Sidepodcast

Daily: 6th February 2010

Saturday has dawned, bright and sunny. Well, maybe. I haven't seen the weather yet, but let us know what it's doing in your neck of the woods! There's testing ahead of us next week in Jerez but it's not looking good weather wise, so we need to brush up on our forecasting skills. Meanwhile, here are some of the things we're talking about:

• Some comments yesterday picked up on pictures posted in the latest edition of Racecar Engineering, that have been featured on a US F1 fan blog. They give a fascinating insight into what goes on inside the car, despite the fact that it looks like the driver's leg is broken in a really uncomfortable way. It's nice to see technical drawings that don't scare people like me away.
• We did a bit of a catch up on F1 Big Picture yesterday, and posted this cute little picture of Nick Heidfeld. With his new job at Mercedes, it was about time we featured a Nick pic, and I have to say, seeing the poor guy in a big field all by himself makes me feel compassion for him. Bless Nick.
• Sadly, it seems that the Only One Timo Glock blog curated by RG has had to shut its doors. This is bad news, of course, but no one can say that RG doesn't have his priorities in the right place. He still has the Northern Waffler blog to, er, waffle on, and as ever, our doors are always open to any guest posts about Mr Glock or otherwise. Keep it up, RG.

That should do it for now. Let us know what you're up to with your weekend and as ever, I will see you in the comments.

Daily: 4th January 2010

Back to the grindstone, today, then, as the year of work begins again. It's Franck's birthday tomorrow and I'm mentioning it today because firstly, I will probably forget when it matters, and secondly, it's nice to start the week with a mention of Franck, and hopefully he'll get a mention tomorrow as well. Meanwhile, here are some of the things on our radar today:

• Ollie has a post with some updates on when we can expect testing action this week. You can also see the new version of his site, with more featured posts, and a little bit more colour. Keep an eye on it, and let Ollie know what you think.
• Gavin has another post from his 2009 in review series, and this time he's looking at qualifying and how the drivers compare to each other. It's a good read so make sure you head on over to look at the graphs. Apparently the next one will be about fastest laps, which should also be good.
• I posted the review of the Best Comments of the Year wiki page yesterday. It was supposed to be a poll where we selected the best one, but there were so many good ones, I figured that we could just pick out a couple and point you towards the rest.

That should do it for now, let us know how your Monday is going and I will see you in the comments.

Daily: 1st January 2010

Happy New Year from Sidepodcast

2009 has been and gone and it is to 2010 that we turn our attention. Happy New Year to everyone who reads, listens, participates, lurks and shares with Sidepodcast. I hope you are having a great day, and that it is the start of a wonderful year.

• Mr C has already done the rounds and thanked everyone he can think of in a special end of year wrap up post. There is also a handy list of some of the highlights of the year, a sort of Best of Sidepodcast in articles rather than audio.
• I mentioned our New Year's Resolution post yesterday but it is worth repeating again as there is still time to make those promises that you are bound to keep for the rest of the year. They can be F1 related or otherwise but we will revisit them at the end of 2010 and see how you got on. No pressure!
• As Mr C took the time to thank me in his aforementioned post, I will abuse my position in the daily to thank him right back. I'm not good at the lovely huggy stuff, but needless to say Sidepodcast wouldn't be what it is without him and his clever code, late nights and amusing insights. I can't imagine anyone else I'd want to run this site with, so thanks to Mr C.

That's enough of that, we have welcomed in the New Year, and now it's time to focus on 2010. As ever, I will see you in the comments.

Daily: 14th December 2009

Another week is beginning, then, and we are here at Monday. As I have been paying very little attention to Formula 1 over the weekend, I think it's time to take a glance around the blog world and see what everyone has been writing about. Let's take a look:

• Firstly, it's over to Pitlane Fanatic, where they already do a regular weekend run through blogs you need to be keeping an eye on. The talk of Schumacher's return is a popular one, with Journeyer writing up a guest post here on Sidepodcast, and also some thoughts from Adie over at F1 Tailpipe.
• Much to my despair, F1 Wolf has begun his countdown to the season, posting a news round up every ten days. We are onto 90 days now, and I can't believe the off-season is going so quickly. Another popular topic of the week was the points scoring system change, and Lukeh also had some interesting thoughts about that over on Gridwalk Talk.
• Dank has written up the first part of a countdown - his top 20 drivers for 2009, from all walks of motorsport life. There are a few F1 names on there, and equally plenty of names I haven't heard of, so a good opportunity to learn a thing or two. Will be interesting to see who is his number one driver when it is posted.

That'll do it for now, I hope you all had a good weekend, and are prepared for the week ahead. Let us know what you've got planned, and don't forget Must Comment Monday. I'll see you in the comments.

Daily: 10th December 2009

Hello all. It is apparently Human Rights day for the United Nations, and also International Animal Rights Day. I am going to combine these two, and suggest that I have the right to have a baby panda, and a baby panda has the right to come and live with me. Sounds like the proper way to observe these events to me. Now, on to the Formula 1 stuff:

• Jake Humphrey has finally blogged again, after leaving us hanging following the final race of the season. There are thoughts in there about interviewing the drivers, finding out about Button's move to McLaren, and of course, the BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Mr Humphrey is hosting, and says he'll have lots of backstage gossip for us.
• Ollie has written up an interesting post about the noise coming from the Monaco Forum at the moment. It's all about media and how Formula 1 portrays itself to the fans, and at the moment, it seems like a real nudge in the ribs to Bernie. Will he pay attention though?
• F1 Wolf has posted another liveries post - lots of lovely pictures of cars from 1991 and their beautiful colour schemes. Eh-hem. I have to say hurrah for the off-season allowing bloggers times to delve into these great topics.

That should do it for now. Let us know how your week is going, and as ever, I will see you in the comments.

Daily: 6th December 2009

We have arrived at Sunday, and it is Susie Stoddart's birthday today. With her boyfriend as a significant investor in Williams, what are the chances of her getting a foot in the door of Formula 1 for her birthday? Probably very small, actually, so let's move on to some F1 related things instead.

• Our excellent guest writer Stuart Codling has gone and got himself a blog all of his own. Whilst we'll miss his fabulous posts here, it's great he has a piece of the web to call his own, and I highly recommend that you subscribe right now. Do it now. You know you want to. I'll still be here when you get back.
• A couple of days ago it was confirmed that Kimi Raikkonen will be racing in the World Rally Championship, driving for Citroen. This is great news for keeping the Finn in motorsport, and it may even mean we pay a bit more attention to rallying. Maybe.
• In the comments, Pat pointed out the new ESPN F1 site. They are the owners of F1-Live, and the new site looks kinda fancy, well sourced material, some good pictures, and more importantly, no sign of any unreliable aggregated news. Worth keeping an eye on.

That'll do it for now. There will be a live show later on today, fingers crossed, so hope to see you around about 8pm, but of course, I'll see you in the comments before then too.

Daily: 12th October 2009

It's Lou's birthday today! Lou has been commenting on the site since August 2007 and I know that everyone will want to wish her a happy birthday. Today is the day to do it. We're also talking about some F1 related things today, though:

• RG has spent a long time putting together an about page for his Timo Glock blog. There is so much information in there, it must have taken quite a lot of research, but as RG says - now you need never get a quiz question about Glock wrong.
• Jackie has been writing a multi-part series of posts on Pitlane Fanatic, focusing on the F1 naughty step. There are plenty of tables and pretty graphs that we love so much, illustrating who has picked up the most penalties and fines, and things like that. A really fascinating read.
• We're onto our fourth Forgotten F1 Team in the mini series so far, with another one on the way later today. Yesterday's featured team was Spyker, who admittedly weren't that long ago, but their tenure in Formula One was so brief, it's very easy to forget about them.

That'll do it for now. At Sidepodcast HQ, we are aching from all the moving about over the weekend, but hopefully things will be nice and normal for the week ahead. Fingers crossed. I'll see you in the comments.

An Aside with Joe - Some People Like to Write a Lot

• Length: 55:07 
• Size: 51.2 MB 
• File: aside13.mp3 
• Transcript: aside13.pdf 
• Torrent: aside13.torrent 

Joe joins us for some blogging and commenting conversation, as well as dissecting the finer points of traveling, writing and the enigma that is Leo Sayer.

We also take plenty of questions from the comments, covering driver prospects, NASCAR prospects, and what did and did not go down in Suzuka last weekend.

As ever, all of this and so much more in this episode of An Aside With Joe.

Linkage

• Read Joe Saward’s Grand Prix Blog
• Subscribe to Grand Prix+ Magazine
• Grandprix.com
• Grand Prix Saboteurs at Morienval
• Purchase Grand Prix Saboteurs from Amazon

Word Gets Around

It's been said that Sidepodcast commenters like to encourage others to get creative. Usually this means the unwary get coerced into blogging, podcasting, or in Paul's case, even being sponsored to tweet.

The relevant wiki page currently lists numerous casualties of said encouragement, but one thing that's always been a sticking point for new blogs and bloggers, is the sourcing of legal photography to compliment posts.

Formula One teams can be quite generous in this respect, while photography sites such as Flickr offer collections of reusable racing images, but there's never been a one-size fits all model that makes embedding as easy as starting a blog.

Pick a Part That's New

Earlier today, we learned of a new service called PicApp which is set to make adding photography to blog posts an awful lot easier. The site itself has been around since the start of the year, but recent partnership deals with major blogging platforms has thrust it into the limelight. As for what it does, well the ten second sales pitch explains it best:

Jazz up your blog, at no cost, with millions of premium, relevant, fresh and legal images to choose from.

That sounds very enticing doesn't it? Let's give it a try.

Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton uncharacteristically share a ride during the drivers parade, prior to the Japanese Grand Prix last weekend.

To embed the above image into your own blog, simply search the PicApp website and copy the relevant image code into your post. So long as you agree to the related terms and conditions, that's all there is to it.

PicApp reimburse content providers - in this case Getty Images - via advertisements that appear when you rollover the images or during specified time intervals of inactivity. It has to be said, we've yet to see this in action, so it's hard to judge how obtrusive the advertising might be. Assuming though that you can live with what appears to be a fair exchange, PicApp seems like a fine idea. I suspect we'll be getting a lot of use out of this on Sidepodcast in the future.

If you're already using PicApp (or a service like it), or intend to in the future, do let us know what you think in the comments. If you haven't got a blog already, you may find you're rapidly running out of excuses for not having one.

Sidepodchat - Of Chaos, Originality and Skepticism

• Length: 4:48 
• Size: 5.1 MB 
• File: chat10.mp3 
• Transcript: Coming soon 
• Torrent: chat10.torrent 

It is Nick's turn to face the questions from Steven Roy, as our Interview with Bloggers series continues. This time Nick talks us through how his daily news round up turned into a more opinionated, and chaotic, series of posts.

Vital Statistics

• Blog: The F1 Rundown
• Tagline: One fan tries to discuss as much of each days F1 news in as short a time as possible…
• Author: Nick
• First Post: 16th, August 2009

We also get to hear about Nick's dream blog post, how much he likes to hear from readers, and why you should read his blog.

If you are a blogger and fancy taking part in this ongoing series, then sign up on the wiki. We'd love to hear from you!