Lego 60 – Model 70911

It’s a mini-Lego season soon and for reasons that shall remain hidden some of the Lego has already been made.

The Penguin Arctic Roller
The Penguin Arctic Roller

Looking rather ’20s here is Penguin’s Arctic Roller. Another view here:

Peguin, The BatMan and the Roller
Peguin, The BatMan and the Roller

SBL Fixed (1300)

A weeks ago I noticed that the Cinema Amp wasn’t outputting sound correctly. I managed to figure out what was causing the issue, I had turned on HDMI control to make it easier to turn the whole system on but that changed the sound field settings. While it might now take three separate buttons to turn the TV on and hear stuff it now all works as it should.

Except for the Surround Back Left speaker.

In the room there are nine speakers. These cover the following:

  • Centre
  • Left and Right
  • Surround Left and Right
  • Surround Back Left and Right
  • Passive sub fed through the main L and R channels
  • Active Sub fed by it’s own low freq channel

While playing Gran Turismo Sport, which is rather more than a hobby for me, I noticed that the sound output from the Surround Back Left wasn’t as loud as it should be. Even by changing the channel levels I couldn’t get the sound up to a decent level. SBR was on -5dB and SBL was on +5dB but this didn’t work. It is also a rather unsatisfactory solution.

I have had a few bits of work done in the AV corner. There was a new electricity meter installed and something might have happened when that was fitted. Also, the speaker wires to just the SBL and SBR were reasonably poor quality. Swapping the speakers confirmed that it wasn’t the speakers that were playing up. So I had to face it that either the wires were bad or the amplifier was broken somehow. The cheapest of these to investigate is the wires. While I was at it I decided to tidy up all the AV corner and give it a clean at the same time.

While out at Lakeside earlier today picking up some cakes I popped into Maplins which is slowly closing. I think they have gone in to administration but I did think I might find some cheap wire. I came out of the shop with plenty of wire for a very cheap price, about 10% of what it’s worth. I also bought a hard shelled case for use as my “Range Kit”.

Maplins' loss is my gain
Maplins’ loss is my gain

When I got home I decided to fix the whole problem of the speaker. I knew this was going to take at least ninety minutes. Getting into AV corner isn’t the easiest and everything was going to come out.

AV Corner
AV Corner

So, all the kit was removed. Everything was dusted and then the two cables to SBR and SBL were replaced and connected to the correct ports on the amp. Once that was done the system was tested using the speaker test tone and to my (slight) surprise the whole system seemed to be working correctly and also, most importantly, SBL was working properly. I had fixed the system.

Not really wired
Not really wired

The above picture has the amp and ONLY the speakers, TV ARC connected and a line out to the Sonos system using the phono plugs. After this the 4 HDMIs needed to be connected along with the 8-port switch and networking cables.

 

Not tidy but functional
Not tidy but functional

Once it’s all in the cabling at the rear of AV Corner looks like the above picture. I know it’s not pretty but I don’t have access to the rear of the devices and so it’s all kinda chucked in and then left. If I could I would have a tower system and then very neatly wire the whole thing while looking directly at it.

This communication is subtitled 1300 because this is communication is number 1300 that has been published. I’m proud. There are more to be completed, they are sitting there in draft form, I will get around to them one day soon.

Blancpain

Part Two Of

“The Weekend Of Noise”

I spent a few delightful hours at Brands Hatch over the weekend to watch the Blancpain GT Series Sprint Races. I do like this type of car. I think I have grown out of F1, it’s not that interesting and full of masses of bullshit. I prefer the “honesty” of GT and Le Mans Prototype type racing. This closed-wheel racing seems more fun and spectacular. I know these cars don’t really bear much more than a passing resemblance to their road-going cousins but I like the look, sound and overall racing of these vehicles.

Audi R8 LMS
Audi R8 LMS

The first part of the WEEKEND OF NOISE was a trip to Norwich for Thrashersaurus. This was the second part of the weekend and my ears were still ringing from seeing Xentrix play the Brickmakers.

The day started with a free pitwalk and a chance to get close to the cars and drivers. Hence the above picture.

Anyway, the first race watched was the GT 4 European Series with many cars on the grid it was pretty good but there was a number of safety car periods and this stifled the racing somewhat, but it did mean there was a good lot of close racing.

I did like the KTM cars which had a lovely rear end.

After that was the first of the sprint races for the GT series and the hour of racing included a pitstop and driver change. It was an impressive sight and good fun to watch. The weather was perfect, lovely and sunny. You know it’s summer when the circuit commentators are reminding spectators to put on plenty of sunscreen.

The beginning of the race was a rolling start and I captured it here:

As I watched the race from the Brabham Straight I got to see the podium celebrations:

Final Podium
Final Podium

It was a good day with plenty of noise and ice cream.

Audio R8 LMS GT4
Audio R8 LMS GT4

It’s very nice being back at Brands Hatch. It’s the place I spend an awful lot of 2004 and 2005, almost every Sunday. Not sure I could have that commitment again but a couple of times a year seems a good start.

Just because I can, I decided to have a go racing a similar race to the GT series on Gran Turismo and, just because I like most of you, I have uploaded that replay on to YouTube. Enjoy (or not).

Racing Miles

Having looked recently at the energy I use in the house and while driving I thought I’d turn my attention to not-real things. Specifically my racing life within the game Gran Turismo Sport.

Pink Collection
Pink Collection

Here is a collection of my pink cars taken in Hawaii. I like the photo mode in the game but it’s not the be all and end all for me. I have seen some people comment that the car editing and photomode tend to be their favourite parts but not me. I like racing the cars and the other aspects of the game are incidental.

There’s a page of achievements that encourages you to play more:

Achievements GT
Achievements GT

The row of pink is lacking as that is online racing and it’s quite unlikely I’ll get those filled up. Unless I find “that one race” I won’t get many pole positions, I need to find “that one race” and play it over and over.

So, the achievements page will give actual figures and from that I can work out my average speed and fuel consumption.

GT Sport Time
GT Sport Time
GT Sport Distance
GT Sport Distance

So, my average speed is 96 miles per hour. Given that some tracks are quite twisty I think that’s a pretty good speed. Even more so that I have spent the time to complete all the licence tests and every track experience. I do tend to race in group 3 or 4 cars as I find them the most fun.

GT Sport Fuel
GT Sport Fuel

I have used 8,567 litres of fuel within the game to race 9,242 miles. So, I’ve done that maths and that gives:

4.86 miles per gallon

I have no idea how this fits with real racing cars. We can have an estimate I think. Current F1 cars have a tank that can hold 100kg of fuel which is about 125 litres. F1 race distance is mandated at at least 305km. I’ll do the maths for you again and the fuel consumption turns out to be around:

6.8 miles per gallon

I guess that this all seems reasonable. A high fuel consumption within the game that matches the real life is probably closely worked into the game and I’m happy with the figures the game has produced.

I don’t like the use of miles per gallon as we should, by all rights, in this country use the standard of litres per 100km as the rest of the EU does but people don’t really want to change, especially those old weirdos in power and the media.

My current GT Sport Profile:

Current Driver Profile
Current Driver Profile

Lego 58 Model 42065

There was a mini Lego season recently and this is the first beast from that. Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the RC Racer:

42065 Side
42065 Side

This beast uses a lovely little IR transmission system. It’s pretty well designed and have 4 channels just in case you are near other systems.

42065 Head On
42065 Head On

Possibly the only drawback is that the battery pack takes SIX AA batteries, but then that does give a decent about of power. It’s the same battery pack as the Excavator I built about a year ago.

Exposing The Innards
Exposing The Innards

In this picture (above) you can see the right (front) and left (rear) motors along with the battery pack and IR receiver.

42065 3/4 View
42065 3/4 View

Tomb Raider

Having ranted and raged about the entitlement in the film Peter Rabbit you might be interested to know that I’m going to completely ignore the quantities of privilege in this film.

I went to the cinema. We know the drill. I write something about the tide without even knowing when that started, but knowing it was a coded reference to the time of day within a movie review because I went when I shouldn’t have. The tide was middling. For a while I was the only person in the cinema and that would have been nice for the whole film but people came in. I think my record for a film is me and one other person, two sad gits together, not that we were together but you understand.

My routine in the cinema is to normally stuff my face with either ice cream or hot dogs [don’t tell the vegetarian police] and then I read a book on my kindle-phone app while stuff non-feature-film occurs on screen. I don’t watch adverts and I watch each trailer once unless it’s an important film [Star Wars, Blade Runner] in which case I don’t watch. Some trailers I watch a little of before ignoring them because I know I won’t be going to see it [Mama Mia 2]. The book I am reading currently is

Dressing for Altitude, U.S. Aviation Pressure Suits-Wiley Post to Space Shuttle – By Dennis R. Jenkins

It’s a free e-book from Nasa and it is quite fascinating. It’s technical enough to challenge my understanding and written well enough to keep me interested. I have read a book on the X-15 program mostly while waiting for films to start and that one was brilliant. Quite technical writing has also helped when I’ve been broken and unable to think about things properly. Having decent technical challenging data and writing restores the balance of logic in my mind when it’s been screwed over. I do still intend to write about the two main times I’ve been quite mental but getting that stuff down in text is going to be hard.

So, the film, Tomb Raider. I rated it on IMDB and now is where I point you to the communication discussing the rating system and then I normally comment that the scoring system is broken and I may get around to addressing that at some point.

I enjoyed this film. I didn’t enjoy the two women behind me talking constantly through the film but I still enjoyed the film.

Let’s face facts: it’s a film based on a best selling game. Therefore we don’t expect it to be great. We expect it to be clichéd and full of stupid action. Guess what? It is. It was a perfect film covering a good game series. It was probably better than the Jolie version and that’s saying something as I can be a bit of a Jolie fan.

In all honesty, if you want a decent movie in this genre then you should watch Raiders Of The Lost Ark. It does all the things that this film does but far far better. But. Indiana Jones isn’t female.

A couple of minor points that struck me in this. When Lara is riding her bike around London, which is looking lovingly cosmopolitan and resplendent, her chain/gears creak. I’m not sure if this was designed so that we know she’s cycling, I mean she is peddling, but no decent biker would put up with that creaking. They would fix it.

The next point is people in these movies seem to get punctured in many un-sexy ways and yet they don’t bleed out or get infected. It’s almost like they are fixed within minutes and able to run around at 100%.

Finally, Hannah John-Kamen was in this movie for about 3 minutes and it was lovely to see her in something where she isn’t playing Dutch. I am currently watching Killjoys on Netflix and she stars in that show.

Rationalisation

I spent some time yesterday dusting the AV corner in the lounge. There’s a fair amount of kit there and dust had built up. While doing that I realised that I don’t need the PS3 there anymore. I don’t play it. I had kept it lying around for GT6 in the days before GT Sport. Now the game is on the PS4. There are probably a few legacy games I will miss but I don’t have the time to play them!

This is a picture of the cabling I cleared out:

AV Kit
AV Kit

I decided I don’t need the Blu-Ray player connected to the LAN, nor the Amp. It’s likely I don’t need the Blu-Ray player there at all because of the PS4 but I’ll leave it there for another day.

MV 22B

I spent real money on a computer game add-in. Like I really pressed the “buy” button with the full knowledge that it was going to cost me money. However, I think it was worth it. I have spend actual £ on an F-18, and F-35 and now a MV22B Osprey.

There are real ospreys that fly over Lake Bassenthwaite in the Lake District and now I have my own [made from steel, although more likely carbon fibre as it’s a very expensive aircraft].

MV-22B Keswick Approach
MV-22B Keswick Approach
MV-22B Head-On Lake District
MV-22B Head-On Lake District
MV-22B Keswick Take Off
MV-22B Keswick Take Off
MV-22B Lining Up With Runway
MV-22B Lining Up With Runway

What a lovely looking beast. I haven’t managed a successful landing yet. But I will keep trying.

Correction

In this picture from yesterday’s communication I noticed that the author has named Graham Hill. The downhill section from Druids to Graham Hill Bend.

Brands Hatch, Kent, UK
Brands Hatch, Kent, UK

By John ChapmanOwn work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

This naming is incorrect. While that section of track is informally called Graham Hill it is not named anything officially.

The corner is most definitely named Graham Hill Bend but the downhill section is name-less. It is occasionally and informally referred to as Graham Hill, but clearly should be called Graham Hill Hill if it was going to be named correctly.

Corners Not Mastered

Here, just for fun, is a list of corners I still strugglw with in Gran Turismo Sport. I can’t consistently take these corners in a manner that makes me feel I’m getting the lowest lap time.

Brands Hatch, Kent, UK
Brands Hatch, Kent, UK

 

Mount Panorama, Australia
Mount Panorama, Australia

 

Monza, Italy
Monza, Italy

 

Nurburgring GP, Germany
Nurburgring GP, Germany

 

Nurburgring Nordschleife, Germany
Nurburgring Nordschleife, Germany

 

Spa Francorchamps, Belgium
Spa Francorchamps, Belgium

 

Willow Springs, USA
Willow Springs, USA

 

Suzuka, Japan
Suzuka, Japan

 

Interlagos, Brazil
Interlagos, Brazil

Lo-Tech

I clicked on a click-bait type link on Twitter a few days ago and watched a video for the Light Phone 2. It’s a lovely looking basic phone that does phone calls, messaging and alarms. This has got me thinking [a rare event I know!].

Perhaps it would be good to just have a phone. A device designed to make phone calls. Send the odd text message. Not a lot else.

This morning as I thought these things I felt a sense of release from the pressure of modern communication. There was a release growing. The freedom to be away from connections. The freedom to not know what is going on.

So, I’ve been looking at basic phones. I have a plan to use a basic phone. To get one and leave the smart phone at home and just have the basic phone. Get rid of the connections to the world. A chance to be free when I want to be.

I can edit this website at home. I can use a camera to take photos. I can read a book. I can removed myself from the constant drivel and pain that following the news brings at the moment. This is looking like a very real prospect for me. A chance to recapture my freedom and to learn to live my life again. And I say that as a committed tech follower.

Garage Issues

Spent a short while last night reading through some discussion groups about how to fix my garage issues within Gran Turismo Sport mentioned in this communication. I found a good level of discussion over at GT Planet and came up with a possible method for returning my cars.

I am a member of Playstation Plus and so my saved games are backed up regularly to the PS+ servers. If the save data there is old enough I might be able to download that save file and restore my garage. There was an anxious wait while I started the PS4 and hoped that it hadn’t uploaded my save file anytime in the last 48 hours. When I could see the remote storage space I did indeed see that the game save file was over a week old. I think this is largely to do with me turning the PS4 off correctly rather than leaving it in stand-by mode all the time. I suspect that if I had left it in rest mode the remote save file would have been newer and I would not be as cheery today.

I was able to download the remote file and overwrite the local version. Then I had to start the game and wait.

The game loaded fine and the car shown on the homescreen was, in fact, one of those that had disappeared. So, I was confident that my cars were back. Shortly after that the game must have synced some information with the GT servers because I received 4 cars for completing my “daily workout”. My money wasn’t restored and the few races I had done over the last week were blank again but at least there was success in getting my cars back.

So, thanks to me turning off the PS4 and not using rest mode I think I have managed to restore the garage and my happiness. Once I did get into the garage it turns out I have over 200 cars and my initial estimate of 100 was quite low!

Now it’s fixed:

Here’s the photo that I wanted to take a few nights ago that started this all off:

EBM Ferrari at Monza
EBM Ferrari at Monza

Garage Failure

I am annoyed. Very annoyed and if I make it through this communication without using expletives I will be fucking impressed.

Yesterday I logged into Gran Turismo Sport. I wasn’t going to play but you get bonuses when you’ve logged in for 100 days etc and I thought a couple of minutes looking at the new user content would entertain me.

On the screen the Monza scapes icon was glowing with a little red dot meaning I hadn’t looked at it since the last update. Well, I thought, I could take a couple of photos of my own cars around the iconic circuit. So, I opened up the Scapes option and then chose a decent corner with some nice rumble strips. Then I went to add one of my own cars to the scene and that is where rage starts.

I ONLY HAD 26 CARS IN MY GARAGE

I have spent a lot of in-game credits building up my garage with lovely new cars and a few of them I have used for a significant amount of races and set them up so they behave in a way that I can drive fast.

AND THEY WEREN’T IN THE GARAGE

Somehow, about 60 cars have disappeared from my garage. They don’t show up in my custom liveries as they aren’t IN MY GARAGE.

I am going to get in touch with support at some point and I hope they can fix this. I am quite annoyed. I have earnt around 20,000,000 in-game credits and so have spent around that much too. I am so pissed off I might even have to say “bollocks” to this game and just fucking quit.

If the magicians can get my data back then I will be happy. I’m not even sure why that particular group of 26 cars still exists in the garage. My main concern is that every time you make an action in the game it saves the data. It is possible that the save file with all my cars in has been over written many times. I’ve also tried rebooting the PS4 in case it has some bizarre reason to do with the machine itself but no success there. Fuck this shit.

Racing The Ring

In a follow up to this communication I’ve spent some time getting to know the Nurburgring and I’m getting there. These two videos show the same lap just from different perspectives. There’s the TV view and then the front spoiler view. The front spoiler view is the main one that I race with.

Enjoy.

More F5

I suspect that you are going to get bored of these over the next while as continue to mess around with the livery editor in Gran Turismo. These next few shots are another F5 livery I created. It’s a Japanese car this time, my next one might end up being a Ford F150!

F5 Number 5
F5 Number 5
Nice Ass
Nice Ass

This livery is called Sylvana for obvious reasons. Perhaps you want to ponder the union flag being so prominent when I care not for nationality?

Finally, here’s a photo, just because it looks beautiful.

Moody at Nurburgring
Moody at Nurburgring

Arctic Hiding

When I’ve finished racing in Gran Turismo and don’t have time for more detailed races I sneak over the the livery editor and create car liveries. This feature is surprisingly more fun than I had expected.

Gran Turismo has a feature where graphic files can be uploaded and then added to the cars you design. However, this has meant I have had to learn how to edit SVG files and mess around with a graphics editor. For whatever reason the file size for upload is limited to 14kB. This isn’t a great deal and means you have to be quite creative within the editor software. The SVG format is perfectly sensible but Microsoft don’t really deal with them, however, there is a free editor available, I use Inkscape.

This car livery is my own design, even the polygon arctic camouflage pattern. I think it looks good:

Arctic RAF
Arctic RAF

This is partly based on an RAF Jaguar scheme, I might try and look up some more planes and get a decent version of each. I know the car is German, but it still looks good.

Snowy Jaguar
Snowy Jaguar

Here are some snow views of the car:

Arctic RAF
Arctic RAF
Arctic RAF
Arctic RAF

A Livery Company

In the new Gran Turismo it is possible to design the paint scheme for cars, helmets and racing kit. I’ve done some terrible versions, trying to get use to the UI, and now I have finally created quite a nice looking car.

Aston Martin Vantage
Aston Martin Vantage

This is an Aston Martin Vantage for the Fulham Five reprobates. I’ll try and get some more shots because not all the detail is visible from here. I like the wing mirrors.

How'd It Get There?
How’d It Get There?

And, because some of us are US based, here’s some location in the USA.

F5 in NYC
F5 in NYC

Finally. This is a clip of me taking the thing around the Kent Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit: