jchasey - Mobile, Games & More

Tunnel Top

2009-03-08T14:52:00.006Z

Work on the car was interrupted for most of January and February since the car was at Minister trying to sort out an engine power issue (long story for another time). Its back now however and there has been a bit of a rush to get the various outstanding jobs completed prior to the first race of the season in the Intermarque series at Brands Hatch on March 15th!

One of the changes in the off season was an upgrade to a six-speed Caterham gearbox from the five speed the car arrived with. Of course a new alloy 6-speed gear-knob was also 'required' and rather than just swap this over, I cam up with the idea of removing the existing tunnel top. This goes from the boot wall to the scuttle - the entire length of the cockpit meaning it weighs in at 1.4kg and I decided that a homemade lighter version would be in order!

Thus a trip to a charity shop led to the discovery of an old black leather jacket and with some sewing support from Liz and some aluminium strip later I had new gaiters for the gearstick and handbrake.

As first generation versions they are a bit rough, but being very cheap and easy to fabricate they can be refined later. The pics show the 'standard' part and my replacement version. Given much of the tunnel top is covered with aluminium anyway, my gaiters only need to cover small sections of the tunnel.

Free Child Friendly GMail with your own Domain

2009-02-24T08:08:00.005Z

So with two young daughters wanting to use the Internet more and more and being a professional in the IT space you'd think it would be easy to set up things like safe email for the kids to use...

We tried things like KidMail which while having plenty of features and being reasonably priced just ended up being too fiddly to use, the chore of having to login each time meant that 'unknown' emails would sit in the approval box for weeks before we got round to checking them. The biggest issue however was that we could not use our own domain - everything relied on using one of kidmail's (albeit extensive) domain names.

The solution, in the end, like all good things ended up being incredibly simple.

Having a domain based GMail account (instead of using xxx@gmail.com our registered domain chasey.co.uk is used, but otherwise its pretty much identical to gmail) I could set up email addresses for the children.

The next step was to setup the user account to allow POP3 access. This enables any standard Mail program to be used to access the email, and more importantly in this case, means none of the settings online can be altered since the account password is kept private by me.

Next is the setup of the white label filter. The filter is designed so that anything from any email addresses not recognised gets forwarded to my gmail account. If it is a legitimate email and from a trusted source I can then login and add this account to the white label list. Alternatively I can just delete and/or take appropriate action. Since email arriving in this manner still gets caught by the normal GMail spam detector a lot of this work is done automatically.

The initial filter I used was '-@chasey.co.uk'. The '-' represents a logical NOT and the @chasey on its own means any email from that domain. So the filter captures any email not from our domain, deletes it and forwards it on to the email address of your choice for checking. Multiple terms can be used on the filter list, so I can just add additional addresses and/or domains as required.

The end result is an email account under our own domain, which I have full admin control over, and can track all emails to and so feel pretty confident over its use safely. Plus it's using the existing GMail system which I use anyway so I don't have the hassle of switching to a different service and best of all it's free!

Car of the Year

2008-12-15T10:08:00.004Z

The Caterham R500 is on Top Gear two weeks in a row, this time winning the Car of the Year award!

I expect we'll see a lot more of them on the road next year after this...

Not real weight saving this weekend, although time was spent cleaning behind the seats where I couldn't get to when the Tillets were in and contemplating the dash layout. I'm considering moving the battery cut-off switch from the side of the car to the centre of the scuttle, so it can be easily reached from either side of the car, plus the switch protector would then be redundant, meaning it can be removed. There is also a big lump of metal that the wiper assembly was mounted on that could be cut off with an angle grinder...

I've also uploaded a small version of a pic Fergus took of me at Lyddon Hill earlier in the year, you can check out his other images on Flickr.

Tillet Seats

2008-12-09T20:36:00.004Z

As mentioned previously I will be removing the existing Tillet seats and replacing with a custom made foam seat. After some research it appears the foam is very susceptable to temperature during the mixing so won't be making up the new seat just yet, but have stripped out the Tillets, saving 4kg for the passenger seat and 5.6kg for the drivers. The extra 1.6kg was for the adjustable seat runners on the base of the drivers seat, which I never used anyway and has a tendency to seize on a Caterham from all reports.

Removing the seats means that accessing the harnesses is now much easier which gave me an idea. I has been planning to keep the passenger harness since I want to be able to easily take out friends and family and bolting in/out the seat and harness is just too much hassle. Getting the Tillet seat out of a Caterham with a full cage on is also a combination of Tetris and Jenga.

However now that foam seats will be used the mounting positions are easily accessed. The standard Caterham harnesses are bolted in place, but the other option is to fit eyebolts and have a harness that can clip onto these. Perfect for the passenger belts that will only be required from time to time. So that saves another 1.9kg for the passenger harness! A massive 11.5kg saved this evening, breaking the 500kg barrier.

Car total weight: 496.5kg (494.5kg race trim)

Top Gear

2008-12-08T09:40:00.003Z

So the 50-year old design of the Caterham beats the Bugatti Veyron round the Top Gear track with a time of 1.17.9! The Stig apparently had real problems getting heat into the tyres because it was so cold when the lap was timed and he felt it would have topped the Power Lap Board if it had been a warm day...

More Lights

2008-12-06T15:50:00.004Z

My parcel from SVC arrived in the week which means I can start this weekend on my lighting project. The purpose of this is two-fold. First to reduce weight where possible, the second is to make it quick and easy to remove the front headlights for racing.

As well as the (small) weight advantage, the same incident at Lyddon that caused all my windscreen chips had a similar effect on the lenses of my headlamps. So being able to remove them for racing will definately increase their life and also will give a small aerodynamic help (the Caterham is enough like a brick at highspeed that this will be minimal!)

The normal Caterham headlights are a real pig to install partly because the wiring goes through the mounting bolt and you end up with a partially dismantled headlamp and lots of cursing in order to get all the wiring through correctly. So on the lookout for alternatives I spotted this image of the MEV Rocket that SVC supply the lights for. The indicator is mounted on top of the oval headlight which is neater than the pod below the lamp that the Caterham uses. Also with the indicator high above the wings it means that the side indicators are redundent. Finally the headlamp is attached with a single bolt to the existing headlight stanchion, but the wiring exits the rear of the headlight, not through the centre of the bolt. While this is not quite as visually neat with all wires hidden, this means that removing the headlight is simply disconnecting the eletrical plug and undoing one bolt - perfect for racing.

Moving to the rear of the car, I also took the opportunity to replace the standard rear light assembly most of which consists of a heavy rubber wedge to project the lamp at the correct angle on the rear wings with a LED version, also from SVC. Given the rear wings are so easily knocked during racing however I measured up and found that the rear lights would actually fit in the old position of the rear fog and reverse lights, removed earlier. This means that should I lose a wing, I won't have to potentially replace a light unit also. Some fiddling with the number plate position is required, so will move to a stick on square one.

Finally the weight calculation:

New front light and indicators saved 1kg.

New rear LED lights saved 0.6kg.

Number plates 0.4kg

Car total weight: 508 kg

Car race trim: 506kg (headlights off)

Wheels

2008-12-06T15:34:00.003Z

One of the things that I did earlier in the season was to change from the CR322 'ditchmasters' that were mandatory in the Caterham Academy to the much grippier CR500s. My car was originally weighed when equipped with the 322s, and I was wondering how much lighter the CR500s were. The CR500s came in at 10kg each (including rim) and the CR322s 12.8kg - 2.8kg each!

That brings us down to the 510kg mark!

Lightweight Race Battery

2008-12-02T09:34:00.003Z

Bits and pieces that I've been stripping off the car have been going onto ebay for sale which has built up a reasonable fund to spend on new lightweight 'race' versions of various components.

First up is the battery, the standard Banner 53034 battery on the Caterham comes in at a hefty 9kg. The replacement I have gone for is the Braille B129 at only 3.7 kg! There are carbon fibre versions available (pictured), but there is no weight benefit, the CF is just for show, so I've just gone for the cheaper standard version.

However the 5.3kg saved does come at a cost - the Ah of the Braille is only 14 compared to the Banner's 30, so more care will need to be taken and a battery conditioner used when the car is parked up for more than a few days.

Also considering installing some Anderson SB Connectors such that an auxilary battery can be used for starting the car to maximise the power of the on-board battery.

Of course lightweight race alternators and starter motors are also available which would reduce the current draw on starting...something to investigate further.

Also delivered yesterday was the polyurethane foam mix which I'll be using to make up some lightweight moulded seats which promises to be fun and games. Check out the 11 February post partway done the page here regarding the perils this can entail.

With that to look forward to, we're now down to 521.2kg

New Ignition

2008-11-27T23:09:00.005Z

The new aero-style ignition switch I'd ordered arrived today, so decided to get on with some wiring loom stripping and dash musical chairs this evening...

The aero switch I put next to the red starter button, in place of the indicator switch, so the ignition and starter were grouped together in the same place. (The indicator was moved to a higher position, hopefully easier to access when driving on the road.) This meant I could also remove the lump of steel that is the steering lock (0.65kg). No keys now required to dangle above my knees, just need to remember the immobiliser fob!

I'd read on blatchat that you could easily remove the scuttle to access the wiring by removing the retaining bolts on each side and lifting it off in one piece, along with the aeroscreen. Sure enough it was very straightforward and meant my subsequent optimisation of wiring and switches was a lot easier. Also stripped off the scuttle SVA trim which was getting a bit worn anyway - 250g saved! - metal runs all through it.

Four switches were redundent - Heater and fan (were never installed in the car anyway), plus the wiper and washer switches were not required since I no longer had a windscreen. These were all taken out, and the Hazard and Fog Lamp moved along for easier access by the driver. I also stripped out the redundent wiring from the loom for these switches, both saving weight and making it (slightly) clearer for any future work. Total weight saving of 350g.

That makes it 1.25kg for the day, we're down to 526.5kg.

Lights

2008-11-22T17:15:00.005Z

Quick and easy 200g saving by removing the bolt-on engine mount - its only required to take the engine in and out of the car and no plans to do that anytime soon.

Then onto something more complex. New regulations next year mean a high-level LED rain-light is required, the Caterham official one is over £100 however!

Managed to source one used on Radicals for only £13.99 from Rambo Auto Tools, then knocked up a mount using an exhaust clamp and re-used the existing Fog Light wiring (with the addition of an in-line resistor) and mounted on the top of the roll bar as per the picture.

While this new light adds 150g I've taken the opportunity to remove the existing Fog light which is now redundant and I recently discovered that you don't require a reversing light to be road legal. So removing this as well have a net reduction of 250g.

Finally I removed the side indicators off the wings - havn't replaced these yet, but have a plan in combination with new headlights that I hope to do next week...

So half a kilo saved today, down to 527.75kg

And it needs to be Road Legal

2008-11-19T15:53:00.004Z

I forgot to mention in my post yesterday, but while I am looking to bring the weight of the car right down, the aim is to maintain it in a road legal state. This puts it at a disadvantage to a fully stripped race car, but I still want to drive the car to work and take friends and family out in it from time to time, something not possible if it became track only.

Only 1.75kg shed today - the Caterham has two horns installed, one high, one low - removed the low one saving 250g (one has to remain to be road legal!) and the exhaust shield (pictured) saved another 1.5kg.

Down to 528.25 kg

Blog is back & Caterham Diet

2008-11-18T20:28:00.007Z

Okay, so it's been a year since I last posted here...things just got a tad busy...

I managed to complete the Caterham build and took part in the Academy Sprint races before switching over to the Chris Knot Intermarque League series where I managed to get a respectable second place in class by the end of the season.

Now the car is back on the axel stands and work starts preparing the car for next season with a few "modifications". Since there is as much time spent having to research what mods make sense as actually doing them I hope to be able to spend some time recording them here.

One key aspect I am looking to do is remove as much weight as possible from the car, which of course aids performance. In the Academy there is a minimum weight - you can get penalised if the car is below this and lighter drivers may even need to add lead to the car to bring it up to this weight. However in the Intermarque League there are no such restrictions (regs are here), so anything non-essential can come off!

I had a setup session with Freestyle Motorsport when I was in full Academy spec, my car (with me in it) weighed in at 623kg (537kg without driver), the aim is to reduce this as much as possible.

During a race at Lyddon Hill in the summer a car immediately in front of me took the corner at Paddock Bend a tad too fast and hit the gravel hard. The majority of it hit my car and I counted 18 chips and 2 large cracks in the windscreen after the race ;->. Since windscreens are not mandatory, I took the opportunity to switch to a deflector. With hindsight for further weight loss I could have chosen the carbon fibre one, and I didn't weigh it before installation but estimate it at 0.6kg, the old windscreen was 4.2kg.

Anyway, this evening I got round to also removing the wiper motor which accounted for another 2.4kg. Plus the plastic water bottle for wiper fluid, associated pump and a part-full bottle accounts for another 1kg.

Starting point: 537kg

Driverless weight: 530kg

We'll see how low we can go...

Towing in Style

2007-10-22T19:21:00.000+01:00

The Caterham build is progressing well, apart from a trip to casaulty last weekend by one of my assistants - more on that later, hopefully I caught it on film ;->

Currently investigating how to get the car to the track. It's road legal, so I could drive it there, but should you have an altercation on the circuit you may have a fair bit of work to do before it's roadworthy again. So a trailer is recommended.

Lunchtime at work today was doing some research on this when Ncik recommended I check out this. Think that might be slightly overkill and I'll be going for something slightly more discreet.

i-Play Investment / Sale Price

2007-10-19T09:47:00.001+01:00

Further to the last post, news has come out on what Oberon actually paid for i-Play rather than the $110m that was slung around when the deal closed. Apax Partners Funds and Argo Global Capital were investors in each round:

1st Round: £10m / $20m in September 2000

2nd Round: £12m / $24m

3rd Round: £9m /$18m in November 2004

I couldn't find any reference to a fourth round, although given the last round is back in November 2004, I thought one had occurred.

So at least $62m invested (Given the pound/dollar exchange rate at the time, actually a fair bit more) and sold for $52.52m. Once you take into account the stock that the staff and management owned it looks like Oberon got a good deal and Apax/Argo just wanted out...

More Consolidation in Mobile

2007-10-18T10:53:00.001+01:00

So my previous employer InfoSpace has sold off the mobile division to Motricity for $135m in cash, full press release here. I think this will be a good move for all involved and InfoSpace will no longer have to tear itself in two directions between online search and mobile services - two fundamentally different areas of business.

It will be interesting to see how the mobile search technology develops which appears to have gone with the mobile division to Motricity, competition in that space is pretty significant.

Also this week we hear that Oberon have been buying again, this time Kenjitsu, a Nikitova-affiliated outsourcing studio located in St Petersburg, Russia, and Friends Games located near Kiev, Ukraine. Price was near $20m according to Globes.

At the same time however David Gosen announces redundancies, which according to rumour are focused in Dunfermline and Macclesfield, respectively the original HQ of Digital Bridges before Brian Greasley arrived (moving it to London) and home of Ditto Studios who were acquired in June 2005.

Seems a fairly straightforward moving of higher cost development labour from UK to Eastern Europe, pity the bad-news is buried amonst the acquisition announcements. Commiserations to all those involved who have lost jobs.

Caterham 7

2007-10-12T10:10:00.000+01:00

Havn't had too much spare time over the last few days because Wednesday I took delivery of a garage full of parts so that I can build a Caterham 7. So the last couple of evenings have been spent wading through the build manual and attempting to locate the clutch release mechanism and the lower wishbone from amoungst the boxes and plastic bags now hiding the garage floor.

So why build a car, especially when Caterham could do it for you?

Well I did a racing course at Silverstone last year and whilst not amongst the best drivers I really enjoyed it and was interested in taking it further for fun. One of the challenges on the course was understanding how the car setup could affect lap times. I've never really been into car maintainence - topping up the water and oil has generally been the extent of my experience to date, so once talk gets onto the setup of the anti-roll bar, and how it should be set depending on whether the track was wet or dry, I knew I had a lot to learn.

So after some investigation, the Caterham Academy seemed to be the ideal solution. Buy the car in bits, put them together yourself so you really understand how it all works, then the following year race the car you built. You should then (hopefully) have the knowledge to adjust the setup of the car yourself for different track conditions and if (when) you have a coming together with another car or barrier, you can assess the damage and fix it youself.

That's the plan anyway, I've got most the front suspension constructed, roll cage installed and last night attached the gearbox to the engine. Hoping this weekend to get the engine installed into the chassis. Its great fun so far, and I'm also attempting to make a stop-motion video of the construction process, so we'll see how that's looking next week...

Press Releases = Buses

2007-10-05T16:29:00.000+01:00

Press releases are like buses, don't see any for ages and all of a sudden they all arrive at once.

We had worked out an impressive plan with carefully staged releases at regular intervals, but then real life and the logistics of dealing with multiple partners and legal and PR departments intervened. So for the follow-up to our Fireworks release, visit http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/29084/Eidos-to-Raid-Christmas

For the impatient among you (it is a Friday afternoon), I can paraphrase and say that it has been announced that we will be developing the mobile version of Tomb Raider: Anniversary. Having worked on previous Tomb Raider titles as IOMO it's great to be able to revisit Lara in this latest version which will be out for Christmas. More news on the game will follow soon!

Fireworks

2007-10-02T11:01:00.000+01:00

At FinBlade we officially announced our first product yesterday, Fireworks, which uses a really nifty piece of hardware developed by ZeeToo called the 'ZeeMote'.

It is fundamentally an analogue joystick that uses Bluetooth to connect to the handset wirelessly. Obviously having an analogue joystick to control a game is much easier than having to mash keys on a handset designed for dialling numbers.

It gets really interesting however when you realise that you can attach multiple controllers to the same handset. Now you can play multiplayer games on a single phone. This is the premise behind Fireworks, a simple casual game (where you have to 'catch' exploding fireworks) that can be played by two players simultaneously.

Taking this a step further, if you have a handset with a TV out option e.g. Nokia N95 then you have a console like setup ready to go. (or PC-like with a Bluetooth keyboard).

Now obviously a mobile phone has nowhere near the power of a XBox360 or PS3, but latest phones are on a par with a PlayStation 1. Compare the rate of processor speed advancement on consoles and mobiles are you realise mobiles will catch up.

Why would you bother to attach a mobile to a TV when you already have a console there though? Well consider those territories where there are very few PCs and zero console installed base. They do have TVs and mobile phones. All of sudden there are some very interesting possibilities.

Caught in the Act

2007-09-21T19:17:00.000+01:00

I have an office at home, usual contents, PC, printer, scanner all my computer junk and so on.

The kids tend to pop in to get paper from the printer to draw on and to spin around in the swivel chair. I don't mind them grabbing the odd sheet of paper but on occasions they can make a mess.

On one such occasion, arriving to find paper strewn over the floor I went back out to the kitchen to confront the perpetrator. Since I have two girls they are proficient at blaming each other, or the dog.

Alex made repeated denials that she had been in my office, had not touched the scanner, definately had not left sticky hand prints on it.

That was until confronted by the evidence.

Happy Birthday

2007-09-06T10:32:00.000+01:00

Happy Birthday FinBlade & Metismo! Both one month old today.

We announced FinBlade to the world last month after an extremely short gestation period. Our expectation was that IOMO would be acquired and we would move with it to a new employer, but when this fell through we had to move extremely quickly to setup the new companies.

Metismo is in 'stealth' mode for now, it's focus is on mobile technology and it is working on a next generation framework (called 'Bedrock') which FinBlade will use in future titles, plus some other secret squirrel projects.

FinBlade on the other hand is very much a pure game developer, concentrating on creating titles for Publishers, a significant proportion of which we expect to be based on major brands. Our first title will be announced very shortly, just waiting for the publisher's PR agency to get back to us with the draft release.

We will also be developing original IP, but as a developer the plan is to launch these games via Publishers. The time when a developer could self-publish a title, as we often did with IOMO is now gone I believe, at least if you want to see significant sales.

So Happy Birthday FinBlade and Metismo, there is cake in the kitchen and thanks to the guys in the office that are taking this journey with us.

First Post of my First Blog

2007-09-04T16:18:00.000+01:00

You should start a blog says Fergus on the train back from a publisher meeting in London...

So with the aim of toppling Monty as the destination for mobile games related blogs and so I can hassle everyone for sponsorship at industry drinks events here we go. Sorry. Monty. Only. Kidding.

No longer being a covered person of a NASDAQ listed corporation I'm going to use my new found freedom to talk about the companies I'm involved in, so that's primarily mobile games, mobile technology, probably football (when Spurs win) and anything else that comes to mind.

I'll be trying to post each week, maybe more frequently, possibly not if work intervenes, hopefully it will be interesting and I'll continue, if not it will have been an educational experiment in user-generated content and I can look cool when I tell my kids that I had a blog...