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F1 hmmmmmm

2009-11-08T02:58:04Z

Years over, done and dusted. Lets see how we did with predictions I made 7 weeks before the first race and 4 weeks before the rebadged Honda (the Brawn GP) car had seen like outside the factory.

Now a note for all those ridiculous stories about a brand new team winning formula 1, Brawn GP was not a brand new team. The car had been in development for longer than any other car on the track. When Honda realised in 2008 that they had brought a Civic to the track instead of the NSX they gave up all mid season development and focused purely on the car that Brawn had this year, before any other team. That said, switching engines isn't a trivial matter as a car is somewhat designed around a particular engine. But after allth at is said and done, they won both the drivers and constructors championship. Which means big payback from the Formula One governing bodies.

As some stats.
Brawn won with 172 Constructor points, The same as Ferriari in '08 previous two years winners were over 200
All Teams Scored points (top 8 finish) on multiple occasions
only Two teams never had a top 3 finish.
Bernie is still a crazy loon who makes a ridiculous amount of money from the 'sport'

Ok where was I
ferrari to be weaker
The went from winners to 4th, from 172 points to 70, granted the Lost Massa through injury for the half of the season he got 22 points inth e first half, even if he'd scored double that in the second , they'd still be down.

renault and bmw to be stronger.
Wrong and Wronger. BMW has now left all together.

Redbull and STR, dark hourses
Well Redbull were possible title contenders and held in there right till there were enough races left in the season. STR took the wooden spoon. They just didn't make their version of the car work..

Williams to be so bland no one cares, same with toyota
7th and 5th, Toyota gave people some occasional excitement and just as the foudn someone who could step into an F1 car and drive, they pull out. Interestingly Toyota never ran a hybrid(KERS) car. (which is good because it'd just be another thing for pribus owners to prattle about)

Force India to continue to wooden spoon, well with the exception of the as yet to be sold honda team -
Well FI scored points twice, Even a pole position, but still came second last, Wow 'yet to be sold honda team' that's how early i made these predictions... We know what happened there.

Mclaren to be on form
They came third, which is pretty good considering they made a car that could not brake and turn at the same time.

Ok the KERS (hybrid) stuff.
I liked it, i've always like the innovation that has occurred in F1. Yes sometime things need to be banned ( traction contol) to make racing actually occur. The concept here was good, but the rules to limiting. So the rules are roughly a power boost of 61KW for 6 seconds per lap, deployable by the driver, doesn't have to be used all at once. Instead of limiting it to 6 seconds per lap, i though about limiting how much power can be statically held in the system. The teams have so far formed a pact to not use it next year, even though the rules allow it.

Hmmm next year predictions..

USF1 and Campos to not make the starting grid.

Lotus and Manor will

Ferrari and Mclaren to be fast, but ferrari should get more points but having two great drivers, not one.

Brawn, well once again they don't know what engine they're using. as Mclaren has Veto power over who gets the Merc engine, so anyone who's a threat doesn't. So They've already lost the dominance they had and they won't get it back.

RedBull To be up there too.

STR to stay at the back, no more customer cars means no more redbull hand me downs. well unless the FIA changes the rules yet again...

BMW and Toyota have already left. BMW has a buyer but no guranteed grid position, I think we'll see a Sauber(bmw) team, can't sayt he same for Toyota.

Force India, Perhaps they will learn that having the faster car in a straight line doesn't win races.

Williams, I'm pitting them as my dark horse for next year.

Renault get my bland award.

There you go, 14 teams, thirteen allowed in 2010, only 11 to start.

RTA gets something right? ish

2009-08-07T05:45:32Z

So they get a lot wrong. Occasionally get things right, like bike trails along side motorways (though they normally remove them a few years later)
This time they're corrected the license points system which they messed quite a few years ago.
Now i think when i got my license demerit points were 1 for 0-15 speeding and 2 for 15-30, it wasn't long before 15 to 30 got bumped up to 3 points, which i thought was okay, well not unjust.
Then they started getting silly, they moved the point for 0-15 up to 3 points and left 15-30 at 3. So points wise it was 0-30, why speed by 15 when you can speed by 30 and have the same license impact (ok the fin was different etc). better yet was stories of people losing half their license in double trouble times by doing 55 in a 50 zone, etc.
Anyhow they fixed it, kinda. 0-10 1 point, 11-20 3 points, 21 - 30 4 points. So you can now not be totally paranoid about slipping those few k's and spending more time looking at your speedo than the road.

So live it up until they foul it up.

Oh yeah, it's a blog remember , no facts here have been checked :)

Alien Nation

2009-05-05T05:43:31Z

So after a recent trip back to the homeland (insert oh so patriotic comments), I was once again how i stand out in my own unique way.
Any shop that i frequent, usually purveyors of a complete meal for under $10, knows me. Now this isn't that terribly surprising in itself, it was when i thought about it at a more indepth level(well deep for me, i like to stay in the kiddy pool, erm for the depth, i better get back on track before i get put onth e black list) that it should out.

Both nations in question here were invaded by the british, both now have very strong immigration policies. So in both nations i can look like the 80% majority (wikipedia*), but in one i open my mouth and instantly people brains click. Again both countries, dispite the strong immigration laws have some semblance of multiculturalism (yeah depends a lot on where you go) and i tend to be in those kinds of places. so why do i particularly stand out. Is it because people think i'm one thing and turn out to be another? anyhow funnier part time..... perhaps

So often i can be at purchasing an item and i'll be asked a question. and even more often i'll fail to understand it (yes i understand less questions than i'm asked, it's a skill), so i'll pause and to and process what they said into my native tongue, perhaps i might ask them to explain, but normally before i get this far they'll repeat the question, which normally doesn't help, but my favourite, is when they repeat the question in another language, which always give me a little chuckle. This is where i'll ask them to explain it to my like a child, Or i might ask someone i'm with to explain it to me, which is even better when they don't understand. The rule at the end of this anything along the linds of 'that's good' 'i'll take that' ' STOP!!! just like that is perfect'. These are generally followed by a look and a 'are you sure you don't want some X'.

*It's a Blog, i'll damn well use wikipeadia for referencees right.

F1 stuffles

2009-04-27T06:50:27Z

So 4 races into the F1 season, lets see how wrong i was, and if it is any better than last year... thoughts on rules and general ranting.

Up first. how wrong was i (i'm goign to keep comparing to these initial predictions, no pussy updating them to make myself look good at the end of it all... lets see i made the predictions on the 8th of feb. before 'brawn gp' existed.

ferrari to be weaker, - well this one is currently true, they're on struggle street

renault and bmw to be stronger. Well Renault might be stronger, but PK just isn't driving well. There hybrid system seems to be working well for them as other drivers have complained they cant pass PK as his KERs makes him quick on the straights. BMW = crap, not showing any promis really at all.

Redbull and STR, dark hourses, (will STR continue to get good ferrari engines or will they be lumped witht he second rate ones again). Well, well RedBull are team number two. If Aussie Sebastian Webber could make his own luck they'd be scaring everyone, but you make your own luck.. As for STR, who can tell if they have good engines or not because of Ferarris poor performance, apart from that tey just middling.

Williams to be so bland no one cares, same with toyota - i could eat some words here. Toyota is nipping at red bulls heals for second, and have only to turn in a win to cement themselves. Williams = bland, okay they did have a fastest lap to there name, but nobdy actually talks about details like that. Nobody.

Force India to continue to wooden spoon, well with the exception of the as yet to be sold honda team - Force india, well this was an easy guess really. Erm, the yet to be sold honda team is well, leading the championship. class that as a fail.
Maclaren to be on form - missed ont his one so far, They are comming 4th but not a title contender.

Ok a count out i'm going to give myself 3 on, 2 maybe's, and 5 dudes you suck.

Ok some teama nd driver chatter
Within teams it's always a little interesting to see which driver is performing better. Generally teams have a favoured driver, indicated by the lower car number (also based on last years progress)

Maclaren
Lewis H. is driving the wheels off the car and would be potentially 4 place in the championship except for his boss telling him to withhold evidence. His team mate is lagging.

BMW
There's been a swap here, but it is a little early to tell, generally close.

The four Sebastians
Young upstart Vettel is exerting dominance over Webber. The other two S's could still go either way.

Brawn.
So last year The Cello stomped Butts on points, although the team gave Buts the lower number. which is how it's been working out onthe Track, everyone has been following brawns butts.

Ferrari
so numbers were swapped this year between drivers as the 2007 champ was beaten in point by his team mate in 08 (who was a contender for the championship down to the last lap). and they look like they'll need to be swapped again.

Force india, Williams, Renault
meh

SoReal?

2009-02-25T06:10:08Z

Cause it isn't surreal cause here it is in the reel

Anyhow so people had been talking about favourite albums and so forth so i was listening to some song by hitting up you tube.
So I acme accross this. The Cure performing live with the Royal Ballet.

(edit, i found a colour version, if you feel colour makes it to happy do a search)

Digital Idiot Box cut over

2009-02-18T06:13:20Z

So with all this talk of being prepared or not for the switching off of analogue tv transmissions I have devised a plan. Now someone else has already mentioned this, and probably in some kind of large public forum, but me and my cosy hollowed out rock haven't heard it.

Instead of just turning off the analogue broadcast, just slowly decrease the signal strength over a period of say, a year (you could even calculate population density in radial bands to do a fixed percentage of population in each de-powering). Okay it sounds a little evil but look at the benefits. No sudden rush to get convertor boxes, there will be a greater devide in quality between the two formats further incouraging take up.

Obviously i don't have an indepth knowledge of technologies but that never stopped me before

f1 Broom

2009-02-09T04:30:48Z

So the 2009 F1 season is creeping up. The following link isa to a cool animation by hte Redbull team which explains hte major rule changes, which are quite significant.
http://www.redbullracing.com/en/4th-Sector/Webber--Vettel-Rip-Through-The-Rule-Book/

So of all those these I'll be watching for the following initially, How will teams manage there engine. Will they somehow tweak one for qualifying much like when they used to have special tyres for qualifying.
Also in the pre season some teams have bee trying external wheel plates which cover most f the tyre rubber, for better aero and brake cooling. I've been speculating that this could reduce the risk of hte tyre puncturing if they clip someone elses car and also how much damage it will inflict on the other car, such as ripping off hte front wing which is now nicely exposed.
Not to mentioned is the fact F1 have asked the tyre supplier to create a bigger difference between the tyres, so that on the two types they get for a race one type should be at least half a second slower. (using both types in a dry race is mandatory)

anyhow predictions (which include personal bias)
ferrari to be weaker,
renault and bmw to be stronger.
Redbull and STR, dark hourses, (will STR continue to get good ferrari engines or will they be lumped witht he second rate ones again)
Williams to be so bland no one cares, same with toyota
Force India to continue to woden spoon, well with the exception of the as yet to be sold honda team
Maclaren to be on form

Stand by for updates on how wrong i am.

Circumference of a circle

2009-01-21T07:28:05Z

This whole idea of having this crazy number in our lovely whole number system was buggin me. So i got to thinking, Which led to baking, This i must admit got me a little distracted, in this particular example, some finely chopped chicken thighs, a coconut curry sauce and puff pastry. Pre cook the innards and let cool, put contents in the pastry and freeze. When you want to eat one, just bung it int he oven at about 475 K Until golden brown 30-40 minutes. I use metal pie tins so i place them on bottom rack of the oven so that the pastry will crispen up and not go soggy.

Pursuant to my original task a solution did come across a solution to fix that horrible value for pi.

Pie Town

2009-01-13T06:01:53Z

This post is a little belated but hey, i had no pens to write with.

It was about 6 month of not having any pie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_meat_pie). Now it is possible for my to drive to a shop that specialises in selling Australian garb but i couldn't bring myself to do it. I could however, endeavour to make my own, much in a way captains of the past would have had to cook their own. I consulted no recipies, got myself a slab of steak, some gravy and some pastry. Chop chop with the cleaver, pre cook the meat just enough, bit of mixing for the gravy, some pastry in a muffin tray. bung it all together in the oven and wait.
Then consume. Yum

Appropriate pie dishes were hard to come by, but I found some, correct some pastry selection faults and perfecto.

A Year

2009-01-04T07:27:57Z

Damn annoying, I couldn't find anyone who had already done this joke so i had to go to the bother of making the image myself. Really is it worth this much effort? is the joke that good? I doubt it.
But hey the combined total of the time of all the people who read this might add up to more wasted time than me putting it together, even including this blurb which hopefully contains a few spelling mistakes and non sequiturs.

Time Time Time

2008-12-11T06:39:39Z

So i've put together a list of tv programs that i have seen the entirity of, to ponder how much time i've possibly wasted watching them. In itself this was also a waste of time, so much so that i came up with some rules.
The show much be complete. Over. Finito. Movies dont count, unless it's like a double epsisode.

Now on the positive side, quite often I was cooking and eater said cooked goods. mmm yum. So not wasting time as such, doubling it. Then other times i was enjoying the shows in company.

Anyhow onto the list i've come up with so far in no particular order.

boston legal
duckman
x files
buffy the vampire slayer
brisco county jnr
jack of all trades
harvey birdman atourney at law
neon genesis evangelion (tv servies)
the it crowed
coupling
futurama (is this actually over)
green screen
arrested development
dilbert
drawn together
furikuri (flcl)
helsing (anime series)
The hitch hikers guide to the galaxy.
*Red Dwarf
Black Adder

Edit: i left off red dwarf somehow. the series i've seen numerous time and can carry on conversations with people only in RD quotes.

Australias Turn.

2008-11-20T07:16:54Z

So the socceroos have been defeted many a time while being clearly the better team. Ball in the netted posty area thats what counts.
But the other day it swung back around, Australia was out played, but they were the ones to kick the round thing so it would be abruptly stopped by the aformentioned netted posty area.

This now has Australia leading out world cup qualifying group after three wins and not a single goal scored against them.

ps. posty isn't a a person who delivers mail.

Exams over

2008-11-15T07:26:29Z

My final exam for this year is over. All went ok. but check this out. the front of the paper only said 2b pencil and eraser. So they took my pens, THEY TOOK MY PENS, just cause it wasn't specifically listed on the front page. They TOOk my PENS!
Ihad to do the whole thing with a pencil. and yes they did check that my pencil was a number two, lucky it was cause i hadn't. checked it. Imagin it is wasn't. I'm surprised I was allowed in the exam room, let alone my clothes. Did i mention THEY TOOK MY PENS!

I now have a sore shoudler from scratching away with a low grade pencil that i had only intended to fill in the multiple guess sheet.

anyway to be nice to anyones else that may have an exam at the same centre i've sent an email to the examination officer to clarify if people are allowed pens in an exam when it says pencil!

d
THEY TOOK MY SWORDS, sorry MIGHTY PENS
wow i managed to resist the temptation to put a random i in for a joke.

More Travel

2008-11-11T07:59:23Z

Aparently i'll be going to seatle int he not to distant future, Seattle looks cold, I hope it's not so cold it's hard to sleep.

must go, the joke police are after me again.

Tomorrow

2008-11-04T06:15:26Z

So I know i'm going to be dissapointed by at least one election results tomorrow.
I've managed to get my hands on a sample voting paper and wow it's like a literature and physics exam rolled into one.

Anyhow, Props to the League of Women voters, they have put together a wonderful website of facts.
http://www.smartvoter.org/

Anyhow, i think for CA
Vote Yes on, 2 and 11.
Vote No on 4 and 8
and i'm not well informed enough on the rest really.

F1 Summary

2008-11-04T03:34:27Z

So my quick, highly uninformed reveiw of hte Formulat one Season. (psst, F1 is motor racing)

So, biggest missed opportunity. - BMW.
Dispite leading the championship early on they decided to stop work on there current car and dropping off the lead pace, dispite this they still managed a very strong showing, could they have taken out the chamionship?

Strongest Finish - Renault, Alonso
At first it looked like one lucky race win, but then another one, and a second place in the final race. This also goes to point that Alonso is a great driver.

Biggest Surprise - Torro Rosso(ferrari engines) - Vettel
I used to say that you never wanted to buy ferrari engine and put them in your own car, they always gave you the slow ones. Then These guys wil and race, Turns out that top manager is a former F1 driver for ferrari and went to them to request the same engines that ferrari actually run.

that's enough....

Next year,
So a whole change of rules next year. One intrigues me, it's the introducion or a regenerative energy system, like those found in hybrid cars. Now F1 has been helping push forward the development of technology found in road cars for a while. now this can get highly argumentative, but at the least it made the following terms better known. Turbo, AntiLock Brakes, Tracstion control, CVT, active suspension. So can F1 help develop bettter hybrid systems? Perhaps ones that don't involve mining for metals or other things that seem counter productive to caring for the environment?

One possibility is that these system make there way into the sports cars of the teams such as Ferrari and Mercedes McLaren... well wait and see...

The rains are here.

2008-10-31T02:47:57Z

So its started raining, and well it going to stay that way for a little while. I haven't seen anything more that some tiny sprinkles since i've been here. Might need to locate an umbrella.
It's Halloween tomorrow. and just about everything has some kind of decoration going on. There nuts for it here, even work is having a mini competition.
Peoples Birthday's keep comming and going. Happy birthday all.(i'm so lazy)

Taxation Without Representation

2008-10-29T06:14:34Z

I now fall into this catagory. Before people start hunting me down, I am not comparing my situation to the American Revolution, Womens Suffrage, Minors paying tax or the countless oppressed races. Just merley stating that a feel a little jyped

Piece of trivia from Wikipedia
"In November 2000, the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles began issuing license plates bearing the slogan "Taxation without representation". In a show of support for the city, President Bill Clinton used the "Taxation Without Representation" plates on the presidential limousine; however, President George W. Bush had the tags replaced to those without the motto shortly upon taking office."

submission

2008-10-17T07:44:00Z

I just submitted my last assignment for the year! wow time flies.......

d

Urban redneck?

2008-10-11T01:31:04Z

Kath and Kim - US version

2008-10-10T04:07:23Z

wow, to painful to watch and wikipedia says it's going to channel 7 also.
Now i was never a huge fan of the original, never made any attempt to watch it, but well when someone it was on the tv it could make me chuckle.

Somewhat Insideous

2008-10-07T04:23:46Z

So I've been learning about how the voter registration works here, and wow they do fun stuff in the name of removing 'fraudulent' voters
One thing they can do is send you a letter, and if you don't respond, well you're off the able to vote list. Simple enough...
So the Parties can initiate this and the facts according to the people behind http://www.stealbackyourvote.com run something like this.
You're the republican party, you get a list of people who have had the mortgages foreclosed (they're unlikely to vote for you) you send them one of these letters and it will go to there old residence as they are extremely unlikely to update there address as they're probable in temporary accommodation. Bingo one disgruntled household of voters no longer in the system.
In a radio interview they mentioned that this was also done to US soldiers who strangely enough couldn't reply as they were deployed. Yay.
In Colorado one in five registered voters have been removed. Now there were probably some real removals in there, but wow.

You can also watch the bbc reports he files at www.gregpalast.com/

ElecTion

2008-10-02T06:29:08Z

Wow, no wonder elections are crazy here.
Apart from voting directly for their president and other electable officials, in California they'll also be voting on 12 'propositions',
Now the closest i can remember to anything like this was the 'should Australia become a republic' referendum.
So 2 of the 12 were placed there by what i'll call the government. A high spped rail link between Sydney and Melbourne, wait no San Francisco and Los Angeles and another about allowing the government to raise money for loans to Veterans to buy houses at special interest rates.
The other 10 are place there by anyone who can get enough signature against there idea.
Some are insightful, some are outrageously offensive, most i could rant about from a soap box on speakers corner.....

http://lwvc.convio.net/site/PageServer?pagename=easyvoter_guide_propositions

On Ya Bike

2008-10-02T03:16:13Z

I finally cycled to work.
One of the things about doing a big move is you get to have some say in where you live. As opposed to living somewhere and then hoping to find a good job nearby. So when i move i picked somewhere that was close enough to a train station, within a cyclable distance from work and close to the city without making for a horrible commute. Well a compromise of those things. It turns out that it's a 10 mile (16km) cycle to work and it's about 100 meters (17 feet) lower than home. Today it was 40 minute of cycle to work and 54 back. although i took a 600 meter detour via foooooood, but well that doesn't really count for 15 minutes, the 100 meters up, head wind and tired legs do though.

HFCS

2008-09-08T02:32:47Z

High fructose corn syrup. will this was one of those ingredient that i didn't know much about.
Turns out it's popular to use in the US of A because they don't believe in free trade over here. In super short, protectionist tariffs and taxes and outright banning of alternatives make sugar twice as expensive as the global market. So lots of high sugar products (soft drinks etc) use a modified corn syrup for sweetness, which is allowed, probably because it can be grown locally.
Now normally i would have accepted this and moved on, the the HFCS lobbying body is currently running a whole lot of TV adds
well the add have the phrase " well you know what they say about it" but obviously they don't want to say it. It just seemed so sus.
So a few quick search brings up all kinds of data here and there, reference to tobacco tactics etc.
What true and what truer is of course hard to tell... Fear Uncertainty Doubt.

For me this is good, as i'm always after more reason to not drink soft drinks.