text:
Underwater nuclear reactors are an amazing idea aren't they? Turns out someone's already patented a design. And there are even plans to build one in Estonia! So last night I designed my own underwater nuclear reactor, complete with multi-colour submarines and colourful aquatic beasties! I'm rather proud of it. I think this is also a […]
Archives for June, 2008
Ruby Toys
UPDATE 6/4/15: this post was previously a page but was removed when I reorganised the sidebar. Check out the rbib project on GitHub. This page contains a couple of small Ruby utilities I've written. BibTeX parser A parser for BibTeX databases. Mostly intended for transforming the entries in some way, such as deleting unneeded keys. […]
Lunar Lander update
I've posted an updated version of my Lunar Lander game. This is mostly a code clean-up of the last release, but it also features a new options screen and the ability to switch resolutions. Download it here.
Ideas for next xcowsay version
These are some of things I'm thinking of adding for xcowsay 1.1: Think mode: draw a thought bubble like cowthink in the original cowsay. Dream mode: display images in the bubble. Draw the bubble with Cairo and anti-aliasing. Translations. A few bug fixes ;-). Thanks to everyone who downloaded xcowsay 1.0!!!!! 😀
Beta version of xcowsay panel applet
I've written a GNOME panel applet based on the xcowsay source code. It doesn't do much at the moment – click it to run xcowfortune. If you want to try it out, get the source code here. You'll need to configure it with –prefix=/usr or set BONOBO_ACTIVATION_PATH for GNOME to find it.
Lunar Lander game
I've posted the source code of my Lunar Lander clone that I've be working on for a while now. Check it out here!


text:
MikeM wrote this great Pacman clock sketch for it (available for download here), shown in the video below.
To display on the OLED, Mike used U8glib graphic library. Initially tested on the 0.96" OLED, the sketch froze after some time, for a yet to be explained reason. The same sketch works perfectly with the 2.42" display. Mike spent a lot of time trying to figure out if the culprit is software (bug in the U8glib) or hardware.
(Any feedback on this issue is greatly appreciated.)
The clock can also display the time as HH:MM:SS on the whole screen, as shown in the photo below, also courtesy of Mike.
My next step would be to design an enclosure for it. For that I will probably need some more help :)
Update Nov 29, 2014, from MikeM:
A lot of credit goes to MikeR, I took the Tetris and Pacman faces from his sketch and adapted them for the OLED shield. The Pong code is modified from the WiseClock sketch. The digital, analog, and QR code faces are mine, although I did use a QR code library I found. I did credit MikeR inside of the code.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
The world depends on mariners. Mariners depend on SCI. And we depend on you.
Photos of AEP vessels and employees in Mobile, AL taken March 2012.
Photos by the Rev. David M. Rider, President & Executive Director
SCI maintains a staff of professional chaplains with interfaith and cross-cultural backgrounds. Chaplains and volunteers assist thousands each year, extending a hand of friendship and hospitality.


text:
Ed Templeton recently did a fashion shoot for Dazed and Confused magazines LA issue. Some of his artwork is also included in a book called "The Fourth Sex". Eds photo book, "the Golden Age of Neglect," is very rare since it sold out at retail.
The big Toy Machine news is of course that Billy Marks will be going pro in September, and we will be offering three Billy Marks pro boards at the trade show. Way to go Billy, you deserve it bra, congrats!


text:
Between Pirna and Diesbar-Seusslitz near Meissen, the Saxon Wine Route wends its way for almost 60 km through the sunny, mild and captivatingly varied valley of the Elbe, along with the international Elbe Cycle Route and the Saxony Wine Trail. This is Germany's smallest wine-growing region and the most northernly in Europe.
This centuries-old wine-growing tradition has had a significant impact on the appearance of the landscape here. Vined hillsides, splendid historic buildings and quaint little wine taverns: these are just some of the sights that visitors encounter time and time again as they continue along the route. However, the real source of this region's popularity is the harmony of its architecture, viniculture, countryside and history.
An exceptional performance from the region's vineyards
This part of Saxony enjoys a particularly favourable climate. Grapes have been grown here for 800 years, and the local porcelain manufacturing tradition dates back almost 300 years. It was wine and porcelain, together with rich silver deposits, that brought fame and fortune to Saxony. As you follow the Saxon Wine Route, you will see vines for the first time near Pirna, then in Pillnitz, close to the stately home there, and then beneath the palaces that line the river Elbe in Dresden. Just outside Dresden going towards Meissen , you will see the next vines growing on terraces on the Radebeul and Coswig slopes, which end at the romantic Elbe wine villages near Diesbar-Seusslitz.
Enchanted by wine
The Mediterranean feel, lovely scenery and cheery innkeepers create a carefree atmosphere, which works its magic as your paddle steamer cruises down the river and your gaze wanders over the vine-clad terraces and vineyards along the Elbe's riverbanks. During high-season, the world's oldest and largest paddle steamer sails daily from Dresden through the wine-growing regions to Meissen.
Where winegrowers become your hosts
The route forms a link through the most beautiful vineyards, interesting observation points and quaint wine taverns to the region's greatest treasures. Some of the charms of this delightful countryside dotted with towns and romantic villages are the countless reminders of its wine heritage: here and there a freshly whitewashed vintner's cottage, a soaring church steeple or a snug wine tavern. Stop off at a winegrower's tavern and let your host pour you one of his best vintages accompanied by some hearty fare or a sweet dish from the list of house specials, all served up with an amusing Saxon tale or two.
Length: approximately 60 km
Theme: wine, arts, architecture
Coswig: Karrasburg Museum, Villa Theresa, Sörnewitz Craft Centre (Handwerkerhof Sörnewitz)
Diesbar-Seußlitz: Elb wine towns, Baroque castle
Dresden: castle, Church of Our Lady (Frauenkirche), museums
Meissen: porcelain manufacturing
Pirna: historical old quarter
Radebeul: Wackerbarth House, Karl May Museum, observatory
Weinböhla: historical vineyard guesthouse, lookout tower at Ratsweinburg
Két hasznos billentyűkombináció a böngészőn belüli zoomoláshoz:
Nagyítás: +
Kicsinyítés: +
További segítséget az alábbi ikonra kattintva kaphat:


text:
"It's not easy being mean."
Those are the words of the frog Constantine in the upcoming Disney film Muppets Most Wanted, which hits theaters this spring. It seems that the master criminal bears a striking resemblance to another amphibian we may know: Kermit.
PHOTOS: Our favorite small towns on TV
Unfortunately, Constantine frames our dear Kermie for his crimes and then proceeds to wreak havoc among the other muppets. Who will uncover the deception? And will the show be doomed? Check out the exclusive trailer, which also stars Tina Fey as a Russian prison guard, Ricky Gervais as Constantine's crooked pal and Ty Burrell as an Interpol agent:
Muppets Most Wanted opens in theaters March 21, 2014.


text:
Penhall Named Grand Marshal of Monster Energy World Speedway Invitational
Hall of Fame Speedway Icon Bruce Penhall Named
Grand Marshal of Monster Energy World Speedway Invitational
CORONA, Calif. – Industry Racing announces that Bruce Penhall, a two-time Speedway World Champion and two-time U.S. National Champion, will serve as Grand Marshal for the inaugural Monster Energy World Speedway Invitational. The race will be held at The Grand Arena in the City of Industry, Calif., at 7:30 P.M. on Saturday, December 29th.
Penhall is the most iconic figure in American Speedway history who experienced tremendous success both in the U.S. as well as the most storied Grand Prix circuits around the world. In fact between 1980 and 1982, Penhall, who hails from Southern California, was the most dominant figure in the entire sport, winning back-to-back AMA National Championships in '80 and '81, and consecutive World Championships in '81 and '82, the later of the two coming before a brilliantly enthusiastic home crowd at the Los Angeles Coliseum.Following his retirement, Penhall turned to acting, becoming a co-star in the popular television series CHiPS, as well as several full-length feature films. In 1999, he was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame and in 2011, became the first and only speedway racer to be inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America.
Recently, Penhall dropped in at the Grand Arena to meet with Race Director Kelly Inman and to get a read on just what was going to take place on Saturday, December 29th. Thirty years after his last great victory, Penhall was genuinely enthused about the fast approaching race and took the time to talk about it.
Bruce, in 1981 you won your first Speedway World Championship before 95,000 fans at Wembley Stadium in Great Britain. A year later, on Saturday, August 28th to be exact, you backed up your title here in Southern California inside the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. It's now precisely three decades later and you, in the role of Grand Marshal, are associated with the most celebrated speedway race in the U.S. in years. What's your take on all of this?
I'm really excited about it and proud to be a part of it. I think Kelly Inman and Carol Perez [Industry Racing Owner], as well as Monster Energy have done a great job in trying to bring what I call 'kids' [GP Riders] over to the U.S. I think it's a great stepping stone for speedway right now to show it at its top level. I'm proud to be associated with it and its certainly going to be a great race. I'm sure of that.
As the most influential and recognizable figure in the sport in this country, what are your current thoughts on the American Speedway scene as well as the sport's immediate and long term future?
Bruce Stjernstrom [Monster Energy VP of Sports Marketing] has been a fan of speedway since back in the 80's when I was riding and I think he finally has the right vehicle here to try and get it back on track again. Speedway is a really exciting sport, but as with all motorsports and all levels of any sport right now, it's suffered from of the recession, which unfortunately slows the development of riders in every aspect. However, I think we are seeing a resurgence and Monster Energy is certainly going to be a big part of that, with the GP's in Europe and now with the U.S. It's good for them and I'm proud to be associated with them.
Bruce, if all falls into place, the Monster Energy World Speedway Invitational could quite possibly entice the organizers of the FIM Speedway Grand Prix circuit to place a round here in America. In your eyes, what would it mean to have a round of the premier global championship in the U.S.?
I think it would huge, I really do. I think we need something like this U.S. versus the world atmosphere like we will have on the 29th. It's not like Industry Racing and Monster Energy are bringing over any sort of second rate riders. All of these guys from Europe are AA riders; the absolute world's best. It's exciting to see that and see the American squad that's been assembled with all these young hungry kids. When we used to race the U.S. versus the world, there was nothing more I loved to do than beat up on the best in the world. I think a GP would serve American Speedway really well and I think it'd be huge for the sport. I hope that this process continues and that we can potentially generate a lot of money for the riders of the future, because that's what the sport really needs.
Having spent most of your career racing overseas, how do you feel about the FIM Speedway GP series and the competition it's producing?
I'm a fan of the GP system, although I still love the one-off, traditional event that I used to ride in. I think the GPs certainly prove the best man will win over the period of 12 events. On the other hand, the one-off competition takes a different approach to be able to put it together on one night, which makes it more exciting. I'm a big fan of GPs and I think its doing really well and it's exciting to see it in all these really nice, big stadiums. Back in the day, we had a few of those, but not a lot. I'd really like to see them come back to the states and have an event somewhere such as the L.A. Coliseum or Angel Stadium.
What kind of competition and different styles of racing do you think fans will see between the Americans and the GP riders?
You're going to see a lot of really good racing on the 29th. I think the Europeans are going to try and prove themselves because none of these guys have ever ridden on such a tiny little track. The young Americans are hungry as hell and are going to do everything they can to try and beat up on the European boys, but the GP riders can certainly adapt to everything. This is a short amount of time to prepare, but this is America and Monster Energy is the presenting sponsor, so they will want to do well and want to prove to the world that there is no way they'll let the young Americans beat them. They know Billy Hamill and Greg Hancock and how good they are, but there are a couple riders they've never seen before or heard of who will be knocking on the door. I'm excited about the racing we're going to see and I'm even more excited to know we aren't going to get rained out with the roof over The Grand Arena.
Tickets for the inaugural Monster Energy World Speedway Invitational are available for purchase from now through December 22nd by visiting the event website at www.IndustryRacing.com. Tickets are priced at $18 and $10 for Juniors and Seniors. Tickets purchased the day of the event will be an additional $5. All kids under 12 are free with adult admission. Parking is $5 with motorcycle parking free of charge. The event will run rain or shine as The Grand Arena has a roof.
Industry Racing at The Grand Arena
16200 Temple Ave.
City of Industry, CA 91744
Contact Track/Racing Director Kelly Inman at email@example.com
To get a rundown on the most recent FIM Speedway Grand Prix season, log onto www.SpeedwayGP.com.


text:
"I am the very model of a fiendish Dragoon Lit Agent"
(appropriate nods to Gilbert and Sullivan's Modern Major General)
I am the very model of a fiendish Dragoon Lit Agent
I've made my website hard to read with false quotations, smoke, and tint
I know the names of cabals out to get us—they all hate and vent
From Snark Central to P and E, what crisis-mong'ring lies they've sent
Each enterprise from Strauss to Crisp contains no lady, Yapp, or gent
They don't exist, mere corporate-types, ganged up to hog the writer's cent
Now all who've signed there are a few details to work out and discuss
I've reading fees plus copier charge and postal—-please don't make a fuss
In short, you've signed your soul away--I don't care if you make the rent.
I am the very model of a fiendish Dragoon Lit Agent.
I know our mythic history, from pickpockets to pirate-kings
Ah, crooks of old have nothing on my podcasts and those blogger things
I never call my clients back, I can't abide by complainers
That check you wrote me is no more—go back and hawk your retainer.
Meanwhile I'll huff and objurgate with awe-inducing fallacy
While naming no specific sales—my clients need their privacy.
Of all the scams—ahem the jobs—I could pull off this is supreme
What better way to get ahead than fleecing people's hopes and dreams?
And in those throngs of naïve writers I have hardly made a dent
I am the very model of a fiendish Dragoon Lit Agent.
Miss Snark reaches for her tuning fork and the cast of the West Wing!
Red Letter Writing Contest #36
Posted by Miss Snark at 10/31/2006 06:36:00 PM
8 comments:
- Dave Fragments said...
WOW - where is George Rose when you need him!
- 10/31/2006
- LadyBronco said...
I love this one!
- 10/31/2006
- Southern Writer said...
- 10/31/2006
- McKoala said...
- 10/31/2006
- susan said...
Natural voice and language skill--to come up with this so quickly. Congrats!
- 11/01/2006
- Georgiana said...
Very nice indeed!
- 11/01/2006
- Kate Thornton said...
Oh, I love this - a patter song!
- 11/01/2006
Thank you all for your encouraging comments. :-) Alas, I came in "closely closely" second in Achievement in Song. But it was to the (deserving) overall winner, so I can feel good about that. What a fun contest, thank you Miss Snark!
Verification word: dabaud
Definition: Shakespeare as identified on Lon Guy-land
- 11/01/2006
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


text:
State offers grants from Tahoe license plate revenues
(Nevada Appeal Capitol Bureau) – The Nevada Division of State Lands is offering grants for environmental preservation and restoration projects in the Tahoe Basin.
The agency has about $350,000 that was generated by the purchase of Nevada Lake Tahoe license plates.
The money is available to public agencies for capital improvement projects that further the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency's environmental thresholds.
Applications are due by Jan. 31 at the state lands office, 901 South Stewart St., Suite 5003.
Since the Tahoe plates were first issued in 1998, the program has generated more than $6 million that was used to fund more than 100 different projects.


text:
If you don't have high enough points to get onto one of our Clearing courses, there are still options available to you. Please read our advice on next steps. Or you may like to consider studying with us next year, view our range of available courses. You can also sign up to our newsletter to receive regular updates about next year's courses.
Recent searches
We won't record your recent searches as you have opted out of functional cookies. You can change this on our Manage Privacy page should you wish to.
Popular searches
Suggested searches


text:
|Numinous The Music of Joseph C. Phillips Jr.
The Numinosum Blog
Thanks and credit to all the original photos on this website to: David Andrako, Concrete Temple Theatre, Marcy Begian, Ed Lefkowicz, Donald Martinez, Kimberly McCollum, Geoff Ogle, Joseph C. Phillips Jr., Daniel Wolf-courtesy of Roulette, Andrew Robertson, Viscena Photography, Jennifer Wohrle, Carolyn Wolf. The Numinous Changing Same CD design artwork by DM Stith. Contact for photo credit and information on specific images.


text:
SUNY Canton Assistant Librarian Gives Questions to Answers on Jeopardy!
SUNY Canton Assistant Librarian Cori Wilhelm will appear on NBC's Jeopardy! game show at 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 4 on WPTZ.
The story has widely circulated the local media and has been the subject of many conversations at the College. Wilhelm participated in the game show and was filmed in August at the SONY Lot in Culver City L.A. She has been limited about what she can say about the show until after the broadcast.
"I can't wait until it airs so that I can talk about it openly with my friends and co-employees," the Assistant Librarian said. "The attention has been a bit overwhelming, but I appreciate the support. It's great to know how many people are supportive and are planning on watching."
She said she began studying during the qualification rounds, but studied a lot more, and harder, when she got the call to be a contestant. She used an online database of old Jeopardy questions to prepare.
"It's hard to study in advance, because you don't know what's on the show," Wilhelm said. "But being a librarian, I help students do research all the time. It keeps me fresh and gives access to a lot of topics."
The Assistant Librarian had previously taken online qualification tests and had auditioned to be on the show twice, after receiving encouragement of her friends and family.
Wilhelm is a graduated from Parishville-Hopkinton Central High School in 2000, earned her undergraduate degree in History from St. Lawrence University in 2003, a master's in Education from SUNY Potsdam 2005, and another degree from the University at Buffalo in library science 2011. She began working in SUNY Canton Office of Admissions in 2006, and started her current position in 2012.
Tags: Cori Wilhelm, Jeopardy, Southworth Library


text:
Latest Innovations. Subspecialty Care. Strength in Patient Follow-Up
Peritonitis is an inflammation of the lining of the abdominal and pelvic cavity (the peritoneum), caused an infection. The peritoneum is a thin, clear membrane that normally covers all the abdominal organs and the inside walls of the abdomen.
Peritonitis can become acute when a sudden inflammation of the peritoneum occurs, usually as a result of the rupture of some portion of the digestive tract. Sometimes the condition can also take a chronic form, where the individual experiences repeated attacks of infection, resulting from such conditions as pelvic inflammatory disease or from other sources of chronic infection.
Causes/risk factors
Most often, peritonitis results from an infection stemming from a perforation of the bowel. A ruptured appendix or diverticulum are two sources of such an infection. Other causes include perforations of the stomach, intestine, gallbladder, or appendix. Pelvic inflammatory disease in sexually active women is also a common cause of peritonitis. The condition can also develop after surgery if bacteria infect the abdomen during an operation.
Finally, peritonitis can also result from injury and bleeding, or from inflammatory diseases such as lupus.
Signs & symptoms
Common symptoms of peritonitis include:
- severe abdominal pain, aggravated by any motion;
- nausea and vomiting;
- fever;
- abdominal tenderness or distention;
- and fluid in the abdomen.
Quick diagnosis of peritonitis is vital, as complications can occur quickly. In addition to taking a medical history and performing a physical examination, physicians may request the following diagnostic procedures in order to diagnose peritonitis:
- x-rays;
- laboratory tests;
- or surgery to explore and repair the cause.
Treatment of peritonitis is generally aimed at the underlying condition. Often, emergency surgery is needed, especially when appendicitis, a perforated peptic ulcer, or diverticulitis may be the cause of the infection. Prompt treatment is extremely important as major complications, including shock or organ failure, can occur quickly. Peritonitis can be fatal if not treated properly.
Antibiotics are given immediately, once peritonitis has been diagnosed. Sometimes, a tube is inserted through the nose into the stomach or intestine to drain fluid and gas. Intravenous fluids are also given to replace fluids that have been lost.


text:
Relationships with
Photo Credit: Aaron Eckhart's picture is courtesy of Mychele Daniau, AFP. Photographic illustrations of Aaron Eckhart are copyright © by their respective holders. The images are published with permission or as allowed by the copyright law's fair use or quotation provisions. If any copyright holder objects to an image being included, please notify us and it will be removed immediately.
Disclaimer: This information about Aaron Eckhart is derived from astrological interpretation of Aaron Eckhart's date, time, and place of birth.


text:
6% off E-Collars.
Enter this code during checkout to save at DogstraStore.
Code copied! Now enter this code at DogstraStore to save!
dogtra Shop
Browse all deals at DogstraStore
See more in Coupons & Rebates, Pets & Animals
* This offer may contain time-sensitive information and offers. Please check with DogstraStore to confirm actual price & availability.
Please enter your name
- Be the first to comment!


text:
What people are saying - Write a review
LibraryThing ReviewUser Review - keylawk - LibraryThing
This is the 198215th Edition, in two halves, with the Macropaedia and the Micropaedia. First published in 1768, the publisher is the oldest English-language encyclopedia still in print. Two Scottish ... Read full review
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
acid activity adaptation albite allegory analcime animals atoms biblical bipolar cells bladder blood body called cause cells cellulose centimetres centre century changes chemical colour common cornea cotton countries currency disease effect electrical evidence evolution example excretion Existentialism fabrics falconiforms farm fascism fatigue Fātimid federal feldspar feldspathoids fencing ferns ferrite festivals fibres field filaments filtrate Finland fire fluid function gametophyte genera glands glomeruli groups important increase Ismā'īlī jute kidney Lake Eyre layer light magnetic marriage material membrane ment metres millimetres modern molecules movements muscle natural nerve normal occur optic organs percent plants plasma pressure produced properties protein region renal result retina rhodopsin social sodium species spinning sporangia structure surface temperature textile tion tissue tubule ture types United ureter urethra urine usually vision visual wool yarns


text:
Nissan has unveiled a prototype vehicle that is as startling in its exterior design as its revolutionary powerplant.
It's being called the Nissan BladeGlider, a deltoid-style concept car that is derived from the shape of an experimental racer that Nissan has been trying out. It has a long, narrow nose with its wide-stance wheels in back. The shape is meant to evoke the lithe grace of a glider combined with the speed of a swept-wing aircraft, but to the average observer, it may remind them more of a top-fuel dragster.
BladeGlider is going to be formally unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show later this month.
"The goal was to revolutionize the architecture of the vehicle to provoke new emotions, provide new value and make visible for consumers how Zero Emissions can help redefine our conception of vehicle basics," said Francois Bancon, division general manager of product strategy for Nissan in a statement.
By placing the front wheel only about a yard apart, BladeGlider's Bancon says that new car will be light and fast. If Nissan becomes a production vehicle — the automaker is hinting at the possibility — it will mark the first use of in-wheel motors.
Courtesy of USA Today


text:
Charlestown, New Hampshire
|This article is a stub. Help us to expand it by contributing your knowledge. For county and town page guidelines, visit U.S. County Page Content Suggestions.
Charlestown is a town in Sullivan county, New Hampshire. It was formed in 1735. Its parent county/ies is/are Cheshire. For more information, contact the county at Box 834, Railroad St., Charlestown 03603. On the attached map, Charlestown is shown as 9 in Sullivan.
For information about the state of New Hampshire see New Hampshire Family History Research.


text:
Canterbury Commons is a trading post and a small town located on the eastern edge of the Capital Wasteland, which in the year 2277, is currently suffering from a full-blown battle between two "super humans." It is inhabited by five wastelanders and can be found north of Washington, D.C., north of Vault 108 and southeast of the Temple of the Union.
Canterbury Commons was initially founded by Uncle Roe and his sister Daisy as a trading center for caravan merchants in the Capital Wasteland.
The settlement is built into what appears to be the remains of a small pre-War town, with the current inhabitants only using a small part of the buildings available. The town's only permanent merchant, Joe Porter, lives in an old Dot's Diner. Adjacent to this building is an old garage which is home to Dominic and Machete, and across the street is the old fire station, now Uncle Roe's house which Roe shares with his nephew Derek Pacion. Behind the old garage, a small brahmin stable can be found.
In front of the town to the west is a large circular cul-de-sac where caravan merchants appear regularly.
- Uncle Roe
- Joe Porter
- Dominic D'Ellsadro
- Machete
- Derek Pacion
- Sergeant RL-3 (if dismissed)
- Moira Brown (formerly)
- Manny Koch (formerly)
- Emmet (formerly)
Notable lootEdit
- Grognak the Barbarian - carried by Derek Pacion, needs to be pickpocketed.
- Dean's Electronics - inside Dominic and Machete's garage on a desk in the room to the right as you walk in.
- Highwayman's Friend - unique tire iron, inside Dominic and Machete's garage, on a shelf right next to the Dean's Electronics book.
Related questsEdit
- Moira Brown grew up in Canterbury Commons before moving to Megaton.[1]
- The caravan merchants' inventories may be upgraded by speaking to Uncle Roe in the unmarked quest Merchant Empire.
- If the player character kills or disables (with the Robotics Expert perk) the Mechanist's robots before they can leave for the robot repair center and disappear, they will respawn after 72 hours at the location of their corpse and remain there permanently. They will level with the player character and will change into higher-leveled robots when the player character reaches the appropriate levels. For example, a robobrain and a Mister Gutsy will be replaced with sentry bots once the player character is at level 20 or above. The robots are friendly towards the player character and the town citizens and will attack any random wasteland creatures that may approach the town.
- Killing either the Mechanist and/or the AntAgonizer before they fight will cause Uncle Roe to give the player character 400 caps but will not allow them to start The Superhuman Gambit quest.
- Uncle Roe's dialogue is dependent on how the Lone Wanderer handles the situation. If one is killed and the other is spared, he will remark in awe how the player character managed to scare one of them away. If both are killed, he will simply thank the player character and give the reward accordingly.
- Upon intervening in the standoff, both the AntAgonizer and the Mechanist have an absurdly high amount of health.
- Sergeant RL-3 resides here if dismissed after becoming a companion.
- The player character may take up residence in the town (see Dominic and Machete's house).
Canterbury Commons appears only in Fallout 3.
Behind the scenesEdit
|The following is based on Fallout 3 cut content and has not been confirmed by canon sources.
Canterbury Commons was originally intended to have an open-air bazaar in the circular cul-de-sac, populated by various traders. Entries exist for two such NPCs, named "Caravan Trader" in the editor, but remain unused and without any vendor containers.
|End of information based on Fallout 3 cut content.


text:
My father loves taking public transportation. When he and mom still lived in the Philippines, he insisted during my annual visits that we use the LRT in Manila to go to the big city from our home in provincial Bulacan. Of course, my mother and relatives did not approve. Dad and I went anyway, going to places of his childhood – Divisoria, Ongpin – when Manila was still, well, beautiful.
Dad & I waiting for the LRT, 2.26.2010
This ride took about 30 min. We stopped at Exposition and La Brea to ride the Expo Line.
I found the Expo Line station impressive. It's clean, open and inviting. The train arrives every 15 minutes and has a nice view of Hollywood and the famous Hollywood sign.
Walking along The Rose GardenThe Endeavor
The Expo Line stops right in front of Exposition Park where California Science Center is located. Dad and I explored, discovered, learned, took photos, and lunched beside the Rose Garden.
After lunch we walked with our frozen desserts back to the Expo Line to head home. The whole trip one way took about an hour. We got home safely and in time for dinner with the family, featuring Mom's menudo.
It's inspiring how an 81 year-old contributes in his own little way to a greener Los Angeles. Making a small difference is possible and, in fact, quite delightful.


text:
From The New York Times
WETUMPKA, Ala. — For a female inmate, there are few places worse than the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women.
Corrections officers have raped, beaten and harassed women inside the aging prison here for at least 18 years, according to an unfolding Justice Department investigation. More than a third of the employees have had sex with prisoners, which is sometimes the only currency for basics like toilet paper and tampons.
But Tutwiler, whose conditions are so bad that the federal government says they are most likely unconstitutional, is only one in a series of troubled prisons in a state system that has the second-highest number of inmates per capita in the nation.
Now, as Alabama faces federal intervention and as the Legislature is weighing its spending choices for the coming year, it remains an open question whether the recent reports on Tutwiler are enough to prompt reform.
"Yes, we need to rectify the crimes that happened at Tutwiler, but going forward it's a bigger problem than just Tutwiler," said State Senator Cam Ward, a Republican from Alabaster who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "We're dealing with a box of dynamite."
The solution, Mr. Ward and others say, is not to build more prisons but to change the sentencing guidelines that have filled the prisons well beyond capacity.
Just over half the state's prisoners are locked up for drug and property crimes, a rate for nonviolent offenses that is among the highest in the nation.
"No one wants to be soft on crime, but the way we're doing this is just stupid," Mr. Ward said.
Still, in many corners of Alabama, a state where political prominence is often tied to how much a candidate disparages criminals, the appetite for change remains minimal.
The Legislature is in the middle of its budget session, working over a document from Gov. Robert Bentley that includes $389 million for the state's prisons. That is about $7 million less than last year's budget.
The Department of Corrections argues that it needs $42 million more than it had last year. Alabama prisons are running at almost double capacity, and staffing is dangerously low, said Kim T. Thomas, the department's commissioner. He said he would use about $21 million of his request to give corrections officers a 10 percent raise and hire about 100 officers.
The odds of approval for that much new money are not great, but they are better this year than they have been in a long while, said Stephen Stetson, a policy analyst with Arise Citizens' Policy Project, a liberal policy group.
Even so, "for the average legislator, it's still, 'These bodies don't matter,' " he said.
There is no ignoring the prison crisis. Even Stacy George, a former corrections officer who is challenging Mr. Bentley in the June Republican primary by promising to be "the gun-toting governor," this past week issued a plan for prison reform. It calls for changing sentencing rules, rescinding the "three-strikes" law for repeat offenders, releasing the sick and elderly, and sending low-level drug offenders into treatment programs instead.
The federal government has stepped in to fix Alabama's prison problems before, but it has been years since the state has faced a situation as serious as that uncovered by a series of damning investigations into Tutwiler.
"We think that there is a very strong case of constitutional violations here," said Jocelyn Samuels, the acting assistant attorney general for civil rights for the Justice Department, who sent a 36-page report to the governor in January.
The toxic, highly sexualized environment, she said in an interview, has been met by "a deliberate indifference on the part of prison officials and prison management, who have been aware of the conditions for many years and have failed to curb it."
The prison was built in 1942 and named after Julia Tutwiler, a woman called the Angel of the Stockades for her work trying to improve conditions for inmates in Alabama. More than 900 women live there, including some on death row, although the original building was designed for about 400.
The prison's abysmal staffing levels, abundant blind spots and only three cameras created a situation where sex among prisoners and with guards was rampant, the report said. Male guards have routinely watched women showering and once helped prisoners organize a strip show. Sex is sometimes exchanged both for banned items like drugs and for basic needs like clean uniforms.
At least six corrections employees have been convicted of sexual crimes since 2009.
The Justice Department is still investigating Tutwiler, scrutinizing medical and mental health care there.
"It is just a culture of deprivation and abuse, not just at Tutwiler but in institutions across Alabama," said Charlotte Morrison, a senior lawyer with the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal organization that represents indigent defendants and prisoners.
In 2012, the organization asked the federal government to step in after its own investigation into Tutwiler showed rampant sexual abuse.
The Department of Corrections says conditions at Tutwiler were beginning to improve well before the Justice Department began its investigation in April 2013. Six months after the Equal Justice Initiative report came out in May 2012, the longtime warden and other top prison officers were replaced, said Mr. Thomas, the corrections commissioner.
He also asked the National Institute of Corrections to review practices and policies at Tutwiler. Using those findings, he issued a wide-ranging plan in January 2013 that included recruiting more female corrections officers, pressing the Legislature for more money and changing several policies and procedures. Among them was a system to better investigate and track reports of assaults and abuse.
"That report came about because I wanted an abundance of caution and to be transparent," Mr. Thomas said.
But women recently released and still inside say life at Tutwiler has improved only marginally.
Monica Washington, who is serving 20 years for armed robbery, said she had been raped by a prison guard and gave birth to a daughter who is now 3 and living with relatives near Montgomery.
The guard, Rodney Arbuthnot, served six months in jail for custodial sexual misconduct. He has since moved to Texas. The courts only recently tracked him down, and the family is finally getting about $230 a month in child support.
In a telephone interview, Ms. Washington said that prisoners were still fearful and that conditions remained bad.
"Right now, for me personally, it's still the same as far as the officers," she said. "It's like an act of Congress to get the things you need just to live. It's inhumane for inmates to be here, period."
Marsha Colby, a mother of six, served almost 10 years of a life sentence without parole for a murder conviction. Her premature son had been stillborn, and she buried him in a marked grave near her home. A medical examiner said the child had been drowned in a bathtub, but the conviction was overturned after a court agreed that the autopsy had been botched. She was released in December 2012.
She remains in contact with some Tutwiler prisoners, who she said were split on whether attention from the federal government was a good thing.
Sex is an important commodity there, Ms. Colby said. The inmates use it to get better treatment and secure contraband items that they can then sell to get food and other basics.
"The women do it for favors," she said. "They get makeup, cologne, anything that's stuff that is resellable. That's how they make their money."
She and others believe it will take a larger overhaul at the top of the Department of Corrections to fix the prison's problems.
"It's a primitive, very backward prison system," said Larry F. Wood, a clinical psychologist who was hired at Tutwiler in 2012. He quit after two months, appalled at the conditions and what he said was the administration's lack of support for mental health services.
"I've worked in prisons for most of 30 years, and I've never seen anything like this," he said. "We need to back up and look at it with fresh eyes. The people who are running it don't have the perspective to see what can change."


text:
All News Releases By Date
White House Grades Washington State School Teachers "A+" for Environmental Excellence
Release Date: 06/20/2012
Contact Information: Mark MacIntyre, EPA/Seattle, 206-553-7302, firstname.lastname@example.com; Sally Hanft, EPA Region 10 PIAEE Coordinator, Seattle, 206-553-1207, email@example.com
(Seattle, WA- June 20, 2012) Mike Town, a Redmond High School teacher, is one of 18 teachers selected nationwide to receive the Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators. Mr. Town and Susan Milan, a South Whidbey Elementary School teacher from Langley, Washington (honorable mention winner), will be recognized tonight at E3 Washington's "Summer Evening Celebration" at McKinstry Innovation Center (210 South Hudson St) in Seattle.
Mr. Town and Ms. Milan were selected for "their demonstrated excellence in preparing classes with an environmental focus that reflected real-life community challenges and created a powerful bond between their students and the natural world."
The Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators recognizes and supports urban and rural educators who use experiential environmental opportunities to help students develop a sense of civic responsibility and stewardship in ecosystems. The prestigious award is bestowed by the White House Council on Environmental Quality in partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
"Mr. Town and Ms. Milan get 'gold stars' for preparing future generations of environmental stewards," said Kate Kelly, Director of EPA's Office of Ecosystems, Tribal and Public Affairs in Seattle. "In addition to being inspiring leaders, these educators have made learning about the environment interesting and fun."
Nationally, this year's winning teachers' programs ranged from field studies in watershed and wetland science in New England to the study of clean energy sources in Colorado and ocean and climate science in Texas, forest ecology and trout studies in the Pacific Northwest and water resource management projects in the desert.
For more about the other winners: https://www.epa.gov/education/teacheraward/winners.html
More information about this program: https://www.epa.gov/education/teacheraward
For more about E3 Washington: http://www.e3washington.org/
Search this collection of releases | or search all news releases
View selected historical press releases from 1970 to 1998 in the EPA History website.


text:
Mayan Calendar Discovery
By John Van Auken
Archaeologists have found the underground chamber of an official Mayan calendar chronicler! And what his inscriptions reveal is that there is another Age following the present "Age of Movement" that ends on this coming Winter Solstice, December 21, 2012. The world does not end—Hooray! In fact, it goes on and on and on. William Saturno of Boston University, the archaeologist who manages the new discovery, published an article in the journal Science, and writes: "The Maya calendar is going to keep going and keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future, a huge number that we can't even wrap our heads around."
Tyrone Turner, National Geographic
Archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University excavates a house in the ruins of the Maya city of Xultun.
What Saturno found turned out to be a well-preserved mural that includes the oldest known Mayan calendar ever found. And just like the Maya Long Count calendar, which serves as the basis for the apocalypse myth, this calendar extends indefinitely into the future.
The Mayan calendar is 20 katun cycles containing 144,000 days, equal to 394.26 tropical years, and a whole cycle is 5,128 years. The current cycle we've been living in began on August 11 or 13, 3114 BC, and ends this year on December 21 or 23. The current 13th baktun will end, or be completed, on the Mayan date of 184.108.40.206.0 (which is equivalent to December 21, 2012 using the GMT correlation).
This new discovery provides us with clear evidence that the end of this 5,128 cycle marks the beginning of a new cycle! According to Mayan legend, the current world—the one in which we are all currently living—is an era of major change, the so-called Age of Movement.
Curiously, the newly discovered Mayan calendar in the chronicler's chamber has cycles of time recording 17 baktuns, rather than the standard 13.
The new finding shows that the calculations include a time span longer than 6,000 years that could extend well beyond 2012. Anthony Aveni of Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., an expert on Mayan astronomy asks, "Why would they go into those numbers if the world is going to come to an end this year? You could say a number that big at least suggests that time marches on."
Leaders among the Maya were keenly interested in astronomy and sought to coordinate sacred rituals with events in the heavens above. A chronicler of the heaven movements and time cycles would have been an honored member of the Maya court.
The wall in the chronicler's chamber was used in the same way a modern mathematician might use a whiteboard. The chronicler wrote his frequently consulted formulas on the wall of his chamber instead of having to look them up in a book. And— because these calendar details were inscribed on a wall—he preserved them better than any book would have. In fact, no books remain from the period when the chronicler wrote on his wall—researchers believe this wall dates to 800 AD.
In addition to the time data, there are pictures on the other walls in the chronicler's chamber, including an image of a king in a feather headdress, seated on a throne, with a white-garbed person peeking out from behind him (possibly a self-portrait of our chronicler). A painting of a scribe holding a stylus was on another wall.
According to the archaeologists, these paintings were the first Maya art to be found on the walls of a person's house.!
The chamber is a little larger than 6-feet square and is part of a larger complex in Mayan ruins of the rain forest at Xultun in northeastern Guatemala. Xultun is a large Early Classic Maya site. It is 24 miles northeast of the more famous Mayan site of Tikal. The site contains a pyramid that is 114 feet high, 2 ball courts, 24 stelae, and 5 reservoirs (aguadas).
image courtesy http://people.tribe.net
Anthony Aveni said the astronomical data on the wall would allow a chronicler to predict the appearance of a full moon years in advance and could be used to advise the king on when to go to war or how good this year's crops would be. "What you have here is astronomy driven by religion," Aveni said.
On an adjacent wall are numbers indicating four time spans from roughly 935 to 6,700 years. It's not clear what they represent, but maybe the chronicler was doing calculations that combined observations from important astronomical events like the movements of Mars, Venus, and the moon, the researchers said. Why bother to do that? Aveni suggest that perhaps the chronicler and his colleagues were "geeks ... who just got carried away with doing these kinds of computations and calculations, and probably did them far beyond the needs of ordinary society."
Simon Martin, co-curator of an exhibit about the Mayan calendar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology is very excited by this find: "It's really a wonderful surprise. We've never really been able to identify a working space, or how they actually went about things." The new work gives insight into how the Maya worked on their calculations, he said, and the fact that the room had a stone roof rather than thatching supports previous indications that the chronicler enjoyed a high social standing.
An undergraduate student working with Saturno's team in 2010 first glimpsed the chronicler's chamber. After first dismissing the value of a little piece of paint on a stone wall spotted by his student, Saturno later went back to the spot and dug deeper, finding the amazing timekeeper's chamber. To Saturno's amazement, the wall writings were of immeasurable value to the growing knowledge of the Maya and their fascination with the stars, planets, and the passage of time.
John Carlson, director of the Center for Archaeoastronomy in College Park, Md., said, "It's a very important discovery. We're only getting a glimpse of the story" in the published paper. Complete details and photos of the discovery will be published in the June issue of National Geographic, which funded some of this research.
John Van Auken, a director at the Association for Research and Enlightenment, is an acknowledged expert on the Cayce readings, the Bible, ancient prophecies, world religions, meditation, and ancient Egypt. John conducts seminars in the U.S. and abroad, and is a tour guide to the many sacred sites around the world with A.R.E. Travel. He is the author of numerous books, including Edgar Cayce and the Kabbalah, Ancient Egyptian Mysticism and From Karma to Grace. He will be presenting at several upcoming Virginia Beach Conferences including the Annual Ancient Mysteries Conference: Ancient Mysteries Conference—Digging for the Truth with Dr. Zahi Hawass from October 4-7, 2012.


text:
This class allows you to universally control (give commands to) those apps by sending window messages to them.
You don't have to bother with tehnical details like "If I'm running Virtuawin, I have to do that, but if I'm running Dexpot, I have to do that..."; just give your command and it will do the job.
The following virtual desktop applications are supported at the moment; Virtuawin, Dexpot.
Everyone is welcome to contribute and make support for more apps & commands, but please don't relay on hotkeys - use more reliable stuff like SendMessage and similar.
- VirtualDesktopClass.ahk which includes: class, example, documentation, license.
- as I prefer to control virtual desktops via mouse gestures, here's Mouse gestures for 3 virtual desktops.zip - ready to run example script which contains all includes and gestures map. Run the script and any supported virtual desktop application (Virtuawin or Dexpot at the moment) and control your virtual desktops via mouse gestures with RButton.
Code: Select all
vd.SwitchToDesktop(1) ; switches to 1. desktop
vd.MoveWinToDesktop(2) ; moves active window to 2. desktop
vd.GatherWinsOnDesktop() ; gathers windows on current desktop


text:
About the Forge
. Please
September 18, 2020, 08:30:57 AM
1 Hour
1 Day
1 Week
1 Month
Login with username, password and session length
Forum changes:
Editing of posts has been turned off until further notice.
Advanced search
Posts in
Topics by
Members Latest Member:
Jason DAngelo
Most online today:
- most online ever:
(November 03, 2007, 04:35:43 AM)
The Forge Forums
General Forge Forums
Game Development
[Cold Soldier] "... every scheme of his heart's devising ..."
Pages: [
« previous
next »
Topic: [Cold Soldier] "... every scheme of his heart's devising ..." (Read 5155 times)
Ron Edwards
Global Moderator
Posts: 17707
[Cold Soldier] "... every scheme of his heart's devising ..."
February 14, 2011, 01:19:59 PM »
Peter and I played Cold Soldier at the Dice Dojo! For those of you following the Dice Dojo game threads, you might recall that I've written about the strong creative vibe the two of us share, so I'd been looking forward to the opportunity to play this together. We used the following modifications of the Ronnies entry document:
- when the soldier uses his weapon, the GM draws a card to bank for the endgame hand
- two cards were flipped up for the obstacle target, not just one; the soldier's card has to beat both
And, uh, I used the
resolution rules instead of the fucked-up mis-reading I'd applied in my first playtest.
I followed Peter's lead regarding the starting concepts. He chose to be the soldier, and suggested the Dark Master be a vengeful god in the present day. We batted around some location ideas and settled upon the American South, somewhere in Georgia far from any city. We'd both lived there, so had a lot of direct experience and shared imagery to work with. He decided that the soldier had died by homicide (beaten to death), could use a big freaky scary prehensile tongue, and fights alone.
Speaking from my side of the table, I really had to wrack my brains with that Dark Master combination, not because I had no ideas, but too many. I thought about getting really Hebrew Bible about the whole thing, like seriously Yahweh literalist; about getting Native American and ecological; and about getting kind of post-modern with a spiritual essence or totem of the modern state. I ended up with a scaled-down abstraction of the first option, not literalist but rather kind of a primal divinity which was disgusted with any and every form of modern human worship. I completely left out all concepts about what it is, what it wants, or how it's related to any religion, going instead with raw principles.
I explained exactly the same standards for starting episodes as Tim and I used in
[Cold Soldier] "Upon horror's head, horrors accumulate."
, and we used them successfully in the same fashion.
1. I began by describing the downtown square in a small town at night, panning in to the morgue and sounds emerging from one of the drawers. I narrated a voice out of the air, which carried such physical presence that items in the vicinity charred at the edges, saying, "Bring him to what he calls my house, with no one seeing you." I specified that all such instructions would carry any necessary information, such as who and where and so on, without ambiguity. Peter described how the corpse in the drawer emerged, left the building, proceeded to a house that I clarified was some distance away from downtown, and entered. This was carried out through alternating descriptions on my part and actions on his. There were children having a slumber party in the living room, and the parents were upstairs.
Mechanically, Peter basically beat the obstacle handily, narrating that the soldier broke the woman's neck in her sleep, then seized the man and (and here we discovered that zombies can jump) leaped to the street. He also triggered a memory from seeing a manhole cover, remembering that he had been pursued in the sewers when alive, and using them as a way to get to the house.
2. I began by describing the soldier sort of tucked away in an abandoned freezer in a junkyard, obviously in a "hole up until I call you again" situation. You have no idea how much fun it is to narrate the voice of a vengeful god in a junkyard location, setting things on fire and scaring the dog. The voice commanded, "Burn all those houses profaning my name," i.e., all the churches of any description, from classical buildings dedicated to that purposes all the way to sometimes-rented community spaces. Our Goes went through the experiences of doing this one by one, ending up at the chapel at the local community college. Peter established the memory of attending this college and this church, and knowing a woman named Betsy there. Oh yes, and we also learned that zombies are competent enough to manage gas cans and fire. (I liked Peter's zombie - more of a dead man with deliberate but still-functional motor skills than a shambling fumble-bum, with occasional supers-level awesomeness.)
The cards went against him, and even with the memory and the weapon re-flips, he failed to burn the final church on the list before the authorities showed up in too-great numbers.
3. Here, I found myself expanding the scope and purpose of the dark master, right at the same time I did it in the previous game. It seems to be a practical transition point now that play has seen both (i) a sufficient amount of context and visual standards and (ii) a couple of outcomes relative to what the dark master wants. The task was to break a guy out of prison and keep him safe; I described the guy as having a shaved head and intense eyes. Peter used another person in the jail as a trigger, and identified him as the guy who actually killed the soldier character, naming him Jack Johnson.
This time, Peter got a bad draw and not even the memory card or the weapon saved it. He narrated that he did break the guy out in a kind of frontal-assault, drive a truck into it way, but that the guy was injured in the journey through the sewers, falling out of sight. This turned out to be a very important plot moment.
Lots of story authority goes to the player in this game when the command is a bit complex and the soldier fails. Bret, what solid general principle might you advise, to guide the player narrating his soldier's failure in a complex task? Does it have to be total? Or just one part?
4. Thinking about the next task brought up the interesting question of how the dark master might view a soldier who's been failing him. Mechanically, there's nothing to go by - the character remains under the dark master's control and continues to carry out tasks, so obviously it's not like the dark master stops using him. But there are nuances to play with. In this case, I gave the soldier a very supportive role, to cover the escape of the man (same guy from the cell) after he shoots a community activist who happens to be Betsy during a very public press conference with various town authorities and activists.
Peter didn't choose to have the soldier resist (wow), and used the weapon to overcome the initial draw, so the assassination succeeded and they both escaped.
5. I began by describing the forests outside of town, with a team of men who'd clearly hunted together a lot in the past fanning their way through it, saying things like "Hey Jack, where's your ghost?", (grimly) "Just keep lookin'," and the soldier stuffed into the cavity created by the overhang of a fallen tree. So this was a little different in that the soldier had clearly not just jugged himself somewhere waiting for orders, and that we could instantly see that people in the area were beginning to get proactive about the situation. I had the Voice say, "Sacrifice them to me, that all may see," with the attendant scary brush fire starting up. It was brutal: Peter described the soldier laying waste to the hunters, using his tongue with a necessary weapon draw, and finishing by taking his time with Jack, including a memory card to remember just what it was like to have been beaten to death, in order to return the favor. He strung up the other hunters in the trees to ritualize the sacrifice.
6. Finally, I was able to squick Peter out. I gave a little thought to how far the dark master's own story had gone, and decided that by this point, a
church had been established. So in the cleared-out downtown bank building, the former lobby was full of people, led in some kind of ritual by the weird skinhead guy, now clearly some kind of religious leader, although I avoided the cliche of robes and similar stuff. Some guys pulled a low wooden platform to the center of the room, and the voice commanded the soldier to "Conceive upon her my coming in the flesh," as Betsy - now herself undead - was led to it.
Peter pointed out that there wasn't much obstacle involved, and he was right, so I thought a moment and then brought in the other main character, who considered himself more appropriate to this task than the soldier, and tried to rally the crowd to support him.
The joker came up in this draw, so this was the penultimate episode. Peter was faced with pretty weak obstacle cards, and the soldier did not resist - so, uh, he did it. This was the end of the "priest" character too, which I think Peter enjoyed a bit.
7. So, our final scene had arrived. This time I was careful to pass the whole process of choosing the cherished item over to Peter. He decided that the soldier regretted his violent, asocial life and valued the new closeness (if that's the right word ... "togetherness" perhaps) with Betsy. This was kind of interesting, being less of something from his past and more a feature of his current existence.
I continue to struggle a little bit with this phase of play. This time, I didn't really come up with a
for the soldier so much as merely threaten the closeness with Betsy, so that the "task" might be at most "stay put," "don't interfere" or something like that - not very strong, in retrospect. A limo pulled up to the house where the two zombies were kept locked away, with Betsy now "great with child," and goons came out to collect her and take her away. The soldier objected.
I had a great poker hand: a genuine full house, with queens high. Peter had two pair with kings high, itself a pretty good hand for non-fancy poker, but not enough to win. He narrated how Betsy was taken away by the goons, and described the shotgun blasts which ultimately felled the soldier, including the final one to the head, upon which the story goes black.
Peter brought in and utilized memories differently from Tim's use of those rules. He focused on the immediately tactical consequences of the memory, linking the new card-draw to the soldier's actions to overcome the current adversity. He made less lucky initial draws and ended up using the weapon a lot more, which gave me a considerable bank of cards to use in the endgame, as you can see. And - hard core! - he did not resist the Dark Master, not even once.
I asked him about at that after we finished the game, and he said (I'm paraphrasing) that his emerging concept of the character was kind of a hard case, and also that the "god" element of the Dark Master carried a kind of moral or supra-moral weight regardless of content that he was enjoying watching play out. Peter, correct me if necessary, and elaborate on your ideas if you want. It's a key variable of play so it bears discussion, I think.
The excellent thing is that theme emerges through the "precious thing" rules at the end, in this game no less than in the previous one despite the absence of resistance. It was a lot more brutal in this case, but my current take is that the choice at the end will always raise a flicker of humanity for the soldier, no matter how obedient to atrocity he or she may have been up to that point.
Peter also talked about how so much of the actual role-playing was internal, yet the story as it emerged was thoroughly collaborative.
I really enjoyed with the rules mods we used, which produced just over half as many scenes as the previous game (possibly confounded by more frequent weapon use). I want to to try them lots and see what it's like when the Joker doesn't wind up on the tippy-top of the half-deck it's shuffled into. In this game the joker showed up as card 29; my shuffling always seems to put it at the top of its half-deck for some reason.
Here are my thoughts on specific advice and standards for both players, based on what we've worked out through practice in my two playtests.
1. A given episode may have multiple locations and possibly time lapses, whatever makes sense for that particular task.
2. An episode is entirely set up by the GM, but entirely concluded by the player. In between, you trade Goes.
3. The player has no back-story authority at all, with the single exception being memories.
4. The first episode is crucial because it establishes the look-and-feel of all kinds of crucial setting and character material.
In my previous Cold Soldier thread, Bret brought up the issue of multi-session play. My thoughts on this will depend very greatly on how to read the actual rules as currently written. I think it's relevant that both Peter and Tim chose to include the death of the soldier in their final narrations, even though the mechanical criteria for it were not met in either case. The immediate question is whether that's even allowed - if the soldier is not destroyed by the rules, does that mean he or she is cursed to continue in service? And whatever the answer is, should be made very clear to both players prior to starting the game.
Best, Ron
P.S. The thread title quote is from Genesis, chapter 6: "And the Lord saw that the wickedness of the human creature was great on the earth, and that every scheme of his heart's devising was only perpetually evil. And the Lord regretted having made man on earth, and it grieved Him in His heart. And the Lord said, 'I will wipe out from the face of the earth the men whom I have created, from man to cattle to crawling things to the fowl of the heavens, for I regret that I have made them!'"
Phil K.
Posts: 31
Re: [Cold Soldier] "... every scheme of his heart's devising ..."
Reply #1 on:
February 14, 2011, 02:43:58 PM »
Augh! This is what I get for having a busy life and not making the Dice Dojo Tuesdays for a month: missing great play tests. (And, yes, I realize it's a twosie game so either we would have played something else or someone would have had to watch if I were present.)
My biggest question is really for Peter. His biggest complaint from
[FreeMarket] Trouble with something
was the perception (right or wrong) that there is an inability to recover from a bad draw. I noticed in your play account that he made a few bad draws and did not recover from them yet the account indicates he enjoyed the game. What's different about Cold Soldier?
Bret Gillan
Posts: 425
That's Bret with one 't' damn it.
Re: [Cold Soldier] "... every scheme of his heart's devising ..."
Reply #2 on:
February 14, 2011, 03:24:02 PM »
Thanks for playtesting this again, Ron. And thank you, Peter.
It sounds like the Dark Master's two-card draw is the way to go. I'll change that in my current draft of the rules.
I think we agree on the standards. My unwritten idea is that the player cannot author anything about the soldier except through memories, apart from (and I'm kind of on the fence on this) the soldier's appearance.
And to answer your question regarding endgame, my thought was that you can only die under the specific conditions laid out in the original rules. Tim rightly pointed out that those conditions were, essentially, never going to happen. Perhaps it is best left in the players' hands to make this decision. My thought was that the master would not permit you to die. Would this be dissatisfying since so much is given over to the player in the final scene of the game? Would it be jarring to have that decision wrested away?
Tim C Koppang
Posts: 393
Re: [Cold Soldier] "... every scheme of his heart's devising ..."
Reply #3 on:
February 18, 2011, 10:39:32 AM »
Quote from: Bret Gillan on February 14, 2011, 03:24:02 PM
My thought was that the master would not permit you to die. Would this be dissatisfying since so much is given over to the player in the final scene of the game? Would it be jarring to have that decision wrested away?
I find this idea of the master not allowing the solider to die very intriguing. As a player in the previous game mentioned, I almost wanted my solider to die just to put him out of his misery. I also saw it as the ultimate act of resistance against the master. So narrating his death was a sort of natural relief. Going up against a Master who just won't let this happen is compelling in a devilish sort of way.
I would suggest either making death a more common possibility, or taking the decision away from the player. The solider has so little choice except for the final scene, that giving the choice about life and death back to the GM seems appropriate. Otherwise, I wouldn't mind seeing the question of death tied to the resistance mechanics. Perhaps the solider has to successfully resist in the final scene in order to narrate his own death?
Tim C Koppang
TCK Roleplaying
Hero's Banner
Mars Colony
Ron Edwards
Global Moderator
Posts: 17707
Re: [Cold Soldier] "... every scheme of his heart's devising ..."
Reply #4 on:
February 22, 2011, 08:17:41 PM »
Hi Bret,
Along with being enmeshed in rules for crazy angels flappin' around all over the place, I've been thinking about this issue since you posted.
I think you should stay in the driver's seat with this game design. You conceived that the soldier would in fact persist (I almost wrote "live") past the point of play, unless some mechanical effect occurred. There isn't any reason to desist from that concept just because a bunch of playtesters enthusiastically did something else. Arguably, in both games I was in, if the soldier didn't die, I at least would have burned with the desire to play again. We all have yet to see what repeated play with the same character is like.
I'm saying, don't let the playtesters be in charge. You had a vision, of which that detail was a part. If it turns out not to be a working and/or important part, then OK, but no one's done that detail right yet, hence, no data.
I do think you're on the right track with reconsidering what mechanic is involved in the soldier's final death. Being full-out of cards at endgame seems unlikely unless you do it deliberately, and even then it'd be kind of hard. And to do it deliberately, it means sacrificing the chance to save what's cherished ... and if I'm reading my fellow players right along with myself, we'd be a lot more juiced about a chance to save what's cherished through the final death. All this is food for thought and I'm curious to see where you go with it.
Best, Ron
Pages: [
« previous
next »
Jump to:
Please select a destination:
General Forge Forums
=> Actual Play
=> Game Development
=> Independent Publishing
=> Last Chance Game Chef
=> Site Discussion
=> Guide to the Archives
Independent Game Forums
=> Adept Press
=> lumpley games
Inactive File
=> Endeavor: Ronnies 2011
=> Endeavor: Game Chef 2010
=> Endeavor: Game Chef 2011
=> Arkenstone Publishing
=> Beyond the Wire Productions
=> Half Meme Press
=> Universalis
Powered by SMF 1.1.16
SMF © 2011, Simple Machines
design by


text:
A bank can be illiquid and insolvent. This is a nasty end-game.
It can be insolvent but not illiquid – when it has plenty of access to deposit funding but the loans it has made are heavily bad. In this case continued operation risks further losses to depositors and the organisation SHOULD be regulated or confiscated.
It can be illiquid but not insolvent (such as when a perfectly good bank has a run).
The purpose of lender-of-last-resort things in bank regulation are to ensure that banks which are subject to runs don't fail because they are illiquid but not insolvent. If a bank which is solvent has a run the right thing for the government to do is to front the run – make it go away – and let the bank sort itself out over time.
The problem of course is that when a bank is illiquid it is very hard to tell whether the liquid bank really is insolvent.
If the government were perfect at telling this they would know precisely who to bail out and who not to. Nobody serious thinks they know that. If I knew that I would be a much better stock picker than I am.
Anyway the reason for a bank confiscation is that the bank is UNSOUND meaning the capital is inadequate. Illiquidity is NOT a reason for a bank liquidation.
This comment was made by the FDIC:
Federal regulators said WaMu has suffered an exodus of $16.7 billion in deposits since Sept. 15, leaving the
thrift "with insufficient liquidity to meet its obligations." As a result, WaMu was in "an unsafe and unsound condition to transact business," according to the Office of Thrift Supervision. Seattle
What is strange about this is that this is precisely the reason you SHOULD NOT take over an institution – certainly without consulting it about alternative forms of liquidity (such as pledging its loans). The whole point of government intervention is to nationalise insolvent institutions and to keep solvent ones liquid. Now I suspect there is more to this story than this blog post. But for the moment the explanations are inadequate...
Two weeks ago WM put out a press release that said this:
WaMu also announced that it has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) concerning aspects of the bank's operations, principally in several areas of its risk management and compliance functions, including its Bank Secrecy Act compliance program. In addition, WaMu has committed to provide the OTS an updated, multi-year business plan and forecast for its earnings, asset quality, capital and business segment performance. The business plan will not require the company to raise capital, increase liquidity or make changes to the products and services it provides to customers.
If this release was not a direct lie - and there is no reason to believe it was - then the OTS thought only two weeks ago that WaMu did not require additional capital. Very strange indeed.


text:
When Your CRM Is Working, Keep Working on It
Oct 25, 2012 5:00 AM PT
"It is a good thing to follow the first rule of holes: If you are in one, stop digging." It was only 1988 when this nugget of wisdom was first recorded, according to the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs.
It's one of my favorites, because it has so many applications in the business world. Unfortunately, the glib so-and-so who first uttered this turn of phrase did not come up with the corollary to this saying, which would have been appropriate for CRM.
What we need is a saying for this: when you're succeeding, keep on doing what caused you to succeed in the first place. That doesn't lend itself to clever sayings because it's a lot more complicated, but when it comes to CRM it's true. Persistence is the only path to success.
Two Parts
However, persistence is a two-part thing. Part one is implementation and adoption: you need to get a strategy in place and a system up and running, then you need to get buy-in from your front-line users -- and you need to make sure that, once you get acceptable adoption, you continue to encourage it and evangelize to your employees about its benefits to them.
Part two is to continue revisiting the underpinning ideas of your CRM strategy, taking into account how customers are evolving, how your business needs are changing, and the features of your CRM technology that you're not using that could be brought into play. It's not a one-and-done scenario -- you have to be persistent in thinking about better ways to harness customer data.
Doing this is difficult. Businesses are not geared toward tasks that have no defined stopping point. CRM implementations are often treated like other IT projects: once they're in place, the thinking stops. The users use it (or don't), and, over time, when enough of them complain sufficiently, the application is seen as outdated and in need of replacement. A new application is selected, the organization suffers through implementation and adoption pains, and things are relatively good for another period of time.
This represents a loss of investment on the software, but also in a loss in training time, implementation costs and selling time. And the sad part is that, often, it was unnecessary -- the application seen as "outdated" wasn't -- it was the decision-makers' view of the application that had failed to keep up. The existing capabilities were present but forgotten in the application -- forgotten because the business had failed to continue thinking about evolving its usage of the application.
Stick to It
The same failure occurs around thinking about customer processes. The moment you have a process that keeps your customers satisfied is the moment you should start thinking about ways to improve upon that process. However, that finite, task-oriented way of looking at business activities often means that, once a process is established, it's off to the next task. That process is not revisited again until it's broken and causing pain in the organization.
This is why I call CRM a "discipline" -- it's an ongoing practice that requires attention and deliberate action. And it requires persistence -- persistence of practice and persistence of thought -- in order to be effective.
Who needs to be the one who keeps this practice? It would be convenient to say that it's the duty of an executive -- the VP of sales, the CIO, or someone in marketing -- but disciplines are rarely convenient. The real answer is that this discipline is really the responsibility of all the users. The front-line users have plenty of opinions, and plenty of practical ideas -- but most businesses lack a single point person to collect their input and use it to help evolve the CRM system to reflect users' needs. Managers need to communicate their goals as they evolve, and IT needs to play a role in enabling CRM technology to deliver responses to those needs.
You can see why this practice doesn't lend itself to pithy sayings -- it's complicated, unfolds over time and requires the alignment of many roles within the organization. Getting it right, however, can maximize your ROI in CRM technology -- and can greatly boost the value of your customer relationships, which is the real point of the discipline of CRM.