Monday, April 10, 2006

space station soma

tune in, turn on and space out :
space station soma
good online radio, the new channel on soma FM,
check out the groove salad channel as well

Friday, April 07, 2006

hands in a need of a keyboard

The little green cat went across the street and into the forest, dragons be here, said the sign at the entrance of the dark pathway leading deep into the wilderness. What can she do anywas, she had to go on, her mothe rtold her that the only apth to salvation is to prove that she isn't afraid of little green cat-eaters. She could hearthe jazz of the jazz trees singing that spasnih song, no hay nada que se puede mirar tudutud..tum tum, the bass coming out of the big hole in the 300 years old tree on the left , the voices flying out with the wings of the olw circling the skies above. The little green cat, why was she green, was she really a cat?And who are these jazz people singing in the forest.. questions that haunted the inhabitatnts of this forsaken
land for centuries to come, and only one man could give them the answer , alas he was so stoned that day when they asked him, that all he could say was 'ninety nine!!!'. And so the legend of the misterious 99 was born, and so the story begins...
The sand between my feet, the sand in my hair, the hot hot sand that felt like air, and that was everywhere, the berbers, wearing their head to toe blue clothes and headsrafs, talking french to the french tourists, and English to us poor idiots who came so far away to find out we speak the wrong language to be here. Where the sand couldn't get , the sun would be, high above our heads.. and it was slowly getting dark, making the colors of the sky and the land so much surreal, there is this strange effect of drinking 6 liters of water in a day, and your
eyes get blurry and start seeing things a bit differently, and the hands, well , the hands all they could feel is the sand in the air. The song of the desert slowly creeps in your brain and takes over, like the monotonous chanting of the rails of the train as it goes south, tudum tudum , tudum tudum, tudum tudum...then comes the land of the carpets, the carpet tents and the green menthol tea that is so sweet it makes you high. Then this dude starts his story about his desert, months later I read Exupery and his desert stories, and it's as if I met one of the
characters in the book on that hot desert night, I could feel the ancient bond of this guy with the desert, it was as if she was his long gone lover, one that he's been trying to forget all his life, and yet somewhere on the back of his mind, she's always there, reminding him to keep awake if he wants to stay alive in this place. Exuperry, yes, and the berbers.And Hemmingway, I cannot imagine what it's like to imagine the sea if you have never seen water outside of those wells where they take it and fill up their containers and leather water bags, and yet this guy knew, he knew abou the old man and the sea, and the forces that make people walk the thin line between life and death.. and then the sun is gone, and suddenly the whole world shrinks to the light of the little lantern in the middle of that desert tent, and it's all quiet, and the songs of the heat in my head are slowly dying out, and all that is left is a memory of that feeling of constant thirst that the boiling water we carry with us would not satisfy. It is quiet, so very quiet, there's nothing to make noises around, no trees to gently move in the rhythms of the wind, no crickets to sing the songs of the stars, no cars passing by, no streetnoises or whatever.. and slowly out of this quietness rises a distant rhythm, a drum, and the echoes of a horn, playing some moroccan tune that reminds of happy times and celebrations, of people from faraway places that gathered
together to mark the end of the hot day.. a wedding they told us, in a village some kilometers away , on the edge of the desert. So let's sing now, they say, and off they start some song, the empty water tank is the drum and their voices, lost in the haze of my memories, like some dream that slips away as the sun breaks through my eye lids on a sunny sunday morning, and my window's facing east.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

why do we go there? what do we study..

these are the questions that the following pictures might answer,
all taken by un underwater ROV ( remotely operated vehicle) controlled and operated by Thomas the Swedish..


a patch of Lophelia pertusa coral reef covered by a certain unknown to science ( to me) sponge. the coral provides shelter for certain species of crustaceans ( crabs), which on the other hand keep the coral clean by eating all the algae and otehr epifauna that grows on the polyps



a sea anemonie ( phyllum Scyphozoa.. uhmm class..whatever) and some shrimps


the sony hdv camera positioned close to a coral patch, it's programmed to make 1 minute of video recordings every 6 hours , that is if it works properly. Based on these recordings I will try to figure out what corals feed on , how do they bahave in differnt current conditions, compare that in situ data with observations in the current flume that we have here in the lab, possibly observe other phenomena at the reef. The camera is positioned at 107,2 m depth, at 58°59'815" N 10°57'592" E



the particle camera, somewhere close-by, contact me for exact coordinates if interested


another Lophelia pertusa ( italics) coral mound with some sponges and soft tissue corals growing on it.

шведски случки

та докато си слушам тука Филчо Колинсов по местното радио, което ползвателките на моя офис спейс забравиха да изключат като си тръгваха преди малко, реших да уплодна неколко фотографии от Шведско, та да видите ( о, вие анонимни и фантомни посетители на тоз блог, май само аз ида тука кат гледам) кво е там и що е то да си морски биолог по тез краища на света ( не не се гмуркаме, щот е дълбоко и студено, ама пък има жевот даун деър).. ето на, стига глупости, малко снимки:


ден първи: морските биолози и океанолози се подготвят отдалече за предстоящите експедиции, све що е апаратура се натоварва на големи контейнери месеци предварително и се изпраща по пощата до местото на акцията.. та тука е момента на истината, отварят контейнера на холандците, и оттам в облаци марихуанен дим излиза биолога Марк, който по погрешка е бил заключен вътре два месеца по-рано и пратен в Швеция
и сега малко билингуалност, посветена на момичето, което май нема да види тоз сайт, а и не говори бугарски : ze dutch marine biologist Mark comes out of the container in a clloud of marinuana smoke, after spedning two montsh inside the container full of fancy oceanographic gadgets shipped from the Netherlands to Sweden 2 months ago..
( снимките не са мой btw, тези са на другия холандец - Жерард, или Херард както му викат в холандско, мойте мастерпийсове ше излезат наяве като си проявя лентите и ги сканирам.. пазя ги да ги покажа на онова момиче дето не говори английски, без снимките не се чувствам достатъчно интересен и важен та да и досаждам и присъствам в съзнанието)


day 1 , photo zwei : The fjord, on the last day of real winter in Sweden this year, veri bюtiful ( full of beauti) pleis..



day 1, late in ze evening, our hero is under attack ( паникан уайаскър, попогрешка си изтрих новия им албум , некой читател да ми го прати моля) , after 24 hours of intensive screwing of screws, advanced metal cutting and plastic straps stapping , my cameras aren't ready for deployment yet. The sony camera on the left is very nice, mi favorit, it takes veri nice images of corals underwater, hopefully.. the camera in the middle is veri scientific, it helps us quantify the flux of particulate organic matter flowing through a two dimentional layer of water in the benthic bountary layer above the sea-floor, or to put it in a more unscietific way - i will spend a month counting and measuring the fluffy stuff flowing in front of the camera , once I get it back ( if it worked at all) - and then , oh and then!! we will know what the coral reef is feeding on!!.. ze thrid camera is the panorama still image camera, the one that took the nice panoramas in previous posts.. enough


неколко дена по-късно Райчо изгря за малко и успях да видя дивните гледки из фиорда.. ето ме на, в акция на път към кораловите рифове, фотоапарата иде да покаже че снимам със недигитални технологии, а мартеницата е символ на дълбоките ми български корени.. Ако сте гледали сръбския филм като порасна искам да съм кенгуру, аз сега съм на покрива на онзи блок и мнооого силно крещя едно име... най-гениялния завършек на филм, по-гениялен от сцената с пича висящ на онзи лондонски мост в края на lock stock and two smoking barrels..



the Dutch lander system's going under, a metal frame with lots of gadget attached to it - flourometers, current meters, cameras, all used to characterize the physical conditions and biological dynamics at the benthos close to the coral reef.. the lander was bigger than the boat, Mark and Gerard wanted to cut out some pieces of the ship, the Swedish zombie captain said no.. this coffee really tirggers activity in some 'lets write nonsense' lobe of my cortex



These are Tom the Irish and Mark the Dutch deploying a mooring system with current meters ( шамандури с въжета, по които висят уреди мерещи скоростта на теченията.. много важно нещо). Tom the Irish is 65 and he has spent most of his life on ships and working with scientific cruises.. quite a character, with amazing skills and stories and experience. He taought me my first knot, a very easy and efficient one that every person dealing with ships and the sea should know..


hardcore oceanographers and one random bulgarian who isn't too sure how he ended up in this photo