Credit: Gavin Brown
Frosty the Snowman!
Hello everyone! How are you all? I have just come home from a mad evening of hectic Christmas shopping. But never fear, I have all of my presents and I have been keeping tabs on the stories I wanted to link to using the brilliant Instapaper service (Cheers Giggles!)
Before I begin with a smorgasbord of linkage, I just wanted to ask if you enjoyed the Mark Webber interview last night? If you missed it, it was Factbyte Factboxed. And if you can, try and catch it on the iPlayer...
F1 Linkage
So... where to begin? I suppose Joe Saward is always a good start ;) He has an obituary on a Belgian driver named Jacques Swaters, a reprint of a GP+ article about the Marussia car company, and a little update on HRT.
Speaking of which, AUTOSPORT are reporting that HRT (the other one) have signed a driver for next year. Also they have stories about driver etiquette being enforced harder next year, the continuation of ex-F1 drivers on the stewarding panel and a photo gallery tribute to Tom Walkinshaw.
Speaking of Tom Walkinshaw, Motorsport Retro has a great tribute to him which includes a lot of photo and video. A sad loss to all of motorsport, no matter what kind you follow...
AUTOSPORT also have a story about the Air Asia flight Sir Richard Branson will be a stewardess on (and it sounds like fun!), and a great article by Tony Dodgins about the perils of travelling as an F1 journalist...
ScarbsF1 has a great article summarising the 2011 Technical Regulations, which seem to have clarified a lot of loopholes exploited in 2010 - including the Mercedes "Roll Blade" (which I am sure you are relieved to hear). Also, he seems to think that nosecones will be lower in 2013...
Did you know that team orders have also been scrapped for 2011? You didn't? Well if you listened to F1 Minute you would have been kept up to date, eh? ;)
The Short Stints...
Did you know Massa drove like his brother this year? Looney Luca did - way to kick a man while he's down matey!
I didn't know Anthony Hamilton managed Paul Di Resta, but he does and he reckons he'll get an F1 seat next year. I do hope so, but they all say that, I suppose...
RG, you're not gonna like this, but RichardsF1 reckons Kamui Kobayashi was the most error prone driver in 2010. Guess who were second and third? Massa was second, while Petrov tied with Schumacher (!) for third!
Tony Fernandes is a bit of a party animal, and he does not disappoint for the Air Asia Christmas Party! Rock on dude!
Ferrari also had some weird Christmas party, with dear old Alonso uncomfortably dressed up as a Santa Claus. I would have thought he was more of a grinch personally...
Back To The Paddock...
Now for some links from the blogs... and as it's nearly Christmas I tend to start watching some stuff on TV that tends to be the same themes each year. So has Lukeh and he has written a great blog post about it!
When Christine hasn't been furiously typing transcripts out for the FBFB (at 93 words per minute no less!) she has been taking some time to read. Here are her latest picks...
Here is a great story from the BBC about a Battle of Britain Squadron formed by Aristocrats - and it makes for compelling reading.
Sidepodspace time now... and did you know that 30 years after being launched, the Voyager probes are still beaming back useful data to Earth? Apparently the Solar System is like a bubble and the probe is about to go through the skin... but when will we get to the bit where the aliens come back to visit us like in Star Trek: the Motion Picture?
Did you see the video of the roof of the Minneapolis Metrodrome roof collapsing under the weight of snow? It's 5 feet of Awesome!
Apparently the music industry is being all draconian and old fashioned again - closing down blogs that have content leaked to them for breach of copyright. But the music industry did the leaking, so this one is a bit of a facepalm!
Microsoft's Paul Allen has had a lawsuit thrown out for what he believes is a breach of copyright on something to do with annoying pop ups on web pages ... can we sue him for those instead?
Here is a cool augmented reality article superimposing old photographs over modern scenes. Very interesting!
Finally, and thanks to Journeyer for this one... Soon we will be celebrating Christmas. For a lot of us that means we will be visiting family members, which usually involves them using the opportunity to ask you for IT help and advice (mine certainly will be). So why not pre empt the inevitable questions by sending them a tech help video? Google are legendary ;)
OK so that's all from me. Have fun and enjoy your day everyone!