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Review: 007 Legends
007 Legends frustratingly drops the player right in the middle of a random scene from Sam Mendes's Skyfall.1.0
Ask any seasoned gamer for a shortlist of the most influential, medium-changing titles of all time and you can bet the majority of them are likely to include 1997's landmark GoldenEye 007. The Nintendo 64 title can still, 15 years later, hold its own against the multiplayer modes of today's most respected first-person shooters in terms of pure, unadulterated fun factor. Regretfully, the James Bond video-game franchise took a drastically steep nose dive in the following years, never again eclipsing the monumental heights of GoldenEye 007 (the 2010 Wii remake is notable for its dedication to the original's triumphant format, but the 2011 Reloaded variation, also developed by Eurocom, mucked things up to an irreparable degree). Now we have 007 Legends, a game with a concept so inherently ludicrous that, if placed in the hands of the appropriate developer, could possibly amount to something more than a tossed-off, unpolished novelty.
007 Legends frustratingly drops the player right in the middle of a random scene from Sam Mendes's Skyfall, in which Daniel Craig's Bond is engaged in fisticuffs atop a speeding train barreling across an above-water bridge. An allied sniper accidentally pops a cap in Bond, and he tumbles into the area's rapidly surging waters. Cue a whole mess of sketchy flashbacks that act as poorly constructed transitions between 007 Legend's five primary single-player campaign missions, each corresponding to a previous 007 cinematic outing. Having recently spent some time with one of the year's must-own Blu-ray box sets, Bond 50, I was admittedly interested in playing through Bond's classic (and not-so classic) adventures straight out of Goldfinger, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, License to Kill, Die Another Day, and Moonraker (yes, this is the chronology as presented in the game). What would have been a treat is if each of these passages actually stayed true to the film that inspired them, but no, Eurocom opts to set their storylines in the present day, chocking them full of nonsense action sequences that weren't in the movies, and replacing the Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Roger Moore with Craig. In doing this, nothing about 007 Legends comes off as legendary, and you never feel like you're really in Bond's shoes, cleverly and forcefully navigating your way to each section's draggy big-bad encounter. Everything about the game, from the mechanics to the visuals, is sloppily constructed and obviously a poor man's version of today's first-person touchstone, the Call of Duty series. Given this, it's perplexing as to how an experienced, capable publisher such as Activision, who also handles Call of Duty, allowed 007 Legends, a disappointment in every sense of the word, to be released in its current state.
The fact is that there's not an ounce of narrative or gameplay originality in 007 Legends, which could have been forgiven if its influences were held in high regard, but unfortunately it takes an unforgivable misstep at every opportunity. The various objectives are dull and overwhelmingly linear, sending the player from point A to point B, shooting anything that moves by way of an embarrassingly broken aiming system or taking the sneaky route by knocking out enemies from behind (laughably, they go down hard with not so much as a stiff jab to the back of the knee). These stealth operations are, quite simply, an absolute joke. With no way to relocate collapsed bodies around, Solid Snake-style, it's as if Eurocom said to themselves, "Eh, let's just put in a couple of stealth elements to shut people up and we'll call it a day." Shameful. Useless. A trigger-less pistol. There's also several botched mini-game-type activities that jump out at Bond from time to time. Half-assed and lackluster, such mundane tasks as hacking CPUs, snapping reconnaissance photos, driving fast cars with substandard steering control, and duking it out with bosses in a routine, lifeless QTE fashion are but another set of holes drilled into an already expeditiously sinking vessel.
Sure, a marginally enjoyable split-screen multiplayer that pays homage to GoldenEye 007's signature design, as well as the promise of some additional Skyfall content to become available later via DLC are nice perks, but they comprise a very miniscule portion of 007 Legends. The bulk of the game is an unsightly, nearly unplayable misfire that comes far too close to devaluing one of cinema's greatest franchises.
Developer: Eurocom Publisher: Activision Platform: PlayStation 3 Release Date: October 16, 2012 ESRB: T ESRB Descriptions: Blood, Drug Reference, Mild Language, Mild Suggestive Themes, Violence Buy: Game
Review: In Wide Ocean Big Jacket, the Magic Is in the Smallest of Details
The game captures place and feeling through honing in on things that are singular, small, and warm.4
Turnfollow's Wide Ocean Big Jacket gains so much of its character from the little details: the radio playing when Uncle Brad buys a pile of wood for a campfire, or the glow-in-the-dark skeleton that he and Aunt Cloanne use to mark their campsite. Their tent is a two-roomer, and Cloanne explains that they, veteran campers that they are, usually set up a little table in the additional space, for reading indoors in the middle of the outdoors. On this trip, though, the other room belongs to Brad's 13-year-old niece, Mord, and her best friend who's now her trial boyfriend, Ben. The kids aren't totally sure about relationships, as they're still in that phase of life where relationships aren't a "real" thing yet—more of a distraction and a declaration than a commitment. But they've decided to give it a try.
Mord explains this relationship to Brad while they're setting up camp, telling him that, as a way of acceptance, Ben had said it doesn't sound "too scary." Backstory is delivered this way throughout the game, through simple dialogue about what's already happened. Instead of outright flashbacks to past moments, there's only the now, the little snapshots of time the characters spend talking in their wooded setting, or the next one, or on the beach. Wide Ocean Big Jacket is broken up into 20 such vignettes, often swapping between perspectives as the characters amble around these tiny areas with their shuffly gaits that have a pleasantly jerky quality reminiscent of hand-drawn animation. Sometimes they have actions to perform, like when Cloanne watches birds through binoculars or Mord cartwheels across the sand.
Other times, you just page through the dialogue (or, in one case, the narrative of a trashy paperback) from an observer's perspective, seeing what the characters have to say around the campfire and look at their expressions. The dialogue unspools in small snippets on simple black screens, below black-and-white drawings of the characters' heads. Though the portraits are totally static, the screens convey a lot through simple tone and those unchanging expressions: Mord's dead-on stare informs her quirky personality, and Ben has the bashful demeanor of a kid whose eyes you can't quite see behind the reflection of his glasses. What might have felt limited instead seems specific, even affecting.
Turnfollow does so much with so little. Despite its unassuming art style and brief length—a little over an hour, if that—the game suggests so much beyond itself, through the lyrical cadence of the dialogue, the charming specificity it brings to the characters' lives, and the way it cuts out of dialogue to reveal scenes like how Mord is standing on a picnic table. The characters are so vividly defined that you get the urge to play according to their behavior, whether it's deciding which bush to pee in or whether or not to cook a whole mess of hot dogs at once on the same skewer. Wide Ocean Big Jacket bottles small moments and makes them feel important, not because they speak to some world-ending conflict, but because they're formative: a kiss, an argument, a sighting of a pretty cool stick to wave around. The game captures place and feeling through honing in on things that are singular, small, and warm.
The game was reviewed using a digital Switch copy purchased by the reveiwer.
Developer: Turnfollow Publisher: Tender Claws Platform: Switch Release Date: February 4, 2020 ESRB: T ESRB Descriptions: Crude Humor, Language, Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol and Tobacco Buy: Game
Review: Lair of the Clockwork God Is a Fine-Tuned Comedy Machine
With their latest, Dan Marshall and Ben Ward successfully extend their lovingly parodic style to a much broader range of genres.4
"Why play only one genre of game when you could be playing two slightly different ones at the same time?" That's a somewhat misleading tagline for Lair of the Clockwork God, as you never simultaneously control the game's self-aware protagonists, Dan and Ben. Rather, you swap between them, as well as control schemes.
Dan is a platformer enthusiast who refuses to interact with objects, while Ben is a stubborn LucasArts point-and-click adventure junkie who doesn't care to jump. Figuring out how to use the skills we associate with their favorite genres of game to navigate through a Peruvian jungle, apocalyptic London, and an alien spaceship results in a game that's fresher and more innovative than yet another standalone platformer or adventure game would be. Lair of the Clockwork God is an exciting way for creators Dan Marshall and Ben Ward to not only set it apart from their prior Dan and Ben titles (Ben There, Dan That and Time Gentlemen, Please), but to successfully extend their lovingly parodic style to a much broader range of genres.
The game is a gold mine of comic scenarios in which the fictionalized, fourth-wall-breaking duo at its center solves novel puzzles using an intentionally haphazard control scheme. Dan's refusal to interact with even basic objects like a light switch results in gloriously convoluted workarounds, like the one where Ben must find a way not only to reactivate a drone, but to somehow make it glow in the dark. As the game points out, Ben is essentially Dan's platforming gimmick; instead of Dan having to seek out skill upgrades, Ben combines items from his inventory into accessories that allow Dan to double-jump or hang from walls. Lair of the Clockwork God's hybridization of platformer and adventure conventions is more than just a successful approach to everything that Ron Gilbert was trying to do with 2013's The Cave; it's also a simultaneous homage and critique of the conventions of various genres, with the two protagonists mercilessly commenting on how games have evolved—or not.
Lair of the Clockwork God's central conceit is that Dan and Ben must teach a faulty A.I. how to re-empathize with humanity. They do so by entering "constructs" (self-contained levels) that represent feelings like Grief or Fear, and each area is "beaten" once the duo has done enough to sufficiently model that emotion to the game's titular god. This focused, vignette-like structure also allows Marshall and Ward to quickly bounce between concepts, the result of which is a game that pokes fun at everything from visual novels to virtual reality, with plenty of righteous indignation left over for walking simulators and monetization options.
Ironically, the one thing Lair of the Clockwork God doesn't have much to say about is other platforming games. One of the 11 constructs, Anger, does a fine job of channeling through Dan the sort of curse-spewing, controller-flinging rage that those who've played masocore games like Super Meat Boy will instantly relate to. The rest of Dan's platforming sections feel secondary to Ben's adventuring. Whereas the inventory puzzles are given new life by Ben's outsized attempts to puzzle his way past obstacles that Dan can simply jump over, Dan's largely dialogue-free acrobatics feel like the interstitial stuff you have to complete to get to the next clever puzzle or bracing joke. Dan's the straight man who sets up the jokes, as when he mantles over some ledges so that he can pop the balloon holding up a dead clown aloft. But it's Ben who lands the comedy of those moments; his ability to Look at objects or to Use items on them provides the literal observational wit and shock humor needed to push these scenes over the edge: "I feel like pissing on a clown's entrails wouldn't be funny somehow."
Everywhere else, though, Lair of the Clockwork God has plenty to say, with each new area finding a clever way to demonstrate a particular emotion. Joy, for instance, manifests for Dan as a Sonic-like Green Hills Zone filled with floating beer caps and frothy alcohol waterfalls for him to run and jump through. By contrast, Ben's never happier than when he sets about dismantling the bureaucracy that governs the way a platformer respawns upon death.
Regardless of whether you share Ben and Dan's nostalgia, their emotions are infectious. The scenarios they face are absurdly over the top, but their actual responses are all too relatable. Most remarkably, however, is that the game can troll players with levels like Confusion and Disappointment and lull them into thinking that Hope is nothing more than a stinging punchline, only to at the last minute show up to the table with the unexpected sincerity of Regret. As it turns out, Lair of the Clockwork God is less about teaching an A.I. what it means to be human than about providing players with examples of how to be better people.
The game was reviewed using a review code provided by Size Five Games.
Developer: Size Five Games Publisher: Size Five Games Platform: PC Release Date: February 21, 2020 ESRB: T Buy: Game
Review: LUNA The Shadow Dust Is Visually Dazzling but Succumbs to Monotony
Its point-and-click adventure elements eventually feel alternately rudimentary and more than a little tedious.2.5
Presented in a beautiful hand-drawn style with detailed animation and a soft color palette, LUNA The Shadow Dust suggests a storybook come to life. The main characters, a cat-like creature with a shadowy face and a boy who wears a rabbit-eared hood, wordlessly make their way through a mysterious tower. Its rooms are full of puzzles tied to intricate devices and murals from long ago, depicting patterns to follow that will let you unlock the next door. But despite the game's considerable visual panache, its point-and-click adventure elements eventually feel alternately rudimentary and more than a little tedious.
Throughout, you control the characters separately, initially needing one of them to complete a simple task on one end of a room that will have some effect on the other side. As the game continues, you begin to split the characters up even further, moving them into entirely separate spaces. The creature, for example, may need to stand in some ethereal void filled with trees, while the boy pulls a lever to cycle the void through different seasons. Though the initially basic puzzles grow somewhat more challenging and satisfying to complete with this degree of separation added to the mix, monotony takes hold as you watch the characters laboriously shuffle from one end of the screen to another.
The game is at its best early on, as a kind of visual tour that demands minimal effort from the player, where the puzzles are a largely inconsequential barrier to seeing the sights. The puzzle rooms' initial layouts are economical, with small areas that hold some obvious visual clue for how to proceed. Such simplicity makes those first puzzles feel a little rote, but they're the most effective, unintrusive vehicle for simply appreciating LUNA's artistry.
As the game wears on, though, it introduces the aforementioned complex spaces, requiring the characters to separate for longer periods and trek up and down stairs as well as in and out the same doors. Combined with the sluggish walking cycle, the backtracking can often feel like outright punishment for not solving the progressively more involved puzzles on the first try. The very space that once seemed so breathtaking becomes easy to resent. As some of the animations and actions repeat for no discernible reason (one cart ride to gather books needs to be done a baffling four times), the gorgeous, otherwise relaxed experience begins to grate.
The game was reviewed using a review code provided by Application Systems Heidelberg Software GmbH.
Developer: Lantern Studio Publisher: Application Systems Heidelberg Buy: Game
Review: Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics Takes Path of Least Excitement
The uninspired material is unable to elevate the game's moth-eaten ramblings about good and evil.2
The draw of a game inspired by The Dark Crystal and indebted to Final Fantasy Tactics is easy enough to grasp. Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics offers fans of Jim Henson's 1982 fantasy film and Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance the chance to see Rian, Brea, and Deet—characters from the Netflix series—engage in tile- and turn-based combat. But it's difficult to imagine anyone being elated by BonusXP's game, as the paper-thin quality of its story is as undeniable as its mechanics are behind the times.
The gameplay loop of Age of Resistance Tactics is beyond familiar. You select different points on a map to initiate battles with bad guys—in this case, everything from the Skeksis, the main antagonists in the The Dark Crystal franchise, to giant worms. As in chess, you move your characters to different tiles in order to control key segments of territory, set up combination attacks, and so on. The objectives of war range from wiping out every enemy to moving a set number of characters to an exit. After victory, you gain experience points and gold, which can be spent on equipment that increases your power, defense, and other attributes.
Oddly enough, you rarely acquire enough gold to buy much of anything for a party that eclipses 10 members, but it doesn't matter. You can get by with substandard weapons and armor in Age of Resistance Tactics because the battles don't demand any unusual strategic thinking. Enemy groups tend to be small, the environmental elements are unthreatening (gusty winds, for one, can be avoided or ignored with little repercussion), and the character techniques fail to fall outside of what one would expect from a tactical game of this nature. The melee techniques, buffs, projectiles, and magic attacks at your disposal recall the player's combat options in everything from Into the Breach to Fire Emblem: Three Houses.
The developers at BonusXP try to spice up the affair with tiles of different heights and a job system that allows characters to combine disparate abilities. Obviously, then, they believe that emulating the well-executed concepts of Final Fantasy Tactics is a sturdy enough foundation, and to their credit, the results are serviceable. You certainly can't sleepwalk your way through Age of Resistance Tactics and fail to, say, increase the adaptability of your party by making offense-dominant characters adopt healing skills from a defense-oriented job. And you can't truly take advantage of the soldiers with ranged attacks unless you pay attention to height dynamics. But these gameplay elements are integral to more than a few titles from this subgenre of game, and BonusXP mostly just follows a well-tread formula.
Take away the characters, myths, and other connections to the Dark Crystal universe and it's easy to see that Age of Resistance Tactics has no real identity of its own. Outside of the occasional comic-book cutscene, the story is largely relegated to a small handful of lines of dialogue before or after battle. The plot is easily digestible but with the anonymous quality common to something made by committee, as in the way the heroes have to exterminate pests before a community will guide them to a new location. And such uninspired material is unable to elevate this fantasy game's moth-eaten ramblings about good and evil.
The game was reviewed using a review code provided by ONE PR Studio.
Developer: BonusXP Publisher: En Masse Entertainment, Netflix Platform: PlayStation 4 Release Date: February 4, 2020 ESRB: E10+ ESRB Descriptions: Alcohol Reference, Fantasy Violence Buy: Game
Review: Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition Is a Magisterial Elegy for a Nation
Kentucky Route Zero is about America in a way few games aspire to be and fewer still succeed at.5
Had Kentucky Route Zero been released for the first time this year, it would have been easy to mistake its concerns for being entirely contemporary. When we talk about recent art that addresses the many injustices of capitalism and widespread disenfranchisement, there's a tendency to frame such discussion in the context of the 2016 election. Rising discontent, widening income gaps, and chosen ignorance in the face of ecological devastation have further popularized stories to voice our collective anger, usually with subtext about eating the rich or gazing upon the end of the world. The setting of the five-part episodic adventure game fits right into such an atmosphere of resentment: a ravaged, mysterious Rust Belt stripped for parts and left to rot, its people displaced and indebted yet doing their best to scrape by.
But this towering masterwork from the three-man development team of Cardboard Computer stretches back further, taking a much longer view of things past than what might simply be described as "post-Trump." Though the first part, Act One, came out in 2013, the game's weariness and outrage extend beyond even the late-2000s financial crisis that inspired it, cutting to the very bones of moral compromise that make up the United States. Kentucky Route Zero is about America in a way that few games aspire to be and fewer still succeed at, as its deceptively quiet story gives way to something odd, sad, and brimming with humanity.
Though the game begins with Conway, an old man who drives a sputtering delivery truck for a floundering antique store, the cast gradually expands with each act. Shannon Márquez repairs old television sets in the back of a bait and tackle shop and is the cousin of the enigmatic Weaver, who tends to appear and disappear through pirate TV signals. Ezra, introduced in Act Two, is a boy who lives with a giant eagle in the Museum of Dwellings, a housing display over a razed neighborhood. First seen in Act Three, Junebug is a robotic musician in punk attire, originally designed to clear the old mine but now making her own way and her own sense of self alongside Johnny, another mechanical worker. To some degree, you control all of them, moving them around the screen in different scenes, but mainly you choose their dialogue and decisions.
Spilling out in a script-like format and typeface, the words of Kentucky Route Zero are numerous, the majority of the game predicated simply on talking to people and visiting dreamlike places. Though it superficially resembles a point-and-click adventure game, there aren't really any puzzles, just choices to navigate the locations and the dialogue paths. A few of the choices matter, though most are flavor; for one, Conway's dog can be a male Homer, a female Blue, or have no designated name and gender. Mainly, you pick the direction of conversations, defining what the characters might say and what they fixate on, who speaks and who stays quiet as the other choices often melt away, the dialogue having flowed in one direction instead of another.
This is, then, a game that asks you to inhabit multiple perspectives rather than consider them from a fixed distance, absent the artifice of world-defining choices. You consider personalities and states of mind, discovering the characters through half-remembered snippets of stories and the way they speak to each other, the way they think, the way they interact with the world. The game develops its own unique rhythms of easygoing movement and gradual exploration, a gorgeous synthesis of sound, image, and text that gets to the heart of how it feels to be out in the night air, to inhabit space along country roads and woods and fields. This is a twilight drive made physical, evoking the imagery of abandoned places and husks of human habitation often only through the words of characters who speak in the over-sharing cadence of the lonely and lost.
Here, you don't poke around for collectibles or experience so much as a general sense of discovery, the urge to take your time and drive through the darkness for the simple sake of finding weird, pretty scenes dense with metaphor. One of the most impressive things about the game is how it has evolved, growing more ambitious from one act to the next while remaining remarkably cohesive. Later acts switch up camera angles and dialogue presentation without uprooting what's come before, without diluting its power; some of the most affecting moments are still the early ones that eschew the simplistic graphical style entirely, leaving you only with the text interface and the brilliant sound design of ethereal music, chirping bugs, and dripping water.
Kentucky Route Zero is a game often content to remain as mysterious as its namesake, an underground highway seemingly unbound by physical laws. Any fights, between unions and predatory companies, have already happened or doubtless will happen again. Instead, it explores the aftermath of cultural devastation, of how people survive in the ruins of the American experiment and how they build atop (or beneath) that wreckage, with the strange reality meant to represent what capitalism has done to the world. The magic is there, only contained and warped by the society that has grown around it.
The characters' paths narrow as the game continues, as the fist of an unfeeling system closes and people are overwhelmed by weaknesses; you drift from the role of driver to the person being driven to a simple observer of what's to come. The people you encounter are refugees of greed and exploitation and obsolescence, and there's a sliver of hope as they defiantly continue, finding pleasure in creation and companionship. They write, they compose, they perform, and they record, inspired by past struggles and a world content to forget its own history beyond facile preservation attempts in arbitrary little museums. After seven years, this visionary masterpiece concludes, an impressionist portrait of people doing what they can in a world that will never recover.
The game was reviewed using a review code provided by fortyseven communications.
Developer: Cardboard Computer Publisher: Annapurna Interactive Platform: PlayStation 4 Release Date: January 28, 2020 ESRB: T ESRB Descriptions: Language, Use of Drugs Buy: Game
Review: Reality TV Strikes Back in the Darkly Satirical Ministry of Broadcast
The game does a fine job of narratively showing the way in which a person can be broken down and made to believe anything.3.5
There's always been something fatalistic about video games, the way in which, once you've selected your playable character, you're locked into a specific role. As much as certain games might emphasize personal choice, like Mass Effect, or navigational freedom, like Skyrim, they're ultimately offering little more than the illusion of control.
The darkly satirical Ministry of Broadcast doesn't wait for some late-game BioShock-like twist to reveal that your character has never been—and never will be—more than a cog in the machine. The reality television program The Wall Show, filmed in what appears to be a repurposed Siberian prison, serves as a framework for a game that can't help but emphasize just how scripted everything is in its world. Even in the opening title sequence, which shows your character blithely jumping out of the back of a speeding truck that's just gorily flattened a janitor, the game is gleefully explicit about how your progress comes entirely at the expense of others, even going so far as to point out your complicity in all of it. What won't you stoop to as this unnamed, ginger-headed competitor in the latest season of a dystopian country's reality program, hoping to win the right to cross the wall and reunite with your loved ones?
Though this shoeless, put-upon protagonist believes himself to be an unsorted contestant, one without a clearly defined role in the competition, it quickly becomes obvious that Shoeless is being molded into the exact sort of player that the regime ruling the country he calls home demands its citizens to be. Resistance isn't just futile, it's not even an option. This is the flipside of what happens in Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, where saving your colleagues simply requires additional puzzle-solving. Here, you absolutely cannot progress if you're not willing to repurpose your comrades as fleshy bridges over spiked pits, or as distractions for feral dogs.
At first, this violence is explained away by The Wall Show as being staged: Nobody's really dying, thanks to absurdities like puncture-proof clothing. And Shoeless's belief in that allows him to absolve himself of guilt. For players, the pixelated aesthetic and comic tone of the game are similarly distancing: They downplay the goriness—and finality—of some of these later encounters, as if a person is any less dead if they've been cartoonishly impaled on a zeppelin, sucked into a drainage pipe, or consumed by an alligator. But though your character escapes angry enforcers, collapsing structures, and radioactive rooms, the game itself never lets you get away from the consequences of your actions. Regardless of the nature of any episode's violence, it always ends with your protagonist having to trudge back through the prison-like facility's basecamp, passing the baleful stares of his unhappy fellow contestants.
While Ministry of Broadcast does a fine job of narratively showing the way in which a person can be broken down and made to believe anything—the game's creators cite George Orwell's 1984 as an inspiration—the gameplay often feels out of sync with that storytelling angle. For one, the limited control scheme only lets you jump directly up or across and makes it difficult to position yourself by the ledges you're trying to climb. Making Shoeless's actions so laborious feels incongruous with the game's central premise: that Shoeless is all too easy to control, that he doesn't struggle or think twice about killing his companions.
It's one thing to be inspired by the classic mechanics of cinematic action-adventure games like 1989's Prince of Persia and 1991's Out of This World, but it's another to be unnecessarily beholden to them. Indeed, Ministry of Broadcast's allegiance to those games' clunky controls is especially odd given that its artistry is miles away from the drab, pixelated graphics of those older titles. This is a game that knows how important it is that players feel the full illustrative soullessness of all those snowy exteriors, graffitied corridors, red-lit bunkers, and empty warehouses that make up the barbed-wire-ringed confines of The Wall Show.
But if you can get past its unnecessarily irksome controls, there's a lot to enjoy about Ministry of Broadcast. While it remains a platformer throughout, the game's various episodes offer different takes on the genre, from the emphasis on stealth during a prison break, where you walk around wielding an imaginary finger-gun, to a surreal horror sequence in which you stumble around the dark depths of the facility where The Wall Show is filmed, led by a talking, glow-in-the-dark crow. One day you're participating in a (rigged) election between the colors Red and Blue, and the next you're in the middle of a war movie, diving desperately into bunkers as you flee an enemy nation's aerial bombardment.
The only constant throughout these settings is the way in which you're being conditioned. Just look at the way each episode's name riffs on the Kübler-Ross model, shifting from the "Celebration of Denial" to the "Repression of Depression" before ultimately ending with a fatalistic choice in which you either accept what you've done, or you die. Or to frame it as Ministry of Broadcast does, sometimes a game simply isn't winnable.
The game was reviewed using a review code provided by Hitcents.
Developer: Ministry of Broadcast Studios Publisher: Hitcents, PLAYISM Platform: PC Release Date: January 30, 2020 ESRB: T Buy: Game
Review: Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot Is a Bloated Serving of More of the Same
The world here is littered with side missions out in the wild, and most of them amount to uninspired fetch quests.2.5
With over nearly 40 years of material to draw from, for any Dragon Ball video game to retell the story of the first Saiyans to arrive on Earth and Goku awakening to his lineage is as lazy as a Star Wars game going to Hoth. And yet, that's exactly the story that Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot tells, without doing anything new to make it worth telling.
It'd be nice to say that Kakarot at least represented a sea change in telling that story as an RPG, but "DBZ as an RPG" has also been done to death, even done quite well a couple of times. And, for what it's worth, Kakarot isn't even remotely the worst example of a Dragon Ball RPG: For that, look no further than the awful, throwaway card-based games.
Visually, this game is largely on par with 2018's stellar Dragon Ball FighterZ. The combat, while extremely simplified, does capture much of that trademark DBZ flash and destructive flair. And quite a bit of work has gone into recreating the show's TV-style presentation through interstitials, narration, and music, bringing back the playful tone of the original Japanese production (every version of the show broadcast in the West tries to introduce an edginess that isn't there in Japanese cuts). The best thing about the game is that it's the most faithful adaptation of the saga, but that also happens to be the worst thing about it.
The anime was notorious for padding out each episode and each story arc with startling amounts of filler material. That included special attacks that would literally take multiple episodes to charge and fire, slapsticky interludes involving characters light years away from the main action, and, at times, characters just standing around waiting to continue a fight.
There's a sequence early in the DBZ metaseries where Saiyan baddies Vegeta and Nappa face off against Earth defenders Piccolo, Krillin, and Gohan, but when they sense that Goku—killed in a previous battle with his brother, Raditz—is being resurrected, they literally stop the fight to wait for him to arrive. There's legitimate reason for that on the show—the anime was in production while the manga was still being drawn, which left the animators stalling for time—but, for reasons beyond explanation, this and other excruciating wheel-spinning has been replicated perfectly in Kakarot. And there's easily over 25 hours of that sort of scene here. Indeed, this is an RPG that won't allow the next major story beat to be advanced until you've done unrelated busywork to stall for time. What should be rousing nostalgia for the early days of the DBZ series ends up bringing back painful memories of playing Anthem.
What makes Kakarot particularly egregious is how much its padding issues apply to its design. This is, ostensibly, an open-world game, abundant in massive countrysides and cityscapes, but these environments are largely empty. The world here is littered with side missions out in the wild, and most of them amount to uninspired fetch quests. There are cooking and fishing mini-games, though neither of them are as crucial to the plot, character development, or your survival as similar mechanics in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or Final Fantasy XV.
In Kakarot, you can fly around collecting orbs that can be spent to unlock new moves, which is fun but not nearly enough to justify all that empty, unused space. There are training grounds scattered across the game's open world where you can defeat random characters to learn new moves, and there are stores that sell healing items to use during battle. These are both useful resources, but they're tiny points of light across what's otherwise miles and miles of nothing.
Though Kakarot comes alive during combat, that's also not without its flaws. You can perform all manner of light-show-inducing Super Moves by holding the left shoulder and pushing a button. However, as long as you can maneuver properly and you're stocked up with enough healing items, you can so very easily cheese your way through the entire game by just spamming your most basic attacks. Super Moves wind up being for your own satisfaction than a vital cornerstone of a fight. That's despite having an entire Final Fantasy-style grid/job system meant to provide enhancements to your team of fighters, and the lack of tension or challenge from fights provides you with absolutely no urgency or incentive to use it.
Kakarot's overarching problem is one of focus. This is a game made with all the resources necessary to create a great Dragon Ball title, and no small amount of affection for the universe. It also has no ambitions of being more than a set of weak, timewasting barriers between you and witnessing a storyline that fans have seen recreated dozens of times before. Even the folks behind the anime knew there was room to reduce the story to its strongest elements, which is how the abbreviated Dragon Ball Z Kai came about. It's not certain who exactly needed Dragon Ball Z regressed to its most bloated form, but it does this story no favors.
The game was reviewed using a review code provided by fortyseven communications.
Developer: CyberConnect2 Publisher: Bandai Namco Platform: Xbox One Release Date: January 17, 2019 ESRB: T ESRB Descriptions: Mild Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence Buy: Game
Review: Journey to the Savage Planet Gamifies What It Means to Critique
The game's themes feel like facile wallpaper over mechanics that feed into the ideas being critiqued.2
In Journey to the Savage Planet, you work for Kindred Aerospace, a dubious space exploration company. At their behest, you're dropped onto the uncharted planet AR-Y 26 with orders to explore, document, and ultimately plunder the place for resources. All the while, live-action videos of Kindred's wacky CEO and audio commentary from EKO, the sociopathic ship AI, emphasize that this is all supposed to be comedic. By loudly depicting resource exploitation as well as general disregard for the environment, the company's personnel, and any semblance of collateral damage, the developers at Typhoon Studios mean to send up colonialism and capitalism at large. (The "savage" part of the game's title is satirical, or at least it's supposed to be.) But like The Outer Worlds, the game's themes feel like facile wallpaper over mechanics that still feed into the same ideas being critiqued.
Like so many modern video games, for example, you must engineer new equipment from whatever stuff you've scrounged from the environment. AR-Y 26's system of branching paths, potential shortcuts, hidden health upgrades, and scan-able objects recalls Metroid Prime, only with the addition of alien alloys and mineral deposits to swat at for crafting materials. It plays like the standard-issue consume 'em up, only with EKO's snarky voice whispering in your ear to assure you that this is the point—that this is the commentary.
EKO jokes that your menial progression is incremental at best, and for a while, that's true; it takes several hours before the game feels particularly satisfying to navigate, as you gradually invest in things like grappling hooks and jetpack boosts that provide double, then triple, then quadruple jumps. The combat never feels particularly good, either, since it demands too much aiming precision from what otherwise amounts to an undemanding series of dodges.
The game might have been onto something if its progression was appropriately banal or if your struggle for resources felt particularly disempowering, positing you as a lowly worker whose labor chiefly benefits someone higher up the ladder. But instead, the materials are your reward. You're meant to comb the environment's tall grass and hidden alcoves for any hint of more resources to vacuum up, because the allure of that incremental progress is your carrot on a stick. It's a compulsive progression loop familiar from so many other games, where finding another orange goo or alloy chest pumps the good chemicals into the right part of your brain. The only difference is a thick cloak of irony that's supposed to pass for subversiveness.
In a game like Subnautica, the exploration gives you a better sense of the world; it makes you feel small, makes you appreciate what you're taking from it to survive. At its most intermittently successful, Journey to the Savage Planet is built with a thrilling verticality that might have achieved a comparable, if far less successful, effect. The outcrops of floating rocks are conducive to death-defying shortcuts and last-minute grapples, often letting you hop right off the edge of one area to immediately land in another far below.
But the game scarcely quiets down long enough to give in to these moments of wonder, undercutting any fleeting semblance of awe with obnoxious comedy. AR-Y 26 is a playground to be bulldozed, full of things to poke, prod, and jokily slaughter in Kindred's name. It is, for example, reasonably humorous that your jetpack vomits out a conspicuous cloud of smug. But it becomes far less funny once EKO insists with a wink that, no, it definitely isn't harming the environment. The whole game is like this. There's no restraint or subtlety to the comedy, only loud and constant underscoring of the things that the writers (often mistakenly) believe to be funny, like an explorer log that details horror at encountering the "Valley of a Thousand Farts." Titles and text entries are riddled with groan-inducing internet lingo, as one quest advises you to "kill it with fire" and EKO's self-written encyclopedia entry opens with "It me."
There's perhaps a version of this game that's content to shut up and let players get their colonialist kicks in blissful ignorance. Though it wouldn't fix the problems inherent to the premise or video game progression systems in general, it would rouse a mere fraction of the irritation. But as is, so full of insistent and toothless satire, Journey to the Savage Planet is a monument to hypocrisy, content to gamify and reward the very things it means to criticize. The result is less an anti-capitalist statement than a statement that anti-capitalism is trendy.
The game was reviewed using a review code provided by 505 Games.
Developer: Typhoon Studios Publisher: 505 Games Platform: PlayStation 4 Release Date: January 28, 2020 ESRB: T ESRB Descriptions: Blood and Gore, Crude Humor, Language, Use of Drugs, Violence Buy: Game
Review: SELF Nightmarishly Grapples with Our Vanishing Sense of Self
SELF rejects the power-building, level-gaining escapism that typifies the majority of pop games.4
Developer doBell's SELF employs a storytelling mode that defies easy categorization. For one, you must play the game and see multiple endings in order to truly understand the nature of a young boy's search for his missing dad in a world that scarcely comprehends him. The text-based narrative is, for no immediately apparent reason, presented as subtitles on a monitor that will often be overwhelmed by static at certain points. The game's terse writing places your playable character in a dream of sorts, where the people closest to him avoid answering his questions and where everyone in the city he calls home can disappear in the blink of an eye. The effect is nothing short of nerve-wracking.
By repeatedly showing an image of cracked glass, where the diverging lines of the crack are explicitly characterized by the narrative as different pathways and destinations in the story, SELF encourages the player to restart the game after arriving at one of many endings. The proceedings concern a child named John who wakes up from sleep only to enter an obfuscating nightmare of an existence in which he cannot find his father. The fractured narrative is consistently fascinating to put together as a puzzle, even if does occasionally lead to tedium. Even though a helpful checkpoint system allows the player to skip parts of the story, you may still have to retread sections of SELF's narrative that you recently finished reading, depending on which ending you're trying to discover on a subsequent playthrough.
A bigger drawback of SELF, though, is its occasional reliance on the "bullet avoidance" of Toby Fox's acclaimed indie Undertale. This type of gameplay is one-dimensional by design, as the player simply controls a powerless icon within a box and attempts to avoid contact with objects that move into the space. The largely mindless routine of moving a bland avatar—a heart in Undertale, a crudely drawn face within a square in SELF—away from easy-to-dodge projectiles becomes stale, and the action is even more unsatisfying in SELF, as objects entering the box have even more predictable trajectories than those in Undertale.
Luckily, everything else about SELF largely works and adds up to an unsettling and revelatory experience. John's mother absurdly evades the child's questions about the new status quo. Eventually, he's able to leave the house for answers, but visits to an arcade, school, hospital, and bus bring more confusion before the player is able to discern exactly what has happened to John's family. And along the way, any sense of calm in the story is challenged by a variety of sharp sound effects, from balloons popping to the high-pitched dinging of bells.
The game goes in different directions based on whether John wishes to "face" the truth during crucial moments in the story, and the various endings often transpire out of nowhere and vary in their emotional impact. In an unexpectedly comic turn, one ending brilliantly comments on the tale's general sense of fatalism: At the very start of SELF, the player can choose to keep going back to sleep rather than get out of bed—one of gaming's oldest clichés—and this decision brings you to "The Happiest Ending," in which John never has to wake up to the disturbing dreamscape that awaits him otherwise.
Other choices reveal curious reversals of seemingly established facts. If you're able to trigger particular memories within the dreamlike narrative, the text will sometimes read as if it's written more from the perspective of John's father. And deeper into SELF, the script implies that perhaps you're actually playing as the father who imagines himself as the son.
Although the story certainly suggests that dreams contain hard-to-define approximations of reality, the ultimate theme of SELF is that you are whom you love. In a mind-blowing twist on the game's primary visual conceit of a monitor displaying text, SELF redefines the screen as a mirror with nails in its corners. If you remove the nails and then the mirror, another mirror appears with a silhouette of a kid. From there, one by one, mirrors can be pulled away to reveal a larger shadow of a person. The tragedy of life, as SELF sees it, is the older we get, the more we grow, but this growth is offset by a loss of self via the deaths of loved ones. Far from an orthodox release, SELF rejects the power-building, level-gaining escapism that typifies the majority of pop games that audiences so casually, unassumingly embrace.
The game was reviewed using a review code provided by indienova.
Developer: doBell Publisher: indienova Platform: Switch Release Date: January 16, 2020 ESRB: E10+ ESRB Descriptions: Fantasy Violence, Mild Language Buy: Game
Review: The First-Person Puzzler Lightmatter Coasts on One Bright Idea
It can't step out of the silhouette of its most brilliant predecessor, Portal.3
At the start of the first-person puzzler Lightmatter, within the mined-out heart of a mountain, an arrogant scientist, Virgil, is experimenting with ways in which to efficiently turn light into an energy source. Things inevitably go wrong, and soon your blank slate of a protagonist is stranded in the depths of the mountain, trying to follow Virgil's caustic directions in order to safely evacuate a facility overrun with killer shadows. It's a concept that turns everyday objects, from an overhead ceiling fan to a conveyor belt, into deadly platforming challenges, as the shadows they cast must be avoided at all costs.
At one point, Virgil directly compares this situation to the classic childhood game "The Floor Is Lava." It's a too-winking nod that calls attention to the carefully constructed nature of Lightmatter's puzzles, which are better encountered as a naturally occurring part of a given area's background, like the way in which a cubicle farm's haphazard arrangement of desks and chairs damningly form a river of shadows that must somehow be forded. In such moments, the game hews closer to The Witness than Portal, in that the puzzles feel like natural extensions of the environment as opposed to artificially engineered test chambers.
The correct paths through Lightmatter's once-generic office and cavern areas are deliberately engineered to have a single, tricky solution. But the game generally does well to distract the player from this contrived construction, wherein the path to the exit is always blocked by a broken light source but the moveable klieg lights and beam-reflecting photon connectors you'll use to literally shine some light on the problem are always conveniently within reach.
It's not until the last third of the game that the puzzles become jarringly conspicuous in their design. Until this point, the various contraptions found within the facility—like conveyors and light-activated switches—have a practical purpose, whether that's for transporting quarried rocks or for testing and containing the lightmatter. Only a few of these machines felt like they served no purpose other than creating a puzzle, like an elevator that doesn't normally travel between floors, requiring instead that you send it back to the first floor so that you can ride atop it to the third. In these final experimental labs, though, the rooms give themselves over to needless brain-teaser padding, as they serve no purpose beyond stymying players.
On a visual level, the developers at Tunnel Vision Games have done a fine job of translating the complexities of lighting into a puzzle mechanism. Going with a clean, cel-shaded look, as opposed to a more photorealistic aesthetic, ensures that the spotlight effects operate predictably in each environment, just as the game's muted palette makes it easier to distinguish between objects. Perhaps taking a cue from Mirror's Edge, the rare splashes of color—green plants, orange machinery sparks, red warning lights—help make even clearer what can be interacted with. And, incidentally, this streamlined aesthetic doesn't lead to dumbed-down puzzles, as the complexity of each area stems from clever design as opposed to an excessive number of obstacles or a misleading series of visual cues.
Would that the game's mad-scientist-run-amok storyline weren't so derivative. There's not a single transmission from Virgil that doesn't bring the comically sociopathic ribbing of Portal's GLaDOS to mind. (There's even a reference to Aperture Laboratory and its cake.) Those lines can do little else, because Virgil is ultimately as much of a cypher as your own "persistent, replaceable, and silent" player character, whom Virgil identifies as a tourist, a safety inspector, a journalist, and, finally, a spy, as if trying to establish what the developers won't.
This is a game that tasks you with trying to escape the facility in one moment, then with helping to shut it down in the next. And because your motivations are so ill-defined, it's impossible not to see your character as anything but a vehicle for solving puzzles, ensuring that Lightmatter is unable to step out of the silhouette of its most brilliant predecessor. And that's a damning thing for a game that's all about deadly shadows.
The game was reviewed using a review code provided by Zebra Partners.
Developer: Tunnel Vision Games Publisher: Aspyr Platform: PC Release Date: January 15, 2020 Buy: Game
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Situated almost underneath the Burnett Bridge, this small park and playground offers the kids somewhere to play while Dad drops in a line. You will find a children's pedal power air bike and a set of swings right next to a barbecue and the toilet block.
Although there are limited play facilities, this is the perfect place to be able to drop in a line and entertain the kids at the same time.
Lions Park, North Bundaberg is considered a dog "off-leash" area.
The car park can get quite busy on weekends when the weather is perfect for boating. Relax and enjoy.
Find UsQueen Street
Bundaberg North Queensland 4670

subset: commoncrawl


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If you overlooked the Fiesta Bowl, you are missing out on some good, quality entertainment. UCF leads Baylor 28-20 at the half thanks to some big plays by the offense.
UCF running back Storm Johnson gave the Golden Knights an early spark. An 11-yard touchdown run gave UCF an early 7-0 lead following a 76-yard drive over six plays. Minutes later Johnson entered the end zone once again on a shorter run to capitalize on a drive that started at midfield. Quarterback Blake Bortles had 183 passing yards in the first half, highlighted by a 50-yard touchdown pass to Rannell Hall midway through the second quarter to build a 21-13 lead and another 34-yard touchdown play to Hall for the final score of the half.
Before it turned in to a lopsided half, Baylor managed to counter with their first touchdown of the game. Late in the first quarter, quarterback Bryce Petty picked up a short touchdown run to put the Bears on the scoreboard. Petty later helped Baylor capitalize on an interception thrown by UCF quarterback Blake Bortles. Petty completed a pass over the middle to Levi Norwood, who then maneuvered out of traffic and made a run for the end zone to bring Baylor to within one point. A botched extra point attempt left Baylor trailing by one, 14-13.
Baylor got another chance immediately following the ensuing kickoff though. Johnson had the ball punched out of hands by a Baylor defender and the Bears recovered in great field position. UCF returned the favor though by picking off a pass from Petty in the end zone to protect the 14-13 lead. Five plays later Bortles connected on the 50-yard touchdown pass to Hall for the 21-13 lead.
After Petty's summersault in to the end zone brought the Bears to within one, Bortles again led UCF to a touchdown. He did so once again by connecting with Hall. Bortles completed a pass to Hall, who managed to find an open path to the end zone down the right sideline with a blocker in front of him down field. A leap in to the end zone extended UCF's lead to 28-20 in the final minute of the half.
Baylor kicker Aaron Jones had a last-second field goal attempt sail just right of the uprights as the half came to a close.


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Hi all. I am a very basic coder, trying to help a friend out. I'm trying to move the login and social icons into the same container with the search form (not within the form itself, of course, but into the parent div) and then float the search form and the cart/social div in opposite directions and apply margins/padding as appropriate. I've tried a bunch of things, and nothings worked because I don't know what i'm doing. Plus it's a drupal site, which adds to the frustration.
Any chance someone could tell me what I would need to change/add/subtract? I can upload the CSS if needed.


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- Options
LezyneSV10 Multi-Tool
Item # LED0034Item # LED0034
Cycle-survival tool.
We're all used to components on our bikes breaking or coming out of adjustment. It's just a trade-off of lightweight performance that we've learned to live with. It's not acceptable, however, when your tools break or strip. It can leave you stranded miles from home, despite having been prepared for a breakdown. Lezyne designed the SV-10 Multi-Tool with durable, corrosion-proof stainless steel and aluminum that won't leave you stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Lezyne uses tried-and-true stainless steel bits that combine durability and light weight. The CNC-machined bits are unbelievably precise, so you don't have to fight to keep them from rounding your hardware. They'll never rust, either, even if you forget them in your pack over the winter. In order to keep weight down, Lezyne uses CNC-machined 7075 aluminum side plates and a forged and CNC'd chain breaker.
The most important difference between the SV-10 and most other multi-tools is Lezyne's clever center-pivot bit design. This design allows Lezyne to make low-profile tools that are lighter, stiffer, stronger, and more ergonomic than the more common wraparound design. Look closely at the joint area of each bit. The center-pivot design keeps the axis of the bit in line with the plane of the tool to make it feel more like a full-size tool. The natural-feeling pivot point is more comfortable and it gives you more torque.
The Lezyne SV-10 Multi-Tool includes all the tools that you'll need for common road- and trail-side adjustments and light repairs. 90% of the time you're making adjustments with Allen wrenches, and Lezyne includes all the common sizes: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8mm. The Phillips screwdriver comes in handy more often than you'd think (just take a few rides without one), and we all know how annoying it can be to be caught miles from home with a broken chain and no chain tool. Torx T25 and T30 hardware is becoming more and more common these days, especially on SRAM drivetrains, so Lezyne made sure to include it on this comprehensive multi-tool.
View more Multi-Tools
Reviews & Community
High Quality
I like it and think it will do the job.
Small and light
- Familiarity: I've used it once or twice and have initial impressions
The pictures don't give any size reference. This thing is real small, and real light. Guessing here, but I would call it 2"x1.5"x0.5". Haven't needed to use it yet for any repairs, but the build quality leads me to believe that it will perform admirably. Buy with confidence.
PS - read on some other site that the chain tool definitely works with Shimano and Sram 11 speed chains (not sure about Campy). Something not all current chain tools do.


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You can't see them, but they're all over your home. Dust mites will be in the carpet, the sofa, the bedding, the curtains, even a child's stuffed animals. These tiny insects, visible only under a microscope, leave a trail of waste that is a highly allergenic.
It's estimated that between 10 and 25 per cent of North Americans are sensitized to dust mite droppings, and that these pests will spark wheezing in over 50 per cent of asthmatics. Thankfully, while you can't get rid of dust mites completely, you can minimize their multiplying numbers.
What They Are
Dust mites, cousins to the spider, are tiny, eight-legged arachnids measuring only one-quarter to one-third of a millimetre in size. They spend their two to four months of life eating, creating waste and reproducing. A female will lay 100 eggs in her lifetime, and each mite produces about 10 to 20 waste pellets a day.
They are whitish in color, and thrive in warmth (between 75 and 80 degrees F; 24 and 26 degrees C) and humidity higher than 50 per cent. Mites eat minuscule flakes of human skin and animal dander. They can't drink, but absorb moisture from the atmosphere.
Where They Live
Dust mites prefer a plentiful supply of skin flakes or animal dander, moisture and warmth. This is why you'll find the highest concentration of mites in your bed. An average mattress contains between 100,000 and 10 million bugs.
A study in 2000 found that more than 45 per cent of American homes had detectable dust mite levels associated with the development of allergies, and 23 per cent had bedding with concentrations of allergen high enough to trigger asthma attacks.
What You Can Do
"The confusion about allergen avoidance is not about whether it really works, but whether it's possible to do in an ordinary house," says Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills, a professor of medicine and microbiology, and the chief of the division of allergy, asthma and clinical immunology at the University of Virginia Health System. "And the answer is yes, but it's got to be done seriously."
According to Platts-Mills, a leading dust mite researcher, there are a few keys:
'Ä¢ The most important plan of attack is to make sure your home is too dry for the mites to survive. Maintain a humidity level of between 40 and 50 per cent, and don't use a humidifier, even in the winter. Consider purchasing a hygrometer (available at most major building supply stores for as little as $20) to monitor the level of moisture.
Platts-Mills adds that basements are tough to keep dry, "so don't live in basements if you're mite allergic."
• A recent European study discovered that older mattresses and poor ventilation, along with sleeping on lower floors of a home, contribute to higher concentrations of dust mites in mattresses. Platts-Mills considers a mattress used for more than five years to be old, depending on how it has been treated. Ensuring that your bedroom has proper ventilation, is not in the basement or too humid, and replacing your mattress (unless it has been covered with dust-mite impermeable covers the whole time) every few years will diminish the number of mites that bunk in with you.
• Encase your mattress, duvet and pillows in mite-proof covers. Plastic is best for containing mites, but not the most comfortable to lie on. A cozier option is tightly woven fabric covers, which are usually made from polyester or a cotton/poly blend and are designed to hold up to frequent washings. Several brands are now on the market, and some have passed rigorous allergy/asthma certification.
• Though asthmatics and those with dust mite allergies have long been told to use synthetic-filled pillows and duvets, research has emerged over the past few years that indicates feather bedding may be a better option. This is because the tightly woven cotton used to keep the feathers from poking through the fabric casing also acts as a barrier to mites.
• If using plastic bed covers, wipe them down once a week with a damp cloth, and let them dry completely before dressing the bed. Cloth bedding, including fabric mite-blocking covers, should be washed weekly in water at least 130 degrees F.
Next Page: Cleaning, Flooring and Pesky Toys


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A couple of Australians sailed out into the ocean to release a marlin back into the wild. That sounds like a nice story, right? Well, it would have been, if a giant shark hadn't come out of nowhere to rip the marlin to pieces in front of them and their cameraman, who was stuck in the water at the time.
Any sane person would, perhaps, try to get out of the shark-infested waters. But not this videographer. Despite being in a giant cloud of marlin blood, he keeps filming, and says after the fact that all he could think was, "this is going to be awesome!" He may have chosen the safest route, though: the giant shark is more or less blocking his way back to the boat. Plus, it was awesome.
Surprise! You're Swimming in a Blood Cloud with a Huge Shark [The Honest Angler]


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For 15 years, a single Grundfos pump did for car battery manufacturer Rombat SA what pumps do: it pumped. And it did so reliably and uneventfully. Thus in 2008, when Rombat considered expanding its water treatment unit in Bistrita, Romania, the company turned to Grundfos.
Wastewater treatment is a significant part of the production cycle at Rombat. The facility processes approximately 200 cubic metres of neutralized and pre-treated water daily. Up to 120 cubic metres per day of the treated water goes back into the production cycle in order to meet environmental requirements. The remainder goes to the municipal water treatment facility and then enters the city's wastewater system.
About one out of every three pumping units at Rombat is Grundfos-made, and they pump about half of the volume of fluids circulated on the industrial platform.
The acquisition of that first Grundfos pump, however, was a matter of luck.
"It was part of some equipment we ordered," explains engineer Gabriel Hîruta, head of the production units at Rombat SA. "Up to that point all our equipment was Romanian-made. We didn't know who the top manufacturers and brands were."
"The repair kit that accompanies the pumps greatly extends their life, hence bringing down their cost."
Gabriel Hîruta, head of production at Rombat SA in Romania
PHOTO: "Buying industrial equipment is not a one-off expense," says Gabriel Hîruta of Rombat SA.
Then, in 2008, as Rombat saw the need for a bigger water treatment plant as part of a long-term plan to expand its production facilities, the question of which manufacturer to go with became urgent. Due to protracted negotiations with various pump suppliers, the deadline for completing the expansion of the water treatment plant shrunk.
At this point, Gabriel Hîruta explains, the single Grundfos pump's 15 years of dependable service stood out as a major selling point. Another big selling point was the repair kit that comes with the Grundfos pumps.
"Buying industrial equipment is not a one-off expense," he says. "One always has to consider the maintenance costs. And Grundfos made the overall expense more palatable with the repair kit that accompanies the pumps, which greatly extends their life, hence bringing down their cost. That matters a lot when buying pumps in bulk."
"So far Grundfos has really helped us take our business forward."
Gabriel Hîruta, head of production at Rombat SA in Romania
A sacrificial order
Indeed, how long a pump will last is of paramount importance in light of the aggressive fluids circulated in a water treatment facility. And the life of a pump is directly related to the quality of the materials from which it is made.
Manufacturing car batteries results in water effluent that is tainted with sulphuric acid. The water treatment process involves neutralization and pre-treatment. Pump materials used in the application must be able to resist the aggressive chemical behaviour of the fluids.
So it seemed counter-intuitive that Grundfos would fit its pumps with cast iron impellers, which are doomed to have a short lifespan in the wastewater of the battery plant.
"Grundfos understood that we needed to expand the water treatment plant quickly," explains Gabriel Hîruta. "They didn't have pumps fitted with steel impellers in stock, so they sent us the whole pump order fitted with cast iron impellers, knowing that those would not last long. In fact, the cast iron impellers lasted exactly the time Grundfos needed to bring us the right type of impellers, the ones made of stainless steel.
"That was really something, being willing to deliver cast iron impellers as 'cannon fodder' to the acidic waters, at no cost to us, simply to fulfil our need to quickly expand our water treatment unit. It shows real commitment to the client's needs."
Trusted partnership
However, Gabriel Hîruta says, one grand gesture is not enough for a lasting business relationship. Such a partnership requires daily maintenance and commitment. And the high-quality products Grundfos has provided are cost effective and reliable. Not to mention, his plant's expansion has been an unqualified success.
"So far Grundfos has excelled in keeping a direct line of communication open with us, meeting our demands and really helping us take our business forward," Gabriel Hîruta says. "Things inevitably go wrong, and when they do it's good to know you have a trusted partner, one who will deliver. It's like a marriage."
Rombat's wastewater needs
Each day the Rombat plant processes about 200 cubic metres of neutralized and pre-treated water. To meet environmental requirements, up to 120 cubic metres per day of the treated water goes back into the production cycle. The rest goes to the municipal water treatment facility and then enters the wastewater system of the city of Bistrita.
In line with environmental requirements, Rombat also recycles the lead in used batteries in its Rebat facility, opened in 2005 in the city of Copsa Mica. Its current output capacity is 20,000 tonnes per year.
Grundfos supplied these end-suction pumps
Grundfos supplied 6 close-coupled (NBG) end-suction pumps at Rombat's Bistrita wastewater facility, helping the company to pump about half of the volume of fluids circulated on the industrial platform. The specific models included:
Read more about Grundfos solutions in manufacturing industries.
Rombat, largest car battery maker in Romania
SC Rombat SA, located in Bistrita in northern Romania, is the largest car battery maker in Romania, turning out 2.2 million batteries per year. The company started 32 years ago as a state-owned entity in a tightly regulated market, but it has since adapted to the open-market environment of the post-communist era. In 1996 Rombat was sold to its workforce. In 2012 it became part of the South African group Metair Investment Ltd, when Metair International Holdings Coöperatief U.A. bought 99 percent of the company's shares, which are not publicly listed. The company holds the top certificates in product quality, health and safety and environmental management.


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When building a new platform, you need to know who will be using it and how, and how those people will interact. So, for our ToxBank design we need personas to do the requirement analysis, and I have created initial draft personas now, which I hope I'll be able to share later.
So, how people interact is important, as communication is central to scholarly research. For example, this is why we blog: they are like conferences. And some insight in how the various personas look at each other can be helpful in describing personas and modeling an social science platform. Matus Sotak (aka @biomatushiq) created this funny but right-on overview:
So, there it is: five personas, each of whom characterizes the other. These views reflect how others think about that persona, which is what a persona is all about: a virtual character we recognize and can characterize in terms as done in this plot. If we hook this to requirements, we could observe that the less-knowledgeable need better access to important literature. Just to name something off the top of my head.
The second is a XKCD comic. This one is more important to the message of this post: what happens if you neglect personas? The above comic shows that ignoring personas is daily business, but is that bad?
This show two personas, an average user who appreciates cool GUIs and apps on cool topics, and a regular dude who lives in an area where tornadoes actually occur. The take home message here is that mere ratio of persona abundance is not generally a proper guide for design.
Now, try to map these two comics to anything you see around. For example, do the five personas match your research group? How does the head of your group handle this? Is hes accepting the status quo, or is hes trying to overcome these stereotypes? How do these personas get reflected in author lists? How does that map onto how you think about your EU project partners? Is it useful?
Repeating this experiment for the second comic is more useful. For example, map this comic to your citation list, and then reevaluate the impact of your research. This is exactly why CiTO is crucial. For our ToxBank project this last observation has major implications too.


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- Home
- Yarn
- Astrid Coquille
Product Description
Coquille is the a light purple with pink undertones peaking out, lightest color of the She Sells Seashells gradient. Pair with Fogbound or Mussel. Shimmering single ply silky merino that knits up into a lovely drapey fabric. Astrid is a Scandinavian name meaning divine strength, fair beautiful goddess.
- 70% merino :: 30% silk
- 438 yds :: 100g :: high twist single ply
- gauge 26-28 st/4" :: needles us 3-5
- hand wash in cool water :: lay flat to dry for optimal care of hand knits
astro-Origin GREEK from Greek astron 'star.'
as·ter ˈastər/ noun 1. a plant of the daisy family that has bright rayed flowers, typically of purple or pink.
2. BIOLOGY a star-shaped structure formed during division of the nucleus of an animal cell.
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You're a hard-to-please bunch, with only 17% of you opining that the $50,000 Porsche 928 was nicely priced. Today we're going with a much, much cooler vintage German machine… at 70 times the price!
Yes, folks, this is the most expensive vehicle for sale in the Hemmings Motor News classifieds (speaking of which, do yourselves a favor and check out the stuff at Hemmings Auto Blogs- which is like mainlining the uncut stuff if you're a car junkie- when you're done here). It lives just a few miles from me, over at Fantasy Junction, and the guys selling it are the same ones who ran the not-quite-as-valuable BMW 633CSi at the Arse Freeze-A-Palooza 24 Hours Of LeMons. It's one of two Spohn-bodied convertibles made, it's powered by an airplane engine, and it evaded destruction by the RAF, the Eighth Air Force, the Red Army, and- most dangerous of all- the Rust Monster. You can have it… for three-and-a-half mil! Reasonable price, or would you need to fortify yourself over at Booth Number Two to see it that way?
[Hemmings Motor News, Fantasy Junction]


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QuarkXPress® not only provides you with world-class layout tools — it provides you with automation tools that allow you to create top-end design quickly and efficiently.
With QuarkXPress it is possible to create footnotes and endnotes, manage them in a separate palette and design how you want them to look using footnote styles.
Footnotes are notes at the end of a page while endnotes are collected under a separate heading at the end of a chapter, volume or entire work. Both footnotes and endnotes are generally used to cite sources within a document or add a note in reference to the content. Footnotes make accessing citations easy for the reader, while endnotes have the advantage of not affecting the layout of the main text.
Content Variables allow you to work with dynamically changing content in all layout types – print, eBooks and App Studio. Content Variables allow you to set rules within QuarkXPress projects that automate layout requirements to ensure consistency and accuracy.
There are five different Content Variable types that will help you to automate and control your layout production:
With the Format Painter feature QuarkXPress allows you to quickly copy and apply (even multiple) local styles. Simply select the text with the appropriate formatting, select the new format painter tool and paste character styles and/or paragraph styles to other text areas. The text can be within the same text box or a different text box. This is a great time saver!
Synchronize Text, Pictures, and Formatting Automatically
With QuarkXPress®, you can use the same text or picture on multiple pages or in multiple layouts, and automatically synchronize it, with or without its formatting.
Whether it's a tagline, a name, an address, or something else, you can make sure that if it changes on page 3 of the print layout, it also changes in the Web layout and the iPad® version. And you can choose to synchronize the formatting, or format the content differently in different places.
With QuarkXPress, you can use the same text or picture on multiple pages or in multiple layouts, and automatically synchronize it, with our without its formatting.
Automatically Style Content Based on Powerful Styling Rules
Many layouts follow text styling rules —for example, "always make the first sentence in a story italic," or "always apply the Wingdings font to the first character in this type of paragraph." Understanding such rules is easy, but making sure they're always followed correctly —especially in long documents — can be a time-consuming and error-prone process.
Conditional styles (sometimes referred to as "nested styles") take the tedium out of text styling rules. Through an intuitive, "plain English" user interface, you can create a set of rules that automatically applies paragraph and character style sheets to your text based on the content of that text and the rules you've defined. This eliminates text-styling inconsistencies and saves countless hours of manual work.
Find out more about the creation and application of Style Sheets in QuarkXPress
Boxes and Groups Move Automatically With Your Text
Imagine you're creating a textbook with pictures in the sidebar, and you want the pictures to always appear on the same page as the text they illustrate. Or a guidebook where you want to put floating icons to the left of some paragraphs. Or a magazine where you want a column-spanning pull-quote box that always falls on the same page as the corresponding text. You can do all of these things manually — or you can do them automatically with the QuarkXPress® Callouts feature.
The Callouts feature lets you associate a box or group (a callout) with a specific point in the text flow called a callout anchor. When the text reflows and the callout anchor moves, the callout automatically moves with it — whether it's to a different part of the page, or to a different page altogether.
For maximum flexibility, you can position a callout relative to the page or spread, or relative to the position of the callout anchor itself. You can create callout styles, which work like style sheets and make configuring a callout as easy as clicking a palette. An intuitive interface makes it all easy to learn and easy to use.
Let Several People Work on the Same Layout Simultaneously
Composition Zones® let you divide a layout into components, then send those components out so that multiple people can work on different aspects of the content (such as body text, graphs, sidebars, and photographs) simultaneously.
Imagine a layout artist in charge of the QuarkXPress® project files for a magazine. The layout artist can "draw out" an area for an ad using the Composition Zones tool, then export that Composition Zones item as a separate file and give that file to the ad creator.
The ad creator can then build the ad in that file with QuarkXPress, then return the file to the layout artist. The layout artist simply places the updated file in the proper folder, and the main layout is updated automatically to show the ad. And because the Composition Zones item works just like a QuarkXPress layout, the layout artist can open it and make changes.
You can also use Composition Zones in situations where you have a block of information that needs to be included in multiple layouts. If you build such a block of information as a Composition Zones item, then share it with everyone who needs it, you only need to build it once. Other users can simply drag and drop it into their layouts. And if it needs to be updated, you only need to update it in one place, and it automatically updates everywhere it's used.
Composition Zones let you divide a layout into components, then send those components out so that multiple people can work on different aspects of the content (such as body text, graphs, sidebars, and photographs) simultaneously.
Import and Automatically Build Grids of Images
Whether you're a photographer who needs to assemble a catalog from a recent photo shoot, or a designer with a folder of images to review or lay out, the ImageGrid™ feature is a huge timesaver. ImageGrid can import a folder of images into QuarkXPress® and automatically build catalogs (contact sheets) of images with a variety of layout and labeling options. Each image can be captioned with its filename, resolution, dimensions, color model, and format.
"If you've ever needed to set up an array of images, you'll know how tedious that can be. This new tool…is undeniably useful and a clear time-saver. Again, it's catching up with a feature previously seen in InDesign and going several steps further."
— Keith Martin, MacUser"
Share and Synchronize Resources and Catch Errors Before They Occur
Job Jackets® let you encapsulate the specifications for a QuarkXPress® project before the job begins, then automatically check the job against those specs before it goes to output.
A Job Jackets file contains a set of specifications for resources such as style sheets, colors, color management settings, and output setups. It can also contain layout specifications, including dimensions, margins, bleeds, and master pages.
In addition, a Job Jackets file contains one or more Job Tickets. A Job Ticket specifies a subset of a Job Jackets file's resources that is appropriate for creating a particular project. By setting up a Job Jackets file for a job beforehand, you can help to ensure that the layout artist uses the right resources for that job.
A Job Jackets file can also contain rules. You can use rules to check a layout (either before output, or periodically as you go along) for problems such as incorrect fonts, problem colors, bad picture file formats, and so forth.
In addition, you can use Job Jackets to share resources in a local workgroup. Multiple designers can connect to the same Job Jackets file and use the resources from that file.
Job Jackets let you encapsulate the specifications for a QuarkXPress project before the job begins, then automatically check the job against those specs before it goes to output.
Create Tables of Contents, Lists of Figures, and More
The QuarkXPress Lists palette lets you create automatic tables of contents, lists of figures, and more, using the style sheets you apply in a layout.
For example, if you use the "Heading 1" style sheet for main headings and the "Heading 2" style sheet for secondary headings, you can use the Lists palette to insert into your layout a multilevel list of all paragraphs that use these style sheets, complete with the page numbers on which each occurs, with or without a customizable leader.
You can also control how such lists are formatted. For example, you could create a table of contents where all first-level headings are formatted with a style sheet that specifies 14-point bold, and all subheadings are formatted with a style sheet that specifies 12-point italic. You can sort lists by page number or by paragraph text. And if you subsequently make edits to the layout, you can update the table of contents with two clicks.
In addition to allowing you to create tables of contents and lists of figures, the Lists palette provides a handy way of navigating around a layout. To jump to any heading or caption in the active layout, simply double-click that heading or caption in the Lists palette. You can even use a dedicated Find field to find a particular item in a list without searching the rest of the text.
The QuarkXPress Lists palette lets you create automatic tables of contents, lists of figures, and more, using the style sheets you apply in a layout.
Speed Formatting with Style Sheets
A style sheet is a named package of text-formatting settings. With style sheets, you can format entire QuarkXPress® layouts in minutes, then change that formatting throughout in a single operation.
Paragraph style sheets define how a paragraph is formatted, including settings for line spacing, indents, space before and after, and so forth. Character style sheets define how text is formatted, including settings for font, size, color, typestyle, and so forth. All of the style sheets for a layout display in a palette for easy access.
One of the main advantages of style sheets is speed. To apply a style sheet to text, you just click its name in the Style Sheets palette. You can also create custom keyboard shortcuts for applying style sheets.
Style sheets are also indispensable when it comes to changes. If you decide to change the point size of all of the body text in a document, you can do it automatically by simply changing the point size in the style sheet.
Style sheets can also help you to maintain consistency, both within a layout and within a workgroup. To make sure everyone is using the same style sheet definitions, you can store a group's style sheets in a Job Jackets file, and have everyone link to that file.
Do you use styles in Microsoft® Word? No problem — you can import and export them in QuarkXPress.
With style sheets, you can format entire QuarkXPress layouts in minutes, then change that formatting throughout in a single operation.
The Item Find/Change feature lets you find and replace a huge variety of item attributes, including box characteristics, box colors, frame characteristics, line attributes, picture attributes, text attributes, and drop-shadow attributes. You can even search for one attribute (such as box size), and then wherever it's found, change a different attribute (such as the number of columns).
You can save time when you need to change attributes of multiple boxes in your layout. Use the Item Find/Change feature to find boxes or lines with specific characteristics, then easily apply changes to them.
Item styles are like style sheets for items. An item style is a named package of formatting options for items. For example, you can define an item style named "Sidebar" that describes a box of a particular size and color with a particular frame, text inset, vertical alignment, and runaround — then assign that item style to a box by clicking the item style in a palette or pressing a custom keyboard command.
Using Item Styles you can easily create and apply styles to elements of your layouts such as boxes and pictures. Any time you create an item for which you have defined a style, you can apply the style in a single click.
The Master Pages feature lets you create a "template" for a page, then use that template throughout a layout. You can have multiple master pages per layout — for example, one for the cover, one for the TOC, and one for body pages. If you update a master page, all of the pages that use it get updated automatically. Combine shared content and you can even create hierarchical master pages.
Using Master Pages you can define elements that appear on every page of your layout. When you change your Master Pages, the updates are reflected throughout your layout.
AppleScript lets you control applications such as QuarkXPress with scripts. AppleScript is an intuitive, easy-to-learn scripting language that has been built into Mac OS® for more than 15 years.
QuarkCopyDesk® lets content creators concentrate on design without worrying about layout.
Questions about pricing, upgrades or features?
Speak with a sales agent.


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Our mission is to help our community be safe, supported and self-sufficient. The Mono County Department of Social Services offers a variety of services to individuals and families through several Federal, State, and County programs.
Report Suspected Abuse or Neglect
If you know or suspect that an child or elderly person or adult with a disability who lives in Mono County is being abused, call the Child Welfare Services (CWS) and Adult Protective Services (APS) hotline.
CWS & APS Hotline number 1-800-340-5411 or 760-932-7755 to make a confidential report 24 hours per day.
Our employees are attentive and committed to providing the necessary information and guidance to ensure optimal benefit from all programs and services offered to our citizens.
We specialize in providing needed services to our clients whether child and adult protection services, in-home supportive services, foster care, employment assistance, food security, medical insurance and other basic need support programs.
Register to Vote click here [3]
About Public Health click here [4]
About Behavioral Health click here [5]
About Child Support Services click here [6]
About Strengthening Families Mono County (CAPC) click here [7]
Mono County Civil Right and Complaint Division click here [8]
Services Provided
Provides Cal Fresh assistance (formerly the Food Stamp program); medical assistance, including Medi-Cal, and the County Medical Program; and Temporary cash assistance for needy families and individuals.
more… [9]
Investigates child abuse and neglect and works to preserve or restore family stability.
more… [10]
Adult Services [11]
Provides services to help the elderly and persons with disabilities to live safely in their own homes. Investigates reports of elder abuse and neglect.
more… [11]
Employment Services [12]
Provides services to job seekers in search of employment and employers seeking qualified employees.
more… [12]
Emergency Shelters [13]
Mono County Social Services is the responsible agency for providing emergency shelters for residents and visitors in the event of a disaster. Please visit our Emergency Shelter page [13] for the location of the shelter in your area.
more... [13]
Health Care Reform [14]
What is the Affordable Care Act (ACA)?
more... [14]
Senior Programs [15]
In Mono County, we offer a wide array of services to older adults. Our goal is to help older adults live healthy, independent lives.
more... [15]
Mono County Acccess & Functional Needs (AFN) REGISTRY [16]
This registry website allows residents with access and functional needs an opportunity to provide information to emergency response agencies so those agencies can better serve them in a disaster or other emergencies.
more... [16]
IMACA Programs [17]
Currently offering the following services:
- Food and Garden Assistance
- Community Gardens
- Holiday Food Baskets – Thanksgiving & Christmas
- Wish Tree – Holiday Gifts for Children
- Head Start/State Preschool
- Subsidized Child-Care (Mono County only)
- Home Energy Assistance
- Home Weatherization and Appliance Replacement
- Low-Income Senior Housing (Bishop)
- Low-income Housing (Mammoth Lakes)
For more information visit imaca.net [17]


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Welcome aboard! This is a website for Chris Smith music, scholarship, recordings, gigs, educational materials and presentations, and the occasional free pint. Glad you've stopped by; do drop me an email (had to close the guestbook, to avoid comments-spam) so I know you've been here.
Please do also visit my blog for the latest stuff; updated daily.


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An incredible new product is ready to launch here on campus and change the way that Stanford innovators are able to promote their work. Stanford Founder's Showcase, or Stanford FoSho for short, is a platform designed to help Stanford developers gain recognition for their creations, let the rest of us to see the cool stuff that our fellow students are building every day, and provide dynamic, relevant content for life on the Farm. The platform will host student-built mobile apps, websites, and video, and will be available for download in the app store by the end of July.
As developers know, the app store has become a sea of over 700,000 apps, each competing to get on the "featured" page to drive downloads. Without serious help in the right places, even the best apps can fail to get recognition, slowing their growth and limiting the hype they deserve. With this in mind, we envisioned a platform that was the first stop for any Stanford innovator when trying to get their creations airborne, providing valuable recognition from the Stanford community and useful feedback from the world's techiest campus. The win-win here is tremendous: developers get to hit the ground running with their innovations and Stanford students get a sneak peek at the next generation of the world's best apps.
The platform is designed with a built-in feedback tool for users to rate their experience, giving the developers analytics and data which provide much deeper insights than the App Store. Even cooler – users don't have to update the app to receive and access new content, meaning new stuff goes straight into users' hands. Once we receive and approve an app, we plug it into the platform and it appears on the user's device in real-time.
The first two pages of the app will be split into "Around Campus" and "Developer's Club". All the apps and mobile sites pertaining directly to campus life will go on "Around Campus", while other Stanford-built apps and cool stuff will go on the Developer's Club page. We're still working on a third page which will change all the time depending on the time of year. Fall quarter will likely include resources for frosh, football, and other autumn-y things for life at Stanford, for example.
But we need to start from somewhere. Step 1 is to scour the area for apps being built right now and launch version one of Stanford FoSho, so we are hereby opening our first round of submissions for the platform. Calling all Stanford developers: we want your apps! You can be a current student, recent grad, or anyone working on an app meant to serve the Stanford student body. Below are instructions on how to submit:
Step 1: Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StanfordFoSho
Step 2: Fill out this form: http://dashboard.metaneer.com/admins/sign_up?institution=14
Step 3: Wait to hear back! You will be hearing from a member of our team in the following days after completing steps 1 and 2.
If you have any other questions, want to network with us, or want to join our team, we'd love to talk. Contact us and learn more via the links below:
Email our team at: email@example.com
Learn more about us: https://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/fosho
Interested in joining our team? Contact the co-founders:
James Mwaura: firstname.lastname@example.com
Andrew Bellay: firstname.lastname@example.com


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If it's luxury you're looking for, then Saint Petersburg, FL is the place to be. Here, you'll find a wide array of luxury homes from over 20 home builders. Your new luxury home will reflect the best in modern day technologies from better building techniques to tighter insulation and more energy-efficient appliances. But better still you can customize your luxury home to align with your style. Choose your fixtures, flooring, cabinets and countertops for a cohesive interior look.
Whether you're looking for something small, with only 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms or something more spacious with 7 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms it's all here. Prices for luxury homes in Saint Petersburg start at $233,990 and go as high as $2,398,500 so we can accommodate your luxury needs no matter your budget.
Luxury awaits you in your new home from NewHomeSource. Start searching today!


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Saturday, January 17, 2009
"My key to Ireland"
Kealy Family Home in Ballyfoyle, Kilkenny
As the only address I had for my father's distant cousins was Ballyfoyle, Kilkenny, Ireland I did not know where to find them when we arrived in the tiny village one wintry January day. Before leaving Australia we had done our homework and, from a Baptismal certificate we had for my great-grandmother, we knew that she had been baptised in Ballyfoyle.
After visiting the churches and cemeteries at Ballyfoyle and Muckalee in search of graves and being made most welcome by the priest at Muckalee who let us transcribe Kealy family details from the Church Registers we decided to try and find the cousins.
As dusk was approaching we called at the tiny Post Office where the clerk gave us directions to the cousins house. I was apprehensive about cold calling but my husband insisted that, as we had travelled from Australia, we should knock. We were given a royal welcome, plied with whisky and offered a bed for the night which we had to decline. Visiting the elderly cousins, who were thrilled to have dropins from Australia, gave us valuable information about our ancestors and an opportunity to sit at a table made by my great-great-grandfather.
Sitting in a room of the house that members of my family had used for over 200 years made me feel so connected to my heritage. It was an awesome experience.
This post has been submitted to Carnival of Irish Heritage & Culture : My key to Ireland.
6 comments:
- Unknown said...
I have family that hailed from Thomastown, Kilkenny, removed to the U.S. I see that you are researching the surname Ryan, and wonder if we share any relatives...please email me, I'd like to talk more about the Ryans. genblogjulie -at- gmail.com.
- January 18, 2009 at 6:56 AM
- Cindy said...
What a fantastic story! Gave me chills just imagining sitting in a room where your family had been all those years ago. Thanks for sharing!
- January 22, 2009 at 4:44 AM
- Michael F. O'Brien said...
My great great grandmother, Bridget Kealy, married Daniel Ivory on February 2, 1826 at St. Michael's Catholic Church in Danesfort, County Kilkenny, Ireland. Would there be any connection?
Thank you,
Michael F. O'Brien, email@example.com
- August 13, 2009 at 3:28 PM
- Michael F. O'Brien said...
If I have the correctly Birth/Baptism record, it was in Freshford in 1811, her father was Patrick Kealy and mother was Mary Mulhall. Does this mean any thing to any of you Kealys.
- August 27, 2009 at 9:19 AM
- GeniAus said...
Michael, my Kealys are from Ballyfoyle, Kilkenny. Perhaps there is a link ....You can see what I have at http://www.geniaus.net
- August 27, 2009 at 12:08 PM
- Sharon said...
My husband's Brennan family come from Muckalee. I haven't been there but other family must have visited the same priest who showed them exactly where family still lived today. We now know why his ancestor moved to Australia - the Irish family knew the story. We also know they are Moses Brennans. Apparently there were so many Brennans they were given another name to distinguish the individual families.
- January 29, 2011 at 2:26 PM