Shoutbox

Please move to T&T if I'm ing too much


With just days to go before the new Formula 1 season (and just days AFTER the start of the new NASCAR season), I have finally managed to get a NON USENET discussion group together.

We are hoping to have several contests running for 2005 [see an earlier thread of mine], with the very real chance of the winner from each contest (perhaps even the top 3 from each contest) walking away with something in the way of a 2005 season F1 prize (to be decided upon at a later date).

If anyone is interested in taking a stroll across the hall and pitching up a tent, the urls are:
news://news.kylixhost.com/tgt.public.tgtchat
news://news.kylixhost.com/tgt.public.tgtxl

tgtchat is for everything that is UNDER 100KB in size.
tgtxl is form anything OVER 100KB in size.

There is a server-side enforced limit of 2MB per message for either group.

Only rules are
1: Anything >100KB dump on tgtxl
2: no fighting

Rule 2 mainly relates to people that want to start a personal feud on the group.  Genuinely light-hearted banter and ribbing is, of course, allowed and encouraged.

Regards,
Brian!

May be worth a look...

A Brief History of The Gravel Trap / TGT

TGT started out in 1997 as "F1NGers", part of the old formula1.com website, back when it was owned by Purple I as an unofficial formula 1 site.  The URL at the time was news://news.formula1.com, and newcomers would get to that through the 'Fun' page of the website - that's how the majority of us found the NG. Purple I didn't moderate the group, so we were left to our own devices, and a unique culture evolved, completely different to any other F1 forum on the internet. We said what we meant, and that meant some ugly flame wars at times - but it was all good fun. At some stage we got transferred to news://gearbox.formula1.com, for no apparent reason and without anyone telling us why... But this was just a cosmetic change.

At frequent times from 1999 onwards, f1.com faced legal threats from Bernie Ecclestone's FOM company, the owner of the commercial rights to F1. They contended that since they held the rights and the trademarks to F1, Purple I should not be operating a site under the F1.com name. This was eventually taken as far as the courts. I don't recall the outcome of the court hearing, or even if they made it into the courtroom. What we do know is that in 2001, the domains www.formula1.com and www.f1.com, both under Purple I control, were to be transferred to FOM and that at the start of the next season, a new site would replace the current one. This was in the summer of 2001, so we had almost a year to wait for our future to be resolved.

During the latter half of 2001, while we were debating our future and waiting it out to see what would happen, we gained our name, courtesy of Krash (the proverbial 'old man' of the group) - the name being 'F1NGers', borne out of 'Formula 1 NewsGroupers'.

It was unclear if the new site would continue to facilitate a newsgroup, but as the official site of Formula 1 motor racing, some were doubtful that it would. These doubts were confirmed when the new site went live and the newsgroup disappeared at the start of the 2002 season.

Fortunately, the F1NGers were saved from sudden obscurity. Mike (NG Handle: Sir Hailstone) had arranged a news server at his place of work. We were all grateful to Mike for providing this service, for free, and life continued as normal at news://news.f1ngers.com.

During the mid-point of the 2004 season, a flame war broke out that was the proverbial "straw that broke the camels back".

The end result of this ultimatly pointless argument?

The F1NGers have split into two distinct groups.  The group that wish to use a login system which gives them overall control over who accesses the group or not, thus meaning that if you happen to annoy one of the group 'rulers', then it's goodbye group account, hello barren wilderness.

Then you have The Gravel Trap, a place where discussion about any topic of your chosing [within reason] is encouraged, newcomers are welcomed with a simple click of the newsgroup link, and do not need to go through a long drawn out process of getting a forum account to join in.  Newcomers are welcome to post what they please, when they please and how they please.  We do not care about trivial matters like plain text / html or top / bottom posting, etc...

There are only really two things that we ask.  If you want to start any personal abuse against another group member, please take it off the group and onto private email or chat program.  Secondly; while we don't mind images being posted to the main group, we ask that anything over 100KB in size be posted to our 'binary' group, TGTXL.

Copyright TGT 2005

I have no idea how this works. I dont understand the link format. never seen something like that in my life. It has open up outlook express. But im an f1 fan (Ferrari and Micheal Schumacher since 1997 ) so im checking it out.

Ok, we're all fired up and ready to go, as are the contests we want to run for 2005.  All details about the group and the contests are below.

Main group server
news://news.thegraveltrap.com [need to find the "tgt" groups and select "subscribe"

Direct links
news://news.thegraveltrap.com/tgt.public.tgtchat
news://news.thegraveltrap.com/tgt.public.tgtxl

The top group is for all general discussion, and the second group is for anything posted that is going to be over 100KB is size.

As wel as these two groups, we are running a series of contests during the 2005 season, the details of which are below:-

=====================
CONTEST DESCRIPTIONS
=====================

=============================
BackMarker Scramble [BMS F1]
=============================
An entry post for the BMS will be posted after final qualifying has finished. To enter, all you have to do is log onto the contest selector and choose BMS F1 from the menu of listed games and select one driver that you think will have the biggest improvement to their finishing position over their qualifying position.

For the final score, it is a simple case of [start position] - [finishing position] = [points scored].

========
BITS F1
========
An entry post for BITS F1 will go up by the Wednesday before a race weekend. Before the first session of qualifying starts, you must select 2 drivers [team-mates if you wish, but CANNOT be the same driver] and your choice of Chassis, Engine and Tyres. ALL choices EXCEPT tyres have a limit of 2 selections for the entire season, so as the season rolls on your choices for each section will gradually get more limited. Try to earn as many points by picking smart and not always going for the obvious choice. Points are scored using the F1 scoring system [10,8,6,5,4,3,2,1] for each component EXCEPT tyres, which is a 5 point bonus for the tyre which scores the most points based on the F1 scoring system.

========
BETS F1
========
An entry post for BETS F1 will go up by the Wednesday before a race weekend. Before the first session of qualifying starts, you must select from a choice of 15 possible scenarios, all with odds ranging from 1:1 to a maximum 50:1. You will have a starting balance of $190,000 to play with, but a race weekend limit of $15,000 or 5 scenarios, whichever comes first. If you join the contest after round 1 then your balance will be reduced by $10,000 per round that you missed.

========
TIPS F1
========
An entry post for TIPS F1 will go up by the Wednesday before a race weekend. Before the first session of qualifying starts, you must select your choice of the top 8 drivers for the race & qualifying, as well as what you think will be the pole-time. You must also pick who you think will set the fastest race lap, who is leading at the mid-point of the race and who ends up as the first retirement.

The fastest lap, half distance leader and first retirement are all 5 point bonus categories. Get it right, score 5 points per section, get it wrong and score nothing. The pole-time works on a sliding scale. If you are within 1 second of the actual pole-time (above or below it) you score points. Within 1 tenth score 10 points, 2 tenths score 9 points, 3 tenths score 8 points, etc.. down to within 1 second and score just 1 point.

If you make a mistake with your choices, or you suddenly feel the urge to switch a driver for somebody else, just log back into the selector, make the changes and send your adjusted entry to the newsgroup entry post. The only contest that won't allow this will be the BETS F1, so make sure that you are 100% happy with those choices before you confirm them.

For all of the contests, if a driver is disqualified of penalised in some way then the contests results will be adjusted to reflect the adjusted results of the race.

The contest selector can be found at http://www.thegraveltrap.com and ALL contest related entry posts and information will be posted to the newsgroups at the top of this message.

It's Schumacher! I love F1, I'm an all round season fan.. I actually wouldn't mind Webber taking out Melbourne.

The started watching it when, let's see... when Schumacher was still at Benetton.

Last post on this subject [I promise ]

All contest have been opened and can now be accessed and entered.  Cut-off time for entries is Sat 5th March @ 13:00 local / 02:00 GMT.