tomhoppe.com

Racing, Web Development, Photography, and Beer...Stuff that matters.

HD in-car - VIR Qualifying with DL1 overlay by DashWare

May 12th, 2009

I screwed up on the rear view facing cam as I left it at home, but I did have a new toy this go around anyways. ChaseCam came out with some new software called DashWare. It lets you take your data acquisition and overlay it on top of your video, showing you speed, mph, g’s, etc etc. The software is super easy to use and I was able to make some custom gauges and logos, and the videos look very pro as a result. I’m very happy with the software and would recommend it to anyone.

You can view the full HD footage by clicking here or just play the smaller embedded version below

Posted in All, Racing, Video | No Comments »

VIR: 2 more races, 2 more wins, but with body damage

May 12th, 2009

Just got back and settled after a long weekend at VIR. The weekend started out awesome, and finished “ok”, but in the end, I did walk away with 2 more wins and a lot more experience.

I decided to do the back half of the test day, and it was absolutely worth it. While the testing tires were horrid, I was able to get some good track time, and get used to the track a bit. Its like Road Atlanta where you need some big balls to go fast. There are turns that you just have to commit to and go, regardless of whether you think you will make it out :)

Saturday qualifying I put on the fresher Hoosiers and rocked out a 2:17.8 lap. Thats only 0.6 off the track record, and was enough to put me on pole for ITA and also ahead of all the ITS cars again. We started the race, right after lunch, and the grid workes called the 5 minute warning super early. I wasn’t quite ready and barely got situated in the car and realized I didn’t have the camera on! Oh well.

I had a good start and ended up with about a 4-5 second lead on 2nd place. It was very hot out, and my rear tires started going off pretty bad, and the car became very loose. With that, and me playing “rabbit” for 2nd place, Chris Perera was able to catch up to me. He was driving over his head a bit though and went off in the last turn with 2 laps to go as we were passing a couple of cars that we were lapping. I saw this in my rear view mirror and relaxed and said “ok, this one is in the bag”. I was going to pass 2 more cars I was lapping in turn 1, but decided to just hold off and pass them later, or not at all instead as I wasn’t in a hurry anymore.

The first car ends up spinning out in Turn 3, hitting the car directly in front of me, and then stopping RIGHT in my path. SHIT SHIT. I duck right, off the track, and ended up hitting him in his drivers side with my front left corner. Ended up bending my bumper beam and screwing up the plastic bumper, but I was able to get back on track, right in front of Chris. I held off Chris for the last 1.5 laps and took the win. The alignment was 100% perfect, and it was only cosmetic damage to the bumper and cover :)

After the race, I swapped my brakes, fixed the bumper/fender, and also got some new tires for Sundays race.

Sunday started out much the same, in taking the pole and having a fast lap. I sped up about 0.2 and qualified at a 2:17.6. It was a better lap though, as I missed a shift, and got held up in 1 turn in my qualifying lap, so it could have been faster. No need though

I had a slightly different strategy for the race, in that I was just going to play with Chris and let him pass me, and then pass him with 1 lap to go for the win. He’s really good at chasing, but he’s not that fast when he’s leading or driving by himself.

He wouldn’t go around me though, even when I lifted on the straightaway, as he was trying unbenowst to me to go for the track record and wanted to draft with me. I was just going for the race win rather then the record and not pushing real hard. Eventually he decided to pass, and I let him by with 4 to go. He then made a big mistake in the lead with 2 to go and went off the track a bit in turn 14, giving me the lead and the race win….almost

I drove the last lap hard, and had a pretty decent lead on him going back into Turn 14. Chris broke a little early, as he was having brake problems, but not early enough. He ended up not slowing down pretty much at all and PLOWING into me twice at the top of the turn. He rear ended me first, spun me around and then smashed me on the side. I got back on track and drove around slowly to the checkered and still took the win.

Chris apologized profusely after the contact and let me know his brakes let him down. Even though the apology was sincere, I’m frustrated after thinking about it, as if the brakes were really busted, why did he only brake 100ft earlier knowing that the race was pretty much over?

In the end, I get to tack on to the body shop bill. Glad that the car was not fixed before this weekend, as now, I not only need a new bumper beam/bumper cover, I need a new passenger door, and frame/rocker panel work to get everything straightened out. UGH.

Because of the costs of all that, I’m going to have to skip the planned July race at Road Atlanta, and I’m not going to be back on track until August in Ohio. It will give me plenty of time though to get everything looking awesome, and also work on some mechanical issues. I have a slight power steering leak, a small oil leak somewhere by the oil filter, and also need to get that rear swaybar mounting fixed.

I’ve got the video off the camera for Sunday, and will be posting the qualifying shortly, and then the race video and crash on Wednesday.

Posted in All, General, Racing | No Comments »

Its almost time for VIR!

May 3rd, 2009

Started getting the car ready for VIR today. I didn’t have any big mechanical issues or anything. Just the standard in-between event work. I thought I was going to have to add a rear wheel bearing in to that mix, but after checking everything out, it seems I just have a touch of play in the rear pillowball bearings, and not the wheel bearing. Also, the front tie rods have a *very* slight touch of play, so I’ll replace those after this event.

Other then that, I just did a normal nut and bolt of the whole car, rebuilt the front calipers and bled the brakes, all new fluids and some cleanup. I realized that the fuel leak I thought I had in the trunk was just spilled gas from when I was transporting the car, and the oil leak I had in the front right seems to be from the power steering pump lines rather then something more important. I couldn’t find it, and its not so much of a leak, as its just “oily dirt” around that area, so I figured I’d just pick up all the spare parts I might need, and fix it after this next weekend, unless it gets worse. I cleaned the whole area up, so it should be easier to tell where its coming from, if it is at all. Lastly, I realized I bent the bolts for the rear swaybar endlinks, so have to pick up some new ones tomorrow. Hopefully I can find those in town.

Leaving on Wednesday for Raleigh, and I’m skipping the test day, so I’m hoping the Roebling setup is going to work well for VIR, as I go right into qualifying. I might adjust the shocks a bit to make the car tighter on entry until I get a few VIR laps under my belt, but going to leave the swaybar on the max setting. Seemed to work for Roebling!

Posted in All, Pictures, Racing | 1 Comment »

HD in-car from the Roebling SARRC Race

April 29th, 2009

The video finally processed on youtube. Looks pretty damn good! Since youtube only allows 10 minute videos I had to split the race into 2 parts. Didn’t use Vimeo as I like youtubes player better. Part 1 has a great start and some passing of ITS cars and running down Mike and Kip in their Miatas. Part 2 has a bunch of lap traffic and gettting through that cleanly.

Part 1
You can view the full HD footage by clicking here or just play the smaller embedded version below

Part 2
You can view the full HD footage by clicking here or just play the smaller embedded version below

Posted in All, Racing, Video | 2 Comments »

What a weekend at Roebling! 2 races, 2 wins

April 27th, 2009

This weekend was the first race of this season. I was really excited to start racing, and at the same time, a little nervous about this weekend, as a couple VERY fast cars were showing up, and I was wondering how I was going to stack up.

The long weekend started out well with Friday’s testing. The car was pretty good right off the bat, but I decided to make some air pressure and shock adjustements, as well as drilling an additional hole in the rear sway bar to stiffen it up. Those changes worked like magic and the car worked AWESOME in the first session back from lunch. With that, and the fact that I pretty much used up all my testing tires, I decided to skip the last session of the day and just drink some beer. The only sad news of the day was that the pimpy VS camera mount still did not work with my Canon HV10 MiniDV HD camera. Boooo. That night, we stopped by walmart and picked up a cheapo Panasonic camera to see if maybe the MiniDV tapes were to blame. As luck would have it, that camera was DOA…..the in car video curse continues.

Saturday brought the first qualifying session. I went out and the car felt awesome the first few turns. As soon as I started my first hot lap though, I got fuel cut. Realized I forgot to put gas in the car. DOH! Even with those hiccups though, I still put her on pole for the afternoon race. The race started out very exciting right from the beginning. I got a great start, and came alongside an RX-7 for turn 3. He totally did not see me coming and hit me and forced me off the track. 97 mph in the dirt, foot to the floor, and I manage to keep the car from spinning, but lose a lot of ground to the lead pack. I put my head down and start driving my ass off and manage to catch the lead group, pass them, and go on to take the win in ITA. The only thing better would have been %$#*$&*# in car video!!

Sunday morning, I get a wild hair up my ass and decide “I’m gonna give it ONE last try for video”. We head back to wal mart and this time pick up a nice HD Samsung camera to borrow. Qualifying comes and the weather is much better. I go out and run a great lap, but its only good enough for 4th place. 1st is at a 1:21.8 but then 2nd through 4th is all on the same tenth at a 1:22.2 lap. Should be a doozy of a race! Even better, the new camera worked! I have flawless video. Woohoo! That 1:22.2 lap is about as fast as any ITA FWD car has ever gone at Roebling, so I’m VERY happy with my times.

I had another good start in the race, and ended up right behind Mike VanSteenburg for the beginning part of the race. I was able to battle through the ITS cars with him, and ended up catching him, as well as the polesitter Kip VanSteenburg, and passing them both to take another win! They fought hard the whole way, and I had to spend about half the race driving with my eyes in the rear view mirror to not let Mike by. I’ll let the full video I post tomorrow do the rest of the talking, as it was a very exciting and fun race for me.

The next race weekend is at VIR on May 9th and 10th. Looking forward to this one, as I love the track, and if the weather holds up, I’ll have a good shot at the track record!

Here is the Qualifying lap. I’ll be posting the full race tomorrow morning, as YouTube is doing maintenance right now.

You can check out the full HD footage by clicking here or just play the smaller embedded version below

Posted in All, Pictures, Racing | No Comments »

Quick and easy mouse over delay with jQuery

April 22nd, 2009

On one of my side projects I wanted to do a hover over fade on and off menu, but wanted to do the menu items with text instead of images. After thinking about how to get the effect, I settled on the below solution. I also wanted a slight delay on the mouse over. That way, if someone just went through the links instead of on them, they wouldn’t get the fade.

HTML looks like this. The only drawback is for accessibility, that they get the link text twice. Not that big of a deal IMHO. 

<ul>
    <li><a href="sports.php"><span class="off">Sports</span><span class="on">Sports</span></a></li>
    <li><a href="concerts.php"><span class="off">Concerts</span><span class="on">Concerts</span></a></li>
    <li class="last"><a href="theater.php"><span class="off">Theater</span><span class="on">Theater</span></a></li>
</ul>

Then the JS comes in and does a nice smooth fade on the “off” class. This allows you to get a fade rather then an instant “on” like you get when you just change classes and colors on the a element. I do a jQuery hover.

When it does the “mouseover”, it sets a class on the main list item its hovering on, that way the global scope of setTimeout will allow you to target that particular element to fade its child. The 100 ms delay is enough to get rid of most of the inadvertent hovers. If using this particular piece of code for something else, you can make that delay as long as you want for a delayed hover. Then the “off” state fades out.

The “mouseout” from the hover then clears the timeout and fades the “off” state back in and removes the hovering class as you don’t need it anymore. 

$('#header li').hover(
function() { $(this).addClass('hover'); hover_intent = setTimeout( function(){ $('#header .hover').find('.off').fadeOut("fast"); } , 100 ); },
function() { try{clearTimeout(hover_intent);}catch(e){}; $('#header .hover').find('.off').fadeIn("fast"); $(this).removeClass('hover'); });

Posted in All, Javascript | 1 Comment »

So the car is almost ready!

April 21st, 2009

With the car out of the body shop (still dented, booo) and the race weekend coming up, I’m finally out of procrastination/non-motivation mode, and working on the car. Hung the fenders tonight, got the splitter un-bent and painted, and attached the air dam to the front bumper. The list of to-do’s is surprisingly short and I hopefully won’t have any issues getting stuff knocked out tomorrow and Thursday.

Still have to get some bolts and nuts to finish the splitter/bumper install, cover the headlights with vinyl, drill an extra hole in the swaybar since roebling is FULL of turns, nut and bolt the car and then just pack! Not too bad :)

Posted in All, Racing | No Comments »

Race car stays ugly for another month, but racing starts!

April 19th, 2009

I learned on Friday that my race car will not be back from the body shop fixed this weekend. Kind of a bummer, as I finally pulled the trigger on getting all the dents out and having a brand new looking car, but Mike got super busy and the street cars got in the way of my race car. At least the new fenders are painted, so those will be on for the next 2 races. I also am going to not bother with any other stickers except the number panel, as it will be a waste to put them on the wrinkled car just to take them back off for painting.

I’ve got 2 events coming up over the next few weeks, and they should be awesome. April 25th and 26th is a Double SARRC (South Atlantic Road Racing Championship) weekend at Roebling Road in Savannah GA. Roebling is a fun and safe track and its all turns. Because of that it does not favor my FWD powerful car at all. The lighter weight Miatas with less HP just plain dominate this track, and 2 of the best ones (VanSteenburg brothers from ISC Racing) are going to be at this race. Also Chuck Baader in his 320es BWM should do real well, as just like the Miatas, the RWD layout of the car helps at this track. We’ll see if I have anything for those Miatas, I’ll give it all she’s got :)

The event after that is May 9th and 10th at VIR in Danville, VA. Its another Double weekend, but this time, the MARRS (Mid Atlantic) guys join us for a huge combined weekend where guys from all over the east coast come to race. Should be a huge entry field and a ton of fun. Bowie should have his ITA Miata back and ready for this event. The track at VIR is a total mix between turns and straights, and the Integras as well as Miatas love this track, so it should be a straight up battle. Bowie knows this track very very well and is very fast, but I have a feeling my car will do really well there. We’ll see!

Also I’ve got the body shop lined up for the weekend after the SARRC/MARRS, so the car will at least be looking pimptastic by the July races.

Posted in All, Racing | No Comments »

CSS icons next to links, spanning multiple lines, and IE support

April 16th, 2009

Man, IE sucks. We deal with it every day, but the lack of support for standards really makes developers jump through hoops sometimes for stupid little things. At work we’re adding some icons next to links to better identify them. A slideshow, community links, video etc etc. Normally this would be really simple. Something nice and automated like the CSS guy outlined would be nice. Except……

If the link spans two lines, IE just freaks. It doesn’t recognize the fact that the a element is two lines, it now thinks its a huge a element so the icon gets all cut off and wierd looking. Also, :after CSS support in IE doesn’t work, so it takes that option off the table.

So having said all that, we settled for a solution where we drop a tag, I chose the <i> tag for “icon” (I liked it better and its shorter then using the span tag and I use <em> for italics) after the end of the text inside the a element, and then identify the type of link with a class on the a tag. Not the ideal solution as now this isn’t automated and we have to manually identify the links, but to me it seems to be the only solution that reliably works in all browsers (IE6, IE7, FF, Safari). Alternatively, for automation, all it would take is a little jQuery to go through the hrefs on the page and drop in the <i></i> tag and class on the <a> tag. 

<style type="text/css">
.asdf i {
background:url('url of your image') no-repeat;
height:10px;
vertical-align:top;
width:10px;
}
</style>

<a class="asdf" href="yourlink">Your link text goes here<i></i></a>

Posted in All, CSS, Racing | No Comments »

What a difference some RAM makes

April 3rd, 2009

I’ve been running the Windows 7 Beta the last month or so. Started out with build 7000, which was pretty good, and now build 7057 I think. The latter one is pretty good, but in the last few days my computer has had horrid stability issues. It would just hang every few mins. It didn’t seem like a “software” hang, as everything would absolutely freeze, and if it froze in the middle of playing a racing game, the sound would also hang. I’m on 3GB of RAM, 2GB of matched pair, and a 1GB stick that I got from somewhere I don’t remember. I took the 1GB of RAM out thinking, hey, worth a shot as the first line of troubleshooting. Halfway surprisingly, it fixed my problem, but DAMN my computer is a dog now. Windows 7 itself seems a bit slower, I guess it really liked that extra 1GB. Also, surprisingly, the racing game pretty much went to shit. I was getting great 60fps at 1280×1024 resolution, but with only removing 1GB of RAM, its struggling at 1024×768. Wierd. Had no idea only 1GB of RAM could have that big of a difference on system speed.

Guess its time to pull the trigger on 4GB of faster RAM. Its cheap now anyways :)

Posted in All, General | No Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »