Hi all. It had been quite a (too?) long time since Bas and I had a race weekend but we've done one again. And this time we mixed the racing and flying bits with a great (but quite long :-) movie. Being honest as usual I have to admit that I do like that combination very much. Specially when the movie in question was the 1966 movie Grand Prix, which I've finally been able to obtain. Brand new original in a US type cardboard, double VHS, box with the plastic sealing still around it. It's just perfect, I'm more happy than a child with a room full of brand new toys folks :-D

However looking back it would have been better if we had not done this weekend I think. Physically I mean. As right now I'm feeling more broken than I've ever before. My back was still not a hundred percent okay (if ever :-) and I reasonably managed to get the stuff in my car in one piece (and I'm talking about my back here of course). Then I head over to Bas' place. But when I returned yesterday evening ... boy oh boy ...

I always bring my monitor back up first, simply because it's the most heavy and clumsy item and stresses my back the most by far. Only this time I almost broke in half when reaching the top of the first pair of stairs, or at least it felt like it. I almost dropped the bugger. After a few seconds I did the second part and got it back inside. Maybe it's time to start saving money and get me a nice nineteen inch LCD screen before someday I break up for real :-(

The trouble is that when everything is put back together at Bas' place, and we're up and running again that 'little' back aching thing get's pushed aside swiftly and makes room for that oh so nice happy-happy-joy-joy feeling that comes up pretty automatically during those race weekends. It's just way too much fun to quit having 'em. I guess that we'll continue having them until one of us breaks down for good ;-) I'm in for a break which should come almost naturally due to the timing of the new seasons first Formula One race in Australia. It's qualifying starts somewhere in the middle of the night and we'll probably watch it live, insert a movie and after that continue with watching the race live.

And afterwards we'll probably crash out, go home, get to bed and sleep the rest of the day ;-)

Hi all. Yup folks, I'm still here. I'm just taking it easy a bit, trying to relax somehow. I still feel Tuesdays snooker, which is not a nice feeling. Maybe even more so because we lost the game, something I 'conveniently' forgot to tell the lot of you last Tuesday *grin* Just kidding, I really forgot. But even had we won the game I still would rather have felt better ... Well there's always tomorrow. Let's just wait and see what that brings shall we? Have a good night sleep all, I'll try to do the same ;-)

Hi all. Last night Bas and I did some competition endurance snooker and I'm still feeling those five frames in my back right now. The reason for those five frames was that we were only with the two of us and the schedule is too busy to re-schedule this game. The problem is that playing so many frames at once straight after one another is not something guys like us (you know, the fragile slowly breaking up kind of ones) can do without facing the results the next morning ... which is now of course :S It's been a few weeks since I've been sleeping normally at night and that I was able to get out of bed in a normal way. When I wake up I feel like I have only rested for about thirty percent or so and It starts to very slowly tear me apart. During the weekends I almost can't seem to stop yawning ... It's also quite tiring to have to watch your every move in order not to get surprised by a sudden stroke and hit the bricks. Anyway, I'll stop boring you guys with my little problems. After all you're mostly here for the fun bits I presume. And guess what? Me to :-)

Hi all. GPRT is short for my Giant Pixel Racing Team. The whole idea behind it is that when you lower the resolution on which you're playing your games, the faster they run. Up until last Fridays evening this had proved to be the plain and simple truth since the beginning of time. Okay okay, maybe it all started a little later, but still. Way back when. So when we were thinking up a name for our sim Racing team we thought it would be nice to exploit this simple yet extremely effective and proven theory and the Giant Pixel Racing Team, or GPRT, was born. As you may or may not know my graphic card died on me when I was halfway through day one of a three day race weekend (speaking of bad timing :S) so a new one needed to find it's way to me and do so fast. Even though it arrived one day too late with the last race for the Grand Prix Legends competition in mind, I was still very happy when on Friday my dad mailed me these few words: 'geez, what a huge box' ... From that moment on my weekend couldn't have been bad, no matter what happened. I'll get to the bad part later unfortunately ... When I was finished from work I made my way to my dads shop in a record breaking time and after more than a week without pixel power I had the solution in my hands. The first thing that went through my mind was 'geez, what a huge box' ... ;-) My dad asked me to get a package to the post office but after that I was on my way home to give my PC back what it had to do without for too long: video power! The installation of my new card was a breeze, as these things tend to be these days, so I could 'test' it quite soon after I came home. First thing I tried was GTR, our new racing sim. Boy that looked incredibly good and even though I was able to run it at quite high detail already, a few sliders could be set from 'high' to 'full' which made a better picture all together. Then it was simply a matter of trying every single sim and game I have installed to see how much difference the new card made. The results were a mix between 'as expected' and 'simply astonishing'. Grand Prix Legends for example looked almost just like it did before but take a flight simulator like Lock-On and you would wonder how you were ever able to do without this kind of massive power. It just about looked like a whole new sim, it's just unbelievable. Unfortunately this wasn't to be a race weekend but you'll have to believe me that I sure had fun behind my pc. Even though Saturday turned out to be a not so 'good' day physically. I almost stretched my back while reaching for a tool at work and in the evening at home my back almost went completely out when I miss stepped while getting a cup of coffee and just about hang on to the kitchen sink, gasping for breath. Had I missed that sink I would have gone flat out into other part of that room I like to call my living and who knows how I would have felt then. Well, worse probably :S Maybe my dad and I carrying that dish washer from the old to the other kitchen was a little too much for comfort ... On Sunday however I was feeling a little better so I sat behind my pc a bit more and tried out more games and programs. Getting back to the GPRT bit now. The point is that with this new graphic card I can now use small pixels and still they shoot across the screen like crazy too so that got me thinking a bit about this whole giant pixel theory. Not to worry though, I'm not going to change the name of the team. But you need to think of these things from time to time to prevent them from becoming something taken for granted. And the theory still stands on the majority of PC's so I guess we're save for the time being ;-) So bottom-line is: Don't go out and get yourself a killer graphic card because all it does is make you think weird about stuff ... ;-)

Hi all. I had it all figured out yesterday. I was going to do get somewhat creative with Benz (the Uncle Benz to be exact ;-) and have me some nice chinese food for diner. While consuming that I was going to watch some more classic Formula One movies I had downloaded and doing so filling the evening. Last but not least I was not going to be in bed too late, as I needed to restore some (if not all) internal power levels after our snooker session from last Tuesday. What I was feeling like sounded like this "I can't do it Captain, I don't have the power" - Scotty, USS Enterprise NCC 1701 ... So there I was, my pasta bowl (yeah I know it says 'pasta', but it's too easy to ignore) filled to the edge with the chinese food, settled behind my PC and ready to watch some racing. When was watching the first mpeg about ten minutes my eyes were already getting heavy and I had so much trouble staying awake. I know for sure that I watched completely but I have no recollection of what it was about exactly. Yeah, it had something to do with racing ... After waking myself up again with a strong cup of Dark Roast(tm) coffee I started the second movie and had another go at the food. Part II so to speak. Unfortunately that went about the same way the first part one did. There simply was no escaping this, I just had to give in to this sleepiness and get myself to bed. So if anyone called me after seven forty five last night, now you know why there was no answer: I was sleeping ... Halfway through the night however, at about half past one, I woke up with a killer headache. But a bunch of aspirins solved that issue rather quickly and I could get back to sleep pretty soon after, which I did and slept nicely until the alarm woke me. Now I feel more or less revived and definitely a whole lot better than I did yesterday at about this time. You might say I needed it in a way.

Hi all. Beware: this is going to be another one of those 'what-I-don't-like-about-the-world' kind of article. So if I'm boring the h*ll out of you people please tell me. Not that I'll stop doing so, but then at least I know why absolutely no-one seems to notice the possibility to spam back at me :P (Yeah you folks had that one coming ... for some time now. You live with it *grin*) Right. So Biek ... what's wrong this time? Last night Bas and I went playing snooker again, as we usually do on Tuesdays. There's this unspoken rule that, when in a given week there's no competition game planned, we use that weeks Tuesday evening to play a couple of practice frames. And it's not uncommon either that we're there on Tuesday regardless of snooker competition. Now I know this, Bas and Jaap know this and Erik (the owner of our snooker place) most certainly knows this. And it's not that this is some overnight behavior, we've been doing this for the past couple of years so it's nothing new. For neither side. Now over the years we had our share of surprises with this establishment. Not really big issues, just your average share of little things like encountering the absence of coffee or beer (even all flavors at a time) but it could well be that things like this happen everywhere all the time and it's just me, kind of annoyed, not seeing the whole picture ... who knows ;-) And these are no big problems of course, when there's no beer, you take a coffee ... wait a minute ... unless there is none left of course ... hmm, I'll need to think about that one ... The thing that bothers me most however is that, even though we're playing snooker and have reserved that snooker table for 'the evening' and therefore should be allowed to use it for as long as we like, he simply tells other people that our table will probably not take long to become available and after telling them comes asking us how long we were thinking of playing that night. Is it me, or am I missing something here? So last night we decided that we were not quitting just yet, you know, just to make a statement. We said that we were going to have 'at least' one more frame, leaving him to go back, explain this to his, probably more favorite guests, and then returning to his own snooker game for crying out loud! Believe me, if I was the owner, and someone wanted to play snooker and I didn't have a free table available I would stop snookering for myself and give them my table, but hey that's just silly old me thinking I guess. Unfortunately when that frame was finished both Bas and I were not in the best states fiscally. Both our backs are far from good and when we've been playing snooker for too long, we tend to simply ... erm ... cave in more or less. But desperate times call for desperate measures so I asked Bas if we could 'please' do another frame. (Yeah I can be that type of bastard when needed) He agreed so we racked up and started another frame, which wasn't appreciated a lot across the room ... mission accomplished for as far as I was concerned *grin* We still had fun nonetheless and when we finished that frame we simply had to stop, which of course is a shame on a moment like that *evil grin* I don't think I'll show up for the night tournament I was planning to join next Saturday ... I simply don't feel like attending it right now. No, what I do feel like right now is going to bed and stay in for the rest of the ... week! Boy I feel just about my entire body now ... What was it that Christian Bale said in the end of the (quite nice) movie Equilibrium? 'It's a heavy cost, but I pay it gladly ...' And that's all there is to it.

where no-one in their right state of mind would even consider going in those cars and at those speeds ... Hi all. Yesterday evening I watched a collection of classic Formula One movies I found on the internet. They (that's my movies, not the actual Formula One mind you) started at around the thirties and went up to about halfway the seventies. Trust me watching those movies does something to me. To me those days represent an era of high speed, uncompromising danger and above all: cold blooded heroism. These guys conquered the worlds most dangerous tracks in the worlds most dangerous racing cars without showing the slightest sign of fear. But then again, maybe that's just due to the sometimes bad quality of the video footage ... Maybe what's been buzzing through my mind the most where the crashes, which happened rather frequently then in comparison to todays Formula One races where they are more and more a rare sight. The 'problem' with these old cars is that they are so strong, the only de-formable thing of a racing car was the driver himself. Which means that in a crash, all energy had to be absorbed by the driver who, of course, was seldom able to do so in a surviving fashion. My stomach turned while watching those horrifying pictures of multi-car crashes and it makes me feel ever so glad that there actually are still drivers from that era alive today. Somehow they must have been very, very lucky. Or as one of them said "compared to the modern race car you could not drive these beasts on their limit, because there's no margin of error. Once you stepped over that line you met an almost certain death."

Happy Valentine gorgeous, you know who you are ;-)

Hi all. This weekend has by far been the most boring since quite a long time. Man I miss racing, I really do. My trusty video-card died on me a week and two days ago now and I sure miss it's power to kick some pixels around ;-) You can't imagine how many hours of racing one can do during weekdays, not to mention during a complete weekend. When all goes well my brand new pixel pushing (or shoving is more like it) video-card will arrive by Wednesday at it's deliverer so I might be able to pick it up Thursday and practice all day for the last competition race. Or so I hope. While surfing the net I stumbled onto a website filled to the last byte with all kinds of information about the theoretical side of racing but since my machine obviously has absolutely no video power (to give you an idea at the moment I'm glad it can keep the desktop in vision ...) I could not try anything out at all. So instead I made it into a nice complete document which, when finished, will be handed out to the GPRT team members so we all can benefit from this info. So, tell me ... What do 'normal' people, as in non-simracers, do during these weekends? Well to tell you the truth: I don't know, I have no clue whatsoever. I presume (okay okay, so I maybe do know ... ;-) that it has something to do with stuff like cleaning the house, doing the laundry, that sort of things. But that's not what the weekend is for folks, you can do that during the week as well. Weekends are for racing, nothing more, nothing less and I hope to be able to do so again next weekend. Hope to see you then!

Hi all. Not that I'm Mr Perfect himself but there really are some pretty disturbing persons in this world, I tell you. Last night when I was well in bed some nut was making one h*ll of a racket downstairs, knocking on the windows from an apartment downstairs and calling to the person inside telling her he was hungry ... You have to believe me that normally I tend to not get involved in that sort of loud 'communications'. And I sort of know the person inside and don't think she was ever going to open that door, or even react. But I need my rest badly enough as it is and this guy was really getting on my nervous. Since no-one else seemed to go tell him to take a hike I decided it was time to take action. So I got dressed, went outside and asked the guy, who by the way kind of looked like a nurse (I'm not sure if you heard about that whole carnival thing, but picture Rio de Janeiro in your mind and add to that too much beer and a weak mind to begin with ... well basically that was what was under my window making noise ...) calmly what his problem was. He replied that it was none of my business and that I should simply go back to sleep. I replied that it was exactly what I had been trying to do for the past couple of hours but that for some reason there was a lot of noise outside which was keeping me from being able to sleep. Sigh ... he didn't get it. Even louder than before he then shouted at me to get lost and then started to boink the window again. Now I really hate it when that happens but what bothers me even more is to get ignored when trying to talk some reason into someone. So then I, once more pretty calm and kindly, asked the guy to stop doing that and keep it down a bit but he just looked up at me and kept on calling the person inside. So I went back inside, looked up the biggest bucket I could find, fill that to the edge with water and went outside again. The guy was still there, this time barking through the mailbox opening in the door. I called him and when he looked up again unloaded my bucket which must have been holding about twenty liters of water all over him. I tell you for a moment it was pretty silent and had things stayed that way I would have been able to go back to sleep again. The guy however reacted as if I had shot him (surprise eh? :-) and now started to yell at me. Well at least I had his full attention this time ;-) Trying to sound pretty determined I then told him that if he had any sense he would just go away and let us all sleep as I had plenty more water where that first bucket came from. A bit to my surprise he mumbled some stuff and then simply walked away. For a minute there I stayed outside because he might get the idea in his head to come up but when he stayed away I went to bed and finally got to my well deserved rest. Now I need to get to bed earlier tonight and tomorrow to try and make up for the damage done to my night rest. Buggers. This is one of the reasons I don't like the whole carnival business, people take in too much drinks, start to do crazy stuff and expect everyone to just let them be. Which is fine with me, but not in the middle of the night under my window. Not anymore.

Hi all. It's simply not to be I guess, something always has to go wrong, not work or simply brake down whenever it's not the best timing. Last (long) weekend, which was supposed to be a very entertaining three day racing weekend feast, my trusty pretty cool looking video card gave up on me, leaving me doing just about anything but racing. It went wrong when I started Grand Prix Legends and wanted to join the race Stefan hosted on the new circuit of Dijon-Prenois where we wanted to do some serious practicing before the race of next weeks Thursday. Both because it's a rather new circuit to us (it was long called the Grand Prix of TBA before we knew which circuit it was going to be) and simply to have fun as well. I think in the end I did about 15 laps in total so far and I sincerely hope that I'm able to increase that number big-time before the race. Saturday evening we all went to mom and her friend to have diner and that was very pleasant. The past couple of times I was over there it was for moms computer. We still need to dot the last 'I's before it's done but that's mainly because of me forgetting all kinds of small things when going over there. That's also the main reason why I always prefer to 'do' pc's at my own home, and not on a remote location which is almost an hours drive away from my place where I have everything close by. 'You can't always get what you want' is what the Stones sang and I'm starting to believe they were right ;-) So today first thing I did was sending out a emergency distress signal, closely resembling that Bat sign in the sky whenever there's serious trouble, and e-mailed my dad if he would try and get me another video card ASAP. Luckily he read it and is right on it as we speak. This is the benefit of having a dad who sells computers I guess, if there's anyone able to get it fast it should be him. I sure hope he's able to get me the new one in time, please please please ... :S Apart from that 'small' inconvenience we still had a lot of fun, simply doing some other stuff instead of racing. One of the things was that we've introduced Stefan to GTR, which he loved very much and with which he did numerous laps on a variety of circuits. This was partly still on Friday, when the video card bits were still working and we could still run together. Later on in the weekend he did some more laps and he might just get one for himself too, who knows. It would be cool to have him for the 24 hours of Spa too, but he needs to do a lot or practicing until then to get some feeling with the cars and track. But who knows ... there's always hope, isn't there :-)