Sunday, March 27, 2005
My new lap time at the Nurburgring - 6:28.766 set in a Minolta Toyota 88C-VHaving gone round the circuit at that speed, I can honestly say that for Stefan Bellof to set an all time lap record of 6:11.3, *in the real world*, he must have been absolutely insane!!!
Labels: games, gran turismo
Steve 7:26 AM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Latest best time at the Nurburgring on GT4 - 7 mins 10 secs, set in a Jaguar XJ220.I'm currently slogging my way through endurance races in the Jag to earn enough cash to buy a proper GT car... expect times to drop considerably when I get one.
What's really surprising me about the game at the moment is, 24 hour endurance races really do last *24* hours. Yikes!
Good job there's an option that allows you to switch into management mode while the race is running, so the car drives itself. All you have to do is start and finish the race in manual control. Still... 24 hours is a bit extreme.
Labels: games, gran turismo
Steve 2:35 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, March 21, 2005
A neighbour of mine has become something of a problem just lately, making a lot of noise, and becoming abusive towards all of his neighbours when requested to turn it down.So this weekend, he really kicked off, hurling abuse at me, my next door neighbour, and anyone else who came anywhere near the area.
Needless to say... myself and two other decent neighbours aren't putting up with this.
This morning we had a meeting to discuss it. It seems another unidentified neighbour has already complained about him, and each of us are now adding our own voices to that complaint.
I've written and posted a very direct and informative letter to the housing association.... something they will not be able to ignore, while the two other guys have phoned the housing officer.
Hopefully something will be done about him, before matters escalate into a voilent situation... coz if things continue as they are, that's exactly what's going to happen.
Labels: annoyed
Steve 4:26 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, March 17, 2005
It's been quite a stressy week. Seems everyone wants a piece of me and my time, when all I've wanted is to be left alone. Oh well.So last night I grabbed a few hours to myself, and completed the first race in the 1000 miles series on GT4.... 25 laps of the Nurburgring in a Ginetta on *hard tyres*, setting a best lap time of 8:41.335.
A very respectable time for such an old car on those tyres. Actually.... it's a bloody brilliant time, and I challenge anyone to beat it in the same machine any time soon.
Labels: games, gran turismo
Steve 11:27 AM [+] (0) comments
Monday, March 14, 2005
What a great weekend.On saturday we went for a bimble round Stony Stratford, for no particular reason, other than it's a nice place to go, and stopped into The Vaults Bar for a drink.
Andrea's not at all familiar with the finer points of Milton keynes, so what better place to start?
Next we ambled on over to Willen Lake, and stopped for munchies in the resteraunt by the lake. Not the cheapest place on earth, but otherwise unpretentious, and a very easy place to just drop into when you don't feel like cooking.
Sunday... more Gran Turismo sillyness. We nipped into town and I picked up a Speedster force feedback wheel.
I dunno. I'm not sure if I should've got the Logitch wheel or if I just suck with wheels, period. Either way... I find the game almost unplayable using the thing... and after losing around a minute and a half on my laptime at the Nurburgring, even after lots of practice and optimising the wheel settings, I've gone back to using the pad.
Playing this morning, I've gone back to complete some of the slower, less exciting races, and in doing so, won a 1964 Ginetta G4. This is a tiny little British sports car that initially only has around 90bhp, but weighs in at around 400kg, so it's very nippy. Just for fun though, I stuck a stage two turbo in the thing.
Hahahaha.
Absolutely mental. I highly recommend it, just for laughs.
Labels: games, gran turismo, Stony Stratford
Steve 1:07 PM [+] (0) comments
Friday, March 11, 2005
My latest time at the Nurburgring - 7:26.695.Labels: games, gran turismo
Steve 5:20 PM [+] (0) comments
Ok... just a little more GT3 Nurburgring stuff.
The real world outright lap record for the place is 6:11.3, set in qualifying by the late Stefan Bellof in a Porsche 956 Group C car. His race lap record was 6:25.91. He crashed out later in that race, and was killed 2 seasons later while attempting to overtake another car *around the outside* through Eau Rouge at Spa.
Mental!
Evo magazine have challenged readers to beat the GT3 time set by their man Richard Meaden, of 5:26.547 in a '92 Nissan R92CP Le mans race car.
My own personal best time so far is a miserable 7:50.718, set in an OPTION Stream Z '04. Basically a Nissan 350Z that been tuned to hell and back.
Expect this to drop over time, as I gain more experience and better cars... and expect updated times to be posted here.
That should give players of the game something to aim for :-)
Labels: games, gran turismo
Steve 1:17 PM [+] (0) comments
So, Gran Turismo 4 then eh?
Blimey.
My very first impression was one of annoyance. I transferred funds across from my GT3 game save, and bought a nice funky Caterham 7, and then went and did the first lisence tests before going on to race.
However... when it came to entering a race, the game informed me that I couldn't enter, as the Caterham was a specialist car. Hmm. Nice of them to tell me that before I bought it.
Not wanting to lose all that money by just selling the car for a fraction of what I'd paid for it, I promptly deleted the whole game save, and started again.
Arse.
Second attempt.
I picked up a Renault Clio V6 Mk2, and got stuck right in.
Now... I'll spare you all the details of everything that follwed and just tell you what it's like.
ABSOBLOODYLUTELY AMAZING!!!
Yes, the graphics are fantastic, and noticably improved over GT3, yes the car handling is equally fantastic and improved over GT3, yes there are 700 cars, which is vastly more than GT3, and yes, there are 50 tracks, which is again vastly more than GT3.....
But all of this is nothing, as there are only 2 words you need to know relating to this game...
Nurburgring Nordschleife!!!
Huge, ultra realistic, and utterly terrifying in the best possible way.
Labels: games, gran turismo
Steve 8:23 AM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Oh! Oh! Oh!Gran Turismo 4 is released here tomorrow.
Expect much game related waffle... or a complete absence of my presence, depending on just how engrossed I get.
Labels: games, gran turismo
Steve 10:36 AM [+] (0) comments
Bills, bills and more bills. Yeash.
I know they're a fact of life, but when rent, credit cards, phone bill, water bill and tv license all come in in at one time and effectively wipe out a whole months earnings, it's not very funny. Good job the tv lisence is annual, water is bi-annual, and phone is quarterly, coz if I got hit with that lot on a monthly basis, I'd be in trouble.
A year or so ago, I attempted to read Neitzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, having a passing interest in philpsophy, but found the thing entirely unreadable. Now, a couple of weeks ago, Andrea gave me a collection of small books that cover the basics of several of the major philosophers, including Nietzsche, so last night, I read that one.
Heh... small wonder I struggled with his stuff. Now I understand why.
I had been expecting something that made sense, and had some kind of natural flow, or direction, but it seems it was his 'style' to write in 'sound bites'... a collection of relatively unrelated revelations that though supposedly the work of a genius, didn't really create a whole... as such.
Having now fairly got my head around what it is he was saying, I find I now disagree with much of what he was saying.
His concept of 'The Superman' ,to me, is just plain bollox, and while I totally agree that "God is dead", I think he's missing the point with "The will to Power".
Yes... much of what people do is based on the urge to gain power, in whatever form that may take, however distorted it may become... but I believe even this is the will to a different thing... again, often in a distorted fashion.... it's 'the will to sex'.
Yeah, that may sound freudian, but personally, I believe it to be the case.
Anyways... this isn't really the place for me to go off on some heavy duty philisophical ramble, especially as it would require vastly too much space to detail my own thinking on the nature of things.
I've been toying with the idea of writing a book on the subject since my early 20s, and maybe one day I actually will, but I still haven't ironed out enough of my basic ideas, some of which certainly wouldn't stand up to too close a scrutiny just yet.
One day.
Steve 9:37 AM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Saturday night was a crazy night.Unable to sleep, Andrea and myself embarked on a photgraphic expedition.... at 3am.
We started off in Passenham, a village near where I grew up, but after taking only 3 shots, the batteries in my camera died suddenly.
Oops.
After coming back to Milton Keynes to buy fresh batteries from a 24 hour garage, we set off again, to take pics of the ruined Norman age church at Stanton Low.
Obviously, my planning, and memory was a bit off, coz I'd forgotten how long the walk across the fields was to get to the place, and the temperature was minus 3... but get there we did.
I got some very cool pics using the flash, and a few time exposure shots that at first glance appeared to be nothing but black.
Photoshop being the wonderful tool that it is though, I ran one of the black pics through it, and was very surprised at the results. Needless to say, I ran the rest through it too.
Here's my fave of the bunch.
Other stuff....
After 2 weeks and 4 days, I finally finished watching Babylon 5 this morning.
As I've already said, seasons 1 to 4 are awesome, but I had serious reservations about season 5.
Having watched the rest of it... I feel inclined to say to those who might consider doing the same, "don't bother"... except for one thing.
The very final episode is a must see, but wouldn't really work without seeing the rest.
I dunno. Tricky.
Nope. I really don't know what to tell you.
Labels: photos
Steve 9:48 AM [+] (0) comments
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