My geek life in video

Hey guys,

One of the competitors of the championship I run for has realised a video of the first race.

You can see me (white and brown car, n°6) in several occasions, fighting and overtaking. Enjoy!

Formule Renault S2 from FFSCA on Vimeo.

Spending £200 at DECATHLON! Ouch!

Yesterday was spending money time..

As I am planning to do more proper hiking (adventurous one, with proper camping, etc..) in the future, I went investing in equipment. DECATHLON, if you do not know it yet, is a French brand of sport shops which provides good quality/price products. Not because they discount famous brands as SPORTWORLD does for example. They just produce their own products, within their engineering office (Decathlon Creation). Then you get proper sport articles, for every sports, at good value because you do not buy a brand! They also sell normal brands but without discount. DECATHLON is more specialised in hiking: they have developped a massive range of product from -10°C sleeping bag to camping showers.. In London, there is a DECATHLON store in Canada Water (Jubilee line).

My first hiking trip should be for easter weekend. Planning work is still in progress. I will go with Craig, my British friend and perhaps other. We try to plan walking along the Thames Path from London (Richmond) to Oxford in the 4 days weekend. The Thames Path, as its name says, follows the River Thames and crosses small villages and towns all along it. A national proper path has been created for hikers. It is not a very difficult track, I reckon, but to join Oxford in 4 days (and take there a train back to London), we are still planning walking 10h/day. Will we be able to do it? Let's see. It is a good challenge anyway for a first hike, before trying more difficult ones: mountains, etc..

Now, I have the equipment though: good hiking shoes, a backpack, rain clothes (sexy!), a proper sleeping bag and a proper hiking tent (not a massive pop-up 2" tent! convinient though, I must admit)

A geek life.. Round 3 at Imola

As motorsport is my great passion, I try to live it as well as I can. Proper racing is well inaccessible, so a lot of other passionate people have found in video games an enjoyable and cheap way to live this passion. I take part to a championship on the game rFactor. We have a race on Wednesday every three week. Yesterday was already the third round of the 2010 championship.

As I did not practice a lot, I did not find a good pace. Also a yellow card from the last race because of a very bad mistake, deprived me of full qualifying session. I had to qualify in one lap only. So I did the 18th time over 22 drivers.

The first race lasts 30 minutes. I started very well, wining several positions in the first corner. I was easily 11th after two laps, overtaking a quite slow driver. But I did a first mistake which put me in 16th place. I overtook again those drivers and I finished easily 10th. Above this place, the drivers were already too far away and much quicker than me.

But there are two race per circuit. In the second race, the ten first of the first race start in an opposite order on the grid. I was in pole then! But, with the pressure of starting first, I completely missed my start, losing three places in the first corner. However I could overtake two drivers who did two little mistakes in the first lap. I was second at the begining of the second lap, but with a lot of quicker drivers behind me. I struggled and resisted as much as I could but I have been progressively overtaken by 7 other drivers, approximately one every lap. I finished 8th at a place corresponding very well to my pace.

A good race event anyway, with honest results, only few mistakes and then good points in the championship. The problem in this championship is that you need to practice a lot to be in the pace and I do not have as time as other drivers to do it. But, despite doing quick, at least I enjoy myself, which is the main purpose of a game isn't it?

My Bahrein GP

Everybody seems to be very disappointed by this GP. Medias had put too many hopes on the spectcular show it was supposed to give. But they forgot that Bahrein is a boring track and having new rules or a come back from an old champion was sure it would not change everything.

I thought this GP was interesting because it was the first time we were seeing a new type of race with different strategies. The qualifying session was interesting but weird. In Q3, drivers were all slower than what they did in Q2 despite having the same conditions (fresh soft tyres and no fuel). I thought that as they must doing their best to get the pole position, they would be the quickest of the weekend. The were not. They all say that it was because of the track on which it is difficult to avoid little mistakes. Fine.

In race, tyres were enventually hard-wearing, both soft and hard compound. But the drivers were also very carefull to preserve them to be sure to have to do only one pit stop. Then, they all did only one pit stop and they were all not pushing the hardest. It will probably change. Obligeing drivers to stop minimum twice could help. But before doing already loads of changes in the rules, let's see what happen in proper fun race track in Melbourne.

Now, my point of view on each drivers, and my stars!

ALONSO: Outpaced by his teammate in qualifying, Alonso reponded perfectly to him in the first corner. He won the race here. After overtaking slowed Vettel, he increased his pace meanwhile Massa was forced to "preserve his engine". Was Alonso able to overtake Vettel if the later did not have his problem? Was he able to keep Massa behind? Whatever, he won his first race with Ferrari. This guy knows how to win championship and victories. He will be very strong this year. *

MASSA: All these new rules and Schumacher comeback hid a bit the comeback of Massa. And what a comeback after such an injury! He was great in qualifying. OK in race, despite his team did not allow him to track down Alonso. A shame.. **

HAMILTON: I am sure that Hamilton never thought that his car would be that slow before Saturday. Big deception indeed this McLaren, still quicker than the Mercedes but far from the Ferrari and RedBull. Hamilton did a great job attacking the Ferrari at the start and then overtaking Rosberg in pits with fresh tyres. I am just disappointed that he seemed to slow down at the end despite he could catch Massa. Perhaps to preserve the engine.. *

VETTEL: A perfect weekend for him. Not for his car.. Once again RedBull produced a quick but not reliable enough car. It is a shame because with a win, he would have really impressed everybody as THE man to beat this season. Anyway, he impressed me! ***

ROSBERG: Despite the German was quicker than his "legendary" teammate, I have been a bit disappointed by his race. He was the only driver to be overtaken in pit strategy. And by the end, he was even not able to overtake Vettel even so slow in straight line. He was deserving a star for beating Shcumacher but to me, he lost it for what I've said.

SCHUMACHER: The old man might be very disappointed. The car is not as quick as expected. Himself is not in the pace yet. Will it be all the time? I think that if he can be as equal as Rosberg in the future, it would be good. But always in front of him? I am not sure he can do it. Except if he is helped by his team, as he was at Ferrari.

BUTTON: Without any surprise for me, Button has been well outpaced by Hamilton this weekend. Button is a good guy, very quick when he is in full trust (car, team, teammate) as he was last year. But he is not at the level of Hamilton at all. Clearly. Especially not at McLaren. He has been very brave to challenge this. He is also the perfect teammate for Hamilton, but only a teammate. He will be quicker than him on some occasions this year, but not more as Kovalainen did last year and the year before.

WEBBER: Considering the car he drives, Webber's race and weekend was very bad. To forget. I hope his home-GP will eventually be good for him next week.

LIUZZI: Slower than his teammate Sutil in qualifying, he did a strong race, very happy of his quick Force India, 5th quickest car of the grid behing the untouchable Big 4.

BARRICHELLO: As Liuzzi his performance was very strong all over the weekend and he showed to his young teammate what experience was meaning. He takes the last point, a good reward for his job and Williams' job. Their new Cosworth engine seems to be very reliable and competitive. A much better start for the British company than 2006, its last previous F1 season

KUBICA: The Polish man really impressed me. After the deception to find only a Renault wheel for this season, he showed to everybody that he was a quick and strong guy. As everybody thought the Renault was shit, he just demonstrated the opposite! Unfortunately he was touched by Sutil at the start and had to push a lot to hope scoring points. He pushed very well, overtook a lot but it was not enough to catch Barrichello. A great race weekend for him anyway. **

SUTIL: A similar race as Kubica's but, I do not think he tried as much as the Polish man to score. He finished 13 seconds behind him actually. But Sutil does not care. He knows that his Force India is a quick car able to give him several points. He should be careful to not miss too much occasions to score them.

ALGUERSUARI: I did not see him during the race

HULKENBERG: A hard first race for the young German. But I have no doubt he will enventually dominate his teammate Barrichello by the end of the year.

KOVALAINEN: He finished the race. What a performance! ..

BUEMI: I did not see him more than his teammate.

TRULLI: He finished as well with the second Lotus but he was almost stopped on the track in the last laps. Ridiculous.. Just for Lotus to say "we are very good, we can finish the race with both our car despite the other new team cannot"

DE LA ROSA: His Sauber was strangely not as fast as in winter tests. They need sponsors, that's why. I think, and they do too, that this car can do better in other tracks. The Sauber apparently just did not like the lumpy new part of the track. The overtaking of De La Rosa on his teammate Kobayashi was not a prove of the speed of the old Spanish man or the slowness of the Japanese. De La Rosa was just in soft tyres whereas Kobayashi was in hard compound.

SENNA: He did what he could with a car which was finished to build on Friday..

GLOCK: Such good drivers wasted in such shit cars this year.. But it is very important for him to remain in F1, whatever the price.

PETROV: What a shame for the Russian driver. Not impressive in qualifying but not too bad, it was only his first race. His start was much more interesting. He won a lot of places and was in a good position, showing a strong performance, when his suspension obliged him to stop. I am looking forward to see what he will do in Melbourne.

KOBAYASHI: Of course with a Sauber, it will be more difficult to show great things as he did in Toyota last year. At least he is F1, in a serious team to learn F1 in this first full year. I hope he will be quickly able to outpace De La Rosa.

DI GRASSI: Not seen

CHANDHOCK: Not that ridiculous as some people said easily, considering his situation. Let's see what happens in the future before judging.

Stars ranking:

Vettel 3

Massa 2

Kubica 2

Alonso 1

Hamilton 1

Some news

Hey hey!

It's a long time I haven't post something here. Sorry, busy times recently. Including few days working in France.

Some news so:
1) To improve my culture I took some very legendary movies from one of my French colleague/friend. They are in French but at least I will watch them! And I will tell you what I thought about them.

2) So many moves in F1 recently. It's official, Kimi has gone and will try a new career next year in WRC. This news in not such bad as I'm sure he will put some interest back in Rallye which really needs it. Also, I prefer seeing him impressing the world than being criticized in F1 despite his fantastic last year.

Lotus seems to be definitely ready for next year with the anoucement of its drivers. And what drivers: Trulli and Kovalainen! They are not my favourite ones but it's quite impressive to see a begining team able to hire such experimented drivers. Virgin looks good as well with its drivers, Timo Glock and Lucas Di Grassi. They are young and agressive, it would be interesting to see what these 4 drivers can do next year with that debut cars. The two other new teams, Campos and USF1 are too quiet at the moment. It smells bad for them. Campos is maybe better because they already hired Bruno Senna. But for me, I think USF1 will not be in Bahrain next year. This team has nothing, even not drivers!

The big rumour is the coming back of Schumi for Mercedes. I didn't believe it at the begining but now, considering what said his Ferrari's boss, his press attache, it is clearly possible. I am very interested to see that!

Still in F1, Jean Todt has started quite well his new job of FIA president taking good decision: changing the point scale, now rewarding the 10 firsts. But the new gap 25 points for the winner, 20 for the second doesn't change a lot as every points from 6th place have been multiplicated by 2.5. Todt also decided to include a former F1 driver in the decision of the marshalls about incidents and accidents. It's a very good point to stop seeing very stupid penalties.

3) In music now, I fell in love with a song from Blondie. A song which has been a hit here in the UK in 1999. It was the return of the band after their successes in the 80s. We didn't get it in France, but now I know it, I love it!

Blondie - Maria | Music Upload

Gone Baby Gone

I have recently watched with the housemates, this interesting movie. The first one of Ben Affleck as a director!

Starring? Casey Affleck... In morality: if you have trouble to find a job, try to have a helpful brother!

Despite that shame, the movie was quite great. A very good thriller using the theme of kidnapping to, eventually talk about the good and the bad. There is two situations that you really ask yourself "is that good or bad?" Because considering points of views, these acts can be good or not.

Casey Affleck is quite good. Just his voice, a little bit too high sometimes for a thriller...
Again Morgan Freeman... I will not say more about him.
The character of the little girl's mother is very well played by Amy Ryan I have never noticed her before. His brother in the movie is a good character as well. He is played by Titus Welliver. Ed Harris is good, as everytime. Actually the cast is very good for this movie with stars Ed Harris and Michelle Monaghan. The first one is good, as usual. But I did not feel Monaghan's performance incredible.

Anyway, a good time of cinema!

The day I tried to make my own pork pie

I don't know why, two weeks ago I started to have a big craving for pork pie. I also remember now as well, that few weeks ago I saw on TV a food magazine about doing your own Ploughman's: giving the recipes of farmhouse-style bread, paté and pork pies!

I didn't use this recipe anyway because I could not find it back. I found my inspiration in several recipes on the net and my own tastes. Very disapointed by the always high-fat pork pie you can find in shops and supermarkets, I tried to make a lean one... And then, I understood why commercial pork pie are fat.

My recipe:
The dough:
300g flour,
100g lard (yes, i know, for a less-fat pork pie it's not ideal, but there are some ingredients you cannot avoid!)
Salt
Warm water

Of course, mix the salt with the flour before. Then add the lard cut in dies. Try to mix it. Add as much as warm water you need to make a dough.

The stuffing:
400g lean mince pork (the double mistakes of my pork pie)
100g lardons
1 small yellow onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 glass of white wine
Parsley
Salt and pepper

I fried the lardons with the onions. Not the garlic! Keep it raw at the moment but cut it in dies. Then I mixed with my hands, the pork with the lardons and onion, garlic, parsley, salt and pepper and... the wine.

Spread the dough, put it in a pot. Stuff the dough. Design a dough cover and close the die. Just open a hole on the top. Cook it. I think 2 hours in a oven is necessary. Better to start to cut it and eat it ater cooling a night in the fridge.

My critics: choosing lean mince pork has been a mistake. Eventually my pork pie was low-fat as I wanted it. But at the same time, it was too dry! And that's the big problem. I tried to put geltine at the end but there was no space to pour it inside the pie...
So to make it less dry, I think it is better to chose fatter meat. The mince is also a mistake. Pieces of meat like lardons, chopped ribs, mixed with lard would have been better. And next time I will try to add the gelatine before covering the pie. And see what happens!

Before that, let's see the result (presented with chutney and salad):

A must-see I eventually saw: Million Dollar Baby

Culture lacks, I told you!

Anyway, this is done. I always heard so many people talking about this movie as a very good movie, a must-see! It has won 4 oscars.

This is what I thought about it:

For me this movie treats several subjects, and more than this sport which is boxing:
- the lost love between a father and his daughter reached in the idealization of another person,
- the equality between men and women, especially in a very violent and macho sport,
- the feeling to be graceful to our parents even if they do not deserve it,
- fairplay,
- and of course, euthanasia.

Everything was really well told in this movie. Some characters were very interesting: Frankie, Maggie, her mother and the funny Danger! Clint Eastwood is very good, Hilary Swank, perfect! But I have a problem with Morgan Freeman. He is a brilliant actor but I think I am bored to see him everytime, everywhere, a bit like Gérard Depardieu in France: he does too much movies! He was good in this movie anyway and he won an Oscar for it by the way!

This movie was a good moment, moving and interesting. It makes think about euthanasia, and alos the wills to live after reaching the top of your dreams and dropping in happiness then...

I tested for you: electric karting

As promised for Olivier's 25, I offered him, and to myself at the same time, a session of karting in London!

Sadly, there is not a lot of tracks around this city. But I found one in Mile End, east-London. We eventually went karting last Saturday. We arrived: the tracks seemed to be a bit wet at some points despite the good weather from the begining of the day. The track didn't look very quick at a first view: only one straight line.The briefing was given by a very cool old marshal!
Then we discovered the machines: electric go-karts!
It was the first time I tried this! Of course, we did not know there were electric when we booked the session. I have always been sceptical about electric go-kart before, thinking it was for sure not as fun, not as quick and not noise, no smells!!

Well I was wrong because these go-karts were just amazing! The feeling of speed, and power is very good! I would add that the acceleration even seemed to be more powerful! The noise: no problem when you are in, you forget there is no noise of the engine as you can hear the wind, the tyres. The main problem is that you hear less your competitors... Anyway, they were far far behind me! I may just have afraid some by overtaking them quickly without the time for them to see me arriving :=))

Oh dear...

A very good fun so! I am looking forward to see electric motors going more and more in cars now, and even motorsport!

Soups!

Already three soups tried this year, and not an article about them yet!
Yes, I have made my first soup of the winter last week and made two other ones on Sunday. A soup can contain everything you want. It can be blended or not, whatever you prefer. You do not really need to follow recipe: follow your imagination! If you do not have any idea, follow one simple rule: build the recipe of your soup around a principal "theme", for example: countryside, seafood, chinese food, italian, etc...

Let's me give you the three themes I have explored and the recipes I have done with:

COUNTRYSIDE:

Oignons,
Potatoes,
Celery,
Leek,
Mushrooms,
Cloves,
Bacon

Put the quantities you want, how much water you like. Cook it slowly for two hours, mix it. And don't forget, add salt only in the plate, not in the pot. It's better to put a bit of salt in the plate, than a lot in the pot!

MEDITERRANEAN

Red Peppers,
Red Oignons,
Courgettes,
Pesto,
Tomatoes,
Potatoes.

I first fried the peppers, oignons and courgettes in a wok. I then added pesto and tomato purée. It was looking like a pasta sauce. Then I added more courgettes, potatoes and a can of chopped tomatoes, water and I cooked that slowly for 2 hours. And blended it. Enjoy!

ROOTS

Carrots,
Potatoes,
Swede,
Sweet potatoe,
Butternut squash (I know it's not a root but it goes very well with this theme)
Creme fraiche,
Fresh coriander.

Again, cook the vegetables in water, slowly for 2 hours. Add only after the crème fraîche and the coriander. Blend the mix!

Soup is a perfect dish because you can do it quickly the weekend and keep it for the rest of the week in fridge or freezer. Then it is easy to use, cheap, and it provides a widen range of products, flavours, vitamins and other essential nutrient in the same dish!

Enjoy!