Sidepodcast

Daily: 17th March 2010

It's Wednesday and that means we are about halfway through the week already. I had to break open the F1 Happy Place yesterday, but the good news is that it mostly worked, and I do feel a bit happier about F1. It's still rubbish, but at least there are good times to remember! Anyway, here are some other things we're talking about:

• I missed this when it was posted, because it was hectic busy at Sidepodcast Towers, but I love this idea from RG, comparing the new teams in a championship all of their very own. The premise is simple - the drivers in the new teams get points based on the order they finish, no matter where they are in the overall result itself. Interesting idea and I'm curious to see what will happen at the next race.
• I don't quite understand why Button is having to defend himself already. Fair enough, Lewis got on the podium but it wasn't exactly looking likely to begin with and the word lucky springs to mind. If his confidence was seriously dented after just one race, then he would be in for a really long season.
• Bernie Ecclestone has jumped to the defense of F1, saying we shouldn't jump to conclusions, submit to knee-jerk reactions, and make any rash changes. He thinks that teams will get the hang of racing under these new regulations and maybe just some tweaks to the tyre rules would help. Ahh, all about the tyres as per usual!
• Also, just a quick note: Sofa F1 Championship 2010 - Round 1. This is not a good start for me. Well done to Alison though!

It's St Patrick's Day today, and I believe there is meant to be a Sidepodmeetup in our capital city today, although I don't know if it's still on. Sadly, we can't be there, but we will be in the comments, as always.

Daily: 14th March 2010

It's Sunday at last and we are about to embark on our first Grand Prix of 2010. It's pretty exciting, and not just because the Factbyte Factbox will be making it's race debut. It was an exciting if hectic experience covering qualifying, so let's see what we can achieve over a full race distance! Anyway, here are some other things we're talking about:

• With extra teams on the grid, it looks as though the FIA have had to change parc ferme quite considerably. Adam Cooper has a good insight into the F1 spy cameras that are now overlooking the cars. We thought maybe it was a little bit Big Brother.
• Will Buxton has some thoughts on the new section of the track, particularly pointing out that: "Quite apart from the fact that there simply isn’t enough track length between corners to allow anyone to have a decent stab at a passing move, the track width is so slim that you can barely fit two cars side by side." Bahrain Fail?
• As a sort of final word on the McLaren vent, Scarbs F1 has a great explanation of how it works. I was still a bit confused but as it happens, it doesn't seem to be as important now that the McLarens didn't qualify that far up the grid anyway.

That's all for now. I hope everyone enjoys the race, and as always, I'll see you in the comments.

Daily: 1st March 2010

It's March already? How did that happen? Not only that but it's Monday as well, meaning we've got to face a whole, brand new week. Pre-season testing is over and done with now, so we are really gearing up towards the season beginning in just a couple of weeks. Here are some of the things we're talking about:

• The second edition of the F1 Digest 2010 Season Preview is up and available and this time we're talking about the teams. Every single team gets a mention, even US F1 and Campos, although there isn't that much to say about them at the moment. We review testing, talk about the launches and the driver pairings, and there are plenty of thoughts about the new cars and their designs. Let me know your thoughts on the new teams over on the thread.
• Mr C has written about his updates to the site which really have turned the site into something completely new. Instead of live updates being based in two distinct areas, now every single page has the ability to load comments without refreshing. Mr C will tell you more in the post, but I can tell you right now, it's awesome and it will change the way you use the site.
• Finally, I would like to plug the latest part of Life in the Fast Lane - my motorsport story. We're onto part 9 and that means it is the final vote of the ten part story. It's the big, important vote, the one that can change the way the story ends and whether there will be a sequel or not. No pressure! I've been surprised by a lot of the voting so far, so make sure you take a look and surprise me once more!

That's all for now, I reckon. Let us know what you're up to this week, and as ever, I will see you in the comments.

The Best Gift is the One You Give

I didn't mention Janna's birthday in the daily post today, because I knew we had a guest post stored up and waiting. Here, Janna tells us what she would like for her birthday.

It’s my birthday today and I keep being asked what I would like or what I’m getting. I like birthdays and I like being given presents but, even more than that, I like giving to someone else something I know they will really enjoy.

With that in mind, and because Christine & Mr C are too nice to ask themselves, I wanted to remind everyone about supporting Sidepodcast.

This site, and all of the podcasts, are the product of Mr & Mrs C’s “spare” time and dedication. They do this because they want to but it takes up a lot of their time and a considerable amount of money. They provide us with an amazing amount of F1 news and a site where we can share our views on all things F1 (and not) supported by their hard work.

You can support Sidepodcast from the home page. You can donate any amount for as a UK supermarket says “Every little helps”.

So, if you love listening to the podcasts, if you enjoy lurking in the comments to catch up on the latest panda news, or if you comment constantly, Sidepodcast supports us all and we need to give something back.

Finally, I started lurking on Sidepodcast around this time last year and de-lurked in July. I want to thank Christine, Mr C and all of the commenters for making the last year much better than it would otherwise have been. If you are lurking, they’re a really welcoming bunch, come and say hello, and don’t forget to donate.

Daily: 17th February 2010

It's back to work for Formula 1 today, and for us as well, as testing resumes in Jerez. So far the forecasts have suggested more in the way of rain, but there will be a dedicated thread for all testing talk along later. I'm hoping the weather clears up a bit as it's much more exciting when things are actually happening out on track. Anyway, here are some things we're talking about:

• Mr C has been busy updating Ye Olde Comments, so if you visit any blog page, you'll find that there are a couple of improvements. The buttons have returned, allowing easy quoting and italicising of comments without having to remember the code itself. There's also the option to share comments now, along with whole articles. If you hover over the comment you're keen on, hit that share link, it'll send you on over to Twitter so you can spread the words of wisdom. Good work, Mr C.
• Our resident comic genius Stuart Taylor gave us a new situation to ponder with his latest guest post. The premise behind the pictures, aside from the obvious, is that things could always be worse. Joe Saward has also posted an article about a similar subject, albeit a little more frustrated about the subject.
• Meanwhile, back to testing, it seems as though James Allen is going to attempt to switch on the auto refresh on his super duper Twitter page. To be fair, we are a little bit skeptical about how long his site will stay up for, but having looked at it now, the main page is down but the Twitter bit is still up. There is hope! It will be interesting to see how it works and it will add yet another element to the testing proceedings.

That'll do for now, let us know how you're week is going, and what you're doing post-pancake day. I will see you in the comments.

Welcome to My Wiki World

We've had a couple of new people pop up and say hi in the comments recently (hi!), and I noticed some attempts to persuade them to join the wiki. We talk about the wiki a lot, I know, but it is a great way to make Sidepodcast even more collaborative and even more of a community. I wanted to take a minute to talk about the wiki and encourage you to join.

What is the wiki for?

Originally, the wiki was a place to host some of the fun games we shared in the comments, plus plan some of the upcoming shows. When we're in the midst of a run of Sidepodpanels, it's invaluable for guests to sign up, and the scores to be recorded.

Since than it has ballooned into the best place for the community to share and plan together. We've got a dictionary of words born out of the comments, we have guides on everything from how to sleep better to making a microwave chocolate cake. There is information about past Batracer leagues, plus a roundup of both the Fantasy Racer competitions we've participated in, and top five league positions for each race.

There's documentation on how this website is taking shape, plus space for requests and bugs to be tracked. Live Commenting instructions live on the wiki, in case anyone is struggling with the doohickey or LCLT, and there are lots and lots of links. From teams, to drivers, to bloggers, to journalists, we're compiling the best of the web.

What can I do?

If you're not sure where to start, the best place is the SPC Regulars page. Registration for the wiki is free, and then you can create a sub-page of the Regulars page for yourself. Your own little home on the Sidepodwiki. You can put as many or as few facts about yourself as you'd like, but make sure to update the birthdays section, so I can add you to our calendar. Also, don't forget the Listener Map to pinpoint your country with a pretty red pin.

Why not help us fill in some of our F1 information pages? We've got plenty of missing info on the links pages - both drivers and teams. We're trying to keep track of who is going to be in which team for 2010, and who is being left on the sidelines, so if you hear something we don't, then please fill it in.

We also have some of the games that start in the comments, such as the Numbers Game page - where we list F1 facts by ever increasing numbers. We're up to 80, but there must be more, I'm sure we can get to 100. Or perhaps you would prefer the ideal three sectors game, where you select your perfect circuit with the best bits from the entire calendar.

Ultimately, the wiki is huge, and there's a lot to take in, but the best way is to sign up, start browsing, and then just hit that edit button. It's super easy to do, you don't need to learn any new codes or languages, it's a pretty simple editor. If you're looking for a particular page, don't use the search on the wiki, it's not very good. Either use the super Sidepodsearch on the top right of this site, or visit the Sidepodsitemap to find what you're looking for.

Where do I start?

Here are a couple of the pages mentioned above to help you get started:

• SPC Regulars
• Listener Map
• Driver Links
• Team Links
• Numbers Game
• Ideal 3 Sectors
• Sidepodsitemap

Once you've dived in and had a go, come back and tell us how you got on. We love the wiki and we want you to love it too.

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.

We Talk About F1 Too, Honest

With the introduction of the daily post, and the permission granted to go off topic at will, there have been a wealth of comments about a variety of topics. Sometimes there are moments of genius, and a comment gets picked out as a contender for the Best Comment of the Year. RG even started a wiki page to compile what turned out to be an enormous list of potentials.

The initial plan was to have a poll and select the Best Comment of 2009. However, there are so many good ones that I think it would be too hard to choose. Instead, we'll pick out some of our favourites, and point you in the direction of the wiki to enjoy the full list.

Don't forget to keep your eyes peeled when you are in the comments this year, as we have started a new page for 2010, and there are already several candidates on there already. We're only three days in! For now, though, it's back to 2009 for a few of the great comments.

It's the Way You Tell 'Em

Before the long and drawn out process of picking a new FIA President was fully underway, we were discussing Max's decision not to stand for the position for another term. Max has said this a few times, and you can never be sure if he means it. When the question arose: "Are we taking [Max's decision] with a pinch of salt or is it the real deal?" Nick replied:

Max's promises come ready salted.

When Stuart went away from home to cover the WTCC at Porto, he still found time to share a couple of comments from the paddock. We were questioning the setup for media types at the touring car events, and wondered whether there was wifi available. Stuart replied:

Sort of - it comes and goes more than the Karma Chameleon...

Now, there is plenty of proof littered through the comments that Steven Roy's keyboard hates him. Some of the typos that occur are quite amusing, and even create some of the words that make it to the Sidepoddictionary. When a conversation occured about the film Deep Impact, Steven wrote: "Just decided this film is utterly unrealistic. They spotted the comment a year before impact. The last thing that came close to the Earth was spotted a week in advance."

Rachel read the movie review and replied:

Must have been one explosive comment.

Next up, at some point during the summer Mr C and I were very much in the mood for heading out of doors. It doesn't happen that often but at one point, Mr C revealed that for the third day in a row, he was going outside. Amy wasn't all that impressed:

This is becoming far too frequent. This is not outsidepodcast.

Nick was in Abu Dhabi during the Grand Prix weekend and claimed that it had hosted the best race of the year. Despite our best efforts, we couldn't shake his belief. Jackie turned up in the comments asking after him: "Is Nick back from his travels yet?" And Steven, no doubt exasperated by the positive GP reviews, replied:

No, he is still on a different planet.

Finally, Jon was struggling to get his links to work in the live comments. It became an established fact that Jon's links weren't functional and he said: "I have an ability." To which Boston Red Scott replied:

You see dead links?

Those are just a couple of our favourites but make sure you head over to the entire list and have a read through. It's a year in crazy comments, and seeing some of them taken out of context just makes them even more amusing. I can't wait to see what we come up with in 2010.

Most Prolific Contributors for 2009

So '09 came and went, and during the year we had a couple of things to say on a subject or two. We weren't the only ones though, some 444,749 individual comments were posted on Sidepodcast between 1 January and 31 December 2009.

We may be biased, but we truly believe the Sidepodcast community is the very best F1 community on the internet. I'm banned from thanking anyone else, but just as we did last year, we thought we'd take a look and see which individuals contributed the most to the conversation in the past 12 months.

Last year, Lou topped the chart with 10,064 comments. She nearly doubled that figure this year, but still came close to falling out of the top ten. Steven's whopping 32,889 comments sees him way out in front as Sidepodcast's Commenting King of 2009. Mr. Roy we owe you a drink or three.

Over 800 individuals left comments this past year, up considerably from the 200 or so in 2008. We welcome everybody with open arms, but we do have to work on keeping hold of new commenters, as more than 300 people left a single response, never to return again.

As for ourselves, Christine didn't quite make the top ten this year leaving just 14,641 comments, while I somehow managed to hit the return key 44,247 times. I think that might count as an addiction.

We should point out that while we've done our best to validate the figures, all counts were aggregated by email address and if you changed yours during the year, your total may not accurately reflect your true effort. We've also done the obvious things like remove spam and trackbacks to ensure only user generated data is totalled.

Sidepodcast passed the 500,000 published comments mark this year, and with that came numerous scalability challenges that we're still working to overcome. We're hoping that people will continue to contribute to the F1 conversation in 2010, and that those lurkers who read but have yet to join in the fun do so soon.

We look forward to reading your next half a million thoughts.

Let's Get the Party Started

Today is the day. It is Sidepodcast's IRL party. No, no, we're not switching allegiances... yet. We're meeting at the one and only Alex Andronov's house for a Sidepodparty - details are on the wiki.

It started out as a regular pub meetup but turned into a party with plenty of alcohol and sausage rolls. We know that not everyone is able to make it to Alex's house on such short notice, so you can follow along here, in this very thread. Equally, if you can't stand the party nonsense, the daily is your friend.

Firstly, we imagine there will be plenty of live streaming going on. We'll embed Alex's U-Stream content here, but keep an eye on the playground for other people's streams.

There should also be plenty of photos taken, so drop.io is the place to watch. We'll try and embed as many as we can into the thread. I think I'm in charge of the comments - I'll be your Sidepodparty correspondent for the day. Let us know if you have any questions, requests, suggestions, and most of all, enjoy the day!