Love God and Neighbour

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:37-40

Preach the Gospel and Make Disciples

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20

Mercy Triumphs over Judgment

Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment. James 2:12-13

Featured Image by Jens Johnsson from Pexels

I watched John Wick 1 again to remember why I liked it and figure out why I don’t like the sequels.

The first movie is serious and dark and the humour that is there is dark humour. The action was honest just making it work action. The violence wasn’t the focus either. There’s surprisingly little blood shown.

The second movie focused too much on violence, blood and world building instead of character and story.

The third just became a fourth wall breaking caricature of itself with even more focus on shallow violence, slapstick, and “funny” “in” jokes because the movie knows that we know that it’s so over the top.

Their mistake is thinking the audience wants a reality check when what they really want is escapism for two hours, like every other good movie.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk

Context: These tweets were taken from a messaging group with friends in August 2019. Apparently the movies still bother me and my ego really is that big.

This is also a series of @shovas (me) tweets.

The following is a post to the iRacing BMW M4 GT4 Members Forum and is reposted here for posterity and to prompt discussion on why exactly grip expression in iRacing is lack whereas other sims have long since solved this.

This car really, really helps earn the name iceRacing and highlights the deficiency in the way iRacing expresses grip.

Let me say, while grip isn’t perfect on other cars, I find the MX-5, Mustang, Skip, and some others tolerable, and I can enjoy them but some cars and tracks the grip is just atrocious on even those cars (Tsukuba, Suzuka, Belle Isle).

But none of these cars/tracks are anywhere near where they need to be compared to rF2, AMS1/2, even old GTR2/GTL/Race07 games, and even the likes of PC2.

The way grip is expressed in iRacing is so, so uninformative and it’s been this way for such a long time, it’s really starting to appear incredible to me that it’s still like this.

Here’s an interesting find: I use an AccuForce and I can choose to use Game FFB or the AF SimCommander’s ffb interpretation of telemetry data (“Steering Force Foundation” (SFF); Similar to what irFFB does). While I find SFF superior, neither expresses grip very well, at all.

^^^ Alarm bells should be going off here — the telemetry data isn’t expressing grip levels with enough clarity? That’s crazy.

I have experienced this since joining the service, many years, and across various tyre models.

Maybe it’s time iRacing looked into this, what with all the pro racers complaining about iRacing tyre model and this ffb/telemetry issue which has never been dealt with.

I have a cleft palate condition (~40yo, otherwise healthy) and, until recently, experienced frequent flu-like or food poisoning-like illness symptoms. By frequent, I mean, at its worst, I was getting extremely sick at least every few months, with the same symptoms, and never actually getting back to 100% in between those periods. But, starting January 2019, I adopted daily (or more) saline nasal washes. From that point, until January 2020, I never came down sick. I had sniffles, runny noses, but nothing at all like what I had been enduring before. I hope this finding helps others who have cleft palate or who are perhaps suffering similar symptoms.

Continue reading “Cleft Palate Conditions and Saline Nasal Washes for Preventing Frequent Flu-like or Food Poisoning-like Illness and Symptoms”

The following is a re-post and re-edit of a post on I made on Race Department, some time ago (June 1, 2019), during the pre-release period of Automobilista 2. This followed on the news that AMS2 would likely not be an openly moddable platform (due to using the Project Cars 2 Madness Engine), as opposed to how AMS1 was openly moddable. There, I brainstormed some ideas that I think are still valuable to this day and encouraged devs to get creative and help maintain a healthy modding scene. Here, I clean up the writing and present it, again, to raise awareness and to keep it for posterity.

Sims – A Mod(erate) Proposal

How getting creative and resisting binary thinking
can foster and grow sim racing further and faster

Getting Creative Again

I wish the discussion would go deeper than this simple moddable vs not moddable binary choice. There are options that keep modding on the table.

Reiza was creative when they crowdfunded AMS and very generous up to this day. I have no complaints with them. So why can’t we repeat that magic. Let’s get creative again.

Who is this for?

This is really for the devs, perhaps the publishers, and maybe for other simmers, to encourage us all to support open moddable platforms by showing you their benefits, and showing you the drawbacks and consequences of closed sims. By supporting modding, we help grow a healthy, vibrant sim community that brings more value to users and more reach and profit to devs and publishers.

Why should I care?

Mods unlock vast potential on both the business side and the customer side.

On the business side, the shelf-life and therefore sale-life of your product is extended by a significant amount. Consider Codemaster’s yearly release F1 games which might have a shelf-life of 1-2 years after which it’s not worth supporting anymore and customer goodwill for that particular product has dried up. In contrast, consider Assetto Corsa, an openly moddable sim, with a shelf-life of 5+ years, and showing no signs of stopping, growing customer goodwill, and a continuing healthy sale-life. Furthermore, a longer contented customer may be more willing to pay for first-party DLC.

On the customer side, there is greater content volume, extending the enjoyment life of the game, and content is produced and updated for longer, resolving worries about a game at a deadend. Additionally, customers traditionally not served by modern products (think vintage racing series) now have the possibility and access to options to acquire content that the dev or publisher would never think of producing. Customers also receive a warmer and more active community to get involved with which leads back to more engagement and more enjoyment out of the game.

Ask yourself, are you ok with your sim dying within a few years, having limited content, no support, and no possibility of extensions or addon content? Or would you like to see your sim going from strength to strength 5 years from now? And, in some cases like GTR2 or Grand Prix Legends, going 10 years, even 20 years, still selling, and users still enjoying the game and its community?

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Here are just a few ideas I’ve been thinking of that keep sims open to modding…

Continue reading “Sims – A Mod(erate) Proposal”

I’ve found a number of videos on YouTube that has struck me as particularly special. Maybe it’s just me but I think they’re unique and deserving highlighting so here they are.

Here’s Pink’s Just Give Me a Reason in an orchestral arrangement,

I’ve found a number of videos on YouTube that has struck me as particularly special. Maybe it’s just me but I think they’re unique and deserving highlighting so here they are.

This imperfectly played, imperfectly tuned, and imperfectly recorded rendition of Pachelbel’s Canon in D is perfect.