Castle Combe HSCC

[zefarelly]

Once you get the hang of your new steed Burfs you won't see as many of them. its only the dodgy ones that are faster!

Originally Posted by Burfs

" There are "plastic things" and then there are "plastic things". The Lots Of Trouble Usually Serious variety are everywhere, but the rest of us, including some plastic things, add a bit of needed spice to the mix, don't you think? I had a crowd of people down to watch and they said it was a very exciting race all in all, even though one or two cars dominated.

[HRSTR5]

Originally Posted by alc59

Did both days. Really good to watch - lots of great old motors, lots of racing.Pleased to hear that competitors enjoyed it - it would be v. boring without you. Hope we see you again soon.

Glad you enjoyed it as much as I did!

[grantp]

A quick update to the earlier posts about the timing and commentary challenges.

TSL followed up my message by email yesterday and we had a short, cordial and positive exchange which was quite enlightening.

I was more than a little impressed that they had discovered a long standing bug report for the Firefox browser that seemed to explain the peculiarity of the commentary reverting to the last successful start (often a long time previously) having performed a screen refresh.


I might try Internet Explorer next time to see what bugs that presents!

Better yet we have an opportunity to help them to improve the service and offer some guidance to users about what to expect and how problems might be resolved or circumvented since they would welcome any feedback with positive (i.e. useful) observations.

I think there are two parts (at least) to that.

One is identifying where technical issues exist - both at the circuit and at the user's end of things (as per the Firefox anomaly for example.)

The other would be which issues puzzle the service's users and could be addressed by some help guidance and FAQs.

Being that we are a fairly mature bunch (I would guess ... in most cases ....) I think we can do "positive" rather than "rant" when required. So we might be able to help with fine tuning the service and the information available to the listener from a technical point of view.

(Maybe not so much with help about how the service availability can be affected, event to event, by contractual arrangements with the circuits and promoters.)

[andy97]

Grant, you lost me at "Firefox", I know it's a browser thingy, but unless it's explorer or Google chrome, and then google, it's all double Dutch to me.

[grantp]

Originally Posted by andy97

Grant, you lost me at "Firefox", I know it's a browser thingy, but unless it's explorer or Google chrome, and then google, it's all double Dutch to me.

Andy, yep, they are all "browsers" but each have their own ways of doing things.

For internet purposes programmers usually hope that one piece of code will work for all browsers but often that is not the case.

So the developers have to consider whether to create some new bits of code to fix a perceived problem - or wait for the people who write the browser to fix the problem at their end.

Apple seem to be especially good at job (and cost) creation in their wonderful world.

They also need to know whether both of their "users" who use that particular version of the browser are seeing the same problem and care about it. The potential for fixing something that will not be used is very high in the "fast moving" software industry.

In the case of the "repeated" out of date commentary .....

The commentary "feed" arrived in the computer as a file and is stored in temporary "cache" memory. All being well everything ends nicely and it gets deleted at some point.

If the streaming file link fails for any reason the file would normally be deleted or orphaned to clutter up the system's storage for a while.

When (if) the l link is re-established a new file would be started from that point on.

If an attempt to re-link fails nothing would be expected to happen. (Probabably).

In this case, using Firefox (which is a very popular alternative to Internet Explorer), sometimes a failed attempt to re-connect to the live broadcast just reverts to the previously capture file from the cache. So you get a replay of the earlier commentary. That may be confusing.

If you know that might happen it can save a lot of time and frustration trying to work out what on earth is going on .....

[Malcolm Smith]

Had a great time on Saturday, my first visit to Castle Combe.
Enjoyed qualifying, excellent racing, and lots of interesting people to chat to in the paddock.
Pre 66 saloons were my favourite, closely followed by 70s road sports and formula junior.
Even the long-suffering Mrs. S. found it enjoyable.... much better than Knockhill....
Some photos from Pre 66 saloons attached. I will try to add some others later.

[Malcolm Smith]

Pre 66 saloons race photos.