andrewlighten.com

How am I supposed see anything?

And no, moving the slider to ‘More’ doesn’t help. It doesn’t move; it’s locked on ‘Less‘.

Microsoft’s labs have an interesting way to view a collection of photos around a particular subject. Neat. It’s a little slow, and took forever to install the first time I ran it, but I like the concept.

In the dying stages of qualifying for tonight’s Hungarian Grand Prix, a spat has erupted between Britain’s Lewis Hamilton and his Spanish team mate Fernando Alonso.

Hamilton was the quicker of the two throughout qualifying, but was beaten to pole position by Alonso in controversial circumstances.

Late in the session Alonso pitted for a fresh set of tyres, and Hamilton followed him in. Alonso’s tyres were duly changed, and the team released him from the pit box. But he sat. And waited. And waited. When he finally left, there wasn’t enough time left in the session for Hamilton to leave the pits and put in another flying lap on fresh tyres.

McLaren boss Ron Dennis was clearly furious at what had transpired. After the session ended he had very stern words with Alonso’s race engineer, then proceeded to take the headphones off his head and march him to the back of the garage with a very firm grip on his arm.

In the post session conference Hamilton was understandably annoyed, but played the situation very diplomatically. When asked whether he was aware of the reason Alonso held him up he immediately replied “Er, no. I think you should ask the team that.“

The sport’s governing body did just that, and four hours after the session, said this:

The actions of the team in the final minutes of qualifying are considered prejudicial to the interests of the competition and to the interests of motor sport generally.

The penalty to be applied is that such points (if any) in the 2007 Formula One constructors championship as accrue to the team as a result of their participation in the 2007 Hungarian Grand Prix will be withdrawn.

Because of the delay caused by Alonso, Hamilton was unable to complete his pit stop in time sufficient to enable him also to complete a flying lap.

The stewards find that he unnecessarily impeded another driver, Hamilton, and as a result he will be penalised by a loss of five grid positions.

When Alonso was asked about the incident he explained that the team had timed his pit departure so that he’d re-enter the track between the two Ferraris. However, at the time of the incident, only one Ferrari — that of Finn Kimi Raikkonen — was on the track. The second Ferrari was in its pit box having failed to make the cut for the final qualifying session.

Alonso and Hamilton have had an uneasy relationship at McLaren this year.

After winning driver’s championship for the last two years at Renault, everyone believed that Alonso would clearly be the lead driver, and that in his rookie year Hamilton would build his skill and racecraft while picking up occasional points. Midway through the year, however, Hamilton has dominated, and is leading the driver’s championship having been on the podium for 9 of the 10 races run so far.

Alonso has struggled to come to terms with the McLaren’s characteristics, and clearly feel’s he’s under extreme pressure from a vastly less experienced teammate. The cracks in his psyche have been visibly building all season, and we’ve now seen yet more evidence of his fragile state of mind. Hamilton is clearly winning the mental game between the two team mates.

You can’t help but feel that last night’s incident is one step further to outright war between the two drivers, reminiscent of the Senna/Prost battles of the late 80′s.

Thirty years ago today — 3rd August, 1977 — was the day that the TRS-80 model 1 was released.

This was an iconic computer and one that I’ll always think of very fondly. It was the first computer I owned, and I can’t imagine how many thousand hours I spent using it.

Good memories.