text:
The Grind: 1UP's RPG Blog
Full coverage on console, PC, MMO and tabletop RPGs.
Table Talk: The Best Kind of Foundation
By Kat Bailey Mar 08, 2010 12:51 AM PST
Category: Tabletalk: A Weekly Pen & Paper RPG Column
New game masters have a lot to think about when designing a new adventure; I certainly did. I went in with an idea of how I wanted the story to go in the short term, and started building encounters and other challenges from there. Unfortunately, it quickly became kind of obvious that I was out of my league.
We made a flow chart while recapping the last session, and I wish I had it here because it was a pretty concise summary of our epic journey to that point. There were lots of arrows, a notation that we were "smuggling," then "not smuggling," and at least one "GTFO." I actually had one of the people take a picture, but it seems to have been misplaced, which is a pity. Unfortunate, the flow chart was much better much than the session before last, which is to say the session was lousy, mainly because my tendency to contrive events got a little of hand. So, having made little forward progress since my GM'ing debut, I decided to mod a pre-gen adventure instead for my most recent Thursday night adventure.
I've participated in a few pre-generated adventures before, mostly as a means to test out a system in a one-shot or game a little over the weekends. The adventures I participated in were run straight from the book with ready-made characters, but I was going for something a tiny bit more complicated. Basically, any pre-gen adventure I selected would have to work with the setting and be easy to segue into; and as it happened, I found just what I was looking for at Wizards of the Coast.
It's called "Dawn of Defiance," and it's a twelve chapter pre-gen that's available for download on the Star Wars Saga website. It's set in the "dark times" -- the era between the foundation of the Empire and the formation of the Rebel Alliance -- and is centered around organizing the resistance for the first time, which happens to be exactly what our campaign is based around in the first place. It was actually a little scary how easy it was to modify the adventure, given how well it meshed with the party's back stories and overall goals.
The story runs over the course of roughly twelve chapters, and takes a Star Wars Saga party from level 1 to 20. The first thing I ended up doing was junking the first chapter, since it was only really a means by which to get the party engaged with Bail Organa. Basically, what happens is that everyone happens to be on a station when one of Organa's agents appears with some stormtroopers giving chase. After a series of events that results in the agent getting frozen in carbonite, the team heads to Alderaan and meets Organa for themselves, after which the campaign gets started in earnest.
In my case though, the party was already a bit above level 1, and they were sitting on Rodia. What I wanted to do was skip step 1 and get directly to the Alderaan part, and that meant transferring the role of the Organa agent to somebody else. Luckily, I had just introduced a Jedi to the storyline, and it seemed logical that such a character would actively work with Organa to bring down the Empire in the early days. Obviously, he's doomed at some point, but that can happen later.
My own "prelude" adventure turned out to be pretty short and simple, but it had direction, and was even a little dramatic. Basically, the Jedi wanted to go to Kessel to meet the Jedi Conclave that had been called to ambush Darth Vader (see the events of "Star Wars: Purge.") After a skill challenge in which the main heroes have to work through a debris field to get into the Kessel System, they landed at the abandoned mine and worked their way in. From that point on, there was only one more actual skill challenge and no encounters, but I kind of wanted there to be an element of dread in there; something had obviously happened to the Jedi, but what? Obviously, they were all dead, and that was exactly what the heroes discovered when they reached the main cavern.
The skill challenge involved the Jedi NPC going into a hopeless rage as he realized that the order had truly been annihilated and swore to take revenge. The party had to roll persuasion checks to calm him down, or he would fall to the dark side and become an actual foe. At that point, I would have had to find a different way to get the party to Alderaan, but I was okay with the idea of a friend-turned-enemy raging around the galaxy. The heroes passed the challenge with flying colors though, and they were soon off to meet Bail Organa. The best part of this is that I can bring the Jedi back anytime I want and use him to spin the story off in any direction I please, so I'm not completely locked into the pre-gen adventure.
The second part of the pre-gen takes place on Felucia, and involved trekking through the jungle to raid an Imperial prison. In the story, it's just a mission to rescue a defecting Admiral, but the fact that it's a secret prison has all kinds of story implications -- I'm pretty sure half the party has had relatives who went missing under Imperial rule -- so I now have additional ways to spin off the story. The only complication came in a perfectly logical quest one of the players made to Organa -- they asked for some swoops so they could make it through the jungle. It seemed contrived to say "sorry, you're going to have to trek through the jungle because I can't procure them on short notice," so I granted the rides. It wasn't a huge deal either, since it was a cinch to modify the skill challenge on the planet; it was a fairly simple matter of having the hazards pop up when they failed "piloting" challenges, as opposed to "survival" challenges. And considering that only two party members were trained pilots, they hit pretty much all of the hazards.
Anyway, the point here is that pre-gens make for a great baseline, but you certainly don't have to follow them exactly. Making use of "Dawn of Defiance" has given me a much better idea of how to structure an adventure; in particular, how to set up some decent skill challenges. So if you're a new GM, definitely make sure to check them out when you're planning your new adventure. They don't have to be the whole campaign -- just the best kind of foundation
Table Talk: Things Fall Apart
By Kat Bailey Feb 19, 2010 3:49 PM PST
Category: Tabletalk: A Weekly Pen & Paper RPG Column
I'm a firm believer in the idea that a campaign can never truly be derailed if you're a smart GM. Part of the appeal of something like Dungeons & Dragons is that they have have an organic story; something that can grow and change with the characters. Of course, sometimes things really can go awry, leaving the GM dumbfounded as the heroes go merrily on their way. Such was the case during last night's session.
To recap: I'm currently running my first ever campaign in Star Wars Saga, so I'm basically learning on the job. In our previous episode, the heroes went through a few simple encounters to escape Imperial-occupied Tibannapolis, after which I spent some time ad-libbing to get them where I wanted them to go. When the session opened, I had them right where I wanted them -- on Imperial-occupied Rishi.
Everything started out well. One of the Jedi unexpectedly asked to check for other Force-users on the planet, which allowed me to quickly throw in a plot element that was supposed to come up later without revealing too much. That got the group intrigued, but they still had to worry about delivering some spice to a local crime lord, which meant having them trek through the jungle and all the way to a hidden base. They couldn't risk dragging the spice through the Imperial checkpoint and into the jungle though, so they left it on the ship.
Perfect, I thought.
I had set up some encounters with wild beasts in the jungle to make things a little more interesting, and even included a little backstory behind the appearance of some offworld critters (they were pets of the crime lord who had gotten loose -- but nobody asked). As usual though, they were a bit too easy. In the early going at least, the Jedi are just really powerful; they have these talents that can wreck opponents in seconds. They aren't all-powerful, but a reasonable roll can crush even powerful foes in seconds. That's what happened to my "mid-boss." a Nexu that was annihilated in one turn by a Force Stun. My only solace was that he got in one extremely nasty attack roll that managed to badly wound the medic. But really, their easy victory wasn't that big a deal.
The "big deal" was what happened not long afterword. The party met up with my NPCs -- a rebel cell -- in the ruins of the crime lord's base (it had been cleared out during an Imperial raid), and learned that the planet was locked down. In order to escape, they would need the cell's help, but not before doing something for them first.
(Random fact: The cell was lead by a woman we ended up nicknaming Lyssa Mary Sue Skywalker Picard Bailey, simply because I started her description with, "She has long brown hair..." Let this be a lesson: Be careful with your descriptions. We all had a good laugh though).
When the party rolled back into the city to check on the ship, they found that it was being guarded by some 16 soldiers. I was kind of hoping they would turn around, but the leader pulled out his fake ID and said that he wanted to get on his ship. The next thing I knew, the soldiers were trying to arrest the party, blasters were coming out and initiative was being rolled. Our Mon Calamari Jedi used a massive force attack to crush all of the guards at once, then the party sliced through two separate locks to get to the Nasty Butler (yes, that's what they named their ship).
The Imperials had stripped away the guns and closed the roof, but even that wasn't enough to stop them. They cranked the engines, crashed through the ferrocrete wall, outran a squadron of TIEs and punched it into hyperspace. They cheered and high-fived while I stood by with the tattered remains of my plot. Shellshocked only begins to describe how I felt at that moment.
So I made a few mistakes here. I basically put the players in a situation where they had to fight their way out, since being arrested probably meant being executed in a hurry. Not only that, but the stormtroopers were all mooks, so they were easily defeated by the Jedi area of effect power. Even my trump cards were simply outrun by the YT-2400. In retrospect, I should have had the guards let them go under the premise that they were using the heroes to lead the Imperials to the rebel hideout. But even that might not necessarily have worked.
The positive element was that it was a pretty spectacular escape, certainly more spectacular than anything I had set up to that point. And I was able to achieve one objective -- they lost the spice shipment that brought them to the planet in the first place, which means that Jabba the Hutt is going to be kind of pissed. More importantly though, they've gotten the Empire's attention. Those two elements make for some very good story hooks.
And it's not even like I have to abandon all of the plot elements I had in place. Lyssa Mary Sue Skywalker Picard Bailey can still work her way into the plot, as can the "Force scream" that the heroes picked up earlier in the adventure. The story marches on, I just need to get better at accounting for human players ... and Jedi
Table Talk: Taking the Reins
By Kat Bailey Feb 14, 2010 3:16 PM PST
Category: Tabletalk: A Weekly Pen & Paper RPG Column
It's been about a year now since I started seriously getting into tabletop gaming, and last week was a big moment. Having spent all of my time dancing to the tune of various other GMs, I finally got to run my own campaign in Star Wars Saga. I think the words we're looking for here are "liberating" and "terrifying."
I had been planning this for a while, but it still came as kind of a surprise. The plan was for the GM at the time to run a few of his plots while I got my own adventure ready, then hand over the reins at an opportune time. Ideally, with plenty of warning. Didn't quite work out that way though.
I had skipped the most recent session because I was severely behind with my work when the GM messaged me, "Yeah, they decided to sell Tibannapolis. I've got nothing now. I know I said I would give you more warning, but do you want to try running the game?"
And just like that, it was time for me to roll up my sleeves and get plotting. Of course, most of my original plot had revolved around the notion that they were all based in one location and trying to hide a few Jedi. With the place now overrun with the Empire and one of the Jedi hanging from a weather vane, I had to come up with a new plan.
The story itself wasn't too hard to figure out. The former GM became a player and rolled up a Duros scoundrel who happened to own a freighter (a YT-2400), so I had a natural out. The problem was in the details of ensuring that I had all of the mechanics down cold and balanced the mechanics properly, which meant a lot of reading on a week when I was supposed to be working on a review and a feature on top of blogging and news (yeah, I'm pretty busy). It was an exciting opportunity, I just didn't want to screw it up.
When the big day finally arrived, I tried my best to go in with an air of confidence. That's the secret to success in anything, I think -- do your best to sound authoritive and confident, even if you're secretly terrified that you're getting everything wrong. We're animals, so we naturally want to follow the one who sounds like they know what they're doing. It's how politicians get elected all the time.
The first half of the session went more or less according to plan. Geet Banif the Duros Scoundrel rescued one of the Jedi from the weathervane, and ended up blowing a hole through one of the city's bulkheads. After a quick encounter with some stormtroopers, everyone leapt onto the ship and fled the incoming TIE Fighters. I actually made it pretty easy on purpose -- the team had been annhilated in pretty much every encounter to that point, and badly needed some confidence. I also kind of wanted to get them working together as a team. There were a few contrivances (a biker gang showed up to provide a convenient distraction at one point), but it overall came off well.
I'm not going into detail about my plans after that because I know some of the group reads this blog, but I had to improvise quite a bit after that. As it turned out, the Duros was in hock with Jabba the Hutt, and needed to go to Tatooine and report in on a shipment he had just made. So from that point, I was pretty much putting together encounters and other situations on the fly to keep everyone busy while I tried to get everything in position for the next leg of the story. Admittedly, I'm still working on my ability to keep things moving, but that really all comes with experience.
With the end of the session, pretty much everything was in position, and everyone was laughing and having fun for the first time in quite a while. Success and comraderie will do that, I guess. As the GM though, it's my job to build them up before knocking them all down. That's for the next session though.
Now that I've got the mechanics down, my evil powers can truly begin to awaken. They're in so much trouble.
Table Talk: Remembering One-Shots
By Kat Bailey Jan 22, 2010 7:07 PM PST
Category: Tabletalk: A Weekly Pen & Paper RPG Column
In retrospect, I wish someone had just run a one-shot for me when I was trying to break into pen & paper RPGs back in college. It would have made life much easier for all involved, including the GM. Instead, my group (a tiny group of dweebs who worked together at the time) insisted on trying run a full-blown campaign with fully-developed characters.
Big mistake -- the wheels came off faster than you could say "neeeeeeeeerds."
The problem was that everyone but the DM was a complete roleplaying newbie, and the campaign was bound to be too ambitious (even if it was a GURPs campaign). We were all wrapped up in dreams of glory while creating our characters, barely aware of trifling matters like, I don't know, party composition. When the adventure actually started, there was little cohesion, no one knew much about the battle system, and everything fell apart.
Now, I'm sure there are plenty of rookie roleplayers who have done just fine with a full-blown campaign. Practically any obstacle can be overcome with diligent research and preparation on the part of the DM and the players. But for the DM who doesn't want their campaign to fall apart when dealing with new players, or even just a new system, the one-shot is the answer.
Sounds pretty simple, but I've seen even experienced campaigners get blindsided by an unfamiliar system. I've mentioned my group's issues with Shadowrun in the past, what with the philosophical mismatch and the truly esoteric rules. I walked into the middle of the adventure completely unprepared for what was ahead of me, and I wasn't alone. The combat in particular required a complete shift in our group's thnking (namely: don't kick down the door).
We've since internalized that rather brutal lesson and started running one-shots befored jumping into full-blown campaigns, with considerable success. The pre-generated characters included with the campaign take care of the basics, but tend to feature enough of a generalized backstory and personality that we can leave our own personal stamp on them. Such adventures usually allow players to see a system at its most efficient, if not its very best. It's great for rookies and veterans alike.
We formally started our Star Wars Saga campaign yesterday, with the one-shot coming the week before. It took place during Episode 1 of all things, during the Trade Federation occupation of Naboo. Our group consisted of a human, a droid, a Wookie, a human Jedi and a Gungan, and our goal was to escape the royal palace. Yeah, I know, a Gungan. It worked out better than you might think, if only because the player is well-versed in awful accents.
The adventure itself was fairly simple, but it incorporated everything we needed to know about the system. It gave most of the classes a chance to shine, required us to make liberal use of our character's skillsets, and involved several battles (with copious use of "roger roger" in each). In the end, we learned that we were all responsible for informing the Republic that Naboo was under blockade in the first place, and cheered our place in Star Wars history (right before asking ourselves, "Wait, does that mean we were the impetus for the prequels? What have we done?")
Ultimately, campaigns are more satisfying than simple one-shots with pre-gens simply because they allow for more in the way of story development and personalized characters, but one-shots seem to get discounted more than they should. It's easy for a campaign to collapse under the weight of inexperienced players or unfamiliarity with a system, which ultimately leaves a lot of disenchanted roleplayers. So my message to new players is to take it slow and feel your way into roleplaying before you leap off the deep and try creating a full-blown character (fun as that may be). And experienced players? Just accept that you might not be ready to leap into a new system with both feet. In the end, I think a lot of people will end up happier.
Table Talk: The Perils of Choosing the Wrong System
By Kat Bailey Jan 15, 2010 11:49 PM PST
Category: Tabletalk: A Weekly Pen & Paper RPG Column
Getting a group of nerds together to play one game is a dangerous business, as I'm sure anyone who's tried gaming online will tell you. When you're all trying to play something like Dungeons & Dragons or Shadowrun though, the pitfalls grow exponentially. Every group has its own personality, and something as simple as picking the wrong system can doom a campaign before it even gets started. I've discovered this firsthand over the past year or so.
When I joined my group last year, they were in the midst of a Shadowrun campaign. Now Shadowrun is a very specialized game, the sort meant for players who love to get into the nitty gritty minutiae of creating a character. Parties must be carefully planned in advance, and every relevant skill must be accounted for. More important, it's not a kick-down-the-door game like Dungeons & Dragons. Extreme planning is required, or the party will almost certainly die.
As I soon discovered, our group wasn't really cut out for Shadowrun. Most of our veterans were D&D types, and their natural inclination was to shoot everything on sight. In a game like Shadowrun, tha is a bad idea. Needless to say, our group didn't last very long. We went back and tried again a few more times, but the results were almost always the same. If we weren't setting off car alarms with our pathetic lack of stealth, individual members were inexplicably throwing aside careful planning in favor of barging into bathrooms to attack targets solo.
The net result was that the group was generally grouchy and dissatisfied, which is not a great mood to be in when you're trying to roleplay. Eventually we all got discouraged and just started playing board games, which was when I more or less stopped going (I'm extremely busy, you see). Before that happened though, we managed to have at least one fairly rewarding roleplaying experience.
One weekend, we all got together to play an Exalted one-shot. The system is fairly simple -- the use of certain abilities determines how many dice you get, and embellishing attacks with lengthy descriptions adds to the overall pool. As it turned out, we had a blast, and even considered abandoning our D&D campaign at the time to roll up some Exalted characters and start anew. It never happened, but it's been at the back of our minds since then.
As it turns out, Exalted and Shadowrun are perfect examples of hit-and-miss systems, mostly because they occupy two extremes of the roleplaying spectrum. As I already said, Shadowrun is an extraordinarily crunchy system, to the point that there's a page in the source book devoted to different comm links. Exalted hews more toward the White Wolf RPGs (think Vampire: The Masquerade), which tends to gloss over harder, number-based elements in favor of the Rule of Cool. It hardly needs to be said that some roleplayers hate White Wolf.
Thankfully, our group seems to have found the perfect medium between these extremes. After a lengthy hiatus, we've started up a new campaign in Star Wars Saga Edition, which can best be described as "Dungeons & Dragons 3.75." It has a lot of the combat found in D&D, but diplomacy and negotiation are important factors as well. More importantly, it does a good job of showcasing the equipment found in Star Wars without going completely overboard and making us buy an appropriate operating system for our specific model of comm link.
We've already rolled up our characters, and we'll kicking things off next week. The sessions will be on Thursdays, so I'll be here blogging about it on Fridays (along with other pen & paper related items). So rejoice, for Table Talk has returned!
Table Talk- Blowing away the dust with a book review
By Shivam Bhatt Jul 18, 2009 11:28 AM PST
Category: Tabletalk: A Weekly Pen & Paper RPG Column
Table Talk is the weekly tabletop games column at 1UP's RPG blog The Grind . Check back every Friday as we cover news, reviews, campaign insights, and more in the world of analog role-playing.
Before we get started, let me first apologize to you readers out there. My season-long absence stems from the fact that I recently took on a job at a well-known video game company that makes a lot of products that you all are familiar with. And as I'm sure you all have realized, being in the games industry means that your life stops from about a month before the E3 convention and picks up again a few weeks later. My duties in my new job meant that from Memorial Day onwards, I was pretty much at work seven days a week, which precluded doing much of anything besides going home and sleeping, let alone gaming and blogging. That said, E3 is behind us, and it's time to dust off those dice bags and resharpen those pencils and get back into The Grind. Many thanks to my friend and editor Kat for picking up the slack while I was on my enforced holiday...I'll make sure the DM gives you some bonus experience points in our next session.
And, well, I was just given a book that pretty much forced me to come out of retirement. You see, the Advance Reader Copy of the forthcoming Dragonlance novel, Dragons of the Hourglass Mage, just appeared in my mail yesterday, and I absolutely demolished it. And as a lifelong, die hard DL fanboy, I'm compelled to share my thoughts on it, especially as it represents the end of the core arc of the series, and the last journey of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman through the minds of these characters. I wrote the following for some Dragonlance friends of mine, and felt that this warranted a mention for the greater gaming community in general. Dragonlance, after all, was a pioneer in gaming history, from the first real epic linked campaign series to the first novel tie-in with gaming product. And its influences are far reaching throughout modern fantasy and gaming. Yes, it's very quaint now, but 25 years ago, it was groundbreaking.
Hourglass Mage is the third book in the Lost Chronicles trilogy, which fills the gaps of story left out of the original Dragonlance Chronicles. The books are an excellent companion, and finally lay to rest many of the questions that readers have had for the past quarter century. With likely great bias, I encourage everyone to pick up the Chronicles, but I know that they won't hold up well in this age of Twilight and friends. That said, anyone ever interested in Dragonlance owes themselves the favor of reading Hourglass Mage as a glowing endcap to the series.
Without further adieu--
So I just finished reading DotHM, and by extension, Dragonlance all together. Never before has a book so completely wrapped up a story as this one has. It was sublime, moving to the point of tears, and absolutely fulfilling in ways that i did not know i had even wanted.
The story, as we know, fills the large gap in
So I just finished reading DotHM, and by extension, Dragonlance all together. Never before has a book so completely wrapped up a story as this one has. It was sublime, moving to the point of tears, and absolutely fulfilling in ways that i did not know i had even wanted.
The story, as we know, fills the large gap in Spring Dawning between Raistlin's disappearance from the Perechon at the very beginning and his return as a black robe at the very end. It delves into the transformation between the weak, jealous young red robe and the resonating tower of self confidence we know and love in Legends. And along the way, HM wraps all of the little disparate gaps left in Chronicles--gaps that in hindsight were always answered with the core text. HM merely illuminates what we all should have seen from the outset.
I'm not going to spoil the plot for you, as the story is worth delving into for any true, or even casual, dragonlance fan. And yes, I highly highly recommend either reading Spring Dawning before you start this book, or doing as I did, and having both in front of you, and alternating between the two. I also recommend having recently read Soulforge, for a bit of reference. This book, with its weight of finality, is the true end point for the Heroes of the Lance, and Raistlin himself, in a way that Summer Flame and the War of Souls tried so hard to be. It's only fitting, then, that Dragonlance as a series end where it started, with a handful of would be heroes thrust into a spotlight they never wanted in order to save a world that didn't want them.
HM covers a very interesting aspect of Raistlin, one that we've never seen before. In this story, he's an awkward adolescent, eager to please his new masters, and eager to seek out the power he so desires. He's not the shady, shy young man of early chronicles, and he's most certainly not the master of past and present that he becomes. He's a man who has thrust off the red robes, not out of a general evil, but because he doesn't care about anyone else but himself. He wants desperately to fit in with the so-called 'cool kids' who wear the black and follow the queen, but he discovers that they are as shallow and lifeless as the groups he left behind. Raistlin's maturation is dealt with a grace and splendor that I honestly hadn't thougth Weis and Hickman capable of. Their writing has been less than great as of late, and this book shines with their love and skill in a way that hasnt been seen in decades. It's as if they themselves knew that this was going to be the last hurrah for their journey on Krynn, and wanted to make sure it was a good one.
This book answers the questions fans have had for the past 25 years. The Key that Raistlin uses to gain his power. The link to Fistandantilus. The Dragon Orb. Cyan Bloodbane. His relationships with Soth, the Conclave, the gods themselves. And where the hell he even got his black robes from. And the integration is seamless. Reading Hourglass Mage is like watching the director's cut of a movie you know inside and out. The new scenes flow as if they had always belonged, and you had just missed seeing them the first time, and the streams that cross between HM and Spring Dawning never feel contrived or out of place. Indeed, even the verbage is the same, unlike the awful transitions from Autumn Twilight to Dwarven Depths. Weis and Hickman learned their lessons from DD and it's follow up, Highlord Skies, and applied them well. If anything, Hourglass Mage is the third Raistlin Chronicle.
The book is not perfect-- there are typos here and there, and a few confusing turns of phrase and plot points, but frankly, this book is Dragonlance itself, and what would DL be without typos and confusion? Never does it detract from the story itself, in any regard.
Now, Dragonlance as a series may continue in some form or another. But Dragonlance as the child of Weis and Hickman, the novel series born in 1984 with a group of friends meeting up in an Inn--that series ends with Dragons of the Hourglass Mage. The novel takes 25 years of plot development and setting growth, and synthesizes it into the endcap to the Holy Six. With it, all questions, all loose threads, all storylines that stem from the Heroes of the Lance are finally complete. And if you can close that final page and put that book down without tears in your eyes, well sir, you're a better man than me.
Table Talk- The two sides of the table
By Shivam Bhatt May 20, 2009 12:21 AM PST
Category: Tabletalk: A Weekly Pen & Paper RPG Column
Table Talk is the weekly tabletop games column at 1UP's RPG blog The Grind . Check back every Friday as we cover news, reviews, campaign insights, and more in the world of analog role-playing.
In the seminal computing history Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, author Steven Levy talks about the Tech Model Railroad club at MIT in the early 1950s, a group that gave rise to some of the original computer hackers and game designers. He writes the following about the two factions of the club:
There were two factions of TMRC. Some members loved the idea of spending their time building and painting replicas of certain trains with historical and emotional value, or creating realistic scenery for the layout. This was the knife-and-paintbrush contingent, and it subscribed to railroad magazines and booked the club for trips on aging train lines. The other faction centered on the Signals and Power Subcommittee of the club, and it cared far more about what went on under the layout. This was The System, which worked something like a collaboration between Rube Goldberg and Wernher von Braun, and it was constantly being improved, revamped, perfected, and sometimes "gronked"-- in the club jargon, screwed up. S&P people were obsessed with the way The System worked, its increasing complexities, how any change you made would affect other parts, and how you could put those relationships between the parts to optimal use.
With some substitutions, this paragraph could be talking about tabletop gamers today. One group lives in the world above the table, where they sculpt characters with elaborate backstories and worry about the cultures and stories of the land they inhabit. The other delves deep into the rules, trying to divine the best combination of races and powers and tinkerable tweaks to make the most optimal character possible. On one extreme, you get the method actors, who play characters with severe game-threatening disabilities and disadvantages just to get the exact flavor they want. And on the other, you get game-breaking exploiters who don't care that their dwarven paladin-necromancer doesn't fit into the style of the game, as long as they do the most damage per hit per round. Now obviously, gamers are not binary, and very few people lean entirely to one side or the other.
Now, for my part, I'm a flavor guy. I can't build a character unless I have a concept for it, and a reason for why he has what he has. And even those times when I find a mechanic that I really want to build my character around, I have to find an in-game rationale for why it might work. Only then can I actually make the character. Hell, even when I'm reading rule books without a game to play, I still only visualize characters and settings within the confines of the flavor of the world. This is part of the reason that I have such trouble with generic rules games like GURPs or Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition-- the core rules strip out a lot of the flavor in lieu of presenting a toolbox with which to add your own flavor. Ironically, this makes it even harder for me to figure out what I want the game to look like, because the flood of options just blends into one big blur.
My friends, on the other hand, can grab a stack of rules books and draw connections between how the various class and race combinations work, and figure out how to get the most out of various surreal combinations, which make absolutely no sense from a flavor profile. For instance, my friend sent me a message about a character concept for D&D 4th Edition, where he had a Swordmage, which is a tank character with the arcane power keyword, multiclass into wizard, which is a distant controller character with the arcane keyword, and take a combination of wizard feats and powers to allow his frontline tank to do a crap-ton of thunder damage in a wide area to a group of enemies. And this is one of his saner combinations. For my part, I could never combine such disparate elements--if you're going to make a paladin, you accept his strengths and weaknesses as part of the flavor of the class, not as potential places to patch in strange elements. Just because the Bard class uses charisma as a main stat doesn't mean that it makes any sense for your Paladin to dip his charismatic toe into that pool. (Ok, ok, so maybe he sings ballads about himself before he goes into battle. Still.)
Of course, I fully admit that there is a lot of value in understanding crunch; after all, its those guys who look past the flavor and into the potential combos who end up making the most interesting decks (at least at first) in the various collectible card games out there. I was a big big Magi-Nation player for a while, and I used to love building decks based around the various tribes in the world, with themes revolving around characters and story and so forth. And I'd get hammered in tournaments by folks who used desert cards with their water magi while casting fire spells and so forth. They didn't give a crap that the deck was completely illogical according to the flavor of the world--as far as they were concerned, as long as it worked mechanically, as long as the connections were legal, it was good enough for them. The underside of the table, with all of its switches and junctions and electronics, was far more interesting than worrying about where the damned trains were going.
Still, though, there are times when crunch and flavor end up sparking fights at the table. My character in our Thursday Shadowrun game, for instance, is a bike messenger, modeled after the pilots of the ships in The Matrix and the folks in the sadly short-lived tv show Dark Angel. So I built him statistically to be a bad-ass biker. He is a decent shot, has good lock picking and sneaking skills, but basically makes a living as a smuggler and bike racer in Seattle. He also has arms and equipment he uses because they fit his back story. These are not optimal, according to some in the party. As the driver, he should have a car, and he should be wielding X and Y weapons because they do more damage for less work, and so on. But that sort of thinking doesn't fly with me. I'm not into playing for the numbers, I'm here for the story, and if my character is unbalanced and less than optimal because there are cooler options out there, so be it. I'm willing to be less effective in combat or whatever if it makes me care about my character more. Frankly, I don't care how the switches work, as long as they keep my awesome looking train running.
Now, there are always going to be folks who suggest that there are other games out there which cater to my desires for flavor over crunch, and that perhaps I should find another group or another system, but frankly, part of the fun is in the meta-game, where we sit and debate how we want the game to go after our sessions, and help supplement each other. After all, as the denizens of the Tech Model Railroad club understood, scenery without the system is just a plain diorama, and the system without scenery is a pile of useless parts. Learning how to balance the two is the greatest way to grow as gamers.
I'm going to be going to Gen Con this summer, and would love to have a meet up with other readers while there. Let me know in the comments if you're planning on attending!
Table Talk - On Maps and Grids
By Shivam Bhatt May 10, 2009 11:04 AM PST
Category: Tabletalk: A Weekly Pen & Paper RPG Column
Table Talk is the weekly tabletop games column at 1UP's RPG blog The Grind . Check back every Friday as we cover news, reviews, campaign insights, and more in the world of analog role-playing.
Coming back from the Star Trek movie got me thinking about table top games the other night. (Well, most things tend to bring me back to gaming, so I guess it's not too surprising.) Admittedly, I had to miss my weekly Shadowrun campaign for it, but it was well worth it. Not only was the movie a fantastic reboot of an ancient IP, it was also full of lots of interesting hooks and scenes for a clever gamemaster to snatch for the home table.
That said, as I've personally never played any of the Star Trek RPGs, so this column isn't going to be about that. I know that FASA released one way back at the beginning of the 80s, and more recently Decipher (the makers of the successful Star Trek and Lord of the Rings CCGs) put out a Trek RPG back in 2002, but otherwise, I'm in the dark. The series and associated games have always had a stronger "hard" sci-fi vibe than I've really wanted out of my gaming when I was younger so I tended to ignore them, much to my older self's dismay. Way to not be well rounded, kid!
In any event, the Trek movie brought me to think about quadrants and grids and starmaps, which in turn got me to think about grids and maps for the upcoming D&D session I was going to be hosting. See, I'm a total junkie for map tiles, hex mats, battle grids, and everything else related to turning your game into an epic battle of miniature proportions. Its funny, because in my earliest days of gaming, we just played with our imaginations. The DM would describe a scene and we would verbally explain where we were and what we were doing. The game was loose and descriptive -- at best, we would have a pencil sketch on a piece of paper to map out the general area.
But as D&D editions progressed, I started gaming with folks who had more time and money than I did, and they would bring things like old dusty leather mats with square and hexagonal grids stamped on them, and lots of lead and pewter miniatures meant to represent our players on the board. They'd use wet and dry erase markers to draw out rooms, and suddenly, all these so-called "tactics" that the books always talked about made sense. If my mage stood here and threw a fireball there, he'd be able maximize his damage and range while inflicting the least amount to his own teammates. It was an eye-opening experience.
It helped, of course, that 3rd and 4th edition D&D were so deeply interwoven with grids and miniatures, as were recently popular games like Heroclix and the like. It's one of the great ironies of modern gaming that people are decrying D&D for becoming a collectable minis game, when the very game started as a fantasy expansion to grid-and-minis based wargame rules! Yes, if you look back at the very first editions of the game, you'll notice something incredibly interesting. Ranges for spells and for character and monster movements are labeled in INCHES. For years, I had no idea why this would be, or what it meant, but it finally occured to me that this was meant for folks to measure out on the grids they were using, with their 1 in. hexes. Suddenly, all of those crazy spell listings made a lot more sense.
This new revelation in hand led me to check every map I had. It turns out that all of those old D&D world maps of places like Faerun and Ansalon and Oerth were actually drawn on hexagonal grids as well, to help facilitate this style of play. It also made for some funky looking coastlines and oddly tracking rivers.
Frankly, I think that a return to this mat based play is great for the game. As a DM, I love being able to describe the rooms and settings while providing a visual reference for my players. It also makes it a lot easier to spring surprise monsters on the group, hiding behind pillars and rock formations they forgot to check. And as a player, I love that there is no ambiguity. You can't get caught in the dragon breath just because the DM feels like it anymore. And more importantly, it allows me to turn a game like Valkyria Chronicles into a tabletop experience without much hassle.
This is not to say that all games must use maps and grids. It would be totally pointless in a game like Reign or Shadowrun, for instance. And its almost a waste of time to try to fit any of the World of Darkness games to a grid. But for D&D and other tactics heavy games (Star Trek space battles, for instance), it's a godsend, and a fantastic time.
Table Talk - On Keeps and the Shadows that Border them.
By Shivam Bhatt May 04, 2009 1:01 AM PST
Category: Tabletalk: A Weekly Pen & Paper RPG Column
Table Talk is the weekly tabletop games column at 1UP's RPG blog The Grind . Check back every Friday as we cover news, reviews, campaign insights, and more in the world of analog role-playing.
My Sunday gamegroup recently wrapped up the third leg of our Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition campaign, and started the transition to our new DM. It was an epic battle with the high priestess of the Shadar-Kai, in order to prevent her from finishing a ritual which (due to cultist subversions) would have brought the demon lord Orcus to the material plane. It was the conclusion of months of adventuring and piecing together a multi-layered puzzle, with three intensely biased factions working against each other, with no clear cut "good" solution for the party. Each faction, be it the dwarves to the north looking for loot and new mines, the elves to the south looking to completely anihiliate all beings who were outside of their natural collective consciousness, or the Shadar-kai themselves, offered a lot of reasons why the PCs would want nothing to do with them. And our poor DM had to continually rewrite and revise his adventure to keep up with our ever changing motives and actions. Let's see Fallout 3 keep up with that!
Needless to say, the game was immensely fun, and not just because it offered such a great story. The key was that it drew on the efforts of previous GMs in our group, and set up many strands and branches for future storytellers to pick up and weave, and still managed to make the players feel as if they had had a complete and self containted adventure. Moreover, the players actually felt ownership of the setting, and a deeper connection to the characters and the game we were in. Not bad for what started as a generic jaunt into testing out what 4e was all about!
The astute amongst you will notice that the above module image is B2- Keep on the Borderlands, one of the greatest introductory modules of all time. For an entire generation of gamers, the Keep and its denizens were the gateway into an eternal world of adventure. But for all of the nostalgia and shared history, the real magic of this module was not the adventure itself, which was a weak little jaunt into the nearby hills to kill various low level monsters, or the Keep, which was so underdeveloped that buildings were not sketched out past the first floor, or even the characters, who rarely warranted more than a stat line. No, the real power of this module was that it gave nacent DMs a starting point from which to build their own world. The only plothooks were the ones the DM came up with, and the only reasons to do anything were generated by the players' own motivations. Its almost funny, then, that it's taken until now for so-called "emergent gameplay" to finally hit the electronics, a mere thirty-something years after D&D!
So when 4th Edition came out last summer, my friends and I decided that we didn't want just one person to get stuck with the role of running the game all the time, and we weren't really sure if 4th ed would be worth the time and effort. So rather than any one of us create a campaign to set the game in, we decided we would play in the old way--straight out of the book, as generic as you can make it. Personally, I think that my friends just didn't want to play Dragonlance again, but didn't want to hurt my feelings by saying so. It's ok, though--they're not going to escape the tendrils of Krynn that easily!
We grabbed the starter module Keep on the Shadowfell, which was very blatently set out to be a homage to KotB. It was a dungeon with the most tenuous plotline and a sketch of a village, with the sole intent of being a series of combats strung together to help introduce the nature of the new ruleset. My players, having moved past the Diablo II style of gameplay, slowly started establishing and extending the mythos of the Nentir Vale where Shadowfell was set. We added more towns, and gave characters personalities and histories, and started developing a campaign out of the skeletal details that the module and the Dungeon Master's Guide provided us. And you know what? It's incredibly fun to do this. To not be shackled to any particular story or mythos, and to be able to add or subtract from the campaign without worrying too much about continuity or fabric of story. The core design of 4th edition is the so-called "Points of Light" concept, which basically sets out that in the world, there are a few cities which are civilized, and everything between those cities is a wilderness full of monsters, dungeons, and insanity. Anyone who has ever played a jRPG is familiar with the conceit, I'm sure. As such, we are free to take our merry band of characters through the world and allow the campaign to grow as we see fit without worrying if it works or not.
It occurs to me that this is what it must have been like in the earliest days, before established campaign settings. Your party's reputation was based on the success or failure of your adventures, and your adventures were based on what you wanted to do, and what you wanted to do was based entirely on whatever struck you as cool. Want a crazy mage tower in the hills? Bam, there it is. Want a dungeon full of halfling zombies? Sure, why not? The world is as large as your imagination wills it, and you've only explored a tiny portion of it.
Seriously, this campaign is some of the most fun I've had with gaming in years, even if I tend to change characters everytime we change DMs. My turn to run is coming up again soon, though, so I best get ready. There are caves full of Kobolds waiting to be explored, and they aren't just going to map themselves.
Table Talk- On the Total Party Kill and my Shadowrun campaign
By Shivam Bhatt Apr 28, 2009 7:30 PM PST
Category: Tabletalk: A Weekly Pen & Paper RPG Column
Table Talk is the weekly tabletop games column at 1UP's RPG blog The Grind . Check back every Friday as we cover news, reviews, campaign insights, and more in the world of analog role-playing.
There comes a time in every campaign when the chips are stacked against you. Perhaps you ran into a room while sorely wounded without checking for traps first, and alerted every monster in the dungeon. Or perhaps you decided that the one monk hanging out at the end of a long hall full of closed doors was an easy mark. Maybe your rogue didn't quite realise that the wire holding the door shut was also the wire that kept the heavy stone ceiling from caving in. And that's when it happens--The DM sighs deeply, closes his rulebooks and campaign notes, and tells everyone to get a fresh new character sheet. That's right, you've just been TPK'd, and your game is over. And very likely your campaign as well, unless you work very hard to save it.
The Total Party Kill is one of the most demoralizing events in all of tabletop roleplaying, and for good reason. We've discussed character death on Table Talk before, and how much of a drain it is on players. After you've spent so much time invested in a character and their backstory and relations, it's hard to try to come up with a whole new concept right away. And when it's your entire party that has died, the trauma becomes exponentially greater. Now, not only is your character dead, but all of the work you've put into the game's plot is rendered moot. All those adventures you finished are meaningless, and all those plot hooks you just started are never to be resolved. Mainly though, losing the group means that even if you start a new game picking up exactly where you left off, it won't be the same. The context will have been lost, and the ties to character history blown away. There are no save games in tabletop roleplay, so when you die, that's all she wrote.
I bring this up because in our most recent session, my Shadowrun party ate bullets, and went to an early grave. We were neophytes to the style of play that SR demands, and tried to run our characters like they were hyperspecialists from Dungeons and Dragons, neglecting both the 'staying in shadows' and 'running' parts of Shadowrun. We preferred to "leap into the open" and "attack overwhelming odds", instead, leading to a conclusion inevitable to everyone...except for us, that is.
Tangentically, this leads me back to the discussion about Classes vs Skill Based Systems from way back. We made our characters to be masters of one thing and one thing only, and were the best at that very thing. So our tank was an indestructable mass of muscle and cyberware who could mow down 50 enemies at a go. He was also, as a result of point manipulation, completely socially uncouth, and unable to hold a conversation without either losing interest or shooting at will. My character was a space pilot, but completely unable to shoot, hack, or even walk at a pace better than "brisk". Our other players followed similar paths, and as such, we were completely useless for large parts of time. After all, when the dedicated hacker is in cyberspace, the rest of us spend the hour swatting flies. Or when I'm in space combat, our mage does his homework. It was a TPK waiting to happen, and our game master was just too nice to tell us.
Shadowrun, incidentally, almost always ends up like this. The first time a person plays the game, they always try to over do it, and maximize their characters as much as possible, leading to gross imbalance. But the next time, you realise that if your character can't do some of everything, he's gonna be doing a whole lot of nothing very soon.
So total party kill. We were faced with a decision--do we start a new Shadowrun game, using our newly gained experience, or do we scrub the whole thing, and find a new system and campaign and so forth? The consensus was that despite our complete loss, we had invested so much time into learning the rules that we wanted to give it another go, and make new characters, balanced properly this time. And that last storyline was such a comedy of errors that no one was sad to see it go. I mean, really? Killing the man who was supposed to give us missions because we failed our very first run and were captured by the enemy? Yeah, not one of the shining moments in my personal gaming history.
What I _am_ sad to see go, however, is my character. Our GM insisted that we all detail our character histories and relations and so forth, as a means of both establishing ourselves in the world and giving him interesting hooks to draw on for the story. Not to mention the side effect of becoming incredibly attached to your player, and wanting to really add flavor to the roleplaying experience. But that is a column for another day. For now, Sy "Cyclone" Landro has been put to rest, and in his place Gull, a bike messenger from Seattle, rides into the daybreak. Here's to hoping this party sticks around.


text:
Killington motorcycle crash injures South Dakota manAugust 19,2013KILLINGTON Police are looking for the other driver in a crash on Route 100 on Sunday which injured a South Dakota man.
Vermont State Police Senior Trooper Michael Tietz said Paul Thornhill, 54, of Sioux Falls, S.D., was driving a 2007 Yamaha motorcycle on Route 100 when a vehicle traveling in the other direction crossed into his lane. Thornhill was thrown from his motorcycle, Tietz said. He suffered a laceration his face and a possible rib injury, Tietz said.
Staff reportMORE IN This Just InBENNINGTON A Bondville woman is facing a felony charge after police said they learned she was... Full StoryBENNINGTON A local man is facing up to 50 years in jail after being arraigned earlier this... Full StoryVermont leaders face many policy challenges, chief among them demographics change, according to... Full Story
- Most Popular
- Most Emailed

subset: commoncrawl


text:
5 vehicles matched;
Now showing page 1 of 1. 25 results per page.
Listed by Premier Motorcars
1974 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28 Coupe. 350 4V Engine, Turbo-Hydramatic Transmission, Factory Air Conditioning, Power Steering, Power brakes (front disc), Special
Listed by Superior Auto Sales
Check out this low mileage 1974 Chevrolet Camaro! Just 25785 miles on this Z28 Coupe. Out of the Norwood
Listed by Play Toys Classic Cars
This 1974 Chevrolet Camaro comes equipped with - 350 V8 (rebuilt), automatic transmission (rebuilt), power steering, power brakes, power windows,
Listed by Private Seller
1974 Camaro Z28 Type LT, Low Mileage 383 Stroker, Aluminum Radiator Auto Electric Fan, Ceramic Coated Long Tube Headers S/S
Listed by North Shore Classics
here we have a RUST FREE camaro..it is powered by a numbers matching 350 motor with a 4 speed


text:
With the chilly November weather in the air and the World Series over, the summer atmosphere and the baseball season have both come to ceremonious ends. But baseball-related fun will continue all the way until spring training. The hot stove season has just begun, and the Yankees front office has a lot of decisions to make.
So far, some major Yankees have been retained. GM Brian Cashman was signed to a new three-year deal. The team exercised its club options on Nick Swisher and Robinson Cano. C.C. Sabathia signed an extension to stay with the club instead of opting out and becoming a free agent. Rafael Soriano, after a less-than-stellar first year in the Bronx, did not opt out of his contract, and will try to return to form in 2012.
But the Yankees have plenty of guys hitting the open market. Jorge Posada, Freddy Garcia, Bartolo Colon and many more will hit free agency and can sign anywhere. We'll take a look at who will be taken back and who will be trashed and have to find a new home.


text:
Chipmakers giving home networks a gigabit boost
Chipsets that power equipment capable of smoothly moving 4K video streams inside homes over wireless and wired networks were on display at the Computex trade show.
Chipsets that power equipment capable of smoothly moving 4K video streams inside homes over wireless and wired networks were on display at the Computex trade show.
Wi-Fi in your home or office could get a big speed boost by the end of this year with Qualcomm's newest chip, which reaches new highs in data transfer speeds.
Google's prototype cars are hitting the road...smartphone upstarts put on the pressure...Reddit rules draw backlash...and more tech news.
John Chambers got a little feisty and a little sentimental in his last earnings call as Cisco's CEO on Wednesday, dismissing a criticism of the company as "garbage" and saying he hopes to be working half time by the fall because "the hunting season's...
Fujitsu has developed stamp-sized wearable sensor tags that can detect whether users have changed their location or posture, fallen down or are experiencing high heat.
Wireless hotspots that can deliver hundreds of megabits per second in real-world bandwidth will become more common as operators increase their investments in Wi-Fi networks.
Three men accused of selling and exporting over $10 million worth of fake Cisco networking equipment into the U.S. have been arrested by U.K. police.
Microsoft has announced Azure networking improvements that will give IT staff more flexibility, and in the process help convince them to move more applications to the cloud.
Cisco CEO, John Chambers, has rubbed elbows with many business, political and entertainment VIPs during his 20 years at the helm
A way to let cellular operators share Wi-Fi frequencies without jamming up Internet service is now in the spotlight at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.
Cisco prepares to swap CEO... Google may face more scrutiny in Europe... Vint Cerf doesn't trust back doors... and more tech news
Cisco Systems has appointed Chuck Robbins, the company's senior vice president of worldwide operations, as CEO, replacing long-time chief executive John Chambers.
Most of us have had the experience of being unable to connect to a Wi-Fi network in a location with lots of people. A technology that promises to alleviate that problem is, however, slowly but surely making headway.
Broadcom and Freescale Semiconductor have announced switching platforms that promise to improve the performance of network virtualization and make the underlying technologies more widely available.
The writing's on the wall about the short supply of IPv4 addresses, and IPv6 has been around since 1999. Then why does the new protocol still make up just a fraction of the Internet?
The latest business news, reviews, features and whitepapers
Visit our shop for the best deals on hot products
Watch our video news and reviews from around the world
Comprehensive buying guides, features, and step-by-step articles
First impression on unpacking the Q702 test unit was the solid feel and clean, minimalist styling.
For work use, Microsoft Word and Excel programs pre-installed on the device are adequate for preparing short documents.
The Fujitsu LifeBook UH574 allowed for great mobility without being obnoxiously heavy or clunky. Its twelve hours of battery life did not disappoint.
The screen was particularly good. It is bright and visible from most angles, however heat is an issue, particularly around the Windows button on the front, and on the back where the battery housing is located.
My first impression after unboxing the Q702 is that it is a nice looking unit. Styling is somewhat minimalist but very effective. The tablet part, once detached, has a nice weight, and no buttons or switches are located in awkward or intrusive positions.


text:
Toshiba recommends Windows.
Technical Support (Computers)
Technical Support (Televisions)
Business, Education, Government,
Enterprise and Reseller Sales
800-705-2397 firstname.lastname@example.com
Well, I will start with what happened to it, though I don't really know. I was on the internet and it started freezing up horribly, then I didn't know what to do so I walked into the room of the house that doesn't get wireless, and gradually it unfroze. Then I went back to the other room got on again, then it just froze again, only this time walking into the next room didn't work, so I pressed the power button and shut it down. Then when I turned it back on I chose "Start Windows Normally" and I entered my password at the login screen, then it was on the screen that says "Welcome" and has the blue loading bar next to it, but I waited for at least 10 minutes and it still hadn't loaded. So, I try safe mode and all I get is a black screen with a mouse cursor, in all safe modes. Well, I decide to go to setup by pressing F2 at the Toshiba screen when you first turn it on. So, I did that and I restored the default settings, then exiting saving the settings, and then I turned it on, expecting it to work or at least have the Welcome thing. It went through the Toshiba screen, then it had a black screen for while , then I got an error message:
Windows has encountered a problem communicating with a device connected to your computer.
This error can be caused by unplugging a removable storage device such as an external USB drive while the device is in use, or by faulty hardware such as a hard drive or CD-ROM drive that is failing. Make sure any removable storage is properly connected and then restart your computer.
If you continue to recieve this error message, contact the hardware manufacturer.
File: \Boot\BCD
Status: 0xc00000e9
Info: An unexpected I/O error has occurred.
So then what I did was I plugged in the charger, the mouse ( like on a desktop computer, only I stick this in my laptops usb thing) , my ipod, I put in the last cd I had in the disk drive, and I connected my computer to the modem from the other computer that I sometimes get on. It didn't do anything, it still gave me that message.
I would appreciate some help. I just got this computer in December 2009 for Christmas, and I have taken good care of it as far as I can tell. I really can't afford to replace anything right now, but if I have to I will find a way. What makes it worse is that I just got a new video game sent from my grandmother for my birthday....
Thank you for your help/thoughts/crap
it looks like a corrupted windows 7 OS or hdd issue , but you might try this one
Remove all usb devices and make sure that only ac adapter is plugged in your computer.
Turn on your computer and start tapping on F8. You should see windows advanced option when you do this.
Select on Safe Mode then Enter. If you can boot to safe mode you can try doing a system restore.
On windows advance option. Select Repair my computer
Just follow the prompt and select system restore.
On windows advance option. Select Repair my computer
Just follow the prompt and Windows Startup Repair
When I press F8 it doesn't do anything, it has the same black screen and then gives me the same error message. I really don't know what to do.
if you have arecovery disk put it and open laptop and press c until it open and choice system recovery and chose the first option and if their is aproblem it will be resolve i hope it work
What happens when you turn on the computer and then immediately press and hold the F8 key?
Which computer?
Copyright © Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.


text:
Shopping List
1. Toast bread.
2. In a small mixing dish, mix Caesar Salad dressing and mayonnaise together. Spread evenly on each toasted slice of bread.
3. Layer the turkey, swiss cheese, and other optional toppings on one slice of bread and make a sandwich. Serve with J. Higgs BBQ chips for a perfectly simple lunch!
No notes available at this time.
Thanks to manifest from St. Louis, MO for submitting this recipe.


text:
Snowboarding Forum - Snowboard Enthusiast Forums (http://www.snowboardingforum.com/forum.php)
- Outerwear and Accessories (http://www.snowboardingforum.com/outerwear-accessories/)
- - Outfit Suggestions for Women! (http://www.snowboardingforum.com/outerwear-accessories/37725-outfit-suggestions-women.html)
Outfit Suggestions for Women!
1 Attachment(s)
I'm female, 5'6 and I'd like to update my snowboarding look. I see all these young-ins at the park with their oversized/baggy jackets and i want to get something like that. Preferably plaid (maybe blue). As seen below, i'm wearing a Burton Mid-layer (you may be able to see the hood). The thing is, all the jackets for women are very fitted... are there any brands that will give me the look I want? Or should I just get a men's snowboarding jacket? I prefer the cooler baggy look, over the girly, very fitted look. I may be willing to try more fitted pants. But i don't want the jacket to be very fitted. Any recommendations of what you think will look nice?
what about something like this?
Purple « Shiloh 2.0 « Jackets « Mens « Fall 2010 « Outerwear « ThirtyTwo, Advanced Snowboard Boots & Outerwear
686 Women's Smarty Cargo pants. Not too fitted at all. I love them, favorite pants I've ever owned. (I don't like the super fitted look either) But they're not available in plaid/patterned as far as I'm aware. I don't own their jackets but next time I need a coat, I'll probably look to them.
That purple jacket is nice. I also like plaid, cant go wrong with plaid. If u want baggy u can always buy mens pants as well theyll be more then baggy enough on you.
females have spent years trying to get a personalized (or female) style so they don't look like boys in their cloths on hill... Now you want to revert back to it?? lol j/p
Just get the men's stuff. You'll have a better selection of baggy outterwear going this route.
holden, airblaster, L1 clothes
all my daughter will wear is mens stuff.... it fits her more comfortably, she is 5'6 with a medium build. My wife will only wear womens clothes because they fit her better.... she is 5'1 with a small build.
|All times are GMT -5. The time now is 05:45 AM.
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2016, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
vBulletin Security provided by vBSecurity v2.2.2 (Pro) - vBulletin Mods & Addons Copyright © 2016 DragonByte Technologies Ltd.
User Alert System provided by Advanced User Tagging v3.1.0 (Pro) - vBulletin Mods & Addons Copyright © 2016 DragonByte Technologies Ltd.


text:
To evaluate the results of a planned combined therapy with surgery and postoperative radiotherapy in the management of large (T3 to T4) squamous cell carcinomas of the tongue—tongue base in properly selected patients.
Patients and Methods:
Twenty-one patients underwent this procedure in a 4-year period. The selection criteria were directed to identify those patients in whom laryngeal preservation was feasible and who were motivated. Five categories of patients were included: those with (1) large primary tumors of the tongue—tongue base; (2) recurrence after initial radiotherapy, brachytherapy, chemotherapy, or a combination of these modalities; (3) recurrence after initial surgery and radiotherapy; (4) double primary tumors; and (5) second or third primary tumors arising in the tongue or base of the tongue. Preoperative investigation included examination under anesthetic and magnetic resonance imaging. Depending on the proximity of the primary tumor to the mandible, a mandibular split, a marginal resection, or a segmental resection was carried out. Soft-tissue replacement was achieved by a myocutaneous or a muscle flap of the pectoralis muscle with split skin. Whenever possible tissues of the contralateral floor of the mouth were also used. Laryngeal suspension was performed in all cases. Postoperative radiotherapy consisted of megavolt therapy, 66 Gy in 6 weeks to the primary site and both sides of the neck.
Resumption of swallowing and speech was achieved in all patients. External deformity was slight. Patients were able to return to their families.
Total glossectomy with laryngeal preservation in properly selected patients provides local and regional control and preserves quality of life.(Arch Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 1993;119:945-949)
Thank you for submitting a comment on this article. It will be reviewed by JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery editors. You will be notified when your comment has been published. Comments should not exceed 500 words of text and 10 references.
Do not submit personal medical questions or information that could identify a specific patient, questions about a particular case, or general inquiries to an author. Only content that has not been published, posted, or submitted elsewhere should be submitted. By submitting this Comment, you and any coauthors transfer copyright to the journal if your Comment is posted.
* = Required Field
Disclosure of Any Conflicts of Interest*
Indicate all relevant conflicts of interest of each author below, including all relevant financial interests, activities, and relationships within the past 3 years including, but not limited to, employment, affiliation, grants or funding, consultancies, honoraria or payment, speakers' bureaus, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, royalties, donation of medical equipment, or patents planned, pending, or issued. If all authors have none, check "No potential conflicts or relevant financial interests" in the box below. Please also indicate any funding received in support of this work. The information will be posted with your response.
Some tools below are only available to our subscribers or users with an online account.
Download citation file:
Customize your page view by dragging & repositioning the boxes below.
More Listings atJAMACareerCenter.com >
Enter your username and email address. We'll send you a link to reset your password.
Enter your username and email address. We'll send instructions on how to reset your password to the email address we have on record.
Need assistance?
Athens and Shibboleth are access management services that provide single sign-on to protected resources. They replace the multiple user names and passwords necessary to access subscription-based content with a single user name and password that can be entered once per session. It operates independently of a user's location or IP address. If your institution uses Athens or Shibboleth authentication, please contact your site administrator to receive your user name and password.


text: Tits McGee (aleyina) wrote in pkmncollectors, 2012-11-12 00:31:00 Tits McGee aleyina pkmncollectors 2012-11-12 00:31:00 Previous Share Next All these metal figures Since I keep seeing an explosion of metal figure GA's and the like, I was wondering if maybe I missed this elusive pikachu figure.I first saw it from Feraligroggles...does anyone else have it?I want everything on here, but mainly I want that sleepy pikachu...preferably in that color as well. Help a sista out! Post a new comment Error Comments allowed for members only Anonymous comments are disabled in this journal We will log you in after post We will log you in after post We will log you in after post We will log you in after post We will log you in after post Anonymously switch LiveJournal Facebook Twitter OpenId Google MailRu VKontakte Anonymously default userpic Insert Bold Insert Italic Insert Underline Insert Strikethrough Insert Link Insert LJ User Insert Photo Insert Media Your reply will be screened Your IP address will be recorded Post a new comment Preview comment Help 26 comments Post a new comment 26 comments swadloon wrote in pkmncollectors: ←Shaymin plush recommendations? (land forme) shastina4ever wrote in pkmncollectors: →Charizard Card question????


text:
Stirring my tea in Cornwall, I pressed the teabag against the mug's side and old John's face came into mind from Bristol, who told me once that the teabag should never be pressed so, but lifted in and out. I watched him tell me this by the his kitchen counter and then I watched my tea again on this Cornish table. Sometimes people say time flies, but a particular memory can hit from a past that feels so distant to seem hardly even real, and can be such a rare remembrance as to stun you in realising just how many moments it is that you have lived, while furthermore how many will never be recollected. The distance between that memory and today's tea is five years, and watching it brew further, I in turn think to my own brewing, and how in old age a surprising memory will knock me back at another tea, all the more surreal for being selected from a far bigger and worse organised catalogue, diving deeper every year, triggered unpredictably by an act that occurs every day, as the hot water swirls and chases after itself, forging a whirlpool of memory.
Hello From Sam
Hi I'm Sam and I write here exclusively at Samuel's Travels. Exclusively as by and large no-one wants me writing anywhere else. Please enjoy yourself while reading.
- Hot Memory samuelstravels.com/2016/06/28/hot… 3 months ago
- A Significant Gesture samuelstravels.com/2016/05/15/a-s… https://t.co/HaHDwyA5jb 4 months ago


text:
realmagick.com The shrine of knowledge.
Adposition Circumposition
Adposition Circumposition is described in multiple online sources, as addition to our editors' articles, see section below for printable documents, Adposition Circumposition books and related discussion.
Great care has been taken to prepare the information on this page. Elements of the content come from factual and lexical knowledge databases, realmagick.com library and third-party sources. We appreciate your suggestions and comments on further improvements of the site.
Adposition Circumposition Topics
Related searchesGaea
arsenio hall
About - Contact - Advertising
© 2000 - 2016 Realmagick.com, All Rights Reserved.
© 2000 - 2016 Realmagick.com, All Rights Reserved.


text:
Welcome to The Crafty Kitten
The Crafty Kitten is owned and run by me, Nikki Edwards - to find out more about me personally please check out my Bio page. The reason for this website is that I am making an ever growing range of products, including home-made candles of varying shapes, sizes, and types, Polymer clay "one-of-a-kind" (aka "OOAK") model of dragons, fairies and mermaids - all of which make unusual, affordable and memorable gifts.
Each polymer clay model, whether dragon, mermaid or fairy, comes with its own birth certificate which is also your certificate of authenticity that your model is a genuine "one of a kind" piece. Although I make pieces in the same colour schemes, no two are ever quite the same, with subtle differences to their postures and facial expressions bringing them to life.
As well as polymer clay models, I do a number of ranges in polymer clay, including jewelry, bag/phone charms, photo/memo holders, and ring keepers. This website contains samples of my work and will allow you to place orders for any of the items on the site or for special orders where you can specify the colours and, in some cases, the poses of the polymer clay models. As well as allowing you to order any of my other crafts (and ask for whatever personalization you need that is available for that product).
Currently, my work is available via my craft and gift shop in Llanrwst, via mail order (simply fill out my contact form, letting me know what you would like to order, the basic pose you would like, and any specific colours or other instruction you may require), via Facebook, or at the craft shows that I attend around my local area - I also have an "online store" which allows you to purchase raw craft materials directly from this website. To find out which of the craft fairs I will be attending please check my diary page.
For more information on the products I provide, and to see examples of the work I have done to date, please check the relevant pages on the website. All the product pages can be found on the right hand side, on the "Products" clip.
Please try to bear in mind that each of my items is a genuine "one of a kind" and as such, although I will do must best try to replicate any requests as closely as possible, there will always be subtle differences between any pictures of the items on the website and the finished product you will receive.
If you have any questions at all about any of my products, please don't hesitate to contact me.


text:
Serif 8088218 Complete Creativity Collection Software - PhotoPlus X3, DrawPlus X3, CraftArtist Gold, Panorama Plus X4Item#: N204-1761 | Model#: 8088218
Currently Out Of Stock!
You May Consider This Alternative
Serif Complete Creativity Collection Software Product Details
Serif 8088218 Complete Creativity Collection Software
Show off your creative prowess with the Serif 8088218 Complete Creativity Collection Software. The Serif 8088218 Complete Creativity Collection Software provides you with a fast and easy Digital Photo Editor, a very powerful drawing program, print project tool, and photo stitching software all in one package. Featuring its PhotoPlus X3, you can enjoy fixing, enhancing, and organizing digital images the way professionals do. The CraftArtist Gold Software even enables you to create personalized cards, photo books, invitations, school yearbooks, and scrapbooks all year round. Plus, its Panoramic Plus allows you to capture breathtaking landscapes in just three easy steps. Explore your creative side with the Serif 8088218 Complete Creativity Collection Software.
What It Is And Why You Need It:
- PhotoPlus X3; allows you to professionally fix, enhance, share, or organize digital images
- DrawPlus X3; produce high-quality designs
- CraftArtist Gold; create cards, photo books, invitations, scrapbooks and school yearbooks
- Panorama Plus; create and share stunning panoramic pictures
Related Items
Manufactured by: Serif
Warranty provided by: Serif
UPC No: 703115686250
Mfg Part No: 8088218
Box Size:
( Length:8, Width:6, Depth:1)
Shipping Weight: 0.2000 pound(s)
Dimensional Weight: 1pounds
What is Dimensional weight?
Click here for full warranty and support information
- Serif logos are registered trademarks of Serif. All others trademarks and copyrights mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.


text:
Found my first new stretch mark yesterday. Made me sad & pissed me off. LOL. I didn't think I would get any new ones as big as I was with my DS. I don't feel like I'm any bigger than I was with him at this stage, I actually feel smaller (23 weeks today).
Anybody else started getting stretch marks already?


text:
Total compensation package up 3.4 percent in 1998
January 29, 1999
Compensation costs for civilian workers were up 3.4 percent for the year ended in December 1998. Wages and salaries were up 3.7 percent; benefit costs rose 2.6 percent.
[Chart data—TXT]
Compensation costs in private industry rose 3.5 percent in 1998. Private industry wages and salaries were up 3.9 percent over the 12 months ending in December; benefits were up 2.4 percent.
In state and local governments, the over-the-year increase in wages and salaries was 3.1 percent, a raise less than that recorded in private industry. Benefit costs rose 3.0 percent for State and local governments in 1998. The total compensation package for public-sector workers rose 3.0 percent over the year.
These data are a product of the BLS Employment Cost Trends program. Additional information is available from USDL 99-24, Employment Cost Index—December 1998."
Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, The Economics Daily, Total compensation package up 3.4 percent in 1998 on the Internet at http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/1999/jan/wk4/art05.htm (visited September 29, 2016).
Recent editions of Spotlight on Statistics
A look at healthcare spending, employment, pay, benefits, and prices
As one of the largest U.S. industries, healthcare is steadily growing to meet the needs of an increasing population with an increasing life expectancy. This Spotlight looks at how much people spend on healthcare, current and projected employment in the industry, employer-provided healthcare benefits, healthcare prices, and pay for workers in healthcare occupations.
Employment and Wages in Healthcare Occupations
Healthcare occupations are a significant percentage of U.S. employment. Some of the largest and highest paying occupations are in healthcare. This Spotlight examines employment and wages for healthcare occupations.
Fifty years of looking at changes in peoples lives
Longitudinal surveys help us understand long-term changes, such as how events that happened when a person was in high school affect labor market success as an adult.


text:
BOSTON (AP) - Dr. Leo P. Krall, an international leader in the field of diabetes and co-founder of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, died Wednesday. He was 87.
Krall, who lectured internationally, founded and directed the Joslin International Fellows Program, which facilitated the training of diabetes clinicians from around the world.
Krall also was a lecturer at Harvard Medical School.
© 2016. All Rights Reserved. | Contact Us


text:
153 posts tagged with airplane.
Displaying 1 through 50 of 153. Subscribe:
Every Joke in Airplane!, Ranked. We rated each joke only in reference to other Airplane! jokes. Airplane! threes and fours are probably equivalent to most other movies' nines and tens.
Some really endless ocean ahead now..,
Crossing the Atlantic in a Beechcraft 76. "In 2013 the flight school I worked at in Sweden decided to sell their two old Beech 76's in favor of a new DA42. The buyer was in San Diego, Cali. So me and three friends had the once-in-a-lifetime chance to fly them across the Atlantic and through the US. These are some of the pictures I took on that trip."
Place the oxygen mask on yourself first before assisting others.
Alright sir, if you don't get on oxygen you're going to die. [YT] Destin Sandlin of "Smarter Every Day" goes into a high altitude simulation chamber where he demonstrates why you should definitely, always, put on your own oxygen mask first. The chamber is set to the equivalent of 25,000 feet (7,620 meters) after a slow decompression, which allows 3 to 5 minutes of consciousness. The video points out that "most airliners travel at 35,000 feet" (10,670 meters), and under a real scenario you may get only 15-30 seconds of useful consciousness.
Where Did the Search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Go So Wrong?
Two and a half years after the disappearance of MH370 (original thread), China, Malaysia and Australia have announced the search will be suspended. Why had they been so confident in the first place? How could they have been wrong? (Popular Mechanics)
The most beautiful airplane that never flew
The Bugatti 100p (Yes, *that* Bugatti) was a remarkable airplane and an innovative design. A single-seat air racer, it was supposed to have been the fastest thing in the skies with a projected top speed of almost 500MPH. [more inside]
Your favorite trillion-dollar weapons platform sucks
Just another day at work
Because your mother doesn't work here
Are you a central San Francisco resident who is too busy to get your trash out to the curb on time once a week? Well your worries are over with TrashDay. Heck, maybe you're too busy for everything. No time to feed yourself because you need to lock down that seed round term sheet with your AngelList syndicate? Here Comes The Airplane.
How to fly a P51-C Mustang
Three YT's showing how to fly a P-51C Mustang.
The cockpit…what is it?
Germanwings / 4U 9525 A320
The New York Times is reporting this morning that crash of the Germanwings plane on Tuesday in the French Alps that killed 150 people "most likely happened" because the co-pilot crashed the jet deliberately, [more inside]
Pilots of Instagram:
My New Folding and Throwing Technique is Unstoppable
John Collins, holder of the world record for paper airplane flight distance, shows you how to fold that airplane. Here, he demonstrates the plane to David Rees[previously], along with a few other designs, which he also teaches to you: the Tube, the Boomerang, and the Tumbling Wing. [more inside]
Welcome to BLAH
Virgin Airlines has released a nearly six-hour video showing what's it like to fly from New York to San Francisco with BLAH airlines, which is fictional, gray, boring, and non-Virgin; all in excruciating detail. (Warnings: SLYT, mannequins, Lynchian, Virgin Pepsi Blue)
how the rich fly
what it's like to fly the $23,000 Singapore Airlines Suites Class (includes lots of photos) [more inside]
"You don't understand, women are holier than men."
"I'm not sure whether it mattered. One young man very kindly said to me, 'You don't understand, women are holier than men.' I said, 'That's rubbish and it doesn't excuse the insult,' and then I added that I spent 13 years in yeshiva and there's nothing he could tell me that I haven't already heard. Then the original man, the one who refused to sit next to me, muttered to another man as he was walking away, 'She doesn't understand.' I said, 'I understand everything, and don't talk to me as if I'm not here.' He ignored me, and all the other men turned their backs and did not respond or even look at me." [Similar version at JewFem blog.]
Monsieur, the pilot is never wrong.
Should Airplanes Be Flying Themselves? William Langewiesche examines the ways in which airplane automation, entrenched cockpit culture, and difficult flying conditions led to the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447, resulting in 228 deaths. [more inside]
What a plane crash feels like: The inside story
"When we yelled 'Brace!' " Brown said later, "I always described it as if you watched a wind come across a field of wheat and everything bends. That's how it was. Everybody went down. It was like a field of wheat being blown over." What a plane crash feels like: The inside story of an American aviation disaster — and miracle [more inside]
The Long Way Home
"Normal return route canceled. Proceed as follows: Strip all company marking, registration numbers and identifiable insignia from exterior surfaces. Proceed westbound soonest your discretion to avoid hostilities and deliver NC18602 to marine terminal La Guardia Field New York. Good luck." [more inside]
Airports from above
Holding Pattern is a Tumblr of some images of airports from Google maps.
How Mistakes Can Save Lives
What hospitals can learn from flight safety measures. After his wife died due to a mistake during a very simple procedure, Martin Bromiley decided to use his pilot experience to examine how such mistakes can be avoided in the future. It involves changing the whole hierarchy of the hospital environment.
Mystery MH370
Last week it was announced that "Bluefin-21 completed its last mission" and that "the area can now be discounted as the final resting place of MH370". That news came two days after Malaysian authorities released a 47 pages long document of Inmarsat's raw data [pdf]. [more inside]
Way too close for comfort
Two Weeks Ago, I Almost Died in the Deadliest Plane Crash Ever How two jetliners nearly collided over the Pacific, why no one knows about it, and what it means for safety oversight aboard airplanes
When Unlimited really meant Unlimited
Way back in 1970, there were some air racing organizers who felt that the answer to the too-short Unlimited air races at Reno might be to have a longer race, so long that it would require pit stops. In Unlimited-class piston airplanes. Thus was born the California 1000. [more inside]
Snaps on a plane
Taking photos from an airplane window seat usually results in banal or just bad (hazy, blurry) pictures. Here are some remarkable exceptions to that rule (in French with credits and links).
First Class
How do you cram a bunch of strangers into an airborne metal tube, charge them a lot of money for the privilege, and get them to rave about it? Hire people like James Park to attract the one percent. [more inside]
Trappy - 1 : FAA - 0
Previously on the blue. Raphael Pirker, a.k.a. "Trappy" was the first person ever to to fined by the FAA for the commercial operation of a drone. However, instead of paying up, Pirker decided to contest the ruling with a little pro bono legal help. Last Thursday evening, the judge issued his ruling. The judge dismissed the FAA's case, agreeing with the defense that since the FAA never created any legally binding rules for small drones to begin with, they cannot now apply rules that would be used for a pilot flying a full size manned aircraft to drone operators. For now, the ruling means that commercial operation of SUAS in the United States is, basically, legal. Within 24 hours of the ruling, the FAA appealed the case to entire board of the NTSB. SUAS experimenters who have been waiting in the wings are pleased with the ruling.
"In fact, there are no places that are not for ladies anymore."
Earlier this week, the captain of a Westjet flight received a note from a passenger regarding her place in the "cockpit". At the time Westjet declined to comment, feeling no need to "lend credibility to the author of the note." In honour of today being International Women's Day, Westjet has provided a more subtle response.
MH370 missing
Malaysia Airlines MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing is missing.
Flight MH370, operated on the B777-200 aircraft, departed Kuala Lumpur at 12.41am on 8 March 2014. MH370 was expected to land in Beijing at 6.30am the same day. The flight was carrying a total number of 227 passengers (including 2 infants), 12 crew members.Rumors that the plane has landed in Nanning, China are debunked. Chinese media had originally reported Vietnamese officials saying they've picked up a signal, but this has also been refuted. There has been no contact nor distress signals, and the case is especially puzzling as the plane lost contact at the safest moment of the flight. [more inside]
The Thrill Of Being Airborne
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot requests clearance to taxi to pad charlie and cry.
Boeing's largest, and ugliest, aircraft today is the 747 LCF, better known as the DreamLifter. The primary job of the DreamLifter is delivering entire 787 fuselages for final assembly. Yesterday evening, one DreamLifter was supposed to land at Wichita, Kansas... [more inside]
The FAA vs. Trappy
Raphael Pirker, a.k.a. Trappy, is a FPV pilot who came to be well known after the video from his New York flight went viral. While most of the media coverage of Trappy's NYC exploits was positive, the incident prompted a heated debate in the hobbyist community, and the authorities took a dim view of it. Shortly afterwards, Trappy was hired by a PR firm to do an aerial video shoot over the University of Virginia. The FAA, having banned commercial use of UAVs in 2007, took the unusual step of issuing a $10,000 fine for the unauthorized flight. Earlier this month Trappy's attorneys filed a response(pdf) to the FAA's action which questions whether the FAA holds jurisdiction over "model aircraft" in the first place. According to Wired Magazine, he court's decision could determine the future of model aviation and miniature UAVs in the US. Once again, the response from the hobbyist/entrepreneur community has been spirited. [more inside]
R/C Carrier Launches R/C Plane
Aviatrixes: female aviators from the earliest years of powered flight
"In the early days of human flight, a new word entered our lexicon: "aviatrix," the female version of "aviator." These women were true pioneers, although if you asked them, they would probably tell you they were just adventurous and loved flying -same as the men who took to the air in those days." Mentalfloss profiles seven women from the first decades of airplanes. If you'd like more tales of adventure and daring, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum website has a section on women in aviation, as does the San Diego Air and Space Museum (related Flickr gallery). [more inside]
"Don't mess up"
How airplanes pulling banners take off. (With wonderful MSPaint style illustrations.) Short video showing how it's done. You can hire companies to fly most any banner, of course. The pickup move is risky, so some types of banners can be directly taken off with, because of wheels (that from Wikipedia).
the scenic route to nowhere
Photographer Dietmar Eckell has taen a series of pictures of wrecked airplanes. It's called "Happy Endings," and no one was killed in any of the 15 crashes.
Plane crashes while landing at San Francisco International Airport
Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crashed just before noon today while attempting to land at SFO. [more inside]
Grenades, Bayonets, and Tasers. Oh My!
The TSA has started an Instagram page showing confiscated items from TSA checkpoints in airports around the country.
There was applause, but it wasn't for the airline.
Several members of the Philadelphia Orchestra were on a flight from Bejing to Macao that got stuck on the tarmac for three hours. With nothing better to do, the musicians resorted to doing what they do best...
Planesploit : this Android app permits you to take control over the commercial jet in which you are a passenger if it is on autopilot.
Free falling
Weight x Distance = Flight Cost.
Please turn off all electronic devices during take-off and landing.
Filmmaker Tim Sessler shot the short film Drift during a flight from San Francisco to Salt Lake City with his Canon 5D Mark III.
Please turn your electronic devices off as we commence descent and landing
109 years ago today, on December 17th 1903, Orville Wright lay down and flew 120 feet at 10 feet per second on the Wright Flyer. [more inside]
'We didn't know what 90 percent of the switches did'
In 2006, the United States Air Force declassified part of one of its secret programs: Constant Peg, the 4477th Test and Evaluation Squadron, which flew MiGs. [more inside]
Rollin' rollin' rollin'...
"This is unprecedented footage of a small airplane crash from inside the cockpit from two different views. Miraculously, everyone survived. The pilot will make a full recovery and the rest of us escaped with superficial injuries and feel very lucky to be alive." (Graphic accident footage, injuries are shown) [more inside]
Even damp it looked sticky.
In the spring of 1977, a Lockheed Lodestar crashed into a lake in Yosemite National Park carrying six tons of Mexican marijuana. The US government recovered most of it. Camp Four got the rest. A true stoner fable by Kief Hillsbery. [more inside]