Last week saw our 20th wedding anniversary. A significant milestone, though not Silver like 25 years, apparently it’s China or Platinum. @elemming decided to book us a treat though. We have on very special occasions gone for experiences to remember. My 40th birthday was driving fast cars around Thruxton.
For @elemming’s 40th we went to Claridges.
We did get to go to Heston’s place for a meal recently too, that was a @elemming’s work based special occasion.
For this special event we went to Raymon Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons both to stay a night and to have the dining experience at a 2 star Michelin restaurant (one that has been held for 30 years!)
For once, in order to make the meal extra special, neither of us took photos of the food or tweeted, facebooked etc through the entire meal. It seems odd to say how special it made it. The food is so beautifully presented, delicate balances of taste and texture and served with great respect not pomposity. However it is a few hours of non-tech facing focus that we will remember for a long while.
The visit to the hotel did not go without recording to share with others and for some memories. The location is a wonderful old house with a very extensive garden. Most of the garden is taken up with things that can be eaten. It is way past a small vegetable plot or herb garden.
Not only that but they also have a charging post for electric vehicles, though it has not been used very much for various demographic reasons.
The gardens were liberally dotted with some very nice statues and sculptures. It added to the other world feeling of being transported elsewhere. The lack of textures on them adding a Snowcrash like feel to the avatars.
The scarecrow was great fun too, apparently modelled on Monsieur Blanc
The fruit gathering statue with its large hat reminded me of Fable too !
One of the more unusual areas creating produce for the grand was the mushroom valley. I have not seen one of those before and it was intriguing. A small river of water and lots of logs and sheltered places allowed fresh fungi to be cultivated outside. The wicker pigs fitted in nicely too.
The room we had “Kiki” was a courtyard room. Some very fine marble in the bathroom and the most comfy hotel bed I have slept in yet. Their photos do it much more justice.
Sometimes going to a place with so many people to help and do things can feel a little odd, not joining in feels strange for me. We are all people after all. However the people at Le Manoir are so relaxed and friendly, yet spot on professionals that it removed that discomfort for me.
As the cook in the house and being willing to try more and more difficult and tasty dishes I learned a lot from what I got to see, smell and taste in the restaurant. Things like a sorbet of red pepper and tomato, or a subtle hint of Wasabi with some cucumber. I had never had Wasabi in anything other than a very rich nasal tickling concentrate. In this dish it was a smoky background flavour that was very surprising in its familiarity but yet confusing as my eyes were not watering.
The food writer Jay Rayner wrote he usually reviewed food at horrible places so we didn’t have to but Le Manoir he was pleased to review because none would ever get the chance to go.
I realise how lucky and special it was for us to be able to experience this. I am also lucky that I was also able to learn a lot and also remember it, not just share it at the time. I think live blogging or periscoping it may have destroyed the moment 🙂
Thankyou everyone for making it such a special and enjoyable time.
Monthly Archives: May 2015
Project Cars – High speed virtual world
Project Cars went live across consoles and PC last week. I am a big fan of racing games. Of all the genres they are my favourite. Forza on the Xbox has been my go to game for driving fun so I decided on the PS4 version of Project Cars in the hope I would have a good racing game on either console. I was not let down at all!
Project Cars looks, sounds and more importantly feels like a proper racing game. Where it differs to some of the other recent games is the inclusion of some very low end racing with Karts and Super Karts. The mid range road cars and GT cars in general feel good and solid, the Karts are twitchy and manic and amazing fun too.
There is a lot of customisation of how you play that can be done in Project Cars. I just put it on the medium setting for everything and got re-aquainted with the PS4 controller. What you need to do in Project Cars is be very very subtle with power and the steering with some of the car models. Tank slappers and oversteer can be very unforgiving in some of the classes. Project Cars, like all good racing games rewards practice. The feeling of getting to grips, just, with a class of car and putting in some fast laps, knowing you can shave even more time off is at its core.
So we have a very good physics model and huge array of classic racetracks. So that’s all good so far. A good physics model and a feel for driving has been in every game I have enjoyed from back in the Night Driver day to pole position, the mighty Sega Rally, Colin Mcrae Rally, Gran Turismo and finally Forza. What they all have gradually added and improved on top of the physics and feel is the look.
I always prefer an in car view. (These will be even better with the VR headsets). Project Cars adds a really interesting view from inside your crash helmet (it has lots of views to choose, including a centre of the cockpit view even for cars that are not central drive). The crash helmet view also muffles the sound just a little. It does some interesting fx with focus blur and forcing your head to bobble back and forth with acceleration. As you can see in this photo elements of the view are blurred on purpose. It is a sort of tilt shift effect that is very pleasing live.
There are also some very effective weather dynamics, rain is quite terrifying as you hurtle along having turned on your windscreen wipers. (Oddly my first wet race nothing told me I had wipers but I mashed a few buttons and found the down dpad turned them on). The haze and the rain drops, including the sounds of them is very clever.
Other games have realtime weather and lighting but Project Cars just has more and better.
The solo career lets you pick a class to start in, like Karts, and work your way up. It is not long before you get to invitational races in all sorts of classes so it does not force too much monotony like a real career might 🙂
You can always hit single race and pick any car, any track any time with 30+ other cars on the track with you too.
An unusual feature on the PS4 is the pit radio messages, as they come out of the controller speaker, which is a nice touch.
On the 360 I had a very good force feedback wheel and pedals for Forza, but it doesn’t work on Xbox One. It made a great deal of difference to times, and to be abel to make sensible gear changes. Pads just don’t suit gears IMHO. Project Cars works with the pad but I am sure would be greatly enhanced with a wheel and pedals.
I tend to leave the driving line on when i don’t have a real wheel and force feedback as it fills in for the lack of sense of speed you can suffer from in any game with only rumblers. I would prefer to be driving without out but I think at the moment I will stick with it 🙂
The tracks are very notable too in Project Cars, all there straight away, as are the cars. No pretend economy to have to buy your way up. Donnington, Oulton Park, Snetterton, Brands Hatch, Imola, Monza, Nordshleife are all there.
Like all good car games there are a stack of tuning options, damage models, tyre wear, pit strategies and aero set ups. Pit stops, if the race is long enough or the rules dictate, let you pick a strategy from a set you have made for that stop.
Probably the maddest option though is the real time actual 24 hour race. There is an achievement for that ! It suggests you get some mates over and take turns driving. So when you enter pits there is an option to swap driver. As only I was signed in I tried the sea driver and an AI driver took part for me. I am not sure it it counts leaving him to do 24 hours, but I am sure the inter web will provide the answer to that.
The launch trailer is below. It does look like this and does not disappoint. I am sure the high end PC version is even more glorious and may make this the standard to beat.
Have your creations got a day named after them?
Yesterday was the 4th May. It happened to be a Monday here in the UK and so it was our May Day bank holiday. I was a little shocked when the predlets asked it it was a national holiday because it was Star Wars day! It was the biggest year for seeing May The 4th Be With You almost everywhere online though!
What started as a school yard joke seems to have spiralled into a massive Star Wars marketing buzz, but not just by its new owners Disney. I saw Star Wars hanging on to the day from so many places. Now us tech g33ks love Star Wars. It is nice to see the it getting such wide recognition but even Dyson vaccuum cleaners were getting in on the act. This image of 2 light sabre coloured vacuum cleaners was doing the social media rounds.
Sky TV was running the entire set of films in the order they were made and had a twitter poll on a twitter card to ask if you were light or dark side. That sort of made more sense than the hoover… I mean Dyson Vacuum cleaner.
Star Wars has always been as much about the stuff around it, the merchandising and toys etc as it has about the film. I remember, being 10 years old, and so excited about Star Wars. Very formative years. We had Star Trek on TV which was great but not as dramatic and action packed as the big screen experience of all those lasers, fighters and the deep breathing evil bad guy. Then there was the music. Epic in every way. So it was hard not to also get excited about the letraset transfers sets being able to rub and stick your own scene from the film or the branded cereal with a collectors toy in the box.
Still? a Vacuum cleaner? Oh well it is just a bit of fun.
I did tweet this the day before as the power tool I was using reminded me of Queen Amadala in the prequels.
I doubt the marketing department at the time had any idea that nearly 37 years on an entire day would be labelled, celebrated and hash tagged to promote the Star Wars properties. It has become such a part of our collective experience that it is quoted and referenced continually. “These are not the droids you are looking for”, “I am you Father”, “I have a bad feeling about this”, “Use the force Luke”, “Do or do not there is not try”. etc etc.
Now there are a few days still left available that have no special significance that I am sure someone, somewhere is trying to weave into their product launch or their initial startups.
In fact I wonder if there is a “special day” registry rather like domain name registration or trademarks?
As a thought experiment, pick a date and try and make a product for it?
12th August a.k.a 128 A day dedicated to restaurants everywhere I Want To Eat (128) see it works, though no in the US as it would be Eat One Too (8 12) a day to share a meal with someone.
Anyway, well done Star Wars and all your spin offs. I am very much looking forward to both the new film at the end of the year and the new Star Wars Battlefront game!
The Force is strong with this brand