There’s something brilliantly wonderful and overwhelming about diving into a subject you don’t really know a lot about. I’ve done this a few times: with films, with music and most recently with sport – getting fully involved with tennis, and this month, jumping feet first into Formula E with a new podcast and everything. At first, it seems totally overwhelming. There’s so much you don’t know, an entire history that you’ve missed out on (not so much with Formula E, being just a baby motorsport series), and so many connections you’re going to miss.

One of our favourite things to do on Sidepodcast is look back at the stupid things we said a year, two years or more ago. Because you can’t search an mp3, that often means scrabbling for what is in the show notes, or better yet, looking back at the transcript for our word for word conversation. Transcribing is a lengthy process, however, and when it comes down to it, we don’t have time to record podcasts at the moment let alone sit down and write them out in prose.

We’ve recently invested some time and energy in using Flipboard to share posts, pictures and shows from Sidepodcast, which meant having to learn to use the crazy thing. Primarily an app, Flipboard allows you to browse through content from Twitter, sites and various web locations in a gorgeous looking magazine style. There’s absolutely no doubting that it’s a good way to peruse content. I found it quite hard to get my head around though.

I’ve always managed to get a lot of use out of my iPad. There are two main dilemmas around Apple’s tablet device (aside from price, etc) with one being “What would I use it for?” and the other being “It’s only good for consuming, not creating.” My iPad has always been kept busy, but I would admit that it’s mostly for consumption. Watching TV, videos, listening to music, browsing the web, playing games, the usual kind of thing.

During some recent summer community fun over on Sidepodcast, the challenge arose to bake something F1 related. Given the wealth of choice of recipes available to me, and a limited amount of time, I went for something I’ve already made in the hopes I could do it better. A long while back, I baked an F1Minute cake, to celebrate a podcasting anniversary. It went down very well, although it was my first attempt at icing something and I went a little over the top in terms of thickness.

It’s been a while since I took one full week off work, but that’s what I did this past week, and boy did I pack in the activities! Wednesday and Thursday last week, Mr C and I went to Silverstone to watch some F1 cars while they were testing. We shared photos along the way via Twitter, and then gathered everything up at the end of the day in a dedicated post on Sidepodcast.

I’ve been joyously listening to the new podcast from Molly Wood and Tom Merritt, called It’s a Thing. They were so good together on Buzz Out Loud and it was a shame when they went their separate ways, but onwards and upwards, the glorious duo are back together! This time, it’s not specifically technology topics, they just talk about whatever they deem to be an up and coming trend, or thing!

It’s no secret that I like whiteboards. I used to scrawl on one during live shows of Sidepodcast, and I was quick to nab one going spare at work. The trouble is, wherever I go, there seems to be a fundamental inability to stick things on walls. Whether it is because I am in rented accommodation, or because my desk is not near a wall, these small boards are always precariously leaning and almost impossible to write upon.

The second book of the 365 F1 Stories series was published over the weekend, and you can find more about it on the books page. It’s been quite the process getting these two books into being, and it’s not over yet. There are more things to do with those two, and more ideas in my head for further exploration. I hope to blog more about the process when I am able to think straight again.

I’ve been catching up with some episodes of The 404 and they mentioned this relatively new website that lets you create a social environment for listening to music. Outloud.fm allows you to create a chatroom with the added bonus of anyone invited able to upload music to a collaborative playlist. The queue of music then plays out for everyone at the same time. I love this concept. I’m no music afficionado.