi ani și ceva, când a apărut prima dată ideea concursului Wiki Loves Monuments România, am plecat într-o plimbare prin Maramureș în căutarea Mocăniței de la Vișeul de Sus și a vestitelor biserici din zonă. Am constatat atunci că dacă monumentele aveau norocul să fie pe drumul principal, dădeai ușor de ele. Dacă nu, îți trebuia musai o hartă sau un ghid.

Indicator de pe DN

Între timp, situația s-a îmbunătățit. Mulțumită proiectelor europene de dezvoltare rurală, multe monumente beneficiază acum de indicatoare, plasate de obicei chiar sub indicatorul spre sat. Pentru unele dintre ele a fost chiar modernizat drumul și eventual au fost refăcute prin aceleași proiecte.

Din păcate, în afară de acel unic indicator, în cele mai multe cazuri nu există nicio altă informație despre sau indicator spre monumentul respectiv.  În cazul monumentelor din sate, singura soluție este să întrebi localnicii pe care din ulițe să o iei. Bineînțeles, ca orășean trebuie să fii foarte atent căci oamenii de la țară au alte referințe în ceea ce privește calitatea drumului și s-ar putea să rămâi suspendat cu mașina pe drumul „bunicel” de acolo.

Pentru orășele, este posibil să mai găsești câte o hartă în fața primăriei sau la gară. Totuși, și aici ai o problemă: să nu care cumva să-ți treacă prin minte a întreba de strada pe care ai aflat de pe net că se află monumentul, căci nimeni nu va ști ce nume poartă fiecare stradă. Este oarecum de înțeles, având în vedere și obiceiul unor primării de a da mai multe nume aceleiași străzi. De exemplu, în Oravița strada principală se numește, pe rând, Andrei Șaguna, Eftimie Murgu, 1 decembrie 1918, precum și „Piața Unirii” și „Piața Ferdinand”, care sunt orice numai piețe nu.

Soluția e să întrebi după numele local al monumentului. Chiar și atunci, s-ar putea ca locuitorii din celălalt capăt al orașului să nu te poată ajuta…

Să zicem că totuși ai răzbit până la monument. Ce ai de făcut acolo, în afară de poze pentru concurs? Dacă nu ești specialist în arhitectură, și majoritatea vizitatorilor nu sunt, nu mare lucru. Cu toată avalanșa de site-uri „specializate” pe monumente apărute recente, puține au informații originale, relevante pentru un număr mare de monumente. De cele mai multe ori trebuie să „sapi” de dinainte în căutarea unor informații.

Această gaură informațională ar trebui, după părerea mea, umplută de cei care întrețin monumentele. Mulți au ca scuză faptul că nu sunt fonduri nici pentru reparațiile de primă necesitate, darmite pentru informații… Și totuși, nici măcar acolo unde au fost bani pentru restaurare, nu s-a investit (aproape) deloc în ceva indicații pentru vizitatori.

Indicatoare

Un exemplu relevant mi se par morile de apă de la Eftimie Murgu. Fiind un monument eminamente tehnic, este oarecum logic ca vizitatorii să aibă mai multă nevoie de îndrumări asupra modului de funcționare decât în cazul unei biserici sau al unei case particulare. O parte din aceste mori au fost refăcute de muzeul „Astra” din Sibiu acum câțiva ani într-un proiect european.

Plăcuță cu numele morii

Au fost instalate câteva plăci în imediata apropiere a monumentelor (fără a acoperi zona dintre DN și sat, bineînțeles) și fiecare moară în parte avea numele ei și numele proiectului. Nimic despre modul de funcționare, amenajările necesare sau istoricul acestor mori. Din fericire, două dintre ele sunt încă funcționale, iar proprietarii lor sunt suficient de amabili încât să-ți explice toate detaliile și legendele locului.

Ce-i drept, dacă ne-am fi făcut temele din timp, am fi aflat poate că în școala generală din sat există un mic muzeu cu o moară desfăcută. Din ce-am văzut însă în pozele găsite pe net, și aici trebuie să te bazezi pe bunăvoința ghidului…

În aceste condiții, tot ce vă rămâne de făcut ca turiști „vânători” de monumente este să citiți cât mai multe despre monumentele din zona unde urmează să mergeți (puteți începe cu o hartă a monumentelor din țară [se încarcă greu] și cu Wikipedia) și eventual să vă înarmați cu un telefon mobil și acces la net.  Pentru cei cu smartphone-uri Android sau iPhone vă recomand aplicația „Monumente România” realizată de Asociația Prietenilor Muzeului Național de Istorie a României, care îmbină în mod fericit harta și un modul de realitate alternativă cu paginile de informații ale site-ului lor, paginile de pe Wikipedia și câteva mii de imagini.

Voi ce alte resurse folosiți pentru a profita cât mai mult de vizitele unor monumente istorice?

Versiunea română aici.

The road

Map

Many of the Romanians that go to Austria for ski or other forms of tourism choos to go by car. From Budapest to Vienna you only make about 3h on the highway, and from Bucharest to Budapest a maximum of 12 hours. It takes roughly the same ammount of time by bus.

You can also choose the train. The journey takes 20h and you have 3 trains every day: one direct trains and two trains via Budapest.

We chose the third way, the plane. Austrian has 5 daily flights and Tarom 1 or 2. That means you will find decent prices even with a few days before the flight. The flight time is 1h45 – less than the ground checks (as you know, airlines recommend arriving at the airport 2h before the flight).

Even if the trip is a little long by car or train, the diversity is a good thing, earning the route a good score.

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Accommodation

Vienna has a huge diversity of hotels and even more flats you can rent. In past visits here I chose low-cost hotels near the railway station, but this time, we rented an apartment from govienna.net, one of the two from Quellenstrasse.

The apartment has scores pretty much OK on the Internet, but for us it was a disappointment. The building was in the Turkish neighborhood, but there were no issues except on the New Year’s Eve, when people were still throwing firecrackers at 3 or 4 A.M. when we returned from the city.

The exterior of the building looked decent, but the stairs were in really bad shape and the apartment had a weird smell. There was enough furniture for 4 people, but there were some weird stuff, like the window above the entrance door or the toilet which was separate from the bathroom.

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What to see

St. Stephan’s Cathedral

Stephansdom is The Cathedral in Vienna. There are other churched in town, but this is by far the most interesting and probably the biggest.

The entrance is free and so is photography (but without flash). The interior seemd a little darker than other cathedrals from Europe, probably due to the fact that we went in winter. Still, this was helping to underline the beauty of the stained-glass windows.

Some details from the interior:

After finishing with the interior of the cathedral, we decided to pay up 4€ to clinb the south tower. Although the panorama is interesting, the horses from the place look much more interesting 🙂

Talking about the panorama, let’s look to the Prater…

…and then to the bells of the cathedral (can anyone translate the inscription?).

After descending from the tower, we stick around the cathedral waiting for noon. Why? We wanted to see the Anker clock.

The Anker clock

It was built between 1911-1917 and it is both a figurine clock, but also a bridge between the two parts of the Anker building. The 12 figurines move at 1/hour, except at noon, when they all go through the window in 10-15 minutes.

We then went on for a stroll downtown, admiring the different monuments of the city.

For lunch, we couldn’t miss the famous Wienerschnitzel:

Haus des Meeres Vivarium

Although recently returned from the Asia trip , where we saw a lot of zoos of all kinds, we thought it couldn’t hurt to compare them with the European zoos.

We weren’t going to visit the actual Vienna zoo untill the last day of our trip. Until then, we went for an evening visit to the Hous of the seas, a huge aquarium spreading on 7 floors.

As a matter of fact, they were not only hosting marine animals, but also species one would see in the desert or the jungle. Unfortunately the name of most of the species have slipped my mind.

They had all kind of turtles, from the small ones like the one below to the huge, 100-kilos and 100-years-living ones.

The primates had their own artificial jungle spreading on 3 floors on one side of the building. Impressive!

Big turles…

The view from the roof.

The Opera

The Imperial Opera is another one of the buildings that every touristic guide recommends. The size is not really impressive, but the architectural details make up for that.

Interior

The really interesting part is the visit inside. The guided visits start around noon every dai, take about an hour and cost 6.5€ for the adults. The guide is avalable in multiple language, including, of course, English.

We started with the main hall. Note the 3 rows of loges. The first thing that attracted our attention was the scene: fortunately there were no rehearsals (hard on the 31st of December), so we would have full access to the backstage.

Detail of the concert hall.

My mom used to tell me that the really cool part of a theater is the stage, but I didn’t believe her. I changed my mind when I arrived on the Vienna Opera stage.

Imagine 5 floors of scaffolding, pulleys and ropes, all with a precise role in the movement of the stage elements. It was like being in a huge building site, the only thing missing being the workers on scaffolding whistling at the ladies below. 🙂

The rest of the buildng was not bad either, with ceilings comparable with the most beutiful palaces. Perhaps because the opera was one of the favorite pastimes of nobles from past centuries?

The technical museum

As beautiful as old buildings may be, I still prefer technical stuff (professional bias, probably). I was very happy that the group I was with agreed to visit the Technical Museum. Ironically, it was also hosted in a huge Hapsburg palace, but with an entrance made of steel and glass.

Right after the entrance there was an area dedicated to interactive experiments meant to explain some simple physical fenomena. Unfortunately I was too busy playing so I took no pictures, but I should mention that this section had the same size as the whole Bucharest technical Museum.

We then went to the railway section. Unlike other technical museums I’ve seen, in Vienna the locomotives were not just shown, but they were cut open and illuminated in order to illustrate the various components.

The image below shows that Romania is much better off than 100 years ago: at the time we barely had a few steam locomotives, while Austria already had electric locomotives in service.

One of the „hands-on” exhibits: a miniature solar park fueled by a lamp illustrated the energy you could produce.

Followed the factory and industrial products’ section.

These bulbs are light-years away from LEDs 😀

The last floor hosted the plane and car exhibition. Unfortunately, due to the lack of time, we went really fast through that floor.

We still saw some Steyrs…

…a Mercedes racecar (I think it was produces also by Steyr-Daimler)…

… and a beetle (I don’t remember the producer, but it seems another Steyr)

Below we have a Gräf și a few angines, all manufactured in Austria.

Prater

I don’t think the Praterul needs an introduction. In case you haven’t heard of it, you can start exploring from the Wikipedia article.

The City Hall

For the New Year’s Eve we went to the park in front of the city hall. I’m sorry I haven’t had the chance to visit the interior, but if you’re interested, you can find information about guided tours on the website.

Happy new year!

Schonbrunn

The last day was dedicated to Schonbrunn, including the park and zoo. Although the winter views are much less impressive than the palace in a sunny day, I still liked it better than Versailles, which apparently (I’m not 100% convinced) is the original inspiration for this palace.

Unfortunately, photos were forbidden in the palace, so I only have a few outside shots.

The picture below is in fact from the Zoo, but the building was in the same style as all the other buildings from the gardens.

The Vienna Zoo

The Vienna Zoo is the oldest zoo in the world that is still functional (established in 1752). It hosts over 4600 animals from 480 species, including pandas and other endangered species.

In the late 80s it almost went bankrupt, but it was „privatized” (actually, a company owned by the city was created to administer the zoo) and with a smart private manager, it was saved. Sounds a lot like what is happening to some Romanian companies, expect for the „saved” part…

It was the first time we saw a Koala, even if we had hunted it throughout Asia.

Apparently not all marine animals were at Haus des Meeres.

The elephants were a little thin, but not as sad as the one from Bucharest (when it was still alive).

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Food

You can try pork chops with beer, some ribs or even Chinese food. In this trip we trusted the recommendations found on the Interned ad we did not regret it – even if some restaurants are true food factoreis, with clients coming and going like on the assembly line, they don’t give up quality and keep the prices decent.

Alternatives

Any City Break in Europe will be exiting if you’re going there for the first time – just find a cheap plane ticket and go for it. Closer to Bucharest you have Budapest or Bratislava. If taking a plane, go for Prague, Warsaw or even Lyon and London.

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Links

Caut să-mi iau un card microSD pentru un navigator GPS. Are vreo importanță clasa de viteză pentru funcția asta?

Photo: Răzvan Lerescu

I wanted to write this article for a while now, but got delayed so now it’s about the old auto tax in Romania (it kinda changes every year). Still, I doubt that much has changed about the people there.

A few months ago I bought a new car and went to register it. I had heard beforehand about the bureaucracy at the Ministry of Finance, and I was prepared to wait for a while. Still, in the hope that I would get away cheap, I went to the Treasury next to my home, but it turns out that first I had to have my tax calculated (even if it’s a simple formula and there is an online calculator for it). We’ll call this office 1.

So the next step is to go to the place where they could calculate it. There you have to go to a room(office 2) in order to get a form which you can’t find online despite the law requiring all such forms to be online; you have to fill the form and return it to the same office along with the other 5 copies of different documents you need in order to justify the request. They will give you a registration number, a place (office 3) and a time (or should I say deadline? I would hate to find out what happens if you miss that time) when you can pick up the paper.

When you come back, you find out that 10-15 other people were called at the exact some time (which, by the way, is in the middle of the day). After waiting for half an hour outside office 3, you finally get the paper that says how much you have to pay signed by no less than 3 different people.

From there, you go to the cashier to pay (office 4). Except… you can’t 🙂 Turns out the cashier is not actually a cashier (i.e. she can’t handle cash), so she only prints the receipt, signs it and then passes it to her colleague at office 5, which takes the money and signs the receipt again. And with that, you’re finally done with the Ministry of Finances, you can move on to the Ministry of Administration to actually register the car.

All in all, in order to pay some money you need to go to their offices in 3 different days (well, actually 2 once you know the drill), involve 7 people from 5 different offices, and move lots of papers with lots of signatures on them around. I think only writing and printing those papers costs more than 1% of the sum I paid. The salaries, building maintenance etc. are on the top of that. All this could be done instead with a single server and a website where you could upload a scan of your car’s identity card and pay the amount online. But not in today’s Romania.

Versiunea în română aici.

The road

Map

I thought I should start a series of trip reports from Central Europe with some pictures from a city-break in Budapest on December 1st (which is the Romanian National Day, making the date a bit ironic if you are a Romanian). There aren’t too many pictures because my camera passed away while being there.

Since WizzAir stopped serving the OTP-BUD trip, airline prices went up, so we decided to go by car. The trip takes about 11-12 hours unless you catch some big queue at the border crossing. We left at about 3 a.m. on fog and we arrived in a sunny Budapest, just in time to catch the afternoon rush hour. The queues were bigger that in Bucharest, but everybody (drivers, pedestrians and cyclists) was much more disciplined.

Budapesta 2012 by strainu, on Flickr
Notă:

Accomodation

Usually, when going through Europe I search for hotels based on recommendations or I go with the big hotel chains, which offer virtually the same services no matter what country you’re in. This time, since we were 2 pairs, we thought it was more convenient to go with a 2 room rental apartment. We chose Lord Appartments, right in downtown Pesta, 3 minutes away from the Opera. The price was 120€/2 nights (+30€ for parking). The picture above is from the street we stayed on.

If you think the parking fee is expensive, you should know that throughout downtown Budapest you have to pay for parking, and rpices are quite high (up to 430 HUF – about 1,5 €/h). Once we got there we found out that parking in weekends is free, but given that the Lord parking was covered and guarded, I’d say it was worth paying for it.

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What to see (in a day and a half)

After leaving the car at the appartment, we went for a stroll in Pesta.

Troleibuz Budapesta 2012 by strainu, on Flickr

Budapesta 2012 by strainu, on Flickr

Budapesta 2012 by strainu, on Flickr

Having enough of „road food”, we went on to teste some traditional Hungarian food in Liszt Ferenc square.

Gulaș Budapesta 2012 by strainu, on Flickr

Ceva mai puțin tradițional by strainu, on Flickr

Afterward, we went for the Christmas market in front of St. Istvan’s (or John) basilica.

Budapesta 2012 by strainu, on Flickr

Budapesta 2012 by strainu, on Flickr

Budapesta 2012 by strainu, on Flickr

Budapesta 2012 by strainu, on Flickr

From there, you can quickly reach the Danube…

Budapesta 2012 by strainu, on Flickr

Budapesta 2012 by strainu, on Flickr

The next day, due to the cold and the limited time, we decided to take one of the many tourist bus lines. Since we wanted to pay by card, we got a „bonus” walk to the company’s headquarters in the inner court of a beautiful Art Nouveau building.

Opera din Budapesta by strainu, on Flickr

The bus leaves from the center on Andrassy st., the ex-central boulevard of Pesta, then reaches the Millenium square. The audioguide is available in 20 languages, including a very good Romanian, much over other audioguides I’ve used.

We were feeling courageous, so we went to the (uncovered) top floor – and freezed badly 😀

After half an hour, we crossed one of the bridges to Buda and we were getting near the Fisherman’s Bastion…

The look from below is cool, but the panorama from the Bastion is much more attractive. The curch in the back is called St. Stephen and it deserves the detour, even if it’s not comparable to the churches in other imperial capitals of Europe.

Below you can find some images from around the Castle.

The initial plan was to also visit the inside of the castel, but it was already getting pretty late so we decided to move on. The buses’ course would go on to the Citadel, a fortification used during the Second World War. Today you will find a wax museum inside.

You could get on the cannons from the yard and even look through the optical targeting system. Pretty cool, no?

At the far end of the Citadel there is a huge statue visible from the whole city of Pesta.

Back in Downtown:

An interesting church, build on a street corner:

And a detail:

The last few hours of daylight were dedicate to a small cruise on the Danube. The ticket was a combo with the panoramic bus, and the cruise has several stops from where you could visit various parts of the city. We wanted to see the Margaret Island, but the winter schedule meant that we only caught the last cruise of the day. At least we had the chance to catch some nice puctures at sunset. The camera was beginning to fail, so between pictures I had to warm it up under my jacket.

We had our diner at a medieval restaurant called Sir Lancelor. It looked much like the Excalibur restaurant from Bucharest, except it was bigger and it had much more entertainment (theater, fire eaters etc.). The effect of the entertainment on the slightly drunk tourists was quite funny, but I guess it was also pushing them to more eating and drinking.

The food also felt less medieval than in Bucharest. The menu contained plates such as bananas with meatballs in a doughnut-like shell (no idea what they’re called) which would have been difficult to prepare in the Middle Ages.

Sunday morning we went back on Andrassy str. and on the the eastern exist of Budapest. The neighborhoods further from the center have been very much influenced by communism, looking very much like their counterparts from Prague or Bucharest.

On the way to Bucharest we stopped in Deva to eat at the Ceapa Roșie („Red Onion”) restaurant. The last time we were there we were impressed with the service and the food and we were eager to share this „secret” with the friends that accompanied us. Unfortunately we were bitterly disappointed this time – the food was terrible and the waitress seemed bored to an in inch of her life. If you have other recommendations from the area, please leave a comment – we would love to knon a good restaurant in Hunedoara county.

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Would I go back?

Definitely! As a former imperial capital,Budapest has those dignified looks of the 19th century that make one want to explore it for much more than an weekend.

Alternatives

Any City Break in Europe will be just as good – find a cheap plane ticket and go for it. Closer to Bucharest you have Vienna or Bratislava. If taking a plane, go for Prague or Warsaw.

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The road

Map

Because we are talking about cities a few thousands kilometers from Bucharest (Munich and Nuremberg mainly), the transport will be made by plane. Of course, if you feel like a road trip, you could go by car, but it will take you at least 2 days to get there.

Both TAROM and Lufthansa have daily flights from Bucharest Otopeni to Munich, both early in the morning and later in the afternoon. Prices are usually around 120-150 EUR per return trip, except in Oktoberfest season. From Munich airport, there is the S-Bahn that can take you downtown or wherever your hotel is in the city.

To get from Munich to Nuremberg, you can take the plane (another 100 euros) or the ICE (high speed train), at about 50 euros the non-refundable promo ticket.

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Accommodation

The first time I was in Nuremberg, I stayed at a rather shady Mozart Hotel, an experience I don’t want to repeat. Fortunately, at my other trips I decided to use big chain hotels – both Accor and BestWestern have hotels for all budgets throughout Bavaria. This makes Germany compete win France at the number and variety of chain hotels.

You can safely pick a hotel in the suburbs of Munich for example, as S-Bahn service is regular and almost always on time.

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What to see

Nuremberg

Nuremberg is a little on the downside when it comes to sightseeing – in fact, except the Castle and a few small museums, there is not much to see. However, if you’re interested in Nazi reminders, you can take the tram to the suburbs for some WWII-related places. In downtown, you will find the famous „Way of Human Rights„.

See the Wikivoyage article for details.

Human rights way

The tram sometimes becomes a metro here…


The Nuremberg castle

Full collection of Nuremberg Photos at Flickr

Munich

Munich, on the other hand is a jewel of old architecture (as with many German cities, some of it was rebuilt after WWII) mixed with amazing 20th century architecture like the Olympic area and the BMW Museum and building.

Downtown

Many bikes on a pedestrian road

Metro (or U-Bahn)

The palace (Rezidenz)

Odeonplatz

Panoramic Views

TV tower – from the cathedral’s tower

Panoramic View. To the right of the picture you can see the BMW headquarters.

Museums

Hyperinflation before the War meant stamping the money instead of reprinting.

The BMW Museum

(Almost) Everything in Munich revolves around BMW. So it makes sense for them to have a huge museum, just across the street from the huge factory and headquarters. As a note, the BMW headquarters are registered as a historic monument in Germany.

BMW headquarters

The museum’s building

The first exhibits: the classic BMW 326…

…next to the future fuel cell…

…and electric cars.


BMW started with planes, the went on to produce motorcycles, cars and now even bikes.

They also have an impressive F1 tradition, both in the past…

…and present
And all that because of their great engines:

The car above misses a red button. Can you guess where it should be?

Well, probably in the gear lever, it’s a Bond car after all, right?

I’m ending the BMW Museum tour with one of the great-looking BMW art-cars. This one from Esther Mahlangu (1991)

More great photos from the BMW museum and Munich at Flickr

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Alternatives

Any City Break in Europe will probably do it – just find a cheap plane ticket and go for it. We’ve already covered Prague, London, Lyon among others on this blog.

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Săptămâna trecută am fost invitat, ca organizator al Wiki Loves Monuments, la colocviul de închidere al proiectului CARARE, la Institutul Național al Patrimoniului. Pozele de la WLM vor fi încărcate pe Europeana prin acest proiect în urma scrisorii deschise trimise anul trecut către minister.

La acest colocviu am ținut o prezentare despre acțiunile de implicare a maselor (aka crowdsourcing) în realizarea de materiale pentru Europeana, pe care o puteți citi mai jos sau o puteți descărca în format pdf, odp sau pptx.

Sunt în căutarea unui stick USB de 32GB. După ceva documentare am redus opțiunile la un Verbatim 32GB și un Maxwell Venture 32GB. Care credeți că e mai bun?

For those of you who don’t know, SIRUTA is the official classification of the Romanian towns and villages. It is maintained by the National Statistics Institute.

Many of the projects I work on for OSM or Wikipedia are centered around location, which means I was writing similar code many times over. To simplify my life, I made a python library that offers a simple interface to the SIRUTA database. Called SIRUTAlib, you can find its homepage here.

As you can expect, it is open-source, licensed under the 3-clause BSD license. The source code is available on Github.

As always, all feedback is appreciated. If you find bugs or want to submit a patch, please use the issue tracker and the pull request system from Github.