Several times on this blog I have talked about how very excellent the Four Chords song is by Axis of Awesome. And it is fabulous, I’m not going back on my word. At the same time, though, it’s fair to say that those four chords have ruined my musical life. Twice in the past couple of weeks, Mr C and I have ended up racking our brains for hours and hours trying to work out where we know a song from, and it turns out to be somewhere in the megasong.

I’m not sure we’ve ever had a unanimous vote before, how exciting! I hear ya! Mitch brought the car in, stopping perfectly inside the Mortimer GP pit box. He was hoisted up on jacks, the crew changed his tyres, and out of the corner of his eye he spotted an extra mechanic having a closer look at the rear end of the car. It felt like he was stationery for hours, but in reality it was about ten seconds - longer than a pit stop should normally take, but not so long that he would lose the lead.

We recapped Mr C’s top five films at the very end of 2010, and after a little bit of pondering (and a little bit of tardiness on my part), he’s back with his top five songs released in 2010. It was a good year for us and music, after a few years of not being that interested in the output of that particular industry. So, here are his top five: Forget You - Cee Lo Green. “One of those songs where nothing before it had been anything like it. The style of the video was unique, and captivating. Not particularly bothered if it’s the version with or without the swearing. I love the retro references too, like Atari.” This Ain’t a Love Song - Scouting for Girls. “It’s the follow-up to every other love song. Every pop song is about saying sorry and getting back together, and much like Forget You, this is the bit that comes after - where they’ve given up and are moving on. It’s also a fine pop song, and it’s also quite amazing they’ve done something that is different to their other songs. I didn’t think they had it in them.” Amazing - Bruno Mars. “What a talent, what a songwriter. I also like his new song, but that’s 2011. Aside from the fact that he seems to have nicked Jason Mraz’s style, he genuinely is one of the talents of 2010.” Written in the Stars - Tinie Tempah. “The song hangs on the chorus, it’s one of the best choruses… blindingly good. Probably made slightly better by the fact the rap isn’t very good. Worth putting up with Tinie for the chorus.” Mine - Taylor Swift. “She’s the new Shania Twain, it’s as country as I’ll ever go in my whole life. However, I like the premise of it, the storytelling. It’s like a mini-movie in a song.” Honourable mention goes to Shakira with Waka Waka, which Mr C debated over for quite a long time. It’s really far cooler than Taylor Swift, and great fun, but not quite as memorable a song. Personally, I thought it took to long to get going, as well, but that’s me and not Mr C.

I mentioned this in my recent Life List recap of 2010, but it bears repeating here. I’ve been finding these episodes of Doctor Who a bit of a struggle to get through. It turns out that I’m really just not that big a fan of Christopher Ecclestone. I still think he was absolutely necessary as the Doctor, and it wouldn’t have worked if David Tennant had just dived right in and started running about in his big, long coat, but still… these episodes don’t do it for me.

I haven’t had a proper cold for a long time, well over a year. The occasional sore throat descends upon me, and I always prepare for the worst, but then it just goes away. I don’t know whether that means I have a better constitution than I used to, or if I am just lucky enough to have already had all the germs that have been circulating recently, and therefore gained some useful antibodies.

Here are the results of the gridwalk poll: As noted in the comments, Mitch is normally painted as the good guy, and I had thought the gridwalk would be a sure thing, but as a die-hard racer, Mitch is more professional than that, and Pierre wins his attention. So, on with the chapter. Mitch waved a hand at the cameras and offered a positive thumbs up, but turned his attention to Pierre. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the crew turn away disappointedly. Mitch knew Melissa was going to be mad at him for passing up a promotional opportunity, but the numbers on Pierre’s clipboard looked far more important.

You’re all so adventurous! I will not chatter too much now, except to say the wiki page is pretty much done, so head over and have a look at everything you could possibly need to know about Life in the Fast Lane. Don’t go yet, though, we’ve got a chapter to get through. The dry tyres were on, and Mitch’s car was lowered to the ground. He could see the mechanics from the team in front eyeing his car warily.

Ahh, I missed this. Mitch and Mason and them all. As my favourite lady of the moment would say: Such fun!I must point you towards the brand new section of the wiki dedicated to Life in the Fast Lane. It has all kinds of crazy information about characters and plot points, plus some fantastic livery designs from Lukeh. It’s a work in progress but it’s going to be excellent. Anyways, it was a bit of an off-beat poll to begin with, no harm in trying something different, and it sets us up nicely for the rest of the series. But, which way did the votes go? Drum roll please.

For some reason, I saw the word ‘witch’ this week and it started me thinking about all the different witches that are out there in books and on TV. There are quite a lot when you give it some proper thought. To narrow it down to five, my top five at that, I decided to pick only the good ones. Sabrina the Teenage Witch. My goodness I loved Sabrina. Those shows were a staple of those lazy days watching kids TV. Even when I was too old for them, it was still fun to watch Sabrina messing everything up and trying to deal with a troublesome and talkative cat. I saw Melissa Joan Hart in some kind of Christmas tv movie thing over the holidays and it was not great, but it reminded me of the good old days. It all went a bit wrong when Sabrina moved to college, and I didn’t see the last couple of series, but it hasn’t really taken the shine off for me. Willow from Buffy. Mostly good, I said. Not always good. Willow was much better when she was just discovering her magical powers, and I still can’t quite fathom how she went from a tentative spellmaker to that all-powerful evil overlord who wanted to end the earth. Where did all that power come from? Perhaps practice really does make perfect after all. I haven’t seen any Buffy in ages, now I want to. Bewitched. I’m assuming that all subsequent programmes of the Sabrina ilk came about from Bewitched. You can’t really argue with a witch who just wriggles her nose to make things happen. There seems to be quite the market in programmes about running around trying to fix things with your magical powers, breaking things, and then having to run around and clean it all up without revealing your hidden talents. I’m happy with that though! The Worst Witch. There was a TV show of this but I have only glimpsed it. I get my knowledge of Mildred Hubble from the books, and they are brilliant. I suppose it is really a tale of being quite useless and bullied at school, but finding friendship and making the best of it. Inspirational stuff for kids, if you don’t count the broomsticks and cats. Simon and the Witch. This is a weird one for me. I know that I love it, but I can’t really remember a single thing about. I know that I’ve seen it on TV, and I know it had that girl out of Eastenders in it. I also know I had a novelisation of it at one point. But truly, I don’t remember anything about it. I’m guessing it was about Simon? And presumably a witch. In not quite so good witches, I had Anjelica Huston for her portrayal in the Roald Dahl movie, plus the evil scary witches from The Craft. I wonder if I could make another Friday Five of bad witches. Hmmm.

I’m rubbish at birthdays, okay? Many happy returns to Franck who turned 33 yesterday. I wonder what he did to celebrate, wherever he is hibernating away for the winter. The worrying news is that Franck’s website is no longer working for me. Anyone else? I mean, it’s not like it had been updated in forever anyway, but even so. At this rate, I will not only forget FKM’s birthday, but I’ll be forgetting about him too!

From the Chengdu Panda Breeding Centre, the subject of that BBC programme I sort of live blogged. Credit: tinachensf/Flickr

“WHERE IS IT?” Mason roared. The mechanics nearby jumped, and rapidly turned their attention to minute tasks. Mason glared at them, but getting no response, he began stomping around the car. “What’s going on?” Melissa asked, approaching Mitch with his drinks bottle. They watched the spectacle from their side of the garage. “Mason has it in his head that he needs his lucky wristband,” Mitch shook his head. “It’s a crazy idea that he just dreamt up over the last few races. Like he hasn’t been lucky enough without it in the past.”

I’ve made lots and lots of New Year’s Resolutions before, both on the blog and in my head, and very few of them have worked out. This year, I changed the concept around completely and debuted the Life List - a long-term set of goals and things to aim at. Some are crazy, some are impossible, some are easy and most will take time. I figured a quick review for the year would be appropriate, with some thoughts on what is next.

The BBC have gradually been building up to this evening’s episode, with behind the scenes stories and footage littering the news and blogs and a great campaign to get listeners to tweet-along with the episode. Although I knew it was supposed to be something special, I was just going to treat it like any other episode and listen to the podcast when I had the chance. How much damage are they really going to do? If a normal storyline is how many different kinds of species Pip can find in the grass, a massive storyline is probably not going to be a plane crashing into the village.

For the new, I’m switching up the way I change headers on the site. I’d come to a position where I could make a perfectly good header in a week and that was fine. I could keep on finding brushes and doing what I could, but a week wasn’t really long enough to make anything particularly special. Instead, I’m going to do a monthly header, with the hopes that I can spend more time on them and keep up the learning process, rather than settling for what could be done in such a short space of time.

To celebrate Christmas with the Archers (and a year since I have been blogging about Ambridge - a year? Where’s that gone?), I thought I’d do this post a little differently. I’m experimenting with the format a little, and will go through the month show by show. It’s not as scary as it sounds. Let us just begin. **1st **- Tony is mean to Kathy again, but she is still whining about Jamie, so who can blame him? Meanwhile, Kate is being far meaner to Ruari - just because Phoebe wants to go to Laser Quest, she drags Ruari along, and makes him sick. Equally, she’s not telling Phoebe the whole truth about her return to South Africa. Kate is just awful.

This may be the first time in a long time that we have watched enough recent films to create any form of top five list. We have indulged in many a movie night, so I tasked Mr C to choose his top five films that were released in 2010, that we watched in 2010. Here is what he came up with: Inception. “The closest thing to the Matrix since the Matrix, which was the closest thing to perfection since forever. It was everything that Shutter Island should have been but wasn’t. Still needs a second viewing, though.” (Film Watch link) Kick-Ass. “The slow start lulled me into a completely false sense of security. The trailer had ruined it slightly, but once it got into it’s stride, it was the most remarkable film of the year.” (Film Watch link) The A-Team. “Because they flew a tank. Also, because they didn’t ruin the original. The only disappointment was BA, probably not as dominant as he is expected to be.” (Film Watch link) Green Zone. “For being the least Hollywood blockbuster Hollywood blockbuster portrayal of American military politics seen to date.” (Film Watch link) Leap Year/Cop Out. “These two are neck and neck, the introduction to Cop Out is the greatest five minutes of any movie sequence ever, but Leap Year has a lot of Guinness in it. I’m more likely to watch Leap Year a second time, so it should take the fifth spot.” (Film Watch link/Film Watch link) Mr C would like an honourable mention to go to The Men Who Stare at Goats, which was his favourite film that we watched all year long, but of course came from 2009.

I treated myself to the first series of Miranda, and after watching the first episode I found myself ever so confused. The iTunes version has the Channel 4 logo at the beginning. How odd, I thought. Miranda couldn’t be more BBC. Created by BBC Productions, broadcast on the BBC. The show came about because of a radio comedy that was on… wait for it… BBC Radio. But there it was, large as life, a Channel 4 ident.

Just cuteness today. Credit: Ross Manges/Flickr

Today I braved the supermarkets to pick up ingredients for the mammoth piece of gammon we received. I told you about it yesterday, and the fact that I am even blogging about the results means I didn’t burn it. That is a bonus! I was following this BBC recipe, but I sort of modified it for my own results, due to constraints with both time and the size of the dishes that I had to work with. I’m not good at photographing food, it turns out, but I’ve got a few illustrations along the way.

Last night, there was a Celebrity Mastermind episode in which one of the contestants chose the Back to the Future trilogy as their specialist subject. Thanks to Alex for pointing this out to me, these questions could have been made for me! As is becoming a bit of a tradition when there’s a subject we know about on Mastermind, I thought I’d gather the questions for others to see how they got on.

Someone gave us a gammon joint! Mr C is partial to a bit of gammon, and I normally buy the ready made slices that just need grilling or frying up, with a bit of pineapple thrown in for good measure. Now I am faced with this: I didn’t have a clue what to do with it, but after a quick search, I found a nice, simple recipe. It starts with having to soak the joint overnight, so Mr C is going to have to wait another day for his gammon. The good thing about that recipe from the BBC is the Shopping List option, which gives you a list of everything you’ll need, in the categories you will find them in the supermarket. That makes me very happy, as I may have to brave the supermarket tomorrow.

Remember a while ago I was blogging about my Rubik’s Cube? That is still in progress, by the way, but I am in the same predicament I was before - keep trying to achieve something but messing it up and finally scraping back to having just one side complete. At some point I will just go ahead and buy the book to attempt to move on, but I am not willing to admit defeat just yet.

When they announced that this year’s Christmas Doctor Who would be based on the Charles Dickens novel, I thought that sounded quite interesting, particularly as I knew they would be incorporating time travel and that’s my favourite bit. Then they made a big deal of announcing the name, drum roll please, A Christmas Carol. I felt a bit deflated. That’s not very creative at all, is it? Naming the story after the very book you are borrowing from.

I really just have to point out this amazing food blog called Zoom Yummy. I think perhaps I discovered it via Wordpress’s Freshly Pressed feed - a daily selection of the best posts from anyone using Wordpress, and it turns out that’s quite a lot of people. I usually only scan through the list and see if anything catches my eye, and this blog certainly did. I can’t really do it any justice in words, so I’m just going to point you in the right direction. The photos are amazing, the food looks so good at the end, and it makes me want to bake. I haven’t yet, I haven’t even picked out any of the recipes to try. At the moment, I just like ogling the food that Petra makes.

At the weekend, Lukeh posted a great item on his blog, the age-old game of who you would invite for a dinner party. It never gets old because your tastes change, there are always new people to discover, and mostly because it is always fun. At the bottom of the post, Lukeh warns to give it some serious thought - if you’re going to be spending an entire evening with these people, you want to make sure they’re the right ones.

Part of the BBC’s festive output this year will be a one-off special comedy show from Ronnie Corbett, quite sadly entitled The One Ronnie. I don’t particularly like the naming convention of the show, and I wasn’t at all convinced about watching it. There are times when these comedians really should hang up their hats, you know? However, Mr C pointed me in the direction of Engadget, who particularly enjoyed a YouTube preview of one of the sketches. If you like gadgets, there will be something in it for you, as an unhappy customer trying to return his tech-related goodies. Maybe.

Travelling in and amongst the snow is a nightmare, but I refuse to moan as I know plenty of people have had it a lot worse than me. What I would like to do is plug the RAC Traffic App, available via both Apple and Android. It is super duper useful, pointing out the tricky situations on the roads - from slippery bits, to hefty delays due to accidents, to roadworks and closed motorways. It’s really useful for UK type people.

I wanted to do something to commemorate all the snow we have been having recently, and I pondered the idea of taking a photo of the white stuff, but didn’t find it all that inspiring. Instead, I went in search of some snow-related brushes and found some really good ones. With a bit of adjustment to the scatter patterns, this is what I came up with. Made with: Pixelmator Font: Plantaganet Cherokee Brushes: Snowflake Vector Brushes

This morning, Mr C pointed me in the direction of the Quest Visual site, where they demonstrate a brand new iPod/iPhone app called Word Lens. It is crazy! You open up the app, hold it up in front of some signs and it translates them on the fly. At the moment it only does English to Spanish, or the other way round, but I would imagine there are more dictionaries coming soon. Here’s the excellent video, showing off the astounding app:

I must say, being back on Wordpress is just like putting on your favourite jumper. It may not be pretty, but it’s warm and comforting. The Squarespace adventure was a bit of a disaster. I have never known such unfiltered spam to be allowed through. At first I thought I was doing something wrong, missing some kind of obvious step but no. The commenting system over there just isn’t up to scratch.

It’s getting to that time of year when the inevitable will happen. It’s unavoidable, you will be sucked in. It’s that dreaded period of indulgence known as: Christmas TV. Actually it’s not all that bad. This is the one time of year that I buy a TV guide to help keep track of what is on and when. Most of the year I can rely on perusing the iPlayer and keeping tabs on some excellent TV blogs, because I’m likely to be relying on the On Demand services more than live programming. When Christmas happens, the channels start bringing out the big guns, and I have more time to sit around and flick through the channels. This requires some extra information.

I had a few minutes to spare, so I browsed to the App Store on the iPad for a new game to play, and there was iPad Jenga - a featured game just pleading for me to buy it. So I did. It’s brilliant. For £2.99, you get to play Jenga without having to stack up the bricks every time, without the noisy clatter when they fall down, without having to have the patience to try and fit them all back in the box at the end of the game.

Remember last week I told you about the Natural World Special that was to be shown on BBC Two on Tuesday? Well, I watched it and here are my findings. “We have pushed the symbol of conversation to the brink of extinction.” Hehehe, he said International Rescue. Around 2000 giant pandas remain. How can it be a carnivore but only eats grass? Founded with just six pandas. AWWWWW. That woman looks really happy to be carrying the panda. Wouldn’t you?? They say the ultimate goal is to release them into the wild, which seems odd. The pandas aren’t that good at looking after themselves normally, let alone after having been bottle-fed. When they reach 300 pandas, they will start to reintroduce them - so that there’s a good base to start from. None of the right kind of bamboo grows near Chengdu. Doh. Some people are climbing into the mountains to cut down the bamboo for the pandas. It might have made more sense to build the panda base near the food. Apparently the pandas reject two thirds of what is brought back. Ungrateful beasts! A giant truckload of bamboo lasts the pandas only one day, so there are lots of cutters who have a regular income from the greedy bears. One panda is just sitting and eating. A worker puts another piece of bamboo in, it grabs it and starts chewing on that instead. They are so cute and lazy. There’s one 12-24 hour window for pandas to get pregnant in a whole YEAR. They are making the male pandas do special exercises to strengthen their legs specifically for the act of mating. You know that whole thing of animals leaving their scent to scare off others? Pandas like to climb their back legs as high up a tree trunk as possible to pretend to be taller. They ain’t foolin’ no one though. One panda is unfortunately called Pin Bin. It could be Pin Pin. It could even be Bin Bin. I’m not sure. I should have put subtitles up. They have tested one female who is ready for mating and brought Pin Bin into the cage next door. They have tried to use bamboo to tempt the male towards the female, but he just sat down and ate it. They’re saying it’s the first time she’s ever been near another adult panda. And then seem surprised that they don’t know what to do once they are thrown together. They have had to give up on the whole mating thing. Silly pandas. “It’s a myth that pandas aren’t interested in sex. They’re just picky about their partners.” They ran out of time trying to get the two pandas to mate so they’re doing things artificially instead. There’s quite a lot of pressure all round, considering they only get this chance once a year. He has just blown a tranquiliser dart at the panda. Kinda like in the movies. Although then it’s not pandas, and more people. It’s taking 15 vets to do all this. Madness. But then again it only takes five minutes for them to do it, so the panda can be woken up again in good time. They’re so fluffy and cute. They’re not going to know if the panda is pregnant or not until just before she gives birth, and that could be anywhen between 11 weeks or 11 months. I’m beginning to think these pandas are just plain awkward. Now they’re talking about family inbreeding, and freezing bits and pieces.

I know I am late to the complaining party regarding the latest iOS upgrade on the iPad, but I have to get my rant down in black and white, otherwise it will just swirl around in my head forever more. The iPad used to enjoy the luxury of a volume switch on the side, alongside an on/off toggle that would lock the orientation of the screen. If you’re swinging the iPad around a bit, it would stop the screen switching direction like a mad thing. As I primarily use the iPad for reading books and watching TV which are best not flailing around, that switch was very useful.

This one started when I was investigating the Quartz Composer, and found the option of radiating circles outwards. I can’t quite remember which one it is, but once I had that and I added in some of the best colour in the world - purple - I had it set. Made with: Pixelmator Font: Didot Brushes: Nature (I think these came with Pixelmator)

A fascinating month in Ambridge this time out, with lots and lots of little bits and pieces helping to set things up for Christmas, and keep the longer storylines bubbling along nicely. I have no idea how I’m going to cover this all in a reasonable space, but let’s just dive right in. Ed, Emma, Will and Nic What used to be a complicated love triangle has now become more of a hate quadrangle. Ed and Will are still at loggerheads whenever they bump into each other. Emma is wary of getting involved with anything to do with Will, but Nic is keen for them all to get along nicely.

Now, I’m going to have to be upfront and honest here, it’s not proper whisky. It’s a whisky and cola, pre-made and sold to me in a can. I’m sorry in advance. I was browsing in the supermarket and stumbled across this whole section of alcohol that I hadn’t noticed before - the sort of pre-mixed cans as pictured above. There’s everything from rum to Jack Daniels to gin and tonic, and I was impressed. When I told Mr C about it, he was also impressed. In his day, kids drank cider. In my day, we drank Smirnoff Ice. Now there is a whole heap of choice out there.

Sometimes, when I load Google Reader, it turns Turkish. It’s been happening for a long time, and I have no idea why. All the settings I can see are set to English, but I must have hit a button at some point in the distant past that pointed it towards Turkey. It happens on all different types of browser, on various gadgets, and on various internet connections, so it’s definitely a Google thing and not me.

You can’t blink without seeing talk of WikiLeaks at the moment, and I have little to say on the political side of things. Mr C, though, pointed out this video of where the controversial site is now hosted - deep in the heart of Sweden. It really looks like the kind of spy bunker you will see in James Bond films, take a look. I particularly like the moon room, although for meetings it must be just like sitting in a fish bowl. I also like how much greenery they have going on, and I am wondering if there is any particular reason they have painted the floor blue.

It looks as though FKM has disappeared again, after his win in Zhuhai. His website has not been updated, and the only place to go for any Franck related goodness is Facebook. There are a couple of cool (but old) videos that were posted recently, but as they are in Facebook, I can only share the links. Here is one, and here is another one.

Next week, there is a programme on the BBC all about the Chengdu Research Base in China. I will definitely be watching the programme - although probably not as it goes out live, which is Tues 7th at 8pm on BBC Two. iPlayer all the way! I’ll report back my findings next week. Meanwhile, in advance of the programme going out, the BBC offered up three super cute videos of some of the baby pandas at the base. Here they are! (I don’t think much of the keyword laden titles.)

You know, I did not remember this episode at all. The only bit I could recall ahead of viewing was that Rose touched the Dalek and that’s when all hell broke loose. Otherwise, the rest was a blank. Sometimes those are the best ones! Sometimes. The concept of an alien museum is so good. I wish we had one of those. Actually, if the Doctor ever gave up his time-travelling ways, he could make a killing in the museum business. I can’t imagine the stuff he’s got hidden away in that TARDIS.

Last night, Mr C introduced me to some of his children’s TV purchases from iTunes. What you watched as a child is a conversation that is always popular, everyone has good and bad memories of things they used to consume via the tellybox, and nostalgia is often a good thing. This also reminded me of a post by Alex, where he pondered each generation thinking the next is going to the dogs. It’s easy to look at Kids TV these days and think it must be twisting the next generation’s mind. Look at the Teletubbies!

I wanted to do something with the image of the giant maze from Longleat, but it didn’t come out as well as I’d hoped, and wasn’t interesting enough for a header. Instead, I upped the green colour, and used a kaleidoscope tile effect. It’s not what I was going for at all, but I find it intriguing. Made with: Pixelmator Original Image: Maze Font: Apple Chancery

Here I am with another list, and I can tell you that this one came about solely from my desire to talk about the first item mentioned below. These are my top five songs with brand names mentioned in them. It’s not really product placement in the “money for saying our name” sense, but more where reality clashes with culture. Let’s get right on with the list. Arctic Monkeys - When the Sun Goes Down

Now, remember I told you before about Cutest Food? I just adore this Panda Gummy Bear picture. Who would ever eat that? It’s far too cute for consumption. And, the always excellent ZooBorns has a whole host of baby panda goodness - photos taken at a research base in China. I particularly like this quote from the comments on that post: I am surprised that the intense concentration of so much cute in one place hasn’t caused a temporal disturbance.

I’ve not been sleeping well for the past week or so, nothing major to complain about, but just a lot on my mind. I downloaded an app (as recommended by Eric the Baker) called Sleep Machine. I’ve always been skeptical about the idea of white noise helping you to drift off, but if there’s an app for something, I am usually curious to test it out (see: running a 5k race).

I still haven’t quite figured out what the theme of Show Your Spots meant this year, unless it had to to do with John Barrowman’s suit, which is very likely. Anyway, remember I mentioned I’d be Factbyte Factboxing the Children in Need charity telethon spectacular? It happened, and I did! Seven long hours worth of glitz and pop and cheese and a bizarre cross of Eastenders and Coronation Street. It was fantastic fun, and only took me the rest of the weekend to recover.

I found the gradient tool under Quartz Composer, and whilst you can easily make a gradient with the required colours in the toolbar, this purple one was too good not to use! After pondering some new brushes, this header was conceived. Made with: Pixelmator Font: #PCMyungjo Quartz Composer - Generator - Gradient Brushes: Glowing Stars