I actually had this post in mind yesterday, when I realised I’d spent quite a lot of time watching the action from the Swimming World Championships in China, and was loving it. Today, it seems to have taken on a different significance, given the news that F1 will be moving to Sky next year. However, these aren’t F1 replacements, just sports I’m starting to get more fond of, and want to see more of.

Really enjoyed this film, although it was not what I was expecting at all. I thought it was going to be all out comedy like we have seen recently, but it was far more serious than that. I also wasn’t aware until afterwards that this was a remake. The comedy that was in there was good though, laughed a lot and liked the story.

I just couldn’t figure this one out. It wasn’t too smooshy, so I figured it must be more of a comedy than a romantic comedy, but even then, it wasn’t crazy funny. Paul Rudd was brilliant, and I did like some of the conversations between Witherspoon and Wilson. The peripheral people were nowhere near as good. It almost felt like they were all given a bit of a skit - the dad going on about stuff, the assistant wanting to tell him things - but they just felt long and didn’t work for me.

Oh, how I have so loved having Back to the Future back in my life. Not that it ever went anywhere, but fresh material, and most importantly good fresh material has been brilliant. I have already blogged every episode of the TellTale Game revival, and whilst I do not have much more to add now I have completed episode five, it seemed only fair to have a farewell post to complete the set.

The new Apple operating system, Lion, was released last week and I volunteered to be the test pilot for our house. At first, I wasn’t that fussed about it but gradually, the more I use it, the more I notice, and there are some bits and bobs that have caught my attention. Here are five of them: Natural scrolling. I turned off the natural scrolling straight away. They can call it natural all they like, but it doesn’t feel natural to me. Thankfully, this is something they give you a preference option for, so it was easy to switch back. Missing buttons. I was busy editing a podcast and thought I was going crazy when I kept moving my mouse in search of some left and right buttons on the scrollbar and they weren’t there. After too many muscle memory moments, I checked with Mr C and he quickly ascertained that I wasn’t mad, they were gone. I hadn’t even updated the software but lo and behold, something had been changed without telling me. Apparently, the idea is that everything in Lion is geared towards gestures on the trackpad, so who needs buttons when you can swipe two fingers left or right? I can’t stand the trackpad. Autosave. At first, I was mildly concerned about the concept of autosaving. It’s been gradually more prevalent in software, but usually with the control still ultimately resting with the user to save. The way it has been done in Lion seems interesting, and it’s not that often I need to go back on a version anyway, so I can’t see it being a huge problem. It does annoy me that sometimes a document can be a bit sticky as it’s working out where it is in terms of saving, and I opened up something that said it was locked because I hadn’t used it for two weeks. Like it’s my operating software’s business how often I open my files. Launchpad. I do love the new little Launchpad icon. It’s like a Windows Start button but for my Mac. That is something I’ve missed since switching, and having it right back is excellent. Accessing the Applications folder at the click of a button is brillo, although it may take me a while to organise the stuff within it into groups I like. Little upgrades. There are nice little features tucked away that don’t get shouted about, like the way folders unfurl when you open them within finder, or the preview that appears when you search for something in Spotlight. Any way of making Spotlight more useful is good in my book. Plenty more still to learn, I’m sure, and I envisage getting angry and being pleasantly surprised in equal measures as I continue to uncover new stuff. For now, it’s a pretty smooth transition to Lion, but I do think the heavy emphasis on gestures is going to get annoying.

I did very much enjoy the concept and the story, and there were only a few bits that grated. Choosing Hitler seems like quite an obvious subject for time travel, which isn’t bad, but is perhaps overused. Having said that, if it gets people interested in history, then it’s probably a good thing. Some of the next books in the series also feature well known periods, and it’s probably a good way to get people involved in the story.

One of Mr C’s biggest complaints with the iPod and iPad stems from the idea of touching the screen and your big thumbs getting in the way. Particularly when you are playing games, controlling whatever is on screen with your not-particularly-see-through-hands can be tricky. It’s a valid complaint, although I always argue that the ease of the iPad far outweighs a technical little issue like that. We were perusing some iPad accessories and stumbled across the AluPen from Just Mobile. I’m not very knowledgeable in the world of styluses… styli… style… pen type things, and this does just seem to be a regular point and touch device with no bells and whistles.

Whilst watching Wimbledon this year, Mr C questioned what those tennis players were consuming when they squeezed little gel packets into their mouths. I assumed they were some kind of gel thing for top sportspeople, but then I realised they sell them in the supermarket. We decided to try some. Eww. I mean, I wasn’t expecting a sweet treat or anything but this was not good. It tasted like medicine, and as a gel it was all gooey and gross. I didn’t particularly feel any extra energy but then I wasn’t in the midst of a mammoth tennis game either.

I’d spotted this book creeping up the charts but ignored it, because I figured it was a rant about how Twitter is bad for the world. A recommendation changed my mind and so I gave it a go. As it turns out, it is a rant against Twitter, but only from a self-confessed Twitter addict. Grace Dent loves and uses Twitter a lot, and has plenty of experience to guide new and old users through the weird world of the microblogging social network.

I do love a good John Grisham, but I must say this was a middle-of-the-road JG. The story was really well-written, and enticing, with great characters, and a good structure. It’s just that overall I was left feeling very, very depressed. Perhaps I shouldn’t judge the book on that, perhaps that is just the way it is supposed to be - to make you think. I don’t know.

Not as good as the first one. Far, far too long, and really, could have been two films. Why couldn’t they stop after that first epic car chase, where they tricked the Joker and got him imprisoned, and leave it hanging for a whole other part two to do with Two-Face?

Had to delay the long run until after the weekend, as I wasn’t feeling too good. That might also explain why it was a tricky one! Week 2, Day 8 Felt good to start with, but gradually got more and more tired. It’s quite weird having to run to a programme set in miles when I’m so used to working in kilometres, but it doesn’t make a difference either way really. I was a bit disappointed with the pace, really, but did feel pretty worn out by the end.

A while back I discussed the concept of degrees via the Open University, and whilst I move more and more away from the concept of degrees and suchlike, the very open format and wide variety of courses on the OU still intrigues me. I just discovered the LearningSpace with tons of free modules - usually bits and bobs taken from now defunct courses - and there are some interesting things to read. I was only browsing around for a moment and found this piece on Aberdulais Falls. I’ve been there!

I’ve just started playing Monopoly on the iPad and I’m enjoying it. Actually that’s not true, I’m hating it because I’ve played twice - both on the easy setting - and I’ve lost both times. I swear the AI is cheating. However, if you ignore my uselessness at Monopoly, the app is really cool. There are animations that make the dice rolling and piece moving fun, but you can fast forward them if you’re not interested in watching the dog gallop forward. Not having to calculate the money is brilliant and I think it is that part that makes playing Monopoly electronically a lot quicker than the board version.

Yes, it was long, but actually I didn’t really find it boring at all. There were a few bits where I was hoping something would happen soon, but as soon as I had the thought, it did. The pacing was great, the story was quite drawn out but not dull. The fact that all the stuff at the beginning was important to the end really made it what it was.

So much better than I was expecting. I thought it would be a dreary romcom, but actually it was intriguing. A great idea, although the interruptions from the child were sometimes a little jarring. Having said that, I do think some films would benefit from a pause in the middle where the plot is explained to a ten year old.

The second book of the 365 F1 Stories series was published over the weekend, and you can find more about it on the books page. It’s been quite the process getting these two books into being, and it’s not over yet. There are more things to do with those two, and more ideas in my head for further exploration. I hope to blog more about the process when I am able to think straight again.

Another really good film. Actually, just like Grown Ups, it had a pretty slow start - but once the lying began, they really hit their stride. There were plenty of laugh out loud moments, there were some bits where I wasn’t quite sure what they were talking about, but the relationship between Adam and Jennifer was so good, it didn’t matter.

It was fine, interesting, well-made. I’m impressed with the speech at the end - brave filmmaking if nothing else. The trouble is, it didn’t really feel very grand. It felt like a five-part BBC documentary pasted together and put on screen. The characters were all excellent, and acting good, but it was a bit who’s who of British drama which broke the tension a bit. Overall, I liked it, but I’m not clear on what makes something Oscar-worthy.

I’ve been catching up with some episodes of The 404 and they mentioned this relatively new website that lets you create a social environment for listening to music. Outloud.fm allows you to create a chatroom with the added bonus of anyone invited able to upload music to a collaborative playlist. The queue of music then plays out for everyone at the same time. I love this concept. I’m no music afficionado. I like what I like and that’s pretty much the end of it. However, Mr C and I have been known to have the odd Friday night conversation about music, the kind that starts with Glastonbury and ends with the knowledge that Sergeant Wilson was the father of one of the Wombles.

I do quite love Dawn French, so I really thought this was going to be a great book to read. Perhaps I went into it expecting too much. I know I had waited far too long to read it because I refused to pay the £10 price tag for a Kindle book. It was reduced in price recently, and I snapped it up, and got reading.

It was silly, and it was funny, and it was just what we needed to cheer right back up again. It wasn’t as childish as I thought it would be, although clearly aimed at the little ones. There were a couple of moments that were too blatantly designed for 3D audiences, and they stuck out like a sore thumb for us mere 2D mortals.

Not that great, really. It was gory but not bothersome in that sense. Some bits were gross, but it was slightly more understated than Kill Bill. If I hadn’t just recently watched those I might have been more affected by it. The story had potential, but it was signposted from far too early on, and left nothing as a surprise when the end came. There was also some rather dodgy CGI along the way.

Here we go then, the first week of a new Runkeeper Class, and all fingers crossed that it’s going to be more successful than the last one. Just two runs to break into the first week gently. Week 1, Day 3 First workout was four minutes running, one walk, and repeat x3. You can see the bumps that are the walks, but overall it was a lot faster than any other runs I’ve attempted. Not quite my fastest average pace ever, I think, but a good start. It was pretty comfortable, but I’d expect so being that short. Mmm, twenty minute run.

I’ve mentioned before, many times, how I love Maggie’s outlook on life. She inspired me to create my own Life List and that has been something magical for me. This time the message is - when life is getting you down, turn it around and do something fun for thirty days. Fabulous. The thirty day idea is such a good one. Who knows where it first came from, but breaking life up into manageable chunks is great, and taking a project a month at a time makes it seem much more achievable.

I really enjoyed this film. The story is excellent, and any time I had a question it was usually answered in the next few minutes. I loved them together, witty dialogue and great chemistry. It seemed odd that they hit it off so immediately, but again, the film explained that too!

Whilst on my trip around the Merrivale Model Village, I spotted the zoo with added baby pandas! Fantastic! There doesn’t seem to be an awful lot of bamboo for so many pandas living in one space, and I’m surprised they are housed between the monkeys and the llamas.

I’ve wanted to see a model village for a long time, and although I’m not sure there’s anything special about this one, it coincided with my trip to Great Yarmouth. When I told people that I was visiting a model village for the letter M, they assumed that was because M stands for Model. I went one step further and found a model village that begins with M as well. Double win!

Here’s a revelation. Trying to come up with your own running schedule, and more importantly sticking to it, is pretty darn tough. Today I said to Mr C: “I’ve been thinking about signing up for another Runkeeper Class, because it’s not working so well doing it by myself.” He replied: “I don’t remember the last time you went out!” Well, it was a few days ago, and the time before that was a few more days ago. I had set up my own workout in the Runkeeper app, a simple 5k and just ran until I reached the deadline, or felt particularly dead. That’s not exactly fun, fun, fun. That’s just… pounding the pavements and hoping for the best.

With ITV finally bringing out their app for iDevices, we know have all channels from 1 through to 4 covered. The BBC iPlayer has been doing it’s iPad business for a while now, Channel 4 had their On Demand app out relatively recently, and ITV have now joined the gang. The ITV app is not a bad one but the choice is limited, considering how many channels ITV have. There was nothing on there I’d watch, but it has all the staples, Emmerdale, Coronation Street… Jeremy Kyle. The only thing that was remotely interesting was that recent detective show with the lovely Suranne Jones in it. They had the last episode available but no apparent series link to catch up. You can tell from the screenshot above that they do have the “Watch More Episodes” feature, but just not on the one thing I wanted to watch. Oh well.

It’s about time I posted another update of innovations in the world of the mug. I have posted a couple of mug selections before, but now I am drinking more tea than ever, so finally, I can envisage actually using them rather than just looking at them. In this world of ever-shrinking attention spans, it seems even a tea break needs to have some kind of entertainment involved. The concept of games on mugs is interesting, whether it is participatory or not.

With thanks to Martí, who pointed me in the right direction.

With the challenge complete, it’s worth rounding up the list of links. I wasn’t all that specific about which song was which in the posts themselves, and given how unreliable YouTube can be in terms of videos disappearing, it’ll be good to have the definitive list in one place.

I have almost the same feelings about this one as I did the last. Great CGI, not so great acting from all involved, and a story that could have been so much more but had terrible flaws throughout.

This month in Ambridge seems to have been another where the storylines tick along nicely, but there were no major outbursts to dominate. There were a few talking points, though, so let’s see what’s been happening. Just tripping Adam and Brian agreed to take over Farm Sunday to take some of the weight off David. It was a nice gesture from them, although clearly they were all quite competitive about it. Will they be fighting over who gets to host it next year? There’s been plenty of talk about the pickers, particularly the battle between Jazzer and Harry as they try and get to know one particular sweet-talking girl. Has he forgotten about Fallon? Are they not friends anymore? I find that slightly odd, but it was fun to hear the odd couple bickering with each other. All those trips that the pickers go on, they seem to have a more exciting life than anyone who stays in Ambridge regularly. Shakespeare plays, potteries, all kinds of things.

I ran this final run of the 10K class before finally admitting defeat. Week 5. Day 29. The long run of the week, and I felt good going out there. I’d lost my TuneBelt armband and was all ready to use that as an excuse not to go. But then I changed my mind and went anyway, and I’m glad I did. I thought I might be able to get past 5k, and I decided to lower my average pace threshold to the 9:25 it was before the break a couple of weeks ago. I ran and I ran, and suddenly I was at 7k. I did go up to 9:26 for a moment, but I was determined to get the longest distance I’ve done to date. And I did!

I’ve read this before, a long while ago, and I wasn’t that bothered about reading it again. Except, it was on my Book List to read and then Amazon gave it away for free for a short while. With all those circumstances, who was I to say no? What intrigues me about this book is the style of writing. When I am trying my hand at fiction, I always worry that I am skipping ahead, missing important bits, trying to cover too much time in too short a word count.

I suspect a lot of people were concerned this would ruin their childhood, and thankfully I cannot say one way or the other, having no knowledge of Transformers before this. It wasn’t a bad film, in fact, I feel like it had the potential to be brilliant, but it was let down in a lot of ways.

I have a lot of favourite songs. Picking one should be hard, but I kept coming back to this, and really… there can be only one. It reminds me of lots of things. The many times I’ve seen We Will Rock You. The first time I saw and loved Highlander. (Not so much now.) My brothers. The awesomeness of Queen.

I went back to good old Abduzeedo for this one, the tutorial for Abstract Wallpaper. I tweaked the colours a little and made it my own, following the tutorial exactly made it too dark for my tastes. As ever, I have used Anivers for the font, as it matches the text on the blog. You’ll notice that there is no month in the header this time out. I’ve been quite lucky that I had a productive few months earlier in the year and had some spare designs in the bank, but now I have run out. I’ve been busy doing other things, such as writing books, and so whilst I do still enjoy creating the headers, it is not a priority at the moment.

Credit: jsteph/Flickr I’m aware that content on this here blog has been a bit thin on the ground recently. Thank goodness for the music challenge for being something of a stopgap. I’m burrowed under calendar dates and F1 facts, getting towards the end of the second part of 365 F1 Stories. The finish line is close now and it’s hard to think of anything else. I’m pushing myself too hard, but it’s almost impossible not to - it’s fun to do, and the nearer I get the more I want to do.

Just two more to go, and the challenge is at an end. It’s been an interesting run through the highs and lows of my musical taste. I’ve discovered songs I thought I’d forgotten and I’ve managed to expand my knowledge at the same time. Good stuff. My least favourite song could be one of a few, but there’s only one that springs to mind at the moment. I had this one worked out when I first read the challenge through, but it’s made worse by the fact I just heard the song yesterday as well. Gah.

Totally not what I was expecting at all, but perhaps even better for it. I wasn’t expecting it to be so funny, although the humour took a while to get going really. I don’t want to moan about another slow-starting film, because this one also needed all the pre-amble to setup the later stuff. It was worth waiting for, but it did take a while to get to the good stuff.

Unlike the last subject, where there are few songs that really make me sad, there are plenty of songs that make me happy. Narrowing it down to one is kinda hard, but I’ll go with this one for now. They’re specifically generating the music to make you feel better. I hadn’t seen the video before today. Not so keen on the clown thing.

There aren’t a lot of songs that make me sad, although I did already mention that if I’m in a particularly melancholy mood, the song that reminds me of a certain event might do it. The only songs that are particularly emotional for me are all of those on the first Coldplay album. Those teenage years were tricky, and unfortunately for Coldplay, they were the ones who helped me wallow in my angst.

So, after my mini breakdown at the end of Week 3, I wasn’t really sure what to do. I knew I wasn’t about to give up, and I sort of knew that Gavin was right when he said that I shouldn’t force myself to stick to this Runkeeper schedule when I clearly can’t do it. Remember we are all different shapes and sizes and you will get to 10k – but maybe you might have to go your own way rather than rigidly follow a course without a personal trainer or buddy who knows you well enough to give you the correct advice. - Wise Gavin (RubberGoat)

This song reminds me of my mum, because we used to have this exact concert on, well, VHS probably, and we’d watch it over and over. The mullets, the high pitched voices, and the guy’s weird eye movements. What’s not to like? I don’t know if it’s just me, but the video goes out of sync halfway through which is a shame, but you get the general idea. Every part of this brings back memories. The weird guy clapping at the start, the “season” who rests his nose on the microphone, and the rather funky bass solo.

I love sandwiches. They are one of my favourite foods. I love perusing the new and exciting fillings that shops and bakeries come out with. I’m not all that adventurous though. I tend to stick to chicken, tuna or cheese, with the odd extra ingredient here or there to make a change. As it is Wimbledon week, Tesco came out with a celebratory Strawberries and Cream sandwich. Amy pointed it out to me, desperate for someone to try it. I was reticent, but Amy added:

This song reminds me so much of my ill-fated attempts to go to the gym. I stuck at it for a while, but the gym was never a particularly comfortable place for me. Just hearing the beginning of this, and particularly seeing the video - which was often played on those weirdly silent TV screens - puts me right back to that place. I can even smell the odd gym smell, a mixture of exercising bodies, air conditioning and ineffectual cleaning products.

This movie had a lot of potential. The story, the concept of his breaking her out, the way he did it, all good. Some of the dialogue, genius. Some of the action, most excellent. The trouble is, there was a lot that was disappointing. The start was pretty slow, there were a lot of people who were never really introduced, you had to infer who they were. I still don’t really understand who the drug chaps were, or why he felt he could steal their money.