BBC - Capital - Is it Zen, or just the art of getting things done?

Amazing how this is one and the same. ;)



BBC - Capital - Is it Zen, or just the art of getting things done?



GTD boils down to something like this:

"1) Adopt a reliable capture method (Evernote, voice memos, a Moleskin notebook, etc) to get thoughts out of your head.
2) Distill them to actionable items and next steps (“send receipts to Finance”, “call a kick-off meeting for an office-wide re-org”) on your daily to-do list.
3) Dedicate yourself to multiple reviews in which you put these action items into the right buckets (“must be done today”, “phone calls when I’m on the train”).
4) Do the things on the list, when you have time, prioritising as you go."

What is Thorium?

What is nuclear? / Thorium As Nuclear Fuel: the good and the bad: "because both the Th-U and the U-Pu fuel cycles will last us well into the tens of thousands of years, which is about as long as modern history."

Fuel Cells as energy storage

Hydrogen Fuel Finally Graduating From Lab to City Streets - Bloomberg: "The shift to hydrogen is inevitable, and it’s happening faster than we expected,"

and

Cars that run on hydrogen can typically go more than 250 miles (400 kilometers) on a tank of the gas and then must be refilled. 

Near-term  forecasts:

“In three to five years you will see that become more prevalent,” Beckman said. “Wind and solar can make hydrogen cheap when the grid doesn’t need the power.”

Will supercapacitors replace batteries?

Some links on the topic are below.

As batteries show no considerable sign of progress, the answer may lie in a different type of technology.

Storage Wars: Batteries vs. Supercapacitors | BERC

Well, after seeing this

it seems that these two have complementary roles. Ultracapacitors for quick charge/discharge (like starting a car or braking) and batteries for the long and slow charge/discharge (regular drive/overnight charge).

Europe Faces Green Power Curbs to Stop Grids Overloading

Good news or bad?!

There’s so much power available on windy and sunny days in Germany and Austria that the number of hours producers had to pay consumers to use it doubled in the first five months of 2014

Europe Faces Green Power Curbs to Stop Grids Overloading: Energy - Bloomberg

Vienna city plan (STEP 05)

The last city plan for Vienna, called STEP 05, includes 13 target zones for development. These are areas identified for further development of the city urban area.

Publications available for download: Shop Stadtentwicklung und Verkehr - Produkt-Katalog

Target zone Donaufeld - link

Model for the target zone Donaufeld - link. Publications with more details are available for download.

Under this plan, around 8000 new apartments will be built in the area of Donaufeld. There would be a green stripe with the bicycle track and a new park/green area. Tram 25 would go through the middle and the bus line 33A would extend towards Kagran/Kagraner Platz.

Landslide after the flooding

http://www.klix.ba/vijesti/bih/jezivo-kliziste-u-sericima-domove-ljudi-u-sekundi-pretvara-u-prah/140519012

YouTube:
Klizište u Šerićima kod Zenice: http://youtu.be/GSnDva1Mt2U

Another myth busted: antioxidants not that useful

Bloomberg - Red Wine Antioxidant Fails to Lengthen Lives in Study http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-13/red-wine-antioxidant-fails-to-lengthen-lives-in-study.html

Changing Continent: European Parliament Elections 2014

The current polarization of powers in Europe does not look too good. Extremes on both right and left seem to be squeezing out the centrist party seats in the European Parliament.

It is interesting to see the sentiment across European countries.



Changing Continent: European Parliament Elections 2014 - WSJ.com

Highrise made of wood?

Interesting article on the art of building with wood.



Holz-Hochhäuser: Gebäude aus Holz so stabil wie Stahlbeton - SPIEGEL ONLINE