When the blog fought the internet

Greetings Internet,

Now this post was supposed to be completed and released on new years day, following the actual event but then I had an idea, and idea that has been more of a pain than it's worth. I thought rather then spend the next few hundred words or so documenting what took place in the void of the internet, it might be more effective to throw together a highlights video of the race. Well as nice an idea as that sounds and as relatively simple as that was to put together it turns out that windows movie maker really struggles patching together 12GB of source video files and for some reason arbitrarily replaces scenes with a black screen... However persevere I did and a film was created all nine minutes of it (it was 30s longer but I've no idea where those seconds went).

The blog was scheduled to take on the might of the internet before Christmas in a Megane Cup race but that didn't work out as my game stopped connecting to the internet, and having conducted some sort of investigation. Well alright I stumbled on the answer accidentally, but that is how the greatest inventions have come into being. It turns out when I took out my addon on-screen graphics I use for blog laps, the map and the TV style speedometer it seems I also took out the connectivity plugin as well, because the screen graphics take time to load and that doesn't help in an online environment. With that resolved the blog was ready this time to make it's first appearance on the internet racing scene, although it was my 104th overall race it was the first in the blogmobile.

The Scene

The blogmobile for the event, racing one of the opponents 

During the gap between Christmas and New Year several events were posted on the internet and the blog decided to enter an event in which it's pilot had used the selected car before, and that was scheduled on a day when no other plans were in place. From those criteria the best option was the Honda Civic cup race at the Knutstorp ring in Sweden, which was scheduled to go green at 17:30 on New Years Eve. Normally this is a time when people of the real world engage in parties an the like, so an earlier start time was beneficial, but not in the end needed. Since the pizza shop wasn't too busy and I could retrieve the order for blog HQ after the race.

Anyway, as this was a new car to the blog fleet it needed the default treatment in the form of a new livery and as a pre-emptive effort one was painted up on the eve of the race. Admittedly the bonnet and roof sections are a little bland but maybe one day if I develop a logo for the blog if it ever advances then there is a space waiting on the car. With the Civic blogmobile all painted up and some testing done on the track which was a new one to me, I entered on the official signup sheet and prepared for the race. As the hour drew nearer it promised to be a rather entertaining event as 21 drivers had signed up and on a short lap things were going to get a little crowded and entertaining, rather fortunate that the car could survive a far bit of damage and still run.

Then the time finally rolled round pizza's all selected for the night ahead, priorities I know - but as a fat guy I get hungry, all was set in place. Logged into the race server, now that I could compared with the pre-Christmas error, and it turned out things were not to be as crowded as I first thought as only seven of the twenty one entries actually turned up for the race, sadly most of those who did arrive were the faster entries. But the blog had one goal in place, a determination not to be last, avoidance of the bottom spot was the primary objective. Times in free practice showed that barring any technical issues I would be safe from that problem as there were two cars (I know, only two) that I could out-pace and hopefully beat come the race. 

Qualifying went the same way, no where near the cars ahead but clear of those behind, in a sort of timing no mans land all on my own, pretty much the reflection of blog HQ and a night ahead of rapidly cooling pizza and disappointing DVDs. But despite the negatives it boded well for the race, it would be safe, and theoretically contact free in clean air between the two divisions. So with 5th place seemingly the default position for the entire event stability seemed assured, however single make touring car races never normally run to plan, throw in some feline interruptions life gets a little more interesting as the highlights video will explain. 

Now before I post the video a couple of things to explain first, because the editor hated making the video it is of a lower quality, to keep the size down. and also there may be typos as this file was the only one I could get the software to produce intact. So after that disclaimer here is what happened when this little blog took on the might of some members of the internet.

 So as you can see it was a lot more eventful then I envisaged, with multiple encounters with a grey civic, yes the one in the picture at the beginning of this post. Where if the cat hadn't have made visits to the keyboard I might have stayed on the lead lap, avoided all the contact and finished on the podium. Which would have rounded off the event rather nicely, but as with motor racing out there in the expensive real world unpredictability is the the only thing you can predict to occur - although there may not be cats causing drivers to crash while they remove the ball of fur from the dashboard. All the same not everything can be accounted for, and maybe in the future the blogmobile will once more take on the internet with hopefully better results in a more complete field.

Until the next time this is farewell from the blog.