The blog's 100th post

Greetings Internet,

It may be a very unfavourable hour of the morning at the moment but given events in the past hour it might be time to complete this post - although it may end up being tomorrow by the time I actually finish this thing making all the references to time in this post so far completely irrelevant but never mind.

Since the inception of this corner of the internet first created in 2010 around mid-season but first saw activity on the run up to the start of the 2011 season helped a little by the cancellation of the Bahrain GP of that year, life here in the dark corner that is blog HQ has seen many highs and lows. Mainly depending on the cushion I happen to be sitting on to make up for the massive lack of height that seems to be a problem in my microcosm. I have seen reader levels and view counts rise and fall dramatically never reaching particularly grand heights, just like me I suppose, but it has functioned. Gaining the attention of people across the planet - although I'm not entirely sure what has happened to the people from Singapore, hello there the blog does miss you. But there has been an increase in readers in Japan and that does make the blog very happy indeed, which is good to see. I does make you wonder if the figures on the stats page are simply automated web spiders and crawlers pottering about and just happening upon this part of the world.

However as is the norm here, I seem to have digressed into the realm of audience figures but in reality without the audience however many of you are actual people then this minor project would be completely pointless. Most of the things I end up doing fall into futility but this seems to have avoided that fate and in a way I have the people out there on the internet to thank for that, I would offer bonus points to those who have been here since the very inception in Australia in 2011, mainly for compensation for putting up with the nonsense I keep babbling on about. However that would become rather challenging to check, validate and then distribute the points - so you can have moral bonus points instead, which aren't really exchangeable to regular bonus points and apparently ASDA don't recognise them as currency. Which was a shame because I did feel like a chocolate bar for keeping this place running for so long without making a complete hash of it, even though recent posts have been off schedule and lacking a certain finesse they should have been presented with.

Me Vs the Internet once more

Now I think it is time to move onto another interesting development in the blog's history, over recent months the blog has taken to competing against the internet in an online racing league using the same simulator that the videos have been filmed with. Normally with rather disappointing results, as the videos have shown I really am no good at this racing lark and have a tendency to crash into things and lose wheels. When competing on the internet, I tend to use somewhat easier cars to drive than the blogmobile although there is a series open to use the DP01 from last season, so less wheels are shed in the process. I have been competing in the BMW E21 series for a couple of races and seemed to finish consistently on the outside of the top 10 from qualifying a lot further back and progressing through attrition.

This time there was a single one off event posted on the league site for off-road buggies in conjunction with a BAHA event happening in the US where the site is based, running on a long 10 mile off road track in a similar setting. Two classes were competing in the event, for two different chassis and engine combinations and the entry list did seem a little thin as only 11 drivers had signed up and five in my class. But when the server was loaded only seven cars seemed to have actually arrived and only three of those were in my class, so even if I crashed and exploded on the opening lap, the blog would claim a podium finish, which was nice.

The grid 

After qualifying the blog lined up third on the grid and second in class which in the whole history of the blog and in the years before racing under the flag of the blog is the highest ever qualifying position (with the small exception of the initiation race drivers used to need to complete before competing) has ever attained. The race was scheduled to run to a distance of one hour requiring a pit stop in the middle for fuel and tyres for the open half a lap the blog did have a bit of a bother and fall down to last but by the end of the first lap through accidents in the mountain and a really steep impossible hill section ended up leading the class. I couldn't really believe it either rather

The treacherous mountain pass

From this point the blog lead the race for the next half an hour with 30s back the next car in class which was piloted by a much faster driver who set pole 10s faster than any lap the blog had managed. But with that much of a lead I thought it would be a good idea to stay out for an additional lap from the pit strategy decided pre-race, on the idea that changing the tyres later would make the car faster at the end when others would be slower. But on a lap that is 10 miles long, on worn tyres is not the grandest of plans, suffice to say I lost a massive amount of time and was caught by the car behind. What made matters worse was that the chasing car had already mad his stop and therefore was 30s ahead in real-time, but there was the small matter of the impossible hill...

The class leaders vs the impossible hill

On really worn tyres at this point the hill became all too challenging and the car refused to climb it, a similar problem befell the other cars in the class and we all spent a long time taking runs up to escape the gully. Some considerable time later and allowing the overall leader to escape beyond all reach the off-road blogmobile was able to leave the trap ahead of the other cars and regain the lead of the class. 

From that point is was clear sailing to the finish as looking at the final results the other cars that were trapped were disqualified by the game's internal regulations, likely for travelling too far the wrong way down the track to get a big enough run to clear the mountain. So albeit a little be default which is not the ideal way of doing things, the blog claimed it's first ever win in competition with the internet. A historic moment and the perfect use for this the one hundredth post from blog HQ, so while I now prepare for the upcoming Canadian GP I shall bid thee farewell from me here at a now victorious blog HQ.

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.

Christmas Greetings from the Blog

Greetings Internet,

I has been almost a year since this corner of the internet was brought into being - a couple of weeks before the season kicked off back in March and now as the year draws to a close I can say that it has been a fairly successful opening year. The blog has received viewers from all across the world with readers in the U.S. across Europe and with a nicely surprising following in Singapore.I has been an honour to have all of you here on this journey throughout the season across the 19 races covered in 2011 and looking forward to the same again in 2012 and hopefully the audience will grow even more over the coming year.

Ideally I would liked to sent off the pre-Christmas season with a final competitive trip out in an alternative blogmobile - something specially painted up for the event. The plan was to run in the final round of the online Megane Eurocup season in this new special blogmobile to finish off the year. Alas this was not to be - technical difficulties prevented the simulator from contacting the server and thus kept the blogmobile off the grid. But looking at the timesheets for the race I would have finished 7th barring contact and ending up in the barrier - which considering the track ( a mountainous street track in Argentina used for the FIA GT1 series) was a distinct possibility.

The proposed Megane Blogmobile

Consequently this post is going to be a little truncated as the online competition element of the blog has been put on hold for now until the simulator can pick up the server list, and the grid that did make the event only half of the entry list were online, so perhaps it was a more generic problem. 

But now there is no race report or highlights video - although those were just ideas at the time - so all that's left to is to extend plentiful Christmas wishes from me here - a little south of the normal Blog HQ not that it's any warmer. There is of course the matter of this being an internationally viewed series of contributions to the world so I do hope you enjoy the winter season and whatever holiday you subscribe to. This isn't the end of the blog for the year oh no - I shall be here with this computer hoping to get some online competition sorted in the meantime. So until then farewell for now and a Merry Christmas to you all.

Summer Break 2 - More Testing.

Greetings Internet

With Spa still several days away there was time to throw another couple of Blogmobiles around the Test Track and to add to the power lap board which was looking a little empty with only two laps on it - and over the season other cars will be added possibly without the videos being posted unless I can think of a way of incorporating it into the regular schedule or programming is it were.

So this time the two cars that are going to be used are firstly the 2006/06 Champcar World Series Lola - the blogmobile which made it's début at the Spanish GP earlier in the year before being replaced by the DP01 07 chassis from Nurburgring. The second of the cars in this edition is the Subaru Impreza WRC which was to be used in the Monaco video - which ended up being rolled in the Swimming Pool section alleviating it of it's doors and other panels in the process. The 1960's Indycar should have been on the schedule the one that actually ran the lap but I deleted the mod to conserve drive space when I was clearing out the game folder - that and the Subaru is plenty of fun.

There are only two major Blogbmobiles to send round to completed the table of all the cars that have done laps (with the exception of the 60's Indycar). Those being the Epsilon Euskadi EE1 LMP1 car used for the Canadian GP weekend and the Le Mans support video, and then there is the DP01 which is the current Blogmobile which started it's role in Germany and the support video from the Nordschleife.

So here is the newest video - and I know there is room to make the cars go faster, just by being better at the whole thing but, I may end up updating the lap board when I re-do the early laps when a consistent amount of fuels and tyre compound is assigned. Because at the moment the laps are run using the mod creator's default setting for car setup and fuel levels, rather then any consistency.

The Summer break

Greetings Internet

While the folk in the F1 paddock are on their enforced holiday with factories shutting down. Everyone heading off home to enjoy the torrential rains of the British summer. But here in this little corner of the internet I have three weeks to fill while there are no cars on track until Belgium at the end of the month. During this downtime I have a plan, a plan that was dreamt up several race weekends ago but only set in motion over the past couple of days. You see I have several cars that I have used for the various videos across the season, and this gap gives me the opportunity to find out - very scientifically which one is best via a series of challenges. Alas this series really only contains one challenge but there are several vehicles to get through.

So here we have another video, to float in the sea of emptiness that is the summer break. Where I took a convertible Panoz and painted it yellow - for continuity purposes only, well and it looked better in yellow and went for a virtual drive in Italy on a 72km route. Pretty much made the blog's virtual vacation about 50 minutes long before it was back to filming something a little more productive. And to let the testing begin - the things you can do with a virtual recreation of the Top Gear track and a series of race cars.

I''ll introduce now the first video of the summer break - featuring a Panoz Esperante Cabriolet (now in yellow), and the first blogmobile to turn a wheel for the Malaysian GP, the 2010 Indycar chassis. With others yet to come ideally.

Expansion

Greetings Internet,

I know with only nine races to go this a little late in the proceedings and on the whole I'm not entirely sure whether it will last or work out too well - it is more of an experimental thing at the moment. But this little blog has expanded from this corner of the internet into a new, wider world. It is something I have been playing with in my mind over the past couple of races of how to provide a more accessible variation instead of just having the rather long winded posts across a race weekend. At the time I didn't have the technology to make this jump, or more accurately i didn't have a cable to recharge the technology to optimise my presence here and there now.

The blog now has it's own twitter page, I know heady heights indeed - right now there is not a lot on it considering it has only existed for a couple of moments and might not be that active. It's primary purpose is to be used in race and other sessions for a sort of live feed from things here via portable technology - which I can now charge and operate after a considerable amount of time in hibernation...it still thought it was 2008. I sure it wasn't mothballed that long ago but still a long time.

Anyway just to lest the world know, all the very patient people who actually read through my admittedly rather long posts that something else is stirring, and that is is a work in progress to bear with me on that. I am after all just one man with a chair and a cake shortage - yes Jenson I had to buy cake because you haven't sent any

The Official Calum D.C. The Blog Twitter Page

The official blog car.

Greetings All,

TV broadcasts for differing racing series often have a generic car they use for demonstrating different things - and yes they have all sort of fancy 3D modelling at their disposal and teams of individuals to sculpt the polys and pixels to make a accurate representation. They also have all sort of fancy 3D animations to show off things like DRS and KERs for this year.

I have a grand total of none of these things - so don't be expecting all manner of special graphics and visualisations, however there should be some upgrades to the blog in preparation for Malaysia in little under two weeks now - depending one whether I can get certain things to work and edited into position.

But the first phase of these upgrades has been completed and tested over the past two days and my be altered during the season should I get bored of the livery - because at this stage it is very rudimentary and plain. That has a lot to do with my very minimal graphic artistry skills which does rather limit what I can do in design terms, and the base model - which may change during the year for something a little less generic.

I have held you - the readers though the plural may be pushing it a bit - for long enough and now here is the current official Blogmobile in the obvious livery given my design tendencies...

The car is not of my build - I just painted it, the model is the FormulaIS from the racing game rFactor and is designed as a general top level single seater race car.

The livery design would not have come of a surprise to those people familiar with my eclectic design normals and is adorned in the default Team Jenkins livery - a fictional racing organisational that has featured in anything that required me to think up a team name. The team has been used in everything from school woodwork projects - which was an articulated truck containing a stock car...which went suspiciously missing and still makes me mad, to a name for a Worms team (because there is never a time in life when holy hand-grenades are not entertaining).

These shots were taken on a virtual version of the Sepang circuit which the field will be approaching soon, so people of the internet as the countdown to Malaysia continues this corner of the internet shall not go into hibernation till then (unless I forget or get too busy with lines) as more things shall appear they may not be exciting but they'll be here nonetheless.