Hippoi Athanatoi

Today it was, unfortunately, time for a theory lesson. I haven’t been feeling great the last days, so I could have used 45 minutes of horse therapy, but at least I got to be in the stable and say hello to Murphy. Oh, and I did get some good news: there was a cancellation for the jumping lesson during Christmas, so I’m in. That means four lessons in one week between Christmas and New Year, and likely a very sore Linda.

The Music Genome Project has created Pandora, an on-line radio which’ll play the music you want to hear.

Enter the name of a musician or band, or the title of a song, and Pandora will present full-audio tracks of music which is similar not only in terms of tempo and rhythm, but things like syncopation, antiphony, synth or electronica influences, and more. It’s completely free (although a paid subscription version is available) and extremely interesting—if you find a new piece of music you like, you can purchase the song via iTunes or even get the whole album.

Once again, I have ended up neglecting my posting duties. Possibly it wasn’t such a good idea to split things off into so many different blogs, since I have managed to keep up with some of the more ‘specialized’ ones while failing completely to write down much in the way of general ramblings. Of course, those sections are far more interesting than me just talking about myself. Still, since I am feeling like doing just that today, here’s an earful (or eyeful, rather).

Two surprises today. One was not so pleasant; our regular instructor was off again. The other was all the more pleasant—I got to ride Murphy! I couldn’t contain a little squeal of happiness when he was assigned to me, which had everyone else laughing. I’m like a 10-year-old when it comes to Murphy, and in the stables I just never think about ‘appearances’. Its the only time I am comfortable not having my hair and clothes in order, and I talk to and cuddle with the horses like a little pony-mad girl. ;)

So we learn that Sky One is planning to remake The Prisoner. Well, it was bound to happen eventually, one supposes. But there’s catch.

As I managed to clear out some of my work earlier than expected, I decided to reward myself with a bit of reading from the rather large to-read pile that has accumulated of late. The book I picked up was Song of Unmaking by Caitlinn Brennan (a pseudonym for Judith Tarr ). This is the second in her series from Luna (Harlequin’s semi-new fantasy imprint), following on from last year’s The Mountain’s Call.

I was quite tired today (on account of some indecently late nights in front of the computer these last two weeks), but since I knew we’d have our regular instructor back, I wasn’t too reluctant to drag myself to the stable. Even though it threatened to get pretty cold as well. Once there, I did my usual round of saying a brief hello to my favourites (Murphy, of course, although he had just had his feed and didn’t want to let me in, and Malupin, Fleur, Sammy, Gamir and a few of the ponies a swell). Its always a little sad these days to say hello to Sammy, because he’s 18 now and you never know when he’ll be gone. So far, though, he’s doing great, although he’s almost never in our group anymore since he’s such a great horse for the lower groups. Same, alas, goes for Murphy. Seems I am not likely to get him for anything but jumping lessons, but fortunately I did manage to get signed up for yet another extra lesson over Christmas, so I do hope he stays healthy this year. He’s had an extraordinary ability to get injured around Christmas. ;P

This is actually rather old news, because someone (cough) forgot to keep herself up-to-date via Louise Cooper’s website on the author’s efforts to get her older books back into print. And now, it seems, she has succeeded.

Mundania Press have begun bringing out some very nice looking editions of her first series, the Time Master Trilogy; The Initiate, The Outcast and the Master.

Via Whedonesque, we learn from the man himself that he’s going to be writing a brand new Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic for Dark Horse which will be canonical and set post-Buffy and Angel. And there’s more news beyond that.

I’ve had a few pretty rough days trying to balance (and not succeeding very well) work with the task of setting up the new forum, so I was really looking forward to today’s riding lesson as a good way to relax. But of course I got unlucky, and ended up having one of the worst lessons so far this semester.

Malupin, that is. Which I expected, since it was a regular dressage lesson today (well, yesterday by now, its past midnight here), but that doesn’t mean I was still hoping for Murphy. Especially since it turned out our regular instructor was off today, and that always makes me a bit more nervous than usual. Fortunately the weather is still mostly just wet, and not very cold, so at least I didn’t have to worry about Malupin being extrasensitive as they sometimes get when its chilly outside.

Dabel Brothers Productions has released a preview for the forthcoming Woodboy/Burning Man graphic novel featuring adaptions of the titular stories written by Raymond E. Feist and Tad Williams.

Although the most important book that I have read of late obviously is A Feast for Crows (I leave the reviewing of that one to Elio, except to say that it is a very good book but also a very different book from the previous ones), I have also managed to take time out from my work to read the second half of Jacqueline Carey’s The Sundering;

Godslayer.

Today was the second of the pair of jumping lessons, and as I had hoped (and expected) I was put on Murphy once again. He, on the other hand, was less thrilled with this, as the class before ours had been delayed. This meant that he hadn’t had a chance to finish his evening hay yet, which resulted in him greeting me with his ears pinned back (in case I was thinking of stealing his hay).

Via Steven Brust’s LiveJournal we learn many interesting things—such as that the man is silver (according to one test), that Vlad is presently wandering around in search of a plot, and that Brust is presently working on a media tie-in novel for Joss Whedon’s excellent Firefly.