Official GTPlanet Member of the Fortnight [Member of the Week]
- Thread starter Terronium-12
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Jump_Ace, the mod I idolise the most. He`s the best. (Oh, I will say that after each and every staff interview. Exept the "Jump_Ace" part...)
TL;DR...
Just kidding.
32. Now it's time for the "Moderator Special": the entire staff has been away on leave for several weeks on business and you're the only active staffer left standing, what do you do?
I grab a bottle of Rum and a 12 pack of Coke and prepare for some long sheepherding sessions!
That`s a badass moderating attitude. đź‘Ť [Rum? Seriously?]
TL;DR...
Just kidding.32. Now it's time for the "Moderator Special": the entire staff has been away on leave for several weeks on business and you're the only active staffer left standing, what do you do?
I grab a bottle of Rum and a 12 pack of Coke and prepare for some long sheepherding sessions!
That`s a badass moderating attitude. đź‘Ť [Rum? Seriously?]
- 28,198
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- KR_Viper
- I Renown I
The recognition of new faces will continue, but this month we're going to put a little spin on the whole concept; and until the end of the month we're going to spin things more quickly as the number of interviews will increase to 3 for the next two weeks. There are only a select number of individuals capable of upholding this new concept; those that don't cower in the face of fame, those that don't regress when presented with the opportunity to shout from a rooftop "I'm better than you... on the internet!".
Those who live, breathe, and exhale the very essence of what makes GTPlanet the place that it has become and will continue to be - these are the approved traits of the archetype known only as The GTPlanet Illuminati, er, I mean the GTPlanet Moderation Staff and incidentally, the GTPlanet Member of the Week.
Two birds with one stone? Say it isn't so!
No matter where we go, people will either ignore or want to confront us, which is where our personal bodyguards come in. No matter what we say, everyone will interrupt and/or attempt to correct us. No matter what we're wearing, it will be made fun of for the next 10 years. So let us welcome the newest member to the League of Extraordinary GTPeople, and the ninth in the long line of staff interviews, Pako!
There were a few sites that came up, but GTPlanet had the most information and the members here were inviting and helpful. I never really gave it much thought and didn’t try to “get the badge”, I just found myself wanting to give back to the community that had given so much to me. I never regretted it once. The staff, past and present, are all stand up guys to work with and it allowed me the capacity give a little bit more. I was here 24/7 anyways, I might as well work here to. 
I haven’t sat back and relaxed in some time. By the time the days done and I try to relax, I am usually passed out in seconds. In all seriousness, I do enjoy some time on our boat, floating on the water in the lake. Hanging out with the family, just kicking back listing to music and the kids laughing as they play in the water has been my new favorite thing to chill. Good times, just not enough of it.
It has it’s perks, but not the kind that some would think. For me it’s an honor to have been chosen and trusted with the responsibility to be a representative of GTPlanet and to enforce, guide, and steer it’s members with the vision that Jordan has orchestrated with his TOS and AUP. It’s only natural to feel a little power hungry at first, but the simple fact that your character was chosen to take the position is a direct assurance that you won’t abuse your position of authority.
There is no contest here. We all know the answer.
Threatened? no.
There are so many opinions out there, sometimes you just have to average out what everyone is saying. I do like a few of the overclocking forums for good insight into what chips are doing well and what trends are showing up for CPU/GPU production runs. The guys over at www.extremeoverclocking.com are great.
• PSP
• PS2
• PS3 Fatty from Launch
• PS3 Fatty
• PS4
• Xbox 360, w/ upgraded firmware.
• 42” LCD 1080p
• 60” Plasma 1080p
• Pioneer THX 7.1 Receiver
• Klipsch 7.0 Reference II Series Speaker setup
• Pioneer powered 10”sub
• Dual DIY Down firing 12” Rockford Fosgate subs.
• Misc. Sub Amp
• Sony Receiver for secondary system with Klipsch mini reference speakers.
• Yamaha 32 Channel Powered Mixer
• JBL SRX series 12” 2-way reference speakers.
• Event studio reference speakers
• Tannoy Studio reference 10” sub.
• Various Sure and AKG microphones.
• Various Sony, AKG, and Sennheinser headphones.
• JBL 18” Powered Sub
• Tascam MX-2424 24 track HD recorder
• Focusrite Saffire recording interface
• Fishtank cooled i7 3770k computer build
• Intel i5 Home Theater PC build
• Intel i7 970 computer build
• iPad Gen 1
• iPad mini Gen 3 with retna display
• x2 Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7”
• Various Bass and guitar amps
• Various electric bass guitars
• iPhone 5s
• A drawer full of old LG flips and Droid Cell phones from years gone by.
• Lenovo micro laptop.
• And I’m sure many other various printers, monitors, etc.
Those who live, breathe, and exhale the very essence of what makes GTPlanet the place that it has become and will continue to be - these are the approved traits of the archetype known only as The GTPlanet Illuminati, er, I mean the GTPlanet Moderation Staff and incidentally, the GTPlanet Member of the Week.
Two birds with one stone? Say it isn't so!
No matter where we go, people will either ignore or want to confront us, which is where our personal bodyguards come in. No matter what we say, everyone will interrupt and/or attempt to correct us. No matter what we're wearing, it will be made fun of for the next 10 years. So let us welcome the newest member to the League of Extraordinary GTPeople, and the ninth in the long line of staff interviews, Pako!
Excited? I’m ecstatic and humbled, especially in light of my low activity and almost “Staff Emeritus” status.
GT3 had just come out and I was looking for cheat codes and tuning advise.
There were a few sites that came up, but GTPlanet had the most information and the members here were inviting and helpful. I never really gave it much thought and didn’t try to “get the badge”, I just found myself wanting to give back to the community that had given so much to me. I never regretted it once. The staff, past and present, are all stand up guys to work with and it allowed me the capacity give a little bit more. I was here 24/7 anyways, I might as well work here to. I will say that my time here lately is very limited due to general life stuff getting in the way so I find myself frequenting the Rumble Strip and various sub forums in it. I like to spend time in the Workout thread to see what others are doing, and to offer any guidance to some of our younger or less experienced lifting members or those that are just starting out. I do frequent the electronics and computer forums quit often as well.
GT3 completely sucked me in. When I was on my couch (later in my cockpit) I could feel the turns, the acceleration, the braking, the bumps and how each car handled differently, I was hooked. It did take a bit of getting used to as I was actually looking for an Arcade style racer after just finishing Ridge Racer V I believe. At first I thought the game was pretty but was disappointed in the game play, only to soon realize it was because I wasn’t driving, I was trying to mash my way through the course. What really tied the whole game together for me was the community of GTPlanet. The collaboration of tunings, online racing events challenging each other’s times, talking about how we would take different turns and sharing each other’s experiences on the track was pure addiction.
Heh, not sure I’ve ever shared this information before. I haven’t thought about this for some time and find myself a little embarrassed by it but here goes. In my early youth, I was into CB radio and quickly found myself in various CB clubs while I was growing up in Hawaii. I needed a “handle” that was unique and mine. In Hawaiian, cannabis is called paka’lolo. I took the “pak” and the “o” for my handle that later became my username on GTPlanet. My username wasn’t always Pako here in GTPlanet. In the early days it was something much different, but we’ll leave it at that.
I love the genre and welcome any game developer for any platform. Although my heart is in the GT Series, there are a lot of other games and platforms that offers a lot to the end user. To have tunnel vision on just one product or franchise really limits the experiences you can have.
I was blown away, excited, and nervous at the new responsibility. Would I be able to live up to the badge and be a representative of GTP? Of course the first thing I did was read every word in the secret Moderation forum. I of course had to bring donuts for everyone, but I was happy to oblige.
After I got used to it, I really like it. Transitions to anything new can always be tough, but the community had outgrown VB and it was time to move to a new platform that could address the concerns that Jordan had to keep the community growing, providing the level of end user experience that would continue to nurture the growth of GTPlanet. I still catch myself from time to time looking for old features, but I’m an old dog trying to learn new tricks.
Honestly, I have spent very little time on GT6. Again, life challenges the past couple of years have been hard and have taken most of my time away from my gaming culture, but these have been good life challenges. Raising a family with a couple of young kids and trying to be a good provider and husband is taking some time priorities right now, but I still managed to get a little time in here and there.
Referencing my post above, my involvement as of late has been in a limited capacity, but still feel I can bring a calm resolution to conflicts that might arise. I’m a lifer here and won’t be going away anytime soon so as time and life permits, I can improve by being more involved and in touch with the rhythm of the community and it’s members.
It will be a little past Dec. 31st, but Witcher 3 is due out and I’m really excited for that. Other than that, I haven’t really seen a lot of anything that has really caught my eye yet. We’ll see. ?
I haven’t sat back and relaxed in some time. By the time the days done and I try to relax, I am usually passed out in seconds. In all seriousness, I do enjoy some time on our boat, floating on the water in the lake. Hanging out with the family, just kicking back listing to music and the kids laughing as they play in the water has been my new favorite thing to chill. Good times, just not enough of it. Not sure if interesting is the word, but our area is most noted for Glacier National Park.
I would work with Kaz on a collaborative project that would tie this community to the core package of GT6 and future releases of the franchise providing a seamless integration between the two environments.
I’m pretty open around these parts. I game, I lift, I play bass, mountain bike, and love boating. I really enjoy spending time with my wife and kids. Life is good!
It would have to be a Sci-Fi Thriller Action movie. I would hand pick new talent to hopefully give them a break and to give the audience a fresh cast to get to know.
I have never regretted any ban or punishment that I have issued. There have been a few times where I was a little too emotionally evolved to adequately and fairly address the issue, but the staff is so good, I quickly asked someone else to intervene so I could step away from the conflict. I can think of a few personal posts in the opinion forum that I wish I could take back. In looking back at some of those post, I know that some feelings were hurt and although that was never my intention, it still isn’t something that I would like to repeat.
Other than the free donuts, I’ve never been paid….have you?
It has it’s perks, but not the kind that some would think. For me it’s an honor to have been chosen and trusted with the responsibility to be a representative of GTPlanet and to enforce, guide, and steer it’s members with the vision that Jordan has orchestrated with his TOS and AUP. It’s only natural to feel a little power hungry at first, but the simple fact that your character was chosen to take the position is a direct assurance that you won’t abuse your position of authority.It would be on the night stand, ready to grab and put on at a moments notice. You never know when you’ll be on the job.
There is no contest here. We all know the answer.Stalked yes. Just look at all the creepy people following me.
Threatened? no.Utilizing elegance, style, and performance, it is our mission to provide the best feedback from the road to the heart of the driver.
Absolutely, without question.
Like most of us, we grew up with computers. It was familiar and I was good at them. My first real hook that jumped me into performance PC gaming was my first dual chip GPU, the Voodoo 5500. It didn’t take long before I was ripping the stock heatsinks off, upgrading the cooling, and pushing the card to get Ultima Ascension to run just a wee bit smoother. Oh man, I was hooked. I had never seen anything like it before. Consoles were so….. 1980’s in comparison. In keeping up with the technology, the rest is history.
Other than an eye for fresh donuts, I would be looking for someone that respects the members, the community, and the architecture that Jordan has designed for this community. Being active and respected among its members would also be a requirement.
I don’t believe my very first post is here any longer. A lot has changed in 13+ years. @Jordan could probably confirm if the earlier 2001 posts are still here or not. I have found it in the past and surprisingly my first post wasn’t much different than how I post now.
There are so many opinions out there, sometimes you just have to average out what everyone is saying. I do like a few of the overclocking forums for good insight into what chips are doing well and what trends are showing up for CPU/GPU production runs. The guys over at www.extremeoverclocking.com are great.I am always an advocate for free information but there is an economic truth that business needs to be financed in order to keep certain services running and available to their customers. If it means that they would have to shut down some of these services that would exclude everyone, then no, I don’t think it’s a bad idea. If their episodes provide that kind of value, $3.99 worth of value, then it’s a good move. The shorter episodes should provide enough of a sample to determine if it is worth that to you. $3.99 is less than a 20oz Double Mocha.
I had about a 6 month span, I want to say in about 2009 or so.
Not that I know of.
I would like to see more hardware development to better immerse the player into the game. If more manufacturers got into the production end of it, it could create a lower cost point for the average player to see hydraulic response systems, full visual surround, even smell modules to enhance the end users experience.
I would stock up on Red Bulls, put my seat belt on, polish my sledge hammer, and wait for the horde! I will of course have my cricket bat handy just in case.
Price Is Right! That show rocks! Family Feud is a close second.
Oh gawd. I’m a bit of an electronic whore and haven’t updated my inventory in some time. Here’s what I can recall off the top of my head:
• PSP
• PS2
• PS3 Fatty from Launch
• PS3 Fatty
• PS4
• Xbox 360, w/ upgraded firmware.
• 42” LCD 1080p
• 60” Plasma 1080p
• Pioneer THX 7.1 Receiver
• Klipsch 7.0 Reference II Series Speaker setup
• Pioneer powered 10”sub
• Dual DIY Down firing 12” Rockford Fosgate subs.
• Misc. Sub Amp
• Sony Receiver for secondary system with Klipsch mini reference speakers.
• Yamaha 32 Channel Powered Mixer
• JBL SRX series 12” 2-way reference speakers.
• Event studio reference speakers
• Tannoy Studio reference 10” sub.
• Various Sure and AKG microphones.
• Various Sony, AKG, and Sennheinser headphones.
• JBL 18” Powered Sub
• Tascam MX-2424 24 track HD recorder
• Focusrite Saffire recording interface
• Fishtank cooled i7 3770k computer build
• Intel i5 Home Theater PC build
• Intel i7 970 computer build
• iPad Gen 1
• iPad mini Gen 3 with retna display
• x2 Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7”
• Various Bass and guitar amps
• Various electric bass guitars
• iPhone 5s
• A drawer full of old LG flips and Droid Cell phones from years gone by.
• Lenovo micro laptop.
• And I’m sure many other various printers, monitors, etc.
1991 was especially memorable. I was a junior in high school, I was young, carefree, and immortal. Nothing could hurt me and every day was a new chance to see how far I could push the envelope. It was good times with friends exploring our youth and independence. I learned a lot of life lessons that year. Some good, some bad, but I wouldn’t trade any of it!
I would like to conclude thanking Jordan, the staff, and the great members of GTPlanet for making this community what it is. I can honestly say that this community has help to shape me into the person I am today and for that I am a better person because of it. I would hope that in the future I get an opportunity to get to know more of the members on a personal level, expanding my family here at GTPlanet.
- 34,821
- NoDak
- Cy-Fi
- 8,945
- F1 chimp land
- AnotherStory
Pako, the mod I idolise the most. He`s the best. (Oh, I will say that after each and every staff interview. Exept the "Pako" part...)
Hulk on electronic steroids. Nuff said.
No XBOX One? I am disappoint, son.
Hulk on electronic steroids. Nuff said.
No XBOX One? I am disappoint, son.
Pako
Staff Emeritus
- 16,440
- NW Montana
- GTP-Pako
- GTP Pako
Speaking of the voodoo 5500, here my only post here referencing it. Haha
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/who-has-the-best-avatar.2028/page-2#post-28225
Looks like a sad post if you ask me.
@TB I forgot to include my bass rig speakers which consist of 8-10's and 2-12's. Yes I like bass, how could you tell?
@Monatsende just waiting for the Christmas bundles. No need to rush it, no time to play it anyways.
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/who-has-the-best-avatar.2028/page-2#post-28225
Looks like a sad post if you ask me.
@TB I forgot to include my bass rig speakers which consist of 8-10's and 2-12's. Yes I like bass, how could you tell?
@Monatsende just waiting for the Christmas bundles. No need to rush it, no time to play it anyways.
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- 9,438
- Portland, OR
- Jump_Ace
- JUMPxACE
He's doin' fine so far. He has a healthy set of lungs that's for sure
We saw our pediatrician today and he said he may not even need PT for his right arm. My wife and I basically dismissed it since we tend to believe the radiologist professional.Jerome
Pako
Staff Emeritus
- 16,440
- NW Montana
- GTP-Pako
- GTP Pako
Oh man, and in looking at the list, now that I'm home, I totally forgot all my networking stuff.... Routers, switches, hubs, Wireless Access points, NAS boxes, etc. I think I have a problem. I will never admit it, but I think I might have a problem. I've never really looked at my inventory that way.
- 28,198
- Brooklyn, NY
- KR_Viper
- I Renown I
I have a closet full of (neatly sorted) boxes - fan controllers, hard drives, SSD's, video cards, plastic models, etc. You don't have a problem, I do.
Pako
Staff Emeritus
- 16,440
- NW Montana
- GTP-Pako
- GTP Pako
I have a closet full of (neatly sorted) boxes - fan controllers, hard drives, SSD's, video cards, plastic models, etc. You don't have a problem, I do.
That's awesome. I have a closet to.
I am working on getting it neatly sorted, it's not alphabetical or anything, but it's all there. I actually recently tossed a bunch of older stuff that was no longer of any kind of use. I am getting better at throwing stuff away. It's actually kind of liberating. And yes, you do have a problem....
Cano
Premium
- 20,758
- Cephiro
I finally eked out the time to read the Mod interviews, as I had lagged behind with all of them. Quite some great reads, some have pretty interesting backgrounds, while others I had never heard of, and others I had never realized they were moderators! Keep them coming, they've all been pretty enjoyable.
Keep them coming, they've all been pretty enjoyable.
- 28,198
- Brooklyn, NY
- KR_Viper
- I Renown I
The recognition of new faces will continue, but this month we're going to put a little spin on the whole concept, but alas all good things come to an end and this is the final week of the Staff Edition August special for this month, which means for this final final week instead of 2 or 3 interviews a week, you'll be getting 7 - that's right an interview for each day of the week!
There are only a select number of individuals capable of upholding this new concept; those that don't cower in the face of fame, those that don't regress when presented with the opportunity to shout from a rooftop "I'm better than you... on the internet!".
Those who live, breathe, and exhale the very essence of what makes GTPlanet the place that it has become and will continue to be - these are the approved traits of the archetype known only as The GTPlanet Illuminati, er, I mean the GTPlanet Moderation Staff and incidentally, the GTPlanet Member of the Week.
Two birds with one stone? Say it isn't so!
No matter where we go, people will either ignore or want to confront us, which is where our personal bodyguards come in. No matter what we say, everyone will interrupt and/or attempt to correct us. No matter what we're wearing, it will be made fun of for the next 10 years. So let us welcome the newest member to the League of Extraordinary GTPeople, and the tenth in the long line of staff interviews, Famine!
I seem to recall what brought me here was a weird racing challenge I'd made up - I'd been an active member at the granturismo.net forums, GTTimes (back then called GT3Times) and GTNetwork.de and I remember doing something silly to offset the serious business of the Nine Boards Challenge (for people less old: this was an event that took place between the nine major Gran Turismo forums of the day, including GTPlanet, GTTimes, GT.net, GTbyNumbers, Racing Line, House of GT and I've run out of memory now). @daan suggested I post it here at GTPlanet - he'd recently become a member here and so I did. That was slightly over eleven years, six months and fifteen days ago.
I do remember at one point asking Jordan if he'd like some forum-specific help tidying up the hybriding forum - before we took up residency here, daan and I created a GT3 hybriding video called The GT Genome Project - but I was just being helpful, I didn't actually want to do it. Fast forward to Q7...
The Infield. It's sane.
Scratch that, it's insane, but at least it's rationally insane. A lot of the other parts of the site require quite the Moebius Mind to rationalise, particularly when there's an update to GT6, a controversial incident in the F1 or someone nominates a small European hatchback in the Cool Wall.
I also hover about a lot in Opinions & Current Events, Motorsport and Cars in General, while I can be seen waving the big staff hammer (I call it Trollnir) in the GT6 forums - generally the Suggestions and Q&A fora.
Gran Turismo did.
My dad went on holiday to Atlanta in 1998 and, knowing I had just bought a PlayStation, brought me back a copy of Gran Turismo - we're all a bit car potty in my clan and it had cars in it (I think there was a TV advert running in the UK at the time too). He didn't realise that the US copy wouldn't work on my EU console, so I traded it in at a local game shop (that chipped PS1s) for an EU version out of duty and then played it. I entirely missed my 2nd year of university.
That was back in '96 when I went to university. I was a big Amiga nut - I think my first effort at webpage writing was a free site about the Amiga game "Worms: The Director's Cut" and I joined a bulletin board about the game. Confronted with a "Username" field, my brain panicked and went to what I'd been reading that day.
It was either Terry Pratchett's Sourcery or it was the Pratchett/Gaiman collaboration Good Omens - in both, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse feature quite heavily. Moving down the list, "Death" seemed somewhat of a cliche and "War" is not really a persona you want to project on the internet unless you are a colossal [you get the idea], but "Famine", considering my skinny frame of the time, fits like a glove. And then there's "Pestilence"... nope.
I bought an XBox just to play FM1 and FM2 and I borrowed a 360 just to play FM3. There were just too many things that I didn't get on with across the whole experience - quicksand grass, superglue walls, the awful truck tyre noises, the almost NFS-legacy visuals, the way the vehicle stats were presented out of 10 (being fair, GT2 did this too, but in arcade mode where it doesn't belong the least). I've never bothered with 4, 5 or Horizon, but I figured that if I hadn't been thoroughly grabbed by Dan's vision of a racing game after three attempts I probably wasn't going to be.
That's not to say that Kazunori's vision of one is perfect - I just get on with it better.
Well, it's like this...
There's a long-standing GT community tradition that you get daan & me at the same time. It's been the case at GTTimes & GTPlanet, GTbyNumbers discovered it when they invited us to the first UKGTP LAN, he was my best man, I was his - and so on. daan was given the badge in February 2005 and I recall some chatter at the time about me being a moderator - not from above, but from other members. I wasn't keen, actually. I was already well on the way to hitting the top of the posting charts and prominence draws a target on you - the last thing you want to do as a moderator of a community is cause problems just by being a moderator.
Shortly after that @Jordan contacted me and said much the same thing and I think we agreed that, on the next round of restocking the staff I'd slot in as a Moderator - someone with moderation powers that only extend to a given subforum or family of subfora - and see how it went. Overall I think it went pretty well...
Big fan. Jordan keeps making little tweaks that improve the site both from a posting point of view and from a moderation one - there's a few features I miss from vBulletin but they keep popping up and the XF ones are on the whole better anyway. It's a far nicer forum than any other I've ever used.
Also a big fan.
The first impressions were very good - it was like GT5 but it didn't take 2 minutes to load anything. It's been tweaked in dribs and drabs since and, although there's still some Gran Turismo hallmarks that could do with pushing out (you know, like the AI do to you blithely on a straight), it's a largely enjoyable game. More could be made of the Lunar Missions - they're fun, but there's only three of them (a lunar coursemaker would be brilliant) and there's still some features to come but I'm having plenty of fun with what I've got even without the online. Vision GT is an interesting project too, but I'd prefer some more new real cars like the TS030 we got a little way back.
Some sections of the community say GT6 is really GT5.5. I think that's a little harsh in one respect - GT5 Spec 2 was GT5.5, especially if you remember how clunky and annoying GT5's on-disc version could be - but from another it's like GT5 has been made into a much nicer, if shorter, package. Considering some folk say GT5 was really GT4.5 and will go out and buy any new FIFA, Call of Duty or Battlefield game with exactly the same graphics, assets and engine as the last one just because the number is one bigger, I don't think the "GT5.5" claim is one that stands up.
Moderation that never sleeps
That and the occasional public face of GTPlanet - I had to join 'proper' journalists at GT Academy last month and participate in round table interviews with Johnny Herbert (GT Academy head judge), Darren Cox (head of Nissan Motorsports Global) and Kazunori Yamauchi himself. It's actually a scary responsibility, particularly when they shove you in a stickered-up ÂŁ70k car unsupervised and tell you to have a crack at a lap time - you don't want to bring GTPlanet into the consciousness of other journos as "oh yeah, those gamers who stacked that GT-R".
And a book.
And lots of indigo.
I don't buy an awful lot of games - tend to pick a game and stick with it for a very long time. I broke up my GT5 time with the Assassin's Creed series, Fallout 3 and then again with Fallout New Vegas, while my GT6 time is punctuated by Skyrim. I've had to abandon Creed as the anti-gamer DRM Ubisoft insisted on poisoning AC3 with utterly ruined my game and I resolved not to go back to them until it was canned completely. I also stopped buying into Activision's treatment of Call of Duty, which seemed to be waiting until online was unplayable through people running around beneath the maps and bullseying you with a knife in a manner that would be rejected from a superhero film as "a bit far fetched" and releasing a new game, rather than fixing it. This means I've not had a COD game since MW2, despite all the hours I sunk into MW & MW2. So AC Rogue & Unity, Watchdogs & COD Advanced Warfare, which you'd expect me to be interested in, are out.
So there is nothing on my radar of any kind right now - moreso because I don't have a PS4 or XB1. I might lift an eyebrow in the PS4's direction at Project CARS or if Sony wants to send me a console to review Driveclub for GTPlanet Elder Scrolls Online would be tempting too, but for now I've got GT6 and Skyrim, plus whatever my wife and eldest daughter (youngest is a bit pre-PS aged right now) get for Christmas.
Browse GTPlanet.
And that's largely true. My days generally consist of waking up, writing (I'm running around 3,000 words/day at the moment, due to a couple of rush jobs) and going back to bed, punctuated by food, ablutions and family time. GTPlanet is time off, unless I'm writing a news article! Kicking back and watching a film or three with the older Minifam is good and I have Indy, my labrador, as a de-stresser!
It's the home of Ronseal Quick-drying Woodstain - it does exactly what it says on the tin.
Immediately employ Jordan as the systems administrator. At least 99.87% of what he does is beyond my understanding and I doubt GTPlanet could function as it does without him. In fact there's a curious parallel between Jordan and Kazunori - GTPlanet is, like Gran Turismo, one guy's vision of what the product should be and it's his life's work (so far) to make it as it is. We don't see a frightening amount of what goes into it, we just enjoy the results - and while we've got a Banned User Log full of the disgruntled who don't agree with the vision, the fact so many of us stick around without any major complaints says he's got it right. Though I think Jordan's feedback is a little more timely.
Also, I'd send Jann Mardenborough a GTPlanet sticker to sneak onto his GP3 car.
Jack Bauer is torturing you for your password to the GTPlanet moderation control panel. Would you give it up before the end of the episode or take that secret to your pain-wracked grave?
I'm in three minds. I'd like to write something myself, but (though I have at least partially) saying who'd I'd cast for this putative series would be too tricky to answer here.
My first alternative choice would be to redo something that, through casting or the march of time rendering the sets/visuals/makup technology laughable, should have been more satisfying than it was or now is - a faithful reboot with a new cast. Something like the BBC's Dirk Gently serial (Steven Mangan is no Svlad Cjelli), the Hitchhiker's Guide TV series from the 1980s (I'd want to keep Peter Jones's VT though) or The Colour of Magic - I can't stand David Sodding Jason and Eric Idle is and always has been Rincewind.
I think in the end I'd fall onto either a serialisation of a Robert Rankin book - his far-fetched fiction is something else - like Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse or, more likely, my favourite book of ever, Good Omens. The cast would be Tom Hiddleston as Aziraphale, David Tennant as Crowley, Miriam Margoyles as Agnes Nutter, Sean Bean as Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery Shadwell (spoiler alert - it's Sean Bean... guess), Patrick Stewart as Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell, Richard Coyle as Newton Pulsifer, Emma Watson as Anathema Device, a CGI Death voiced by Vin Diesel, Christina Hendricks as War, Christian Bale as Famine (yeah, yeah, shut up - he fits the description), Aiden Gillen as Pollution, Simon Pegg & Nick Frost as Hastur & Ligur (respectively) and Mandy Patinkin as Beelzebub.
Oddly it seems to happen when being lenient. I can count it on the fingers of one hand, but people who I could have banned but given the benefit of the doubt who've then rounded on me and had a tantrum that made me wish I had actually banned them exist. Though I have since banned them.
I'd punch them, but I'm too rich.
It depends on the style of badge. I might sew it or pin it onto one of my many GTPlanet shirts or, if it's more plaquey, stick it to my computer room door next to the "No Girls" sign.
Wipeout and I never got along, right from the very first one. I grabbed Fusion as my "sorry PSN got hacked" game and still didn't get on with it at all. Never played F-Zero - I wasn't a Nintendo child. So I'll say STUN Runner.
Yes and yes. Goes with the territory and the total amount of care I give is unrivalled in its lack of magnitude.
Well it can, sure, but only if you know how. So not very.
Actually, "community management" - a fancy label for forum moderator - is rapidly becoming a viable occupation, in the PR career ladder.
I'd certainly give it a look, but it'd have to be a community that is well lead from the top already. Largely GTPlanet moderation is easy - we almost always know what Jordan would do if it was him looking at the screen. With a less focussed, less fair and less predictable leadership, it'd be pretty thankless. I wouldn't want to have to moderate a community like some official forums where any kind of product dissent is met with a ban, whether valid or not.
Indirectly? Schyeah!
It seems a go-to when someone can't handle what's being said. It bothers me not - by the time they've got to the point of having to go "Yeah, what's with the purple anyway?", they've run out of steam.
The carbonfibre manufacture industry.
I've no love for either driver, though I respect what they can and could do at the top of their game. It's a tough call because Schumacher could drive the car at 99.95% for 99.95% of the time, but Lewis can drive at 112% when required.
It'll be somewhere in the online racing forums and it was in February 2003. It's bold, indigo and uses full sentences, so not much is different.
Criminy. I've got nearly 50,000 posts and there's some belters in there from conversations where I've had to check I was actually awake and not on medication. A couple spring up. One was when Carlos Kavros - THE Carlos Kavros - joined the site to tell us about Richard "Harold" Branson. The other is 4D gaming. Yeah. That was weird.
People always want something for nothing, so sure they're going to lose viewers. I'm not especially bothered either way - it's cheaper than Top Gear magazine.
In the early days, no more than a week. Since adminning it up... only the four days I was in Iceland.
Almost certainly North Korea. I can imagine I'm not too popular in Ethiopia either.
I'd like car manufacturers to realise two things. The first is that they gain sales from the exposure of racing games and stop charging ludicrous sums for licences when it's in their own interest to be featured - I've played about 100 hours of GT6, so even if I'm playing ten times more than the average player, that's 20 million hours of advertising from GT6. The second is that they gain sales no matter what game they're in and to stop signing exclusivity agreements - Porsche is harmed more by not being in GT6 than GT6 is, simply by not getting that Playstation exposure to impressionable kids who'll grow up wanting a Porsche. My eldest actually wants a Ruf (after a GT-R, of course)!
Isn't that a Sunday?
GTPlanet is quite like the USS Enterprise (D, thank you very much) - with a full complement on board you'd need a lot of hands on deck, but it can be run with far fewer crew if not all of it was needed. I'd probably [redacted] in order to [redacted]. With the [redacted] and 🤬 [redacted] Danny [redacted] out of the way, that'd [redacted] - certainly enough for one man to handle.
Oooohhh... Bullseye, Blankety Blank (the Les Dawson era) or 3-2-1 with Ted Rogers and Dusty Bin.
I think we own "all the" now - consoles, TVs, smartphones, tablets, PCs, laptops and netbooks, the occasional DSLR... I'm quite gadgety in general, but nothing floats my particular boat at the moment. Obviously there's going to be a PS4 in the future at some point but I'm not fussed at present.
I was moulded by the 90s - I didn't see the Noughties until I was already a man. Pretty much every memorable milestone other than "met my wife" occurred in the 1990s. I even got to witness my football team win a major trophy for the first time in 56 years. And they haven't won another one since.
To create the world's finest resto-modded Mk1 MX-5s.
See "If-", but substitute "Earth" for "Planet" and "Man" for "moderator".
None that you should be aware of, no. I'm sure the GTPopulation knows I used to play hockey quite a lot, but a few persistent injuries have somewhat subdued my appetite for it now. I quite like playing this racing game thing on the Playstation if that counts? Actually, I collect different versions of it too but, I'm sure that's reasonably well known...
Do my children count as hobbies?
I just wanted to say good luck - we're all counting on you.
There are only a select number of individuals capable of upholding this new concept; those that don't cower in the face of fame, those that don't regress when presented with the opportunity to shout from a rooftop "I'm better than you... on the internet!".
Those who live, breathe, and exhale the very essence of what makes GTPlanet the place that it has become and will continue to be - these are the approved traits of the archetype known only as The GTPlanet Illuminati, er, I mean the GTPlanet Moderation Staff and incidentally, the GTPlanet Member of the Week.
Two birds with one stone? Say it isn't so!
No matter where we go, people will either ignore or want to confront us, which is where our personal bodyguards come in. No matter what we say, everyone will interrupt and/or attempt to correct us. No matter what we're wearing, it will be made fun of for the next 10 years. So let us welcome the newest member to the League of Extraordinary GTPeople, and the tenth in the long line of staff interviews, Famine!
I seem to recall what brought me here was a weird racing challenge I'd made up - I'd been an active member at the granturismo.net forums, GTTimes (back then called GT3Times) and GTNetwork.de and I remember doing something silly to offset the serious business of the Nine Boards Challenge (for people less old: this was an event that took place between the nine major Gran Turismo forums of the day, including GTPlanet, GTTimes, GT.net, GTbyNumbers, Racing Line, House of GT and I've run out of memory now). @daan suggested I post it here at GTPlanet - he'd recently become a member here and so I did. That was slightly over eleven years, six months and fifteen days ago.
I do remember at one point asking Jordan if he'd like some forum-specific help tidying up the hybriding forum - before we took up residency here, daan and I created a GT3 hybriding video called The GT Genome Project - but I was just being helpful, I didn't actually want to do it. Fast forward to Q7...
The Infield. It's sane.
Scratch that, it's insane, but at least it's rationally insane. A lot of the other parts of the site require quite the Moebius Mind to rationalise, particularly when there's an update to GT6, a controversial incident in the F1 or someone nominates a small European hatchback in the Cool Wall.
I also hover about a lot in Opinions & Current Events, Motorsport and Cars in General, while I can be seen waving the big staff hammer (I call it Trollnir) in the GT6 forums - generally the Suggestions and Q&A fora.
Gran Turismo did.
My dad went on holiday to Atlanta in 1998 and, knowing I had just bought a PlayStation, brought me back a copy of Gran Turismo - we're all a bit car potty in my clan and it had cars in it (I think there was a TV advert running in the UK at the time too). He didn't realise that the US copy wouldn't work on my EU console, so I traded it in at a local game shop (that chipped PS1s) for an EU version out of duty and then played it. I entirely missed my 2nd year of university.
That was back in '96 when I went to university. I was a big Amiga nut - I think my first effort at webpage writing was a free site about the Amiga game "Worms: The Director's Cut" and I joined a bulletin board about the game. Confronted with a "Username" field, my brain panicked and went to what I'd been reading that day.
It was either Terry Pratchett's Sourcery or it was the Pratchett/Gaiman collaboration Good Omens - in both, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse feature quite heavily. Moving down the list, "Death" seemed somewhat of a cliche and "War" is not really a persona you want to project on the internet unless you are a colossal [you get the idea], but "Famine", considering my skinny frame of the time, fits like a glove. And then there's "Pestilence"... nope.
Gran Turismo.
I bought an XBox just to play FM1 and FM2 and I borrowed a 360 just to play FM3. There were just too many things that I didn't get on with across the whole experience - quicksand grass, superglue walls, the awful truck tyre noises, the almost NFS-legacy visuals, the way the vehicle stats were presented out of 10 (being fair, GT2 did this too, but in arcade mode where it doesn't belong the least). I've never bothered with 4, 5 or Horizon, but I figured that if I hadn't been thoroughly grabbed by Dan's vision of a racing game after three attempts I probably wasn't going to be.
That's not to say that Kazunori's vision of one is perfect - I just get on with it better.
Well, it's like this...
There's a long-standing GT community tradition that you get daan & me at the same time. It's been the case at GTTimes & GTPlanet, GTbyNumbers discovered it when they invited us to the first UKGTP LAN, he was my best man, I was his - and so on. daan was given the badge in February 2005 and I recall some chatter at the time about me being a moderator - not from above, but from other members. I wasn't keen, actually. I was already well on the way to hitting the top of the posting charts and prominence draws a target on you - the last thing you want to do as a moderator of a community is cause problems just by being a moderator.
Shortly after that @Jordan contacted me and said much the same thing and I think we agreed that, on the next round of restocking the staff I'd slot in as a Moderator - someone with moderation powers that only extend to a given subforum or family of subfora - and see how it went. Overall I think it went pretty well...
Big fan. Jordan keeps making little tweaks that improve the site both from a posting point of view and from a moderation one - there's a few features I miss from vBulletin but they keep popping up and the XF ones are on the whole better anyway. It's a far nicer forum than any other I've ever used.
Also a big fan.
The first impressions were very good - it was like GT5 but it didn't take 2 minutes to load anything. It's been tweaked in dribs and drabs since and, although there's still some Gran Turismo hallmarks that could do with pushing out (you know, like the AI do to you blithely on a straight), it's a largely enjoyable game. More could be made of the Lunar Missions - they're fun, but there's only three of them (a lunar coursemaker would be brilliant) and there's still some features to come but I'm having plenty of fun with what I've got even without the online. Vision GT is an interesting project too, but I'd prefer some more new real cars like the TS030 we got a little way back.
Some sections of the community say GT6 is really GT5.5. I think that's a little harsh in one respect - GT5 Spec 2 was GT5.5, especially if you remember how clunky and annoying GT5's on-disc version could be - but from another it's like GT5 has been made into a much nicer, if shorter, package. Considering some folk say GT5 was really GT4.5 and will go out and buy any new FIFA, Call of Duty or Battlefield game with exactly the same graphics, assets and engine as the last one just because the number is one bigger, I don't think the "GT5.5" claim is one that stands up.
Moderation that never sleeps
That and the occasional public face of GTPlanet - I had to join 'proper' journalists at GT Academy last month and participate in round table interviews with Johnny Herbert (GT Academy head judge), Darren Cox (head of Nissan Motorsports Global) and Kazunori Yamauchi himself. It's actually a scary responsibility, particularly when they shove you in a stickered-up ÂŁ70k car unsupervised and tell you to have a crack at a lap time - you don't want to bring GTPlanet into the consciousness of other journos as "oh yeah, those gamers who stacked that GT-R".
And a book.
And lots of indigo.
I don't buy an awful lot of games - tend to pick a game and stick with it for a very long time. I broke up my GT5 time with the Assassin's Creed series, Fallout 3 and then again with Fallout New Vegas, while my GT6 time is punctuated by Skyrim. I've had to abandon Creed as the anti-gamer DRM Ubisoft insisted on poisoning AC3 with utterly ruined my game and I resolved not to go back to them until it was canned completely. I also stopped buying into Activision's treatment of Call of Duty, which seemed to be waiting until online was unplayable through people running around beneath the maps and bullseying you with a knife in a manner that would be rejected from a superhero film as "a bit far fetched" and releasing a new game, rather than fixing it. This means I've not had a COD game since MW2, despite all the hours I sunk into MW & MW2. So AC Rogue & Unity, Watchdogs & COD Advanced Warfare, which you'd expect me to be interested in, are out.
So there is nothing on my radar of any kind right now - moreso because I don't have a PS4 or XB1. I might lift an eyebrow in the PS4's direction at Project CARS or if Sony wants to send me a console to review Driveclub for GTPlanet
Elder Scrolls Online would be tempting too, but for now I've got GT6 and Skyrim, plus whatever my wife and eldest daughter (youngest is a bit pre-PS aged right now) get for Christmas.Browse GTPlanet.
And that's largely true. My days generally consist of waking up, writing (I'm running around 3,000 words/day at the moment, due to a couple of rush jobs) and going back to bed, punctuated by food, ablutions and family time. GTPlanet is time off, unless I'm writing a news article! Kicking back and watching a film or three with the older Minifam is good and I have Indy, my labrador, as a de-stresser!
It's the home of Ronseal Quick-drying Woodstain - it does exactly what it says on the tin.
Immediately employ Jordan as the systems administrator. At least 99.87% of what he does is beyond my understanding and I doubt GTPlanet could function as it does without him. In fact there's a curious parallel between Jordan and Kazunori - GTPlanet is, like Gran Turismo, one guy's vision of what the product should be and it's his life's work (so far) to make it as it is. We don't see a frightening amount of what goes into it, we just enjoy the results - and while we've got a Banned User Log full of the disgruntled who don't agree with the vision, the fact so many of us stick around without any major complaints says he's got it right. Though I think Jordan's feedback is a little more timely.
Also, I'd send Jann Mardenborough a GTPlanet sticker to sneak onto his GP3 car.
Jack Bauer is torturing you for your password to the GTPlanet moderation control panel. Would you give it up before the end of the episode or take that secret to your pain-wracked grave?
I'm in three minds. I'd like to write something myself, but (though I have at least partially) saying who'd I'd cast for this putative series would be too tricky to answer here.
My first alternative choice would be to redo something that, through casting or the march of time rendering the sets/visuals/makup technology laughable, should have been more satisfying than it was or now is - a faithful reboot with a new cast. Something like the BBC's Dirk Gently serial (Steven Mangan is no Svlad Cjelli), the Hitchhiker's Guide TV series from the 1980s (I'd want to keep Peter Jones's VT though) or The Colour of Magic - I can't stand David Sodding Jason and Eric Idle is and always has been Rincewind.
I think in the end I'd fall onto either a serialisation of a Robert Rankin book - his far-fetched fiction is something else - like Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse or, more likely, my favourite book of ever, Good Omens. The cast would be Tom Hiddleston as Aziraphale, David Tennant as Crowley, Miriam Margoyles as Agnes Nutter, Sean Bean as Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery Shadwell (spoiler alert - it's Sean Bean... guess), Patrick Stewart as Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell, Richard Coyle as Newton Pulsifer, Emma Watson as Anathema Device, a CGI Death voiced by Vin Diesel, Christina Hendricks as War, Christian Bale as Famine (yeah, yeah, shut up - he fits the description), Aiden Gillen as Pollution, Simon Pegg & Nick Frost as Hastur & Ligur (respectively) and Mandy Patinkin as Beelzebub.
Oddly it seems to happen when being lenient. I can count it on the fingers of one hand, but people who I could have banned but given the benefit of the doubt who've then rounded on me and had a tantrum that made me wish I had actually banned them exist. Though I have since banned them.
I'd punch them, but I'm too rich.
It depends on the style of badge. I might sew it or pin it onto one of my many GTPlanet shirts or, if it's more plaquey, stick it to my computer room door next to the "No Girls" sign.
Wipeout and I never got along, right from the very first one. I grabbed Fusion as my "sorry PSN got hacked" game and still didn't get on with it at all. Never played F-Zero - I wasn't a Nintendo child. So I'll say STUN Runner.
Yes and yes. Goes with the territory and the total amount of care I give is unrivalled in its lack of magnitude.
Well it can, sure, but only if you know how. So not very.
Actually, "community management" - a fancy label for forum moderator - is rapidly becoming a viable occupation, in the PR career ladder.
I'd certainly give it a look, but it'd have to be a community that is well lead from the top already. Largely GTPlanet moderation is easy - we almost always know what Jordan would do if it was him looking at the screen. With a less focussed, less fair and less predictable leadership, it'd be pretty thankless. I wouldn't want to have to moderate a community like some official forums where any kind of product dissent is met with a ban, whether valid or not.
Indirectly? Schyeah!
It seems a go-to when someone can't handle what's being said. It bothers me not - by the time they've got to the point of having to go "Yeah, what's with the purple anyway?", they've run out of steam.
The carbonfibre manufacture industry.
I've no love for either driver, though I respect what they can and could do at the top of their game. It's a tough call because Schumacher could drive the car at 99.95% for 99.95% of the time, but Lewis can drive at 112% when required.
It'll be somewhere in the online racing forums and it was in February 2003. It's bold, indigo and uses full sentences, so not much is different.
Criminy. I've got nearly 50,000 posts and there's some belters in there from conversations where I've had to check I was actually awake and not on medication. A couple spring up. One was when Carlos Kavros - THE Carlos Kavros - joined the site to tell us about Richard "Harold" Branson. The other is 4D gaming. Yeah. That was weird.
People always want something for nothing, so sure they're going to lose viewers. I'm not especially bothered either way - it's cheaper than Top Gear magazine.
In the early days, no more than a week. Since adminning it up... only the four days I was in Iceland.
Almost certainly North Korea. I can imagine I'm not too popular in Ethiopia either.
I'd like car manufacturers to realise two things. The first is that they gain sales from the exposure of racing games and stop charging ludicrous sums for licences when it's in their own interest to be featured - I've played about 100 hours of GT6, so even if I'm playing ten times more than the average player, that's 20 million hours of advertising from GT6. The second is that they gain sales no matter what game they're in and to stop signing exclusivity agreements - Porsche is harmed more by not being in GT6 than GT6 is, simply by not getting that Playstation exposure to impressionable kids who'll grow up wanting a Porsche. My eldest actually wants a Ruf (after a GT-R, of course)!
Isn't that a Sunday?
GTPlanet is quite like the USS Enterprise (D, thank you very much) - with a full complement on board you'd need a lot of hands on deck, but it can be run with far fewer crew if not all of it was needed. I'd probably [redacted] in order to [redacted]. With the [redacted] and 🤬 [redacted] Danny [redacted] out of the way, that'd [redacted] - certainly enough for one man to handle.
Oooohhh... Bullseye, Blankety Blank (the Les Dawson era) or 3-2-1 with Ted Rogers and Dusty Bin.
I think we own "all the" now - consoles, TVs, smartphones, tablets, PCs, laptops and netbooks, the occasional DSLR... I'm quite gadgety in general, but nothing floats my particular boat at the moment. Obviously there's going to be a PS4 in the future at some point but I'm not fussed at present.
I was moulded by the 90s - I didn't see the Noughties until I was already a man. Pretty much every memorable milestone other than "met my wife" occurred in the 1990s. I even got to witness my football team win a major trophy for the first time in 56 years. And they haven't won another one since.
To create the world's finest resto-modded Mk1 MX-5s.
See "If-", but substitute "Earth" for "Planet" and "Man" for "moderator".
None that you should be aware of, no. I'm sure the GTPopulation knows I used to play hockey quite a lot, but a few persistent injuries have somewhat subdued my appetite for it now. I quite like playing this racing game thing on the Playstation if that counts? Actually, I collect different versions of it too but, I'm sure that's reasonably well known...
Do my children count as hobbies?
I just wanted to say good luck - we're all counting on you.
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They actually made a Dirk Gently series?
Also: Mandy Patinkin, Vin Diesel, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Tom Hiddleston in one show... plus all those other epic people... I think the internet would explode... if the production budget didn't first!
Also: Mandy Patinkin, Vin Diesel, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Tom Hiddleston in one show... plus all those other epic people... I think the internet would explode... if the production budget didn't first!
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Great to see that I'm not the only one who's a fan of Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams around here!
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Famine, the admin I fear, I mean, I idolise the most. He`s the best. (Oh, I will say that after each and every staff interview. Exept the "Famine" part...)
Indigo, the colour of your banhammer, too?
Very enjoyable read. Of course. đź‘Ť
Indigo, the colour of your banhammer, too?
Very enjoyable read. Of course. đź‘Ť
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- Famine's house.
- Milford_Cubicle
At least he mentioned his wife and kids a couple of times 
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I'm almost certain to be asleep between 0400 and 0730 local time. This isn't necessarily always the case - at Le Mans this year we were on air until 0315, but I wasn't online at the time. I think I was up until 0230 this morning (0130 GMT), but I was mainly writing a thousand words on the Audi A3 Saloon and only flicking onto GTP occasionally to check for spammersLooking at his recent posts, he has a gap between 01:05 GMT and 09:20 GMT. That's not to say he was sleeping, mind you.
Well, this one time I... but that's not important right now.
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I don't have pool or extended television, either and yet I almost always have at least 6, and up to 10 most weekends. For some reason, all of the boys in the neighborhood come in pair, too. It gets absurdly loud when they're all running around with Nerf guns* but at least I know where they are, who they're with and what they're doing.
*I have a feeling those will be exchanged for a pool table in a few years...
