Month: August 2008

You’re right about Karen Carpenter – a pure voice, so wonderful to listen to.

I too am a big dire straits fan 🙂

one of my favorite weather’ish songs is “I Can’t Stand the Rain” by Tina Turner.

It’s a good collection!

Michele sent me here

The inspiration for this week’s Thursday Thirteen struck while at work yesterday. We’ve had an odd summer this year, days of bright sunshine like today have been rather few, sandwiched between torrential downpours. No floods like last year, which is a blessing. We’ve been having a bit of fun in the office with this one and a special mention goes out to Mrs C who has been full of ideas. Enough ideas in fact, to make it possible for this Thirteen to maybe get repeated next week but with older songs instead of the newer ones here !

Right – enough wittering, on with the 13 🙂 I’ve put in Youtube links where they’re available but there are some obscure ones in here … Enjoy !

Thirteen Things about Seasonal Songs 1…. Crowded House – Weather With You. I love this song, great one to open with. 2…. Cloudbusting by Kate Bush. Could have had The Big Sky here from Kate Bush but Cloudbusting is a far better song 🙂 3…. Rainy Days And Mondays by The Carpenters. Karen has one of the most beautiful voices ever to hit the airwaves. 4…. Gonna Buy A Hat by Chris Rea (lyrics only). This one’s from the Dancing With Strangers album and was away from my iTunes collection for far, far too long. 5…. It’s not quite November Rain yet but here’s a great song from Guns & Roses. 6…. We were saying “Here Comes The Rain Again” rather a lot yesterday. One from Eurythmics. 7…. But at least we haven’t said “Here Comes The Flood” like at some points last year. This one’s from Peter Gabriel’s first album. 8…. Sometimes I find it rather restful when “I Listen To The Rain“. One of the highlight’s of Beverly Craven’s career here. 9…. There’s a few metal fans out there who I know keep up with this blog, this one’s especially for them : Flood by the Sisters Of Mercy. 10.. One of my most favourite groups has always been Dire Straits, It Never Rains is from the Love Over Gold album. 11… Purple Rain by Prince. No Youtube link cos Prince seems to be banned from there … 12.. Blame it on the Weatherman by B*witched. Cos when it rains, we know exactly who’s responsible. Been trying for ages to find the albums these girls did ! 13.. Here Comes The Sun sung by George Harrison. Because the sun has decided to get his hat on today ! Another singer who’s voice I love, it’s a great shame that he was taken from us too early.

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The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

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Got another Thirteen coming on the same theme next week but it’ll have classical music and show music on instead. I’m still looking for clues on that one though – We’ve thought of 7 between Mrs C and me, so that makes 6 more needed 😉

Star Trek rant again !

The Deep Space Nine episode I’m re-watching at the moment (might not be for long, might skip it) has a rather curious story running through it. You’d usually expect Star Trek to champion the environmentalist utopia cause, however this one is about as Anti-Environment as you can get.

Ok – the core of the story is that one of the senior officers has been sent to evict some farmers from a moon so they can wreck it by stripmining its core for energy. So that’s a habitable moon, with viable farming land going to get made uninhabitable in the pursuit of power that could easily come from an alternate source like solar.

Curious is one word, Insane! is another ! The one constant we’ll find when we eventually break out of Earth’s orbit and unleash ourselves on an unsuspecting galaxy is that inhabitable planets and moons will be as rare as hen’s teeth. So real estate where people can live and grow food should be prized above all else.

Back to Star Trek … but I’ll be distracting myself with getting some food ready.

PS Getting to read a bit of Heinlein’s Time Enough For Love. This one comes after quite a few of his timeline novels and I’m getting to read it again after reading some of the more key books in that timeline. It has Heinlein’s typical wit running through it and has definitely got me laughing at what’s coming off the pages 🙂

The build up’s all done now and the main event’s here and underway. Every 4 years we get a great festival of sport, covering most of the team and individual events that people play. There’s some obvious ones in there, some less obvious ones but what it does mean is a sportnut like me gets to see some sports on the telly that otherwise don’t get a look in. The sad thing is the time zone, because China is 7 hours ahead of British Summer Time most of the events will take place when we’re either asleep or at work. The GB evening time neatly coincides with the Chinese sleeping time.

Today is an excellent day already for GB 🙂 We have a gold medal winner ! That would be Nicole Cooke who had a superb ride in the Women’s Cycling Road Race in atrocious conditions. They seem to be having monsoon type conditions over in China at the moment, to the point where the BBC presenters have a bucket in their studio.

I’ve just been watching the Women’s team bronze medal match in the archery. That’s one of the first sports I got involved with, over in N.Ireland as a boy. (It was something that my mum & dad could send all 3 of us to every week) GB were involved in this one too but unfortunately just missed out by 2 points. Ah well – they’ll be hungrier for it when the Games come to our place in 4 years 🙂

Right – Olympics had temporary reign over the Telly, time for the Test Match again ! After watching Nicole Cooke get her gold that is. There won’t be too many chances to stand up for the anthem in these games, best to make the most of what opportunities we get 🙂

This one’s about books I’ve read over the last year. Joy has a challenge running at the moment, with the aim being to read 52 books, 26 with titles covering the whole of the alphabet and 26 with authors covering the alphabet. For more, take a peek at my long neglected Sleepypete Stories blog (link in the blogroll). I’m sneakily using that one so that the A To Z post can remain at the top without being lost in my various random ramblings.

Thirteen Things about Books I’ve been reading lately 1…. First up, The Algebraist by Iain M Banks. This is one of his later books but the first one I read. Instant classic. There’s a very well realised setting here, which doesn’t sci-fi cheat too much. Rule Number One – Do NOT mess with the Dwellers. 2…. Robert A Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. This books is much better than the film, although the animated series comes close. This is a book that deals far more with ethics and government with the alien shooty bits actually being rather limited. 3…. David Weber’s At All Costs. Much better than the previous book, War Of Honor, because it has a lot more action in between the tedious politics bits. But, the series is definitely suffering from the escalation that most sci-fi space opera series tend to burn out on. 4…. Avatar series by various D&D authors. This series has the gods of Toril getting thrown out of the heavens due to not doing their duties properly. So their boss sets out to teach them a lesson. Cue a series of stories crossing most of the Forgotten Realms D&D setting, with gods dying, cities being destroyed, mortals being corrupted, a little bit of love and madness and rather spectacular re-ordering of the pantheon there. 5…. Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks. This is the introduction to The Culture, a hugely mixed society of the future which is run by machines. These machines very definitely have personalities of their own, which leads to names like Resistance is Character Forming, No More Mr Nice Guy and Now Look What You Made Me Do. This one is the first Culture book and is nigh-on essential reading for any sci-fi fan. 6…. Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds. Gotta admit, I was a little disappointed with this one. It had a reasonable setting to work with but suffered from being too drawn out and too rushed. The beginning takes ages to get through, the end rushes through very quickly. 7…. XWing series by Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allstom. These are in the Star Wars universe, taking up the story about 2-3 years after Return of the Jedi. They’re well worth a peek, not so much for the Star Wars but for the interplay between the characters. 8…. Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks. Another Culture book, tough to describe. So I’m not going to 🙂 Besides, spoilers would happen very easily with this one ! 9…. Time Enough For Love by Robert Heinlein. This one is about his Lazarus Long character, aka the oldest living human. He’s about 2500 years old when this one is set and is a kind of biography of the character. I’ve read a lot more Heinlein than when I first read this quite some time ago, I’m hoping to get more out of it this time. 10… Harry Turtledove’s Worldwar series. I’m two books in with these and I’ll get started on the third after Time enough For Love. The premise here takes you back to World War Two. Things are going as we know. Apart from aliens from space choosing that time to invade ! Bit long winded these, which is why I haven’t bombed through the series just yet. 11… Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams. I’ve read all 5 of these. The first three are very, very good, with all of the famed Douglas Adams wit shining through. The fifth isn’t that great though. 12… All those documents from work that I can’t tell anyone about 🙂 13… Larry Niven’s Ringworld series. Not read any of these for a while but anything by Niven is worth checking out.

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others’ comments. It’s easy, and fun! Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

More news ! I have a plan …

I wasn’t quite sure how I’d be putting in the A to Z, to keep it in a fairly prominent place and stop it dropping off the bottom of the posts where I’d forget it.

But … I have another blog sitting idle because I haven’t organised my thoughts properly ! Will convert that one into a place for the A to Z 🙂

PS I have an author who will fit the ‘Z’ …

Oh good!

[chuckle] Getting round to it 🙂

You are welcome to join the A ~ Z Reading Challenge, but your link needs to go to the post that indicates you are participating or you can post the image and lists on your sidebar. I deleted your name because when I followed the link there was no “book talk” here. Sign up again with a link to your post, if you’re interested in participating. We’d be happy to have you join us.