I quite enjoyed the Silverstone races yesterday, wet track always makes it fun. Darren Turner has right to be annoyed at Giovanardi and he's right by saying he's not a worthy champion making stupid moves like that.

Tim Harvey, Mat Jackson and Michael Doyle were 3 drivers of the day to me, Harvey's Porsche race was fantastic, my jaw dropped after seeing him 4th after 2 laps!

Mat Jackson winning race 3 of the BTCC from 13th on the grid was very good too! He is probably the best out there in the wet.

and Michael Doyle in his 5 year old Honda Civic finishing 8th in race 3 from 17th on the grid is a brilliant result, they're known as the smallest team in the BTCC and he's working wonders with that car - he even passed BOTH Halfords Honda Civics which are at 2008 spec, not 2003 spec like Doyle's car! Future champion I feel - like Andy Jordan, I just hope he has a better budget behind him for a more up to date car next season.

Quote from kirmy :

nowhere near as good as mid 90's touring car standards

I always love it when people say that... Having watched BTCC since the mid 90s and seen videos of full races down to 1991, I have to say, the driving standards then were even worse than they are now!

I seem to recall Steve Soper in particular being a bit of a twat.

Don't get me wrong, I love the BTCC in all its forms over the years, it's a fantasticly close championship (almost) every year, but people who say driving standards were better in mid 90's... That statement is wrong.

Quote from Blackknight555 :

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
These r just sum of the things i am tryin too get down on paper so as to make a plan an try an stick to it....


(quote)Im here 4 a long time...not a just a great time.........

A bit of advice for advertising the team, using full words and grammar is always a good bet - even when you're not advertising the team and just doing general forum posts. Saything things like 'r' instead of 'are' and 'wot' instead of 'what' really doesn't make you look good, it makes you look more childish than anything.

Radiohead - The National Anthem

Quote from STROBE :

Never been myself, but you're not the first person I've heard to say that.

Now take couple of photos I took... Count the cranes (especially in the first pic)

It doesn't look to bad in pics, but in person the place just looks awful!!

Plus as I said before... the atmosphere is very threatening, everywhere you go.

It's about 10m higher than it was when I was in Dubai nearly 2 years ago. Their builders are building so much that things are done very very slowly!!

I've been to Dubai once, never again will I go there, I hated the place, felt threatened by the people and the place is just a massive building site/dump.

I love that combo, not driven it for about 10 months though. (then again i've only driven LFS for league purposes in the last year).

I remember one of my best races came from starting 20th on the grid (out of 20) and after 10 laps managing to win the race at the last corner with a good clean fight with everybody on that server!

I bought my entire computer from ebuyer in just components... In April I ordered a motherboard, processor, memory, graphics card and PSU. They all came less than 12 hours after I ordered them! (next day similar to tinvek).

And last week I ordered 2 hard drives and took the next day delivary option for an afternoon delivary (between 12:00 and 5:30 i think it was) and they arrived at 12:15pm!

I know it's not all ebuyer, but they deserve praise for getting things dispatched so quickly, and in recent times City Link seem to have managed to get their act together pretty well too!

I'm gonna have to drop out of my spectator slot unfortunately, found out today that I'm in London that weekend.

Radiohead - Bones

Quote from Jakg :

just need to move my hands as i turn.

Generally, turning requires you to move your hands - so yes, it will help.

Radiohead - Idioteque (Live)

Quote from Dajmin :

I'm starting to look for my first car now, but I've not had much luck finding a Seat Leon in my price range. I really like the mk1 Focus, but I never hear good things about Fords so I'm a little put off.

I can recommend a mk1 Focus, I drive one and it's an excellent car. Had 4 problems with it so far - none mechanical (1 freak window blow-out with de-misters, crap tyres that Ford put on it when I got it from them, crap Ford brake disks that warped and a puncture)

I do drive it a bit hard sometimes (only when I know it's safe, I'm not the sort who wants to crash it), and it's a very good car to drive, good fun too, and even the 1.6l has some poke in it! They're very solidly built too!

Ford hardly stands for Fix or Repair Daily in my eyes... I've had it for 317 days now, and it's only been to the garage 4 times (2 of those times were for tyres as mentioned above, 1 for new window mechanism after the blow-out and the other time for brakes) So really it's Fix or Repair every 79.25 days... minus the 3 that were general wear and tear/crap tyres it's fix or repair every 317 days.

In short... if you get a Focus or any Ford, ignore what the idiots say who've never had one, take the word from people who own them and love them (which is the majority!).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/7534890.stm

Quote :

A Kent car dealer who was sent flying when a van struck a barrier was shocked to discover the driver was the German ex-Formula 1 ace, Michael Schumacher.
Martin Kingham, 39, said he was closing the security gate at his premises in Lydd on Sunday afternoon when a Fiat van struck the end of it.
The barrier hit his leg "sending him spinning" on to the bonnet of a car.
Police called to the incident said they helped both men to swap details and no further action was needed.
Mr Kingham was unhurt, while only minor damage was caused to Schumacher's van in the collision outside Millfield Motors, just before 1600 BST.
'Penny dropped'
He recalled how the police officer called to the scene said: "That chap is claiming to be Michael Schumacher, and I said, 'You know what, he doesn't half look like him'.
"Then the penny suddenly dropped. When I phoned my business partner later and told him that you'll never guess who I've been run over by, he wouldn't believe me.
"Obviously being a car salesman we do like a wind up but the difference with this story is that it is actually true.
"Michael's entourage turned up and he left."
A spokesman for the seven-time Formula 1 world champion confirmed the incident had taken place and that Schumacher had co-operated with police.

I laughed.

Quote from LineR32 :

Try system restore.

Won't work... System Restore won't remove viruses, most of the time they embed themselves inside the system restore so if it's used it just makes the problem worse.

Has nobody seen this regarding fuel prices?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7518516.stm

The price of oil has dropped in the last 2 weeks, and finally it's having an effect at the pumps!

Quote from tristancliffe :

Nobody has managed to explain what the black flag meant. It can't be for a problem with the car, as that is a black/orange flag, so presumably either BTCC don't understand basic MSA regulations, they are just out to get Plato, or they have different rules for 'professional' drivers.

It's the only BTCC race I've watched in the last two or three years. A shitty diesel, terrible driving standards, stupid commentators... It'll be another three or four years before I watch some more. Unless I become a moron and think crashing into each other is racing.

And then people have a gripe about paying £10 to watch club racing, where there is more clean passing per race than in a BTCC season, plus about 10 races per day.

Cue the usual tosser ruining a perfectly good touring car discussion (as ALWAYS happens here)

p.s. I'm confused now... I think that just links back to your own pic - so different from anyone... I FAIL

EDIT... I'm right... I FAIL!

/me runs away

Quote from danowat :

I think ITV4 have done well with the TV coverage this season, the support package is still only ok.

The SEAT thing was wierd, can't understand how both cars can have problems, how does the success ballast work out for the next round?, maybe the SEAT's think they may have struggled with the ballast?

The ballast for practice/quali and race 1 goes by championship positions. race 2 and 3 goes by previous race results

Quote from Bean0 :

Instead of the usual Clios/Porsches/etc we got to see some lycra-clad blokes huffing and puffing their way around France.

D- ... Must Try Harder.

i turned the TV off for a few hours between the coverage.

Yeah SEATs race 3 was a mystery.

I don't think it was sandbagging, surely a high profile team wouldn't sand bag when they were over 20 points off the championship lead at the time and even more away from manufacturers and teams championships, now back to over 30 points in the drivers championship after race 3.

But it sure is good to have the BTCC back after a 6 week break!

Bring on Oulton Park!

Oh and as a side note... ITVs coverage was actually pretty good yesterday for a change! More driver interviews than normal, certainly adds to the coverage more!

Quote from mcgas001 :

The passenger came out worse in the BMW because she wasn't wearing a seat belt.

I hope you tell your insurance company that, and if they don't believe you all they'll have to do is look at the damage on both cars and the severity of her injuries for something like that.

Audioslave - Cochise

I suppose I better add what I like about LFS.

- Skinning is easy, viewer is good.
- UF1 is a great car - if only tracks were just as great

I'm running out of things now...

Quote from Velociround :

There are just a lot of things why I love LFS:

1. Best physics ever. (I spend many hours just playing LFS, watching replays, going around with Shift + U, watching the physics in slowdown, and I never get tired)
2. LFS World is just perfect, I'm using it as my Windows desktop right now
3. Best Graphics
4. There are a lot of tracks and cars, and we are getting more and more.
5. The development is amazing, looks like the devs work on LFS everytime, there is always a TEST patch coming on and every time I download it I get just amazed on how much things they've done to the game. And I always love to help, even if I get just a single bug report.
6. There are a lot of servers online with so much people to play it at anytime
7. The best Multiplayer mode I've ever seen! 32 people on a server, and no lag.
8. Skins are just perfect. You can edit them in just any image editor and do whatever you want! how could it be better!?
9. Incredible damage system, even on the car body. (just needs a bit more work but its still incredible and I can't complain on that)
10. The game with the highest FPS ever. A MX440 is a lot more than the necessary to play it on high settings (even though I have a 8600GT)
11. Easiest game to play: put it anywhere, click on LFS.exe and you are racing. No need to reinstall when you format windows, no need to reconfigure after reinstalling windows, the game still the same thing no matter what you do [changing directory, format windows, etc]
12. The people on the forums, on the servers, the devs, everybody I've seen are incredible, they are friendly, easy-going, they make you Welcome to the game and playing with them is worth it. I visit LFS website and forums everyday, though I don't speak so much
13. The game is cheap. Though here on brasil it costs R$100 (Reais), but this is the normal price to every PC game.
14. Configuring a steering wheel could never be easier: connect to the PC. open LFS. Turn it to one of the locks, then to the other lock, and you are ready to play properly.
15. and of course, a lot of other things but I have no time to mention them here

Question... Have you EVER played another game, EVER?

Ultimate fanboy of the year award right here!

I particularly like - Best multiplayer - no lag.... what the feck? Play rfactor online, touch another car lightly and amazingly it DOES NOT go into space like they do on LFS... LFS is down to LAG.

Also the Best Graphics... Just no... Honestly... NO.

I am quite interested to see what you have to add to that as you suggested at #15. ? See what else i can laugh at.

At work we use cans of compressed air (go through about 3 cans a week of it!) and a hoover to suck out the dust. It's the best way of doing it. To get some of the worse dust out of the fans, a paint brush is good to loosen it up before using the compressed air.

My journey to work averages 8 corners per mile (1 mile to work, and 8 corners).

I'm guessing you have about 8 corners for your entire journey to work?

Do corners include or exclude turning to avoid wildlife?