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I’ve just found this and had to share.

Utterly amazing. Aside from the fact it’s scary how many songs are alike, I’m very impressed with their ability to switch from one to the other. I’d just get carried away and at least finish the chorus of one song. How do they manage to control themselves to just do one line of each?

Matt Smith is the new Doctor Who, facing the daunting task of replacing David Tennant. It’s an unenviable task, especially from someone I’m sure not many people have heard of.

I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve seen him in action, but on first impressions alone… he doesn’t look the part, and he certainly doesn’t sound the part.

There’s more information about him in this BBC press release, and an embed of the extended interview with the new, eleventh doctor below.

What do you think?

Browsing through the iTunes TV Programmes store yesterday, I came across this little gem:

That’s one single TV episode, that lasts for an hour and is £2.99. Is this the first time that iTunes have given in to the variable pricing pressure? I haven’t seen it before.

When NBC said they’d be returning to iTunes, we all assumed they’d had to give in and admit that Apple’s platform is a great sales outlet for their shows. However, if the picture is to be believed, then Apple have more likely agreed to NBC’s pricing demands.

I’ve never really understood why you can get a two hour omnibus of Hollyoaks for £1.89, the same price as a 14 minute episode of Shaun the Sheep. However, most of the reviews on iTunes are complaints about the price, so making it variable doesn’t seem like it will be popular. Unless they get cheaper, of course.

By the way, I haven’t bought either Hollyoaks or Shaun the Sheep. Just saying.

I’m all for the return of Top of the Pops and TOTP2, and I don’t really think they should have disappeared in the first place. There are very few decent music programs on TV as it is, I’m pretty sure the Beeb could have adapted Top of the Pops to remain mainstream if they’d really wanted to.

Of course, they didn’t, and then they announced it wouldn’t even be back for a Christmas special. As soon as Simon Cowell poked his head above the parapet and said he’d sort it out, they decided perhaps they would like to stage the show after all.

The schedules showed one Top of the Pops special on Christmas Day and one on New Year’s Eve. I don’t know about anyone else but I watched both and essentially saw the same show twice. I thought the BBC were trying to step away from their image of fooling the public, and this doesn’t seem like a good way of doing it. Changing some of the links to introduce the same acts doing the same songs, in some cases the exact same footage from the previous show, isn’t really honouring my intelligence, is it?

Skipping everything I’d already seen on the second show meant I could only enjoy about three minutes of the program. What a waste of time.

Also, are there only a few singers who can do live anymore? I must have seen Sam Sparrow and Duffy at least a dozen times over the festive period.

I don’t usually make resolutions, as I know I’ll either break them or have forgotten them by the end of January. However, I had already been talked into doing so over at Sidepodcast.com, so I thought I might as well share my three very simple resolutions for 2009.

1. Try and stick to a Wii Fit schedule. I enjoy it when I do it but quite often forget and only remember when I’m tucked up in bed.
2. Be a bit more house proud. I spend a lot of time in the one room - office - and often leave the rest of the flat to ruin. I want to pay more attention and try and keep things “nice”.
3. Stick to one kind of to-do list. In my endless quest to find the ideal to-do list, I have spread my tasks all over the internet, the desktop, and my notepads. If I stick to one, then at least I’ve got a central place to adapt to my needs.

Like all good resolutions, you should just start them when you think of them, rather than waiting for a specific day. I have already been mindful of these in the last two weeks, but I think January will be the real test.

Nevertheless, have fun making your own resolutions, and welcoming the new year in if you are doing so. All that’s left to say is Happy New Year.

The Mac doesn’t really have any cheap and cheerful image editing software. You’ve got the very limited features of iPhoto, and then you’ve got the expensive software of Fireworks and others. I don’t do that much image editing, as I let the other half invest in the software. However, as I intend to blog more, I at least want the ability to resize and crop as needed.

I discovered Picnik.com recently, and it is amazing.

There are two versions - free and premium - however the free one does everything I need. You upload the photo, select it, and moments later, you’re playing around with the crop feature, the exposure, colours and sharpening. All the ingredients needed to make a photo that little bit better without spending a penny. The auto-correct feature is also very handy if you’re stuck for time.

I don’t know if it’s the meadowy green, childlike layout but Picnik really appeals to me. There’s no navigating dull grey menus trying to find what you’re looking for. Everything you need is an easy button click away, and the options are all really clear and simple to navigate. I highly recommend it as an addition to your bookmarks.

Here’s a quick video from the CEO, highlighting the main features:

At some point, if you’re looking at Smarter Than Your Average, it should change from a Wordpress.com template, to this rather more customisable design:

While the web is gradually making it’s way towards 3.0, STYA has taken that great leap into the world of web hosting and FTP for it’s very own version 2.

I’m not going to make any rash promises about hundreds of posts and lots of fascinating features, but you should probably be able to tell that the blog is already getting a bit more love and attention than it used to. And we haven’t even got to New Year’s Resolutions yet.

I always knew that giving up blogging wasn’t going to last, because for some unknown reason, it’s the one hobby that has managed to keep my attention and interest for many, many years. So, here’s to many, many more.

The Boxing Day sales certainly were popular, especially at the Westfield Shopping Centre. The BBC have a short video of the mass hysteria as the doors to the centre opened.

One woman even discusses the fact that she has travelled from afar, stayed overnight in a hotel, and was looking forward to her shopping trip more than Christmas Day itself.

Needless to say, this freaks me out.

Our cupboards are beginning to look a bit sparse and I need to hit the shops. Granted, I’m not going in search of food at Westfield, but I wonder how busy my local supermarket is going to be. Shopping before Christmas was a complete nightmare. I was elbowed in the aisles and shouted at in the car park. Now I must return to the scene of the crime and attempt to shop some more.

If I don’t return, you know what happened.

Update: I survived, but here’s a conundrum for you. The traffic was light, parking was a complete nightmare, but the supermarket was blissful. How are the people getting around, and are they all just sitting in there cars once they get there?

Whilst it is the norm to not even open presents until Christmas Day, nothing about me is normal. That would explain why I bought the present for myself, wrapped it, gave it to myself during a live stream of a party, and have now finished up with the present already. You know how it is.

The gift I bought myself was the Mega Bloks Vodafone McLaren Mercedes Pit Stop - a lego alternative that comes complete with pit wall, F1 car and driver.

I spent maybe an hour on the thing altogether, although it was split up over the course of three days. Here’s the finished product:

And here are five reasons why I loved building it.

1. Every piece is in the box. Having experienced the frustration of getting to the end of a charity shop bought jigsaw and finding one piece missing, it was brilliant to know for sure that all was in the brand new box. Also, I had no bits left over at the end which is also encouraging.
2. The instructions. I think I am the only person in the world who likes the playing rather than the working out how to play. When I was younger, a friend and I borrowed her sister’s laptop to play on Tomb Raider 2. We messed around for a bit and got stuck. Then we uncovered the Strategy Guide her sister also had, and after that, things were much more fun.
3. It looks like it does on the tin. Most things you buy don’t resemble anything like the marketing photography. Especially toys. Have you ever been able to get a Barbie or an Action Man to do the things they do on the TV? Me neither. This is just bricks, they can’t really build that up too much. My finished product - the picture above - looks just like the tin. Except some of the stickers are a bit wonky. And I can’t get the man to stand up.
4. The bits that aren’t bricklike. Especially with a Formula 1 car shape, it would be almost impossible to build some of the bits needed. I don’t know of any lego bricks that dip down at the front as the nose does on an F1 car. Thus it was quite amusing to dig out the rear wing, the steering wheel, and the wing mirrors, and go: “I know what this bit is!”
5. The stickers. The next progression from building lego models is those Airfix kits. No thanks. I much prefer fiddling with these stickers than having to get all down and dirty with a paint brush. So what if these Mega Bloks are aimed at 8 year olds?

It never ceases to amaze me what a small world it is. My mother called me up and said a temp at her work had asked if she knew me (same name and all), and it turns out he’s a temp I had to train up at my last job when leaving for this one.

When she said he worked with me for two days over there, I immediately said his name, and she confirmed it. If he remembers me and I remember his name, we must have made quite an impression on each other. I can barely remember my own name sometimes.

This just reminds me of when one of the favourite teachers at my school left. She went to work at a school over 50 miles away. Of all the schools in a 50 mile radius, she went to work at the one my friend went to. How weird is that? I don’t know if the teacher was half so popular at her new school, though.