Sephy’s Platzish

Anyone who knows me will know that I am a huge racing fan. In fact, I’ve attended a lot of races, mostly on the local level (though the options for where to actually attend races is going down on a seemingly annual basis). I’ve even attended a couple of races in the second and third tiers of Stock Car/Truck racing about 8 years ago - though that was a once-off event thanks to getting a couple of tickets given to me as a present.

However, at a time when the races tend to be boring, and the drivers seem to have had the life taken out of them. I mean, there has to be something wrong when one of the sport’s top stars gets fined $25,000 and 25 points for saying “bullshit” on cable TV. Let us not forget, of course, that NASCAR’s “coming of age” moment was when the Allison brothers and Cale Yarborough got involved in a fistfight at the end of the 1979 Daytona 500.

Nowadays, the sport is controlled by large bankrolls - teams have to get multi-million dollar sponsorships for their cars, and some teams have even gone so far as to rope in support from other sports team owners (notably the owners of the Boston Red Sox, and the Montréal Canadiens as a start). Unfortunately, with this influx of money and influence comes the necessity of controlling the drivers, to a point, as I have said, where they are simply robots.

A great example of this comes from the banquet held in New York last week - all of the speeches of the top drivers was preloaded onto a teleprompter. The days of the drivers saying what they want are gone, replaced with speechwriters and consultants.

However, there is an alternative. Not surprisingly, it comes from the other side of the world. It’s also somewhat hard to find on US TV screens, again, not terribly surprising.

I’m talking about the Australian V8 Supercar Championship - the most popular form of auto racing Down Under, featured 37 races spread out over 14 rounds this year going to all states and territories of Australia (except the ACT), New Zealand and even Bahrain. In the past, they’ve gone to China, and there are rumours of them going to be a support race for the Singapore F1 Grand Prix next year.

In all except three rounds, the format of the series is three races, generally around 120km in length, with a pit stop required to change two tyres. The other three rounds are the season-opening Clipsal 500 in Adelaide (on a shortened version of the F1 circuit), featuring a 250km race on each Saturday and Sunday. In September, the series heads to the Melbourne area for a 500km endurance race (for the last few years, it was at Sandown, but next year it will be held at Phillip Island - home of the original 500 mile endurance race in the early 60s).

The crown jewel in the V8 series is the Bathurst 1000 - which started out as a 500 mile race, but the switch to metric in 1974 brought about the increase in distance (interestingly, and this is just one of those things that I would notice - in some of the early films of the race from when it was still a 500 mile race, you could see the speed limit signs; they looked exactly like American speed limit signs, and not the semi-European signs you see nowadays) to 1000km (624 miles or so)

I bet if you asked any Aussie to do word association with the race, and 9 out of 10 times the first thing you’d hear out of their mouth would be Brock. As in Peter Brock, for whom the trophy for the race winner was named after he passed away last year in a rallying accident in the TargaWest in Perth. This year’s race was the second after his passing, and it did not disappoint for excitement.

It all started out well, and then the weather decided to change - gone was the sun that they had had for the best part of the race, and in came the rains. It cleared just long enough for the drivers to change back onto the slick tyres, but the rain came back. This led to the last few laps being run in the wet with slick tyres. This is the last lap of the race from this year. I just want you to note the excitement in the announcers’ voices (Matt White and Neil Crompton), and the atmosphere you get from the coverage.

As a matter of fact, one of the V8s champions, Marcos Ambrose, has moved over to the States in order to advance his career (and earn a boatload of money) in NASCAR. So far, he has kept his personality, and as he moves into the top ranks of the series, I can only hope that he keeps his personality, though I’m sure that he’ll get frowns from the France family if he tries to do something like he did in 2005 (they didn’t fight outright, and he did something absolutely brilliant - he went to a nearby house, saw the replay, and then went back to the garage).

If you know the sites, you can download the V8 races from this year; the finale held last weekend was brilliant, with the championship fight going right down to the last lap of the last race of the year. I won’t tell you who won, but either of the blokes who were in the running to win the championship would have deserved it.

For those of us here in the States, we can watch the V8s, however, the broadcasts on Speed are still at the second race in Adelaide. Unfortunately, they’re doing something completely stupid, in my opinion - here is the schedule for the races on there (I’ve taken out repeats):

• Adelaide - Round 1
• Pukekohe - Round 3
• Hidden Valley - Round 6
• Oran Park - Round 8
• Bathurst - Round 10
• Queensland Raceway - Round 7
• Symmons Plains - Round 13
• Phillip Island - Round 14

Thankfully, they’re showing what had to have been the best round overall, Oran Park (a rare rain-affected race for the V8s, with a surprise round winner). However, the fact that they’re not showing all the rounds and then skipping around with the sequencing of them is inexcusable.

If it were a perfect world, they should show the races live (or at least in the same week), since it’s rare that there’s something conflicting with the live broadcasts at 10 or 11pm Central on a Saturday night (when the races would be run in our summer, when we’re on Daylight Saving and Australia’s not). However, showing race 1 in December, some 8 months after it’s actually run, is something that shouldn’t happen.

Oh, sorry, I forgot. Pinks is on.

…of the widely publicised election that nobody knew about in the USA.

Well, saying that nobody knew about the election would be a bit of an understatement; obviously news junkies, expats and anyone with an interest in Australia knew about the election that was held today down there. Of course, the pedantic side of me has to mention that almost all of the voting took place yesterday my time, since it’s midnight on the east coast at 7AM here during the winter…

Anyway, if you were aware of how the election was going up until now, you wouldn’t be surprised that the result did wind up as it did - Labor picking up a massive load of seats in the House of Representatives, leading to John Howard (who, incidentally, might just be out of a job depending on the results of the absentee ballots) holding firm at his position on second in the chart of longest-serving Australian Prime Ministers.

I actually stayed up for quite a while last night (I was awake fully until about 2AM, then pretty much dozed off until 3, laying on the couch when I went to my bed proper) watching the coverage from ABC TV, which they were streaming for all to watch (and record, if you may know how to do that; which I do, so I can catch up on the bits I missed while sleeping, though I could have sworn that I heard Mr. Rudd giving a speech, with the cheering crowds and all). I have to say that everything that I had heard about one of their election analysts, Antony Green, was true - he made all this talk of “primary votes”, “two-party preference” and swings make sense. He also would be honest about what the numbers that were coming in actually meant.

All I’ll say is that it’s too bad that a network here doesn’t have the forethought to bring him overseas to possibly analyse our election. I guess beggars can’t be choosers, eh?

However, one of the most interesting aspects of this election is the fact that the American media couldn’t have cared less. Sure, it was an election occurring half a world away, but I will note that elections in the UK get quite a bit of attention; in fact, C-Span would air the BBC’s coverage on one of their networks, even going so far as having it on all night. If you were to tune in to the first two (and most widely distributed) of their networks this morning around 1AM, you would have seen some random government person giving a speech or an author giving a talk at a Barnes & Noble somewhere. The other news networks, all of which weren’t even showing new content (CNN [US], MSNBC and Fox News), may have mentioned the election, but I don’t follow those channels that much anymore; all I know is that 1 AM, they didn’t show coverage from their Aussie counterparts as well.

After it’s all been sorted, though, the news website emails I receive have mentioned the resounding defeat for the Liberals and the Nationals. Of course, it’s all put into the frame of reference that Howard was a staunch ally of President Bush, however, I don’t believe that the close ties to our government had much, if anything, to do with the defeat of the Coalition. If I had to guess, I’d say that the biggest issue that led to this result is the appearance that the recently enacted workplace reforms (WorkChoices), along with uncertainty in the housing market (an issue which wasn’t helped along with the fact that the Reserve Bank raised interest rates during the campaign, to a rate that was still lower than the rate that was in place when Howard took up residency in Kirribilli House some 11 years ago.

All in all, it will be interesting to see how it all comes out in the wash, and to see what kind of changes will go on Down Under over the next three to four years. Also, a question, when will Kevin become the PM? I’d guess before Christmas?

A couple of weeks ago, I got word of a really cool offer of some free stationery from a company called VistaPrint - in particular their Australian division. Part of the offer included free calendars, postcards, business cards and even Christmas cards.

So, being a lover of all things free (even if I have to pay for shipping), I went ahead and ordered a whole bunch of free stuff - 100 large postcards, 250 business cards, a calendar, 10 Christmas cards and a pad of sticky notes. I went for the slowest option for shipping, about 3 weeks.

About a week and a half ago, I heard the doorbell ring, and as it turned out, there was a DHL deliveryman there with a package for me. Now, I hadn’t heard anything about part of my order being shipped, so when I opened it, I was pleasantly surprised. As it turned out, the first shipment was sent from Detroit via overnight shipping.

Then, just now, I went out to get the mail, and there was a small envelope in there. I was half expecting it to be some books that have been sent to me from overseas (which I didn’t pay anything for, but earned as a reward for completing a challenge). I looked on the package and it said that if it wasn’t deliverable, that it should be returned to Belgium; along with that is a customs sticker that says the retail value of the items inside was A$3.99. As it turned out, these were my Christmas cards that I had been waiting for.

Clockwise from lower left - sticky notes, Christmas cards, Calendar, postcards, business cards

The coolest thing about the calendar if you ask me, is that it has all the Aussie holidays on there (of course, they’re not that different to ours, but it does have Australia Day and Anzac Day on there, but doesn’t have all the different Labour Days and Queen’s Birthdays, and I did add some US Holidays as well )

If you check out VistaPrint’s Australian site, you should be able to take advantage of a lot of these deals - this whole lot of stuff cost me only $15 for shipping.

This has been an interesting week, for sure. I’ve rediscovered my passion for “driving in circles”. The story is certainly an interesting one, and somewhat of a long one. Check back later this week for something about that.

Mainly because of that, along with finishing the whole second half of the 5th season of The West Wing (which features one of my favorite lines, spoken by Josh, about the space program - “It’s all low-earth orbits. It like if, 30 years after Columbus, Spain expected people to get hot and bothered about a trip to Mallorca.”, and generally not having much time in front of the computer this weekend, the update’s going to be somewhat short this week.

Posts I liked this week -

• Computerworld highlights some great ads over the last forty years of their magazine (via Neatorama)
• mrbrown shared a video he found of Bill O’Reilly getting taken to school by a 16-year-old who was defending his school’s seminar on drug use and other “risky” behaviors
• deanpence bought an iPhone and gave it a very thorough review; the phone’s definitely not for me, but it’s good to see that it does live up to the hype
• Allie at Memoirs of a Gouda has found a way to stop Jehovah’s Witnesses from visiting - put a Buddha statue in the front garden; that works most of the time. However, I find that living in a hard-to find place helps too
• Directions, 1937 style, can be found at Shorpy (a great photo blog featuring old photos from at least 50-60 years ago.
• I know that y’all may have seen this already, but Craig Harper says that if you want something, you actually have to do something to get it. Take that, “the secret”! (By the way, if you haven’t seen it, the Chaser’s War on Everything tried out the secret and it didn’t go as planned…..I’ll put the video at the end of the post ;))
• How would you react to getting a Lexus for your birthday? You’d be over the moon, right? Well, Matt at Fireflies in the Cloud found a video showing how a kid reacted to getting a Lexus…
• Thiru’s How to Live Online has a very interesting graph showing what people do online by age group. Not surprisingly, the younger you are, the more likely you are to participate in various aspects of internet life.
• Ray at FreshBlogger has a quick how-to on finding your blogging voice. It’s something that I think can help almost any blogger be better.
• Lastly, cars are being delivered all over Australia, but two really nice cars are going to my friend Snoskred, one for her parents, and one for herself

Only one blog on the new blogs list: The BenSpark. If you’re willing to put your face out there to be seen, you can enter his contest to win an “xshot” which makes self-portraits much easier.

It has been a bumper week for the US Blogs community at BumpZEE. These are the new blogs -

• Declaration Photos
• Advertising For Success
• CoolAdzine for Marketers
• Endangered Spaces
• Texas RV Travel Blog
• Homeschooling In The Ozarks
• ITheTwilight
• n E o A u T e U r
• Principled Discovery
• Life With Heathens

Around here, something happened on Tuesday. I forget what it is. Oh yeah, that’s it! I bought a domain! I also discussed my Fear of Failure and the movies I’ve watched (I’m open for suggestions).

Traffic was about average for the week, until Sunday night after someone submitted the site to StumbleUpon, which caused over 100 people to show up, for a total of 147 unique visitors yesterday, making the total number for the week 236.

This week, it’s the 4th of July, so that means there will be a “war” of sorts outside. I’ll explain that later. I’m also up to episode 5 of The West Wing season 6 - it’s been eventful so far, and I expect it to keep going. I’ll also have a post for the Hump Day Hmm about Karma, and more

Lastly, here is the Chaser video, as promised -

Last Monday, I had mentioned that I was “gonna do a weekly update thing from now on”. And that has now manifested itself into This was the Week that Was, TW3 for short. It’s basically a round-up of blog posts that I found interesting, some new blogs that I’ve started reading, and a bit of an update on what’s gone on here. There’ll also be a mention of news from time to time. I hope y’all enjoy it

Some blog posts that I really liked -

• Duncan’s TV Ad Land featured some great ads that have been blocked from reairing on British TV because back in the 50s, eggs and toast was seen to be a balanced breakfast. Now you have to have juice.
• Andrew G (formerly of Channel [V] and currently of Australian Idol) discussed a great insight that he got from emceeing an event featuring the Dalai Lama in Sydney
• One of my favorite blogs is The Food Pornographer, where tfp, as she is known, photographs many of the meals she has. This week, a couple of the posts caught my eye -
  • Tuesday night dinner with friends - featuring a picture of a version of an Aussie burger, using chicken instead of the regular hamburger. It looks really delicious!
  • Monday work food - guilty! - Obviously we *do* have KFC here, but it’s always interesting to see how other countries serve the same kinds of food in the same restaurant. Of note are three things - 1) the soda in a can - here, it’s served in a cup like any other fast food restaurant, and the last time I’ve seen a can with a narrow opening was maybe 10 years ago; 2) No coleslaw - if it were me, I’d have that instead of the chips (fries). 3) The bun. I had a look on the Aussie KFC website, and they don’t have the biscuits. Seriously, y’all are missing out on some goodness there.
• Sky High Cork City from inphotos.org, with a great picture of Cork City in Ireland from the top of a parking ramp/garage/structure/deck.
• Google held a Press Day in Paris this week, and released a bunch of facts and figures about their operations, highlighted at unofficial Google blog Google Operating System. The most interesting stat is that 20-25% of queries are brand new ones.
• Anaglyph mentioned a story about the Royal Australian Navy preventing a boarding of one of their ships by Iranian forces. How, you might ask did they do this? Simple - by using some colourful language

Some of the new blogs I’ve started reading recently -

• Memoirs of a Gouda, who I mentioned the other day for being willing to embrace swearing.
• Alyndabear. She just bought herself a new domain, something that I am seriously considering doing at some time in the near future. She also received a bum blog review a couple weeks back, which is when I started reading - I have to say that their review was totally off-base.
• A Byootaful Life; I know it was mentioned in Snos’ round up, but the post that got me was the one about the Digg Cake; specifically the words “boob cake”. Yeah, I’m a perv :p
• A Taste of Home. It was linked off of byootaful life, and is another foodie blog. You can’t get enough of those

New blogs in the US Blogs Community:

• ourmonmouthblog
• TallFreak.com
• Everybody Loves Tana!
• Jericho Monster
• Nate Balcom..that is..NateBal.com….Come On In..The Web Is Fine..
• One Step Forward

I’ll be honest, while I’d love to invite every single blog in the US personally, there are only so many hours in the day, and so many blogs that I can comment on before I go a bit, well, silly. My goal, as I said last Monday, is to double the number of blogs by the end of the month. Right now, we’re at 46, so that means there’s quite a way to go. If you know of some blogs that are in the US, feel free to invite them to the community, and if you’re a blogger and haven’t signed up yet, why not? It’s free, easy, and you’ll get yourself on the US Blogs Blogroll.

Speaking of the blogroll, I’ve found a way to make it scroll without losing the value of the links. I’m sure you can probably hide links using that method as well.