burnedsap

Multi-21 is a phrase which will go down in history as the moment when Vettel established himself as a fast and ruthless racing driver who doesn't stop at anything to win. Multi-21 refers to the command given to both the Red Bull drivers toward the closing stages of the 2013 Malaysian F1 Grand Prix, which orders both drivers to hold position, and cruise to the chequered flag. Webber was leading Vettel to a Red Bull 1-2, when Multi-21 was issued. Webber turned down his engine, and started preserving his tyres, and Vettel too was expected to do the same. Vettel however, had plans of his own.

Post race reaction.

Often Kimi Raikkonen has been compared to James Hunt, and their playboy lifestyles do have a few similarities. Both are world champions, and neither of them give a damn about the consequences of anything they say. The playboy lifestyles they lead were in stark comparison to their fellow drivers at their times. But the key difference lies in their core personalities.

SEX: Breakfast of Champions. James Hunt doing his thing.

This was a messy race. With the wet track at the start, and rapidly changing conditions, it was a slightly random result. There wasn't too much drama at this race, and it was a boring race to watch. With the faster degrading Pirelli tyres, pit stops decide the outcome of the race, and there is less of wheel to wheel battle.



The only wheel to wheel battle

Although there aren't as many games available for Mac as there are for Windows systems, there are still more than enough games to choose from. Here are some of the games I think are worth buying. I'm not listing it in any specific order. I'll try to update this list whenever I can.


TOCA Race Driver 3: One of the best all round driving games ever. Basically, its Gran Turismo for the Mac. So you can play this game for the rest of your life, and still not complete it.

F1 2012: The best and the most accurate Formula 1 game till date. Although F1 2013 is coming this year, F1 2012 is still a superb game, and the online experience is unparalleled.

The Movies Superstar: This is like Sims, but all about movies. You're basically controlling a movie studio, producing movies, and managing stars. Good fun

Lego Batman 2: Its Lego. And its Batman. Need I say more? Haven't had so much fun in a long time.

Colin McRae Rally Mac: Probably the most realistic rally game there ever was. It is quite a challenge.

Call of Duty 4: The most iconic FPS game of all time, and the one with most hacked servers ever. I think there's more than a million players online by the looks of it, and an infinite number of mods. It's better than Black Ops because of the game's hack-ability.

Call of Duty Black Ops: This another iconic FPS game, but it's a lot more realistic, and you have to work a lot harder while playing it.

Lego Star Wars Clone Wars: Once again, Lego, Star Wars, and lightsabers. Better than the original Star Wars games.

Dirt 2: The rally game next-gen. With the X-games, and rallycross, focus has shifted from proper rallying. Not as cool, but still it's a lot of fun.

Minecraft: It's blocks of pixels stacked on each other. With imagination, you can create anything.

Angry Birds Space: The best Angry Birds version. Much better than the original thing.

NBA Jam: Retro game refreshed and bought back to life. Best played with a friend. This has to be ported to the gaming consoles. So much more fun than the original NBA games.

Real Racing 2: Same as the now iconic iOS version. Not as polished, but still playable.

Anodyne: The product of indie developers, this game had a game-changing launch. The devs put it on pirate bay.org for free, and asked players to donate. And oh boy they did. Brilliant RPG.

Grand Theft Auto Series: Its grand theft auto. Burn everything.

The Incident: Another indie game, this is really very good. Hours of fun.

Video Tennis: This uses a novel method of playing ping pong. It tracks your hand using the webcam to play the game. It works very well.

Sky Gamblers: Air Supremacy: Another iOS port. Multiplayer is epic. Needs a joystick though, to play the game properly.
Galaxy on Fire 2: A space exploration game with good space battles. Great graphics.

Flatout 2: The daddy of smash 'n' race games. Haven't seen speed and violence in a such a great cocktail before.

Tomb Raider: Underworld: It's Tomb Raider. Owe up. You only play the game to look at the girl. Everyone does. She looks great in this game. So it's a no-brainer.

Bus Driver: Great training if you lose your job. It's sort of a realistic bus driving game. I haven't driven a bus, so I have no idea how realistic it is.

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy: One of the better Star Wars games. Although it is quite old, it is still really good. Deserves a remake though.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: The most iconic Star Wars game ever. With an option to build your character toward the dark side, or the light side, it is quite a easy decision to make. Join the dark side. Have fun.

Mark Webber is due to be replaced in 2014, and so far, none of the drivers at Red Bull's sister team Torro Rosso have impressed. Red Bull would probably prefer to promote António Félix da Costa to the team, or even Jules Bianchi, or Davide Valsecchi. So till they believe the drivers have achieved some level of maturity, they might sign up Kimi Raikkonen for a single year at Red Bull for 2014. This is subject to the fact that Kimi might not continue in Formula 1 in 2014. Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel have a great relationship on, and off the track, so a move might be possible.

Kimi Raikkonen at Red Bull next year? Image by Sutton Images

But there's one factor that makes Lotus a very good team for Raikkonen to thrive at. Lotus doesn't make Kimi do any PR work, and they don't involve in him team politics either. By shielding him away from the media, and PR work, Lotus can get the best out of Raikkonen, as the 2012 standing show quite clearly. 2012 was probably Kimi's best ever season in Formula 1. Kimi enjoys the privileges he receives at Lotus, and so there isn't much of an incentive to join Red Bull. Kimi prefers to enjoy his racing, rather than be outright successful, so there doesn't seem to be much of a case to join Red Bull. But if Kimi wants to win a championship, then he can do so with Red Bull. Red Bull has the budget, and the resource to do so, and Kimi might be tempted to sacrifice some of his PR freedom at Lotus to win a championship. There's no guarantee that either Red Bull, or Kimi want this move, but who knows what could happen next year.


UPDATE: As it turns out, I wasn't wrong after all. Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz said: "Kimi is cool and fast and always a candidate."So Raikkonen could spend his final year in Formula 1 with Red Bull, reunited with Adrian Newey from his McLaren days. Although it wasn't an entirely a successful relationship, their last year together in 2005 was a very good one. We saw Raikkonen wallop the competition with an extremely unreliable car. Now both men have gotten better over the years, and we could see ultimate dominance once again in 2014?

Kimi Raikkonen won a race that could probably the most exciting and coincidental on in years to come. He qualified on P7, and then using a 2-stop strategy, he cruised to a win. This also tells us how the cars stack up in terms of one lap speed and race pace.

@Sutton Images

Melbourne 2013 and Abu Dhabi in 2012 were uncannily similar. In both race, Raikkonen on P1, Alonso on P2, and Vettel on P3. In both races, Webber qualified P2, and had a bad start. Another interesting fact is

With the Mac App Store expanding day by day, it is becoming increasingly hard to figure out which applications are actually needed. So here's a small list of apps that I use on a day to day basis.

Media

Perian: This is a Quicktime player addon that enables to it play many video formats

MPlayerX: The most dependable and versatile media player out there. Plays everything, and anything.

I had made a Nokia N9 vector graphic a while back, and I thought of making a tutorial for that. But Nokia has released the new Lumia 920. However, as the N9 and the 920 have similar bodyshells, they're not that different. The N9/920 is also a simple phone to recreate using vector graphics, so it's a great for beginners as it covers most of the concepts of vector graphics. Sketch is a great application by Bohemian Coding which is very simple to use, but still very powerful.

This is the finished product. Although it's not perfect, it's still a great way to explore vector graphics, and how to use Sketch.

Formula 1 is the pinnacle of competitive motor-sport. With millions of dollars being spent on research and development to find every tenth of a second on track, it is extremely competitive and even the slightest advantage can translate into wins and ultimately championships. However, ever since Alain Prost retired, and Ayrton Senna passed away, F1 has lost that element of surprise and excitement to keep viewers hooked on to the television. The only excitement comes from charismatic drivers, and thanks to corporate sponsorship deals, even that charisma is being suppressed. Formula 1 is simply too boring.

Hungary 2007

This is the robot that my team and I made for the IRO. Although it didn't win anything, it was by far the fastest robot on the table. Due to a silly mistake of not loading the right program, it just completed half the challenge. For Formula 1 fans, it's a bit like the McLaren of 2012. Blindingly fast, but just not reliable. So many memories attached to this robot. It looks stunning, doing its stuff.

This was one fast bot. We even wore down a set of tyres in practice sessions

Members of the team, called 'Velocious',

Raghav Nanda(Visit his blog)
Sudip Guha
Salil Parekh(Me)





If anyone wants to contest the source of this picture or take credit for it, buzz off. This is my intellectual property, and I didn't grant you permission to make money off it. But many thanks for taking the picture.

This is Honda's Civic Estate Concept. Now this is not car that anyone will pin posters of on their bedroom walls. But for those who actually have to spend real money and buy cars, this is very desirable.


For an estate car, this looks fantastic, and this isn't some fancy concept that will never make production. This is the production version, with a few extra bits and bobs added on. The basic shape, and design will carry over to the production model. Although the fancy LED lighting will not. The new Civic looks dumpy and disproportioned, but the estate version sets things right. It looks much more complete, and the Honda promises that it will have a good amount of space in the back as well. If that exhaust and the LED lighting makes it to the production version, people will pay extra for it. Guaranteed. Honda, make it happen.

This was a very interesting test session. There is absolutely nothing conclusive that can be derived from the test apart from the fact that the top teams are still fast, and the slow teams are still slow.

@Sutton Images

Here are the pointers, as usual.

• Marussia replaced Luiz Razia with Jules Bianchi as Luiz Razia's sponsors didn't pay up. Jules Bianchi is about a second faster than Max Chilton, so this will not be a fun year for the englishman.
• Caterham did nothing interesting, apart from proving James Allison right by removing their illegal exhaust system.

Lamborghini is back in business, making cars that are too busy tripping on acid and rolling in heroin to give a damn about performance figures. It doesn't really matter if the big wing, or the rudely large diffuser even work. This is what Lamborghini should be making everyday.

This is the Lamborghini Veneno, unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show 2013. Performance stats don't matter. Just look it at. Keep looking at it. Now print it, and stick all over your room.

This is what happened during its conception,

"It's our 50th anniversary, what should we do?"
"Bake a cake?"
"WHAT? No way. Too mainstream"
"Or lets make a car"
"YEAH! But we we should get really high while doing that. I got some acid tabs!"
"LETS GET THIS PARTY STARTED! FORZA!!"

And this is what happened.

Unbelievably brash

True to the maxim: "Bigger the wing, better the car"

Pirelli SuperSofts? Is Pirelli bringing their F1 colour codes to road tyres as well?

Instead of buying the shiny and plasticky giftwrapper from the shops, use old newspapers to wrap gifts. It's a lot easier, and if you happen to tear it, you can always use another one, without having to go to the shops again, and the shiny plastic one is the most annoying giftwrapping paper to use. Instead of simply using the old newspapers as they are, why not jazz it up a bit? Adding a stencil or two goes a long way in making it look even better than the shiny stuff from the store, and it'll look like you actually made an effort in gifting the person.

First, take old newspapers, and choose according to the size of the gift you're wrapping.

Old newspapers. Use the business ones, as they have fewer pictures, and will make the stencils stand out.