Hello and welcome to Saturday! It's David Coulthard's birthday today, and the man is in Australia along with the rest of the BBC team, gearing up for qualifying later today. We're doing the same, and there'll be plenty of threads to follow along with later. Meanwhile, here are some things we're talking about:
- Stuart Codling has a presence on the brand new Formula Santander site, which seems to be a slice of F1 news and gossip from the major sponsor of Ferrari, McLaren and several races. Holly Samos is also writing on the website, and although it's not a beauty to look at, and there's still a few kinks to be worked out, it looks like there might be some good content.
- We just wanted to highlight a tweet from Renault who said: Did you know we published blogs from our fans, too? http://cot.ag/c1wUX6 Come on aspiring writers and Renault fans, get scribbling That seems very cool, doesn't it? You'd better get writing, Renault want to hear from you!
- Finally, we did our Fantasy Racers Reminder yesterday, and although it is too late to make changes to your team now, it's worth reading as it's a fabulous guest post from Gavin. If you'd like to feature your team in an upcoming reminder, please let me know, or pop your name as a volunteer in the wiki.
- Whilst we're talking about predictions and such like, don't forget to post your predictions to the Sofa F1 championship as well. Also, remind me to do mine, please!
That should do it for now. Stay tuned to Sidepodcast as we have lots of field reporters running around Albert Park and it's fabulous fun watching their progress. I will see you in the comments.
For the final Thursday Thoughts, Maverick has posed a question not directly related to F1, but an interesting one. Mr C and I are both answering, so make sure you also read his answer here. The question itself: why do you blog?
It's a tough one for me. I've been blogging for so long and in so many different ways that I often forget why I do it, aside from just enjoying the process. I love to blog. I like writing, I like forming an idea into something a bit bigger, I like sharing things with other people. I love getting comments, but that is a bonus.
Once, a long time ago, an Aunt of mine stumbled across my personal blog, and when talking to me about it, said it was just like a scrapbook she used to keep. She said it was exactly what she would have done if the technology had been around when she was a kid. That's mostly how I see my blog. One giant scrapbook - a way of highlighting and saving awesome things, taking part in and recording conversations with fabulous folks. Looking back through the archives can be a pleasure or a pain, but is always a fascinating thing to do.
I have quite a lot of archives to look through, with many, many blogs to my name. Currently, I have these blogs ongoing:
Other blogs I have started and stopped: Daily Tennis Blog, Daily F1 Blog, Daily Hollyoaks Blog, The BBC Blog.
It might be an addiction.
In terms of Sidepodcast, I feel as though the blog is for something that won't work very well in audio, and is for things that need sharing and archiving. We've often bemoaned the fact that audio isn't the easiest thing to look back on, and producing transcripts is very important, if time consuming. When something needs bookmarking in a more tangible form, a blog entry might be it.
F1 is one of the hardest subjects I've tackled, and even though I've learnt enormous amounts since I first started the Daily F1 Blog, I still feel clueless 99% of the time. Writing, and discussing the subject with our lovely community helps me keep on learning.
Welcome to the last Thursday Thoughts for the time being. We've been answering and posing questions for the off-season, and it's been an amazing ride, covering vast subjects from best team principals, to the economics of local governments. The best thing about Thursday Thoughts, though, has been the excellent participation amongst bloggers - from the volunteers to host the question each week - to everyone putting fingers to keyboard to come up with some answers.
This final question comes from Maverick of Viva F1, who thought it would be fitting for the last one. Rather than something specific to F1, we want to look at blogging. Maverick's question:
Which blog article or articles have you written that you were most pleased with writing and why?
The topic came out of a conversation about the reasons for blogging, why you do it and what you get out of it. These are also up for discussion, if you want to focus on the whys and wherefores, rather than specific posts.
We'll post our answer here later today, and if you take up the question, please link to your posts here as well.
That just leaves me time to thank everyone who's hosted a question:
We could never have come up with such a diverse range of conversations by ourselves, and I can't wait for the winter to come round so we can do it all again.
We have reached Thursday, and I have started to put the day in the introduction for each daily thread, as I know it helps some people (like me) who get confused about what day it actually is. It's a busy day on Sidepodcast today, as it was yesterday, so here's a round-up of what we've been up to:
- We have completed the Aside with Joe specials - a two part series taken from the Evening with Joe in London. They make for a fabulous listen, and even if the quality isn't the best, Joe is on fine form as usual. I hope you enjoy them, Mr C worked particularly hard on editing these, so leave him your feedback for part one and part two.
- It's our final Thursday Thoughts before the season gets underway, and it's Maverick who has come up with a lovely question to send off the series nicely. I hope everyone will make a special effort to participate in this final one - and make sure to link back to your posts in the thread so we can follow the conversation.
- The FIA published the revised entry list, following US F1's departure. There are only 12 teams on there now, which screws up pretty much all my preview shows. Oh well, now I can't wait for the season to start - if only so that nothing else changes before we get there! Have your say about the new-look list in the breakout thread.
That should do it for now. Let us know how your Thursday is going, and I will see you in the comments.
It is Bank Holiday Monday in the UK, granted to us because Boxing Day fell at the weekend. There is still little to go on in the news stakes, which is a breath of fresh air and means we have been able to get other stuff done. Here are some of the things we're talking about:
- The 2009 Season Review Megamix was released yesterday, featuring a summary of the year just gone from our excellent listeners. Everything from the downpour at Malaysia to the replacement of Bourdais is covered, and it's great to get views from a variety of eloquent F1 fans.
- We have a new blog to join in the F1 fun - Tom G, who recently got a mention in the podcast, has set up A Little Bit... Piquet. There's only an intro post for now, but I'm sure the rest of the entries won't be a little bit Piquet at all.
- Recently I posted a roundup of the Advent Calendar podcast - a breakdown of all the shows with descriptions for each - in place of an omnibus edition of the extended podcast. At three minutes each, that omnibus would be about 75 minutes long. I'm pretty certain Mr C would not approve of such things!
That's all for now, although just a quick reminder to everyone (but also to me) that it is Must Comment Monday today, so keep an eye on all those F1 blogs.
Mr C says he is determined to both remember and do MCM justice this week. I will do the same, and as ever, I will see you in the comments.
It is Monday once again and to steal the title from the song by The Boomtown Rats; I don't like Mondays, the weekend is over and I'm having to get on with some work. This is the third daily post as part of the takeover, who knows maybe we should takeover more often? The aim for this daily thread is to be free of anything Formula One related. I hope the teams don't decide today is the day to reveal anything but by saying that I have probably tempted fate so if something does happen I'm sure breakout posts will appear as soon as humanly possible.
- Today is Must Comment Monday, so feel free to plug your latest blog posts or your blog in general. If you don't have a blog then now is the perfect time to start one. It is a lot of fun and there really no excuses not to have one.
- On an MFC note, some figures for BBC iPlayer have revealed that in October alone there were 70 million requests for programs. iPlayer is now available on 15 platforms (but not the Xbox) and it is reported to be transferring 12.5gb worth of data per second.
- Its the last day of November and Christmas is only 25 days away. Which means the Christmas special of Doctor Who is fast approaching, BlogtorWho have images of the Christmas Radio times cover & feature on "The End of Time". I, for one, can't wait for the Christmas special.
Finally I know I already mentioned it, but please remember is it Must Comment Monday all bloggers really appreciate comments, a list of blogs can be found over on the wiki.
Hope you all have a good day, and I shall see you in the comments at some point!
It's that time of the week again, where we pose a question and gather opinions from all corners of the web. If you have a blog and want to answer the question, then you can write up a post and link to it in the comments. If you don't have a blog, you can answer in the comments themselves, or we are more than happy to publish a guest post on your behalf.
This week's question:
Should F1 teams launch 2010 cars in a single launch event?
James Allen has previously mentioned that FOTA are considering the possibility of launching all their cars at one event, to try and save costs. At the last mention, they were making enquiries as to how this would work with the media. Mr Allen was worried that some of the smaller teams would miss out on coverage, dwarfed by the likes of McLaren and Ferrari.
This time last year, both Toyota and BMW had announced the launch date of their 2009 cars, but so far this year we've heard nothing. Does that mean the group launch might be on or is it that the teams are a bit more behind this year?
What do you make of the idea? Would it work? Would you rather they stuck to their individual launches? What about the Toyota style online launch to help cut costs?
Let us know your thoughts by the end of Thursday, and have fun writing!
Last week, we introduced the concept of Thursday Thoughts, a question posed here on Sidepodcast to encourage F1 bloggers and writers to publish a few words on the subject. The first question seemed to go down quite well, the experiment was successful despite it's hasty organisation.
This week, we have had a bit of time to prepare, and are giving you plenty of time to think up an answer to today's question. I asked for a couple of suggestions in the comments, and Jackie came up with a great idea:
Who should be the next boss of FOTA?
Now that Luca di Montezemolo has suggested he won't continue with the role for too much longer, as he has himself a proper job, who do you think should take his place?
If you have thoughts on this subject, please post them to your F1 blog and share the link in the comments (even if the pinger gets there first). If you don't have a blog, you can still participate by posting in the comments here or if you've got a lot to say, I'm sure many blogs will be happy for a guest post, or we can publish them here.
I'll be thinking up my answer to the question later today, and we would like to put a deadline on it by about 9pm GMT. Of course, it's not the end of the world if you miss it, but we'll have probably started pondering what next week's question should be by then. Happy blogging!
I am declaring 19th Nov to be LCLT day - the day when we give the much-ignored Live Commenting solution some love. I know it does have it's hard-core fans, and that is excellent, but I think we need to raise awareness to the Live Commenting single-thread goodness. Perfect for tracking each conversation separately, and more importantly, posting your thoughts in the right place. If you haven't been there for a while, why not give the LCLT a try today, and see what you think?
- Elsewhere today is also Thursday thoughts day. We'll post a question at some point this morning, and if you are a blogger and feel like having a go, why not type out a few words and let us know how you find it? Naturally, all suggestions for questions are noted and they do not have to be about the news of the day or anything like that.
- There was plenty of that news though, as we are still recovering from the idea of Kimi not racing next year, wondering at the bizarre pairing of Button and Hamilton, and celebrating at the confirmation of Spa. When will the actual off-season begin?
That'll do it for now. I have two days off now, so yesterday was my Friday and I have thankfully avoided terrible Thursday. Let us know how your day is going, I'll see you in the comments.
We have reached Sunday and it is Doctor Who day! Eh-hem. Please excuse any Doctor Who excitement in the daily thread today, but we have been waiting a long time for this! Of course, there are plenty of F1 things to talk about. Well, I say plenty, there are a couple of things.
- Notus have confirmed that running a Malaysian driver is not crucial to their plans to hit the grid, and that is lucky, as there are only a couple of viable options. They are hoping for that in the future though, and looking at it as more of a long-term project rather than something they need for their first year in the sport.
- In linkage news, Jackie came up with a great weekend idea to highlight some of the great posts and give you something to read over a weekend. Round up posts are always very interesting, especially when there is editorial in there as well.
- Yesterday, we watched Cars and live commented our way through the film - it was brilliant fun, and thanks to everyone who was around to enjoy it with us. If you missed out this time, stay tuned for the next movie - we're taking suggestions over on the wiki. Whichever one we pick will have to go some way to beat Cars, though, it had rarely working traffic lights and everything!
That'll do it for now. Don't forget there's no live show tonight, but we are working on the podcast about our experience at the Mercedes-Benz event, and that should be with you at some point soon. I will see you in the comments.
