chUK's blog

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Same Old...Kind of...

Yet again, I'm still just working away. Makes it harder to write these blogs, as it's kind of hard to share exactly what I'm doing, and a little too detailed as well. Think I see the light at the end of the tunnel for this part of my project, but we will see! The weather has been colder the last couple days, and it rained pretty good last night too. It's sunny today, but still colder (says 55 F). There is a music and art festival going on in the gardens here in Newport. I went out for some live music last night, and will go check it out again for a while this afternoon and maybe this evening, depending on how motivated and productive I feel. Looks like it should at least stay sunny which will make that fun.

Yesterday I decided I was tired of sandwiches for lunch and went to The Bull down the street for a classic ham egg and chips lunch. It hit the spot and it was nice to sit outside - the rain came at night. I did buy some minted lamb and a venison burger this week. I cooked the lamb last night and it was really tasty, I managed to cook it just about right I think, maybe could've gone a little more rare. I think I'll do the venison burger tonight for dinner, should be fun! Tomorrow I'm going to finally give into my craving for Indian food, still debating exactly which place I'm going though. Probably the one that is BYO alcohol, and a 5 course meal for 8.99 I think. It's that or there are three buffet options for about the same price. The 5 course is just as much food as I'd eat on the buffet, it's just a matter of choices.

At least there is F1 to watch this weekend, and the ALMS race is live on MotorsTV at 745 tonight, and of course enough day baseball on the weekend to keep me happy too! It really helps having things in the background when I'm working on my project - a lot of the commands take a while to execute.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Being Productive

Finally I feel like I'm getting somewhere on this project, almost have the initial assembly built so I can start doing some analysis. Hopefully that should start tomorrow, maybe tonight if I make good progress today. Other than that I don't have much to add really. I've been working more from home recently, and just going to campus in the afternoon for a few hours if I have to. Yesterday I did take the bus to Olney to work from a cafe for a couple hours, and had some tea and cheesecake. I felt way too British with the afternoon "tea and cake"!

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Trying to Make Progress

I think I've finally made a small breakthrough on my project, getting some CAD files to actually work now. Though a few are still being uncooperative. Hopefully this means I can really start being productive today and all this week, we will see.

Yesterday morning and early afternoon was really miserable here, pretty constant and relatively hard rain. So I stayed in and spent too much time trying to make my files work and watching golf - which they were playing in absolutely miserable weather. The weather did clear up later in the afternoon, so I went into Milton Keynes to return some camping stuff we had bought for last weekend. I also picked up a few things to fix some issues I'd had with my shower. When we were in Bordeaux, we tried Benedicte and Claude's favorite Normandy Camembert. They explained that among other things, the difference in the good stuff was that it was unpasteurized. Sainsbury's did have an unpasteurized Normandy Camembert, so I picked it up to try. It's definitely nowhere near as flavorful as what we had in France though...

This morning I'm catching up on the last 2 episodes of Top Gear and doing more CAD work. It's slightly rainy, not sure what the forecast is for the rest of the day. I'll try to get a workout in after lunch I think. I suppose I should be interested enough to watch the Women's World Cup Final tonight too.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Whew, Those 2 Weeks Went Fast

I really can't believe how quick Jess' trip over here felt. At least it was all very fun. Had a good afternoon in London after she finally got through the long line at Customs. Maybe it was due to the strike the day before, but Jeremy had the same issue in the same terminal (4) when he came over. We had planned to check out the Greenwich area, but diverted after we'd been on the Tube for about an hour, and realized it would probably be another hour before arriving. So we stopped off near Covent Garden for some lunch - a pork and black pudding pie, a few drinks, and then walked about 2 miles to Regents Park, which was very nice and relaxing. A couple beer stops finished off our night before the train back to Milton Keynes.

Saturday we let Jess catch up on sleep as much as possible before repacking a bag to head to Bordeaux. The trip to Luton was a bit stressful, due to, yes you guessed it - the bus. It was 40 minutes late showing up in Milton Keynes, and we were right on the edge of taking a 40 GBP taxi instead. Then we were slightly worried about being late for check-in, but in the end it all worked out, security and bag check went super quick and we were on the plane. Not as easy as security and baggage at Bordeaux though, we were out of there meeting Benedicte and Claude in no time flat! I think we'll get another post up about France specifically, maybe with Jess as a guest blogger!

We returned to the island on Tuesday afternoon, on a slight delay, but the bus was on time and we made it back to Newport Pagnell easily enough. Wednesday we spent recovering from the food and wine coma from Bordeaux and a quick trip to campus in the afternoon for a briefing about the British Grand Prix. We also walked around and explored my town a little more.

Thursday we picked up the rental car in the morning, and started the journey to Silverstone with a few stops along the way. We parked in Buckingham and walked around a bit. Lunch was a little picnic that we had packed, along with some cherries that we'd bought from a stand on the side of the road that were really good. The trip to Silverstone was for our official briefing, and to pick up the ticket for Jess. The briefing took too long, as it was scheduled when everyone else was in a different meeting. So we spent a ton of time just hanging out waiting for the people in charge to come back to finish our instructions. Finally we got out though. After Clive scared us enough about the traffic issues on Saturday and Sunday we did decide to camp at the track though, so we had to stop by a store in Milton Keynes on the way back to buy a tent and a sleeping bag for Jess (I'll return them both, and we wound up not needing the tent anyway). Our first meal out, not counting London (we'd done a good job using the food I had around to save money) was at 8 in Emberton, at the Bell and Bear. We really enjoyed everything, smoked pigeon and goat cheese pannacotta apps, pan fried haddock and lamb for entrees, and a cherry clafoutis for dessert.

The weekend turned out to be really fun, yes it was long, early and sometimes tiring work driving the golf carts around, but it was really a unique way to be part of a Grand Prix. It also allowed us access to a part of the track without the general public, which made it much easier to watch the cars when we had time off. I will say that hearing and seeing the F1 cars run for the first time was absolutely stunning. I'd almost expected to be disappointed by them, but that was not the case. You can visually tell they are so much faster than anything I'd ever seen before. And the noise is just something that you have to hear to explain. TV doesn't even come close to reproducing the sounds of the weekend. The atmosphere was really good too, tons of fans everywhere, way too many McLaren fans, and the weather was really only a minor annoyance, even though it was pretty bad on Friday and Saturday. It was really annoying on Friday, our first session off was for Free Practice 2, which was seriously wet, and no one really ran until I think 45 minutes into the session!

On Monday we had to return the car - so back to the good old bus for Chuck - and headed down to the Chiswick area in London. We walked along the Thames, down to Kew Gardens and Kew Green. It was good weather, and a nice relaxing walk. The permanent looking house boats along the river were quite interesting. Dinner was a meat platter with fabulous chorizo, chicken, steak, pate, and salami, served with gherkins and some fresh bread. A final stop for even better dessert put a great ending on the night. I got a sort of chocolate Lava cake, but served with salt caramel, tonkabean ice cream and an amazing sesame cracker. Jess had a praline nougat, with brandy soaked chocolate cookies and a chocolate whipped cream kind of thing too. We definitely kind of lucked into finding the place, which made it even better!

Tuesday morning we skipped the continental breakfast for French toast and eggs florentine at a spot close to the hotel before heading to Heathrow. The tube was delayed just a little, but we were still there in plenty of time, even with our tearful, never-ending goodbyes.

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

The Week...

Seems to be going well. Time at least isn't too slow, and I've found ways to be productive, even though I'm waiting on some CAD models still to progress on my thesis. So not that much different than Lighthouse in that respect. I've been filling the time working on job application stuff, so hopefully that will pay off in the end. I think my eyes are starting to protest all the looking at the screen time though. I tried to avoid printing off papers, but I did a few today so I can get away from the screen periodically. I don't really feel busy, but I think it's because my idea of busy was really different back home. Productive right now can simply mean I read some papers during the day and came up with x,y, or z conclusions. Just really different. Easy to be frustrated with the whole process though. At least from talking to some other guys everyone seems to be in the same kind of boat. I'm trying to just not stress about it and do what I can and it will work itself out. I was trying to avoid having a last week or two scramble of late nights, but I think that is just going to happen. Jess put it best - "it wouldn't be grad school without at least a few late nights of work". I did find an awesome paper that should help out a lot in my project yesterday that is 58 pages long, think I'm gonna save that one for the train ride into London to pick up Jess on Friday. And it will probably spill over into the flights to and from Bordeaux too. Gonna get back to watching baseball and maybe a little job/website searching on the side.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Hot!

The weather has turned hot here, it was 81 yesterday afternoon, and its supposed to approach 90 this afternoon. Not really sure how I'll stay cool. Luckily some rain is coming tomorrow that should cool things back down. The weekend was good if a bit slow. Saturday we were going to the Donington Park Museum, but the only people interested did not have cars, so that didn't happen! The weather was pretty nice that afternoon, so I rode my bike over to a pub by the canal that was having a beer and live music festival. A nice afternoon. On Sunday I rode my bike again, this time to campus, to watch the European Grand Prix with some classmates. It was a slightly boring race, but still fun to watch of course. The rest of the afternoon was slow, I did some laundry, cleaned up a little around my room, and made a black bean stirfry for dinner.

I'm on campus today working with some software. I might be wasting my time, but I've got to get started on my design otherwise I'm going to go crazy. My dimensions and size might be completely wrong, I'm waiting on some CAD models. So I'm trying to set it up and see if the program will allow me to change dimensions easily. We'll see.

Really looking forward to Jess' arrival on Friday morning, and then our trip to Bordeaux - we fly out Saturday night, and return Tuesday afternoon.

Friday, June 24, 2011

Le Mans!

The trip started a bit ominously, as I had some trouble finding Jeremy at the airport. Luckily it just turned out that his customs took forever. Once he finally came out, like 2 hrs later than he shoulda been, we headed to the Tube on the way to London. Since he was delayed so long, we didn’t have a lot of time to burn, but we did manage to do some walking around the Thames, between the London Eye and Big Ben. We did also manage a stop for tea (where I realized that I left my USB memory stick on the plane) and then a stop for a few pints and sausages for lunch. Of course there was an obligatory stop at the Euston Tap before the train to Milton Keynes. We did get lucky and snag a table outside under the shelter, so we didn’t get wet when it started raining! We took care of getting Euro’s for France too.

Neither of us fell asleep on the train – thanks to each other, or maybe the beer on the train – but then the bus to Newport was miserable. It was absolutely packed and we had big luggage and no room to put it and it was really annoying. Finally we got back to my place, and started repacking for Le Mans. Dinner wound up being fish and chips, which did hit the spot after the long day of travel. A stop at the Co-Op for some food items for the trip finished the outing. I don’t even remember when we got to bed, but it was pretty late, packing took a little longer than expected.

An early start the next morning meant a pickup from my house at 815, which we both managed, though I think we had like 5 alarms set between the 2 of us! The drive to the ferry was a bit slow, rush hour traffic around London is never fun, but it was necessary for when we were trying to get to Le Mans. My GPS came in quite handy though, for the whole trip actually, it was probably worth the purchase price for the benefits this weekend alone. The weather did clear up as we got to Dover, so we got some decent pictures of the cliffs as the ferry departed. The ride was easy, Jeremy and I avoided the food on board with some of the stuff we brought, and then we were off to Le Mans!

And here is where it was obvious we were truly with college kids, and where my GPS really probably saved our butt. I don’t really know what the plan was, I stayed out of it because I wasn’t driving, but getting on and off the ferry makes it impossible to stay with your group of cars, unless you arrange a meeting spot before you depart. Add to that the fact that everyone seemed to want to drive a different speed, and it was clear we weren’t convoying to Le Mans. On top of that, I don’t know who if anyone had directions. We only messed up with the GPS once, at a weird interchange where we should’ve trusted the signing instead of the GPS. But it didn’t really matter, and we got a little scenic route around Rouen, France. One mistake was assuming that finding our campsite once we got to Le Mans would be easy. It was far from it. The best part of this being lost was that we could hear the cars already, so we knew we were somewhere close! We saw two of our other cars driving around a couple roundabouts, all of us lost. I finally figured out where to go from cross-referencing the circuit map I had printed with my GPS. Luckily we also avoided the huge line to get in the circuit by coming in the back way!

Everyone else finally arrived and we set out to find and setup our campsite. There were already plenty of people there, but tons of room for more too. By the time this we wanted to watch some of the qualifying session, so we headed to the track, and kind of accidentally wound up at the start/finish area. So the first bit of action we watched was from the grandstand over the pits. The cars, especially the Corvette, were just awesomely loud as the exhaust bounced around each side of the grandstands.

On the walk back I wound up buying a “steak hache” from the food stand outside the campsite, which was basically 3 burgers stuffed in a baguette! Jeremy was somehow still surviving off of our snacks. The next day there was absolutely no racing, so we made a road trip through to a grocery store, the Super U, or U Super, something like that. We bought a bunch of sausages, burgers, bread of course, and I couldn’t resist some goat cheese from the vendor setup outside. We convinced Vincent (the lone Frenchman in the group) to ask for a bag of ‘glace’ (ice) which apparently they just give you if you ask. The pit lane was open all day to tour, which we did once we got back. Great pictures, everyone’s garages were completely open, bodywork off the cars, it was really fun. Some crazy costumes too, Elvis, Oompa-Loompas, The Original Hulk – including a fully staged wrestling match in pit lane! After the pit walk we cooked some lunch, or linner, or something, we didn’t necessarily have specific meals here, just whenever we needed food! Then we took the Tram into the city of Le Mans for the driver parade, which was insanely packed. Jeremy and I had walked up a couple of stops because it was more convenient, but wound up having to take the Tram back to the track, then get on it going the right way because it was slam full everytime it came by. The city was really a sight to see, I’d be curious to see it on a regular weekend. It was also larger than I had anticipated. We finally managed a decent spot for a view of the cars, but wound up not staying all the way to the end for the drivers. The rest of the night was basically partying at the campsite until it got dark sometime after 11 and then some more hanging out until we all passed out.

Saturday morning we all literally crawled out of our beds one by one. We watched some of the historic race from the exterior of the Porsche curves, and waited around slowly moving our way closer to the fence as people left. We stayed there through the few laps that they ran with the Mazda 787B that won the race in 1991. I think it was the last Japanese car to win, maybe the only too? We then took off back to the campsite for some food and then returned to the interior of the Porsche curves for the start of the race.

The race was entertaining for a while, until the first Audi caused a really long safety car. Unfortunately we only saw the new Aston LMP1’s on a couple of laps, as one crashed, and the other spent more time in the pits with engine problems than it did racing. With the long safety car going, it was back to the campsite for a refuel of us. After food we returned to the start finish area to watch racing there. It was really really impressive watching the LMP’s in the curves after the Dunlop bridge. Especially how they were passing the GT cars was just awesome to watch. Our drink of choice by now had become the plastic wine barrel. We stuck it in the backpack with two cups, and carried it around wherever we went. A second trip to the store was required on Saturday night for food, didn’t want any of the meat to spoil so we hadn’t bought enough for all 4 days. At this store though, they were charging 6 Euro for 6 frozen 1.5 liter bottles of water. It was closer to the track, and I’m sure they just take advantage of the situation. Anyway, they wound up working really well in the cooler, so in the end I think they were worth the price.

As the race went on and we explored other areas, of the track, we were discovering that the track transportation was extremely unreliable. Everytime we saw one of the shuttles it was jam packed, and they weren’t very frequent either. This definitely meant that we couldn’t get around to all the corners, and it was unexpected. I hadn’t really thought about it much, figuring we’d get to the track, and the shuttles would get us wherever we needed. Little did I know that you really need to plan when you were taking each shuttle and that you had to get on it at its origin! So in the end this prevented us from getting to Arnage or Mulsanne. Or maybe I was planning it that way so we have a reason to go back ;) It would also help actually watching the racing if you bring a radio where you can listen to what is going on, as the PA is not even close to at all the spectator areas, and when it is, it’s in French with an English standings update maybe once an hour. We watched from around the grandstands for a while, until the second long safety car caused by the second Audi. Hoping it would be a little quicker we walked to Tetre Rouge and watched for a while but got impatient waiting for actual racing. The plan was to walk back around the other side of the track to the campsite, but unfortunately this wasn’t possible, so we went back to the Porsche Curves to watch some night racing. It was a bit surreal watching the headlights scream at you, then past you, with some of the cars lighting up their brake lights and backfiring out of their exhaust. By now it was getting oddly cold though, so some grill action was in order back at the campsite before bed.

The next morning is when our trip down to Arnage went terribly wrong when every single shuttle was full. The walk to the origin of the shuttle was past the start/finish line, which was too far away from the campsite that we didn’t want to walk it again. We settled on the Porsche curves again. The plan was to then get some food and get to start/finish and take the shuttle to Arnage for the finish. It worked until the shuttle was stuck in traffic and probably wouldn’t have gotten us there in time. Off the shuttle we went, and found a place in front of a large monitor near the Ford Chicane to watch the ending. Luckily the winner was still slightly in doubt, with the lone Audi 8 seconds up on the Peugeout with under an hour left. However it wasn’t to be, as the Audi was on a much faster pace at that point. The weather had been really inconsistent all weekend, and it was spitting rain at us for the finish unfortunately. It never got too heavy though which was good. It did however get heavier after the race was done and we were back at the campsite. That was pretty miserable – no racing, rain, hard to grill, and limited space in the tent. At least we did still have some wine and beer remaining. A few people took their car into Le Mans to get out of the rain, but with Jeremy it would’ve been too tight, and besides we still had food and stuff to use at the campsite. I think the highlight of that night was all the fireworks that people were setting off around the campsite, impressive stuff. It was a good thing that we weren’t near the dumpster that somehow got set on fire, that we could see the huge black cloud of smoke from and I can only imagine how it smelled.

The best part about where we watched the end of the race was that we accidentally stumbled upon the entrance to the start/finish straight where spectators crowd around to watch the trophy presentations. We had a really good view for that!

The trip back home was uneventful, and we did manage to catch an earlier ferry than anticipated, which got us back home about 2 hrs earlier. It was sad to leave Le Mans, where the exotic cars were so commonplace that it seriously got old seeing “oh just another Ferrari”. It was really quite amazing the level of cars that people drove out there, and people were even camping out of exotics!

Inevitably there were lessons to be learned from this first trip. First of all, know that we know how the shuttles pretty much work, I would have a very specific plan for going to each place I wanted to watch the cars from. That’s the only way you’ll get everywhere unless you just walk circles around the 10 mile track, in which case – good luck to you. Secondly, bring a generator, at least a radio, maybe a TV and satellite, and do it proper tailgate style. Third, the shower and bathroom situation was better than expected, minus not really having any hand soap – bring hand sanitizer, especially if you have to take contacts out every night. Fourth, bring a rolling cooler so you can bring food around the track and not have to trek back to the campsite everytime. Fifth, book early and get a better campsite that is closer to the start/finish area where all the amenities and shuttles seem to be. Sixth, you won’t see a car that impresses you for at least a month after 4 days of constant super car sightings. Lastly, don’t let Jeremy have unsupervised control over pouring the wine keg for himself J

I made sure we took the most appropriate way out of the campsite, driving the wrong way down the Mulsanne Straight, where not 24 hours prior cars had been doing over 200 mph.

So I had this grand plan to mix pictures into the post, but then the selection I had didn't work as well as I had hoped, so I decided to put them at the end. Jeremy took more pictures than I did probably. Sorry for the unrotated pictures by the way.