GT7: Le Mans 24 hour track - 30 min race

 I've managed to crack this one with the Aston Martin DB10 Gr3 race car with 95% of power. It's great - the car has long legs so I can comfortably punch out two or three laps. Usually rains around lap 2, or halfway through lap 3 so it's on to Intermediates - not Wets.

Have tried with other cars - no success. The AM is the winner for me on this track. 550,000 credits for a win, but let's try to play nice and get the Clean Race Bonus.

Working on the 800 series - need to pick the right car and bed it in for this. Still struggling a little getting the right vehicle, but it won't be long before I crack it. 

GT7 Race Log - Daytona Gr.1 Prototype Series

 This race continues to elude me from a success perspective. Still racing the Toyota (and it's a beast) and getting solid lap times - but not near the fastest cars. I think I need a fully managed transmission - I'm not hitting the top of 6th gear on the straights, and struggling to get over 300km/h because the gearing is wrong. I'm hitting corner apexes pretty well and the Toyota has the most remarkable braking - I'm picking up places under brakes a lot, it's acceleration while it has battery charge is great - but I'm topping out in 5th around 290km/h - and I still have a gear to go. So, still getting into the top 10, usually about 5th but can't crack the top three. Nailed Suzuka Circuit though - still pretty happy about that (especially during appalling weather). Nothing like that at Daytona though - just car setup needs work.

Hoping to get back to it today and also knock over the weekly challenges. 

GT7 Race Log - Suzuka Circuit Gr.1 Prototype Series

 This one is taking a bit more effort - especially with some dodgy weather during the racing. The TS050 is a great car:

Image from: https://toyotagazooracing.com/wec/cars/2017/

I made a 20th (wow was that a crappy race), then a 17th and then a 12th. My final attempt of last night I scored a 6th and set the fastest lap time, but made a few mistakes early that left me too far from the top 3 to strike. Every run through gets better, and these machines are amazing to drive. I'll have another crack in the next day or so, and see if we can continue improving.

In the meantime, I've been watching the recent Manufacturer's Cup and the Nation's Cup on the Gran Turismo YouTube channel. Some amazing racing. Really felt for the Lambo team in the Manufacturer's Cup getting tagged and dropping back in the field. Those guys were smashing it. Enjoy your racing!

GT7 Race Log - Circuit de Sainte-Croix C GR.1 Prototype Series

 Hot damn! Ran this last night and came 16th with best time of 3:14 (RM tyres, single pitstop). Today I ran it, and that A. Wilk AI player knocked in a 3:06:XX as his hottest laptop and I managed a 3:07:XX. Came 2nd! I'm super happy with that. Running in the TS050 - Hybrid '16 and on soft tyres this time. At lap 6 dived in for fuel and new tyres - knocked me back a few places (I think I was 9th at the time) but I came out, flicked the fuel ratio to 1 and full power, then kicked it in the guts and got underway.

2nd is so much better than I hoped for. This run I was aiming for a top 10 at best, so I'm very pleased. I've struggled a bit at Daytona, but now I'm getting used to the handling of these Gr.1 cars - they're so different to the other classes, with really short braking zones, and absolutely heaps of power. 

Woohoo! More to come on this baby, yeah!

GT7 Race Log - WTC700 Dragon Trail

So I haven't been messing with tech a lot lately, but I have been playing some Gran Turismo 7 and it's been a lot of fun. I need to record race information and thought others might benefit. My internet connectivity isn't great, so going up against other players has some difficulties associated with it. Playing the game though is all good.

This was a race I really enjoyed, even though I came third initially - probably because I screwed up the race tactics a bit.

The World Touring Car 700 races are great fun, and I'm still working out the car to take them on with. In this race, I took the very lovely Porsche 911 GT3 RS (992) '22 for a spin. It's unmodified and on RH tyres. Lap times were low 1:40:00's (I think the best was a 1:40:xx), but the fuel usage was my problem! I had to stop twice, even with the fuel mapping turned significantly down. It just didn't have the legs to get me through the race on a one stop strategy. The GR Supra Race Car beat me, and even with two stops I still placed third. I'll try it again in the Supra and see if I get a better outcome. Also of note, I just ran the WTC800 on this same track (different variant) and took the DBR9 GT around. It was a one stop race for me, in lap 8 with a squirt of juice to get over the line. I had taken one of my favourite cars - the GT by Citroen Race Car, but the fuel usage was an issue. I potentially could have driven better in this car, however, the Aston Martin seems to suit my style a bit better (FR vs MR) and I had better lap times.

OK so on with the run - this time the Supra Race Car on medium race tyres at Dragon Trail!

*** Update ***

OK that did the trick - the Supra was the winner with one fuel stop, and only a half fill to boot. The other thing to note - should have gone with Racing Hard tyres - the mediums were no good for the last lap, particularly the last half of that lap - it was all sliding and very gentle power. Time for a break. 

elementary OS 5.1 Hera - a review and a revisit

 It's been ages since I used a desktop Linux distribution - being up to my ears in the horror of implementing ISO 27001 doesn't leave you much time to play around with computers - too busy writing policies, auditing and generally trying to improve security to a formally acceptable and risk managed level. I need a quick, small OS though to do the occasional network scan, view the contents of a dodgy file on and for general, low impact activities. I remembered reviewing elementary OS ( elementary.io) some time ago ( see https://www.ryv.id.au/2015/01/elementary-os-review.html ) from 2015 so I thought it was worth a revisit. 

I downloaded the ISO from their website, forgoing to donation for the moment while I review it. If it turns out I'm going to keep using it, I'll send them some love. The ISO is 1.38GB in size and I booted it in a VMware Player instance. From go to whoa (I won't include the install photos here) it took about 10 minutes with a dual vCPU and 4GB of RAM instance on my HP ProBook. It's really a lovely looking distribution, and within a few minutes of being logged in, it asked to install updates and identified the virtual OS package to be installed as well. After this, the screen re-size worked nicely and the thing picked up some speed as the virtualisation became more optimised. So what does it look like?

A nice clean desktop experience to begin with. Status bar up the top, menu down the bottom. The icons and images are rendered beautifully and the whole thing has a polished finished to the graphics. It reminds me of the Apple's attention to detail.

The Application menu expanded out. Not much in there yet, just the basics so far.

System settings are neatly laid out and everything is easy to find.

This is a nice touch - I'm very used to have fl.ux running on my machines and having a built in night light is great. Note the icons - neat and elegant.

Finally, the browser on the desktop. elementary OS uses grouped apps - curated and non-curated. Curated apps have: "Each has been reviewed and curated by elementary to ensure a native, privacy-respecting, and secure experience."

I have yet to ascertain the veracity of these claims, however, so stay tuned while I play with this thing a bit more. That being said, the AppCentre looks really good:

Pretty! When you install non-curated apps it throws up some warnings thusly:

Good to know these things going forward. There is quite a breadth of curated applications so generally I'll stick with them. 

There are dollar amounts next to some of the apps in the AppCentre - some of them are pay-what-you-want which is a great concept. I like to try stuff out before I invest and this works for me. Once I like a product I tend to spend on it - particularly to help people continue development.

From a performance perspective I'm pretty happy so far. Everything goes quickly, apps launch in a timely manner and it puts very little strain on the system. The Chrome tab I'm typing this in now is using more RAM and CPU than the Elementary OS virtual machine is, and I have the AppCentre, web browser and applications tabs all open while I take screenshots and mess about. It's billed as a system to re-invigorate old hardware (something I enjoy doing) and it's clear that the demand on resources has been managed well. Unlike Windows 10 for example.

The final word is this: download it and try it out. You've got nothing to lose and it really is a lovely looking OS that is quick and fully functional. I take my hat off to the team there and look forward to their future work.

Upgrading pi-hole on Ubuntu 18.04 problems

 If you've tried to upgrade pi-hole running on 18.04LTS then you might have gotten an error like this:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
       lighttpd : Depends: libssl1.1 (>= 1.1.0) but it is not going to be installed
      E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

I've spent a bit of time poking around at this to no avail, until I stumbled upon a solution that is - install aptitude and use it to fix the dependency issue!

Indeed.

root@domains:~# apt install aptitude

then:

root@domains:~# aptitude install lighttpd

and choose downgrade libss1.1

and lighttpd installs and pi-hole works again.

This was a much harder solution to find than it should have been and something is really screwy with these packages. 

Hope this helps!