Stuff and Junk

digital, motorsport, photography and anything else

Townsville, what a great event!

Jul 12

Posted by Vern in Motorsport, Photography | No Comments

This was a fantastic event in the V8 Supercar calendar, the racing was great and the off track entertainment was also awesome. The Townsville track is not your usual street circuit, not only you can see so much of the track from so many different angles and locations, but it encourages great racing as well. Each corner has a unique an setup to produce strong competitive driving.

V8 Fujitsu Development Series

V8 Utes

Full Set

V8 Supercars: http://randompics.com.au/nmd/portfolio/types/V8SC_2010_Townsville_Sat
V8 Fujitsu Series: http://randompics.com.au/nmd/portfolio/types/V8FS_2010_Townsville_Sat
V8 Utes: http://randompics.com.au/nmd/portfolio/types/V8utes_2010_Townsville_Sun

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Lachlan’s first iRacing experience

Jun 4

Posted by Vern in Driving, Gaming | No Comments

iRacing is probably the closest thing that I can find to actually re-living the racing days and is certainly a heap cheaper. It’s also the only place a four year old can race an IndyCar! I shot this while my son Lachlan had his very first iRacing experience and not really too surprisingly, he wasn’t half bad at it considering he’s already been playing rFactor and Live for Speed.

This also shows our triple screen Matrox setup with a Logitech G25. The three screens give a peripheral view of the car which is fantastic when overtaking, or being overtaken, certainly leads to less contact.

iRacing

Milky Way Spin

Apr 16

Posted by Vern in Photography | No Comments

Camping recently in the Barrington Tops in NSW, looking up at night you tend to see a fair few more stars then in the ol’ big smoke.

This one I exposed for a little over ten minutes, but what’s great about living in the southern hemisphere is we get a far better view of the Milky Way then the folks up north.

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The Top Gear Shot

Apr 14

Posted by Vern in Automotive, Photography | No Comments

Toyota Prado on a mountainMy wife recently bought her dream car, a nice 2005 Toyota Prado. Great car, low kms and amazingly had never ever been off road! Poor car, never experiencing the dirt it was built for.

So only a few weeks after it had joined it’s new owners, we took it camping in the Barrington Top in NSW, where there just happened to be a mountain to climb.

I got this shot from the top, where funnily enough there is an old caravan that someone dragged up there.

I made sure I got the light levels right for the sky so that I could get in the sky and clouds and then after a bit of low level light adjustments and a bit of vignetting this is what we came out with.

Reminds me of that typical Top Gear style shot.

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Trading Post Orange

Apr 14

Posted by Vern in Automotive, Motorsport, Photography | No Comments

I love shooting this car!

The orange is so heavy on any contrasting colours and you can really push orange.

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Bathurst 12 Hour 2010

Feb 15

Posted by Vern in Automotive, Motorsport, Photography | No Comments

Another great event at the Bathurst 12 Hour this year and although the constant rain made it difficult for taking shots, it certainly made things interesting on the track as well as a good backdrop for photos.

Of course the lower light meant running the ISO a little high and dropping to a fairly low shutter speed, really need a bigger lens!


http://www.flickr.com/photos/norrgard/sets/72157623300000583/

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HSV GXP Club Racer? Not Quite.

Dec 11

Posted by Vern in Driving, Motorsport | No Comments

gxp_fullHSV have just released their latest model the GXP and it is aimed at an entry level HSV for the weekend racer. A cheaper alternative with the basic Commodore tail lights for example to keep the costs down.

When I first heard about this car it sounded like a great concept,  but then the more information I read about it, more boring it sounded. You buy a HSV because you either you want something unique or you want real race inspired performance. All this car seems to be is a unique car, built for the masses.

If you are going to take stuff out of a car, then at least strip some weight out! My impression of a true club level racer is something that has all the non essentials taken out, chuck in a roll cage, some harnesses, bonnet pins and tighten it up some more.

Perfect examples; 911 GT3 RS, Renault Megane R26R, Aston Martin

Come on HSV, bring out a real Club-Sport!

http://www.hsv.com.au/hsv/press/default.aspx?ID=1153

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Real Driving Simulators: LFS vs rFactor

Dec 3

Posted by Vern in Driving, Gaming | 1 Comment

I’ve been using Live For Speed for about 5 years now and have never found another driving game/simulator that has ever gotten close when it comes to the actual driving experience.

I tried rFactor about 12 months ago and didn’t really think that much of it, although I did think about how long it took to get LFS working with the wheel setup, force feedback bla bla. So I gave it another go this week and initially I thought the same, but then I spent the time setting the G25 up right, and it wasn’t until I started downloading some more content that it came to life.

Then I downloaded Oran Park and then as soon as I hit this;

GRAB_000

I was in!! The Oran Park dog leg, one of the greatest corners in the country and now that it is gone to the progress of residential housing gods I am very happy to know I can relive my old Sports Sedan days through rFactor.

lfsz28

I still put LFS at the top when it comes to the realism of driving, but rFactor is very very close but has the added benefit of relatable content.

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Avoid the Traffic? Navman Suna review

Nov 30

Posted by Vern in Digital, Driving | No Comments

Basically, nup. Not really.

Suna Traffic en routeI would really love this to have worked but unfortunately it just isn’t quite there. There is actually nothing wrong with the hardware, well mostly anyway. OK, so there is a major issue with the hardware.

First issue is it uses an FM signal to pick up the traffic information which of course is digital and when digital reception is bad, it’s useless. So the problem I have living 38.9kms from the CBD is it won’t pickup any traffic until I’m almost 1/3 of the way in, by then I’m already stuck in traffic.

According to Suna who provide the traffic signal to the Navman and the RTA, who in NSW provide the traffic information data to Suna, there is never ever any traffic on the M2. Which of course the M2 is always a $5 carpark.

Problem is if you follow it around it’s suggested new route, you never going to know if there was any traffic there any way. Therein lies the second issue, the data it self is where it all falls over. Because it never picks up traffic on the M2 you then start to doubt the system and start ignoring it because you can never gauge it’s success, you can only gauge it’s failures.

So basically I still use it all the time as a gauge, but you just can’t rely on it. Having said that, a better FM signal and more accurate traffic data and it would be defiantly worth it.

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Hits vs Page Views vs Visits, The Simple Stats.

Nov 17

Posted by Vern in Digital | 1 Comment

A simple description of the three big stats when it comes to websites; Hits, page views and visits.

Imagine you have a web site with two pages, both pages containing text and 3 images.

If someone comes opens the home page, clicks to the second page and then leaves you will have;

  1. 1 visit
  2. 2 page views
  3. 8 Hits

They have visited the website and no matter how many pages they look at, it is one visit until the session is closed. Sessions are usually ended by the user closing the browser or clicking through to another website.

During that visit they viewed two pages, the home page as one and then the second page.

Each page records 4 hits, the 3 images plus the HTML page containing the images and text. The server has produced 4 files in total for the home page, but because they opened the second page that also contains 3 images and another HTML page, that adds another 4 hits.

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