Up, up and away!

Tomorrow Kate and I are off to Lake Garda in the North of Italy for two weeks. We’re then getting married in Malcesine Castle next Friday (22nd). I had planned to have some of my usual half arsed updates written in advance so that this little blog wouldn’t be empty for two weeks… but a certain incident put pay to that.

Speaking of which, I’m getting better. The stitches in my right knee were removed earlier today. It wasn’t a fun procedure since one had been healed over by a scab. As you can imagine that took a while to get out. Actually taking the bandage off was more painful since it gave me a bit of waxing. Waxing just isn’t natural. My bruises are also fading and it’s just lots of little aches and pains to get over now.

We’ll try to post some stuff up whilst we’re away, either on here or on the gallery, but it depends if I can find the interweb! Anyhoo, wish us luck! I’d better go finish (start) packing!

Italian Grand Prix

Ah crap, Schumacher 10 points, Alonso 0. What an utterly depressing weekend for anyone who isn’t a Ferrari or Schumacher fan. Was Alonso’s 5 place penalty a fix? Hard to say. I just think the run of bad luck has now switched in Renaults favour instead of Ferrari.

You have to hand it to Alonso though, he pushed really hard to get up to third, but that extra effort helped nuked his engine. Schumacher put in a pretty flawless weekend from start to finish. He might not have qualified on pole (Kimi did), but he was odds on favourite to take the win.

The next three races, China, Japan and Brazil, now make up a mini World Championship. Alonso’s lead in the drivers championship is down to 2 points, just in front of Michael on 106. Whilst in the constructors, Ferrari are now on 168 points, 3 ahead of Renault. It’s certainly all to play for.

Also on the plus side, Schumacher retires in 3 races time. Homer, if you please…

[gv data=”http://www.youtube.com/?v=KnnXKz3lzmM”][/gv]

Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad weekend after all?!

Turkish Grand Prix

I appear to have missed this one. I was only able to watch bits of it since we had family round and I’ve still got a copy of it on the Sky+ box but I doubt, given the way things have been going of late, I’ll get to watch it.

My vague recollection is that Massa got his maiden win (from qualifying on Pole) and Alonso came second, ahead of Schumacher in third. Reading up on the F1 ITV site it looks like a mistake from Ferrari during the safety car period when they brought both cars in for a pit stop at the same time (?!) lost second for Schumacher. What a pity…

Championship wise (for Alonso), a good result!

Wasn’t much fun trying to find the race result on F1 ITV, they have no link to an archive of articles. I have to use trial and error to guess the url. Useless gits.

Last bit of MPQ Archive Coverage

Promise (fingers crossed). Ok, so I’m kinda struggling now but I want it more as a record for myself more than anything.

Quake.de (thanks again Spirit).

MPQArchiveOnQuakeDotDe

Raven Games forums. Wonder how it got there…

MPQArchiveOnRavenForums

Nobodysalternative QW forum (login required).

MPQArchiveOnNobody

I also made some tweaks to the site as well. The Archive By Author now lists all the author names first and then you click on the names to get the maps that author created. It also gives an average map score which is just a bit of fun. Previously it just listed all the maps, ordered by Author name, which was very messy. Thanks to Aardappel for suggesting that.

I also added an Archive by Comments which is just like on the old site. It just lists the comments by date with links to what they relate to. Not much use to anyone other than me, but it’s just so I can see what’s being said.

In the news for all the wrong reasons…

The Lancashire Telegraph had details of the crash in their Wednesday edition. My grandparents gave me a cutting of it from the actual paper and a quick search of the website found this:

LancashireTelegraphWebsite

The last time I was in the paper (the Burnley Express) was for coming second in a colouring competition about (ironically) car safety held by the local Fiat garage when I was at primary school. The picture was fantastic. I just finished balling my eyes out because I was gutted I’d come second, and it was so obvious I’d been crying. Ah the memories.

Colour of bruises today: Purple, pink and yellow.

Ouch

One Mark V Golf GT TDI – Before:

OldMkVGolf

My previous Mark V Golf, don’t have a nice piccy of my (ex)current one.

After:

GolfSmashed

GolfInsideSmashed

Driving into work on Tuesday morning a car on the opposite side of the road hit a patch of diesel, lost control, came over onto my side of the road and hit me head on. The good news is, I’m still in one piece :) All limps attached and functioning correctly. The not so good news is I have two stitches in my lower lip, three stitches in my right knee and lots and lots of purple / black / blue coloured bruises on my chest and stomach from the seat belt. Oh and I ache, lots! The other driver involved is fine too. They knew they’d lost control of their car so were able to brace themselves (well as much as you can in these situations). Even so they still have lots of bruising.

Here’s what remains of what hit me (a Mercedes SL 320):

MercCrashed

Looks worse than it actually is. The front of their car took the brunt of the impact with no intrusion to the cabin. I wasn’t so lucky and the dashboard did come in slightly and hit my right knee. My burst lip was caused from head butting the airbag. The tyre to the left is not from the Merc, amazingly it’s front tires were completely intact, unlike mine which were both very flat and bent. From the back of both cars you’d be none the wiser, they look fine.

To be honest, I don’t remember a great deal. I have a flash of a black car being right in front me and then I’m off the road on the grass verge, airbags exploded and smoke everywhere. My driver side door was all bent and won’t open. I instead opened the passenger door and literally fell out. The other car had been spun round and was facing the same direction as my car. Debris was, as you can imagine, scattered all across the road. The emergency services were there very quickly to sort things out.

The police are happy that it’s just an accident and it’s now in the hands of the insurers to sort out. Everyone involved has been very helpful, especially the Barnoldswick Ambulance service and Accident and Emergency at Burnley General Hospital (oh and obviously my family (Kate and my Grandparents) and work). It’s a surreal experience. I’m still recovering and seem to have fits and bursts of energy and tiredness. I’m just happy to be able to talk and limp :) You have to say that modern cars are incredibly well engineered. Five years ago I might not have been so lucky!

Edit: In case anyone wonders, both cars were doing approx 30mph each. Goodness knows what it would have been like at higher speeds!

And finally… because this hasn’t been the most cheerful of posts, here’s a couple of cat photos! One of Sleepy Bobcat and the other is of Taco Kitten (no idea where I got it from).

BobCatSleepy

CatSausage

Yay for cats!

Doh

I appear to have purchased The Complete PopCap Collection.

PopCapBought

I was most miffed that my game of Chuzzle was stopped (hour free play used up)… and figured it’s daft to pay $19.95 for just that when you get all 17 games for $89.95 (nearer to $106 with good old 17.5% VAT on top).

End result: Chuzzle + Zuma + Bejeweled + Pizza Frenzy = Gaming Equivalent of Crack.

More MPQ Archive coverage

Funny really given I only posted about it on my blog (which only Bal, bear and Vondur read), func_msgboard and in #terrafusion (which was kept in the topic for about 3 seconds until someone called czg a penis or something similar).

First up QuakeBrasil. I haven’t foggiest what it says, probably that I’m the son of a goat herder and that I like to drink pig slop. I obviously deny the charges (about being a goat herder’s son).

MPQArchiveOnQuakeBrasil

QuakeOne had a post in their forums (thanks Baker).

MPQArchiveOnQuakeOne

As did QuakeWorld.nu (thanks Spirit).

MPQArchiveOnQuakeWorldDotNU

And Daz posted too… but missed out 300 reviews from the total (there’s nearly 500, not 200). Or maybe he just didn’t count Rocketman maps? In which case, fair play.

MPQArchiveAtDaz