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Twisty Little Passages 150
|Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction
|Nick Montfort
|The MIT Press
|4 out of 5 grues agree: Montfort's one of them!
|John Miles
|The definitive survey of interactive fiction for the literati... and the rest of us
Eight chapters, arranged in roughly-chronological order, detail the lineage of interactive fiction from its origins in Delphic riddles to its newest and most intriguing forms.
Passion and precisionAmong Montfort's first statements is one that demonstrates a commitment to careful scholarship that recurs throughout the book: "Text adventure and interactive fiction do not mean exactly the same thing." Infocom's Deadline and Emily Short's Galatea are cited as examples of IF that are not "adventures" in the pop-fiction tradition of exotic settings and perilous situations. These titles, among others, demonstrate that IF isn't just a delivery vehicle for the stereotyped themes of juvenile fiction with which it's often associated. Montfort proceeds to explain why he found it necessary to write Twisty Little Passages:
Essentially, previous authors and critics writing about interactive fiction just didn't care. In Chapter 1, "The Pleasures of the Text Adventure," Montfort shows that he does. Here, and in the following chapter ("Riddles"), he suggests that the IF art form has a much deeper history than we might think:To see why a solid treatment of (IF) needs to be written, one need only consider this selection from the single page that mentions IF in Ilana Snyder'sHypertext: The Electronic Labyrinth (1996):These three sentences state six specific things about Adventure - when, where, and why it was developed, that it is a computerized version of Dungeons and Dragons, that its fictional locations are inspired by Tolkien, and that it is set in California. At least four of these six statements are clearly false, and the remaining two are misleading. (pages 9-10)The precedent wasAdventure, developed in the 1960s at Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL). The program was conceived of as an experimental game. A computerised version of role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, Adventure comprises a series of descriptions of fictional locations inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy The Lord of the Rings (1954), and set in the surrounding Californian mountains.
Recognizing that his audience is likely to include technical geeks as well as literary theorists, Montfort defines some lit-crit terms as they apply to interactive-fiction analysis. Towards the end of the first chapter, we're presented with terminology like "story," "narrative," and "plot," but the definitions Montfort offers could have been fleshed out without sending us to the library to brush up on our Russian formalism. The distinction between "diegetic" and "extradiegetic" exchanges (communication with the game world and the game engine, respectively) appears next, illustrated by Zork 's first few interactions with the user. "Metalepsis" comes next, defined as an intrusion or transgression between levels of story and narration -- sometimes unintentional, sometimes with fatal results. (Portions of Floyd's commentary in Planetfall are cited as an example of the former; the protagonist's robot-assisted suicide in Suspended exemplifies the latter). Happily, none of these intimidating-looking terms are prerequisites to an understanding of the book as a whole.... the combination of an explicit challenge and a verbal literary work has a clear precedent (:) the riddle. By presenting a metaphorical system that the listener or reader must inhabit and figure out in order to fully experience, and in order to answer correctly, the riddle offers its way of thinking and engages its audience as no other work of literature does. (pages 3-4)
Naming the gameAssuming the art of interactive fiction began with the riddle, what constitutes a work of IF today? After a brief excerpt from LookingGlass Technologies veteran Dan Schmidt's For A Change gives us an example of description, interaction and puzzle-solving, Montfort goes on to establish four requisite aspects of IF:
- A text-accepting, text-generating computer program;
- A potential narrative (a system that produces narrative during interaction);
- A simulation of an environment or world; and
- A structure of rules within which an outcome is sought, also known as a game.
Works which do not include each of these elements are deliberately excluded, among them "hypertext fiction," most graphical computer games, and numerous experimental titles. In this respect, Montfort perhaps misses an opportunity to reflect upon the true extent of IF's influence over the rest of the entertainment software world. With a reported 30,000 lines of text in Deus Ex 2 - more than any Infocom game ever boasted - I'd argue that the historical text-only criterion is becoming more questionable all the time.
The rise of the smart machinesMuch more than a theoretical treatise on IF, Twisty Little Passages is also the most complete chronicle of important IF titles, authors, and publishers assembled to date. Its middle four chapters focus largely on academic and commercial efforts at crafting and publishing interactive fiction. Chapter 3 begins with an introduction of the concept of generative literary machines ("ergodic literature"). Montfort cites the Turing machine-like nature of the I Ching , followed by a mention of Jonathan Swift's satirical machine from Gulliver's Travels, "made of equal parts of irony, sarcasm, and mockery, that would automatically write books on all the arts and sciences." Advancing to the modern era, we encounter Theodor Nelson's early hypertext experiments in 1970; the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books that appeared near the close of the decade; and the Dungeons and Dragons phenomenon that introduced a generation to the idea of participative fiction and inspired more IF and computer-game authors than even the most dedicated scholar could count.
The mother of all computer games, in Montfort's view, was Spanish engineer Leonardo Quevedo's 1912 chess-playing robot. Devised to attack a particular endgame problem on a vertically-oriented chessboard, Quevedo's machine was unique in that it represented the first so-called "chess automaton" that operated by legitimate electromechanical means rather than by fraudulently-concealed midgets. A subsequent refinement of Quevedo's machine would later catch the eye of famed computer scientist and AI researcher Norbert Wiener, achieving recognition as the first genuine attempt at artificial intelligence.
Mechanical curiosities aside, no discussion of human-computer interaction would be complete without inviting Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA (1966) to the party. As the first convincing conversation "bot", ELIZA accepted plain-English input from a human interlocutor, transforming it (albeit with no semantic understanding) into a sympathetic textual murmur geared to elicit further input:
Even more impressive than ELIZA was fellow MIT researcher Terry Winograd's SHRDLU, the first computer program capable of modelling, rendering, and allowing a human to interact verbally with objects in a virtual world:Person: Men are all alike.
Computer: IN WHAT WAY?
Person: They're always bugging us about something or other.
Computer: CAN YOU THINK OF A SPECIFIC EXAMPLE?
Person: Well, my boyfriend made me come here.
Computer: YOUR BOYFRIEND MADE YOU COME HERE
Person: He says I'm depressed much of the time.
Computer: I AM SORRY TO HEAR YOU ARE DEPRESSED. (page 82)
Prior to reading the transcript above in Montfort's book, I'd heard of SHRDLU only in passing. It deserves a lot more attention than it's received. SHRDLU was one hell of an impressive hack in 1970, and it wouldn't be trivial today, judging by the capabilities suggested. Like the incredulous audiences that must have attended the early chess robot demonstrations, I'd have been prying panels off Winograd's PDP-6 with a screwdriver, looking for midgets ex machina.Person: WHAT DID THE RED CUBE SUPPORT BEFORE YOU STARTED TO CLEAN IT OFF?
Computer: THE GREEN PYRAMID.
Person: THERE WERE FIVE BLOCKS TO THE LEFT OF THE BOX THEN.
Computer: NO, ONLY FOUR OF THEM: THE RED CUBE, TWO LARGE GREEN CUBES, AND A LARGE RED BLOCK.
Person: PUT THE BLUE PYRAMID ON THE BLOCK IN THE BOX.
Computer: OK (does it)
Person: IS THERE ANYTHING WHICH IS BIGGER THAN EVERY PYRAMID BUT IS NOT AS WIDE AS THE THING THAT SUPPORTS IT?
Computer: YES, THE BLUE BLOCK. (page 84)
Worlds from Adventure to ZorkAfter bestowing the title "the first work of interactive fiction" upon a deserving SHRDLU, Montfort summons the spiritual grandfather of them all: William Crowther's Adventure . Released in 1975 for the benefit of his five- and seven-year-old daughters and any interested lurkers on the nascent ARPANet, Adventure combined ELIZA and SHRDLU's human-interaction capabilities with a primitive fictional setting:
YOU ARE AT A COMPLEX JUNCTION. A LOW HANDS AND KNEES PASSAGE FROM THE NORTH JOINS A HIGHER CRAWL FROM THE EAST TO MAKE A WALKING PASSAGE GOING WEST. THERE IS ALSO A LARGE ROOM ABOVE. THE AIR IS DAMP HERE. (page 88)
Crowther is a contemporary of Zork co-author Dave Lebling, who, coincidentally, was a member of the same Dungeons and Dragons group in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In one of Montfort's many personal communications with IF luminaries, Lebling says:
With such similar roots, it's no surprise that Zork and Adventure play like long-lost brothers. In Chapter 4, Montfort details the evolution of Zork and other important IF titles that were created by multitalented college students with free mainframe access and seemingly-limitless time on their hands. Much has been written about Zork and its legendary Implementers, but seldom have we been given such a well-documented survey of the personalities and motivations behind the game's creation. One tongue-in-cheek room description from the mainframe version of Zork didn't make the cut for the commercial releases:Eric Roberts . . . started running a D&D group a year or so beforeAdventure was written. Eric had his own ideas about how D&D should be done, emphasizing storytelling and de-emphasizing the mechanical aspects of the game such as die- rolling. He tried to create a Tolkien-inspired world that was fun and consistent with Middle Earth... I think one strong component that carried over into Zork was to try to keep the mechanical workings of the game as hidden as possible, which to me enhanced the fun and immersiveness of the experience. (page 86)
Zork accepted complex sentences with indirect-object phrases, offered a much-larger vocabulary than its predecessors, and broke significant new ground in multiplatform software development, predating UCSD Pascal as the first commercial application for virtual-machine technology. But it also advanced at least one purely-literary aspect of computer gaming by introducing its first complex interactive character: the wily Thief. One of Montfort's references offers an insightful Joseph Campbell-esque definition of "villain": "the symbolic representation of forces working to seemingly hinder, but actually promoting, the hero's or heroine's development." (pages 112-113) Since Adventure's dwarves and pirate are not representations of anything else ("parental figures or psychological drives"), their deeds are destructive without being truly "wicked." Zork's thief, on the other hand, serves as a foil for the player character's combat skills, as a reflection of the player's own rapacious treasure-lust, and, ultimately, as an unwitting assistant in the quest.Tomb of the Unknown Implementer
This is the Tomb of the Unknown Implementer. A hollow voice says: "That's not a bug, it's a feature!"
In the north wall of the room is the Crypt of the Implementers. It is made of the finest marble, and apparently large enough for four headless corpses.
The crypt is closed.
There are four heads here, mounted securely on poles.
There is a large pile of empty Coke bottles here, evidently produced by the implementers during their long struggle to win totality.
There is a gigantic pile of line-printer output here. Although the paper once contained useful information, almost nothing can be distinguished now. (pages 102-103)
Zork's innovations over the state of the art established by Adventure are too numerous to count, although Montfort explicitly avoids the common mistake of canonizing Zork and Infocom games in general while giving short shrift to other important IF efforts. In Chapter 5, we learn what became of the Zork implementers in their post-MIT lives at Infocom.
Alas, poor Infocom. . .In Montfort's words, Infocom, which was founded June 22, 1979 by Lebling, Blank, Anderson, and seven other MIT alumni, "began work on the foundation of IF while the plot of ground that it was to be built upon had not been completely surveyed." Chapter 5's opening paragraph is revealing:
Although Scott Adams (no relation to Dilbert's creator) and his company, Adventure International , were the first to sell IF commercially in 1978, Infocom was the most successful IF publisher of its era. The company reached US $10 million in sales in 1985 with over 100 employees on the payroll. A quoted excerpt from the New Zork Times , the company's newsletter, illustrates how Infocom's marketing focused on their games' puzzle-centric design:Adventure is considered the great original epic of interactive fiction. Infocom's works call for a grandiose comparison made on a slightly-different metaphorical ground. Whoever the "Shakespeare" playwright actually was - common or noble, working largely alone or in close collaboration with a theater company - Shakespeare wrote, remarkably, not just the greatest English-language play, by critical consensus, but almost all of the great English-language plays. Similarly, the interactive fiction creators at Infocom devised practically all of the best-loved IF works in the history of the form. (page 119)
Montfort subsequently comments:Although our games are interactive fiction, they are more than just stories: they are also a series of puzzles. It is these puzzles that transform our text from an hour's worth of reading to many, many hours' worth of thinking. . . . The value of our games is that they will provide many hours of stimulating mental exercise. (page 120)
Of the thirty-five games that Infocom published before its US $7.5 million sale to Activision in 1986, their earlier releases receive some of the most detailed analyses in Twisty Little Passages. In addition to discussion of the Zork and Enchanter trilogies, Montfort offers us insights on the unconventional, revelation-driven structure of Deadline, the Reagan-era sociopolitical commentary found in Infidel , and the tragic end of Floyd the Robot in Planetfall:The company's ... belief in the centrality of problem solving should explain ... why Infocom did not focus on creating what might more easily be seen as artistic and literary works that favored exploration, communication with characters, or alternate plot progressions. Yet Infocom did make some progress along these lines, and advanced the state of the literary art by coupling the textually described worlds and situations with carefully crafted puzzles in ways that great riddlers might, in provocative and affecting ways. (page 120)
Many other games, from Trinity to A Mind Forever Voyaging and the Douglas Adams- assisted adaptation of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are discussed extensively in Chapters 5 and 6. Private communications between Montfort and Adams's collaborator at Infocom, Steve Meretzky, lend a glimpse of what it was like to work with the late, lamented author:As a character who is also a technological artifact, Floyd is more important than his immediate function in the IF world suggests. He is a figure for the sometimes emotional relationships that people have with computers, or that are mediated through computers. (page 150)
Montfort's 35-page bibliography is a treasure trove in its own right, with online and printed references given equal weight. Academic grognards may question the long-term utility of online citations, but the omission of sources such as Briceno et al.'s comprehensive Down from the Top of its Game: The Story of Infocom would have been a serious shortcoming. Throughout the book, Montfort's goal of preserving and documenting the great IF works remains clear, with a scholarly ethos that's just as relevant to fans of today's games. He praises Infocom's relatively-lax copy protection schemes, compared to those used by other game publishers whose heavily-protected works may be lost to posterity:Adams's "world-class procrastination abilities," as Meretzky called them, did cause some problems for the (Hitchhiker's Guide) project, which began in February 1984 and was slated (ambitiously) to be completed by the following Christmas. Meretzky said of Adams that "being a successful person with tons of interesting acquaintances, he had an extremely distracting life. Plus, he wasn't fond of the actual task of writing. He loved coming up with ideas, but hated wrestling them into a properly-formed work." (page 173)
Activision, in particular, earns well-deserved props in the book for opening earlier Infocom works and encouraging independent development.If any examples of heavily-copy-protected computer games survive through another two decades for study and discussion, it will be thanks to the loose, widespread network of teenagers and college students who assiduously cracked these programs, allowing the crippled disks to run freely both on systems at the time and on compatible computers today. (page 159)
... and other commercial effortsAlthough Infocom's oeuvre receives the lion's share of attention in Twisty Little Passages, the book does not neglect the many other commercial IF publishing efforts on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1980s and 1990s. Chapter 6 ("Different Visions Worldwide") opens with a quick drive-by tour of Roberta Williams's 1980 Mystery House , recognized as the first graphical adventure game. A number of IF book adaptations were undertaken in the early 1980s as well, among them The Hobbit from Melbourne House and the classics Fahrenheit 451, Rendezvous with Rama, and Nine Princes in Amber from Tellarium. Along with the aforementioned Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy released by Infocom in 1984, Montfort gives favorable attention to US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky's Mindwheel , published in the same year by Synapse Software.
Brief histories of British IF publishers Level 9 and Magnetic Scrolls round out the chapter, along with an even-briefer mention of Legend Entertainment, written before Legend's shutdown in early 2004. The latter constitutes one of the few weak spots in Twisty Little Passages's coverage of the classics. Legend's integration of music, artwork, graphical navigation, and other interface enhancements in the Spellcasting 101 series went far beyond Infocom's efforts to modernize their own IF engines, and the company deserves more than a single paragraph.
At the end of Chapter 6, Montfort recounts the 2000 failure of former Infocom author Mike Berlyn's Cascade Mountain Publishing, one of the last commercial publishers of pure text-based IF. He proceeds to draw a sheet over the commercial market for interactive fiction in general, pronouncing it as dead as Graham Chapman's parrot:
I don't agree with this proclamation of commercial doom, which is a recurring theme in Twisty Little Passages. It's unreasonable to look at the failure of a single company which released two IF products in two years -- one of them a recycled effort from the mid-1980s -- and draw the conclusion that future IF games will only be offered for sale alongside Beanie Babies, assorted stolen laptops, and someone's spare kidney. Unlike modern PC and console games with multimillion-dollar budgets, a killer IF title can still be written by one guy or girl working the graveyard shift at home. Success is arguably a matter of recalibrating one's expectations -- and business model -- to match contemporary market conditions. (Did it ever make sense for Infocom to employ 100 people in some of the most expensive commercial real estate in Boston, working on a handful of all-text games that fit on 140KB floppies? Montfort stops short of considering this question, but in the post-Ion Storm era we live in, the answer should be pretty obvious.)A few individuals have since sought to sell their IF works, and the occasional company like Activision has re-released older works. The main market for interactive fiction today, however, is on eBay and other auction sites, where packaged disks from the 1980s are bought and sold by collectors and IF enthusiasts. Fortunately, the end of the interactive fiction market is not the end of the story for this form. (page 191)
Fortunately, as the last two chapters reveal, a healthy independent IF community has sprung up to take the place of the commercial publishers who are no longer with us.
IF's independent authors: the once and future sceneIn April 1993, at the culmination of a long reverse-engineering effort by "a group of programmers called the InfoTaskForce" (page 202), Graham Nelson released an object-oriented programming language capable of creating story files for the Infocom Z-machine interpreter. Along with a commercially-available text-adventure authoring system known as TADS, Nelson's language, Inform, sparked an indy IF revolution.
As Montfort writes, Nelson also fired the first shot of that revolution:The (growing) community of IF authors really began to demonstrate the vitality of the form in the 1990s, innovating in ways that early hackers and later game companies did not. Their IF works are usually even more widely available today than the most successful commercial software of the 1980s, since they are typically free for download and, thanks to the Internet, widely available. ... A relevant FAQ notes that ... there were five IF games in the 1996 Year-End Download Top 40, making these games some of the most popular non-commercial computer games in the world. (page 193)
Ten years after the first release of Inform, hundreds of independent IF authors and fans congregate on Web boards and Usenet newsgroups to discuss new titles released using Inform, TADS, and a host of other IF platforms. In particular, the annual Interactive Fiction Competition, begun by the denizens of rec.arts.int-fiction and rec.games.int-fiction, celebrates its own tenth anniversary in 2004. Past Competitions have spawned groundbreaking titles like Adam Cadre's Photopia , released in 1998 and still much-discussed today, and Andrew Plotkin's unsettling Shade . These, and many other indy releases, are reviewed extensively in Chapter 7. It would have been good to see more pointers toward longstanding IF fan sites such as Eileen Mullin's XYZZYNews in this chapter, but for the most part, Montfort's latter two chapters do a great job of summarizing the state of interactive fiction's art and culture. His enthusiasm as an observer of the modern IF scene is infectious.Nelson's most famous piece of interactive fiction - and likely the most well-known IF work since the demise of Infocom - is the first fruit of Inform, the 1993Curses . This large, complex, and difficult adventure is set in an English country home and in certain other spaces that are linked in fantastic ways to it. Nelson (2002) said he "consciously wrote it in an Infocom-esque spirit, aiming at the same epigrammatic style of wit." (page 203)
Two tentacles upI can wholeheartedly recommend Twisty Little Passages not only to IF fans and amateur historians, but to anyone serious about the foundations and culture of computer gaming. Infocom and Legend Entertainment auteur Steve Meretzky's back-cover blurb says it all: "(Twisty Little Passages) is a thoroughly-researched history of interactive fiction, as well as a brilliant analysis of the genre. Reading it makes me itch to fire up that old DEC-20 and start writing interactive fiction again!" As a fan of Meretzky's many IF works, I should be so lucky. As a fan of the IF art form as a whole, I'm indeed lucky to have run across Nick Montfort's excellent book.
You can purchase Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page


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The Best & Worst Dressed On The 2012 BET Awards Red Carpet
The 2012 BET Awards were held in Los Angeles last night and it was, strangely, full of '90s stars (Brandy! Monica! The members of Destiny's Child who got kicked out…?). Also, Nicki Minaj wore one of her most intense outfits yet. Check out red carpet looks from Selita Ebanks, Willow Smith, Kerry Washington, Taraji P. Henson and more ahead.
(All photos via Wenn)

subset: commoncrawl


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With inviting color, texture and shine, the Waterline exhibit is on display at the G.L Freeburg Gallery at Kenai Peninsula College through Nov. 18.
Sixteen pieces of Wendy Croskrey's art line the walls of the gallery. Many of the pieces are solely made of colored resin, while others incorporate steel, bronze or aluminum in the design.
Croskrey is a University of Alaska Fairbanks associate professor.
According to the artist statement, the work for the show is drawn from nature including observations of water reflections and surface texture.
"The seductive exterior surfaces are meant to attract the viewer," Croskrey said in the statement. "The artwork are metaphors for the things we are attracted to and in some situations, they are tied to impossibility."
With abstract shapes, as with "Vessel" made from thermal Formed plastic encased in plated copper or with "Spoon" constructed from resin, cast aluminum and steel, the works inspire wonder and thought.
"Walking to the water's edge and exploring our significant impact we leave on nature is represented in the work through physical mark making and surface treatment. A rough surface is expressive; a grinder mark replaces the stroke of a brush and shown in concert with the onerous layers of resin. Texture is the pallet that I utilize; is investigated in the work visually through industrial materials that chemically alter the façade along with physical mark making," she wrote.
KPC Art professor, Cam Choy, said the works in the show are strong and colorful. He said the potential of a workshop, inspired by the exhibit, may be a possibility in the near future.
"They are really stunning visuals," Choy said.
Works like "Divide" made from Steel and thermal formed plastic with colors of the sea, and "Portals" made of thermal formed plastic framed in steel, take on the circular shape of water droplets, easily found in among the flora and fauna of nature.
While many of Croskrey's works are multicolored and smooth in texture, her three works; "Concentric Ring," "Concentric Ring 2," both made from ceramic and aluminum, and "Double Fist" made of cast aluminum, all have a rougher feel, with a cool metallic touch.
The gallery is open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.


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GREENVILLE, N.C. - Philip Clark and Chase McDonald each collected a pair of hits and drove in three runs helping East Carolina (7-4) to an 11-9 midweek victory over UNC Greensboro (6-4) Tuesday night at Lewis Field inside Clark-LeClair Stadium.
In a game that saw five lead changes, 26 combined hits, 24 runners left on base and 13 different pitchers toe the rubber, the Pirates scored three crucial runs in the seventh thanks to a two-RBI single by McDonald and a pinch hit single by Nick Thompson staking ECU to an 11-9 lead. Jake Harris, who picked up his first win of the season, tossed a scoreless eighth while Drew Reynolds closed out the game nailing down the save with a scoreless ninth.
Trailing 9-8 going to the bottom half of the seventh Luke Lowery singled through the left side to start the inning. After he was lifted for Ben Fultz as a pinch runner, Bryan Bass singled through the left side extending his hit streak to 12 games. Jack Reinheimer moved the runners up 90 feet on a sac bunt to third and Reynolds was intentionally walked to load the bases. McDonald singled to center scoring Fultz and Bass for a 10-9 Pirate advantage.
The Spartans, trying to stop their pitching woes, brought in left-hander Corey Taylor to face Dylan Brown, who popped up to second on a 0-1 count for the second out of the frame. Jay Cannon was intentionally walked to load the bases for Clark, who was immediately lifted for Thompson who then singled on a high chopper to second where Reynolds scored and McDonald was thrown out at the plate giving ECU a two-run cushion, 11-9.
Harris (1-0) tossed two innings in relief allowing one run (earned) on three hits with a strikeout. Starter Andy Smithmyer lasted just 1 2/3 innings surrendering three runs (two earned) on two hits with two walks and a strikeout. Dylan Dickens made his fifth appearance of the year working three full frames where he allowed three runs (all earned) on two hits with three walks and three strikeouts, while Reynolds got recorded his fourth save allowing a pair of hits and recording three punch outs in one inning of work. Tyler Bolton also saw action allowing two runs (both earned) on two hits in 1.1 innings.
Dylan Thompson (1-1) suffered the loss giving up all three runs in the seventh (one earned) on three hits with a walk. Spartan starter Brandon Browne was touched for five runs (all earned) on four hits with a pair of walks before handing the ball off to Brennen James, who surrendered one run (earned) on two hits in one inning of work. Tyler Frazier (1.2 IP, 2 H, 3 BB) and Caleb Henley (1.0 IP, 2 H, 2 BB) each allowed a run before Thompson entered the contest. Taylor (1.1 IP, 2 H, 2 BB), Adam Anderson (0.0 IP, BB) and Dominique Vattuone (0.1 IP) recorded the final five outs without allowing a run.
UNCG struck early scoring a pair of runs in the first inning taking a 2-0 lead. Christian Wolfe doubled to start the game and took third on a Zach Leach sac bunt. Trevor Edwards reached after being hit by a pitch and moved to second on the first of two Smithmyer wild pitches. The second pitching miscue resulted in Wolfe scoring and Cambric Moye singled two batters later to left pushing across Edwards.
TJ Spina scored the Spartans third run of the game in the top of the second on a passed ball extending the lead to 3-0. Spina reached after being hit by a pitch, took second when Benigno Marrero was walked and landed on third on Wolfe's sac bunt back to the mound.
ECU knotted the game at three in the bottom half of the frame thanks to RBI base hits from Clark, Zach Houchins and Lowery. Brown started the frame with a base knock through the right side then swiped the first of his two bases moving into scoring position with one out. Clark plated Brown on a single to center where Julian Abreu misplayed the bounce allowing Clark to end up on third. Houchins drove in his seventh run of the season on a double to left center and Lowery followed with a single through the left side scoring Houchins from second.
McDonald, Jay Cannon and Clark each drove in a run in the third giving the Pirates a 6-3 lead. After back-to-back walks to Reinheimer and Reynolds, McDonald singled up the middle plating Reinheimer. Brown followed with a sac bunt moving Reynolds to third and McDonald to second before Cannon delivered an RBI single through the left side pushing across Reynolds. Clark placed a bunt down the first base line with one out scoring McDonald for the final run of the frame.
UNCG sent nine batters to the plate in the fourth scoring three times and tying the game at six. With the bases loaded, Shawn Hendon singled through the left side scoring Leach. Abreu reached on a fielder's choice pushing across Edwards and Marrero drew a bases loaded walk scoring Moye.
Clark's second hit of the game scored Brown and gave ECU a 7-6 lead. Brown walked with one out, stole second and came around to score on Clark's two-out base hit down the left field line.
The third wild pitch of the night for the Pirates and a sac fly by Lloyd Enzor helped the Spartans regain the lead at 8-7 in the sixth frame. Leach singled through the right side and Edwards doubled down the left field line putting runners at second and third with nobody out. Leach scored on a wild pitch and Edwards trotted home from third on Enzor's long fly ball to center field.
Once again, ECU answered UNCG's run with one of its own in the bottom half of the stanza. Reinheimer reached on a bunt single, took second and third on a pair of Henley balks and strolled home on Brown's two-out double down the right field line, tying the game at eight-all.
Marrero's home run off Harris to left center with two outs gave the Spartans a one run lead, 9-8, in the seventh.
The Pirates, who outslugged the Spartans 15-11 on the night, had six players record multiple hits with eight of their nine starters registering a base knock. Reynolds drew a game-high three walks and scored twice, while Cannon and Reinheimer each added a pair of free passes.
ECU will be back in action on Wednesday, March 6 when it hits the road for the first time this season taking on former Colonial Athletic Association foe Old Dominion. First pitch is scheduled for 3 p.m. (EST).


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The Office of Undergraduate Studies received 56 applications requesting a total of over $780,000 for creative and worthy projects proposed for the fifth round of the TLO program. Overall 25 undergraduate applications and 6 graduate applications were funded. These projects included funding for a study abroad program in Santander, an Organic Gardening project at the Clara White Mission, an athletic training field experience at the Kennedy Space Center, and many other exciting projects! To read more about the funded undergraduate projects, please click here. To view a list of the graduate award recipients and projects, please visit the Graduate School website here.
UNF's annual symposium offers faculty the opportunity to spotlight their successes in mentoring and research. The symposium also gives students the opportunity to gain valuable experience in a safe and supportive environment, and perhaps prepare to present their findings at professional conferences. Students, colleagues and administrators are given the opportunity to learn about the diverse types of scholarship underway at UNF. Students may apply to present qualitative or quantitative studies or scholarly projects completed in any field. Projects may be presented in one of two mediums: 1) poster presentations or 2) paper presentations (PowerPoint). The deadline for applications is 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 25, 2010. For more information contact LouAnne Hawkins at (904) 923-3552 or firstname.lastname@example.com.
Applications and abstracts must be submitted online by the deadline to be considered for this year's symposium. The symposium will be held at the Student Union April 23, 2010. For more information contact LouAnne Hawkins at (904) 923-3552 or email@example.com
Len Fisher's Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life has been chosen as the common reading book for the 3rd annual UNF Reads Program. Rock, Paper, Scissors is a book that students should find interesting, engaging and applicable to their own lives. The book explores how game theory illuminates social behavior. Game theory concerns the strategies we use when we interact with other people and the decisions people make when confronted with competitive situations. Fisher uses real-world examples and philosophical problems to examine how social norms and our sense of fair play can produce cooperative solutions rather than competitive ones.
According to the General Education Council, an ideal selection for UNF Reads should be accessible, interesting to freshmen, and hold the potential for multi-disciplinary connections across all colleges. Fisher's book accomplishes all three of these goals:
All Freshmen will receive a copy of the book at Summer Orientation.
The Honors Program is undergoing a number of changes, including its location. This summer, the Honors Program will be moving to the first floor of JJ Daniel Hall in the space previously occupied by the Cashiers Office. This begs the question – What will become of Honors Hall when it no longer houses the Honors Program? A name change seems imminent.
But the change in location is just a physical change. There are important substantive changes taking place in the Honors curriculum that are of interest to the rest of the University. In the past, all Honors courses have been offered with an IDH prefix, which stands for interdisciplinary honors. The same IDH course number was used to apply to courses as diverse as the Psychology of War and Envisioning the West (History Core). It was confusing for the college advisors as they tried to complete a student's program of study. It also made it difficult for the Honors Program to offer courses that fulfilled upper level course requirements for their students. Therefore, beginning in fall 2010, a new Honors attribute will be added to existing course numbers to indicate their status as Honors courses. For example the course Envisioning the West can now be listed as (H) EUH 1000. This tells advisors that this class fulfills the requirement for the history core.
The Honors attribute makes it possible for the academic departments to offer any existing course as an Honors version of the course. The department can also offer a special topics course as an Honors course using this Honors attribute. By doing this, the Honors Program hopes to encourage academic departments to offer honors versions of their upper level required courses and major electives. Students will be able to search for courses using this attribute in much the same way that they search for courses that fulfill General Education requirements and foreign culture requirements.
The Honors attribute can also be used to cross-list an existing course with a Honors version of the course. For example, Visiting Distinguished Scholar Nancy Soderberg teaches her international relations course Real World Power/Superpower Myth as both a regular political science course and an Honors course with 10 spaces open for political science students who have at least a 3.0 GPA, and 10 spaces open for Honors students. The Honors Program encourages faculty from all disciplines to consider creative strategies such as this to increase the breadth of Honors course offerings. It also provides a way for faculty to offer innovative courses that might have enrollments too low to stand on their own as departmental courses. For more information about how the academic departments can offer Honors courses, please contact Dr. Mary Borg.
During the 2008-2009 academic year the Undergraduate Studies Council and Academic Affairs piloted the Undergraduate Coordinators Program in order to identify faculty members who would serve as the department/program contact for undergraduate students in the major interested in discussing the academic program, course selection and careers, as well as graduate, research and mentoring opportunities. The overall goal of this program is to increase faculty-student out-of-classroom contact, which research has shown improves student retention, graduation rates, academic achievement, personal and intellectual development, educational aspirations, college satisfaction, and perceptions of college quality.
Dr. Peter Magyari from the Department of Clinical and Applied Movement Science and Dr. Jennifer Kane from the Department of Educational Leadership and Counseling both served as Undergraduate Coordinators in their departments during the pilot phase of the program last year. At the end of the pilot, both Dr. Magyari and Dr. Kane reported that they had approximately 20 – 30 contacts with students per week in person. According to Dr. Kane, "Students really appreciate having a set person who they know is available to advise and counsel them through the program…I have received a lot of positive comments from students and parents related to the one-on-one attention our students receive and the help they get navigating through the complicated university system as well as the broad field of sport management." Reflecting on the strengths of the program, Dr. Magyari stated, "Having a specified faculty to address these student concerns improved the likelihood of student contact with faculty. Quite often advising would call and set up an appointment while the student was in their office further improving likelihood of student contact with faculty."
This semester the Undergraduate Studies Council and Academic Affairs have re-vamped the program and have renamed it the Faculty-Student Contacts Program. Faculty Contacts must be tenured, tenure-track, or full-time faculty instructors. Faculty Contacts will be granted course releases and a summer stipend, which will be provided by Academic Affairs. Faculty Contact activity will be recognized as part of the teaching component (non-credit-generating instruction) of the faculty assignment as reflected on the Faculty Activity Report for purposes of annual evaluation and valued accordingly in the tenure and promotion process. Department chairs select a faculty member in their department to put forward for the program. For the 2010-2011 academic year, 12 departments submitted an application and 7 departments were selected. Those departments included: Childhood Education, Communication, Criminology and Criminal Justice, English, Foundations and Secondary Education, Nutrition and Dietetics, and Sociology.
For more information about the Faculty-Student Contacts Program please contact the Office of Undergraduate Studies at (904) 620-2261 or firstname.lastname@example.com.
In Fall 2010, the General Education Task Force will launch the first semester of the Venture Studies program. The first component of Venture Studies offers students a choice of first year seminars designed to help students understand the connections among foundational requirements, apply theory to practice, and provide the tools necessary to make a successful transition to college life. The goals of the Ventures Studies Program are to help students become reflective thinkers and integrate knowledge across the disciplines and apply it to real world problems. The seminar provides students with a learning community led by a faculty mentor committed to helping them determine their goals and support students in the process of creating a plan to reach them.
The fifteen faculty who are teaching the inaugural first year seminars are participating in a series of OFE workshops this spring to help them design courses that share a central pedagogy and have some common features including an introduction to community-based learning. The seminar breaks down the classroom walls by extending learning out into the Jacksonville community. Four of the fifteen seminars offer students an opportunity to enhance their experience in Venture Studies by participating in a Living and Learning Community, living together in the Venture Studies residence hall while taking either:
The staff of Residential Life will offer enrichment opportunities tied to the course themes outside of the classroom.
In addition to the Venture Studies First Year Seminar courses that have a residential component, there are several other courses that satisfy either a General Education requirement or a requirement for the Leadership Studies Certificate. These seminars include:
For more information about the Venture Studies Program please visit the College of Arts and Sciences website.
On March 2nd, the Volunteer Center, in partnership with the American Democracy Project and the Honors Program, launched the 2nd Annual Read Across America Day Event in honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday. Read Across America Day is a national event that celebrates the joy of reading on the birthday of beloved children's author, Dr. Seuss. Motivating children to read is an important factor in student achievement and creating lifelong successful readers. Research has shown that children who are motivated and spend more time reading, do better in school.
After the positive feedback from last year's inaugural Read Across America event, it was decided to continue the program a second year. This year approximately 500 pre-k to 2nd grade students gathered in the UNF Robinson Theatre with over 50 UNF student volunteers who read to the kids and spread the word that reading is cool! During the week prior to the event, the UNF volunteers were required to attend an orientation session, where they were trained in best practices for reading to and interacting with children by professors from UNF's College of Education and Human Services.
The event included not only reading circles led by the UNF volunteers, but also guest appearances from Cat in the Hat and Thing 1 and Thing 2. UNF professor Marcia Ladendorff dressed as the Cat in the Hat as she read the book that her costume was inspired by. Also, a short Dr. Seuss film was shown and the UNF Swoop Squad brought ten kids on stage and taught them how to swoop!
After the event the Volunteer Center thanked the volunteers with a free lunch complete with green eggs and ham! In addition to its goals of raising student awareness about public and international affairs, and promoting student political participation, the ADP seeks to encourage civic and community engagement among students.
For more information about the American Democracy Project at UNF please visit our website.
On February 9th the Meet the Mayoral Candidates forum was held at the UNF University Center. During this event, UNF students as well as JCCI Forward members had an opportunity to ask the candidates questions as they rotated in a "speed dating" style between each candidate's assigned tables. Department of Political Science Chair, Dr. Matt Corrigan, and Charter Review Commission Chair, Wyman Duggan, kicked off the event by explaining the role of the mayor in a consolidated government, and providing insights on the work that is being done to revamp Jacksonville's charter. At the tables, each of the candidates first answered the question, "Why do you want to be the Mayor of Jacksonville during these difficult times?" The candidates that were present included: Robert Hutcherson, Warren Lee, Audrey Moran, and Brenda White. Mike Hogan and Kevin Hyde were not in attendance due to City Council commitments. The format of the event allowed for a high level of interaction between the participants and the candidates.
In Fall 2010, Dr. Saurabh Gupta provided his students with a unique TLO experience that was centered on building e-Textbooks for students in under-developed countries who cannot afford paper-based textbooks. The development of the textbook was targeted at providing students with a better value for cost. The textbook created as a part of this project was "E-Business Strategy," of which Dr. Gupta is one of the co-editors. The project also allowed students to explore the new world of electronic publishing and e-book readers, which are becoming increasingly important in the professional business environment. It also provided opportunities for publishing and presenting at conferences.
In small groups the students discussed and suggested improvements in the quality of assigned chapters in the e-business strategy text. The books will be released under creative commons license. This provided an opportunity for students to publish (with their names as contributors), and gave them an opportunity to make a significant contribution to a publication. By the end of the project, six chapters were written by the student groups. These are currently in pre-production evaluation by the Global text group. In addition, a conference paper written by three students regarding the use of e-book readers (such as the Amazon Kindle) has been accepted for presentation at the Southern Association of Information Systems conference to be held in Atlanta in March. The paper titled "Would Students Benefit from Using eBook eReaders in Academic Programs?" will also be published in the proceedings of the conference.
Dr. Oliver Schnusenberg and Dr. Pieter de Jong led a group of eight finance and international business students on a TLO to Washington, DC in Spring 2009, which gave them the opportunity to experience first-hand how international transactions are regulated by the government. The objectives of this TLO were to provide students with an understanding of different international organizations and their operations involved in international business and finance; to illustrate the job opportunities available in international business and finance in the nation's capital; and to reinforce an understanding of the importance of international business and finance.
The various agencies that were visited during this trip were the International Monetary Fund, Goldman Sachs, the Organization of American States, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the CFP Board, the Ex-Im Bank, World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, and the United Nations. The planned visits were structured to allow students to obtain a better understanding of how government, semi-private, and private agencies facilitate international business, and in particular, international finance. At the end of the trip the students gave a presentation to the IB Society and FIS about the different organizations they visited. In an evaluation completed after the TLO, one of the students wrote, "Personally, this trip has been a transformational experience for me. Now, I have a better knowledge of these different organizations. It has broadened my horizons in so many ways, giving me a different perspective of the world."
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Apologies if this has been addressed elsewhere. I have had a look and can't find it.
Do product types work with admin profiles?
Here's what I did.
1. Create a custom product type as normal.
2. Realise that a user other than superuser can't edit that product type because product_custom.php is no registered as an admin page.
3. So, I thought I'd just make an admin page for it ( as there is one for product.php)
4. That was fine.
5. But when I try and check/uncheck it in an admin profile it has no effect.
6. When I enter the row into the admin_pages_to_profiles table then the user can use the custom product. So it all works fine except the checking and uncheckng of that particular page but relies on putting the row in by hand.
However, I went back and see that the same thing happens if I use, for example, product_music.
Once again is there something I am missing?


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1 more events today...
Wednesday, May 23Today's Hours:
Courier Article by Pam Locker
Sunday, April 26, 2006
Love, Death Are Themes In Recent Favorite Novels
The Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library system has declared 2006 the Year of the Reader. Each month the library is focusing on a variety of well-known authors - adult, young adult and juvenile - with bookmarks and displays of their books at all library locations.
Authors for April include Charlotte Bronte, the revered author of "Jane Eyre," the penultimate gothic romance. A new novel titled "The Bronte Project" caught my eye and turned out to be so good that I ended up on a fiction kick.
So today I'm sharing some recent novels that I have enjoyed. For the descriptive summaries, I am largely indebted to the library's online catalog at www.evpl.org.
The Bronte Project: A Novel of Passion, Desire, and Good PR by Jennifer Vandever (Shaye Areheart Books, 2005).
Abandoned by her fiance and overshadowed in academia by a woman with a talent for self-promotion, a mild-mannered Bronte scholar finds herself beginning to question everything from her love life to her life's work. My take: Funny sendup of academia by a first-time novelist and screenwriter with talent.
Love and Other Impossible Pursuits by Ayelet Waldman (Doubleday, 2006).
After a recently married lawyer's newborn daughter dies, her recovery is complicated by problems with her precocious preschool-age stepson and his competitive obstetrician mom. My take: Sensitive and bittersweet exploration of learning to live and love again.
Missing Mom by Joyce Carol Oates (HarperCollins, 2005).
In the aftermath of her mother's murder, a 31-year-old newspaper reporter experiences a tumultuous year of mourning. My take: The incomparable Oates, who recently lost her own mother, shares her grief through this feisty young heroine.
The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier (Pantheon, 2006).
An afterlife world is inhabited by the recently departed as long as they remain in the memories of the living, while on Earth a virus has wiped out most of the population, and a young woman struggles to survive at an Antarctic research station. My take: Mesmerizing - the best novel I've read in years.
Truth and Consequences by Alison Lurie (Viking, 2005).
A university administrator is dismayed when her back pain-plagued husband falls for a beautiful writer who recently joined the faculty. My take: Witty observations on love, marriage and remarriage.
The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster (Henry Holt, 2006).
When a retired life insurance salesman moves to Brooklyn to find anonymity and solitude, a chance meeting with his long-lost nephew sets change in motion. My take: I'm glad a customer recommended this talented author. He takes ordinary life and makes it extraordinary.
The Good Life by Jay McInerney (Knopf, 2006).
In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, a group of privileged New Yorkers are led to reassess their lives and to become better people. My take: THE 9/11 novel to read and McInerney's best in years.
Ruins of California by Martha Sherrill (Penguin, 2006).
Divided between the working-class stability of her mother's immigrant family in Los Angeles and her brilliant father's sophisticated life in San Francisco, a young woman seeks to achieve a balance during the course of the turbulent 1970s. My take: Enthralling. Sherrill actually began this as a memoir but decided that her father's story was too hot to handle, so wrote it as fiction instead.
The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis (Little, Brown & Co., 2006).
A 12-year-old girl with the power to bring the dead back to life possesses an extraordinary gift that irrevocably shapes her own life, the lives of her two friends and their community. My take: A wonderfully ethereal novel that has gotten a lot of buzz.
Arthur and George by Julian Barnes (Knopf, 2006).
This cleverly constructed work based on historical facts brings together Arthur, who is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame, and George, an obscure Anglo-Indian solicitor, who is accused of a trumped-up, wretched crime. My take: My friend Becky recommended this, but it is on my list of must-reads.
Pam Locker is a librarian with the Evansville-Vanderburgh Public Library. The opinions expressed in this column are personal and do not reflect policies or official recommendations of EVPL.


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GRAETTINGER - Funeral services for Alvin M. Dalen, 82, of Graettinger will be held at 10:30 a.m., Monday, July 22 at Bethel Lutheran Church in Graettinger. Interment with full military honors will be held at Valley View Cemetery, Graettinger. He died on Thursday, July 18, 2013 at the Good Samaritan Society in Estherville.
Visitation will be held from 4-7 p.m., Sunday, July 21 at the church in Graettinger.
Alvin M. Dalen the son of Ingvald and Jeanetta (Malmanger) Dalen was born April 21, 1931 on a farm near Graettinger. He received his education in country schools. Alvin served in the United States Army during the Korean Conflict. Following his military service, Alvin returned home and started working at the Estherville Creamery and that is where he met Bonnie.
Article Photos
Alvin M. Dalen
On April 2, 1966, he was united in marriage to Bonnie Kleine in Ceylon, Minn. The couple made their home in Estherville and Alvin worked for the Estherville Creamery, City of Estherville and Homestead Housing. Over the years, Alvin enjoyed doing yard work, mowing and helping area farmers. Alvin also enjoyed spending time with family, golfing and fishing.
He was a member of Bethel Lutheran Church in Graettinger.
Left to cherish Alvin's memory are his wife, Bonnie; daughters, Traci Akridge; Jill Heinrichs and her husband, Pete all of Graettinger; grandchildren, Miles Heady; Destiny Akridge; Annika Akridge; Emma Heinrichs; Eric Heinrichs; Jayda Wegner and his sister, Agnes Aanonson of Rifle, Colo.
He has been preceded in death by his parents, two infant daughters, five brothers, Leslie, Einer, Irven, Kenny, Arnold and sister, Clara and two infant sisters.
Memorials may be given to Alzheimer's Research or the Cancer Society.


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- Home»
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- Match Report: Q3 - Auckland Aces vs Hampshire
Match Report
Oct 12
08:10pm IST
CLT20 Desk in Mumbai
Match Report: Q3 - Auckland Aces vs Hampshire
Stellar Mahmood helps Aces qualify for main event
Azhar Mahmood's sensational all-round performance was the highlight of the Auckland Aces' eight-wicket win against Hampshire in the third qualifying match of the Karbonn Champions League T20 2012. After putting their opponents in to bat, the Auckland Aces did very well to restrict them to 121 for eight, thanks to Azhar Mahmood's five-wicket haul; and then they got the required runs in 14.3 overs to register a resounding win. With this victory, the Auckland Aces confirmed their passage to the main event of CLT20 2012.
Set to chase a modest 122, the Auckland Aces opening pair of Martin Guptill and Lou Vincent built the platform with a quick fire 49-run partnership. Though the pair scored only 15 runs in the first three overs, they signaled their intentions to get done with the run-chase quickly when they got stuck into Kabir Ali and Dimitri Mascarenhas in the fourth and fifth overs. While Guptill hit Ali for two boundaries and a six in the fourth over, Vincent hit Mascarenhas for three boundaries in the fifth.
With both batsmen middling the ball well, Hampshire earned a wicket from unlikely quarters; Vincent (19) powered a wide delivery from Chris Wood, but Jimmy Adams fielding at short cover pulled off a sharp catch to end what was shaping to be a dangerous innings. Guptill would be dismissed subsequently for 38. The 26-year-old – who has been in stupendous form recently – enjoyed his time in the middle as he hit three boundaries and two sixes in his 31-ball innings. But he miscued an attempted lofted on-drive and holed out to Kabir Ali patrolling the long-on boundary.
Though Guptill played an important innings, and an entertaining one too, his knock would be overshadowed by Azhar Mahmood's brilliance. The 37-year-old, who was sensational with the ball earlier in the afternoon, sent the Hampshire bowlers on a leather hunt and changed the match into a no-contest; he hit five boundaries to go with his four towering sixes during his unbeaten 55 (off 31 balls) and helped his team race to the finish line. Anaru Kitchen was unbeaten on six when Mahmood cut Glenn Maxwell for a boundary through point to score the winning runs.
For Hampshire, all the bowlers barring Shahid Afridi (1-23) came in for a bit of a stick. Chris Wood was the only other wicket-taker for the English
Twenty20 champions.
Earlier in the afternoon, Azhar Mahmood broke the backbone of the Hampshire line-up with a five-wicket haul. Though opener Michael Carberry held one end firm, the batsmen at the other end struggled to cope with the tennis ball bounce and deviation the pitch offered.
Mahmood was introduced into the attack in the fourth over and was welcomed into the attack with a huge six over long-on. But the former Pakistan all-rounder would have the last laugh as he would pick up the wickets of opener James Vince and Jimmy Adams in the same over. He struck a big blow in his following over when he dismissed the dangerous Shahid Afridi for a duck. He also dismissed Liam Dawson and Mascarenhas to finish with his best figures in Twenty20 cricket.
Ronnie Hira (2-25) and Michael Bates (1-27) accounted for the remaining three wickets, while Andre Adams and Kyle Mills kept things quiet in their respective four-over spells.
That the Hampshire batsmen struggled for momentum can be established from the fact that they scored less than six runs an over in 11 of their twenty overs. The biggest partnership of the innings was the 36-run stand for the fourth wicket between Sean Ervine and Carberry. The sixth wicket association of Liam Dawson and Carberry was worth 31 runs. Hampshire would eventually finish their allotted twenty overs at 121 for eight – at least 30 runs short of what should have been the par score in the given conditions.
Brief Scores: Hampshire 121-8 in 20 overs (Michael Carberry 65, Azhar Mahmood 5-24, Ronnie Hira 2-25) lost to Auckland Aces 123-2 in 14.3 overs
(Martin Guptill 38, Azhar Mahmood 55*, Shahid Afridi 1-23)
Man of the Match: Azhar Mahmood, for his match-winning all-round performance of 5/24 and 55* (31 balls)


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The Gunners brought in Spanish left back Nacho Monreal from Malaga in a late deal worth around 8 million pounds, following an injury to Kieran Gibbs that will see him sidelined for up to six weeks.
The North London outfit was also heavily linked with Barcelona forward David Villa and West Ham midfielder Mohamed Diame throughout the window, though moves for those players never materialized.
Wenger admitted that one other final transfer was near completion, though he did not name any names, and he insisted it was not a lack of money that scuppered the signing.
"We were close to one more signature," Wenger told reporters. "It did not happen because of the desire of the clubs to sell or not sell. It is only linked with that.
"It was not a money problem, it was more a desire from other clubs to keep their players."
Wenger has declared himself "delighted" with the capture of Monreal, and has now stressed that, although the Gunners can always improve, his side has enough ability and quality.
"I believe that we have top quality in our squad and that is what we want to show until the end of the season," Wenger said. "We have some aspects of our game that we need to improve and how active we will be in the market in the summer will be decided by how well we do now until the end of the season."


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Half Moon-Shaped Stool With Three Legs
This stool was made of poplar in Shandong Province right around the middle of the 20th century. Obviously what is most appealing in this stool is its architecture. The half moon seats rest on only three legs. It is architecturally and sculpturally a great design, and it almost suggests a sense of humor on the part of the person who made it. I can almost hear the person speaking to them self "A half seat deserves no more than three legs." Of course, the person constructing the stool would have said it in Chinese! This stool is a successful whimsical design. Useful too.
Wood: Poplar
Province: Shangdong
Dimensions: 21" x 14" x 6"
Price: $155


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Life's like a box of chocolates & there's gotta be some gelt in it too! ~ Chocolategelt.com Since 2003
At ChocolateGelt.com
you can buy chocolate gelt and a variety of Passover
supplies. Click Here to find great bulk deals!
It (Purim fundraiser) went well and everyone loved the boxes - not a single complaint this year
about the contents, which was a first. So we will be in touch with you MUCH
EARLIER next year, ok? Ple...
- Wholesale
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Map - Testimonials


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Aisle reflections
Tammy M. Anderson 11/1/2012 6:41:37 PMOutstanding comp. tones pov and capture. Beautiful! #1495916
Colette M. Metcalf 11/1/2012 7:26:55 PMThis is beautiful!!! #10400258
Connie J. Bagot 11/2/2012 4:29:29 AMLove the rich wood tones and the glossy reflections---beautifully captured! #10400548
Carol Flisak 11/2/2012 7:28:07 AMBeautiful image, Lindley... excellent pov, lines, and contrast of the warm detailed wood to the reflection! #10400748
Leslie McLain 11/2/2012 8:43:58 AMBeautiful capture and reflections, Lindley. #10400853
Ann Lyssenko 11/2/2012 6:59:46 PMWonderful composition and reflection as you walk the viewer down the aisle. Ann #10401552
Ellen Hodges 11/4/2012 5:15:52 PMLooks very cool, Lindley!!!! #10404178
St. Josaphat's Basilica in Milwaukee, WI
Exif: F Number: 22.6, ExposureTime: 2074943/100000 seconds, ISO: 100, FocalLength: 35.00 mm, Model: Canon EOS 40D
Uploaded on 11/1/2012 6:23:45 PM
Camera: Canon EOS 40D Digital SLR
Copyright for this gallery photo belongs solely to Lindley Johnson. Images may not be copied, downloaded, or used in any way without the expressed, written permission of the photographer.
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At the age of 101, Horsham's Fanny Reinheimer has seen more than most people could ever dream.
She will celebrate her 102nd birthday tomorrow but with good health and a sunny disposition, she hopes to see much more of life.
"My secret in life is to be content and happy with your lot it doesn't matter if you are rich or poor," she said.
"I'm selfish I want to live longer."
Mrs Reinheimer, who has five children, said she spent 38 years living on a farm at Kalkee before moving to Horsham.
She lived on her own in Horsham for 20 years after her husband Keith died before moving to Sunnyside Lutheran Retirement Village two years ago.
She said she took part in everything she could at the village.
"I like all the activities and I do what I can and join in," she said.
"I have been busy and happy all my life.
"I am very happy here."
Mrs Reinheimer said her favourite things in life were music, colour, flowers and friendships.
She said she was fortunate to be in good health.
"I could say I'm fit and at my age that's rather wonderful," she said.
"I had one operation on my hip at 84 and a second one at 91. I flew through them."
Mrs Reinheimer said she had a big party to celebrate her 100th birthday but tomorrow would be a more relaxed affair.
She said her five children would each come and visit her at different times on the day.
Mrs Reinheimer featured in the Mail-Times' special publication 'Century of Smiles' in 2008.


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Gymnastics Posts Outstanding Score at Auburn
Associate SID
AUBURN, Ala. - The sixth-ranked LSU gymnastics team tallied the highest team total in school history in a meet at Auburn with a 196.975, but it was not enough to overcome No. 14 Auburn's school-record 197.175 Friday night in Auburn Arena.
The 196.975 tops LSU's previous high score of 196.350 set March 1, 1997 at Auburn.
LSU (8-3, 4-2 SEC) earned a 49.550 on vault, which is tied for the third-best vault total in school history as five Tigers tied or set new career highs. LSU also hit a 49.550 on vault against Centenary on March 18, 2005.
The Tigers scored a 49.350 on floor, 49.175 on bars and a 48.900 on beam to finish with the 196.975.
Auburn improved to 3-7 overall and 3-4 against SEC competition after its program-best performance.
"We fought hard, but we made too many mistakes," LSU head coach D-D Breaux said. "Auburn had a great meet, but we did not do what we needed to do on beam. I'm pleased with the other events, but we have to put together a solid four events to be the team we want to be at the end of the season."
Both teams started strong as LSU trailed Auburn after one rotation, 49.275-49.175. Sarie Morrison anchored for the Tigers on bars, and she set a career high with a 9.95 to tie for the title. LSU also counted a 9.85 from Rheagan Courville, 9.825 by Randii Wyrick, 9.80 by Kaleigh Dickson and a 9.75 by Britney Ranzy.
After the stellar 49.550 on vault LSU took the lead over Auburn, 98.725-98.550. Randi Lau, Maliah Mathis and Britney Taylor all shattered their career highs with a 9.925 to tie for the event title, while Dickson and Jessica Savona equaled their respective career bests with a 9.875. Courville anchored the event with a 9.90, the fourth 9.9 or higher in the event for the Tigers.
LSU maintained the lead after three rotations, 148.075-147.725, with a 49.350 on floor. Courville and Mathis tied for the team high with 9.90s, and Lloimincia Hall anchored with a 9.875. Britney Taylor posted a career-high tying 9.85, and Jessie Jordan and Savona both recorded a 9.825.
In the fourth and final rotation, LSU scored a 48.900 on beam while Auburn earned a 49.450 on floor to finish the meet on top. Dickson tied her career mark on beam with a 9.85 to lead the team, and LSU also counted a 9.825 from Courville, 9.80 from Hall, 9.75 from Jordan and a 9.675 from Ericka Garcia.
"We are ready to get back home in front of our great fans and perform well against some good teams in Georgia and Alabama the next two weeks," Breaux said.
LSU returns home next week to face No. 8 Georgia in a huge SEC showdown. The meet will begin at 7 p.m. CT on March 1 inside the Maravich Center. The Tigers will stay at home the following week on March 8 to play host to Alabama in the Sixth Annual Etta James Memorial Meet.
Tickets are still available to both the Georgia and Alabama meets by visiting www.LSUtix.net.
1. Auburn 197.175 (VT - 49.275, UB - 49.275, BB - 49.175, FX - 49.450)
Individual (Includes first place and all LSU competitors)
All-Around - 1. Caitlin Atkinson (Auburn) 39.550, t2. Rheagan Courville 39.475
Vault - t1. Randi Lau 9.925, t1. Maliah Mathis 9.925, t1. Britney Taylor 9.925, t1. Brianna Guy (Auburn), t5. Rheagan Courville 9.90, t7. Kaleigh Dickson 9.875, t7. Jessica Savona 9.875
Bars - t1. Sarie Morrison 9.95, t1. Petrina Yokay (Auburn) 9.95, 5. Rheagan Courville 9.85, 6. Randii Wyrick 9.825, t7. Kaleigh Dickson 9.80, 9. Britney Ranzy 9.75, 11. Jessie Jordan 9.675
Beam - 1. Megan Walker (Auburn) 9.875, 2. Kaleigh Dickson 9.85, t3. Rheagan Courville 9.825, 8. Lloimincia Hall 9.80, 9. Jessie Jordan 9.75, 11. Ericka Garcia 9.675, 12. Britney Ranzy 8.80
Floor - t1. Caitlin Atkinson (Auburn) 9.925, t1. Brianna Guy (Auburn) 9.925, t3. Rheagan Courville 9.90, t3. Maliah Mathis 9.90, 6. Lloimincia Hall 9.875, t7. Britney Taylor 9.85, t10. Jessie Jordan 9.825, t10. Jessica Savona 9.825


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text:
Who does NOT use -- in their scripts, if they're safety conscious?
rm -i -- *
Problem solved?
Normal programs should stop processing options after a (standalone) "--" and take everything following it as regular parameters. getopt and similar libraries handle this automatically.
I really wouldn't class the "use of wildcards" as a security risk - the security risk is the developer that doesn't know what he's doing.
Would command line handling be a security risk, if someone would add a --superuser-rm option to his code and execute "rm -rf
drop tables *
# rm -rf *.*
(I actually saw a Windows-centric guy do that once as root while he was learning Linux. The look of horror on his face as the entire box began to delete itself was hilarious...)
Depends on the version of Unix that you're using. There a lot of non GNU variants of rm that will happily resolve
Most wouldn't run it in / , but rather in some odd subdirectory, in which case it will stumble across "..", work its way up, then find "." - whereupon most *nixes will immediately devour
I think they finally fixed this behavior in recent distro releases, but the incident in question happened in 2006-ish; can't recall exactly if it was an RHEL 2.x box or an older FreeBSD one, but it was hella fun to watch.
Oh, thought of another one, just to mess with other admins:
# chattr +i
Oh, thought of another one, just to mess with other admins:
# chattr +i
Wouldn't notice until kernel upgrade time:
$ ls -d
Where did you learn about that ?
RTFM[anpages.] It's literally in the system documentation. Granted, not all commands have such an option. Knowing which do is your responsibility. Arguably, all commands should have such an option.
Back in the (iirc) bsd 4.2 days, su was a suid shell script - at least on the machines I was using at the time.
Setup a symlink to su called -i
$ -i
# rm -- -i
There was a security bug handling suid shell scripts where the user was changed and then the #! interpreter was run, i.e.
and you got an interactive root shell
Was very informative when the 'script kiddies' (although I don't recall that term existing in those days) had symlinks called -i in their home directory that they didn't know how to delete
Are you running commands, with root on stuff you don't know where it comes from ?
If you absolutely have to go run the query in the folder into which someone has upload/file creation, then at least use
This is not an issue if you work recursively on the directory holding whatever they want, which should cover most of the situations. A bad admin can run queries that are as dangerous or worst pretty fast!
Always be cautious when running someone else shell script, that's even m
Always be cautious when running someone else shell script, that's even more dangerous..
If you aren't capable of auditing an untrusted-sourced script before you run/use it, then don't run it or use it.
I grab (cut+paste) script bits from online when I'm lazy, but I always take the time to audit the chunk of text, and insure that it doesn't do anything dumb before I use/incorporate it. Doing this gives me two benefits: First, I can double-plus insure that it doesn't do anything I don't want it to, and second, I learn a bit about the person who wrote it (and in some cases, I discover a
About as I would expect. A fellow admin and I were recently talking about the disown command and how after more than a decade on the job we are still finding out about commands that have existed since we were kids running around on the playground.
Most admins find out about -- after they run into a situation where they accidentally created a file with a name like "-f" go ahead, try and delete a file named "-f" any other way.
It works in many unix commands, actually "--" is a very common "end of options" signa
Most admins find out about -- after they run into a situation where they accidentally created a file with a name like "-f" go ahead, try and delete a file named "-f" any other way.
Is the most dead-simple way of doing it and is portable to non-gnu-based systems, although even BSD has the double-dash option nowadays.
And there is always the old standby of insulating the operation from bash command line expansion:
perl -e 'unlink "-f";'
You could also, within a minute or so, write and compile a literally two-line C program to remove it. I don't understand the mystery.
#include <unistd.h>
int main() { unlink("-f"); }
Can't speak for the OP, but I once accidentally created a file name '-r'. Trying to remove it eventually led me to discover '--', but I don't expect most people to know about it.
Sorry, if that appears harsh - but sometimes it pays to read manuals and try and understand what you're doing and how the stuff works.
I don't exactly remember when I learnt it first - but I DID already know when I also got told about it during my CS BSc degree course (probably 1st or 2nd year - which would place it about 1998-2000).
If you need to code stuff "securely", you need to understand how stuff works -- I don't think of myself as a particularly apt security coder or hacker - I mainly specialise on in
That is B.S.
If someone reads that, they do not think security. They think it is an escape to deal with files that start with - and that is where they file it in their head. You also have to understand about '*' and think about how the two would work together.
This is exactly why computer code is insecure.
I did not say purely that reading about -- should tell you about security alone. IIRC my original incident with -- was a colleague setting me a teaser on trying to find out how to delete a file called '-f'; and me first having to figure out, that 'rm ??' reads like delete all files with two character filenames (of which there was only the '-f' file), but not seeing that the ?? actually gets expanded to all the two character filenames by the shell; rm never sees the '??' but instead only sees the filenames -
Uh, it's only been around since the mid-90s if not earlier.
This "--" is only for some commands that decide to implement it. It basically means "nothing after this is an argument", and it's common with GNU utilities (probably the default) but is more rare in other tools and Unix variants.
So why would the expected method not be the default? This is exactly how security problems are born.
While that is indeed the solution, it is also true that it is too easy to forget. Perhaps one could modify all commands to require the use of the "--" separator, or to warn if it's not present, at least if some environment variable is set. That could be very helpful for people trying to write more secure code.
"the security risk is the developer that doesn't know what he's doing."
Not the hacker who does know what he is doing.
Nop, you can not just use --. because many commands do not understand --
Here is an article by dwheeler (a frequent slashdotter; often cited for his technique countering the trusting trust problem) about filenames.
http://www.dwheeler.com/essays... [dwheeler.com]
I believe he is mostly right. We should move to file systems that do not allow "stupid" names and be done with it.
Nop, you can not just use --. because many commands do not understand --
"--" is understood by getopt(), a library function to parse command line options. getopt() can simply print a warning out stderr when it's called and comes across un-escaped operatnds.
Bonus points if it defaults to printing errors when it's run in a non-TTY environment (e.g., shell script).
Extra credit for programs like rm that pre-scan their arguments to see if they match files - so if you passed in "-r" in the option area without a --
The real bug here is the same as in SQL injection attacks: A failure to safely distinguish between program and data!
I.e. when doing chown usr:grp *.php, the wildcard globbing should escape any special letters, particularly including white space and wild card characters.
This is the same idea as when you use prepare(... ?,?) on any sql statement with replaceable parameters, then execute() with the relevant dynamic values.
posting the answer to this useless story that was posted to FD
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 12:55:42 -0700
From: Michal Zalewski
> We wanted to inform all major *nix distributions via our responsible
> disclosure policy about this problem before posting it
I'm not sure how to put it mildly, but I think you might have been
scooped on this some 1-2 decades ago...
Off the top of my head, there's a rant about this behavior in "The
Unix-Haters Handbook", and there are several highly detailed articles
by David Wheeler published over the years (e.g.,
Yup, it's a counterintuitive behavior that leads to security problems.
The odds of changing the semantics at this point are very slim. Other
operating systems have their own idiosyncrasies in this area - for
example, Windows it not a lot better with parameter splitting and
special filenames.
It may be counter-intuitive for people that have very little experience with a UNIX commandline. All others did run in the issue at some time that they could create, but not easily delete a filename "-v" or the like. But people with very little UNIX commandline experience have zero business writing security critical software that uses the commandline tools!
This is a complete non-issue. Incompetent people will usually screw security up and this is just one of the countless ways to do it.
I just want to state the UNIX does not behave like that, it's GNU who does.
Is the wildcard expanded by the shell in PowerShell?
No. This class of attacks will not work against PowerShell (nor for plain old DOS for that matter). The problem is the combination of text-centric shell scripting and shell expanded wildcards.
Really, this is well-known, non-surprising and will not happen to anybody with a security mind-set. Of course it will happen in practice. But there are quite a few other variants of code injection (which this basically is) that the same people will get wrong. Complete input sanitisation is mandatory if you need security. I mean, even very early Perl-based CGI mechanisms added taint-checking specifically for things like this. If people cannot be bothered to find out how to pass parameters from an untrusted source securely, then they cannot be bothered to write secure software.
The fix is not to change the commands. The fix is to exchange people that mess things this elementary up against people that actually understand security. Sorry, you cannot have developers that are cheap and competent at the same time and even less so when security is important.
Wake up. Not everyone is a developer. Not everyone has even 2 minutes of unix philosophy.
My Users are scientists, and they get to trash their home space here. These types of issues are most likely to happen when they are writing a script and it makes files for what should have been options.
My job isn't to teach them unix, it's to keep them happy and productive. They make mistakes, I clean them up and help them through the frustration of things going wrong.
I remember reading about this in the 1991 release of "Practical Internet and Unix Security," from O'Reilly back in 1991. I'm pretty sure they even gave examples. They also laid out a number of suggestions to mitigate risk, including not specifying the current path, ".", in the root user's path so they must explicitly type the location of an executable script, and so on.
They also pointed out that some well-behaved shells eliminate certain ease-of-use-but-exploitable features when it detects that a privileged user is running it, and even on systems where that's not the standard, the default
It's really hard to secure shell accounts on systems, no matter how you try. Is this article just proof that the current generation of unix admins is rediscovering this? Should I be shaking my fist and telling the kids to get off my lawn? This was old news 2 over decades ago.
I understand why this works and I understand the need to sanitize user input, but this is dumb. Even if there are workarounds. It's obvious what the intent of "tar cf archive.tar *" is suppose to be, it shouldn't be treating file names as additional arguments. Anyone actively using this "feature" for anything legitimate is dumb too.
This seems very similar to the whole "we need some other language than C" argument. Sure, you *can* make secure code with zero overflow vulnerabilities, but damn near all sof
It's obvious what the intent of "tar cf archive.tar *" is suppose to be, it shouldn't be treating file names as additional arguments
The problem is that the * expansion is done by the shell, and the shell doesn't know the difference between file names and arguments.
no the problem is with gnu tar...
it sees cf file file file --whatever
and it usese --whatever as option
on unix (not linux) it also sees cf file file --whatever
and tries to put the file "--whatever" into the tar archive.
linux (gnu) broke stuff which worked for ages in unix world
The problem is that the * expansion is done by the shell, and the shell doesn't know the difference between file names and arguments.
But it could very easily make them explicit filenames by prefixing them with
The problem is until we are willing to essentially throw everything out, baby bath water and all, we can't really fix it.
Take the C argument. The issue is really again one of input validation, buffer over flows happen ultimately because of of problems with input validation. Yes a language that enforces bounds checking everywhere and takes memory management out of the hands of the programer solves the specific problem of the buffer overflow; it does not make it much more secure though in the grand scheme o
Systems where user data can accidentally get mixed in control commands are dangerous. In addition to this shell trick, another example would be HTML, where you have to be careful to not let raw HTML data through your guestbook messages so that visitors can't inject HTML into the messages.
With competent and careful system administrators you can avoid problems, but it's still kind of a fragile design in my opinion.
Er.. most of the exploits are only possible if one is root and/or the directory is writable for some other user (e.g. leon in this case).
Since one is root, one can do anything anyway so why bother with all this misdirection? If someone leaves world writable directories lying around (especially without the sticky bit set), then they deserve everything they get. Or is this some kind of "trap the (completely) unwary sysadmin" wake up call? If I see some strange named file (especially if I know I didn't put it there) I would investigate very, very carefully what is going on. I can't be alone in this - surely?
Since one is root, one can do anything anyway so why bother with all this misdirection?
Because you can trick a more privileged user into executing commands for you by writing files into your own folder. Most the examples given were of admin housekeeping tasks run against a user writeable folder.
Er.. most of the exploits are only possible if one is root and/or the directory is writable for some other user (e.g. leon in this case).
Since one is root, one can do anything anyway so why bother with all this misdirection? If someone leaves world writable directories lying around (especially without the sticky bit set), then they deserve everything they get. Or is this some kind of "trap the (completely) unwary sysadmin" wake up call? If I see some strange named file (especially if I know I didn't put it there) I would investigate very, very carefully what is going on. I can't be alone in this - surely?
The point is that this can be used to trick a root user into issuing what he believes is a safe command. The combination of the text-reinterpreting shell and specially crafted file names combines into a seemingly innocent command ending up allowing the attacker (the creator of the specially crafted file) root access on the system.
It doesn't help that some (on the surface) idempotent commands like find packs a number of dangerous options that can be used to execute shell scripts, commands or remove files.
Unpacking 'shar' archives via 'sh' considered dangerous.
This is because the linux commands do not respect what the manual says:
man rm...
rm [OPTION]... FILE...
but in realitiy it's rather:
rm [OTION|FILE]...
whereas on other unix systems it works as expected, first the options, then the arguments
rm *
rm: DIR1 directory
rm *
rm: DIR1 directory
So screw the GNU tools, they mess things up for the "old unix sysadmins"
Here is a nice linux/unix trap:
y="rm z"
f=$x $y
So you expect f to contain: a rm z
not really...
z: No such file or directory
so the rm actually was executed
a=$x is an environment variable attribution, so $y becomes an executed command...
And that one works on any unix/linux
Recently patched in chkrootkit (CVE-2014-0476)
This is because the linux commands do not respect what the manual says:
man rm...
rm [OPTION]... FILE...
but in realitiy it's rather:
rm [OTION|FILE]...
And what happens if the malicious filename is first in the list?
If computers were conceived to execute user commands, then why is a command for matching file and dictionary names returning them in such a form that they become executable parameters, when they could easily be explicit filenames by adding
Is making what should be basic and safe housekeeping functions like chmod * and tar * dangerous really something you actually want in Linux?
Let me check my dictionary for the defintion of idiot:
1. n: A user, especially super user, who uses * as an agument without first checking to see what * expands into.
2. n: A user who leaves his directories world writeable so others can put random garbage in them.
The one line summary for this story is bad things happen to people who use a command without knowing what the command does.
Right, so an admin tarballing the content of a user's folder is an idiot because he didn't check to make sure the shell he was using wouldn't pass any of the file names as executable attributes instead of, you know, file names?
The one line summary for this story is bad things happen to people who use a command without knowing what the command does.
The definition of the unix wildcard when used in the shell is:
"The character * is a wildcard and matches zero or more character(s) in a file (or directory) name."
Note that the definition doesn't include anything about translate filenames into other kinds of executable parameters.
Probably because anybody who's used the various Bourne-style shells for a while
considers it a feature, not a bug. This is a case where the Principle of Least
Surprise comes up with different answers for novice users and for experts:
"What? A * can expand into an unintended command argument?" "Yeah, what *else*
would it do - the shell is just globbing, it doesn't know for sure what the
command will do with the parameter".
Who asked for this feature? Can anyone give me a legitimate use case for "tar cf archive.tar *" evaluating as
tar cf archive.tar admin.php ado.php --checkpoint=1 "--checkpoint-action=exec=sh shell.sh"
instead of
tar cf archive.tar "./admin.php" "./ado.php" "./--checkpoint=1" "./--checkpoint-action=exec=sh shell.sh"
Back in '83, a friend challenged me to remove a file name "-rf *, without causing collateral damage.
Article should be called 'Exploiting wildcards on GNU'.
All of the examples in the original document work because GNU software can intersperse options and filenames freely. None of those exploits would work in BSD userland, for example.
I am more bored than you could ever possibly be. Go back to work.


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Experiment of The Month
Reconstruction of a Musical Tone
Musical instruments differ from on another. The ear can distinguish the sound of one instrument from another even when they are playing the same musical note. The difference is in the overtones; the frequencies present in addition to the frequency of the fundamental tone being played.
Music majors at Millersville develop their ability to produce pleasing or evocative tone quality with their instruments. Music majors are required to take a one-semester musical acoustics course in the Physics Department. Among other things, in this course they learn to think of tone quality in a new way. They are able to see the overtones of their own playing in a visual representation, and to see the effect of variations in their technique.
From a scientific point of view this exercise is interesting because it spans a large segment of what scientists do. Not only do we analyze a sound to discover its most important components. We also use that information to synthesize a tone which is recognizably the same as the original sound. Deconstruction is only the first half the story. Reconstruction is the final half; it provides evidence that we really understand the nature of the sound we hear.
In the beginning, we used oscilloscopes to analyze musical tones, but most of our analysis is now done with software called CoolEdit2000. A demonstration version is available for free at http://www.syntrillium.com/cooledit/index.html
In a PC with a sound card, the software allows recording, analysis, and production of sound. An example of the process uses an ancient musical tool called a tuning fork. (Back in the days when telephones had dials, tuning forks were the frequency standards used to tune pianos.)
Tuning forks were intended to produce nearly pure tones, but they have significant overtones and thus a distinct tone quality. The number of important overtones is small compared to musical instruments. This fact makes it easier to use CoolEdit to construct a replica of a tuning fork sound.
The tuning fork is tapped and the sound recorded using the computer microphone, sound card, and CoolEdit software. The signal versus time graph is shown below:
This signal is analyzed using the CoolEdit Fourier transform tool, producing a plot of sound intensity as a function of frequency, as shown at the right. the fundamental tone is 320 Hz, and two overtones are easily discerned. The overtones are not simple multiples of the fundamental because the vibration pattern of the tuning fork is (roughly) that of a bar, rather than that of a taut string.
The tone-generating tool is then used to produce a tone with the same fundamental, and the same amplitude overtones. The sythesized tone has the signal versus time graph plotted below.
The spectrum of the synthesized tone is plotted at the right. Compare to the spectrum of the original tone, above.
Wave files of the two tones, real and synthesized are available for your comparison. Dr. Grosh, who developed this exercise, reports that the music majors have been impressed with the similarity of the two tones.


text:
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