Vista baby
Vista is finally out, well properly out anyway. It’s already managed to annoy me several times and I only started the install this afternoon. After years of mocking microsoft for their lack of progress information it seems that they are destined for more as the install process has only indeterminate progress bars for a good part of the install, and quite frankly the most important part as its the bit where you have to sit there to fill in the information.
As for looks, it does look very cool. I’m not sure that I’ve got everything running smoothly yet but it was pretty troube free with regard to getting everything working. Anyway must get back to playing around with it!
Good Hunting
F1 show rooms?
Christian Horner has been quoted by itv-f1 as saying that F1 needs to provide customer designs for it to be a viable investment. He’s arguing that it’s better to have more competative customer teams than uncompetative independants citing the Minardi/Torro Rosso example. I’m not sure that the issue is relevant anymore though, Bernie has limited the number of teams to 12 and with Prodrive coming on board that means no more room. Seeing as we’ve already got 11 teams that seem fairly stable who apart from David Richards is going to be hunting around for a customer car?
As far as I see it providing the option detracts from F1, it’s the pinicle of motorsport and it has the unique appeal of new cars every year along with unparalleled technology. Having more of the same cars running around will surely just make the sport more predicable, something that it has been heavily critised for over the last few years. With 12 different cars on the grid each is sutebly suited to different tracks and gives a shifting performance level where better drivers may be at a disadvantage.
Another problem is the loss of sponsorship, F1 has already lost money through the tobacco ban and if it starts to lose it’s place at the top of the mountain then would that not be a problem for the sport. We’ll see how ProDrive pans out I suppose but I don’t think it’s true to say that we need customer cars.
Good Hunting
Prince of the world
Prince Charles has won an environmental citizen award in the US (from the BBC), presented by none other than Al Gore (Still haven’t seen An Inconvenient Truth). Although he has been critised by environmentalists for flying over to the US. I know that it’s not the best way to travel but surely a guy with as much on as the Prince of Wales doesn’t have time for sailing across the oceans? I’m sure if they had decided to travel by sea everyone would have been up in arms about the costs so how can he win? Now normally I’m not much of a royalist but surely this is a good thing? Someone from our tiny country being recognised for his work in trying to save the environment? Especially at a time when the US administration could be doing a lot more to combat climate change.
This kind of goes with something that I thought about when I was listening to John Reid on the radio this morning, I know that he’s a politician but at least he tells people what’s wrong and how he’s trying to fix it. All that people can focus on is a couple of things that haven’t quite gone to plan. Why are we, the British, so institutionally pessimistic? A american with something to do with the war in Iraq was also on talking about the ‘new strategy’ and how we’d be able to measure it’s success by the summer with some guidelines earlier than that, before John Humpreys jumps in with “Or failure”. The measurement of success implies a measure of failure too so why are we so eager to jump on failure?
Perhaps we’d be better off focusing on the things that have gone right and trying to learn from those rather than focusing on what’s gone wrong and trying to learn lesson from them?
Good Hunting
BSG (Baltars Spirit Guide…?)
The third season of BSG (Battlestar Galactica for the uninitiated) resumed at the weekend in it’s new sunday slot on SciFi and so being the idiot I am I managed to not get it until wednesday morning when I discovered the the sound was out of sync on my download. My luck was in though as Ian had it and we had a spare forty minutes so I managed to get to see the latest episode, Ian has a good post about this so I won’t reiterate what he’s said as again he’s proved that I sound like a five year old child in comparison.
* (Kind of Minor) Spoiler Warning *
I will say though that after having some time to consider what the episode means for BSG I’m,
a) Disappointed,
b) Concerned, and
c) A tiny bit turned off.
Now I’m disappointed as BSG can be great and has had some great cliffhangers over the three series, I mean what about the end to season two for starters. I was so excited about the pure number of story arcs they had leading into this one episode, but they just tied everything up. We have now have everyone back on the Galactica and the next episode can just be mid season filler really. The only thing that I really want to know about is the other Cylons, but I’m not that bothered. I’m not sure how they are going to tie them in if they are meant to be people on the Galactica as the other Cylons don’t know who they are and so where do they come from? Without a major revision of the Cylon backstory then there’s not really anyway that I can see for them to be integrated into the story, I’m sure that the writers will prove me wrong but I hope they don’t resort to some weird - only just feasible - answer. This brings me to my second point, where the series is going.
One of the main things that I love about this series is the realism that they have brought to this quite frankly unbelievable universe, short of adding super heros or the Starship enterprise it’s pure Sci Fi. But the writer, directors and actors have managed to humanise this show in a way that most others haven’t done. I really feel that we’re starting to lose that now and that we’re getting into Startrek territory. As Ian said to me yesterday, it’s a bit of a leap to say that the Super Nova must be linked to one that happened 4000 years ago and that it must be the pointer to where they are going - I may still be wrong here as this is yet to be confirmed that it is the right way. Then there’s Starbuck drawing, please don’t go down the spritual route, please, please, please! I hate it when stories do that. Now when that’s the universe that the story is set in and we know that from the start it’s fine, but don’t switch to it half way through. Just my pennys worth.
My last point is just the fallout from a & b really. There’s not much going on to keep me in apart from James Callis who is still awesome in it and I’m worried that we’re going in a direction that I’m not going to like, I suppose that time will tell. All of this said I still really like the show and I’m going to watch it until the end! Plus we already have two and a half seasons of great tv!
Good Hunting
Renaults new look
Well renault have unveiled their new car which has been doing ok in testing despite the couple of image I put up last week. There’s all the usual hype about the two times world championship team moving on etc, etc… blah, blah, blah… but the main difference (Apart from a decided unspanish driver lineup) is the colours. I think that it might actually make me feel sick. Why not put some lime green in there to really put us off.
Now I like clean simple designs and normally so do F1 designers (I’ll let the Red Bull guys off as they have had to design two different team looks from one logo) but this is some kind of horror car. I just hope that this isn’t the start of a move towards the kind of sponsership and designs that preveil on the other side of the pond and make it so hard to determine the difference between the teams.
I’m sure that the colours won’t effect the speed or the reliablity of the car but it might make some of the mechanics ill as they watch it fly past each lap. On the other hand perhaps it’s a seceret ploy so that when they come up behind Kimi, Alonso, etc… they can distract them easily. Maybe we’ll see more sunglasses on the grid from now on. What do you think hidden art or just plain rubbish?
Good Hunting