This season in Formula 1

I don't mention auto racing nearly enough given how much of a fan I am of it.  Basically, if it's got wheels and goes fast, I'll watch it.  That's also pretty much the extent of my interest in cars, I'm not a huge car buff or anything.

Anyway, this season of Formula 1 is interesting thus far for a number of reasons.  First off, points are now given to the top ten finishing positions of each race.  I'm not exactly sure of the point curve, but the winner gets 25 points.  The overall higher rewards should prove to make the championship a closer fight with more drivers in contention as we get to the end of the season.

No refueling is allowed.  This is, I believe, primarily a safety measure.  The last few seasons have seen multiple fires and drivers leaving with the fuel hose still attached.  Also, this lets the team qualify their cars on an insanely light fuel load since everyone can now fill back up to the brim just before the race.  On the other side, very few motor sports don't allow refueling, so F1 seems a little weird now.

The effect that no refueling has had on the races: Instead of it being advantageous to pit later than your competition, it's now much more advantageous to pit before them to get fresh tires.  Tires mean a lot more this season, it's already been shown that if a driver is easier on their tires that they will have an advantage.  Pit stops are blindingly fast, some of the teams are changing tires in less than four seconds.

There are three new teams that haven't quite figured things out yet: Lotus, HRT, and Virgin Racing.  Since there's two cars per team, that's six guaranteed backmarkers in every race.  And yeah, I've been making jokes about the Virgins.  "He can't afford to follow that Virgin around forever!" etc.

If you've been watching the past few seasons, you've no doubt noticed that Red Bull has been getting better and better.  They've taken this season by storm.  They're leading the constructor's championship and their drivers, Mark Webber and Sebastien Vettel, are leading the driver's championship.  They look like the team to beat this season.  Webber's come alive and is taking poles and winning races, including back-to-back pole to victory wins.  Vettel had some car troubles early on that caused him to retire from two races while in the lead, but that's been ironed out and he's been right there pressuring Webber.

The stewards, who hand out penalties for in-race mishaps, have been under fire for being overzealous in the past few seasons.  To try and bring that under control, the steward panel for each race now has a former driver on it, to provide that perspective.  Personally, I still see people getting penalized for things that I deem to be "racing incidents", i.e. things that just happen every now and then in racing and don't really deserve penalization.  I still think the stewards issue won't be solved until the panel is a dedicated panel consisting of the same people every race.

Felipe Massa is back after that head injury he suffered.  He's currently getting punk'd by Fernando Alonso, but it's nice to see him back in the car.

The big news is that seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher has returned and is driving for Mercedes.  He's working with his old pal, Ross Brawn.  He's already returned to being himself in a race car, riding the edge of the rulebook all the way.  He's just not winning, that's all.

Fans of Kimi Raikkonen may be disappointed to know that he's moved from Formula 1 to WRC.  I don't know if anyone broadcasts WRC live, all I can ever find on TV is after-the-fact summary programs on HD Theater.  I don't even know if it's possible to broadcast it live given where they're racing, but it'd be nice if it were.

Renault have improved a fair amount.  Their cars are yellow and black this season instead of white and yellow, I think it's a faster paint job.  Not as fast as their old iconic blue and yellow, but whatever.  They pretty much had to change it given that their old color scheme used colors from the logo of their old primary sponsor, ING, which pulled its sponsorship after the race fixing incident happened.

Overall, my prediction so far is that Red Bull will probably walk away with the constructor's championship.  Which of their drivers gets the title is currently completely up in the air.  Both are capable and deserving.

food food food

I have a mini-vacation in the next two days.  My parents are going to be gone and I have to take care of the dog, but other than that, it's open.

I'm thinking it's prime time to marathon some anime.

I also have my food planned out.  Thursday night will be tacos (homemade ftw).  I procured a pound of ground bison and a box of Old El Paso Stand N Stuff taco shells.  A pound of meat makes ten tacos, and there's ten shells in the box, so it works out perfectly.  I doubt I'll eat ten tacos, but whatever.  More for another night.

I also procured another California Pizza Kitchen frozen pizza.  This one is rising crust rather than thin crust.  It's their BBQ recipe Chicken variety.  Yeah, I know, it has onions.  I'll cope with the heartburn.

Also for daytime snacking I have a large bag of Chex Mix.

I figure that with all that stuff, I'll be set for food.  I can make sandwiches for lunch, we have plenty of bread, mustard, cheese, and lunch meat, so that little issue was solved before it even came up.

Working Through the Backlog

I said a long time ago that I'd use this season to work through my anime/manga backlog, but it took me until a few days ago to get around to starting.

I kicked it off by catching the hell up on reading Yuria 100 Shiki.  Since I couldn't remember exactly where I left off, I started over from the beginning.  There's only 56 chapters translated, so it didn't take too long to get through it.  Also MAL appears to have a definitive number of chapters (100) and volumes (12) listed for it now.  This seems fitting seeing as how it's no longer marked as "Publishing".

Next I followed up by watching the Akikan! and Kanokon OAVs.  Akikan's OAV was really funny.  Kanokon's was good, but...  pales in comparison to the TV show.

Earlier tonight I watched the K-On! Uraon bluray specials.  It's 7 episodes that are about 2.5 minutes apiece and it's pretty funny.

Still left to watch:

• Gundam Unicorn episode 1
• the recent Darker than Black OAV episode
• Canaan (13 episodes)
• Fate/Stay Night (24 episodes, and a 6 minute special)
• Kiss x Sis OAV (4 episodes) (saving to watch when 4th episode comes out, also why the hell did they start numbering the episodes from zero)
• Macross Frontier (25 episodes)
• Maria Holic (12 episodes)
• Rozen Maiden (first season (12), OAV (2), second season (12))
• possibly Shingetsutan Tsukihime, just to see why the collective anime community denies its existence (12 episodes)
• Strike Witches (TV (12) + OAV (1))

Currenly airing series I'm archiving for marathon enjoyment: (yeah, it's all ecchi)

• B Gata H Kei (12 episodes)
• Kiss x Sis TV (13 episodes)

Currently airing series that I'm watching as the episodes come out:

• 13 episodes of Promised DayFull Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood
• K-on!!

Other stuff I shouldn't forget:

• At some point this year there's going to be a Gundam 00 movie
• Whenever Suzumiya Haruhi no Shoushitsu is released on bluray, it would be nice
• There's another Negima OAV episode due out any fucking time now god dammit

I think that's about it.  The reason for this huge backlog is that I look at the number of episodes in the series (or the total size of the backlog) and get mistakenly overwhelmed.  A 12 episode series, episodes averaging 23 minutes, assuming I only watch the OP/ED once, will only take a little over 4 hours to watch.  Parents go to sleep around 10 PM, mom gets up at 4:30 AM.  Plenty of time, plus for the longer series I can start earlier and wear headphones.

That's a lot of stuff I have to watch, but if I space it out it should go by pretty quickly.

Linux Mangaka Moe Fail

I'll say right up front: the outcome of this review should be 100% obvious.  This linux "distro" sucks.

But why does it suck?

I'll admit, I wasn't expecting much.  In the end, I got less than what I expected.  What could one possibly expect from a linux distro aimed at anime/manga fans/fansubbers/scanlators?

Here is a list of the things I expected:

• From looking at the screenshot on the page with the download link, I expected it to be a reskinned Ubuntu with a custom set of preinstalled applications.
• I was right.
• When booting the livedisc in a VM to test it out, I expected to log on automatically (as is done on a regular Ubuntu livedisc); click Install, enter account information, time zone information, etc. (as is done in a regular Ubuntu install); and have it install.
• No automatic logon.  The livedisc has a regular user account, and root.  The regular user account cannot perform the install.  You must LOG ON AS ROOT to install.
• After unmounting the ISO and rebooting the VM, I expected to be able to log on as the user I created during the install.
• No such luck, the user wasn't present.  Furthermore, upon logging in (as root) I discovered that it was acting like the livedisc, even when installed to the hard drive.  The Install option was still present.
• I expected the regular user to have access to the same application set as root.
• Sadly, nope.  It has an entire Wine menu that only appears in the system menu when you're logged on as root.  This menu contains 7-Zip and Notepad, like there aren't readily available graphical archiving utilities and text editors for linux.  Only root has the Terminal in its menu.  A terminal is necessary for anyone with even a passing knowledge of Linux, some things are just flat out simpler and easier to do on the command line and it's simply not feasible to have a GUI frontend for every last command in linux.  Hell, even Windows has things you can only do from the command line.  Both of these could probably be fixed with enough poking around, but I shouldn't have to do that.
• I expected Firefox to be, you know, a default install of Firefox.
• What do you think?  Firefox was configured to look like Chromium.  Or maybe it was Chromium with Firefox's icon and "Mozilla Firefox" in the titlebar (yeah, it had a titlebar), who knows.  I didn't use it long enough to check.
• Being targeted at the anime/manga community, I expected some anime wallpapers.
• Well, at least I got this one.  Not that any of the characters were recognizable.  I found where they were (/usr/share/backgrounds) and copied them to the samba share on my server for reasons unknown.

Two for six?  Linux is much better than this.  You're better off installing whatever fansubbing tools you want to use on a default install of Ubuntu if you want an Ubuntu-based Linux install to fansub with.  I deleted the VM, didn't even dignify the ISO by seeding it back to a 1.0 share ratio, and promptly deleted the virtual hard disk and the ISO. Good riddance.

The verdict: SMASH IT WITH A HAMMER, KILL IT WITH FIRE, ET FUCKING CETERA.

This Just In: Free Stuff is Hard to Resist

So in case you've been living under a rock, you probably know that Valve released Steam for the Mac earlier this month.  To celebrate, there's a special deal.  Portal is free.

Yeah, I know I'm about the last person in the world to post about this.  Whatever.

I love puzzle games and had wanted to play Portal at some point, but never really had the money to get it (unemployment ftl).  But since it was free and legit, why not?

Since getting it I've beaten it four or five times.  For a game that's as good as it is, it's pretty short.  I've got all the achievements I really care to get.  Basically all of the ones you can get playing the game normally, and the achievement for finishing two of the advanced levels.  I might do the rest of the advanced levels, but it'll take some time.  The challenges I might do (I have bronze on one of them, for doing level 13 in 9 portals, and I know how I can shorten it by at least couple more), but it's not my top priority.

All of the achievements except for Camera Shy and Transmission Received I got on my first playthrough.  My second playthrough I went for Camera Shy and somehow came up two fucking cameras short.  On my third playthrough I got that as well as Transmission Received.

Earlier I was playing around with the console, giving myself all the Half-Life 2 weapons (despite not actually owning HL2), getting the upgraded portal gun early, having fun with noclip, etc.  I noclip'd my way to the room with the cake (and companion cube) in it that you see at the end, as well as the outside world area they have for that one scene.  It's kind of weird, the cake makes metal noises if you hit it with the crowbar.  Also, if you move the companion cube, it doesn't move it back before the end cutscene.  Just for kicks I noclip'd to the top of the shaft that you fly down just before seeing the cake in the cutscene and grabbed the chair on one of the ledges.  Put it by the table with the cake.  Yeah, noclip is fun.  Though you do have to watch how you use it, or you could end up like this guy.

Portal is pretty good, and it's still free until the 24th, so if you don't have it, grab it while you can!

On a side note, I would love to use a jump break but Blogger isn't putting the "click here to continue reading" link in the post.  It still properly does the jump break, but...  yeah.  Also, I swear that I enabled the thing at the bottom of the post that says "Posted by XT-8147" but it's not showing up.  Blogger's full of bugs in that area, on Random Bullshit I disabled the comments link early on in the setup, and re-enabled it later but it never showed up.  Reactions haven't worked in either place.  What the fuck.  Do they even test their features?

California Pizza Kitchen Frozen Pizza

I mentioned a while back that their flatbread melts were pretty good, so I decided to try one of their pizzas.  After carefully considering my choices, I made my decision and ended up with a "limited edition" Cheeseburger pizza.  Basically it has little balls of seasoned ground beef, diced tomatoes, onions, and cheddar cheese on it.

The box says "Crispy Thin Crust" and oh man, they're not kidding.  The crust is extremely thin and crisps up nicely in the oven.  Most likely due to the lack of substantiality in the crust, it also sports a rather quick cooking time: 11 to 13 minutes at 425°F.

Size-wise, it clocks in at 10 inches.  Not large by any standard, but it might realistically feed a couple people if they aren't completely hungry.  The listed serving size is a third of the pizza, which means you'd have to cut it into six slices.

It tasted pretty good.  I may have to get another if they have one that isn't an ultra-thin crust, just so I can actually taste their crusts.  If their crusts are made from the same bread recipe as the bread for their flatbread melts, it should be perfectly fine.  There just wasn't enough crust for me to really get an idea of its taste.

They have several different varieties, of course.  My next decision will still be somewhat difficult.  It would be really nice if they had one without the onions.  The onions on the Cheeseburger variety were caramelized, and actually tasted kind of sweet, which didn't sit right with the rest of the pizza.

This pizza was one of those with directions telling you to place the pizza directly on the rack.  I've made my opinion about that clear before, but that opinion was based on the hypothesis that if placed directly on the rack, oil would drop down onto the heating element of the oven, potentially starting a fire.  So with this pizza I decided to test that out and see how it went.  I put in the flat pan with aluminum foil on it like I usually do, but I put it on the lower oven rack, below the pizza.  I figured this way I could see what, if anything, it dropped.

When the pizza was done (as per the directions, the cheese was melted and the crust was golden brown), I inspected the pan to find it completely clean.  I'm now shifting my hypothesis to what I hope is a reasonably educated guess that the oil amount will differ depending on the brand and variety of the pizza.  This is one of those win-win experiments.  If I prove myself right, I'll be happy that I was right.  If I prove myself wrong, I get to have a bunch of pizza in the process.

The only real problem that I encountered is that the 10 inch size of the pizza resulted in it needing fairly exact placement on the oven rack, or one side would hang slightly below the rack.  I had to move it while it was cooking and add extra time to compensate for having opened the oven.  This was basically an oversight on my part when putting it in the oven, but if it was even just a quarter inch wider the issue would have been nonexistent.

Overall, it was pretty good.  As I previously mentioned, I'm going to have to try out some of their other varieties to get the whole picture.

Classic DOS Games: Windows 3.1? Waitaminute...

Yeah, Windows 3.1 runs quite well in DOSBox.

Just to stay on the safe side of legality, I can't offer a download link.

Setting it up takes a little work.  With the right drivers you can get actual semi-decent video modes.  I have it running 1024x768 with 16 bit color.  The resolution can go higher, but my monitor doesn't go much higher...  lol ancient CRT

Anyway, everything you remember about Windows 3.1 is there, because, it IS Windows 3.1.  Just in case you think you forget, I'll mention Hotdog Stand and canyon.mid.

Here's a screenshot of me not actually using the Hotdog Stand theme (it's deliciously eyebleeding), but I am listening to canyon.mid.

And here's a screenshot of me using the Hotdog Stand theme, but not listening to canyon.mid.

While Windows 3.1 technically isn't a game, it does come with Solitaire and Minesweeper (which you already have installed in your undoubtedly more recent version of Windows), and if you install the Win32s addon that allows it to run 32 bit programs, you'll have Freecell (which again you probably already have).

However, if you have old 16 bit Windows games that act weirdly in a more recent version of Windows, this is the perfect environment to run them in.  Unfortunately I don't believe networking works in Windows 3.1 under DOSBox.  Also notably absent is scroll wheel support.  Welcome back to the good old days, when mice maybe had two buttons, were blocky non-ergonomic devices, and connected via 9-pin serial ports.