I'm thinking of heading over for a long weekend in Feb to see old friends, no hotels meens if I can solve the airport parking issue it's no more money than a night out in London.

The only thing is, i've done over 50 flights now and each one I get more and more terrified. I've no idea what's wrong with me, it must be age, but for some reason the more often I get on an aeroplane the more I feel my luck will soon run out. Stupid eh...

Quote from Nathan_French_14 :

Ketchup is fantastic, but for me, fry sauce takes the winning spot. I forgot the name, but there is also a special fried sausage that you can get in Holland. That was also really delicious with fry sauce.

Lidl usually has a lot of east European goodies for sale Becky, and I'm pretty sure that Dutch fry sauce is available there too. You could always take a looksie if you ever have a craving for it.

I was introduced to something that translated as a "Barber Shop" in a kababery type place in Haarlem, which as far as I can see contained raw calories. It was delicious, all 980 million calories of it. You won't find them in Lidl so next time you're over in Dutchland give it a shot

I've had that sausage too and it's lovely. I'm a big fan of Dutch cuisine, it's just their architecture I take issue with

Quote from Nathan_French_14 :

Ah, do you mean the Mayonnaise like sauce, but with small pieces of herb in it? If so, I loved that stuff and always bought bottles of it to bring back to the UK.

P.S, this thread is making me hungry. Anyone fancy a late night drive to Burger King with me?

Yeah that sounds about right. I had a long running national pride debate with my ex over whether ketchup or fry sauce was better, but when she's not around i'm quite prepared to accept I love the stuff :P (But biscuits will always be called biscuits and not cookies).

Quote from Boris Lozac :

Whatever the case, they're fu*king tasty!

Personally they're not to my palette, but then I live in a country that really does know how to fry a chip

Our food might be internationally famous for being bland and over salted, but our chips are fantastic!

EDIT: Having said that, I've found the Chip Parlours in Holland to be particularly special also. That Fry sauce they have is quite tasty

At no point should you consider McDonalds to be food.

They're chips, oh wait - trading standards would have a field day if they were called that, they're "McDonald's Fries" aren't even vegetarian... Neither is the Strawberry milkshake.

I meen seriously wtf !?

I had my first McDonalds in about 15 years the other day, and I bit into one of these fries and I questioned why there was so much air in them, when potatoe doesn't have air... This set me off on a mission to figure out why.

It turns out that they're injected with beef extract, although the ingrediants list this as "Natural Flavour". Even more saddening is that the "McDonald's Fries" only list potatoe as an ingredient! Now that's foxtrotted up.... Chips are meant to be deep fried potatoe, they don't have an ingredients list!

It's not a restraunt, it's a chemical processing plant, and you eat there at your own risk.

There goes the debate. You can't say you are carefully avoiding conspiracy theories and then post the two biggest conspiracy theories of the last 20 years in your last 2 posts... There goes any debate.

Look I agree Assange is innocent. The politicians are bastards, and the encroaching surveillance and police controls over our civic lives is following a worrying trend.

But the government aren't transmitting an obedience brain control signal, you don't need a foil hat, and a green lizard alien Jew flying a 747 into a building did not steal your Luke Skywalker doll as a child.

Awww bless, have you been reading up on "Project Blue Beam" again?

This whole affair leaves me fealing as bitter and sour over our government as the Digital Economy Bill did.

I wish people would stop referring to our system as a democracy.

For a start Britain in particular is not a democracy and never was - we have a democratic vote to control the lower house, we do not elect our prime ministor and have no power at all over the upper house.

Secondly the democratic system in Britain is designed such that we can only move power in the lower house about between two controlling groups - which currently, and likely temporarily, encompasses a third group who are for all intents and purposes little more than scapegoats (as the lesser party in any 2 party coalition always will be).

Democracy as we know it has no value, especially as the two groups available on offer in Britain differ only on a few economic issues but on all serious issues - such as state security, which countries to invade this year, sensorship - they are in complete agreement.

It is impossible for British people to elect a party which does not support the marginalisation of civil rights.

Consequently Julian Assange is very lucky that so far he has only been arrested, but i'm pretty sure he'll be flying circles over Morocco soon and headed for retirement in a US military controlled Afghan prison.

I have reacquired my virginity. Life is simple again but I may need a bad haircut again to look the part.

I had a date this weekend and it was fail. Leaving my quite seriously annoyed with the numerous and inconsistent requirements of women.

Head cannot take any more. Head is simple coffee drinking device, does not like strange cruel women.

Quote from TehPaws3D :

Well now we know how the Toyota test track works, Since these little buggers just don't stop.

lolz.

Great video, and as a work of "kinetic" art it's underlying message seems quite obvious, and the fact that's its also quite cool is ironic and sad.

Oh please don't missunderstand my intention to raise that, off topic is fine in a 12 hour race. Just after 60+ minutes or however long I was watching at around the 4 hour mark there was no mention of the race at all, it was a better ballance when I tuned in later. Going to log in again and see how it's going now

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

Tell Scawen.

LFS is capable of running more cars than are entered, my point is that there's no need to have 3 classes in the same event, and with a reduced entry field it's created a scenario where a 12 hour race is being competed by half a dozen cars per class, that's too few because it makes getting a podium result comparatively meeningless, it's a disservice to the teams who put the effort in to compete.

Endurance events are meant to be difficult, after watching a few hours my feeling was that the race needed more same class cars, and less than half the entries getting trophies... It wasn't 'difficult' enough.

On a secondary note the commentators didn't seem very interested in the race at the time and barely talked about it for the whole time I was tuned in, but i'm going to tune in again shortly and see if they're more enthused by the ontrack action

Too few cars for 3 classes on such a long circuit. :/

Quote from Ales_M :

Lfs community at his best , no life kids , shemales and ugly lesbians.

ugly lesbian with a life, at least

It sounds to me like you're all too hung up on sex. I can think of better ways to spend time, sex is quite fun but the clincher is that it's free *shrug* If it cost me money I wouldn't bother with it, but as it's free it's basically something to do when the telly is crap.

I don't get why so many people are all so hung up on sex like it's some ultimate declaration of life long love. Sex is a past time and nothing more.

Leave it too long and it's always a disappointment, the first few times with someone are always awkward. You need to learn each others responses and descover what works for them, and if you wait ages all this expectation builds of what it's going to be like.

So to all you virgins, and those of you above talking like virgins: Get over it already. Seriously.

*shrug* Driving sensibly makes more difference than winter tyres. This isn't a perfect world, and i'm not blowing money on winter tyres and swapping them around all the time for our changeable climate. I make do with what I have - by not being an idiot.

Except to pull the ocassional handbrake turn or powerslide of course. I parked my brother into his office sideways yesterday with him screeming as we came to a tidy stop ... his reaction was absolutely worth any risk to my car versus a wall

On the open road however just dont drive like an idiot - let tailgaters and people driving too fast for the conditions go past and if the snow gets too heavy just don't do the journey ... not because you can't, but because the person who crashes into you can't.

*shrug* it's not rocket science, and it certainly doesn't require me to invest money in a product I don't need and can't afford.

It's clubbing when you pull the loud obnoxious girl who staggers and crashes into the kebab shop and either hits or hits on everyone in sight.

Quote from TehPaws3D :

I also want to hack saw every guys balls into bits and giblets, But I'm not saying that out loud, Unlike you! Crashgate!

Crashgate has a point though, you can't trust something that bleeds for 5 days and doesn't die.

Quote from Williams Press Release :

1 December 2010. Grove, UK. Williams F1 today confirmed that Pastor Maldonado will contest the 2011 FIA Formula One World Championship for the AT&T Williams team. The appointment finalises the team’s line up for next year following confirmation in November that Rubens Barrichello will remain with the British squad for a further season.

Who ?

It's a bit early to have any solid plans for next year yet.

I would like to produce a new game, i've been talking to my brother for years about getting the studio back together again but it never quite happens. Earlier tonight I installed a new 3D engine because I thought i'd have a play with it but it wouldnt work on my PC because my graphics card is so old. Perhaps my first goal for 2011 should be to get a new PC so that I can cultivate new ideas! Because the hardware i've got right now isn't suiteable for development of anything more complicated than web and simple GUI apps, or very crude 3D.

I would like to produce a new LFS broadcast league - but i've been wanting to do that for the last couple of years in the full knowledge that i'll likely never get around to it. There's just so much more I never did with my last series that could be done to really set a new standard, but I just don't have the motivation for it, or the hardware to realise it (my PC cant run LFS with 6 cars let alone a pack of 30). I do some coding ocassionally to move the idea forward but the project needs an injection of passion and motivation that just isnt there for me in LFS at the moment.

I'm definitely going overseas again, I just don't know when or where. I may go back to the Netherlands as i've a few friends out there and I love the place, but Ireland, Italy and New York are also options.

I'd love to return to the race track. I dont want the hassle/expense of owner driving anymore so i'm keen to compete in the DMax kart series which runs an ironman series at different circuits around the country using rental Rotax's, which is about as quick a kart as one is going to find with rentals. The series really appeals to me, but I dont have the budget.

My finances have gone a bit wayward toward the end of this year, and although i've not built up debts - on the contrary, i've almost cleared them - but I am really struggling for Christmas. I'm absolutely confident things will start to improve for me in January but I really don't know how much better things will get.

A lot of how well I do next year is down to how successful I can make the company I work for. A substantial payrise or a change of jobs is definitely on the cards this coming year as I know i'm underpaid for my skillset and i'm in a very employable position. I was headhunted twice last year so i'm hopeful for a good year in 2011 - although i'm already all too aware how quickly things can change. If I lost my job i'd be homeless in weeks as i've no buffer.

Well I planned to return to karting next year but right now I'm in a financial hole and things are really tough.

My personal life is ok though, I've good friends and am partying often. Still not got a love life to speak of but I have a date next weekend so maybe ... Maybe not ...

Had some more loss / death to deal with this year, it's about time somebody I know got married or something, or is this a sign of getting old?

Hi Neilser

You're right that it does need to be more than a byte, 256 options does allow for the possibility of recreating a similarly compatable setup. I'm not convinced 32 bytes are needed, 65536 possible combinations should be sufficiently daunting (2 bytes).

The maths to generate a sufficiently random checksum is of no real consequence, if the numbers come out too similar than all you do is use each field as a seed for a random number generation - then use those random numbers on a bitwise XOR and you've got yourself a totally random but consistent checksum.

Quote :

well i'm off to watch The Apprentice, you'll have to try and seduce me another time because i'm going full screen and wont see MSN

Well there are two approaches to fixed setups, one is to forceably send a setup, but what if a series defines suspension as fixed but allowes flexible gearing etc. A fixed setup would not be compatible with this.

That's why I took the approach of a checksum of parts of the car setup, but I must admit to being fond of a public server being able to deliver a fixed setup too.

Quote from Neilser :

I think I like this idea.
But what exactly do you mean by ""For reasons of security INSIM cannot send setup data"?

Imagine we are practing for a league race, some leagues racers preffer to keep their sets to themselves until after a big race. Especially if ones fuel strategy might be summised from tyre compound/pressure choice. It would not be right for INSIM to be able to capture exact specifics of a setup, but sending a checksum instead gets around this.

A checksum is a single value derived from the multiple input values (ie: 1st gear ratio, 2nd, 3rd, ... 6th, final gear ratio all added together bitwise), from the checksum it is not possible to extropolate what the setting for each field is - but because any change in the input value would effect the resulting checksum it is possible to detect if somebody is running a setup that conforms to series rules by comparing their checksum to the checksum generated by the leagues fixed setup.

Quote from MadCatX :

I like this idea too, but I think that with some effort it can be done even without having the support for setup checksum in InSim I also think that MD5 would work here just fine as you're not trying to hide anything.

MD5 would be needlessly large, an old fashioned 1 or maybe even 2 byte checksum is perfectly adequate for the task.

No fancy technology needed, just good old 70's-80's coding technique Just comparing the checksum of what each user has as opposed to what they should have, with the setup divided into areas for "fixed gearing" or "fixed suspension" series etc.

o.O
https://www.regtransfers.co.uk ... 428911&criteria=wen7y

Shame there's no Y on the end...