A beautiful little animation. It’s sad at the end, but the description on Vimeo suggests it “sets off the compassion of an imaginative little boy” which I think can only be a good thing.

A great set of baby panda photos by jsteph on Flickr. Credit: jsteph/Flickr

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.

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

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.

This week, I got my update from the WWF about their work with pandas. When I first sponsored a panda, they sent over information about Zhu Xiong, suggesting this was the specific panda that my money was going towards. I doubted that very much, but either way, that has come to an end anyway. From the newsletter: …it’s been a while since our team in China have spotted her. We think she may have retired to an area where it’s too remote and inaccessible to find her anymore.

Credit: suemoff/Flickr Sad news this week, when the world’s oldest panda died aged 34. Ming-Ming lived in Guangdong Province, and passed away from kidney failure. But, she had lived a long life - the average for a panda in captivity is just 22 years!

A couple of weeks ago, Google featured pandas in their doodle for Earth Day. They were interactive and moved about a little when you hovered over them, but even stationery, they were still little cutsies. I do approve of the penguins, too, but this is not Baby Penguin Thursday.

My dearest, darling brother (ha!) emailed me this last week. It’s a poster for Panda liquorice (bleurgh), and the tagline reads: “If you love liquorice, all you see is panda.” I don’t like liquorice at all, so I would change it to: “If you like pandas, all you see is panda.” But I guess that’s not as catchy.

A couple of weeks ago, I discovered a new iPod game called Land-a-panda. The premise is simple, but it gets complicated quickly. You have a panda on one side of the course and he is keen to get to his lady friend on the other side of the course (they must be in that magical 12 hours of a 365 period when they’re attracted to each other). In between, you have to get the panda through an obstacle course of cannons, which seems a bit mean, but it’s all in a good cause.