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.

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:

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

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).

May 7 2018May 7 2018

Thrashersaurus

Part One Of

“The Weekend Of Noise”

With the lovely weather on Saturday I decided to join friends at a pub in Norwich. It’s quite a way to go, it took two and a half hours to get there I think although the traffic along the M11 was pretty slow all the way. Why Norwich? Well, it’s not for nostalgia’s sake. I’m pretty certain the last time I was there was in 1989 for an afternoon while I attended cadet camp at RAF Swanton Morley. I remember seeing the cathedral and then having a pizza in a restaurant on a hill with some other cadets. I think Swanton Morley wasn’t really set up for an influx of eighty cadets and we felt starved!

I travelled to Norwich to attend THRASHERSAURUS at the Brickmakers pub somewhere in the Anglian city. I just followed the Sat Nav, I didn’t really know where I was going, although I had checked out parking and the local area using Google Maps, that seems the sensible thing to do.

It seems quite obvious to me but Thrashersaurus is a thrash metal festival for local bands and a few more well known ones on the UK scene. I could only be there for the Saturday and Xentrix were headlining. They are a band I have known about for about 25 years and I even own some of their stuff!

So, I kept notes as the day progressed and now I present them to you. They aren’t comprehensive but they give a flavour of what I thought. The venue was better than I had expected. The two stages were a good size and the clientele were your pretty standard metal heads; all there for a good time and pretty friendly.

Uridium – pretty good, well structured metal songs, like a faster Saxon.

Uridium - Thrashersaurus — Uridium – Thrashersaurus

Crawlblind – on the main stage. Shouty metal/thrash. Whatever.

Crawlblind - Thrashersaurus — Crawlblind – Thrashersaurus

Clownsmasheverything – on the B2 stage. Not thrash. Seemed like fast late 80s rock to me. 10 seconds of really heavy riff that was great.

Vendetta – main stage. Shouty but not growly. A band of short fat men. Reasonably good. Singer running up and down in front of stage.

Cryptic Shift – B2 stage. The fuck!? Experimental wank. Walked out.

Soulborn – main stage. Shouty vocals. Ok. Some good riffs. Only on guitarist. Some off-beat cymbal action. Nice one. Singer forgot his guitar apparently.

Psython – B2. Wailing vocals. Speed metal. From Rotherham?

Killer Hurts – Main Stage. Less technical than Testament but that style. Very 80s style thrash. Ok for what it is. Song : Blunt Force Trauma: Hilarious.

Lifer – B2. From South Wales apparently. Down tuned guitars very heavy slow riffs. Song: Words Of The Wise. Best so far.

Shrapnel – main stage. After a brief sit down went and saw last 20 mins. Quality fast thrash. Early Metallica sounds, but not quite as good and possibly 30 years too late.

Shrapnel - Thrashersaurus — Shrapnel – Thrashersaurus

Dinner time.

Reprisal – B2. Fast. Heavy noise. Not that impressive.

Incinery – main stage. Bit shit. Snare drum sounded really bad. Too much constant drumming, not enough variation. Sat down.

Forgotten Remains – B2 from Chesterfield apparently. Shouty growly vocals, no idea what he’s saying. Fast and loud, no real subtlety to it! Played The Trooper last, speeded up.

Xentrix – main stage. What I’ve been waiting for. Tight, thrash metal. Very well executed.

Xentrix - Thrashersaurus — Xentrix – Thrashersaurus

All this finished at 23:15 and after some goodbyes I had to drive back to Kent to ensure I could take part in the second part of The Weekend Of Noise”.

May 1 2018May 1 2018

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.

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:

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.

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.

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

April 29 2018October 23 2019

Context

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.

April 29 2018April 29 2018

Godwin’s Goodwin Sands

I made it to the South Foreland Lighthouse yesterday in weather that can be described as atmospheric [as can all weather, literally]. There was sun, rain and some haze. France could be seen at times but not all the time. I don’t have a picture here of the light house so you’ll have to imagine what it’s like but the tour was interesting and, once again, I find myself amazed at how ingenious we humans are.

The lighthouse was built to warn seafarers of the dangers of Goodwin Sands where over a thousand ships lay wrecked. It is also the first place that an international radio transmission was made, by Marconi, of course.

The light turns by the use of food to human energy turned into potential gravitational energy. A large mass is raised by hand and the energy contained within that turns the 3 tonne light system as it drops. The lighting system floats on a tub of mercury, this reduces the drag to manageable proportions. Remarkable.

There is a tea house and also a cottage attached to the lighthouse. The guide mentioned that the place was quiet and normally they are very busy and the lighthouse is packed.

Being here made me realise just how busy the Dover Straights are and how much traffic moves through the port.

And so, as we prepare to leave the EU, this fine town of Dover voted OUT but will find itself fucked over as our incompetent Government fails to secure the best deal for the security and economy of this country.

Also, I managed to get this far without mentioning Nazis.

April 24 2018April 24 2018

Alternate Views

There’s a competition where I work involving the still image. I have entered with one of the following photographs. I have been meaning to take a collection of photos of the place for a number of years. There are certain aspects of the buildings that I find curious and interesting. I think they would make good images if taken from the correct angle. Sneaking in to take these photos has been on my “holiday to-do list” for a number of years but I’ve never got around to it.

Anyway. Here are four shots I took this week. No explanation, just interesting images IMHO.

April 23 2018April 23 2018

Rampage

Went to the cinema this evening to see Rampage. Now, I hadn’t seen any of the trailers – I don’t tend to watch them. All I had was the film poster. Before the film I went for a walk along the wharf, not a Worf that would be weird, and noted that the tide was neither in nor out. There was a low level bubbling sound from the mud banks slowly draining their contained water, it was a relaxing sound.

As is usual I rated this film on IMDB. You should see this guide to the system within this communication.

I rated Rampage (2018) 4/10 #IMDb https://t.co/CImNAehzsy

— Ian Parish (@iparish) April 23, 2018

It was a terrible film and got worse as it went on. I didn’t even notice one of the main plot points although the camera shot at that exact spot struck me as strange but I didn’t work out why they had done that. I had to ask my neighbour at the end of the film how the antidote got into George.

Chicago didn’t look a whole lot different at the end of the film. Still a trashy place.

The tide was in when I left. The water level was higher than two hours previously.

April 22 2018June 20 2018

Noteworthy

A couple of random things in this communication [aren’t they always? I hear you cry].

firstly, a while ago there was some lovely helicopter noise over my house late at night. I looked it up on my flight tracker and discovered the Army Air Corps had passed exactly over my house.

The Army Air Corps just flew over my house!
Well, not all of it, just two people. pic.twitter.com/T2itJDcKkh

— Ian Parish (@iparish) April 16, 2018

Then, last night, while looking for the rain storms that were meant to be hitting the UK I noticed a Royal Moroccan Air Force Gulstream circling above the Essex – Hertfordshire border.

I followed this for a while wondering where it was heading, eventually it turned towards Stansted airport and I didn’t follow it all the way.

My suspicion is that this flight had some dignitary on board heading for medical treatment in London. The Saudis do this quite often and you can see their planes land at Stansted. The rail links are pretty quick as are road ways and even helicopter flights. The security is top-notch there too as it is where Air Force One lands with POTUS.

The above picture shows the thunderstorms heading over the UK along with the RMAF Gulfstream track.