Here are a couple of Fantasy Tour de France stats to go with today's rest day.

Currently, the leading team has 15130 pts. But had you selected the perfect lineup (so far), you would be on 18,502. The current 'perfect' team is as follows:

Note that these are not the 9 top scoring riders. Nocentini (11th) is included rather than Nibali (7th) in order to fit under the 100 point limit.

But who is currently the most efficient rider - earning the most pts in comparison to their cost. Well, its Christophe Riblon - just ahead of teammate and former race leader Rinaldo Nocentini.

Read the extended article for the Pts/cost table for all riders.

It should come as no surprise that Alberto Contador topscored today - but only by 3 pts over Andy Schleck. Kloden 3rd, Wiggins 4th and Brice Feillu still going strong in 5th.

EDTeam are the leaders, but Malvern Star Test Team close in by nearly 100 pts as they move up into 2nd place. LDF - Velingnews.com are also going well, breaking into the Top 5.

Top 10:

The extended article has the full standings

On the 8th of July, Hannes68, the guy behind Hannes Editor for PCM08 and Hannes Converter for PCM07 and PCM08, announced that he'd not update his editors to work with PCM09, simply due to lack of motivation - saying that when he came home from his programming job, he'd rather not do more programming.

But luckily for everyone, 8 days later, he's changed his mind and released Hannes Editor and Hannes Converter for PCM09. For the news one around here, Hannes Editor is an easy-to-use editor to change a lot of the basic stuff such as rider names, stats, team names, shirts, and a lot more. It also has several save game options, such as changing budgets. And I'd also say that it's even easier to work with than Cyanides standard DB Editor.

Hannes Converter is kinda like the Advanced Editor. It can edit all tables of the database, but unlike the Advanced Editor, you can also choose to only load one specific table. This makes it very useful when making small changes and fixes, especially when it comes to save games which the Advanced Editor has some problems dealing with.

So, lots of 'thank you' go to Hannes68. You can get the Hannes Editor 0.9 here and the Hannes Converter 0.9 at this link.

Please note that both versions still are betas. And both of them are only in German - it should be fairly easy to understand anyhow, though.

George Hincapie may have missed yellow, but he is the day top's scorer. He does so ahead of Brice Feillu, Andreas Kloden and Nicholas Roche.

EDTeam are building up a dangerously strong advantage as far as the other teams will be concerned - the lead is up to 766 pts over Team We shall Fail!, the new 2nd place team. However, Malvern Star Test Team are up to 3rd and scored 77 more pts than EDTeam in this stage. There are 2 big movers in the top 10 as Team Matt493 fall 3 spots to 5 and LDF-Velingnews.com rise 3 spots to 7. Lagetcher's Team Pathetic are the biggest gainers of all teams, as they have increased their position by 7 places.

Top 10:

The extended article has the full standings

With the Tour having been rather dull (not to say flat out boring) so far, feel free to look away from the tv for one moment to enjoy this week's Weekly News.

PCM released on Steam
So far, the cases with people having problems with downloading Pro Cycling Manager from Metaboli have been many. Especially people who've bought the game with Paypal have experienced not to receive a serial key and therefore not being able to play the game.

Well, here's a new possibility: As with last year's game, it's now possible to buy it through Steam. The price is currently 44.99 €, but can properly be altered using a proxy. As a positive side effect, it's said that there's no StarForce protection included with this version as it uses Steam's in-built one instead.

Database Viewer is back - along with new feature
As some may have noticed, we did a small reorganization in our menu during yesterday. A new top-menu, PCM Tools, is now appearing, and with it, you now have access to three very useful applications: The well-known Shirt Database, the returned Database Viewer - and the new feature, a Shirt Viewer.

The Shirt Viewer works like a simple online version of NIFSkope and Cyanide's Cyclist Viewer. With it, you can see how a shirt will look in-game without having to open the game (or the Cyclist Viewer) to check. It's still work-in-progress, so any feedback is very welcome.

The Database Viewer is an old function which had been deactivated for several different reasons. Now, it's back, and we intend to keep it updated for PCM09. Currently, you can view stats, teams and other useful information of three PCM09 databases: The Real Name DB, PCM.daily's Expansion Pack and the PPDB V1f.

Quick Tips: How to Backup Your Save Game
A new article has been published in the PCM09 Articles Section. It explains how to easily make regular backups of your save game - all done automatically by the game. It's worth mentioning that the tip also works for PCM08 - PCM07 is untested, but it may work for that game too.

You can read it by clicking here.

Several graphic updates by Jacky_Durand
The Graphic Artist Jacky_Durand is still going strong. He's been making sponsor kits and other graphic updates for PCM for very long, and PCM09 is no exception. During this week, he released several updates:

A Tour de France Update which replaces the standard banners with some including the real Tour de France sponsors.
A Velodrome Patch which replaces the three standard velodromes with AWD Dome in Bremen, the Olympiahalle in Munich and the Amsterdam Velodrome.
A Generic Velodrome Patch which replaces the three standard velodromes with some even better looking ones with one for Germany, one for France and one for Netherlands
And lastly, a No Logo Patch which removes the logos of the main menu.

Will007 and Rasm making fantastic shirts
If you've been looking in the Graphic Forum of PCM09 lately, you may have noticed the so-called WiRa Cooperation. Will007 and rasm, two of the best shirt makers, have teamed up to make fantasy shirts for the members of PCM.daily - something which is very much requested due to PCM09's Create a Team-feature.

So far, they've been making ~14 amazing fantasy shirts, and if you're looking for one, you may want to request it in their thread - but only when it's open for requests. Make sure to read the 1st post before doing anything.

Several historical projects in the making
With compatibility being 'high' between PCM08 and PCM09 (meaning that a lot of stuff can be reused), many projects are being converted at the moment. One of the things that PCM08 was lacking was historical projects - although many were in the making, the fewest were released.

Luckily, it seems like that will change for PCM09. During this week, rogercoll, primarily known for his cooperation with Dankan when making databases, announced a 1991 project which looks very promising with its correct equipment, caps instead of helmets, etc. You can read more about it here.

Two 1998 projects have also been announced. One is being made by the Norwegian community while the other one is made by French DB maker Mista-Flo. The one from the Norwegian community looks like one which may be released eventually.

Other than this, I've heard about a 2005 DB, a 2003 DB, a 1996 DB, one including all the stars from the 90's and a all-star DB from 1903 to 2009. So at this point, it's looking good for the fans of historical databases.