It's dark, your family have gone off to France without you. You're a sitting duck for opportunistic thieves looking to steal some seasonal goodies.

So what do you do? You call in the CCTV people to put up some cameras and alarms and stuff - or you just do a Kevin McCallister and follow these simple, cost-effective steps for cheap house protection.

Here's the Home Alone guide to home security:

 

 

 

For more Christmas tips and advice, keep opening the i-Flicks Advent Calendar to find other "How to..." infographics, including How to Be Santa.

 

 

 

Everyone loves a chuckle at Christmas. Unless you're a total grumpus and you have no friends and you don't like Christmas and you're dead inside.

If you are dead inside, then these top six festive chortle buckets should cheer your sorry face up:

Warner Bros. is still pumping away at that Superman franchise, desperate to relaunch the Man of Steel into cinemas. The latest man to join that scheme? Well, it might be Chris Columbus.

The word on the web is that Columbus is Warner's favourite choice to direct the project, no doubt thanks to the box office clout currently swung about by Harry Potter. But would Christopher Nolan - supposedly the godfather of the scheme - really allow such a thing to happen?

Nolan's fellow geek David Goyer is also putting himself forward as the man to make the movie. And while he gave the world The Unborn and Blade Trinity, he's also responsible for the new-look Batman, the original Blade, and Dark City, not to mention the now-cancelled FlashForward.

Put that up against the man who directed I Love You, Beth Cooper and Bicentennial Man and it's obvious who wins. Chris Columbus all the way! Right...?