Tom Moitié

Hi guys, I’ve been working on a motorsport calander, avaliable in ICAL, XML and google calendar format. Currently it has the next three motorbike grand prix, and the next Formula One race, and I hope to update it with GP2 when the schedules become avaliable. It has the exact timings for all the free practices and qualifying, and I may put the BBC broadcast information in the description section for the UK users. Here are the links:

• XML
• ICAL
• HTML

If you would like to see any other motorsport meets added to this, send me a message and I’ll see what I can do.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/8047906.stm

A Scottish man is furious after the football catering services fail to pass on VAT price reduction to fans.

“On a £3 item, for example a hotdog, I should’ve been saving six pence. Now if you multiply that by say 2,000 people buying hot food, ie Bovril, pies, hotdogs, cheeseburgers etc, thousands of pounds extra are being charged and the customer is not getting any benefit.”

If by thousands of pounds you mean about £120. Oh the humanity!

With an unprecedented 3 wins and 50 points, Brawn GP has lifted the Mercedes engine to first position in the Unofficial F1 Engine Championship with 23 points, 5.7 points adrift of the nearest competitor.

Returning from a dismal first two races of the season, the Renault engine scored some well deserved points with Red Bull leading the way, bringing the recently improved engine up from fourth to second. The Toyota engine drops from first to third on the leaderboard, despite a pole position and another fastest lap in the past two races. Toyota F1’s performance is outweighed by Williams’ lack of.

In last is arguably Formula One’s fastest engine, the Ferrari 056. With aerodynamic and reliablity problems at Scudaria and general speed problems at Torro Rosso, the Ferrari engine joins the BMW engine at the bottom of the leaderboard scoring 3.5 points and 4 points respectively.

Ferrari 053 - the v10 engine that powered the highly successful F2004

With five different engines running ten different cars, it’s tough to choose any particular one as the best. Of course with all the techical regulations, the success of an engine lies in the success of the team and the design of the car. In any case, it’s interesting to see how an engine has done over a season, so I have created the Unofficial Formula One Engine Championship. Each engine is ranked by its number of points (including two points for a pole position and one point for a fastest lap), divided by the number of teams using it.

I’ve taken the past two seasons and collated that data into tables as well. I decided to take constructor’s points rather than driver’s points because it is the constructor’s responibilty to put an engine to good use, therefore the Mercedes engine got an abysmal score in 2007. In 2008, as Super Aguri did run in races and had the potential to score points, I counted that Honda engine to have had two teams, even though that team dropped out. I couldn’t think of a way to make this fair, other than to divide by race starts, but I though this would be a little too complex.

I’ll be updating this table after each Qualifying and Race so make your predictions on the best engine this year.

Felipe Massa would have won 2008 under the wins system

“It’s logic – in athletics you look at the 100 metres, you’re not looking at the guy that’s second, you’re looking at the winner. In most sports people are looking at winners.”
Bernie Ecclestone on 5 live

If you think this then you might as well be awarding each race to the driver with the fastest lap. In order to win a Grand Prix, a driver has to be consistent every lap. In the same way, in order to win the Formula One World Championship you need to be consistent throughout the season.

Formula One isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon. It’s the Tour de France. The Dakar Rally. Would you award the Tour de France to the person who has won the most stages and crashed in all the rest? No, in fact they classify racers in six different ways, none of which count the number of wins.

I can’t even think of one multi staged sport that does classify a competitor by however many times they have won. The only example that springs to mind is the Olympics in which the media keep an unofficial tally of gold medals in order to rank the countries – something that isn’t recognised by the IOC.

Help me out here. Does Bernie’s argument have any validity? Are there any sports that rank competitors based on won events (a tally, not a points system)? Or in 2010 is the FIA set to introduce the worst thought out ranking system in Formula One history?

I like to think I’ve amassed a half decent haul of Xbox games, so here they are for your perusal:

Missing from this list is my copy of GTA IV which I have faithfully lent out to a fellow Xbox gamer, and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2 does not belong to me. The rest are mine. Over the coming weeks I shall write a short review of my experience in each of these games which may be useful for those of you who want to get a cheap old game.

And this is my beast; an Xbox 360 Elite.

I’ve decided to get more decisive on my online presence, so here’s my blog which I will inevitably fail to keep updated, and other useful crap which will inevitably become outdated. I’ve had numerous attempts of starting a regular blog, which you can probably find scattered across the Internet – all full of a shitload of boring information. If I can update the fucker at least once a month, I’ll be happy.

Another thing I’ve started is regular Twitter tweets. I never used to “get” Twitter, until most recently when it seems the most of the Internet decided they wanted to join. To that end I’ve installed a Linux app called Gwibber which seems to be pretty apt at keeping Twitter and Facebook status synced up. Also gives me a nice list of everyones updates.

Gwibber screenshot

It sits happily in the corner of my screen, popping up whenever anyone updates. I’m watching you.