This week, I passed the Baking recipe app to Mr C and asked him to pick something he might like. The app is full of photographs, so it makes choosing what you want both a) easier because they are some fantastic photos and b) harder because you want to try a little bit of everything. He opted for the Chocolate Butterfly Cupcakes, which I thought looked complicated but weren’t once I actually looked into it.

Mr C’s back for his second roundup of the 2012 year. Last week it was all about music, this week it’s all about the visual arts. To recap the rules, initially we wanted this to be a “top five 2012 films seen in 2012” but the problem is we run about six months behind thanks to windowing and all that nonsense. Instead, the rules are relaxed a little to include the 2011 films that we didn’t catch in time last year, plus the 2012 films we have managed to see so far.

Last year, I added something new to my Life List - completing a puzzle book. It came about after I worked through a crossword with my mum and dad, and realised just how pathetic my general knowledge skills are. I thought a few puzzles couldn’t hurt, and seeing a Puzzler or two lying around reminds me very much of living at home. I picked up one of the monthly editions of the Puzzler magazine, it just so happened to have Princess Kate on the cover - although I’m not really sure why. Does she like doing puzzles?

Off-the-beaten-track at CES 2013 Don’t let’s tell Mr C about the sports cameras!

When I finally started a bit more human after a festive holiday full of cold, I decided to bake something nice and comforting. What better than apple pie? I used a recipe from the Photo Cookbook - Baking edition, and had great fun chopping up all the apples and mixing in sugar and cinnamon. I didn’t have a round dish, so I improvised. They are meant to be leaves on top. They looked better in real life.

We were doing some testing of our internets, browsing random things on YouTube, when Mr C asked if I had seen this version of I Knew You Were Trouble by Taylor Swift. As much as he has convinced me of some of her music, I’m not a fan of this song at all. However, when it’s done like this, by Walk Off the Earth, then I’m on board! These people are amazing. We got completely lost in their videos, they’re always doing something new and different, they’re so talented and creative!

The past month in Archers-land passed terribly quickly, I can’t quite believe it is 2013 already. To recap on the festive antics of our Ambridge-based friends, we must begin with Lilian and Matt. What is going on in that woman’s head? I don’t understand why she doesn’t just leave Matt if she is so unhappy with him? Why sneak off into the kitchen to take clandestine phone calls? They aren’t married, they have no children. They have a history but it’s a tempestuous one at best. What’s stopping her just running off with Paul? The business, maybe? I don’t get it.

New Year usually means quite a lot of reviews of the previous twelve months, and things are no different round these parts. At the end of each year, Mr C gets a chance to have his say on both music and films, and today it’s time to recap his top five songs from 2012. We’ve previously listed his songs from 2010 and from 2011, but this time it’s all about the music and melodies that were unleashed upon the unsuspecting public last year. What gems did Mr C manage to find?

Turbo This is one of the latest efforts from DreamWorks Animation, and features a snail who feels the need for speed. The blurb is bizarre (but then I suppose these things always are): A freak accident might just help an everyday garden snail achieve his biggest dream: winning the Indy 500.

Instead of making New Year’s Resolutions each January, I have a long-running Life List that does the same job, only is a constant reminder of the things I want to, and am trying to, achieve. It’s time to have a quick recap of what has been happening on my Life List over the last twelve months. The Amazing A-Z Adventure I’ve only managed two more visits this year, and now we’re getting to the trickier half of the alphabet. Qs, Xs, Zs, that kind of thing. In 2012, I went for a bit of a walk around a park, and a bit of a walk around a gin distillery. I had a plan for Q that did not come to pass, so that will require some rethinking. 2012 involved a bit of saving money, but 2013 may involve more travel.

The final few weeks of the year haven’t really gone as I had planned. I didn’t manage to complete a 10k in December, which is disappointing but not surprising. The weather has been terrible, either freezing cold or torrential rain. I’m not a completely fair-weather runner, but it’s hard to get the motivation when it is both dark AND raining. I had planned to make the most of my holiday over Christmas to go out several times, but of course, I have got this stupid cold. I went for a run on Boxing Day, and that was that.

I’ve always been a bit put off by the whole puff pastry situation. Everyone says that you may as well just buy ready made pastry - even Mary Berry says so - and that it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Making puff pastry from scratch is tricky and time-consuming, so it makes perfect sense just to roll out the ready made stuff. It’s not that I’m snobbish about it, but I just tend to think if you’re buying ready made things, you may as well just buy the finished product - a sort of ‘what’s the point?’ attitude.

My dad often sends me links and things that he discovers on his travels around the internet, and sometimes I think I need to share that with others - but never quite get round to writing a post about it. Instead, here’s a compilation of five recent links and bits that I found quite interesting. A List of Books. I’m working through my own select list of reading material, but I like the idea of this list - compiling together several other top book lists into one giant compendium. It’s also quite fun to look down and see just how many of these I’ve read thanks to my reading adventures! Britain. I’m not sure where this has come from, but it’s apparently the information that was given to GI’s coming over to Britain during World War II - giving them a quick start guide about how odd us Brits are. I particularly like this bit: “If Britons sit in trains or buses without striking up conversation with you, it doesn’t mean they are being haughty and unfriendly. Probably they are paying more attention to you than you think. But they don’t speak to you because they don’t want to appear intrusive or rude.” Best Animal Pictures of 2012. There will no doubt be a heap of “best of” compilations emerging soon, a couple even on this site. But I love the first picture in this group, where an errant sloth tries to get in on the photo action. Cute. Paint Sample Calendar. This isn’t the exact info my dad sent over, but it’s the same idea. And a genius one! A dry wipe calendar made out of the free paint swatches from your local DIY store. I’m very tempted to try this. Smart toaster. This one was sent a while back, a toaster that tells you the weather. Of course, weather forecasts aren’t always top notch, so why not just eat them? It’s always fun when other people curate the internet for you - that’s why I follow blogs like Kottke. Finding cool things without too much effort!

I was a little wary ahead of this year’s Christmas Special. The festive episodes have not always been the best, and when they are charged with ingratiating a new character into our lives as well, the pressure is really on. Thankfully, all my fears were unfounded as what we had here was a fantastic episode in its own right, plus a continuing mystery regarding the new companion as well.

These are so good. So delicious. I really need to work on my dusting technique though. It’s not very even, and far too much in some places.

The Thanksgiving Black Friday sale business doesn’t really reach the UK, although the internet’s ability to shrink the globe means we do get to see some deals. I spotted one such deal on the Amazon site, where they had reduced the Kindle Fire to just £99. Now, we don’t really need another device in our lives, but I was interested to see what it was like, and we could always use another gadget for testing things on.

It turns out that Mr C is a bit of a fan of cherry cake, so I added it to my baking list and this week that was the recipe that popped up. It’s a good ol’ Delia Smith recipe, but I must admit to being a little concerned at the idea of putting a cake in an oven for an hour and a half. It’s a reasonably low heat, and after a while you’re meant to put a little foil hat on to stop it burning on top. I think I left it a bit too long.

Mr C reckons this trailer reminds him of Prometheus which is very worrying to me. I can see what he means, but also… it looks brilliant! And there appears to be distinctly less lens flare than the previous outing. Phew! Star Trek Into Darkness

I’m a bit late on writing this for November, we’re almost halfway through December already, but there’s plenty to catch up on before the festive season begins (and we have to endure Lynda’s latest creative endeavour). Of course, the main story over the past few weeks has been Ed, Emma and their lack of funding. George dropped them in it a bit by demanding the more expensive cereal whilst shopping with Nic. When Will said they should have George more often, Ed flipped out. When Nic asked Emma, it went over much better. Good ol’ Super Nic. Anyway, there was an emotional trip for Emma to the foodbank, where she was caught by Susan (what are the chances!) and then after another hefty bill, they realised the solution was staring them in the face. Ed swallowed his pride and agreed to move in to Susan and Neil’s. It seems very hypocritical how Susan said it was “different” that Emma wanted to come home, as opposed to Tracey. Emma has two noisy kids too!

Naturally, as we are heading rapidly towards the festive season, where mince pies and yule logs and turkeys are the order of the day, I decided to bake some Hot Cross Buns. It had been in the back of my mind a while ago, and then when I made the chocolate chip cookies, I remembered I had dried mixed fruit that needed using up. So, I waited until the end of the F1 season so I’d have a free weekend. All that kneading and waiting and kneading and waiting does my head in and I wanted a clear day for stress free baking. It was all going well until I put it aside to rise for the first time. It didn’t rise. Well, maybe a centimetre. I moved it about, I left it in front of the heater, I did all I could and it did nothing. I kneaded it some more and left it again. Still nothing.

Gangster Squad Where do I begin with this? Oh yes, Ryan Gosling. Mmm. And Emma Stone with her proper red hair. And the guy who was incredible and freaky in Men in Black 3. And Ryan Gosling! Oh, and the film looks okay too.

Spotted this on Kottke and had to share. As Kottke says: “When the hand reached in to turn the Rubik’s Cube, my brain melted and spilled out of my ear and into a puddle on the floor.”

I wrote some initial impressions about the Kindle Paperwhite when it first arrived, and looking back, I think I was very generous. It was a disappointment but I tried to temper the frustrations with the knowledge that there were benefits for me (3G and touchscreen), and it was supposedly a cutting edge product - they knew it wasn’t perfect. Unfortunately, after a month using the device most lunchtimes, I have given up. This week, I deregistered the Kindle, and went back to my previous version - a simpler, but more reliable product.

I wasn’t actually planning on baking this week - lots to do and not too much time to spend in the kitchen. However, as I am officially addicted, I looked for a quick and simple recipe that I could do without too much thought. There was also a request from other members of the household for some brownies. Lo and behold. I love chocolate, I really do, but I wasn’t 100% sure this recipe was for me. Perhaps it was the dark chocolate, a bit too dark, I wasn’t a massive fan. They were delicious, don’t get me wrong, but I think I can do better. I did like the white chocolate chunks though. I’d forgotten how much I like white chocolate. Mmm, buttons.

Some may recall the phase I went through, designing lots of headers for this site. I gave it up because… well, I wasn’t that good and I wasn’t really getting much better, and I moved on to other exciting creative things. BUT, you know, sometimes, of a Saturday night, you get the creative urge to mess about with Pixelmator. I wasn’t planning a new header, but I followed a random tutorial, and ended up with this. I liked it so much that I decided it was time for an update.

I stumbled across a post on Wired.co.uk a while back and I thought it was fascinating. Apparently, DC Comics are going to have Superman storm out of the Daily Planet, preferring to take his chances in the online journalism world with his own blog. I had never really thought about the fact that Superman/Clark Kent as a journalist in the Daily Planet was starting to be a bit old school. Although, having said that, the appearance of the Daily Bugle in Spider-Man did seem a bit out of place - much as I loved the snarky editor.

Before I started my weekly baking habit, I did try my hand at a few odds and ends, with a medium degree of success. A traditional Victoria Sponge was one of those that I attempted, and it didn’t turn out too badly. I had some odd crinkly edges to contend with but it was okay. I thought, as I am now clearly a baker extraordinaire, that I would try again and see if I could improve it any.

This week, we watched the new reboot of the Spider-Man series with Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone. It was really very good and when you compare it to the trilogy that came before, I can totally understand why they wanted to ditch that franchise and start all over again. The comic book movie genre doesn’t seem to be losing any of the momentum it has gained, with the Avengers planning individual and group sequels, along with talk of a Justice League film as well. Spider-man has been revitalised, whilst the Batman trilogy has drawn to a colossal close.

I’ve noticed a couple of trailers for potentially watchable romantic comedies recently. This is not my favourite genre, but when done well, it’s a good way of winding down for a couple of hours. Admission Corny as anything, I know, but I like Tina Fey and I love Paul Rudd. Maybe they can sell it.

It’s been a tricky couple of weeks, particularly this last weekend. I’m getting to the point where most of my running is going to be done on a weekend now, because of the lack of daylight hours. I had a four day weekend but spent most of it tucked up inside with an extraordinarily painful sore throat. No running for me. However, before that occurred, I had managed to complete a 10k, probably the only one for November, and it was, I suppose you would say, a personal best!

My tea tasting adventure has taken me to lots of new brands that I hadn’t been aware of previously, and the next to fall into my path was Tea India. They were marvellously kind to send me a package with some new flavours to try that should be in the shops in the UK soon, if they are not already. “The range includes a premium Black Tea and three authentic chai infusions, Masala, Vanilla and the unique Cardamom Chai - each with their own distinctive flavours selected from the many varieties found at vibrant bazaars and served up by chai wallahs.”

There have been quite a few bunker items in the news and wider media recently, none of which I have managed to write about. So here, instead, is a summary of five of the most recent. This was pointed out to me by Mr C who saw it on Twitter from someone else (crediting is hard when you have terrible memories like us), but as the end of the world is rapidly approaching… again… people are starting to notice that burrowing underground or under the sea could be useful. The Daily Mail have gathered together some of the so-called best bunkers. The hotel in the Maldives that has rooms underwater is really quite freaky and also very cool! Meanwhile, this Doomsday Preppers thing is catching on. Apparently there is a program on the National Geographic channel following some, er, dedicated types as they prepare for the worst. There’s also a game based on the concept too. Both of these things I have not seen/tried but will have to check out soon. A while back, I was pointed in the direction of a marvellous underground home that was built in the remains of an old reservoir. It looks stunning, if a little like the Teletubbies hillock, but my main concern is if it is in a former reservoir, will it not fill up with water when it rains. The always excellent In Focus photo site has a recent post about polygamists living in the rock in Utah. Let’s ignore the religious/political aspects of this, living in the rock seems very caveman and very cool! Except the part where you have to blow massive holes in the rock in the first place with explosives. That sounds less cool and more dangerous. Finally, I found some photos of old bunkers that were created under the streets of Moscow, when there was concern about the threat of nuclear war. Now they have been turned into a museum/bar/restaurant/strip club. As you do. It looks very odd, kind of like a space ship, but hey, making use of crumbling bunkers is always fine by me. Annoyingly, I also know that there was a recent episode of Grand Designs where they looked at yet another underground establishment. Mr C and I made a point of watching the celebratory 100th episode of the show, and the underground one was the very next week… but we missed it. D’oh!

It’s been a while since I last went somewhere for the alphabet adventure, but I had this trip in my mind for a while - it was just a matter of getting the logistics together. My P plan was either going to be in Portsmouth or Plymouth. I had wanted to go to the Historic Dockyard, but the Mary Rose still isn’t ready, and I want to go when it’s all ready. So, instead, I headed towards Plymouth and took a tour around the Plymouth Gin distillery.

Somehow, baking something no matter how big or small seems to have become a weekly habit and there’s no escaping it. I keep thinking I’ll take a weekend away from the kitchen, and then my ingredients cupboard calls out to me and there I am with the mixing bowls, creating something else! This week, I went back to the treacle tart that I made during the Bake Off fun and games. There were a couple of complaints last time that we didn’t have it with cream, so it was always going to be something I had to bake again, so we could experience it properly.

This week I spotted two trailers for films and both of them are about zombies, but they each take a completely different form. The first, World War Z, plunges Brad Pitt in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. The trailer looks okay but it doesn’t really give a hint to any kind of actual story. World War Z

My love of all things bunker/fort/island led me to googling everything I could find about Spitbank Fort. Aside from the fact that it’s not the greatest name ever, it’s also a round concrete fort situated off the South Coast that’s been turned into a hotel. It’s amazing! Photo credit: Anthony Abbott As the website states: “Spitbank Fort is the most exclusive venue on the south coast, and is its own private island for hire, available for exclusive use, special events, private parties, wedding receptions, music videos and corporate hire. There are few venues in the world that can offer the privacy and exclusivity of Spitbank Fort. With accommodation for 18 and function space for up to 60 people, this is the unique venue that you have been searching for that will quite simply blow all others out of the water.”

I’ve wanted to go to a ploughing match for ages - ever since I heard the antics from one on The Archers. I like country and farming stuff, but I couldn’t quite imagine how a ploughing match would work. My parents have been keeping an eye on when and where ploughing matches have been taking place, and finally all the stars were aligned (read: I got myself organised) so that we could go to one together.

This week’s bake was chocolate chip cookies that I have been dreaming of making for a long while, since the middle of the actual Bake Off marathon. I sourced a recipe and, once again, was happy that my ingredients cupboard featured everything I needed except chocolate chips. I decided to buy both chocolate chips and chocolate chunks and mix things up a bit. Oh my god, they were so good! I made two batches. The first one was six dollops of cookie dough, which then spread out far too much and essentially created one giant cookie. I managed to split it up, but it had square edges which was a bit silly. The second batch was just three cookies on a baking tray, so that they naturally found their own round shape, like the above.

There’s a new trailer for the sequel to Despicable Me. If you did not enjoy the last one that included some incredible/awful singing, don’t worry. This one only has a few seconds of much more tolerable minion singing. Despicable Me 2 I am very concerned about the final clip though - with the minion opening the door to what appears to be a friendly face, only to be attacked. No minions must get hurt in the making of this film!!

This month has been all about Ed and Emma and their lack of funds. They’ve both been trying to find extra work but it is not easy to find. Expensive things keep happening - broken cars, trips to London, vet bills - and there’s only so many times Susan and Neil can reach into their pockets. What this is really building up to is yet another battle between Ed and Will, however. Will gave his boy a surprise guinea pig as a pet and a present. That just landed them with another expense they weren’t hoping for.

I recently spruced up my Life List page, adding some handy links to the yearly reviews at the top, and then splitting the to-do items into tenuous categories - things to do, things to see, that kind of thing. It’s surprising to me to realise that I’m heading rapidly towards the end of a third year of life-listing, but then again, I’ve tried all sorts of crazy things in that time, so it’s certainly doing its job!

One of the appeals of writing books exclusively in a digital format is that if you need to update your book, it should be simple. Whether it be for a mistake, or additional information, or simply a bigger and better second edition, ebooks are perfect for updating. Rather than printing a huge batch of paperback or hard copy books then realising you’ve made an error, it should be easy to fix and avoid that heart-sinking moment of discovery.

I love projects and creative thinking that solve problems - even if they are problems that I don’t always relate to or understand. This is one of those: encouraging people to exercise when they are using the computer too much. Can there possibly be such a thing?? The video explains it all, with tons of information here. I like the concept, I think being instructed you should do something based on a measurement of your activities is really good. The computer thing doesn’t work for me, because I would go mad if my mouse started slowing down. Plus I don’t have a bike. It makes more sense when people are just messing about on Facebook for hour after hour, or as I used to do - playing the Sims all night. I like to think I’m being slightly more creative online now, but that doesn’t mean that getting up and away from the screen isn’t important too.

The Great British Bake Off came to its conclusion a week or so ago (not that you’d know it as their are masterclasses and “revisited” episodes galore!) and I was sure that I was going to take a break from baking too. Except, then Mr C requested jam tarts and I had a look at a recipe and compared to some of the things I’ve been doing, it seemed the easiest thing ever.

On the very day that my Trailer Tuesday post was due to go up last week, the new Iron Man 3 trailer was released. I meant to go back and update that post, but… I didn’t. And then I thought, actually, this deserves a post of its own, even if it is a week late. Iron Man 3

Quite a while back now, Mr C and I ventured towards Manchester to see what all the fuss was about with these new television studios at Media City. The move away from London towards a new settlement a little further north is full of political interest, but that’s not why we wanted to go. Just to see all that broadcasting power contained within some beautiful buildings is like heaven for us.

How has it been four weeks since I last wrote an update? Very odd. I managed to complete October’s 10k. If you’ll remember, I was hoping to improve on this: Jun – 1:34:31 Jul – 1:36:03 Aug – 1:30:55 Sep – 1:34:31 And I managed this: So, not a personal best, but close enough. In other personal best news, my thirty minute runs have topped out at 3.63km, which I managed twice this month. I’m desperate to get to 3.7km, that seems like the next milestone.

Almost as much as its adventures in space, the final mission of the Space Shuttle Endeavour - to get through the streets of Los Angeles to its final resting place - has captured the minds of a global audience. There’s so much about this that still manages to boggle my mind, and now we have some brilliant time lapse videos to see the movement in action. This second video is almost exactly the same, but does have a clip of them lifting up some electrical wires out the way. It’s amazing how they managed to pull off this feat of extreme travel, incredible to have the view of a space shuttle tail fin winding its way through a leafy suburb, and brilliant to watch the city be put back together again once the behemoth has passed through.

When the new and exciting Kindle Paperwhite was announced, I was keen to try it out. There’s not much wrong with my current Kindle, but there are a few niggles that the Paperwhite is meant to solve, and they would make me ebook reading experience even more brilliant than it already is. We ordered as soon as we could, and the Paperwhite arrived on the doorstep yesterday. With just 24 hours of experience under my belt, I have some early thoughts on the device - and they’re not as ecstatic as I thought they would be.

Sky have created an advert of sorts, highlighting that never-ending animation series The Simpsons. I haven’t seen any episodes for the longest time, and quite a lot of people think it should have ended by now. Regardless, the title sequence is iconic, and here it is done with real life actors! The only bit that doesn’t quite work for me is Marge’s hair. I get that they’re not going for the full on yellow skin, but a bit of a beehive might have made all the difference!