Best Buys for Christmas according to The Gadget Show

I finally got round to watching Monday’s episode of The Gadget Show and it’s got to have been the best episode of the series. A Christmas special, this episode reviewed the best gadgetry gift you can get for children, women and men. As you can imagine, I was in awe of all the gizmos that featured on this show and I thought I’d let you know of them in case you are stuck for ideas for the ideal Christmas present this year.

Am I going to be more “brit” than the British?

I’m trying to get my British passport sorted out but before I can apply for one I need to take a test – to see if I qualify in my “Britishness” before I can claim to be a British citizen.

I’ve been reading through the handbook “Life in the United Kingdom: A Journey to Citizenship” which is the official test book and study guide – written by the Home Office Life in the UK Advisory Group, the people who set the citizenship test. I need to know facts like how many Chinese are living in the UK, how many children go on to pursue further education, where Santa Claus (oops Father Christmas) comes from, in fact I’m surprised I don’t have to memorise the recipe for fish’n'chips!!

I just wonder how much of what I need to know is relevant to my becoming a “Brit” – is this stuff that all Brits know?? Will it help me better converse with another fellow citizen if I know these facts? Evidently not, as we saw

A Second Life – if your first one disappointed you!

I heard about Second Life – the internet based virtual world – quite a while back and so decided to give it a go a few months ago. This is like nothing I have ever seen on the internet. It’s essentially a role playing online “game”. I say “game” in inverted commas because although you play along with your role it’s not a game in the traditional sense, or in other words there’s no real winners and losers. It’s just living your life on the internet, meeting other people, making money, spending it and so on. But it has taken the online world by storm.

Katie Holmes – marathon runner, mother and perfect wife?!?

She makes the rest of us look bad!! Katie Holmes, mother to a one year old baby and wife to one of Hollywood’s most successful actors, with a successful acting career of her own, completed the 26.2 mile New York Marathon in 5 hours 29 minutes and 58 seconds. She then posed for photos (looking as glam as ever) and then rushed home to freshen up so that she could make it to the premiere of her husband’s movie “Lions for Lambs”. Well done Katie! Tabloids across the world are casting a suspicious eye over

It’s true – Boyz II Men are back

I must admit I had forgotten about Boyz II Men until I watched X Factor on Saturday where they made a special appearance. And the memories came flooding back when I heard them perform ‘End Of The Road’. What a brilliant group. The songs, the voices, the melodies – you can’t fault these lads. They are, and always will be my favourite ‘boy band’ if they can even be categorised in that way.

The good news is that they are

X Factor Emily withdraws from Top 10

I didn’t realise that X Factor was down to the final 9 until I tuned in to ITV last night to see the live show where Dermot O’Leary announced that the youngest contestant, Emily Nakanda, had withdrawn from the competition. It turns out that a video showing Emily allegedly attacking a teenage girl had emerged and, following this, Emily’s family took the decision to withdraw her from the show. Earlier in the week, another video emerged

Hayden Panettiere – a different kind of Hero

Heroes star Hayden Panettiere has been in the news recently, very much living up to the name of the show that brought her into the public eye. She tried to intercept a dolphin hunt by fisherman in Japan, showing her support for animal’s rights. With five other activists, Hayden paddled out on her surfboard to a cove in the town of Taiji in southwestern Japan on Tuesday to interfere with the annual hunt.

According to People magazine, they were intercepted on Tuesday by fishermen on a boat who told them to leave and prodded them with a pole. They were eventually forced back to shore, unable to prevent the hunt. Video footage

Hulu.com takes online viewing to another level

Finally an online viewing technology that makes sense! Hulu.com is a joint venture between NBC and News Corp and it will launch with many episodes of hit NBC and Fox shows and a small sampling of movies, all with one-quarter the commercial minutes of regular TV.

Whereas most other networks have kept their shows on their own sites, Hulu.com will syndicate its shows to four of the Web’s most popular destinations, plus allow viewers to embed streaming clips or entire shows on their blogs. A “Heroes” fan-blog, for instance, could