How Do You Watch Formula One?
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How Do You Watch Formula One?

Oliver White
2nd August, 2008
24 comments
1 min read

Having set up my desk for the Hungarian Grand Prix, I got thinking if I was the only one who organises the room around the grand prix whenever the cars take to the track. Below is a photo (excuse my lack of photography skills) which shows how my desk looked as the build-up to the qualifying started. It primarily includes my MacBook Pro, which is obviously essential for blogging to BlogF1, joining in with the LiveBlog and following Formula One Live Timing. Due to the limited space on the 15″ MacBook screen, I also utilise a separate 22″ Dell monitor (which was one of the best things I ever bought). I also rotate my TV slightly so I can see it from the desk.

Grand Prix Set Up

My TV is obviously out of sight in the image, but I have uploaded another image to Flickr which you can see here…

So what about you? How do you watch Formula One? And if you’re a fellow blogger, how do you watch and blog Formula One. If you have a Flickr (or similar) account, upload an image and link to it in the comments. If it doesn’t work straight away, I’ll fix it for you…

24 comments

  • Hi,

    How do you have a separate window showing on the dell monitor? Does the mac have a second display card? I use a dell laptop running win xp. Normally I have to have 3 separate windows open, 1 for live timing, 1 for the live blog and another for the live feed.

    BTW, please visit my blog:

    http://www.lewisf1.blogspot.com

    Regards/Alvin

  • I’m not 100% sure what you mean, but I’ll have a go at explaining it – I’m not an expert, by the way.

    In MacOS, as soon as I plug the Dell monitor into the MacBook it recognises it and converts my desktop over. If I want, within the OS preferences, I can leave the main desktop on the laptop if I want, but I prefer to have the menu and dock on the larger screen. (In Windows-speak, I’m referring to the Start button and taskbar.)

    When I open Firefox, I load Live Timing (automatically loads on the main screen), then open the Live Blog in a separate window. I just drag that window over to the laptop screen (the two screens are essentially one giant screen and I can seamlessly move between the two.) I can even have half a window on the left and half on the right – but that would just be silly! 😉 Or have one giant wallpaper in the background, although I prefer two different images so I don’t get confused.

    By the way, you can do all this within XP as I did it with the ex-girlfriend’s Dell laptop. Look for ‘Displays’ in the Control Panel. The picture of the two monitors (when a second is plugged in) is almost identical to how MacOS does it.

    Does that answer your question or have I got the wrong end of the stick?

  • This is complicated. In fact, I can see a blog post coming out of this. Suffice to say I don’t have to set up the hardware side of it very much, but if I’m watching from the computer, the software can take a while to set up. This is because I have several commentary sites, a general browsing site, the ITV streaming service, live timing and a basic graphics program in operation simultaneously.

  • All Mac laptops (and PC ones, as far as I know) allow you to run a second screen off their external output. The Mac is quite straightforward, you just tell it to run two screens.

    In Windows, you will see when you go into the graphics card properties that when you plug in a second monitor, there’s a 1 and a 2. Used to be a nightmare (Linux still is) but it’s very easy.

    I knew Oliver was the type of higher human that would use a Mac. 😉

    (that’s a joke, by the way)

  • Hahaha! I like that. I is a higher human, I’ll ‘ave you know. For someone who is barely taller than Heidfeld, that ’tis quite the compliment to befall me. 😉

  • @me: (Deleted your second [empty] comment, hotlinked drop.io in your first 😉 )

    Yeah, you get kudos for fitting everything you need into a 15″ MBP screen, definitely. You also get kudos for Live Blogging within WordPress, which I’m still trying to figure out how you managed to do…

  • “Deleted your second [empty] comment, hotlinked drop.io in your first”

    are you some kind of mind reader? thanks, i tried but your comments saw right through me 🙂

    “You also get kudos for Live Blogging within WordPress, which I’m still trying to figure out how you managed to do…”

    a couple of people have asked the same question:

    once it’s stable and we’re confident we’ve ironed out most of the bugs, we’ll publish it as a plugin in the wordpress directory. we’re improving it on an hourly basis at the moment, and closely monitoring processor / bandwidth usage at (mt), so it’s still too beta for public consumption.

  • @Tom: Odd, when I click on my photo and then ‘All Sizes’, I get the embed code just under the image. Thanks for joining in though, as the race unfolds as well – that’s dedication! 🙂

  • Ollie, I will do the post when I get my blog back. It’s currently giving me a 403 (Forbidden) error every time I try to get into it, and other readers are reporting the same problem.

  • @Ali: Yeah, in my previous comment I noted the 403, but it came back for me so I edited my own comment to remove the line. But, as you say, a 403 is happening again – good luck on getting your site back!

  • Great image Duncan, and thanks for contributing. If you need someone to stain the door frame, let me know – I’m pretty good with a pot of varnish! 🙂

  • I think I might start again with the live blogs having not commented since Spain – preferred to concentrate on the race on ITV but you seem to pick up an awful lot more (which admittedly isn’t saying a lot).

    At the moment I’ve got a TV which is alongside my monitor (one 19″ widescreen) on a desk which has the live timings open as well as the ITV web site so I don’t miss the press conference: http://www.upload3r.com/serve/070808/1218102241.jpg

    (That is Jackie Stewart’s brilliant book “Winning Is Not Enough” on my desk by the way – I’ve finished reading it ages but it’s worth reading again every now an then).

  • Thanks francois – it’s really weird seeing BlogF1 on someone else’s monitor, but I don’t know why though. Thanks for sharing your setup, and come back to the Live Blogs – you’ll always be welcome.

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