Why settle for a simple bunker underground when you can have an entire skyscraper delving into the depths of the earth? The BNKR Arquitectura company (great URL, by the way), have come up with a concept for an upside down pyramid for the middle of Mexico City. Starting with a wide opening at the top, the pyramid piles layer upon layer going down into a single point. There's a great …

I don't watch that much reality TV. At the moment, I'm favouring The Great British Bake-Off, which is hard to class as reality TV because everyone involved is so nice and friendly, and it's just like a giant tea party every week. Strictly Come Dancing returns tonight, and that is a show I do watch. I can't stand Tess or Bruce, I don't like the pointless results show, I think …

The BBC confirmed today that after this series, there will be no more episodes of Doctor Who Confidential filmed. The sister show has been sitting alongside the main BBC1 programme since it came back to our screens with Christopher Ecclestone, but is now on the way out. The Beeb say: The Confidential team captured the rebirth of the show back in 2005 and for over half a decade they have …

A long while ago, I discussed the concept of Endless Pools and how very much I wanted one. Actually, back then, I wanted to set up a business - rows and rows of Endless Pools to save people having to swim in a communal pool. Now I am over that nonsense, and would just adore to have a pool to myself. Recently, I've spotted a couple of adverts for Endless …

A while back, Mr C and I went on a sojourn to the south coast to take some pictures. Actually, we went there with the specific intention to take pictures and publish them live on the go, forming a workflow as we went. I wrote more about the process we decided upon over on Sidepodcast, but we've now hit upon a snag. Posterous have gone through something of a revamp, …

Closing Time presents the last opportunity for us to really enjoy ourselves before what is bound to be a depressing and likely confusing episode to close the series with next week. I am happy to be proved wrong and find that the series six finale is every bit as genius as the series five one was, but I will own up now and say I'm dreading it. That is next …

Last week, I talked about recipes I am tempted to make, and today I've got more kitchen related stuff. I managed to have a quick browse through a Lakeland catalogue this week, and it was full of kitchen related gadgets. A few of them were pretty impressive, so I've picked five that I would buy if I was in the mood to sort my kitchen out. Lakeland Scrudle - £2.99 …

Today is the 100th edition of Baby Panda Thursday, and, I'm afraid to say, the last. It's been an absolute pleasure to scour through photos of pandas every week (give or take) for the last two and a half years, but I'm determined that Thursdays will not be bad days anymore, and they will not need the cuteness to cheer me up. Don't think for a second that this is …

So, who has tried out The Sims Social? I'm just starting to use Facebook more as their battle with Google+ heats up, so that I can see who is winning and who is losing. Then they went and introduced my favourite ever game as a Facebook game. It's not really the same Sims at all, nothing like it, really, and it's very, very... social. That might sound crazy, given that …

It's taken me a little longer than I had hoped but finally, I have seen the last ten episodes of The Killing. I wrote some brief and quite vague notes about the first ten previously, but now I know how the story ends I can talk in more detail. There are spoilers ahead, so look away now if you have yet to enjoy the drama of The Killing. The mystery …

In the wee hours of the morning, I launched my latest book - Between the Lines. The book is the first in the new Formula Primo series - which you may know better as Life in the Fast Lane. It began as a simple ten part story, in which the readers could vote in which direction the next chapter would go. Now it has been expanded and improved to become …

Between the Lines is the first book in the Formula Primo Confidential series - a fictional motorsport category populated by intriguing and passionate drivers. Following the highs and lows of a rookie racer as he joins the series, this first book will transport you into a motorsport universe of exciting drama. If you ever followed my Life in the Fast Lane series, you will recognise the characters and the fundamental …

When I formed my Life List reading goal, I decided the best thing to do was pick a list of books that would introduce me to new titles and authors. There are lots of lists scattered around the internet, but I selected one and got on with it. I set up a dedicated page to house the list, and link to the reviews of the books I read as I …

Last time Toby Whithouse wrote an episode, it involved a strange vampire/fish hybrid that stalked the canals of Venice. This time out, he was seemingly charged with writing the end of Amy and Rory's adventures with the Doctor. Quite a bigger challenge, I'd say. As is often the case in some of the more recent episodes of Doctor Who, this was a standalone adventure that was really just the coat-hanger …

This doesn't really count as a week, it's just one run. The final one. The 5k. According to the class, this is the race that we have been training for. I didn't have a race, but I did 5k anyway. Walking intervals were not included, but the notes for this final run said we could do them anyway, if we wanted. I decided not to, and ran the whole way. …

Occasionally, my dad will send me a recipe that he has found and it's usually for something sweet and delicious. So far, I haven't made any of them because it's hard enough to avoid the sweet things that exist already in our house, without adding any more to the mix. Having said that, there is nothing like window shopping in the cake recipe section of websites, and here are five …

The BBC have a new series on at the moment called Nature's Miracle Babies, and the first episode featured lots of cute and cuddly baby pandas. I only half-watched it really, jealous of the man getting to play around with the balls of fluff, and also slightly concerned when they practically ripped his plastic apron from him as they played. I watched and blogged a BBC documentary on the almost …

A while ago, I set up my own About.me page. It's not the most exciting thing you are going to see today, but I quite like the simplicity of the concept. I think About.me are aiming to be the digital version of a business card - a place to send people to find a quick introduction and then all the other places you might be on the web. The nice …

Typical that we get to the final week and I am delayed by... everything. First I went to the Steam Fair and took a day or two to recover from all that walking and all that sun. Then I was prepared to go out, got up early and everything and it was bucketing it down. Didn't quite fancy it. Nevertheless, eventually, I managed to get Week 7, the final one, …

David Walliams completed an epic 140 mile swim in eight days, following the path of the River Thames to raise money for Sport Relief. He finished yesterday, and my guess is he's been sleeping ever since. Almost immediately that he climbed out of the Thames for the last time, he spoke to the BBC for a surprisingly eloquent, if exhausted, interview. I'm not normally one to take much notice of …

When Mr C and I started discussing book trailers, we did a bit of research and talked concepts and all that good stuff. I decided to make a storyboard of my thoughts on what our trailer should perhaps have in it. I am not good at art, though, as we have previously discovered. Instead, I turned to my trusty iPad, and what do you know, there were a couple of …

Since writing my two-part F1 book and releasing it on Amazon as a Kindle ebook, many people have noted with disappointment that they don’t own a Kindle device. Yet one of Amazon’s best kept secrets is the many, many Kindle apps they have created offering the ability to read their ebook content on a variety of different devices. Even if you don’t possess a Kindle, you should still be able …

The troublesome trio are off on another adventure. Presumably dissatisfied with the action they found back in "Eastendersland" last time, they are in search of a fun and exciting planet. Only trouble is, Amy has forgotten her phone. "I bring you to a paradise planet two billion light years away and you want to update TWITTER!" The Doctor has heard of Twitter! I digress. Amy forgets her phone, takes the …

As if I wasn't already taking over the internet enough, I've set up another domain and site. If you head over to christineblachford.com you will find a quite sparse, but in progress website. That is the place where I'll be specifically posting updates about books and writing and that kind of thing. Don't think I won't talk about that stuff here too, but it felt sensible to nab the domain …

Formula One, the pinnacle of motorsport, has over sixty years of history - much of it colourful, some of it chequered, all of it fascinating. Instead of wading through pages and pages of mind-numbing facts and figures, That’ll be the Day aims to give you the action one slice at a time. For every day of the year there is a story, a biography, a series of facts, making a …

Whilst wandering around the Steam Fair last weekend, we found a line of displays that showed off how smaller engines could deliver a steady stream of water. One couple in particular had a unique way of showing off their technology. I should have taken video really, because the panda was hooked up to the lever and pumping away at the water. Back and forth he went, poor thing. It was …

BBC Four are re-airing The Killing - 20 episodes of the Danish drama in its native language with subtitles. This is not the kind of thing I would normally watch. I love a good crime drama, but throw in subtitles as well and it all gets a bit tricky. I tend to watch TV whilst I am busy doing other things, so it is difficult to keep an eye on …

Fresh from my adventures with Shelfari, I've also signed up to Goodreads. I investigated them both and went for Shelfari simply because the website appealed to me more, but having had quite a lot of fun with one reading site, I thought why not double it? Goodreads does very much the same, although there are some things it does not do as well, and some things it offers that are …

As this very wise post says, a lot of the goings on in the Archers this month have been to do with business and money. From the trials and tribulations at Bridge Farm, to Peggy's desperate bid to keep Jack's carer, everything has resolved around those little round coins. The Bridge Farm situation keeps on going from bad to worse. Customers are turning away in their droves, businesses are severing …

The scariest place in the world is a child's bedroom. I must say, I don't recall finding my bedroom that scary. The occasional moment where you see a shadow and can't figure out what it is, but not much of the "monsters in the cupboard" stuff. However, plenty of children do find bedtime and the subsequent switching off of the lights a rather terrifying time, and this story captures that …

Yesterday, I went to the Great Dorset Steam Fair with my dad. He's been before and really liked it. I've never been, or if I have my memory has erased it. I must admit, when we were first talking about going, I was sort of expecting it to be a bit like the Gillingham & Shaftesbury Show, which is somewhere my dad and I also visited. It is nothing like …

I am a terrible artist. I can see things in my head, but there is some kind of communication lost between my imagination and my hand, so that a pencil drawing ends up looking terrible. Nevertheless, I recently got lost in a world of "how to draw" videos on YouTube, and when I realised it was Baby Panda Thursday today, I thought the two things would combine quite nicely. The …

This week was over before I really knew about it, which is odd because it felt like a really mismatched weeks. Sometimes I thought I hadn't been running for ages, sometimes it felt like I was tying up my shoelaces all the time. Nevertheless, the end of the Fitness Class is creeping up on me. After this week, there are just four workouts left. Goodness knows what I'll do after …

Let's come at this from the very beginning then. At the end of the last half of the series, I said I wasn't bothered about watching the rest. I knew I was going to watch this first episode to see where they took it, but the rest was up for grabs. As much as I love the Doctor, there are other ways I can spend an hour on a Saturday …

This baby panda looks how I feel today. As always, watch with the sound down, because for whatever reason, being in a zoo makes people screech.

I was really looking forward to The Hour, a six part series on the BBC that followed some 1950s Beeb journalists setting up a news programme called, funnily enough, The Hour. It was compared to Mad Men from the outset, but it wasn't much like that crazy advertising world. In fact, the only real similarity was the bad hair and the constant chain-smoking. After the first episode, I wasn't sure …

I've talked about David Mitchell's Soapbox before, I love the rants and most of them are as if he has read my mind. It's into the third series now, but never before has one been so identical to how I feel. Even if he is speaking through a "gradgrindish persona adopted for comic effect" all of it is spot on.

A pretty quiet week. The distances have been creeping up which I find disconcerting because a) I don't really have the time to run more than 7km, given how slow I am and b) training for a 5k should not involve an 11k, should it? That's not this week, but in a couple of weeks time. Bah! If I could do 11k just like that, then all that 10k related …

Google has made doodling famous, but the practice of scribbling away when someone is talking is still considered rude and/or bad practice. I've never really pondered this fact until recently, when I became aware of the Doodle Revolution. Sunni Brown heads up the revolution, with an aim of changing the perception of doodlers from inattentive listeners to engaged ears, and reviewing working practices to make creativity a bigger part. I …

Mmm, Back to the Future. I love to browse the branded t-shirts, but I never really buy them because once I start, I think I would become bankrupt quite quickly. However, I was looking at BTTF related t-shirts recently, I forget why, and these are my favourite five that I stumbled across. Dr. E. Brown Enterprises I like the ones that aren't supremely obvious, so whilst all Back to the …

A beautiful little animation. It's sad at the end, but the description on Vimeo suggests it "sets off the compassion of an imaginative little boy" which I think can only be a good thing.

After my rather foolish admission that I hadn't necessarily paid much attention to those that went to the moon after the main three, Steven Roy recommended I watch this documentary film on 4OD - In the Shadow of the Moon. I watched, and I learned, and I made notes. I've posted the distilled version for Film Watch, but these are the full notes I made along the way - 90 …

When JK Rowling announced Pottermore, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. The Harry Potter books are some of the few physical novels that I still own, and I haven't wanted to dispose of them until I had an ebook copy to replace it with. It's been driving me crazy, as I only own six of the seven books, and that gap on the shelf is hard to live with. …

When I was younger, I hoarded magazines, and would cut nice stuff out and paste them into books. Mmm, nice stuff. I've just found the site Polyvore, which essentially allows you to do that but in a digital fashion. I've seen people doing this for ages, sometimes they call them mood boards, but I just think it's fun. Polyvore provides you with a gazillion choices, whether it is fashion or …

Yesterday, the BBC screened a feature length documentary following the Team GB gymnastics squad as they trained ahead of the 2008 Olympics. It was called "Gymnast". It started at the very beginning, before the six gymnasts had been chosen, and followed many more hopefuls as they tried to get selected. Hopes and dreams, and all that, it was interesting to see the dynamic between girls, their family, and the coaches. …

We're now on the second page of the calendar for this class. It started in July and ends in August, and that means this is the home stretch. Kinda. I'm still a few days behind schedule, so it'll probably be September for me, but still. It's going okay so far. Unusually, this week has four runs, with the last one being a 5k - presumably to see if you've got …

So far, my blogging about media has been limited to films, Doctor Who and The Archers, with the occasional one-off if a piece of viewing really inspires me. It's something of a dream of mine to have enough time and dedication to blog about TV more often, and I do have some vague plans to do more of it. Here are five blogs that inspire me in that direction, and …

You'll remember that earlier in the year I went to my first (and probably only) football match, and somehow became an Aston Villa fan. I vaguely followed what they were doing for a few weeks, and then sort of lost touch until the season ended. Mr C and I watched the occasional Match of the Day update, but even then only if we happened to be in the right place …

I don't know much about fashion. I'm the kind of person that has a few staple items, and a few other bits I love and that's about it. I detest clothes shopping, but I don't mind ogling some of the sites where people show off their outfits each day. I found this video, which takes the idea of a staple to extremes. To help raise money for charity, Sheena set …

Stumbled across this video from March last year of a proposed underground mansion. Actually there are two videos, the first is a report from Granada which gives a clearer idea of what the mansion is all about. The second video has more images and less chatter from irritating presenters - it's actually got no sound at all which is a little disconcerting. Here's the first though: Video no longer available. …