Oh The Memories

So now that the earth is back in rotation I guess its time to make a blog post! Over the weekend I picked myself up a magazine, F1 Racing Magazine! I haven't really read a magazine since the huge dissappointment which was Racer... and since Racer Magazine I have learned! I will not be subscribing to F1 Racing untill I read 2 issues(I will pick up the January issue asap). I read F1 Racing faster then I've ever read a magazine, I just couldn't put it down! The December issue is actually a tribute issue to M. Shumacher (surprise surprise) but the issue was also filled with other things like the F1 Racing Magazine's 'Man of the Year', a fan survey/open debate on the future of F1, an article on Nelson Piquet .Jr, an article on Jenson Button's father, the problems of mclaren, ect. Jenson Button actually wrote for the magazine in a past issue, so I've heard.... But Peter Windsor does write for them on a regular basis. Also just to let you all know... Skype is no longer going to be free to call land lines in the US and Canada starting January 1st! But none to worry because you can sign up for the unlimited calling in us & canada for only 15 dollars a year, but you gotta sign up soon because on January 30th they are bumping it up to 30 bucks a year. I have enjoyed my year of free calling even though I only really started using it half way threw the year. I've been listening to the TWIT podcast network for a while now... as have I been watching Diggnation for a while. And I was a HUGE Tech TV(and i mean huge!) fan back when it was good. Anyways.... recently I've been watching alot of the old Screen Savers episodes on You Tube. And I gotta tell you... It is great, every day I try to watch an episode or two (even though I've already seen the episodes :P) I... Still am a little bitter about the whole G4 thing but... in a sense this is better! Everyone (that matters) from the old tech tv have broke off and created their own network of shows. and you know what... I think soon enough they will all come together and it will be the screensavers all over again just...better somehow! I watched the indigital holiday episode... that was great to see a few of the old members together but myself... I am not a fan of Jessica or InDigital for that matter... Podcasts/vidcasts are great because they are A) avaiable for everyone and B) you can watch them at your own leisure. It would be great! Having a huge network, trying to recreate what was Tech TV back in the day. I know leo is really busy with his 20 podcasts but i think what would work is having shifts. Monday-Wednesday would be Kevin, Alex, Sarah, and Yoshi. and on Thursday and Friday we would have Patrick, Leo, Cat, and Andy Walker. Plus we could have other shows like unscrewed, and their current projects like the revision 3 network. It would be great! I doubt it will happen but as leo said, everyone kinda broke apart and did their own thing and soon they will all come together again. It's a pretty steep dream and I'm sure they would all be up for it. Oh the greatness which was Tech TV... It was so good... and then some how g4 managed to mess it up. Anyways... I really hope they merge all the projects they are doing seperatly together soon! kinda like that undotv thing chris was talking about a while back... Anyway... I will keep you posted on any great break threw. Here is a link to some old screensavers episodes hope you enjoy them as much as I have :) LINK

'07 It Is!

Alright! RTR#2 is going to be post-poned to the first week of '07! We came across some problems with this one. Initially our problem was scheduling once that was sorted out we came across a problem... a problem of forgetting to save after done recording. I admit that was my fault, I don't know what I was thinking but I clicked the X and the clicking of 'no' is second nature and I didn't even think about what I was doing. So we had wasted an hour and a half on that, which in my opinion wasn't that great anyways. So we rescheduled to record it on Wednesday :) Well once we got recording we restarted a few times and then our connections seemed to crap out. I said that we both should restart and Sir Yannick decided not to come back online. So I was left by myself to do the episode and because I like doing the show and wrote 3 pages of notes for this episode I decided to do it solo. I, unlike Yannick, like to meet dead lines and don't like to give peoples hopes up. The first time I recorded it, it was 19 minutes long, the second time I did it- 28 minutes, finally after letting my throat heal I went to linux and recorded it for a final time which came to about 42 minutes. It's surprising how much time it kills when you have a co-host :O I would say our show would be close to 2 hours if Yannick would have recorded it with me. Either way I must say that I wasn't all that impressed with this episode. I felt we had so much content for this episode that it would be the best episode yet, and it would have been if Yannick would have stuck around to record it. Anyways enough about that, episode 2 will be out in the first week of '07, once into '07 expect an episode everyweek (which day of the week is yet to be announced). I've been getting a fair bit of spam lately... not only in the email box but my youtube, some forums and worst of all here (Anorexicpillow.com). InDigital Episode #8 came out... I personally dislike the show but for this "Holiday Show" it had a star studded cast, or atleast in the eyes of an old Tech TV fan :P Dan Huard, Sarah Lane :O, Ziff Davis, Leo Laporte, Michaela Pereira, Robert Heron, Kevin Rose and Patrick Norton all had a roll in this episode. over the holiday season I will post the A1GP results as they occur. The Spyker F1 team today announced that Adrian Sutil will be their second driver for the 2007 season! Timo Glock also signed to be BMW's second test driver.

A Few Current Events

This post is just 3 small blog posts about some recent events in the world of racing!

1- So Marco Andretti tested the Honda F1 at Jerez! For his first time in a Formula One car he did pretty decent. He posted a time of 1m21.8 which was only 2 seconds off of the pace of Lewis Hamilton, the hot lap leader of the test at Jerez on Friday. Marco Andretti states that F1 is a big dream of his and plans on moving to Formula One once he wins the Indy 500. He believes that he will win the Indy 500 in 2007 or 2008 and then Formula One will be his main focus. He came in a close second for the '06 Indy 500 and got his first win in the Indy Racing League at Infineon Raceway this summer.

2- Team USA a man short? Well it's that time of year again for the ever so popular Race of Champions! The original line up for Team USA this year was Travis Pastrana and Jimmie Johnson. Johnson had to withdraw from the Race of Champions due to a broken wrist that he sustained from falling off of a golf cart at a charity golf event. The first person he called to replace him in the RoC was Indy Racing Leage champion Sam Hornish. Sam Hornish had to decline the offer due to short notice. Johnson then scrambled to find another American driver and thought Scott Speed would do just great! Well to our surprise Speed Injured him self while testing at Jerez for Toro Rosso. With one day until the Race of Champions they were not able to schedule a second drive, rumor has it that Marco Andretti was next on the list. Leaving Travis Pastrana to race for Team USA by him self.

3- With Michelin departing the Formula One circuit Bridgestone will be left as the single tyre supplier of the series. Felipe Massa Claims that passing will be much more difficult with a single tyre supplier and says "These tyres make you less aggressive, so it is not going to help passing". Ralf Shumacher on the other hand thinks the complete opposite of this. Ralf said "I am convinced the cars will slide more since the grip levels are lower than in the past. In theory, this should lead to more overtaking maneuvers, but we'll have to wait and see." Bridgestone is proposing a system much like The Champ Car World Series where each team has both a soft and a hard compound tyre and must use both in the course of a race.

Don't forget to tune in to Race Tech Radio we cover racing and technology news weekly! www.racetechradio.com

Slightly Delayed

Alright Race Tech Radio Episode #2 is going to be released on Wednesday or Thursday due to scheduling issues. So your best bet is to go into the Podcast section of my site and subscribe to the RSS. That way you will be sure to get the podcast as soon as it is released instead of the next time you visit my site. It will also available on you tube so you can see pictures of the odd things we talked about on the show here. Those Pictures are also going to be available in the "Shoot The Shit" area of RaceTechRadio.com. Anyways... I am really enjoying Race Tech Radio, I find it a whole lot of fun to do! I can really see how Leo Laporte got caught up in podcasting and is now doing 9 or so podcasts, it truly is addicting! Sadly I heard that Leo may be quitting KFI soon :( He said that it takes up his whole weekend and might be scrapping that podcast soon. Which really sucks because KFI The Tech Guy is my personal favorite podcast of Leos. It reminds me of Call For Help and I loved that show... Another thing I heard about Leo is that Call For Help is moving to Vancouver British Columbia... which just so happens to be where I live! Now I'm not sure if they are going to be doing live tapings but if they are concider me there! Although... their last studio, the one for the new Call For Help which is/was based in Toronto Canada was very small. I would almost go as far as saying that Leo is a personal Idol of mine... He has such a vast amount of knowledge about everything! It's very impressive for him to be able to answer random questions about everything from cameras, to computers, to tvs on the fly! Anything that has a chip as he says... Sure the odd time he doesn't know the answer but hey he is human and if he doesn't know the answer to your problem that moment he will either find the answer for you over the break or after the show. Btw Leo... if you need a co-host I'm there :P I may not have nearly as much knowledge as you but I can work on that. I finally got my mic working on Linux which is... great because having to boot into windows for skype calls was really starting to suck. And with an upcoming project of mine having to do with a fair bit of audio editing it would have really sucked if I had to be trapped in windows to do that. I will announce that project once into '07 and sure that I am willing to do it :) Now that Star Racer is done I will be able to listen to Top Rock 25 again! Oh how I've missed that show and the most charismatic personality on Internet radio Chewzer! One of the stations he broadcasts on is a stream I listen to rather often and they play a fair bit of Barenaked Ladies and I gotta tell ya'.... maybe Girl On The Left had a point they are rather catchy and fun to listen to. Seeming that we are talking about Rant... Hasn't it been close to 6 months since the last patrolling was released? Like come on Cimm I understand that editing isn't the only thing you want to do in your spare time but come on this is getting bad! And on a final note for those of you that don't listen to the podcast I am really enjoying A1GP! I really like the concept of having the nations competing and you really get into that aspect when watching. It's defiantly worth a watch during the off season. It really is no surprise that Speed TV picked up their broadcasts... not only is it good but Speed TV has nothing! They are showing Fia GT reruns, and Scca reruns hell even a 24 hours of Nurburgring highlights show. They really have nothing for the offseason other then Pinks. Anyways I guess thats all for this week there won't be an RTR next week but there will be one the following week! Hope you enjoy this weeks episode!

Launched!

Race Tech Radio is a weekly podcast which covers the latest in racing and technology news. From Formula One to MacBooks, we cover all the topics of interest hard and fast bringing you a wealth of information each and every episode.

Episode #1 - December 12, 2006

This week on the show: - A1GP Signs with SPEED-TV - Fox To Do F1 Coverage in 2007 - Marco Andretti To Test HondaF1 - Kimi Raikkonen's 2007 F1 Salary - Betting on F1's 2007 Season - Villeneuve's F1 to Pick-up Trucks Shift - Jimmy Johnson breaks his Wrist - Dell Along For the Blue-Ray Band Wagon - Blu-ray DVD Drive Annoys Some PlayStation 3 Buyers - Vertu Finishes the Racetrack Legends Series Phones - Goodbye "Flash Memory", Hello "Phase-Change" Memory - The Apple iPhone - December Issue of AutoSimSport - 13h of CSI: Miami on A&E - Raceline Radio Network

Download by right-click on the episode banner, and select save target as...

Alright! So the Podcast is now released and will be posted on Tuesdays starting 2007. We will be doing Episode 2 this Tuesday but will be taking the following week off, so the podcast will officially be launched weekly starting '07. Race Tech Radio will be mostly about open wheel racing and all series to do with it like A1GP, GP2, F1, IRL, Champ Car, ect. And Technology news if there is room for it :) We will be aiming for an hour long but we won't make it exactly 1 hour until around episode 10. Anyways the official website is http://www.racetechradio.com and will grow in content as we get further into the year. Either that or subscribe to the rss which will be posted on the site later this week or you can check out my podcast section which will have all of the episodes in there. Now onto the post :D Today was the finale of Star Racer and as I predicted Devin Cunningham won! It's ashame the car he will be driving next season in the Mazda Star Series is so ugly but i hope he moves to a better series soon after his contract expires. What was disappointing was how Chris Green cracked under the pressure :( he ended up having contact with 3 other racers :O and that Philippe Gelinas kept blaming his lap times on the car, after switching with Lorenzo his lap times stayed the same and Lorenzo took 1st position. The strange this was that they announced the winner of Star Racer after the final race of the 06 Champ Car series at Mexico City on the 15th of November... I watched that race and... didn't see them or even hear about it. They didn't make a big scene of it other then Devin doing a lap in the car. I can see why they pushed Star Racer out so quickly because it started what... late November? and finished mid December for the TV series, and the actual search for the racers started mid summer and they had the Star Racer picked out and in the car testing in November. They have to get him in and comfortable with the car and the 15 race tracks in the 5 months left of the off season for the Mazda Star Series. A1GP is going to be on Speed TV today at 1pm pst which I am rather excited about. It will be my first A1GP race and hope it meets my expectations, if not... atleast the concept is great it may turn out like shit... hah kinda like USA come to think of it :P So that is all for this post come back next Tuesday where I will have a new blog post and a new episode of Race Tech Radio!

Time Once Again

It has been a fair amount of time since my last post... I actually started to write a post the other day but then my browser crashed and I didn't feel like writing it all over again. Anyways onto the news :D The official Formula One line up for the 2007 season is in: McLaren: Fernando Alonso & Lewis Hamilton, Renault: Giancarlo Fisichella & Heikki Kovalainen, Ferrari: Felipe Massa & Kimi Raikkonen, Honda: Jenson Button & Rubens Barrichello, BMW: Nick Heidfeld & Robert Kubica, Toyota: Ralf Schumacher & Jarno Trulli, Red Bull: David Coulthard & Mark Webber, Williams: Nico Rosberg & Alex Wurz, Spyker: Christijan Albers, Super Aguri: Takuma Sato & Anthony Davidson. Torro Rosso is yet to announce their drivers for 07 even though they said earlier that Speed and Liuzzi would be sticking with the team for 07. Spyker hasn't confirmed their second driver just yet seeming that Hamilton declined their 10 million dollar offer. One thing that I am worried about is Honda... They have lost their main sponsor Lucky Strike due to the tobacco advertisement ban (which is total bs) and they are still in search for a primary sponsor. I just hope they don't change the paint scheme to drastically. Another big announcement in racing news is that Speed TV will from this day on be showing the A1GP broadcasts so if you miss open wheel racing in the off season of F1 and the IRL now is your chance to jump onto this series! It used to be on very few selected networks but now it is on Speed so all can enjoy it. Another piece of Speed news is that they have teamed up with FOX to bring F1 to the American people... Fox will be doing the coverage of Indianapolis, Canada, France and Britain, while Speed covers the rest of the season in Formula One. It seems like a good idea to get Formula One to more people and I'm all for it :D In tech news: Kevin Rose spilt the beans on the Apple phone (due to be announced in January) on his popular show Diggnation. On episode 30 he mentioned that the iPhone will be running 2 batteries one for the mp3 portion and one for the actual phone, a slide out keyboard, a touch screen, it's going to be "small as shit", comes in 4 and 8 gigs, flash memory, and that all the major phone companies will be carrying it. He was right on the money with the ipod nano so his source seems to be dead on, provided kevin hasn't gotten him fired yet. Other then that... thats about all... other then my multiple computer problems this week things have been great. As of right now my only reason for still having windows is Skype and Live For Speed :) Its funny because just when I started to get somewhat good at Macromedia Fireworks I switched to Linux and was forced to use gimp, which so far seems good but I'm not familiar with it just yet. Tekken 5 was released on PS3! which is... i must admit rather tempting. Anyways thats all for this week! Thanks once again for reading but if you are still reading this on blogger please rebookmark my site as www.anorexicpillow.com which has my huge gallery and soon to come podcasts!