Month: April 2022

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All Gold – Licence Tests – Gran Turismo

Today was the day I managed to complete all Gold in the Gran Turismo 7 Licence section of the game. I had been struggling with the final test which was a drying lap around Spa in some crazy-assed Porsche. I struggled so much that I even watched some YouTube videos about completing the lap. I spent around 300km yesterday going around Spa and in that time I think I managed to complete about THREE laps. I constantly went off track or crashed. Today I spent another few hours working on this. The idea being that the track settles in my brain over the night time and I get better each day. I’m not sure I got better because it took another 395km to get a lap completed within the Gold time. I did find that I was getting better at Eau Rouge and was generally coming off in the later part of the lap more and more so I knew I was getting better and it was only a matter of time before I smashed it!

It doesn’t look much, the video. But trust me. It took a fuckton of effort to get to that point. If you touch the wet line you are fucked. If you touch a kerb you are fucked. If you accelerate too much in some corners you are fucked. Basically you are pretty much fucked at every stage of this track. You need to pull off a perfect lap and also make sure you don’t crash on the last few corners which you only see a few times because you spend the rest of the time in the chuffing barrier.

Here’s a map of Spa and here’s my list of troublesome corners in this test:

  • La Source
  • Eau Rouge
  • Radillon
  • Les Combes
  • Malmedy
  • Bruxelles
  • Double Gauche
  • Las Fagnes
  • Paul Frere
  • Blanchimont
  • Chicane

That’s right people, pretty much every shitting corner caused me problems and I crashed regularly at every single one [except Kemmel]. Obviously I crashed most at La Source because once you’ve crashed there you can’t crash anywhere else around the circuit.

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It’s Beautiful And Hard Work

I’m clearly still playing Gran Turismo 7. I have the PS5 version and I have to say it looks absolutely amazing. The lighting is fantastic. I’m enjoying the game but it is quite challenging and I’ve struggled at a couple of the licence tests and also some of the circuit experiences.

I took quite a while to complete the Brands Hatch circuit experience mostly because it was in a Radical and they are a touch twitchy as you head around the track. I got there but it took about an hour. I’m currently on about two hours of work on the final licence test. I’ve passed at the silver level but I really want a gold. That would mean I have every licence at gold level and I would consider that an excellent achievement. The test is around a drying Spa circuit in a 1970 Porsche beast that doesn’t like a single wet patch. You have to really stick to the dry line around the circuit and so you don’t have any room for error. I’ve found it so frustrating I’ve even watched a few people on YouTube to get some tips.

This is not a helpful comment - GT7
This is not a helpful comment – GT7

Sometimes when you come off the track again at any of the bloody corners – I’ve crashed at every corner multiple times – you get this chap popping up onto your screen telling you to watch the demonstration. At first this seems like good advice but after two hours of trying and seeing this comment multiple times you end up telling that person to “fuck off” whenever they show up. I almost want to scream “leave me alone”. It’s emotionally challenging and I’m not sure how I will feel when I finally shave the last three seconds off my time and get gold.

Air Display while at Spa - GT7
Air Display while at Spa – GT7

At least the whole game looks amazing. The above clip is from a race at Spa and these aircraft I could only hear while the race started. I couldn’t see them from the car. I had to go to the replay to see them. Such attention to detail is pretty good. I also think the lighting in the “winner” screen is gorgeous and it makes me feel good:

Winning screen - GT7
Winning screen – GT7

Right. I have to get on the PS5 to have another day of swearing at the Spa circuit and hating my car.

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Volcano – Satyricon

I got some Satyricon albums when I was due to see them as part of a festival in 2014. The festival got cancelled and I didn’t end up seeing this band. I might have listened through this once, I’m not sure. I didn’t like it.

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Morbius

So, yesterday I took the short trip to Cineworld at Rochester to see the Sony Marvel film Morbius. I had booked to see something about a lost city but have decided to see that film over the weekend. I might try and find somewhere with a 4DX cinema to watch a film as it’s been a while since I’ve seen one of those. Luckily for me Ashford Cineworld has been upgraded to a 4DX. Unluckily for me Ashford is at the other end of Operation Brock – the massive queue of lorries on the M20 trying to cross the channel. I start these communications by saying what state the tide was in as I approached the cinema and I can tell you it was low. All the mud bank was showing, the barge was in its own little pool and the water was very low. See this picture.

Medway At Rochester Low Tide
Medway At Rochester Low Tide

After I watch a film at the cinema I then rate it on IMDB and there’s a whole system about how that works. See this communication about how I decide what score to give a film. Then, when I am active on Twitter, because I have times when I remove the app from my phone – it’s not a healthy place to be -, I tweet the result to my millions of followers so they can see what I thought.

So, what did I think of this film? It was boring and unimpressive. I wonder if we’ve reached peak superhero? I know that I generally don’t like superhero films and this one was one of the worst I have seen. It was all pretty standard and just “meh”. There are a couple of things I made a mental note while watching to try and remember to write about and so here we go: Morbius’ pin is the “last six digits of pi” reversed and I wasn’t sure whether to burst out laughing or not at this. Was this deliberate or a pure accident? Pi, when expanded in decimal number system, is an irrational number and so there isn’t a last digit of pi. Was this a clever joke or a stupid mistake? I’m not sure. Morbius requires human blood but there’s no explanation why it has to be human. The bats don’t drink the blood of other bats. Why would he need to drink human blood? This didn’t make sense. Also, at the end of the film his girlfriend – who appears at first just to be a co-worker but then they kiss on the roof tops and that was definitely NOT mentioned before that point – turns into a vampire thing because Morbius bit her. What? How did that happen? Why did that happen? This movie is a load of crap. Oh, and at the end in the final big fight the two chaps seemed to fall a good few thousand feet off a building which wasn’t really that high. I’ve no idea how this happened. Oh, Morbius gets a lab from come counterfeiters but then doesn’t really use that place for anything except building a centrifuge which he could have ordered from Amazon a lot easier.

I did watch Joker recently on Netflix after Smith recommended it. I was told there isn’t really any superhero stuff in it. This was a good film. Joker is more a social commentary than DC film and there are plenty of lessons within. Don’t waste your time with Morbius. Watch Joker instead.

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Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses – Slipknot

I’ve had this album playing while I’ve been sorting out my SSL certificate on this website. So, given the music has finished I’ve been working on this for about an hour. I’d like to say I managed to do it all myself but I had to employ some lovely people at my hosting company a few times to guide me through the process. I think it’s something I did about two years ago so it’s unlikely for me to remember all the things I have to do. I also find that terminology changes between help pages and the actual webpages that you are trying to edit so it can be a pain sometimes when you aren’t sure if you are doing the right thing.

This album has some awesome songs on it, mostly I think I know them from the Antennas From Hell live album but they are still good songs. I highly recommend The Blister Exists, Duality, Before I forget.

It’s a Slipknot album. It’s what you expect. Chaos and noise. It’s great.

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How Long To Platinum?

I was a little upset the other night as I had finished a particular championship on Gran Turismo 7 and I got the ending movie! I wasn’t expecting it so soon. I’m hoping they add more championships over time but there’s still plenty of game content for me to work through. Apparently I have 294 trophies to get through to unlock the platinum trophy. Now, I have never unlocked a platinum so maybe I won’t make it but it is something to aim for. I had the following in a nice email from the Sony people:

GT Finale Email
GT Finale Email
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Everything’s Connected

I have been quite impressed with the capabilities of the PlayStation 5. The graphics look amazing, the load times are impressively short and the sound is great. They recently added the ability to link screen captures into the app on a mobile phone making it much easier to save images and videos from games. I can now save a short video, get it on my phone and then send it anywhere I want. This is brilliant. PlayStations have had the ability to directly share with YouTube and Twitter for a while, they might even do Faceshit but I don’t really do that one. Having said that it’s impressive that I can now get this stuff on my phone I’m going to show you some captures I made recently and then uploaded to YouTube.

This first video I captured from Gran Turismo 7 was me driving a Ferrari thing and absolutely smashing it. I really enjoyed this short test. This most definitely wasn’t the first go at this licence. You see, the first go is generally learning about the car; how good are the brakes, how well does the thing turn in, what’s the oversteer like, what’s the engine sound on gear shift? Once you’ve got a grasp of all of that you can then start with a solid run to get the licence and then build up to the limit to get the Gold. Well, that’s how I do it.

This video is another Ferrari but this time a complete circuit around Monza. I really enjoyed this but it definitely wasn’t the first attempt. See the previous paragraph.

The final video I put on YouTube, for now, is me completing one of the Super Licence tests which is a complete lap around Interlagos in a Pagani. This took quite a few attempts and was good fun, although I don’t really like the accidental change into first at the last slow corner.

Getting Gold on every licence test is a bit of an obsession. I mean, why wouldn’t you? One of the Super Licence tests is an F1 clone type car around Laguna Seca. I think it took about an hour of my time to get gold. Sometimes I went off at the third corner, sometimes the last corner. It’s quite frustrating to get close to the end of the circuit knowing you are a couple of tenths ahead of the ghost car [your previous best lap] and then bin the car in the gravel.

Having said all the stuff above I am enjoying the game. I like the challenge and I’m happy plodding along doing a little each day. I know there’s been quite a backlash to the rewards and “lucky dip” that the game designers have made but I also wonder if people just aren’t patient enough to want to play a game long term. I very rarely finish a game but one thing I know for sure is that I’d rather enjoy it that complete it, if that makes sense. I don’t see games as movies which I suspect is how many other players see them. If the game can allow me to do something I can do in real life and make it fun then I’m happy.

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Only Two Hours Sleep You Say?

It has been an interesting few weeks. I recently met up with my good friend Jamie from Cornwall and had a nice meal with him and Smith. When I returned to my car and started it all hell broke loose and it sounded as though the exhaust had fallen off! I turned it on again just to see what would happen and – BLAM – still the same [sexy for a race car] noise. There is no way a Toyota Prius should sound like that. So I had to call the AA for Bora Horza Gobuchul. Now, being a male and having broken the car in the leafy Surrey suburbs I was not top of the list to be helped, but that is perfectly fine. It makes sense that women and vulnerable people should be helped first. We shouldn’t live in a world where that discrimination is necessary but as there is a very clear problem with male-on-female violence I’m happy to wait.

The AA man turned up and I described what the car sounded like. He grabbed a torch and looked underneath the vehicle. “Your catalytic converter’s been nicked”. In the couple of hours I was with my friends people had come and jacked up my car and sawn out the catalytic converter. This was a bit of a “bugger” moment as I was hoping he could just do some bolts up and I’d be on my way back home. Nope. The AA man called for a flat-bed truck to come and get me. Again, I’m down the list of priority so I had to wait until 0230 for the truck to arrive. I was slightly terrified of having to start the engine to get the car onto the truck as the Prius can only be put into neutral with the power system turned on, if the battery is low the engine will start. It turned out there was enough juice in the hybrid battery to run the car on EV power for a short while. It was loaded onto the truck and we headed off to Kent.

I had Bora Horza Gobuchul dropped off at an exhaust centre a couple of miles from my house and I got home a little before 0400. I went to bed and got up after not sleeping particularly well to organise work things and getting to the exhaust centre to explain the car dumped outside their workshop. I had already planned to cycle to work for a few days this particular week and so I had all my shower kit and spare clothes at school. So, I just had to cycle a few more days. Fortunately the weather was good and quite warm. Hopefully it’ll be similar the next time I cycle to work. The ride is about thirty minutes and as the majority of it follows the Medway towpath is actually really pleasant.

After speaking to insurance people and various garages it turned out that if I needed a courtesy car then I would have to get Bora Horza Gobuchul fixed at their choice of garage. In Ashford. The guys at ATS couldn’t fix the Prius because they can only replace the exhaust with OEM parts and they don’t have a deal with Toyota. So I had to get the car fixed in Ashford. After calling them I had to wait five days before they could get to me! Five days. I phoned them on the Friday, they couldn’t get the car picked up until I had uploaded a photograph of the car showing it can’t be driven. This was an amusing piece of administration as I couldn’t take a photo of the bits of the car showing I couldn’t drive it because from the outside it just looked like a normal car. While they understood this they also said that they can’t proceed until I upload a photo. I was at work. My car was thirty minutes bike ride away. So, I had an old photo of the car, cropped the background out, removed the meta-data and uploaded that. The garage said they would be able to get to me for Tuesday morning between 0800 and 1300.

I managed to borrow a friend’s car for the weekend and to run small jobs and the sorts of journeys you take for granted when you have a car. Even so I was mighty pissed off that I was expecting a speedy service and all that happened with me was delay and delay. So, I am currently in the position of waiting for Bora Horza Gobuchul to be fixed. I have a courtesy car which is ok. It’s a car. I don’t like it, but it’s a car. It’s nice to be mobile. All the money side of the admin has yet to be completed and I’m hoping to get the Prius early next week. I have no idea whether I’ll get a cat-lock fitted next time it’s in for a service. I suspect that if people want to steal my catalytic converter then they will.

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