With the revolting and confusing infusion of both pizza and burger, the Pizza Burger is the only burger that has ever disgusted me and also caused me to gag.
The time it takes to perfect a meal is a strong indication to the quality of the product. With this being true, the Pizza Burger legitimately took thirty seconds to make, making it feel like an incomplete mess of cheese blends slapped on a patty effortlessly and served like dog food. The time it took to make was laughable.
The burger supposedly consists of a beef patty, sliced pepperoni, pizza sauce, oregano and a mozzarella cheese blend on a parmesan cheese bun. Some heavily notable mistakes were that the bun was plain instead of being topped with parmesan, and there was absolutely no traces of oregano.
My hands were dripping with pepperoni grease while I lifted the soggy burger off my plate. There was an unusual slab of cheese crust that looked like hair follicles slapped on an undercooked patty.
The cheese blend the burger claims to have is downright revolting as it combines hard stale cheese, melted cheese and cheese on the bun. Everything seemed completely undercooked and effortlessly made.
My first bite completely eradicated my taste buds as I struggled ferociously to even comprehend what I was tasting. I didn't even swallow either of my two bites before tossing it in the garbage.
The aftermath of eating the burger gave me a overpowering and sickening cheese flavor in the back of my throat whenever I exhaled through my mouth. Unfortunately after tasting the burger, my entire body began heating up and my face began to swell. I immediately ran to the bathroom and vomited an inconsiderably large amount of puke after drinking water to wash down the putrid flavor.
If you like pizza, eat pizza instead. If you like burgers, everything else is better than this. While I usually recommend people to eat tasteless food with the lowest of expectations, I would recommend you have an easy access to a doctor or stomach flusher after trying this product.


Tonight I'm spending another restless night with my Dad in his hospital room. This is my second night to stay with him all night. Just the two of us. It has been my privilege to be with him since last Saturday accept for a few hours when I was away from the hospital. I have talked to him, quoted scripture to him, sung to him, and prayed with him. The only problem is he can't communicate with me.
Oh, how I wish I could hear his strong voice talk about kindness and winning souls and how we need to love the Lord, and thousand other topics as I have done so many times in the past.
The first night I slept about an hour and I am hoping will get a little more this time. We are about to be in day five after Dad has had a pretty serious stroke. Our doctor (who is outstanding) has said that we are in the most crucial days of the post stroke period.
Dad is still not responding but the doctor says that is not uncommon. He says that the hope is that he will respond after day five or six. We are praying that he will begin to respond and that he will regain his wonderful ability to communicate.
During this past week I've been reminded of the importance of family and friends. There are times in our lives that we are reminded of the importance of the people closest to us. During the past week family and friends from around the world have blessed us.
I have watched our family come together to surround our dad with love and attention. I have watched family members put aside differences to work together to show the common love that we have for Dad.
I have had friends who have driven for hours to come to the hospital (knowing that they would not be allowed into the room) just to spend a few minutes visiting and praying with us. Some of these friends have been a part of my life for more than thirty years (Thanks Russ, Gary, Mike, Johnny, Rick, Robert, James, Ron, Juan, and I could go on and on and on). The blessing they continue to be to our life is overwhelming.
Here are a few valuable lessons that I have been reminded of by family and friends this week.
(1) TELL PEOPLE THAT YOU LOVE THEM. The number of times this week that I have heard the words, "I love your Dad," "I love you," or "we love your family" has been overwhelming. We all know that God's Word teaches that we should love one another (John 13:34-35; 1 John 2:9-10; 1 John 3:14-18), but hearing someone say those three magic words makes a tremendous difference.
(2) SHOW PEOPLE THAT YOU LOVE THEM. If saying the words is important, showing love by our actions carries love to the next step. Jesus said, "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments." (John 14:15) This is love by action. If we really love someone we will show them we love them. My family has seen love in action during this struggle in our life. People have brought food, sent cards, offered their homes for out of town guests, driven for hours to sit for a visit, and shown kindness in numerous other ways.
(3) PRAY FOR THOSE YOU LOVE. Prayer is one of the most powerful resources that Christians have at our disposal. We can approach the throne of God with boldness and know that He hears us (Hebrews 4:14-16). We have the assurance that Jesus our Savior mediates for us when we pray (1 Timothy 2:5). Even when we are at a loss for words (as I have been some in recent days), and we can only utter, "God help us," the loving Spirit intercedes for us (Romans 8:26-27).
We have heard from people throughout our great nation and around the world to let us know that they are praying for us. To each one who has come by and prayed for us, to each church who has offered up special prayers for us, to every individual who has told us (in person, by phone calls, via Facebook, or email) that we are in your prayers, thank you is insufficient. We feel that we have been bathed and overwhelmed by the prayers of righteous people! There are not enough words in our vocabulary to properly say thank you.
It is not my intention to make this article about just my family, however this is my perspective at this time. I am well aware of the fact that there are thousands of other Christians around the world who are going through similar challenges right now.
There are Christians who are being physically persecuted, Christians who have lost someone close to them. Christians who have lost their jobs with no assurance of future work, Christians who are dealing with death, disease, depression, and dejection.
There are Christians who are dealing with division in their church. There are Christians who are struggling with some private sin, those who are questioning their faith, and they are desperately trying to find their way back to God. There are Christians who are going through marriage problems, dealing with divorce, and alienation from their children. There are Christians who have left their first love.
You may be saying, "Jeff what is the point of all of this?" Well, here it is friends, WE NEED ONE ANOTHER! There are so many shattered hopes, broken homes, and bruised lives in our world, so WE DESPERATELY NEED ONE ANOTHER. You see, we have no way of knowing for sure what is going to happen with Dad's situation or with any of the situations I've mentioned above. However we do know that God is on His Throne, that God is good, and that ultimately He will work everything out for our good. With this knowledge in our hearts & heads, and with the help of one another we can endure any difficulty or hardship that comes our way.
Dear God up in Heaven, help us not to just talk about Jesus, help us to become Jesus. Help us Father, not to just talk about being loving Christians, help us to say the words, "I love you," help us to show our love by our actions, and help us to pray for one another more. Dear God, teach us to be all that You want us to be and all that those around us need us to be. Thank You, Father for showing us how we should live. In the Blessed Name of our Savior we pray, Amen.


text:
Q: Swagger UI always enabled TIBCO BW 6 when my application is deploying in production enviroment, I can´t disable the Swagger documentation . This document is always active .
Please, how can I disable swagger documentation?
I have updated the Appnode/config.ini file with the property
 "bw.rest.docApi.port=7777"
to
"#bw.rest.docApi.port=7777" but the swagger is active.
thanks and regards.

A: Can you please try adding the following to VM arguments (for studio design time) or java.extended.properties (in appnode TRA for runtime) to see if it helps?
-DBW_DISABLE_SWAGGER_UI=true

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
'use strict';

/* Controllers */

var app = angular.module('ng-dashboard.controllers.findbugs', []);

app.controller('FindbugsController', ['$scope', 'FindbugsFactory', function ($scope, FindbugsFactory) {
	FindbugsFactory.query({}, function (data) {
	    $scope.numberOfWarnings = data.numberOfWarnings;
	    $scope.numberOfHighPriorityWarnings = data.numberOfHighPriorityWarnings;
	    $scope.numberOfNormalPriorityWarnings = data.numberOfNormalPriorityWarnings;
	    $scope.numberOfLowPriorityWarnings = data.numberOfLowPriorityWarnings;

	    $scope.diffLow = data.numberOfNewLowPriorityWarnings;
	    $scope.diffNormal = data.numberOfNewNormalPriorityWarnings;
	    $scope.diffHigh = data.numberOfNewHighPriorityWarnings;

	    $scope.numberOfNewWarnings = data.numberOfNewWarnings - data.numberOfFixedWarnings;

	    setupFindbugsChart(data);

	    if((data.numberOfFixedWarnings - data.numberOfNewWarnings) > 0){
	    	$scope.less = true;
	    } else if((data.numberOfFixedWarnings - data.numberOfNewWarnings) < 0) {
	    	$scope.more = true;
	    } else {
	    	$scope.same = true;
	    }

	    $scope.done = true;

	    fn_computeSize();

	  }, function (error) {
		  $scope.error = true;
	  })
}]);

function setupFindbugsChart(data) {
	var chartData = [
	        	{
	        		value: data.numberOfHighPriorityWarnings,
	        		color:"#d9534f"
	        	},
	        	{
	        		value : data.numberOfNormalPriorityWarnings,
	        		color : "#f0ad4e"
	        	},
	        	{
	        		value : data.numberOfLowPriorityWarnings,
	        		color : "#5bc0de"
	        	}

	        ]
	var ctx = document.getElementById("findbugs-chart").getContext("2d");
	var findbugsChart = new Chart(ctx).Doughnut(chartData);
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Q: Representing heirarchical enumeration I have a set of enumeration values (fault codes to be precise). The code is a 16 bit unsigned integer. I am looking for a data structure that could represent such an enumeration. A similar question has been asked here: What's the best C# pattern for implementing a hierarchy with an enum?. But this hierarchy is deeper.
Sample enumeration values
Current = 0x2000,
Current_DeviceInputSide = 0x2100,
ShortToEarth = 0x2120,
ShortToEarthInPhase1 = 0x2121,
ShortToEarthInPhase2 = 0x2122,
ShortToEarthInPhase3 = 0x2123

Use case
When the user provides a code then the UI has to display the equivalent meaning of the code with the hierarchy.

For example, if the user provides a value 0x2121 then the UI has to display Short to earth in phase 1 in the current at device input side. The best way to represent this is by using a hierarchical notation: Current : DeviceInputSide : ShortToEarth : ShortToEarthInPhase1.
Competing approaches
I have three competing approaches to represent the enumeration:

*

*Create an enumeration at each level of the hierarchy. Then use a controller class to resolve the name.

*Store the enumeration values in an xml and use LINQ to generate the meaning of the code.

*Store the enumeration values in an xml. During the application startup. Create a singleton instance to retrieve the meaning. The instance contains a dictionary populated with the values from the xml.

Approach 1
The enumerations:
enum WarnCodes
{
    None= 0x000,
    Current = 0x2000
}

enum WarnCodes_Current
{
    DeviceInputSide = 0x2100,
    DeviceOutputSide = 0x2200
}

enum WarnCodes_Current_DeviceInputSide
{
    ShortToEarth = 0x2120,
    ShortCircuit = 0x2130
}

enum WarnCodes_Current_DeviceInputSide_ShortToEarth
{
    InPhase1 = 0x2121,
    InPhase2 = 0x2122
}

The controller:
public string GetMeaning(int code)
{
    int bitMask = 0xF000;
    int maskedCode = bitMask & code;
    StringBuilder meaning = new StringBuilder();

    switch (maskedCode)
    {
        case WarnCodes.Current:
            meaning.Append("Current : ");
            bitMask = 0xFF00;
            maskedCode = bitMask & code;
            switch (maskedCode)
            {
                case WarnCodes_Current.DeviceInputSide:
                    meaning.Append("Current : Device Input Side :");
                    ...
                    break;
            }

            break;

            ...
    }
}

Approach 2
The xml to store the enumeration values looks like this
<WarnCodes>

</WarnCodes>

And the method used to query the codes is:

XElement rootElement = XElement.Load(settingsFilePath);
public string GetHierarchicalMeaning(int code)
{
    XElement rootElement = XElement.Load(warnCodesFilePath);

    List<string> meanings = new List();
    StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
    IEnumerable<XElement> elements;

    elements = from el in rootElement.Descendants("code")
               where (string)el.Attribute("hex") == code.ToString("X")
               select el;

    XElement element = elements.First();

    while (element.Parent != null)
    {
        meanings.Add(element.Attribute("meaning").Value);
        element = element.Parent;
    }

    meanings.Reverse();

    foreach (string meaning in meanings)
    {
        stringBuilder.AppendFormat("{0} : ", meaning);
    }

    return stringBuilder.ToString().Trim().TrimEnd(':').Trim();
}

Approach 3
The xml to store the enumeration values is same as in Approach 2. The dictionary is populated from the xml by GetChildren().
private Dictionary<int, WarnCodeValue> warnCodesDictionary;

public void Initialize()
{
    XElement rootElement = XElement.Load(settingsFilePath);
    warnCodesDictionary = GetChildren(rootElement);
}

private Dictionary<int, WarnCodeValue> GetChildren(XElement element)
{
    if (element.Descendants().Count() > 0)
    {
        Dictionary<int, WarnCodeValue> childNodeDictionary = new Dictionary();

        foreach (XElement childElement in element.Elements())
        {
            int hex = Convert.ToInt32(childElement.Attribute("hex").Value, 16);
            string meaning = childElement.Attribute("meaning").Value;

            Dictionary<int, WarnCodeValue> dictionary = GetChildren(childElement);
            WarnCodeValue warnCodeValue;
            if (dictionary == null)
            {
                warnCodeValue = new WarnCodeValue() {Meaning = meaning};
            }
            else
            {
                warnCodeValue = new WarnCodeValue() {Meaning = meaning, ChildNodes = dictionary};
            }

            childNodeDictionary.Add(hex, warnCodeValue);
        }

        return childNodeDictionary;
    }

    return null;
}

The meanings are retrieved using GetHierarchicalMeaning():
public string GetHierarchicalMeaning(int code)
{
    StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();

    int firstLevel = code & 0xF000;
    int secondLevel = code & 0xFF00;
    int thirdLevel = code & 0xFFF0;

    if(warnCodesDictionary.ContainsKey(firstLevel))
    {
        stringBuilder.AppendFormat("{0} : ", warnCodesDictionary[firstLevel].Meaning);
        if (warnCodesDictionary[firstLevel].ChildNodes != null &&
            warnCodesDictionary[firstLevel].ChildNodes.ContainsKey(secondLevel))
        {
            stringBuilder.AppendFormat("{0} : ", warnCodesDictionary[firstLevel].ChildNodes[secondLevel].Meaning);

            if (warnCodesDictionary[firstLevel].ChildNodes[secondLevel].ChildNodes != null &&
                warnCodesDictionary[firstLevel].ChildNodes[secondLevel].ChildNodes.ContainsKey(thirdLevel))
            {
                stringBuilder.AppendFormat("{0} : ",
                    warnCodesDictionary[firstLevel].ChildNodes[secondLevel].ChildNodes[thirdLevel].Meaning);

                if (warnCodesDictionary[firstLevel].ChildNodes[secondLevel].ChildNodes[thirdLevel].ChildNodes != null &&
                    warnCodesDictionary[firstLevel].ChildNodes[secondLevel].ChildNodes[thirdLevel].ChildNodes.ContainsKey(code))
                {
                    stringBuilder.AppendFormat("{0} : ",
                        warnCodesDictionary[firstLevel].ChildNodes[secondLevel].ChildNodes[thirdLevel].ChildNodes[code].Meaning);
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

The WarnCodeValue class:
class WarnCodeValue
{
    public string Meaning
    { get; set; }

    public Dictionary<int, WarnCodeValue> ChildNodes { get; set; }
}

Questions

*

*Which of the above 3 approaches is better from a performance point of view?

*Are there any other approaches for representing the enumeration?

*Any improvements to the code?

A: Consider using classes instead of enums, you then use a singleton for each value and can use the type system to build a tree, including virtual methods to produce error txt etc.   (This can sometimes be a good option, but can also lead you into lots of problems if it does not fit well)

A: You could use FlagsAttribute.
For instance you could do something like this:
[FlagsAttribute]
enum WarnCodes
{
    None= 0x0000,
    Current = 0x2000,

    // second level of hierarchy
    DeviceInputSide = 0x0100,
    DeviceOutputSide = 0x0200,

    // third level of hierarchy
    ShortToEarth = 0x0020,
    ShortCircuit = 0x0030,

    // fourth level of hierarchy
    InPhase1 = 0x0001,
    InPhase2 = 0x0002
}

You can test it like this:
int[] testVals = {0x0000, 0x2000, 0x2130, 0x2122, 0x2121, 0x2131};

foreach(var val in testVals)
{
   Console.WriteLine( "{0,4:X} - {1}",
      val, ( (WarnCodes)val ).ToString( ) );
}

A: Second attempt... You could implement your own tree structure where each node has a single-digit hexadecimal representation and a code like 0x2121 represents a branch of the tree:
                      >2 - (current)
                      / \
 (device input side)>1   2 (device output side)
                    /\   /\
                     >2 (short to earth)
                     /\
                   >1 (in phase 1)

So, to read what 0x2121 means, we follow the corresponding branch of the tree and (for each node) we read the message it contains.
Here's a quick and dirty implementation of the tree:
public class TreeNode
{
    private List<TreeNode> _children;

    public int hex {get; private set;}
    public string meaning {get; private set;}
    public IList<TreeNode> children {
        get{
            return _children.AsReadOnly();
        }
    }

    public TreeNode(int hex, string meaning)
    {
        this.hex = hex;
        this.meaning = meaning;
        _children = new List<TreeNode>();
    }

    public TreeNode addChild(int hex, string meaning)
    {
        if(hex<=0 || hex >=16) throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("hex");
        if(GetChildByCode(hex)!=null) throw new Exception("a child with code " +
                                             hex.ToString() + " already exists");
        var child = new TreeNode(hex,meaning);
         _children.Add(child);
        return child;
    }

    public TreeNode TryAddChild(int hex, string meaning)
    {
        if(hex<=0 || hex >=16) throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("hex");
        var chd = GetChildByCode(hex);

        if(chd==null) {
            chd = new TreeNode(hex,meaning);
            _children.Add(chd);
        }
        return chd;
    }

    public void AddBranch(int hexPath, string[] meanings)
    {
        var lst = intToList(hexPath,16,new LinkedList<int>()).ToList();
        var curNode = this;
        for(int i = 0; i<lst.Count; i++)
        {
            curNode = curNode.TryAddChild(lst[i], meanings[i]);
        }
    }

    public TreeNode GetChildByCode(int hex)
    {
        return
            (from c in _children
            where c.hex == hex
            select c).SingleOrDefault();
    }

    public string getMessagesByPath(int hexPath)
    {
        var lst = intToList(hexPath,16,new LinkedList<int>());
        var msgs = getMessagesByPath(lst, new List<string>(),this);
        return
            (msgs == null || msgs.Count==0) ?
                "None":
                msgs.Aggregate((s1, s2) => s1 + ": " + s2);
    }

    // recursively follow the branch and read the node messages
    protected IList<string> getMessagesByPath(LinkedList<int> hexPath, IList<string> accString, TreeNode curNode)
    {
        if(hexPath.Count == 0 || hexPath.First.Value == 0 || curNode==null)
            return accString;
        else
        {
            var chd = curNode.GetChildByCode(hexPath.First.Value);
            string meaning = (chd==null)? "not found": chd.meaning;
            accString.Add(meaning);
            hexPath.RemoveFirst();
            return getMessagesByPath(hexPath,accString,chd);
        }
    }

    // convert the code to a list of digits in the given base (in this case 16)
    // this could be an extension method for int
    private LinkedList<int> intToList(int theInt, int theBase, LinkedList<int> acc)
    {
        if(theInt < theBase)
        {
            acc.AddFirst(theInt);
            return acc;
        }
        else
        {
            acc.AddFirst(theInt % theBase);
            return intToList(theInt/theBase, theBase, acc);
        }
    }
}

you can populate the tree this way:
        var root = new TreeNode(0,"root");

        root.AddBranch(0x2121, new string[] {"Current", "DeviceInputSide", "Short to Earth", "In phase I"});
        root.AddBranch(0x2122, new string[] {"Current", "DeviceInputSide", "Short to Earth", "In phase II"});
        root.AddBranch(0x2123, new string[] {"Current", "DeviceInputSide", "Short to Earth", "In phase III"});
        root.AddBranch(0x2221, new string[] {"Current", "DeviceOutputSide", "Short to Earth", "In phase I"});
        root.AddBranch(0x2222, new string[] {"Current", "DeviceOutputSide", "Short to Earth", "In phase II"});
        root.AddBranch(0x2223, new string[] {"Current", "DeviceOutputSide", "Short to Earth", "In phase III"});
// ...

this way you get total control over the hierarchical structure of your codes and can implement checks so that the structure itself cannot be corrupted. Searching a message remains easy and (since it does not process a code after the first 0), a search for 0x2000 should be more efficient because only the 2 is actually processed.
//search meaning of path
root.getMessagesByPath(0x2122)

A: Found that a modified version of Approach 3 is most suitable. Thanks to @paolo for helping me come up with the answer.

Modified Approach 3
The xml containing the codes:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<WarnCodes>

</WarnCodes>

The WarnCodeValue class:
class WarnCodeValue
{
    public string Meaning
    { get; set; }

    public string ConcatenatedMeaning
    { get; set; }

    public Dictionary<int, WarnCodeValue> ChildNodes
    { get; set; }
}

The singleton processor class (to retrieve the meaning of a code):
sealed class WarnCodeProcessor
{
    private static Dictionary<int, WarnCodeValue> warnCodesDictionary;

    private static volatile WarnCodeProcessor _instance;

    private static object instanceLockCheck = new object();

    public static WarnCodeProcessor Instance
    {
        get
        {
            lock (instanceLockCheck)
            {
                if (_instance == null)
                {
                    _instance = new WarnCodeProcessor();
                }
            }

            return _instance;
        }
    }

    private WarnCodeProcessor()
    {
        warnCodesDictionary = new Dictionary<int, WarnCodeValue>();

        string currentDirectory = Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location);
        string settingsFilePath = Path.Combine(currentDirectory, "WarnCodes.xml");
        XElement rootElement = XElement.Load(settingsFilePath);

        warnCodesDictionary = GetChildren(rootElement, string.Empty);
    }

    public string GetConcatenatedMeaning(int code)
    {
        string concatenatedMeaning = string.Empty;

        int firstLevel = code & 0xF000;
        int secondLevel = code & 0xFF00;
        int thirdLevel = code & 0xFFF0;

        if (warnCodesDictionary.ContainsKey(firstLevel))
        {
            concatenatedMeaning = warnCodesDictionary[firstLevel].ConcatenatedMeaning;

            if (warnCodesDictionary[firstLevel].ChildNodes != null &&
                warnCodesDictionary[firstLevel].ChildNodes.ContainsKey(secondLevel))
            {
                concatenatedMeaning =
                    warnCodesDictionary[firstLevel].
                    ChildNodes[secondLevel].ConcatenatedMeaning;

                if (warnCodesDictionary[firstLevel].ChildNodes[secondLevel].ChildNodes != null &&
                    warnCodesDictionary[firstLevel].ChildNodes[secondLevel].ChildNodes.ContainsKey(thirdLevel))
                {
                    concatenatedMeaning =
                        warnCodesDictionary[firstLevel].
                        ChildNodes[secondLevel].
                        ChildNodes[thirdLevel].ConcatenatedMeaning;

                    if (warnCodesDictionary[firstLevel].ChildNodes[secondLevel].ChildNodes[thirdLevel].ChildNodes != null &&
                        warnCodesDictionary[firstLevel].ChildNodes[secondLevel].ChildNodes[thirdLevel].ChildNodes.ContainsKey(code))
                    {
                        concatenatedMeaning =
                            warnCodesDictionary[firstLevel].
                            ChildNodes[secondLevel].
                            ChildNodes[thirdLevel].
                            ChildNodes[code].ConcatenatedMeaning;
                    }
                }
            }
        }

        return concatenatedMeaning;
    }

    private static Dictionary<int, WarnCodeValue> GetChildren(XElement element, string concatenatedMeaning)
    {
        string elementMeaning = string.Empty;
        XAttribute attribute = element.Attribute("meaning");
        if (attribute != null)
        {
            elementMeaning = attribute.Value;
            concatenatedMeaning =
                string.IsNullOrEmpty(concatenatedMeaning) ? elementMeaning : string.Format("{0} : {1}", concatenatedMeaning, elementMeaning);
        }

        if (element.Descendants().Count() > 0)
        {
            Dictionary<int, WarnCodeValue> childNodeDictionary = new Dictionary<int, WarnCodeValue>();

            foreach (XElement childElement in element.Elements())
            {
                int hex = Convert.ToInt32(childElement.Attribute("hex").Value, 16);
                string meaning = childElement.Attribute("meaning").Value;

                Dictionary<int, WarnCodeValue> dictionary = GetChildren(childElement, concatenatedMeaning);

                WarnCodeValue warnCodeValue = new WarnCodeValue();
                warnCodeValue.ChildNodes = dictionary;
                warnCodeValue.Meaning = meaning;
                warnCodeValue.ConcatenatedMeaning =
                    string.IsNullOrEmpty(concatenatedMeaning) ? meaning : string.Format("{0} : {1}", concatenatedMeaning, meaning);

                childNodeDictionary.Add(hex, warnCodeValue);
            }

            return childNodeDictionary;
        }

        return null;
    }
}

Usage
string concatenatedMeaning = WarnCodeProcessor.Instance.GetConcatenatedMeaning(0x2121);

Output
Current : Current, Device Input side : Short to Earth : Short to earth in Phase L1

Possible modifications include a GetMeaning(code) to retrieve the original meaning of the code, rather than the concatenated meaning.


There are many factors that contribute to a good night's sleep. The mattress and the bed have a huge impact on sleep quality – they both have to work together to provide you with comfort. The environment you're in has a major effect as well – as well all know, it's harder to sleep in places where there's too much light or it's too noisy.
It seems that getting a good night's sleep really does start with buying a bed that's right for you – but how are we meant to know which one to pick? It can be a real challenge to find 'the one', especially considering the wide variety available.
Luckily, we're sharing a 5-step guide to help you find the perfect bed – peaceful nights lie ahead!
Don't let it be a problem in your life! Finding out which sleeping position works best for will help you figure out which bed you should purchase. Certain mattresses that work better for certain sleeping positions and the type of mattress your sleeping position requires will determine which bed to buy.
When buying a bed, it's really important to carefully consider the size. Make sure the bed is both long and wide enough for you to comfortably fit onto.
If you share a room with your partner, taking them to shop for beds is also a good idea. You can have fun testing out the beds together and get a feel as to whether or not you both can fit comfortably onto the bed. Remeber, it needs to be practical for both of you – one of you may want your own space on a trundle bed.
However, it's not as simple as buying the biggest, plushest bed – the size of your bedroom must also be considered. If the bed is too big for your room, then it'll feel cramped and uncomfortable which may directly affect the quality of your sleep.
It's much easier to imagine the bed in your home once you've seen it in real life. In store, you'll be able to better asses the size of the bed and how it will look in your bedroom.
Of course, you'll also be able to get advice from sales assistants which could prove really valuable.
Without the quality of one, the other's quality will be diminished, which will ultimately affect your sleep.
Usually, people tend to aim for the lowest-priced items without considering the effect this will have on quality. Saving money is ok to have as a goal, but buying a bad-quality product could lead to sleepless nights, which we'd argue is a waste of money in the first place! Remember: there's a difference between getting your value for money and being cheap.


South Kensington. Finding something you didn't notice yet.
Last Sunday I enjoyed a nice walk in South Kensington looking for nice spots to frame in a picture and I choose this area because of Instagram. I really enjoy looking for inspiration because it's also a challenge. Can I find something that is not been already shoot?
2018 resolutions: what I will do of my photography?
My journey is complete and I know now where my photography need to sit.


Department of health education and communication was established in 2008. In the aspect of teaching, the Department is mainly responsible for major of health education and communicaiton, preventive medicine, medical insurance, health law teaching task. The courses include: epidemiology, health promotion planning, health behavior, introduction to journalism, health communication, newspaper editing, photography, and art, professional writing in scientific research, etc.; the research mainly involves: cardiovascular disease epidemiology, health status and health related behavior research, community health communication and health management, health education research.
The Department has a total of 4 people, including 1 associate professor, 2 lecturers and 1 laboratory technician. There are two people with doctor's degree and 1 people with master's degree.


I hope that regardless of where you ended on your project, you had fun and were able to network, learn, teach and laugh together with other IoT makers in the community. I saw so much excitement and energy from people that day that I can't wait to see what products everyone dreams up for the next one! I'm also happy to report that the LED Costumes event was a huge success as well! 13 kids attended and built a number of different projects using LEDs, Arduino and a ton of creativity.
We are uniqiely positioned here in the state of Minnesota to be leaders in the Internet of Things and am certain that as a community we will continue to help IoT grow. To that point, Patrick will be posting an anonymous survey to the group on DevPost to get your feedback. Please take the time to give us your honest responses as we want to continue to improve this event. In the future, (if my dreams come true), I'd love to be in a position to put on multiple IoTHackDays at various locations and times during a single year.
I also wanted to give on final plug for all of our sponsors and of course Minnetronix for being such an amazing host. The volunteers from Minnetronix went above and beyond to help teach kids how to solder, assist me in getting the space setup and torn down and bent over backwards to accomodate us. A HUGE thanks goes to those employee volunteers and the company for supporting the local IoT community in such a special way.
I look forward to seeing you all again soon and feel truely blessed to be working with the most creative and innovative people I know. Thank you for helping to make this event something special!


text:
Tech company Livestream opens headquarters in former 3rd Ward space
By Doyle Murphy
Livestream has a new lease on life in Bushwick.
The rapidly expanding tech company offered a peek inside its sprawling new digs seven months after 3rd Ward abruptly closed, jilting artists, designers and crafts workers.
In their place, 80 young engineers, programmers and tech support staffers relocated to massive loft space Tuesday on the second floor of the 80,000-square-foot four-story warehouse on an industrial stretch of Morgan Ave.
A first-floor stage and classrooms would be familiar to the former tenants who taught arts and crafts workshops as part of the old 3rd Ward model — and Livestream's co-founder hopes to bring back some of those artisans to teach classes the company could film and then stream across the world.
"There used to be amazing artists and teachers at 3rd Ward," said Livestream co-founder and CEO Max Haot, who added that he and his partner negotiated a deal to move into and renovate the space in less than three months.
"Why not bring them back?" added Haot.
Other amenities for the relocated Livestream employees include an outdoor patio with a ping pong table and a 15,000-square-foot roof space.
Haot, who also lives in Bushwick, said the location makes it easy for employees to bike to work and could help recruit from the creative-class residents flocking to the red hot neighborhoods of North Brooklyn.
dmmurphy@nydailynews.com
Latest New York
'It may seem hard, but march on': Harlem pastor comforts worshipers at last service at beloved house of...

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The leadership communications specialist, CloudQast, has completed running a ten-day complex training programme for a global law firm.
Damian Gaskin (left) and Lindsey Mack, of CloudQast.
The programme focuses on scenarios relevant to the firm's actual work for its clients, and seeks to enhance the junior lawyers' ability to deal effectively and productively with influential people and organisations facing complex legal challenges.
"One of the benefits of using immersive role play in this way is that, once a role play is ended, the 'clients' come out of character to give the delegates detailed feedback on how they felt that things went," said Lindsey. "CloudQast also films the sessions – to help in analysing the delegates' performance.


text:
Szalonnapatak () település Romániában, Szilágy megyében.

Fekvése
Zsibótól keletre, Szurduk keleti szomszédjában, a Szamosba folyó Szalonnapatak mellett fekvő település.

Nevének eredete
Neve a szláv slanina szóból ered, eredeti jelentése: sós, sáros víz, a mellette elfolyó Szalonnapatakra utalva.

Története
Nevét az oklevelek 1554-ben említették először Zalonna néven.

1591-ben Nagy-Zalonna-patak, 1594-ben Nagy-Szalonna, 1607-ben Zalonna, 1622-ben Nagy-Szalonna, 1830-ban Szalonna.

A település kezdetektől fogva a kolozsmegyei Almásvárához tartozott. Balassa Imre özvegye Somi Anna a birtok negyedrészét 1554-ben férjének Patócsi Boldizsárnak adományozta.

1560-ban II. János király a birtok felét Bebek Ferenctől elkobozta, és Báthory Kristófnak adományozta. A birtok másik fele Balassa Zsófiáé volt.

1585-ben Balassa Zsófia Csáky László özvegye magát első férjétől Némethi Ferenctől való fiának néhai Zsigmondnak itteni részébe beiktatta.

1595-ben Bellő, másképp Balassi György volt a település birtokosa.

1622-ben a kolozsmonostori konvent átírta Báthory Zsigmond által Móra Mártonnak adományozott itteni rész adománylevelét.

1658-ban Csáky István és Sárközy György és az Oláh család birtoka volt.

Szalonnapatak a trianoni békeszerződés előtt Szolnok-Doboka vármegye Csákigorbói járásához tartozott.

1696-ban Szalonna török hódoltsági falu volt.

1722-ben a Sárközi családé; Sárközi György gyermekeié volt.

1727-ben  gróf Bethlen János és neje Alvinczi Erzsébet gyermekei osztoztak meg itteni birtokukon.

1783-ban alőri Sárközi György leányáé Sáráé és nagyenyedi Salánki család birtoka volt.

1810-ben Gyárfás József, Jósika Miklós, Székely Elek, Keczeli Sándor, Mohai Farkas, Salánki József és Simai Lukács részbirtoka.

1820-ban báró Jósika Miklós, Székely Elek, Keczeli Sándor, Mohai Farkas, Salánki Józsefné Csikós Julianna  és Gyárfás Elek birtoka volt.

1886-ban 292 lakosa volt, ebből 5 zsidó, a többi román volt.

1891-ben 329 lakosából 326 görögkatolikus, 3 izraelita volt. A házak száma ekkor 63 volt.

1900-ban 369 lakosából 186 férfi, a lakosok közül 6 magyar, 363 görögkatolikus román, Református 2, izraelita 4. Ebből magyarul beszélni tudott 8, irni-olvasni 12 tudott. A településházainak száma ekkor 71 volt.

Nevezetességek
 Görögkatolikus fatemploma 1894-ben épült, 1895-ben szentelték fel.

Források

Jegyzetek

Szilágy megye települései
Szolnok-Doboka vármegye települései

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


These St. Louis couples share their engagement stories.
How We Met: My best friend dragged me to a happy hour one evening because she was meeting her new boyfriend, and going alone was not an option. Being the good friend I am, I went…but not without dragging my feet. When we got there, she was on Cloud Nine and didn't need me as a crutch. I, however, was bored, but not for long. This very handsome, confident guy walked right up to me and started talking. Usually I would be annoyed, but there was something about him that drew me in, and we talked the rest of the evening. My best friend even ended up leaving me behind, but I didn't mind. Rob and I discovered we were both divorced, both had amazing children and both loved to dance. We exchanged numbers. Although Rob had to leave the next day for Florida for a two-week family vacation, we had our first date as soon as he returned.
The Big Day: May 30, 2010.


text:
The Grand Jury body seeks Global justice and will not be stopped until it is done
Trending News World
by Loveworld February 15, 2022 0180
The Grand Jury is a group of international lawyers and a judge, that are conducting criminal investigation modelled after the United States Grand Jury proceedings. This is where governments of the world will be forced to answer for the crimes against humanity committed under the Covid agenda.
A new fierce and determined body of human rights gatekeepers now formally known as the Grand Jury under the leadership of Dr. Reiner Fuellmich has dedicated their lives, their resources and are risking their lives to see that the deep state under the guise of governments is brought to justice, including the media collaborators.
According to their website; This Grand Jury Investigation serves as a model legal proceeding to present to a jury (consisting of the citizens of the world) all available evidence of COVID-19 Crimes against Humanity to date against "leaders, this investigation is of the people, by the people and for the people and shall be referred to as the 'Peoples´ Court of Public Opinion.
What allegations exactly is the Grand Jury pursuing and even seeks to persecute? The allegation is that the world's governments have come under the controlling influence of corrupt and criminal power structures. They colluded to stage a pandemic that they had been planning for years. To this end they deliberately created mass panic through false statements of fact and a socially engineered psychological operation whose messages they conveyed through the corporate media.
The economic, social, and health damage that these Crimes against Humanity have caused to the world's population can be measured in quadrillions of dollars. Does this sound foreign to you? Definitely not, the man of God Rev Dr. Chris Oyakhilome has exactly taught millions around the world and exposed extensively the very crimes we seeing this Grand Jury persecuting today.
What is our part in this, we continue to pray and now even pray for the men and women of courage like in the Grand Jury that as they seek justice for many, that this course prospers and that they and their families be protected and strengthened to get to the finish line.
Ramaphosa's SONA received various reactions
Freedom convoy: protests put U.S & Canada trade at risk
Putin makes his move in Ukraine fearless U.S and Europe's threats
Loveworld February 25, 2022
UK's plans to govern use of digital identities revealed


text:
Q: A proof of inequality about $L_{p}$ space everyone
I am reading a note and find a proof of an inequality. It says this,
By holder inequality, for $1\le p\lt\infty$,we have
\begin{align}
|\int_{R}|f(x-y)g(y)|dy|^{p} &\le (\int_{R}|f(x-y)|^{p}|g(y)|dy)(\int_{R}|g(y)|dy)^{p-1} \\ &=\|g\|_{L_{1}}^{p-1}\int_{R}|f(x-y)|^{p}|g(y)|dy
\end{align}
Therefore,
\begin{align}
\int_{R}|\int_{R}|f(x-y)g(y)|dy|^{p}dx &\le \|g\|_{L_{1}}^{p-1}\int_{R}\int_{R}|f(x-y)|^{p}|g(x)|dydx \\&=\|g\|_{L_{1}}^{p-1}\int_{R}\int_{R}|f(x-y)|^{p}|g(x)|dxdy \\&=\|f\|_{L_{p}}^{p}\|g\|_{L_{1}}^{p}
\end{align}
What I don't understand is 1) How holder inequality can justify the first $\le$ sign in the first formula. It seems holder inequality does not work this way. 2) Why the doulbe integral in the second line of the second formula equals to $\|f\|_{L_{p}}^{p}\|g\|_{L_{1}}$

A: For Q1, if $\frac{1}{p}+\frac{1}{q}=1$, then $|g(y)|=|g(y)|^{\frac{1}{p}+\frac{1}{q}}=|g(y)|^{\frac{1}{p}}|g(y)|^{\frac{1}{q}}$, apply Holder's inquality to $|f(x-y)||g(y)|^{\frac{1}{p}}$ and $|g(y)|^{\frac{1}{q}}$ gives you the result.
For Q2, just use Fubini's theorem to interchange the integration ( integrate w.r.t $y$ first), and the use Change of variable formula.


The dissertation is the final module for a number of MSc programmes. It involves the planning and designing of a research project, including ethical consideration where necessary. Students work with their supervisor to produce a 20,000 word dissertation.
This module runs in September on Wednesday mornings 09.00 - 12.00 (maximum ) Includes lecture/workshop and seminar.
This is the final module for a number of MSc programmes- students will already have achieved 120 masters level credits, equivalent to a Post Graduate Diploma, before commencing.


o	Professor: Ain Shams University, Faculty of Engineering, Electronics and Communications Eng. Dept., Cairo, Egypt.
o	Invited Professor: University of Paris VI, Paris, France.
o	Supervised 30+ M.Sc. and Ph.D. theses.
o	80+ technical papers in refereed journals and conferences.
o	Staff Engineer, Mentor Graphics Corporation. Managing research activities.
- High-level modeling for Automotive applications.
- Layout effects in nanometer technologies.
o	Engineering Manager, Intellectual Property Division, Mentor Graphics Corporation. In charge of analog design and test of integrated high speed serial links.
o	Served as consultant for Mentor Graphics Corporation, to develop analog design reuse software.
o	Served as consultant for MEMScAP, to develop sensor acquisition integrated circuits.
•	Ph.D. University of Paris, on the design and reuse of analog circuits.
•	Holds Three US patents on Analog design porting, High-speed digital manufacturing test and Analog hotspot detection.
•	Hazem Said, Mohamed Dessouky, Reem El-Adawi, Hazem Abbas, and Hussein Shaheen, "Analog Layout Retargeting", in "Analog Layout Synthesis: A Survey of Topological Approaches ", by Helmut E. Graeb, Editor. Springer. 2011.
•	Haitham Eissa, Rami Fathy, Ahmed Arafa, Sherif Hany, Abdelrahman ElMously, Mohamed Dessouky, David Nairn and Mohab Anis, "A Parametric DFM Solution for Analog Circuits: Electrical Driven Hot Spot Detection, Analysis and Correction Flow", IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, Volume 21, Number 5, pp. 807-820, 2013.
•	Amr Amin Hafez, Mohamed Dessouky and Hani Fikri Ragai, "Design of a low-power ZigBee receiver front-end for wireless sensors", Microelectronics Journal, Elsevier, Volume 40, Issue 11, pp. 1561-1568, November 2009.
•	Mohamed Dessouky, Mahmoud Magdy, Noha Mahmoud, Maie Aly and Noha Soliman, "Bringing Research to Undergraduate Projects – Case Study: Design Automation of a Delta-Sigma Analog-to-Digital Converter", International Journal of Engineering Education, Volume 20, Number 2, March 2004.
•	Mohamed Dessouky and Andreas Kaiser, "Very Low-voltage Digital-Audio Delta-Sigma Modulator with 88-dB Dynamic Range using Local Switch Bootstrapping", IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, Volume 36, Number 3, pp. 349-355, March 2001.
•	Mohamed Dessouky and Andreas Kaiser, "Input Switch Configuration Suitable for Rail-to-Rail Operation of Switched-Opamp Circuits", IEE Electronics Letters, Vol. 35, Number 1, pp. 8-10, January 1999.
•	Khaled El-Kenawy; Inas Mohammed; Mohamed Dessouky, "Analog layout placement exploiting sub-block shape functions", 13th International Conference on Synthesis, Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Methods and Applications to Circuit Design (SMACD), Lisbon, Portugal, June 2016.
•	Sherif M. Saif; Mohamed Dessouky; M. Watheq El-Kharashi; Hazem Abbas; Salwa Nassar, "Pareto front analog layout placement using Satisfiability Modulo Theories", Design Automation and Test in Europe Conference (DATE'03), Dresden, Germany, March 2016.
•	Ahmed Arafa, Hend Wagieh, Rami Fathy, John Ferguson, Doug Morgan, Mohab Anis and Mohamed Dessouky, "Schematic-Driven Physical Verification: Fully Automated Solution for Analog IC design", IEEE System-on-Chip Conference (SOCC), NY, USA, September 2012.
•	Rami Fathy, Ahmed Arafa, Sherif Hany, Abdelrahman ElMously, Haitham Eissa, Mohamed Dessouky, David Nairn and Mohab Anis, "A Parametric DFM Solution for Analog Circuits: Electrical Driven Hot Spot Detection, Analysis and Correction Flow", IEEE System-on-Chip Conference (SOCC), Taipei, Taiwan, September 2011.
•	Ahmed Arafa, Hend Wagieh, Rami Fathy, John Ferguson, Doug Morgan, Mohab Anis and Mohamed Dessouky, "Schematic-Driven Physical Verification: Fully Automated Solution for Analog IC design", Design Automation Conference, User Track (DAC'11), CA, USA, June 2011.
•	Mohamed Dessouky, "Analog Design Automation: An Industrial Perspective", Design Automation Conference, User Track (DAC'10), CA, USA, June 2010.
•	Mohamed Mohsen and Mohamed Dessouky, "13-bit 205 MSamples/s Pipelined ADC with Digital Background Calibration", IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS'10), Paris, France, May 2010.
•	Hussein Adel, Mohamed Dessouky, Marie-Minerve Louërat, Hugo Gicquel, and Hisham Haddara, "Foreground Digital Calibration of Non-linear Errors in Pipelined A/D Converters", IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS'10), Paris, France, May 2010.
•	Haytham Ashour, Mohamed Dessouky and Khaled Sharaf, "Extended Division Range 2/3 Chain Frequency Divider With Dynamic Control Word", IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS'10), Paris, France, May 2010.
•	Dina Kamel, Mohamed Dessouky and Denis Flandre, "Enhanced performance of SERDES current-mode output driver using 0.13 m PD SOI CMOS", IEEE International SOI Conference, Foster City, CA, USA, October 2009.
•	Rami Fathy Salem, Haitham Mohamed Eissa, Ahmed Arafa, Sherif Hany Mousa, Abdelrahman ElMously, Walid Farouk Mohamed, Mohamed Dessouky, "Electrical Hotspot Detection, Analysis And Correction", US patent US8914760 B2, Dec 2014.
•	Janusz Rajski, Nilanjan Mukherjee, Mark Kassab, Thomas Rinderknecht, and Mohamed Dessouky, "Scan Test Application through High-Speed Serial Input/Outputs", US patent US8726112 B2, May 2014.
•	Sherif Hammouda, Mohamed Dessouky, and Mohamed Tawfik, "Analog Design Retargeting", US patent US7730433 B2 June 2010 and European patent application number 05801389.7 – 2224 PCT and patent number EP2005024928.


text:
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[Legendary Lives] Three games to talk about
Author Topic: [Legendary Lives] Three games to talk about (Read 27764 times)
Trevis Martin
Re: [Legendary Lives] Three games to talk about
This is a terribly interesting thread Ron, thanks for sharing it. I went to the website, downloaded and read both Legendary Lives and Khaotic!
There was perhaps too much fun with the Sanity and madness rules, which are pretty devastating. Emil was basically stone crazy by the end of the session. The spirit guide rules are really cool.
I couldn't find anything for spirit guiding or Sanity aside from a chart in the lifepaths section of the game. Maybe it's something not included in PDF he has posted that was in an earlier published edition of the game. What are the spirit guide rules like? What was it you liked about them?
Reading Khaotic, the color of the game really hit me in just the right spot. It's like a combo of Bliss Stage, Quantam Leap, Cyberpunk, and a few other things for good measure. I notice that the author changed his method from the ART table/percentile to a 6 sider roll under where you roll your total Attribute + Skill and only add up ones twos and threes which then corrosponds to the success scale. Since Khaotic! was the last game produced I don't know if he was just trying to streamline the Legendary Lives or just trying a variation for it's own sake. Do you have an opinion on one vs the other given that you've used the Legendary Lives system?
-Trevis
Sorry didn't quite complete my thought there. I mean it looks like he switched from a flat system to a curve between the two games even though he had made the flat mechanic work well in LL.
Hi Trevis!
The Sanity rules are included in the description of the skill Sanity, on page 136 of the PDF. I followed that text very specifically during the game with Tim, Tim, and Chris, including circumstances and modifiers for the rolls. My conclusion was that if you don't get Sanity through your race and Type, then bloody well use a free slot to buy it.
I didn't use those rules in our game at Forge Midwest. That was an oversight on my part, probably because I had been shaken from my "this will be a straight-up adventure" plans into the "whacked characters doing orthogonal whacked things" mode. Considering that Ben's character was a demonologist already, I should have called for a Sanity check when his vampire girlfriend showed up but given him a bonus. Plus Ctine should have had to make a check when the phantom snakes attacked her, or maybe when they all disappeared. I don't think Gootch encountered anything a veteran assassin wouldn't have seen all the time anyway, though.
The spirit guide rules aren't a special rules-set, but if you know the game and then read the Magic section for each of the character's magic skills, then cross-reference with the character's race and religion material, then there's a hell of a lot of second-order rules-application waiting to be discovered for any spell-using character.
In the case of the Gypsy character, the rules for the Spiritualist say the player rolls for many features of a developed NPC, including race and Type, and in fact, all those various detailed personality and lifepath features as well. This has potential for some wild contrasts, especially since the character and the guide are mandated to be very, very close emotionally and to be utterly devoted to one another. In Tim's case, his rather mild, victimized, and moony-eyed character had a bad-ass Entomolian Warrior for a spirit guide, which allowed me a metric ton of fun role-playing, and also allowed for the character's magic to butch up his otherwise feeble combat potential.
I pleasurably shudder to think of a spiritualist character who, through the luck of the dice, ends up with someone like Gootch for his spirit guide. If "guide" could even be considered an appropriate term, in that case.
I'd like to play Khaotic, one of these days. It seems to me to have a lot of potential for Cold War fallout thematic content, given the internationalism of the player-characters - I remember reading the mandate in Cold City for the characters to represent the various post-WWII power-player nationalities and saying, "Cool, this is like Khaotic." As far as the system goes, I'll reserve judgment until I see it in action, especially since now I know that a Williams game exhibits a lot of interconnectedness among its parts.
Best, Ron
Larry L.
aka Miskatonic
Whew. That was my understanding of the whole "Ssseth" thing, too.
Now that I'm clear about how things actually went down, here are some observations.
From my perspective, the story was a dark comedy of errors. I'll recall it here (in a very me-centric way!) because it illustrates certain GM techniques Ron was using. This is mostly stuff he lays out in the various Sorcerer books, but it might be helpful to someone to see how they're used in a non-abstract way.
I had rolled up a guy who a) was an assassin, b) valued love above all else, and c) had recently gotten back together with a former lover. So Ron frames a scene where I'm hanging out with my sweetie, and she mentions that her Serpentine master is cruel to her. I figure this situation has a pretty obvious solution for this particular character. So I endeavor to murder this Asp guy.
Ron cuts to a scene with Willow, and she's having a conspiratorial conversation with her Serpentine boss guy. Wait, what did you say his name was? Asp? Oh! I see. Fun moment of character knowledge vs. player knowledge. This is going to be interesting.
I head off the the forest to gather some poison -- Legendary Lives has an absolutely wonderful list of semi-realistic poisons, all with interesting effects -- but I get a crappy roll, so I decide to move forward with good old-fashioned stabbing. There's a pretty amusing encounter with me using my charm power just a little too well on a Hob (see racial stereotypes, above) who helps me get into Asp's house.
I'm sneaking around in Asp's house looking for anybody, but I get a bad sneaking roll, so Ron declares I trip over what he describes as some kind of intricate model. I decide I better try to fix it, but roll a little low on my repair skill, so Ron decides that means I manage to put it back together... the wrong way.
There's another scene with Willow, where they're discussing how Asp in in possession of this war machine she's supposed to acquire. And I'm like, wait, would this war machine look anything like the "model" I tripped over? And Ron grins and says yes, it does. Oops!
Asp comes home, and is angry that his Hob let a brownie into the house. I flee to under his bed, and Asp follows like he's chasing a stray kitten. "Come here little brownie..." Then I decide to leap out and stab him. It's right about this point where I realize this was strategically about the dumbest thing for me to do, because by sword skill is a whopping 3, really terrible. Oh hell, I'll roll for it anyway.
I rolled a 100. This turned out to be, literally, "awesome." I'll break this down a little later. For now, we figure out this means Asp is killed instantly.
Then Ctine and Ra'ed show up to grab the war machine, and I'm acting all sweet and innocent. Ra'ed wants to do this ritual to bind a spirit into the war. It binds the last victim of a weapon, so Ra'ed asks his trusted brownie for his blade, which Gootch offers up. We roll to see if Ra'ed gets suspicious about the blood and all. Nope! He takes my lame alibi at face value. So he summons up the spirit of a Serpentine, which all the players realize is actually Asp, but Ra'ed and Ctine are completely oblivious to. Funny stuff. The captive spirit possesses the war machine, and starts wheeling it off to do destruction.
I had kind of been looking forward to developing the misanthropic buddy relationship between Ra'ed and Gootch. But this was just a con game, so I decide to go for a punchier ending. I check with Ben about dicking his character over. "What did I ever do to you?" Nothing of course, I just need a patsy. So Gootch emerges from the crime scene, finds the nearest Hob -- who turns out to be the same Hob from earlier -- and proceeds to make up a total lie about how I was just sneaking around trying to find a treat and witnessed some Nomad murdering the Serpentine!
Before the angry Serpentines catch up with Ra'ed, I stop by and ask him to spot me some cash. We make some rolls, and while Ra'ed is convinced the war machine will make him rich beyond measure, he's not going to give me any cash. So instead I convince him to let me run back to the tent and use his money to stock up on provisions. I steal all of this money, and use it to run away with my girlfriend. What a little bastard Gootch is!
Not portrayed in this game, but left for an implied epilogue, is Ctine bringing forth the war machine, willing to destroy the brownie village as collateral damage, but finding it doesn't work for some reason.
I sort of felt like the spirit of In A Wicked Age was watching over our game. The way the character interaction drove the game forward reminded me of that game for some reason. This was undoubtedly actually just Ron's mad GM skillz at work, but it probably speaks to something that IaWA does by design to create this sort of play.
As mentioned, the resolution system creates some interesting opportunities for the GM. There's a chart with skill levels running up to about 25, which are cross-referenced with a percentile roll to determine a category of success or failure. Somebody compared it to the old Marvel Superheroes RPG. This also makes having a character sheet, with this resolution table printed on it, more or less essential for smooth play.
In the situation above, my roll of 100 still resolved to the best success category, which is called "Awesome." How cool is that? I can actually say I "rolled an Awesome!" The wound system is also described in terms of these success categories, and after a little rules-reading, we determined an Awesome hit scratches out Awesome and all the lower categories. In this case it meant my foe was dead, even though he had the better-than-average defense list of "Passable, Good, Great, Superior, Awesome." (But not in all cases. Some superior monsters have unusual wound lists. Dragons are "Awesome, Awesome, Awesome, Awesome," meaning you actually have to land an awesome attack just to hurt them.)
There's a surprising variety of skills used for social situations, which pairs with the conflict system in really fun ways.
One interesting note is that the game explicitly assigns all dice-rolling to the player side. The GM doesn't roll dice when interacting with the conflict system, he just narrates the outcomes. While this is not as revolutionary a thing as the author seems to think it is, it is an excellent example of game design around a particular set of gamemastering skills.
There's still a little more handling time than I might like. There was one point where Ron got a little flustered trying to look up a particular rule. The starting number of spell points is kind of buried in the text. Having the searchable PDF on my netbook managed to smooth over a few bottlenecks.
This is about the only thing going on in Legendary Lives that would keep me from making a universally positive recommendation. Looking over the text, it's not quite as in-your-face as we make it sound, but you read between the lines and piece some things together, and it's clearly there. It's a little more directly based on real-world stereotypes than the standard Tolkien or Forgotten Realms type cliches. And in the right hands, there's clearly an opportunity here to tell some powerful stories about race and stereotypes. But I can't help but wonder if this had fallen into my adolescent, not-so-worldly hands years ago if I wouldn't have gotten some funny ideas.
It potentially makes for some uncomfortable situations. In my case, near the end of this game I seized on an opportunity to cover up my romantically-motivated murder. Then I thought through the racial analogies involved. I realized Gootch had framed his buddy as the perpetrator of a racial hate crime, just to cover up his own misdeeds, and thought about just how heinous that situation is when it occurs in the real world, and felt a little pang of nausea deep down inside. I've had a fair number of characters who do really bad, fucked-up things, and it mostly plays for entertainment, but this was genuinely disturbing.
Mostly though, there was a story a how a series of simple misunderstandings played into the context of the larger animosity between Nomads and Serpentines. Despite the comedy involved, it's possible to reflect on how this is like certain real-world cultural conflicts, how individuals acting on limited information are perceived as actors in a larger clash. To this extent, this game contained "the stuff" which makes a role-playing session seem worthwhile to me.
Ben's character was, for the bulk of this game, wearing either no pants or no shirt. I just wanted to share.
Indie Gamers Minnesota
Millsy
Cool thread - I've had Legendary Lives for years but never played or run it - and it made me dig it out again and look it over.
With reference to your earlier point about it building characters with lots of cool background but no in-built situation, have you seen Lost Souls? It kinda conveys the same thing - you randomly roll up your ghost/spirit/haunting and get lots of detail about your past life, how you died, why you came back, etc, but not a lot of information about what your options are now. If I recall correctly, even the sample adventure in the book required one specific character type of one of the players (these are randomly-rolled character types, remember), so they could solve the problem associated with their death.
At least with Legendary Lives you could always ignore the background and run a 'straight D&D' game while the GM gets up to speed with the characters backgrounds from lifepath - but I filed Lost Souls away in my youthful mind as a game that looked awesome but that would never work. What you've done with Legendary Lives makes it seem more playable - but it's taken a long time to get here, hasn't it? I can't imagine that, when LL was first published, there were that many GMs running it in the style you've described - it's like, whenever I played Cyberpunk in the mid-90s, you'd come up with all this awesome background, and then the GM would be like 'Right, you're all part of a special ops team, hunting Androids in the slums,' and you'd forget about all your background.
What I guess I'm asking about LL is, to what extend do you think that the interaction and depth of background were planned to impact on the game? Or were they just there to provide colour while you went to the dungeon and killed the dragon?
Larry, that was definitely an aggravating moment about the Spell Points. Since I'd spent all my prepping for Forge Midwest on Justifiers/The Exchange, I hadn't done any thinking about Legendary Lives mechanics for months until we sat down. Especially since I'd run into the same snag about the exact same issue back when we played the game almost two years ago. As a public service: despite the text's use of the term Spell Cost in points, which is not in an of itself a problem once you understand it, the spell-using character in Legendary Lives does not have a pool or bank of "spell points." What the term means is a penalty to that particular magical skill roll which will not go away until the adventure is over. So you propose something to do with your (for instance) Conjure skill at (say) 14, and I as GM say, "That'll cost you 3 Spell Points," and if you choose to go ahead, after this roll at 14, your Conjure skill will be 11. They only go down; you don't get them back until the adventure is over.
At first, this might seem like a death spiral, and it sort is, except for a few details. First, you have at least two and perhaps as many as five magical skills, so racking a couple down isn't so bad even early in the adventure. First-prime, magic skills in Legendary Lives are very, very open-narration in terms of what the player proposes might happen - there are no spell lists, just the skills and whatever the player suggests might happen through their use, at that moment. Second, since all dice rolls in Legendary Lives arrive at a qualitative descriptor ("Mediocre," "Great"), the GM has a pretty good opportunity to make every spellcasting do something, and the basic rubric in this game is for the GM to use failed rolls to turn plot-corners anyway. And third, if you keep using a diminished magical skill, then your chance for Catastrophic results goes up, and hey, what's a little magical catastrophe among friends if (i) it makes neat story-things happen (see the previous point) and (ii) gets you checks to advance the skill? In the game with Chris and Tim and Tim, Chris found himself looking forward to later-stage play rather than dreading it because his character's magic would go all funny, and he'd get advancement checks.
I completely agree with you about the themes and issues of our game. Comedy and extravagantly colorful fantasy work best for me when they riff off something real, and I think we all entered into the real-stuff as a shared punchy-consequence context for whatever we did. Which is another vote in favor of the scary-extreme ethnic stereotyping, in this case.
I was looking forward to the long-term consequences of Gootch screwing up the plans for the machine, but as it turned out, and probably due to the one-shot context of play, events of the game turned faster, more important corners before that had a chance to develop.
Guy, that's a great post, full of stuff to talk about. This is exactly what I was aiming at back in my truncated Color-first character creation endeavor (which was interrupted by the birth of my third kid). To start: I've read both Lost Souls and Khaotic pretty carefully, but haven't played either. Only the authors can tell us for sure, but I think the basic idea is that the GM does in fact have his adventure, period, and the players "run through it," period, and all the life-history stuff is raw color for how you make them talk as they do it. ... Which still strikes me as a bit weird. The lifepath techniques in Legendary Lives, to my eyes, are just crying out to be used as central prep features for unpredictable-outcome scenarios, especially for long-term play. If I get a chance to talk with Joe and Kathleen Williams some day, I'm going to ask whether the texts display a tension between what they'd like to play vs. what they think gamers want to play or are capable of playing.
Regarding Lost Souls, I also find it the least compelling of the three, partly because the contrast between "we're a group, we have individualized powers, we run missions / have adventures" and "we are dead souls, active as ghosts" is an ongoing conundrum for me in role-playing games, to the extent that I simply jettison the former (I've discussed this regarding both Ghost Light and Wraith in the past). Which is weird because again, you'd think that the back-story for each character would be the real meat of any play concerning ghosts. The combination of cartoony and grim-dramatic doesn't gel for me as well as the cartoony + fantasy-rich does in Legendary Lives. In Khaotic, my mental jury is still in deliberation. The characters' back-stories are nicely nuanced, being full of conflict but allowing you a lot of room to round them out, but exactly how that relates to the two settings (either on-mission in the monster body or back-home in your real bodies) is utterly opaque. Especially in combination with this text from the game:
Any action a player tries has a whole range of possible results, giving the referee greater flexibility in deciding what happens and making the game
always unpredictable and exciting.
... which may work for many GMs, but which I find nearly impossible to implement in terms of what I want from role-playing, and what the folks I tend to play with want. It worked really well for us in playing Tunnels & Trolls, but that game is unabashedly Gamist and the GM is goddamned well the players' opponent - which is a play-mode that is explicitly disavowed in the Williams games.
And to follow up in a different but relevant way, I also pulled out my old 1989 Cyberpunk rules (including all the first printing errata - yay!) to review those lifepaths. A few things occurred to me.
1. Most lifepath techniques build the character's skills, literally composing the character's life so far in a "build it as you go" fashion. Legendary Lives doesn't do that - the religion table roll and the five lifeline rolls are carried out independently of all the other details. Also, there isn't a special Draconian lifeline or Priest lifeline or whatever; everyone uses the same ones, which is also the case for the various individual features tables and the personality table.
2. Related to #1, instead of "living" the character's life to date sequentially roll by roll, you put the lifeline events in whatever order you'd like, shaping their details to other aspects of the established character as seems most coherent.
3. There's no rolling involved in terms of carrying on to another roll or in Traveller terms, "mustering out," or whether you do or don't get the benefits of that particular step.
I'm not saying the LL method is automatically better or worse than the method established by Traveller and utilized in many games since (Cyberpunk, Mutant Chronicles), but it is clearly a bit different when you consider all those. And strangely, I think that it works for Legendary Lives but - again, without playing so this is speculative - seems a little unwieldly or not-quite-fitting for both Lost Souls and Khaotic.
edited to fix a link - RE
« Last Edit: April 05, 2010, 09:09:37 AM by Ron Edwards » Logged
Oh yeah... I'd be interested in hearing Ben's or Willow's version of "what the story was" if they have a chance. I didn't completely put it all together, just caught some interesting parts.
Hi Guy,
I played a whole campaign of Lost Souls! I didn't even realize these games were related until I had the character sheet printed out, and then I was like, "I've played this game before!" Same resolution matrix, same big list of attribute-keyed skills.
In that game, situation did not spring from character as awesomely as it did with LL. I'm not sure if it's actually a difference in the games, or if this system just generally caters to a certain set of GM talents, and if you're the GM who has them, it works. Someone on RPG.net described Lost Souls as "the Beetlejuice RPG," which in hindsight seems like it would have been a helpful creative focus.
Christoph Boeckle
I wanted to get back to thank you for the detailed reply, but also to post about my bewilderment at the same comment that had Lance react.
I don't get your point about the skill rating not being relevant to one given roll when using a flat method. I have literally worked on that comment over the last days, tried to wrap my head around it, and... I just don't get it.
It's the craps example that confuses me since there you say that it makes sense to bet on a "7" when rolling 2d6, but not particularly when rolling 1d11+1. To me, that's because a "7" on 2d6 is roughly a 16.7% chance (and other sums are lower) whereas a "7" on a 1d11+1 is a 9.1% chance (and other results are equally probable).
But man, having a 75% rather than a 35% (with a flat & roll-under method) reads to me as to be same feature that makes you bet on a "7" in your craps example rather than a "2", because the chance for a "75 or under" is higher than a "35 or under" even for that single roll. The flatness or the bellness is relevant for how to calculate the probability of an event and other crunchy stuff like mean value and standard deviation, which one should take into account, but once you have the probability of a given event (the "7" in craps, the "75% or under" in the percentile example) then that's that.
A thought that just occurred to me is that Legendary Lives indeed uses a d%, but the result is mapped to a not-so-flat distribution in terms of what is really used ("Cata" to "Awesome"). This actually supports your idea that the way one generates randomness is heavily influenced by how it is factored into the resolution procedure.
Of course, in a game where a critical hit (which really is what you focused on) is only on a "00" on a percentile die, then skill rating is indeed irrelevant for determining critical hits, and it makes a lot of sense to me to point out such a fact given the history of systems where that really shapes combat. However, defining a critical hit to be a "12" on 2d6 could be just as problematic. The problem there seems to me in how the critical tables are evaluated. It's the disproportion of decapitating vs knocking off a few HP that makes combat resolution very unreliable.
So, am I making sense or is there a crucial fact I missed in your point?
I wonder if you could expand a little on what you're pointing at here:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on April 05, 2010, 09:07:06 AM
Especially in combination with this text from the game:
It seems like a little aside, which you turn to and quickly away from, that is a really important point.
What is the challenge, how is it implemented well by some, and why is it nearly impossible for you?
For Christoph only
Think in terms of knowing that you might roll an 11 on 3d6. You are making this roll with a skill of 13, so if you get 13 or less, you succeed. Perhaps this is quite crucial at this moment of play, too. Anyway, although you might roll anything from 3 to 18, 13 or less has a special status (you want it), and 11 falls into that range. What I'm saying applies very well to 11, so let's focus on that. Handy utility: Statistical Tables for Dice Rolling.
For this one roll, you have lots of ways to get an 11. It's not 1/16 (6.25%) out of 16 possibilities. It's actually twice that because the three dice can come together to make an 11 in tons of different ways. Whatever you roll on one of the dice, the other two can come together to make an 11, and even that two-die consideration has many ways to do it too.
You have a higher chance to get that 11 than you do to get any one of the failing values. (In fact, at 14 or less, you have more chance of nailing that 11 than you do of getting all the failing values combined! So 14 is the "done" value for improving rolls for a 3d6 and under system.)
If you rolled a hypothetical 16-sided die marked 3 through 18, that would not be the case. Your chance of nailing that 11, or any successful value, is 6.25% and that's the same as nailing one of the failing values.
Now, this same point can be extended to almost all of the values under 13, with the only exception being an outcome of 3, although the "goodness" of each value does decrease as you go down the scale.
This point has literally nothing to do with the fact that when you compare 13 or less on 3d6 with ~84 or less on d100, you are indeed looking at the same chance to hit across the long-term history of rolling this skill for this character at this ability score. That is indubitably true. But my claim is that you will experience the consistent betterness of 13 or less, on 3d6, as opposed to 8 or less, meaning sooner and more reliably, than you will see it by shooting for 84 or less on d100, as opposed to ~26 or less on d100. Even though, yes indeed, 100 or 1000 or infinite rolls will show that the percentages are the same.
I will return to the actual point I tried to make earlier in the next post.
edited to fix the link to the probabilities page
« Last Edit: April 07, 2010, 01:42:33 PM by Ron Edwards » Logged
Well, I'm starting all over, because I caused trouble in trying to talk about too many aspects of the numbers at once. I'm going to jump to the point I really wanted to make.
OK, let's talk about a flat method in terms of how you "go up." It might be during the course of play, advancing the skill or whatever, or we could be speaking more abstractly, running up the scale mentally, whichever. The units of "going up" are the same as percents, and the important thing is that whether each unit is 1% or 5% or any other %, when you "go up," you go up by that much. In old RuneQuest, when you went up from 20 to 25%, it's adding the same amount of the 1-100% spectrum as when you went up from 50 to 55%. (And even adding a slight random element, like in the old Stormbringer game when you rolled d10 to see how many % you go up, doesn't change this much.)
But now, in a curved method, the units of the readable values "contain" variable amounts of percentage. So if we're talking about 3d6, sum the total, try to roll some number or under; then when you go up from 8 to 9, it's not as much of a jump in your chances as going up from 9 to 10 is. Think of each advancement, point by point, as being different in terms of how much percentages it captured. At low values, you don't get very far which each improvement, but on the "slopes" of the curve, each readable-unit gained is a very great improvement in your character's chances. As veterans of Champions and GURPS well know, the sweet spot begins at 10 or less and proceeds through 13 or less. At 10, each bump up grabs a solid percentage, and at 13, you've "captured" the bulk of the hump in the bell curve. Various different dice combinations yield different "flatness" at the top of the curve, so some include a plateau effect there and some don't. 3d6 and 2d10 seem to be rather good for the top of the bell not being a plateau, so the sweet spot can be enjoyed throughout the upward and downward slopes; the latter method is especially well done in Pocket Universe.
Finally, the point! I'm really really not talking about the basic chance to hit in this thread. I'm talking much more about qualitative aspects of both extreme success and extreme failure. What I'm saying is that Legendary Lives' ART (Action Results Table, on page 152 of the Legendary Lives PDF) actually overcomes the lack of sweet spot that characterizes many flat methods. To understand this table, you should know that the column on the left is the character's score in say, Sword. (It says "Roll" at the top of that column, but that term is actually pointing to the right, at the boldfaced outcomes across the top.) So if you have 7 in Sword, your percentile range for Catastrophic result is 1-8%. But focus especially on the distinction between Passable and Poor, which is the default success/failure division in this game unless some particular target outcome is specified. See how radically it changes at the low and high ends of the spectrum, and how it plateaus in the middle? That's neat! Not only did he impose a different-percent-per-improvement curve onto a flat-method roll, he also chose a different pattern from what you get with (say) 3d6!
What I'm sayin' is that Legendary Lives presents a quite distinct relationship between dice method, extreme result values, and improvement/change in a skill. Not only does it tie into general character improvement, but also to the drop in ability associated with repeated use of the spell skills that I described above. As you drop in the ability through the course of a spell-heavy adventure, your chance for Catastrophe not only increases, it increases dramatically and differently per unit decrease in the skill.
Point for clarity: I am not talking about the or the best technique in terms of comparison among games. I'm talking about how this particular thing is suited well to the other aspects of what I call Exploration or the SIS (character concept, setting features, color, the immediate situation), for this particular game.
Your AP account under "Techniques" is fascinating. Reading it felt like watching someone draw a relationship map. That's a stark contrast to my experiences with relationship maps, wherein they've been drawn pre-play, not during play. I'm thinking mainly of Ganakagok and How We Came to Live Here. In those games, it was fun to collaborate openly on proto-situation building. In your LL game, it seems a very different sort of fun, watching to see how the GM is going to forge maximally juicy situations out of all the characters (aka connect the nodes on the map via relationships).
Did you do most of this pre-play (in your head or on paper) or ad-libbed in response to the play you were seeing at the table? The former strikes me as easy ("Okay, I'll make up an NPC, give one character a reason to work with him, and another character a reason to kill him") and the latter strikes me as pretty hard for someone not used to it ("Okay, in this scene, I'll take the breaking of the model from last scene, and impart it new significance by revealing that the model is a sought-after war machine!").
I'm not saying it doesn't sound doable, it just doesn't strike me as markedly easier than a lot of the traditional GM stuff that seems to burn a lot of folks out (tweaking adversity to sustain drama in missions, pressuring characters into cooperation, etc.). Or does the sort of map-weaving from this LL game tend to occur primarily in the first few scenes, and then the GM gets to lay back and let the situations run themselves thereafter?
Anyone who played,
Did the situations and color of the scenes derive heavily from the book's setting material? Was that material felt in anything more than the specifics of the characters? From Ron's initial description of the game, I figured, "Hey, tons of inspirations for play, there!" which he seemed to disagree with me on. But hearing now about sneaking into creepy dudes' houses and tripping over their war machines, I wonder if that was all you guys, and all the situations implied in the book went ignored.
By "implied situations" I'm talking about stuff like where the V:tM book says "Clan Ventrue wants to control the vampires through manipulation and organization, while Clan Tremere believes their magic is vampires' key asset" and the GM goes, "Cool, we'll play a bunch of Tremeres undermining and supplanting Ventrue leadership."
here's my blog, discussing Delve, my game in development
Larry's plot summary is astoundingly accurate, I really have nothing to add.
I recall authoring the war-machine thing myself, though it turns out brownies have some sort of clockwork engineering. Essentially, I wanted my character to get her hands on a WMD.
I have to clarify my position on our dialogue. To me, the Legendary Lives character creation process does indeed seem chock-full of scenario prep material, stuff that I as GM would be practically obliged to incorporate into my preparation, or even use as the primary components. However, nothing in the pretty clear and extensive text about scenario prep and play in the book is consistent with that. Is that making more sense? I'm not talking about what I can do with such material; that's not hard. I'm talking about looking at (i) highly personal, quirky, probably neurotic, NPC-heavy character-centric conflicts, saying, "Whoo yes!", and then running into (ii) absolutely assumed/non-negotiable group/party team membership, linear adventure preparation, and instructions for how to utilize roll outcomes to ensure the story goes smoothly. Running into as in, a brick wall.
The distinction between the two isn't quite that sharp in this case, but essentially the answer is the former. Let's start simply with putting the characters onto the map. None of the characters had anything to do with the primary setting-based conflicts concerning the Seelie Court, so the Elfin Kingdom wasn't too important to consider. I wanted to stay pretty close to the Nomad lands, due to the Serpentine/Nomad conflict, and it so happens that Brownie Country is right next to that area. And there's a town in Brownie Country called Baye, "where the Circus Circuit meets" according to the book, and the final step in Ra'ed's lifeline was working for a circus. So it instantly fell into place, as if this town had been invented for the purpose of observing the shenanigans of these particular characters. That was all pre-play.
One of the features of character creation, and the only one I see which links that specific character to what is about to be presented by the GM, is a stated goal. I asked the players to provide very concrete, immediate goals, something their character was determined to do right now. Ra'ed's was to kill his undead girlfriend, Gootch's was to reunite with his lover, and Ctine's was to build a war-machine, as Willow described. The first two simply tightened up existing NPCs and issues from character creation, and the last introduced a new component into play. I already had the NPCs I needed. Easiest: Ra'ed's girlfriend (and former guy-friend), right there to be used in the back-story and in the goal. Slightly more needed: Brownies like being slaves, but not if they're mistreated, so Hootchie Koo had a ready-made problem for Gootch to consider, requiring only that I identify her owner. And the most needed (not much): there needs to be a Brownie war-machine for Ctine to find, and a Serpentine NPC to boss her around.
Some things did get teased or snapped into place during the course of play. I deliberately kept Ra'ed's former friend, the guy, on the shelf, not deciding to bring him in (as opposed to deciding not to). I made up the war-machine model in Asp's house right when Gootch sneaked in, but this wasn't about planning to have it broken or stolen or understood or anything like that - it was about what might be found in Asp's house, period. That's how I do it, stuffing a new scene or circumstance with things which reflect the various relationships and activities going on. What happens to them and what that might mean for future events is left to play without planning.
You've answered your own question. This kind of GMing is stunningly easy by comparison, although your "lay back and let the situations run themselves" is missing the key components of scene framing and of playing NPCs as characters rather than covert plot-movers.
Did the situations and color of the scenes derive heavily from the book's setting material? Was that material felt in anything more than the specifics of the characters?
Heavily from the book! The location on the map, the town we were in, the various racial-cultural details of everyone, NPCs included. Like "Serpentine Alley," the street in the Brownie town where the Serpentines lived, and Asp's hob sidekick. I can't think of a single thing in our game that wasn't directly linked to setting material and/or the specific outcomes of character creation process. For example, Willow's war-machine was perfect, not only because of the Brownie clockwork-engineering, but because her secret Serpentine society was criminal, nationalist, and thievish, and that tied into how Ctine and Ra'ed both had a cultural stake in the Nomad town that she planned to destroy with it.
Modestly speaking, I think our group really seized upon and celebrated the game's canonical content.
P.S. Paul, I owe you a reply. I'm working on it.
I don't believe any of the players had even seen the book before we played. Therefore, all of the setting material was filtered through Ron for awesome. He had already taken the trouble to figure out, for instance, that the elves were really interesting, or that the insect men were actually kind of boring. He really nudged towards spellcasting types, because the magic system was interesting and worth checking out -- I believe "bad-ass" was the actual word he used.
The character generation was essentially random, and therefore didn't require any prior knowledge of the setting, with the tables pointing everyone the the necessary entries in the book, which were sufficiently evocative we could start cracking jokes about the obvious stereotypes they were invoking. One or several of the five life events generated for each character suggested an interesting way to incorporate into the budding story. (But not all the events! Some were, of course, overlooked for not seeming relevant. We didn't go to lengths to force these details into the game, of course. The process by which some creative avenues are ignored and are soon forgotten might be an interesting thing to observe in and of itself.)
I can't speak for Ron, but I did observe that he didn't break out, like, a secret GM playbook or a relationship map or anything.
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text:
Luís Diogo da Silva ComNSC (Sertã, Cernache do Bonjardim, 6 de Dezembro de 1830 - Lisboa, 4 de Outubro de 1910) foi um empresário agrícola e comercial e académico português.

Família
Filho de António José da Silva e de sua mulher Maria das Dores da Silva, neto paterno de Diogo António e de sua mulher Micaela Joaquina e neto materno de José Leitão da Silva e de sua mulher Rosa Maria do Desterro.

Biografia
Comendador da Ordem de Nossa Senhora da Conceição de Vila Viçosa a 17 de Fevereiro de 1887, Comendador da Ordem de Leopoldo I da Bélgica, Governador do Banco Nacional Ultramarino, Diretor da Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa, grande Capitalista e Proprietário.

Casamento e descendência
Casou em Lisboa, Sacramento, a 5 de Agosto de 1876 com Maria da Nazaré Cardoso e Silva (Lisboa, São Nicolau, 20 de Março de 1840 -?), filha de Camilo Martins Cardoso, Capitalista, e de sua mulher (Lisboa, São Nicolau) Joana da Luz Cardoso. Foram pais de Laura Cardoso Diogo da Silva (Lisboa, 26 de Junho de 1890 - Lisboa, Lapa, 28 de Janeiro de 1966), Grande-Oficial da Ordem da Instrução Pública a 9 de Janeiro de 1959, casada em Lisboa a 27 de Julho de 1910 com Artur Porto de Melo e Faro, 1.º Conde de Monte Real.

Naturais da Sertã
Empresários de Portugal
Agricultores de Portugal
Comendadores da Ordem de Nossa Senhora da Conceição de Vila Viçosa
Académicos de Portugal


text:
New transparent adhesive stays red for 3 minutes for easy application
By Matthew Humphries 05.17.2013 :: 7:30AM EDT 05.17.2013
@mthwgeek
If you go to the store and buy a tube of adhesive, chances are it's going to be a clear solution. That's great for when you want to glue something transparent together, but it does generally make it difficult to see where the adhesive is and how much you have used.
Japanese company Kokuyo has come up with a solution to this problem, though. They've figured out a way to make their instant adhesive stay red for 3 minutes before turning transparent over the course of 10-20 minutes. By doing so, applying the adhesive and controlling how much use should be a lot easier because it is much more visible at the time of application. At the same time, you end up with a similar finish to traditional clear adhesives because it loses its color.
Kokuyo has obtained a patent for the technique that allows the color change to happen. It involves the use of photocromic technology, which sees compounds that undergo a photochemical reaction included in the adhesive. So the adhesive remains red while protected in its container, but as soon as it comes into contact with light it starts changing color.
Such a feature is both useful and highly marketable, so I expect a number of the big name adhesive brands to either try to get a license from Kokuyo or copy it and workaround the patent somehow.
Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) may also take an interest. In February they announced a reusable adhesive that liquefies under UV light, but it didn't dry to a transparent state. Maybe AIST and Kokuyo can join forces to create the ultimate is reusable adhesives.
photocromic


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As well as running the hugely successful Winter Gardens, driving its renaissance and securing major show contracts including Mamma Mia! And CATS which have brought significant benefits to the local economy, Michael has masterminded and negotiated the expansion of the Blackpool Dance Festival. In 2014 Michael signed a deal that would see the very first overseas Blackpool Dance Festival take place in Shanghai, China in 2015. Blackpool Dance Festival is the world's first and most famous ballroom dance festival, which first took place in 1920 and in 2015 was the largest to date. The event in China will further enhance Blackpool's position as the number one dance festival in the world. Michael's astute leadership of the Winter Gardens and his passion for the Blackpool Dance Festival will see Blackpool, Lancashire reach a potential 50 million registered ballroom dancers in China.


Axia Corporate Property is pleased to present Unit 1, 38 O'Malley Street, Osborne Park for Lease.
The offering comprises an impressive and highly functional Office / Warehouse combination, guaranteed to satisfy the most discerning of occupiers.
The premise is further complimented by ample undercover hardstand, allowing for container access and egress, which is securely fenced. Prospective tenants will also be afforded signage rights to the building.
In addition to the exclusive 11 car bays afforded to the premise, visitor parking in provided at the front of the property.
Occupiers seeking highly presentable, presentable, functional and cost effective occupancy, in the heart of arguably Western Australia's premier industrial / commercial precinct, need look no further than Unit 1, 38 O'Malley Street, Osborne Park.


Prerequisites: Successful completion of, or enrollment in an approved Radiologic Technology program.
Prerequisites: Enrollment in the Radiologic Technology program or certification as a Radiologic Technologist.
This course covers the curriculum mandated by the California Department of Health Services, Radiologic Technology Branch. It satisfies requirements for qualifications and continuing education provisions forpersons who perform fluoroscopic x-ray procedures. California full certification as a radiologic technologist is required.
CLASS OVER RADT 474 - 43732 - Venipuncture for C. M. Admin.
Prerequisites: California full certification as a radiologic technologist or enrollment as a second year student in a two year radiologic technology program. Current CPR and Basic Life Support for health care provider approved by the AHA .