Author: Sleepypete

I’ve had a request !!!!

Actually two requests. One of the Chrissa community people is looking to have a gaming desktop built but doesn’t know what they should acquire. And then there’s my mum, who is looking for a light laptop to replace one that’s a little too heavy to be a … laptop.

But first …

I may not be able to bring you any more pictures of the lovely Old Ben. When I had a chat to my mum yesterday (Dad’s doing fine, recovering nicely and is out of danger), she let me know that Ben was struggling again. Poor lad. His old pain pills have been giving him serious side effects, hopefully the new pills sort him out.

He’s an old fella and has been a wonderful little chap to have around but he may not have long left. And like Goldie and Scruff before him, he has his own special place in the hearts of our family and the people who have enjoyed seeing his pictures on Facebook.

Yep. It’ll break many hearts when we have to let him go but if they give you a look that says “I hurt too much and don’t want to be here any more”, that unpleasant job has to be done.

PC Stuff !!!

Let’s see what’s out there. First up is the desktop. The price range is about £800 but as always, you try and see if you can get top value for less money.

As always, start with the processor because it drives the rest of the machine. I recommend Intel now because they are more efficient, run cooler, run better. They do cost a little more though.

Processor – Intel Skylake i5-6400 (cheapest of the i5’s and the older Haswell generation is only £6 cheaper) – £156. This needs a LGA1151 motherboard. I have had mixed results with MSI but they come in with the cheapest Z170 board : MSI Z170-A Pro for £87. The Z bit means it has the faster performing chipset (the glue that holds the system together). This motherboard needs DDR4 memory and this is so cheap, you want a minimum of 8GB these days. The G.Skill memory in this machine has done well, there is a 8GB pair on Novatech for £33. Oh and you’ll want to keep that processor cool with something large and beefy (means it runs quieter) like a beQuiet Shadow Rock 2 for £36.

One note there – the coolers have improved but can be scary to mount for the uninitiated.

Processor graphics has improved so much recently but it does help massively to have an external card. I’m pleased with the AMD Radeon R9 380 card I have now and you can get the Sapphire version for £170. You get diminishing returns if you spend more than £200 on graphics cards.

Every system needs storage – I think PCs have moved passed cd/dvd/bluray storage now but you can get a bluray rom drive for £37. I won’t include that in the total. For the main storage, you can shave off some cash and complication by using a SATA Hybrid drive (a normal drive with SSD to make it smooth) and Seagate have a 2TB drive for £84. We’ll pick that for this but normally, you’d be better putting Windows on a 250GB (for breathing room) SSD plus a 1TB+ conventional drive to put the data and games on.

It all goes in a box, a typical desktop being an ATX mini tower. Watch for cheap ones, they usually have sharp edges that demand a Blood Sacrifice during the build. Antec have the VSK3000 case for £27. DO NOT buy a case with a power supply included, unless that power supply is a beefy enough named brand.

Power supply is very important. If they aren’t beefy enough, they will strain until they die. If they’re cheap, they will usually fry other components in their death throes. So you buy the power supply from people like Corsair, Antec, EVGA, Cooler Master, Thermaltake. I’ll choose the Corsair CX600M for £67 for this build.

How much ?
£660. Wow, didn’t expect that, it’s cheaper than usual, makes me wonder what I’ve missed. Boost it a little with a SSD and conventional hard disc combo plus that £37 for the bluray drive.

Also – £80 for Windows 10 Home 64 bit.
Monitor – I am so close to buying the AOC i2369 for £125 (or a bit cheaper from PC World).
Keyboard – I like my Turtle Beach Impact 100 for about £50.
Mouse – no recommendations here except Avoid Roccat, Avoid Saitek/MadCatz.

How much is something similar on PC Specialist ?
I’m going into the “Top Spec Core Computers”, not really caring about the box and the rest of the spec is the same as above except for :
Motherboard Asus Z170-P and memory by different people;
Coolermaster Hyper 212 cooler.

And that comes out to £722 or £801 with Windows. A premium of £60 for them to build it is … probably marginally acceptable and it avoids the chances of breaking stuff when putting that cooler on and having bad bits slip through, because they’ll test it before you get it. The motherboard makes a dent in the price and I think the more expensive Asus motherboard is worth it. Sadly I can’t link the build :-(.

REVISION – Do not buy Asus hardware. It is usually feature incomplete or contains unpleasant surprises that will annoy the hell out of you later. With me, it was a lack of 5.1 surround sound support in the surround sound socket, with another it is a random disconnect from the internet while the person is streaming because Asus got it wrong with the network port. Also feature incomplete because £100+ boards usually have 2x network ports (or more), this one only has one plus a broken wifi.

How about the laptop ?
Heading over to PC Specialist again, the one that catches the eye is the 14″ Ultranote III with an all important weight of only 1.8kg. It also appears to have a very good screen. Other bits of spec to change :
Processor – more cores with an i5-6200U. The i7 chips are an expensive waste of time. The 6200U isn’t as powerful as the 6400 above but that U means lots of battery life and it’ll still be good enough for things like watching videos off the internet.
Memory – up to 8GB.
Hard disk – a hybrid 1TB drive (the SSD parts speed up the machine a lot and you don’t really have the space or weight for multiple drives in a laptop)

And that comes out to £511.

I’m going to scout to offerings from Dell and from PC World but I think we might be putting an order in for that Ultranote.

PS I’ll miss Old Ben. He’s adorable.

Two subjects today !!!

I’m currently watching Top Gear from yesterday and it’s got to the segment about reimagined classic cars. Chris Evans is currently driving an MG B Roadster, reengineered to have all sorts of modern touches. To borrow from the TG article, classic cars had a few problems :

Reliability;
Slow;
Crash and you die;
Weak handling;
No mod cons;
General erosion and rust.

One thing to say about the reengineered cars though, they are no longer original. They have moved away from the classic. I don’t think they can lay any claim to being authentic and therefore have no intrinsic value above the cost of reengineering them. It’s not a car that would go into a garage, be pulled out occasionally and be admired for its place in history.

I’ve dabbled in being interested in kit cars over the years. These are another stage on from the reengineered classics. The redone classics are bound by the original material. The design, the chassis, the stuff that has to stay the same. Anything else is fair game, like engine, mechanicals and all that stuff. I’ve never had the facilities that would let me dabble in this though, so no Sleepycar for me.

But … watching that article again makes a few old thoughts resurface. We’ve owned a classic car and it was beautiful. She was Chloe (from the registration plate), one of the forgotten classics :

(that’s not our one, it’s from Google a while ago).

That article of automobile beauty is an old Triumph Spitfire. We loved our one for her lines. Can’t say that much for the rest of it but that body proved an old adage : Curves are beautiful. But the Spridget and the MG B got all the attention. There was a coupe version too with a bigger engine. But the Spitfire had one massive problem – corner hard and it would probably kill you.

The problem was swing axle back suspension. On a car, you want the wheels to go up and down to soak up the bumps. You don’t want them angling off the vertical. On a rear drive car, this means two universal joints per side to get the power to the wheels. The Spitfire only had one, which meant the wheels would swing off the vertical quite drastically at the extents of their up and down travel.

There you go – picture from www.eng-tips.com.

Trust me – it’s bad and it meant I refused to think about driving the car when I was old enough and had my licence. It had already been crashed by that point so that was kinda academic.

But if I were to rebuild the Spitfire like a modern car ? Here’s what I would change :

Remade interior – but still with minimalist dials embedded in a characterful wooden dash. Because these cars aren’t about climate control or air conditioning or even the kinds of toys in my Lexus. They’re about being one with the car and enjoying the drive.

Beefed up engine – there’s lots of room under that bonnet, I bet you could fit in a modern turbocharged 4 cylinder. Perhaps even some of the hybrid parts from my Lexus ? It’s quite a bit bigger though and I doubt whether the hybrid bits would fit.

Let’s see – turbocharged 4 cylinder around the 2 litre mark. But you would want to get something to match the rear drive. Most modern cars have the engine in front pointing from front wheel to front wheel (transverse). My rear drive Lexus has the engine pointing down the middle of the car (longitudinal). Kit cars sometimes sort this by putting all of the front engine bits behind the driver to make a rear engine, rear drive car. Yep, this would be the awkward bit.

Suspension – the Spitfire came with independent double wishbones at the front (this is a very good thing) and you really couldn’t improve something like that. But the back end would need to be completely replaced, preferably with something matched to the new engine. Perhaps a 4 wheel drive solution ? Might work.

It’d be an interesting exercise to look up the possibilities. What would fit, what would work, could you make it even more special by adding hybrid drive mechanics.

This may occupy my thoughts for a while :-).

The other subject ? New stuff ?

I’ve been appreciating Windows 10, to the point where I’m now calling it an upgrade. I’d recommend it for machines, including those machines on earlier MS operating systems. And there are reasons … which I thought about earlier today when reading some of the more rabid opinions of a pro-Linux commenter :

Adware and Spyware – do the research, turn them off.
2d Flugly – I actually like this after Windows 7, it’s simpler, more readable and doesn’t take up any more of your time than it should do. The old Win7 animations seemed to absorb time for no good reason.
Removal of customisation options – shrug. It’s a computer, not a scrapbook.
Metro in general – meh ? Windows 8 was an abomination but they seem to have fixed the worst of that in Win10. I can get to my applications easy and the tiles let me set a few easy favourites.
Forced updates – yep, this is a problem. It actually knocked our Chrissa off the net the other day midstream, because it deleted her network drivers. Oops.
High bandwidth update downloads/uploads – again, do the research, turn them off.
Windows Logon – I haven’t had to do this and have no intention of using their cloud services.

No clear performances over Win 7 – it’s subjective but it feels smoother, faster and I haven’t had to restart Waterfox due to resource leaks lately. Memory usage is currently 4.7GB used out of 8GB, it would be up to 6-7GB by now on Win7.
Feature removal – not noticed anything significant.
Start Thing vs Start Menu – I like the new one, allowing you to add most likely to use programs as tiles lets you find them quicker without diving through the Start Menu. Looking back, I don’t think I was a fan of the Start Menu.
Customer QA testing – don’t be part of the beta testing Insider network …

Yeah, Linux Mint might be a better OS for web browsing and other activities but …

You can’t run games on it. At least, not a significant number of games. And that makes it totally unusable and unsuitable for someone like me.

I’d put my current hierarchy of OS’s for new machines as :
Windows 10 – first.
Linux Mint (chosen due to those rabid commenter people) – second.
Apple MacOS X – sadly a long distant last now. This fails due to Apple moving away from supplying stuff that the customer wants, into a closed ecosystem driven by Apple for the benefit of Apple.

So if you’re not bothered about compatibility with games or software like iTunes (again, an example of Apple making software for the benefit of Apple), then go Linux Mint. If you like the occasional game, Windows 10. And for something different, Apple is probably in the last iteration that anyone could recommend. It was the best (except for compatibility) but I think that’s past now.

It’s your choice though, my mind has been changed though by working with Windows 10 for a little bit and I actually like it. It’s convinced me.

But it still won’t talk to my camera. Grr.

Is it really Monday since the last post ?

I better do another of those Alphabet posts because I’ve been lacking ideas to put posts around !

Last week seemed really tough. The first part was worrying about my dad and I think the rest was catching up on the exhaustion that has a hold on me at the moment. It took less than an hour to sort out the plumbing job on Monday but it took most of what I had.

My dad’s doing better. He’s home now and the sister reports that the damage is restricted just to dragging a leg a bit. Hopefully the nerves relearn what they’re supposed to do but it’s great news. Far better news than what we were expecting, it sounded pretty serious.

My mum and dad have had some pretty serious stuff happen to them over the last few years and they’ve come through it really well. Long may that continue.

I’ve been looking to recover too. I think all of the really nasty stuff in me has gone now but my outsides are still particularly weak and prone to being redamaged. That said, when I do tear new holes in me, they typically repair in the 3 days or so cuts and bruises always used to.

I just have to stop redamaging things. I have some Gunk to help out there too, Fucibet has proved pretty effective for me.

That’s one thing I’d pass on to everyone who suffers from problems with their outsides. You will attack the damage. It’s basic human nature. But … you can mitigate the damage that you do to yourself by redirecting it. So for me now, when the itchies hit at work, I’ve been tackling the source of the problem instead of the symptom. Translation – I’ve been giving my arms a drink with E45 cream. And it seems to be working too ! Arms are looking a bit better.

I’ve been watching the sport too.

England have been doing incredibly well in the cricket, the men and the women. It’s as if the plans have come together and they work so well as a unit. Cricket is like that, individual performances stand out but it’s only when those individuals come together as a team that they win. I’ve been really enjoying watching the men and women team win lately.

Talking of individuals and team – I’ve been quietly chuckling at the England football team fumble their way out of this championships. I’ll support every England team or individual (make that UK and Republic of Ireland) playing that I see, although there is a kind of hierarchy when they play each other. But … I’ll laugh at the footballers because of a general lack of respect for any footballers. They’re a despicable bunch who lie and cheat their way to victory. There is no honour in that and they should be ashamed of themselves. Oh and there’s the massively overpay thing as well.

That said, I do moderate that support according to how the other supporters or teams behave. There’s a kind of Meh feeling about the Welsh at the moment after them failing to adequately explain away their celebrations at England going out of the tournament. See that comment before about honour. There is no honour in cheering another person’s misfortune.

Other games ?

I took a rest from Stellaris over this week, partly through inclination, partly through having the Chrissa streams on the desktop. I’m wanting to pay attention to those. Glad I did on Wednesday because the coverage of the Inside game was golden. Funny, shocking, tense. She does top value streams that one (link on the right and she’s replaying Mass Effect 2 at the moment, one of the best games ever).

Oh and my wrist has been acting up too. Makes it sore to play the games and I’d rather keep Good Wrist times for work. Stellaris is on hold for a bit as well at the moment due to the mods I use needing to catch up with the latest patch.

I’ve been spending the moneys too !

3 have turned up from the Steam sale :
RymdResa – a space exploration game
Convoy – a scifi game where you’re battling across the planet to repair your ship
Shadowrun Hong Kong – near future role play game where technology and magic mix

Add to that a few albums :
Bat For Lashes – The Bride – I will buy this lady’s albums til the end of time. What a voice.
Garbage – Strange Little Birds – a group that continues to be awesome.
Sia – 1000 Forms of Fear – hmm, great voice, not the best writing. Still enjoyable.

I’m currently enjoying Madonna’s album Music while the postmortem of the France vs Iceland game is on the telly (muted because the pundits are a waste of space usually). Great Grand Prix today, followed by a time delayed England Women thumping the Pakistan team. And now Chrissa streaming Mass Effect 2.

I’ll try and not leave it a week until the next post !

PS Almost forgot !!! Thursday evening was watching Independence Day 2. A decent, enjoyable movie with lots of scifi action on the screen. I was entertained. But while watching, it felt a bit more like one of those b-movie mockbuster movies where they clone a major blockbuster. Odd.

I actually adulted today !

Well, technically I adulted at work as well but I don’t count that. Adulting at work is kind of expected, I try and avoid it when I get home. Rest and recuperation and all that.

Today’s job was a plumbing job that I should have done a long time ago but I was a bit scared of a few things :

Heading up into the attic. This involves going backwards up my ladder and then levering myself up into the loft. It’s … precarious. And a bit of a stretch in my current condition. I had to go up and down from there a few times and my muscles were starting to complain by the end of that. They’re still suffering from my general mineral imbalance.

(I’m still struggling to maintain a proper amount of hydration in me. I think my body is confused there between repairs, what my muscles demand and having too much water on board).

The whole plumbing thing. You know, the possibility that as soon as you undo the tap, you’ll get drowned in a deluge of water. That went ok this time.

Yep. The whole getting it wrong thing …

Anyway – looks like job done and a drip that’s been going for far too long has been fixed. I am thankful for a few things in my adulting :

Having the dexterity still to do this. My hands also get affected by the whole mineral imbalance thing and like to cramp up in certain situations. Not good when you’re trying to grip things.

A new toy – previously, I’d depend on my torch put in a strategic place (i.e. a place where it casts light and doesn’t roll away, smash and leave me in a dark attic). The new toy is a head mounted light, which is AWESOME ! Love it. It gets the light where I want it. I was actually shopping for a battery powered lantern type thing that I’d hang somewhere appropriate but the headlamp is far better.

That it apparently worked … Hurrah ! And phew. Because it’s handy to have a Second Adulty Type Person to hang around by the mains water tap (which doesn’t actually close completely apparently) in case you do get a deluge from the bit you just replaced.

Anything more to be thankful for ?

Not slipping, hitting my head and dying. That’s the other thing about the second adulty thing. I’m quite conscious of being on my own here when going up in that attic. Because it is a bit precarious getting up there.

Anyway. That’s my adulting for today. One plumbing job – complete ! There are still a few plumbing jobs to do here and I’ll need a carpet replaced eventually as a result of leaving this leaky drippy ballcock unfixed for far too long.

Apart from that – easy night tonight. There’s no stream to watch so …

Football on the telly, England are currently 2-1 behind at half time and while I’m ambivalent about England football, I would like them to win. After the football finishes, it’ll be music on the hifi with the Oblivion soundtrack.

I’m going to avoid the gaming tonight as I’m feeling somewhat wiped out. The gaming hops me up and … actually is a bit tiring while I have fun with it. I’ll be back in with the Happy Hive in Stellaris soon enough, taking over the rest of the galaxy while being scared of the Fallen Empire (best tech, squash me like a bug at the moment) that is on one of my borders. I’m enjoying Stellaris.

I’m keeping an eye on the Steam game sales too, although I haven’t pulled the trigger on the two games in my cart (Convoy and Rymd Resa).

I’m attempting to avoid damaging myself more, although … itchy !!!

Yep. More games videos to watch, currently it’s an EnterElysium alternate World War 2 in Hearts of Iron 4. It’s a grand strategy game set around World War 2 which … is a bit beyond what I want to learn to play. But it’s amusing to watch their games and how the alternate history plays out. He’s currently invading America as the Fascist British Empire.

But I am pleased with my adulting for today.

Yep. That goes for you too.

Yep.

Not a bad weekend spent pretty much hiding from the world, isolated from what’s been going on. I think it’s been restful 🙂

I’m still repairing, my dad looks like he’s repairing too. He’s the one I was worried about on Thursday, hopefully he’s out of hospital by now. We’re a hardy bunch my family, although that can be a curse as well as a blessing as we won’t seek help when we need it or change when what we’re doing is causing us problems.

We’re the sort of people who will put in our will something like : Put a tape recorder in the coffin, set to play repeated knocking followed by a shout of “I ain’ted Dead yet” as they’re putting us in the ground. Now there’s an idea … where did I put that will that I haven’t actually made yet.

So – still worried, but not as worried as last week.

Changes ?

This desktop now has Windows 10 on it … I pulled the trigger on the upgrade yesterday and so far I’m happy. There was a little hitch where it claimed my processor wasn’t compatible, almost as big a “What the HELL !” as my old laptop claiming the screen was incompatible. The problem was a self protection system that I’d turned off.

It feels a little quicker, a little smoother. The UI is different, more boring compared to the shadows and whatnot that Windows 7 puts on the screen. That might be why it feels quicker, because the machine isn’t busying itself with unnecessary prettiness.

One thing I did miss was the sidebar and Windows Gadgets. I have a few of those that tell me about things like how busy my network connection is, how much space is on my discs, how hot and busy the processor and graphics card are, how much memory is being used. Things like that.

Any more changes ? Dunno there. I will admit to daftness though. Most of my clothes and stuff is dark and I can do one of those washes every 2 weeks. That fits for washing machine capacity and stuff like how many different shirts I own. I don’t use much white stuff, so the white wash is fairly infrequent. But … I always forget some things like … dishcloths. Oops. Even though they’re next to the washing machine. Double oops.

Explanations ?

I feel I owe a little bit of explanation for how I reacted to the referendum vote. There was a Facebook post of “England what did you do and do I still want to live in you”.

I’ll come out now and say I voted Remain on Thursday. It seemed the lesser of two evils. Here’s how I saw it :

Remain – would keep us tied to meddling busybodies in Europe who came out with all those regulations and then ignored them when it didn’t suit them. But they have introduced some happy regulations that make life a lot easier for us. Things like Working Time Directive and a lot of other employment law.

Leave – were being fronted by a bunch of untrustworthy scumbags who have since been proven to be completely untrustworthy as they break all the promises they made during their campaign.

Immigration – I think this was a red herring to be honest. When I’m out there amongst the public (it does happen), most of the non-UK people I see seem to be imported from Asia to give the call centres an authentic Indian accent sound. (Is that racist ? Or observation ?). The KFC girls are Eastern European and they’re nice. Perhaps I notice the Asian people because they look different. I don’t see that as a negative. In fact, I know one Very Pretty Lady who is … very pretty and has those bubbly chuckles.

But we are seeing idiots harass non-English looking people in the street. That’s abhorrent and it’s a shame we don’t have an overseas colony to send them to any more. The harassing people. There’s no place for those people in a civilised society.

Economy – there’s one constant in economics – the people who have control the reins are utter cowards who will run screaming into their SELL bunker at the first hint of trouble. The stockbroker people break good companies and the economy with their ways. Yeah. I don’t like them.

Stupidity and Arrogance – from the EU commissioner bloke who probably swung the result by at least 2% by saying there would be no renegotiation of terms. That nearly changed my vote.

But it’s that outright gullibility that drove my reaction to the referendum result. People voting for those who have already proved utterly incompetent (Gove), those who’s ideals are absolutely counter to the “We’ll help out the common people” he was claiming to believe in (IDS) and the one who is a fascist lunatic (Farage). And that hostility to immigrants that’s being reported.

We’ll see how things work out over the next few weeks. There is already talk of a House of Commons rebellion voting counter to the referendum result, which would keep us in the EU.

We shall see.

I’m back to the cooldown time which is watching a HeyChrissa stream. She’s playing one of my favourite games at the moment, Mass Effect 2. And it’ll be interesting to see how she plays through.

And that’s cooldown from running my Happy Hive empire in Stellaris. So named because I’ve gone for happiness this time as the thing that makes the race stand out. Sometimes it’s good to go for science, sometimes for military strength, sometimes economy. But … happiness works on all of those a little bit. It seems a powerful combination so far. The Happy Hive has eaten (figuratively, not literally) one competing empire, assimilated another and has taken over half of another.

They should steamroller over another one … soon. But not tonight, chill out time now :-).

Brexit is irrelevant compared to the other news.

With Brexit you think things are going to get *better*….? [lol]

I have them all at the moment I think …

Let’s see :

The best one is a HAPPY BIRTHDAY ! to someone special who I hope will see this and have a read. I was going to do another Alphabet post today but with the news I’ve had, heart’s not in it now. I need to think.

That’s the next emotion – thoughts of futility.

To be honest, I’ve had the thoughts of futility for a while with the condition of my outsides. I keep saying I’m improving but I never actually get better. The condition seems to evolve and change over time. I see improvements in some areas (some of the deep cuts have healed !) but more damage appears in other areas.

I would like to be back to the normality of properly healed skin, I just don’t know when that’s going to be and it’s extremely wearing mentally for a bunch of reasons. The first is having something wrong with me that doesn’t appear to want to fix.

But it is steadily improving. The news I had today is about someone who may not improve and my first thought on hearing that is to either find someone who is willing to give me a hug for a long time or to curl up in a ball on the bed and shut the world out for a while. It’s added a bit of weight to a feeling I’ve had for a while about someone.

No more about that for here though. Let’s just say I’m rattled and my first instinct which is to help people knows that I can’t help in this case. My outsides even mean I can’t be around to give a little support. (Need a quiet weekend and would really prefer not to go into work tomorrow).

I’m still tired too. My body doesn’t want to sleep at the moment. I’ll be tired and yawning my head off in the evening with no energy but when it comes to bed time, I just can’t sleep. I may actually be having broken sleep but it doesn’t feel like that.

Ouchies – my shoulder has decided it wants to be out of place for a while, which is … ouch. I haven’t found the way yet to pop it back where it should be. Oh well, if it wasn’t the shoulder it would be something else (my back dislikes me at the moment).

That’s enough here about the bad stuff though.

I may go off and hide for a while at the cinema tomorrow afternoon to watch Independence Day;
Thoughts are with the person the news is about;
More thoughts are remembering a happy smiling birthday person face;
I’ve been happily addicted to Stellaris …
… and my Happy Hive race was doing well*
(I’m restarting to remove a mod and to add some more mods)

And I’m hoping that 2016 will actually turn around and get good at some point. It’s been a horrible year so far.

LOVE the 'summer' graphic!!!

After watching most of Le Mans over the weekend, I’m currently watching another kind of motoring …

Definitely better than what’s outside the window !

Yep. Spotted this one on the Facebooks this morning and it’s too good to not steal/borrow/recycle. Although, I think there is a trace of sun outside there … Could be my room light reflecting in the window again.

Yep. Le Mans was pretty good this year. One thing they’ve introduced is a Slow Zone, effectively a virtual safety car where if there is an incident, the cars go through the incident area extremely slowly (for race cars capable of 200mph+). It lets the marshals deal with the incident with less fear of someone else being caught out, lets them get cars out of gravel traps and back on track and lets them fix the safety barriers.

Would something like this mean that a driver like Max Bianchi would still be with us ? (He crashed into a tow vehicle that was extracting another crashed car – was he speeding under yellow caution flags ? We shouldn’t speculate, that doesn’t change anything). Maybe he would be – the slow zones definitely make for better racing as they can keep going with the ZOOM on the other areas of track without the SnoreFest which is a full track safety car.

Oh and I was putting the Lego Le Mans car together as well. That’s the basic chassis together, with engine firewall ahead of the engine and rear suspension/differential assembly. It has pistons ! That move !

Lego Technic has changed a fair bit – when I built the Lego Technic car maybe 30 years ago, Lego hadn’t evolved much past the rectangular blocks. There were pins and axles but the special moulded components like the hubs at the back there, weren’t in the Lego component set.

Just like the real cars ! Hybrid race cars have ruled Le Mans since they were allowed in a few years ago. They aren’t as advanced as the Formula 1 hybrids (they have restrictions on the amount of hybrid energy they can use) but they’re getting there. I think the Porsche has a MGU-H, which harvests power back from the turbo.

I was anticipating some car-carnage at Le Mans and the Formula 1 this weekend. From Le Mans, the weather conditions were bad enough (heavy rain) that the teams didn’t have enough time to get all of the practice and qualifying in. The Formula 1 was on a circuit which was a mix of old roads and new roads, where some of the old roads were very tight.

I don’t think that one is coming apart any time soon. The pins that hold it all together are pretty intricate. The back section even folds back on itself to fully frame the engine bay. Here it is with the mechanicals in and the bodywork starting to appear.

Notice the shadows and the potential daylight … I was getting more and more tired on Saturday and didn’t trust myself with adding more bricks, clips and gears (as demonstrated by me missing whole pages and finding out later!), so I gave in and had a short sleep/nap. Yep, still not managed to watch through a whole Le Mans. Must be getting old !

How was Le Mans ?

It has its usual classes, LMP1 for the fastest cars, LMP2 (Le Mans Prototype) for not quite so fast non-road race cars and 2 GTE classes for very fast road cars (Aston Martins, Ferraris, Ford GT40, Corvette, Porsche). The GTE classes are divided up into Pro and Amateur with the drivers allowed to race being controlled more strictly now than in the past. Remember I said about an incident which cost Ant Davidson a few fused vertibrae ? He’s still racing but the idiot who caused the collision isn’t.

The race started under safety car conditions due to heavy rain making the track dangerous but that cleared up after an hour. But … what’s this ? An Audi in the garage with major difficulties. A blown turbo … and they get it back on track within 20 minutes. It’s miraculous how quickly they can repair the damage on these cars. And because it’s Le Mans, a blown turbo doesn’t mean end of race, it just means they’re a few laps behind and still in with a chance.

Quicker even than the time it took to put the Green Machine together.

Modern Le Mans cars are built like that, they’re built modular so they can be repaired and put back in the race quickly before they drop out of contention. The stricken Audi finished a few laps behind and … because of certain other events, almost finished on the podium.

Lots of incident in the race, lots of changes of leadership and position. A very even race all told, with the leading 3 cars being on the same lap until … (I’ll get to that) with the Audis keeping them honest. The lead in LMP1 was changing with every pit stop and on the track too as cars were in different states of tyres.

Toyota were incredibly confident and while it looked like they didn’t want to jinx it by celebrating early, you could tell the excitement bubbling up from under inscrutable Japanese engineer faces. I wanted them to win too !

How cruel it was then that with only 5 minutes to go, after 23 hours 55 minutes of racing, that the lead Toyota (with a Porsche only a minute behind) would suddenly break down. There are no prizes in Le Mans unless you cross that finish line after 24 hours with a car that can run under its own power. And the Toyota broke down just after crossing that finishing line.

Heartbreak for Toyota, jubilation for Porsche and their surviving car. And very close finishes in LMP2 and GTE as well. No wins for Aston Martin this year – boo hoo.

After that kind of epic racing, the Formula 1 with its processional nature and foregone conclusions was a bit meh (as usual).

I’ve been watching Top Gear too, I’m warming up to it. Matt Le Plank is thawing out a bit (although his section with the idiot in the muscle car around London last week was stupid) and the other presenters are more than earning their place too. They had a Tesla Model X on this week and I think I know who I will move to after Lexus don’t do it for me any more …

Alternative fuel cars like the all electric and the hybrid are definitely the way forward for me.

Hybrids are the best of both worlds at the moment, with electric power supplementing the fuel engine. But … they do have an extra cost and the mechanicals take up a lot of space and add weight. You have two propulsion systems in the car, with some of the bad bits of both. Like a big lump in the front that takes up space and, in mine, a propshaft that means it’s a 4 seat and not a 5 seat.

Electric cars, like the Tesla, are hugely interesting. They’re solving the range problem, they’re getting massively more acceptance now (because cars like the Tesla go fast) and because they’re just electric, there are none of the compromises on interior space that come with the hybrids.

Perhaps soon ? Maybe 5 years in the future ? We shall see.

Saying that though, I could make the Lego Le Mans car electric now, albeit just for the doors and engine cover.