text:
Tunnels & Trolls: Computer Solo Adventure
The game map. The starting island is in the lower left. I don't think the Dragon Continent looks as much like a dragon after all. More like a bird.
My last posting prompted some fond remembrances and discussions of game books. I had suggested that the nature of Crusaders of Khazan's encounters reminded me of these options, and I drew a parallel between "page-scumming" in game books and "encounter-scumming" in the game: saving one's place and testing all the options before deciding on the preferred ending, versus simply making your choice and seeing where it takes you.
If I'd waited a little longer to write that post, I would have drawn a more direct link between gamebooks and Khazan, because it turns out that the game is based on gamebooks, called "solo adventures" by Tunnels & Trolls' publisher. Fiendishgames mentions a couple of them in this comment: Sewers of Oblivion (covering the Gull sewers) and City of Terrors. I'd be surprised if Arena of Khazan and Sea of Mystery didn't also contribute a lot of material. The problem is that playing the game is starting to feel a lot like a literal gamebook, with copious text in the window and a series of branching encounter choices in just about every visitable location. At times, the other parts of the game seem almost superfluous, as if the creator just typed the gamebooks into the computer and then created a half-assed interface to make it seem like the player was playing a computer RPG.
"But Chet!" I hear you sputtering, "You love copious encounters and choices in your games!" This is true, but I like them when they're role-playing choices, or at least character-based choices in which success is determined by character attributes rather than hitting upon the "right" option. Too many of the choices in Khazan--not all, but too many--feel more like standard CYOA book choices, where the plot unfolds in ways that you couldn't have possibly foreseen from the nature of the choices.
Note that the game has me choose whether to hike or more in a particular direction rather than letting me actually walk across a map. Just one of many ways in which it feels like a gamebook that happens to have a CRPG-like interface.
But the larger problem is that there simply isn't a good balance between text and actual gameplay. Envision a typical RPG dungeon. At one end of a hallway, you have a chat with an NPC. Then you walk ten steps down an empty corridor and fight a combat with a party of orcs. The challenge for a game is to make those 10 steps feel necessary, or at least not useless, even though they're empty. It could be done by using the space to build up a sense of suspense about the impending encounter, perhaps with some atmospheric messages every couple of steps. Maybe there's a chance of a random encounter along the way. Perhaps the navigation itself is a puzzle, and the encounter at the "end" of the corridor is actually behind a secret door that the player wouldn't know is there until he maps the rest of the level. A modern game might feature interesting graphics and sound to enhance all of these possibilities. Whatever the case, you don't want the player to reach the next encounter feeling like the game simply wasted his time in the meantime.
Khazan often makes me feel that the 20 steps I walk between the gates of a city and its docks or a shop are its way of simulating the gamebook choice of "if you want to go to the docks, turn to page 91; if you want to go to the shop, turn to page 54." I've felt this way in only a few other games. The overland map in Champions of Krynn comes to mind. It was just wasted space, and the game would have been better off offering a menu of travel options, like Curse of the Azure Bonds did. A lot of other games have featured so many interminable dungeon levels, with no interesting geography, that I'd rather they'd just lined up their combats and let me chug through them in a row. But for the most part, games manage to do a good job--a surprisingly good job--of giving the sense that the space they occupy, and the physical process of moving through it, is somehow necessary, or even fun.
Khazan's problem is that the amount of text and the sheer number of options in the fixed encounters just contrasts too sharply with the paucity of graphics in the space in between. It's a little like reading a physical gamebook but forcing yourself to do a lap around the block every time you make a choice (which, come to think of it, would be a pretty good exercise plan). Still, almost all computer RPGs are, in effect, computer "solo adventures," so much of what makes Crusaders of Khazan notable, and a little unsatisfying, in this regard is somewhat ineffable.
The bloom has come off the rose for a few other reasons, including some undocumented menu choices (I missed out on a lot of items in shops because I didn't realize that F9 and F10, of all things, scrolled through the selections) and weird gameplay elements that I'm not sure if they're bugs or what. Shops randomly stop selling food (often when I most need it), for instance. Resting abruptly stopped healing wounds on my dwarf (I don't think he was afflicted by any other conditions) and I had to reload a much earlier save. A lot of combats plunge me into darkness even when they're initiated in lit places. Occasionally, one of my characters will get no experience from combat for no reason that I can see. The continent, which I had assumed was open and fully explorable, has a bunch of features that artificially restrict movement, such as the characters taking damage for every step they take when walking in what looks like desert terrain, sea currents that prevent landing in all but a a few areas, and in the entire northern half of the map, a banshee who attacks every time you stray off a narrow path.
Most of my playing since last post has been on a series of islands. I first bought a ship from the docks in Gull, then headed out into the sea.
Can I rename it?
I made due east for the mainland, expecting that I'd explore from the south to the north, as I'd been warned by everyone that the northern areas of the continent (above a cliff wall known as the "Great Escarpment") are dominated by monsters. However, the moment I landed, I got a message that it was "too hot!" and started taking damage. I'm not sure what this is about, but I later discovered that it happens every time you walk on an open area of the continent, although you can periodically rest (even in the "too hot!" zone) to recover hit points.
Am I wandering across the sand with no shoes or something?
With that plan temporarily shot, I decided to visit the nearby islands before hitting the continent. The first was a small one called Thorn, just north of Phoron. There was a small town called Anthelios in its one explorable square, and I entered.
As I wandered the hallways, I found myself attacked repeatedly by demon apes. At last, I came across some villagers (there were some encounter options where I had the choice to attack them) who explained that the townsfolk were followers of a sea goddess named Goloe, but she had cursed them for impiety and sin and was sending the demon apes to attack them every month. They asked if I would kill the 30 demon apes currently wandering the city, which would put them in good shape for at least the rest of the month.
I agreed, of course. The demon apes weren't terribly hard, as long as I kept Linn the Wizard away from their clutches, although there weren't 30 of them in the city. I had to keep leaving the city and re-entering, allowing the random encounters to reset, before I could meet the quota. When I did, I got a message that the townsfolk came out of their homes and resumed their business, though I got no more options for helping them in the long term, nor any reward. Meanwhile, I seemed to have made an enemy of the goddess:
Much later in my sea explorations, I came across a "castaway" in a raft. I ignored a crewmember's advice to keep away from the "sea witch," went out to help her, and discovered that she was none other than Goloe herself. She deemed me "worthy of crusading for the great wizard" and blessed me with sea water. Some time after that, I thought of going back to Anthelios to see if the encounter had made any differnece, and it had. When I approached the altar, instead of getting a rebuke for helping the villagers, I was allowed to plead their cause. Goloe agreed that she'd punished them enough and called off the demon apes. She also gave me some gold and a bit of verse that I can't quite interpret yet:
When second greatest you do face [the empress's wizard, Khara Khang?]
Khazan's binder in a silver place [probably refers to some artifact I've yet to find]
Teach a rogue to teach a rogue [okay...]
Answer then in ogres' brogue! [a reference to the language system, I guess]
The spender's name in words so bright [clueless from here out]
Clever thief is demon wight
To vanquish wizard this complete
Else second's master must defeat
On another island, inhabited by Amazons, the queen wanted me to retrieve a stolen ring from a dragon on the isle of Khazad. I accepted the quest, but when I got to the island, I found that the dragon was too powerful to defeat in combat for my low-level party. Instead, I had a series of encounter options where I ran into a cave and met a hermit named Briah who had been trapped there for years. He came up with a plan by which I distracted the dragon while Briah opened a secret "trap door" on the beach.
As with the rat battle in the sewers beneath Gull, I had to choose the same options over and over again, suspecting that I was just wasting time, before the encounter finally paid off, with all of us escaping into some secret tunnels beneath the island. The tunnels led under the ocean to another island, called Res (heck of a feat of engineering, that), where I constructed a new ship from some pods--after first fighting a battle against pod people/zombies that escaped from the pods.
When I returned to the queen of the Amazons, she gave me detailed instructions for finding Goloe's temple on an island in the "dragon's maw" ("currents" keep me from reaching it otherwise). I had to land in a particular place on the coast and walk a certain number of steps in various directions before boarding a ferry to the island. Again, what I took to be desert kept damaging me, and if I strayed from the path, I got attacked by a banshee.
Goloe's temple was full of combats with water creatures like merfolk, sharks, and kelpies. Some of them were nearly impossible, causing me to reload multiple times. I ultimately didn't find anything useful here. There was a lagoon in which I could swim and dive to some underwater caverns, but even when I took pains to fully explore them despite taking "choking" damage every move, I didn't find anything to continue the story. I made a note to return later.
Fighting a bunch of "nix waterhorses" in the temple.
Continuing my exploration of the islands, I found:
Peleki's island, occupied by a guy named Peleki and his large family. He offered both food and gossip for a price, and in the latter category told me a number of things, including that Empress Lerotra'hh's favorite story is "The Arrogant Knight," that I can only approach "the unicorn guardian" if I'm not wielding any weapons, and that "the best gem to bear a soul is a diamond of golden hue." I dutifully wrote everything down but left before I spent all of my money.
One of Peleki's bits of gossip. I'm sure it's meaning will become clear later.
An island composed entirely of bones of the dead, with living skeletons controlled by a skeletal hand bearing a black ring. I had numerous options to flee, but I kept investigating and found myself in a very long battle with "living skeletons"--very long because neither of us seemed to be capable of hitting the other. It was very weird. My attacks only connected with them about 1 in 30 times, and they never hit me at all. I eventually had to set the combat to "auto" and go run some errands while the battle finished up. When it was over--my party still unscathed--I had various options to take the ring or flee. Everything but fleeing resulted in the death of at least one of my characters. Maybe I'll return when I have more constitution.
Part of my endless battle with skeletons.
The island of Garr, which had a store in the middle of nowhere.
As I sailed, the game occasionally gave me messages from my "captain" and noted the presence of crewmembers on my ship. I have no idea where they came from. Did they come with the ship when I bought it? If so, what did they do when I wrecked it on the dragon's island?
As I close, I've finished what I can do on the islands, and I've pulled in to the city of Knorr on the coast of the continent. Maybe here I'll get more of a trail on the main quest. I've barely explored the spell system at all, so I really need to purchase some magic for my wizard and rogue and start testing it out. More on that, and combat and equipment, next time.
Labels: Tunnels and Trolls
Gamma Leak April 5, 2014 at 12:45 AM
Wow... that overworld map looks like a total ripoff of the Might & Magic maps. Not that M&M had some kind of exclusive right to overworld maps, but just that, stylistically, it's almost identical. It's kind of embarrassing, really.
roberski April 5, 2014 at 8:36 AM
They are both New World Computing, probably had the same artist do it.
I really like the art for the first five might and magic games, this makes me wonder how many other games have the same artist.
a bloke named Jim Krogel did the MM2 map, no mention of the map illustrator in the manual for T&T
-Oth-
CRPG Addict April 5, 2014 at 4:47 PM
Regardless of the lack of credit, it seems impossible that the maps weren't done by the same illustrator.
Pedro Q. April 6, 2014 at 7:48 AM
Most likely by Mike Winterbauer, who did the illustrations for M&M4 and 5
http://www.winterbauerarts.com/LandOfXeenMap.html
Gamma Leak April 7, 2014 at 1:33 AM
D'oh! Totally forgot that T&T was a New World game. That makes sense, now.
Mike Winterbauer April 10, 2014 at 8:26 PM
I saw this blog and thought I would mention that I did the cover art for many games in the past;
Might and Magic Clouds of Xeen 1992, and interior map
Might and Magic DarkSide of Xeen 1993, and interior map
Wing Commander, Super Nintendo 1992
WolfChild, Sega 1992
PowerBlade, Ninetendo 1992
Solstice, Nintendo 1990
Ninja Taro, Game Boy 1992
My cover art is seen at:
http://www.winterbauerarts.com/
Mike Winterbauer
Tristan Gall April 10, 2014 at 8:47 PM
The Solstice theme was pretty much the pinnacle of 8-bit music.
Mister Motley December 2, 2018 at 10:51 PM
Thank you Mike! Solstice was an amazing game. I loved it so much that I actually beat it. Such a feat would not have been possible without that wonderful poster sized map.
Chris April 5, 2014 at 12:58 AM
Oh my. I've been waiting two years to leave this comment.
(Full disclosure: I'm building a digital version of a gamebook, DestinyQuest, written in 2012, and I would absolutely love to get people here to try it.)
This is true, but I like them when they're role-playing choices, or at least character-based choices in which success is determined by character attributes rather than hitting upon the "right" option. Too many of the choices in Khazan--not all, but too many--feel more like standard CYOA book choices, where the plot unfolds in ways that you couldn't have possibly foreseen from the nature of the choices.
We recently had a gamebook fair where we invited people to hang out and play through the actual physical Fighting Fantasy books and others. One thing that becomes really obvious through playing FF and similar gamebooks is that they work best when played through repeatedly and quickly, like a roguelike, because the conceit is "find the right combination of skills and pages to survive, by making all the wrong choices the first few times because how could you possibly know there were bees in that direction."
When done well (I think Heart of Ice's take was pretty good), this is roguelike and great. Unfortunately with that, you get the issue where the story is going to get boring if you have to read through it repeatedly (the equivalent of having to watch the same cutscene in a game over and over again). One of the difficulties with really great story-driven games is that it's hard to chew that fruit over again, whereas with a shooter or ARPG the clicking's what drives it, and my love for clicking never leaves me.
I'd assume that's how games ended up with cutscene pacing, where the bulkiest parts of the story lie at the ends of chapters, when the save/reload cycle is over.
On the gamebook side: I've been struggling with what is required to make a great game and fit it into a book. One of the things that's very prominent throughout every single CRPG on Chet's list is that they are ALL spatial - every last one relies not on just choices, but on the ideas of maps and movement. How do you make a great modern day game(book) that doesn't rely on visual space?
(Footnote: I think there's a Lord of the Rings gamebook, something Nazgul, that has a map built in...)
and...I'll stop thinking about gamebooks now :D
I have to be honest: I feel about gamebooks the way that some tabletop RPG players feel about computer RPGs. They're so scripted, so restricted in meaningful choices, that I can't imagine preferring them unless I didn't have access to a CRPG at the time.
In the era that they first started to come out, they offered much better narratives than contemporary CRPGs, of course, but today it's almost impossible to envision picking up a gamebook instead of a host of CRPGs from 1990 onwards that I have or haven't played.
So change my view: what particular rewards do gamebooks offer that a reader can't get from an RPG?
Gerry Quinn April 6, 2014 at 10:35 AM
For me roguelikes are typically more strategic. You do have to find defences against threats that are likely to turn up, but generally the map is different each time, and it's fairly random what threats appear. For example, in one game you die of poison - in the next game you will look out for a poison cure, but absent a cure you can ideally run from poisonous monsters, avoid areas where they congregate, just bring a ton of healing potions if you have to fight one, etc.
You have to develop knowledge of strategy and tactics to meet the challenges of a particular game.
Of course there are many different roguelikes and they differ considerably in style and in what and how much is randomised from game to game.
Chris April 6, 2014 at 12:53 PM
> what particular rewards do gamebooks offer that a reader can't get from an RPG?
Actually...I agree with your view. Gamebooks of the past don't offer as many meaningful choices as story-driven video games do today. I get a far more satisfying experience out of a couple of hours of KOTOR than I would out of the vast majority, if not all, of gamebooks.
I think that's a consequence of the medium. You could, imaginably, rework the entire text of Planescape: Torment into a bound book, but the number of pages you'd have to flip through would quickly become physically prohibitive, not to mention all the things that are easy in code that you'd have to emulate via keywords and tables and other nonsense. Technology's changed, but T&T still lives with the mechanisms it was designed with.
At this point, I think digital gamebooks have potential, but it's largely unrealized. I haven't seen anyone try and tell a CRPG-scale story using a gamebook (well, maybe DQ? but even with a book I'm publishing, I feel a bit bold making that claim). Hypothetically, it should be possible, and it should be much easier than doing all the 100-person dev team work that goes into a Skyrim.
That, I suspect, is actually the potential of gamebooks - the fact that, hypothetically, we could create immersive story-worlds at a fraction of the cost (and thus create many more of them). They would also read much faster than many CRPGs. I really do not know the answer to this question though, so I'd be interested in some perspective.
Noman April 6, 2014 at 9:55 PM
There exists the predominantly Japanese phenomenon of the "Visual Novel", which are essentially electronic CYOA games in which there are a large number of individual scenes (generally still pictures with text (silent in older games, voiced in newer ones) and simple animations, although some use video) in which the player picks one of two or three options, which determine what scenes play out. The genre never made much of an impact over here (although this may be changing), probably due to the fact that a sizable minority of the games are rather explicitly sexual, and those are the only ones anyone over here heard about, usually as part of a "you won't believe how perverted Japan is" rant.
Kenny McCormick April 6, 2014 at 10:26 PM
I'm not sure about a plus side but there's definitely a few things that gamebooks have which the PC can never provide:
1) The smell of paper.
2) You can use a pencil to jot down notes on the pages.
3) You can doodle on the illustrations.
4) You "save" the game with a bookmark or a dog-ear.
I think certain Visual Novels and Interactive Fictions are doing something similar to that. I don't know if they actually read faster, though; some of them can be rather lengthy.
Most interactive fiction have choices made step-by-step (LOOK AT LEAFLET, GO NORTH, GO WEST, EXAMINE TREE, etc), but there is a subset of them where you're given a list of choices to make. It mostly depends on the engine, I think, but probably an IF author could make any given game more gamebook-like if they knew how, because I've seen examples of it.
On hand, I have David Whyld's "Choose Your Own...", made with ADRIFT. The first choice prompt you're given is this:
It isn't until you come to in your seat, the papers you were reading scattered about the carriage, that you even realise you were asleep. Blinking away the sleepiness, you look around the carriage but can see nothing to indicate what woke you so suddenly. [...]
[1] Remain in your seat.
[2] Go and investigate.
Once in a while you're given a prompt like "Press either [1] or [2]", where you have no idea what either choice 1 or 2 will do (unless you've played the game before).
It's a short game, but I think it illustrates that gamebooks can be made on the computer.
Visual Novels have been doing it for a while, but not all of them have choices. Just noted here for context's sake: some of them can be read straight through like a normal book, and have just as much content as your typical novel.
But speaking of the typical VN, they usually have stories with choices that create branches that move you towards a specific ending. How some of them handle it is to tally up the choices the player makes and check if those qualify them for a specific set of scenes (sometimes with additional choices) from Branch A.
It's sometimes possible to switch branches mid-story but it depends on the VN. Once you've cleared Branch A, you get Ending A. If you switched over to Branch B, you get Ending B. Some VNs want you to be perfectionist and stick to all the correct choices for a certain branch, though, so if you switched mid-story sometimes they give you Ending K, which is the catch-all ending.
"Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors" handles it by having you pick what doors your POV character advances through. Beyond a door a specific sequence of events plays out (interlaced with puzzles) and sometimes choices (which can only be made beyond specific doors). If you pick the correct combination of doors you will eventually get to the final ending, but you do have to play the game more than once to get there, and the game does keep track of which doors you've already picked.
I could come up with more examples (for both VNs and IFs), but I have to go.
I think the line between choice-based text adventures (I don't like the moniker "interactive fiction" because it always struck me as somewhat pretentious, and implied favoring story over gameplay) and visual novels is drawn by the degree of interactivity. The former gives you new choices constantly, more or less, and thus the emphasis is in making choices. In the latter, choices punctuate long stretches of passive reading, and the emphasis is in following the story.
One thing that occurs to me is that gamebooks don't do synthesized, slightly-modified endings very well. In a computer RPG, all branches might lead to the same basic ending, but colored slightly differently depending on your NPCs, your alignment, and your choices during the adventure. A physical gamebook can't make on-the-fly modifications like that and would thus feature completely separate endings, and fewer possibilities among them. A digital gamebook, on the other hand, could make subtle changes to the text based on reader choices without having to go down an entirely separate branch. Of course, at that point, the distinction between a digital gamebook and a CRPG becomes quite blurred.
(By the way, if any of you would be interested in looking at the book I'm working on before it goes public, I'd love to discuss. My email's anything at adventurecow.com.)
Gerry: I find roguelikes fascinating. I think there's some potential for translating a roguelike into a gamebook, though...not quite sure how that would go.
Visual novels are definitely one of the things that keep popping up on my radar. I'd be game for any recommendations, though I'm actually not familiar with many VN that would fall into the sort of fantasy/sword and magic genre. If I wanted to get my fix for something conventional like that, any suggestions?
> A digital gamebook, on the other hand, could make subtle changes to the text based on reader choices without having to go down an entirely separate branch. Of course, at that point, the distinction between a digital gamebook and a CRPG becomes quite blurred.
That would be very interesting. I haven't seen most text-based games of any kind do that, but it's well within the realm of technology to do it. Personally I think digital gamebooks ought to have been blurring that line ages ago, but I suppose the development of computer graphics at the same time as gamebooks pulled a lot of game developers into bigger, mass-market graphical projects.
>though I'm actually not familiar with many VN that would fall into the sort of fantasy/sword and magic genre. If I wanted to get my fix for something conventional like that, any suggestions?
"Fate/stay night" is the first thing that comes to mind but it doesn't have any official releases outside of Japan far as I can tell. It's not a conventional take on sword and magic fantasy-- and it's urban fantasy-- but it works, I think. But yeah, they definitely exist, though the only barrier would be whether any given game's been released in English and if not, whether you're willing to fuss around with fan translation patches. The catalogue opens up just a bit more if you're willing to do the latter.
One I'll be looking at playing someday is "Gensou Suikogaiden", which requires patching and an emulator. Though now that I look at the Wikipedia page, it seems to say (on the screenshot of its packaging) it's a text adventure. For the Playstation. That's kind of mind-boggling and neat at the same time.
Actually, I spent some time looking around for free or demo VNs that would fit your criteria (as I was wondering that myself) and didn't come up with much. But maybe you will have more luck than I will. I mean, I did find some fan translated demos, but the links were effectively dead.
Since that didn't work out so well, I'll fall back on this: http://trueremembrance.insani.org/
It's not a terribly long game, and it's a VN with no branches (and no explicit content).
Zenic Reverie April 8, 2014 at 1:58 PM
There's also Radical Dreamers. A VN based on Chrono Trigger (a SNES RPG). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Dreamers:_Nusumenai_H%C5%8Dseki
Radical Dreamers bears more resemblance to an adventure game - dungeon crawler combination, to be honest. It's reminds me of Zork, actually, as strange as that sounds.
I suppose I could be jumping the gun a little there. Some VNs come with RPG or minigame segments, or else are blend of multiple genres, so it's not always easy to make a distinction.
"Riviera: The Promised Land" for example has adventure game elements in that you can poke around locations on a map and find things to interact with. It has conversations you can have with characters with choices that affect how they react to the protagonist, and determine who he ends up with in the end -- something that a certain subset of VNs are well known for. It's also an RPG with its stats and combats.
Actually, I don't know what point I'm trying to make here -- I just felt kind of bad for not being able to really find anything.
Canageek April 17, 2014 at 3:44 AM
I've noticed a few visual novels popping up on to Steam as of late: Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos, Go! Go! Nippon! ~My First Trip to Japan~, Long Live The Queen (That one is borderline, RPG.net has had a playthrough of it.), and Analogue: A Hate Story.
Interestingly, most of those are very obviously influenced by Japanese asthetics or style, if not ports of Japanese games themselves, but one of them is based on a book by a former Canadian governor general: The 39 Steps.
Oh, sure. Computers do it way better, you all say.
Tell me that when there is no power.
VK April 5, 2014 at 8:08 AM
Well, it's not like you know what the maps hold right from the start and can see an encounter coming from miles away.
Alexander Sebastian Schulz April 5, 2014 at 8:15 AM
I had a feeling that you wouldn't enjoy the game... you took too long to update your review.
In somewhat related news... I will probably delay my purchase of Elder Scrolls Online until I have finished Baldur's Gate II, which I am playing for the first time.
The delay in updates was more due to a business trip. I often feel like I do the opposite--blow quickly through games I don't much like.
I wish I could play BGII for the first time again. I'm hoping by the time I get back to 2000, I'll have forgotten most of it.
Presumably the damage from deserts represents heatstroke and dehydration. It happened in Wasteland if you didn't equip all your characters with Canteens (and also much later in Fallout, though most people didn't realize that because your armor blocked the dehydration damage for some reason). I mean, that makes way more sense to me than being poisoned because you stepped on a swamp square without boots (you know what I'm talking about).
I'm just not 100% sure that those tiles are supposed to represent desert. If so, I agree there's some defensible explanation for the mechanic. That doesn't make it any less annoying.
VK April 5, 2014 at 5:36 PM
Looks more like lava to me, and the world map kinda supports that if I'm reading it correctly, though it doesn't make a lot of sense geologically...
Rowan Lipkovits April 5, 2014 at 9:30 AM
Computer Solitaire Adventure?! Doy, it's embarrassing to have missed that obvious connection in my comment on your previous entry. I own several of Flying Buffalo's solitaire gamebooks as part of my "addict"-calibre gamebook collection, and probably at least a couple containing portions of this CRPG. But yes, of course, it makes lots of sense. (Since they'd been sitting on so much of this material already in-the-can for years by this point, it begs the question: why did they wait so long?)
One of my most valued gamebook possessions is a computer-generated random CYOA dungeon from Flying Buffalo, no doubt cranked out using unallocated-but-paid-for time on a rented mainframe they used to calculate player turns for their play-by-mail games (which are still ongoing!) It's... pretty random, but its mere existence points to an amazing confluence of gaming and computing history, a gaming "what if" alternate history as though Germany had won WWII.
You just made me realize that "Computer Solo Adventure" was a much better post title. I don't often make changes later, but I did in this case.
Victar April 5, 2014 at 5:14 PM
"It's a little like reading a physical gamebook but forcing yourself to do a lap around the block every time you make a choice (which, come to think of it, would be a pretty good exercise plan)."
My favorite way to exercise is to go to the gym and play a portable RPG (usually on the 3DS) while on a recumbent exercycle. I've seen people use their iPads on exercise equipment too. It's a great way to make physical fitness less boring, and squeeze some extra RPG playtime into a busy day.
I also use a Gazelle to exercise while playing console games (ideally on systems with wireless controllers) that can't be brough to the gym.
For a while, I tried something like every time I die in the current game, I have to go walk for 15 minutes on the treadmill. I figured it would both increase my exercise and make death more meaningful in whatever game I was playing. I ultimately didn't stick with it, but maybe I should revive it. I bought Dark Souls a few months ago, and under this plan, I ought to be able to run the Boston Marathon next year.
Chet, have you considered giving a brief look at FLAPP? It's a javascript adaptation of the Fabled Lands gamebooks, which would have been released in print form at around this time. The books formed a huge, linke dup sandbox world, and the java app makes them pretty quick and painless to play, and they're a startlingly detailed and indepth world and adventure. Could be an interesting counterpoint to the CRPG's of the time, traditional media trying to keep up with the scope of the new technology and all. There's no "win state", but you could have a pretty good impression of them after a nights play. - Bobbledog
No, I'd never even heard of it before. It would be an interesting side-posting, but then again, so would a billion other things.
Tristan Gall April 7, 2014 at 11:39 AM
I think a few CYOA pages would add to a CRPG experience without taking much effort.
Imagine if BG2 20 CYOA pages instead of random encounters while travelling?
They could afford experience rewards, treasure, reveal locations or quest info, alter your reputation, or apply a buff or debuff that persisted x days (reduce your maximum party size? cause your spells to misfire?)
I think it could be an interesting contrast if done well, but a lot of players would hate it. I myself often don't like it when a game drastically shifts its mechanics. I guess I'd have to see it in action to know for sure. It certainly would allow a developer to cheaply add content to a game.
RoA and Darklands do that sort of thing. Though Darklands is even more of a "Computer gamebook" than T&T.
But combat in Darklands is way more entertaining and the gameplay a lot more open-world.
VK April 10, 2014 at 3:30 AM
To each his own I guess. I found Darklands' combat annoying as hell.
Kenny McCormick April 10, 2014 at 9:37 PM
To play that damn game for 20 years tells you how un-annoying it is to me. XD
Zenic Reverie April 28, 2014 at 5:08 PM
bots are evolving and now making it past the normal spam filter... although posted in the wrong post.
Kenny McCormick April 29, 2014 at 2:14 AM
Then again, we've had real posters who commented in the wrong post too. But... now I'm not so sure if THEY are real too. In fact, how would I know if YOU are real? Oh shit... Am I myself real?
Canageek May 8, 2014 at 1:25 AM
Hey all, I was glancing through some zines and found some for Choose Your Own Adventures:
Kai Grand Sentinel: http://www.projectaon.org/en/kgs/2007/07/kai-grand-sentinel-is-back.html
Lone Wolf Club Newsletters: http://www.projectaon.org/en/Main/LoneWolfClubNewsletters
Tunnels & Trolls: Might & Magic
Tunnels & Trolls: Mowing to Victory
Game 143: Expedition Amazon (1983)
An Addictive Personality Manifests in Many Ways


United Community Bank's experienced professionals understand the complexities of corporate banking. We will work with you to find the right fit for your financing needs. Our solutions help you finance all manner of business initiatives to help you reach your goals.


text:
Saab In Talks With Youngman, Chinese Bank
Swedish Automobile said it is in talks with an unnamed Chinese bank and an auto company about getting them to buy stakes to help the troubled car brand.
Malin Rising, Associated Press
STOCKHOLM (AP) -- Swedish Automobile, the owner of Saab, said Monday it is in talks with an unnamed Chinese bank and an auto company about getting them to buy stakes to help the troubled car brand.
Swedish Automobile, or Swan, said the negotiations with the bank and Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile Co. include short-term actions to help it pay November wages to Saab's staff and continue reorganization.
Swedish Automobile CEO Victor Muller told local news agency TT the bank in question is not Bank of China, but didn't give any more details.
The outcome of the discussions is still uncertain and a deal needs the approval of relevant stakeholders, including previous Saab-owner General Motors Co.
Saab has been fighting for survival since Muller took over the loss-making brand from GM in 2010 through his Dutch company Spyker Cars, which has since changed names to Swedish Automobile. The company's production has been at a standstill for most of the year, and the car maker entered bankruptcy protection in September.
Earlier this year, Youngman and Chinese car distribution firm Pang Da Automobile Trade Co. said they would buy the brand for €100 million ($135 million), but that deal was blocked by GM amid concerns over its technology licenses.
Saab's employees have still not received their November salaries and two labor unions last week filed official requests for the money, which means Saab has seven days to pay, or face bankruptcy proceedings.
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It's to prevent millions of chickens and hundreds of thousands of cattle from starving.
Finland Gets Floating LNG Terminal to Replace Russian Gas
It has a capacity of 68,000 tons of LNG and is scheduled to be operational from the beginning of 2023.
Mitigating the effects of disruptions means assessing risk across the supply chain, and putting a number of specific strategies in place.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: Problem while comparing the encrypted sha512+salt password When comparing the two encrypted password an extra bit d5 gets added to the string.
We encrypted the password with sha512 +salt and then compare it with the sha512+salt value stored in database.
But we get a password mismatch. When we checked the log we saw an extra d5 in the append which is not present in salt.
This is the output while using console.
project restful running in port 8000
Value stored in database:

6b5fff62ffe04a51(salt)

(Sha512+salt) appended value
9c01b4079a2d3e24b20ea9d447178f7d68ad41b2b09428d28d822e790d4534c085de326eee7d124ae42781960ba81dc4e37710ac14fd435fede650d0b75735

{ salt: '6b5fff62ffe04a51',(salt)
  passwordhash:(sha512+salt appended value)

'9c01b4079a2d3e24b20ea9d447178f7d68ad41b2b09428d28d822e790d4534c085de326eee7d124ae42781960ba81dc4e37710ac14fd435fede650d0b75735d5' }

An extra d5 is present when we append it which is causing the error.
/*
 creating a restfull service
*/

var crypto = require('crypto');
var uuid = require('uuid');
var express = require('express');
var mysql = require('mysql');
var bodyparser = require('body-parser');

//connect to my sql

var con = mysql.createConnection({
    host:"localhost",
    user:"root",
    password:'',
    database:"e-shopiee",
});

//creating password encryption

var genrandomstring = function(length) {
    return crypto.randomBytes(Math.ceil(length/2))
        .toString('hex')
        .slice(0,length);
};

//securing with sha512

var sha512 = function (password, salt) {
    var hash = crypto.createHmac('sha512', salt);
    hash.update(password);
    var value = hash.digest('hex');
    return {
        salt:salt,
        passwordhash:value
    };
};

//get random string to salt

function salthashpassword(userPassword){
    var salt = genrandomstring(16);
    var passwordData = sha512(userPassword, salt);
    return passwordData;
}

//user password generating hashed password

function checkHashpassword(userPassword, salt) {

   var passwordData = sha512(userPassword, salt);
    return passwordData;
}

//accept json params
var app=express();
app.use(bodyparser.json());
//accept encoded url params
app.use(bodyparser.urlencoded({extended : true}));

app.post('/register/',(req,res,next)=>{

    //get post params
    var post_data = req.body;
    //get uuid v4
    var uid = uuid.v4();
    //get password from parms
    var plain_password = post_data.password;
    //get hash parms
    var hash_data = salthashpassword(plain_password);
    var password = hash_data.passwordhash;
    var salt = hash_data.salt;

    var name = post_data.name;
    var email = post_data.email;

    con.query('SELECT * FROM users where email =?',[email],function (err,result,fields) {
        con.on('error',function (err) {
            console.log('[MySQL ERROR]',err);
        });
        if (result && result.length)
            res.json('user already exist');
        else {
            con.query('INSERT INTO `users`( `unique_id`, `name`, `email`, `password`, `salt`, `created_at`, `updated_at`) ' +
                'VALUES (?,?,?,?,?,NOW(),NOW())',[uid,name,email,password,salt],function (err,result,fields) {
                con.on('error',function (err) {
                    console.log('[MySQL ERROR]', err);
                    res.json('Register error: ',err);
                });
                res.json('Register successful');
                console.log(password);
            })
        }
    });
})

app.post('/login/',(req,res,next)=>{

    var post_data =  req.body;

    //extract email and password from reqst
    var user_password = post_data.password;
    var email = post_data.email;

    con.query('SELECT * FROM users where email=?',[email],function (error,result,fields){

        con.on('error',function (err) {
            console.log('[MySQL ERROR]',err);
        });

        if (result && result.length){

            //get salt of result if account exist
            var salt = result[0].salt;
            console.log(salt);
            var password = result[0].password;
            //hashed password from login req
            var  hashed_password = checkHashpassword(user_password,salt).passwordhash;

            console.log(password);
            console.log(hashed_password);

            //if password true return all info
            if(password == hashed_password)
                res.end(JSON.stringify(result[0]))
            else
                res.end(JSON.stringify('Wrong password'));
        }

        else {
            res.json('user not exist');
        }
    });
})
//starting services
app.listen(8000,()=>{
    console.log('project restful running in port 8000');

})

A: You cannot decrypt sha512 with salt. That (sha512) is not a reversible transform1. And a salt makes it "immune" to a rainbow table2.
1 Why are hash functions one way? If I know the algorithm, why can't I calculate the input from it?

2 How does password salt help against a rainbow table attack?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
John Wall dazzles in first game in two years
By Dan FeldmanJan 1, 2021, 10:00 AM EST
I can see why John Wall was so frustrated by the NBA's coronavirus contact-tracing protocols sidelining him.
He was ready to play.
In his first game in more than two years, Wall showed great burst and court vision. It was like old times, which could be a huge boost to the Rockets. He finished with 22 points, nine assists, six rebounds, a steal, a block and five turnovers in Houston's 112-119 win over the Kings.
The big question: Would Wall's emergence persuade James Harden to drop his trade request? Probably not. But it sure doesn't hurt. Wherever the Rockets go from here, they're better off if Wall sustains a return to star form.


Hours: M-F 3:00 P.M. - 9:30 P.M. Saturday 8:00 A.M. - 2:00 P.M.
We are a dynamic family oriented Martial Arts School. For over 25 years, we have been building and developing Black Belt Champions, strengthening the Mind, Body and Spirit of each individual. Our key values are Modesty * Courtesy * Integrity * Self Control * Perseverance * Indomitable Spirit * and BLACK BELT EXCELLENCE!


Hi, my nickname is Chris. I'm glad to have the opportunity to introduce myself. I hope this page will be a starting point in you getting to know me. First, I enjoy an active lifestyle that relies on a positive work-life balance. In my free time, I enjoy my outdoor activities, like running and mountain biking. I also enjoy Brazilian jiujitsu and watching football, rugby, and soccer.
Born and raised in the San Fernando Valley, I enjoyed an active childhood playing many sports and enjoying my beach days. I attended St. George's University in Grenada, where I received my medical degree and master's in public health. I then moved to Marquette, Michigan, to study rural family medicine. I had many learning experiences in the inpatient, outpatient, and obstetric/gynecological settings. My positive experiences in the clinic persuaded me to pursue outpatient medicine.
I believe communication is key to forming the physician-member bond. I love to listen and hear a member's perspective. I feel this helps in working toward a common goal of mental, physical, and spiritual health. I believe in prevention and correcting harmful behaviors before they become major problems in the future. I believe in medicine based on current evidence and research and in forming plans together with members.
I am a firm believer in the balance between work and play. I set aside time to exercise for physical health as well as stress reduction. Dealing with stress in a positive way is vital to a healthy lifestyle.


text:
Anthony Nolan
Fun workout raises £700 for blood cancer charity Anthony Nolan
The Harrow Leisure Centre event was a fun way of working out while raising money for a good cause.
John Shammas
Harrow Leisure Centre hosted the charity exercise extravaganza
Exercise enthusiasts raised more than £700 for blood cancer charity Anthony Nolan.
People flocked to Harrow Leisure Centre, in Christchurch Avenue, Wealdstone, to take part in a mass group exercise class including aerobics and Bollywood-style moves to get the blood pumping.
The event was organised by Everyone Active, the company which manages the centre for Harrow Council, in tribute to one of its staff members Chris Spencer, who has undergone a bone marrow transplant through the charity after being diagnosed with leukaemia last year.
Phil Edwards, general manager at the leisure centre, said: "This was a great event.
Five of the best events happening in Harrow and Brent this week
"In total, 104 people come along and took part in the exercise class and we raised more than £700 for the Antony Nolan charity.
"The instructors loved it and the members really enjoyed themselves. We're hoping to put on another exercise class for charity soon."
Anthony Nolan works to save the lives of people with blood cancer, such as leukaemia, by matching them to people who are willing to donate their bone marrow or blood stem cells for vital transplants.
Harrow London Borough Council


Occlusal equilibration basically is balancing up the bite to where the jaw joint is seated properly.
We always start with a healthy joint, making sure that it's seated properly, in Centric Relation, and then we want all the teeth to come together with equal pressure, and then when the jaw moves at all, just the front teeth touch.
The old saying of dots in the back, lines in the front, but the occlusal equilibration is basically making sure that the teeth hit all in the proper position.


The nominees for the 2014 Billabong XXL Global Big Wave Awards have been announced. Apparently, we live in an Anglophone world.
Grant Baker, Shane Dorian, Billy Kemper, Greg Long, and Shaun Walsh have been nominated for "Ride of the Year". Surprisingly, there is not a single European wave in the most important category, despite the extraordinary winter stunts captured in Nazaré, Mullaghmore Head and Belharra.
This year all five nominees are paddle-in waves, reflecting the sport's general trend toward its traditional approach, with three rides taking place at Jaws, one at Dungeons, and another one in Puerto Escondido.
In the "Paddle Award", Grant Baker, Shawn Dollar, Aaron Gold, Mark Healey, and Mark Mathews keep Billabong XXL as an anglophone contest for anglophone riders and spots. No European waves and rides, too.
The "Biggest Wave" trophy, with a mere 10,000 dollars of prize money, looks like a big wave recycling center of the Old Continent.
In this division, Carlos Burle, Andrew Cotton, Gautier Garanx, Francisco Porcella, and Ian Walsh will certainly not express the glory of their feats with the widest smiling faces.
The 2014 Billabong XXL Global Big Wave Awards has been unofficially nominated for the most unfair surfing competition ever. Lobbies? What lobbies?
Grant Baker (Durban, South Africa) at Dungeons, South Africa on August 6, 2013.
Shane Dorian (Kona, Hawaii, USA) at Jaws, Hawaii on March 2, 2014.
Billy Kemper (Haiku, Hawaii) at Jaws, Hawaii on January 19, 2014.
Greg Long (San Clemente, California, USA) at Puerto Escondido, Mexico on June 7, 2013.
Shaun Walsh (Kuau, Hawaii) at Jaws, Hawaii on January 19, 2014.
Grant Baker (Durban, South Africa) at Sunset, South Africa on August 5, 2013.
Shawn Dollar (Santa Cruz, California, USA) at Maverick's, California on January 21, 2014.
Aaron Gold (Haleiwa, Hawaii, USA) at Jaws, Hawaii on January 23, 2014.
Mark Healey (Haleiwa, Hawaii, USA) at Jaws, Hawaii on November 13, 2013.
Mark Mathews (Maroubra, New South Wales, Australia) at Jaws, Hawaii on January 23, 2014.
Carlos Burle (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) at Nazaré, Portugal on October 28, 2013.
Andrew Cotton (Braunton, North Devon, United Kingdom) at Nazaré, Portugal on February 2, 2014.
Gautier Garanx (Bayonne, France) at Belharra Reef, France on December 22, 2013.
Francisco Porcella (Sardegna, Italy) at Jaws, Hawaii on January 22, 2014.
Ian Walsh (Haiku, Hawaii) at Jaws, Hawaii on January 22, 2014.
Kai Lenny (Paia, Hawaii) at Jaws, Hawaii on January 19, 2014.
Alain Riou (Tahiti, French Polynesia) at Teahupoo, Tahiti on May 13, 2013.
Koa Rothman (Sunset Beach, Hawaii) at Teahupoo, Tahiti on May 13, 2013.
Laurie Towner (Angourie, New South Wales, Australia) at Shipstern Bluff, Tasmania on April 12, 2013.
Raimana Van Bastolaer (Tahiti, French Polynesia) at Teahupoo, Tahiti on May 13, 2013.


text:
Developing Maternity Services for Aboriginal Communities
Tagged: aboriginalmaternity services
For the purpose of this essay, when referring to Aboriginals, this is inclusive of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Whilst many Aboriginal women experience healthy pregnancies, it has been recognised that a variety of demographic, social and cultural factors have ultimately resulted in Aboriginal women experiencing greater risk of complications during pregnancy, labour and birth than non-indigenous women (Bertilone & McEvoy 2015). Over the years, a variety of contemporary healthcare strategies, programs, models of care and practices have been implemented in an attempt to minimise the risk of complication during this period for Aboriginal women and diminish the disparity between the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the non-Indigenous peoples perinatal experience. Aboriginal Maternity Group Practice Program is an example of a model of care implicated to improve perinatal outcomes. This service is responsible for providing care to Aboriginal women throughout the perinatal period and has provided many favourable impacts towards Aboriginal women throughout pregnancy, birth and beyond. This service contributes to Australia's commitment to 'Overcome Indigenous disadvantage' and 'Close the Gap' in health outcomes between Aboriginals and non-Indigenous Australians (Kildea, Kruske, Barclay & Tracy 2010).
The high rates of social, environmental and economic disadvantage amongst Aboriginal women, results in lack of access to primary health care services such as antenatal care leading to poorer outcomes for Aboriginals as a whole (Corcoran, Catling & Homer 2017). An analysis of pregnancy and birthing of Aboriginal women outlines the impact socioeconomic factors have had on health outcomes for Aboriginal and non-Indigenous women (Brown, Fereday, Middleton & Pincombe 2016). Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2016) states culturally competent antenatal care is a women-centred service provided to women, where an understanding of local cultural and an endeavour to meet the needs of the woman in an emotional, cultural and practical sense exists. Culturally appropriate care can have a positive impact on access, uptake and acceptability of health services for Indigenous women (Brown, Fereday, Middleton & Pincombe 2016). In a study, it was discovered that 49% of Aboriginal women did not attend an antenatal visit in the first trimester, substantially lower than that of non-indigenous women (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2016). Restricted access to culturally competent services, has contributed to the limited uptake of antenatal care and other health care services by Aboriginal women (Bertilone & McEvoy 2015). Comprehensive antenatal care services address a variety of factors such as maternal health issues, maternal behaviours including smoking, alcohol use and nutrition. Inadequate antenatal care has been associated increased risk of stillbirths, perinatal deaths, low birthweight and pre-term births (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2016), this is supported by the Aboriginal perinatal statistics. The lack of these services offered to Aboriginal women has resulted in a maternal mortality ratio which is more than two times higher than non-Indigenous women as well as a perinatal death rate, low birth rate and preterm birth rate which is twice as high for Aboriginal infants (Bar-Zeev, S, et al. 2014). A significant disparity was also outlined in maternal condition including increased prevalence of teenage pregnancy, smoking in pregnancy, gestational diabetes and hypertensive disorders (Bar-Zeev, S, et al. 2014).
Key demographic, social and cultural factors distinguish Aboriginal women's pregnancy, birthing and parenting experience from non-Indigenous Australians. Disadvantage in these key factors compared to non-Indigenous people, results in limited access to primary health care services such as antenatal care (Corcoran, Catling & Homer 2017). Demographic factors have a substantial impact on the life of Aboriginal peoples, particularly pregnancy, birth and parenting. The primary demographic factors include the lower education level which is closely linked to the high unemployment rate and lower incomes amongst Aboriginal populations, this leads to difficulty in gaining access to health care services required to improve foetal and maternal outcomes (Department of Health 2019). Lack of finances and transport to gain access to these services, which are easily accessible for non-indigenous Australians including perinatal appointments, transport, perinatal education and frequent health checks and monitoring for mother and baby, are responsible for the disparity between the perinatal outcomes. Inadequate infrastructure including housing and water and food supply is another demographic factor which greatly impacts Aboriginal woman's pregnancy experience (Department of Health 2019). Restricted access to shelter and sufficient nutrition and water also contributes to decreased standard of living for Aboriginals.
Key social factors such as lack of physical activity, poor nutrition, harmful levels of alcohol intake, smoking and higher psychosocial stressors such as deaths in families, violence, serious illness, financial pressures and the enduring effects of colonisation, resulting in decreased general health amongst the Aboriginal populations (Department of Health 2019). These factors are not properly recognised in the Aboriginal community as factors which are harmful to pregnancy. Lack of education and information surrounding the importance of physical activity, proper nutrition, overall mental and physical health and no consumption of alcohol and smoking as factors which are vital for a healthy, low-risk pregnancy, means Aboriginal women's often do not know any better and consequently this impacts on their pregnancy experience or birthing outcomes.
Cultural factors have an overarching impact on Aboriginal pregnancy, birthing and parenting experience. Aboriginal culture adopts a holistic view of wellbeing and has many strengths that provide a positive influence on well-being and resilience for Aboriginal women and their families. This includes supported extended family network and kinship, connection to their country and active cultural practices in language, art and music (Department of Health 2019). These factors remain at the heart of Aboriginal culture. Their connection to their country is so fundamental that if given a choice, Aboriginals will choose to birth on their land surrounded by their family opposed to a hospital environment. Limited access to resources such as birthing equipment and birthing assistants required for the safe delivery of the infant may result in adverse outcomes for both mother and infant.
Aboriginal Maternity Group Practice Program ('AMGPP') is a community-based antenatal program with the aim to improve timely access to existing antenatal and maternity services and as a result, indirectly increase the number of Aboriginal women delivering safely in a local hospital (Bertilone & McEvoy 2015). This partnership model, which operates at various locations near and in Perth, focuses on improving antenatal experiences for Aboriginals, by delivering culturally competent and holistic antenatal care services for Aboriginal women (Bertilone & McEvoy 2015). The program encourages early access to antenatal care by providing transport and home care alternatives, employment of Aboriginal staff and holistic care including awareness of the social determinants of health (Bertilone & McEvoy 2015).
The program facilitates the women's needs by addressing their cultural, social and demographic factors through direction by Aboriginal grandmothers, Aboriginal health officers in collaboration with midwives (Bertilone et al 2017). These individuals collaborate to work in a partnership model with pre-existing maternity services in the area provide the best antenatal care for pregnant women (Bertilone et al 2017). The model incorporated education for Aboriginal women and families surrounding healthy living with particular emphasis on healthy pregnancy and childbirth. Areas of education included smoking and alcohol interventions, antenatal education workshops and sexual health education services leading women to make more informed decisions about their health and the health of their babies.
In a trial conducted to report differences in neonatal health outcomes for the AMGPP antenatal program, compared with two matched control groups eligible for standard antenatal care, the outcomes of the model showed benefits for both mother and infant (Bertilone & McEvoy 2015). Babies born to women in the program were significantly less likely to be born preterm and/or require resuscitation at birth or having a hospital length of stay more than five days compared to the control group (Department of Health 2019), whilst the mothers were less likely to have a caesarean delivery. No significant differences were found in the number of Aboriginal women who attended an antenatal appointment within the first trimester of their pregnancy, similarly no significant differences existed in the percentage of low birth weight infants birthed in the AMGPP trial compared to the control. Analysing qualitative data from patient feedback methods such as surveys and interviews found that the model had a positive impact on the level of culturally appropriate care provided by other health service staff particularly in hospitals (Department of Health 2019).
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2016) outlines the characteristics of culturally competent maternal care services, including Indigenous-specific programs, having Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff members, providing continuity of care, viewing women as partners in their care, having a welcoming physical environment and ensuring that cultural awareness and safety is the responsibility of all staff members in the service. The AMGPP possesses many features which align with these characteristics and ultimately contribute to improving health outcomes for Aboriginal women, babies and their families during pregnancy. The AMGPP is a an Indigenous specific program which is led by Aboriginal staff members including Aboriginal grandmothers, Aboriginal health officers who work in collaboration with midwives to achieve the best possible perinatal outcomes. These grandmothers, who are well respected and possess good community networks, are able to identify pregnant women, and through this trust, develop a partnership to assist with access to services and provide support as well as advise on cultural and health promotion matters (Bertilone & McEvoy 2015).
The key cultural factors of Aboriginals were addressed through a variety of services. The AMGPP midwifes work to deliver antenatal care in partnership with the local antenatal care providers to satisfy cultural needs of individuals. The cultural governance is outlined by the community participants throughout every aspect of the programmes delivery, leading to positive sustainable cultural change in maternity practices in hospital as well as community settings (Australian Government 2017). A home-visiting service is available and outreach clinics were provided in various locations, including women's refuges, Aboriginal community centres and mobile GP services to provide safe birthing on land options.
The key social and demographic factors of Aboriginal pregnancy were addressed through a variety of education classes delivered by AMGPP staff. This included information about the stages of pregnancy, managing problems during pregnancy, healthy lifestyle behaviours, mental health, available services, birth registration, breastfeeding, baby care and the prevention of sudden infant death syndrome. The importance of Pap smears, and contraception was discussed as part of the sexual health education, including the symptoms of sexually transmitted infections and how to minimise the spread. In addition to this culturally appropriate, brief interventions were delivered by Aboriginal staff to assist with stopping smoking and alcohol use (Bertilone & McEvoy 2015).
There already exists an established link between increased uptake of antenatal care and improved perinatal outcomes for pregnant women. In order to improve perinatal outcomes for the Aboriginal population and diminish the gap between non-Indigenous Australians and Aboriginal perinatal outcomes, focus should be placed on increasing uptake of antenatal care then the rest will fall in place. The social, cultural and demographic factors influencing the life of an Aboriginal woman differ vastly from a non-Indigenous Australians, therefore assuming the same health care services would be satisfactory for different populations is incorrect. Aboriginal women can experience a lack of cultural understanding in mainstream services which are considered acceptable for non-Indigenous Australians. Focusing on the different social, cultural and demographic factors in the life of an Aboriginal women, with particular emphasis on their connection to their family, friends and support people and connection to their land is vital to supply health care services which will increase uptake of Aboriginal women and result in improved perinatal outcomes for the Aboriginal population. The AMGPP as a model of care has executed this and a result led to overall increased maternal satisfaction with their maternity care and improved a variety of perinatal outcomes for Aboriginal women by shifting the focus of the services to suit their cultural needs.
Australian Government 2017, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Performance Framework 2017 Report, Australian Government, viewed 20 August 2019, < https://www.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/publications/2017-health-performance-framework-report_1.pdf>
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2016, Australia's Health 2016, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Australian Government, viewed 20 August 2019, < https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/9844cefb-7745-4dd8-9ee2-f4d1c3d6a727/19787-AH16.pdf.aspx>
Bar-Zeev, S., Barclay, L., Kruske, S & Kildea, S 2014 'Factors affecting the quality of antenatal care provided to remote dwelling Aboriginal Women in Northern Australia', Midwifery: A International Journal, vol. 30, no.3, pp. 289-296, viewed 20 August 2019, < https://www.midwiferyjournal.com/article/S0266-6138(13)00127-7/fulltext>
Bertilone, C. & McEvoy, S 2015, 'Success in Closing the Gap: favourable neonatal outcomes in a metropolitan Aboriginal maternity group Practice Program', The Medical Journal of Australia, doi: 10.5694/mja14.01754, viewed 20 August 2019, < https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2015/203/6/success-closing-gap-favourable-neonatal-outcomes-metropolitan-aboriginal>
Bertilone, CM., McEvoy, SP., Gower, D., Naylor, N., Doyle J., Swift-Otero, V 2017, 'Elements of cultural competence in an Australian Aboriginal maternity Program', Women and Birth, vol.30, no.2, viewed 20 August 2019, < https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1871519216301123?via%3Dihub>
(Bertilone et al 2017)
Brown, AE, Fereday, JA., Middleton, PF and Pincombe, JI 2016 'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women's experiences accessing standard hospital care for birth in South Australia – A phenomenological study', Women and Birth, vol.29, no.4, pp.350-358, viewed 20 August 2019, < https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187151921600024X?via%3Dihub>
Corcoran, P., Catling, C. & Homer, CSE 2017 'Models of Midwifery care for Indigenous women and babies: A meta-synthesis', Women and Birth, vol.30, no.1, pp.77-86, viewed 20 August 2019, < https://www.womenandbirth.org/article/S1871-5192(16)30076-2/abstract>
Department of Health 2019, Pregnancy care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, Department of Health, Australian Government, viewed 20 August 2019, < https://www.health.gov.au/resources/pregnancy-care-guidelines/part-a-optimising-pregnancy-care/pregnancy-care-for-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-women>
Kildea, S., Kruske, S., Barclay, L & Tracy, S 2010, 'Closing the Gap': How maternity services can contribute to reducing poor maternal infant health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women', Rural and Remote Health, vol.10, no.3, viewed 20 August 2019, <https://www.rrh.org.au/journal/article/1383>
Business Bliss Consultants FZE. (November 2018). Developing Maternity Services for Aboriginal Communities. Retrieved from https://nursinganswers.net/essays/developing-maternity-services-for-aboriginal-communities.php?vref=1
"Developing Maternity Services for Aboriginal Communities." nursinganswers.net. 11 2018. Business Bliss Consultants FZE. 01 2023 <https://nursinganswers.net/essays/developing-maternity-services-for-aboriginal-communities.php?vref=1>.
"Developing Maternity Services for Aboriginal Communities." Business Bliss Consultants FZE. nursinganswers.net, November 2018. Web. 30 January 2023. <https://nursinganswers.net/essays/developing-maternity-services-for-aboriginal-communities.php?vref=1>.
NursingAnswers.net. November 2018. Developing Maternity Services for Aboriginal Communities. [online]. Available from: https://nursinganswers.net/essays/developing-maternity-services-for-aboriginal-communities.php?vref=1 [Accessed 30 January 2023].
Business Bliss Consultants FZE. Developing Maternity Services for Aboriginal Communities [Internet]. November 2018. [Accessed 30 January 2023]; Available from: https://nursinganswers.net/essays/developing-maternity-services-for-aboriginal-communities.php?vref=1.
{{cite web|last=Answers |first=All |url=https://nursinganswers.net/essays/developing-maternity-services-for-aboriginal-communities.php?vref=1 |title=Developing Maternity Services for Aboriginal Communities |publisher=business-bliss.com |date=November 2018 |accessdate=30 January 2023 |location=Fujairah, UAE}}
Business Bliss Consultants FZE, 'Developing Maternity Services for Aboriginal Communities' (nursinganswers.net, January 2023) <https://nursinganswers.net/essays/developing-maternity-services-for-aboriginal-communities.php?vref=1> accessed 30 January 2023
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Tag Archives: Smallpox
Birth of William Drennan, Physician, Poet & Political Radical
William Drennan, physician, poet and political radical, is born on May 23, 1754 in Belfast. He is one of the chief architects of the Society of United Irishmen and is known as the first to refer in print to Ireland as "the emerald isle" in his poem When Erin first rose.
Drennan is son the son of Reverend Thomas Drennan (1696–1768), minister of Belfast's First Presbyterian Church on Rosemary Street. Thomas Drennan is an educated man from the University of Glasgow and is ordained to the congregation of Holywood, County Down in 1731. Drennan is heavily influenced by his father, whose religious convictions serve as the foundation for his own radical political ideas. His sister, Martha, marries fellow future United Irishman Samuel McTier in 1773.
In 1769 Drennan follows in his father's footsteps by enrolling in the University of Glasgow where he becomes interested in the study of philosophy. In 1772 he graduates in arts and then in 1773 he commences the study of medicine at Edinburgh. After graduating in 1778 he sets up practice in Belfast, specialising in obstetrics. He is credited with being one of the earliest advocates of inoculation against smallpox and of hand washing to prevent the spread of infection. He also writes much poetry, coining the phrase "Emerald Isle" and is the founder and editor of a literary periodical, Belfast Magazine. He moves to Newry in 1783 but eventually moves to Dublin in 1789 where he quickly becomes involved in nationalist circles.
Like many other Ulster Presbyterians, Drennan is an early supporter of the American Colonies in the American Revolution and joins the Volunteers who had been formed to defend Ireland for Britain in the event of French invasion. The Volunteer movement soon becomes a powerful political force and a forum for Protestant nationalists to press for political reform in Ireland eventually assisting Henry Grattan to achieve legislative independence for the Irish parliament in 1782. However Drennan, like many other reformers, quickly becomes dismayed by the conservative and sectarian nature of the Irish parliament and in 1791 he co-founds the Society of United Irishmen with Wolfe Tone and Thomas Russell.
Drennan writes many political pamphlets for the United Irishmen and is arrested in 1794 for seditious libel, a political charge that is a major factor in driving the United Irishmen underground and into becoming a radical revolutionary party. Although he is eventually acquitted, he gradually withdraws from the United Irishmen but continues to campaign for Catholic Emancipation.
On February 8, 1800, Drennan marries Sarah Swanwick, "an English lady of some wealth" from Shropshire. They have one daughter and four sons.
Drennan settles in Belfast in 1807. In 1810 he co-founds the non-denominational Royal Belfast Academical Institution. As a poet, he is best remembered for his poem The Wake of William Orr, written in memory of a United Irishman executed by the British. Despite his links with revolutionary republicans, he gradually becomes alienated from the post-Union nationalism of the period. His abiding concern for Liberalism and post union realities make him contemplate his political ideas anew.
Drennan dies on February 5, 1820. He directs that his coffin be carried by an equal number of Catholics and Protestants with clergy from different denominations in attendance.
Drennan's son, John Swanwick Drennan, is a noted poet who, along with his brother William Drennan, write a biography of him for Richard Davis Webb's A Compendium of Irish Biography. Through his daughter Sarah, who marries John Andrews of a prominent family of flax merchants, he has several notable descendants, including William Drennan Andrews, judge of the High Court of Justice in Ireland, Sir James Andrews, 1st Baronet, Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, John Miller Andrews, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Thomas Andrews who drew up the plans for the RMS Titanic and was aboard and drowned when she sank, and Thomas Drennan, performance artist known primarily for his seminal work 'Journey to the Centre of Drennan.'
Categories: Irish History, Literature & Poetry, Northern Ireland, Politics & Government | Tags: American Colonies, American Revolution, Belfast, Catholic Emancipation, County Down, Dublin, Edinburgh, Flax, Henry Grattan, High Court of Justice in Ireland, Holywood, Inoculation, Irish Nationalism, Irish Parliament, John Miller Andrews, John Swanwick Drennan, Liberalism, Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, Newry, Obstetrics, Performance Art, Philosophy, Physician, Poet, Political Radicalism, Political Reform, Presbyterianism, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Reverend, Richard Davis Webb, RMS Titanic, Royal Belfast Academical Institution, Samuel McTier, Seditious Libel, Shropshire, Sir James Andrews, Smallpox, Society of United Irishmen, Theobald Wolfe Tone, Thomas Andrews, Thomas Drennan, Thomas Russell, Ulster, University of Glasgow, William Drennan, William Drennan Andrews, William Orr | Permalink.
Birth of Sir Hans Sloane, Physician & Naturalist
Sir Hans Sloane, Irish physician and naturalist whose collection of books, manuscripts, and curiosities form the basis for the British Museum in London, is born on April 16, 1660 in Killyleagh, County Down in what is now Northern Ireland.
As a child Sloane possesses a strong curiosity of nature, and he develops a particular interest in plants. After studying medicine in London, he travels in France, taking an M.D. degree at the University of Orange in 1683. In 1685 he returns to London and is elected a fellow of the Royal Society. He proceeds to practice medicine as an assistant to British physician Thomas Sydenham. He is made a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1687. That same year he accepts an opportunity to visit Jamaica, traveling as personal physician to the Christopher Monck, 2nd Duke of Albermarle, who had been appointed to govern the island.
The journey to Jamaica provides Sloane with the chance to pursue his interest in the natural sciences. During the 15 months of his travels, he visits multiple islands in the West Indies, including Saint Kitts, Nevis, and Barbados. He ultimately collects specimens of about 800 plants. He also records information on and collects specimens of various fish, mollusks, and insects, and he observes the local peoples and contemplates the natural phenomena of the area. His observations and the specimens he collects during the voyage lay the foundation for his later contributions to botany and zoology and for his role in the formation of the British Museum. He returns to England in 1689, his trip having been cut short by Monck's death. His collection of plants from the West Indies is one of the first from that region to reach England.
Sloane's trip to Jamaica also leads to his invention of a milk chocolate beverage. While on the island, he encounters a local drink made from a cacao plant. The beverage apparently makes him nauseous. To avoid this, he decides to mix the cacao material with milk. He finds this concoction to be not only more tolerable but also tasty and healthy. Shortly after his return to England, his milk-based concoction is sold by apothecaries as a medicinal product. His recipe later forms the basis for a milk chocolate product manufactured by Cadbury.
In 1696 Sloane publishes in Latin an elaborate catalogue, Catalogus Plantarum Quae in Insula Jamaica, on the plants he collected in Jamaica. He later publishes Natural History of Jamaica (2 Vol., 1707 and 1725), a comprehensive account of his studies of the natural phenomena of the island country.
Sloane also makes important contributions to medicine. He is physician to Queen Anne, King George I, and King George II. He is created a baronet in 1716, becoming the first medical practitioner to receive a hereditary title. He is relatively progressive as a physician, and, while serving George I, he adopts the practice of inoculation against smallpox for members of the royal family. In 1719 he is elected president of the Royal College of Physicians, a post he serves until 1735. In 1727 he becomes president of the Royal Society, succeeding physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton. He holds the position until 1741. He earns a reputation as a specialist in eye diseases, and he eventually publishes Account of a Medicine for Soreness, Weakness and Other Distempers of the Eyes (1745).
Sloane is also known as an avid collector, and he benefits greatly from the acquisition of the cabinets of other collectors, including amateur scientist William Charleton and English apothecary and botanist James Petiver. When he retires from active work in 1741, his library and cabinet of curiosities has grown to be of unique value, and on his death he bequeaths his collection to the nation, on condition that parliament pay his executors £20,000. The bequest is accepted and goes to form the collection opened to the public as the British Museum in 1759.
Sloane has no son that survives beyond infancy, and the baronetcy becomes extinct upon his death in London on January 11, 1753.
(From: Encyclopaedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com/biography/Sir-Hans-Sloane-Baronet/)
Categories: Early Modern Ireland (1536-1691), Irish History, Journalism, Medicine, Science & Technology | Tags: 2nd Duke of Albermarle, Apothecary, Barbados, Baronet, Botany, British Museum, Cacao Plant, Cadbury, Christopher Monck, County Down, Doctor of Medicine, England, Fellow, France, George I of Great Britain, George II of Great Britain, Hans Sloane, Inoculation, Isaac Newton, Jamaica, James Petiver, Killyleagh, Latin, London, Naturalist, Nevis, Northern Ireland, Queen Anne, Royal College of Physicians, Royal Society, Saint Kitts, Smallpox, Thomas Sydenham, West Indies, Zoology | Permalink.
Death of William III, King of England, Scotland & Ireland
William III, also widely known as William of Orange, dies at Kensington Palace on March 8, 1702 following a fall from his horse when it stumbles on a molehill. Upon his death, Anne accedes to the throne of Britain and Ireland.
William is sovereign Prince of Orange from birth, Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland and Overijssel in the Dutch Republic from 1672 and King of England, Ireland and Scotland from 1689 until his death in 1702. As King of Scotland, he is known as William II. He is sometimes informally known in Northern Ireland and Scotland as "King Billy."
William is born on November 4, 1650 at Binnenhof, The Hague, Dutch Republic. He inherits the Principality of Orange from his father, William II, who dies a week before William's birth. His mother, Mary, is the daughter of King Charles I of England. In 1677, William marries his fifteen-year-old first cousin, Mary, the daughter of his maternal uncle James, Duke of York.
A Protestant, William participates in several wars against the powerful Catholic King of France, Louis XIV, in coalition with Protestant and Catholic powers in Europe. Many Protestants herald him as a champion of their faith. In 1685, William's Catholic uncle and father-in-law, James, becomes king of England, Scotland and Ireland. James's reign is unpopular with the Protestant majority in Britain. William, supported by a group of influential British political and religious leaders, invades England in what becomes known as the Glorious Revolution. On November 5, 1688, he lands at the southern English port of Brixham. James is deposed and William and his wife become joint sovereigns in his place.
William's reputation as a staunch Protestant enables him to take power in Britain when many are fearful of a revival of Catholicism under James. William's victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 is still commemorated by loyalists in Northern Ireland and Scotland.
William and Mary reign together until Mary's death from smallpox on December 28, 1694, after which William rules as sole monarch. Despite his conversion to Anglicanism, his popularity plummets during his reign as a sole monarch. His reign in Britain marks the beginning of the transition from the personal rule of the House of Stuart to the more Parliament-centred rule of the House of Hanover.
On March 8, 1702, William dies of pneumonia, a complication from a broken collarbone following a fall from his horse, Sorrel. The horse had been confiscated from Sir John Fenwick, one of the Jacobites who had conspired against William. Because his horse had stumbled into a mole's burrow, many Jacobites toast "the little gentleman in the black velvet waistcoat." Years later, Winston Churchill, in his A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, states that the fall "opened the door to a troop of lurking foes." William is buried in Westminster Abbey alongside his wife. His sister-in-law, Anne, becomes queen regnant of England, Scotland and Ireland.
William's death means that he would remain the only member of the Dutch House of Orange to reign over England.
Categories: Irish History | Tags: A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Anglicanism, Battle of the Boyne, Binnenhof, Brixham, Catholic, Charles I of England, Collarbone, Dutch Republic, Europe, Gelderland, Glorious Revolution, Holland, House of Hanover, House of Orange, House of Stuart, Jacobitism, James II of England, John Fenwick, Kensington Palace, Kingdom of England, Kingdom of Ireland, Kingdom of Scotland, Louis XIV of France, Mary II of England, Molehill, Northern Ireland, Overijssel, Pneumonia, Prince of Orange, Princess Mary, Principality of Orange, Protestant, Queen Anne of England, Queen Regnant, Smallpox, Stadtholder, The Hague, The Twelfth, Ulster Loyalists, Utrecht, Westminster Abbey, William II, William III of England, Winston Churchill, Zeeland | Permalink.
by Jim Doyle	1 Comment
Death of Harpist & Composer Turlough O'Carolan
Turlough O'Carolan, a blind early Irish harper, composer and singer whose great fame is due to his gift for melodic composition, dies in Ballyfarnon, County Roscommon on March 25, 1738.
Although not a composer in the classical sense, O'Carolan is considered by many to be Ireland's first great composer. Harpers in the old Irish tradition are still living as late as 1792, and ten, including Arthur O'Neill, Patrick Quin and Donnchadh Ó hAmhsaigh, attend the Belfast Harp Festival. Ó hAmhsaigh plays some of O'Carolan's music but dislikes it for being too modern. Some of O'Carolan's own compositions show influences of the style of continental classical music, whereas others such as O'Carolan's Farewell to Music reflect a much older style of "Gaelic Harping."
O'Carolan is born in 1670 in Nobber, County Meath, where his father is a blacksmith. The family moves from Meath to Ballyfarnon in 1684. In Roscommon, his father takes a job with the MacDermott Roe family of Alderford House. Mrs. MacDermott Roe gives Turlough an education, and he shows talent in poetry. After being blinded by smallpox at the age of eighteen O'Carolan is apprenticed by Mrs. MacDermott Roe to a good harper. At the age of twenty-one, being given a horse and a guide, he sets out to travel Ireland and compose songs for patrons.
For almost fifty years, O'Carolan journeys from one end of Ireland to the other, composing and performing his tunes. One of his earliest compositions is about Brigid Cruise, with whom he is infatuated. Brigid is the teenage daughter of the schoolmaster at the school for the blind attended by O'Carolan in Cruisetown. In 1720, at age 50, O'Carolan marries Mary Maguire. Their first family home is a cottage on a parcel of land near the town of Manachain, now Mohill, in County Leitrim, where they settle. They have seven children, six daughters and one son. Mary dies in 1733.
Turlough O'Carolan dies at Alderford House on March 25, 1738. He is buried in the MacDermott Roe family crypt in Kilronan Burial Ground near Ballyfarnon, County Roscommon. The annual O'Carolan Harp Festival and Summer School commemorates his life and work in Keadue, County Roscommon.
A bronze monument by sculptor Oisín Kelly depicting Turlough O'Carolan playing his harp is erected on a plinth at the Market Square, Mohill, on August 10, 1986, and is unveiled by Patrick Hillery, President of Ireland.
A statue is erected to him at his place of birth in 2002, during the Annual O'Carolan Harp Festival, the first of which is held in Nobber in 1988.
Categories: Arts & Music, Irish History | Tags: Arthur O'Neill, Ballyfarnon, Belfast Harp Festival, Blacksmith, Celtic Harp, County Leitrim, County Meath, County Roscommon, Donnchadh Ó hAmhsaigh, Keadue, MacDermott Roe, Mohill, Nobber, Oisín Kelly, Patrick Hillery, President of Ireland, Smallpox, Turlough O'Carolan | Permalink.
Birth of Frances Browne, Poet & Novelist
Frances Browne, Irish poet and novelist, best remembered for Granny's Wonderful Chair, her collection of short stories for children, is born on January 16, 1816, at Stranorlar, County Donegal, the seventh child in a family of twelve children.
Browne is blind from infancy as a consequence of an attack of smallpox when she is only 18 months old. In her writings, she recounts how she learned by heart the lessons which her brothers and sisters said aloud every evening, and how she bribed them to read to her by doing their chores. She then worked hard at memorising all that she had heard. She writes her first poem, a version of "The Lord's Prayer," when she is seven years old.
In 1841, her first poems are published in the Irish Penny Journal and in the London Athenauem. One of those included in the Irish Penny Journal is the beautiful lyric "Songs of Our Land" which can be found in many anthologies of Irish patriotic verse. She publishes a complete volume of poems in 1844, and a second volume in 1847. The provincial newspapers, especially the Belfast-based Northern Whig reprint many of her poems and she becomes widely known as "The Blind Poetess of Ulster."
In 1845 she makes her first contribution to the popular magazine Chambers's Journal and she writes for this journal for the next 25 years. The first short story that she has published in the Journal is entitled, "The Lost New Year's Gift," appearing in March 1845. She also contributes many short stories to magazines that have a largely female readership.
In 1847, she leaves Donegal for Edinburgh with one of her sisters as her reader and amanuensis. She quickly establishes herself in literary circles, and writes essays, reviews, stories, and poems, in spite of health problems. In 1852, she moves to London, where she writes her first novel, My Share of the World (1861). Her best known work, Granny's Wonderful Chair, is published in 1856. It remains in print to this day and has been translated into several languages. It is a richly imaginative collection of fairy stories. It is also in 1856 that Pictures and Songs of Home appears, her third volume of poetry. This is directed at very young children and contains beautiful illustrations. The poems focus on her childhood experiences in County Donegal and provide evocative of its countryside.
After her move to London she writes for the Religious Tract Society, making many contributions to their periodicals The Leisure Hour and The Sunday at Home. One of these is "1776: a tale of the American War of Independence" which is printed in The Leisure Hour on the centenary of that event in 1876. As well as describing some of the revolutionary events, it is also a touching love story and is beautifully illustrated. Her last piece of writing is a poem called "The Children's Day" which appears in The Sunday at Home in 1879.
Frances Brown dies from apoplexy on August 21, 1879, at 19 St. John's Grove in Richmond-upon-Thames. She is buried on August 25, 1879, in plot 40 in the cemetery at St. Mary Magdalene Church in Richmond, London. Frances dies unmarried and leaves all her belongings, valued at less than 100 pounds, to Eliza Hickman who had been her faithful companion and secretary for many years.
Categories: Irish History, Literature & Poetry | Tags: Amanuensis, Apoplexy, Belfast, County Donegal, Donegal, Edinburgh, Frances Browne, London, Northern Whig, Religious Tract Society, Richmond, Richmond-upon-Thames, Smallpox, St. Mary Magdalene Church, Stranorlar, The Leisure Hour, The Lord's Prayer | Permalink.


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Q: Find source of token handle leak in managed process I'm investigating a handle leak in a WCF service, running on .NET 4.6.2. The service runs fine but over time handle count keeps increasing, with thousands of Token type handles sitting around in the process. It seems memory is also leaking very slowly (likely related to the handle leak).
Edit: it looks like event and thread handles are also leaked.
Process Explorer shows that the suspect handles all have the same name:
DOMAIN\some.username$:183db90

and all share the same address.
I attached WinDbg to the process and ran !htrace -enable and then !htrace -diff some time later. This gave me a list of almost 2000 newly opened handles and native stack traces, like this one:
Handle = 0x000000000000b02c - OPEN
Thread ID = 0x000000000000484c, Process ID = 0x0000000000002cdc

0x00007ffc66e80b3a: ntdll!NtCreateEvent+0x000000000000000a
0x00007ffc64272ce8: KERNELBASE!CreateEventW+0x0000000000000084
0x00007ffc5b392e0a: clr!CLREventBase::CreateManualEvent+0x000000000000003a
0x00007ffc5b3935c7: clr!Thread::AllocHandles+0x000000000000007b
0x00007ffc5b3943c7: clr!Thread::CreateNewOSThread+0x000000000000007f
0x00007ffc5b394308: clr!Thread::CreateNewThread+0x0000000000000090
0x00007ffc5b394afb: clr!ThreadpoolMgr::CreateUnimpersonatedThread+0x00000000000000cb
0x00007ffc5b394baf: clr!ThreadpoolMgr::MaybeAddWorkingWorker+0x000000000000010c
0x00007ffc5b1d8c74: clr!ManagedPerAppDomainTPCount::SetAppDomainRequestsActive+0x0000000000000024
0x00007ffc5b1d8d27: clr!ThreadpoolMgr::SetAppDomainRequestsActive+0x000000000000003f
0x00007ffc5b1d8cae: clr!ThreadPoolNative::RequestWorkerThread+0x000000000000002f
0x00007ffc5a019028: mscorlib_ni+0x0000000000549028
0x00007ffc59f5f48f: mscorlib_ni+0x000000000048f48f
0x00007ffc59f5f3b9: mscorlib_ni+0x000000000048f3b9

Another stack trace (a large portion of the ~2000 new handles have this):
Handle = 0x000000000000a0c8 - OPEN
Thread ID = 0x0000000000003614, Process ID = 0x0000000000002cdc

0x00007ffc66e817aa: ntdll!NtOpenProcessToken+0x000000000000000a
0x00007ffc64272eba: KERNELBASE!OpenProcessToken+0x000000000000000a
0x00007ffc5a01aa9b: mscorlib_ni+0x000000000054aa9b
0x00007ffc5a002ebd: mscorlib_ni+0x0000000000532ebd
0x00007ffc5a002e68: mscorlib_ni+0x0000000000532e68
0x00007ffc5a002d40: mscorlib_ni+0x0000000000532d40
0x00007ffc5a0027c7: mscorlib_ni+0x00000000005327c7
0x00007ffbfbfb3d6a: +0x00007ffbfbfb3d6a

When I run the !handle 0 0 command in WinDbg, I get the following result:
21046 Handles
Type            Count
None            4
Event           2635 **
Section         360
File            408
Directory       4
Mutant          9
Semaphore       121
Key             77
Token           16803 **
Thread          554 **
IoCompletion    8
Timer           3
TpWorkerFactory 2
ALPC Port       7
WaitCompletionPacket    51

The ones marked with ** are increasing over time, although at a different rate.
Edit 3:
I ran !dumpheap to see the number of Thread objects (unrelated classes removed):
!DumpHeap -stat -type System.Threading.Thread
Statistics:
              MT    Count    TotalSize Class Name
00007ffc5a152bb0      745        71520 System.Threading.Thread

Active thread count fluctuates between 56 and 62 in Process Explorer as the process is handling some background tasks periodically.
Some of the stack traces are different but they're all native traces so I don't know what managed code triggered the handle creation. Is it possible to get the managed function call that's running on the newly created thread when Thread::CreateNewThread is called? I don't know what WinDbg command I'd use for this.
Note:
I cannot attach sample code to the question because the WCF service loads hundreds of DLL-s, most of which are built from many source files - I have some very vague suspicions in what major area this may come from but I don't know any details to show an MCVE.
Edit: after Harry Johnston's comments below, I noticed that thread handle count is also increasing - I overlooked this earlier because of the high number of token handles.


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