I love Christmas - it’s such a great time of year. It’s great to be back from University seeing family and friends. Everyone has finished work and school today for the festive weekend, and I’m ready to relax for a few days! I hope you all have a great Christmas period, and to celebrate I’ve linked up a few of my favourite Christmassy wallpapers for your desktop below:

Download at Deviant Art

Download at Deviant Art

There’s another couple too I still have from Christmas last year, which were offered by a site called Cubed Companies. They were great, but I can’t find them anywhere online this year. You can download them both in a zip below:

Download Zip

I take no credit for any of these - Just wanting to provide you with some great wallpapers to adorn your festive desktop!

Merry Christmas

I’ve been lucky enough to gain a President’s Award from Manchester University. I could go on further, but the press release from the University seems to From Manchester University

Students awarded £10,000 scholarships from The University of Manchester

NINE students have been awarded prestigious £10,000 a year Scholarships to study at The University of Manchester.

The awards are reserved for ‘the best of the best’. Only the very highest academic credentials are considered, with eligibility depending not only on at least three “A” grades at A-level, including grade “A” in every module, but also on the results of a “Thinking Skills Assessment,” a special examination and an interview.

In addition, the award holders have demonstrated personal qualities indicating that they have the potential to make distinctive contributions to University and the wider community.

The University of Manchester wants to strengthen its reputation as a preferred destination for many of the best and brightest students from across the UK and throughout the world. This new President’s Awards programme of up to ten generous, highly prestigious scholarships is one element in a range of programmes designed to encourage outstanding students to come to Manchester, irrespective of their capacity to pay.

The President and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Alan Gilbert, in congratulating the new President’s Scholars, said how important it was for one of the country’s foremost research institutions also to be seen to be investing heavily in creating opportunities for students. Professor Gilbert said: “We want the brightest young people in the UK increasingly to see Manchester as a logical and rewarding choice, just as we want a wider scholarship programme to ensure that no able student is denied a place in Manchester because of an inability to pay.”

Accompanying these Awards, Manchester has a multi-million pound programme of widening participation scholarships and bursaries reserved for able students from low-income families.

The University also invests very considerable time and resources into a range of widening participation initiatives concentrating on the needs of primary and secondary schools and their pupils in educationally deprived areas of Greater Manchester.

The nine inaugural Award holders are:

• David Appleyard, 18, from Skircoat Green in Halifax (BSc Management)
• Thomas Esler, 19, from By-Cupar in Fife (BA Classics)
• Katie Maltman, 18, from Ilkley in West Yorks (MB ChB Medicine)
• Philip Bull, 18, from Meir Park in Stoke-on-Trent (MPhys Physics with Astronomy)
• Rupert Gaze, 35, from Stalybridge (MB ChB Medicine with foundation year)
• Christopher Devlin, 19, from Limavady in Londonderry (BA Law with Politics)
• Ruth Watkinson, 19, from West Bridgford in Nottingham (BSc Biochemistry with industrial experience)
• Kiran Horwich, 18, from Ealing in London (BA History)
• Laura Roddis, 18, from Wrexham in North Wales (BSc Speech and Language Therapy)

Enjoying your Macintosh experience? There may be one ingredient you’ve been missing out on: the many amazing products created by the Mac community’s extremely active independent software development community.

That’s why we’re declaring this The Week of the Independent Mac Developer, and in an effort to spread the word about these hidden gems, we’ve put together a collection of some of the best darn software available on the Mac for a steeply discounted $49.

MacHeist is something that managed to more or less completely slip by me until around 4 days ago. It’s a great scheme set up by several large Mac software developers to help raise money for charity, and get their product’s noticed. You have the chance to buy a bundle of applications for an incredibly discounted price - the cream of the crop of Mac applications.

Software includes Delicious Library, Shapeshifter, NewsFire, Disco and more. I’m tempted by the price, but already own Shapeshifter and NewsFire - shame I bought them so long ago, could have saved a packet now! Have a look, and remember that 25% goes to a charity of your choice!

There’s nothing better on a cold winter’s evening than a great heart warming Christmas film, and The Holiday really delivers in every area. Four great actors/actresses help to turn a fairly cliche’d love story into something funny and uplifting - I never looked at my watch once, unusual for me in a film of this genre!

The film is a romantic comedy about two women who swap homes for Christmas. Iris (Winslet), a journalist on a London newspaper, is stuck in a dreadful relationship with a colleague who won’t commit to her. She lives in a tiny village and in a fit of desperation agrees to swap her house with Amanda (Diaz). Amanda is a hugely successful film industry executive who owns her own company, having found out that her long-term boyfriend is unfaithful, she needs a holiday.

I’m sure you can piece together how things unfold from there… Could both ‘romantically doomed’ women find love in a country far far away? Could they live happily ever after? If you’re looking for a film that with challenge and test you, this definitely won’t fit the bill. If you’re after a Christmas classic which will leave you feeling like everything is right with the world - look no further!

MacAppADay is your free source for apps for your mac. Throughout December, each and every day, we’ll give away 5000 copies of a popular mac application.

Getting into the Christmas spirit yet? Thought you would be - it’s difficult not to with all the advent celebrations and shopping madness going on. A great project being run this December is MacAppADay. They are giving away free Mac software on a daily basis, at 12am (that’s 8am for those in the UK - just as you’re waking up!). So far they’ve offered some good and some bad applications, but it’s worth checking out for the odd free gem.

There are certainly quite a few different iPods out there now - Apple have come a very long way from the initial iPod with a whole family of devices today. I’m the proud owner of a 5g iPod video at the moment - I think it’s fantastic. The only downside is that sometimes it can be a little big. I know that might sound quite picky (let’s face it, it’s 30gb of music and video in your pocket!) but when you’re at the gym it can be a little too clumbersome. The question is, which of the new iPods around today is most appropriate for use at the gym/going for a run?

There seem to be two options really, you could either opt for an iPod nano or an iPod shuffle….

The iPod shuffle
It’s tiny. There’s not a great deal else to say! The iPod shuffle is the perfect size for the gym as you can literally clip it on to your arm or t-shirt and completely forget about it. That can be a real relief, allowing you to focus on the workout rather than worrying about your headphones being dragged from your ears every thirty seconds or so. However there are also certainly downsides. The shuffle only stretches to 1gb in size, which means you might find yourself limited in terms of music vareity - it might be perfect for a workout, but it is lacking in terms of practicality when wanting to use it in other scenarios (a trip away for instance).

The iPod nano
The new iPod nano is a vast improvement over it’s older predecessor. It doesn’t scratch as easily, it’s (ever so slightly) smaller, and Apple have brought back the great colour variations. It also comes in much larger sizes than the shuffle, and has a screen to boot. In terms of features to price, the iPod nano wins hands down. But all that doesn’t show how well it compares at the gym. It’s certainly larger than the shuffle, making it once again noticable during your workout - however that can usually be solved with the addition of an armband style accessory.

It also has one more killer feature…

The Nike + iPod sport kit makes the iPod nano a much more usable contender than the shuffle, in that not only will it provide bouncy, pounding music whilst you’re at the gym. You can also take it on the road… Using the Nike kit allows your iPod to monitor how fast, how long and how well you are running, and all those stats can be stored and compared back at your computer at home. It’s a great training tool which is unique to the iPod nano (a shame really, as I would love one for my 5g iPod video).

Conclusion
It’s certainly a tricky decision. On the one hand you have the iPod shuffle, a tiny device perfect for tune-ing up your workout. On the other hand, an (slightly clumsier) iPod nano with a larger capacity, screen and the possibility of hooking it up to a Nike sports kit. Personally, I think it’s wise to opt for the nano. Not only will it perform well for your workout, but it’s a much more functional general use iPod than the shuffle which you might find limiting over time. The decision’s up to you… Enjoy your run!