Leo has added to his ever-expanding network with a new show: This Week in Google. The first show is live, featuring Gina Trapani and Jeff Jarvis, with topics including Apple blocking the Google Voice app, drunk emailing, and Google Wave. Always recommend checking out a new TWiT show, even if it’s not your thing.

This past weekend, we visited the West Midland Safari Park. It hadn’t actually been part of the plan, but sometimes visiting animals you wouldn’t normally see is the only way to brighten up your day. There were the usual deer type animals, some buffalo, and plenty of zebras and things. It was the rhinos and elephants that we enjoyed seeing though. It was interesting that as we were going round, the cars piled up when we got to the lions. It was impossible to get anywhere, and we spent at least twenty minutes making our way past the big cats. Now, lions are exciting, I will grant you that, but when there are elephants just around the corner? No competition.

This is one of the best blog entries I’ve read in a while, despite the fact that it is in the form of an image, which I would normally frown upon. The topic in hand is the progression from terabytes to the next level petabytes. It took me a while to get my head around this at first. A terabyte is a thousand gigabytes, a petabyte is a thousand terabytes. So, in other words, quite large.

If ever there was a need for baby pandas, it’s today. A Pandogropher (Cassie)/Flickr

There are studies emerging all over the place regarding who actually uses Twitter and what they get out of it, and it seems as though the powers that be are starting to take notice. The social networking site has long since ceased to be a place where you answer the original question “What are you doing?” In fact, I just had to go and check the website itself to see if it actually still featured the question above the text box. It does, which seems odd.

Our hero FKM has finally opened up about Le Mans, and it makes good reading (even when murdered by Google Translate). There’s a lot of detail about the broken leg, and the race itself, but the best bit comes at the end, when he talks about why he looked grumpy on the podium: Sorry … I am not proud of this moment for my guys, for all the work we have done, I should have a smile of pride to belong to this family … but tired, hurt and disappointed, I struggled on. But do not worry after a few hours, I was the first to open the fridge door truck to offer drink to the winners and 2009 … with a smile!

I recently uncovered a site called 11 Points which compiles top ten lists, but with eleven items. Some of the lists are rubbish, and the site is very garish to behold, but there are some gems to be found. I have always liked top ten lists and similar. The first podcast I subscribed to was Top of the Pods, which is sadly no longer broadcasting. The idea was a simple weekly chat between two guys, counting down random lists, some submitted by listeners. There’s something about the list format that appeals to me, and I miss that show.

With all the current news and info emerging about the Apollo 11 mission - celebrating the 40th anniversary of the moon landings - it’s hard not to think about space travel and what the future of it is. During a reunion of the Apollo 11 crew, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong seemed to think that Mars should be the next destination. They also didn’t stop at dreaming up _visits _to the red planet but thought we should aim higher. Aldrin’s take on things:

Today, the first LibriVox book that I co-ordinated has been completed and catalogued for the wider world to enjoy. If you’re at all interested in a book that follows the life of a prehistoric caveman, then I recommend The Story of Ab by Stanley Waterloo. It was quite exciting when I saw this book turn up in the new releases RSS feed, as it is with any book I’m involved in. Knowing that I helped to make it happen, that I was a part of a wider effort to make the audio available to everyone, is really satisfying.

I don’t really enjoy hot drinks much, the occasional cup of tea or hot chocolate, and certainly not coffee. That being the case, I feel like I am missing out on the joy of the vast variety of mugs there are available to purchase. I was doing a little searching, for no particular reason, and came across a couple I would want, if I could justify buying them only to sit in my cupboard and collect dust.

I appear to have grown a cucumber. I don’t quite know how this happened. One minute it was all leaves, then the yellow flower, and suddenly there’s a big, green cucumber growing. I did take some pictures last week but forgot to do anything with them, and I can tell you this vegetable has more than doubled in size over the course of a week.

I remember writing a piece for The BBC Blog when Being Human got recommissioned for BBC Three. At the time, I said: Personally, I couldn’t get through the first episode, but it was even successful on the iPlayer. The first two episodes were the most watched at the time, and the website has seen a soar in hits. Well, as it turns out, they have been repeating the first season, presumably in preparation for the second to begin soon. I gave it another go on the iPlayer and absolutely loved it. Perhaps I wasn’t in the mood previously.

Credit: David Merrett/Flickr Not sure about the turn-ups, but if anyone can pull them off, FKM can.

Firstly, you must, must, must check out these very cuddly panda bears, and whilst you are there, you must buy me one. (Thanks to Andy for the tip.) Now, onto the good stuff: Credit: Karen/Flickr

It’s been a bit quiet in Franck-land recently, but he hasn’t been twiddling his thumbs, doing nothing. He was in France for a Peugeot event, and then travelled to Canada to spend some time with the Andretti Green Racing team. According to the official website: Franck was pretty excited to go to Canada to see his Dudes… His former mechanics and engineers kept in touch and the AGR team actually followed the Number 8 performance pretty closely at Le Mans.

I was recently perusing the Podcasting News site and found an article with some new media tips from Trent Reznor. Now, I am only vaguely aware of Mr Reznor, not being a Nine Inch Nails fan, myself. However, it was the tips themselves that fascinated me. And by fascinated, I mean baffled. It starts off well. Have your MySpace page, but get a site outside MySpace - it’s dying and reads as cheap / generic.

I just heard about the £12.5 million revamp of the London Eye. Do you know what they’re doing? They’re taking each pod off, one at a time, and replacing them with a temporary one that doesn’t carry passengers. Each pod is then floated down the Thames to Essex, before being transported to Worcester. The refit takes place, the pod is returned to its rightful place and the next one gets the same treatment.

Shock, horror, last Thursday was actually an acceptable day, as days go. I have a feeling today will revert to the usual Thursday fare, though, so Baby Panda Thursday it is! Firstly, make sure you check out the latest Zoo Borns panda post because there’s all kinds of cuteness on there that shouldn’t be allowed. Also, there is a superb set of panda photos on Flickr that are unfortunately not available for sharing. They are definitely worth looking at, though, and there are loads of them.

Today we have a new and unexpected bloom: I think this must be part of the bell pepper plant, but I can’t be 100% sure. It’s very pretty though, and so far I have spotted two of these cute little flowers. The tomatoes are coming on very well, growing nice and strong, bigger than I expected. They are still green, so I am waiting for them to turn a lighter shade of red before snapping some more photos. I can’t wait to try one.

I seem to be using Facebook less and less, but there are sometimes things that make me want to dive back into the blue and white world. My Desk Friend is one of those things. The little robot connects to your profile and can let you know when you have messages, when your friends log in, and when you’ve been poked. It also works for other generic services, such as letting you know when you have an email, but it seems to be designed around Facebook. The weird little penguin gets it’s own section of your profile and your friends can give it gifts and things like that. Okay, that may be taking it too far, but it is cute, no?

It is all about the greens this week, as the strawberry crop seems to have become non-existant all of a sudden. I only had about three or four delicious strawberries to eat. The rest were too small and went bad before I could get to them. I believe there are some new buds beginning though, so I will be patient once more. Meanwhile, I have turned my attention to the rest of the plants.

I watched an episode of Doctor Who last night, with no real reasoning, except it was on the iPlayer and I needed a Doctor fix. I don’t know about anyone else, but I feel cheated of a proper series this year, and even if these specials are the best thing ever, can they really replace a 13 episode run? Either way, I am one of those annoying people who has only become a fan since the rebirth of the series, and I have yet to get through an entire episode of the early Doctors. Mr Tennant is my favourite, and although I posted previously about being reluctant to let him go for Matt Smith, I’m actually looking forward to seeing how the new dynamic will work. Plus, I hate goodbyes, and I wish it was next year already.

I would like to draw attention to this unusually serious but still excellent episode of The Buzz Report from CNET. I particularly find the conversation about Steve Jobs interesting. Naturally, all anyone wants is for Mr Jobs to get well soon, but it does raise some issues. The medical centre were very, very quick to clarify that Mr Jobs didn’t get any preferential treatment and was at the top of the liver transplant list because he was the most needy person on there. Which in turn puts some of Apple’s earlier claims into doubt. Will they be in trouble with the shareholders for suggesting things were not particularly serious?

The Hawk-Eye technology to record a tennis ball’s movements and then review controversial line calls has been around for a while, and been included within the rules since 2006. The Wimbledon Championships are on right now, and we quite often see the players calling for a challenge on a call. Personally, I find the challenges a little bit disruptive. The player has to request it, we have to wait for the footage to be prepared, and then we have the audience “ooooh” as the result is displayed. However, this is much more preferable to relying on human eyes that can easily make a mistake. Some of those serves reach 150mph, literally blink and you’ll miss it. Having the option to question some of these decisions is a good idea.

As a big cheerleading fan of the iPlayer, I’m glad to see that other channels are gradually trending towards some of the innovative work the BBC have done. Channel 4 upgraded their on-demand service a while back, and now it is all good to work on both PC and Mac, has online streaming instead of just a desktop application, and is generally a lot better. I have only found a couple of things on the schedule there I would want to watch, and they are coming to the end of a series, so I can’t start watching them now. However, I will be keeping an eye on it, and it does mean I can look at all the sections of the TV Guide, rather than just the Beeb.

Last night, I was awake at 1am due to some pretty vicious lightning and thunder cracking right over my head. Thankfully I was indoors, but for the couple of hours I was awake, I was not amused. At what point does lightning cease being awe-inspiring and become more of an annoyance? When I was a kid, massive storms were great fun. There was one particular day, I was waiting for a long distance friend to arrive. My mother and I were standing in the open front doorway, marvelling at how muggy it was. Suddenly the sky turned a deep, dark yellow, the rain came crashing down and the lightning soon followed. That was a good day.

A few times recently, we’ve been asked the question: I’m starting a new blog, which platform should I use? Of the free software that is available, the two main ones are Blogger and Wordpress and I will always opt for Wordpress. Here are my five reasons: Wordpress just feels more professional. Even if you’re starting a blog for purely fun reasons, I feel like the layout of WP admin is a lot cleaner and more intuitive to use. There is a progression path. With Blogger, you can set up a free account and type away. You can purchase a custom domain if you want, but that seems to be the limit. On WP, you start with the free account, and if you get on with it, there is the option to take the host-it-yourself path which gives you unlimited choices in terms of themes, widgets and customisation. Themes. There are a million themes out there if you choose the DIY route, but even on the wordpress.com domain the selected few themes you can choose from are pretty nice. It’s easy to make them unique and individual by changing header pictures and tweaking the widgets. Blogger seems more limited in this sense. Comments. Trying to leave a comment on a Blogger site is sometimes more hassle than it’s worth. There are the crazy spam-blocker pictures, plus confusing options when it comes to identifying yourself. Wordpress has the four standard text entry fields, so you always know where you are. Wordpress is better. It just is. Okay, so I ran out of reasons, but I will always recommend WP over Blogger. It’s a personal decision, though, and above all else, getting blogging is more important than your software of choice.

A quick shout out to current Formula 1 driver Heikki Kovalainen, who remembered Franck whilst being quizzed by F1.com. The Ask the Expert feature puts tricky questions to F1 drivers, with the subjects being loosely associated with their lives. Heikki also managed to get the highest score of the ten or so drivers quizzed so far. He is officially now a friend of the site.

I have found myself analysing blogging a little too much recently, but one thing has occurred to me that I hadn’t really thought about before. The blogs, or entries therein, that are based around a specific structure are very, very interesting. For example, on this very corner of the interweb, I have a couple of ongoing projects - the Film Watch live blogs, and the Great Gardening Adventure. Now, I am bound to say these are interesting, I am biased like that. However, I have seen similar ideas on other blogs, and really enjoy reading them.

This year, there are more ways than ever to keep up with what’s happening at the hallowed tennis grounds, and I am grateful because each year I get more and more scatterbrained. I extolled the virtues of the BBC’s coverage last year, and there’s more of the same going on for the next two weeks. From what I can tell, we can enjoy: The Wimbledon live blog, giving updates from all over the competition High profile live match updates - including video, and game by game commentary Tennis programmes on the iPlayer, including a couple of matches each day in their entirety, plus the usual Today at Wimbledon fare. Live radio and BBC Two streaming. Tarango & Cash’s Wimbledon Tennis podcast. That’s enough right there, if you ask me. However, the official Wimbledon site has some goodies on offer as well. There’s online video, the interactive draw plus some excellent live scoring.

If you trace the origins of our eating habits back far enough, you’ll find that a man would knock a rabbit on the head with a club, and bring it back to his cave for eating. Fast forward a few millennia (have no idea about the timescale of humans?), and I had a pizza delivered to my house as a result of typing for a few minutes. Of all the takeaway options, pizza is probably my least favourite, but after a hectic weekend it seemed like the ideal solution. I hit up google for some nearby outlets, and found that not only do Domino’s deliver, but they take orders online.

I have learnt many things this week, but the most important one is regards to keeping control of the plants. Up until now, and perhaps in response to being grateful they survived at all, I had let the plants grow and grow and keep on growing. The strawberry pot was reasonably restrained. It grew to a certain size and then some fruit popped out. However, the tomatoes got taller and taller until I was seriously beginning to think I’d have to trade them in for a more manageable crop.

Recently, I have been making time to record more stuff for Librivox. The collaborative book that I was co-ordinating is nearing completion, so I have started a new solo effort, and am participating in some of the other group projects as well. More on that another time, what I am here to say is that a rather cool iPhone App has been rocketing up the application charts. It is simply called Audiobooks and it lets you listen to Librivox books on the go.

Finally, there is word on the official FKM site regarding the Le Mans race. A couple of days ago, The Joker (site admin, I believe) posted reaction to the 24 hour race. On the entire day: Sweet and sour… that’s what these 24 Hours in Le Mans taste like. But with three podiums for his three last participations, I think the stats and figures are pretty good! FKM wants to win in Le Mans. It didn’t work this year, that was pretty close though, but for sure he will keep fighting and he will make it for sure!

Since I watched Rain Man, and learnt about this Abbott and Costello phenomenon, I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. I keep bugging Mr C by saying “Who’s on First?” and then getting annoyed when he doesn’t know what to say. Not that either of us know any of the sketch to carry on with, but it’s fun catching him off guard. It is amazing to me that a sketch can continue to be timeless and supremely popular after 70 years. Wikipedia says it became a big hit in 1937, and has continued to get awards and top best comedy lists ever since.

Ugh, Thursdays really are awful. Here’s some cuteness to cheer things up: Credit: Fiona Jones/Flickr Waiting for someone? Credit: Jodi/Flickr What is up with pandas hanging upside down from trees?

I’ve noticed a couple of posts recently, in my feed reader, that suggest apps that will help to keep track, and even publish your own lifestream. I sat back for a minute, and thought, how many social networks can there be? I know there are some niche ones out there, book clubs, wine groups, things like that. But how many actual social things are there? Then I discovered one of many User Name Check sites, that allow you to see where your preferred username is taken, and which sites you can still go to nab what you want.

Don’t you just hate those blogs where people analyse what they’re doing to such a degree that they actually talk about little else? Well, I apologise in advance for this post, which is just a quick thought about why people blog. As far as I can tell there are three reasons, and these are quite general categories. To connect with people. You want to find people that are interested in the same things you are. You want to share links and sites that you find interesting. You want to start conversations. To learn about a subject. Blogging about a specific subject helps you to learn as you write, and share what you know. To practice writing. Whether it is non fiction, or creative writing, blogging is a great way to practice, and get in the habit of writing often. As far as I can tell, this blog falls under the first category, and the now-defunct BBC blog fell under the second. I used to do a little of the third on my personal blog, but gave that up when I realised my creative writing just isn’t very good.

And there it was, Le Mans in all its glory. Franck started the race, Bourdais finished it, and between the three drivers, they came in second. It was a race of high attrition, with the Audi’s struggling, giving Peugeot their best change to break their rival’s run of victories. Good for Peugeot, they managed a win, bad for Franck it was the other team. The #8 Peugeot at the hands of FKM, Bourdais and Sarrazin led for the start of the race, but spent an unfortunate ten minutes in the pits with a wheel problem that saw the lead change hands. Towards the end of the race, Bourdais was gaining on his sister team at the front, but there was a notion that the team had been told not to race each other. Peugeot didn’t want to risk their chance at a win. Montagny was not impressed:

Do you remember The Man Who Cycled the World? The crazy but impressive Mark Beaumont thought it would be smart to visit all the continents, travel 18,000 miles and do it in under 200 days. I wrote about it after seeing a repeat of the accompanying programme on the iPlayer, and now, Mark is back. I hadn’t noticed this initially, but the Beeb have set the man up with a blog for his new aim of Cycling the Americas. The new challenge, according to the blog is as follows:

It seems like social networks are suddenly starting to realise that if people are going to put their lives on the internet, then they might want to have a proper identity. Facebook have introduced what appear to be called “vanity URLs” to your profile. It seems a bit mean to say that having your profile accessible by something with your own name rather than a bunch of random numbers is vanity, but that seems to be the name that sticks. My profile is now accessible via: http://www.facebook.com/christine.blachford.

When it comes to getting up and about and trying to exercise, I tend to flit from one thing to another. Nothing really captures my attention, except swimming. I do not like to go to the local swimming pool because (and this is probably another of my weird traits) there is no way of seeing how busy it is before you go in, and yet I don’t want there to be any kind of window with outsiders peering in once you get in the water.

It seems like every five minutes now, there is a new feature to Google, or a new search engine making it’s debut. They all proclaim to be the next big innovation in searching, and some will even revolutionise the way we find information on the web. I have already taken a quick look at Wolfram Alpha, which says it is not trying to be a Google killer. Mahalo has always been a different kind of search - curated by humans to provide the best and most relevant links for your topic. I have never found it that useful, because if I want YouTube links, I would just go to YouTube. However, the idea behind it was strong, and it’s a surprise to me that it’s changing.

There are a plethora of Twitter apps for mobile phones, and I know the iPhone is over-run with them. As a G1 user, the Android platform has less options, but there are a few worth looking at. The one I have settled on is Loquacious, which is actually a paid for app. It’s only a couple of dollars, though, so that didn’t put me off. There’s a 14-day fully featured demo, and I can honestly say the one thing that really sold it for me is that when you type a tweet - there’s a character countdown!

Back in December, I discovered Picnik, an easy to use photo editing web app that pretty much made my day. Just recently, particularly with the introduction of my gardening pictures, I have returned to Picnik and love it even more than I did last time. The best thing about Picnik is that it is unbelievably easy to use. If you are editing a lot of pictures, or particularly massive ones, it may be a little too slow. For heavy use, I imagine it could be frustrating. However, for simple pictures, one off retouches, and really easy functionality, I think Picnik is for you.

More strawberry news, as this time… I ate one! That’s right, the reddened strawberry was red enough to eat, so I tried it out. It wasn’t perhaps as sweet as it could have been, but it was nice and juicy, with a great texture. Must be all that water! In other news, the remaining plants are still green and growing, and not a lot else. I want to see some other produce rather than just the strawberries, but I guess this will take a while longer.

Credit: mansalio/Flickr

After the first session of qualifying, Audi were on pole, with our man Franck second. However, once the second session was complete, it was Peugeot all the way, with the #8 car on top at the hands of Stephane Sarrazin. #7 was third and #9 was fifth. Naturally, the Audi of McNish, Kristensen and Capello was second. After the shock news that Franck had broken his leg, it was even more of a surprise to see him put the car on pole in the early stages of qualifying. The team maintain that they were concentrating on race setup for the most part, and it was only once they were happy their work was completed that they went for a time.

It’s unclear exactly how this slipped through the net, but it turns out even Radio Le Mans didn’t know until they asked the man himself why he was limping. That’s right, Franck has only gone and injured himself. During training in the Alps, Franck made it through all the rock climbing and dangerous stuff with ease, but then stood on the ball during a game of footie, and broke his fibula.

Remember I told you about the Zoo Borns site? They recently had a feature on a newborn Panda at Thailand’s Chiang Mai Zoo. It was too much of a baby to be cute and cuddly, but I figured ‘yay for the expanding panda population’. However, the site then posted an update featuring the same baby pandas just a week or so later, and boy are they cute now!