First Autocross

Went to my first autocross on Nov 13th. It was the coolest fucking thing I've ever done. I was a little nervous at first. Didn't want everybody thinking I was a poser and was worried about the vibe at the event. I guess Midnight Mayhem at the drag strip made me somewhat apprehensive. It was definitely a dick measuring competition there, so I figured the autocross would be somewhat the same. It definitely wasn't.

For those of you that are unfamiliar, the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) usually has regional meet-ups for people to drive their personally owned vehicles around a coned course. These autocrosses are usually time trial-like events with drivers only racing the clock. The course we used that day was in the same area as the Formula Drift competition two months earlier. Suffice it to say it was a big course. This is the only shortcoming of most autocrosses, since they are held in large parking lots the courses are usually small, running about 20-30 seconds from start to finish. Thankfully my first event was about a 90 second course. Perfect for me starting out as I wanted something to stretch the car's legs.

In the days leading up to the event, I came to the conclusion that if I was prepared and took it as serious as I could people wouldn't bother me that much. I practiced on the autocross maps on Live for Speed and drove the GTI hard to get reacquainted with the car's handling (it is the wife's daily driver, after all). I would be using the GTI because it was more mechanically reliable than the MazdaSpeed3, has newer tires, is more forgiving at the limit and could be run in automatic if I chose to do so.

The wife and kids came last minute to sit in the Mazda as a support car. It was fun driving around with Val on the way to the speedway, she'd gun the GTI a little, I'd catch up and make Vin Diesel comments at redlights (been trying to convince her to hoon a bit in the cars with me late night, cops be damned). The first sign that all my worries were unfounded came as we arrived late for registration. Everyone else was still somewhat bleary-eyed and moving at a leisurely pace. I heard several comments about how too damn early 7am was for an autocross. I got my stickers on the car, passed tech inspection and rented a helmet. Since I was a new driver, a walkthrough of the course was mandatory and gave a lot of insight. I had pad and paper out during the walkthrough and mapped out the course to the best of my ability. I started estimating the exit gear for each corner then stopped writing when I realized they all were pretty much 2nd gear turns. After a brief driver's meeting, I lined up the car and waited. Val and I had walkie talkies in each car from a prior road trip to communicate.

Everything I could possibly do, I had done. Changed the software on the car to 100 Octane ignition timing, filled it with 100, mapped out the course and placed that map on the dashboard for reference, went over and over the turns in my mind. I had 3 goals: don't spin out, don't get lost on track and don't knock over any cones. Basically don't do anything noob-ish. As I got closer to the starting line, 5 cars back, 3 cars back, 2, I began to feel the inevitable butterflies in the stomach from anticipation of doing something I've done virtually for hours on end to a reality in just a few seconds.

ESP off, helmet strapped on nice and tight, transmission in Sport (shifts faster than me anyways), lined up number 1, brake fully depressed, throttle to the floor, revs capped at 3000 for launch control. There was a right turn before the timing gate; any cones knocked over there turned into an automatic DNF. Green light waved, brake released and away the little Golf went! The throttle does still need to be feathered for the best launch. I killed the throttle for the right turn and the floored it after I straightened out. Don't know what speed I was at the first turn but a funny thing happened. All nerves completely disappeared and instinct fully kicked in. It was almost like a switch, 1 second it's there, the next it's completely gone.

Throwing the VW into the turns was amazingly gratifying. There was hardly a second on the track where the tires weren't screaming. Kinda felt bad since it's tires were pretty new, but damn it felt fantastic! On my second run, another driver asked to sit in the passenger seat with me. I told him it was my first event so I didn't know how helpful I'd be, but it'd be fun anyways. So I practiced the old "Top Gear" schtick of talking and driving hard. He kept asking me if it was my first time throughout the course, so I guess I left a good impression. We ran a total of 4 runs for the morning group. I had my best run the 4th time out. Ran 86.3 seconds. I left at about noon, not staying for the afternoon group.

After all was said and done, I turned in a decent time and accomplished all of my goals. Talked to some great people and had a fantastic and really laid back time.

Sad day at the speedway

Didn't expect my first Indycar race to go like it did today. Race was barely minutes long when almost half of the field got taken out:

Very different being there than seeing it on TV. Very surreal. Drivers were just getting into their groove and I was going to start timing some laps for myself with my phone, when the accident occurred. Everybody in the grandstands stood up after the first hit, expecting the normal crash, but one car after another kept getting hit. It was a pure holy shit moment. Of all the years I remember watching the old Indy series with Dad growing up, I don't ever recall a crash as bad as this one.

After being taken by MercyAir downtown, Dan Wheldon was announced dead 2 hours into the red flag. Here are my meager clips for austerity:

There's not much else to say.

iRacing Vid

And to celebrate the upcoming Las Vegas Indycar final on Sunday here are a few laps of mine in iRacing with the Dallara Indycar :

Indycar Parade on the strip

On one of those rare occasions I venture down to the strip: Took the fam down to see the Indycar Parade tonight. Ended up being slightly too far south and neglected to get a great video, but it was really cool nevertheless. All the drivers made a helluva show for their first return to Vegas in 7 years. Bet they had fun too. I was impressed how deep the 3.5L V8's bass note was. I was prepared for the high pitch revving sound but, man, they all made for an amazing rumble. Its made me really excited for the Championship on Sunday. It should be a good time. Hopefully, they'll make a lot of money and come back next year. Anywho here's a vid:

Holy shit, son!

No posts for over a month! Talk about a high stress time. Couldn't cut a break for a long ass time, but seeing as everything is good now, I'll start posting more. In the mean time here is a an old pic I drew on the DS Colors program!

The Yeager

Formula Drift Qualifying

Went to my first officially sanctioned racing event on Friday. Been trying to keep an eye out at the speedway for events other than NASCAR. This was the first one I was interested in. Formula Drift was in town for Round 6 of their championship. Was a late night event with practices starting at around 7pm with qualifying ending sometime during the night. With high 110 degree weather in Vegas, night racing is the only way to go! 'Twas pretty cool for me. Wanted to go back on Saturday night but decided to stay home with the family instead. Need a goddamn babysitter! Still got a free ticket for the IndyCar Las Vegas GP in October that I was going to go to anyway, so all was awesome. Here's a vid (forgive the shakiness of the Flip):

Red Orchestra 2

Older Red Orchestra 2 vid highlighting the realism in shooting weapons. If you've never played the first Red Orchestra, it had one of the most realistic shooting mechanics ever created in a first person shooter. While COD or games like it are more twitch-based and make you feel real accurate right off the bat, Red Orchestra was the closest you could get (with a mouse and keyboard/gamepad) to actually handling a real weapon. When a weapon had recoil, you'd actually have to push the weapon down while shooting and could change out gun barrels when they got overheated in light machine guns. No running and gunning. Run, stop, get your breathing down, steady your rifle on a vertical surface such as a wall, fire, click twice on the mouse to work the bolt to eject the shell and continue.

While most people wouldn't really appreciate the amount of realism in a game such as this, it really adds to the sense of immersion. This type of realism/immersion increases my enjoyment with a game, as it gives a great sense of success when you get pass the initial learning curve.

Anybody ever feel the sense of accomplishment when you first started up an aircraft switch by switch in a flight simulator? It's the same kind of feeling.

Give a look if you're only slightly interested. The dev team started out by winning the "Make Something Unreal" mod contest, so they are "boots-on-the-ground" gamers at heart.

Fuck Call of Duty

Glorious of glories. This is multiplayer warfare!

New Flight Sim?

Naw, son. It's Arma III! Set View distance to 20km. New processor and video card may be required.

My Childhood in Four Minutes from Videogames Live!

Val and I first saw this at Videogames Live! in Henderson. It was played at the return of intermission (which is when we arrived having been stood up by our babysitter). Great vid and the audience reaction was equally great. Hollering at the top of their lungs. Certainly brings out a lot of nostalgia. Props to Chris Scullion of UK Official Nintendo Mag for making this.

Race Room Fresno

Race Room, cool place to go or...

RaceSimCentral link

Tied to the SimBin franchise of games, these are more common in Germany. I know LAN gaming centers all have whiffs of the old Battletech sites of the late '90s, (for some reason they don't have the one in San Diego's Hazard Center listed, weird):

Wikipedia Link

...just another form of BatteTech waiting to die out?

But I still wouldn't mind going to something like this in Las Vegas. I even called the 3wire LAN here and wanted to see if they'd do a GT5 tournament. 'Twas a no-go. Still Race Room is pretty interesting.

Wait, you're not seriously posting school papers on your blog?!

Yes and no. Hopefully, just this one.

Too Long Didn't Read (TLDR): If anyone you meet says they like Ayn Rand,

punch them in the face and run.

I vant to suck your laissez-faire capitalism!

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged and the Hypocrisy of Objectivism

On the 15^th of April 2011, the movie Atlas Shrugged Part 1 was released in a limited number of theaters. Atlas Shrugged is the first part in a purported trilogy of forthcoming movies based on novelist Ayn Rand’s book of the same name. Part 2 and 3 are still stated to be in production and will see release sometime in 2012 and 2013 respectively. The movie Atlas Shrugged Part 1 is the brainchild of John Aglialoro, a self-proclaimed follower of Rand’s philosophy: objectivism. Mr. Aglialoro, CEO of Cybex International and a self-made millionaire, optioned Mrs. Rand’s magnus opus for $1 million in 1992 and launched its development independently. (Timpane, 2011) Believing it was necessary to get Mrs. Rand’s message out to a new generation of individuals and also achieving a personal goal of visualizing a movie of one of his favorite books, Mr. Aglialoro was arguably obsessive with his movie’s inception. What would or could cause a man to devote 19 years of his life and an exorbitant amount of money into a project adapting a novel from 1957? Is he mad or is there a sane reason behind such devotion? What is objectivism and is it relevant today?

To begin to talk about objectivism one must first start on its creator: Ayn Rand. Mrs. Rand was born as Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg, Russia to a bourgeois family of non-practicing Jews. Her father was a successful pharmacist that ran his own business. During the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, he saw the entirety of his professional accomplishments confiscated by the state. This caused Ayn’s family to move to the Crimea, where Ayn finished high school. They returned to Saint Petersburg, renamed Petrograd, where due to the revolution women and Jews were allowed to enter the state university. She enrolled in Petrograd State University, majoring in history. Shortly before graduating, Rand was purged from the university along with 4,000 other bourgeois students. When a group of visiting Western scientists took notice and complained to the Communists, Ayn and other third year students were allowed to be reinstated. She graduated from Petrograd State University in October 1924. A year later, Rand was granted a visa to visit relatives in Chicago, Illinois. Due to tightening US immigration laws, Rand had to convince the US embassy that she would not abuse her visa and stay in America. She stated to them that she was engaged to a Russian man, loved him deeply and would return to marry him. In reality, she decided never to return to Russia and even planned going into Mexico or Canada to await permanent status when her visa expired. Her mother Anna is said to have sold the last of the family jewelry to fund Ayn‘s trip, most of which was long ago bartered for food during years of communist-induced famine. Ayn traveled by ship to America. She stayed with her extended family in Chicago for six months, one relative of whom owned a movie theater. Through a film distributor, that relative was able to secure a letter of introduction for Ayn and her extended family raised $100 to pay for Ayn’s trip to Hollywood. Ayn’s goal in Hollywood was to become a screenwriter. Letter of introduction in hand, she was turned away at Paramount Pictures, the employment office telling her no screenwriting jobs were available. Allegedly, while waiting at the Paramount front gate Rand had a chance encounter with Cecil B. DeMille. When asked what she was doing here, Rand told DeMille her story and the director invited her to a backstage tour of his movie set. This tour lasted for a week and culminated in a job as an extra and eventually a place to stay at the Hollywood Studio Club, where DeMille’s wife sat on the board of directors. Ayn changed from being an extra to a script reader. Rand married an actor, Frank O’Connor, in 1929 and tried to get work as a writer. Her big break came in 1932 when she sold her first screenplay “Red Pawn” to Universal Pictures. She also had a stage play “Night of January 16^th” produced in Hollywood and Broadway that same year. She published “We the Living” and the novella “Anthem”, before hitting her first major success with “The Fountainhead” in 1943. The Fountainhead introduced some of the concepts that would later become her philosophy of objectivism. While working in Hollywood on a screen adaptation of The Fountainhead, Rand began writing what would become her greatest achievement in fiction “Atlas Shrugged”. Published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged dramatized her unique philosophy in an intellectual mystery story that integrated ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics and sex. (A Brief Boigraphy of Ayn Rand) It was a best-seller for seven months and ended up selling more than a million copies after five years. It ensured Rand’s financial security and established her next role as a public philosopher. After Atlas Shrugged, Rand mainly worked on books espousing her objectivism and conducted many speaking engagements across the country. With her husband’s death on Nov 9, 1979 (my birthday coincidentally), Ayn began to become somewhat depressed. Her last work before passing away in March 1982 was an adaptation of Atlas Shrugged into a screenplay for a television miniseries. At her funeral, many of her old colleagues were present, including Alan Greenspan. A floral arrangement in the shape of a dollar sign, much like her favorite lapel pin, was present as well. (Ayn Rand) She was 77.

So what exactly is objectivism? Simply put, objectivism is the promotion of individualism over collectivism. When explaining her philosophy to a group of Random House salesman prior to the publishing of Atlas Shrugged, one salesman asked Rand if she could explain her philosophy while standing on one foot. Rand stood on one leg and stated, “Metaphysics: objective reality. Epistemology: reason. Ethics: self-interest. Politics: capitalism.” (Heller, 2009) Rand posits the only moral purpose in one’s life should be rational self-interest. The ability of a man to do and become whatever he can in life on his own means without conflict from the collective: communism, fascism and socialism. She believed the only true free government was the one created in the United States, but expressed further that the only moral government is one that includes a laissez-faire economy, the complete and utter separation of the government and economy. The rights of the individual and the limit of that government are held above all else. Moreover, her objectivism is an all-inclusive philosophy that has a basis in ideas that are somewhat noble at first but in practice and at least in Rand’s very own fiction are heartless. Case in point, Rand abhorred the classical character of Robin Hood. Anyone stealing from another individual that worked hard to achieve all his material wealth was considered by Rand as morally evil. She took it further though to imply spreading that wealth to the “moochers” is also morally evil. Her character in Atlas Shrugged, the pirate Ragnar Danneskjold, is the polar opposite of Robin Hood. He seizes relief ships sent from the United States to Europe with the intent of giving back payments of gold to the creative people it was taken from. He steals from the poor and gives to the rich. Altruism, Rand thought, was akin to suicide.

Recently a resurgence has occurred in the popularity of Ayn Rand’s writings. Atlas Shrugged stills sells 150,000 copies annually, it sold 500,000 in 2009, and it is currently number 50 on Amazon’s bestseller list. Its ideas have struck a chord with an audience today. Pushed by deposed Fox News television icon Glenn Beck in June 2010, it has become a favorite must-read novel of the Tea Party and political libertarians. Signs stating “I am John Galt” or “Who is John Galt”, a main protagonist in Atlas Shrugged, are known to show up at Tea Party meetings and rallies. In a nation split into those wanting more federal regulation of Wall Street and those that wish to keep federal interaction with the economy minute in scope, the scenarios put forth by Rand could be construed as a reality that is just around the corner. Will the government reach a point of social economic control? Is socialized medicine the end of the American way of life as we know it? Will we become France? These are the types of questions that way heavily on the mind of people that want smaller government.

So does the present-day world have any current underpinnings of Rand’s dystopian novel? The answer I believe is no. Not just to take out an easy target, but to iterate the irrelevance of a philosophy so far removed from the socio-economic landscape of the modern world; Rand’s philosophy is dangerously stuck in the past. The money that is made nowadays is far from what even the richest of individuals were making in the decades of her life. CEO pay, for instance, has increased from a ratio of 42 to 1 of the average worker salary to 300 to 1 in 2004. The middle class continues to dwindle and the gap between rich and poor grows wider. The old adage is true, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” To ally oneself to a wholly ethnocentric view of “moochers and looters” versus us, breaks the totatlity of our economic system into a black and white world. This is absolutely untrue. There are shades of grey everywhere. Objectivism and moreover the situation in Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged is nothing more than masturbatory fantasy for a select group of selfish intellectuals. Who in their right mind, believes that they are so important to this world that they can never be replaced? If all of the nation’s most industrious minds refused to continue to innovate would our world stop? The answer again is no. There are too many talented workers and lower level individuals that I believe would step up to the challenge; people that would never have the opportunity to do so normally. Anybody thinking they wouldn’t be easily replaced is wallowing in their own arrogance. There will always be somebody willing to do the work you refuse to do. I believe objectivism was created by a heavy-handed and disassociated person living in her own little bubble. Much like the creation of Fox News in a sea of liberal news channels, objectivism is the eventual antithesis of Rand’s childhood growing up in a communist world. For those that enjoy analogies: objectivism is to communism as Fox News is to MSNBC. They are extremes at both ends of the social spectrum and in my eyes any extreme is dangerous. One of the most important flaws of objectivism is the inability to take the simple human behavior of greed into account. The same greed that causes any economic bubble to burst and the same one that caused our Great Recession. In no way, can the primary goal of acquiring wealth be separated from the baseline of greed it implies. And while Rand never states acquiring wealth as a goal in objectivism, the warping of her philosophy have led many of her followers to believe it is the only goal to strive for.

Compassion above all else is the most important moral one should have and hold high. Compassion upon looking at one’s fellow man not as a looter or moocher but as a human being. A human being with aspirations and dreams just like yourself. Altruism in and of itself is not suicide. President Obama once said that it was our capability to have compassion for one another that defined us as human beings. I believe in this thought. I must maintain my faith in humanity. The soulless pursuit of money cannot be looked to as a moral standard. If everyone cared for only themselves, doctors would stop saving people’s lives, police officers would not answer 911 calls, firefighters would not save people from burning buildings. Extended families, relatives and legendary directors would not have the compassion in their hearts to help an immigrant in her time of need; to provide her the chance of a lifetime and become somebody that eventually considered those types of altruistic acts of kindness as morally evil.

The loss of sense of scale gaming or the Call of Duty-ing of our gaming subculture CONTINUED

TLDR: Multiplayer gaming started to innovate with BF1942, but began to stagnate with the introduction of Call of Duty to console players.

In fact, Battlefield popularity reached a high-point during the invasion of Iraq. Desert Combat, a modern day total conversion mod for BF1942, churned out map after user-created map days after the real-life battles. Players were able to play the Battle of Basra the day after which it occurred. This garnered the mod visibility on news outlets such as CNN. An impressive feat, considering the only other PC mod to ever gain attention was GTA's Hot Coffee.

The very next year in 2003, the first Call of Duty was released. Running on a heavily modified version of the Quake 3 engine, Call of Duty provided a tightly-scripted experience highlighting a few key single player mission mechanics: the reinforcement countdown timer (where players were tasked with defending an area against overwhelming odds until reinforcements arrived a.k.a. the angels on our wings mission), the unlimited enemy spawn position (where a front line of enemies would continuously spawn until you advanced on the objective), and the use of ironsights as a precision aiming mechanic. Though not the best-looking of games on it's release, it did provide many exciting set-pieces not yet seen in the over-saturated WWII genre.

Stalingrad, the best level in the game.

Stalingrad, an exact copy of the first few minutes of Enemy at the Gates, was a particularly good anti-thesis to Medal of Honor's D-Day landing. If you were unfortunate enough to play the level first on the console-released Finest Hour, you didn't know what you were missing.

Multiplayer, on the other hand, was never Infinity Ward's strong suit. In Call of Duty, it was just another batch of tried and true deathmatch and team deathmatch the only unique aspect being the replay of the player's viewpoint that killed you. Besides being a fairly cool gimmick, this also cut down on any issues of hacking, though some argued it allowed inexperienced players an unfair advantage against an experienced sniper.

Multiplayer was finally improved later, through the Gray Matter-developed expansion pack United Offensive. Vehicles were allowed in multiplayer in the form of tanks and jeeps. Base Assault was a nirvana of team multiplay and is still great today. Teams would defend and attack three hardened control bunkers. These bunkers would require heavy bombardment from tank shells, explosives or artillery strikes to break down concrete outer walls then would require infantry to capture the objective a la Battlefield.

Even More to come...

Men from boys.

This is what a true simulation is about:




Tire wear is 100x for display purposes. But it's still an amazing feat. Tire modeling is the most important aspect of sim racing. Just like tires in real life: "it's where the rubber meets the road". The one thing that will connect you to the feel of the road surface and eliminate that "floaty" or "ice-skating" feeling. Here the rFactor guys accurately simulate deformation, wear, heat/friction and it's affect on grip, and flat-spotting. The flat-spotting is especially impressive since no one that I know of has accomplished it this well. With iRacing 2.0, rFactor 2 and Forza 4 coming out, it's a pretty damn good year to be a sim racer! Flight sims, where you at?

Churn of Duty.

Good article on bit-tech.net about the next Modern Warfare. Speaks my thoughts exactly. Check it out here.

Fiat 500 Abarth coming to the US!

We finally get a good version of a European staple:

According to Fiat's twitter feed it will be introduced at the LA auto show. Some autosites have even speculated a power bump for the US Abarth. Why is the Abarth's introduction to the US so noteworthy? As Americans we always get the dumbed down version of nicer European cars, due to tough emission and safety standards. With automakers like Fiat and Alfa Romeo just now beginning to re-dip into the American market, it's slightly worrying that they would not bring their A game and eventually 'cede from these shores again. The Abarth is Fiat's A game. By sheer fact that it is going to be introduced, gives hope for enthusiasts to maybe see other staples on these shores. The future seems positive. Now at last, we can start the long healing process and maybe forgive Ford for not introducing this:

Bastards. Here are some other superfluous shots, but of the Fiat 500c:

Mini should be very worried.

Crazy Aussie cars.

Love the VXR8. It's actually an Australian HSV Clubsport R8 Supercharged by Walkinshaw Performance or SuperClubby for short. Love the whine from the supercharger. Skip to 1:07 to hear it. I don't know what is with Australians and superchargers. Must be because of Mad Max's car. We got a version of this car in NA under the Pontiac G8 GXP badge, but to create this car on these shores you'd need a custom hood,then a Walkinshaw Supercharger and tune. If I had the money and wanted something unique this'd be it.

The loss of sense of scale gaming or the Call of Duty-ing of our gaming subculture

TLDR: FPS multiplayer is moving away from innovation and just sticking to CoD-like deathmatch, which wasn't inherently where CoD came from in the past.

With Battlefield 3 soon to be released in October, I wanted to take time to reflect on the lineage of vehicle-based multiplayer gameplay. Back in 1999, if you were playing any PC games chances are you remember a little game called Codename Eagle.

Codename Eagle

This was DICE's first attempt at an online multiplayer game with an emphasis on vehicle based combat. Though I didn't get a chance to play the game when it initially came out, I played it a couple years afterward based on recommendations of Battlefield 1942 lineage. Suffice it to say, it really seemed more like a beta-test of 1942 than a real game. Buggy and the controls were not good. Around the same time as Codename Eagle, team-based multiplayer was alive and well with the Counterstrike 1.6 mod. In fact, most multiplayer games of the late 90s early 2000s were based upon deathmatch and team deathmatch modes i.e. Quake & Unreal Tournament; with a little CTF thrown in for good measure. Most of these games were fought on smaller scale maps with an emphasis on fast-paced, close-quarters gameplay. Of them, Counterstrike became the staple by which others were judged by. It could also be argued Counterstrike was the first game to successfully implement objective-based rounds (Terrorists vs Counter-Terrorists). But going back to vehicle-based multiplayer: around 2001, Operation Flashpoint Cold War Crisis was released.

OpFlash still ugly in it's day.

This, like Codename Eagle before it, allowed you to control several vehicles in singleplayer and multiplayer including coop. Flashpoint also introduced players to a huge sense of overall scale in their gaming environment with the original island measuring over 100 sq miles. But unlike Codename Eagle, Flashpoint had a high learning curve to it, it was after all an infantry simulator first and foremost. So while a great game in it's own right, it's popularity remained only for the hardest of hardcore. The following year riding the high of an E3 2002 trailer comprised of "live ingame action" EA released Battlefield 1942.

The original trailer, trust me it was amazing back then.

Here was a game that revolutionized the multiplayer arena. All vehicles, ships and gun placements were player-controlled, 64 players were available on most maps with the maps retaining a great sense of scale, it introduced conquest: a multiplayer mode that simulated an ongoing battle by relying on a respawn ticket pool affected by the amount of captured flags. Now you didn't have to just kill another person to win the game, your whole team had to pull together for a common goal. This was a breath of fresh air for me and others like me that grew tired of the frag or be fragged games of the time. Those were fun for a while, but innovation felt like it was the only way to move forward the FPS genre. Battlefield 1942 enjoyed many years of popularity involving two expansion packs: Road to Rome and Secret Weapons of WWII.

More to come...

Older drag vid.

Not the best run for me:



R/T.......1.367
60'.........2.469
330'.......6.459
1/8........9.743@74.96mph
1000'...12.584
1/4.......14.985@94.24

Was running the APR Stage 1 100 octane program on street radials with the spare tire removed. Lining up in the car was hard due to the DSG. I'd have to stop, roll a little to set the christmas lights, stop, engage launch control, look up, realize I was too far back, roll forward some more, wait a second to engage launch control again, then go. Not as easy as a manual. Engaging and re-engaging launch control is a huge pain in the ass. It always took a few seconds before engaging. That green light comes up hella quick too. Several times I was caught messing with launch control when it dropped. Still fun though. My best of the night unfortunately wasn't videotaped: 14.811@95.80mph. In the future, I will definitely just be using 91 octane gas. The extra HP and torque from 100 octane doesn't necessarily mean faster 1/4 mile times for FWD cars. Too much wheelspin off the line.

Some Arma II vids

Found this one on my hard drive the other day:



Never posted it because of the frame rate issues. So I made another one on Saturday. This was the best one. It's only 42 seconds but I like the unscripted death.



Nothing like Arma II fireworks to cure the workday blues!

The search continues...

Finding Captain America to watch online has been friggin aggravating. Harry Potter and Thor were easy enough to find. Captain America is proving difficult. Most of the ones I find are the 1990 Captain America film starring Ned Beatty. I remember watching that film on cable with Chris. At the time, we thought it was alright. Man, how wrong we were. Anyways, enjoy the trailer:

Harry Potter 7 part 2

So just finished watching Part 2 online. Whole moral for the Snape backstory? Weeman loov bastards!

Pic

Also I've posted this picture of Cameron Diaz for all you that went to see Bad Teacher this weekend.

She's so hot!

FB friends amount

This one completely baffles me. Everyone always seems to have a problem keeping up with acquaintances on FB. Having a friends list of over 50 people is absolutely ridiculous. Like you really want to see everyone's updates of inane bullshit. "Went to MacDonalds two secs ago. Had a Big Mac! Yum!" Dwindle that list down to the people you really care about and want to hear from. Block everyone else. Be selective with that shit. Pull a DeNiro, let only a few people in the inner circle. Periodically evaluate everyone on your friends list. "Okay, way too much cut and paste political viewpoint from you...[Delete] Too much whining from you...[Delete]" Leave only the people you would actually call, care about, make you laugh or are separated by incredible distances. It's a good thing that you'll never see or hear from that summer camp lover again. "I fucked this guy? He's a goddamn tea-bagger." Nostalgia has it's merits. Do your part, get your list to double digits! Quit whoring your social network out!

Sounds like promiscuity

Apparently, I'm getting married to some girl tomorrow. Well, renewing our 10 year vows. I have to say a few sentences in the ceremony. I don't really like being in the spotlight though, so it may be harder than it seems. Don't know where the nerves came into effect. Probably has something to do with being in the military and having all creativity and individuality beat (mentally) out of you. I seem to recall memorizing plays in one day in elementary school, performing solos for JV band in middle school and not being nervous. Sucks having a lifetime of foibles that determine the amount of nervousness you get in front of an audience. Before I would be too cocky to get anything like that wrong. Something along the lines of, "Fuck these people, I'm gonna nail this speech." But siphoning off my jesus-fire to other people has left me a hollow shell of the person I once was. That and going against everything that ever made me a person and re-enlisting. Still remember that one call back home. "Hey, Dad, my enlistment is coming up. I'm thinking about getting out. Can I come home and live there till I get on my feet?" Few seconds of hesitation told me all I needed to know. "Well guess that door's closed." Still, I should've gotten out and hit the ground running after 4 years in. Could have gotten an air traffic job then too. Mais, c'est la vie. But you know what? "Fuck nerves, I'm gonna nail everything from now on"

+1 Internets

I thought about explaining the name of the blog, but figured someone could google-guess it. Suffice it to say, I seem to read books with the some common themes in them, be it Repairman Jack, the Hyperion Series etc. Good reads. +1 Internets for the first one to google-guess it.

It's a smart match.

Since getting out of the military I have been toying with the idea of facial hair as a standard fashion accessory. Originally opting for what I consider a Margera-like goat, I settled on extended chops. But lo and behold, after a year of chop action, their placement seemed to be steadily lowering to neck beard territory. This was enforced by the comment of a few people on FB. I have currently decided on the trimmed straight sideburn/goatee combo for a few purposes. One, the goatee nicely covers up an unsightly double chin, two the straight sideburns are an automatic step up from the grungey-ness of the neck length chop. (No matter how you trim chops you'll always look like you could use a shower.) And finally, with the darkness of the beard and me eyebrows, I consider myself looking rather dashing. I call this look the Will Turner. Named after the venerable protagonist in the Pirates franchise. See observed examples. And yes, it is a smart match.

The Margera, Neck Chops, The Will Turner

No you dant'nt!!!

Yes. Blogosphere descruction not so imminent. Creation of new blog to expedite evolution of logosphere-created supreme AI. AI god by name of Netron. Posts begin...now.

May god [sic] have mercy on our souls. (Netron)

Netron circa 3405AD