I’m not sure I’d have have been so forthcoming with the information that the PSM (stability control) could be turned all the way off… God stuff Chris :)
First F1, now Lotus-Cosworth go back to Indycar
Following Lotus and Cosworth’s return to F1 this year, it sounds like the two companies have big plans for the future. As well as their recent agreement to jointly further develop the Toyota engines Lotus use in the Elise and Evora road cars, today they announced a return to the American Indycar series.
The two have teamed up with the existing KV Racing Technology team and will join the grid for the first USA round of this years series. The car will be in the traditional Green and Yellow Lotus colours, and will have Takuma Sato behind the wheel.
This isn’t the first time Lotus has raced in Indycar of course, back in the 60’s they were a common sight with Jim Clarke winning the Indy 500 in ‘65.
F1 technical information
It’s been an interesting few weeks with most of the F1 teams now deeply into their test programmes before the new season starts in a few weeks.
This year Twitter seems to have been the place to keep up with the action, with the teams, drivers, the BBC and various independents posting updates and info.
One guy in particular has been tweeting some very good technical info about the new cars. @scarbsf1 is an independent journalist following F1 and posts some great analysis of F1’s technical side. He’s also setup a blog at http://scarbsf1.wordpress.com. If the techie side of things interests you it’s a very good resource.
Running successful projects
Over the years something that’s interested me more and more is what makes one project successful and another, well less so.
I guess I’m quite fortunate that the projects I’ve worked on have always turned out well, but some have been very hard work – far harder than they needed to be.
The biggest difference would seem to be the people, not necessarily their skill or innate talent (though of course that helps!) but the support they are given to get the job done.
Anyway, Charlie Kindel, who’s a Programme Manager on the Windows Phone team at MS posted an interesting account of the work being undertaken around the new Windows Phone 7 Series phones. He talks about some of the principles he uses to run projects, most of which I’d agree with. It’s worth a read if this sort of stuff interests you.
TED on your TV
With another TED over, I’ve been trying to watch a talk’s from previous TED’s as they’re almost always worth 20 minutes of my day. One thing the keeps bugging me is that I’d much rather watch them on my TV than on a laptop or iPhone.
I remember commenting in another post last year that I wished there were an XBox app for TED. Unfortunately there isn’t one, but something that does work is the browser on the PS3. It turns out that browsing to TED.com will let you watch the videos in full screen. Well full screen apart from the player controls.
Much better :)
Jamie’s talk from this years conference.
Blaise Aguera y Arcas’s impressive demo.