It comes on at strange unexpected moments. Today was sitting on the airplane reading a proper semi-business related grown up book (with only a few pictures) about the growth of the organization behind the London marathon of all random things.

But when it happens I just can’t help myself. I’ve been told it’s normal, but the things that set it off are so small and random some times.

This time was a throwaway line about a hand written signs seen along the marathon route one year. My emotions get the better of me and I feel myself getting rather teary eyed. I’m stressed, tired and on days like this it does not take much, but I know it’s a natural and indeed healthy way of dealing with things.

One thing I’ve learned over the last year or so is that all deal with loss differently. I miss you mum.

I sat in some really interesting discussions about the future of broadcasting on the internet; specifically long form content. There seems to be two rather opposite and non-complementary views.

On one side we have the enthusiasts, these people that want to produce and share media longer than 10 or 15 minutes. Potentially expensive to produce, but for now (as with monetization of the web in general) we’ll ignore that. Their pro-long form content arguments revolves less around the media itself and more about where it is consumed.

The other side, led by the current new media content producers thinks that current 5-8 minute average is about right. There are lots of successful examples on YouTube, professionally produced webisodes and stand alone sites like “Funny or die” and “PG Porn”. It’s easier to produce, easier to digest, not too long that people’s attention wanders and is about long enough to tell a story.

A number of what I’d call “legacy” TV companies have dipped their toes into short format shows with some success. The SyFy channel made a series of 5-6 minute Battlestar Galactica internet only webisodes, they did the same for the spin off series Caprica. The BBC has done the same thing by making extra content available inline only for a number of their shows.

I sat in on a couple of discussions with content creators about the long/short format. Almost universally they see the big thing stopping production of web based long content is that there is no money available to make it. With a beautiful piece of circular logic, I was told that the main reason there is no funding is that the suits don’t believe the market for long for exists.

There may be some truth to that argument; people are not used to watching movies on their computer. I would rather sit on the sofa and watch a movie on the TV, rather than with my Mac on my lap or in the office. It’s a comfort and ease of use thing.

The hardware to integrate TV with the internet is becoming more available, the delivery method is there (iTunes and Netflicks) but it’s rather niche right now and requires a certain amount of tech knowledge to put together. Not a way to get a critical mass of the market onboard (see circular argument), but there seems to be belief among the pro crowd that the market is emerging and the future is bright.

The new Apple TV goes a long way towards bringing the Internet and internet based content to the TV. All you need is a broadband Internet connection and all the contents on iTunes are available for your TV.

I think that if you can watch long form content in the same way you watch a movie at home, namely on the sofa, then internet only long form content can be successful. I think we are almost ready for long form, but let’s not forget that no matter what we watch, it’s about the quality of the content.

I suggested a couple of days ago that Vettel has that certain indefinable thing that makes people think he’s a bit special, I got a couple of questions as to what I was on about. It’s more then just his speed; it’s looking like you belong in the paddock. Mika Hakkinen had it, in 1991 I recall piece in Autosport where one of the hacks that covered the sport declared “He (Mika) is going to be world champion one day”. He was in his first season in F1 driving for a fading Lotus team and mostly caught in mid-grid anonymity. He went on to win two F1 Drivers titles in ’98 and ‘99.

It’s difficult to define exactly what “it” is, but it’s usually clear when it’s there. Vettel is clearly Red Bull’s chosen son. While I’m sure it does not say it in his contract, Webber was supposed to be the slower driver and support Vettel. However, Webber has had a great year, probably a career year. He’s got a good solid track record in some mediocre cars track record, but nothing in his history would lead you to believe he was going to be this fast. Yeah, he’s got the car to compete, but he’s also got the best out of it and had a remarkable year.

Another driver had a remarkable day. It took a little bit of luck and got it just right with the conditions, but Nico Hulkenberg took pole position on Sao Paulo. Hulkenberg has had a good first year, while not as fast as his team mate; he was not expected to be straight away. Results have picked up in the second half of the year and have been steadily finishing in the points.

It is so tough for a new driver to get up to speed with a car now, testing is very limited and there is no substitute for seat time in any racing series. Gone are the days of separate test teams and 20,000km run outside of race weekends. Williams is a good team that knows how to develop the car, but all new drivers are hamstrung by only being allowed limited testing.

As far as the title chase is concerned Hulkenbergs’ achievement is impressive, but realistically meaningless. But it was an impressive drive for the Williams driver, who has never been higher than 5^th on the grid before today.

After pole it’s business as usual. Vettel is 2nd and Webber 3^rd and on the clean side of the track. I imagine the post qualifying debrief was a little frosty after Webber went public with how he’s feels the team is treating him as second best. Hamilton was 4^th and Alonso 5^th.

Button has a poor day and was only 11^th on the grid. It seems likely he will be eliminated from championship contention later today.

As for what I think may happen tomorrow… The two Red Bull drivers and Lewis Hamilton need to go for the win, it’s really simple. I think Alonso will stay out of trouble, stay close to whoever is in third, not push too hard, but take full advantage of any mistakes made by the other contenders.

Weather look like it’s going to stay dry, should be a fun shoot out to watch.

First we have the race from Sao Paulo, then the Sounders at LA. No matter what the results, it’s going to be a fun day tomorrow.

OK, it’s rather pathetic how much bandwidth the discussions of who is the Stig takes up. And I’m here to use a little more and share a gem that went up on the BBC site yesterday.

The link has a video from Top Gear about raising Stigs and what the show is going to do after white Stig outed himself over the summer.

Fly regularly and you probably have a wonderful on again-off again relationship with your airlines of choice. I used to fly considerably more, most of it long haul, but maybe 80% of it was on charters so I never got sucked into the whole mileage thing too heavily.

At the time I donated (along with most other people travelling with the F1 circus) my miles to charity. I took the lounge access and very occasional upgrades, and cancer patients got to fly for treatment. Very much a win-win.

The last year or so has been a little different. I’ve flown across the Atlantic 12 or 13 times, it’s one of the downsides of living 6000 miles from aging parents.

This has meant a couple of things, first I have no vacation or sick leave left. Seondly, I’ve spent enough money that I’d better get a Christmas cards from both Delta and British Airways.

My relationship with Delta has been the rockiest, I’ve been pretty loyal to them and in return I’ve been bumped, had flights cancelled and even in one case my booking cancelled by mistake.

Most domestic flights have been the usual economy-class nightmare. Surrounded by screaming kids whose granola mum wants then to be free to “express themselves”. While sitting next to someone on the “cabbage soup diet” whose task for the day is to make the entire airplane smell like cabbage. Awesome.

Then there are flights like yesterday when everything is forgiven, Seattle to Houston.It’s a moderately long flight, about 4 hours or so. They texted me the day before the flight confirming an upgrade, then I arrive at the airport and am shown to the “express security line” where I walk up to the x-ray machine with no wait.

Then I’m greeted by name on the aircraft, the attendant asks what I’d like for breakfast once we are airborne and given a freshly squeezed orange juice prior to taxying. The seat is huge, legroom wonderful, only 12 people share the lav and there is no puddle of urine on the floor. This is what flying should be like, and I guess would be like if I decided I wanted to travel more with work, but I don’t.

There was one exception to the usual economy class nightmare late this summer. I was flying from Seattle to London via Atlanta once again. It started off badly when my cell rang at 2:15 on the morning of my flight, it was a robotic voice telling me that my flight had been changed. I now had an eight hour layover in Atlanta rather than the 90 minutes I’d booked. Worst still it’s the second time it’s happened to me this year on this route.

I needed to be in London and did not have much of a choice at that point, but when I commented on it at Seatac they gave me a little bit of a compensation. Including a pass to the lounge, $20 food voucher for Atlanta and a $100. OK, they are sorry, but I still have eight hours in a major airport that does not have a single decent bookshop (that is criminal).

However they have a stonking lounge that pours very liberal G&Ts, has a nice line on spicy snacks, fast internet and a place I can charge my laptop. I know how I’m whiling away the eight hours in Atlanta, I’m getting plowed and watching movies from iTunes. I’ll admit it’s not much of a plan, but it’s the best I’ve got.

In the cold light of sobriety my iTunes selections ranged from the awesome (A Bridge Too Far), through the interesting (All Time Low) to the very questionable (Dinner for Schmucks). It shows a clear trend over time, the more G&T, the dodgier my choices.

Eventually I got to flight time, I’m in the back and for a moment get all optimistic I’m getting a pair of seats to myself, boarding look almost done and there no one next to me. The second to last person walks down the aisle, dare I hope? Yessss… She walks past!

Next thing I have a tap on my shoulder, the woman who just walked past me is there. She introduces herself and says her friend is coming, has the aisle seat next to mine and would I mind giving her friend the window seat. I’m in the happy drunk stage and say OK, one of my better decisions.

Staggering down the airplanes comes the person who I will come over the next eight hours to know as Jennifer. A combination scary cat lady, cool tourist and rambling drunk. I gathered quickly that she had been stuck there for a few hours with her friends in one of the bars and was well on her way to being shitfaced, and she was not going to let the small matter of being on an airplane slow her down.

But wait there is more! She’s got snacks, lots of snacks and she is sharing. When I say “snacks”, it’s way more than that, that word is not doing it justice. There is cheese, crackers, olives, more cheese and, and and… This is awesome!

She seems determined to stay in “the zone” all the way to London. I get up to go to the bathroom, I come back and there is a couple of G&T’s sitting on my tray table. Jennifer is pretty determined I’m going to stay happy drunk with her.

This is awesome and those 8 hours were as close a economy class has ever come to being good. The down side is she has completely destroyed flying in the cheap seats for me. It’s a disaster, never again on a flight is someone going to sit down next to me and pull out garlic stuffed olives and tell me to enjoy. Great food, G&T and fun, drunk conversation. Thankfully my brother was picking me up in London.

Had time to kill in an airport earlier this week and saw this:

I get a nail file taken away from me, I can’t bring on a full size tube of toothpaste and I can’t be trusted with a real knife when eating in business class. But it’s OK to buy this next one in the airport store, even though one has a full size knife as part of the sculpture?

Can someone explain that logic to me?

It’s not thing only WTF moment from this week, but I’ll share the others later.

When Rooney said he was unhappy at United there were only three other clubs mentioned as possible homes. These were the only clubs considered to have the resources to give Rooney what he was looking for. The usually suspects linked to the transfer of big players are Real Madrid and Barcelona. The third club that was listed as having the money to give Wayne what he wanted was Manchester City and the deep-pocketed owner Sheikh Mansour.

We know there are not enough oil sheikhs and Russian oligarchs to go around (exhibit A – Coventry City) in the Premier League and Championship.

The fact that Man City’s spending power is now ranked by the press along side Real Madrid is astounding, especially when you look at the results.

Tonight City got hammered 3-1 in Europe by Lech Poznan, a game that should have been very winnable considering the talent on show. That made three losses in a row. Last weekend was to a Wolves team made up of no real marquee players, was just ugly to watch.

After the loss at Wolves Adebayor and Kompany, both sublime footballers, were blaming each other before they had left the pitch.

Two weeks ago City lost to an Arsenal side that is playing some very good football right now.

It’s a cliché, but good sides beat the sides they are supposed too. Man City have no excuse for not beating Wolves and giving Arsenal a better game of it. Next week City have a winnable game when they visit West Brom. The following week is the big one, Man United at Eastlands.

The stated goal of the owner and manager is to win the Champions league in 2012. This side may have the money to spend, but Roberto Mancini is struggling to get the best from the players he has brought and devise a system that plays to their strengths.

Fail o win the next two games and eyes are going to start turning towards Mancini; the owner has two very straightforward goals, the Premiership and Champions League.

Today Mancini is unable to deliver either. This is the man who won three Serie A titles and a European Championship for Inter, I’m clear the refereeing scandals gave him an advantage (here is the Serie A piece I did about it months ago), but they still had to win.

It’s very fair for Mancini to say he should be judged over a far longer period than three months. The obvious similarity is Chelsea. Abramovich brought the club in 2003. The club had some success under Ruud Gullit prior to the Russians’ take over, but it still took 4 years and a pot of money to build the team that won the Premier League.

Compared to the Chelsea, Mark Hughes and Roberto Mancini have done very well at City.

However the rules have changed in the last seven years. UEFA has introduced regulations that will penalize clubs that can’t balance the money going into and out of the club. Under the proposed rules, clubs that can’t sustain them selves will be banned from European competition from 2015, it sounds like a long way away, but it’s only 3 seasons away.

With the UEFA deadline closing in how much patience will the deep poked owner have for the under-achieving manager? Should Mancini not deliver this year, will he get another?

With the way the Mark Hughes was disposed of by the ownership it’s hard to imagine that they would tolerate not winning for long.

To be fair, while Chelsea look exceptionally good this year; they have not yet won anything yet. And City is in almost as good a position as Arsenal and United to chase them down.

It makes me sound absolutely certifiable to say it, but City could prove the often quoted theory that every manager is two or three players short of what he needs to win everything. It sounds absurd after all the money Mancini has spent, but the team has looked like it’s lacking something.

When you have $33 million players like Joleon Lescott on the bench when a manager struggles, his team had better look good doing it. And I don’t think City have this year. I know this pisses off friends of mine (sorry Dave), but it’s true.

This weekend is the penultimate round of the championship as the F1 circus spends the weekend in Brazil. In theory it could all be over this weekend is everything goes Alonso’s way and the other contenders have issues, but that seems unlikely.

Alonso clinches under the following scenarios:

• If Alonso wins and Webber finished fifth or lower
• If Alonso is second, with Webber no higher than 8th and Hamilton and Vettel not winning
• If Alonso finishes 3rd, with Webber finishing outside the points and Hamilton and Vettel finish fourth or worse

Once again Korea the Red bull cars were the class of the field on Friday and Saturday, but neither finished. Out of the 17 races so far this year one of the Red Bull drivers have been on pole for 14 (Vettel 9, Weber 5) of them, and had both P1 and P2 on the grid at eight rounds. The team also claims seven wins, more than any other team.

Those nine pole positions of Vettel have only led to three wins (compared to four wins for Webber). While the Red Bull cars have had reliability issues (Vettel more so than Webber), should neither driver win the title it will be down to errors and mistakes by the team and drivers. The crash where Vettel took out his team mate while running 1-2 in Turkey and running into Button at Spa are the most obvious.

On a single lap Vettel is remarkable, over the year he is 25 points behind Alonso in the championship. I don’t doubt at this time that Vettel will go on to win the championship, probably more than one. Some drivers look like they belong in F1, I think Vettel is one of them.

So if Webber wins the final two races and Vettel second, even if Alonso finishes third in both races, Webber wins. If Vettel wins the last two, with Webber second and Alonso third, the Ferrari driver wins.

This weekend Red Bull has to go for the win, they have no choice. However does team principal Christian Horner have Vettel support Webber, or let them fight it out? This week Horner said “Our strategy remains unchanged – this championship will not be over until the last lap in Abu Dhabi has been completed, and we will be pushing flat out until that time.”

It seems a rather naive strategy if it’s true. The team clearly feels Vettel is their future, but winning the championship this year may mean asking him to put his ambitions aside for this year. Let them race and they could hand the drivers championship to Alonso and the manufacturers’ title to McLaren.

This has been a wonderful season, lots of good racing and some very interesting stories. Five drivers have won races, a further three have stood on the podium and 19 out of the 24 cars have scored points. This as as good as I’d hoped it would be at the beginning of the year.

I think this championship is going all the way to Abu Dhabi, that will be a shoot out.

This is a link to a Richard Adams blog in todays Guardian newspaper. In it he runs down the 10 worst adverts during the current election cycle. It is something of a target rich environment, so enjoy.

BTW, my personal favorite, the demonic sheep, I’ve never seen a political add quite that strange. Would have loved to be in the room when someone came up with that idea and sold it to the candidate.

A cause that’s near to me is the colon and testicular cancer, someone close to me is struggling with colon cancer. This is maybe the easiest sponsored event I’ve ever done, all I have to do is grow a moustache. I’m naturally rather fluffy and really have to shave every day, growing facial hair (and ear hair, and back hair, and so on) is cake for me.

The event is called movember. The expectation is easy, start the month off clean shaven and grow a moustache for the next 30 days and party at the end of it. I’ve never sported a moustache before, and I have a horrible feeling I’ll look like a 70’s pornstar at the end of it, but I’ve certainly done more painful things for charity before now.

Today is day one, my face is clean shaven, still a little swollen and sporting the hillbilly look.