AN 80th-minute Glenn Murray penalty ensured Steve Wigley's reign as Bristol City caretaker manager ended with a whimper.
Derek McInnes is expected to be announced as manager at Ashton Gate tomorrow and has his work cut out with the rock-bottom Robins.
Bristol City were lucky not have been trailing before half-time after an error-strewn performance from former England goalkeeper David James. Four minutes before the break he hit a clearance straight into the path of Darren Ambrose, but the Palace midfielder failed to find the net, and James was unable to redeem himself when Palace were awarded their late penalty.


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Introducing the Gibson Generation Collection: A New Line of Acoustic Guitars Purpose-Built For Players To Hear More of Themselves
Above: the Gibson Generation Collection of acoustic guitars.
Watch the Gibson Generation Collection video: HERE.
Explore the Gibson Generation Collection on Gibson.com: HERE.
When it comes to musical instruments, there are few designs more elemental and timeless than the acoustic guitar. With just a hollow wood body, a wooden neck and fretboard and a few choice pieces of metal and plastic, the instrument has fueled music creation for centuries, and remains a staple of rock, pop, folk, blues and myriad other styles to this day.
Similarly, for much of that time Gibson, the legendary 128-year-old instrument maker, has crafted some of the most iconic acoustic guitars in history. Today, Gibson continues to build popular and enduring designs like the J-45, the J-200, and The Hummingbird. At the same time, the brand is pushing forward into new and imaginative acoustic guitar territory – proving that in the right hands, even the most traditional of instruments can serve as a platform for innovation in sound and style.
The brand-new Gibson Generation Collection is the latest example of Gibson tapping into its distinctive history in the service of designing guitars for the modern era. The four acoustics in the Generation Collection – the small-bodied G-00, the slope-shouldered G-45, the cutaway-equipped G-Writer, and the Jumbo-sized G-200 – are constructed around an innovative side sound hole design that projects sound up toward players. Meaning that, for the first time, guitarists are hearing exactly what their audience is hearing. This sound hole, which Gibson has dubbed the Player Port, was developed from a long-lost 1964 blueprint discovered in the Gibson archives, which illustrated a guitar with a sound hole built into the side of the body.
Learn more about the Gibson Generation Collection: HERE.
Explore the new Gibson Generation Collection on Gibson.com: https://www.gibson.com/en-US/generation.
"Gibson's historical items and archives have moved so many times that it's a wonder we have anything left at all," says Mat Koehler, Senior Director of Product Development at Gibson. "But a lot of amazing things still exist from Gibson's golden era, like this blueprint, which I believe has to be the first documented use of a side port on a guitar."
Above: the small-bodied Gibson Generation Collection G-00.
Watch the G-00 video: HERE.
Perhaps too unconventional a concept for 1964, the side port-equipped model never went into production, and soon faded from memory. Until now. The new Gibson Generation guitars incorporate an updated version of the original 1964 side port concept into the Player Port design, providing players with a next-level immersive sonic experience. In addition to the sound being projected out at the listener via the traditional sound hole in the top of the guitar, the Player Port, on the side of the body, directs it right at the player. "As a result, you can hear more of yourself than ever before," says Cesar Gueikian, Brand President, Gibson.
Koehler likens the effect to "wearing in-ear monitors and having a microphone in front of your guitar. It's that different of a playing experience. The first time we tried out a prototype, we were blown away by what we were hearing." And the benefit is not just in performance. "If you're sitting in your room practicing, or even just learning guitar for the first time, hearing all of those nuances in your playing is going to help you in your development."
Gueikian stresses that, true to their name, these acoustics were designed with a "new generation" of player in mind. Meaning that in addition to groundbreaking features like the Player Port, other design aspects – thinner bodies, slimmer neck profiles, and a flatter fingerboard radius – were incorporated to provide an overall easier playing experience. Combined with the immersive sonics, the result is a guitar that you want to sit with longer, helping to spark creativity and a desire to further explore and hone your skills on the instrument.
Above: the Gibson Generation Collection G-45 acoustic guitar.
"The slimmer build, along with other little tweaks, make it a little more comfortable than a vintage-style acoustic guitar," Koehler says. "These are small changes that really modernize the build and make the instrument more comfortable to play than most other acoustics in the marketplace."
And the Generation guitars achieve this with the added benefit of being offered at an affordable price point. Like all Gibson guitars, all four models are USA-built at Gibson's Bozeman, Montana, craftory and are constructed of premium solid woods, including Sitka spruce tops, walnut backs and sides, "a beautiful, sustainable and great-sounding wood," Koehler adds, utile necks and striped ebony fingerboards. The G-Writer and G-200 guitars also add in an LR Baggs Element Bronze pickup system for easy amp plug-in and-play.
Above: the Gibson Generation Collection G-200 acoustic guitar.
Watch the G-200 video: HERE.
Above: the Gibson Generation Collection G-Writer.
Watch the G-Writer video: HERE.
"For Gibson, innovation is not just a new guitar feature or new electronics," Gueikian adds. "It's also about creating a premium made-in-USA Gibson guitar at an accessible price."
And indeed, these are classic Gibson guitars through-and-through. "The goal was not to reinvent the wheel, but to improve the creating and performing experience for the player," Koehler says. "So the best part is that even with the Player Port and the other modern features, the Generation guitars still sound intrinsically like a Gibson."
Tradition and innovation, all wrapped up in a great-sounding, easy-to-play and affordable acoustic. More than a century in, this continues to be the Gibson way. "Orville Gibson started this whole thing in 1894 with analog innovation and respecting the value of an instrument as an artistic tool," Koehler says. "And that's what we keep in mind with every new guitar we offer: How can we innovate in a way where it still ties into the Gibson legacy, but also has slight improvements for today's player? And I think we really hit that balance with these new acoustics."
"This is an idea that began in Gibson's golden era in 1964 and is now being put into practice in 2021," Gueikian says. "We always talk about leveraging our iconic past to lean into the future, and the Gibson Generation Collection acoustics feel like the ultimate expression of that belief."
Gibson Generation Collection:
GIBSON.COM/GENERATION
You'll Cringe Hearing About Jake Gyllenhaal's First Encounter With Brad Pitt
Reese Witherspoon's daughter, Ava Phillippe, on sexuality: 'Gender is whatever'
Kim Kardashian & Pete Davidson Get COZY on Date Night
Nothing says amore like getting all your right angles.
At least that what's fans think when it comes to Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson, all thanks to one of her latest bikini pics. Kim had her Instagram followers buzzing on Jan. 17 when she posted three photos of herself frolicking alongside a beach in her two-piece swimsuit, captioning the series of snaps, "Mother Nature."
But it was the third photo itself that seem to catch everyone's attention since there was a noticeable shadow in the photo behind the lens, and for fans—that could only be one person.
"The shadow is Pete, we all agree right," one person wrote. Another added, "Tell Pete to not get a shadow next time." A third follower commented, "Not me zooming on the shadow of the photographer to see if it was Pete."
All small social media investigations aside, the assumption of boyfriend-turned-photographer wouldn't be that far-fetched considering the budding romance between the two seems to be going pretty strong.
Ever since the couple confirmed their relationship last November, there have been several low-key dates between Kim and Pete. Not to mention, the couple took their date nights beyond their local spots, most recently jet-setting for a getaway in the Bahamas—where he likely could've snapped those bikini pics.
However, the relationship between the SNL star and the SKIMS founder goes beyond palm tree and pictures, with a source telling E! News in early January that "Kim and Pete are getting very serious," adding that Kim is "smitten and the relationship is very exciting to her."
As for whose shadow that was for sure? Well, social media seems to be keeping up with the clues.
Can't keep up? Get every update, exclusive clips and more from your favorite family.
January 18, 2022 | 8:00am
Jamie Lynn Spears, seen here in 2004, does not address "Zoey 101" creator Dan Schneider's alleged misconduct in her new memoir.
FilmMagic, Inc
Jamie Lynn Spears heaps praise on "Zoey 101" creator Dan Schneider in her new memoir but fails to acknowledge the allegations of misconduct that have been leveled against him.
When Spears, 30, first mentions Schneider, 56, in "Things I Should Have Said," she credits him as the person who "recognized [her] talent" and "was the driving force" behind her landing the starring role on the Nickelodeon dramedy.
"The show attracted some of the best professionals in the business. The creator and director, Dan Schneider, was exacting and insisted on professionalism," she writes.
Spears then applauds Schneider, who infamously had a habit of tweeting photos of young actress' feet, for knowing "how to get just what he needed from a rambunctious group of teens who thought that they were all that."
But any mention of the embattled showrunner ends there.
"Things I Should Have Said" hit stores Tuesday.
Worthy Publishing
Schneider was once an unstoppable force at Nickelodeon, creating children's sitcoms including "The Amanda Show," "Drake & Josh," "iCarly" and "Victorious."
But in March 2018, the network abruptly cut ties with the producer so he could "pursue other opportunities and projects." Page Six broke the news at the time that he walked away with a $7 million payout.
Deadline reported soon after that "for years Schneider had been under a cloud of suspicion over the treatment of some younger stars of his shows," while the New York Times revealed in June 2021 that an internal investigation at Nickelodeon had found Schneider was verbally abusive toward co-workers. (The review found no evidence of sexual misconduct.)
Schneider is the sole recipient of the Kids' Choice Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Schneider denied to the Times that he had ever acted inappropriately at work, saying in part, "I couldn't and I wouldn't have the long-term friendships and continued loyalty from so many reputable people if I'd mistreated my actors of any age, especially minors."
He also insisted that his photos and videos of kids' feet were "totally innocent."
Schneider was most recently credited as the creator of Paramount+'s "iCarly" revival, which premiered in June 2021, though he had no creative involvement.
Jodie Sweetin is engaged for the fifth time, this time to Mescal Wasilewski.
ghostfacelito/Instagram; jodiesw
She said "yes" — for the fifth time.
Jodie Sweetin announced on Instagram Monday that she is engaged to Mescal Wasilewski after four years of dating.
The "Fuller House" alum quoted famed author Maya Angelou before leaving fans with a romantic caption of her own.
"I love you Mescal, for always," Sweetin wrote. "You're my person. I can't wait to see the life that lies ahead for us."
Sweetin's photo included a close-up look at her marquis-style engagement ring, which Wasilewski gave to her two days before her 40th birthday.
"Here's to us, @ghostfacelito and our life of adventures. Together," she continued. "I think I'm really gonna like turning 40 ❤❤❤💍."
Wasilewski shared the same photo on his Instagram and added, "So that happened…"
Sweetin has been married three times. Her first marriage to Shaun Holguin lasted four years, from 2002 to 2006. The "Finding Santa" star then married Cody Herpin in 2007. The former couple, who split in 2010, share daughter Zoie, 13.
She shares daughter Beatrix, 11, with ex-husband Morty Coyle, to whom she was married from 2012 to 2016.
The "Love Under the Rainbow" actress then became engaged to Justin Hodak in 2016, but the two never made it to the altar.
Sweetin's engagement comes just over a week after her "Full House" co-star Bob Saget died unexpectedly at age 65. The cast released a joint statement in the aftermath, saying they were grieving "as a family."
Wasilewski popped the question just days before Sweetin's 40th birthday.
jodiesweetin/Instagram
"Thirty-five years ago, we came together as a TV family, but we became a real family. And now we grieve as a family," they said in the statement released on Instagram last week.
"Bob made us laugh until we cried. Now our tears flow in sadness, but also with gratitude for all the beautiful memories of our sweet, kind, hilarious, cherished Bob. He was a brother to us guys, a father to us girls and a friend to all of us. Bob, we love you dearly. We ask in Bob's honor, hug the people you love. No one gave better hugs than Bob."
The statement was signed by stars Sweetin, John Stamos, Dave Coulier, Candace Cameron Bure, Lori Loughlin, Andrea Barber, Scott Weinger, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, as well as series creator Jeff Franklin.
More than 100 stars turned out to remember the late comic at his funeral.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Our ticket block has sold out, however game tickets are still available through the Wizards or on the secondary market! We are seated in section 429. No matter where you're seated, come to the pre-game happy hour at the Greene Turtle, and we'll take a group photo after the first quarter ends!
The Cleveland Cavaliers come to DC to play the Washington Wizards at 7pm on Friday, February 8! Join us for a basketball outing whether you cheer on the Cavs or the Wiz Kids.
All ages are welcome. You do not have to be an alum to participate. All ticket sales are final. Pick up your tickets at our Pre-Game Happy Hour at the Greene Turtle adjacent to Capital One Arena starting at 5:30pm on game day. Tickets not picked up by 6:30pm will be left at will-call. Questions? Email Jenn.


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Home Response to sneezing
Response to sneezing
Milton Keynes' parks are recognised as some of the UK's very best green spaces Today, a record number of parks and green spaces collect a Green Flag Award The Parks Trust, the self-financing charity who expertly manage and maintain over 6,000 acres of parkland across Milton Keynes have been recognised by the Green Flag Award Scheme, as having some of the very best parks in the world. The Parks Trust is among a record-breaking 1,970 UK green space organisations and 131 in….. Milton Keynes Local News…
Best of Bedford – Steve Barratt
March Music Highlights
Console Corner: Far Cry New Dawn review
No underestimating Newport County as they make Stadium MK debut


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Hidden sugar in everyday foods
Sweet Retreat campaign helps with curbing sugar cravings
By Samantha Eastburn
It's well-known that too much sugar is not healthy. Many people realize they are consuming extra sugar when they add two packets of it to their coffee every day, or they grab gummy worms as an afternoon snack. These are conscious decisions to consume sugar, but what about the foods with hidden sugar?
The American Heart Association recommends a maximum amount of added sugars daily: 6 teaspoons (24 grams) for women and 9 teaspoons (36 grams) for men. On average, Americans eat 20 teaspoons (84 grams) of added sugar every day, the equivalent of 320 calories.
Novant Health has launched Sweet Retreat, its first ever Web challenge that gives participants a 10-day plan to cut all added sugar from their diets. Added sugars are those that are added to foods, the most common being regular table sugar and high fructose corn syrup.
More than 6,500 people have signed up to participate in the Sweet Retreat . Registration is currently open for the second round of the challenge, which begins on Monday, May 16.
Many people may be surprised about which foods have added sugar. Barbecue lovers are probably unaware that there is about 13 grams of sugar in every two tablespoons of barbecue sauce. "Most of us would use more than two tablespoons for just one barbecue sandwich, so imagine how many grams of sugar are hidden in the half rack of ribs you might order at dinner," said Alice Smith, a Novant Health registered dietitian.
"Yogurt is a healthy dessert alternative when you compare it to a slice of cake or bowl of ice cream, but it has about 27 grams of sugar," Smith added. "Yes, it is a dairy product, but it's filled with sugar."
Smith suggested using nonfat Greek yogurt brands, which only have 6 grams of sugar depending on which brand you purchase. She also suggested buying flavored yogurt, instead of the kind with the fruit or jam on the bottom, as those contain extra sugar.
Pasta sauce and ketchup also contain more hidden sugar than you might think. There are 12 grams of sugar in every half cup of sauce, and ketchup has 4 grams of sugar in each tablespoon. "Ketchup with reduced sugar tastes identical to traditional ketchup and has about 75 percent less sugar. It's a win-win," Smith said.
"There's no secret that there is a ton of sugar in soda, even diet sodas," she said. "There are actually 39 grams of sugar in diet soda, and about 33 grams of sugar in caffeinated soda. Even reduced sugar sodas have 18 grams of sugar, but it's the best option if you are really craving one."
Alarmingly, a 1.5-ounce box of raisins has 25 grams of sugar. "Cranberries are really no better either," Smith said. "A one-third cup of dried cranberries is about 26 grams of sugar. Sure, it sounds like a healthy snack, but a better alternative is a 1-ounce serving of banana chips, which only has 10 grams of sugar."
And what about those oh-so-popular smoothies?
"I am a smoothie fanatic and I have one almost every day, but you have to be so careful about what you put into it if you make it yourself or if you buy prepackaged ones from the store, or even if you go to a smoothie bar," she said. "Some prepackaged smoothies can have about 32 grams of sugar, but if you stick to the smoothies that have more greens, like kale or spinach, the sugar content will decrease."
Smith said that coconut water or coconut milk is a great way to give smoothies a sweeter taste but with less sugar. Adding fresh parsley or mint leaves to a smoothie can also help keep your smoothie low on sugar.
"You should also be careful about granola bars," the dietitian noted. "Some bars have as much as 43 grams of sugar in just one bar, but some granola bars only have 4 grams of sugar. You really just need to be careful and look at your labels when purchasing granola bars and cereal."
Smith said you can reduce your sugar cravings by being active. "Sometimes mindless activities like watching TV, chatting or sitting at your desk leads to excessive eating, especially those sugary snacks," she said. "It's important to get up and take a walk. Doing something active can take your mind off the fact that you want sugar."
To register for the Sweet Retreat, visit NovantHealth.org/SweetRetreat . Throughout the challenge, Smith will send daily emails with tips and tricks for removing added sugars from your diet. You'll also be able to access an accompanying blog with tasty recipes.
Tags: losing weight, diet, nutrition, millennials, midlife
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A voluntary parent organisation with the aim of providing better access to education for rural and regional children has praised the Australian government for recognising the need for better telecommunication in the bush after its recent Mobile Blackspot Round 4 results. On March 18, 2019, Minister for Regional Services Bridget McKenzie announced the results of the Round 4 competitive assessment process, which included the small rural towns of Clare and Naradhan of western NSW. The Isolated Children's Parents' Association (ICPA) praised the announcement, saying mobile phone service near rural and remote schools was important. The Association was founded at Bourke in 1971, following the closure of the Bourke Hostel that provided accommodation for children living on remote properties so they could access education. The NSW State Council of the Isolated Children's Parents' Association (ICPA-NSW) was formed less than a year after the Bourke branch was founded. READ MORE: Government commit $25 million to go ahead with Round 4 of Blackspots Program The mission of the newly formed association, then as it is now 39 years later, is access to education. NSW ICPA president Claire Butler said Clare Public School is within a huge blackspot area. "Clare Public School for example is 155 kilometres from Balranald township, the school sits in a paddock, surrounded by remote farmland, and unfortunately sits in a huge blackspot where one has to drive an hour to get mobile phone service," she said. Ms Butler said for families, staff and surrounding farmers travelling on the road each day, mobile connectivity is an important infrastructure and resource. When Round 1 of the Mobile Blackspot Program was announced in 2015, the association expressed much disappointment at the lack of remote areas that were successful. ALSO MAKING NEWS: Primary Industries Minister Niall Blair resigns after being re-elected Ms Butler said of the 144 base stations announced, none of those were in a geographically remote area of NSW. "So, since then ICPA NSW has been advocating with telcos and government that if there was to be any particular area prioritised, then a place of public interest such as rural and remote schools should be an area of priority when deciding where to put a base station," she said. "Areas such as the Clare School in far south-west NSW and Naradhan School in the Riverina, have always been high on our agenda and their wouldn't be too many politicians in the NSW Government who haven't heard of those two schools and their plight for mobile phone service. "Less populated areas are less appealing to Telcos because they offer less commercial viability so, for Round 4 especially we are particularly pleased to see Telstra investing in more remote areas of NSW, in particular areas with schools in them." According to the Australian government's Mobile Blackspot program, Round 4 will deliver 180 new mobile base stations (49 Optus and 131 Telstra) to address more coverage issues in regional and remote Australia. Its website states that "the rollout is expected to commence shortly, with the first new base stations being activated by the second half of the year".
A voluntary parent organisation with the aim of providing better access to education for rural and regional children has praised the Australian government for recognising the need for better telecommunication in the bush after its recent Mobile Blackspot Round 4 results.
On March 18, 2019, Minister for Regional Services Bridget McKenzie announced the results of the Round 4 competitive assessment process, which included the small rural towns of Clare and Naradhan of western NSW.
The Isolated Children's Parents' Association (ICPA) praised the announcement, saying mobile phone service near rural and remote schools was important.
The Association was founded at Bourke in 1971, following the closure of the Bourke Hostel that provided accommodation for children living on remote properties so they could access education.
The NSW State Council of the Isolated Children's Parents' Association (ICPA-NSW) was formed less than a year after the Bourke branch was founded.
The mission of the newly formed association, then as it is now 39 years later, is access to education.
NSW ICPA president Claire Butler said Clare Public School is within a huge blackspot area.
"Clare Public School for example is 155 kilometres from Balranald township, the school sits in a paddock, surrounded by remote farmland, and unfortunately sits in a huge blackspot where one has to drive an hour to get mobile phone service," she said.
Ms Butler said for families, staff and surrounding farmers travelling on the road each day, mobile connectivity is an important infrastructure and resource.
When Round 1 of the Mobile Blackspot Program was announced in 2015, the association expressed much disappointment at the lack of remote areas that were successful.
Ms Butler said of the 144 base stations announced, none of those were in a geographically remote area of NSW.
"So, since then ICPA NSW has been advocating with telcos and government that if there was to be any particular area prioritised, then a place of public interest such as rural and remote schools should be an area of priority when deciding where to put a base station," she said.
"Areas such as the Clare School in far south-west NSW and Naradhan School in the Riverina, have always been high on our agenda and their wouldn't be too many politicians in the NSW Government who haven't heard of those two schools and their plight for mobile phone service.
"Less populated areas are less appealing to Telcos because they offer less commercial viability so, for Round 4 especially we are particularly pleased to see Telstra investing in more remote areas of NSW, in particular areas with schools in them."
According to the Australian government's Mobile Blackspot program, Round 4 will deliver 180 new mobile base stations (49 Optus and 131 Telstra) to address more coverage issues in regional and remote Australia.
Its website states that "the rollout is expected to commence shortly, with the first new base stations being activated by the second half of the year".


Eseguire i comandi essenziali di Linux come l'installazione, le ricerche e la manipolazione dei file.
Operare su sistemi Linux: gestire il processo di avvio, schedulare jobs, aggiornare il sistema, monitorare le prestazioni del sistema e gestire la sicurezza.
Gestire utenti e gruppi: l'aggiunta / cancellazione / modifica, configurazione di LDAP e PAM, modifica dei processi utente e delle risorse.
Garantire l'efficente utilizzo dell rete tramite la configurazione, il monitoraggio, il tunneling e l'instradamento del traffico.
Configurare i servizi DNS, cartelle condivise, SSH e SELinux / AppArmor così come i server per DHCP e HTTP.
Gestire lo storage sistema utilizzando partizioni, volumi logici, volumi fisici, ACL, quote e il clustering.
Conoscenza dei componenti di base di Linux.
Familiarità con gli editor di testo.
Manage startup process in Linux.
Manage shutdown process in Linux.
Describe how the Linux Filesystem is set up.
Demonstrate knowledge of how the key directories work.
Manipulating system tunables with sysctl.
Changing the maximum process ID.
Describe how the Linux Kernel is configured.
Work with udev and sysctl.
Modifying Filesystem parameters using tune2fs.
Understand, configure and monitor RAID.
Create, resize and utilize Logical Volumes.
Describe the role of processes in Linux and how they relate to programs.
Identify the different states processes can take.
Set process priority using niceness values.
Understand the role and function of package management systems.
Understand the role of revision control systems, particularly git.
Describe the role that package installers play in managing the software update process.
Demonstrate proficiency with APT, yum and zipper.
Manage users and groups by adding/deleting/modifying them.
Modify user processes and resources.
Appropriately use the root account.
Use SSH to securely access remote systems.
Describe the benefits of backup up data.
Demonstrate proficiency with common backup tools.
Demonstrate proficiency with common compression tools.
Explain how IP addresses function.
Route traffic persistently and non-persistently.
Describe the role and function of firewalls.
Understand the most commonly use tools.
Describe the function of zones.
Describe the sources of threats to system security.
Understand the components important to creating a security policy.
Demonstrate basic familiarity with SELinux.
Describe the common sources of corruption/performance issues.
Identify the cause of system issues.
Recover a system after some of the most common types of issues.


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Interactive Fiction and Game Design
About Quest (A Collection of Blog Posts by Alex Warren and The Pixie)
K.V.
28 Apr 2021 12:49 (edited)
Quest is 15
This post was originally published on the textadventures.co.uk blog.
Quest is 15 years old today! I posted the announcement of Quest 1.0 on the rec.arts.int-fiction newsgroup on Saturday 7th November 1998. (And the original link in that post still gets you to the right place today, eventually)
So Quest is itself now almost as old as I was when I started writing it. But what got me started on it in the first place?
You're probably expecting me to say something like this… I'd been interested in text adventure games since their heyday in the 1980s. On my family's home computer, I got hooked by classic games like Zork, Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy and Planetfall. Such wonderful worlds of the imagination! Such crafty puzzles! I would spend hours drawing maps on squared paper and looking out for grues and giving myself eye strain and…
Well, no. That's not how it happened. I never played any of those. In fact, I was never really into text adventures at all.
But then, they were before my time. I was just a bit too young. I first dabbled with a computer in, oh, about 1990 or so. We had an Acorn Electron in our house. We did have a couple of text adventures for that - we had a copy of Acornsoft's Sphinx Adventure (never really played it, couldn't get anywhere, found it boring) and my dad had typed in the listing of a game called Necromancer from Electron User magazine. Which never quite worked properly, as something had been mis-typed somewhere along the line.
So I was just never that interested in text adventures. I was more into playing whatever shareware games had found their way onto my PC - Commander Keen, Wolfenstein, Doom and so on. But what I was much more interested in was creating my own. I probably spent more time in front of QBasic than any game. And that is where it all begins, really.
Schoolboy Humour
In 1994, at the age of 12 I started secondary school. The IT lab there was open at lunchtime for anybody to use. So instead of running around getting exercise, or loitering somewhere else, me and my friends played around with the computers. They were probably 486s, running MS-DOS 6 and Windows 3.1. They were connected to some kind of network but there was no internet access - we'd barely heard of this internet thing anyway back then. There wasn't a whole lot to do other than write silly little programs using QBasic (or Visual Basic 3.0, which was also installed) so that's what we did.
After my schoolfriend Martyn moved house and went to a different school, we kept in touch by writing letters to each other - this being a time before either of us had an email address. We would enclose 3.5" floppy disks to share our latest programming efforts. It was in fact in Martyn's first letter, around January 1995, that he sent me a game he'd written called "Sid Snibble and the Curse of the Curry Stain".
I still have a copy, in a heavily nested folder full of archives of archives, and I can still run it today using QB64. It looks like this:
It was a text adventure, but even this had a graphical element to it - you didn't walk around the game by typing NORTH, SOUTH etc., you moved an ASCII face around with the arrow keys. When you entered a location, you could look at things, speak to characters, pick up items and so on - all in an attempt to solve the mystery of what happened the night before, and why you woke up in the middle of the road in a strange town with a large curry stain down your shirt.
This looked fun. I could write something like this. It would be hilarious! And so I set to work, doing what I'd always done - copying Martyn's ideas, but doing them a lot worse.
So, in April 1995 I wrote my first text adventure game.
It was called… well, there's no easy way to put this. I don't want to rewrite history or tell a lie. I was young and the game was only for me and my friends. It was called "Where's My Nob?!"
How I wish that weren't true. How I wish I could sit here and tell you the story of how I poured my soul into a creative work of genius, a work of art, a literary masterpiece. With a title like that, maybe I could claim that it was an earnest work exploring gender issues. But it wasn't. I was 12. The game was an excuse for a load of the kind of sophisticated humour that 12 year olds are known for. Featuring locations such as Dracula's castle, a teacher's house, a corner shop, a dairy, a Skoda dealer and Potato World.
So, a throwaway game that should be played by nobody. But for me, a 12 year old boy who didn't do any kind of creative writing, it was a fun thing to do that got some kind of creative juices flowing.
[Aside: Although it's not a work that I would ever want anybody to see - indeed, I would be absolutely horrified - I think what it represents is something that still persists as I develop Quest today. Specifically, although I want Quest to be a useful tool for building very high quality works of interactive fiction, there is still a need for something that allows people to create their own Sid Snibbles (and, er, to find their own Nob? I think deep down my sense of humour remains the same). To give people a way to express themselves, to allow them to develop their artistic sense, to allow them to get started, and then to improve their craft. It's easy to be snobbish about this kind of thing, and to moan about low-quality games, but if we didn't have bad text adventures, it's unlikely we would have very many good ones either.]
Anyway, back to my, er, game. I sent it to Martyn on a floppy disk together with a second one called "Make Mrs Booth Friendly!", a game about my French teacher. Also on that disk, I included a terrible chatbot, "Dr Mad!" who would diagnose your illness, and a fortune teller called "Sadistic Smeg".
Over the following months I wrote some more text adventure games, always full of in-jokes about school, only ever written for my friends, and never to be seen by anybody else ever, certainly not now. "It's Mad!", "Fantasy Land!", "Park Parade Adventure!" and "The Town of Terror". It seems the running theme was titles with exclamation marks.
Making Text Adventures for Windows 95
Fast forward a few years to 1998, when I'd started dabbling with Visual Basic 5.0 - which meant I was no longer stuck writing programs for DOS, I could create programs for Windows instead, featuring buttons and menus and message boxes and pictures and everything. I was rather stuck for ideas though. I'd spent some time working on a virtual pet, which were all the rage back then, but wanted to try something a bit meatier. I'd just finished my GCSE exams and was looking for something to keep me occupied over the summer break before I started sixth form. I thought back to the text adventures I'd written, and wondered - what would a text adventure game for Windows look like?
I decided to write myself a little engine before writing a game, so I wouldn't have to hard-code everything like I'd done in QBasic. I started coding something that would take in a simple text file which would define all aspects of the game, and handle things such as allowing players to save their progress.
It turned out that I was actually far more interested in creating the engine than I was in writing a game anyway, and I was interested to see what other people might come up with if they used my system. At the time, I was fairly ignorant of any pre-existing systems which would do a similar thing to mine, until somebody suggested I take a look at the rec.arts.int-fiction newsgroup. I started checking out the competition, and reading about Inform and TADS. It was clear to me that they were difficult for newcomers to use (this was before Inform had a natural language syntax - the syntax of Inform 6 still looks bizarre to me), so it looked like I should be able to get people interested in what I was doing.
I released Quest 1.0, and it looked like this:
(Those two globes were animated and bounced back and forth between the edges of the screen. For some reason.)
Quest 1.0 loaded text files which were in a simple format I'd devised, called ASL - Adventure Scripting Language. The syntax was simple, designed to be coded by hand using Notepad or similar - there was no visual editor yet ("QDK" appeared the following year).
Here's the Quest 1.0 Readme file and ASL Reference if you're interested in some historical detail. You would create games by using Notepad to edit the included template.asl file, which looked like this:
' Quest ASL Template
' All sections must exist in the game, though the text sections may be empty
' if desired.
define game <Enter name of game here...>
asl-version <100>
game version <1.0>
game author <You>
game copyright <© 1998...>
game info <Enter game info here...>
start <Enter name of place here...>
possitems <Enter items separated by commas here...>
startitems <Enter start items here...>
end define
define room <Enter name of place here...>
look <Enter description here...>
define text <intro>
Enter intro text here...
define text <win>
Enter win text here...
define text <lose>
Enter lose text here...
This file format lasted a long time. It was used right up until Quest 4.x, the last version of which was released in 2011 - albeit heavily extended and changed in various ways over the years.
The empty template looks like this when loaded in Quest 1.0:
The user interface is still very similar to what Quest offers now - in fact, after it was rearranged in Quest 2.1 it has effectively remained an identical layout. There is the game text of course, a command box, a space to show what items you're carrying, and a list of things you can see in the current location (which would show "Look at" and "Take" buttons if something was selected). There are also the compass buttons for easier navigation.
Quest 1.0 supported rooms, characters, objects, things you could pick up ("items"), quantities of things ("collectables"), string variables and some basic script commands. It could play WAV files, show images and display pop-up menus. It supported text formatting, and let you set up your own custom commands using a syntax like "eat #object#" - the same format that is still used in Quest 5 today.
There was a small sample game distributed with Quest 1.0, "A day in the life of a salesman". It is of a very similar standard to my QBasic efforts - which is to say stupid, crude and borderline offensive in places. So no, you can't have a copy, but yes, it does still run in Quest 5.4!
What happened next? We'll pick up the story in the next blog post, where I'll talk about how Quest grew, changed and even shrunk over the years to become what it is today.
CONTINUED IN NEXT POST
15 years of Quest, part 2: 1999-2000
This is part 2 of a look back at 15 years of Quest - part 1 is here.
Immediately after releasing Quest 1.0, in November 1998, I got started working on Quest 2.0 - the first alpha version was released only a month later, in December 1998. This version incorporated the early feedback I'd received from v1.0 - making room descriptions more customisable, adding functions, numeric variables and "for" loops, improving the in-game debugging information, and fixing various bugs.
It seems surprising to me now that I didn't ever do a bug-fix release of v1.0 - I guess that so few people were actively using it, and there were so many rough edges anyway, it must have made more sense just to plough on and pour everything into v2.0. And this was before I'd ever heard of source control anyway - in fact, I doubt I'd have even had any kind of backup copy of the Quest code at the time. (It was a time when I was constantly running out of hard disk space, when floppy disks were too small, before I had a CD writer, and before any significant amount of online storage space was easily available).
Over the following months I added more features - more text formatting options, allowing objects to moved and hidden, and libraries to allow Quest functions to be re-used between games.
It was all a nice break from working on my A-levels and filling in my UCAS form.
Quest 2.0 was released in August 1999, and for the first time included a beta version of a new visual Quest game editor called "QDK" - meaning finally you no longer had to code games using a text editor. (I would have called the editor "QED" but there was already a Quake editor of that name).
The script editor was very basic:
The main player interface for Quest 2.0 still looked pretty much exactly the same as v1.0 - which is to say, hideous. This was finally rectified in November 1999 with the release of Quest 2.1, which has a layout which is awfully similar even to the current version of Quest:
Quest 2.0 is the first version for which at least one actual game was made - and it's still on textadventures.co.uk, and it still works today, whether you download it or use the web-based player - The Adventures of Koww the Magician.
There are a total of 28 games on textadventures.co.uk which were written for Quest 2.x - see if you can find them… (the column to the right of the game listing will tell you the version of Quest used to build the game).
The "libraries" feature got some early use, with Alan Bampton creating a "Standard" library to add some features, including containers - which Quest was still years away from supporting natively. This library was included with Quest itself as of v2.11. (10 years later, when redesigning Quest for v5.0, libraries became the way to add all functionality to Quest - without its Core library, Quest 5 does very little at all).
By early 2000 my thoughts were turning to Quest 3.0, which would be a huge update - I was getting lots of suggestions from users, and there were various aspects of Quest I wanted to tidy up - things which didn't make sense to me at all any more, such as: why was "an object in a room" a separate concept to "an item you can carry"? It was time for the first of many overhauls of Quest. In the mean-time I carried on releasing bug-fixed versions of v2.1 up until Quest 2.19, which was released in January 2001.
Next time I'll carry on with a look back at version 3.0 and beyond. If you want to peruse some archive material, the forums from 1998-2000 are still online.
15 years of Quest, part 3: 2000-2004 - Experimenting with Multi-Player
This is part 3 of a look back at 15 years of Quest. Here are links to the previous posts: part 1, part 2.
The first alpha build Quest 3.0 was released in March 2000, and fixed one of the weird design flaws of previous versions by unifying "items" and "objects". Objects now had to have unique names, but they could have aliases, which would be displayed to the player instead of the code name. This version also introduced a disambiguation menu to allow the player to distinguishing between different objects which had same the alias. This is fundamentally the same approach to object handling that Quest still uses today.
That first alpha of Quest 3.0 also added timers. The second alpha in July 2000 added support for a truly experimental feature that never quite took off - online multi-player play. This allowed Quest to connect to a new bit of software I was working on, which started out with the name "QX3" and was later renamed "QuestNet Server".
The idea was that the game ran entirely on the server, and players would connect to it using the Quest software. This would allow multiple players to connect to the same game world, where they would each have their own inventories and be able to interact with other players.
You can get some idea of how it worked by looking at some screenshots for the basic "Arena" demo. Multiple players would appear in the same room, and they could pick up objects, give them to each other, and even hit each other. For example, here's what Bob might see if he joins Alex in the room:
And here's what Alex sees while this is happening:
I thought this was rather nifty, myself, and although it got a reasonable amount of interest from Quest users, it ultimately failed to really get anywhere. I've come across a forum post from 2002 by MaDbRiT which sums it up:
Questnet is a good idea that is kind of struggling to get off the ground. There are no games because there are no players and no one wants to spend aged writing a game if there are no players. What came first, the Chicken or the Egg? The technical demands of hosting a QuestNet game are out of realistic reach of most of us too - even if I wrote a QuestNet game, I couldn't "serve" it - I just don't have the facilities.
In the days when most of us were still using dial-up, the idea of running a server on your home internet connection just didn't make a whole lot of sense.
QuestNet Server would hang around for a while, never getting much use or ever seeing its full potential. I still think there's something in the idea of multi-player interactive fiction, and maybe it's something to revisit some day. Watch this space!
The second alpha of Quest 3.0 also got rid of the separate concept of "characters" - they were now just objects too. It added support for arrays, and arbitrary object properties allowing any kind of data to be attached to an object (although these were separate to the built-in properties or "tags", which meant that you couldn't easily read or update data like an object's "look" description - this flaw was resolved when Quest was rewritten for v5.0, when all object data was finally stored as properties).
A third alpha build followed in September 2000, which added object types - allowing object properties to be inherited. This also added support for creating rooms on-the-fly via script.
In October 2000, I moved to London and started university, so progress with Quest slowed down quite a bit.
In March 2001, Quest 3.0 reached its first beta release. This added support for dynamically creating objects and exits, and added script properties ("actions"). The second beta followed in April, featuring various minor tweaks to get it closer to a releasable version. Quest 3.0 was finally released in September 2001, and QDK was updated at the same time to get a cleaner interface and to support all the new Quest features. It also gained a new script editor.
The new-look start screen allowed you to load a game file, or connect to a multi-player network game:
The main player interface was relatively unchanged from Quest 2.1, although you could now toggle the panes off:
QDK was still looking rather plain:
The Room and Object editors were now grouped into tabs:
The new Script Editor presented a plain English way of editing scripts. It's not dissimilar to Quest 5's script editor, although it did involve opening a pop-up window every time you wanted to edit any individual command, which some people found a bit tiring:
A few bug-fix releases followed very shortly afterwards, and then I started working on v3.1. This added support for MOD music files - something I was into creating myself, but a feature I think was never actually used by anybody. There were various other tweaks, including improvements to the parser. Libraries gained the ability to add panes to QDK (here again is an example of a feature that was added which is now a core part of how Quest works - as of v5.0, all panes in Quest's editor are defined by libraries). Quest 3.1 was released in June 2002.
The next update was version 3.5, released in December 2003, featuring the ability to translate the player interface (although not on a per-game basis - it was a player setting), plus support for text-to-speech and opening ZIP files. Following slightly later in January 2004 was the first non-beta release of QuestNet Server - although, as it would turn out, it would never get another significant release after that, simply keeping pace with features as they were added to the single-player version Quest.
The pace of change was clearly slowing down, as I was keeping busy with my Physics degree. It got even worse after I graduated in 2004, and started working - I didn't really touch Quest for almost two years. But when I finally came back to it, I dived into it in a big way. More on that next time!
NOTE FROM K.V.
Ignore this last section (NOTE FROM K.V.).
I had to add this text to edit this post without running into "Sorry, you can't post that here."
I've been building Quest and working on textadventures.co.uk full-time for a couple of years now, on and off. Despite my best efforts to turn this into my living, I can no longer continue to work on this basis. As of January, I'll be moving on to work on something else, with interactive fiction becoming a side project once again.
We applied to Emerge, a new startup accelerator focusing on education, with our aim of building up ActiveLit. I'm told about 80 companies applied, and we were one of the 20 selected for interview.
Unfortunately we are not one of the 7 or 8 that have been selected to join the programme.
We would like to thank you for taking the time to apply to and interview for Emerge Education '14.
Places are limited and the applications were excellent. It was difficult to select participants from such a strong group. Unfortunately on this occasion, we are not in a position to offer you a place in Emerge Education '14. We hope you will apply to our future programs.
We include below a brief summary of how we arrived at this decision and hope this is helpful to you:
Your product was more developed and had more traction than that of any other applicant to Emerge Education and we were impressed by the user demand it has received;
The selection committee's main concern was a lack of clarity around whether your team had the strategic intent to take ActiveLit from an (already) successful product to a high-growth business;
In addition, applicants that did better in the selection process tended to have more business experience as part of the co-founding team.
I find it difficult to understand the logic here, and in fact this email makes less sense every time I re-read it. The highest traction product of all applicants, but a question mark over our "strategic intent"?
Whatever. You can't expect too much from rejection emails. Any "reasons" given are always post-hoc justifications of the decision made. I expect the most typical would be "your product is not sufficiently developed", so at least it's novel to be turned down because our product is too developed.
It would only require one reason to say yes - "we think there's a good chance of making money if we invest in you". At least in this way it's a more straightforward and honest process than awarding grants - it's refreshingly simple compared to working out why, say, a government body won't award funding. Any rejection from an accelerator is fundamentally because they couldn't find this reason to say "yes", rather than any reasons that may be given for saying "no".
This is the feedback we've been waiting for, then - the simple yes/no answer to the question "Can we convince people that know about money and business and stuff that what we've been working on is viable?"
And the results are in, and the answer, at least from Emerge (and also Wayra), is "no". And that's fine.
They say that it takes grit to succeed, but what if you never give up on an idea that is fundamentally never going to work? Maybe it simply makes more sense for Quest, textadventures.co.uk and ActiveLit to be run as side projects. I've sunk a lot of time into these now - 2 years of full-time effort. I'd be much richer now if I hadn't done this.
Of course, I'd be unhappy. I'm really pleased with what I've achieved. I used to sit at work, seething in frustration, because there were things I wanted to do with interactive fiction that I didn't get time for. That's changed now - I've built a lot of software, explored a lot of angles and spoken to a lot of people, trying to work out how an interactive fiction business might succeed.
And what I've discovered is, I can't make it work. Not right now anyway. Maybe it just needs to live and grow organically for a while. Maybe something external will change, as more and more people discover interactive fiction, or as more teachers use Quest and text adventures in the classroom. I've got nothing left to "push" from my side, and I've run out of money anyway.
And even if nothing external changes, and it never grows beyond what it currently is, it will still have been worthwhile. I don't regret anything. I've built what I wanted to build. I've scratched the itch. I've created software that is being used by all kinds of people for all kinds of things. Children are learning programming, being engaged with reading and writing. More and more people are playing and creating games on the site. I've met some great, interesting people. It's been a lot of fun. It's been totally worth it.
But I can't do this for a living, so it will have to become my hobby again. There are plenty of other things I can do - there are loads of opportunities for software developers at the moment, and there are some great companies out there doing interesting things which I can contribute to. It's an exciting time, and I've now got some great experience that will hopefully prove useful in whatever I move onto next.
LEGup Fail Clinic: textadventures.co.uk and Quest
This talk was given at the London Educational Games Meetup on 28th May 2014.
Link to view on YouTube:
Going It Alone - EXCERPT FROM - How to Be Awesome (Part 1)
This post was originally published on the Stack Overflow blog.
So that's what I did – I decided to build some awesome stuff. In 2010 I quit my job and threw myself head-first into building the things that I wanted to build.
I'd been spending much of my spare time working on my open source project Quest, a system that lets non-programmers write text adventure games, and I knew that teachers were starting to use it in their classrooms, so I thought there might be some opportunity there to make some money out of it.
To be honest, quitting my job to focus on building a text adventure engine did seem kind of silly – but the iPad had just been released, and I was wondering if interactive ebooks might become a thing. If so then maybe I would find myself in the right place at the right time. All the best ideas are kind of hard to distinguish from ridiculous ones, and there was only one way to find out on which side of that dividing line this fell.
And that was really the extent of my "business plan" – I didn't think it through in more detail than that. It was more a case of "what's the worst that could happen?" And the worst case scenario didn't seem too bad – I'd quit my job working as a VB6 developer, but if I wanted another crappy developer job then it wouldn't be that difficult to find one. What I wanted was a good job, and the best way to find one was to increase my skills.
Being quite a frugal person I happened to have enough money saved up that, even if I didn't have any income for a year or so, it wouldn't be a big problem.
So I spent most of the next four years doing various things with Quest and interactive fiction:
I finished my Quest rewrite, and kept on iterating with new releases, turning it from a Windows desktop application into a web app
I massively expanded and improved my website, turning it into a hub for all kinds of text-based games
I built a new product for schools using text adventures in the classroom
I ran workshops in schools getting kids to create their own games
I experimented with being a publisher, turning text games into mobile apps
I wrote my own game which was an experiment in what a modern text adventure might look like
I worked with writers and filmmakers on a project for a book publisher, building a promotional text game for a new sci-fi novel
I made small amounts of money here and there, with a larger amount of money from a few months of contract .NET developer work to top up my finances. Ultimately though, my money ran out.
I had failed to build a successful business, but I had spent years doing work that I enjoyed, and I now had a vastly increased set of skills and a much more interesting CV. I had built some awesome stuff – now I just needed to follow the cycle around, to tell people about it and try to get an awesome job. That's what I'll be talking about in part 2 of this post.
Just in case you think the only way to build awesome stuff is to quit your job and spend four years trying to build an entire business – you don't have to be as batshit insane as me. You can build stuff in your spare time – I still do, it just takes a little bit longer. Build something you're interested in building, something you can be proud of, and ship it. It's the best way to learn, and it's the best way to upgrade your CV.
Looking for a new owner for textadventures.co.uk and Quest
I have been developing Quest and textadventures.co.uk for a long time. It started off as a summer coding project when I was a teenager and wanted to send stupid text adventure games to a friend. Over the last couple of decades it has turned into something far bigger than I could have imagined.
It has alternated between hobby and full-time job, and tinkering with it all these years has taught me huge amounts about writing software, helping turn me into the developer that I am today.
I'm proud of what I've built - various open source projects that have enabled hundreds of thousands of people to build games for the first time, and a website that has become the top hit on Google for "text adventures" and attracts 3,500 users per day, a number which continues to increase.
The software and community around it are in great shape, and I think they have a great future. But the time has come for somebody else to take charge - I want to focus my energy on new projects, and hand over what I've built to somebody else who has the passion to drive things forward.
I am looking for people interested in taking this on. There are quite a lot of different bits, and these wouldn't all necessarily need to go to the same person or company - things could be split up if that looks like the best option. I am open to all suggestions and proposals - my main concern above all else is finding the best home (or homes) for the long-term future for these projects. I am not looking for money and I'm happy to do everything I can to ensure a smooth handover.
If you're interested, please email me at link removed.
What if new owners can't be found?
I really hope that people from the interactive fiction community will want to see Quest and textadventures.co.uk continue, so if you can possibly help then please get in touch. Do you want to keep textadventures.co.uk alive for the community that loves it? Could you take it forward to bigger and better things?
If no suitable new owners come forward by 28th February 2017, then sadly I will have to start the process of shutting down the website and forums. Initially they will become read-only, and I will look to export the data elsewhere (the IF Archive or the Internet Archive) before closing the sites completely.
Quest and Squiffy will remain accessible on GitHub but there will be no further updates. The software will still be able to be downloaded for offline use, but the online web-based versions would no longer be available. The GitHub repositories themselves would probably be transferred to the IFTF.
The different bits
QuestKit
textadventures.co.uk:
The site itself, where people can upload games (not just Quest and Squiffy games, but Inklewriter, Twine and Inform games too) and post reviews and comments
Online player and editor for Quest games
Online editor for Squiffy
Social media accounts:
@textadv
@activelit
facebook.com/textadventures
Various domain names:
textadventures.co.uk
textadventures.uk
textadventures.co
textadventures.net
textadventur.es
textadventure.co.uk
activelit.com
activelit.co.uk
textadventures.co.uk according to Google Analytics:
~3,500 unique visitors/day
83,986 unique visitors in November 2016 (a 14% increase on November 2015)
428,119 page views in November 2016 (18% increase on November 2015)
Average session duration 03m 41s
66% of sessions are from new users, 34% returning
161,203 registered users (115,038 with confirmed email addresses)
In November 2016, new sign-ups from 4,746 users (3,190 with confirmed email addresses)
13,582 games (8,216 are public) of which:
Quest games: 9,892
HTML (Twine, Squiffy etc.) and Inform games: 1,621
Inklewriter games: 1,321
External links (game listings from IFDB, Choice of Games etc): 757
In November 2016, 394 new games (136 are public)
8,317 reviews and 13,414 comments
In November 2016, 197 new reviews and 336 new comments
94,575 games started in Quest's online editor
@TextAdv on Twitter: 921 followers
textadventures on Facebook: 1076 likes
Income and Expenses:
AdSense earns about £50/month for the limited advertising which is currently on the site.
The main costs are for Azure at ~£70/month, and the VPS (hosted by OVH) which runs the Quest online player and editor at £13.59/month ex VAT.
(On Azure, I've been getting a £65/month free credit, so the actual amount billed averages only about £5. This means the total cost for running the site has been about £20/month, which has been entirely offset from the Adsense income.)
Developers needed for textadventures.co.uk and Quest
This is a follow up to Looking for a new owner for textadventures.co.uk and Quest.
Thanks to all of you who have got in touch so far. A lot of people have asked about what would be involved in taking over and running textadventures.co.uk and/or Quest, so this post is to go into a bit more detail about how things are set up and how the work might be split up across different people.
For a smooth transition, I need to find people to fill these four roles:
One or more .NET web developers for textadventures.co.uk and/or ActiveLit, familiar with Azure and ASP.NET MVC and with front-end development using JavaScript and Bootstrap.
One or more JavaScript developers for Quest 6, Squiffy and/or QuestKit. Ideally familiar with back-end and front-end web development, and desktop development using Electron.
One or more .NET developers familiar with both desktop and web development for Quest 5. Ideally familiar with both C# and VB.NET.
A server admin to keep the current browser version of Quest alive (both the Player and the Editor). Needs to know how to run a Windows server. This is currently running on a VPS at OVH. (This is just for the online player and editor – running textadventures.co.uk itself will require a developer familiar with Azure. Eventually if both the Quest Player and Editor are rewritten to use JavaScript, the server admin role becomes redundant).
Of course any of these roles can be combined – after all, they've all been done by me up until now.
textadventures.co.uk and ActiveLit sites
textadventures.co.uk and ActiveLit run on the Azure App Service (formerly known as Azure Websites). Data is stored in Azure SQL and in Azure blob and table storage.
The web-accessible blobs (for game downloads, cover art etc.) are behind a Cloudflare CDN.
The code uses C# and ASP.NET MVC. The front-end uses Bootstrap, JQuery and a little bit of React.
ActiveLit runs alongside textadventures.co.uk on the same Azure infrastructure and talks to the same database.
Quest 5 & 6
There are two parts to Quest – the Player and the Editor. There are also two ways of using Quest – via the web, and via a downloadable Windows desktop application.
The current version is Quest 5, and I also made a start on Quest 6 which is architected quite differently. The new version rewrites the Player back-end to use JavaScript, which means the web version requires no server component (making it much faster, infinitely scalable, distributable on any website, and an end to time-outs while playing), and the desktop version will be cross-platform for the first time (packaged using Electron for Windows, Mac and Linux).
To take on Quest 6, I'm looking for a developer who has experience using the modern JavaScript ecosystem (npm, TypeScript, gulp, webpack and all of that kind of thing). I will work with this person to help get Quest 6 shipped. (It doesn't make sense for me to continue working on this project without somebody to hand it over to, because it will of course need to be maintained after it is shipped). Quest 6 lives in the v6 branch on GitHub.
After Quest 6 is shipped, rewriting the Editor to use JavaScript would also be really useful. That would be a project for the new Quest 6 maintainer, or maybe even someone else. If Quest could be taken to the point where both the Player and the Editor were shipping as 100% JavaScript applications, that would be a massive simplification of the Quest architecture.
Quest's long-term future lies with Quest 6, but it would be good if we can find somebody to maintain Quest 5 for the time being, not least because even if/when Quest 6 ships, it will still be using the same .NET-based Editor that Quest 5 uses.
I've updated the Developers documentation page on the Quest docs site to describe how the various projects that make up Quest 5 together. It is not an easy thing to pick up – there's a lot of code there, and a mixture of languages and technologies reflecting my changing tastes and experience over time. It's stable though, and it shouldn't require big changes because if the Player and Editor both get rewritten using JavaScript then all of it will become obsolete.
If you're interested in taking on one or more of these roles, please email me at link removed.
To reiterate, I am not looking for money. I want to hand these over to somebody (or a group of people) with a passion for IF and a vision for where these products could go in the future. That vision doesn't necessarily have to agree with my vision (that's what stepping back is about) – this is a massive opportunity for somebody to take over running a popular website and IF development system. textadventures.co.uk is the place people come when they search for text adventures on the web, so it's a big gateway to the world of interactive fiction. Taking on the website doesn't have to be about taking on Quest.
I've only got Alexa rankings to prove it (so take them with a pinch of salt) but the site appears to be bigger than other IF sites like IFDB, intfiction.org and Choice of Games. It's how a lot of people start out making text adventures – in fact, it's introduced a lot of people to programming in the first place. It's used by schools to get children into coding and creative writing.
Thanks again for responses so far. If you can't help out yourself, please help spread the word to somebody who might be able to take this on and ensure it has a future.
Meet the new textadventures.co.uk team
I announced last month that I was handing over textadventures.co.uk and Quest. Many thanks to everybody who got in touch to volunteer to help. I was really pleased that so many people want to see these projects continue into the future. I am now happy to announce that we have a new team in place!
Luis Felipe Morales will be taking over the textadventures.co.uk and ActiveLit websites, and also Squiffy. A programmer since the 1980s, Luis has been involved with the Spanish interactive fiction community since he was young. He has maintained and created several internet portals and now works as a freelancer.
Jay Nabonne and Andy a.k.a The Pixie will be taking over development of Quest. Both have been very active members of the forums for a long time. Jay is a lifelong programmer and game player who is interested in not only creating games but helping others to do the same. A California native, he now lives with his wife in the UK. Andy has been playing and creating text adventure games since the Eighties, has been using Quest for over five years and has written various guides and libraries for the system.
Greg Fenton and Nathan Clive Gerard will each be running servers for Quest's WebPlayer and WebEditor. Greg is a developer who wrote his first text adventure in dBase III on an IBM PC back in the very late 1980s shortly after leaving high school. Nathan is a regular player of text adventures from the UK (currently living in the USA), who spends his days setting up and looking after web servers in the cloud.
I'll be working with each of them over the coming months to ensure a smooth transition. Please welcome them aboard!
A History of Quest
by The Pixie, from the documentation
When I took over Quest, I was intrigued to see its history. Alex did some retrospectives in some blog posts, allowing a timeline to be constructed.
The roots of Quest, up to Quest 1.0, from Alex's first game when he was 11 to the first Quest.
https://blog.textadventures.co.uk/2013/11/07/quest-is-15/
From Quest 1.0 to 3.0, seeing the introduction of a GUI for writing games.
From Quest 3.0 to 3.5, via multi-player.
https://blog.textadventures.co.uk/2013/11/27/15-years-of-quest-part-3-2000-2004-experimenting-with-multi-player/
Part 3 indicated that he intended to write more, but I have not been able to find it. His next blog post indicates he got a proper job, so perhaps he never got around to it.
Earlier Quest
Quest versions 1 to 4 were a development of the same system. Quest 1 consisted of a player and a file format - a format quite unlike the XML format of Quest 5, but one that would be developed across the first four version.
With Quest 2, we got an editor and an update to the player. The player even at this time looked like the modern interface.
07/Nov/98 Quest 1.0 released
??/Aug/99 Quest 2.0 released, with beta version of the QDK editor
??/Nov/99 Quest 2.1 released, with play screen laid out as we know it today
??/Jan/01 Quest 2.19 released
??/Sep/01 Quest 3.0 released (with a short-lived multiplayer option)
??/Jun/02 Quest 3.1 released
29/Jun/03 First forum post (or first I could find anyway)
??/Dec/03 Quest 3.5 released
??/Jan/04 QuestNet Server first and only version released
17/Jan/07 Quest 4.0 released
02/Feb/07 Quest web player goes beta. Previously players could only download games to play, now they could play them in the browser.
Quest 5
Quest 5 was a big change. I get the impression the code was entirely written, now using C#. The file format was entirely different, using XML. The new interface was HTML. Another big change was that Quest went open source, and was now free to both edit and play.
https://blog.textadventures.co.uk/2011/08/30/quest-5-0-is-out-now/
I joined the Quest community in the Summer of 2011, when the beta release of Quest 5 was out.
17/Jul/11 Quest 5 tutorial released (Bob and the defibrillator featured in the tutorial for earlier versions by the way).
01/Aug/11 My first forum post!
30/Aug/11 Quest 5.0 released
12/May/12 Quest 5.2 released (a web version of the editor)
14/Jan/13 Quest 5.3 released (updated interface using Chrome, web fonts, map, changeable POV, light/dark)
28/Mar/13 Quest 5.4 released (text processor, code view for scripts, JS object; some XML attribute names changed - which can cause problems if opening games from earlier versions)
05/May/13 Quest 5.4.1 released (exits with scripts need an attribute set to make the script run)
01/Mar/14 Quest 5.5 released (customisable UI, the Features tab and a contribution from me)
03/Aug/14 Quest 5.5.1 released
??/Feb/15 Quest 5.6 released (no blog post for some reason, so hard to find what got added, but a forum post indicated it was mostly a bug fix)
19/Sep/16 Quest 5.6.3 released (Alex's last release)
11/Jan/17 Alex officially leaves Quest and textadventures.co.uk
19/Jul/17 Quest 5.7.1 released (there was no official 5.7.0!)
02/Feb/18 Quest 5.7.2 released
Quest 5.8.0
https://blog.textadventures.co.uk/2018/09/03/quest-5-8-is-out/
THE FUTURE OF QUEST
https://textadventures.co.uk/forum/questkit/topic/t9k4lvtfuuksmwbjpzvm9g/the-future-of-quest


We've raised £0 to my husband passed away suddenly on Sunday.we are aiming to raise 5000 pounds for his send off. Any donations greatfully received thank you.
My husband sadly passed away suddenly on Sunday and wanna give him the best send off we can. If you can help us raise 5000 pounds please feel free to donate whatever you can Any donations are greatfully recieved thank you.
This is to help the family of Marie Baxter who passed away suddenly with funeral costs, every little bit would help massively.
raise money through donations in lieu of flowers for two local charities in memory of Jeanette Woods.


text:
Q: Low disk space on /boot preventing update in Ubuntu 22.04 and warnings of missing firmware which aren't missing? When I run software updater in Ubunutu 22.04 it gives a low disk space in /boot error and fails to update.  When I run sudo apt upgrade (after sudo apt update), I get warnings of possible missing firmware, write errors and errors processing packages. I checked if these firmware files are missing, but they are in that directory.
I checked other answers on askubuntu and the  most common cause I can find is that there are lots of kernels installed,I only have three installed (including the one in use). I followed the answers on this askubuntu page and tried using sudo apt autoremove which gives the same errors as sudo apt upgrade. I also tried to install ubuntu-tweaks but it states it doesn't have a release file and is unable to locate package (after adding the repository).
I would prefer not to remove the other kernels due to an earlier issue I had once, when my system wouldn't boot with the most recent kernel after an update, but did on an older kernel.  I am also using LUKS to encrypt my hard drive, so as I understand I need a separate boot partition. My /boot partition is 500mb in size with 25 mb free according to disks, although system updater says 0 bytes are free in the error.
Can anyone recommend the best way to resolve this?  Do I have to remove the other kernels, or can I safely resize my boot partition?
Output from the upgrade, autoremove commands and the list of kernels installed are below, currently 5.15.0-37-generic is being used.
sudo apt upgrade output
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
2 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
Setting up linux-firmware (20220329.git681281e4-0ubuntu3.2) ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.15.0-37-generic
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/yellow_carp_gpu_info.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/vangogh_gpu_info.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_rlc.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_mec2.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_mec.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_me.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_pfp.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_ce.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_sdma1.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_sdma.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/sienna_cichlid_mes.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/navi10_mes.bin for module amdgpu
zstd: error 25 : Write error : No space left on device (cannot write compressed block)
E: mkinitramfs failure zstd -q -1 -T0 25
update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-5.15.0-37-generic with 1.
dpkg: error processing package linux-firmware (--configure):
 installed linux-firmware package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Setting up linux-image-5.15.0-37-generic (5.15.0-37.39) ...
Processing triggers for linux-image-5.15.0-37-generic (5.15.0-37.39) ...
/etc/kernel/postinst.d/dkms:
 * dkms: running auto installation service for kernel 5.15.0-37-generic
   ...done.
/etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools:
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.15.0-37-generic
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/yellow_carp_gpu_info.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/vangogh_gpu_info.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_rlc.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_mec2.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_mec.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_me.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_pfp.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_ce.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_sdma1.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_sdma.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/sienna_cichlid_mes.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/navi10_mes.bin for module amdgpu
zstd: error 25 : Write error : No space left on device (cannot write compressed block)
E: mkinitramfs failure zstd -q -1 -T0 25
update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-5.15.0-37-generic with 1.
run-parts: /etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools exited with return code 1
dpkg: error processing package linux-image-5.15.0-37-generic (--configure):
 installed linux-image-5.15.0-37-generic package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 linux-firmware
 linux-image-5.15.0-37-generic
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

dpkg -l linux-image-* | grep ^ii output

ii  linux-image-5.15.0-27-generic          5.15.0-27.28 amd64        Signed kernel image generic
ii  linux-image-5.15.0-33-generic          5.15.0-33.34 amd64        Signed kernel image generic
ii  linux-image-generic-hwe-22.04          5.15.0.37.39 amd64        Generic Linux kernel image

sudo apt autoremove output
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
2 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Setting up linux-firmware (20220329.git681281e4-0ubuntu3.2) ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.15.0-37-generic
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/yellow_carp_gpu_info.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/vangogh_gpu_info.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_rlc.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_mec2.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_mec.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_me.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_pfp.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_ce.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_sdma1.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_sdma.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/sienna_cichlid_mes.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/navi10_mes.bin for module amdgpu
zstd: error 25 : Write error : No space left on device (cannot write compressed block)
E: mkinitramfs failure zstd -q -1 -T0 25
update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-5.15.0-37-generic with 1.
dpkg: error processing package linux-firmware (--configure):
 installed linux-firmware package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Setting up linux-image-5.15.0-37-generic (5.15.0-37.39) ...
Processing triggers for linux-image-5.15.0-37-generic (5.15.0-37.39) ...
/etc/kernel/postinst.d/dkms:
 * dkms: running auto installation service for kernel 5.15.0-37-generic
   ...done.
/etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools:
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.15.0-37-generic
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/yellow_carp_gpu_info.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/vangogh_gpu_info.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_rlc.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_mec2.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_mec.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_me.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_pfp.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_ce.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_sdma1.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/cyan_skillfish_sdma.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/sienna_cichlid_mes.bin for module amdgpu
W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/amdgpu/navi10_mes.bin for module amdgpu
zstd: error 25 : Write error : No space left on device (cannot write compressed block)
E: mkinitramfs failure zstd -q -1 -T0 25
update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-5.15.0-37-generic with 1.
run-parts: /etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools exited with return code 1
dpkg: error processing package linux-image-5.15.0-37-generic (--configure):
 installed linux-image-5.15.0-37-generic package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 linux-firmware
 linux-image-5.15.0-37-generic
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Output of lsblk -e 7 -o name,fstype,size,fsused,label,partlabel,mountpoint,uuid
NAME FSTYPE   SIZE FSUSED LABEL PARTLABEL MOUNTPOINT UUID
sda         931.5G
├─sda1
│              16M              Microsoft reserved partition
│
├─sda2
│           466.6G
├─sda3
│    vfat     512M              EFI System Partition
│                                                    79FC-D483
├─sda4
│    crypto   464G                                   d64463f7-a3f2-4e6d-aa20-24502db38777
│ └─sda4_crypt
│    ext4   463.9G  37.8G                 /          5adad8d4-88aa-48ef-a789-9b042a566764
└─sda5
     ext4   476.7M 261.9M                 /boot      fe57f9a0-e2fe-4330-96c5-0be9299de1cc

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Artech Realtors is happy to announce the launch of its 56th project, Artech Courtyard at Ambalamukku, Thiruvananthapuram.
Inspired by the time-honored courtyard for the best of contemporary and traditional architecture, Artech Courtyard offers you the privacy, space and freedom for a great city life. At the same time, it offers the opportunity for families to bond and children to have the fun and frolic, thing that you always want them to have.
On this occasion, we cordially invite you to join us on the auspicious occasion of Bhoomi pooja at the project site on Monday, 15th of December, between 9.15 am and 9.45 am.
Looking forward to your gracious presence.


McDonald's Birthday Party Made Special ~ Gracias Latism!
McDonald's Birthday Party Made Special … Gracias Latism!
It all started with this birthday card I created at the LATISM (Latinos in Tech Innovation and Social Media) Conference in Houston, TX. McDonald's was a generous sponsor of the conference. As a contest and a 40th Birthday wish to the Egg McMuffin, attendees were encouraged to create a birthday card to the Egg McMuffin. I hardly do anything crafty but this mama wanted to win the grand prize: a birthday party at a local McDonald's restaurant including a limo ride to the restaurant. Who wouldn't want that for their kid's birthday party?!
McDonald's delivered on an awesome party!
A little while after I returned home from the conference, I was notified that my 'Tweet card' was a finalist for the contest. I did my best to share it with everyone I knew to get their vote. And we did! We WON! It was worth it. McDonald's delivered on an awesome party!
<<~Here's our handsome 'Spidey'! He couldn't wait for his party to begin. Since we only let him have McDonald's as a treat, he couldn't believe we were taking him there for a whole afternoon to be with his buddies and family.
A limo ride to McDonald's?! Umm, yeah!! We were delighted that several of our friends could join us for the ride. As parents, we joked that we'd have these photos to share in 10-12 years when hopefully some of these same friends would be hopping in a limo again to head to their prom.
In the limo like rock stars!
GRACIAS familia for celebrating our little guy's big day!
This local San Antonio venue was a delightful surprise. Many of our guests who are long-time residents of San Antonio had no idea that the location had such large plays cape and semi-private room for birthday parties. The excellent staff was also there to play games with the children and serve our guests with their favorite McDonald's treats and eats! For the brief moments when the children weren't chasing one another in the play scape, they were playing Stack-the-box with Big Mac boxes.
What is it with kids and empty boxes?! They love 'em!
We all enjoyed the party, food, desert treats, company and yummy cake! Here's the birthday boy and our younger son who will have to have his own McDonald's birthday party in the Fall 🙂 The birthday boy with his favorite teenage cousins and (at the bottom) us proud parents with our son!
Happy Birthday to my little Spidey!
We received so many Thank You's and compliments for the party. Honestly, all the thanks goes to McDonald's and LATISM! As a member of LATISM, I have been appreciative of McDonald's for supporting this non-profit organization and it's mission to further the Latino community in business, education, tech innovation and health. As a winner of this wonderful contest and a parent, I am appreciative of McDonald's for making this celebration so special and memorable for our family.
¡Mil Gracias y Me Encanta!
Wow this is fantastic!! Weren't you saying you never win anything?!! This is awesome! Your little man looked beyond thrilled!!
So happy you won!! He looks like he is on cloud 9 🙂 Que lindo!!


text:
Q: Copy to clipboard buttons in browser no longer working Starting yesterday, all of the sites I use frequently that have a "copy" button that copies text to my clipboard no longer work.
I can still highlight the text and cmd + c to copy, but would really like to know why the browser buttons are not working. This occurs in safari, firefox and chrome so it isn't browser related.
Running OSX 10.11.5
13in MBP retina
It is also a company computer, so please no solutions of erase and reinstall OS.

A: Some websites' 'copy to clipboard' buttons require Adobe Flash Player depending on your browser. Make sure flash is installed and up-to-date; see if that helps.


Good evening everybody, who love elegant and cute creations, this is often another nice chance to create a granny square with flower in the center with their own hands in just a brief amount of your time. Very beautiful and attractive with modern design. Here is step by step video tutorial without missing details to learn the skills. These granny square is possibly one of the cutest I've ever seen in our crochet life. Ideal to crochet blankets, pillows and other items. So, let's get right down to the business.


Lloyds first said it was not aware of any issues, but has now confirmed some customers are having trouble accessing online banking.
We are now aware that some customers may be experiencing intermittent issues when trying to access their online banking service this morning.
A Lloyds Banking Group spokesman said: "We are now aware that some customers may be experiencing intermittent issues when trying to access their online banking service".
Customers started complaining on social media on Sunday evening, with one user posting concerns about access to online banking services from 5pm.
Brent crude futures have risen 20 percent in 2019 to around $63 a barrel, but most of that increase took place in early January. Gulf Coast imports, but they have been falling in recent years due to the collapsing Venezuelan oil production.
Paul Barton tried to get the bank's attention with the message: 'I am going to troll you Lloyds Bank until you listen. "My internet is fine but I can not access my bank on any device", the user said. I need to check my balance and other things'. Apologies are pretty useless to those trying to sort payments'.


text:
Laxman Limbu
Laxman Limbu is a Nepali singer and composer. He entered Nepali music industry after he won the title of Taplejung Idol, and later became the first runner up of Limbuwan Idol. The young versatile singer from Terathung has released one album — 'Khulduli' and he gained popularity with the title song
'Khulduli'.
Limbu began his musical journey in Dharan as a part of a big deusi and bhailo group of a Limbu community in 2010 AD. After his first musical stint, he was motivated to participate in Taplejung Idol. He not only participated in the singing competition in 2011 AD but he won the competition winning the title of Taplejung Idol. In 2012 AD, he competed in another singing competition — Limbuwan Idol and became the first runner up. He also took part in other singing competitions like Singing Star and Khoj Pratibha.
With his musical talent and little experience, Limbu came to Kathmandu in 2013 AD to pursue music in the industry. He then became a part of international program in Hong Kong. The same year, he also recorded the song 'Thorai Thorai Paagli Uni' for the collection album titled 'Nilam'.
In 2014 AD, Limbu released his debut album — 'Khulduli' which catapulted him to fame. The title track featuring singer Shreya Sotang became an instant hit. The album has eight different songs which range from rock to pop to semi classical to audhunik, and it established him as a versatile singer.
The singer who has musical training in eastern classical music is continuing lending his voice to various songs as well as to various concerts. He is also collaborating with many other artistes while he aims to become a playback singer.
Himal Tamang
Manju Lawati
झलकमान गन्धर्व'को आज ८६औं जन्मजयन्ती
अनुस्मालाई इजिप्टमा मिस इको एसिया उपाधि
मोडलिङ संगै चलचित्र यात्रामा समिर खान
नायक बन्ने लक्ष्यमा सल्भिक सुर्खेती
स्थापित हुँदै सुन्दरी मोडल नग्मा श्रेष्ठ (फोटो फिचर)


After launching its flagship Coolpad Max smartphone in India, the Chinese company is gearing up to launch yet another smartphone in India. The new smartphone will be a selfie smartphone.
Coolpad Selfie smartphone will be launched in India on 10th August. The company has started sending media invites for an launch event in India next month on 10th August.
As you can see in the Invite, the teaser reads, "Believe in Your #Selfie". This confirms that the smartphone will be a selfie focused smartphone.
As of now no other details Coolpad selfie smartphone are known. The company might launch the new smartphone under Rs. 10,000. It will give tough competition to other smartphones in this range.
Coolpad Selfie will be launched in India on 10 August.


Second thing you can do is vacuum the microfiber couch to get rid of debris or dust. After that, you can brush the spot that is stained with dry brush slowly. After that, you can use liquid to clean the necessary stain after considering the code on the label of the couch. After that, you can high dryer it. To clean microfiber couch is not very hard. The first thing you should do before cleaning it is to see the code of the label of the couch to see how you should clean it so that it won't get worse. Furniture & Furnishing.
In term of the couch fabric, leather fabric can always be a good choice. However, you should mind the design of the couch, don't choose one that has too many variation designs. This can make the couch look too 'busy' for minimalist house. You can choose the design of the couch based on the concept of the house so it will fit naturally in the room. Talking about the concept of the room, these days, there are many people use minimalist concept for their house. Not only that it is also durable in term of style, but it is also very simple. Architecture.
Before purchasing furniture, people should consider several important things. It is very important to think wisely before purchasing furniture for their house. It is so because most of the people hope that the furniture that they are about to buy is going to stay longer in their house before it's broken or less up to date. The endurance of the couch can be seen from the materials of the couch. Most people like to have a leather couch or microfiber couch as a choice because it is durable and good for various situation of the house. Moreover, the design of the couch is various and the model can stand for quite long period of time. It will help you stay on the up to date track and you won't have to buy a new couch just to keep up with the time. Furniture & Furnishing.