Category Archives: NASCAR

Getting NASCAR RaceView Working with Internet Explorer 8

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(Update February 12, 2011: The information in this post is now obsolete with the 2011 NASCAR season as RaceView is now an Adobe Flash application and does not use Java or Octoshape.)

During the first 200 laps or so of the NASCAR race in Bristol, I finally got NASCAR.COM’s RaceView working on my system. Hallelujah brother! LOL. This post will probably get further tweaking after next race. Before I begin I should state that my system is as follows:

  • Running Windows XP Home w/ SP3 with all high priority updates applied. I use the Windows Classic theme which explains why the dialog boxes in the screenshots I have look the way they do. Old school, what can I say.
  • Have Windows Media Player 11 installed.
  • Have Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.6.8 installed.
  • Running latest version of Java (build 1.6.0_21-b07)
  • Using an EVGA 6800GT with NVidia drivers version 178.13. I mention this because many of the newer 190+ drivers have caused RaceView to lock the system harder than a rock in the past when it was working before and re-installing the older video drivers cured it.
  • Running DirectX v9.0c

Now that all of that is out of the way. Much of what I cover here is also mentioned on NASCAR.COM’s TrackPass knowledge base. All I am going to include is what I did that, apparently, got it working, possibly in combination with what the NASCAR.COM webmasters did on their end after I told @NASCAR on Twitter my problems getting nothing but errors.

I decided I would try to get it working with Internet Explorer first. If it doesn’t work with it, it’s not going to work with anything else. Due to the length of this post with all the screenshots, I’m using the read more option here:

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My NASCAR Inspired DestroyTwitter 2 Theme

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Now that DestroyTwitter 2.1.0 supports themes, I decided to make a NASCAR inspired theme. It’s very similar to the one I made for DestroyTwitter 1.X. You just need to download, unzip the file and install the theme through preferences.

Download DestroyTwitter 2.X NASCAR theme

mrheadrick's DestroyTwitter 2.X NASCAR theme

Since these are just CSS files, they are very easy to modify how you see fit. Enjoy! :)

My plea to NASCAR.COM and TrackPass (RaceView) Developers

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It’s probably a good thing I waited until today to write this; otherwise, it would have been full of many colorful words. :) This is a follow-up to my last post. I tried to run NASCAR.COM’s RaceView during the Michigan race this past Sunday and all I got was either a window with “loading” at the bottom or just a solid white window. This occurred in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. I opened up the Java console in both Firefox and IE and it just had a Java error of a Null pointer assignment:

java.lang.NullPointerException
 at com.sun.opengl.util.JOGLAppletLauncher.start(JOGLAppletLauncher.java:385)
 at sun.plugin2.applet.Plugin2Manager$AppletExecutionRunnable.run(Unknown Source)
 at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
Exception: java.lang.NullPointerException

Yes, I did try to reload several times. So I gave up and just started PitCommand to listen to Dale Jr’s audio. I did have to start it in IE first before the audio would work in Firefox and I just didn’t care to investigate this further. I was frustrated and missing the race. Before you ask, I do meet their minimum system requirements.

Now, I don’t mind troubleshooting problems; however, I do not want to do it during the actual race! It totally ruins the fan’s experience. How can you expect fans to search knowledge bases and forums, reinstall Java, plug-ins, audio and video drivers, and do whatever else might be potentially involved? It boggles my mind that there isn’t a race simulator that we can test these applications with during the week. If I was a NASCAR website/TrackPass developer I’d scream for this. I am quite sure the website team has no desire to fix the software during races either (I only hope they at least have some internal system to do this). Normally I wouldn’t give a flying fruitcake about it, but I am paying more for TrackPass than I am for my webhosting here that my blog, among several other sites, is on. The IndyCar RaceControl works (yes, they do loose timing and scoring sometimes but that’s an issue at their end when it happens) and it’s free.

This will probably be my last season to subscribe to RaceView. If the preview works during next year’s Daytona 500 then I might reconsider; otherwise, I’ll just stick with the scanner.

I welcome any comments about other’s experiences and how you got it to work, if you did.

Getting NASCAR PitCommand audio working in Firefox

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(If you’re having problems with RaceView, you might want to check out this post: Getting NASCAR RaceView Working with Internet Explorer 8)

During Sunday’s NASCAR race I was trying to get the audio working in NASCAR.COM’s PitCommand using Firefox (version 3.6.8 at the time). No such luck, even after disabling AdBlock Plus and enabling 3rd party cookies. So, I decided to try it in Internet Explorer 8. Naturally, it worked just fine. I tried it again in Firefox, and it worked! Hmm.. what’s going on here?

I knew that the audio stream was being handled by Windows Media Player since it was using the .ASX extension. I did have the Windows Media Player plug-in for Firefox installed. There’s an article at mozillaZine which gives information about it. In fact, my MIDI page is designed to work with it. Since it only worked after I tried it in Internet Explorer, I figured it must have triggered something or saved something into Temporary Internet Files that allowed it to then work in Firefox. Since WMP is a Microsoft program, it stores its files in IE’s Temporary Internet Files directory. So, I deleted the Temporary Internet Files using the Internet Explorer Control Panel applet. The audio quit working with PitCommand in Firefox again. I launched PitCommand in IE which worked and closed IE. The audio started working in Firefox. At this point I restarted Windows and went to Firefox first thing and the PitCommand audio worked.

It seems that some Javascript or other file that gets saved to Temporary Internet Files when using IE is letting the WMP Firefox plug-in to play the audio in this specific case. This leads me to believe that the code on NASCAR.COM’s site might be doing different things based on the browser it detects. Because I was sick of troubleshooting and missing the race I stopped here.

NASCAR.COM really needs to have a fake race stream during the week so that all of us, and them, can work on software issues then and not during the actual race! Who wants to do that? I also tried RaceView but it wouldn’t work in either Firefox or IE. I just got a blank page with a Java error on it. Early this morning I got a Java update (version 6, update 21) but I won’t be able to test that out till the next cup race.  :-?

How I got NASCAR RaceBuddy working in Firefox.

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During the NASCAR Truck race on Friday, NASCAR.COM made TruckBuddy available.  It was very similar to RaceBuddy they had last year during the TNT races. You get a choice of several live video feeds along with a mosaic feed of 4 video streams at once and a live chat feature.

Problem:

When I first tried it with Firefox (version 3.6 or 3.6.2), the video portion did not work and the live chat portion on the right side would not work properly either. It would let me attempt to login via Twitter and provided the typical Twitter Allow/Deny Connection authorization window; however, upon returning to the application it did nothing and acted like I had never logged in.

Solution:

I solved the video problem by disabling Adblock Plus on the NASCAR.COM site. Apparently, if the video advertisement does not play first, then nothing else will or at least problematically.

I solved the chat problem by enabling 3rd-party cookies which I have disabled by default (Tools -> Options -> Privacy). Upon further examination, I could disable 3rd-party cookies again if I gave exceptions to the following:

  • gigya.com
  • livechat.gigya.com
  • socialize.gigya.com

After the race was over, I re-enabled Adblock Plus for NASCAR.COM :) . Hopefully this helps anyone else trying to get RaceBuddy working with Firefox should they have it again.