#100

Well, finally I made the 100th blog entry, but in the last weeks I dropped in posting speed. One reason to that is I am working a lot on esport-racing and our other projects. Not many time anymore to do something else. So far I can tell: We are behind our schedule in terms of looking nice page, but we are somewhat in the schedule for a runing page, including good backend features etc. We'll see how it starts... Keep your fingers crossed. ;)
Now I celebrate my 100. blogpost a bit and get back to some content updates.

Progress and more

OK, back to my project, which is coming along not perfect, but it's moving. First the answer to some question: Yes there will be a spanish version as soon as possible. We just want to have some things sorted out, before we put on the translation pack. The rest of the page is growing, I'm taking care of a lot of content, while the coders take care of all those needed little features. After commentable news will be finished, there'll be the hard work coming, with getting the league page including the navigation all together. That's the biggest and most important part of the whole project. But I have to say, I'm really really happy about the stuff we already did, and on what people work right now to get it going. In the end it will be a nice league system, which is able to grow even more - I hope. No, I know! Good night ;)

Sara :(

OK, first something really not racing related: Now that heroes and Prison Break are running again, I just have to say 2 things:

1.: Nice to have Sylar back

2.: Sad, that Saras actrice didnt want to play in season 3 anymore :(

But damn, both series started good again, and there's the third fun giving TV thingie too: Top Gear is back, and wow, I just love that humour!

Website progress

OK, while there isn't much to tell on the testing of LFS atm, I gonna tell you a bit about the progression of the esport-racing.com website. We launched the german part already on 3rd of october -  well about 7 hours too late, but still - and from that point on we were working hard on bugfixes and updates. Most important update for now is the addition of the english part of the page. News are translated, forum almost works on english (except the buttons, but I'll work on that today), registration works too etc. Looks all good so far, needs some more testing and settig up though. Stay tuned ;)

working almost 24 hours....

I knew, it would be hard, but I never expected it tobe so much work. 24 hours of work now in a row... almost. I'm dead tired, trying to inspire my best helping hand with the code, so we can finally bring this baby up. Bigest problem was basically the small time we had in the last weeks, to actually work on that project, as there are still other projects with a definitely higher priority. Well, some little stuff left, I hope, you see something prety soon.

Cheers

Soooo tonight ...

Unfortunately I just saw, that the little timer I have there doesnt show the real time, but connects to the local time. So it's more than the 9 hours shown atm until Heroes airs again. I'm really looking forward to this new season! OK, back to getting the page running again... ;)

OT: new series season

OK, Prison Break already started into season 3 this week, while only 3 and somewhat days left to Heroes. So lets see what season two Heroes brings us.

I actually have to say, that I didnt not really like the first episode of new Prison Break season. But lets see what the future brings us. It's even for that TV-series really staged, as you can clearly see that it drifts away from the somewhat closed - and also quite reasonable - story of season 1 and 2. I do think that the way, the Heroes series is put up, is way more reasonable and better, than this sona season of PB. But as I already said: I'm open to surprises, so lets see what the future brings us.

So, where are we heading here?

Check THIS out and tell me ;)

Rest in Peace, McRae and son

I wanted to write somewthing else today, but the actual shit happening puts me to that:

Yesterday one of the greatest names in Rallyesport died in a sad accident, taking his 5 year old son with him into death. My condolences go to his loving wife and daughter.

Rest in peace, Johnny and Colin McRae.

First race after a loooong time

Yesterday evening I had the first league race after a looooong time. And what shall I say? Oh My God, how could I stop leagueracing for soooo long? I mean, there was everything in it! Might have been the slowest grid in the league, but damn it was fun:
OK, qulifying went OhKey, but then I had a really bad start, havent raced for a long time, i had to get used again to the attacks in the first 2 laps. And then someone threw a tire at me in the chicane. I flipped and crashed my suspension, so I had to head for the pits. 1 minute down to the leaders I now could find my rythm into the race and started hunting the other drivers. That already was a lot of fun, until lap 17 of 20...
Due to the fact, I got to my PC 1 minute before the start of the Qualifying, I forgot to reset my connection and I had my 24h DSL disconnect... shit.

OK, up to the second race, starting place 18. And now I was in the rythm already and made my way up the grid. I hunted them down, one by one, had a fastest lap in the race once (third fastest overall) and could finish in P6 at the end. My race experience helped me a lot, as I could trick a lot of the youngguns into easy mistakes and take their places. Blocking is an art, overtakin too ;) Wow, I really had a lot of fun! Up to the next race next week!

OK, here comes the next stuff from IAA

Well, I had a nice looong day with at the IAA'07 today. Started with a pretty dumb press conference at BMW. What the hell, releasing X6 and at the same time they talk about reducing CO² etc. That just doesnt fit. On the other hand, I do like the new 1 coupe. Looks so oldschool. Then I headed to the other halls and got a lot to see. Sat in a lot of cars and played some little simulators. I also did a testdrive in some boring Audi Diesel to learn how to save fuel by changing driving style. Well, that's about all. Most impressive actually were the Loremo, the Aston and the Ferrari, Maserati, Alfa, Fiat hall. It was so fucking crowded, that I wonder how this should work out, when it's open to public...
Anyway, here are the pics, enjoy!

IAA 07

IAA, first stuff ;)

OK, I gonna post some more movies and pics later on, and a detailed story about what's going on at the IAA'07 in Frankfurt, germany. But here's my first test drive:

Well, I actually played sega rally on a PS3 inside a moving Lancer, and it bloody sucked. What a sad thing, to see the possibilities of a PS3 wasted like this... :/

Interesting week coming

OhKey, the upcoming week will be a really interesting one: First i gotta have to do a lot of stuff for my league project getting started, my best three german drivers Nils, Danny and Steven will start tomorrow evening into the new ESL Premiership while I will have a start in the upcoming EAS series. First time for some racing for me since last year. Looking really forward to it.
But then, there is the biggest thing this week: The IAA is starting with its pressdays on tuesday. I'll be there early in the morning for the BMW press conference, where I will have a look at the new freeware game with the new BMW M3 in it and will also enjoy the catering and the drinks all around the exposition. That gonna fill my petrolhead :P

back from bootcamp

now that was a nice weekend with the guys from my team. pizza, beer, racing and some movies. Here are some pics, check them out.

So this is it?

OK, this is my first videoblog. So be nice with me ;)

Been on TV again

OK guys, I've been to munich for filming this one back in April. Yesterday it finally aired in the Show "BRain" on german TV. Have fun and a laugh at my incredible RL driving skills :P

BMW and their new (old) drivers for 2008

Mario Theissen presented today their drivers for the following Formula 1 season:

Nick Heidfeld
and
Robert Kubica

Personally I'm really happy for Nick, that he can stay with that promisning team, 3rd best in the world atm, and definitely the possibility to win races and more next year. Robert I think will have some little probs at the beginning of next year with the removed traction control, but will attach fast and then will own together with Nick. Well, I do think, Nick's faster over a race distance anyway ;)

Groenholm, the ubern00b ;)

Even a Rallyepro like Groenholm doesnt manage to get the rear in, without stalling :D Enjoy this actual vid from today, taken by Danny aka Husky:

Skinners go pro?

While Team Inferno, home of the famous setupfield for LFS, is looking for a new skin the competition way, it gets clearer and clearer: Car skinning - not only in LFS - becomes more and more professional. Why is that?
The reasons are a bit the same, as there are more and more sponsors and kind of semi-professional teams in Sim Racing and eSports itself. People want the best they can get, and the skill of a bunch of graphic enthusiasts reached a level, which is definitely payworthy. There are still guys that know their stuff really great, and do it for the fun. But: The big teams want good quality skins, while they themselves concentrate more on the core of Racing and maybe keeping a website up. So they are open to offer good skinners some reward. It starts with small amounts of money or a T-Shirt or some hardware stuff. But that's only the beginning.
So, Skinnerz out there: Keep up your great work!

Back in town - unfortunately

You might wonder why, but a simple question: What else do you need, if you have in a little village with about 500 inhabitants right in the french alps, at about 900 meters above NN full speed DSL internet? :P You can check a lot of pics in my buddies picasa webalbum. And then imagine a sunset, 25°C, a nice "Cote du Rhone", some cheese on a nice balkony or in a nice garden with your laptop at hand. No better working place on earth!

En directe de France

Just a short vid from the brother of my buddy here in France. He's enjoying the US of A atm, and it seems like american sand tastes good for a french guy ;)

Back flip on the sand
Hochgeladen von gillessj5

France, I'm coming!

Just posting to say good bye for about ten days. We are visiting friends - basically my second family - in Lyon and Grenoble and will enjoy the french Savoir Vivre. So just to let you know, see you in about ten days, and maybe I have some news about the GC then ;)

Are you a Hero?

Go check this Quiz out!

btw, I'm like Micah ;)

Bumper Dumper!

You dont know what a bumper-dumper is? Go find the newest piece of Top-Gear or wait till sunday when it's shown on TV again. It's a MUST-SEE!

raced.de is back

That's prolly only interesting for my german readers, but we're bringing back www.raced.de. Check it out.

A Great vid and an old story

OK, I actually wanted to rant about something, but then I came across a really great video by Don. Check this out (Or get divx version HERE):



Back to the rant now: In german LFS forum somebody (again) moaned about bumpdrafting in LFS and that reminded me of a really old story, happened 3 years ago, also in Live For Speed, but it was S1 back then. HERE the corresponding thread and the VIDEO to it (with german LIVE commentary by Hoellsen and Nik).

Number of the beast

That is, as we all know, 666. When I parked my car in front of our house this afternoon, the kilometer counter, which I put to sero everytime I refuel, it showed 666 kms and 700 meters...
Sounds like a hell of a drive? yeah, it kind of was. Only good thing though, is the point that I was low on fuelconsumption and got home save. But: What the fuck are a lot of the other drivers thinking? I mean a fully crowded autobahn, 2 lanes, no way to go faster than 130, and the guy behind is right in my bumper, while the guy in front is in the bumper of the car ahead, and then has to brake every minute almost fully... That lead to all in all 3 full brakings today. Scary shit, and always avoidable with some more precautious driving.
Oh, and to my dutch friends: GET RID OF THAT CARAVANS! You even suck when only standing in STAU with them...

Häkkinen still ownz them all

Dont you think? :D

You think some stuff only happens online, but...

... check this, how on earth did he manage to go this way there???

Back from Dresden

My wife and me had a wonderful weekend in Dresden (without our kids ;) ) and enjoyed the great weather and a nice party with our friends. All ended with a nice karting event, where I could take the win with my team-mate and beat an Aston Martin Testdriver ;) Enjoy some pics here:

Dresden

Force em or not?

Soooo, finally it is there, but what the hell?
The developers introduced a sim-typical Option to force people on servers to use the cockpit view. Nothing special so far, cause this option is implemented in a lot of sims and used from leagues to even the field and disable advantages you get from driving on the roof or lying between the wheels. So far nothing interesting, but now the people start going nuts. Why you ask? Well, I dont know. They feel guilty of being arcade maybe? Every moan about the field of view os sooo small with cp is just ridiculous. In reality you dont fly behind the car, dont sit in the middle on the hood/roof and dont lie between the wheels with an invisible chassis. All those views give an advantage to the cockpitview. And for leagues it is just a matter of fairness, to implement this FCV option, so everyone is on an even level.
Oh, about those moaners, who whine how difficult the change is etc.: STFU, I did the same 2 years ago and it didnt slow me down a lot, I got used to it really really fast, after about 2 days I was used to it. I cant even drive anymore with the wheels view I used back then....
So: BE MAN ENOUGH! Go use cockpit! ;)

More pro than t-com...

Not a day without some funny stories about the biggest german ISP and phone thingy, the t-com:
This morning @ about 10 o'clock my router started flashing its status light. That's usually a sign for something being not OK. And I saw, that my phone line was dead already, while DSL did work still. But not more than 5 minutes and also DSL was dead. I knew, that due to some new neighbours there were already some problems with the phonelines, so I opened the door of our apartement, and listened... Voices downstairs, prolly lowest floor or cellar. I grabbed my trousers and shoes and started sprinting the 5 floors down. The Mr T-Com was already in his car and about to leave, when I caught him. He said "No, I didnt touch anything there, just measured some".
Well, after putting his test thingie on in our apartement (5 floors up for him :) ) and testing it back down in the cellar (6 floors down :P ) he found a broken-loose wire. "Ooops, that must have been me then..." Any more questions?
Well, he had to get up to our fifth floor again to get his equipment. At least something that he will remember :P
I just dont want even imagine, what would have happened if I would have been too slow and missed him...

Hot Summer, hot hot summer..

Sooo, everyone's into holidays? After the last race of the quite succesful ESCC season 2 yesterday, where I am personally happy that really the big guys raced in there, had a lot of fun, great fights and gave a good good show. I just hope next season I'm a bit better able to directly cast myself, so there is less lag on my comments, than through TeamSpeak etc...

But the work isnt over. There's a little summercup planned, a demo cup, I'm working on some special SK release and I wanna go into holidays for a week or so too ;) I wish you all better weather than here right now for the whole summer. Eh, and besides that: Get out and enjoy the sun!

Heroes Season 2 infos

You should know by now, that I'm a Heroes addict. Season 2 work has begun already, and in some interview some guys of the cast give some nice answers and share some secrets. Check this out:

Ferrari back en forme!

Saw the race on the weekend? Pretty good demonstration of how you dominate a race. And Kimi did a tremendous job, putting down the best laps, when Masse was in for his last pitstop and taking over the lead. Reminded me of some msc action... Still, the true champion of last weekend was definitely Rossi. How he basically destroyed Stoner was a piece of Art. Great driving on his motorbike.

And here's something for you to enjoy and pass on:

MoE and some little other stuff

The probably best league there is in LFS starts with their pre-season preparations. So go check out their forum and participate in the polls. Besides that my old team will start their website on sunday or monday. So check out www.ocrana.com then ;)

BLOXORZ and...

A nice game for in between! Enjoy 33 levels of blocking:

BLOXORZ

And dont forget the dramatic chipmunk!

Summer...

...And it seems, like everyone fell into a deep slumber. What's up people? Are you with your minds already in holidays? Do you really need that break so much?
OK, I let you alone with your summerdreams and want to put you to some little things that happened last week, and how they will turn out for the future.

The biggest eSport league in Europe kicked their racing game out of their prestigueous Pro Series. And put in another version of CounterStrike. Whil I do understand the financial reasons, I do think it's a shortminded decision. On the other hand, no one in the ESL really ever took care for racing and the oportunities. About time, that this might change. Therefor it's also a mistake of the RacingCommunity itself to not use the ESL for their own purpose, push it etc. Or: How would you sell something that you simply dont know and dont understand?

So I sat back down on my arse and put some stuff together already and gonna go pushing again. Seems like a lot of the rest of the guys are lazy bastards and just happy with what they have here ;) "naabs", Rudi would say

The EPS finals, or...

... camping is not made for me. My back still hurts, I almost fell asleep on my way back home (here is a big THANK YOU to the developer of 3D rumble strips on the autobahn) but I still had a lot of fun. So what's all that fuzz about those german EPS championship finals two times a year? Well, by now it turned to a nice community meeting with guys who know each other for about 4 years by now (some at least). It's a tradition now. So all the guys meet up there, race their races and in the evening there's a nice barbeque with football and beer at the camping site. A lot of beer actually :P


But back to the start:
The start of the EPS X finals weekend needed to be a record. And I was actually forced to deliver one. Due to the fact, that I couldnt leave home earlier than 8.30 am and I had to be at the location 190kms away in cologne at 10.00 am, I put the pedal to the metal. Leaving the gas station here at 8.35 and arriving at the parking lot in cologne at 9.45... So one hour 10 minutes for 190 kms. PB :)


From the point of my arrival at the location, I was in constant action. First organizing skins etc. for the drivers, checking beamer being ready in the big room, also got a microphone working. Then commentating the two first races with nils and danny dominating the grid. Best start you could think of for our drivers. Then I entered the results also on our SK page and went to talk with one of the giga guys. After that we went for some lunch (I was starving by that time), and then nils and danny went to the SK office to practice for sunday. While the rest of the grid went karting. Well, we missed that fun, but for danny this was probably the important point towards ensuring his second place. And without my advice their laptimes would have sucked anyway in FZR (weight to 100% anyone?) ;)


Finally we went towards the camping site, made a short stop for beer, coal and steaks, and the nice part of the evening could start. I just cant recall every little detail, but Arne rocks, Wolle is better again, fetzo got the best online racing stories and Ingos humour is unbeatable, while Dennis belly tries to catch up to Ingos ;) Theo is a fun guy too, wearing a shirt with his nick on it (well, who isnt those days anyway? ). I could sleep in a tent from nils, that was OhKey, but sleeping on the hard floor is just nothing for an old man like me...


Sunday morning we headed again to the finals place - which was great btw - for the last two races of this season. And as expected nils dominated again, while Danny really had to fight a lot for his second place, especially after Hendrik got him in the last lap of the first race. The whole giga crew seemed to had a bad evening on saturday too, as they all turned up almost an hour too late, which unfortunately lead us to the problem of not having a beamer to show the first race. Well, in the end, at least the final fights in the race could been watched via the beamer and a bigger crowd was there this time too. They seemed to like the show, we did the winner ceremony too and then I again had to enter the results by hand, cause the webside had some hickup. That took quite a lot of time and after some last, nice talk with Sven I head to the Pizza Hut for a last lunch with danny, jay, nils and his sidekick hady. Then, finally, I could head back home towards my family. I threw in some ??? into my MP3 player, phoned some, and hoped to stay awake... the rest is history ;)


Thx. everyone, was a great weekend!

Community power and an unbeatable argument

Tonight there is the last race of a quite big amateur series in germanys LFS scene. And someone far away from home needs to drive in this last race, to be able to reach the - on top of this Amateur series settled - Pro Series. So what did he do? He made a "contact-post" in a forum, asked for a place to race tonight, close to the place he is atm. And guess what: It worked out. He'll be racing tonight, fighting for the last points at someones place he only knows from online racing. Now that's community power! Another nice argument PRO socialisation of online gaming ;)

But I have some other strong argument here. Just check this MOVIE. If you have anything to debate after viewing this, except to spread the word, you have understood nothing!

Finals are up on the horizon

What finals, you might ask. Well, it's almost a tradition by now, two times a year the german LFS community meets up in Cologne for the ESL Pro Series Finals, where on a LIVE event the winner of the actual LFS EPS will be determined. The weekend promises a lot of party and a lot of fun again! I'm really looking forward to it. So, come to Cologne, and meet a lot of LFS nerds and have a lot of fun with us!

X

LFS Patch X is finally out, get it here: www.lfs.net

Politics... wtf?

You thought, I'm going politics? Haha, no. I just heard that US of A president Bush doesnt participate today at the G8 meeting, due to feeling sick. So who of the other presidents made him drunk yesterday? With german beer and russian vodka maybe? :D

To all those Simmers out there

If you ever wanted to enjoy the way the developers of LFS really work on their sim, I encourage you to visit the test-servers and the Testpatch-section of the LFS Forum frequently those days. The amount of testpatches, bugfixes, improvements and the speed of coding should give you a good idea, how they usually develop LFS.

So this is a rare occasion, where the normal user really could get an idea of the development. This is more than pure betatesting atm.


And besides that you can enjoy packed servers with up to 32 cars on the track. I accidently stayed there yesterday for about 2 hours.... Last time I raced that long was some LFS GT race last year ;) The typically n00bs, plus some wreckers (did anyone say dmwright?) and some of the oldschoolers. col, devil to name just a few.

Public again

Yesterday evening I've been racing on a public server online for the first time in the last six months more than just one test race. And I have to say: That was a lot of fun, especially cause of the packed server and the 25+ people in a race. Nice fights everywhere.

btw., grats theo.

New Dream Theater Album - Systematic Chaos

OK, I received my order from LFS-Shop today, but also my Special Edition of Systematic Chaos from Dream Theater. It seems like this is my most-post-on-a-day day.

About the album: It sounds great and the songs are somehow Octavarium with some backflashes to Images and Words which makes this one a true DT work. The special edition comes with an additional DVD with the whole album mixed in 5.1. And this is an experience, I wouldnt miss (well, my neighbours might...) Damn, you're just IN the music!.

Best LFS vid ever?

Get the hires version HERE!

My sons special ability #1

Sleeping where it's impossible. Ever wondered if your kids have special abilities?

Vinnie

Oh btw. New Heroes comic is out, check NBC page.

coffee cam

A "not so unknown" finnish racer and virtual racer did that in his office, so he sees if there is coffee left or not. I should do that for my kitchen too...

Just in case...

... I'll forget when Heroes season 2 starts, I added this nice widget ;)

24 hours - the aftermath

I thought a long time, if I shall post all my anger here or not.... Well, first I raged about the Orgas, then I gratulated them for some straight line they finally tried to put through, and in the end it seems a bit... Well, the provisional results wont be the final one.


The Race marshalls been definitely too much under pressure and there wasnt the possibility to post protests in the race - what should have been possible. MoE Organisation shows, how a 24h Race should be done and organized. Enough marshalls, replays being saved in the race, and looked at by the backup marshalls during the race and then penalties are given. But here the marshalls gave penalties online, most of the time without even letting other marshalls have a look at the replay. And therefor a lot of the penalties sounded strange some times. e.g.: You get a penalty for a small touch, maybe even a little linemistake by the other and then some hours later your car got shot clearly and nothing happens. So I expect a lot of protests coming now, and there will be a lot of penalizing afterwards. I also wonder if the FXRs will get penalties for clear of-track driving and gaining time, compared to going slower through turns and staying on the track. The two other RWD cars in the big GTR clas definitely have a disadvantage there, cause their cars get really unstable on the grass.


Anyway, all in all it was - again - a crazy big event, amateurlike but fun-giving. Everybody should have enjoyed it, a good example you can find HERE.

bwit goes web 2.0

YEAH, my favourite local curry-sausage dealer has just opened his Forum and his Shop. Now you can get the hot stuff online too! And no, I'm not taking part in the chili-contest, I am not suicidal ;)

I have to excuse myself... a bit

Well, the organisation of the 24h Race got almost all their problems solved, they practice some starting procedures atm, rules got updated and put towards actual developped tracker systems etc. Finally they are going the right direction.


And do you know, why this I happens? I think there's one or max. two persons who took over the leader role in the organisation and now put this through. Good stuff, guys. Now keep that event coming, it'll be a hot weekend!

heroes wtf?

OhKey.... what the hell? Have you seen the last episode of Heroes season 1? Sorry, Volume 1 I have to say... I dont know... I have seen a lot of series, but that cliffhanger is evil. As usual, I wont spoil anything here, but I have to say: Great ending, Hiro's the Hero, and some others too. Good Shit!

How to become a joke

in some racing community:


First you organize some great 24h hour races in the last years, then you stop progressing, take the same rules - but dont put them readable online easily - start some advertising for this years 24h race and dont even have a site ready, get about 100 teams to sign up. Then you have the luck, to increase the number of cars/server a lot and you have to change the rules. But what do you do then?


Start discussing and dont decide fast. Very "good" decision, to do that.


You do the Qualifying then, and allow cutting, which is basically bugusing. And people start discussing about that again, no clear and open decision is taken by the admins again.


And finally, you pull the biggest trick for the jokes: While the balancing issues appear, you again do a late and not clear decision, so people start discussing again. And because they discuss, you get angry, and there you have your joke. While about 300 racers wait for a cool event, they get a nice soap-opera to laugh at. Including drivers from the original team pulling off from LFS due to the "community behaviour"


What the hell did you expect after such a movie-like story? Why on earth is there no real "chief-admin" taking the organisation and putting some clear figures and decisions? Why dont you get yourself into the right direction? Do you want to stay the joke of LFS-24h-racing orgas? I dont get it. Up to now the racer who quitted the team and LFS (he was just seen online on a server) keeps on writing envious bullshit and therefor putting a smile on a lot of peoples faces.


To say it Simpson-like: "HA HA"

StarCraft 2

Years ago I got my first online gaming experiences with StarCraft1. We had a zillion great LAN battles and it's still one of the best RTS games you can think of. And NOW:


StarCraft 2


Nothing more to say

Cliffhanger

Wanna know best cliffhanger ever (imho)? Watch Heroes season 1 ending.... O M G


Update: Ooops, one more to go, so next week we'll see, "How to stop an exploding man"

Some new stuff

Finally got my links-tab started. It will grow by time, but for now I start with two of my buddies blogs, jawel, who partially blogs in french and cypher, who's blogging in german. So get your languages ready ;)
Besides that I link to my team SK and to my more or less not so actual youtube vids. Have fun.

Heroes!

Some hours, then I see it! Who's gonna Nuke now? Peter, Sylar or even the Nukeman? Or even nobody? Cant wait....

F1 and Heroes

My new Hero in this F1 season is Hamilton. Man, he showed Alonso how to do it. relaxed driving, good strategy and now he leads the championship! That's the way to go. And now eyebrow has the heaviest pressure he can dream of. His own team-partner! He must feel like Kimi now. Well, on the other hand, I think Kimi feels better. He has the speed and the knowledge, that he can beat Massa easily. I guess his strategy was better and he would have gotten Massa @ 2nd pitstop, while taking Hamilton @ 1st one.


And why Heroes now? Well, tonight is the first seasons final, and I simply cant wait to see it tomorrow! Who's gonna nuke?

international Racing mayhem

While we started the ESCC2 already 6 weeks ago, we had the first One Grid Race yesterday with the W17 testpatch in LFS. 27 cars on the track, almost all fast guys to see and a lot of hot battles and good racing. Some crashes too, but that's due to some lack of experience with such a fast grid all in all. You can check the replays here: ESCC Race 4

We also look forward to show the final two races via LIVE stream on the web ;) We are in talks about that atm.

Other point: You read about montoya crashing again? It's kind of funny how NASCAR gets "newstime" due to him here in Europe, while he definitely sux big time. On the other hand, that's always been the interesting part about NASCAR, the crashes. ;) I'm still and always bored about oval racing, cant help it.

old, olt and new stuff

Yesterday there've been a TV Show in serbia looking into LFS, and the OLT-Pro Racing server was packed for that event. People enjoyed the tight racing with more than 27 cars or so on it. Every other day I can only encourage you, to get there too and enjoy LFS at its best.

Today, I just got the confirmation, that I get my fast machine back on thrusday. That's good new news for my old stuff ;)

And if you wanna check something new, get ready this week for patch X... or maybe weekend... or next week ;) LFS is rolling again :)

backuplaptop

Well guys, I wanted to write something more, something longer, but due to a wrecked soundchip in my CELSIUS H230 I had to put her into warranty/repair. So atm I'm on a backup laptop with a 800 MHz Duron and 256 MB of Ram... I hope, I get my "baby" back quite soon.

Quitters

Well, besides all my other hobby stuff I am also Admin of the ESCC and am very very happy to see the toughest and fastest races so far ever in LFS. The Grid is prolly the best there ever was, all the fast names are in it and every race is tight and density is extraordinary. Well, that hits for Grid 1... Unfortunately - and for me not even understandable - Grid 2 lacks the continuity of the people to join and race. That's a shame. Now the excuses why people quit this league are even funnier... if it wouldnt be so sad.

"One league is enough"

"Yeah, EAS is too much for me"

blahblahblah... This behaviour is totally unfair towards the other drivers, and puts a bad light on YOU quitters, as it puts on your team. I for myself started a list and this list will be taken into account if you quitters wanna join any other league in ESL in the future. Maybe those guys arent lazy, but definitely they didnt thought this whole thing through, and that's a shame. I'm tired of this behaviour. So here goes: The list of guys who are just too lazy (imo):

• Dee
  
• ClioRacer
• FiredUp
• phight
• nesrulz

I gonna update this list, if needed. I'm just bored of this behaviour.

Why I'm Nick Heidfeld Fan now

Well, I'd like to go a bit more into detail of my ~15 minutes talk with Nick Heidfeld on the intel Racing Tour Finals. Just because this was my personal highlight and I was so positively surprised. Well, I was watching the race for the M6 on a balcony just above the racers, and then I saw Mario Theissen leaning over and watching the race too. So I went over to him and said, that he shall congratulate Nick to that marvelous overtaking maneuvre against Eyebrow Alonso. His answer was simple: "you can tell it to him by yourself, he's over there". A few meters away also Nick was leaning over and was actually watching the race all by himself.
That was my chance! So I approached him, congratulated him for the maneuvre as opening and we got into talk. After I asked him how he felt in the car his eyes really got lightened up and he had a nice smile on his face. He was also quite surprised how close it looked in the TV afterwards, cause in the car all felt full yunder control and nice. "Eh, that looked quite cool, doesnt it?" ;)

The ice was broken and we had some talk about Live For Speed and the scene and my two drivers down there. He was really interested that there is a gaming scene with semi-professional guys, competing for things. He had a lot of respect about the leader, and the pressure put on him, just because of the knowledge of having a M6 in his hands. I also asked him, why Robert (Kubica) was that slow compared to him, and he said he had some problem with not closing tank-lid, but that's basically costing NO time. Nick shook his shoulders, with a little smile on his face. Must have been something else then ;)
We were both leaning side by side at the balcony watching the race like two buddies from the (sim)racing scene. It felt so natural, totally normal. He was really into it, pulling air through his teeths when nils attacked in last two laps, or when Simon spun out almost hitting nils. Before last turn I had to leave him rapidly, cause I wanted to be with my boys down there, he grinned, knowing a bit how I felt and we said a short good bye. Man, what a great person (still so little :P ). I got someone to cheer for for the next races and seasons :)

M6 anyone?

There it is! It's decided and Danny "Husky" Engels from my team won that gorgeous BMW M6. WOW. What an event, what a race, what a party. First go check some of the pics in my picasa album:

IRT Finale

Well, now what can I tell about this great event? First of all we had a lot of strange happenings on our way to get there: Danny almost missed the train, Nils almost crashed in a plane and the second had another hour dealy, which added up to 3 hours delay on his arrival and I ran once more into the rev-limiter... Damn nice A9 Autobahn there.
We finally made it to the event in the "Lenbach" in Munich and the place was already packed with a lot of VIPs and stuff. And then, during the race, I had the coolest fifteen minutes, I could imagine. I saw Nick Heidfeld watching the race and so I approached him and started talking. And after one or two typical answers he got relaxed, realized that there were some guys here, knowing what racing means in terms of passion and we had a pretty cool conversation. We talked about his fabulous maneuvre vs. Alonso and he damn loved it. Some short quotes:

"How did you feel in the car, overtaking him there, outside?"
*with a huge smile* "I wanted to put my arms high up in the air, but next turn was already coming ;) "

"You sure know, that there was like no room between alos and your car?"
"hehe, yeah, from inside all looked under control and easy, but then I saw it on TV and gotta admit, that was damn close. Quite cool, eh?"

And we continued this way, watching and enjoying the tense of the race.

Nick: "Oh, he nearly shot him... damn, that was close... oh, now he spun, but that's not a guy from your team, no?" - "nope" - "well, then ok ;) "

Well, after Danny prolly had the best hour of his life, being driven by Nick in his own M6, we started partying and continued this up to the end of it, late in the night at around 3am. Damn, what a great event!

On the road ....

So I was on the road again and will be tomorrow. Today's a good day then to talk about it ;) My visit at the GIGA 2 studios was a lot of fun and we saw a really entertaining race too. My personal highlight but also somehow disapointing was reaching absolut TopSpeed of my Lancia Kappa. That sounds good at first, but when it's limited due to your rev-limiter, it's a bit annoying ;) So there is this one part on the Autobahn A3 from Frankfurt to Köln (Cologne), where it goes downhill for about 2 kms without speedlimit. The traffic allowed it to go with 200+ so I put the pedal to the metal and at about 235 km/h my car ran into the rev-limiter... Damnit.

What's the reason for this? Well Lancia delivered the Kappa with two different Gearsetups called "Power-Drive" and "Comfort-Drive". Now you can imagine, which one I have. Gonna have to find the ratio of my fifth gear, to calc a bit then ;)

So where am I going tomorrow then? Well, I'll head down to munich with Danny, to watch the IRT finals, meet Nick Heidfeld and Vettel and also Mario Theissen. And yes, we're going with my car and gonna have a nice drive down to munich. I keep you updated on how the race went and all that.

Me @ TV

Tonight you can see me commentating the todays race evening of the LFS EPS X LIVE @ GIGA2. I think, I'll have a lot of fun, cause the races promise to be really really entertaining.

The later Easteregg

Hi buddies, I'm back from my easter holidays and already deep into LFS betatesting stuff. Finally I have to say, cause it was a bit quiet around my favourite Sim. But I guess today or tomorrow there'll be a new testpatch out for everyone of you with a lot of cool new little features, making the whole Sim better usable and even more real :) Keep an eye on www.lfsforum.com for latest news about that.

SimBin  surprised yesterday with an announcement that they are developing their own gaming engine. Starting as a racing sim engine it will also be able to work as a FPS or other 3D engine. It's almost complete, from physics to rendering, network, menues etc.... I have to say: Finally we get something commercially new in the engine market, cause I am personally bored and annoyed of the all the time samefeeling of ISI based engines. Check out the details HERE.

Still here

As you might have guessed right, this was a little April-fools joke. So back to business. The FIA decided over the weekend to prohibit Traction Control systems in Formula 1 from 2008 on. That I call a good news, cause this way we see the real drivers winning again. It's only possible from 2008 on, cause all teams need to use the same electronics then, which can be supervised completely by the FIA. So, after this already really promising year 2007 in Formula 1, we'll get some more and better action in 2008. Realy something to look forward to.

Good Bye

Well, that's it. After about 4 years in LFS, I quit. Was a lot of fun, but center of Life changes, so I have to move on. Leep on racing, buddies.

Some LFS EPS coverage

You can watch - or better hear - me perform doing comments on the 6th race of the ESL Pro Series here:

Gamer-FM Download

Was quite funny to do, cause I was sitting with my laptop on my bed, had a pizza and got some beer :) No one noticed it though :P

Taxi goes LFS

"funnycat" was inspired by my favourite french car-movie series "Taxi" and made this cool movie. Have Fun.

Taxi chase
Hochgeladen von MrFunnycat

Timo Glock tested LFS

Just some nice pics of Timo Glock with my team-mates and me after our showrace at the cebit 2007 in Hannover. Check BMW-Sauber F1 Homepage for more infos on him.

vykos.de

Hello SK!

So, now there you have it. I am very happy that we made this step and went to SK. It offers so much possibilities for us and virtual online racing in every aspect. But besides that, we got the oportunity to have a showrace vs. Timo Glock, who is 2005 rokie of the year of the champcar series, did a great performance in 2006 GP2 series and is now Testdriver for BMW F1 team, while also competing in this years GP2 series again.

He's a great guy, loved racing on "our" virtual tracks and we enjoyed that a lot. We got the feeling, he liked more talking with us than with his PR-pussycat. To put it that way: There was petrol-talk all over and he did very well in LFS, cause as he said: It comes really really close to the real thing.

Weekend of truth

Sooo, I encourage everyone of you to check decent community pages tomorrow to read about our racing teams newest clash at eSports to make virtual Racing even bigger than it was up to now. For some it's a surprise, for us it's consequence. You thought, ocrana racing team isnt that big as it was anymore? I guess, you're a bit wrong ;) But huge things, need time. Check back tomorrow :)

Week of Cebit

So what's coming this week? The cebit is about to start, - still - worlds greatest IT-show in Hannover. And as far as I heard on sunday there'll be a lot of guys from the german LFS community around and especially on the ESL and intel booth. I'll be there too, and I guess we'll have an interesting and funny time there. Oh, and if there's someone from around Frankfurt who likes to go there on sunday, I might have a free seat in my car, gimme a mail ;)

And now you go out and enjoy the summer, while I try to finish sooo many things, I cant really talk about (yet) ;)

Racing Spring

While the F1 season is about to start, we at the ESL decided to finally start the ESCC again to provide some racing to the international racers crowd in LFS. I'm just finalizing the news, but get ready for some nice GTR-cars action. And some prices ;)

So I also got back to a little racing and tried the STCC servers. And I have to say, it's fun for 15mins... then it got boring for me. Nothing beats a good league in terms of cool racing. I think I will have to start again in next EAS.... ;)

Ouch again

I just come back from the toilet, and I paid my dues for the hot curry-sausage from yesterday (again). Why on earth does this hot thing taste so damn good, that I do the same mistake over and over again? If you ever visit Frankfurt, you gotta go to Best worscht in town and enjoy the best curry sausage you can get.

Some other hot sausage: Today new videos and pics of the Maserati GranTurismo ("It's not a game, It's real!") got released. Head over to www.granturismoisback.com and check it out, it's well worth it. I will get back to a very very promising TV-cam tool for LFS, made by Soeren and actually in beta-testing...

Ouch

God damnit. I just hit the wardrobe with my little toe. It hurts really bad... But back to simracing. The last week was for me personally a new motivation, to invest some of my precious time into the sim-racing scene. Some nice project showing up, might be the blockbuster. Completely non-team related and dedicated to the whole sim-community... We'll see.

And yesterday finally Soeren came around with a nice beta of his lfs tv-cam tool. I'll take a deeper look at it later today. And now I wish you a nice weekend, enjoy!

Oh what a day...

You might think, I gone nuts now, or what. But today it was a good day. First of all: Happy Birthday to my mate OPK who is engaged for a while now and is coming along well in his life. All the best, buddy.

Then, germany won the oscar for best foreign language film with a pure, strong, good movie about the "Stasi" in the GDR in 1985. Go get the DVD or see it in cinema, it's worth it!

And besides that, The Stig made the best move ever, but I wont spoil anything here, get the newest episode of Top Gear for that ;) Finalgear is the keyword.

And last but not least, I'm feeling kind of OK again after having the worst diarrhoe ever (that's what's happening to you, when you're married with children ;) ). Oh, and besides that I just had some great stuff got done today, and that feels just good :)

New Maserati Gran Turismo

Ok, here comes the Big Bang for every petrol-head out there. The new Maserati Gran Turismo! From the pics, I just say WOW!



Check www.maserati.com for more infos!

The sound of OCRANA

As promised, here's the song to the video:

MP3, 4.5MB

krani rules!

soooo, now we are the ocrana racing team for about 3 years, ocrana itself just became 10 years old and therefor it's time for a really special vid. We made the music, we did the stunts, we won the championships and krani did the video! ;) check it out here:

HQ, 73MB
youtube
google

UPDATE:
Because of all the questions, some infos on the vid, the sound and its history:

1. Yes we have that many members in the racing team, although some of us are a bit more inactive than others.
   
2. OCRANA itself is a fantasy word, made by the founders of this very nice team.
3. The song is called "Just OCRANA", done by Ingo Spyra and Christian Schneider, bass-player and drummer of Echo Appartment. Songtext and wav-file we'll provide later. It was done in purpose for the video.
4. OCRANA became ten years old november '06, the racing team is in OCRANA since january 2004, it exists since April '03
5. Yes, I founded that racing team, not OCRANA ;)

Hope that helped a bit ;)

NFSU? STFU!

Sooo Cafepress won today;) Check it out!


 

Some Oldschool hardware stuff

Man, that was a time when I had my first Voodoo add-on card. The one you had to connect in between your gfx-card and the screen.  Now see what graphics-card technicians and game devs really did during the last 10 years, by looking at THESE pics. Check out the framerate up there. Is your uptodate 2004 gfx card doing that many frames easily in doom3? :P

Pure Emotions

OK, I just told you about leagues starting etc., same goes for the "city liga", and they produced one of the finest trailers as advertisement I have seen so far in LFS. Check it out here:

Movie, 25MB

LFS Sound betterd up

Due to the nice find in the geekx blog of the sound editor for LFS, people started working on their own sounds for the LFS cars. The best atm comes from DaveWS, get it HERE! It's worth every bit of bandwidth!

League racing is warming up again

As always, the sim racing seasons are about to start or just started. We will have a lot of online racing this spring, I even think with more LIVE coverage than ever. The ESL Pro Series is entering their 8th LFS season, again 5000 euros will be given as prizemoney. That'll puts the overall prizemoney given to LFS from the ESL itself to 40k euros. Nice amount...

OLFSL, The Original LFS League, the oldest of them LFS leagues is starting again too, and I think you will see some really good and close racing in there. There are plenty of other leagues just starting, so check out the leagues subforum of LFS HERE ;)

pseudo |-|4XX0R

What happens, when a poor and lonely not-that-young-anymore french mind loves a game and thinks he himself is some kind of Hitler of hacking? Well, he hacks the forum of his beloved game, posing, showing off and posting "It was just for fun". But, to bring that to a clearer point:
That wasnt actually a hack, it was more like executing some files to use a documented hole in the forums-code. That actually doesnt need any special hacking skills but more some criminal and sick motivations. Shame on the devs here, that the hole wasnt closed b4, but lean back a moment and laugh a bit on the oh-so-big phlos from france, who's JaHK (Just another Hacker Kid).

Check THAT for more reading on it.

Bugatti et al.

There you go, you check videos on some sites and then you come to myvideo and you see that really surprising vid of some bike-driver filming a Bugatti Veyron and a Porsche Carrera GT. So you watch this vid with the typical pleasure a petrol head feels, seeing exotic, fast cars, and then you realise that this was shot right around the corner, on your typical part of Autobahn that you travel quite often: check this out, for Highspeed on A5, A66 and some smaller road ;)

1000 bucks, for what?

Well, there is this Online Racing league, using only open wheelers, if possible some Formula One cars. Well, here's the first problem: There is no official Formula 1 Sim for the PC, except the two BMW F1.06 for LFS and rfactor. Besides that, you will need to have a licensed team - or get hired by a team with a license - to drive in that league. Sounds all fine and cool, but:

To get that license, you will have to pay the small amount of about 1000,- € . Yes, Euros. Honestly, there are so many good and great leagues, that even offer more content, more news-features, more price money for none-2-small starting fees. I still dont get it, why teams pay 1000,- bucks for... almost nothing. Anyway, good luck to all sim racers, cause the new seasons all over the world are about to start soon ;)

"Die Deutsche Post"

... that's how our german main mail service is called. The last two weeks I had my special experiences with the german post. But lets start from beginning:

I ordered a nice Hat over at the LFScentral shop (Check the geekx blog for more ;) ) beginning of january. Or even last year, dont really remember it. Anyway, on january 17 the german mail didnt meet me at home when delivering the parcel and just threw a reminder into my mailbox that I could catch it up the next day in the local mail-office. That was exactly what I did... but the mail didnt o what I expected. It was not there. The guy in charge had no clue at all and sent a FAX with my phone numbers and details to the central mail office... OK, long story short: After several visits @ several local mail offices, an evil phonecall to customer support, including a lawsuit threat, I received a standard letter:

Sorry Mr, we cant find your parcel. If you want it to be traced back, the sender will have to do a detailed search request. Yeeeaah, sure, Cafepress from California will take care and do a detailed request for a little hat, MY ASS!

Well, last thing I could do was to contact cafepress support and tell them my story, here's the answer (1 hour after I contacted them ;)):

"Dear Joachim,
Thank you for contacting CafePress.com!
I am sorry to hear that you did not receive your order. I have issued a replacement order at no cost to you. However, you should receive your order by February 26th.
If the original order does arrive there is no need to return it. Please go ahead and keep it as our way of apologizing for the delay.
If there is anything else I can do for you please let me know."

CafePress 1 : 0 Die Post

Joost

Do you know Joost? I just got into the beta-test of this nice upcoming TV-revolution made by the skype-makers. Instant TV, I'd call it ;) You just start it, choose your channel, and bang you're in the show. It's not TV channel streaming like TV Ants or TVU, it has it's own channels, and during that beta time, there arent that many channels, but right now I'm enjoying some World Poker Tour Show.

I just hope Scawen is into LFS TV already, picking up the great Pre-Work done by several guys, and brought to some kind of beta state by WolleT from Triso-Racing.

Vista or not?

So, now it's out and it seems like people couldnt care less about "the" release of "the" new OS by M$. Why on earth did they cut the possibilities of Vista that much down, that basically nothing new stays in, well except the c&p from Mac Aero thingy...

On the other hand, LFS can be unlocked on Vista since Patch V, which seems "quite" important, cause everyone will switch to Vista immediately (read: 2 years). While more and more people got already Dual- or even Multi-core CPUs, or at least HT capable CPUs and LFS doesnt support multithreading. So what would you have done in the Developers seat? Work on Vista compatibility or check the possibilities of Multithreading? I think I made my point clear...

Prison Break Day(s)

 Yeah, as you see already, tuesdays is my Prison Break day. The great show airs monday nights in the US, and I cant wait to see it. But what's up with racing on tuesdays? Well there have been some interesting leagues on tuesdays a year or two ago, and I heard that there might be a folow up to the ESCC by the ESL quite soon, which might be on tuesdays again, but the rest is just... nothing special. So I head over to watch some Prison Break and read some forums, having a laugh on a lot of people.

Oh, if you aren't a fan of TV-shows then this video from kraniwani might interest you. He did it as an interims vid until his big project for OCRANA - 10 years movie is finished.

Sundays...

 Usually sundays were cool some months - even years - ago in terms of Racing and LFS. Last practice sessions needed to be done for the Pro Series Race on Monday. But at the moment we have the winterbreak, no season is running and I stopped racing at that high level for quite a while now. So now my sundays are full of personal study stuff, family and a lot of preparation for the upcoming seasons. Yeah, I'm checking stuff too, even if I'm not racing. I will do the penalty stuff for the EAS participants again this year, and besides that our team needs to have some little push for 2007 ;) As usual with games that stay on the market for a looong time.

Oh, about games: Just heard that rFactor wouldnt be supported for free anymore after this last patch 1.250. Understandable, but still a shame. I think that the Racing Sim market isnt fully fed at all by rf and LFS. The minimum goal for evey sim should be, to reach GPL selling numbers and those were in about 600k. Well, we'll see how ISI will try to get some more money out of the crowd with the same old aproach to physics in future releases - although there are some quite cool mods of rF.

Well that's all for now, still learning that blogging stuff, and I think, I'll be able to put some podcast on this week.

Cheerio

Welcome!

Hello World!

Some year(s) after I registered the url and after I got the idea, to start blogging, I finally will take the step and get out into the world and talk about myself, my life and all the other stuff happening around me. Besides that I will post some podcasts on a not regular basis. You might find some interesting stuff on my beloved hobby sim racing, especially on Live For Speed, the way it takes and some little stories straight out of the world of simracing. So I hope, you'll enjoy this and give me chance. Have fun!