The first even night race in Formula1. Wow. A part of history now and I'm glad I could be at the race in person :)

It was great fun walking the track with teemus on thursday and then Friday, Saturday and Sunday just flew by with loads of F1 and loads more of Zouk.

This was my second F1 race and if I was asked to pick between Sepang and Marina Bay, I think the latter wins hands down. Cheaper food, cheaper merchandise, lovely atmosphere, amazing music, giant screens that were actually viewable to name some. I think the very fact that the race happens in the middle of a city is a win. In Sepang, there was nothing to do after the race, but head back into the city...which wasn't all that much fun in retrospect ;)

I'm sure the organizers will iron out the kinks for the next edition and it will be even more fun overall.

Way to go Singapore, you've given F1 a truly wonderful twist in the tale.

Last set of pics, Raceday - http://flickr.com/photos/fox2mike/sets/72157607704772359/

X-posted to f1

Pics are up at http://www.flickr.com/photos/fox2mike/sets/72157607640807934/

X-posted to f1

Pics are up at http://www.flickr.com/photos/fox2mike/sets/72157607538474392/

Sorry! No time to describe in detail, but to summarize :

If you're every coming to Asia to see a GP, Singapore is THE place to be :) Awesome event so far, amazing organization and great fun!!

X-posted to f1

The best part of all the 3 days, was raceday. Why? Because that's when you realise that you're normal and you see how many other people are atleast just as crazy or even more crazy that you are about the sport. The whole atmosphere was awesome. So many motorsport fans in one place....

I was wearing my Ferrari shirt as I came down for breakfast that day at the hotel and everyone looked at me like I was part of the team. Hah, felt good ;) The same thing on the monorail, random people would smile...a fellow Ferrari fan from some corner of the globe would nod or wave. And everyone in general knew what the deal was all about.

The rest of the snaps are being uploaded, a few hundred more to go...I'm off to sleep now.

A quick follow-up to the last post...

So you're stuck somewhere and badly need to help your dad with something on the computer at home. I've been in this situation quite a bit and well, I've usually ended up trying to troubleshoot over the phone with minimal success. Enter x11vnc. Here's a quick guide on getting it working on Gentoo.

remote denotes the box I'm using to reach my desktop on the machine home.

1. emerge x11vnc tightvnc. Substituting tightvnc with vnc will do as well, but I like some security, which is made slightly easier using tightvnc.


2. Run vncpasswd in your home directory. This creates a /home/shyam/.vnc/passwd and you will have to enter a password not longer than 8 characters in length, which I found a little surprising. Oh well.
   
3. On home, run x11vnc -rfbauth /home/shyam/.vnc/passwd -display :0. Adjust display as required (0 or 1..)


4. From remote run vncviewer home and enter the password you setup when prompted. Voila, you're in and seeing the desktop now.

A couple of points:

• For VNC to work correctly, home has to have the X Display active. From what I've seen, when I vnc into home with X running but I'm on the console, the vnc display is all distorted.


• By default, VNC traffic is not secure. It is advisable to tunnel it over ssh if you're using it from an insecure network/across the internet. With tightvnc it becomes very simple. All you need to do is vncviewer -via remote home and tightvnc sets up the ssh tunnel automatically.

Missed Barcamp, but had a relaxing weekend for the most part. Schumi showed Alonso who the boss is and I'm extremely happy for him :)

Fernando Alonso takes over the place that was Schumi's for a few years running. The McLarens were awesome in the Brazilian GP and had they had this car/setup in the beginning of the season, I guess we'd have seen a Kimikrieg throughout. Heck, if they didn't have the number of engine failures that pushed him down 10 places...he'd still be there and fighting. Ah well.

As an ardent Ferrari fan, it does feel kinda odd to not be winning :D It also gives you a perspective on what the "others" felt all along...which is sad...to say the least. I'm looking forward to 2006, I'm sure the F2006 will come back to kick some arse and hard. The ideal scenario would be to have 3-4 teams say Ferrari, McLaren, Renault and BAR with awesome cars and fighting it out till the last race.

JPM's finally broke his "one race a year only" jinx by winning at Interlagos. His new helmet design is cool :)

Note : As code_martial pointed out, Interlagos was JPM's 3rd title this year.

Okay, so there will be a GP @ Indy in 2006. Clicky!. This is good news!

My Question has been answered I guess :)

TDF first. Lance Armstrong rocks. Words cannot express how far he's come after winning his battle with Cancer. Way to go Lance, you are an inspiration for the millions out there.

F1. In the years Ferrari + Michael were champions (consecutively, 1999-2004) how many mechanical failures did the car have? Probably less than 10 on the day of the race, across both cars. 15 at most. Now that is consistency. No wonder they were able to hold on as champs for the period they did. Personally, I feel that if Rory Bryne had designed the F2005 and had Bridgestone done a wee bit more homework, Ferrari would be really competing for the title this year as well. Mclaren/Mercedes really need to take a leaf out of Ferrari's consistency book if they ever want to win another title in F1. The Mclarens have the pace, the aerodynamics, the tyres, the drivers. Everything but an engine that won't run the full race or blow up in practice. Wake up dudes. Fast.

Schumi did all he could with an underperforming car, holding back Giancarlo as long as he could :)

Yes, I jumped again when Kimi's car went kaput. Only for a second, but I had to celebrate.

Let's start with Saturday. Venus Willams made an amazing comeback (as much as I hate to accept it) to win her first title after 2001. The way she went beserk after winning was amazing. Live 8 was truly awesome, and is something that I'll never forget. The cause is really important too and the ads showing how people suffer due to poverty were heart-wrenching. Lots of sleep happened somewhere in between.

Sunday was the Men's final, Federer making short work of Roddick, yet again. Was wonderful to watch. The French GP was nice, after the screw up at Indianapolis, it was nice to see a proper race. Alonso seems to be inching away with the championship.

I just realised that this isn't that long an update, it still is late. Ah well.

That's the question on the minds of the most ardent fans of the sport I guess as it is on mine. Indy's chiefs will "evaluate their position" with regards to the future of F1 racing there. Sad. I've seen countless entries on blogs all over, here's my viewpoint.

Michelin needs to take the brunt of the blame/they are the primary reason for everything that happened. Why? Because they are world class tyre manufacturers and they didn't take into account that the section at Turn 13 had been re-laid so as to provide more grip for the Indy cars and hence their tyres could not handle the G-Forces caused at that turn. Boo-Boo. Michelin did do the sensible thing asking the teams they supply to not run the race due to safety reasons and the teams in turn were perfectly right in pulling out their cars because we can't afford to have 14 "Ralf Schumacher style" horrible crashes on turn 13. As the commentators mentioned, the tyres are built to handle punctures to a certain extent, not sudden deflation when the car is going at 300+ Kmph.

Next, Ferrari. They played spoilsport by blocking the chicane that could have made the race possible, but then...all they saw was the 19 + 19 points in the driver's and constructor's championships. That said, they've always been ruthless and selfish, they weren't the favorites of the American crowd and although their decision to race can't be held entirely against them, they've lost a little more after Sunday. Barrichello was right in the press conference when he said : "It wasn’t our problem, people probably won’t understand that because they seem to be sad… you know, there were a lot of people out there still watching us but they will think that we had the problem, but obviously Bridgestone has been working very hard, they brought the right tyre here and we were feeling very good.". Kudos to Brigdestone for not fubarring the way Michelin did....

Jordan were apparently supposed to *not* run, expressing solidarity with the rest of the teams and Minardi would follow suit. Apparently, they stayed out and Paul Stoddart was forced to keep his cars out as he later revealed in his press release. We're only competing with Jordan and when they stayed out, I can't keep my cars from racing....

So who's the biggest loser? Not Michelin, Not Ferrari. F1 and its fans are. As a Formula 1 fan for the last 7 years or so, I feel extremely disappointed to have watched an Indy GP with 6 cars. My respect for David Coulthard shot up by a zillion points when he said on his pit to car radio during the warm-up lap something to the effect of "If the team hasn't decided by the end of this lap, I'm racing." Hats off to you Coulthard. You're not a Sucker anymore.