Yesterday was definitely a day of rest in Sidepodcast Towers, but having said that Mr C just keeps on coding. I was busy trying not to fall asleep all day, whilst some new commenting updates were in the works. I'll leave him to tell you more when the updates go live, but keep your eyes peeled. Meanwhile, here are some of the things we're talking about:
The reason I'm so tired is thanks to the most excellent evening out in London, listening to Joe talking. So far we've heard all good things from the people who went, and I'm hoping we'll have some blog posts and photos to share with you soon. Lou has been posting a couple on her Twitpic account, though, including ones of me looking ever so thoughtful as I kept the comments updated. Turkey Machine has also written a quick post about his evening.
I caught up with a couple of days of testing news yesterday, and posted two F1 Minute episodes. The first talks of Glock at Virgin - he's enjoying being the number one - and the second is about Schumi's predictions - he's changed his mind. I love the idea that Michael might have suddenly realised he said something he shouldn't have.
Whilst we're on the subject of testing, I hope you're keeping an eye on Gavin's summaries after each day, as well as the updates over on Viva F1. Maverick and Gavin both use lots of pretty graphs, and now we're at Barcelona and conclusions can be drawn from what we're seeing out on track, it's worth looking deeper at the statistics. We'll be asking for your predictions soon enough!
That's all for now. Let us know how your weekend is going and what you're up to, and I will see you in the comments.
Sunday has arrived, and with it brings a live show... but not from us. Giggles Radio is scheduled to begin at 4pm today, so I hope you will join Alex as he brings us some excellent music with added chatter to go with it. Meanwhile, here are some of the things we're keeping an eye on:
Mr C has been making some more tweaks, this time the Sidepodcast Feed. If you subscribe to keep up with the blog posts, you should know find an added bit at the bottom of each entry so you can check the ratings, click through to comments and find related posts directly from your chosen feed reader.
If you've been struggling to keep up with everything from testing in Jerez, then F1 Minute is here for you! Yesterday I posted a special episode to catch up with the final day, but there is 60 second coverage for each day of testing, including who was fastest, who was slowest, weather updates, and of course, who was causing all the red flags.
It was a day of guest posts yesterday as firstly Lewis discussed two separate events at Silverstone and how they compare and contrast, and then Lukeh told us why he's looking forward to the upcoming season and why we should too. It's a great insight into the mind of a Rubens fan, obviously, but there is also plenty of optimism to go round.
That should do it for now. We should have a podcast along either later today or some time tomorrow, and as ever, I will see you in the comments.
We spent most of last night watching some ARCA racing which was very confusing but also kinda fun. I don't know that we'll be following it particularly closely but sometimes it's nice to watch things that are a bit different. It was certainly interesting to see Piquet bashing into people. Anyway, here are some of the things we're talking about:
Whilst catching up with the Quotes pages on F1 Minute, we introduced a new feature called Tweets of the Week. It does what it says in the title, by grouping together ten of the best F1 related tweets of the week, from our Twitter lists of journalists, drivers and teams. It's nothing revolutionary, but it's a nice way to keep up with what's happening from those who know.
Yesterday also saw the debut of the brand new item on Sidepodcast - Christine's Rankings. In an attempt to rank the F1 drivers from best to worst, I have taken it upon myself to work out a very scientific and not at all superficial method of scoring them each week. It's going to be fun, and you can help. Find out more here.
I've heard call for round-ups of the testing and launch action from the past week for those who were busy, and although I would always recommend F1 Minute first and foremost, it looks as though Adam Hay-Nicholls has written a collection of his thoughts as he catches up with all the happenings of the week. There are some interesting snippets in there, so get reading.
That should do it for now. Don't forget to sign up to Danny's new Fantasy WRC championship. You can't know any less than myself and Mr C, so it's just a bit of fun. After you've done that, I'll see you in the comments.
Somewhere between the time we started Sidepodcast and present day, we manage to attract some fantastically creative individuals to the community here, and those people never cease to come up with endless amounts of brilliant ideas and together solve all sorts of unimaginably complicated problems. Those same people also ask a lot of questions.
Credit: Sidepodcast
Christine... on the Internet
Last week Christine and I, under the guise of F1 Minute, launched a short video trial, investigating into how the current F1 Minute audio podcast might translate to the small screen. It's a challenging problem to solve, because video production typically takes considerably more effort than audio production and Christine already manages to fill every waking hour with audio work. How in the world can an order of magnitude more work be squeezed into that same timeframe too?
The simple answer is, it can't.
This didn't come as a massive surprise, given we attempted to bring F1 Minute video to life at the beginning of 2008 before the real world got the better of us. Last week's trial almost slipped through our fingers too, had mother nature not kindly intervened and given us a couple of snow days to catch up with ourselves. We're ambitious, but ultimately held to account by the same invisible force as everyone else.
In a typically Sidepodcast fashion, we made and launched our video trial without any preconceptions or expectations. The shows could've been a worldwide smash hit, or they could've vanished without a trace. We were only really interested in figuring out how long each one took to make, assuming it was possible at all.
Then questions came from the smart people and we couldn't answer them. We didn't know how long we were planning to make them for. We didn't know when they would be available. We didn't even have a logo prepared should someone wish to plug the show.
You'd never guess we'd been doing this for three years already.
Now though, we are slightly smarter after the fact. We know roughly where we are, what we can do, and where we might be going... sort of. We know that making a daily 60 second video on the subject of F1 is possible, and that given the right finances they can be made mostly by one person on a part time basis. We also know we have most of the right equipment, but that a laptop really isn't the correct machine for the job.
Clearly we now know the initial run of shows would only last for five days although we probably assumed it would be more. We also know that there are other options to explore and that we're not done experimenting yet.
As discussed on the F1 Minute blog HD video is a priority, so to is optimising a tardy workflow. It's been requested that Christine feature more throughout each show, and while we originally filmed just the top and tail of the programme, a better model would likely look similar to F1 Rewind from days of yore (except in shorter form).
Looking around for the competition, only Autosport's autoplaying video channel appears to offer anything of a similar nature, and you'll need a magnifying glass to see that. GP Update have the occasional stab at video production, and Eurosport appear to occasionally put some F1 news content online. There really isn't anyone else out there doing something along these lines, and that's the main reason we wanted to have a go.
At it's current level the series isn't sustainable without an income. How we find an income stream for it is a problem for another day, in the meantime we have more to do and more to learn. Expect more F1 Minute video before the season begins.
If you had any thoughts, ideas, suggestions and questions this past week, now is a good time to throw them out there.
As time passes, there is more and more in F1 that we need to try and keep track of. Bernie keeps on adding to the race calendar, there are more teams ready to launch and new drivers keep popping up with birthdays. The only thing there is less of is testing, but we still need to follow that as well. To aid us in the pursuit of remembering stuff, we have created an über-calendar - currently available below and in the playground.
A year or so ago, we created two separate Google calendars - one for F1 Minute, with all the race and launch dates on there, and one for Sidepodcast with an attempt at an upcoming podcast schedule. Neither of them did exactly what we wanted and they were gradually dropped as we moved on to other things.
Now that the need for a calendar has cropped up again, we decided to put our minds to the task and come up with a proper solution. Hopefully, we feel we have done that. Google allows the option to create many different calendars - really these should be called categories, I think - and you can feature them all on the same one, or you can pick and choose which are displayed. In this way, we have created the option of seeing the driver birthdays in one colour, and the non-F1 events in another. Those are just two of the calendar categories we created. In full, they are:
Commenter Birthdays & Anniversaries
Driver Birthdays & Anniversaries
F1 Minute Schedule
F1 Schedule
Non-F1 Events
Sidepodcast Schedule
Hopefully, these are quite self-explanatory, but a couple of things to note: the Sidepodcast calendar features all related things, including podcasts, live streams, special events, and meetups. The F1 schedule has races, launches, testing, and court dates. The non-F1 events include Autosport, Goodwood and things we will likely live comment such as Le Mans 24 Hours.
There is also a calendar over on F1 Minute, which selectively shows the F1 Minute and F1 Schedule, tailor-made to be slightly less cluttered.
If you are a Google user, you can even add them to your own iGoogle homepage, or calendar, by means of the little button in the bottom right. Click the plus, they'll be added, and you can then set your own reminders and such-like.
We are still tweaking the calendar, hence why it remains in the playground. The customisability seems to be endless, so we are also taking suggestions. I'm hoping to use the calendar to aid in some of the daily posts as well, so if anyone has links or thoughts about notable dates to remember, let us know. Plus, if I have missed your birthday, please do shout and I'll add it in.
Today it is the birthday of one Mr Sam Bird, sometime test driver for Williams, who is currently racing in the GP2 Asia series. That series confuses me greatly because it is a feature and sprint race, but only at two circuits, just a couple of events, and quite far apart. Still, it keeps the drivers busy over the winter months, I suppose. Meanwhile, here are some of the things we're talking about:
Bernie has been busy, as per usual, launching a bid to buy Saab with the major shareholders of Renault, Genii Capital. Goodness knows what he would do with it if they were successful - would they become an F1 team? It all seems a bit too cozy. Anyway, we have a breakout thread on such matters, so head on over and share your thoughts!
Meanwhile, US F1 have become the FIA's new best friend after being given special allowances to test over in the US, before joining everyone else in Europe. We put up an F1 Big Picture of the Barber Motorsports Park they have in mind. It looks very... simple.
Whilst we're on the subject of F1 Minute, don't forget to keep your eye on the videos as they are released. We know they are behind at the moment, but we're catching up all the time. We'll be blogging about our thoughts and findings very soon, but for now, just sit back and enjoy F1 sixty seconds at a time.
That should do it for now. Let us know what you're up to this weekend, if you are able to do anything due to the weather. Personally, I'm voting for sitting next to a radiator all day long, and while I do that, I'll see you in the comments.
We have reached Thursday and most of the news is still about Flavio and how that is affecting everyone in the sport at the moment. There isn't much more to go on though, so perhaps it's worth looking at other things going on right now. Before I start, make sure you check out the new F1 Minute video. Onwards:
The good news is that Donington Park hasn't completely gone to the ground yet, as the Wheatcroft family now have the keys back in their possession, and they're committed to re-opening the circuit as soon as they possibly can. Tom Wheatcroft's son Kevin is now in charge, and his main priority is saving jobs and keeping things going for the fans.
Sauber have become the first team to announce their launch - now that the single group thing has been thrown out the window. At the end of January, just ahead of the first test of the year, we'll get to see a brand new car, apparently to be called the C29.
In what should be a new segment for F1 Digest previews this year, I want to gather together your thoughts about the circuits on the 2010 calendar. I've set up a wiki page to collect them, and it explains it better than I could do here, so dive right in and leave your opinion on the tracks we will visit this year. (Multiple thoughts per track are actively encouraged!)
That should do for now. Snow is still causing havoc around the UK, so we'll see what today brings! I'll catch up with you in the comments.
F1 Minute is a weekday audio show hosted by Christine, which covers all the Formula 1 news in a handy 60 second round-up. The show has been running for more than two years in its current format, and as an experiment we're now looking into how this might translate to video.
Although the content will ultimately be hosted on the F1 Minute website, we're including this concept show on Sidepodcast in order solicit a wider variety of feedback. Please do get it touch and let us know if you like the idea, or if there are things that need improving.
In this episode, Christine takes a look at Kubica's plans for 2010 as well as the new look Jenson Button. This show was originally published as Kubica Set to Stay at Renault on F1 Minute.
Boxing Day traditionally means recovering from the day before and eating all that leftover turkey. It will be turkey sandwiches and turkey curry for everyone for weeks, I'm sure. We were right about the F1 news, though, there was very little. Here's what we're talking about:
Autosport have an interesting article about ten things that didn't happen this year. I'm assuming they mean things that we believed would happen, otherwise that would be a pretty hard list to narrow down! Some of the things could still happen, so we'll have to keep our eyes peeled.
Poor Donington Park didn't get the Christmas present they were looking for as they couldn't find a buyer for the lease, and therefore the future is looking pretty bleak. We've discussed the Donington thing in great detail before, but it's sad times.
There was a special festive edition of F1 Minute yesterday with a couple of statistics, some facts and figures, and a special thank you to all who have listened this year. The Minute is on a break until the new year now, so there had better not be any massive breaking news.
That'll do it for now, hope everyone is enjoying the holidays, and we will see you in the comments.
Ah-ha, the end of the week at last, and another weekend just around the corner. It's been a nice slow end to the week in terms of F1 news, but I have a feeling (and Joe said) it's all going to start kicking off again next week. Meanwhile, here's what we're focusing on instead:
We started turning our attention towards the Sidepodparty yesterday, and came up with the Christmas Carol that will replace the 12 days of Christmas. Last year, during the party, we all took turns to sing an F1 themed 12 days, and this time it's all about Jingle Bells. Naturally, we've set up a wiki page for alternative lyrics and volunteer voices.
Yesterday's Thursday Thoughts was a good one, taking a closer look at the possibility of a group launch by FOTA rather than the individual team launches we know and love. We had some great answers from Lukeh, Jackie, Pat, Sean and Lady Snowcat. Mr C said he was writing one, but I haven't seen it yet, so it will have to be a Friday thought instead.
Finally, we did a bit of an F1 Minute catchup yesterday, posting two of everything. There are two delicious shows about Donington and FOTA, whilst the Big Picture took a slight turn away from normal programming to feature DTM cars and politicians.
That's all for now, I think. As ever, let us know what you're up to over the weekend and if you have anything exciting planned. Watch out for the Friday Fun game appearing later in the morning, and I will see you in the comments.
