One of the intriguing things about the LibriVox project is that all the works are from the public domain and all the recordings are put straight back in there as well. Hundreds of recordings are completed and head straight into the public domain for anyone to do anything with. It’s a decision that creates plenty of debate over in the forums, but is ultimately a good one. The works are there for the greater good, and shouldn’t be locked up behind copyright.

A Christmas Carol is a perennial favourite, the complete and utter definition of a classic and rightly so. Short and to the point, not filled with excess waffle, and with a fantastic journey from start to finish, the book grabs you and won’t let you go. Of course, I can’t read this without picturing every step as the Muppets version, which is perhaps unfortunate to the original, but a great time for me. Some of the word for word pieces make me smile, and the songs riff through my head as I go along.

I managed to finish watching the last five episodes of The Killing and have spent a little while pondering the entire prospect. Firstly, it wasn’t until I had embarked on the second half of the series that I realised it was only ten episodes - half the length of the previous outing. That being the case, the end felt quite abrupt. I had been anticipating something a little more drawn out, and then suddenly it was all ramping up to the big finale.

I’ve read the first chapter of The Hobbit many times (see below), but never got to where the adventure really begins. It’s a good story, far easier to understand than I expected - I may have been confusing it with the sprawling adventures in Lord of the Rings. My only complaint regarding the story itself is that there are too many dwarves - who can remember all those names, and who can distinguish between them? It’s like trying to remember the reindeer.

Again, similar to Thor, it was better than I thought it was going to be but I do think it was the weakest of the ones we have seen so far. I liked that all the back story was gone before the opening credits were over, instead of dragging it all out in the sloooow fashion we have come to expect. There was a lot of chasing and running, which meant we never had time to get to know Bruce Banner.

It wasn’t the worst film I’ve ever seen, but it did seem to strip away the essence of Herbie completely. Yes, it makes sense that he would look after a little old lady as best as possible, and he is certainly the kind of car to encourage a relationship and nudge it along if he can. But he’s a racing car and the only bit of actual racing we saw was a weird game of chicken, and then chasing a man onto the ledge of a tall building. Very odd.

This year’s Christmas special was in a difficult position - it had to be light enough to be enjoyed at prime time on the main festive day, but equally it had to hold enough gravitas to follow a very heavy series. I think this one managed to do a really good job, and improved on the fairy tale style of last year’s Christmas outing.

I liked it a lot more than I thought I was going to. It was very beautiful and well done - the characters seemed good and interacted well together, although I didn’t really find myself connecting with any of them. In fact, I felt most sorry for Loki and he was meant to be the bad guy. It was a good way to spend a couple of hours, and I’m glad that the Avengers business made us watch it, but I wasn’t completely sold on Thor in the same vein as other comic book heroes.

Mmm, running on Christmas Day. There were just a few people out and about, mostly those walking their dogs. Gloriously quiet and only a little bit of drizzle. I hadn’t actually intended to go out, but then I saw a couple of inspiration tweets from friends, including:

A couple of days ago, I posted this story of a good deed to my Google+ account. You may have already read it, in which case you don’t need to do so again - it’s here word for word: Today I braved the crazy Christmas shoppers in the supermarket for my own regularly scheduled food purchases. I was not looking forward to it, I’ve seen a fight break out in front of the brussels sprouts before.

A great sequel, I reckon. Almost instantly we were reminded of how fabulous the Tony Stark character is and I remembered how much I wanted to just watch a film of him going about his day to day business. Having said that, I did think that there was more time to revel in the character in the first movie, whereas this second one had more of a story - or more characters, at least - to pack in.

I was surprised at how well the film holds up, considering it is over 20 years old. Of course, animation ages differently to live action, and that probably helps. As an adult, I was slightly disappointed with how many similarities I could see between this and Back to the Future, but equally, that probably helps endear it to me more. It’s a great film and I love it. Watching it as an adult hasn’t ruined it for me, which is not always the case.

Here is my to do list looking quite a state. I have made it mostly hard to read because there are some quite fun and fabulous and secret upcoming things on there. Christmas provides a few days off, and I intend to get this list down to a more manageable size. It used to hover around the three quarters of a page length, and that I could deal with.

I’ve had my iPhone for almost two weeks now, and I love it. All those hideous and disgusting phrases like “it just works” and “it makes me want to do more with it” are all true. I’ve got posts in the pipeline (by that I mean in my mind) regarding the highs and lows of life with Siri and what a revelation the camera is, but a quick summary is… it’s great.

When I wrote my Life List, one of the first items on there was to bake the perfect loaf of bread. Then I watched two series’ of the Great British Bake Off and realised that I am never going to be a very good baker. So, instead of making the same loaf over and over again in search of perfection, I thought I’d change the task. Instead, I’d like to try making a variety of different types of bread, settling for the adequate and tasty product instead of the marketable ideal. Who decides what perfect is anyway?

So, first up, the new Batman trailer. The Dark Knight Rises I like the idea that this is a set of Batman stories - a trilogy of Batman, not trying to keep the brand alive forever, not trying to take it over and push it in a new direction forever, but just taking the characters and telling a story and then moving on. Of course, that is until a fourth movie comes out and this all gets blown out of the water.

It didn’t ruin the first one, which is good. It couldn’t ruin it really because it was the exact same film, just with some tweaks. They weren’t left with a baby, but they did lose one of the party, he was found in a ridiculously obvious place, there was some kidnapping, some beating up and a lot of shouting and swearing. It was good, but because we’d already seen everything before, it wasn’t great.

I’ll be honest, my notes for this film are pretty rubbish. I didn’t like the start very much - it was all quite obnoxious, loads of swearing and horrible people (bosses!). But, as soon as they started on their mission, it got a million times better. I pretty much started laughing and didn’t stop.

A week or two ago, I posted about my favourite Quality Street options when presented with a tin of the delicacies. I had a few messages suggesting that Quality Streets were an unknown, but Roses were more popular. For example, Amy said: I have no idea what Quality Street is but I know what Roses are and I know what Cadbury Favourites are so I’m assuming they’re along the same lines, only Britisher.

I hadn’t realised that the story went on to two generations, and was fascinated by the events that happened after Cathy died. I felt like the ending was quite depressing - the characters may have been content but it didn’t feel like that was the best result they could have had. Still, that was in-keeping with the tone of the entire book so it wouldn’t have been right to have a smiley happy ending.

Marvellous sequel. Even better than the first one, in fact. I do think there’s a sneak preview of the whole ‘creating a lot of extra characters for big bucks’ here. It certainly is nowhere near as cynical as later sequels, however. One of those new characters is Wheezy, and who can hate Wheezy? I wasn’t so keen on the cowgirl, but her horse was cute.

Finally, the second series of The Killing has begun airing on BBC4. I say finally, but as I watched the last series so recently, it doesn’t seem all that long ago that I was cheering on Sarah Lund and friends to find the murderer. At the end of the first series, Lund walked out of the police station and into the sunshine - presumably to a happier and better life.

It was better than I thought it would be, but not exactly the most exciting movie of all time. I had anticipated Hanks’ character being a bit of a doofus but he wasn’t, he was good, kind and smart. It seemed as though Roberts was going to be a Bad Teacher type but equally she was just going through her own problems. There were some funny moments, some interesting snippets of dialogue, and it was fascinating to watch the younger students reacting to the older man in their midst.

When I visited Edinburgh for my Alphabet Adventure, I very much liked it. Which is lucky, because the zoo have recently taken ownership of two pandas - on loan from China. I remember the Park & Ride bus stopping at the zoo on the way back, and I considered getting off but it didn’t look all that impressive from the outside. Now, it is one of my top destinations! I loved hearing about the pandas arrival - being flown in on a FedEx plane, and being nicely secured in see through FedEx crates. Who knew you could just FedEx a panda? It would have been brilliant if that had been one of the packages Tom Hanks had been left with on Cast Away.

This week, I caught sight of a public spat between Paul Irish and Jeffrey Zeldman - two heavyweights in web standards evangelism. I know of them both from a vague distance and I follow some of their work but I can’t pretend to know anything about web standards. I’m not even 100% sure what the argument is about and I certainly don’t know what a blue beanie is. My opinion on the matter is pretty moot as I don’t know of the history between them or the big things they stand for other than skimming the surface of their output like I do. From my point of view, one party came out of the argument looking better than the other, and it’s not Paul’s podcast that I’ll be unsubscribing from. Of course it helps that he is cute as anything.

As a kid, The Twits was never one of my favourite Dahl stories. It’s all a bit grizzly with disgusting beards, trees with glue on and upside down monkeys. Great, imaginative stuff, but not really what I liked. Well, actually, the upside monkeys were okay. As an adult, this book is brilliant. Mostly because it ticks an item off my Big Read list, and only took half an hour to finish. Actually, it’s a fine little story, typical Dahl. Two quite despicable creatures are truly awful to each other and to everyone around them, and eventually get their comeuppance, in a rather fitting fashion. Good-o.

A few days ago, Amazon announced two brand new stores for Kindle, bringing the total up to six individual destinations now. The two new countries added are Italy and Spain, via Amazon.it and Amazon.es. All three of my books are currently available in both, with any searches bringing up the results with Euro currency. Christine Blachford on the Italian store Christine Blachford on the Spanish store The two news stores join the recently introduced French site, along with the already existing US, UK and German stores.

It seems to be a time for history to start catching up with the villagers in Ambridge this month, with all kinds of long-lost relatives being unearthed and rediscovered. First up in the main show, it’s all about Pat, Tony, Helen, Tom and what could be their new grandson/nephew. After Kylie appeared at the funeral for Ivy, she started talking about a brother and Pat got very suspicious. I don’t know who Kylie or Sharon are. I don’t really care that they have another relation at all. But Pat wouldn’t let it drop, and after stalking the poor chap on Facebook has decided he looks the spitting image of her deceased son John and therefore must be his. This all seems very sensationalist for a soap like The Archers. It’s not like Pat and Tony didn’t have enough going on at the moment. What with Helen and her baby, plus the Bridge Farm brand going down the tubes, they seem to have dominated most of this year.

I was so glad to get my hands on this book. I started reading the Inspector Frost series months ago, and going by Shelfari’s series links, was expecting to read five installments. There were five available for the Kindle, all was well. Except, Wikipedia informed me of another - technically the fifth in a series of five - and lo and behold, there it was on Amazon, but not as an ebook.

It’s starting to get quite tricky, and motivation to go out is hard. I gave it some thought and decided that the couple of weeks when I first stopped running quite so regularly were good because my body was like: “Oh, cool, I’m nice and rested, I’ll go faster.” Then, give it a few more weeks, and my body is now: “Oh, wait, you want me to go out? But I’m so used to inside!”

This one lives up to its predecessors in being truly awful and also lots of fun at the same time. Somehow, Michael Bay managed to find someone worse than Megan Fox, which is pretty impressive. We often browse critics reviews after we’ve seen the film and found one that summed it up, essentially: Great CGI and visuals, but terrible dialogue, acting and storyline. The three things that make a good film all missing, but it was still interesting enough.

I wasn’t really sure what to make of it to start with | it seemed to be two distinct parts. The fairy tale aspect, with Alice in Wonderland exploration and creatures, and then the horror of real life, with gruesome torture and many, many deaths. Who is that meant to be aimed at? Despite the bleak story and the ultimately very depressing ending, it was a fascinating watch. I enjoyed the subtitles and the fantasy aspect was fabulous. I did like it, but I don’t really know how to put it into words.

After my posts just over a month ago, wherein I decided to give my Android phone one last chance to convince me to replace it with another similar model, I had some fantastic suggestions of apps to use. Dolphin Browser and Fast Reboot were a revelation to me, and made for some more interesting minutes spent browsing. However, the irritations are still there, and after six weeks, I finally made the decision and ordered my upgrade - the iPhone 4S. I can’t say I’m 100% looking forward to it, I like the variation of having a non-Apple device, but having said that, not having to carry a phone and an iPod separately is also appealing.

It is that time of year again, the one where the seasonal aisle in the supermarket becomes full to bursting with sweet treats - chocolate and Christmas puddings galore. In honour of the occasion, and because wherever I turn there appears to be a new tin of Quality Street, Roses or those Miniature Hero things, here are my favourite five Quality Street sweets. Fudge. Clearly, because it is just like a mini fudge bar, and everyone knows a finger of fudge is just enough to give your kids a treat. And by your kids, I mean me. My only complaint is that it’s in a pink wrapper which just doesn’t seem to suit the fudge thing. Not pink, surely? Orange chocolate crunch. It’s no secret that no one likes the orange sweets or the strawberry sweets, but the orange chocolate crunch is different. It’s just like chocolate but with an orange tang, rather than a weird mess of fruit flavoured creme stuff. The green triangle. An odd shape for a sweet but delicious nonetheless. Come to think of it, I’m not really sure what is in this one. Sort of, squidgy chocolatey stuff. I know they made giant green triangles at one point, but I was not brave enough to try one of those. Toffee finger. There are far too many toffee related items in the Quality Street tin - three, in fact. The toffee penny is a surefire way to need a dentist, but for some reason, the toffee finger is a bit less dramatic. It’s still chewy, and you still have to be careful of your pearly whites, but it’s the best of the three options. Milk choc block. This is a new one on me, I don’t recall there being a single slab of chocolate in these tins before, but I quite like it. I always find that a full bar of just chocolate can be quite dull, but if you get the occasional block here and there, it is definitely a treat to enjoy it by itself. Mmm, chocolate. It’s such a shame that I had to open a new tin of Quality Street just to make sure I was doing full research for this post. Maybe next Friday I’ll have to do my top five Roses. That would be a shame too.

After the body-swapping of the first DT episode proper, we know are faced with the Doctor swapping his accent - for Tennant’s native Scotland. It filters in and out, is startlingly out of place to begin with but soon feels very natural so that I didn’t notice he’d stopped, even though Queen Victoria did. It’s always a risk for Doctor Who to take on historical figures, sometimes it works very well, sometimes it doesn’t. For the most part, the series has done a good job. Charles Dickens is a great character, and later on, Vincent van Gogh is handled particularly well.

I’m not sure I completely understand why The Shell Seekers is on the BBC’s Big Read list - it’s good, but it doesn’t feel all that special to me. The story centres around one older lady, and her extended family, with each chapter following a different character to build a bigger picture and tell the history of the protagonist.

To celebrate 1000 episodes of F1Minute, I baked a cake and iced it. It was my first attempt at icing, and the whole concept is quite new to me. I was inspired by a colleague at work who makes some pretty outstanding baked goods, and is the go-to person when it comes to celebration cakes. I think at the moment she has orders from at least three people for at least five different birthdays.

This film was awful, terrible, sad, depressing and downright difficult. Which, of course, makes it amazing. It’s the first movie in a long, long time that genuinely moved me and although a lot of it was difficult to watch, it was never boring. For a 2hr+ film, that’s pretty impressive. My only complaint is that there were too many characters who were quite indistinguishable from each other. My nickname trick only worked for about three or four of them.

The BBC have introduced a new trailer for their Christmas output - well, it’s more like one of those feel-good ones that has no specific content and just a lot of famous faces beckoning you to stay with the Beeb over the festive season. Works for me! I can only say that seeing The Doctor playing Twister with a Cyberman may be the best three seconds of TV that I’ve seen in a long while.

As their Book of the Week recently, the iBookstore featured the new Michael Crichton novel called Micro. Except, it’s not really a fully baked Crichton book. I’m a massive Michael fan, Timeline is one of my favourite books of all time. Some of his later works turned out to be a bit hard work, but Jurassic Park, Congo and Sphere are all great pieces. I was very sad when he died and paid tribute to his back catalogue, before finding a new book of his - Pirate Latitudes. This one was practically finished and just had yet to be published before he died, so although I felt a bit weird reading it, it was understandable.

Really enjoyed this one. I didn’t really know the story at all well, although have vague images in my head of the TV adaptation. I thought the gruff old man was going to be more scary but actually he was an absolute darling. What was scary was the level of child abuse that was detailed in the story. I couldn’t quite believe parts of it, but it was such a great journey seeing Willie become Will and be brought out of his shell.

This week, Jeffrey Tschiltsch posted a fabulous update on Google+ that pondered the concept of stories within racing games, particularly the new Formula 1 epic from Codemasters. Here’s a sample of Jeffrey’s thoughts: So after finishing +Christine Blachford’s Between the Lines (Formula Primo Confidential) last night I suddenly realized what Codemasters’ F1 2011 is missing in its career mode: a compelling story line. The generic emails, state-the-obvious “headlines” and contract offers you get throughout your season are a feeble attempt at narrative, and the responses given during the “interviews” really don’t seem to do all that much.

Oh dear. It’s hard to know where to start really. Firstly, I suppose, it is important to say that I was convinced this film was going to ruin the entire Cars franchise for me. It didn’t do that. There was enough of the fabulously simple Mater and the racy arrogance of Lightning to keep that essence. The trouble is, there wasn’t the story to do them justice.

There were a lot of characters, I’ll grant you that, but there were only a few that really mattered and they were absolutely fascinating. I loved the twists and turns of the story, even though it was blatantly obvious where it was going to end. It sometimes got frustrating that Bathsheba couldn’t just swallow her pride and do what everyone could see was the right thing to do, but hey, that’s where fiction comes from.

I think the Beeb would say the halfway point was a week or so ago, but I’m working on the fact that 14 dancers started the competition and only seven remain. Several will make it into the final, but here’s my thoughts on the dancing so far. Those that have been knocked out Edwina Currie I sort of missed her big outburst during the show itself, but wasn’t particularly sad to see her go either. It’s always hard to be the first one to leave the competition, and it’s not always clear whether the right person has gone or not, but I think it would have been hard to keep on watching the show with so many Ann Widdecombe comparisons.

In the end, I quite liked it. Ferrell was very good, combining the nice personality that will keep you sympathising with the troubled thoughts of an alcoholic. My main problem with the film just stems from the very premise of being locked out of your house | particularly when she wasn’t even in there. I just can’t get my head round it. Throwing someone out is one thing. Locking them out of their own life for five days with no word is something completely different. Still, the kid was really cute and I liked the story.

It’s been a pretty tiring week and I wasn’t really in the mood to go running today, but I pulled on my trainers anyway. Nice and foggy outside to really lift the spirits, but once I started it wasn’t too bad. It’s also been something of a frustrating week, so getting out there and clearing my head was kinda good. I wasn’t particularly fast, but I also wasn’t expecting my progress so far to continue forever. You can’t keep running once a week and expect to keep on getting faster every time.

Today I was supposed to go to the next destination for my A-Z Alphabet Adventure. I have reached the letter O, and I had intended to visit Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. My adventures had come to something of a standstill until recently, as it’s been a busy and thrifty latter half of the year. However, I was aware that Osborne House closed over winter, and that if I didn’t get there, I wouldn’t be able to do anything on the adventure until March at the earliest. That wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, I don’t know if I’ll get through any more of the alphabet before then anyway, but it’s always nice to have the option.

In Time This concept seems very intriguing - not quite the time travel that I love so much, but using time as a unit of currency instead. I’ve never quite been convinced of Justin Timberlake in the lead role, but he was good in the Social Network, so I can’t hold his Michael Jackson dance moves against him. The three women of different generations all looking the same freaks me out just a little bit though.

I don’t understand the chemistry or attraction between Hugh and Andie, but I love pretty much all the conversations he has with his friends. It’s certainly clear that Richard Curtis improved on this as he wrote more films | because they are all quite a similar story and this is a fantastically rich base to build on.