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.

Minecraft - The Most Awesome Cubical Sandbox Poison

So as the Winter Holidays go on, with the Christmas Day past and the New Year's Eve is coming, everyone's busy playing snowball wars in their neighborhood and making snowmen after receiving some gifts from Santa. In Indonesia, however, winter is non-existent (DUH!) and most of the college students will face the Finals week, including myself. There's a good news and bad news for this; The good news is the Finals week has started on 29th December through 9th January 2015. The bad news is THAT above statement. Who has planned their New Year's Eve vacation plan in the middle of the Finals week? I wonder... (Only if there's a break between the New Year's Eve celebration then it's fine)

Cut to the next blog post where I will post something new, and it is about a game. While the majority of this blog covers racing games and racing simulators, I would be pleased to give something totally new that isn't related to racing: Minecraft, a.k.a the Most Awesome Cubical Sandbox Time-Wasting Poison. There's something in this game in which it wants me to play it, even the first time I played it on a web browser, in which the web version is the most basic version where you just need to build something out of the assorted selection of blocks. As the time progresses, new versions come out, from the version with an addition of the crafting element and the monster-fighting element in which monsters will haunt you down like crazy at night, to the version with amplified world resources and a compatibility to user-made mods thanks to third-party mod loaders. Building things are also more fun thanks to new additions of blocks throughout versions plus nature elements such as biomes, trees and animals. It is amazing to see how well put everything is in this game, even to think that it even attracts a racing gamer with absolutely no intensive Minecraft experience like myself.

Things Come and Gone

There's so much happening last month- November 2014; while the 30th marked the end for Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 3DX+ card transfers to MT4 for the Indonesian version, which I don't even care because I don't have any tuning cards left, the same exact day Tom Kristensen officially retired from the racing world after finishing his last ever race in Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace a.k.a Interlagos in the final round of FIA World Endurance Championship. He did announce his retirement moments before the Brazillian six-hour started, and we knew that it is indeed a "right in the feels" moments for motorsport fans, especially looking at his career, most prominent being a nine-time 24 Hours of Le Mans champion with Audi, the constructor he's comfortable with within the endurance racing fandom since 2000, save for his years with Bentley Speed 8 in 2003 which gained victory.

This month also marked the new versions of games. Among them are Turbo Sliders with its new version with promised features I have posted in separate posts way back and MiniRacingOnline with the new SDL2 graphics plus the day/night cycle (it's currently a beta for the time being). The new Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 5 also arrived in Indonesia yet the MT4 cabs will be updated to MT5 by 17th December. For the latter game, however, there's a caveat to note: in the International version, features found in the Japanese version such as the Maxi.NET subscription service and the Maxi G system for purchasing Dress-Up parts, are absent. It is more likely that the Indonesian version would have the same absence found in the International version, looking at the condition. Other than the absence, everyone gets to try new cars such as Toyota 86 and its clone Subaru BRZ plus cars from BMW and Mercedes Benz, adding the roster of foreign names after RUF and Chevrolet. Also worth noting that new tracks, such as Mount Taikan pass, are present in the new version.

As the 2014 is on the edge with 2015 draws near, let us enjoy the last weeks of 2014. On a personal side, I'm trying to recover from my old HDD's crash while trying to find a way to get money faster.