Sunday, 12th October, 2008 – 09:39

I am absolutely shattered. But I’m also angry once again. The stewards have changed a race result after a race, which always riles me, and they’ve achieved this by giving Bourdais a penalty. For what? For driving the only line available to him as he exited the pitlane? Give me a break.

The race report is up but I’m far from happy with it. Unfortunately, it got to a point where my head wasn’t working properly, so I just hit ‘Publish’. I was considering taking a nap before putting the post up, but decided Bourdais-Penalty post will probably attract more attention anyway, and the longer I leave it the more I’m likely to forget.

Sunday, 12th October, 2008 – 04:21

Right, I’m done with code for now. Time to put the bialetti on the hob and make some coffee. Of interest this morning: How the Ecclestone Affair Unfolded – an article on Ecclestone, tobacco advertising bans and Blair’s Labour government.

Sunday, 12th October, 2008 – 00:02

So apparently I’m staying awake for the race after all. I normally do this, but as I’m getting on a bit I took an extended nap yesterday. I must say though, right now I feel really good and energetic. But as there is little news floating around at the moment I’ve diverted my energy to design. The Pink For October look to BlogF1 finally garnered a couple of compliments after I jigged it a little (read: a lot) and now I’m aware that the regular look will need some fiddling as well. So to keep me occupied this morning I’ve been playing with the site on devBF1 – a separate area of BlogF1 where I play with the design away from prying eyes.

Four areas really bug me about the site as it stands:
- Speed
- Footer
- Green colour of links and hovers
- Not being able to cycle through posts on the homepage (‘Previous’ and ‘Next’)

Now I like green, it works with the colour scheme and is reflected in the header image. It’s certainly better than the orange I had last year, although a strong orange would work quite well now I come to think of it. But, the green is too soft and the difference between a and a:hover is too subtle.

To explain, a is the code used for a link. It needs to be different from the text (usually defined as p) so people know there’s a link on the page. a:hover is obviously the change in colour (or whatever) when the cursor hovers over the text.

Me from Sidepodcast said on Identi.ca yesterday that he liked the links in the comments, and from that I presume the young chap means they stand out better and are more contrasting.

So I’m playing with colours this morning and at about 2am I intend to start analysing the database and queries to it. This may help with the speed issue if I can identify anything that I can fix. Of note though, the frontpage is actually smaller in size than 80% of the ten or so F1 sites I checked earlier. So that leads me to believe the speed issue is database related, and that is why I’m gonna be knee deep in stuff I don’t fully understand. Yet. Because the great thing about BlogF1 isn’t necessarily just that I learn about Formula One. I get to learn all kinds of other crap as well.

Helpful Links:

To see what this post is all about, I recommend reading the first one – it contains the whys and whereabouts of this diary. Also, this post will be updated, but the RSS feed to BlogF1 won’t. I will however, Dent each time I update, so my Identi.ca profile and feed address are listed below. Subscribe away…

• The Secret Diary Of A Formula One Blogger: Part I
• Ollie White’s Identi.ca Profile (for updates)
• Ollie White’s Identi.ca RSS Feed (for subscribing to updates)
• BlogF1’s Dodgy Guide to RSS Feeds

And that really is me in the Fisichella cap pulling a Hamilton pose – don’t ask, long story…

Original article by BlogF1.

The Secret Diary Of A Formula One Blogger: Part II

Flyaway races are always hard to cover simply because of the time difference, but no matter what Bernie Ecclestone might try and say, I love them. I will admit I would love this particular one more if it were at Suzuka, but hey-ho. And I will also admit, I prefer flyaways at the start of the season because I am full of energy and anticipation. But even towards the close-of-year, waking up at some ungodly hour of the morning to watch twenty cars drive around a track; it still seems special to me.

These two posts (essentially, Saturday and Sunday, ish) will cover qualifying and the grand prix, before, during and after. They will be updated sporadically because obviously, I’m also going to be doing other things. I have no set timetable for updates, but to help you along the way, I’ll Dent everytime I’ve added an entry. For those unfamiliar with Identi.ca, just follow the link and keep it open in a separate window – you may want to refresh it from time to time. Or better yet, subscribe to the RSS feed – details of subscribing to feeds can be found by clicking the Subscribe link at the top of all pages on BlogF1, just skip the site-specific stuff.

I should also mention that the diary will have little in the way of structure. Given the time of the morning and the fact I’m running a semi-popular blog, my entries will probably resemble a hash of comments, one-liners and the occasional naughty-word. But it will be me, it will be BlogF1, and I hope it will be fun.

Saturday, 11th October, 2008 – 19:21

For the last entry of today, I’ve been out and about checking other sites and the backlinks to my own. This evening I’ve been touring the F1-blogosphere and reading other people’s writing on qualifying and news stories of the day. I feel it is important to read other people’s work because often they will take a different view on things and mention something I didn’t even realise. A good example being that I totally forgot about the fumbled pitstop for Massa in qualifying today, but it was mentioned elsewhere on the web. Thankfully, it was brought up in the comments – so yay for comments. They really do add to the posts.

I’ve also added to the comments elsewhere, giving my opinions on things and offering further information where I think I can add it. And I noticed that F1Fanatic linked to couple of my posts in his ‘Links’ article. A welcome return for these posts on F1F, I feel. I always enjoyed them before because with so much online-noise in Formula One, it is easy to miss great and informative posts from lesser known sites. Plus, BlogF1 gets the occasional link as well.

And I noticed earlier that my post-writing speed has increased. The article about Jean Todt and the FIA was churned out in about 15 minutes from start to finish. For a 500 word article that included a few links and sources, I thought that wasn’t too bad. Often, the newsy posts are quite quick to write though; it’s the inbetween posts that delve deeper into either Formula One or my own opinion that can take up to a day (on and off) to write.

I’m also considering what is too much information, and what is not enough. Occasionally I’ll see an article on a popular news site that doesn’t even reference a team or driver name, but other times I see too much extra info in an article and find myself getting confused or bombarded as I read. And also, how many posts is too much for one day? Autosport tend to go over the top and write many articles for essentially one story. But then Grandprix.com only tends to really come alive during a race weekend. GP.com tend to have better writing though, so I can forgive them. But transferring that question to BlogF1, I’m considering next year’s post structure for race weekends. Lots of thinking…

Saturday, 11th October, 2008 – 15:31

So I have a new plan. It was kinda forced upon me by sleep. I took a nap at about 9 o’clock this morning with the intention of waking up at about 11am or so. Instead, I woke up at Midday but still felt tired. So I decided to close my eyes again and sleep ’til whenever I woke up again, and then stay up through to Sunday evening. And now I’ve woken up again at 3pm, I feel totally refreshed, but my body has no clue what time of day it is.

I just skipped through some of the feeds that had updated while I was in dream-land and found the article about Todt and the FIA on Grandprix.com interesting. I always presumed that Todt changed roles at Ferrari in preparation for some kind of FIA ‘promotion’, and it seems with Piccinini’s resignation it may be starting to happen. I’ll blog about it after I’ve put the grid post up. First though, I need to eat breakfast, again.

Saturday, 11th October, 2008 – 08:44

With the qualifying report now up, I intend to scoot around the web for an hour or so, reading what others have had to say about the day’s F1 activities, then go for a nap and get the missing couple hours sleep from earlier. Then mid-afternoon I’ll write the grid post. The grid post normally comes later in the day incase there are any pending issues from qualifying. I don’t think there are any today though because we usually get to hear of them sooner rather than later. Following that it’s just the live blog post to type up for midnight and any interesting news story that deserves a mention.

Wow, it’s not even 9am yet!

Saturday, 11th October, 2008 – 07:15

Now the result post is up, I can relax a bit, get some breakfast and start the report post. Writing the reports is always the hardest thing for me to do, especially the race one. The reason is because there is often so much to talk about I run out of time and space. And I nearly always forget something. I also try to make the posts balanced, but that can be hard sometimes when drivers have anonymous races and others are making all the moves and getting all the attention. A good example from today might be Toyota versus Kubica. Toyota were screaming “look at me” while Kubica quietly popped his BMW into sixth. The Polish driver outperformed both Toyotas, but all I can remember of Kubica qualifying was his final run.

Saturday, 11th October, 2008 – 06:50

During qualifying and race, I always have the text editor open and update the positions/retirements as they happen. So I sort of take part in the live blog, update the positions for the final post, check live timing and also watch the TV. Formula One is all about multi-tasking!

Saturday, 11th October, 2008 – 06:30

So Glock is going for coporate pole and Steve Ryder is nowhere to be seen in the padock. Lots of things to write about for the qualifying report then. The green tyres are just stoopid and half the people in the live couldn’t tell the difference between prime and option. And boy, Fuji is a boring circuit…

Saturday, 11th October, 2008 – 05:10

Morning.

It felt a little like Christmas morning just now; I spent a few moments figuring out why my alarm was going off at some absurd hour, then felt a small rush of excitement. I now have infront of me already the key componants to watch qualifying… Coffee, apple juice, notepad & pen, live timing, ITV. And as my mind wakes up, I’m slowly starting to come round to the idea of getting rest during a flyaway race weekend. In the past, I’ve simply stayed awake, but this time around, maybe old-age wouldn’t let me. But considering the time of day I don’t feel too bad.

I forgot to say yesterday, if there are any questions about F1-blogging, please ask in the comments. I’ll try to answer in the next update or in the comments myself. Brundle’s just doing his track guide at the moment and I should log into the live blog and wake up some more before my stint modding.

Friday, 10th October, 2008 – 20:50

I should just add that I also have completely random conversations on Identi.ca as well, often with many people who comment here on BlogF1. But during qualifying and race, I rarely update Identi.ca, so any updates should stand out a little better. Also, tomorrow I will ensure the post-intro is no more than one paragraph, therefore minimising scrolling and finger-ache. I didn’t really think of that today and had my head been screwed on a little tighter, I would have done an ‘Explanation Post’, followed by the series of entries. But hey, I live and learn.

Friday, 10th October, 2008 – 20:22

I am absolutely shattered. But it is for a good reason. Last night/this morning I watched my very first Free Practice session all the way through. After a decade-and-a-half (near enough) I watched a 90-minute practice session. And of all the races to choose, I picked the one where I have to stay up all night! I’m not going to lie and say it was spectacular, because it wasn’t. But I am pleased I did it. I watched the video on ITV’s site because they won’t show the sessions on the actual TV, and I had the ususal F1 Live Timing whirring away on the monitor. And to be honest, the only reason why I didn’t see the second session was because I had to go to work. I caught the first ten minutes or so, but then the shower beckoned and off to my non-nine-to-five job I went.

But having only got little over an hour’s sleep, I’m feeling pretty crap right now. The plan is to head off to bed at about ten this evening to get some zeds, and then I’ll be up and bright before the sun to catch qualifying. I’ll probably add another update before qualifying, and I’m modding Q1 for Keith’s Live Blog. Then I’ll be off writing and blogging, but I’ll keep you all updated. For now though, I’m just chilling out on the eve of the Japanese Grand Prix weekend, sipping a cool glass of Veneto Pinot Grigio, checking out other F1 websites and blogs and wondering if I really know what I’ve let myself in for with these two ‘diary’ posts. I’m also writing the ‘Live Blog’ post, which is always pre-published beforehand to 00:01, just in case I fall asleep and forget. That post is usual easy, the only difficulty is finding a techie image to go-with.

Oh, and BlogF1 is supposedly fixed, by the way (feel free to catch with my dents on Identi.ca). For the past two days it has been even slower than normal. As in, it took about a minute to load and further minutes to do anything else. As of yet, I have no idea why, but I’m fairly certain it was database-related (the whole site pretty much runs off a database) and most importantly, I pretty sure it had nothing to do with me! My host (Media Temple) is normally superb – rarely a falter in the past year -but I’ve submitted a support ticket just to find out why it went weird. But touch wood, it has all returned to its regular lazy self. Fingers crossed it stays that way for the weekend.

Helpful Links:

• Ollie White’s Identi.ca Profile (for updates)
• Ollie White’s Identi.ca RSS Feed (for subscribing to updates)
• BlogF1’s Dodgy Guide to RSS Feeds

And that really is me in the Fisichella cap – don’t ask, long story…

Original article by BlogF1.

The Secret Diary Of A Formula One Blogger: Part I