Stuff Archives

Just to let you know that amongst the re-vamping of the website, I've put up three new videos. You can get to these from the video home page to watch or to download these in full resolution. The three videos are

• William riding his bike
• William using the drinking fountain in the park
• Squirrel on the slinky on my feeder

Enjoy!

It's been a long time since I've added anything to the blog site, so I figured I'd jot down some tips that I've got for picking the selections in the Race Game. Before you read on, however, I guess the big question is whether or not you'd want to follow my advice. Well, I'll leave that one up to you.

I guess we should start at the basics. If you have no idea what you're doing, then you should probably take a quick look at the standings in the Sprint Cup and at least make sure your picks are from the top 25 or so. There are exceptions to this rule, the first being road courses and the second being super speedways. Road courses we can ignore as there aren't any in the 10 chase races. There's one race at Talledega in the chase that's a super speedway and you can still apply these rules - basically a lot of cars wreck in the big races and there's an element of luck about which drivers are left running at the end of the race. The top 27 drivers with the car number they are typically associated with as of writing this are as follows:

Pn	Car#	Driver
1	11	Denny Hamlin
2	29	Kevin Harvick
3	18	Kyle Busch
4	24	Jeff Gordon
5	2	Kurt Busch
6	48	Jimmie Johnson
7	99	Carl Edwards
8	16	Greg Biffle
9	31	Jeff Burton
10	14	Tony Stewart
11	17	Matt Kenseth
12	33	Clint Bowyer
13	39	Ryan Newman
14	1	Jamie McMurray
15	00	David Reutiman
16	42	Juan Montoya
17	5	Mark Martin
18	88	Dale Earnhardt Jr
19	9	Kasey Kahne
20	56	Martin Truex Jr
21	43	AJ Almendinger
22	20	Joey Logano
23	98	Paul Menard
24	6	David Ragan
25	47	Marcos Ambrose
26	12	Brad Keselowski
27	77	Sam Hornish Jr

The second tip is that the race selection isn't locked until just before the race starts. That means you can go to Nascar's website and see how the drivers did in practice and qualifying.

The third is to look at your chase drivers. The top 12 in the list above are the chase contenders. These got there because they've had a good season. Generally one or two of them fall behind, but more often than not you see about 6-8 of the chase drivers finishing in the top 10. It's worth making sure you've at least some of them in there.

If you want to get technical, you can look at track type and distance and match up to the drivers form. Carl Edwards earned the nickname “Concrete Carl” because of his success on concrete tracks. Kyle Busch always seens to run well on the short tracks. Jimmie Johnson is generally there or there abouts on the mile and a half tracks. Although Dale Earnhardt Jr doesn't seem to be as successful as his fans want him to be, he's always a good choice on the super speedways.

Last would be to look at the potential spoilers. Spoilers are the non chase drivers that finish in the top 10. Given that the top 12 drivers are fighting for points, if a non-chase driver finishes ahead of them, then it takes more points away from that chase driver. And there's nothing more that the non chase drivers like than to steal a win and prove a point - they've got to finish the season with something.

A couple of top picks in spoilers are both the Earnhardt Ganassi drivers - Jamie McMurray and Juan Pablo Montoya. Both have won races this year, but both have struggled with consistency - too many DNFs left them wanting for the chase, but they continue to finish well if they make it to the end of the race. Kasey Kahne's probably another one you'd put in that bucket too.

Newman, Truex, Reutimann, Martin and Allmendinger are also good calls. I probably wouldn't go much beyond that for these races, but that's just my thoughts.

I don't know why, but I keep going back to this video, so I thought I'd post it. I think they've really captured the “Rob Green incident” really well.

Karen was out getting her hair cut, so dad was on party duty. Took William to one of his friend's birthday parties - they arranged a trip round a fire station which was pretty cool - don't all kids love fire engines? Then off to the park. I'm reasonably impressed with this picture as it's snapped from my mobile phone.

The other think that was cool was that one of the fireman asked me if he could look round my car whilst the kids looked round the engine. Just boys and toys!

And I thought it was just me. My car has the latest “voice recognition” technology, but it doesn't seem to understand me. I figured it was my accent and that it only understands American. Karen can vouch for the fact that I end up shouting at my car when I need it to do something. I find it rather ironic that it's a “safety feature”. I actually find that when I try and use the voice commands, I end up taking my eyes off the road more to look at the console in the hope that it's going to put something on the screen that hints to it understanding something of what I've asked. In the good old days, you want to call someone, you pick up your phone, dial the number and you're done. In the name of safety, we have a procrastinated process of screeming names at the voice recognition trying different accents to get it to try and understand us.

So, after that quick rant. If I've got problems..... these guys don't stand a chance:

Been a long time since I've posted a blog, I felt I'd share a quick experience with everyone. Hopefully most people will have noticed that it was Easter last weekend. As is the tradition on this day, at least in the US anyway, all the kids go and do an egg hunt.

Stupidly I agreed to go along to the local one that William was participating in. I guess there's a first .... and last for everything. So we trundled up to the location of the egg hunt. Found a parking space and proceeded to make our way into the park. Karen then figured out we were late, which was news to me as I hadn't been aware of a time we were walking towards, so she ran off with William to get him setup. I lost sight of them and proceeded up the hill to the milling crowd on the assumption that this was where the action would take place. My instincts were correct - this was indeed the right location and I was soon reunited with wife and child. My job was to man the camera and take pictures of the little one as he foraged for eggs in the designated area.

The designated area was a rectangle marked with yellow tape. Several next to each other in order to separate the kids. Apparently there were instructions surrounding the event - only kids in the designated area and a six egg maximum. Well, the whistle went and all the parents dived in. Rule number one out the window. In fact, it was too hectic that I didn't even get a photo off. Shortly, William came back as he couldn't find anymore eggs and Karen went in with him and that's when I took this first picture:

So the above is after it had started to calm down. Now, we only found out the rules after the event had completed. Upon returning, I asked William to walk back in and then come back towards me so I could take a picture and you will notice that his “haul” is a little over the six egg limit.

Interestingly, all the above actually took less time to take place than it did to write this article. All the fun was to happen next - bouncy castles, kids playing, parents talking to each other and all that good stuff. Well, so I'm told. I told Karen she could stay as long as she wanted which, surprisingly was about an hour and a half. I went back to my car, switched on the radio and fell asleep listening to it.

Next year, I'm working on cutting out the middle man and simply staying in bed.

I guess I'm about a week or so late posting this, but have had other things to do. Well, if you call playing video games and generally worrying about work given the economy, other things. So, Mr O and myself went to watch a couple of NASCAR races at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana and Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Very exciting for me given that I’m following Juan Pablo Montoya and got to watch his car blow up in Fontana and see his team mate take him out in Vegas…. Hmmmm. Also, can anyone say “five in a row”? Jimmie Johnson managed to win both the Sprint cup races we saw and looks like he’s going to be in the running for another title.

Alright, enough of the sports report and now onto more irrelevant things. It’s difficult to miss the fact that Danica Patrick has entered stock car racing. She’s doing about 12 races in the Nationwide series and I think going full time next season – we’ll have to wait and see. It was pretty apparent that there was a lot of interest in her at the race track. The longest lines were at the #7 Go Daddy stall and there were a lot of people talking about her. She’s a pretty good drive as we’ve seen in Indy Car, but I wouldn’t say out of the ordinary. I was trying to figure out whether the interest in her was because she’s a woman or because she’s an attractive woman and that many people were hoping that they would get lucky if they ever met her. Based on this last premise, I was rather pleased to snap the shot below. Kevin Harvick had just passed Danica to put her a lap down. I was rather pleased with myself for this one as it’s a picture of Danica in the lucky dog position – one I’m sure that many have dreamt about. Now the best thing about this picture is that if you look carefully, you can see a bit of Busch too. (Oh but for school boy humor).

All that pales in comparison, however, if you do an actual search on pictures of Danica. Below is one such example that I found which, is far better to look at than my blurred picture and a couple of double entendres.

Oh well, continuing the theme of irrelevant, I did snap another picture that lends itself to the caption competition. It’s been almost three years since I’ve posted a picture there, so I’m quite pleased I got one. Feel free to take a look and add a caption to the Caption Competition Picture #3.

Last, I’m sure there are thousands of people out there waiting for the photos to be posted. I’ve sort of processed most of them, but lethargy got in the way so you’ll have to wait another week before you get to see these.

Seems a few people I've spoken to haven't seen this, so I figured I'd post it. A fine showing from the British Bobsled team even if I say so myself.

Congratulations have to be given to Jimmie Johnson for winning his fourth consecutive NASCAR championship. Obviously Jimmie's been on the edge of his nerves since his bad luck at Texas - not necessarily worried about whether he was going to bounce back and win his fourth championship, but rather worrying about whether or not he will get recognition from EastBayRag.

Clearly achieving something that has never been done before in the history of your sport is good, but until it's been ratified here, does it really mean anything? Being serious for a minute, however, I am actually pleased for Jimmie, Chad and the 48 Lowes team. Given how close the competition is, this is a very big achievement.

I almost missed this one if it wasn't for hearing a ticket offer on The Bone (local radio station) going into work one morning. Chickenfoot were playing at the Greek Theater in Berkeley (or Bezerkeley as the band were trying to get the place renamed). Chickenfoot's a new band of old heroes - Sammy Hagar, Joe Satriani, Michael Anthony and Chad Smith - all of whom have had distinguished careers on their own. I've heard their music and I really like, so it seemed like a good concert to go to. Found out that one of the guys at work was going, so he decided to sell his ticket and get two more and we went together (well, sat together anyway, we traveled separately).

Interestingly, his single ticket was further back from the stage. Not sure if we just timed it right when there had been some returns, however, we ended up with a couple of seats in row 6 - can't complain at that. In fact, the only thing I can complain about was the walk from where I parked my car - traffic was horrific getting to the venue due to its location in Berkeley and when I got there was told the disabled parking was full and so was the nearest car park. I was somewhat lucky that a space opened up on the street so I only had 4 blocks to hobble instead of 6 from the next nearest parking lot.

Enough grumbling, the show was fantastic. Mark who I was with commented that there wasn't a wasted note in the entire evening and I have to agree with him - it was really impressive. There were a couple of things that really made if for me - the first was that the band themselves were clearly having a lot of fun, Hagar commented a couple of times that he felt like he was the luckiest man alive to be doing what he was doing and there was no reason to doubt him. There was a fantastic dialogue between Sammy and Chad throughout the show with input from Mike. Joe didn't say much, but he doesn't have to - when you can play the guitar that well, you really don't need to say anything.

The second thing was that I've had a desire to catch a drumstick thrown into the crowd ever since I went to my first concert some 27+ years ago (Iron Maiden on March 5th 1982 at Leicester De Montfort Hall, although technically the first band I ever saw would have been The Rods as they were the support at this show). Well, 27 years later and a seat in row 6 and I got lucky enough to catch one of the (many) drumstick's Chad tossed into the crowd. I have to add the “many” comment as Chad did indeed generously impart many drumsticks which did increase my chances of getting one. Never-the-less, it was a clean take (all those year's playing as a goalkeeper not wasted) and given that I only have one free hand, that was pretty cool as there were many fumbles with all the other sticks that were being contested followed by a scramble on the floor to find it.

The only thing I disagreed with during the evening was in the middle of the set when I felt compelled to scream “42 Montoya” at the top of my voice. I doubt he heard me, but Sammy started it when he dedicated the song “Turnin' Left” to “the driver of the number 48 .... Jimmie Johnson.” The song itself makes me laugh as it has a chorus of “we go round in circles” which seems more than appropriate. Don't know if Sammy would have had the chance to see the qualifying results, but Jimmie did make the pole for this weekend's race at the Monster Mile (Dover). And I certainly wouldn't be someone to bet against Jimmie achieving what is now being called “The Chase 4 History”, however, my man Montoya is alongside Jimmie for the start of the race and you know he's going to take the race to Jimmie. Guess we'll see tomorrow who wins on the day, but I suspect we won't know the Champion until we close the season at Homestead, particularly given the number of drivers that have a realistic chance of claiming the title.