canspice.org

Geof is planning on doing Blogathon 2005 where he’ll hopefully post 48 times in 24 hours on August 6. Blogathon 2005 is in the name of charity, and participants get to decide which charity they wish to sponsor. Geof is sponsoring the Blood:Water mission that is trying to get HIV-free blood and clean water to communities in Africa.

Alice and I are sponsoring Geof to the tune of $25. If you want to sponsor Geof and watch his insanity, go pledge some money.

Formula 1 has a survey up asking fans for their opinions on what next year’s qualifying format should look like. This season we’ve seen two qualifying formats. The first one had drivers go out on Saturday in the reverse order of how they finished in the previous Grand Prix (so the first place driver would go out last), then go again on Sunday morning in the reverse order of their times in the Saturday qualifying session. The grid would be decided by the drivers’ aggregate times.

That was changed a few races ago. Instead of having two qualifying sessions, they dropped the Sunday morning session and just used the Saturday session.

The first proposed format has the drivers go out and do as many laps as they can in two 25-minute sessions separated by a 10-minute break. The best times from each session are added together to give a final qualifying time that determines the grid order. There would be no restrictions on fuel.

The second proposed format puts the drivers out for a 60-minute session, but after the first 15 minutes, the slowest five drivers would be taken out. After 30 minutes, the next slowest five drivers would be removed, leaving ten drivers to battle it out for the remaining top ten positions on the grid. Again, there would be no fuel restrictions.

You can vote on the proposed Formula 1 qualifying formats or vote to keep the current format.

Pitpass is saying that Bernie Ecclestone would be surprised if the second format wasn’t in place in 2006. The story says that the voting is closed, but I was able to vote five minutes ago. For the record, I picked the second format.

Thursday and Friday brought one of the reasons why we came to England: to meet up with some of the programmers formerly employed by Starlink. We had the meeting in sunny Hunstanton.

English people are strange, I have to say. Hunstanton really isn’t all that much. Its sole redeeming feature seems to be… uh… well, there’s a sandy beach that appears when the tide goes out. I have to admit that it was indeed sunny. There was a pub that was quite nice. The tourist shops were full of tat, 95% of which wasn’t even related to Hunstanton or England or really any place in the world. Yet Hunstanton seems to be some kind of minor scale tourist destination where families go in the summer. I can’t understand it.

I also have to say that although the English are otherwise relatively modern (they drive cars and listen to radio and drink tea), there are a few things that really point to the reason why the sun sets on the Empire these days. One of those is taps. Taps in sinks, not taps in bars (for which the English are to be commended). England doesn’t seem to have discovered the mixing tap yet. On nearly every sink I’ve seen you have a hot water tap and a cold water tap with separate spigots, whereas in every sink I’ve seen in North America and Australia you get one spigot for both temperatures. In England if you want warm water you’re stuffed, you can either get hypothermia or scald your hands. I’m 95% certain that countries broke away from England because they realized that England’s tap technology was lagging behind and they didn’t want to have their hospitals overflowing with scalded hands.

Friday, after the meeting was over at 2pm, we hit Sandringham and Castle Rising Castle (older than Canada!). Sandringham is a tad on the ugly side, suffering from expansion-itis, although its interior is quite nice. Liz wasn’t in so us plebes were allowed through (for the low low price of £7.50). The gardens are well done and look natural in that manicured-let’s-plant-these-trees-relatively-randomly kind of way. Castle Rising Castle was impressive and imposing. It’s not the largest castle out there but hey, beggars can’t be choosers. It’s the best proper castle I’ve been to. To be fair it’s the only proper castle I’ve been to that I can remember (Craigdarroch Castle doesn’t really count, although I suppose Hatley Castle probably does).

Monday evening we left Hawaii for London, England. After about thirty-six hours of travel, three of which were used for sleeping on planes, we arrived in London. I lost a Tuesday somewhere along the trip.

Oh, I should mention that the “we” I’ll be talking about is me, Tim and Frossie, both of whom I work with. Or for.

We arrived in London at about 6:45am and had to catch a train from King’s Cross at 1:45pm, so we had time to kill. We caught up with Frossie’s sister for breakfast, then did an open-top bus tour around London.

London’s crowded. Filled with people and cars. The buildings are, for the most part, old. Older than Canada! It’s a bit of a hodge-podge architechture-wise. Don’t really have much more to say about it, mostly because we were only tourists for a couple of hours. I got some pictures, so expect to see some popping up in the photo section any time now.

At 1:40pm we arrived at King’s Cross. Ran past the flowers for the victims of the July 7th bombing, ran past Platform 9 3/4, and caught the train to King’s Lynn, and from there Tim’s mom drove us over to Gedney Dyke, which is where we’re situated now.

Formula One, these days, can be as much about luck as it is about skill. Some drivers seem to have all the bad luck heaped upon them. Three of the drivers in the F1 paddock got hit with the unlucky stick in this past weekend’s British Grand Prix.

The first, Kimi Raikkonen. Sure, he’s lucky in that for this season his teammate, Juan Pablo Montoya, always seemed to have the bum car and Kimi made it through to the end (except for a couple of spectacular incidents), but the last two Grands Prix have been particularly unlucky for him. Each weekend he’s had an engine let go, and in this year’s rules changing your engine means you take a ten-position hit on the starting grid. For the French GP he had the third-quickest qualifying time but started in thirteenth, and for the British GP he was second-quickest and started twelfth. Mind you, he finished second and third, respectively, but had he not blown up his engines he could conceivably have won both races.

The second, Giancarlo Fisichella. French GP, he stalled on his third pitstop and lost a couple of positions. Ended up finishing sixth. British GP, he stalled on his second pitstop and lost a position. Ended up finishing fourth, when he could have come in third and got back on the podium after winning the Australian GP at the beginning of the season. Giancarlo is either really unlucky or Flavio’s got his anti-Fisi device working well.

The third and so far most unlucky driver this season is Takuma Sato. Not only did he get disqualified from the San Marino GP for running with an illegal fueling system, losing his points from that race, he got banned from the following two races. At the European GP, BAR’s first race back after their suspension, he got collected in a first-corner crash that kindly removed his front wing. After pitting and struggling with his car, he finished twelfth. At the Canadian GP he got rear-ended by one of the Saubers which broke off part of his diffuser (an important aerodynamic piece) and his rear wing. Half-way through the race he had troubles with his gearbox. Even though this effectively put him out of the race, BAR decided to change it and put him back out for some testing. To add insult to injury, during this testing his rear brakes locked up and put him out of the race for good.

The US GP he missed because he was one of the Michelin Fourteen. At the French GP he just kept moving backwards, ending up eleventh. An at the British GP he hit the wrong button on his steering wheel while lining up for the grid, which cut his engine. He had to be pushed into the pits where he lost a couple of laps. Ended up sixteenth.

Sato’s the only driver to not score any championship points this season, which is particularly bad considering all four Minardi and Jordan drivers have points (although those were gained in the US GP debacle). Rumour has it that Sato’s unlucky streak is a consequence of BAR’s good fortune last year. See, BAR was second in the Constructor championship last year, so their cars this year are numbered three and four. The three goes to the top driver Jenson Button, and car number four is driven by Takuma Sato. In Japanese, Sato’s native tongue, four has the same pronunciation as death. That’s pretty unlucky, I’d say.