The New [R]GARAGE is Finally Here!

Ladies and gentlemen, the moment of truth has finally come! After all the real-life delays and stuff, and putting the site under construction for more than a year (holy moly!), I'm presenting you the all-new [R]GARAGE!

The new site could have come sooner but having it finished before the wave of Finals and the New Year's Eve is a bliss, and better yet new stuffs are aplenty with the release of the new creations, new site looks, and one more surprise I am throwing somewhere on this post!

We Stand for the World

Digging The Past Even Deeper

A brief fangirl moment here: OMG MY OLD SITE IS STILL ALIVE!!!1111oneoneone!!!11!!!!

For my next entry this month, I was confused as to what should be written for my next post: The IziEditor? My Student Study Service days? Or my new TMUF Skinning project? Writer's Block is a bitch, I know, especially when once again Fashion Week took over my life once more. It doesn't help at all as I also started to binge certain web series, and the high level of obsession with female leads of those series has dropped my will to be productive.

But interesting enough, I stumbled upon my old Turbo Sliders site recently and stoked that it is still active until now, compared to my RendyTUNED site that has been frozen already (yet thankfully Internet Wayback Archive allowed me to view the site however I see fit). There, I discovered one track that I stupidly forgot to release on my RendyTUNED days onwards: Fantasy Road, a countryside track situated near a river. The track has been floating for years, and it actually was a much more decent track than the existing ones if I had to be honest.

However, Fantasy Road isn't the only track I forgot as the search for my old tracks continue from there on, starting by digging my old CDs I used to store my files on from the day I started being crazy for internet cafes. I remember making tracks with the names "Champark" and "Manggus R1", two of the default car tracks unreleased to the site but with no luck, so I decided to turn into Mike Nike whose track/car search helped me the most. Using his help, two things were revealed: Number one, those tracks are in the broken HDD, and number two and the most important of it all is Night Beach Party, my first ever NightMod track. I would thank Mike Nike for taking care of the NightModded track since it was a product of disqualified origin for TS's first ever track making contest.

INSIDE THE MALL: AEON Mall BSD - A Modern Japanese Philosophy

(Video: AEON Mall BSD City's Official YouTube Channel)

So, it's been a long time since the Inside The Mall series went live. I actually wanted to cover other malls but unfortunately I backed up my old photos of other malls on the eventually-broke HDD which pretty much explains why there hasn't been a continuation of this post series UNTIL somewhere in July where I found out that I visit this fairly recent mall located in the outskirts of BSD City, exactly in Serpong, Tangerang. The unique thing about this mall is not only is this the place where my sister works but also is one of the malls with an edge of its own: putting the Japanese philosophy to this mall, from culinary to lifestyle. This is AEON Mall BSD, the first and the only mall in Indonesia developed by Japan-based AEON Mall.

This actually marks my return in the blogging activity though not the first article since my long hiatus due to Student Study Service throughout August, which the title goes to my Teen Choice Awards recap I posted on my Livejournal blog. I've planned several articles to be released here, and this is one of them. In fact, I would post my Student Study Service experience both on this blog and my LJ (though this blog would be the first place and the original post) so that I can give you some insight on this Indonesia-exclusive academic agenda, but we'll get into that later on.

Embracing Le Mans in Different Ways Possible

Due to how TL;DR the last 24 Hours of Le Mans article was (combined), this part, which was originally to be featured in the last post, was spared. This though isn't without a reason: there isn't just one experiment on replicating a Le Mans race, not even two, three or four, but LOTS OF THEM! Yup, the spirit of Le Mans lives on in these events that we just can't even move on from the French classic, even in top down games. Yes, waiting for another 365 days and moving on is hard, even harder than moving on from a hard relationship and waiting for another season of Orange is The New Black to binge on, if you have Netflix that is.

But the bright side is that 24 Hours of Le Mans is a race everyone wants to be engaged in, and a wide variety of media have facilitated such things, mainly video games since the days arcades were born. From the classic WEC Le Mans arcade game in the 1970s, to Sega's innovative gameplay of Le Mans 24 arcade game, and then swarming home consoles with titles such as Test Drive Le Mans (TWO versions) in the late 90s, Gran Turismo 4 within its infamous full-length Endurance Events hall race WITHOUT A MID-RACE SAVE in 2000s (but does have a day/night cycle in its sequels) and later Race Driver GRID where you are offered a chance to drive the event (which turns out to be 24 minutes long) at the end of every season. XBox-exclusive game Forza Motorsport apparently doesn't miss this chance in its recent installments also, and yes, I'm yet counting simulators like GTR2, rFactor and Project CARS (its "sim" status seems a little bit questionable somehow...) with user-made Circuit de la Sarthes and supporting endurance series mods. Outside of gaming scope, if you have quite a creative brain, you can have some artworks, GIFs or memes in the middle of the race, a series of "live artworks" of the race, or you can even have a stop motion Le Mans-style race.

As far as the video games scope is concerned, the 3D games (bar WEC Le Mans duh -_-) have all the joy and somehow not the top down games you all know, which translates to the 3Ds saying "you can't sit with us" to the top-downs, but is it so?

THE OTHER QUARTER OF BATTLE - 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans recap (part 2)

As the dawn came, one rule to come in mind is that even the worst runner of the race would never give up until the race finished. In this case, the #23 Nissan, as pictured, driven by Oliver Pla, Jann Mardenborough and Max Chilton was this. (Image: Club Nissan Elite)

Previously, the sixteen hours of 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans were filled by GTEs engulfed in flames, LMP2s spinning around, and certain LMP1s having too much problem. But at the same time, the battles within these different classes were all burning hard; you have a three-way bout between works efforts of Corvette, Aston Martin and Ferrari in the GTE-Pro category, then there were GTE-Am cars bopping their buns rear bumpers off for survival, LMP2 cars trying to stop KCMG's dominant run, and, of course, the cat-and-mouse duel between Audi and Porsche for the Le Mans wins this year, which will determine either Audi will continue its dominance or that Porsche broke its streak in its own home, avenging their last year's loss.

It has been one sleep and one breakfast for the past sixteen hours racing, now here goes the recap for the other eight which took place in a time where the moment was right: lunch.

THE FINEST SPORTSCAR SUPREMACY - 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans recap (part 1)

(Image: Auto Express)

The Sportscar battle of supremacy has come again! 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans has delivered some of the notable actions, which included crazy overtakes, some get togethers, and other kinds of miracles. This year marks the French classic's 83rd edition, and is the first time we see the absence of an innovative machine in the Garage 56 and Tom Kristensen. Also for this year, the crop of talents include the three NISMO GT-R LMs, SMP BR01s, Gibson 015Ss, Oreca 05s, and a Riley Viper as some of the new names, and for the drivers, we have quite a crop of F1 drivers, active and former, including Nico Hulkenberg, who drove the #19 Porsche 919 Hybrid alongside Earl Bamber and Nick Tandy. There were so many headliners for this year's race, which includes Audi's bid to strengthen its Le Mans dominance amidst Porsche's threatening FIA WEC performance, Toyota's awakening, and the eventual victor of both GTE categories, Pro and Am.

This post is my most special post for the past three years in writing this stuff. The first year was kind of trainwreck even though it was posted right after the race ended, and the second was really long overdue due to final test affairs despite the article being a proper recap. This year, unfortunately, was also long overdue due to finals, but fret not though, it's not a total trainwreck time-wise like the second though. Also, this doesn't hide the fact that this year is the first year I live and breathe Le Mans without watching it via cable as I lost my subscription to all sports channels, though in exchange I have Radio Le Mans, some live video streams, FIA WEC Official Live Timing, Motorsport.com's live text feed and of course Twitter so nothing is lost even though I have to face the fact that my internet doesn't stream live videos very well with lags a plenty. This is also the first time I spent ALMOST my whole life listening to RLM, either using my main internet or my smartphone internet, sans the net café visit where I spent the last 30 minutes of the race. And then I realized that my cable no longer has Eurosport so cue the Carrie Mathison cry face, NOT!

Due to how TL;DR this recap is, I split this into two parts: this part will cover the race start to the sixteenth hour, while the rest will be covered in part two, along with some "extra spice" at the end of the part 2 post.

A Dear Letter for Jules

Dear, Jules.

I don't know who you were, and I don't even follow what you were up to. Yet somehow I feel empty now that you were up there in heaven. The day you started fighting for your survival, I started to grow my respect on you, and I kept hoping that you would be back there, soldiering on.

You had a fight last year, a big fight for your survival. You struggled your hardest to quickly get back to your cockpit of a black and red open wheeler everyone loves to call it "Marussia", formerly "Virgin Racing" years back.

It was that time when you had an accident last year. You have tried your best to avoid it, but it was all too late. Many people who watched you at that time cannot resist their sadness; they were speechless, just like when Allan Simonsen crashed in Tertre Rouge before you. I didn't get to watch the footage but reading how everything happened, it carried me and I finally became one of them.

(Image: James Moy Photography / PA)

Some people I witnessed were playing the blame game after that accident, but very many, including myself, were by your side. Your fight began as your family, your friends, and your fans were cheering their hardest so you could have your courage. I understand that it was a long fight to survival, not something that you could do in a fast pace.

Sadly, Fate had another plan, and in the end some battles cannot be won. You left us way too soon, and your career was far from over. At one point, you had a dream of following your great father's path and even driving for the Ferrari team. Yes, the Rosso Corsa team every racer wants to be in.

(Image: FIA World Endurance Championship)

It was the darkest day for not just the Formula 1 fandom, but the whole Motorsport fandom. Max Chilton, your teammate, dedicated his Indy Lights victory to you, even other drivers from other disciplines were remembering you. In the end, everyone will miss you, even though you weren't one of the top guys. This shows that motorsport is a one big family, regardless of whatever the car everyone is racing.

For myself personally, this is the another loss of several figures of the world for the past four weeks from this post. Everyone already lost Satoru Iwata, the former Nintendo CEO responsible for our childhood who passed away due to cancer, and now we had to lose yet another figure. I know that both you and Satoru weren't directly related, but bear in mind that these two people were the notable figures in their own way.

(Image: F1 Fanatic)

Thank you, Jules. May you rest in peace...

Sincerely,

~[R]

DEDICATED TO JULES BIANCHI
1989 - 2015

The new [R]GARAGE - What to Expect as Le Mans Draws Near

"Just a day in my laptop designing Go-knows-what. I only have 4 days left in doing this so..."

For the past April, I have been speeding up on the [R]GARAGE redesign, yet due to real life circumstances you know everything was put into a total halt, and eventually all is dead. However, I promised that the new [R]G will feature new stuffs on the way, and a new design too. Many of these new stuffs are a mix of outright new ones and old ones, from my creation "infancy", that I have never released until today. All these new stuffs are those that shape and live up [R]GARAGE's new philosophy: more than just top-downs.

My Mobile Chapters

Yes, I am into THIS hype. This was taken when I had a Town Hall Level of 5, now it's 6 at the time of this post.

Unfortunately, my college assignments took its toll to my online activities like my site's revamp and writing at least one blog posts earlier this month. With the barrage of college assignments and preparations for my Student Service Study as I pointed out on my other blog's latest post, I almost lost courage in what I need to post here, even giving Nurburgring 24 Hours a life here; this year's race featured some of the greatest moments worth as reasons to why this year's race was an interesting one: from Adam Christodoulou's heroic tire change to everything about Manta Foxtail, and from the Subaru Impreza to Glickenhaus SCG003c. They can make a good post material and the post itself would be a sure-fire 24 Hours of Dubai format post, but time flew fast and my courage quickly dried with all the college assignments. Nevertheless, I still am assuring you that this blog is alive and well, for the nth time.

This post will be more about my mobile life which has drastically changed since the day I bought the Xiaomi Redmi 1S. Being an Android smartphone, I had a bucket list of apps to be installed in my new phone, and yeah, mobile games included. Initially, I kept lots of games, after months of usage however, I only kept few of them due to the fact that I had to give room to my other apps related to mobile productivity. In contrast to my days as a Nokia user, my mobile activity goes beyond just browsing things: I drove real circuits, tapping into Japanese rhythms, and forging an army while strengthening my defense....

Endurance Racing and Turbo Sliders

While the work for my new site's look is still in progress, the new season of FIA World Endurance Championship has just kickstarted with the 6 Hours of Silverstone race with the #7 Audi driven by Marcel Fässler, André Lotterer and Benoît Tréluyer won the race, but the six-hour race also did deliver its set of actions including the battle between the race-winning Audi and #18 Porsche mid-race. Tension rised in other classes too as position fights took place many times especially in the GTE classes. The downside however was the #77 GTE-Am Porsche to which I had to address as "Team Dempsey" for that matter as the team didn't seem to get their pace in the race. Technical-wise, John Hindhaugh pointed out that, in LMP1, the Audi tops the "twisties" (read: tight turns) while the Porsche aces the straights.

Sometime in the middle of the race I left the Twitter-verse for awhile for what I can call as "The Experiment". The experiment in question was replicating 6 Hours of Silverstone race in Turbo Sliders, using the new F1 Speed League mod featuring cars from FIA WEC, 24 Hours of Le Mans and European Le Mans, among others, which I showed on Twitter as the race was still going on. Of course, the track is also F1SL-made, and, you guess it, it is indeed F1SL's Silverstone I raced. Despite the execution, I have prepared the AI lines long before this experiment is started, but with only the AI lines, cars and track required to run the experiment, one question prevailed: Is it enough to replicate the said race?

March is (Always) Madness!

Throughout March, I have been made busy with several activities that put my blogging activity here on hiatus, aside from college assignments and stuffs. The first one is Fandom March Madness which is the March Madness-style tournament with television and movie characters, exclusive on LiveJournal (note the "Steel Cage" in its name), and the second one is the Fall/Winter 2015 Fashion Week. Okay, so I can sense your questions why I had to take a look at such a very seemingly-unimportant thing that is fashion week, to the point that I sweated myself only to count how many shows a model has done, but all I know is that the March Madness atmosphere was there all along, not just merely because the last weeks of the Fashion Week coincide with FMM, with so many close races in every moment as exciting as Bathurst 12 Hour! If you will, you can check both actions of the FMM and Fashion Week on my LiveJournal blog!

However, as much as I enjoy all these "March Madness" stuffs this month, I always remember that I still have this blog and that I still have a site to take care of, plus some contents for God-knows games I play. Looking back, all these activities cost me very much of my blogging activity as I spent my days updating things on Twitter and via Excel, especially those related to fashion week. As a result, my 2015 Bathurst 12 Hour blog post was really late, but it was also because I was at loss at what to post. Remember that I tried to write a Nissan-themed post in light of Nismo's Bathurst 12 Hour victory and its GT-R LM unveiling in the Superbowl, but at the last minute, I ditched it and go back to square one for the B12hr post. In the end, this post entails the updates I had throughout my AWOL due to the March Madness.

2015 BATHURST 12 HOUR - The Morals of the FCY-ridden Story

The hero car of this year's Bathurst 12 Hour (image: GT Academy on Twitter)

"Bathurst Delivers!" As endurance racing commentary regular slash my favorite commentator ever John Hindhaugh always said amidst the 12-hour endurance race at Mount Panorama Circuit. This year's crop gathered cars from different classes, with GT3 as, obviously, the highlight category though with a twist in a form of "Pro" and "Am" sub-categories with other category grids include Flat 6 cup cars, GT4s, production cars and invitationals. Even with the race itself clashed with V8 Supercars's super test at Sydney Motorsports Park, meaning that we didn't see Craig Lowndes, Shane Van Gisbergen and Rick Kelly, this year's race gave us top-flight GT drivers in return, including GT Academy graduates Florian Strauss and Wolfgang Reip and Blancpain GT Series champion Laurens Vanthoor, who turned out to be the next breed of the "mountain killer" after setting the fastest lap to an extent he brought Phoenix Racing "The Al" - The Allan Simonsen Memorial trophy awarded for the pole position in the qualifying.

Bathurst 12 Hour is anything but without a story, and this year's race once again proved why there's always a great story that lies in such a race. This post lists some of the author's choice memorable moments that has made you excited, nervous, cringe and delighted throughout the race's run.

(WARNING: This post contains lots of pics and GIFs. Not for the faint-hearted snails)

The Fault in My DLs - When Being Rushed Made Everything Went Wrong

It turns out that my zip files for Gran Canaria and Frappe Snowland (evidence not pictured) tracks contain corrupted files.

It has caught my attention that some certain files whose links I had provided in several places, including my site (granted it's still in construction) and my blog here contain faulty elements, including corrupted ZIPs, missing tiles et cetera. I just found out last night as I tried to drive my old tracks just for fun and it petrified me that two custom tracks were problematic as soon as I extract all the track ZIPs. They are Frappe Snowland and Gran Canaria, of which they each had one corrupted file, and the file in question is the custom track's image. Additionally, I also found out that I forgot to put additional custom tiles for Templedore as the underpass tile is missing. Despite it is not much a problem as Sliderpoint has the underpass tile, I can't condone such a behavior as the tileset is less than 1 MB and I just need to include it all along. Even my second version of Tsukuba and Snow Complex has the same missing tiles problem too.

It also turns out that this kind of "rushed" behavior also the same behavior that affected how my tracks were before my trackmaking skills matured, same with my writing in which I had vocabulary issues too, resulting in either Engrish-y writing, erroneous grammar structures and vocabularies or a hybrid of both. Yet, when I don't rush in trackmaking, I did rush in releasing the track, which is what I didn't do until recently. Those who have downloaded both corrupted tracks and those with missing tiles, my apologizes to you.

2015 24 HOURS OF DUBAI - A Special Kind of Dubai

#2 Black Falcon SLS AMG piloted by Arab Abdulaziz Al Faisal, German Hubert Haupt, Dutch Yelmer Buurman and English Oliver Webb that took this year's outright victory in the 2015-running 24 Hours of Dubai. (Image: Autocar India)

Finally the first legitimate post of my blog in 2015! I know, it's technically the second post of 2015, I just put that for the sake of randomness. Randomness aside, though, the first wave of events have passed. You have the Dakar rally that has recently finished hours ago at the time of this post, and then there were award shows like People's Choice Awards and Golden Globe Awards, yet there also was the 2015 24 Hours of Dubai, the tenth running 24-hour race event involving grand tourers, touring cars and endurance specials, battling it out for class victory. The race was won by the #2 Black Falcon SLS AMG driven by Arab Abdulaziz Al Faisal, German Hubert Haupt, Dutch Yelmer Buurman and English Oliver Webb, with the team's other success is the 1-2 in the 997 class, with the lady luck weren't on last year's winner Stadler Motorsport's favor due to an accident that eventually ended their run with 61 laps of mileage.

Yet, the more I think about the Dubai 24-hour race, I felt that there's more to the competitors and cars than in the race alone. I mean, they almost had everything in screaming colors; fireworks? Check. Competitors with interesting traits? You can check this post. A Corvette? Check. A big number of starters? Check. Rather than posting the race recap since I didn't stay up for full 24 hours, following the good 'ol Rendy's Blog tradition, this post will be dedicated to some of the unique things present in this year's race.

2015 - New Year, New Crusade

Happy New Year, Everyone!  (Image source: Orlando Local Guide)

2014 has been an awesome experience for yours truly. There have been lots of things that happened, including part of things that I have finally done in the previous year. From joining tournaments, both physically and submit-your-results-online-ly (cannot make up in a shorter word unfortunately lol), to doing and learning things like redesigning my blog, my site, and making stuffs, not to forget that I also made new friends both online and physically in that year.