Early conclusion for 2015 Formula 1 Season

With the ending of the US Grand Prix Lewis Hamilton won his 3rd World Championship title. There are few more races remaining in the year but mathematically their results won’t change the championship status. From the beginning of the season it was evident Hamilton dominated the season and it was well deserved at the end.

Ferrari meanwhile has improved significantly after mid season with their engine upgrades and could be threatening the Mercedes power units. It’s clear that Renault engines are no match at the straight lines for the front runners.

Pareto principle for Technology

Technology keeps moving forward at a rapid pace, what you buy for the money today has about half of its value in just 6 months time. Spending wise it’s a total waste!

Buying a top of the line Flagship Phone would cost over LKR 100K, on the other hand you can get 80% of its functionalities / performance achieved for just 20-30% of the price, and since you’ve spent so less the depreciation factor isn’t terrible as the most of the high end gadgets. Sure you won’t be able to tell your friends about the flashy new gadget you’ve got but whatever the flashy new gadget gets outdated in just 3-4 months time.

2015 Formula 1 Mid-Season Review

After the conclusion of the Hungarian Gran Prix it’s clear that Mercedes is still the fastest car, as long as they are at the front they remain unchallenged. Lewis Hamilton has scored most amounts of Poles but we saw how poor the launch was on both Mercedes Cars compared to Williams and Ferrari.

The moment Mercedes get passed by another car at the start line they have a miserable time. This was the same with RedBull in the previous winning seasons – as long as they got a clear start they were winning.

At the Hungarian Gran Prix it was like having Launch Control for Ferrari, the start was very quick. We have noticed Ferrari having much better starts in the previous seasons as well.

Mercedes needs to revisit on the race starts and the pit stops and rectify their selves, otherwise irrespective of having the fastest car (by a big margin) they’ll end up having to put a tough battle, which is totally unnecessary.

Meanwhile at the McLaren garage we see some big improvements for the results. Frankly the McLaren car wasn’t ready at the start of the season – that’s the bitter truth. Now they are playing in the catching up game. I don’t expect McLaren to score big finishes in this season but if they keep the current pace of improvements it’ll be valuable for the development of the next year’s car.

Winners and Losers in 2015 Formula 1 Season

It might be too early to say who the real winners and losers are in Formula 1 this year, but by looking at the first 2 races you can say a few things. It’s clear that McLaren are far away from getting any good outcome, and Alonso is a big loser with the switch from Ferrari to McLaren. Ferrari on the other hand is looking well with Vettel. It might a Mercedes strategy error that cost them the victory but overall Ferrari is coming strong. RedBull is another loser in the game and so as Lotus.

McLaren-Honda

We have seen how successful the McLaren-Honda partnership has been in the past in Formula 1. In 2015 they have again joined hands but this time it will be a tough challenge as Honda has not been an engine supplier for many years. I would like to think this as more of an early gamble for next year rather than expecting anything big for 2015.

Formula E

It's said to be the highest class of competition for one-make, single-seater and electrically powered racing cars. But I doubt the success of this series in the immediate future despite the marketing campaign. If you take a look at the driver's lineup you can see there are a lot of ex Formula 1 Drivers involved. Needless to say all of them failed to secure a driver seat in Formula 1 this year.

Now that Formula 1 is effectively a Hybrid Car race I would like see Formula 1 going fully green with Electric power one day. Everyone including myself will miss the engine noise but it'll be revolutionary.

Mercedes Split Turbo

In the 2014 Formula 1 Season there is one team that stands out at the front at every race – Mercedes F1 team. The main reason behind this is the advantage over the Turbo and the Engine Packaging. All Mercedes Engine cars have the split type turbo giving them a big performance advantage over all their competitors.

Mercedes Split Turbo explained

Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum

I have heard of the US great military power but have never seen an Air Craft Carrier or a Submarine. On Sunday, 8th September 2013 I decided to go to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum located at the New York City. It’s an old Air Craft Carrier now been converted to a museum and it hosts many fighter Air Crafts, helicopters, a space shuttle and many more at the museum premises. British airways Concorde, a US Strategic Submarine with a Cruise missile are other exhibits.

USS Intrepid

F-16 Fighting Falcon

SR-71 Blackbird

Different variants of AH-1 Cobra

Harrier "Jump Jet"

Concorde

A Cruise Missile mounted on the submarine USS Growler

National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC

Located in Washington DC, the Air and Space Museum is a quite large museum, it has lot of NASA space gadgets and military spy UAVs.

A Drone (Predator UAV)

X-45 UAV

Stepping in to the Android world

I’m a bit late to enter the Android world but finally I decided to go for one. One of my main concerns of getting a phone was battery life. I just can’t charge the battery every day! I need it to last at least 2-3 days. All the Androids I know are extremely bad with the battery life, having said that no point of buying a small Android phone either.

So with some convincing finally bought an Android. The first issue I faced is the Google Account. I do have a Google Account with a non Gmail address so I tried to register with that, and it failed saying it doesn’t have Gmail. If Android wanted to make sure it has to have Gmail why didn’t they ask for a Gmail Account at the first place? *sigh*

Flash Diffuser

When you want to take pictures in a low light environment your camera's built in flash pops up and it provides more than enough light to take the photograph. And when you use the flash sometimes the results go terribly wrong!

Simply the flash brightens things too much and it adds lot of bright white areas in the photos spoiling the natural colors of them. There are other ways of avoiding flash and capturing more light; you can adjust the shutter speed, aperture and ISO sensitivity, etc... but sometimes you can't reduce the shutter speed because you'll simply miss the shot. Since Shutter speed is high you have to put the aperture to the highest (e.g. f2.8) to capture more light as possible. And you won't be able to increase ISO too much because it could add noise to the image. So here is a trick I learnt; it's adding a "Flash Diffuser". You don't have to purchase one; you can just create one for you. Just see below article and see the results for yourself.
http://content.photojojo.com/diy/diy-film-container-flash-diffuser/

My camera has a built in flash and I wanted to try this trick on my camera. What was hard to find was the old white film container. No one uses old school cameras now; everyone is in the digital age. So I went to a studio and got some empty film containers for free. After coming home and checking my camera I realized that I need not to cut the film container but I can use it directly. Here is what I did; Just pop the flash and insert the flexible film container directly covering the flash and its mount. Cheap, very easy and works pretty well.

McLaren’s are flying again

2009 Formula 1 Season started with Brawn GP team winning most of the races in the first half in the season. The season had many rule changes. Especially people were discussing on the KERS. Though Hamilton was promoted to the 3rd place in the first race in the season he was disqualified from that couple of days after that. No KERS car won nor managed to get a podium finish till Massa finishing 3rd on Nürburgring in Germany on the 9th race in the season.

McLaren cars received a major upgrade just before the Nürburgring, and yes it was well reflected in the Practices and in the Qualifying. Though Hamilton finished last due to an unfortunate incident in the very first corner the McLaren cars showed that they are very powerful. Next came the Hungarian GP and McLarens were flying. Hamilton scored the Victory making the first ever KERS car victory in Formula 1 while his team mate Kovalainen taking 5th place.

Today, 22nd August 2009 I was watching the Qualifying of the European GP and McLarens did fly once again. The Pole position was taken by Hamilton while Kovalainen taking the 2nd place. Valencia Street Circuit is where KERS can play a big role, McLarens will charge the KERS battery in the practice lap and when the race starts they will be smoking the rest of the cars for sure :P This is only my prediction, let’s wait and see what happens tomorrow :)

Ground Zero

To start off I must admit that I’m not a big fan of computer games. I have played some computer games but that’s it, I have never played a multiplayer game with anyone else.

I went to see few old friends of mine on Friday (12th June 2009) just to see how they are doing. Well they were alright and they asked me to come play some computer games with them, well I couldn’t say 'No' and since I haven't done anything like that before I said Ok. Prakanthan called and booked this place called 'Ground Zero', I didn’t even know what it was or where it was. It happened to be at the 'Excel World'. There were 7 of us and I asked Prakanthan what computer game that we are going to play, and he said it’s 'Halo 3'. I have seen Nuvina playing Halo on his computer so I figured it was some first person shooting game. But at Ground Zero it was X-Box and there weren't any computer key boards. They had these devices just for the games.

The next thing I knew the game was on, and I was like 'OMG what to do now' but somehow I figured and Damn... it was fun. Glad they do it like everyday but honestly it’s a waste of money plus it’s not what I used to do on Friday nights just not my thing. Having said that I’m not gonna say that I didn’t enjoy it, of course I did enjoy it a lot :)

Remarkable rule changes for 2009 Formula 1 Season

Formula 1 rules evolve every year, that’s one of the core factors which keeps the F1 fans guessing what would happen with the new rules. For the 2009 Formula 1 season FIA has changed the rules remarkably. Slick Tyres were not used in F1 races for around 10 years due to safety reasons but now it’s back in action for the 2009 Formula 1 season. This alone would not affect the end result of the series much however this would indeed increase the excitement of every race, but if the track is wet and with the possible crashes and safety cars coming in to the track it would even slow down the races more than we think like what happened in the 90’s.

Slick Tyre (Bridgestone)

As of technical changes FIA has announced that they would be allowing Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) for the F1 cars in the 2009 season. Now this is something huge, again there are both ups and downs. Acceleration wise it would definitely be an advantage but additional weight of the KERS equipment would be a problem for higher speeds. So in general for the tracks which have fewer straight lines than the bends this would be ideal. But I wonder how many teams would be actually using this new technology. As of the movement of this being written, Renault has confirmed that they would be using KERS for the Australian Grand Prix.

And the last but not the least, the biggest change as I see is the deciding criteria of who would be the Drivers champion. Earlier it was the driver who scores most of the points in the season who will be the champion, but in 2009 FIA has changed the rules. It’s the driver who wins the most number of races in the 2009 season will be the world champion. However the rest of the places would be decided on the old points system. This is wired indeed, if this rule was there in the 2008 season then Massa would have been the champion in 2008 though he has got 1 point less than Hamilton.

I have serious doubts with the FIA’s rule about deciding who would be the Drives champion, and we could even expect some twisted results at the end of the series. I believe the beauty of the championship should decide on the last game, like in the 2007 & 2008. But if the new rules are to be applied then the decision would come long before the last race and the final race would have no much excitement :(

Broadcasting a wedding over the Internet

Yup, I know it’s wired but I did it. It was my cousin's (Nilupa) wedding and I had to broadcast it over the internet from Mt. Lavinia Hotel since there was a huge demand for that from my other cousins who are not in Sri Lanka (Specially from Rosi). This isn't the first thing that I have broadcasted live over the internet; the first was Lawyers association annual get together at Holiday Inn. Both the occasions I missed what was happening there.

For Dummies: It isn't hard all you need is a good quality web cam, Laptop and last but not the least the Internet :P

I wasn’t an active blogger during the past month or so, for the time being I’m leaving this short blog entry but there will be some new updates soon, especially after the 2009 Formula 1 season begins :)

Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor and the Lamborghini Reventon

It’s been a long time that the Lockheed has launched the ultimate fighting aircraft F-22 or better known as “Raptor”. I loved the design of this aircraft from the Aerodynamics to almost everything it had on board. Most people will fall in love with this aircraft just because of the looks. It has the perfect shape and the design for a Fighter Jet.

Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor

In the beginning of this year I watched some TopGear videos and guess what something reminds me of the F-22 Raptor. It had the same looks and everything but this time it’s a car... and it is the Lamborghini Reventon (pronounced as Rehbenton).

Lamborghini Reventon

Not many Raptors are produced by Lockheed, the average production rate is 20 Raptors per year. On the other hand Lamborghini will be producing only 20 Reventons ever. I personally think that the Lamborghini has copied the design of the body from the F-22 or at least the F-22’s design has influenced the guy who designed Reventon (copying that is). The Reventon, with its matte gray finish and carbon fiber panels provides necessary proof for that.

According to Lockheed F-22 Raptor costs $ 137.5 M where as the Lamborghini has put a price tag on Reventon as € 1.0 M

The Reventon is powered by a 6.5 Liter V 12 Engine which give the car 650 BHP at 8000 rpm and 487 ft-lb at 6000 rpm of torque. 0-60 mph takes only 3.4 seconds while the top speed is 220 mph.

Source(s) : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamborghini_Reventon, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-22_Raptor

Download Day

Download Day - Spread FireFox


Mozilla FireFox 3 has been released..!!!
Help FireFox to set a new World Record.

The Home of Firefox Community Marketing has announced a day called "Download Day" which they are expecting to establish a new Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours!


Download FireFox 3



Source(s) : www.mozilla.com/firefox,
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/