Qualifying was good, with Kovalainen putting in a great performance for his first front row position. Massa’s pole was to be expected, but Raikkonen’s performance was not. He did not seem as comfortable with the car as Massa so I suspect he had a poor setup. Hamilton also seemed highly disappointed with his 3rd place. At the time I couldn’t figure it out why he would be, but it all became apparent in the race.

The start of the race saw the clean side of the grid get away far quicker than the dirty side. There was a fairly nasty accident at the back, which brought the safety car out for a few laps, and Raikkonen tagged Kovalainen into turn 1, puncturing the McLaren’s tyre. Kovalainen had to pit and that was unfortunately the end of his podium hopes.

Despite this, Kovalainen put on a spectacular show as he fought his way threw the field. He may have had a significantly faster car, but few of them went easily. The hardest to pass was Timo Glock, who simply would not give up.

Hamilton also gave his fair share of entertainment, pushing Massa hard while on the prime tyre and eventually overtaking him. It was great to see a racing move at the front, rather than the usual pit stop leap frogging that the leaders do. It also became clear why he was disappointed with 3rd on the grid - on the advice of Bridgestone, he was going to be three stopping and therefore was significantly lighter on fuel than Massa in qualifying and easily capable of pole. If he had taken pole I’m sure he could have won, but despite his poor qualifying performance, he drove an excellent race to a well deserved 2nd.

Raikkonen’s race was quiet and while he caught up with Hamilton in the closing laps, he didn’t seem interested in trying to pass him. He blamed a broken front wing, but I feel it is a bit of a (lame) excuse. There were no signs of debris in the replay of Raikkonen tagging Kovalainen’s car so I think any damage would have to be extremely minor and pretty much insignificant. I think this was pretty much confirmed by Raikkonen as he said it was damaged but not enough to need a new wing. I think he simply had a poor setup.

The BMWs weren’t as competitive here as the last few races, but they still came away with a nice points haul. The BMW drivers may not be capable of winning the drivers championship, but they certainly look good for the constructors at the moment.

It looks like the McLaren is closer to the Ferrari than originally thought after Barcelona, so I think it is safe to say they have made up whatever they lost after the first race and are back in business.

Next up is Monaco. Qualifying will be more important than usual as overtaking is impossible. Hopefully we will see the second McLaren win of the season there, or even BMWs first ever win. Either way, it looks like it will be another close championship.

I had a good day. Mum got me a copy of Test Drive Unlimited, which I then spent most of the day playing with my best friend. Had lots of fun racing around and crashing into traffic.

I also got some money off relatives, which I used to buy the Test Drive Unlimited MegaPack. It added lot’s of nice cars like the McLaren F1 GT, Ferrari 612 Scaglietti, Alfa Romeo Brera and Ferrari 250GTO (which costs $5,000,000!).

And now I’m going to go and crash some more traffic… in my McLaren F1 GT.

Qualifying was extremely close, with there only being about 0.2 seconds between pole and fifth, and Alonso qualifying in a surprising 2nd. This was already going to make for an interesting race, as odds were that the Renault was extremely light and running a different strategy to most.

Then during the race there were a couple of overtaking moves and quite a few incidents, the biggest of which being Kovalainen’s crash at the Campsa corner. The safety car was out for several minutes as the marshals and FIA medics worked on getting him out the car and checking him out. Once again the strength of a modern Formula 1 car came through, with Heikki coming out in one piece.I was very impressed with Hamilton and Kubica’s race. They both hung onto the Ferrari’s until the finish and showed that maybe Ferrari doesn’t have as big of an advantage as was initially thought.

Alonso also did well with what turned out to be a much improved Renault. I thought Alonso had gone very light on the fuel, to put on a bit of a show for the home crowd, but it turned out he was not significantly lighter than Massa. So Renault have found some actual performance and are probably the fourth fastest team there right now.

Webber had a quiet but good race as well, finishing fifth. I would consider Red Bull to be Renault’s main rival at the moment so we could have some good scraps between Webber and Alonso in future.

Heidfeld was unfortunately caught out by the safety cars. It’s a stupid rule, but no more stupid than the previous free-for-all mayhem that ensued after a safety car went out. It was dangerous and created the same disadvantage as the new rule for some. I think the best solution would be to enforce a 110% lap rule when the safety car is out. Anyone can pit any time they want, but no-one must have a lap 110% of the safety car’s lap. This would both keep speeds low and negate any advantage of pitting under the safety car. Easy to implement too.

Overall it was an eventful race and much more interesting than the usual 66 parade laps of the Catalunya circuit.

Turkey next which is a good track and should provide a good race. It is one of the tracks on Massa’s list of “tracks I can actually drive”, so it will be interesting to see if anyone can beat him there.

I chose Samsung because Samtron monitors were made by Samsung and before it went dull and blurry, the Samtron was an excellent monitor. I have also had many other Samsung products, all of which are of a high quality.

I am so far extremely happy with the Samsung 940BW Plus. The colours are bright and it is crystal clear, although any monitor would look good after the Samtron. I have had no issues with ghosting at all (it has a 5ms response time), which worried me a little coming from a CRT.

One of the things I liked in particular was the simple design - it is just a rectangular shape of silver coloured plastic, with the screen and 6 buttons in the bottom right. Other monitors of a similar specification had fancy designs, which isn’t at all necessary in my opinion (you’re looking at the screen, not the surround).

At the same time I got an Inno3D 7600GT 256Mb AGP Graphics card to replace my Leadtek Winfast A350 (128Mb FX5900 XT) card. The A350 was an excellent card, playing anything the chipset supported very well, however I doubted it could handle the jump from 1024×768 to 1440×900 without a major degradation in performance, so I got the Inno3D 7600GT.

It is physically smaller than the A350, but has considerably more power. Not only can it handle the resolution jump, but it has added considerable performance on top. I was expecting it to do well (it is 2 series newer than the FX5900) but not quite as well as it has.

I have had some issues with the widescreen and gaming unfortunately. Most games support it, even ones I thought wouldn’t like GTA III and GTA Vice City. However Grand Prix 4 and Battlefield 2 fail to support it natively. Grand Prix 4 I can understand as it is old. It runs but everything is stretched. Battlefield 2 though seems stupid, considering games released at a similar time support it. There is a workaround by adding a modifier to the shortcut path, but it’s not as good as native support, especially when it comes to running mods.

Overall I am very pleased with both products. My Mum was also suitably impressed - she purchased another Samsung 940BW Plus and an Inno3D 7600GS for my sister.

My sister’s Colin McRae 2005 skills have improved considerably now as a result. Not sure how but she is 20 seconds faster.

The site is nicely designed, is clear and informative. It was really quite easy to find out about how it worked and what was required. One of the things that attracted me in particular was that they expect disclosure of sponsored reviews (as you can see from the image at the bottom).

My blog was approved within 24 hours. I submitted it yesterday morning and I woke up today to find that it had been approved today. I’m still waiting for approval from others.

The control panel is well designed and easy to navigate too. It clearly shows me my “opportunities” and allows me to reserve them. The only thing I haven’t found yet is a way to view already reserved opportunities, so after reserving an opportunity and navigating away from the page, I had to go back and re-reserve it.

At the moment it appears I will be mainly using PayPerPost, as they are quick, efficient and design well.

I got 18 Wheels of Steel: American Long Haul a few months back and have thoroughly enjoyed it since. I am sure that Euro Truck Simulator will be just as good and the many screenshots available on the official site certainly do look impressive.

I am checking the site everyday to see if there is more information about it, specifically a release date and information about what countries will be included and what new elements (if any) will be added to the game.

I am hoping that Britain will be included, not only because it’s where I live but also because of the additional elements such as the ferry crossing and left-hand/right-hand switch, which would make cross continental journeys that bit more interesting.

I will post again when there is more information, which is soon I hope.

Secondly it works as a partial ad-blocker. I don’t mind adverts - websites cost money to run and money typically comes from adverts, however I object to my computer being filled with junk because of it.

The third and final reason I use it is so that I can see how my Javascript based sites function when Javascript is turned off. However this has led me to seeing how other sites function with it turned off and I must say that I am appalled at the number that fail to take the unavailability of Javascript into consideration.

I have spent today signing-up to pay-per-post blog services so I can hopefully make a little money from this blog. Out of about 10 sites, probably only 2 safely degraded so the site remained useful without script turned on. While I know it isn’t limited to these sites, it is a widespread problem with sites today.

For an example of proper degradation, have a look at Xpertwebsite.com. It is heavily dependant on Javascript as you can see. However if you turn Javascript off (manually or via NoScript), everything is still usable and accessible. Probably an extra hour of coding to make it that little bit more accessible.

Now look at the ReviewMe FAQ. All the Javascript is doing is showing/hiding the answers. Turn it off and you just get broken links that do nothing. Why? It isn’t hard to only hide the answers if Javascript is enabled. This is actually how the first version of Xpertwebsite.com worked (it was Javascript on a single HTML document, rather than AJAX). Adding a working link would be easier but just as good.

I know the majority of people have Javascript turned on, but it isn’t right to assume everyone does. Unless a site actually needs Javascript (which is rare) then it should degrade to a usable state. At the very least, a noscript tag should be utilised to inform the user that the site works best with Javascript enabled, yet most sites which use Javascript don’t even have that which is plain ridiculous! Even the newest of HTML coders could do it, yet these “big boys” can’t be bothered!

Rant over.

She saved up some money and my Mum finally agreed that we could get one, so on Friday I cycled the 4 miles to the pet shop to meet my sister from school and pick-up a hutch and guinea pig. She then took a taxi home with the hutch and guinea pig while I cycled back.

When I got back, I helped get the hutch ready for him and put him in it. However after a few hours we decided to bring him indoors as it was cold outside and Wysiwyg is only 7 weeks old, so he is small (see the picture of my sister holding him) and doesn’t have as much fur as a fully grown guinea pig.

So we now have him in a makeshift home in the form of a large collapsible crate filled with everything he needs. It’s big enough for him for now, but when he gets bigger he will be better off in the hutch, although we are now debating if and how we can get it indoors. We have plenty of time though, as apparently guinea pigs take 6 to 8 months to reach adult size!

He is very friendly and doesn’t mind being picked up, held or stroked. According to the squeak he makes (different guinea pig sounds mean different things), he actually enjoys it which is good. He makes no effort to escape - we can just hold him in one hand and he sits there, cuddling up to us.

All in all he is great!

Anyway, this is my logo design for Fortheinter.net. The only variations absolutely certain at the moment are the main logo and the CMS Fortheinter.net logo. The other two will most likely change (especially as portfolio will be part of design).

I’m currently working on my designs relating to CMS Fortheinter.net (default frontend, administration and the main site) while waiting for further instructions regards work I’m doing for Xpertwebsite.com. I’ll try and show one of the designs later this week.

Any feedback relating to the logos is welcomed.

So I’ve finally finished the design. Took longer than I expected, even when disregarding my recent days of laziness and delays. Wordpress seemed to make it as difficult as possible to create the theme the way I wanted to. Let me know what you think of it and of any bugs you find.

Anyway, pending other work, my fight against “CMS oppression” will be able to resume when I start working on CMS Fortheinter.net soon. I decided last night that I’m going to make the administration independant, rather than inline. Inline is easier in some regards, but would also be a pain in others.

For example, a site like Xpertwebsite.com (who I do work for), doesn’t have a sidebar. How would you get to the administration without a more generic navigation? How would you integrate the administration into an 99.9% AJAX based design like that? It wouldn’t be easy, and the quick CMS I made for that site has an independant admin.

The other factor is performance. I’ve noticed that all these administrator permission checks going on in the modules are slowing down the system quite quickly. While some permission checks are going to be necessary, it seems daft to be burning performance away on something that will be accessed considerably less than the actual content.

Making it independant allows me to play around with AJAX more in the administration too. If it was inline, I’d have to remember that someone will be changing the theme and use less AJAX, which in turn makes the administration a little harder to use.

The final benefit is one that has bothered me from the start. If the theme is broken, by poor coding or an update that changes the code, the site owner couldn’t use the administration to change the theme to the default while they fix their own design. Which would obviously be pretty bad. So an independant administration seems the right way to go.

Hope I haven’t bored you too much with that lot.