Jack Cooper

Everyone has a driving style. Even if we were all taught by the same instructor, we would all develop our own personal habits. Some are good, and some make me wonder whether the cliché about finding a licence in a cereal box is true for some drivers. Driving abomination, not style. But anyway, let's not drift away and start ranting.

I'm still not a proud owner of a full UK driving license at the time of typing, but I've had lessons for a whole four months now - equating to about 22 hours of practice. I'm now - without trying to be all big-headed - pretty competent at driving now, and it's just a case of waiting for my test. This means I now fully know my driving habits. Put it this way: I have to control them while with an instructor...


1) Speed may be a nice drug, but it's all about the acceleration

There's a fair stereotype that gets knocked around all the time that 'all petrolheads tear up the motorway at dangerous speeds'. While I've just paraphrased my own imagination, I'm sure you've heard something along the lines of it from some Daily Mail reader at one point. The yoof are such an inconsiderate, dangerous bunch, aren't they? Well, come at me, male sibling.

Let's open the taps every now and then!

I'm a petrolhead, so yes, I'm not one for dawdling at 55mph on a 70mph dual carriageway. But pure speed isn't my kick; it's how I get to that speed that excites me. You see, a lot of people will join a fast-moving road, and be happy to carry on accelerating like an oil tanker. Not only is that a buzzkill, it's actually pretty dangerous. Come on, give the gearbox a workout! Stay in the lowest gears until you physically see the engine's valves jump out of the bonnet, and then perhaps consider a change. The engine noise, the G forces, and the faces of shock when people see a learner car actually outpacing continental drift is enough to make my day.

Luckily, this isn't one I have to hide away from the instructor. You are actually taught to get to speed as quickly as possible, with the idea being you do not disturb the flow of traffic. As long as you stay within the speed limit, you bury that goddamn gas pedal to the carpets and beyond.


2) I'm lazier than [insert witty simile here]

While I enjoy driving, there are times where you can't just mash your foot down and enjoy the wonders of acceleration. Locations that pop into my mind for an example of this would be every urban area in the world. Town driving is urgh. Just urgh. It's the only adjective that works.

Uuuuuuuuuuuuurgh.

Towns involve you constantly stopping and starting (bye-bye clutch leg), constantly looking out for pedestrians, and constantly imagining you winning a fight with that white van man who just cut you up. It's hard work, it's a chore, and it's no fun. To compensate for this, I like to be as lazy as possible. For example, if a light is red, I will glide up to it as slowly as possible in the vague hope that it might turn green before I stop - therefore getting rid of the need to do the whole mirrors-handbrake-neutral-first gear-find biting point-check mirrors-set off thing. If that was a mouthful to read, imagine doing it in real life every 30 seconds in a town centre.

Generally, if I have to come to a complete stop, I groan internally.


3) If you overtake me, I will be looking at your arse for a looong time

Not literally, of course. Though it has already put a weird mental image in my mind - great. No, what is mean is that if you overtake me, my primeval competitive nature gets sparked into life. I will prove to you that overtaking me was a complete waste of time by tailgating you for as long as possible.

I bet you felt real proud overtaking the Corsa whip, eh?

It sounds like a dick-move, and that's because it kind of is a dick-move. It isn't necessary, it doesn't achieve anything, and it probably aggravates the driver in front. But I see it as a bit of a passive-aggressive 'f*ck you'. Now naturally if that driver then proceeds to drive way over the limit after overtaking, I can't carry on tailgating. But to the guy in the bronze Mini Cooper S earlier today, I hope you and your turbo hot-hatch felt proud about overtaking a 1.3l diesel Corsa today. I'm sure you felt so manly, as a nice little compensation.

I have more minor habits, but I don't want this to end up being drivel more pointless than Sepp Blatter's Fifa victory speech today.

See ya soon, random reader.

As I've said quattuordecillion times already (thanks for the number, AdVenture Capitalist), I'm quite fond of my cars - I have been from a very early age. I'm also quite fond of gaming on my PC. Don't get me wrong; I'm not some hardcore gamer with a triple-monitor setup, and a dedicated man cave for my dank rig. No, I'm just a 'casual gamer'. Or a peasant, if you're a scummy elitist.

More to the point, I like nothing more than combining these two interests of mine. So out comes the racing simulation genre of gaming. It's quite a niche sector of games as far as relative terms will go, because far more people prefer a proper action game rather than a dull driving game. I mean, come on, why don't you just go outside and drive for real? Huh?

I don't care how pretty you are, you have atrocious physics

To that, I have no answer. But because there are only a select few weirdos like me who are entertained by driving virtual cars, good driving games are few and far between. People will point out the Need for Speed franchise, which seems to have those developers who conceive a new baby as soon as they've released one. As a result, NFS games aren't the most polished in the world, and the physics suck big time. Where's the risk adrenaline when you can take corners at 200mph?

Then on the consoles you have the likes of Forza and Gran Turismo. Before I built my PC in the summer of 2013, I had a PS3, and I enjoyed Gran Turismo 5 very much indeed. But all the textures are a bit pants, all the cars sound like vacuum cleaners, and there's only so much fun to be had with a Dualshock 3 controller. Forza 5 improves the graphics and sound, but again, the controller is your bottleneck.

GT5 was my benchmark for years

Recently, a few good games have leaked onto the PC. We have Assetto Corsa; a fantastic simulation game in terms of physics and visuals. I got it summer 2014, and I've been entertained with it ever since. Its online mode is crap, the clutch is completely wrong, and the career mode is shallow, but the sheer beauty of it keeps hot laps entertaining. There is a reason why car gamers are niche - we are plain weird. Entertained by cars going in mindless circles with no competition? Pfft.

Pretty sexy, I think you'll agree

However, despite being satisfied with Assetto Corsa, I have been keeping my eye on another game which seemed to be in Alpha mode for ages. It's publically funded, and it's called Project CARS (Community Assisted Racing Simulator). Many 60fps YouTube videos have been leaked, and it looked mouth-wateringly good. It was beautiful. I wanted it badly.

Finally, the day came. I was hesitant to spend £40 on a game which I subconsciously knew would be in the Steam summer sale just weeks later, but I couldn't resist. I took the plunge, splashed my cash, and downloaded it as quickly as possible. And when I mean as quickly as possible, I mean going to the extent of carrying my 20kg rig downstairs and plugging it into an ethernet port. 15GB downloaded in forty minutes - now was my time to play what seemed to be the greatest driving game in the world.

Dirty, dirty virtual porn

I quickly configured my gaming wheel (a Logitech G27, if you're bothered to know), and went straight to the free hot lapping section to get to a car and a track as quickly as possible. I randomly picked the McLaren F1 and the Abu Dhabi F1 track. Initial impressions? "Well, this is crap." Oh dear, this wasn't great. I was hearing no tyre squeal, and I was getting no force feedback through my wheel. Is this going to be a disaster?

I quit the game in a small huff shortly after, muttering that my £40 would be better spent by eating it. But I decided to give it another chance, spurred on by the cost of the bloody game. I tried career mode. Oh, this is actually pretty good. You start with karts. I've driven karts before, and this game matched their habits so well, I was almost grinning by the end of the first race. This was exactly karting, minus the g-forces.

Yep, pretty hot

But what's the point of a game which can do karts, but not cars? Well, I put aside my prejudice, and took a Lotus 49 to the Nurburgring. The engine sound was perfection. The force feedback was magically better. The physics were on-par with Assetto Corsa. And the clutch was behaving like a normal bloody clutch. Yep, this is pretty special.

So, a quick summary, before I bore you too much. The online mode is great. The flexibility there is good, and it's easy to join a lobby and play instantly. Career mode is amazing. You don't have to do the 'start from the bottom, now we here' kind of thing. You can start right from the top classes of cars, if you so wish to. The visuals are amazing. Beauty was the key selling point of this game, and it really hasn't let itself down.

SO REAL

However, you do need a beast of a PC to run it. While I do have a rather outdated AMD Phenom II 965 processor, my graphics card is a not-at-all-shabby AMD R9 280X - a card that makes Assetto Corsa run at a stable 120fps. There are reports that Project CARS is NVidia biased, so even the top AMD rigs may struggle with this game.

With that being said though, this game is a must if you enjoy any kind of racing simulation. You can make this game as arcade or as serious as you want it to be. It'll stroke the beginners' back, and it'll reward the enthusiasts' dedication with utter, utter realism. Congrats, Slightly Mad Studios. You've created a game that will stop me revising for my exams.

When I was walking home from school today, I was listening to Radio 2. Don't judge, the only other station my phone picks up is bloody Heart FM, where 'more music variety' means playing 'Happy' and 'Shake it Off' at least fourteen times per day. Regular DJ Steve Wright was talking to Peter Kay, who was promoting his new sitcom: Car Share. The concept was incredibly simple; a comedy starring two different personalities in a car sharing scheme en route to work. It features Kay's trademark analysing skills of turning normal habits into a laugh. Or at least that was what was being discussed on the interview. I wanted to see if something so basic could be funny. All episodes are now premiered on the BBC iPlayer ahead of the TV broadcast, so if you live in the UK, click the link at the bottom if you're interested.

As a pre-warning, this does contain story spoilers.

The first episode starts with John (Kay) in his car, trying to find his workmate Kayleigh (Sian Gibson) via a dodgy sat-nav. Har-dee-har, a crap satnav gag, how original. My immediate impressions were 'oh god', but I was barely a minute in, so it'd be stupid to judge. Eventually John finds the right house, and out pops an attractive blonde the same age as him. The developing romance was almost too obvious, really.

Two characters, and a car. Job done.

Critically, these two characters have completely different personalities and conflicting views, which provides the main fuel for the comedy in this show. Peter Kay has done well to capture tiny details of what we do when we drive, such as looking at the radio screen when something silly is played (because of course the display recognises your scowl), and subtly adjusting your seating position. All very realistic.

Predictably, the relationship starts off frosty; not helped by an unfortunate accident at the start which ends up with John covered in piss. Kayleigh is peppy, slightly thick, and has a 'Now that's what I call Music' compilation album as her favourite CD. She also insists on having Forever FM on the radio. Think Heart FM, but worse. Honestly, I didn't think that was possible, but there you go. The atmosphere created by the two characters is very well done on a realistic scale, but my laughter was few and far between. Frequent little nose laughs (c'mon, everyone does that), but only a couple of proper laugh-out-louds.

The driving is real, as Kay wanted this to be as realistic and as believable as possible.

There just isn't quite enough depth for me to get properly gripped thus far, but how can you have a deep story in a show that simply has two workmates in a car? After three episodes, you get the impression that the characters will evolve personally, which is a nice touch to keep the audience engaged. John will probably come out of his single life shell, whereas Kayleigh may well stop being so naive.

Quick summary? This show has a realistic side to it. You do really feel like you're simply watching two people conversing with each other. There's no puns, no audience laughter, just two distant workmates getting to know each other. In a way, that's great, but some would argue it's too boring; too basic.

As far as comedy goes, it's more comedy bronze than comedy gold, but as far as making something out of a simple car journey goes, then it's an 11/10. I respect Peter Kay for his obvious hard work into this production, and I want to see him on the TV screen more often. Car Share? I will be watching more episodes, but I don't think I'd ever worry about missing an episode.

6/10

UK readers can watch episodes here!

Whether you like it or not, sexism really does exist in our modern world, and it has existed for what seems like forever in some shape or form. Only in the past fifty years or so have people actually begun to sort out this issue for once and for all.

Compared to a few decades ago, we have advanced far. The Equal Pay Act (1970) was introduced by the UK government, assuring women that they will get the same pay for the same work as men. While the pay isn't exactly equal currently, it has improved massively in recent times. And of course women aren't seen to be the stereotypical homemakers anymore; looking after the baby, and making sure she is ready to pamper her husband as soon as he gets home. No, over 60% of women are now in work, which is closer to the male figure than it ever has been.

However, while the feminist revolution continues to quietly carry on making things fairer for everybody, there are a few, er, 'toxic' feminists around. Sounds like quite a harsh way of putting things, but I think it's true. They are known officially as 'radical feminists', and they want gender equality and then some. You know, the stereotypical 'men are pointless' ones.

As far as I can work out thus far, they all seem to have built a cosy nest on this abomination of a website called Buzzfeed. To sum Buzzfeed up quickly, it's a click bait extravaganza of random cat pictures, and list articles that often contain a subheading along the line of 'You won't believe what #26 is!!!'. It's trashy, and it kills your brain cells. But most of all, it seems to absolutely love finding sexism in anything.

The day was October 21st, 2014. It was a quiet day, fairly boring actually. I had just come home from school, and decided to see what's what on the world's most laughable website. An article was pinned near the top of the site, called 'There Are More Male MPs Right Now Than The Total Number of Female MPs Ever'. Right, OK, let's click.

The story describes how female MPs claim that politics is a testosterone-fuelled environment, which put other women off. Yes, that may well be true indeed; politics is all about getting yourself heard, especially in the House of Commons. But how in the name of all that's holy is it gender inequality, as Buzzfeed claims?

What's said in the article by interviewed female politicians is that women may not like the idea as much as men would. Somehow, Buzzfeed translates that into a subheading of 'We have a way to go yet in terms of gender equality'. What? Where is the part where women are declined to be part of a political party? Oh right yeah, there isn't one.

Let's take this somewhere else. Primary school teachers are mostly women. There have been no squabbles of sexism here, because men aren't declined to work in this sector, it's just that a lot of men (as a rule of thumb) choose not to work there. Big difference between choice and being declined, and the politics scene is exactly the same. I can think of other female dominated examples, such as librarians and journalists, but none have received complaints, because the Buzzfeed machine hasn't got round to them - yet.

Stick with what you're good at Buzzfeed, and that's blatantly stealing stories and pictures from Reddit, and claiming them to be your original content.

Here's the story that made me roll my eyes.

For once, I'm not going to rant about a particular subject. This is a personal blog, so I may as well use it for personal things.

It was April Fool's Day on April 1st! Can you believe it? Anyway, enough of the sarcasm. I love April Fool's, because it's a day where [most] people have a good sense of humour. Despite that, I've never actually 'fooled' anyone, on the simple basis that I haven't been clever enough to think of anything.

Well, this year I decided to go to Reddit and get some inspiration. Some pranks were cliché, some where downright evil, and some were a bit too simple. But then I came across a winner. I would remap my brother's keyboard on his laptop.

In case you don't know what remapping is, it's a simple process of changing what each key does. So I could remap my 'Enter' key to now tell the computer that I want it to act as 'Delete' instead. The possibilities are endless, but I kept it simple but cruel. I simply swapped two vowels around; 'o' became 'u', and vice versa. Su, hellu, my name is Jack Cuuper.

Trust me, it worked a treat. His anger almost earnt me a bruise, but it was worth it.

What else has been going on in my life recently? Oh yeah, driving lessons. I started on the very first day of February, so it makes it exactly two months of teaching so far. I have very recently just passed my theory test on my first attempt (thank god), so I am now free to book my practical test whenever I feel the time is right to do so. My instructor thinks I'm ready, but I feel I'm making just a few too many mistakes at the moment.

And what if I do get my licence in the next month? Many cheers all around, that's for sure. But I still don't have a job (which is annoying), so running a car is out of the question for now. Will I forget how to drive? God, I hope not. Oh well, let's just end up on BBC Three's 'Dangerous Driver's School', a show where some teenagers pretend that they have no idea that they're being filmed - despite there being an obvious bloody camera on the dashboard.

Anything else? Well, my exams are coming up shortly. I'm not too worried about them to an extent, because I have a certain amount of faith in myself. But I probably should revise sooner or later for at least a few subjects. Oh wait - I can't due to all this bloody homework I get bombarded with.

Teachers, pls.

In case you didn't know, BST stands for British Summer Time. This is where we move our clocks forward an hour (losing an hour's sleep in the process) to give us lighter evenings. This is what I like to call the 'fake GMT'; as we are now entering what is officially known as 'GMT +1'. Catchy.

I write about this now because on the 29th March at 1am, we move our clocks forward an hour - or tonight in simple terms. But my question is this: do we really need this time swapping?

Our fake BST was made to help farmers during the war. If the clocks went forward an hour, they would have more light in the evening to do their thing. But we are above and beyond that time period now. So, should we stick to just one time?

Well, let's think about this carefully. If we stuck to BST, our summers would be amazing, and our winters won't get dark while you're preparing yourself some lunch. However, it does mean the sun rises later - that's a problem for winter.

We actually tested it out in the 1960s, to see if we could live on a constant BST. What occurred was a much higher accident rate in the mornings, due to the fact that the sun wasn't saying hi until 8:30 in the morning, and the street lamps weren't going off until about 9. But then surely we have dark evening rush hours? Well, yes we do. But studies have found we are much less alert in the morning rush, so a dark morning drive is a lot worse than a dark evening one.

So, a constant BST has been proven not to work. So, what about sticking to proper GMT? I like our winter time, because it sticks to UTC - the coordinated universal time. UTC is what every place in the world follows, and it's great that the UK is based right in the middle of the prime meridian time line. USA EST is five hours behind us, so their time is officially called UTC -5. Australia is UTC +10, and so on.

'Proper' GMT would mean our tried and tested winters would stay the same, but summer nights will be slightly shorter. So instead of summer closing in at around 10pm, expect it to be at 9. Quite clearly, there is nothing wrong with this, so why are we still following BST?

Cut the crap, UK official time people. I want my hour's sleep.

I haven't posted here for quite a while. So for the dusting of individuals who do occasionally visit this place: sorry.