I have never done much in the way of reading books. Fiction is not for me, so novels are more-or-less out of the question. However, I do enjoy reading non-fiction books. But I somehow never get the time to read them.

Time is the scarcest resource imaginable, and I have a tendency to build these backlogs. Not too long ago I wrote about the huge number of podcasts that are stuck in my backlog (I am just about getting that under control). I also have a small pile of CDs that I bought several months ago and still haven’t listened to, and a slightly smaller pile of DVDs from before Christmas that I still haven’t watched.

But books are the big daddy of my backlog. I have special shelf just for unread books! Currently, 15 books sit there. Some of them I must have got almost a decade ago.

I think they are perhaps the wrong books. How tempted am I to ever reopen the ten-year-old book about US radio stations that I started but didn’t finish? How about the two political books that I started but never finished? Or the two books about economics that I started but got bored of?

In the summer of 2006, between my second and third years at university, I went on a big drive to read economics books. I had begun to realise that I was struggling at economics, and decided to spend the summer reading less academic, more accessible economics book in an attempt to soak up some of the subject and hopefully become a better economist in third year.

I happened to read a blog post by Greg Mankiw called Summer reading list, which seemed to fit the bill perfectly. After a bit of research, I selected five books from the list and ordered them. Sadly, it took me a year to read one of them. I finished another of them last year. I started one of them this year but gave up, and two others sit on the shelf virtually unopened. (I finished Freakonomics very quickly, but I think I bought that afterwards.)

My lack of talent in economics became clearer in third year, when I performed abysmally. My motivation plummeted. I later bought the Penguin History of Economics, which was on the reading list for the History of Economic Thought course that I took. This, also, has been started but not finished.

For a while, my main plan was to get through these economics books, and the other books in my backlog, before buying any others. But having not done any reading for several months, I had to recognise that this wasn’t a good plan.

Before I completed my degree, I had already more-or-less made the decision not to pursue economics further. I was lucky enough to somehow get a 2:1, but mostly due to the politics courses and my dissertation. It was clear to me that I just wasn’t cut out for economics, even though I planned to maintain an interest in it.

But there was no point in pretending I was going to start reading these books. So I have decided to buy more books on different subjects and start reading them. Last week I acquired seven new books — six that I had bought, and one surprise gift. It’s a mixture of stuff — some about writing and editing, a humour book, some motorsport books that I will probably blast through, and… an economics book.

Well, I figured that since I liked Freakonomics so much, I would probably actually read Superfreakonomics. Wish me luck. I will keep my LibraryThing thing updated.

What am I doing that means I have so little spare time? I would say that it’s all because I currently spend so much time commuting to work (generally around three hours per day, or two if I’m lucky). But my chief means of entertainment while travelling, listening to podcasts, has also been causing me undue hassle due to the rising backlog sitting in my iPod waiting to be listened to.

I guess it’s lucky that one of the biggest problems in my life just now is the fact that I have too much interesting and fun stuff to listen to. But I have genuinely found it a tricky balance to get right, and am trying out creative ways to organise my spare time more efficiently as a matter of priority.

Having too many podcasts to listen to has been the case for as long as I can remember. It’s a bit like having an RSS reader, and before you know it, you have subscribed to so many RSS feeds that you never get them all read. This is okay as long as you don’t let anything get too out-of-date before you get round to it.

However, the mild annoyance of having a huge backlog of podcasts became a major problem recently when, almost without noticing, I ended up being four or five weeks behind on almost every podcast I listen to. This became a major problem with the current affairs podcasts I listen to, particularly just after the General Election had taken place. They had almost all been rendered completely out of date!

So since the election I have been on a drive to listen to more podcasts, weed out the ones I don’t really like, and prioritise the more newsworthy ones. Before, I had around 260 podcast episodes downloaded but not yet listened to. Having unsubscribed from and deleted a few podcasts, I have got that number down to 170, where it seems to have stabilised.

It took me about a month to do it, but I have managed to catch up with all of the podcasts that I deem to be “current affairs”, and have even sub-divided this into high-priority and low-priority sub-categories. Apart from F1 podcasts (which have always been consumed fairly quickly), these are now listened to first.

Of the podcasts that are less centred around the news, I have split these into a ‘B’ and ‘C’ list. Bs are podcasts that either I really enjoy or I think I should listen to. Cs are podcasts that I have assigned the lowest priority to. I am on the verge of unsubscribing from some of these.

I start listening to these podcasts if there are no current affairs ones waiting, with one C being placed after every two or three Bs. Just now, the oldest of these is from way back on 2 April — ten weeks ago. It is certainly interesting to see whether or not I really miss listening to these podcasts.

It certainly feels like I have become a lot more organised, even though there are almost 40 hours’ worth of podcasts waiting to be listened to. And that is just in this list alone.

I haven’t even mentioned the comedy podcasts, which I listen to as part of a different routine. I listen to one Adam and Joe podcast per week (on a Monday, to cheer myself up, geddit?). Then during whatever bits of time I have on Monday or Tuesday I listen to Iain Lee or Barry from Watford. This is a huge backlog of its own, but because the Iain Lee ones are generally around 10 or 15 minutes long, it’s easy to squeeze them in here and there.

There is so much cheap (in fact, free) entertainment that there is simply too much interesting stuff to get through it all. I recently calculated that the amount of podcasts I was downloading amounted to 1½ hours of listening every day. No wonder I was struggling.

It is worth being a bit more discerning with how I spend my spare time. But it is always difficult to make the decision to stop listening to a particular podcast. I have been listening to some of these for three years now. But a bit like a favourite shirt that’s worn out, I’m not sure I can actually bring myself to chuck it out.

This article marks the return of Formula 1 to this website, as I have decided to (partially) close down vee8. For those of you who would rather not read the F1-related articles, you may like to subscribe to the F1-free RSS feed.

To break this process in gently, I have decided to make the first post a light-hearted look at what might happen in the 2010 Formula 1 season.

The season will be the most exciting ever, but the title of the DVD will make it sound like a wet Wednesday

In 2006, Fernando Alonso took his second World Championship in scintillating style that went down to the wire. The title of the official Formula 1 season review DVD was “Once Again”, making it sound like your drunk uncle has just wet himself for the umpteenth time.

In 2007, after a tense season-long battle between McLaren team-mates Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Räikkönen amazed the world by snatching the title from both of them in the final race of the season, overcoming a 17 point deficit with two races to go. The DVD was called “Kimi made it at last”, as though he had just come home late from a heavy night.

In 2008 Lewis Hamilton took the Championship in heart attack-inducing style on the last corner of the last lap of the last race. The DVD was called “Luck does not come into it”, which I still haven’t worked out the meaning of.

And the DVD really sold the 2009 season well by calling it “Not in a hurry…”, as if Jenson Button did not have a record-breaking winning streak at the start of the season.

Even if the Championship showdown is host to the first ever alien visit to this planet and is settled with a massive 200mph laser gun fight involving seventeen drivers from the planet Q’txxp’he, it wouldn’t surprise me if the DVD was given some madly dull title like, “I’d rather be watching paint dry”, “Isn’t Corrie on the other side?”, or “I’d stick with watching lawn bowls if I were you”.

Confectionery diffuser face-off

2009 was the year of the Double Decker diffusers. The 2010 pre-season testing period has seen a similar curiosity surrounding the rear end of F1 cars, with teams being notably coy about showing off their behinds.

The concept has now moved way beyond Double Decker diffusers. Among the new types of diffuser will be Red Bull’s Drifter diffuser, McLaren’s Mars Bar diffuser, Toro Rosso’s Curly Wurly diffuser and USF1′s Snickers diffuser. However, once again, Ross Brawn will find the upper hand when he reveals Mercedes’s Boost diffuser.

FOM will fail to improve television coverage

Although Bernie Ecclestone’s FOM is supposedly covering the world’s most technologically advanced sport, the television pictures will still resemble a smudgy YouTube video. Bernie Ecclestone will insist that there is no need for HD coverage because, “my IT guy told me he swears by his old CRT television”.

Despite the decision to give HD the cold shoulder, FOM will stick with their existing on-screen graphics, which are so small that they are actually bloody impossible to read on any 4:3 display. They may be declaring the start of World War III on those captions for all I know.

Intense McLaren Championship rivalry

The title will come down to the wire in Abu Dhabi, with the main protagonists being McLaren team mates Hamilton and Button.

Towards the end of the race, John Button will think he has the upper hand by unleashing his killer move – undoing the last button on his shirt. Little will he anticipate that Anthony Hamilton will win the Championship by staring even more intensely.

Michael Schumacher will be the world’s most superstitious man

Following on from the revelation that Michael Schumacher has a mad superstition for odd numbers, the German will reveal a litany of hitherto unknown superstitions. Among these will be an insistence that his team mate runs with an inferior set-up because “it makes me feel a bit better about my car”.

He will also reveal that he has a special form of OCD that means he just has to brake-test any drivers that are behind him, and cannot stop himself from driving straight into anyone who has just overtaken him. He also has a strong superstition for getting to choose his own parking space, and will park his Mercedes car in Race Control, where he can literally control the race by tampering with the timing system.

No-one will think to point any of this out, because nothing is allowed to get in the way of Princess Michelle’s Fairy Tale Comeback.

Cosmopolitan Valencia will continue grid boy tradition

Valencia’s tradition of having grid boys in addition to grid girls at the European Grand Prix will continue. Coincidentally, Flavio Briatore will make his F1 comeback at the very same race.

New teams to struggle

New teams will be unable to shake off speculation surrounding their ability to see out the season. While the early focus will be on USF1 and Campos, the spotlight will soon switch to Virgin Racing.

Suspicions will be raised mid-season when the Virgin team mysteriously re-brands with a green livery and makes a formal application to change its name to ‘Zavvi’. A few months later, the team will run out of money and close down, but not before a special fixtures and fittings sale where fans will have the opportunity to buy the screws that once held the car together.

The bearded beggar who appears at races is not homeless

Having made a tactical error by trying to get a drive at Mercedes only for some seven time World Champion or other to get in the way, Nick Heidfeld will begin the 2010 season without a job. He will resort to sleeping on the floor in the paddock and begging.

If you see a suspicious-looking bearded man in the paddock, it is probably Mr Heidfeld, the world’s greatest ever second place finisher. Although he might speak as though he is slightly drunk, he is not homeless and is perfectly harmless.

Warp20

A series of posts

1. 20 years of Warp Records
2. 20 Warp albums — part 1
3. 20 Warp albums — part 2
4. 20 Warp albums — part 3
5. 20 Warp albums — part 4
6. 20 Warp albums — part 5
7. Warp20 (Box Set)

Warp Records celebrated its twentieth anniversary this year with an extravagant box set, Warp20 (Box Set). Measuring in at 10 inches × 10 inches × 3 inches, it truly is a thing of beauty. Packed in there are five CDs and five 10 inch records, full of Warp goodness old and new.

It was not cheap either, so was only for the most fanatic of Warp followers. Luckily for Warp, there are plenty of fanatical followers — myself included.

Warp20 (Chosen)

Also released separately as a 2CD album on its own, Warp20 (Chosen) is designed to be a collection of the best of the first twenty years of Warp Records.

The first ten tracks, making up disc one, were chosen by voters on the internet. As such, the top ten is sadly predictable. You really could have forecast in advance the inclusion of the likes of ‘Windowlicker’, ‘Roygbiv’ and ‘My Red Hot Car’ in the top three.

The inclusion of most of these tracks was surely never in doubt. Certainly, the top eight are bona fide Warp classics (I am not so sure about Jimmy Edgar’s ‘I Wanna Be Your STD’ or Clark’s ‘Herzog’, but I can understand their inclusion). There is also a noticeable skew towards the late 1990s / early 2000s. Only one track, LFO’s ‘LFO (Leeds Warehouse Mix)’, is from before 1998.

It is clear that the current fans of Warp Records — at least those who voted in the internet poll — are a bit like me. They were not around for the birth of the label, and cling on to the late 1990s IDM explosion as Warp’s classic sound. I think this is Warp’s best period too, but I would have preferred a greater variety in the first disc.

Luckily, the second disc is on hand to provide some of that variety. Label boss and co-founder Steve Beckett chose a further fourteen tracks which make up disc two. While all the usual suspects are again present and correct (giving the likes of Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada and Autechre two appearances on the compilation), other periods and genres are given rightful recognition.

Ultimately, though, while there are a couple of gems here that I didn’t previously own, Warp20 (Chosen) is a bit redundant for me, and no doubt for almost everyone else who bought this box set. If you are such a great fan of Warp that you are going to shell out eighty quid or so, you almost certainly need no such overview to the label.

Perhaps of more value is the fold-out poster of comments posted by the internet users who placed their votes, providing (relatively) qualitative information to accompany the raw top ten.

Warp20 (Recreated)

This is the surprise highlight of the package — a double-disc album of Warp artists covering classic Warp tracks. It shows you how far Warp has come in the past ten years. For its tenth anniversary, Warp released an album of Warp artists remixing classic Warp tracks.

But with a more diverse range of artists on its roster, and plenty of artists with a different set of skills, it seems as though it makes more sense to ask artists to do covers rather than remixes. The results are pleasingly wonderful. Clearly, when you take maverick musical geniuses and ask them to take on the works of other maverick musical geniuses, the results are going to be deliciously skewed and entertaining.

The album opens with Born Ruffians covering Aphex Twin’s classic humorous tracks from the mid-1990s, ‘Milkman’ and ‘To Cure a Weakling Child’. The band’s stripped down approach works surprisingly well. The vocals are shouted out as though from the rooftops, rather than being distorted by electronic effects, adding to the comedy effect.

Another surprise highlight is Maxïmo Park’s take on ‘When’, originally by Vincent Gallo. This is a wonderful piece of dark synth-pop. Hopefully it signals a new direction for Maxïmo Park, whose sound has otherwise become stale.

Meanwhile, Jamie Lidell’s version of Grizzly Bear’s ‘Little Brother’ is just as beautiful and organic as the original. It is another instance of an artist revealing something otherwise unheard in his audio arsenal.

But the real highlight of the album is ‘Phylactery’ by John Callaghan, which is based on Autechre’s ‘Tilapia’. This transforms one of the first signposts of Autechre’s foray into increasingly unique and obscure electronics into a wonderfully wonky pop song.

One instance where a remix may have been a better idea is when Luke Vibert tackled ‘LFO’. The results are actually rather good — undoubtedly a Luke Vibert take on a classic Warp track. But it certainly lacks the punch of the original. This makes it a slightly trudging, though intriguing, listen.

Overall, though, Warp20 (Recreated) is a marvellous document. It reveals sides to Warp artists that hadn’t been revealed before. It’s like peering into the fourth dimension of an already-extraordinary label.

Warp20 (Elemental)

This disc contains an hour-long mix of 65 Warp tracks, created by remix maestro Osymyso. A similar mix, by Buddy Peace and Zilla, was released five years ago along with the WarpVision DVD. Although Osymyso had five years’ worth of extra material to work with, I am less fond of his effort. Nonetheless, the creativity involved in creating such a mix, containing a diverse array of Warp music from the past twenty years, still astounds me.

Warp20 (Unheard)

Moving on to the vinyl in the box set, we have three ten inch records made up of eleven previously (sort of) unheard tracks. Incidentally, these are smartly presented with a minimalist design and debossed text.

The selection kicks off with Boards of Canada’s immersive ‘Seven Forty Seven’. This is not, strictly speaking, unheard. It was originally featured in an interactive Boards of Canada website several years ago. But it is the first time it has been presented as a track itself. It is so good that I can’t work out why it hasn’t been released before.

This is followed up by the equally exciting ‘Oval Moon (IBC mx)’ by Autechre. Named after IBC, the Manchester-based pirate radio station through which Autechre first made their name, this is real old school stuff. Having been produced in 1991, it is almost as old as the Warp label itself! And it’s excellent.

After these two stonkers, the rest of the collection does not quite stand up to the same level. But it is still a good listen. Fair efforts from Clark, Plaid and Flying Lotus are included, along with classic unreleased material from Elektroids and Nightmares on Wax.

Meanwhile, the plodding and uneventful ‘Sixty Forty’, originally from a 2003 Peel Session, is probably the most disappointing Broadcast song I have ever heard. The collection is rounded off with ‘As Link’, a new Seefeel track, whetting appetites for their rumoured comeback.

Warp20 (Infinite)

Musically, the box set is rounded off with a couple of records made up entirely of locked grooves. There are fifty loops in total, plundered from Warp’s back catalogue. It is an interesting experience to experiment with them for a bit, but probably of limited use to anyone who is not a DJ.

Warp20 (1989-2009) — The Complete Catalogue

The final item in the box is a large book that documents the artwork for every release on the Warp label. It is interesting to leaf through and assess how the label progressed over the years, and recall the memories of hearing all of this wonderful music for the first time.

Warp Records is almost as well known for its strong visual identity as for its music. There is some fantastic artwork in the Warp catalogue. While this book is not at all the best way to appreciate the artwork, it does serve as an excellent historical document cataloguing Warp’s classic covers.

Since the turn of the decade I have watched Formula 1 pretty much as a neutral. Of course, I prefer some teams and drivers more than others. In case you’re wondering, my favoured teams are BMW, Red Bull, Renault and (at a stretch) McLaren. Out of the drivers, I like Räikkönen, Heidfeld, Kubica, Alonso, Coulthard, Webber, Barrichello and (at a stretch) Kovalainen.

When I was younger my attention was grabbed by Stewart Grand Prix. Jackie Stewart’s was a famous name that I could latch onto, and the Scottish iconography appealed to me as a young Scot. I also loved the fact that they were a new team, seemingly with the odds against them, but did a fairly solid job.

Rubens Barrichello’s drive to 2nd in Monaco in 1997 was exciting to watch, and for a second I thought they were going to win when Michael Schumacher briefly ran off the road at Ste Devote. Mostly though 1997 was a year fraught with reliability problems. 1998 brought a further dip in form.

But the 1999 season as a whole was brilliant for Stewart GP as Barrichello once again shone. Who could forget Barrichello leading at the Brazilian Grand Prix? And then Johnny Herbert took a fantastic win at the Nürburgring. This team was only three years old, yet was in a position to fight for good points hauls, finish 4th in the championship and even win a race. That’s more than the team’s subsequent owners, Ford (as Jaguar) and Red Bull can say for themselves.

Besides Stewart, I developed a soft spot for Jordan. I loved the way they came back from a disastrous start to 1998. Halfway through the season they hadn’t even scored a single point. Then things started to look up during the British Grand Prix. I can remember watching a fly-on-the-wall documentary about Jordan’s 1998 season. Eddie Jordan was nervously pacing around the Jordan pit area mumbling, “I need this feckin’ point… Come on, I need this feckin’ point so much.” He got that feckin’ point.

Just a few races later Jordan Grand Prix scored a magnificent 1–2 in Belgium, with Damon Hill heading Ralf Schumacher. It was the team’s first win and it ushered in a new, though fleeting, era of competitiveness for the team.

The 1999 season was a joy to watch, not only for Stewart but for Jordan and Heinz-Harald Frentzen in particular. The German driver took an amazing six podiums including two wins, particularly memorably in France. For a long while it looked as though Frentzen was a genuine championship contender, though in the end it was not to be.

In retrospect, the work the Jordan team put into the 1999 season diverted their attention away from the future. Ian Phillips said as much in the latest Inside Line podcast — the championship run burnt the team out, and they never recovered.

In subsequent years the Jordan team drifted ever further into mediocrity and it became more and more difficult for me to like the team. 2003 was particularly painful. Giancarlo Fisichella took a flukey win in Brazil, but that disguised a truly awful season in which the team otherwise scored the miserable total of three points. If the previous year’s scoring system would have been in use, the win would have been their one and only points score.

To compound matters, in 2003 Eddie Jordan got into a needless legal fight with Vodafone which he was seemingly never going to win. From then on Jordan struggled financially. That team is now known as Force India and has had four different owners in the past five years.

However, the late 1990s were great Jordan-supporting days. And along with supporting the team comes the merchandise. I had two Jordan caps (one generic Jordan and the other Damon Hill, mimicking the Hills’ famous helmet design). I also had a Damon Hill t-shirt that commemorated the “place in history” that Hill took by taking the first win for the Jordan Grand Prix team. I also have a 1:43 diecast model of Damon Hill’s Jordan 198, the car he drove in 1998 and helped secure Jordan’s famous 1–2 in Belgium.

That is not the only F1 merchandise I bought when I was younger. I also had an Orange Arrows cap. I think I got it because I liked the colours. I am sometimes surprised to see people still wearing Orange Arrows gear from time to time, around six years after the team folded. I also had a rather colourful Ferrari t-shirt commemorating their 1999 Constructors Championship victory. What can I say? The folly of youth.

In addition to the Damon Hill 1:43 diecast, for a period of five years I decided I was going to collect 1:43 scale models of every single Formula 1 world champion. So in 1998 and 1999 I bought two Mika Häkkinen McLarens and from 2000–2002 I bought three Michael Schumacher Ferraris.

To spice things up a bit I bought models of Alberto Ascari’s 1952 Ferrari 500 F2 and Nelson Piquet’s 1981 Brabham BT-49C. But I got bored after that.

Grand Prix Legends were looking for excuses as to why diecast models don’t sell so well nowadays. I think the reality is that 75 quid for a 1:18 model that will only gather dust on a shelf is a bloody rip-off. Back in the day I think I spent around £20 per 1:43 model. I don’t think that’s something I would do today.

Aside from the normal annual purchases of video games (when available) and the season review DVD, I have not bought any Formula 1 merchandise for a while.

Until now.

I have bought this jazzy BMW Sauber t-shirt to express my support for the team. Like many, I have been wooed by the methodical, grounded approach of the team’s principal Mario Theissen and its drivers Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica.

The win was coming for a while, and the fact that it was a 1–2, just like Jordan’s maiden win, was the icing on the cake. The team’s recent dip in form won’t deter me. Now, for the first time for several years, I am not a neutral. I am supporting BMW Sauber.

It’s strange because I was never a supporter of the Sauber team at all. Nor was I keen on BMW when they were in partnership with Williams. But the magical combination of BMW and Sauber under the leadership of Mario Theissen has attracted me to them to the extent that I am a card-carrying, t-shirt wearing fan.

So which teams do you support, and do you buy merchandise to show that support?

I have been a big fan of Sony’s Formula 1 series of games. Its history can be traced back to 1996 when Formula 1 (based on the 1995 season) was released. It was a complete masterpiece. Developers Bizarre Creations had made the first 3D Formula 1-based video game and they got it near enough perfect first time round. It is still a joy to play the game today.

It was an arcade-style racer which meant that it was fairly basic, certainly by today’s standards. But it was a huge hit even among non-F1 fans. It was Europe’s second biggest selling video game of the year.

Formula 1 97 followed the year later, refining the product to a great extent. You could even set an option to have tear-off strips. When your visor got too dirty you had to press a button to clean it! It also had a separate arcade mode which felt like a completely different game. This meant that the game pleased non-F1 fans and dedicated F1 geeks alike.

From there, things went a little pear-shaped. Despite the huge success, Bizarre Creations decided to call it a day with F1 so that they could concentrate on Metropolis Street Racer. That series has since become the hugely successful — and, I must say, excellent — Project Gotham Racing series.

In the meantime, Psygnosis, the publishers who owned the rights to the F1 game, were left in the lurch. Visual Sciences were given the job of developing Formula 1 98, but they had just a few months to do it in. Sure enough, the game was an utter beast — buggy, unplayable and generally unsatisfying.

Another change of developer came for Formula One 99. Studio 33 were brought on board. They managed to do a competent job, but it was clearly a case of getting the basics right first as the game was slightly bare. It was, however, the first game to incorporate the Safety Car! Whether gamers enjoyed the experience of being behind the Safety Car is another matter…

In the intervening period, Psygnosis was bought by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and renamed Studio Liverpool. This began Sony’s association with the F1 license. Gradual improvements were made for both the 2000 and 2001 editions, but the glory days of Bizarre Creations’s games would not be reached on the PSone again.

It is worth remembering that this period was a rather congested time for Formula 1 fans. In some years there might have been around half a dozen different versions of the F1 game. The PSone alone had four F1 games released in 2000.

As well as the Sony offering, Video System brought their F1 World Grand Prix brand from the Nintendo 64 to the PlayStation. Developed by Lankhor, the game was highly realistic, with a dizzying array of different set-up options and horrifically realistic handling. At least, I hope that was the case because it made the game damn well unplayable. It was a struggle even to reach the end of a straight. It was without a doubt the worst F1 game I have ever played.

The following year, Video System published a second game based on their 1999 license. This time they turned to Ubi Soft to develop it. F1 Racing Championship was considerably better than the first attempt, but that wasn’t saying much. As it was the third PSone game based on the 1999 season, there was little reason to buy it, particularly as the year was now 2000!

More successful was the Electronic Arts series. The company made the brave decision of publishing F1 2000 at the start of the 2000 season. Sony had been releasing their games at the end of each season. This meant that there were some inaccuracies in the game as teams proved to be more or less competitive than their pre-season testing form showed. But that seemed academic when all of a sudden there was a chance to play the F1 game several months earlier than normal, and crucially before the Sony edition came out.

However, the EA game was simply not as satisfying as the Sony version. For one thing, EA brought in Visual Sciences to develop the game, although this was kept quiet! VS was the company that made a hash of Psygnosis’s Formula 1 98. Although this time round they did a better job, it was still a bit of a handful to play.

EA also made the decision to release an updated version called F1 Championship Season 2000 at the end of the season to fix some of the inaccuracies of the original. There was quite a neat “scenario mode”, where you would relive actual events from the 2000 season. But by now the PSone market was truly over-saturated with F1 games.

Presumably realising this, FOA gave Sony an exclusive license to publish Formula 1 games from the 2003 season. EA’s parting shot was to release F1 Career Challenge. This took advantage of their licenses for the seasons from 1999 through to 2002. You would begin your career in a poor car and try to make your way up to a better car through the seasons.

This added a much-needed new dimension to F1 games which were often very samey for the obvious reasons that they were all based on the same circuits and the same cars time and time again. Sony / Studio Liverpool have since added a career mode to each of their subsequent F1 games.

These were difficult years to be an F1 gamer. Instead of getting what we wanted — namely, a decent F1 game every year — we were getting several mediocre games, none of which did the trick. Thankfully this changed with the move to the PS2 and the exclusive license awarded to Sony. It was tough luck if you didn’t own a PS2 though.

Sony’s early PS2 games were not all that great. But they were notable for being the only way you could get DVD reviews of the 2000 and 2001 F1 seasons, complete with footage from F1 Digital+. These remain the only official review DVDs of those seasons.

Every year the F1 game improved a little bit. Formula One 04 was enjoyable enough. But Formula One 05 was probably the first time you could say there was an F1 game as good as Formula 1 97. There were also some neat features where, using the Eye Toy peripheral, you could insert your own face into the game and watch yourself participate in the podium ceremony. Rather surreal, but good fun! Unfortunately, F1 05 was far too easy to play even on the hardest difficulty settings. Another nice touch was a set of unlockable classic cars.

Formula One 06 further refined the game. By now, a number of authentic features had been added to please the F1 fans. For instance, in career mode if you are stuck in the test driver role you have to be prepared to trundle around an empty track doing consistent laps — a lot more difficult than it sounds! Come race time you could even choose to drive the formation lap yourself and you would have to get the tyres up to temperature.

(You can read my more detailed reviews of Formula One 05 and Formula One 06.)

There has been one game on the PS3, F1 Championship Edition (strangely familiar title, that). It is based on the 2006 season. I’ve never had the chance to play it, but it looks great.

Just as the F1 series was becoming great again though, the F1 games have dried up. I had wondered why. After all, the 2007 season ought to have been more lucrative for Sony because of the hype surrounding Lewis Hamilton. Unfortunately, Bernie Ecclestone seems to have thought this more than Sony did, leading us to the current deadlock.

In the meantime, Electronic Arts have signed a £5 million deal with Lewis Hamilton. However, this does not necessarily mean that a new EA F1 game is on the horizon. Several years ago Jacques Villeneuve was involved in a fantasy racing game called Speed Challenge: Jacques Villeneuve’s Racing Vision. This EA deal could be a similar plan.

With stalemate all round, it is probably too late even for a game based on the 2008 season to be made. What a terrible shame. You might think I am going overboard a bit. But for me, the annual video game has become an important memento of the season, just as much as the review DVD is. If I feel a bit nostalgic for Pedro de la Rosa in an Arrows, I stick on Formula One 99. Now it looks like two whole years will be lost.

Fans of F1 games should check out F1Gamers. The site is chock full of obtrusive adverts, but it’s a good resource nevertheless.

Music of 2007

A series of posts

1. What I listened to in 2007
2. Music of 2007: #40–#21
3. Music of 2007: #20–#11
4. Music not of 2007: three reissues
5. Music of 2007: #10–#4
6. Music of 2007: top three

Well, last year I looked at some reissues as well, so I thought I’d do that this year as well. I wasn’t joking when I said I might not get this list finished until February. This is in alphabetical order.

Seefeel — Quique (Redux Edition)

This is nice. This forgotten shoegaze / techno crossover classic got a re-release for seemingly no particular reason. Not even an anniversary. If they’d waited until 2008 they could have done it for the fifteenth anniversary. I guess that for whatever reason they felt like the time was right to reissue it last year.

Scottish readers may be wondering, and I can confirm — this album’s title rhymes with ‘keech’. But the music itself is anything but.

This ‘redux’ edition comes with a full second CD of lost extra goodies. Tracks that inexplicably never made an album as well as alternate versions and remixes come included. My particular favourite — of both discs — is ‘Clique’. Why did this not make the album? It should have been a single!

Quique has a gentle ambient approach, like a wall or ocean of sound. I personally prefer the heavier, darker, more industrial sound of their follow-up, Succour. But Quique is nevertheless a fine album, and I’m happy to have picked up this double disc joy.

The Knife — Silent Shout (Deluxe Edition)

I missed this one first time around. Wasn’t quite interested enough. But when it was re-released as a three disc package I went for it. Maybe I was right first time round.

It’s actually a fairly good album. There are some good tunes. But I was disappointed. Given the rave reviews the album got, I very much found it a damp squib. Good to listen to from time to time though.

Maybe part of the problem is that I already knew one of this album’s tracks quite well. For that reason it suffers from that problem where one song seems to tower over the rest of the album. Even knowledge of this problem hasn’t prevented me from feeling a bit disappointed though.

The new extra discs give me much the same feeling. One is a DVD of a concert performance (An Audio Visual Experience) and all of The Knife’s videos. The other is a CD with the audio of the concert performance.

On CD it sounds quite good. About the same standard of Silent Shout. But watch the DVD and it just looks a bit ridiculous. It is about as live as Princess Diana. The vocals seem to be live, but that other guy clearly doesn’t know what to do with himself. If somebody is making that music live, it certainly isn’t him.

I’d love to believe that waving a couple of ridiculous looking glowing sticks in a pseudo-rhythmic (and often not even in sync with the music) manner is making all of those sounds. But I get the feeling that that awesome instrument hasn’t been invented yet.

I know that live electronic music is a bit of a grey area. But seriously. I prefer the “look like you’re checking your email” approach. At least that is less pretentious.

I enjoyed the music videos though. I will probably check out some of their older stuff if I see it going cheap somewhere.

White Noise — An Electric Storm (digitally remastered)

Already this has become one of my favourite albums of electronic music. I am absolutely in awe of it. Having read about the techniques used to make it, and just the sheer fact that it was so visionary, I really think this ought to be more famous than it is.

I have already written a suitably gushing review of it. I had forgotten how long it was. All those words and not a single comment! Gah.

That’s yer lot. Incidentally, I have been linking to my original impressions of the albums I have been listing in this series. But there was also a post where I wrote about 12 of them — a kind of mid-year roundup. If you are interested, you can read it here. You will notice that I was actually near enough on time with that one. Ironic really, given how busy I was at the time…

Copyshite

A series of posts

1. Copyshite
2. The entertainment industry’s wrong turns
3. The future of music: gigs and t-shirts
4. The future of music: pretty boxes

There are only two things in the world that give us absolute total happiness. One is seeing other people fail. The other is unwrapping a newly-bought CD.

–Armando Iannucci

In the wake of all the upheaval that the recorded music industry is facing, a lot of people have been predicting the death of the CD. After all, the very reason why music is cheap or free these days is because they don’t need to be put on a physical object which then has to be transported around the world. Surely digital downloads are the only conceivable future for music distribution.

I don’t like the idea of this. If I was five years younger it would probably make perfect sense to me. Last week’s edition of The Economist tells the story of a focus group that EMI held. It was aimed at understanding yoofs better. At the end of the meeting, the teenagers were invited to take as many free CDs from a pile on a table as they wanted. Not a single person took a CD.

It’s just the latest example of a recorded music industry that has always found it difficult to adapt to new technology. Historically, consumers have gone for the most convenient and cheapest format rather than the technically excellent one. So says Fredric Dannen if you scroll a long way down.

When the long-playing record (LP) format was introduced by Columbia Records back in the late 1940s, the industry as a whole resisted it, and many predicted it would never take off because 78s sounded better. Without question, early LPs did not sound nearly as good as 78s. But given the choice of listening to all of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on two sides of one record versus sixteen sides of eight records, the consumer opted for convenience and simplicity (not to mention less shelf space).

…You can always count on the record industry to cling to the past, and to fight innovation.

So does the arrival of MP3 mean the death of the CD? I personally hope not. I love CDs. I am of that generation, probably a small five–ten year window of people who wouldn’t consider vinyl but had no access to file sharing as they grew up. Napster came onto the scene in 2000, when I was 14 — well into my music-consuming life.

I have been collecting CDs since I was nine years old. I haven’t counted, but I must have around 600 CDs. I only bought my first vinyl records a few years ago. I bought them grudgingly, only because they were not available on CD. I reckon today I have 30 vinyl records.

I have only ever bought around a dozen MP3s — again, because they were not readily available on CD or vinyl. (I have downloaded a few dozen more because they weren’t commercially available at all — mainly live bootlegs and demos.) I would consider buying more. But although MP3 is the format du jour, there is a big block in my mind preventing me from buying something that I will never be able to see or touch.

I suppose this makes me a collector. (Yes, my collection is in alphabetical order — or it was until I ran out of space.) Collectors tend to be fans of vinyl though, which makes me an anomaly.

It would be nice to think that the CD will limp on and eventually survive another day in the MP3 era just as vinyl has done in the CD era. I have grown up with CDs and I love them. I’m not an audiophile, so the sound quality issue doesn’t worry me too much. And to be honest, I can’t be bothered with the faff of vinyl.

Whether it is CD or vinyl, there will always be people like me who treasure the physical presence of an album. It’s not just about a collection of notes. It about an event, a happening. It’s the artwork, the packaging. The sleevenotes, the lyrics. The smell of the booklet. It has an aura. When you hold a copy of a good album, you are transported to its space without even having to put it on. Could all of this really die because of the internet?

When Radiohead released In Rainbows, the pricing structure grabbed all of the headlines. But that wasn’t the interesting thing for me. The pay-what-you-want method is just a belated recognition of the fact that people could choose to pay nothing anyway.

The other aspect of the release of In Rainbows interested me much more. I didn’t pay anything for the MP3s. I downloaded them for free when they were released on 10 October. That’s because I got them as part of the £40 “discbox” set.

The discbox is a premium edition of In Rainbows. It comprises a CD of the album, an second CD with eight extra tracks and enhanced content, a 2× vinyl edition of the album, and generally all-round badass packaging.

£40 is the most I have ever paid for an album. I hesitated before I ordered it — but not much. Although I am sort of a collector, I have never been a completist. I am usually happy to have the CD version on its own. But I couldn’t resist the awesomeness of the discbox — despite the fact that I hadn’t even heard the album.

This was largely ignored in the media coverage of the album, but to me it was the most notable aspect of the unconventional release of In Rainbows. When I first posted about In Rainbows, I neglected to even mention the fact that the MP3s were free. I didn’t find it that interesting.

People like me, who love the physical formats, will be continue to be catered for. It is easy to make money out of us. Slap a sticker saying ‘limited edition’ on a record and suddenly demand for it will become price inelastic. Suckers like me will buy premium versions of albums at higher prices than we would otherwise consider. And this will become ever more important for the record companies as physical sales continue to get eaten into by the internet, where profit seeking is impossible.

In Rainbows wasn’t the start of this. Limited edition versions of albums have been around for a very long time. But in an age where it is becoming increasingly difficult to make money out of recorded music, it is becoming more and more prevalent.

When I went shopping for Sigur Rós’s Heima DVD I thought £17 was a bit steep. Then I saw the limited edition version for £25 and bought it.

The deluxe multi-format edition seems to be becoming more common as well. Björk’s latest single, ‘Declare Independence’, is available as a deluxe edition, yours for only £19.99.

Formatted in the same extravagant packaging as the Volta double LP, this contains all conceivable formats of the single: double vinyl, CD and DVD.

Something else that is becoming more and more common is for people to automatically get the MP3 version for free when they order a physical version. For instance, Nonesuch has started doing this. You can choose between standard 128kbps MP3s or maximum quality 320kpbs at no extra cost.

It makes sense to me. Being able to have your entire music collection on a portable device is becoming an expectation these days. Since vinyl is a bit more tricky to get onto your iPod, it would be good to get the MP3s of music that you have already bought automatically for free. Hopefully more record companies will adopt this approach.

A lot of people have wondered aloud if the fact that we can now get music for free from the internet is devaluing music. But it seems to me as though the internet is not only driving the price of music down — it’s also driving the price of CDs and records up.

2007 F1 season review

A series of posts

1. F1 season review: the backmarkers
2. F1 season review: the frontrunners
3. F1 season review: the constructors (11th–6th)
4. F1 season review: the constructors (top 5)
5. F1 season review: broadcasts
6. F1 season review: podcasts
7. F1 season review: websites

I am making this the last in my series of posts looking back on the 2007 Formula 1 season. Truth be told, I’ve become a bit sick of writing them every Sunday. I skipped last week. Anyway, next Sunday is in a different year, and it’s a bit off to be looking back when everyone else is looking forward.

Anyway, I promised I would review Formula 1 websites, so here goes. Again, this is all in alphabetical order.

Autosport.com

A reliable source of Formula 1 — and other motorsport — news. It is also the most frequently updated of the F1 RSS feeds I subscribe to. So chances are that if something has happened, Autosport will have the story.

There is also a neat ‘Autosport TV’ feature, containing highlights of certain motorsport events. Bernie take note — this is how things will be done in the future, so don’t leave F1 lagging behind every other series!

Unfortunately, not all of the content on Autosport.com is free. But you can’t have it all. The website also performed badly on the day of McLaren’s WMSC hearing, when the website was down for huge parts of the afternoon, and then when it came back up it got the story wrong. Oh dear.

BBC Sport | Motorsport | Formula One

The BBC’s F1 news website is as you would expect — solid, but not really in-depth enough for obsessives like me. Only the very biggest F1 stories appear on BBC Sport Online, and they seldom contain anything revelatory.

Having said that, there are some neat features from time to time. Heikki Kovalainen wrote a regular column. I also particularly enjoyed reading an article about Kimi Räikkönen’s playboy image! There is also some good video and audio content collected from the BBC’s output.

However, the stories and features also concentrate too much on Lewis Hamilton. I guess this is to be expected from the BBC, but it’s all a bit fawning and not very balanced.

As for the other features, again they are pretty good, although they haven’t changed much for several years. I would imagine that features such as the pitstop guide are excellent resources if you are just getting into the sport.

BlogF1

Ollie White’s BlogF1 was the first Formula 1 blog I started reading regularly. The posts strike a neat balance between news and opinion, although I personally prefer more opinion-heavy pieces.

I have to confess that nowadays my favourite feature of BlogF1 is the weekly caption contest. However, there are some other neat features hidden away from the main blog area.

There is a particularly comprehensive section on racetracks from around the world, complete with images from Google Maps. There is also a stunning complete list of championship statistics going all the way back to 1950, the inception of the Drivers World Championship.

F1 Insight

This excellent blog is, as its title suggests, very insightful. What I love about it is the fact that Clive doesn’t just churn out banal posts about the issues of the day. Instead, he finds an interesting angle and then writes about it, bringing to the reader’s attention an aspect that he may not previously have thought about.

To take some recent examples, there is a post questioning Sebastian Vettel’s reputation as a promising driver. And here is an interesting take on Fernando Alonso — is he going to be the greatest reputation-maker of all time?

In sum, F1 Insight is guaranteed to challenge the conventional wisdom, making it an essential read.

F1Fanatic

Without a doubt, the best Formula 1 blog around! What astonishes me is that you can visit the website every single day and there will be something new — even in the depths of the off-season. There was even a new post on Christmas Day, but you are just as likely to find three or four new posts per day even at this time of year.

The breadth of features is also breathtaking. Book and DVD reviews often appear. The Lapped Legends series takes a look at some of the less talented drivers and teams in F1′s history. And the ‘F1 in the Blogs’ feature is a must-read roundup of the best F1 blogging. The blog has also been known to hold competitions which I have been lucky enough to win!

Main writer Keith Collantine is clearly very dedicated to the website and infinitely knowledgeable about the sport. It could so easily fall into the trap of being a haven for stattos, but it actually strikes a perfect balance between geek heaven and accessibility.

Ah, and I have also had a guest post published on F1Fanatic. So obviously it’s a must-read!

Formula 1 Blog

This is the Formula 1 Blog as in Negative Camber and Grace, whose podcast I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. The blog is rather different to their podcast. You would never guess that it was the same thing. The long, in-depth podcasts are accompanied by very concise, brief, pithy blog posts.

Despite the difference in style, the blog is great for all the same reasons as the podcast. Priding itself on being a “journal of opinion”, forceful opinion is certainly what you get.

One problem is that you have to be registered to comment. This is okay, and understandable in an age where upwards of 95% of blog comments are spam. But I tried to register and never got my confirmation email, so I am locked out (well, not really, but I can’t be bothered going through the rigmarole of registering again). Okay, so it’s not the end of the world, but it is a bit off-putting.

As well as the blog, there is a forum which I hear is buzzing. But forums are not quite my thing.

Formula1.com

This is the big daddy — Bernie Ecclestone’s Formula 1 website. It has come on leaps and bounds in the past year.

The best bit is still the Live Timing facility. If you have access to a computer during a grand prix, having Live Timing open will keep you up to date, with access to pretty much all of the information you would want, updated in real time.

The news section is so-so, but this is more than made up for by the site’s other features. A particular joy is the technical section, which looks in detail at the developments each team makes throughout the season. There is also great information on each circuit, a fine image gallery, profiles on all the teams and drivers and — for the bravest among us — a good section on F1′s Byzantine rules.

Perhaps the strongest part of the website, though, is the database of past races results, stretching right back to 1950. An excellent, in-depth resource if you want to look up old race and Championship results.

However, this section suffers from a frustrating navigational quirk. Say I want to look up the past results of a driver. I can select the driver, say Kimi Räikkönen. Now I want to look at his results from 2002, so naturally I select 2002 from the drop-down menu. But this takes me straight to the Championship Table of 2002, not the results of Kimi Räikkönen. What a pain!

Little annoyances aside though, Formula1.com is better than you might expect. It is finally catching up with other motorsport series. Now FOM needs to move into offering video on the website urgently. An insipid, 30 second long ‘highlights’ clip (which inevitably focuses on the crashes rather than the racing) will not do. Bernie needs to offer more video content online in future. If he is going to take all the interesting videos off YouTube, he had better offer them on Formula1.com.

Fun F1

A fair attempt at an F1 humour website, although not the best.

GrandPrix.com

One of the best F1 news sites going. This website might not have the budget or the big-name status of, say, Autosport, but it undoubtedly has the contacts.

Often the stories are as much about rumours as they are about hard facts. But this is often to its advantage. I seem to remember that GrandPrix.com was the first website to announce that Kimi Räikkönen had signed for Ferrari. Some other websites laughed at the suggestion at the time, but GrandPrix.com was proved right.

It was also consistently ahead of the curve in the reporting of the Stepneygate scandal. You simply had to read GrandPrix.com to keep on top of the facts surrounding the issue. Remarkable reporting.

ING Renault F1 Team – Weblog

A fine companion to the Renault podcast. Once again it demonstrates that Renault are serious about reaching fans in ways that other teams don’t consider. The blog is properly done as well, not half-hearted and with a buzzing comments section.

The design is rather busy for my liking, but to be fair I am not the biggest fan of the content either (unlike the podcast, which is excellent). Nevertheless, this is a lesson to the other teams: this is how it should be done.

ITV Sport – F1

This season saw the ITV-F1 website turn from a reasonable, accessible guide to Formula 1 into a central cog of the Lewis Hamilton hype machine. No doubt it is good for raking in the advertising money, but it is awful for genuine F1 fans.

Nevertheless, there are some top features on the ITV-F1 website. For instance, there are regular columns from Peter Windsor and David Coulthard. And Ted Kravitz’s notebook is often worth a read.

Next year I expect nothing less than a Lewis stalking feature which will plot on a Google Map where Lewis Hamilton is at this precise moment in time.

Linksheaven

A reasonably good Formula 1 group blog.

Pitpass

A fine independent Formula 1 website. Like GrandPrix.com — a reliable news resource, although Pitpass has a much slicker design! I have to say though, it is rather annoying that you can’t copy any of the text if you want to quote it. I can’t think of any other websites that persist on using this user-unfriendly technique that treats normal users — even people like me who want to approvingly link back — as criminals.

I would also rather that the news feed did not contain stories about that awful tripe known as A1 Grand Prix. Yeah, that toytown motor racing series where drivers don’t win, nor do teams — but countries do. What a load of nationalistic gash!

Apart from that, the news reports are good. The opinion pieces are fine, but often come across as a bit curmudgeonly. And the endless predictions of the imminent death of Formula 1 do get tiresome after a while.

Sidepodcast

A great blog to accompany a great podcast! They have recently had a new lick of paint. That’s all I can say. A cracking read, just as much as the podcast is a cracking listen.

Sniff Petrol

The best attempt at a Formula 1 humour site. This site provides some much-needed light relief amid the turmoil and politics of an F1 season.

Highlights include Crazy Dave Coulthard (complete with entertaining descriptions of what Red Bull tastes like), D.I. Blundell’s latest report and the latest advice Michael Schumacher has given to his brother.

Times Online Formula One blog

Ed Gorman’s Formula 1 blog is easily the best of the MSM F1 blogs. I do hope it returns for the 2008 season. I imagine it will because apparently it has been very popular indeed.

I can vouch for that. I think I can thank the comments section of Ed Gorman’s blog for a few of this blog’s readers nowadays. It is still to this day one of my top referrers. Infact, it is the top referrer to this blog all year apart from Google Images UK. And this is all from the comments sections of two posts from October. Blimey.

One problem was that it came to be defined in terms of its (oddly) mostly Spanish readership clashing with Ed Gorman’s British perspective on events. Thankfully in the end the relationship appears to have become the more respectful, ‘agree to disagree’ type, rather than the antagonistic relationship it could have been.

I think that’s about it, mostly because I am losing the will to live. As are you, most likely. Er, any other suggestions, blah blah, etc.?

Anyway, the Boosh were pretty good. Hopefully I’m keeping spoilers to an absolute minimum here. If I were to have one criticism it would be that is felt like they were just trying to crowbar as many of their ‘greatest hits’ into one show as they could. Lots of the same old jokes and the same old scenes, only with a re-jigged plot.

Of course you have to expect them to use their popular material — I’m sure one particular person in the crowd (who the entire audience told to “shut the fuck up!”) would have been disappointed if Old Gregg didn’t make an appearance. But most of the time it just felt like they were always gearing up to tell a joke that we’ve already heard rather than coming up with genuine new funnies.

Still, it was very funny. I thought they wouldn’t really be that bothered to entertain because it’s the middle of the tour and are surely fed up and tired, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves on stage. Julian Barratt was right in there taking the piss out of audience members from the start, which laid my fears to rest. There were lots of good bits — Noel Fielding and Rich Fulcher having a spit-spat and the Hitcher’s soliloquy, complete with a dig at BBC Three’s scheduling, particularly stuck in my mind.

I keep on remembering lots of stuff, as you do with these things. Looking at The Mighty Boosh website, I see that they are making a DVD of the live show, which is fantastic news! You can watch it again and again, etcetera. I’m looking forward to it.