I first read The City and the Stars when I was nine, before 2001 was a movie, and I come back to it every couple of years. If he had stopped there he would have been a merely great science fiction writer.

Some things just wear a path into the mind. For me it was reading the brand new Rendezvous with Rama multiple times and listening to Everybody Knows this is Nowhere while in bed with the flu. Now I can't read or hear one without being transported to the other.

No-one else did Sense of Wonder sci-fi that well.

Rob

I reckon that faucet fiddling wastes more water than wasteful shower heads and that most water saving heads result in more fiddling. Most people here in Australia have two taps and fiddle merrily while thinking they are saving water with their piddling shower heads.

I live in a multi storey block with communal gravity fed hot water. It was a nightmare until I put regulators (350 kPa) onto the hot and cold supplies, a good mixer tap and a quality shower head. Now I don't change the position of the tap from one day to the next.

Hydraulics and thermodynamics are the only subjects I got over 90% for.

Rob

I can't work out where the value is. Your post prompted me to actually look at the site where I have never before contemplated paying actual money for inferior distorted recordings.

I suppose it is worth it as a convenience in place of getting a decent sound out of old vinyl or finding something much loved but unavailable.

I am probably too old to get why anyone would expect me to pay 12 Euros for something when I can get it for $12 on Amazon or at my local shop for a few bucks more if I really want it today.

Rob

I got a little Uniden hands free cordless phone. I carry it around and get on with my work while on hold. I couldn't live without it. My record on hold with Telstra is 90 minutes plus another 50 to discuss and partly solve the problem.