Knight Rider

Testing is currently underway at the Losail Circuit Qatar in preparation for the first MotoGP race of the 2008 season.

The March 9 race will be the first Grand Prix, two or four wheeled, to be held at night when it starts at 23:00 local (20:00GMT). Formula One will hold a night race in Singapore in September.

MotoGP organisers have said their race would be the biggest sporting event to be staged under floodlights with the area involved at Losail equivalent to 70 FIFA regulation soccer pitches, with 3,500 lighting units installed.

ref: http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/65378

MU120: CMA44

Having put MU120 on hold for a month (except for attending my local tutorials) due to starting M450 and completing the first TMA, I can now go back to it.  I have outstanding 2 CMA's and the ECA.  With this in mind I ploughed through and submitted CMA44 this afternoon.  It was not so bad although I did have to refer back to my notes on a couple of occasions.  The biggest problem was remembering where all the relevant functions are in the calculator.  Now onto CMA45.

Bradley Smith Interview

MCN caught up with Polaris World Aprilia rider Bradley Smith at the teams official launch in London yesterday.

M450: TMA01

Last night I finally managed to submit my first TMA for M450, 5 hours before cut-off.  The course started on February 2nd and it has been a long hard slog during these past 24 days to get the TMA completed, even though the course team say in the assessment guide

completing each TMA could take as little as five or six hours

There are 2 reasons for this TMA taking so long, the first being that I dived straight into the TMA and although I have started tasks such as a project schedule and an E-R model, I did them as part of the TMA.  The second reason is that I have experienced a lot of difficulty in finding any research papers in relation to my project.  This become a frustrating exercise and started to make finishing the TMA feel tedious.  And I don't believe that I am alone in these sentiments.

Anyway I can now get down to some real practical work, starting with the statement of requirements, and the database analysis and design.  With this in mind hopefully TMA02 wont take so long to complete when I come around to doing it.

Vote for Dustin

This Saturday the Irish decided on their entry for this years Eurovision Song Contest and the winner was Dustin The Turkey singing Douze Pointe. 

It reminds me of the episode of Father Ted where Father's Ted and Dougal are Irelands entry for the annual European contest with their song My Lovely Horse.  The Irish don't want to winner the contest anymore as it is proving to expensive to host, so they pick the one song that is guaranteed to loose.

MU120: TMA02

Got home last night to find my marked TMA02 had been delivered.  This came as a surprise as having handed in the TMA about a month and a half before the deadline, I had completely forgotten about it.  The surprise was made very pleasant when I discovered that I had scored 98%.

MU120: On Hold.

Having read all 16 units and now only having CMA44, CMA45 and TMA04 left to do I have decided to put MU120 on hold.  My reason for this is that M450 officially started on Saturday (02.Feb) and its first TMA is due on 26.Feb.  I therefore want to concentrate on the M450 TMA01 and will resume MU120 after 26.Feb.