April Blogging from A to Z Challenge

Monday, June 9, 2014

Themes That Rocked! Challenge Participant Charity Bradford and the World of Dr. Who

Please welcome author Charity Bradford!

Your theme was Dr. Who. What made you choose that theme?

Two reasons. #1 I LOVE Doctor Who and knew it would be a fun topic that I would enjoy exploring for an entire month. #2 My kids love Doctor Who and agreed to help me with the posts. I thought it would be a bonus to share the Challenge with my children.

Which letter was your favorite and why?

This is hard because I must confess I loved almost every letter. Reliving the series through video clips was amazing. Looking back over the episodes knowing where the story was going made everything more emotional. If I had to narrow it down I'd pick--C, R, S and T because they cover my favorite characters.

Which letter was the most challenging?

Q, X and strangely Y were hard. I just couldn't think of anything Doctor Who and had to get creative to make it work. I finally did favorite Quotes, X-tra clips/episodes that I couldn't fit in earlier and thanked YouTube for all the great videos I used during the month.

What is your favorite race or creature from the show?

The Weeping Angels are a great race in the creepiest way, but if I could get a full make-up job I would choose to be Silurian. Every one that I've seen on the show has this aggressively sexy look to them. Plus, who wouldn't want to be a reptilian warrior?

Who is your favorite Doctor?

You keep asking really hard questions! I should qualify this by saying I haven't watched the classic Who series. David Tennant was my clear favorite until series 7. Now Matt Smith is equal if not edging slightly ahead of Tennant. It doesn't have anything to do with the actors as much as the way the story line changed a bit and drew me in even deeper. Both of them made me think about things, laugh out loud and cry. I can't ask for more than that.

What’s your favorite Dr. Who quote?

I have lots of favorites, but here's one that didn't make my Q post--"Don't play games with me. You just killed someone I liked. That is not a safe place to stand. I'm The Doctor and you're in the biggest library in the Universe. Look me up." ~The Doctor, Series 4, Forest of the Dead

Just what is a Silurian?

The Silurians were a sentient race of earth reptiles that dominated the earth before humans. At some point they went into hibernation deep under the earth's crust. The first time I saw them on Doctor Who was series 5 with Matt Smith in "The Hungry Earth". The warrior class woke from cryo sleep when their settlement was threatened by humans drilling into their air pockets. Humanity barely escaped all out war with them thanks to the Doctor's quick thinking.

If you participate next year, do you have a theme in mind?

Yes! My kids already voted and we are going to do A to Z posts from the TV series X-Files.

I’m an X-Files junkie, so that sounds like a great theme. Thanks, Charity!

Co-host Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh is the author of Amazon Best-sellers CassaStar, CassaFire, and CassaStorm, and his blog can be found HERE

Friday, June 6, 2014

#atozchallenge #roadtrip - Stormy's cruisin' with the top down!

Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Looking for adventure
And whatever comes our way

(Born To Be Wild by Steppenwolf)

Welcome to leg three of the Post A-to-Z Road Trip!

Stormy the Weather Gnome and I are going to try to hit at least 20 new blogs a week from the Challenge list and tell you about a few of them in each of my posts.

When you go visit these awesome blogs, please make sure you tell them that you're visiting on the Post A to Z Road Trip!

Author Stephen Tremp
Stephen Tremp

Stephen's A to Z Theme: The Wonders and Oddities of our Universe.
From Aliens to Galaxies.
From Quantum Computers to Water in Space.
Stephen covers it all and explains it in a way even I can understand!

Like a true nature's child
We were born
Born to be wild
We can climb so high
I never wanna die
Born to be wild

The Slightly Eccentric Diary of Rob Z Tobor
Rob Z Tobor

Rob's A to Z Theme ... one giant-run-on-poetry-compilation-extravaganza.

Astral Traveller
Cat Starr

Cat's A to Z Theme ... absolutely beautiful travel pictures from around the world.

Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space

Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time!
Sharon Arthur Moore

Sharon's A to Z Theme ... food terminology, techniques, foods, gadgets, recipes and all things, well, food!

Wilderness Apocalypse
D Kai Wilson
Kai's A to Z Theme ... Everything you ever needed to know to survive any Apocalypse.

Thanks for visiting with us today!
Are you finding any great blogs on your trip?

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Steve's Science And Other Fun Stuff

Hi all, and thanks for stopping by. Stephen Tremp here. I post "Stephen's Science And Other Fun Stuff" here very first and third Thursday of each month .

I'm taking a break from my break for a power packed week. Then I'm go back to my Man Cave and finish my latest book Murcat Manor. So let's look at a few of the recent high lights of the latest and greatest regarding science and astronomy.

Hubble Team Unveils Telescope's Most Colorful Cosmic View: More than a decade after they started, scientists have finally filled out their view of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field on the ultraviolet side of the spectrum. The updated image, released Tuesday, incorporates all the colors that the Hubble Space Telescope can detect, visible and invisible. Oh yeah, a picture does tell a thousand words.

NASA Finds Mega - Earth: Scientists announced Monday that NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope has spied an exoplanet that is 17 times larger than Earth. Kepler-10c has been described as a “Mega-Earth” because it is even too gargantuan to fit into the category of “Super-Earths,” which are about 10 times the size of Earth.

Scientists didn’t even think an Earth-like planet this big could exist because it was believed that planets 10 times the mass of Earth would hold on to so much hydrogen gas they would become like Saturn or Jupiter. But Kepler-10c is a rocky, dense planet not enveloped in gas. This discovery suggests there is plenty of room for life to exist on other plus-sized planets.

Elon Musk's Space Capsule Is So Much Nicer Than The Competition: The Dragon V2, unveiled at SpaceX headquarters Thursday, can carry seven astronauts to the International Space Station.

SpaceX revealed on Thursday an updated version of its cargo-only-carrying Dragon spacecraft, showing off the new capsule's sleek interior with room to seat seven astronauts.

The Dragon V2 is much more spacious than the Russia Soyuz spacecraft, which fits three crew members and has been NASA's only way of sending American astronauts to space since the agency shut down its shuttle program in 2011.

Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli (right), pictured inside the Soyuz with Russian cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev and NASA astronaut Cady Coleman, called the capsule "small but reliable" after returning to Earth from the space station in May 2011.

City of Tomorrow Might Already Be Here: Right now, 21st century challenges like greenhouse gases, crime and high energy costs — are being met worldwide with real innovation.

In the coming years communities will grow at an amazing pace. The United Nations predicts by 2030, 60% of the world will live in cities. Demand for clean air, water, energy — and convenience — will skyrocket.

Along with emerging innovations, increased connectivity via the Internet and smart devices promises to help solve many of these threats.

Imagine turning the ocean into drinking water, ending traffic jams, making policing smarter and creating buildings with zero carbon footprints.

NASA'S New Mega-Rocket On Track For Future Test: A new era of space exploration — supported by a history-making new mega-rocket and a spacecraft designed to deliver humans into deep space — could be on the horizon for NASA.

The space agency is gearing up to build the largest and most powerful rocket in history. The huge launcher, called the Space Launch System (SLS), will move a new spacecraft dubbed Orion, designed to send up to four astronauts farther into the solar system than ever before. A short list of destinations includes the moon, nearby asteroids and, eventually, Mars.

Everyone is looking forward to 2021, the year when the first manned launch will occur. But before that happens, the rocket and spacecraft will have to pass a number of tests.

Back To My Man Cave: Okay, I need to return to my Man Cave and finish Murcat Manor. But I am thankful for my time out of the cave as I was able to have a lot of fun and meet some very interesting people. I'll share my pics with you. So enjoy and I'll see you all Thursday June 19th.