"Nothing but the rain"
First communication for the new year of 2019 is a couple of pictures from Gran Turismo photographic mode. The first is my Chevvy over-steering around the penultimate bend on the Sainte-Croix Circuit. You can see a list of circuits here.
This second picture is of my two favourite cars on GT Sport. Both have a really good balanced feel and I’ve raced over 500 miles in the Porsche.
I’m not happy. I’ve been playing Gran Turismo Sport for about six months. I had an issue in the past where my cars disappeared from the garage and I managed to fix that one using a cloud save that hadn’t updated in over a week.
This week it happened again. I remember the game crashed while moving through the menu GUI and I restarted the PS4. Then, I reloaded the game and it worked fine. I had all the cars and I completed the daily workout. I saved the game and then exited the program. Finally, because I thought it was all working well I copied the save game file to a USB stick. After that I watched some Netflix on the PS4 and so I think the PS4 transferred my save file to the PS Plus cloud save.
Next time I go to play the game all my cars, just less that 400, had gone from the garage. Only the DLC ones were visible. So, I try copying the save file form the USB stick, but that one is corrupted. Then I look at the cloud save file but that one is bad.
So, I restore the PS4 using a back up external hard drive from two months ago. That made no difference even though an old version of the save file was there. I think the GT server file must be buggered too.
My final test was to delete the entire game. Rebuild the PS4 database and then reinstall the game with its 60GB of download and then copy the two month old save file from the system restore from the USB stick, I had copied it across earlier.
Nope. Fuck you went the game. You can’t have any of that shit.
So. No cars in the garage but all my progress saved. I am currently pondering starting again from fresh. A complete new game. It’s OK. I’ll have to complete every lesson and test again and also all the circuit experience but maybe that will be fun.
Maybe.
A few communications ago I wrote about the energy consumption of different cars. I thought I would try and give some perspective to this. Now, I haven’t done the mathematics at this point and so will be writing this as I go. I don’t know what the results are going to be.
My car, Bora Horza Gobuchul, uses 50 kWh of energy, roughly, every 100 km I drive. Given that my insurers believe I drive about 10,000 miles per year that’s a grand total of:
8000 kWh per year
Let’s see how much this costs in fuel alone. 10,000 miles is about 200 gallons of petrol, which gives, at prices of £1.20 per litre, £1,080 per year on fuel alone.
I have a small Victorian house. While it is small it has poor thermal efficiency. It has brick-thick walls with no cavity insulation and is draughty. I do have a chimney balloon in one of the chimneys and the other is boarded up. The bathroom and kitchen stick out the back and are cold all year.
I use gas for heating, hot water and hob cooking. I use electricity for some heating and then appliances and light. As the graph above shows I used 10.5 MWh of energy in the house last year [assuming the meters are correctly calibrated]. This cost me £840 for the year.
So, loosely speaking, the amount of energy I have used to transport me and a 1.5 tonne car around is about 30% more than that I’ve used to live in my home. Considering the time I spend in the car is minimal compared to my house this seems a poor deal. Granted, my car moves around relative to the Earth but this just goes to show how much energy is needed for transportation.
The costs turn up the following figures for comparison:
House £0.08 per kWh
Car £0.135 per kWh
I think it’s time to start voting Green. We also need to start a massive system to change societies need for personal, inefficient transport. There needs to be a cultural change and it needs to start now. It’ll take 20 years to change behaviours and it’s quite likely already too late.
A friend mentioned recently that he was thinking of buying a Nissan Leaf 2.0 and it got me to thinking what the running costs are. For this communication I’m not worried about purchase or servicing costs so this comparison isn’t a very good one but it is somewhere to start!
My car, Bora Horza Gobuchul, is a petrol/electric hybrid. Just your standard hybrid NOT a plug in hybrid. So it’s battery is charge either through regenerative braking or excess energy being produced by the engine, when at a standstill for example. My average fuel consumption rate is 55 mpg. Current petrol costs are about £1.20 per litre. This means my current driving costs are:
£6.20 per 100km
This is a variable though. The price of petrol is subject to many factors and changes constantly. The mileage achieved driving Bora Horza Gobuchul depends on how well it is driven!
The Nissan Leaf 2.0 is currently the latest ALL Electric vehicle developed by Nissan. It is a plug in car and so runs using electricity only. The manufacturer claims a range of 168 miles and a battery capacity of 40kWh. My current electricity tariff charges me 15.3 pence per kWh and the driving costs for the Leaf are:
£2.26 per 100km
The Tesla Model S claims a range of 220 miles with a battery capacity of 60kWh. This produces a driving cost of:
£2.59 per 100km
This comparison is VERY basic. It covers just the cost of charging the vehicle. I have not taken ANYTHING else into consideration but I am quite surprised at how much cheaper the electric cars are in terms of cost per 100km for driving. This alone would tempt me greatly if I had a garage where I could park my car. However, somewhere, a space, to park my car every day next to my house is my current dream. That is what happens when you live in a crowded Victorian street.
Just another minor comparison: energy consumed per 100km:
50kWh – Bora Horza Gobuchul
14.8kWh – Nissan Leaf
17.0kHw – Telsa Model S
This just shows the inefficiency of petrol based engines for transport. So, my current plan is: get house with garage, buy Tesla, save the planet.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
And, because some of us are US based, here’s some location in the USA.
Finally. This is a clip of me taking the thing around the Kent Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit:
I think I have finally figured out how to upload decals to Gran Turismo. This means I can add whatever I want (within bounds of decency) to car liveries.
The best bit is I can save video to YouTube!
Now all I need to do is colour match my decals with this website and upload some groovy KSC based colours!
I did a Gran Turismo Race Challenge. There were three laps around the Willow Springs Horse Thief Mile.
On the last corner I missed the tarmac and hit a bump, it was a big bump. The car launched into the sky. I managed to take some photos during the replay. They are below. A good thing is that I don’t know how the car landed. I launched and then passed the finish line in the air and so the race finished!
I went to see if Pixar had restored their story abilities yesterday by going to see Cars 3 at Rochester cinema. The tide was in and the mud flats were hidden from view. I was really disappointed with Cars 2, while it was a fun film it was a shockingly poor sequel to Cars. So, could they do it properly this time?
I rated Cars 3 (2017) 6/10 #IMDb https://t.co/rj2AI18JFs
— Ian Parish (@iparish) September 2, 2017
I was borderline between giving this film a four or a six, see my ratings explanation communication. You see, this film was pretty predictable. It was the same as the first film. I guess that’s the best way to make a sequel, you can just look at The Force Awakens. This film was OK in terms of plot. It seemed a little obvious towards the end, but it worked. I was surprised they bought the voice of Doc Hudson back, but they needed it for the film – just had a quick look and all the quotes were from the first film, so they didn’t need to resurrect Paul Newman.
I liked the idea that Hamilton was played by Lewis Hamilton. There were many other stars of the road included but when you remember this is based on NASCAR you’ll understand why I have no idea who they were.
There always comes a moment when it is time to retire a vehicle or sell it on. For me, it is time to retire The Beast. It’s a rather sad moment. The Passat and I have been a large number of places and I’ve had to spend quite a bit on surgery to keep it going safely.
While this technically wasn’t the first car I owned it was the first one I actually wanted to own. Before I needed to transport p>2 around I had always owned motorbikes. There was a temporary period in my life when I owned a Nissan Micra, this lasted about five months and I’d rather not talk about it.
The Beast arrived in my life in 2006. It already had 90,000 miles on the clock and I think it was used as a rep’s car. There were a couple of odd things about it where paint had been redone poorly and there was evidence that gave rise the to suspicion that it had had a small side impact at some point. Anyway, mechanically it was sound and had a nice “pull” to it.
See this communication for a discussion of repairs and general things Beast related.
The Beast has transported me to the following locations:
It feels like a sad thing. Retiring this car. I’ve owned it for over ten years now. It’s seen me through many phases of my life. But it is now time to move on. To accept something newer.
I know I have a video from inside the Beast travelling around the Le Mans circuit in 2008. I will continue to look for it and post it below when I find it.
So after taking the total to 215,000 miles I will say: Sleep well, Beast.
I’m looking forward to a new motor racing formula that will be debuting soon. Formula E is a new idea for racing where the cars are entirely electricity powered.
The cars look great and having seen some television clips they look pretty fast too. There’re some big name drivers involved in developing this sport further, more on the Formula E website.
This is going to be broadcast on ITV4 in this country and then highlights on BT Television. It’s worth a look I reckon.
I am aware this is quite a low-key communication from me, but I was going to write about Suffolk but you’ll just have to wait. As a teaser I would just say that you should always try to get on the A12 when heading to Kent from the East Coast rather than be completely unaware and realise you’ve gone wrong as you pass Newmarket. As I’ve mentioned Newmarket, have a look at the Suffolk county border around Newmarket – crazy.
It has been quite a few years since I went to watch something at Brands Hatch. The circuit isn’t far from where I live and I used to go an awful lot before getting children. I decided to take the sons and show them what racing is like. I chose to go take them to a club weekend rather than a large event. My reasoning was that it wouldn’t cost me much, there wouldn’t be that many people around and if they hated it after 30 minutes it wouldn’t bother me too much to leave.
We went to see the MG Car Club race weekend. These cars looked good and there were races from Ferraris too. For the race report from the weekend then look here. This picture is from the MGCC website.
This picture shows my sons running up the hill to the inside of Druids corner so they could see the cars racing around the hairpin.
And here is the view from the hairpin.
Put quite simply and without much fanfare:
I would like the drivers in Kent to use their indicators on roundabouts.
The rest of this communication is me making my point but with an associated rant too. Feel free to skip it all. In fact I recommend you skip all the twaddle below.
The main routes I travel around mid-Kent have plenty of roundabouts and navigating these safely is quite a task. Many have lanes marked where most people don’t follow those lanes, in my opinion because the way the lanes are labelled makes it nigh on impossible to drive smoothly (The Running Horse roundabout is a prime example). Also, conversely, many roundabouts have sensible lanes marked and people don’t seem to understand the writing on the roads and why the car in the left lane might be turning right.
Here’s a guide and some specific rants:
A229 and M20 Eastbound interface. This is a curious one which has two lanes for turning right when leaving the M20 eastbound. There is a filter lane on the left to head towards Chatham. There have been plenty of occasions when drivers fail to notice the filter lane and stop at the roundabout waiting for there to be a space in the traffic. This is not the worst offence and actually understandable. You people are forgiven.
The M20 and the A249 roundabout. My general impressions of this roundabout are that people cut lanes and don’t indicate or if they do it’s to address the problem of being in the wrong lane in the first place. Most of these offences seem to take place at rush hour and I guess people think they will save time by rushing and lane hopping. The issue is that you don’t really save time. You just increase your own stress, others’ stress and cause distress.
This roundabout has been updated recently to make space for the Kent Institute of Medical Science or something similar. Generally this roundabout works well, however, I have noticed that some of the drivers coming from the Bearsted direction to travel towards the M20 (straight on) like to indicate right and then not cancel their indicator as they approach their turning. This is annoying.
The not-quite J7 of the M20 roundabout. The road people recently wrote new lane instructions on the road here. They had to change the layout due to new roads and stuff on the A249 towards Maidstone. The new lane markings make excellent sense. It’s such a shame that many people who drive here seem unable to either read lane markings or actually drive and use indicators at the same time.
This is not really a rant about the drivers on this roundabout although I have witnessed one crash here. The council or someone re-designed this roundabout about 5 years ago along with a new by-pass. The lanes don’t work as you have to swerve to make the correct lane as you travel around the circle. Also, when entering from Malling direction there is a ridge that bounces the car light as you travel over it. I first discovered the ridge when I was motorcycling, the rear went loose and I nearly lost control. It’s a very poor design.
The M2 J3 roundabout. I would have to say that the general problem with this roundabout is, well, that’s interesting. I drew this onto the map but am not sure why. I know, let’s go for the general fact that it’s a roundabout and it’s in Kent, therefore people don’t understand the lanes or use their indicators.
The Running Horse roundabout joining Penenden Heath to the A229 and the M20. Whoever designed the lanes on this roundabout never tried to drive them. The lanes do not follow a smooth arc around the traffic circle and in reality you have to swerve across lanes if you follow the road markings.
People do not indicate on this roundabout. This would improve matters. When they do indicate they seem to indicate to move off the roundabout one turn too early.
In the course of my time driving in these areas I would estimate (subject to confirmation bias) that I have seen 3 or 4 accidents here a year. And that’s just at the 5 or so minutes a day that wander here.
Suppose you are journeying from the A229 southbound to the M20 west bound. You would follow the route depicted above. What happens in reality is:
No indicators, no general lane control and head off to M20
This leaves all the drivers approaching from other routes not knowing where you are going and makes them wait whereas had some indication of travel been used the roundabout would flow much more smoothly.
What should happen is:
Those who do use their indicators seem to start indicating left at point C which should mean that they are going down Forstal Road but this is not what happens most of the time.
This roundabout is dangerous. The lane markings on the road itself do not make for smooth progress around the traffic circle. People using the roundabout don’t use their indicators because they are clueless and people use the wrong approach lanes because it will save them a few seconds. Oh, I guess I should also state that people are generally twats and don’t think about their driving and how it affects others’ they just exist in their own cosy little warm world of their car.
I have decided that I shall not rant about driving any more on this website (I might tweet about it now and then) but it is not important enough to warrant my time. Oh, that and the fact that people don’t really read this stuff.
Firstly I shall make a number of presumptions. There’s probably plenty of evidence for these but I am not going to give citations.
I’ve been thinking about the things I moan about. Sometimes I explain those things on these pages, sometimes a short burst on Twitter and sometimes I like to moan to my family or work colleagues. It’s good to let off steam as long as you don’t come across to other people as a moaning bastard. Then again, it’s not always a bad thing to be considered the grumpy one, you tend to be left alone.
So, here goes.
The topics of our moaning need to be generalised. They should be topics that nearly everyone experiences or understands. They should be communal so we all feel involved and able to agree or chide.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the best topics for moaning are:
We all love to join in and be part of a gang. With these topics we can feel part of a gang straight away.
Just because we find cause to moan about these issues, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s getting worse. It might be different or worse or better. Anecdote won’t be able to tell. Let’s leave the details to the sociologists and scientists and engage in ranting every now and then. It’s good for you.
This Fooyah Communication concerns the weather and cars. It does not concern the fact that my car doesn’t like starting if the temperature is below 2 Celsius and nor does it concern the run of cold weather recently. I also have not done any controlled, scientific tests to confirm my observations but I would be interested in doing so.
Observation:
When there is a frost and the cars in my street have ice on the windows the side of the car that is closest to the buildings has less or zero ice.
Hypothesis:
One side of the car is warmer than the other resulting in less ice.
Mechanism:
The nearby buildings radiate heat and keep that side of the car warmer or slow its loss of heat.
Pretty picture:
Cars parked in the road in position A have less ice on the SW facing side which is nearest the buildings in the street. Cars parked in position B have less ice on the NW side which is closest to the buildings there. It is not a phenomenon to do with the sun as both of these positions are shaded from the sun’s rays in the early morning and there isn’t any sun when I go out to the car in the deep dark midwinter.
Most of the houses in these streets were built around 1880 and so have brick-thick walls and no cavities to insulate. Therefore they radiate the heat energy of the house quite efficiently. I need to park my car outside a modern house with cavity insulation to see what effect that has on the frost of the car.
Some not-very-sciency-maths-stuff:
I have made a huge number of simplifcations in the following calculations but the order of the result will be about correct and if it isn’t then I am sure that one of the F5 +1 will let me know. Essentially I have estimated the amount of energy lost by the air in my whole house and have assumed that about one third goes through the front of the building (the roof is quite well insulated). I have also assumed that the bricks of the house will lose some heat over the night and that this is radiated out although some will be radiated in. Then the car absorbs the energy without any loss. Basically, the final answer is a big ISH.
So the car absorbs about a couple of Watts per metre squared. That seems about right, but what do I know? Thermodynamics freaked me out at college!
I am officially a member of the Michel Vaillant club, I think.
I have the letter but I need to read it, carefully and slowly! I don’t really speak French. If I really struggle then I’ll ask some people at work to read it for me. We have many language specialists!
Along with previous posts about driving [Thank you and Throttle] I would like to add this short rant.
I have noticed a number of people recently who take the slip road to join the motorway (mainly the M20 near me) who decide to continue at the mediocre speed they were doing before the motorway.
This is clearly dangerous. The whole point of the slip road is to allow traffic to match the speed of the vehicles on the main carriageway. Most traffic seems to travel near 70 miles per hour on the motorway so heading down the slip road at 40 to 50 mph is just plain dangerous. It’s no surprise that I get annoyed when my safety is put at risk because another driver on the road doesn’t have the confidence to drive at a proper speed.
The highway code says [my emphasis]:
259
Joining the motorway. When you join the motorway you will normally approach it from a road on the left (a slip road) or from an adjoining motorway. You should
- give priority to traffic already on the motorway
- check the traffic on the motorway and match your speed to fit safely into the traffic flow in the left-hand lane
- not cross solid white lines that separate lanes or use the hard shoulder
- stay on the slip road if it continues as an extra lane on the motorway
- remain in the left-hand lane long enough to adjust to the speed of traffic before considering overtaking
Put your foot down please and stop endangering my life.
About six years ago I found myself perplexed! I would see a car out of the corner of my eye and think “ooh, there’s a nice looking car”. It would only hit me when I looked properly that it was a BMW. I hadn’t liked any BMWs until this time and I found it distressing that they had changed their general style and were now good looking.
Finally this balance has been redressed. The latest BMWs that I have seen on the roads are back to ugly. I think they look stupid. All is well with the world again and everything is correct.
An Aside
The Range Rover Evoke is a horrible looking car. The designers are genius because it seems to be the latest fashion accessory. Ugly but selling, perhaps they should be pink as well? If I had designed it I would be crying with laughter all the time. The BMW X6 is just as bad.
The recent seasonal events on Gran Turismo 5 have made me need a selection of good cars at different PP (performance points). Gran Turismo applies Performance Points to each car so that you can race cars of similar performance and know that you are evenly matched. I have selected, not very carefully, the following cars for the indicated PP. I have learned that it is best to have as much power as possible and to increase the ballast to counteract the power increase.
For the 400PP races my car of choice is a BMW Mini of all things! But it works well and thrashes the opponents.
A 500PP race gets me heading to my Lancia Delta HF Integrale Evoluzione ’91 for a non-race car. If I need a race car then I seek out my RE Amemiya AsparaDrink RX7 ’06.
A 600PP race and it’s the McClaren F1 ’94. Soemtimes I might use the Ford GT LM Race Car SPec II, you know, just for kicks!
For a 700PP race I turn to my beloved Mazda 787B. It’s a gorgeous car and was one of my favourites in a previous incarnation of Gran Turismo.
We tried searching for films suitable for a sensitive 2 year old and all the interwebs came up with were:
So we bought Cars from eBay.
It’s brilliant. The sons love it and have watched it about 10 times in the last week.
As expected from Pixar this film is really well written and directed. The artwork is fantastic and the detail is awesome.
I said to wonderful wife that I thought the cars suspension moves the wrong way when they go around corners. She replied
that’s your issue with a film with talking cars?
Fair enough. Although I guess they could have cool active suspension so the side of the car on the inside of the corner is lower rather than higher than expected. Essentially a car rolls to the outside of the corner not the inside, hey you could have cool lever linkage also!
Anyway, great film and sons obsessed with racing cars! Brilliant.