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Victorian Essential Learning Standards main page for H&PE, which includes links to teaching strategies and assessment maps, among other useful resources.
Victorian Essential Learning Standards main page for Interpersonal Development, which includes links to teaching strategies and assessment maps, among other useful resources.
This site contains links to learning and teaching support materials related to Interpersonal Development.
Victorian Essential Learning Standards main page for Personal Learning, which includes links to teaching strategies and assessment maps, among other useful resources.
This site contains links to learning and teaching support materials related to Personal Learning.


text:
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using SQLite.Net.Async;
using SQLiteNetExtensionsAsync.Extensions;

namespace Croumetro.Database.Tools
{
    public class Repository<T> where T : class, new()
    {
        private readonly SQLiteAsyncConnection _db;
        public Repository(SQLiteAsyncConnection db)
        {
            this._db = db;
        }

        public AsyncTableQuery<T> Items => _db.Table<T>();

        public async Task<List<T>> GetAllWithChildren()
        {
            return await _db.GetAllWithChildrenAsync<T>();
        }

        public async Task<int> Create(T newEntity)
        {
            return await _db.InsertAsync(newEntity);
        }

        public async Task CreateWithChildren(T newEntity)
        {
            await _db.InsertWithChildrenAsync(newEntity);
        }

        public async Task RemoveAll()
        {
            await _db.DeleteAllAsync<T>();
        }

        public async Task Remove(T newEntity)
        {
            await _db.DeleteAsync(newEntity);
        }

        public async Task<int> Update(T entity)
        {
            return await _db.UpdateAsync(entity);
        }

        public async Task UpdateWithChildren(T newEntity)
        {
            await _db.UpdateWithChildrenAsync(newEntity);
        }

        public async Task<int> Delete(T entity)
        {
            return await _db.DeleteAsync(entity);
        }
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Wisconsin governor, Senate debate set for same night
MADISON — Candidates for governor and U.S. Senate in Wisconsin will both be debating, in separate cities, on the night of Oct. 19.
The governor's debate sponsored by the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association was originally announced for Oct. 5.
But the WBA Foundation announced Thursday that the debate day had been changed to Oct. 19. The debate between Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Democrat Tony Evers will occur at 8 p.m. in Madison.
That debate will begin just as one between the candidates for U.S. Senate will be wrapping up.
Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Republican challenger Leah Vukmir were set to debate starting at 7 p.m. that night in Milwaukee.
Baldwin and Vukmir were to debate at least two other times.
Walker and Evers are debating again Oct. 26.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Genre: Folk-Rock
Genre: Contemporary Folk
Folk-Rock(2)
American Folk(1)
Political Folk Songs(1)
Soloist / Performer
Diane Garisto(1)
Emily Bindiger(1)
Eric Andersen, 1943-(1)
Aerophones(2)
Flute(1)
Mouth organ(1)
Harmonica(1)
Organ(1)
Chordophones(2)
Bass(2)
Bass, double(1)
Bass, electric(1)
Guitar(2)
Guitar, electric(1)
Keyboard(2)
Piano(2)
Idiophones(2)
Percussion(2)
Percussion, various(2)
New York(1)
New York, NY(1)
One Meat Ball
produced by Mark Hawley and Christine Lavin, 1952- (Appleseed, 2006), 1 hour 5 mins, 21 page(s)
Mark Hawley, Christine Lavin, 1952-
14. Heartbreak Diet, 3 mins
produced by Robert Aaron; performed by Eric Andersen, 1943- (Appleseed, 2005), 55 mins, 13 page(s)
The folk music movement centered in New York's Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, although it was steeped in traditional repertoire, it quickly focused on new, original songs written by the performers themselves, songs that explored mature personal concerns and commented on the social and political issues of th...
The folk music movement centered in New York's Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, although it was steeped in traditional repertoire, it quickly focused on new, original songs written by the performers themselves, songs that explored mature personal concerns and commented on the social and political issues of the day. Eric Andersen was a part of that movement while it was happening, so his "Great American Song Series," the second volume of whic... The folk music movement centered in New York's Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, although it was steeped in traditional repertoire, it quickly focused on new, original songs written by the performers themselves, songs that explored mature personal concerns and commented on the social and political issues of the day. Eric Andersen was a part of that movement while it was happening, so his "Great American Song Series," the second volume of which is called Waves (following the first volume, 2004's The Street Was Always There) represents a participant interpreting the compositions of his peers. Unlike, say, Rod Stewart recording his Great American Songbook series of pre-rock standards with little sense of what those songs were about, this is more what you might get if, for example, Hoagy Carmichael had made an album of the songs of Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and George Gershwin. In fact, that comparison is particularly apt because Carmichael, though of the same generation as those songwriters, was actually just a little younger, which is also true of Andersen, who was born after, but within a few years, of every songwriter he covers on this album except John Sebastian (and Sebastian is less than a year younger). Andersen may have been closest to Phil Ochs personally among these musical friends, but he did not share Ochs' focus on politics, which tended to make his interpretations of songs like "I Ain't Marching Anymore" on The Street Was Always There less than convincing. Here, he sticks to Ochs' sad, lovely, and apolitical "Changes," to which he is much more suited. But he shows the greatest affinity for moody, introspective singer/songwriters like Tim Buckley ("Once I Was") and Fred Neil ("I've Got a Secret"), recalling their phrasing while adding his own style as a gloss. (Similarly, the Neil and Tim Hardin songs provided the best moments on The Street Was Always There.) Andersen himself probably wouldn't claim to have improved upon the original artists' versions of these songs, but covering them provides a different perspective, brings them up to date, and may help rescue some of them from obscurity. "If Eric has done his job," writes annotator Robbie Woliver, "I hope you will trek down to your local record store ...." As the two albums appear to have been recorded at the same sessions, this is probably the end of Andersen's musical reminiscence, and he seems to have covered the obvious bases. Still, there's more where these came from, and there are still a few people (Richie Havens and Mark Spoelstra, to name two) so far unrepresented, so a third volume would not be amiss. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide Show more Show less
Eric Andersen, 1943-
Andy Grassi, Robert Aaron
1. Once I Was, 4 mins
2. Ramblin' Boy, 4 mins
3. I've Got a Secret, 4 mins
4. Pale Blue Eyes, 6 mins
5. Golden Bird, 3 mins
6. John Brown, 4 mins
7. Changes, 6 mins
8. Today Is the Highway, 3 mins
9. On the Road Again, 4 mins
10. Coconut Grove, 3 mins
11. Bold Marauder, 4 mins
12. Hymn of Waves, 4 mins
13. Thirsty Boots, 5 mins


comes in bonfire and black colours and might be stuffed and north face coats ike a sleeping bag to your convenience. Marmot has its personal tailor and tailor machine, also as a fairly superior system. At 1st, the group of Marmot usually meet the pioneers of field exploration and outside adventure to listen to their suggestions. And right after that, the group will verify and analyse the data and connected information. At last, they will style new scheme to resolve the new complications by continuously exploration and discussion.


This year Amanda will be joined by Raelene Sharp and Godwin Bradbeer to judge the 2019 Camberwell Art Show.
In Addition, Amanda will be demonstrating at 2:00pm Sunday 30th June . …. "With her inimitably energetic panache, Amanda will paint the subject of boats in the Alla Prima style".


text:
The Rise and Fall and Rise of a Gangster Cop
The Fix Q&A with Michael Dowd, the kingpin of a gang of cops who extorted drug dealers, and now the subject of a brilliant documentary.
Michael Dowd's story is being compared toGoodfellas but, unlike wiseguy Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), Dowd was a New York City police officer who described himself as a "gangster and a cop." In his fifties now, Dowd says he's "for the most part" sober since 1992 — the year he was arrested for racketeering and cocaine trafficking. At the time, he was employed by East New York, Brooklyn's 75th Precinct.
The Seven Five documentary opened in theaters this weekend and tells the whole sordid mess. It's not your typical doc though. This is a crazy rush of adrenaline told by a charismatic criminal who seems to get as much of a kick out of himself as Ray Liotta's Henry Hill. Another similarity to a Scorsese movie is the wild abandon used with the F-word.
This is better than any police procedural. Sony already bought the rights to the story and has begun making a feature film with big Hollywood names including screenwriter Scott Frank (Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Minority Report), director Yann Demange (71) and producer John Lesher (Birdman). Oh, and there's a book in the works, too. Dowd could not hide his excitement when he said he hopes the book will answer any questions that might arise.
During the late '80s through the early '90s, Brooklyn had the highest murder rates in America. Crack cocaine was everywhere and Michael Dowd was a cop so crooked that he, along with his uniform-wearing law-breaking cohorts, inspired Mayor David Dinkins to create the Mollen Commission, a task force assigned with investigating police brutality, criminality and abuse of power.
In the film, Walter Yurkin, another shady cop from the "Seven Five" said, "It was the deadliest precinct in the country. It would scare Clint Eastwood and I'd break your neck if your neck needed breaking."
In 1982, Dowd was a 20-year old, shiny-new clean cop. A decade later, he was the dirtiest thug in the New York police department. Dowd was the kingpin of a gang of crooked cops extorting money from Dominican drug lords and robbing drug dealers at gunpoint.
Like so many drug addicts, his grandiosity did him in. In American Gangster Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) brought about his own downfall by strutting around in a lavish fur coat. Dowd's version of that was when he began forgetting to pick up his $615 per week NYPD paycheck while riding to work in his brand new red Corvette. He even arranged limo pickups from work to Atlantic City to launder his ill-gotten green.
The Fix interviewed Dowd last week in New York, just before the release of the film.
In American Gangster, Russell Crowe played Richie Roberts, the one cop with ethics. And in Serpico, one cop stood up to the whole corrupt police department. Did you think those cops with ethics were saps? Or did you just see them as rats?
Look, most cops want to be good cops, including myself. It depends on the environment they're in and where the gray line is. I didn't want to be a gangster but once you cross the line it's very difficult to get back. It was hard to sleep with myself then, knowing night-after-night what I was doing. Read more "the fix"…


text:
Sword-Bards
Arrow! Black arrow! I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and always I have recovered you. I had you from my father and he from of old. If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well!
Bard's request to the his arrow in The Hobbit brought to mind an idea, perhaps just by close proximity between "asking your weapons nicely for things" and the word "bard". If magic weapons have spirit, feelings, morale, can be delighted by deeds and moved by fair speech, then maybe enhancing/inspiring weapons is a reasonable ability for a bard of all classes. Or something much like a bard, anyway.
There's sort of precedent in the Loddfafnismol, too, where Odin tells a young man about the magic songs he knows.
An eleventh [song] I know, | if needs I must lead
To the fight my long-loved friends;
I sing in the shields, | and in strength they go
Whole to the field of fight,
Whole from the field of fight,
And whole they come thence home.
(It's easy to forget that Odin was a rather bardy god; one of the early acts of his feud with the giants was seducing Gunnloth, the daughter of the frost giant Suttung, and with her help stealing the mead of poetry from Suttung. While fleeing the giants he spilled some of the mead, and men got poetry by his mistake)
This all comes back 'round to Dwarfhack. I had wrestled with painting runes on equipment as an appropriately-dwarven way to get potent effects that win combats decisively in the absence of sleep, filling the function of the MU without the classic MU spell list. But the annoying little details around time to paint runes and smudging when used and so forth seemed significant. And the dwarves in The Hobbit don't do much with runes - while the treasure map is written in runic script, and the moon-writing on it too, the only runed arms they find are of elvish make. They do sing a lot though...
Week as Wilderness Turn
Last post, I noted that the distances and times involved in wilderness travel in The Hobbit were so great that a game in that style might want to use 24-mile hexes as its smallest unit, and a week as its "turn" of wilderness travel. What does it look like if you take B/X's or ACKS' rules for wilderness travel and rescale them this way? What would you probably have to change and what could you leave alone?
If you're taking a week as your base unit of time, then you no longer have to worry about taking a rest day per week, and can just bake it in. So you're scaling up your movement or actions per "turn" by a factor of 6, since you get six working days. Using 24 mile hexes vs 6 mile, you're scaling up your unit of distance by a factor of 4. So movement will be ~1.5x more hexes per turn.
Exploration movement speed : 24 mile hexes / week
30' : 1.5
60' : 3
120' : 6
240' : 12
So that's rather inconvenient, having to reckon in half-hexes. I suppose we could do something like this, taking woods or hills as the default and multiplying everything by 2/3, so we get 1 24-mile hex per week per 30' of speed. Which would be pretty clean, until you're on plains or road.
Nautical and aerial distances covered get quite large when you look at them on per-week timescales. The lowly rowed canoe makes 4 hexes per week, while sailing ships with good winds might make nearly 8 hexes per day, or north of 50 hexes per week (assuming no weekly day of rest under sail). Aerial travel gets pretty nuts when you multiply it all by 1.5 as well. These modes of transport are fast enough that you probably don't want to track them hex-by-hex on a map on weekly timescales. You use sailing ships to move between maps. You fly Eagle Airways for a couple of hours, not for a solid week (and still might get to move a hex or two). Getting a personal, permanent flying mount is a phase-change event where you have outgrown thinking much about wilderness travel.
Since forced march is only one day of extra speed, followed by a day of rest and no speed, if we're dealing purely in weeks you might be able to just remove the option. On the other hand, I like leaving this sort of option available to players; trading off now vs later is always interesting. Maybe the right way to handle forced march on this scale is through something like strategic initiative in mass combat, where when you have a wilderness encounter, you can choose to forced-march to maybe gain a terrain advantage, bonus to escape roll, or surprise bonus at the expense of fatigue if brought to battle.
The right way to handle getting lost / failed navigation rolls is probably that they reduce your movement for the turn. Maybe halve it; you spend a couple days wandering around within hexes that you were traversing, but going 24 miles out of your way is hard. Could do hunting the same way; spend the whole week hunting, don't move at all, and get two rolls, or spend half the week hunting, get one roll, and half movement (and then if you also get lost that week, you end up still in the hex you started in).
Rations might actually get simpler, at a stone per man per "turn". And fresh ration decay could be simplified too; you could just have all uneaten fresh rations go bad every turn. Then hunting and foraging can work entirely within a single week; if you find a week's worth of fresh rations, that's a stone of iron rations that you can skip eating and carry over into next week. So then you only need to track one number: the stone of iron rations you're carrying, which might also be thought of as your buffer against foraging failures.
As far as combat resources go... for a Hobbity feel, you really want some refuges in the wilderness where you can recover hit points. I still think recovering spells there too (not every night in the wilderness) makes sense, provided some reworking of mid- and high-level spells. But I could see going the other way with it too, where you're pretty much always going to have full spells for any encounter. This lends itself to very large encounters where you need lots of spellpower to bail the party out.
Wilderness encounter frequency definitely gets weird. You probably don't want to have to roll a pile of d6s every "turn", and having multiple encounters per unit time is awkward. I could see having one encounter per week, with the difference between terrain types being "roll n encounters and pick the scariest / biggest one". Or just a quantity multiplier like dungeon level, where if you're in mountains you get 3x as many goblins as if you were in plains. But this also doesn't quite square with the frequency of wilderness encounters in The Hobbit, where they can go a couple weeks without an encounter. I could see having some <100% chance per week of an encounter, but when there's an encounter, it's always a lair - a kingdom of elves, a whole cave system of goblins, a big honkin' pack of wargs, a gang of trolls with accompanying cave full of magic swords of elven make. On the time-and-space scales you're dealing with here, you might encounter a warband from a lair initially, but within a week they'll report back (or be noticed missing) and you'll be dealing with the whole village shortly. Maybe winning surprise lets you only deal with one warband initially.
Domains get... maybe a little messy. Clearing a 24-mile hex is a lot of work. You could do something like wilderness lords, where every wilderness hex already has a "lord" of a sort, and if you can knock him and all his monsters over that's good enough, the rest migrate or fall into line. This is particularly plausible in a setting where everything talks, but might feel a bit strained after the third or fourth time, and maintaining relationships between all the "lords" of neighboring hexes is a lot of work. Another approach might be clearing to capacity; if you want to build a village, you have to displace a number of HD of monsters comparable to a village of goblins. This is what you might expect in a wilderness that is at capacity, saturated. But this isn't the wilderness we see in The Hobbit, which is as post-apocalyptically empty of monsters as it is of men.
Maybe that's an answer - "clearing" a wilderness hex just means dealing with any already-known lairs in it, and then the real game is dealing with wilderness random encounters, which could have wandered in from nearby hexes, or could be from unknown lairs in the hex. Taking land is easy; holding it is the hard part. This creates a sort of "the dungeon is too big to be cleared" feeling, and is also consistent with the incomplete clearing of eg Mirkwood by the elves. It pushes domain rulers into the same sort of reactive posture of incomplete control in game that they held in the fiction.
Switching to 24-mile hexes changes visibility somewhat, in that the edge of the hex is over the horizon. You could spend a week exploring within a single hex, easily, and unless the next hex over is elevated, you might not know what terrain type it is until you enter it. Finding a dungeon within a hex might take a while, but that's consistent with the fiction too, where they can't find the back door into the mountain. They have trouble finding Rivendell too.
This mode of play doesn't seem terribly well-suited to 1:1 timescales, if most weeks you don't have an encounter. I could see doing two turns per week of real time though, to make sure there's time to resolve wilderness encounters without too many more piling up.
Labels: ACKS, Leisure Reading, Wilderness
I realized I hadn't read much in the last year, and that I had been dancing around Tolkien, reading his Catholic British contemporaries (Ker, Chesterton, and Lewis' Screwtape Letters), and decided I ought to just go revisit the man himself. I'm pretty sure my mother read The Hobbit to me and my brother when we were small but I don't think I'd read it myself (certainly not since coming across OSR D&D). I have not seen the film(s?) and do not plan to.
It may be worth noting here that I am taking the text of The Hobbit alone, ignoring the whole rest of the canon from elsewhere as best I can. I think I like it better this way. I will probably read The Lord of the Rings next, but for now I want to consider only what is written in The Hobbit. And I want to get it written down, so that after the trilogy I can look back in on it. This may not be the "correct" way to read the The Hobbit, but it may turn out to be a worthwhile way nonetheless.
I found it delightful. I wish more D&D were in the model of The Hobbit than in that of The Lord of the Rings.
They're not out to save the world. They're very explicitly not heroes. The motives of most of the characters most of the time are Thucydidean - "fear, honor, and self-interest".
There it is: dwarves are not heroes, but calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots; some are not, but are decent enough people like Thorin and Company, if you don't expect too much.
That [attempting to slay Smaug] would be no good, not without a mighty Warrior, even a Hero. I tried to find one; but warriors are busy fighting one another in distant lands, and in this neighborhood heroes are scarce, or simply not to be found... That is why I settled on burglary.
Of the dwarves, only Thorin gives a consistently decent account of himself in battle (hitting a troll in the face with a stick, holding the goblins with Orcrist, and shooting the white hart). They get stuffed in sacks, chained up by goblins, webbed by spiders, and imprisoned by elves without offering any effectual resistance. They sing better than they fight. Their courage fails at the foot of the mountain and only Bilbo prods them on. They worked as blacksmiths and coal miners before this; Fili and Kili are young and inexperienced, Balin at least is old, and Bombur is very fat. These are not Dain's elite heavy infantry, "strong even for dwarves". These are dwarven vagabonds with a map, a key, desperate scheme, a hobbit, sometimes a wizard, and a good deal of luck. They are, in short, exactly what we might expect of low-level dwarven PCs in OSR games.
The mere fleeting glimpses of treasure which they had caught as they went along had rekindled all the fire in their dwarvish hearts; and when the heart of a dwarf, even the most respectable, is wakened by gold and by jewels, he grows suddenly bold, and he may become fierce.
He did not reckon with the power that gold has upon which a dragon has long brooded, nor with dwarvish hearts.
And like my players of old, how loathe they are to give up what is theirs! Though it be a great burden and a danger in itself!
The treasure is likely to be your death, though the dragon is no more!
How on earth should I have got all that treasure home without war and murder all along the way, I don't know.
And like a third-level character come suddenly into a great deal of treasure and a fortress, Thorin handles it ineptly and it is his doom - in contrast with Dain, who "dealt his treasure well".
And like combat in the OSR, defeat is miserable and victory is pyrrhic.
I have heard songs of many battles, and I have always understood that defeat may be glorious. It seems very uncomfortable, not to say distressing. I wish I was well out of it.
"Victory after all, I suppose!" he said, feeling his aching head. "Well, it seems a very gloomy business."
And then the setting (or at least the parts much described) is the sort of howling emptiness implied by OSR systems. But working from just this text, there isn't much of an apocalypse. The Wild was not ruined by any central force, no great, shattering event, no unveiling. Most of it was ruined by just... neglect. Decay. Entropy. Nobody is putting in the maintenance. Certainly there are evil forces at work, but for the most part they're opportunists filling a vacuum, not part of some grand plan.
The marshes and bogs had spread wider and wider on either side. Paths had vanished, and many a rider and wanderer too, if they had tried to find the lost ways across. The elf-road through the wood which the dwarves had followed on the advice of Beorn now came to a doubtful and little used end at the eastern edge of the forest; only the river offered any longer a safe way from the skirts of Mirkwood in the North to the mountain-shadowed plains beyond, and the river was guarded by the Wood-elves' king.
There were many paths that led up into those mountains, and many passes over them. But most of the paths were cheats and deceptions and led nowhere or to bad ends; and most of the passes were infested by evil things and dreadful dangers.
The old maps are no use: things have changed for the worse and the road is unguarded. They have seldom even heard of the king round here, and the less inquisitive you are as you go along, the less trouble you are likely to find.
An argument could be made, of course, that Smaug is the relevant apocalypse. But that hardly explains the lawlessness of the Lone-lands between Hobbiton and the Misty Mountains, unless the reach of Dale was once very great indeed. The giants have the power to shut up the exits of the goblins, but they don't (unless Gandalf is able to "find a more or less decent giant"). The wood elves waylay travelers, hunt the white hart, and get drunk on Dorwinion wine, and the spiders multiply. The eagles seldom take notice of the goblins. Beorn keeps his territory clear but only goes so far. What has Elrond done lately? The Lake-men have surplus enough to outfit and feed the dwarves but don't seem to be pushing out either, as the Master is content to maintain his little bubble of peace. Dain waging war on the goblins of Moria seems to be very much the exception in that he is active (with Gandalf being the other active player for good, setting the trip in motion and working on the problem of the Necromancer while they're in Mirkwood).
No, the real cause of the ruin of the Wild seems to me to be apathy. Not so grand as a Dark Lord, but much more true to life.
I love the passage of the seasons; it is something that I always want to evoke in my open-world games and something that I never seem to get quite right. The distances are so great! To run a campaign in this style, one might be well-served by 24-mile hexes as the smallest unit, and wilderness turns of a week. I love that the place-names are plain English - Misty Mountains, Lonely Mountain, Iron Hills, Blasted Heath, Rivendell / Riven Dale, Mirkwood / Murk Wood, Long Lake, Wood River, River Rushing, Dale, and Lake-town. Moria, Gondolin, and Dorwinion are proper names but only referenced, never seen; only at the end does Tolkien sneak in "Esgaroth" as a proper name for a place seen (Lake-town) in the style of the names of places in the trilogy.
I love the talking of all the animals; everything bigger than a bat seems to have a voice and a language. How often have I bemoaned that animal encounters on the wilderness encounter table are a waste of time for a mid-level party of reasonable size? How much less of a waste would they be if they could talk? If they could be bargained with, asked for information, deceived, taunted?
"O Thorin son of Thrain, and Balin son of Fundin," he [a raven] croaked (and Bilbo could understand what he said, for he used ordinary language and not bird-speech). "I am Roac son of Carc."
In the middle of the circle was a great grey wolf. He spoke to them in the dreadful language of the Wargs. Gandalf understood it. Bilbo did not, but it sounded terrible to him, and as if all their talk was about cruel and wicked things, as it was.
In the silence and stillness of the wood he realized that these loathsome creatures [spiders] were speaking to one another. Their voices were a sort of thin creaking and hissing, but he could make out many of the words that they said. They were talking about the dwarves!
Weapons, too, have a touch of soul to them:
It burned with a rage that made it gleam if goblins were about; now it was bright as blue flame for delight in the killing of the great lord of the cave.
When was the last time a magic weapon in your game was delighted? Sure, sentient swords are in the tables, but how often do you even bother rolling for them, so seldom rolled and then so inconvenient to sort out and keep track of when you do?
It's just... grounded, I suppose. There is no cosmic struggle here. Magic when it appears is mostly small wonders, in talking birds and delighted swords and water that makes you sleep. Dwarves can be wicked, eagles can be cruel, Beorn and the Elf-king are very suspicious of visitors, and Thorin and the master of Lake-town are overcome by avarice not because there is any agent of a dark power whispering in their ears but just... because of a moral failing.
I have dodged entirely talking about the hobbit himself and whether his desire the whole time to be home in comfort is of a kind with the apathy that is the ruin of the Wild, or wisdom, or both.
The stars are far brighter
Than gems without measure,
The moon is far whiter
Than silver in treasure;
The fire is more shining
On hearth in the gloaming
Than gold won by mining,
So why go a-roaming?
Maybe Bilbo's peculiar virtue is that he can be moved to adventure in the first place, and that once begun, he remains to see it through to the end in spite of his want of comfort and normalcy (which I suspect is quietly shared by almost every other "good" character but the dwarves). And that like Rary as played by Blume, he knows when the job is done, rather than having his appetite for treasure become insatiable once whetted.
In any case, I am glad to have read it, and apologize for the rambling post (initially I had planned a series of more tightly-focused posts, but oh well).
Posted by John at 12:13 AM 9 comments:
Labels: Leisure Reading, OSR, Wilderness
ACKS Budget Dungeons: The Wages of Wizardry
Last post, I talked about the idea of designing dungeons under constraints. I noted that designing dungeons using an in-world budget would be kind of a pain, but sleeping on it, ACKS does give us the tools to do that - there's the table of structural feature prices (shared with OSE), putting a 10x10 square of dungeon corridor at 500gp, and ACKS' heuristic that a character with n XP has earned about 80% of that from GP recovered, plus the section in Domains at War: Campaigns on using magic to assist construction projects. Though looking over the guidelines there, it seems like using magic for underground construction would be tricky - Transmute Rock to Mud carries a collapse risk, Move Earth only works on earth and not stone, and Wall of Stone is dispellable. Most of these spells only increase the construction rate of manual laborers, rather than contributing value directly. Honestly Disintegrate might be the choice here for carving out dungeon cubes - but if you have a wizard with Disintegrate, pricing dungeon corridors gets weird, because they're free in money but not free in time.
In any case, to conclude that tangent, magic construction techniques might not be that useful for dungeons, but we can still get a decent estimate on how much dungeon a wizard could build based on their lifetime earnings, at 80% of their earned XP in GP. Sadly this breaks down in ACKS specifically at high levels because of the domain XP threshold rule, where you can earn GP from your domains but don't get XP for it. Fortunately, wizards earn the vast majority of their domain XP from spending money on magic research projects, so for now I'm not going to worry about this.
Let's consider two edge cases: the newly-fledged 9th-level wizard, and the biggest, baggest archmage who ever archmaged, 14th level. 310k XP and 1.06 million XP, respectively, for lifetime earnings of 248 kGP and right around 800 kGP. Presumably some of that will probably have been spent on towers, libraries, workshops, henchmen, research projects, etc - 20-25% on a dungeon seems reasonable. Let's call it 50k GP dungeon budget for the newly-minted wizard and 200k for the archmage. What does that get you?
Well, at 500 gp per 10' cube, about 100 10' cubes for the wizard, assuming nothing else. A 30x30 room is 9 cubes, so that's about 11 such rooms assuming no hallways, maybe 10 if you leave some budget for hallways and doors and such. If 30% of dungeon rooms contain monsters, then we should expect about three monster rooms. Given typical % in lair chances, we might see one lair or we might not. Going down to 30x20 rooms as your standard size gets you 15-16 rooms instead with some slop for hallways, which is still about 5 monster rooms, one of which is a lair. So that is not a big dungeon.
And then in the archmage case, you're working with quadruple the budget, so something on the order of 40-60 rooms, with 13-20 monster rooms of which around 3-7 are lairs?
Huh. So I guess if you take "dungeons come from wizards" seriously, dungeons probably shouldn't be enormous, for any model of wizards where they're secretive rather than cooperative with other wizards. Which seems a bit obvious in retrospect, but it's interesting to see just how small is really reasonable.
At the very high end, where you have a max-XP archmage who has spent 75% of his lifetime earnings on dungeon-building rather than 25%, you triple that again, up to 120-180 rooms, 40-60 monsters rooms including 10-20 lairs.
Looking back over price lists, one amusing consequence I could see coming out of this is in stairwells - a 10' wide flight of wooden stairs costs 60gp, while a 10' wide flight of stone stairs costs 180gp. So a wizard cheaping out on stairs might use wood instead of stone, and that creates some amusing potential interactions with fire (and certain jelly-type monsters, I suppose). Hey, you're a pro, you can Levitate, right? Stairs are for chumps.
Labels: ACKS, Dungeons
Boss Monster and Budget Dungeons
A friend mentioned a card game today that I hadn't heard of called Boss Monster, and described it as a game where each player is building a dungeon and whoever ends up with the deadliest dungeon wins.
It got me thinking about building dungeons on a budget. Part of the reason One Page Dungeon Contest has had the success it has is that the constraints it imposes encourage a certain amount of creativity. What other constraints might we consider?
The first that springs to mind is literal, in-game budget. Work out prices for 10'x10' squares of cleared area, doors, monsters, traps, etc, and see what people can come up with when their scale is limited by that resource. But that's a very accountanty approach.
A time budget might also be interesting. One Hour Dungeon Contest, anyone? Even if the products themselves end up not being very interesting, I could see such a thing leading to the development of tooling and processes optimized for saving time. Maybe one hour isn't really reasonable - maybe three is enough to get something interesting but still constrained enough for it to matter? I dunno, might take some tuning.
Labels: Boardgames, Dungeons, OSR
Gisli's Saga and Boot Hill
I read Gisli's Saga the other day and something about it reminded me of Chocolate Hammer's Boot Hill campaign. It got me thinking about how one could set up a powderkeg for a saga quite similar to that, but perhaps smaller in number of characters.
Thorkel and Gisli are brothers from Norway who settle in Hawkdale in Iceland, and marry into Hawkdale families. Gisli marries Auda, the sister of a man named Vestein, while Thorkel marries Asgerda. It comes out that Asgerda fancied Vestein, leading to suspicions of infidelity and eventually the deaths of about a dozen men.
Asgerda's interest in (already-married) Vestein is a pre-existing fault line in the micro-setting that the player-character-like outsiders Thorkel and Gisli stumble (and then marry) into. It doesn't seem like it would be too much of a stretch to build a tiny setting of 5-10 extended families with a bunch of such fault lines:
a long-simmering dispute over grazing-land or property lines
a contentious dividing of property among a man's heirs
a father who mislikes his daughter's favored suitor
a bastard child whose step-mother hates it
a badly-treated thrall
a wheel of cheese stolen in a hard winter
a good sword borrowed and never returned
a badly-given gift
a lad whose father was slain, who wants eventual revenge on his killer but can't get it yet
an insult in one's cups at the Althing some years back; cooler heads prevented bloodshed then but still it rankles
weregeld accepted for a relative slain but some family members still think the slayer should've been made an outlaw instead
a suspected cheater at sports or horse-fighting
a man envious of another's wealth, desirous of the priesthood / chieftainship
a rich man who is miserly to guests and alters deals, gets away with it because he has several strong brothers
a skilled duelist who runs roughshod and takes what he pleases, challenges those who object (returns from sea-roving mid-campaign to shake things up, presumably)
a suspected sorcerer feared by those outside his family
three town gossips poking their noses in everything and spreading news of dubious veracity
a skolding wife who urges her husband to unwise deeds
a husband who mistreated his wife, causing her to return to her family's house; a dispute over the dowry
a hot-headed young man, yet unproven in battle and eager for it (probably about ten of these, really)
a cool-headed young man, goaded by his father as unmanly for preferring words to violence
a wise man's foreboding prediction
an ominous dream
And then let some player characters loose into it to get into trouble over the course of a few years of game-time.
I don't know what system you'd use for such a game - Pendragon, Mythras, and Wolves of God all spring to mind, but they're not quite Boot Hill. But it's an interesting thought.
... I suppose it would be amusing to hack up Boot Hill's ranged combat system to instead do high-detail, few-combatant, armorless melees of axes, bill-hooks, spears, swords, and shields... "Grim cut off Skiolld's foot at the ankle-joint, but Helgi thrust him through with his spear, and he got his death there and then" seems like the sort of thing a derivative of Boot Hill's combat system would do well.
Labels: Boot Hill, Leisure Reading, Vikings
Tooling for 1:1 Timescale Games
I've had boring, practical questions about how to run 1:1 timescale games rolling around in the back of my head for I guess a couple months now.
World-design considerations.
Many of the games of that era seemed centered around a single city and/or megadungeon (Blackmoor, Castle Greyhawk, and the City-State of the Invincible Overlord, for example), and Jeff's Trollopulous seems to have followed a somewhat-similar pattern. How important is having a central locus like this?
Is the right way to lay out a region for this style of play more radial, with wilderness increasing out away from The City, rather than a linear civilization->borderlands->wilderness gradient from a large, civilized heartland?
What's the right scale, so that travel is long enough to be a meaningful allocation of time-resources, but not so long that the game grinds to a halt as everyone is traveling?
Session structure.
BDubs' game seems to have a core community of players who play adventuring PCs and have a regular session, often dungeoneering, every week, plus some set of patron players doing their own thing in the background. This seems like it doesn't scale up arbitrarily (but what does, really?).
Jeffro's adventurer-level players seem to play more like patrons, doing their own thing, maybe jumping an injured patron and taking his stuff, rather than partying up and having regular sessions where they go into dungeons.
And then there's Gygax's example, where (purportedly) people would show up at his house unannounced and he'd run a session.
Under what circumstances do which of these different approaches to sessions (or lack thereof) work well?
Keeping the information organized. What's the right (or at least adequate) way to keep the information about who is doing what when where (and when they'll be finished) organized? And how do you keep (at least some of) that information secret, to let the interesting behavior emerge from patron interactions under fog of war?
Index cards?
Spreadsheets?
Shared google calendar?
Paper calendar that only the DM has access to?
Gantt charts (lol)?
Database?
How do you make such a style of play amenable / accessible to more casual players rather than just "elite auditor mindset" players? (I'm bummed that I can't find either BDubs' or Jeffro's post where that phrase was invoked)
I think I have an angle of attack on one of the information organization question, at least.
The answer is databases.
This post brought to you by my assignment at work this week, auditing code that interacts heavily with databases
Why? Because you can automate around them.
The barest, crudest sketch goes like this: have a table of ongoing operations with start dates, end dates, and descriptions. When someone starts something, add it to the table. Have a table of players, including their discord IDs, and a table containing (operation ID, player) pairs of "players who should be notified when this operation finishes". Have a discord bot that runs every night at midnight, checks to see if any operations have finished on day rollover, marks them complete, and notifies players (and probably DM) by PM.
Ha, maybe run the bot at 5PM instead, right as people are getting off of work - a character's work for the day is done at that time too. And any "orders" gotten in before 9AM the next day are completed by 5PM the next day.
But this doesn't really let you answer the question of "what is any particular character doing at the moment?"; there's no notion of character there. So maybe we also want a table of characters (including an "owning player" column), and then a table with (operation ID, character ID) pairs indicating "this character is currently unavailable for play because they're busy with this long-running thing".
Of course, once you have a table for characters, it's very tempting to throw their stats and XP in there too... and a table for all the unidentified magic items they're hauling around, with both the in-world description you've given and the actual identity of the item. And how many charges that wand that they figured out the command-word for but never really properly identified has left.
It would be kinda nice to put wilderness expedition logistics information in there too and update it on nightly rollover... but that gets a bit thorny because then we need a notion of a party, which presumably can have a set of characters (as well as a count of NPCs like mercenaries and shared equipment like wagons), and which might be busy with an ongoing operation (like overland travel). So then we run into this: do we have a table of party/operation pairs, for parties that are busy? Do we then query party membership to determine which characters are busy, or also still have a character/operation table and have to check both it and party membership? Or do we just have a party/operation table, and have parties of only one character sometimes? That might be kind of nice, for the case where you pick up friends along the way (or lose friends along the way and a party goes down to just one member).
Do we want some notion of location? Of grid coordinates? (I really hate programming against hex grids) Parties having a location which is updated overnight based on their overland speed? (But then I would need to encode their paths too, which sounds painful... maybe this is a good argument for Arnesonian "12 miles a day regardless of terrain") But it would be neat that if there are multiple parties in the same location in the wilderness, they might have a chance meeting. Automatic random encounter determination, putting a pause on the travel operation until resolved?
If we're already considering notifying players in response to stuff in the world, we could extend that for information flow and intelligence. Maybe having a spy in a location adds you to the notification list for start and completion of operations in that location. Maybe operations should have secret vs common-knowledge descriptions, with spies having some chance to uncover the secret descriptions and town gossips yielding the common-knowledge ones. Spies might dispatch messengers in response to some operations beginning or ending, creating operations in their turn for the messengers to travel to their destination. Some notion of queuing news at a place (to be received on your return) might be necessary. Automatic weekly collation of common-knowledge events in (say) a central city into a "News in Kezmarok" style digest sent to all players could be neat, and a good way for players to advertise "looking for group" or patrons to advertise "looking for temporary, deniable help".
Finally, NPC actions. If you have all this tooling for keeping track of what PCs are up to, it seems natural to extend it to also keeping track of what NPCs are up to. Clocks on steroids; give "orcish warlord gathers horde" a concrete end-date and set it up to notify just you, the DM, when it finishes. And if players interfere, move the end date around accordingly. Likewise, if you want to send an NPC party on a wilderness/trade expedition, make a series of operations, one to travel there, one to buy and sell goods for a week or two, and one to travel back. NPC party raids a dungeon? Make a single die roll to see how they did, make an operation where they take a week of bedrest and recruiting, and then put them out of your mind. They're in motion, you don't need to worry about them for a week. But your players might hear about them automatically.
This starts to look a lot more like a living world. And the table of operations starts to look like a log of all the stuff that happened outside of combat, which would be a pretty neat artifact of a campaign (much like player-produced maps are a neat artifact).
It also seems like it would be pretty easy to keep it game-system-agnostic. Character stats seem like the most likely place to break this, and I'm not even sure I really want them.
Labels: OSR, Software, World Engines


text:
Q: Couldn't start client Azure Resource Manager Template in VS Code Can someone please help to resolve this issue.
Error: Couldn't start client Azure Resource Manager Template in VS Code
[Error - 2:10:04 AM] Starting client failed
Error: spawn EPERM
    at ChildProcess.spawn (internal/child_process.js:403:11)
    at Object.spawn (child_process.js:562:9)
    at c:\Users\noohauqu\.vscode\extensions\msazurermtools.azurerm-vscode-tools-0.15.3\dist\node_modules\vscode-languageclient\lib\main.js:347:40
Error: ARM Template Language Server: An error occurred starting the language server.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


What is feminism? In this short, accessible primer, bell hooks explores the nature of feminism and its positive promise to eliminate sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. With her characteristic clarity and directness, hooks encourages readers to see how feminism can touch and change their lives-to see that feminism is for everybody.
Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics ePub (Adobe DRM) can be read on any device that can open ePub (Adobe DRM) files.


Best Traffic Directory - Submit Free Links. View - News & Media > Education Category Links.
PRMR Inc. is a full service public relations media relations agency located in Bridgetown Barbados which has a virtual team of professionals.


text:
Dmitry Silaev: The beginning of the path of the Siberian Bear to Top 8 >>>
Dmitry, I confess, I watched your fights with the conviction that nothing like this would happen... ()
Dmitry, I confess, I watched your fights with the conviction that nothing like this would happen. Suddenly, this Swede appears, Tobias Sporrong, who managed to go slipped with you. Can you tell me how this was possible?
- Tobias surprised me, to be honest. I did not expect that he has such a strong wrist, and he is also fast. On the left, he opened my wrist, to be honest, he shook me a little, but then I just rebuilt the fight, and there were no problems. In the future he will be a worthy rival to all of us, I assure you! I have never met him before.
A similar question concerns Krasimir Kostadinov. He won with you in the open left hand category. Now, a few days later, tell me - how could this happen?
- As for Krasimir - I was not at all upset that I lost to him on the left, he was more experienced than me, and was able to beat me. When I went to the finals with him, and when he hooked me in the first fight, I felt that I was stronger than him in his strongest movement - the hook. In the super finals, I did not expect him to restart me and reach the pillow. He is rightfully a champion, and there's some reason that the whole world of armwrestling knows his name! I respect him.
You probably watched the fights of the third stage of Top 8. Did the results surprise you? What results did you set and did everything happen as you thought? Which Top 8 member surprised you?
- Alex Kurdecha surprised me, he gained experience, and became stronger, I would like to meet him in armfight. I was very happy with the victory of Evgeny Prudnik, when I came to Kyiv, he showed me a lot of interesting things, and I sincerely supported him and worried for him at this tournament. Dima Trubin worthily returned to his former form.
As for Vitaly Laletin's performance, he gave a very worthy fight to Levan, next year Levan will be much more difficult with him, I assure you.
The next question is what to do next in 2020. Is there an offer from Igor Mazurenko to participate in the Top 8? If so, what is your answer?
- As for the proposal to take part in the Top 8 - I proved at this tournament that I deserved to rightfully take a place among the top eight world champions, and I hope that I will not remain inconspicuous. My fans assured me that I am worthy and they want to see me in Top 8.
Do you have a coach, or are you your own mentor?
- My coach Gennady Lykov, Honored Trainer of Russia, he raised many World Champions. At this stage of my professional career, Vitaly Laletin helps in preparation and mental attitude. We not only work with him and train together, but also friends in life. We carry out restoration procedures at his country house, a lot of people gather, and we not only relax, but also pull and share our successes and support each other!
And the last question that will bring your readers closer to you. What is your education? I already know, but they may not know. What are you doing now?
- I have a higher medical education, an orthopedic dentist. Unfortunately, I had to do another thing, because I am young and I want to earn money, maybe in the future I will return to my profession as a doctor, but for now I want to work for myself.
What do you do outside of work and sport?
- Outside work and sports, I like to relax, have fun, spend time with my family and travel, I like to relax both in a nightclub and in a country house with barbecue and good company :)
Thanks for the interview and see you next year!
- Greetings to my supporters!
Interview: PeSzy
The story of the Legend. Andrey Pushkar
Rustam Babaev vs. Alex Kurdecha: size matters
Kyiv Open Cup / winter section will define the Top 8 participant!
Krasimir Kostadinov: I can fly!


text:
St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Evanston, Wyoming is a small church in the Carpenter Gothic style. The church was built in 1884–1885, and at the time was the only Protestant church in a community dominated by Mormons and Catholics. In its early history it hosted Lutherans, Methodists and Presbyterians in addition to its Episcopalian congregation.

The simple plan features a nave entered from a side narthex, with an apse set apart from the nave by a Gothic arch. The windows are pointed arches with quatrefoils. Construction is wood frame with drop or beveled siding. The detailing is principally plain flat material, with some evidence of Stick Style influence.

St. Paul's Episcopal Church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

References

External links
 St. Paul's Episcopal Church at the Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office

Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Wyoming
Churches completed in 1885
19th-century Episcopal church buildings
Buildings and structures in Uinta County, Wyoming
Carpenter Gothic church buildings in Wyoming
National Register of Historic Places in Uinta County, Wyoming
Evanston, Wyoming

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


An elegant necklace linked by hand with smooth and glossy genuine black onyx gemstones and crystal clear Swarovski crystals. Wear this necklace for a dressy occasion or add a little sparkle to your casual outfits. Handmade by The Singing Beader.
I linked this necklace by hand with non-tarnish silver wire. The small black onyx gemstones are diamond shaped and measure 10mm x 7mm. The sparkling round and faceted crystal-clear Swarovski crystals are 4mm. Stones appear larger in photos than actual size. See photo of stones in model's hand.
Necklace length: 23 inches long and fastens with a .925 sterling silver 7mm spring clasp and jump ring (see photo with ruler).
Shopping for high quality gemstones and findings is as pleasurable for me as constructing one of a kind jewelry. These onyx gemstones and crystals are excellent quality and were a pleasure to work when making this elegant necklace.


text:
This postcard of Broadstairs harbour was probably produced sometime in the 1960s to judge by the Ford Poplar in the background and the clothes of the few discernible people. Other than that, little has changed between then and now: Bleak House still towers over the harbour, the boathouse – the most photographed building in Thanet – is still there (as is the telephone box) and the Tartar Frigate on the far left of the picture is still serving drinks and fine food as it has done for hundreds of years. Mirroring this tradition, little has changed in the habits of Broadstairs Chess Club when it come to choosing a venue for the annual Christmas Dinner. No-one can be certain without checking the archives when the dinner was first held but it was probably in the early 1990s. There were a couple of occasions when we were daring and tried other restaurants – the Royal at Ramsgate and the Fayreness in Kingsgate Bay spring to mind – but we always came back to the Tartar Frigate. This year was no exception and as usual most members met in the Charles Dickens pub overlooking Viking Bay before strolling down to the harbour for the meal.
Paul Carfrae and Bob Cronin
The Christmas Dinner is one of the club's highlights of the year. Although many members adjourn to Cramptons at the end of a weekly club night, not everyone can so this is an occasion for everyone – or almost everyone – to get together over a drink and a meal and to chat about anything and everything although the latter might not be quite true as the word 'Brexit' was not heard once by this writer. The meal is subsidised by the club so it is a way to give something back to the members who have contributed to it throughout the year. This time it was also an opportunity to welcome several new members to the club. Richard Clement and Trefor Owens were unable to attend but for Shany Rezvany, Chris Stampe, Gary Hilleard, Paul Johnson and Arnaud Wisman, this was their first Broadstairs Christmas Dinner, resulting in a very healthy eighteeen members taking their seats which must be a record. The food was delicious as always and if you fancy paying a visit before Christmas, I recommend the wild mushrooms on a toasted ciabatta cooked in garlic cream as a starter.
David Clifford, Reg Pidduck and Andy Flood
It would not be a Broadstairs dinner without a quiz, of course. In the early days this always seemed to be chess-based but in recent years all sorts of random topics have formed the basis of the questions and this year was no exception. Michael Jenkinson produced a quiz based on the English Channel and the lands either side. Sample questions to test friends and family over Christmas included some that would definitely qualify as general knowledge e.g. 'Who was the first man to swim the English Channel?' and 'When did the news of Wellington's victory at Waterloo reach Broadstairs?' but others fell into the obscure bracket. 'How long has the English Channel existed in its present form?' (approximately 8,000 years, apparently) or 'When did commercial hovercraft operations commence from Ramsgate?' (1966). Then there was the occasional trick question: 'When was the first flight by man across the Channel and who did it?' Well, many people remembered Louis Blériot from their schooldays – not personally – and it was just a case of getting the year right. No, said the quizmaster, the first flight was by balloon in 1795 by Jean-Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries! Not surprisingly, with the quizmaster seemingly reluctant to award any half-marks, out of approximately twenty available marks, the winning total was six. I don't think Broadstairs Chess Club will be raising a team to take part in the next series of Only Connect but it was enjoyable and we thank Michael for taking the time to produce the quiz and provide a very generous prize of a bottle of whisky to the winner.
And so, as the evening drew to a close and those with longer journeys drifted homeward, a few hardy souls retired to the Dolphin for a final drink and to reflect on a great evening and to look forward to 2019 and the 50th Thanet Chess Congress for which preparations are already under way. For Broadstairs Chess Club there is now a short break for the festive period and we re-group on Monday January 7th with another chance for the Walker Shield team to make a mark on this year's competition. Echoing Michael's wishes in the last post, we wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Posted in: News (2018-19)


text:
blog • News
The True Story of Yonie Kauffman
As tailored by Brad Igou
Lately, I got here throughout the story of Yonie Kauffman, an Amishman in the Huge Valley space of Pennsylvania. It is definitely one of probably the most uncommon stories to return out of Amish tradition, and it's true. It was put into novel type by Joseph Stoll, an Amish author at Pathway Publishers, the Amish publishing home in Canada. The guide is known as The Wasted Years. The story is fascinating, and it additionally points out that a lot of our story of Jacob and the dialog seem to be rooted in actuality. If our story of Jacob's Selection is just not exactly the norm, then definitely the story of Yonie Kauffman is even more unusual and bizarre. However, it did happen. It is reminiscent of the French film Return of Martin Guerre and the American model Sommersby. Following is my synopsis of the story, and a few precise passages from the e-book by Joseph Stoll, revealed in 1993.
In 1900, Yonie Kauffman was 20 years previous. Actually, he was virtually twenty-one. In two months, and he would have a birthday, and then he can be on his own. That was what Yonie was fascinated with as he rested towards the hoe handle. On his own—free to return and go as he happy, to decide on his personal work, to be his personal boss. Yonie heard a practice whistle echo down the valley. Trains had all the time fascinated Yonie. They have been a romantic image of the good past, of life outdoors this slender valley… Oh, the time would come when he would get out and see the world.
Yonie's mother shouted at him, for he was clearly daydreaming. Yonie considered his state of affairs as he obtained again to his hoeing. The humiliation of all of it! Here his mom ordered him round as if he have been a young lad… Yonie resented having to stay at house to hoe. However carpenter work was scarce, and his dad had made the choice that morning—Yonie would keep residence and assist the womenfolk hoe the garden. Now Yonie's mother questioned him.
"What makes you so quiet, son?" she requested. "Is something bothering you?"
Yonie shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, I don't know," he answered.
"Of course you know," she insisted, not unkindly. What point was there in telling his mother how dissatisfied he was? She would never perceive. Why inform her how irked he turned when Dad gave him orders. Yonie couldn't stand being bossed round, and his dad nonetheless used him like just a little boy, it seemed. Each time he labored together with his father, there was all the time rigidity and resentment build up inside him.
"Come, Yonie," she coaxed. "Tell me what's wrong. You're not the happy young man you used to be. What has changed you?"
What has changed me? Yonie questioned. Why am I the best way I am? He wished he knew the trustworthy reply to Mom's question. However he did not, so he was silent…. How might he clarify to his mother this restlessness that seized him and made him miserable? How might he make her understand when he did not understand himself?
There was a lot on this valley that was pricey to Yonie, and he knew his roots ought to have grown deep. That was what perplexed him. Why should he have this urgent longing to get out and see the world, the unusual locations he had read about in his geography books and elsewhere?
Yonie's mom thought perhaps the sermon at the last church service, the communion, and ordination would have had a constructive effect on Yonie. Indeed, his uncle's turning into a preacher had moved him, but his internal dissatisfaction remained.
Yonie reflected on his house and household, and the stories his mom informed him of the days when the Amish first got here to the Kishacoquillas Valley, tales informed to her by her mother and father. But Yonie's ideas have been disrupted by cries, and Yonie noticed that the Zook's barn was on hearth. Nothing might be completed to save lots of the barn, the hearth started by a toddler enjoying with matches. When it was all over, Yonie's little cousin was lifeless. All of the sudden Yonie felt guilty for his dissatisfaction earlier in the afternoon. His issues have been minor in comparison with what his Aunt Rachel was struggling at this moment.
Yonie ended up getting employed by the crew that might rebuild the barn. He wasn't actually too pleased, because he had heard the person in cost was a troublesome boss. "What's wrong? Don't you appreciate a good job when work is scarce?" requested Dad.
"I guess." That was all Yonie would say. However inside he was rebelling… Dad had not even asked him his opinion, whether or not he wished to work for this man. On the job, as he expected, he was not very completely happy. But who or what was the primary object of his dissatisfaction, he could not say. Maybe it was Yonie Kauffman! Nicely, once he was twenty-one, he would discover out. Then issues can be totally different.
When Yonie discovered his good good friend Amos's household was shifting to Ohio, he needed to go along and assist them transfer in, seeing slightly of the surface world along the best way. Yonie asked his father, who replied abruptly, "No, I can't see any point in that. You've no business in Ohio, and besides, how would you ever get back" Yonie knew the topic was closed. When he realized the trip to Ohio was forbidden, it seemed all of the more fascinating. But his father had given him no consideration. It was the same previous story.
The summer time of 1900 wore on. Yonie Kauffman's twenty-first birthday passed, and the cash he now earned was his own to keep or to spend. At residence, the tensions between father and son didn't lessen, as Dad Kauffman continued to be curt with Yonie, ordering him round as before. Yonie, for his half, was decided to now to bear the injustice in silence. He nursed his resentful feelings and stored them to himself as much as attainable. And so the rift widened.
Then Yonie heard that there was work out in the Kansas Amish settlement. He had enough cash to take the practice, and announced his plans to go. His mom was upset. "But it's dangerous. You never know what company you'll get into. Why don't you stay home, and join church?"
And quiet down once, and get married. Yonie might finish what he thought his mother was considering. However Yonie did not need to be tied down yet. What harm might there be in having a superb time first?
"Let him go" Dad Kauffman advised his wife. "maybe he'll learn his lesson. My guess is he'll come home broke, and then maybe he'll appreciate what people have done for him here."
Yonie left, and after the harvest, nonetheless did not return, or even write very often. His mother and father turned concerned. "Maybe I was too harsh with him while he was at home. I know I should have been more patient. But that doesn't excuse Yonie. He knows better."
"We'll have to keep writing, and urge him to come back," continued Mom. "We must pray for him, and trust that he will see his error."
But letters quickly got here back noting that Yonie had moved on, with no tackle. And so the months handed with no word. Unknown to them, Yonie had tired of a nomad's life and he was homesick for his household and his childhood residence. Of larger importance, the burden of his conscience had grown too heavy, and he was ready for a change. He needed to make peace together with his mother and father and God.
He returned to the Huge valley in 1903, resolved to make a brand new start, to proper his wrongs, to hitch the church, to stay a Christian life. He was prepared to humble himself and admit that he had erred. And he was aware that the more than two years he had spent out west had been wasted years—a time when his life had lacked path, and he had gone from one job to a different, without purpose and with out function.
Yonie was sick of such a life, and he knew now he might stay a greater one, if solely… If only he received a welcome from his household and former buddies. If solely he might be accepted by them, after which was worthy of their esteem. If only he might overcome the temptations that came to him, the durations of discouragement, the emotions of resentment and insurrection. If only…
Issues went fairly nicely for Yonie when he returned. He obtained a job in the sawmill, and even survived what might have been a deadly accident. Luckily, the blade would solely depart an enormous scar on his left shoulder.
As the summer time progressed, Yonie's shoulder healed quickly. He attended the young people' singing commonly, and joined heartily within the singing of the previous martyr hymns. He had an exceptional singing voice and loved utilizing it.
For some time Yonie had been giving critical thought to getting married and starting a household of his personal. However he was nonetheless not sure of himself. There was just one woman that was of interest to him, and that was Mary Stoltzfus… He was considering of how extremely respected Mary was, and of his personal report of the past — his disobedience in going out west, his moody spells of discouragement, his bouts together with his temper… Dad and Mother Kauffman have been happy with Yonie's interest in Mary. If any woman might convey out the most effective in Yonie, Mary was the one.
However Yonie had a rival in in search of Mary's affection, his distant cousin John Kauffman. Despite the fact that Mary would let Yonie take her residence from the singings, she by no means actually appeared to make a dedication to him.
Time handed, and someday Yonie discovered himself slicing stone up in the mountains. Deciding to return and end the subsequent day, he rigorously hid his decide and shovel in a crevice between two rocks where no passing hiker or tramp may find it. He needed to return residence and make sure to get to the younger individuals's corn husking that night time, and see Mary again.
However on the husking, he fell in with a gaggle of boys who had brought some arduous apple cider alongside, they usually succeeded in getting Yonie to drink an excessive amount of. Quite than need to face Mary in such a state, he determined to easily go residence together with his sister. As he left, he saw Mary being taken house by his rival, John. T
he subsequent morning Yonie woke with a nasty headache. At that second life was hardly value dwelling. If he certainly lost Mary, what was the use of making an attempt? Yonie was dissatisfied, discouraged, despondent — more so than he had ever been in his life.
Mary Stoltzfus was genuinely sorry, however she had made up her thoughts that their friendship should end.
Thus, when Yonie discovered of a gaggle of young men planning to take a trip to the Amish settlement in Lancaster, he decided it will be good to get away for some time. His mother and father thought he may even discover a young lady there which may strike his fancy. However when the group returned every week later from Lancaster, Yonie was not with them. Mother and Dad Kauffman debated what to do. Mother needed Dad to go to Lancaster. Dad thought Yonie wouldn't take heed to him, and that Mom would have the ability to speak to him higher. But earlier than they might do anything, a letter arrived from Lancaster from a pal saying Yonie had gone, and nobody knew where he went.
Six years handed, and although the Kauffman's waited every single day for a letter from Yonie, none came. Now it was 1909, and Yonie's sister was getting married, and wished her brother might be there. However by this time, Yonie had develop into a sailor, and was out on the oceans, visiting other lands. Nonetheless, he was typically sad together with his life, together with his companions, the card games, the consuming. So he resolved to return residence. Unable to put in writing to his mother and father, he wrote his sister…
"I should never have left home. I know it was a terrible thing to do, and no doubt Mom and Dad have long disowned me. Now I would like to come home, but I would like to know first if I am welcome. Please write and tell me the truth. I do not want to come back if nobody wants me back. But I would like to lead a different life."
Yonie can be in New York for 2 weeks, and he had a publish workplace box, anxiously awaiting a reply. But he was shocked to obtain his personal letter back, unopened, and stamped "Refused."
Yonie was crushed. This was so in contrast to Mary. or had Dad given her orders? The fact was evident to Yonie. His family had rejected him. He was not welcome.
So Yonie decided to return to the ship and his life on the sea. Unknown to Yonie, nevertheless, was the fact that his letter ended up accidentally on the house of an previous maid (named Mary like his sister) in the Huge Valley, who thought someone was enjoying a joke on her, and refused this supposed letter from the long gone Yonie Kauffman.
Then, in 1915, a pal of the Kauffmans ran right into a 35-year-old man in Ohio who he was positive was Yonie. In fact, a lot time had handed. It was determined that Dad Kauffman and a sister would go and see him. Dad had his doubts, much more so when he met the person in the lodge room. Sister was not fairly positive. They asked him to disclose his bare shoulder and see the scar, but none was there. The man provided no info, refused to say who he was, and didn't converse the dialect. No response came when Dad stated all was forgiven if he would simply come house and be their son again.
Back residence Mom Kauffman was distraught. She needed so to consider her Yonie had been found. Because the household talked, it was discovered that the scarred shoulder was truly the left one. Might it's it really was Yonie, and he had purposefully confirmed them his proper shoulder solely?
A number of months passed, and a tramp arrived on the Kauffman house. Mother noticed his face, and out of the blue her heart jumped. She asked if he was Yonie, and he stated that certainly he was. Thus, in 1916, the mysterious man from Ohio had come house, and admitted to being the long misplaced Yonie. Nevertheless, some individuals had their doubts, including Dad Kauffman. Apart from, Yonie's way of life was lower than desirable. He came and went. He did odd jobs. He still had a consuming drawback. He nonetheless disliked interference and recommendation. Thus neither Dad, Mom, nor the ministers might persuade him to vary his life. Individuals continued to argue about whether this actually was Yonie. As time glided by, he joined a Mennonite Church, but then was expelled for his consuming drawback.
At some point Dad Kauffman didn't come up from mattress. As Mother talked to him, she feared the worst. He spoke these words about Yonie as he lay dying…
"I see now we were too hard on Yonie when he was a young lad. Or at least I was. I meant it for his good, because I saw so many boys growing up without restraint, and I didn't want to make that mistake. Yonie is natured a lot like I am, and I often wished my dad would have helped me overcome my temper when I was a boy. Now I see that I was too harsh with Yonie…. Sometimes I feel my life has been wasted if Yonie doesn't repent."
Yonie appeared affected by the dying of Dad in 1923 on the age of 78. He came over Mom extra, and did chores around the house. Then the day got here for the reading of dad's will. When Yonie heard that each one dad was leaving him was $25, and that the remaining of the property can be divided equally among the many different youngsters, he was indignant, and heard to mutter, "Twenty-five dollars! Chicken feed!" He felt that his older brother Crist was accountable for his being shut out of Dad's will. One night time a fireplace broke out in Crist's barn, and it burned to the bottom. Yonie was suspected, but there was no option to know for positive.
Ten months later, Mother Kauffman handed away on the age of 70. Individuals thought this may lastly change Yonie, however he got here to the funeral with the odor of liquor on his breath.
As a while glided by, the relations talked amongst themselves, and determined to attempt to help Yonie buy a home of his personal, since it appeared Yonie was making an honest dwelling, and maybe could possibly be convinced to put some cash into a place of his personal. That is what happened, and Yonie acquired his place in a city far enough away that he wasn't seen all that much anymore, though they heard he was getting married.
By now, most individuals had in all probability forgotten the controversy over whether or not this really was Yonie, however the actual Yonie was indeed elsewhere. He was nonetheless a sailor, and had now reached the conclusion that he had to return residence. He arrived on a Sunday, not likely eager to be seen. He managed to enter the home by means of an open window. It turned clear that one of his sisters lived her now, and that his mother and father have been both lifeless. He longed to return to the days when he was younger, sitting at the table, listening to Dad read from the German Bible. Yonie felt he had wasted his life. He was alone, no spouse, no household. He thought of what may need been. Yonie couldn't determine what to do.
As night time came, he determined to look for a barn to sleep in, and perhaps for a meal. Tramps weren't unusual visitors to the Amish in these Melancholy years. He went to the Levi Yoder farm, and made his request. However Levi stunned him by saying that he seemed for all the world like Yonie Kauffman. Yonie broke down, and admitted that indeed he was. When Yonie's sister and others in the family heard the information, they might not consider it.
They went to satisfy the brand new Yonie, and Mary knew it was certainly her brother as soon as she noticed him, and in addition questioned how she might have been so fooled by the opposite. To place all doubters to rest, Yonie bared his left shoulder, the place the scar from the sawmill accident was still clearly evident. A number of days later, to additional prove his id, he took some individuals up into the mountains, and there situated that decide and shovel he had hidden in the rock crevice some thirty years ago.
Yonie was a changed man. He was repentant and very sorry for the pain and sorrow he had brought about his mother and father by his disobedience. However it was too late to make amends to them. What a waste his life had been. The most he might do now was to stay the remaining years of his life in a means that may have been acceptable to them. Only thus might he hope for God's forgiveness, and for grace and mercy for his soul.
Who then was this different Yonie Kauffman? Yonie heard of the impostor, and on August 25, 1932, the native newspaper reported on the meeting of the two Yonies. The impostor, now married, had heard of the news of the actual Yonie's return, and advised others how he had come to the Kauffmans, at the urging of associates, perhaps satisfied of receiving an inheritance. He seemed virtually relieved now that his worry of this occurring was over, and he might admit what was the truth is the reality. Because the newspaper famous when the two males met, the impostor showed "no reluctance to admit the imposition and he found the man he wronged just as ready to forgive and forget." The imposter additionally admitted to having set hearth to Crist Kauffman's barn after Dad Kauffman's demise.
And thus ends one of the strangest stories in Amish history. It is a story of unhappiness and deceit, or dissatisfied mother and father and a disobedient son, of years wasted in sinful dwelling.
The solely glad portion of the story is the considerably brighter ending, but even this is tinted by regrets and sorrow over what may need been. The Finish.
Amish Nation Information Article by Brad Igou
This Blogger Lost 25Kgs with this Secret Strategy that Includes a Fitness Tracker » AmitBhawani.Com
Best of the Western in 2018


Sunder Pichai, the CEO of Google, is in India and today he spoke at #GoogleForIndia event in Delhi that was attended by media, developers, entrepreneurs and marketers. Sunder Pichai spoke at length and we bring you some of what he spoke.
Google will build a new campus at Hyderabad and hire more people. The technology giant is working towards including as many people as possible in the use of internet in the country, and added the company will develop products in India that have global usage.
"We will ramp up our engineering investments at our Bangalore and Hyderabad facilities. We will also build a huge new campus in Hyderabad," Pichai said.
Free WiFi being set up across 400 railway stations will be "highly reliable and hi-speed" with speeds higher than what an average internet user gets.
The network is being set up by Google in partnership with the Railways' telecom wing, RailTel and Mumbai Central will be the first station to get the facility.
Google's rural internet programme will be expanded to 300,000 villages across India. The company will even help women from 3 lakh villages across India to get online in three years. The initiative plan is called 'Internet Saathi' and will reach the villages in 3 years.
Google Indic Keyboard has been launched specifically for Indians and allows you to type messages, update on social networks or compose emails in your 11 native languages on your Android phone. The languages supported include English, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu.
Chromebit was announced. The device can be connected to the HDMI port of any display, and convert it to a chrome OS computer. It will be launched next year at a price of Rs 7,999.


text:
Hurricanes Overcome Senators With 4 in the 3rd
By The Canadian Press February 13th, 2019
OTTAWA — Teuvo Teravainen scored two of Carolina's four unanswered goals in the third period as the Hurricanes beat the Ottawa Senators 4-1 Tuesday night.
Ottawa Senators Anders Nilsson kneels in his crease as Carolina Hurricanes Nino Niederreiter, Justin Faulk and Teuvo Teravainen celebrate (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld)
Micheal Ferland and Justin Williams also scored for the Hurricanes (29-22-6), who wrapped up a season-long five game road trip. Curtis McElhinney made 25 saves.
Mark Stone scored the lone goal for the Senators (21-30-5), who saw its two-game winning streak come to an end. Anders Nilsson, making his third straight start, stopped 33 shots.
Down 1-0, the Hurricanes tied the game just 16 seconds into the third period when Dougie Hamilton found Ferland at the net for the tap-in.
Shortly after the Senators found themselves in penalty trouble as Thomas Chabot was called for tripping and Cody Ceci took a double minor for high sticking Nino Niederreiter.
Carolina wasted no time on the two-man advantage as Williams found some open ice and fired a shot bar down to take the lead, and just over one minute later Teravainen made it 3-1 by beating Nilsson with a one-timer.
Teravainen scored his second and 17th of the season late in the period off a turnover as he beat Nilsson high shortside.
Carolina's Jordan Martinook had a great chance in the opening minutes of the second period to tie the game, but Nilsson stopped him in close. Nilsson frustrated the Hurricanes again later in the period making a couple big saves with Carolina on the power play.
The Senators appeared to take a 2-0 lead at the four-minute mark, but the goal was called back when it was deemed there was a kicking motion when Jean-Gabriel Pageau connected with the puck before it bounced in off McElhinney.
Both teams had a number of good chances in the first, but it was Ottawa that opened the scoring at the 12-minute mark. Stone knocked a puck out of the air and over McElhinney's shoulder to extend his point streak to four games (four goals, two assists).
Notes: Filip Gustavsson got his first NHL recall and served as the Senators backup Tuesday as Craig Anderson took a tennis ball to the eye Monday. Patrick Brown was a healthy scratch for the Hurricanes.
Lisa Wallace, The Canadian Press


text:
January 8, 2010 By Stephen Klarich
KTLA recently reported that the Los Angeles Police Department arrested Shane Sparks, a judge on the reality dance show "America's Best Dance Crew" and a choreographer for the hit show "So You Think You Can Dance." A warrant was issued for 40-year-old Sparks who was taken into custody for multiple charges including the following: two counts of sexual intercourse with a minor, two counts of oral copulation with a minor, and lewd conduct with a child under 14. Sparks' attorney says he is innocent and is being falsely accused due to his fame. The crime allegedly took place over 15 years ago.
Child molestation charges are extremely serious. Penalties for a sex crime conviction in the state of California generally include the real possibility of many years in state prison. A conviction will also require a life long registration on the state-wide sex offender data base.
The experienced Southern California sex crime defense attorneys at Wallin & Klarich have years of experience handling misdemeanor and felony sex cases, charges related to failing to register as a sex offender, and three strikes cases. The aggressive attorneys at Wallin & Klarich are known for zealously representing their clients in order to provide them with the best defense possible. Call Wallin & Klarich today at (877) 466-5245 for a consultation of your case.
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text:
Student News for The University of Baltimore
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Friday Groove
The Color Theory: Embrace Your Culture for Black History
Photo: Jeff Dominguez – The Sting
As we all know, February is Black History Month. With racial injustice being brought to national attention within the past year, this time around feels a lot more important compared to recent years.
Said best by N'dea Yancey-Bragg of USA Today, "Black History Month recognizes the contributions African-Americans have made to this country throughout time. Specifically this year, on a national scale, we reflect on the continued struggle of racial injustice."
For those interested, how did we get here?
Early Beginnings
The story of Black History Month dates back to 1915, almost fifty years after the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery. The founding fathers of this celebration, Carter G. Woodson and Jesse E. Moorland, were dedicated to promote accomplishments made by African-Americans. They wanted these newly profound leaders to embrace their culture, while being put on a higher pedestal for the whole world to see.
Photo: Matheus Viana – Pexels
Before 1976, Black History Month was "Black History Week" – formerly known as National Negro History Week, residing between Abraham Lincoln's and Frederick Douglass' birthdays (who were important advocates of black lives).
Rising philosophers and leaders in the civil rights movement (such as Malcolm X, John Lewis, James Meredith, and Martin Luther King Jr.) brought awareness of the Black identity. Thus, evolving "Negro History Week" into the modern Black History Month.
Today's Impact
As said in my previous post, we started this whole pandemic with lots of uncertainty. But there seems to be a forecast of hope on the horizon. With heartbreaking events, such as the death of George Floyd and many other countless names, became eye-opening for our nation. This year's celebration, the on-going focus is heavily reflective of last summer's Black Lives Matter Movement.
Although some may argue, just this year alone, this particular "reflection" is overly emphasized. Somebody once told me recently, "Well, why are people finally recognizing our struggles now? Why are people finally bringing up this issue after so many decades of pain?"
I hear you, my friend. But recognizing this issue now is better than never. We were bound to face the issues of police brutality, racism in the workplace, ignorance, and every injustice the black community has dealt with throughout the history of this country.
Nichelle Smith of USA Today agrees, "The short answer: Forward. Through still-difficult times to the other, better side. There's no going back to a "normal" that never worked well for Black people anyway."
Everyone has been through a lot this past year. What's keeping us alive is for us to keep progressing and pushing forward as individuals.
Current Sting President and Editor-at-Large, Leonard Robinson, also agrees to my philosophical advice as said in his last post: "The big thing that happened? Humanity got better at simply…being alive". To put it in perspective, every day (hopefully), we are becoming more tolerant to our neighbors.
Photo: Scott Olson – Getty Images (via NPR)
The Colors: Symbolize Through Wear
With this celebration going on now, and still in a worldwide pandemic, the most common way to express your heritage and "blackness" is to dress up for the culture.
Dressing in a way can be considered as a reflection of one's cultural values and morals. Think of it symbolically: there's a story or meaning behind certain colors and patterns.
The colors red, black, and green have always been associated with African-descent and used as the colorway for Black History Month – inspired from the iconic, Pan-American Flag (or known as the Black Liberation Flag). Said by NPR editor, Leah Donnella: "Red stood for blood — both the blood shed by Africans who died in their fight for liberation, and the shared blood of the African people. Black represented, well, black people. And green was a symbol of growth and the natural fertility of Africa."
I'm not saying you should wear red, black, and/or green to support this national celebration – but only my suggestion. You could go even further into embracing your culture by wearing traditional wear, such as head wraps and fine prints.
Jeff Dominguez is the Communications Director for The Sting and writes The Color Theory, an influential fashion column.
Author: Jeff Dominguez
Jeff Dominguez is the Communications Director for The Sting. He is currently a Digital Communications major at the University of Baltimore. View all posts by Jeff Dominguez
Author Jeff DominguezPosted on February 2, 2021 February 2, 2021 Categories Color Theory, Columns, LifestyleTags African American, african American women, African Americans, African art, black, black history, Black History Month, Black History ubalt, black men, black women, BLM, Color Theory, culture, fashion, Foward, John Lewis, knowing culture, Malcolm X, MLK, streetwear, traditional
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Let's circle back on the recent events that are making our future look shaky.
How does Hip-Hop affect English language?
A fan of fiction books?! 📚
A big Thank You to @marlonwayans & @dcervincomedy for meeting with The Sting, SGA and Seb. A night to remember.
Learn more about Greek🇬🇷🏛 and Turkish 🇹🇷music with Valerie Hinkle, our new writer.
Is Gap Year a good solution or a distraction?


By my count, there were 4 NEW databases ADDED this past week, per the list above. There are now 32,881 databases available as of 24 June, an increase of 3 from last week. Which database did they delete?
Disclosure: I have a fully paid Ancestry.com subscription. Ancestry.com has provided travel expenses to meetings and has hosted events and meals in Salt Lake City in past years.


I am programming from quite some time. I am able to solve easy questions quite easily, but I am unable to solve medium and hard problems , I am not able to approach .
Please Help me how can I approach difficult problems . Any help will be highly appreciated.
I'd suggest you to read the editorials. If you can't understand them, then you should probably go for easier problems. The trick is, many problems are similar and once you've seen ( and solved!) thousands of problems, you will spot the trick behind them.
@Kuruma I've also been struggling with math due to the poor math background. In our country the mathematics education is pretty poor, compared to other countries like China or Russia. That's why I also try to read some mathematics book while studying CS since they have a lot in common.
And what about a more…complicated situation?