A while ago, Janna asked if there was going to be a vote on which was the favourite header. I thought that was a good idea, but as it’s an ongoing project, I wasn’t sure how voting would fit in. However, now I have completed the tenth header image, I thought it would be the perfect time to take a break. It’s always good to recharge one’s batteries, sit back and take stock of what you’ve achieved, and more importantly, find inspiration for the future.

I wasn’t quite sure where I was going with this header. I hadn’t found a tutorial that inspired me and I just felt like messing about. It was relatively easy to make the light burst thing, and I accidentally stumbled across the repetition filter. Getting the one Smarter Than Your Average text to stand out was a bit harder, but in the end, I was quite happy with how it turned out.

Before you even have a chance to think about taking a breather, Franck is back in action again this weekend. The Superleague Formula rocks up at the Nurburgring in Germany. The intro on the official site reads: Superleague Formula by Sonangol journeys from central Spain to western Germany this weekend for the football-themed championship’s fifth round of the season at the Nürburgring. Nestled in the spectacular Eifel Mountains alongside its formidable Nordschleife forbearer, the circuit returns to the calendar after hosting the second-ever Superleague Formula round in 2008.

I got an update through for the panda I adopted and the newsletter bore the headline: “Panda rescue drama.” Inside it tells the story of a panda that wandered off and became stranded on a steep hillside. A rescue team had to be dispatched to get it back. It says: To stop the wayward bear becoming frightened, onlookers and other non-essential staff were evacuated from the site. The rescuers then climbed down to where the panda was located, and lured it away from the hillside with sticks of delicious bamboo. They soon managed to coax it back to the safety of the reserve.

The most read item on the BBC as I type this is stunning. TV star Declan Donnelly was amongst hundreds of football fans in London who missed England’s all-important World Cup goal after a power cut. “We were watching the game in a pub in Kew,” Donnelly told the BBC news website. “One minute before the goal, the power went.” Hey, you know what? I didn’t get to see any of the match. Where’s my news item?

As a change of pace to all the football talk, here’s a post about Wimbledon! It seems it’s become an annual thing for me to summarise all the ways I’m trying to keep up with the best tennis tournament around. In 2008, I talked a little about the live commentaries, whilst in 2009 it was all podcasts and apps. This year, I’m going to do more of the same, as the list of ways and means keeps growing!

We all know that when it comes to design, the 2012 Olympics seems to be a big ball of fail. Eh-hem. We’ve had a while to get used to that pink and green disaster, though. The latest addition to the 2012 branding line-up was the mascots. Firstly, I didn’t know there were Olympic mascots anyway. Is this just a host country thing? Why do we need mascots? Secondly, they’re quite scary.

I found a tutorial during the week that I wanted to try out, but I wasn’t sure which picture would work best translated into a pencil drawing. The tutorial is very simple, so I tried it out on a couple of waterfall shaped pictures but it didn’t work. This one I was sure wouldn’t work either, but low and behold, there it was. The font and the rest was easy to choose.

So, I missed out on the first race, and tuned in just in time for the start of Race 2. By all accounts, the first race didn’t go so well. I know Franck started 12th, and he began the second race on the front row. With a reversed grid, that would suggest it wasn’t a result to write home about, and after further research, I learnt they had to retire with a mechanical issue. Boo.

Oh, just wow. I don’t know why but I really wasn’t expecting much from this finale. Even more so for this week, as the first of a two-part story is normally ridiculously over the top or really rather slow. For the most part, this series of Doctor Who has appeared to be quite low budget, and I think that lowered my expectations quite a lot. Well, I think it’s fair to say they saved a whole chunk of the budget for this episode. Roman camps, thousands of starships, Pandorica’s opening, it was all in there.

When I first introduced the concept of the A-Z Adventure to my parents, they instantly knew where I should go for D. They had recently been to the Didcot Railway Centre and suggested it as a potential candidate. My mother is a particular fan of steam trains, so when I decided I would go there, they felt a second visit would be worthwhile. The Didcot Railway Centre is essentially a small stretch of land between two railway lines. They use the existing lines to run steam trains (and Thomas trains!) a short distance, and preserve the memory of such feats of engineering.

With the Le Mans disaster still fresh in our minds, we must turn our attention to the next event for Franck - Superleage Formula at Jarama. This weekend, FKM will be back in the car for Girondins de Bordeaux, and for the first time, the official Superleague site will be offering Qualifying streaming on Saturday, as well as all the racing action on Sunday. More information can be found here (Facebook link).

I think, like many other people, I was dreading this episode. You cannot move a single inch on this planet without encountering James Corden doing something, and whilst it’s probably not his fault, it’s quite easy to be bored with his rather over-enthusiastic manner. You can have too much of a good thing, and that’s supposing you think it was a good thing in the first place.

I tried to avoid it for as long as possible, but eventually I had to write today’s World Cup post over on Sidepodcast. I have watched more of the games than I imagined I would, and enjoyed even more of them. A lot of that has to do with the live comments, as it’s fair to say I have a lot to learn! On that subject, I wanted to note down some of the things I have picked up after just a few days of international football. I will be an absolute expert by the end of this, you mark my words.

Every now and then, I get a bit bored of the name of my website. I’ve been through several iterations, bought lots of domains and moved things around a lot. Not any longer. Smarter Than… is a perfectly acceptable name, if a little long. I have solved this problem, and the one in which I crave new URLs, by purchasing a shortcut for you: mrschristine.com. If you can’t be bothered to type out all 22 letters plus a dot com for STYA, then you can use the super snazzy mrschristine.com instead.

A Q&A with the man himself. On not anticipating any problems: We were not really pushing, we were very focused on the targets, not on qualifying. We just focused on one point, which was the win. We were just so relaxed and peaceful working together. I could sleep very easily this week, and during the race too. I was just checking the lap times and everything we’d said before was done, no problem at all. It was just great.

It wasn’t my intent but looking at the finished product this week, I’ve realised how very Doctor Who it is. I must have been subconsciously influenced by this because I certainly wasn’t aiming for a Doctor Who header. My favourite part was the blur filter to create the light effect. So simple! Anyway, here are the details: Made with: Pixelmator Tutorial: Hexagons Bokeh Font: Gloucester MT Extra Condensed (rasterised and widened)

The race isn’t over yet, but our dreams for a Montagny win really are. The #2 car was leading but… well, Autosport tell it best: Franck Montagny was on his out-lap from a scheduled fuel-stop when flames and smoke started pouring from the right side exhaust of his 908 at Tertre Rouge. He tried to get the car back to the pits, but was forced to park it up at the side of the Mulsanne straight. He has remained by the side of car, still hoping to find a way to get it back to the pits, but the failure looks terminal.

I loved this up to a point. The characters were awesome, Downey Jr was as excellent as I thought he would be. The relationship between Holmes and Watson was perfect. The story left a lot to be desired, though. It started out okay, but it was a bit too mystical, and the end got all scrappy so that I wasn’t quite sure what was happening. It felt like a let down, but the characters made up for it. If they do make a sequel, which I would like, the story had better be… well, better.

This was actually a good film. It was slow paced but intriguing, and the suspense gradually built until the end. Even though it was actually quite obvious, I didn’t get the twist until it happened. Dean Cain was pretty good, considering he had to hold the screen for essentially the whole film. I was happily surprised.

But our driver is not at the top. Sadly, I didn’t get to see any of qualifying either - who decided to put Le Mans on when I am just crazy busy? Still, according to the Autosport report on things: Stephane Sarrazin, who had taken the last three consecutive 24 Hours poles, was denied the opportunity to extend his streak when the final stint in the #2 car was given to Nicolas Minassian.

I’m afraid I’m going to be one of those rather annoying people who only pays attention to football when the World Cup is on. Come on England and all that. Thankfully, I wouldn’t dream of being one of those annoying people that puts flags on their cars, so I think the two balance each other out quite nicely. I know very little about football. Really, really little. I used to “support” Manchester United when I was too young to know any better. I have never lived anywhere near Manchester, so I must have only picked them because they were doing quite well. When I say support, of course, it really means caring enough to know who Ryan Giggs was, and maybe collect stickers because stickers were fun.

I don’t suppose these are baby pandas really, but I wanted to point out the newest panda related goodies I have been coveting on Etsy. Nerdy Panda! I also think the happy bread is quite cute but that is not for this post.

It’s always exciting when I find a Montagny mention on Autosport, as I usually go there in search of F1 news - and he is pretty hard to find in that section! However, they’re making a special Le Mans effort, and we have word from the great man himself. The word is: mega! During the transition between practice and qualifying, FKM speculated: I had 35 laps on the tyres, it’s not as good as a new set of tyres, and when there’s soft tyres and no fuel, it’s going to be mega.

Ah, it is that time of year again, the race we have all been waiting for. None of that silly Superleague stuff, we’re talking 24 Heures du Mans. We are hoping to live comment lots of the action over on Sidepodcast, and there will be threads popping up throughout the next few days so that we can keep an eye on everybody’s favourite Frenchman. (And probably a few other people as well.)

I popped outside and when I returned I found a spider had decided to join me. It perched on my shoulder, so I swiped it off, but unbeknownst to me, it had webbing attached. It clung to my leg and remained there until someone else spotted it and did the swiping for me. The spider was returned to whence it came. I don’t mind spiders. I can’t say I am partial to having one crawl all over me but I was not as freaked out as my colleague was, and as I know many people would be.

May saw a lot more going on than in the previous few months, as some of the slow-burning storylines begin to come to fruition. Starting with, of course, Lillian, Paul and Matt. The love triangle. Can I just officially say - Lillian and Paul = bleurgh! He was so disgustingly soppy, and she was right there with him. Eventually, she chose Matt but I would gladly have those two minutes of my life back, please.

I started working on a cloud text tutorial but got a little bit frustrated, so I scrapped that. Instead, I swung my tutorials net a bit wider and found a grass and glass video on YouTube. It was really quite easy, and such a striking look! Made with: Pixelmator Tutorial: Glass Font: Impact Background Image: Grass Pack I

This was the epitome of one of those Love It or Hate It episodes. It was all about the people and less about the monsters, but written by Richard Curtis, you could hardly expect anything else. I thought it was okay. It was nice to have a slower episode after some of the fraught stories we’ve seen recently. Things are bound to be ramping up towards the end of the series as well, so a moment of peace is probably a good thing.

On Friday of last week, the Cutest Food blog posted a panda cake. It just missed out last week, so I saved it up for this week. It is cute, although the bottom one looks a bit like a pair of binoculars.

There’s a new feature from Wordpress called reblogging, and it was introduced via this blog post: We All Like to Reblog. First up, thanks for telling me what I like. Now, I have been really impressed with the sudden surge in development at Wordpress. New themes are appearing all the time, and it seems as though they are really investing in making the platform more interesting. That, in itself, could be of mild concern because we all know when new features start tumbling in, things usually start to go wrong. (Mentioning no names, drop.io.)

I saw the film before I read the book, and took heed of those who said the book was nothing like the movie version. Whilst this is true, it also is very similar. I feel as though when someone decided to make this into a film they realised that there were way too many characters in the book, and narrowed them down to make it easier to watch. There’s no story in the book, it is simply a navigation through research by Jon.

It was a beautiful, hot day in May when I decided to head towards Cheddar Gorge - the third stop on my alphabet tour. As it turns out, I arrived at Cheddar from the Gorge end, meaning I drove through it to get to the car parks and tourist stops. It was really quite scary, like driving into the centre of the earth. The cliffs either side started getting higher and higher, until eventually they blocked out the sun. Spooky.

On my way home from work, I pass by one of those old computer shops. You know the kind I mean, where they have stacks of dusty old PCs and monitors, they take them apart and put them back together again, and hope for some business. The shop looks pretty dated, and I’ve never seen a customer go in there. In fact, I had barely noticed it at all until recently. Thanks to the beautiful roadworks that bring an abrupt halt to my journey, I found myself stopped outside the shop, eyeing it up to pass the time.

The concept appealed to me enormously. Tracking the lives of two people by peeking at them for just one day every year for twenty years. It was unusual and enticing. I was slightly concerned that it would mean either they got together straight away and we would have to follow them through a humdrum existence, or it would be an endless will-they-won’t-they. Actually, it was both of these things but it was brilliant. The writing was exquisite, catching you up on a year’s worth of happenings without being boring, but also dealing with the minutiae of that day without wasting a second. The characters were both fabulous and frustrating, and the years flew by without a second glance.

I’ve read this one before, a long time ago, and I loved it as much this time as I did back then. The reason I picked this up was that I managed to get my hands on a copy of the sequel - World Without End. I want to read that one but thought I’d refresh my memory of the original. Although they are standalone books, it was good to remind myself of the style of writing, and the sort of time in history we’re talking about.

I am ever so slightly obsessed with this new smoothie from Innocent Drinks. The problem is… It’s green. Really, really green. It doesn’t look appetising at all. Mr C turns his nose up every time I pour a glass. It’s very good for you. Two of your five a day. Apples, grapes, kiwi fruit. There’s even some spinach in there. In fact, here are the full ingredients:

Always love Bruce saving the world. There aren’t as many catchphrases in here as I thought there were but still, I love it. I still like the second one more, but this one must have been good because it broke the dreaded two hour barrier and I didn’t even notice. Go Bruce!

For the first time in this series, I spotted an image during the week and saved it to a folder called: Inspiration. Get me! So, It’s not a carbon copy but it’s similar and I love it. I made it pretty hard for myself though. For a start, I was sitting outside in the sunshine, so the colours weren’t exactly as I thought. Thankfully, they didn’t clash terribly once I’d adjusted to the gloom of inside again. Secondly, as I was sitting outside, I was using the trackpad, rather than a mouse. Not easy. Lastly, I had no idea what I was doing, so I made great use of the “copy to new layer” feature. One layer of gray, one of pink, copy the grey bits I wanted and then hide the existing layer. I’m sure there’s an easier way, though.

As human beings, we are pretty rubbish at negotiating for the future of the human race, aren’t we? The second part of this story didn’t really seem to capitalise on the first episode. There was an awful lot of setup and although I have nothing against the wrap up - it was all a bit formulaic. The humans failed, big style. Some people made some sacrifices and the Doctor managed to save as many people as he could.

Only read this if you a) care and b) have seen the LOST finale. Let’s begin with something positive. The two things that made the finale worth watching: Miles: “I don’t believe in many things, but I believe in duct tape.” The scene with Hurley asking Ben for help. Love Ben. Now, I’m afraid, the rest of the post will be entirely negative, because… let’s face it. It sucked.

I am the proud owner of a new HTC Desire and it is fabulous! My G1 finally came to the end of it’s useful life. That or my contract came up for renewal so I went for the upgrade. To be fair to the G1, I was a seriously early adopter, I got a lot of use out of it, and it only occasionally let me down. By the end, though, it was a bit creaky. The battery was all but useless, and it’s ability to pick up signals could only be jump-started by switching it on and off again.

This one is just so very Sex & the City, isn’t it? I started out with a straight line of text, then played about with size, bold and italics, plus made good use of the ruler to move it above and below the regular line. Great fun. The background came afterwards, a simple cloud filter and purple colour (which adds to the Sex & the City vibe, I feel).

With a reverse grid for the second race, Franck lined up 8th. An incident on the first lap allowed Franck up to sixth, and then he overtook another car to move up to 5th - a pretty good first couple of minutes. It was all for nothing, though, as Bourdais went and crashed into him in the corner, knocking out three Frenchmen from the French race. Good work Le Seb.

Once again, none of us had any idea this was to be a two-part episode because the powers that be behind Doctor Who don’t seem keen on making it obvious. It’s only when it gets to the end and you realise they are still in as much danger as ever that it can’t possibly be solved in the next five minutes. Anyway, what of the Hungry Earth then?

Franck qualified for the first race in 13th place, which isn’t that impressive. If you take into account his topsy-turvy season so far though, plus the fact that he’s driving with injuries, it’s a little bit more acceptable. Autosport labelled Franck as a “surprise dropout” so at least they have noticed he is rather good. Made up a couple of places on the start, up to 11th. After the pit stop, he came out in 10th and stayed there until the finish. In the last minute or so, there was a worrying moment when the Beijing car tried to overtake, but Montagny wasn’t having any of it.

Blenheim Palace is just above Oxford and claims to be: Britain’s Greatest Palace. I don’t know whether there’s an award that goes along with such a thing, but so says the pamphlet. I bought the ticket without access to the palace itself, because photography is not allowed inside and I don’t want to support that kind of restriction. I accidentally went past the main parking area and ended up just outside the pleasure gardens. There wasn’t much going on there, it’s mostly an area to entertain the kids. There was a butterfly garden, which I went into but didn’t really like. I only saw one butterfly and as is the way with climates that support such winged creatures, it was much too humid to take the camera out.

We have done the community film watch thing over on Sidepodcast, all gathered together to live comment a movie - ensuring we all hit start at the same time. I’ve seen many people tweeting their way through TV shows and movies. It seems as though sharing the experience with someone else is becoming ever more popular - even if you are on opposite sides of the globe. So here is a website I would like, if I had the millions to pay off the movie industry, and hire engineers to build it: filmwatchlive.com.

This is a must watch video, if only because Franck is very cute when he gatecrashes other people’s interviews. Also, I appear to have missed out on the news that FKM has four broken ribs. How did that happen?

Sorry this final part has taken so long to appear. Perhaps sub-consciously I just did not want to say goodbye to our characters. Either that or I was really quite busy. However, we must say goodbye, and here is how we’re going to do it - the results of our final vote. Melissa’s future caused quite a bit of discussion but we have a definitive answer: Mitch sat in the garage, helmet in hand, his eyebrows furrowed. Mason crossed the garage, pulling his race suit up around his shoulders. “What’s up with you?” he asked Mitch.