Nicole M. LeBlanc

Nicole Mercedes LeBlanc is head milliner of Fleur de Paris in New Orleans. She grew up in New Orleans and received a B.A. in French and Political Science in 1985 from Newcomb College of Tulane University. Since 1983 she has been designing hats exclusively for Fleur de Paris in New Orleans’ French Quarter. LeBlanc has designed at least 15,000 hats – no two exactly alike — since she began her millinery career.
LeBlanc received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship in 1986 which she used the award to pursue independent millinery studies in London, Paris, and Florence. While living in London, LeBlanc was an award winner in the 1987 Young Designers of Great Britain Millinery Competition.
She is one of the subjects in “What is it about Hats?”, a documentary by Andee Kinzy about hats, hat lovers and millinery. Fleur de Paris, LeBlanc and her hats have been featured in The Hat Magazine (Winter 2006), The New York Times; The Dallas Morning News ("She's Got a Head for Ladies' Hats", April 15, 2001); Southern Living; Platinum Magazine (Fall 2002); Where Magazine, The Times-Picayune (fashion section profile, April 1986), CityLife, Essential New Orleans (inaugural issue, Fall 2003, "Crowning Southern Ladies and Gentlemen"), Scat, Southern Woman and Gambit; the Greenville (SC) News-Piedmont (spring 1986); various Tulane University publications; the British Home Stores employee magazine (Winter 1987); and the illustrated travel book "Very New Orleans" (among many other guides to the city), She has also been profiled twice on New Orleans television for her Easter creations. Fleur de Paris and LeBlanc’s hats were prominently featured in a pivotal scene of the Melanie Griffith film Crazy in Alabama. She was also the subject of articles in Southwest Airlines "Spirit" magazine and FrenchQuarter.com At least 11 of her hats have been chosen for display in the past three years at the Kentucky Derby Museum, and her work has been selected for inclusion in a hat calendar.
In a New York Times essay following Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent tragic flooding of most of New Orleans, author Mark Childress listed the hats at Fleur de Paris as the #2 thing that should be missed about the city. LeBlanc also been featured in several radio stories and media reports.


Isoken Ogiemwonyi

Isoken Ogiemwonyi is a Nigerian fashion designer. She is the founder and CEO of the fashion label "Obsidian" and retail store "ZAZAII". She is known also as the Co-Founder of Winterfell Ltd, which owns Le Petit Marche Nigeria and L’Espace trademarks. She was the winner of the 2012 MTN Lagos Fashion & Design Week/British Council Young Creative Entrepreneur of the Year. In 2013, The Guardian placed her among the 25 most influential women in Africa.
Education.
She is a graduate of Bachelor of Laws from the University of Nottingham. She also has a PGD in Hospitality Administration from Glion Institute of Higher Education, Switzerland and a MSc in Management from BPP University, London. She also got an IB diploma at Malvern College.
Career.
Isoken is an editor at BellaNaija Style and runs Editorial Business & Strategy at BNStyle. Isoken and Wonuola Odunsi are the Co-Founder of Winterfell Ltd, which owns Le Petit Marche Nigeria and L’Espace trademarks.
She launched in 2009 a womenswear and accessories brand named "Obsidian".
Le Petite Marche (LPW) is a platform discovered to bridge the gap in Nigeria fashion retail and help in the distribution and promotion of Nigerian designers market. It was also founded in 2009.
L’Espace is a department store in Lagos that was co-founder by Isoken and Wonuola Odunsi. Although Wonuola resigned as a director in 2015.
Isoken was the 2012 MTN Lagos Fashion & Design Week/British Council Young Creative Entrepreneur of the Year. Obsidian showcased her work at the 2011 & 2012 MTN Lagos Fashion & Design Week. She also participated in the 2013 Pitti Immagine Trade show in Florence, Italy. She launched a new African fashion and beauty store named "ZAZAII" at Victoria island, Lagos.


Anu Vardhan

Anu Vardhan is an Indian Costume Designer and Entrepreneur.
Career.
A graduate of visual communications from Loyola College, Chennai is a recipient of State Award for Best Costume Design and number of other awards.Anu Vardhan's first involvement in the film industry was through her family friend Santosh Sivan's "The Terrorist" (1997). She worked on costume designing, scripting dialogues, and also appeared in the film as a friend of the film's lead character played by Ayesha Dharker. She then worked with Sivan again in "Asoka" (2001), as the Principal Costume designer. After extensive research on the historical period, Vardhan helped prepare 3rd century period costumes for the lead actors Shahrukh Khan and Kareena Kapoor. Vardhan has worked extensively with actor Ajith Kumar, collaborating with him on his projects with Vishnuvardhan and Siva.
In 2016, Vardhan worked on "Kabali" (2016), she styled Rajinikanth in two different looks - as a gangster wearing high-end suits and as a labourer in the 1980s.
This film won her much appreciation and won her numerous awards The success of the film prompted director Pa. Ranjith to sign her for his next film with Rajinikanth, "Kaala" (2018). In the film, Anu was tasked to primarily dress the actor in kurtas and lungis, with a black theme.
Anu has also regularly used handloom products in her work, notably designing silk-cotton saris for Nayanthara for her role in "Viswasam" (2019). The popularity of the style prompted a demand for a similar products. She continued to design costumes with similar materials for Nayanthara in "Bigil" (2019) and "Darbar" (2020).
Personal life.
Anu Vardhan is the granddaughter of Tamil actor N. S. Krishnan. Her husband Vishnuvardhan is a film director. The pair had met at Loyola College and had also worked on Santosh Sivan's "The Terrorist" (1997) together.


Amped 3

Amped 3 is a snowboarding video game, the third and final installment of the "" sports game franchise, developed by Indie Built published by 2K Sports and released exclusively for the Xbox 360 in 2005. It expands on previous versions of the Xbox exclusive games. It has also been noted for taking a more irreverent tone than previous installments, such as the inclusion of challenges in which two players compete to amass the most injuries, and for its unique cut-scenes using different visual media, from hand puppets to anime.
Gameplay.
"Amped 3" features several ski resorts with a variety of challenges in addition to the main story. Completing these challenges earns the player respect points and money. In addition, certain challenges unlock new clothing, gear, tricks, and music. These challenges include media call-outs that require the player to perform a certain type of trick, timed runs, sled and snowmobile challenges, races that require the player to collect a certain number of objects within a set time, and challenges that require the player to beat a professional snowboarder. Gaining respect points allows the player to unlock new areas of the mountain and advance the main story.
The game has a single-player story mode, while having 2-player minigames throughout. No online content or play, other than a high-score leaderboard, is available.
Plot.
The story begins at Northstar at Tahoe, with the main character "Player 1" dressed in a pink bunny suit heading up the mountain with friends Wienerboy, Sebastian, J Dawg, and Hunter. Player 1 snowboards down the mountain and takes a big drop off of a cliff. Once there, Player 1 meets Dandelion, a snow goddess with a passion for scrap-booking. From here, you can choose Player 1's gender and appearance.
As the story progresses, it is revealed that Player 1 and his crew are saving up for a vacation to a ski resort in Chile. After completing several training challenges, Player 1 and his crew participate in an Easter Egg Roll to earn more money for their vacation fund. After saving Wienerboy from a trio of mysterious thugs, the player follows them to see what they are up to. During the chase J Dawg confronts Player 1 and accuses him of stealing the vacation money from Hunter's locker. The rest of the crew heads to Chile, while Player 1 tries to earn money to replace the stolen funds.
As the story moves to Snowbird, Player 1 accepts several jobs for a marketing company. These jobs require the player to perform several dangerous stunts. After the marketing company decides to relocate, Player 1 meets up with his friend Roman who suggests he try out for the ski patrol. After making some more money, Roman sets up Player 1 with a new job: taking pictures of celebrity Berlin Sheridan on her snowboard trip. Player 1 manages to avoid Sheridan's bodyguards and makes enough money to replace the stolen vacation fund.
The story cuts to a news report of a comet on a collision course with Earth. Another reporter cuts in to share Player 1's photos of Berlin Sheridan in embarrassing positions during her trip.
Player 1 makes it to Valle Nevado and sets out to investigate what happened to his friends. He finds out they were selected for sponsorship by a company called Colonotronic Arts Inc. Player 1 reunites with Wienerboy first and finds out he was rejected by C.A.I. Next, he meets up with Sebastian who was sent by H.R. to assist in Player 1's “re-orientation.” Player 1 destroys Sebastian's laptop (which has a red eye similar to HAL from ). This breaks C.A.I.’s influence over him. Sebastian directs Player 1 to Laax Resort where Hunter has been sent to recruit more minions for Colonotronic Arts. The cut-scenes reveal that a villain named Baron von Havoc is behind this, as he seeks to create a game called Emag Live.
Upon arriving at Laax, Player 1 confronts Hunter and beats her in two snowboarding challenges. The crew discovers that J Dawg has been made a part of a boy band whose music contains subliminal messages. Player 1 manages to stop J Dawg’s concert before it broadcasts its message around the world.
Once J Dawg has been rescued the crew meets up with Dandelion again. She informs them that she was the one who stole their vacation fund and framed Player 1 for it so the crew would be split up and wouldn’t fall under Baron von Havoc’s mind control. The crew makes their way to Baron von Havoc’s zeppelin and stops his plan.
The game ends with a musical number featuring the main characters in the story. At the song’s conclusion the comet hits the Earth and destroys everything.
Reception.
The game received "average" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.
Awards.
In GameSpot's Best & Worst of 2005 awards, "Amped 3" won Most Outrageous Game, and was nominated for Best Licensed Music, Best Story, Best New Character (for Buck Wad), Funniest Game, and Best Alternative Sports Game.


Ghillies (dance)

Ghillies are specially designed shoes used for several types of dance. They are soft shoes, similar to ballet shoes. They are used by women in Irish dance, by men and women in Scottish country dance, and by men and women in Highland dance.
Ghillies are also sometimes known by a variety of other names that include: light shoes, pomps, pumps, and soft shoes.
Appearance and materials.
Ghillies are soft shoes, almost always made of a supple leather that forms to the foot. They use laces which criss-cross the top of the foot and are tied together similar to a sneaker. Most dancers use laces (required in competitions), although some ghillies do utilize elastic. Some dancers will also wrap the laces/elastics around the soles of the feet. The soles usually stretch across the entire bottom of the shoe (full-soled) and are made from leather. Some ghillies, however, are split-soled, with a leather sole under the heel and under the ball of the foot. Ghillies are most commonly black, although other colours (such as red, green, and white) are manufactured. White ghillies can be dyed a variety of colours to be used for costumes specially choreographed dances such as blue, red, pink and others.
Scottish ghillies.
Scottish ghillies are used by men and women for Highland dancing and for Scottish country dancing. They are almost always black, although they often feature coloured stitching and eyelets. Highland ghillies, for Highland dances, generally need to fit snugly but also need to be able to get on the foot around thick socks or hose; for National dances they fit snugly as they are worn with thin socks or stockings. They are generally worn very tight in order to get a good point.
Irish ghillies.
Irish ghillies are used by women in Irish dancing, whereas men wear reel shoes. Unlike Scottish ghillies, the Irish version rarely feature coloured stitching, and they use loops in the leather, as opposed to eyelets, for the laces. Irish ghillies are available in a solid tan leather sole and a split sole.
Comparison with ballet shoes.
Like ballet shoes, ghillies are generally made from leather, and have similar soles. Many dancers who start in Highland or Irish dancing will first use ballet shoes, as the cost is considerably lower.
The most easily recognizable difference between ballet shoes and ghillies is that ghillies use laces to fasten them to the foot, whereas ballet shoes generally use an elastic across the ankle. Also the laces are very long, and are wrapped around the ankle and foot before tied. Other differences are that ghillies do not have a string/elastic around the edge of the shoe to tighten them, and the soles of ghillies are not usually stitched on, but glued on.


Droid Bishop

James Bowen, known professionally as Droid Bishop, is an Australian synthwave musical artist, guitarist, keyboardist and songwriter.
Bowen is the brother of musician Sam Sparro.


Faith (shoe retailer)

Faith was a British shoe retailer founded in 1964 by London accountant Samuel Faith and his wife. In the following years new stores were gradually added, primarily in the South of England. After Samuel's retirement, his son Jonathan acquired the family business which he subsequently sold to Bridgepoint Capital in December 2004 for £65 million.
The company entered administration in 2010, and Debenhams purchased the brand and 115 Faith concessions operating within its stores.
History.
In the 1980s the brand launched its prosperous 'faith solo' brand, taking styles and ideas straight from the catwalk and selling them to a mainstream audience. The company also began a programme of opening concessions within selected Dorothy Perkins and Topshop stores.
In 1996 a contract was agreed with Topshop for Faith to open a concession in every Topshop store in the UK and Ireland. In the late 1990s Debenhams also approached Faith with a long-term view to becoming the main concession partner for young fashion ladies footwear. This form of expansion therefore became the only means of growth for the business for several years until 2001.
By 2001, concessions accounted for 75% of sales mainly through the Arcadia stores of Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Miss Selfridge. In the autumn of 2001, Arcadia served notice that they intended to terminate the contract. Faced with this loss of revenue, the company embarked on a substantial programme of opening own-brand stores.
Topshop asked Faith to leave its stores in the summer of 2003 as they found there would be a higher profit in producing its own brand of footwear. This led to a huge expansion of both Faith branches and profits. Latterly there was only one Faith concession within Topshop (at Oxford Circus).
In 2004 there were approximately 1700 employees in the UK and Ireland, with further concessions operating under licence in the Middle East. There was also a division servicing the main UK mail order catalogues, such as Freemans and Littlewoods.
The brand celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2004. In December 2004, Faith Shoes was bought for £65 million by private equity group Bridgepoint Capital, and some years later entered into a pre-pack administration agreement in 2008, when John Kinnaird bought the business.
In April 2010, all stores were closed as part of a new administration procedure. Prior to administration it had 72 stand alone branches, as well as concessions in Allders, Debenhams, Sunwin House, and Beatties. Debenhams purchased the 115 Faith concessions trading within its stores in July 2010.
"Hope" store.
In April 2010, after Faith Footwear Ltd went into administration, 70 stores were closed, and more than 1700 staff lost their jobs. Inspired by the former Dorchester Woolworth's Store Manager Claire Robertson's success in reopening her store as 'Wellworths', the Chelmsford branch of Faith got together and reopened their store on 3 July 2010 as 'Hope'.
In the official press release Store Manager Justina Pay stated: "We were inspired by Claire Robertson and her success in turning her old Dorchester Woolworths store into Wellworths, a great example of someone who has had a massive success from a very sad redundancy. Customers were genuine in their sadness that our stores were closing and were concerned as to where they could buy quality shoes from, we knew we had to 'do a Wellworths' and try and bring it back!".


Fujimori Shizuo

 was a Japanese woodblock artist associated with the "sōsaku-hanga" (creative prints) movement. His style was strongly influenced by Expressionism.
Fujimori was born in 1891 in Kurume, Fukuoka prefecture. He studied Western-style art ("yōga") with the Hakuba-kai ("White Horse Society") in 1910, and the next year enrolled in the Tokyo School of Fine Arts from where he graduated in 1916. At the school he met Onchi Kōshirō with whom he collaborated on "Tsukuhae" ("Moonglow"), a print and poetry magazine, producing 37 prints.
In 1919 he contributed to the first exhibition of the Japan Creative Print Association (Nihon Sosaku-Hanga Kyokai). After a period teaching in Fukoka and Taiwan, in 1922 he moved to Tokyo to pursue a career as a professional artist in the fields of painting, printmaking and illustration. He worked as editor of "Shi to hanga", was a contributor to many other publications, and was a founding member of the Nihon Hanga Kyōkai in 1931.
He provided thirteen prints for the seminal sōsaku hanga series "One Hundred Views of New Tokyo" ("Shin Tokyo hyakkei") of 1929–32, and produced his own series, "Twelve Views of Great Tokyo" ("Dai Tokyo Junikei"), in 1933–34.
His bold and simple expressionistic carving style may have derived from the loss of his right thumb in an accident in his youth.


Wolfgang Kramer

Wolfgang Kramer (born 29 June 1942 in Stuttgart) is a German board game designer.
Early life.
As a young child, Wolfgang Kramer used to play games with his grandmother, and said he developed a positive attitude about games because "she always used to let me win." Although he started buying games in his teens, he found there wasn't much variety, so he started to modify some rules. His friends enjoyed the new rules and suggested he design his own games.
Part-time games designer.
While studying commercial science, Kramer started to develop a racing game that didn't use dice for movement. While working as an operations manager and computer scientist, he developed his new movement system into an abstract game called "Tempo", and published it in 1974. He later modified this game into a car racing game called "Formel Eins" ("Formula One"). While still working full-time, he designed and published several more games, two of which won the Spiel des Jahres.
Full-time games designer.
Kramer became a full time game designer in 1989. He has designed over 100 games, many which have been nominated for or have won the Spiel des Jahres. He has frequently collaborated with other designers, notably Michael Kiesling and Richard Ulrich.
In 1984, Kramer invented a player score track that ran around the perimeter of the board for his game "Heimlich & Co.". This type of scoring track became a feature of German-style board games, and is called the "Kramerleiste" ("Kramer track") in his honour.
Kramer is also an author of mystery novels, including "Der Palast der Rätsel" ("The Palace of Mysteries") and "Die Rätsel der Pyramide" ("The Mysteries of the Pyramid").


Open Verification Library

Open Verification Library (OVL) is a library of property checkers for digital circuit descriptions written in popular Hardware Description Languages (HDLs). OVL is currently maintained by Accellera.
Applications.
OVL works by placing modules or components checking specific properties of the circuit alongside regular modules or components. Those special modules are called checkers and are tied to circuit signals via ports. Some aspects of the checker functionality can be modified by adjusting checker parameters. Typical properties verified by OVL checkers include:
Depending on the selected parameters, OVL checkers can work as assertion, assumption or coverage point checkers.
Main source of OVL popularity is the fact that it allows introducing high-level verification concepts to the existing or new designs without requiring new language, e.g. a designer having access to Verilog tools does not need a new language to start using property checking with OVL.
Supported Languages.
While first versions of OVL supported Verilog and VHDL, most recent versions support (in alphabetical order):
Depending on the demand, support for two more languages may be added: "PSL - VHDL" flavour and "SystemC".


Jean Dahlgren

Jean Garvey Dahlgren is an American artist. She is the third and first female president of the Delaware College of Art and Design.
Early life and education.
Dahlgren completed her Master of Fine Arts degree from Marywood University through their low-residency program "Get Your Master’s with the Masters." She also completed her Master's degree from the State University of New York at Oswego.
Career.
Upon completing her formal education, Dahlgren began teaching at The Sage Colleges in 1988 and eventually became the program coordinator for Sage’s graphic design program. In these roles, she spearheaded the development of the four-year program in graphic design and served as coordinator for Sage’s graphic and media design program. During her tenure at Sage, Dahlgren also served on the leadership team for the College Board/Educational Testing Service Advanced Placement in Studio Art and on the Upstate NY Board of the American Institute of Graphic Arts. In July 2016, Dahlgren was named Dean of Sage College of Albany.
In 2018, Dahlgren left Safe to become the third and first female president of the Delaware College of Art and Design. Following her appointment, she was named on Delaware Business Times's 2019 People to Watch List.


Flag of Ontario

The flag of Ontario is the provincial flag of Ontario, Canada. It is a defaced Red Ensign, with the Royal Union Flag in the canton and the Ontario shield of arms in the fly. The flag of Ontario was derived from the Canadian Red Ensign, which was used as a civil ensign and as a "de facto" flag of Canada from the late 19th century to 1965.
History.
Before 1965, the Canadian Red Ensign had served as the "de facto" national flag of Canada. It was flown at all military installations in Canada and overseas, outside the legislature and government buildings, at Royal Canadian Legion halls, and many private homes.
In 1964, the federal government, after a long and acrimonious debate, adopted the Maple Leaf flag as the flag of Canada. This decision was unpopular among some Canadians. These included many Ontarians, particularly in rural areas that made up much of the political base of Premier John Robarts' Ontario Progressive Conservatives.
Robarts thus proposed that Ontario would have its own flag and that it would be a Red Ensign like the previous Canadian flag. It was traditional for jurisdictions around the world with a British system of government and way of life to adapt either a blue or red ensign as a flag, by adding the local coat of arms or some other symbol. In Ontario, it was logical to place the Ontario shield of arms on the flag. Robarts felt the Ensign was an important symbol that reflected Ontario's British heritage and the sacrifices made by Canadian troops under the Red Ensign. As Robarts put it, the Ontario flag "covers our history".
Canadians were exhausted by the long debate over the national flag and leaders of both the Ontario Liberal Party and the Ontario New Democratic Party supported the design for the proposed Ontario flag. The only opposition came from Sudbury Liberal Member of Provincial Parliament Elmer Sopha who was fervently opposed to the flag, arguing that it failed to reflect Ontario's diverse character and that it was "a flag of revenge" against the new national flag. However, he was joined by only one other MPP, Liberal Leo Troy, in voting against the flag, and it was passed by the Legislative Assembly on March 17. It went in effect on May 21, 1965.
The flag of Manitoba was adopted under similar circumstances.
Description.
The flag of Ontario is a defaced Red Ensign. The flag was an adaptation of the Canadian Red Ensign, which had been the "de facto" national flag of Canada since 1867. The flag is a red field with the Royal Union Flag in the canton and the Ontario shield of arms in the fly. The coat of arms of Ontario had been previously granted by Royal Warrant of Queen Victoria in 1868. It features a green field with three gold maple leaves and above it, a white band with a red St. George's cross.
The specifications of the flag are 1:2. The shade of red in the flag is specified as "British Admiralty Colour Code No. T1144 for nylon worsted bunting and No. T818A for other bunting." The shield of the coat of arms is "centred in the half farthest from the staff".
In 2001, a survey conducted by the North American Vexillological Association (NAVA) placed the Ontario provincial flag 43rd in design quality out of the 72 Canadian provincial, U.S. state, and U.S. territory flags ranked.
Ontario Flag Day.
On May 13, 2015, the Liberal MPP from Etobicoke Centre Yvan Baker put forward the Ontario Flag Day Act, 2015. This bill, which passed the house and received royal assent on June 4 in the same year, declares May 21 every year as Ontario Flag Day.


Palmtex Portable Videogame System

The Palmtex Portable Videogame System (PVS), later renamed and released as the Super Micro and distributed under the Home Computer Software name, is a handheld game console developed and manufactured by Palmtex, released in 1984.
The system is widely known and referred to as the Palmtex Super Micro, due to the fact that when the console was re-branded, the Palmtex logo could still be found on the console, alongside Super Micro. However, Palmtex dropped its name from the packaging and promotional materials, in favor of its business partner, making its retail name the Home Computer Software Super Micro.
It had a number of quality and design issues. Only three games are known to have been released, it is possible that only one or more factory runs were made, and the existing units were liquidated and later sold through mail order with little to no advertising. As a result, it is now a rare collectible system, although working units are still extremely prone to breaking with normal use.
History.
Two different companies were involved with the console: Palmtex, who developed, manufactured and distributed it, and Home Computer Software, who developed its games.
Early operations.
The company started with Esmail Amid-Hozour, a businessman that came to the United States in the early 80s. When looking for new business opportunities, he found electronic games, which were becoming popular in Japan, most notably the Game & Watch handhelds manufactured by Nintendo. He later managed to make a deal with Nintendo, who helped him import 300 handhelds to the US for a test market. The response was positive, and the units were sold without much trouble. Seeing this, Amid-Hozour founded Palmtex on March 22, 1982, which became the first company to distribute Nintendo consoles in the US. The handhelds distributed by the company were "Fire Attack", "Parachute" and "Turtle Bridge", with a later release adding "Octopus", "Donkey Kong" and "Snoopy Tennis".
Seeing the success of the Nintendo handhelds, the company began importing other handhelds like the Tri-Screen Time & Fun series by VTech to the United States. While the Game & Watch handhelds had normal Nintendo branding and packaging, the ones from VTech were re-branded to exclude the company's name from the console and packaging in favor of Palmtex.
At the end of 1982, the demand and sales of electronic handhelds was at its peak, so Palmtex decided to create their own video game system.
Development.
On January 30, 1983, Palmtex announced the PVS, meaning "Palmsized Videogame System", making mention of its interchangeable cartridges, 3D effects due to several layers of glass providing depth, color graphics, sound control, and the inclusion of a pause button. The unit retailed for $30, while additional games were $20. It was described as a "dramatic design breakthrough" for handheld games.
In May 1983, more details about the console were revealed, showing an illustration of an early prototype, along with five game cartridges announced for the system and a brief description of each, "Crystals of Morga", "Star Trooper", "Mayday!", "Spell Bound", and "Mine Field". The company hoped to have at least 12 different games including the five launch titles by the end of 1983, and to release the system by March or April 1984. However, by July 1983 the release date was pushed back to May 1984,
 and Palmtex advertised that those who bought the system would receive the game "Spell Bound" for free.
Originally, the game cartridges slid into the unit, compared to the final product where they clipped into the back of the screen. The name "PVS" was changed to mean "Portable Videogame System".
Palmtex also expected to release two new games each month for the system.
Palmtex signed a contract with Home Computer Software, led by Dan Shafer, to create the games for the console. They had developed other games for the Commodore 64 and Atari ST, and helped distribute the rare Atari 2600 game "The Music Machine", which is a clone of "Kaboom!", and the "Family Bible Fun" series of games by Sparrow Records. HCS hired Chuck Blanchard, who programmed "React-Attack" and "Aladdin's Adventures", while an outside consultant created "Outflank". This partnership helped the development of the console and its games progress smoothly.
In 1983, the Berlin Internationale Funkausstellung, at the time the biggest consumer electronics fair, took place from September 2 to September 11, and Palmtex wanted to showcase their system. The first prototype didn't fit inside of the unit, and to be functional the handheld had to be connected by an external cable to the breadboard hidden under the booth table. It had a transparent plastic casing, emphasizing the internals of the device.
By the end of 1983, the design was finalized, and was sent to National Electronics & Watch Co Ltd in Hong Kong for manufacturing, with the first batch of units being ready just in time for their next public appearance.
In 1984, Palmtex attended the Winter Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which took place from January 7 to January 10, 1984. Home Computer Software also attended the event.
Palmtex showcased the redesigned system, now with a white and black plastic case, alongside three launch games, "Outflank", "React Attack", and "Aladdin's Adventures".
Home Computer Software showcased three games they were publishing, "Kids Say The Darnest Things To Computers", "Plaqueman", and "Pro Golf".
Crash, liquidation, and bankruptcy.
Even though development progressed and a final product was ready and available, the video game crash that had started the previous year was in full swing, leaving many disinterested in the market. The PVS became a victim of circumstance, and had a hard time presenting itself to distributors at the show.
That wasn't the only problem plaguing the system. A major design flaw presented itself during the demonstrations, in that the transparent screen was too dark, and needed a substantial natural light source behind it to be able to see and play the games, even during the day. This problem could be fixed, but in its current state, and with the market in a dire situation, no distributor was willing to carry the product, resulting in no orders being placed at CES.
Although it had been slated for release around May, the system was reported to have been released to the public for $49, with each additional game costing $15, sometime before January 26, according to the January 1984 issue of "Popular Computing Weekly". However, this doesn't seem to have happened.
Palmtex searched for venture capital to continue funding for the project, but with the video game crash in full effect, the response was negative. This left the company without funding to improve the design of the console, and to many employees leaving the company.
Left with many existing units left from its production run, Esmail tried to sell existing stock through many means, including wholesaling, and even retailers from Asian countries who could liquidate its stock. After failing to secure a deal, Palmtex decided to liquidate the stock themselves.
In order to do so, they needed to make two changes. One was to fix the screen brightness issue, creating a simple light box to provide a back-light if one was needed, the LightPak. The other was a name change, choosing to go with "Super Micro" in order to appeal to the microcomputer market, which was booming in 1984. Complementing the new name, "Palmtex" was removed from all marketing and box art in favor of "Home Computer Software", to position it more closely to a computer. The information sticker on the bottom of the console still retained the Palmtex name. This meant that existing consoles and cartridges with the PVS branding had a "Super Micro" sticker applied over the old logo, while the new LightPak component had the Super Micro branding from the start.
The console was finally made available through mail order, costing $39.95 for the Super Micro, $14.95 for each game and $19.95 for the LightPak. A Deluxe Pack cost $59.95, including the console with the light-box and a game.
Even after this blunder, Home Computer Software was still developing more games for the system, but because Palmtex failed to pay a lump sum they owed after the delivery of the first three games, HCS stopped any further development on the new games, meaning the plan to release two new games each month didn't materialize.
Home Computer Software kept selling their games and advertising them in magazines, from December 1983 after filing trademark for their logo, and January, to at least September, but they never really recovered financially from the missed payment, leading the company to declare bankruptcy before the end of 1984.
In the end, both companies were suspended by the Franchise Tax Board at an unknown date.
The CEO of Palmtex, Esmail Amid-Hozour, went on to create Etón Corporation in 1986.
Hardware.
The console has three different components: the PVS itself, the game cartridge, and the LightPak.
The PVS (Model Number 9000-R1) uses a clam-shell design that opens and closes using a plastic clip on the front. The two halves of the system are connected by hinges and a flexible flat cable. The top half contains the cartridge port and a polarizing layer for the LCD, which is located in each cartridge. The bottom half contains the battery compartment for four AA batteries, and speaker.
The front of the console contains a power switch, two player controllers, which are D-pads with eight directions, and six buttons, R (reset), M (mute) which turns the sound on or off from the internal speaker, P (pause) to pause the game, and three action buttons A, B and C. On the back there is a contrast dial for the LCD.
The game cartridges contain the main processor and ram, similar to the Microvision, as well as the monochrome 32x16 LCD with a color overlay with fixed sprites for the game graphics. They clip on the back of the display, and connect via 36 pins, with two 18-pin connectors on each side, and are necessary for turning on the console. The back of the cartridge contains a decal with the name of the console (PVS or Super Micro) and the name of the game.
The LightPak uses two AA batteries to power six light bulbs behind a textured diffuser to provide a back-light to the screen, and clips on top of the cartridge, enclosing it on its plastic shell. This is considered optional as it doesn't connect to the main circuit of the console like the cartridges do, and a room with adequate lighting makes it unnecessary for play, but the manual advises against direct sunlight.
The LightPak works by using the LCD to cover up the entire overlay of sprites with black squares (pixels), except the sprites being used at that moment. The light shines through the back of the translucent overlay and screen for visibility with either the light pack or ambient light.
Retail configurations.
Each component of the console could be ordered separately, or a Deluxe Pack that included one Super Micro, one game cartridge, and one LightPak.
The packaging for both the Deluxe Pack and the games follows a unique code format, "A-x00x-B".
Hardware problems.
The console is infamous for being of poor quality construction. The plastic is described as light and brittle. Due to the use of plastic clips during assembly of the cartridge and LightPak, as well as opening/closing the clam-shell design of the console, every time it is used, it seems at risk of breaking. The power switches also suffer from this problem. It is unknown if this problem existed since the launch of the console, or if age shrunk the plastic, turning it fragile.
The cartridges are also prone to breaking. The LCD can easily rot and the connections can break, improperly covering up the sprites during game-play, hindering the visuals of the game partially or completely. In other cases the game just stops working at all.
The LightPak is also easily broken - the light bulbs inside often come loose, making it lose some of its functionality. The battery compartment of the LightPak functions normally, but the one on the PVS has a problem where the cover needs to be inserted for the batteries to stay inside, and if the cover is closed all the way, it will be sealed shut, and require significant force to open, possibly scuffing or breaking the plastic.
Games.
Although five games had been announced with intentions to make more, none of the five were released. Instead, only the three new games showcased at CES are known to have been released: "React Attack", "Aladdin's Adventures", and "Outflank".
"React Attack".
"React Attack" is a strategy game where the player needs to find the reactor in 48 different rooms, before confronting a terrorist to stop a nuclear meltdown. There's a time limit of 15 minutes before the player loses the game.
"Aladdin's Adventures".
In "Aladdin's Adventures", the player controls Aladdin against an evil genie who is trying to steal his magic carpets.
"Outflank".
"Outflank" is a game of Reversi on an 8x8 grid, with three difficulty levels. The player can undo a wrong move and swap places with an AI during gameplay.


Programming Research Group

The Programming Research Group (PRG) was part of the Oxford University Computing Laboratory (OUCL) in Oxford, England, along with the Numerical Analysis Group, until OUCL became the Department of Computer Science in 2011.
The PRG was founded by Christopher Strachey (1916–1975) in 1965. It was originally located at 45 Banbury Road.
After Strachey's untimely death, C.A.R. Hoare, FRS took over the leadership in 1977. The PRG ethos is summed up by the following quotation from Strachey, found and promulgated by Tony Hoare after he arrived at the PRG:
The PRG moved to 8–11 Keble Road in 1984. During the later 1980s and early 1990s, some members of the PRG were housed at 2 South Parks Road, including Joseph Goguen (who was at the PRG during 1988–1996). Tony Hoare retired in 1999 and the PRG was led by Samson Abramsky from 2000. The PRG continued until the renaming of the Oxford University Computing Laboratory to the Department of Computer Science on 1 June 2011, under the leadership of Bill Roscoe, a former member of the PRG.
The PRG was a centre of excellence in the field of formal methods, playing a leading role in the development of the Z notation (initiated by a visit of Jean-Raymond Abrial) and CSP (together with the associated Occam programming language). It won Queen's Awards with IBM and Inmos for work in this area.


A Handful of Dust

A Handful of Dust is a novel by the British writer Evelyn Waugh. First published in 1934, it is often grouped with the author's early, satirical comic novels for which he became famous in the pre-World War II years. Commentators have, however, drawn attention to its serious undertones, and have regarded it as a transitional work pointing towards Waugh's Catholic postwar fiction.
The protagonist is Tony Last, a contented but shallow English country squire, who, having been betrayed by his wife and seen his illusions shattered one by one, joins an expedition to the Brazilian jungle, only to find himself trapped in a remote outpost as the prisoner of a maniac. Waugh incorporated several autobiographical elements into the plot, including his own recent desertion by his wife. In 1933–34 he travelled into the South American interior, and a number of incidents from the voyage are incorporated into the novel. Tony's singular fate in the jungle was first used by Waugh as the subject of an independent short story, published in 1933 under the title "The Man Who Liked Dickens".
The book's initial critical reception was modest, but it was popular with the public and has never been out of print. In the years since publication the book's reputation has grown; it is generally considered one of Waugh's best works, and has more than once figured on unofficial lists of the 20th century's best novels.
Waugh had converted to Roman Catholicism in 1930, after which his satirical, secular writings drew hostility from some Catholic quarters. He did not introduce overtly religious themes into "A Handful of Dust", but later explained that he intended the book to demonstrate the futility of humanist, as distinct from religious, especially Catholic, values. The book has been dramatised for radio, stage and screen.
Plot.
Tony Last is a country gentleman, living with his wife Brenda and his eight-year-old son John Andrew in his ancestral home, Hetton Abbey. The house is a Victorian pseudo-Gothic pastiche described as architecturally "devoid of interest" by a local guide book and "ugly" by his wife, but is Tony's pride and joy. Entirely content with country life, he is seemingly unaware of Brenda's increasing boredom and dissatisfaction, and of his son's developing waywardness. Brenda meets John Beaver and, despite acknowledging his dullness and insignificance, she begins an affair with him. Brenda starts spending her weeks in London, and persuades Tony to finance a small flat, which she rents from John's mother, Mrs Beaver, an unscrupulous property developer. Although the Brenda–Beaver liaison is well known to their London friends, Tony remains uxorious and oblivious; attempts by Brenda and her friends to set him up with a mistress are absurdly unsuccessful.
Brenda is in London when John Andrew is killed in a riding accident. On being told that "John is dead", Brenda at first thinks that Beaver has died; on learning that it is her son John, she betrays her true feelings by uttering an involuntary "Thank God!". After the funeral, she tells Tony that she wants a divorce so that she can marry Beaver. On learning the extent of her deception Tony is shattered, but agrees to protect Brenda's social reputation by allowing her to divorce him, and to provide her with £500 a year. After spending an awkward but chaste weekend in Brighton with a prostitute contriving divorce evidence, Tony learns from Brenda's brother that, encouraged by Beaver, Brenda is now demanding £2,000 a year—a sum that would require Tony to sell Hetton. Tony's illusions are shattered. However, the prostitute brought her child with her who can establish that Tony did not commit adultery and the blackmail fails. Tony withdraws from the divorce negotiations, and announces that he intends to travel for six months. On his return, he says, Brenda may have her divorce, but without any financial settlement.
With no prospect of Tony's money, Beaver loses interest in Brenda, who is left adrift and in poverty. Meanwhile, Tony has met an explorer, Dr Messinger, and joins him on an expedition in search of a supposed lost city in the Amazon rainforest. On the outward journey, Tony engages in a shipboard romance with Thérèse de Vitré, a young girl whose Roman Catholicism causes her to shun him when he tells her he has a wife. In Brazil, Messinger proves an incompetent organiser; he cannot control the native guides, who abandon him and Tony in the depths of the jungle. Tony falls ill, and Messinger leaves in their only canoe to find help, but is swept over a waterfall and killed.
Tony wanders in delirium until he is rescued by Mr Todd, a British Guianan who rules over a small extended family in a remote clearing in the jungle. Todd nurses Tony back to health. Although illiterate, Todd owns copies of the complete works of Charles Dickens, and asks Tony to read to him. However, when Tony's health recovers and he asks to be helped on his way, the old man repeatedly demurs. The readings continue, but the atmosphere becomes increasingly menacing as Tony realises he is being held against his will. When a search party finally reaches the settlement, Todd arranges that Tony be drugged and kept hidden; he leads the party to believe that Tony has died, and gives them his watch to take home as evidence. When Tony awakes he learns that his hopes of rescue are gone, and that he is condemned to read Dickens to his captor indefinitely. Back in England, Tony's death is accepted; Hetton passes to his cousins, who erect a memorial to his memory, while Brenda marries Tony's friend Jock Grant-Menzies.
Background.
Evelyn Waugh, born in 1903, was the younger son of Arthur Waugh, the managing director of the London publishing firm of Chapman & Hall. After attending Lancing College and Hertford College, Oxford, Waugh taught for three years in a series of private preparatory schools before beginning his career as a writer. His first commercially printed work was a short story, "The Balance", which Chapman and Hall included in a 1926 anthology. He worked briefly as a "Daily Express" reporter, and wrote a short biography of the pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti before achieving success in 1928 with the publication of his comic novel, "Decline and Fall". By the end of 1932 Waugh had written two further novels, "Vile Bodies" and "Black Mischief", and two travel books. His professional successes coincided with private upheavals; in June 1928 he married Evelyn Gardner, but just over a year later the marriage ended when she declared her love for the couple's mutual friend John Heygate. Reconciliation proved impossible, and Waugh filed for divorce in September 1929. At the same time, Waugh was undergoing instruction which led to his reception, in September 1930, into the Roman Catholic Church.
Waugh's adherence to Catholic teaching on divorce caused him frustration while awaiting the possible annulment of his marriage. He had fallen in love with Teresa Jungman, a lively socialite whose Catholicism precluded any intimacy in their relationship since in the eyes of the Church Waugh remained married. Waugh's conversion did not greatly affect the acerbic and sharply satirical tone of his fiction—his principal characters were frequently amoral and their activities sometimes shocking. Waugh claimed "the right to write of man's depravity in such a fashion as to make it unattractive". When "Black Mischief" was published in 1932, the editor of the Catholic journal "The Tablet", Ernest Oldmeadow, launched a violent attack on the book and its author, stating that the novel was "a disgrace to anybody professing the Catholic name". Waugh, wrote Oldmeadow, "was intent on elaborating a work outrageous not only to Catholic but to ordinary standards of modesty". Waugh made no public rebuttal of these charges; an open letter to the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster was prepared, but on the advice of Waugh's friends was not sent.
Creation.
South American journey.
In 1932 Waugh embarked on an extended voyage to South America. His decision to absent himself may have been a reaction to his increasingly complicated emotional life; while his passion for Teresa Jungman remained unrequited, he was involved in various unsatisfactory casual sexual liaisons, and was himself being pursued by the much older Hazel Lavery. The choice of South America was probably influenced by Peter Fleming, the literary editor of "The Spectator". Fleming had recently returned from an expedition to Brazil seeking traces of Colonel Percy Fawcett who, in 1925, had disappeared in Brazil while searching for a fabled lost city.
Having seen "Black Mischief" launched to mixed but generally favourable critical comment (Oldmeadow's intervention was not immediate), Waugh sailed from Tilbury on 2 December 1932. He arrived in British Guiana on 23 December, and after some days of indecision opted to accompany the district commissioner for Rupununi, on a journey into the interior. He hoped that he might reach Manaus, a large city deep within the Brazilian jungle, but transport proved unreliable, and he got no further than the border town of Boa Vista. On the way, at one of his overnight stopping points, he encountered Mr Christie, an elderly mixed-race settler who greeted him by saying, "I was expecting you. I was warned in a vision of your approach". The two enjoyed an agreeable dinner together, where Christie talked of the "Fifth Kingdom" (a biblical prophecy from the Book of Daniel). He told Waugh that he had seen the entire gathering of the saints in heaven—surprisingly few, he said—but could not count them because they were incorporeal. Waugh added Christie to his "treasury of eccentrics", set aside for future literary use.
"The Man Who Liked Dickens".
Waugh arrived at Boa Vista on 4 February 1933, to find no boats available to take him on to Manaus. Days of inactivity and boredom followed, with "nothing to read except some lives of the Saints in French and Bossuet's sermons". Waugh passed some of the time by writing a short story; although not identified in the diaries, this story has been generally accepted as "The Man Who Liked Dickens". Apart from using different names and some minor details this story is the same as the episode that Waugh later used as the climax to "A Handful of Dust": an elderly settler (modelled in manner, speech and appearance on Christie), rescues and holds captive a lost explorer and requires him to read aloud the novels of Dickens, in perpetuity. The story was published in 1933, in America in "Hearst's International–Cosmopolitan", and in Britain in "Nash's Pall Mall Magazine". In an article written many years later, Waugh explained how the story became the basis for his next novel: "The idea [for the short story] came quite naturally from the experience of visiting a lonely settler [Christie] ... and reflecting how easily he could hold me prisoner. Then, after the short story was written and published, the idea kept working in my mind. I wanted to discover how the prisoner got there, and eventually the thing grew into a study of other sorts of savage at home and the civilized man’s helpless plight among them."
Writing and title history.
On his return to England in May 1933, Waugh, short of cash, had to complete numerous writing commitments before he could begin work on the projected novel. In October–November he wrote his account of the South American journey, which he called "Ninety-two Days". He then went to Fez in Morocco, to begin the novel in warmth and solitude. In January he wrote to Mary Lygon, reporting that he had written 18,500 words of "my filthy novel", and later he told Katharine Asquith: "I have just killed a little boy at a lawn meet & made his mother commit adultery ... so perhaps you won't like it after all". By 10 February he had reached the half-way point—45,000 words—but was uncertain how the story should proceed, and returned to England at the end of February with most of the second half unwritten. He finished the book at the Easton Court Hotel at Chagford, in Devon, a regular retreat that he used when completing writing projects. By mid-April the book was with his publishers, Chapman & Hall, and Waugh was busy correcting the proofs.
Waugh's agent A. D. Peters sold the pre-publication serialisation rights to the American monthly magazine "Harper's Bazaar". Because the "Mr Todd" episode had been published as a short story the previous year, for the purposes of the serialisation Waugh provided an alternative ending. In this, the whole Brazilian adventure was replaced by a brief coda, in which Tony returns from a luxury cruise to be greeted by a chastened Brenda asking to be reconciled. Tony agrees, but, unknown to her, he decides to keep her London flat for his own purposes. Waugh's biographer Selina Hastings describes this ending as "artistically far more complementary" than that used in the book version; an earlier biographer, Christopher Sykes, thought that had this alternative been retained in the book version, the novel would not have acquired its later distinction.
In March 1933 Waugh wrote to Peters from Chagford to say that he intended to call the novel "A Handful of Ashes". This title was disliked by "Harpers"; an alternative, "Fourth Decade", was also considered and rejected. Finally, the story was serialised under the title "A Flat in London", and the chosen book title was "A Handful of Dust"—taken from a line in T. S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land": "I will show you fear in a handful of dust." The line is within the section of the poem entitled "The Burial of the Dead", which depicts a comfortless, lifeless land of desert and rubble, reflecting the empty moral ambience of the novel. The title phrase had been used earlier by Joseph Conrad in the story "Youth"; by Tennyson in "Maud"; and by John Donne in his "Meditations".
Themes.
Autobiographical.
In his study of Waugh's literary life, David Wykes describes "A Handful of Dust" as "a courageous and skilful act of fictional autobiography", driven by the trauma of the writer's divorce without which, Wykes maintains, the book would not have been written. Waugh, says his biographer Martin Stannard, was "dredging the memory of his personal agony" in documenting the breakdown of the Lasts' marriage. The critic Cyril Connolly, whose first reaction to the work had been negative, later called it "the only book which understands the true horror of the withdrawal of affection in an affair from [the point of view of] the innocent party".
Wykes believes that, of the novel's three central characters, only Tony is representative of his real-life equivalent—Waugh in his pre-Catholic irreligious state. Brenda is portrayed in the novel as typical of many of the women in Waugh's early stories—well-bred, trivial and faithless—but Wykes argues that she is not a representation of Evelyn Gardner, "neither in inward nor outward qualities". Nor, he asserts, is Beaver intended as an accurate portrayal of Evelyn Gardner's lover, the "dreadful nullity" of Beaver being a form of literary revenge on the erudite Heygate. There is general agreement among commentators that other characters are drawn from life: Mr Todd is clearly based on the eccentric but rather less sinister Mr Christie; Dr Messinger, the incompetent explorer, reflects W. E. Roth, the curator of the Georgetown museum whom Waugh considered accompanying into the jungle, only to be dissuaded by reports of Roth's irresponsibility and disregard of danger. Thérèse de Vitré, the object of Tony's forlorn attempt at a shipboard romance, was named "Bernadette" in the original manuscript; the change was made as a reference to Waugh's platonic friend Teresa Jungman. Thérèse announces her destiny to marry a rich Catholic, and, in an echo of Jungman, recoils from Tony when she discovers that he still has a wife. The culmination of Tony's misfortunes, his enslavement to Mr Todd and Dickens, is foreshadowed in Waugh's life by his father's habit of reading his favourite literature aloud to his family, three or four evenings a week: "... most of Shakespeare, most of Dickens, most of Tennyson ... stepping about the room and portraying the characters ... he held us enthralled".
The art historian John Richardson, however, wrote, in the article "Sybil Colefax, Lion Hunter" (House & Garden, September 1983), that the society decorator Lady Colefax "was the model for the deadly decorator, Mrs Beaver (as, allegedly, her son Michael was the model for Mrs Beaver's son John)."
Satire and realism.
Critics and commentators have generally acknowledged that "A Handful of Dust" stands apart from Waugh's other prewar fiction. Philip Toynbee describes it as a turning point in Waugh's journey from outright satire to disillusioned realism: "Much of this book is in the old manner, funny-preposterous laced with funny-bitter, but the whole tone and atmosphere are violently changed when the little boy is killed". Likewise Gerald Gould in "The Observer", reviewing the book's initial publication in 1934: "Here was the old gorgeous, careless note of contempt and disillusionment. Gradually, implacably, the note changes and deepens". A later critic, John Cunningham, recognises that stylistically, the book is in a different category from Waugh's other 1930s novels, both more ambitious and more ambiguous. Although, says Cunningham, "[i]t provokes as much knowing laughter as Waugh's other satires of manners", it is a significant step away from its predecessors, towards the Catholic "comedies of redemption" that would become the principal focus of his writing life.
In his introduction to the 1997 Penguin edition, Robert Murray Davis suggests that in part, the book reflected Waugh's reconsideration of his position as a Catholic writer, in the light of the recent Oldmeadow furore over "Black Mischief". He may have developed a more serious tone to pre-empt further criticism from that quarter, although Stannard maintains that Waugh's beginnings as a serious writer date back to 1929, when he was completing "Vile Bodies". Waugh's own comment, in 1946, was that he was not, according to his own understanding of the term, a "satirical" writer, and that in writing the book he was merely "trying to distil comedy and sometimes tragedy from the knockabout farce of people's outward behaviour".
William Plomer, writing in "The Spectator" after the book's first publication, thought it mistaken "to regard Mr Waugh's more surprising situations as farcical or far-fetched; they are on the whole extremely realistic". However, the mixture of genres was not immediately understood or appreciated by some of Waugh's admirers; Connolly's initial thought was that Waugh had been "destroyed as a writer", by snobbery and association with country-house living. In Sykes's view, the fleeting appearances in the book of characters from Waugh's farcical world, such as Lady Metroland, are awkward and intrusive—the world of "A Handful of Dust" is not outlandish: "Evelyn would have done better to have forgotten Lady Metroland and her world altogether".
Religion and humanism.
Cunningham sees "A Handful of Dust" as a forerunner of Waugh's later, avowedly Catholic novels. In keeping with Waugh's dismissive attitude to the Church of England, Anglicanism is shown as a farce (Mr Tendril the vicar's sermons), or a nullity (Tony's admission that he had never really thought much about God). Instead, Christianity is evoked by presenting the awfulness of life without it; according to the writer and critic Frank Kermode, "[T]he callousness of incident and the coldness of tone work by suggesting the positive and rational declaration of the Faith". The reader, Stannard says, "is never allowed to forget man's primal bestiality ... God is the key that has been thrown away in this purely secular world". John Raymond in the "New Statesman" refers to Waugh's "unique type of moral vision", and calls the novel a "powerful twentieth century sermon on the breakdown of a Christian marriage".
Tony's doomed quest in the Brazilian jungle is framed in biblical terms; the relevant chapter title, "In Search of a City" alludes to Hebrews 13:14: "For here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come". However, Waugh remarked of the novel that it was "humanist, and said all I wanted to say about humanism". He believed that the essential 20th century conflict was between Christianity and Chaos, and chose to present a chaotic world to demonstrate that civilisation did not have in itself the power to survive. Thus, in the Brazilian jungle, Tony encounters what Davis terms "power without grace ... secular feudalism unredeemed by the saving grace of Christianity". Todd is the symbol of humanist, irreligious power.
English Gothic.
The critic Bernard Bergonzi refers to Tony Last as "a doomed Gothic hero", echoing Waugh's explanation to his friend Henry Yorke that the theme of the book was "a Gothic man in the hands of savages—first Mrs Beaver etc, then the real ones". According to Stannard, Waugh tended to judge a civilisation by its art, and especially by its architecture, and English Gothic is a major leitmotif of the novel. Tony's recognition of the extent of Brenda's betrayal is described as "a whole Gothic world ... come to grief". Later, Tony finds purpose in his otherwise pointless voyage when he hears of the fabled lost city from Messinger; he visualises it as Gothic in character, "a transfigured Hetton ... everything luminous and translucent; a coral citadel crowning a green hill top sown with daisies". When at the end of his quest he first catches sight of Todd's settlement, in his delirium he sees, instead of the reality of mud huts and desolation, "gilded cupolas and spires of alabaster".
Although devoted to original English Gothic, Waugh had mixed views on Gothic Revival architecture, preferring what he called "pre-Ruskin" to the "stodgy" later 19th-century style in which he places Hetton. He instructed the artist responsible for the frontispiece in the first edition of the book to "design the worst possible 1860" style to depict the house. The guidebook description of Hetton which opens the second chapter reveals that, "formerly one of the notable houses of the county, it was entirely rebuilt in 1864 in the Gothic style and is now devoid of interest". Thus, Tony's devotion is shown to be to a false ideal; his deposition and replacement in his domain by middle-class heirs represents what the writer Brigid Brophy terms "a bourgeois sack of a fake-Gothic Rome".
Publication and reception.
Publication history.
"A Handful of Dust" first appeared in "Harper's Bazaar", as a serial in five instalments during the summer of 1934, using the alternative, non-Brazilian ending. The complete novel was first published in book form in London, on 4 September 1934, by Chapman and Hall. It was an immediate success with the British public, and within four weeks had reached its fifth impression. In the same month it was issued in New York by Farrar & Rinehart, who were initially unenthusiastic about the book and, according to Waugh's agent, made little promotional effort on its behalf. It has since been published in the United States by (among others) Dell Publishing (1959); Little, Brown (1977); and Barnes and Noble (2001).
Since its first publication the book has remained in print, and has been reproduced in many editions and foreign languages. It was first published as a paperback in 1951, by Penguin, who have reissued it regularly. In 1945 Bernard Grasset published a translation in French, after which the book was published in most European languages, and also in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Arabic.
Critical reception.
The initial critical response to the book, while largely complimentary in tone, was nevertheless muted and sparse. This relative paucity of attention, Stannard surmises, might have been a consequence of the earlier serialisation, which meant that the essence of the story was well known before the book appeared. "The Times Literary Supplement"'s anonymous reviewer deemed the novel "a study of futility", whose hero is "so incapable of helping himself that he is not worth helping". Peter Quennell in the "New Statesman" found the story both painful and amusing—"tragedy and comedy are interdependent"—but was not overcome by the bouts of hilarity that had interrupted his reading of earlier novels such as "Decline and Fall". If not exhilarating, the book was "certainly the most mature and best written novel that Mr Waugh has yet produced". Plomer's "Spectator" review described the book as "another of [Waugh's] cultivated pearls", economically written, holding the reader's attention throughout and capturing with precision the moods and rhythms of life as it was lived in certain quarters of society.
The only overtly hostile review was Oldmeadow's in "The Tablet", which asserted that, after the disquiet in Catholic circles following the publication of Waugh's previous novel, his co-religionists "reasonably hoped to find Mr Waugh turning over a completely new leaf. He has not done so". The review mixed literary criticism with moral sermonising, to which Waugh felt bound to object publicly. His friend, the journalist Tom Driberg agreed to place a notice in his "William Hickey" column in the "Daily Express", in which Waugh accepted fully Oldmeadow's right to criticise the literary quality of the work "in any terms he thinks suitable". However, he added, so far as his moral lecturing was concerned, Oldmeadow was "in the position of a valet masquerading in his master's clothes. Long employment by a prince of the Church has tempted him to ape his superiors, and, naturally enough, he gives an uncouth and impudent performance".
Many of Waugh's friends and admirers gave the book unstinting praise, among them Rebecca West, Lady Diana Cooper, Desmond MacCarthy and Hilaire Belloc. Among those less enthusiastic were the novelist J.B. Priestley, who found the characters lightweight and uninvolving, and the devoutly Catholic Katharine Asquith who thought the writing was brilliant but the subject-matter deeply depressing. The novel's critical standing grew steadily in the years following its publication. In 1942 the American critic Alexander Woollcott chose it as the best English novel in 100 years, a verdict largely endorsed some years later by Frank Kermode. Sykes wrote in 1975 that "there are only five or six novels of this century that can seriously challenge it".
In 2010 "Time" magazine placed "A Handful of Dust" in its listing of the hundred best English-language novels published since 1923 (the year the magazine began publication), stating: "If this is Waugh at his bleakest it’s also Waugh at his deepest, most poisonously funny". In the Modern Library's list of 100 best novels, "A Handful of Dust" is placed 34th in the "Board list", although unplaced in the complementary "Readers' List".
Adaptations.
On 8 April 1968 BBC Radio 4 broadcast "A Handful of Dust" as a radio play, in an adaptation by Denis Constanduros produced by Brian Miller. Jack Watling and Stephanie Beacham played Tony and Brenda Last, with Rex Holdsworth as Mr Todd. A new radio adaptation, with Jonathan Cullen and Tara Fitzgerald in the main roles, was broadcast as a two-part serial in May 1996. In November 1982 an ensemble cast performed the work as a stage play, directed by Mike Alfreds, at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. A film version, directed by Charles Sturridge, was released in 1988, with James Wilby as Tony, Kristin Scott Thomas as Brenda, Judi Dench as Mrs Beaver and Alec Guinness as Mr Todd.
Notes and references.
References.
99. Urari - A handful o Dust review


Nitin Chandrakant Desai

Nitin Chandrakant Desai is a noted Indian art director and production designer of Indian cinema turned film and television producer, most known for his work in Marathi and Hindi Films, World Cultural Festival 2016 at Delhi and films like, "Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam" (1999), "Lagaan" (2001), "Devdas" (2002), "Jodhaa Akbar" (2008) and Prem Ratan Dhan Payo (2015). During his career spanning twenty years, he has worked with directors like Ashutosh Gowarikar, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Rajkumar Hirani and Sanjay Leela Bhansali. In 2002, he turned film producer with Chandrakant Productions' "Desh Devi", a devotional film on the Devi Mata of Kutch.
He has won National Film Award for Best Art Direction four times, and Filmfare Best Art Direction Award three times. In 2005, he opened his ND Studios spread over at Karjat, Navi Mumbai, near Mumbai, which has since hosted movies like "Jodha Akbar", "Traffic Signal" as also Color's reality show "Big Boss".
Early life and education.
Desai's attended his school at Wamanrao Muranjan High School, Mulund in a Marathi Medium, He studied photography at the J.J. School of Art and L.S.Raheja school of arts, in Mumbai, before joining the films.
Career.
He first went to Mumbai's Film City Studios in May 1987, and immediately switched from the 2-D format of still photography to a 3-D world of art direction. He joined noted art director, Nitish Roy as a fourth assistant for the period TV serial, "Tamas" (1987), directed by Govind Nihalani. Thereafter he worked TV series, "Kabir" for five-and-a-half years, series "Chanakya" for the first 25 episodes, and took over independently from the 26th episode onwards.
His first feature film was Adhikari Brothers's "Bhookamp" in 1993, but it was Vidhu Vinod Chopra's period film, ' in 1994 that got him noticed. Over the years he has worked in film like "Parinda", ', Maachis, Baadshah, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar and Raju Chacha, international projects like "Salaam Bombay!", Amok (a French film directed by Joel Farges, which won Desai a Pri Genie nomination), Jungle Book, Kama Sutra, the Canadian film Such a Long Journey and Holy Smoke. He also created two sets for "Slumdog Millionaire" 2008 film, which include the set of "Kaun Banega Crorepati" scene, incidentally he had also designed the set for the Star Plus TV series, and an interiors set of the Taj Mahal.
He turned film producer in 2003, with devotional film, "Desh Devi Maa Ashapura". Situated on the outskirts of Mumbai at Karjat, the ND studios was opened in 2005 by him. Spread over , later Reliance Entertainment picked up 50 per cent stake in the studio for about Rs 1.50 billion. He turned to producing TV series, with Marathi serial "Raja Shivchhatrapati", which became a big hit.
In Marathi, he has produced a biopic movie "Balgandharva" released in May 2011. He has also produced a reality TV show "Marathi Paul Padte Pudhe", which provides a platform for young talent. Concept is similar to America's Got Talent.
He was reportedly working on Amol Gupte's "Sapno Ko Ginte Ginte". After producing "Chittod Ki Rani Padmini Ka Johur" (2009) TV series, he was reportedly producing historic TV series, "Taj Mahal" and "Baji Rao Mastani".
In 2011,he also debuted as a lead actor by the Marathi film 'Hello Jai Hind' directed by Gajendra Ahire.
Most of Desai's successful work as an art director has been in period films, as can be seen by the fact that all 4 of his National Film Award for Best Art Direction awards have been for period films.


Manx TT Super Bike

Manx TT Super Bike is a 1995 arcade racing game developed jointly by Sega AM3 and Sega-AM4. It was later ported to the Sega Saturn by Tantalus Interactive and to Windows by Perfect Entertainment. It is a motorcycle racing game built for the Sega Model 2 arcade board. Up to 8 players can race in this game if enough cabinets are linked together, following on from "Daytona USA".
The game's setting is the Isle of Man TT - the world-famous and demanding motorcycle racing event held on the Isle of Man. There are two courses to race on: the Laxey Coast course for novices and the more difficult TT ("Tourist Trophy") Course for veteran players. While the TT Course is based on the actual course on the Isle of Man, the Laxey Coast is a fictional course designed by the game developers, though its scenery is drawn from the Isle of Man.
The arcade game was known at the time for its impressive graphics and innovative cabinet. Many arcade motorcycle games incorporated a bike-like machine that tilted so the player could maneuver the on-screen bike through the physical "bike" (pioneered by another Sega game, "Hang-On"); to do this, the player would need to push their feet against the floor. The "Manx TT" machine, however, was sensitive enough to tilt just from the rider shifting their weight, allowing the player to keep their feet on the machine and use their body weight to control the on-screen bike, making the game feel more realistic. Many of the unsold cabinets were converted into "Motor Raid", a futuristic Model 2 motorcycle racing game released in 1997.
Sega's decision to entrust the Saturn port of "Manx TT Super Bike" to an external developer, particularly one with no experience in porting arcade games, was controversial. However, upon release the game proved to be a major critical success for the Saturn.
Development.
Producer Tetsuya Mizuguchi recounted the impetus behind the game:
The in-game motorcycles resemble the team Honda/Castrol Honda RVF750 RC45. In making the game, AM3 consulted the motorcycle racing team Castrol/Honda Racing Corporation, who helped them on a number of points, including studies on where sound comes from on a motorcycle and how it travels to the ear of the rider. The team determined that they needed four sound outputs to recreate this experience realistically. Because the Model 2 arcade board has only two sound outputs, they used a Model 1 sound board for the additional two sound outputs.
Because it takes more polygons to render a motorcycle than to render a car with a similar level of detail, AM3's wish for the game to support up to eight players presented processing difficulties. They opted to limit the bikes to a relatively small number of polygons so that the game could support eight players without suffering slowdown.
The game was first demonstrated at the 1995 Japanese Amusement Machine Manufacturers' Association show; the game was described as only 20% complete at this time, with just one course playable.
Gaming fans and journalists assumed that the Saturn version of the game would be developed by the same internal Sega CS team which handled the Saturn conversion of "Sega Rally Championship", but the team was busy with "", which Sega considered a more important release. Sega instead assigned the port to third party developer Tantalus Interactive, though several personnel from Sega of Japan assisted Tantalus towards the end of development. The assignment came to Tantalus in an indirect manner; Sega initially gave the job of both Saturn and Windows ports to Psygnosis, which contracted them out to Perfect Entertainment and Tantalus.
Release.
The Saturn version features an arcade mode (which is essentially a recreation of the arcade version, including the presentation screens) and a Saturn mode, which includes additional features such as practice races and a challenge course in which all the tracks are played in order. It supports two players using a split screen, as opposed to the linkup multiplayer used in the arcade version, and is compatible with the analog controller. The Saturn and PC releases have the game soundtrack as standard Red Book audio which can be listened to in any CD player.
Saturn to PC conversion.
The PC conversion, based on the Saturn game, offered enhancements to the visuals and gameplay modes.
Reception.
In Japan, "Game Machine" listed "Manx TT Super Bike" on their February 15, 1996 issue as being the second most-successful dedicated arcade game of the year.
Following a strong audience reaction at the Amusement Trades Exhibition International show, the game's UK distributor sold out of "Manx TT Super Bike" cabinets. A reviewer for "Next Generation" hailed the game as "one of the fastest and most dazzling bike coin-ops in the arcades ... the next evolutionary step in bike racing sims." He said the ability to control the bike without placing one's feet on the ground makes it far more immersive and realistic than any previous cycle racing game, and additionally applauded the effective simulation of speed, high frame rate, "solid" learning curve, persistent and intelligent AI opponents, and the way the bike reacts to being hit or jostled by other racers.
Despite the controversy over Sega entrusting the Saturn conversion to an outside developer, upon its release critics agreed that it was an exemplary conversion of the arcade game. Dean Mortock, for example, admitted in "Saturn Power": "... I was certainly sceptical as to the reasoning behind letting another team do the conversion. But, after playing the game inside out, I can honestly say that I believe that this is the finest conversion of "Manx TT" onto the Saturn possible." The game's smooth control was highly praised, with most critics commenting that all three controller options (standard joypad, analog controller, and steering wheel) work well, with the analog controller allowing the most exceptional precision of the three.
The most common criticism made of the game was that the additional content of the Saturn version was insufficient to give it the longevity expected of a home console game. "GameSpot" in particular concluded that while the game "is one of the best conversions the Saturn has seen and is also truly fun to play", Saturn owners should pass on it in favor of something with higher value-for-money. A "Next Generation" critic, however, argued that "What "Manx TT" is missing in depth is made up for in its ability to deliver a thrilling racing experience with an incredibly smooth frame rate, top-notch rider animation (a detail that doesn't mean much until you've seen it), and some of the best control dynamics ever offered in a racing game". Kraig Kujawa of "Electronic Gaming Monthly" called it "the perfect racing game to rent", while his co-reviewer Dean Hager argued that though the content is limited, "surprisingly, [it] will keep you busy for a while." Rich Leadbetter of "Sega Saturn Magazine" judged that "Although lastability could have been improved, Manx TT is a tough, enjoyable experience which does a great job of bringing the arcade game to Saturn."


Robert J. Schwalb

Robert J. Schwalb is a writer in the role-playing game industry, and has worked as a game designer and developer for such games as "Dungeons & Dragons", "A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying", "Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay", and many other RPG supplements.
Career.
Robert J. Schwalb has worked for "Wizards of the Coast". His works for "Dungeons & Dragons" include: "" (2006, with Robin Laws), "Drow of the Underdark" (2007, with Ari Marmell, Anthony Pryor, and Greg A. Vaughan), "Elder Evils" (2007), "Exemplars of Evil" (2007), "Tome of Magic" (2006, with Matthew Sernett, Dave Noonan, and Ari Marmell), "Player's Handbook II" (2006).
He has also worked for Green Ronin Publishing on Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and he has contributed to "" for Paradigm Concepts (2007).
Schwalb was a long-time developer and staff member for Green Ronin. With Patrick O'Duffy and Chris Pramas, Schwalb wrote "The Pirate's Guide to Freeport" (2007), a 256-page sourcebook on Green Ronin's best-known locale. Schwalb designed the "A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying" game, which previewed in 2008 and published in 2009; this was his last project for Green Ronin before he moved over to Wizards of the Coast. His additional role-playing work includes work for Black Industries, Fantasy Flight Games, and several other companies.
Schwalb became the writer for the online version of the popular "Dragon" column "Demonomicon of Iggwilv" in 2008, having thus far contributed articles for Yeenoghu and Baphomet.
Schwalb also co-wrote "Divine Power", a 4th Edition "D&D" supplement, which made the "Wall Street Journal" Best-Seller list for July 2009.
In 2012, Schwalb became one of the lead designers for the fifth edition of "Dungeons & Dragons". He also wrote for Monte Cook Games' Numenera line, including the "Numenera Character Options" book and the adventure "Beyond All Worlds".
In 2014, after completing his work on the fifth edition, Schwalb launched Schwalb Entertainment and began writing a new RPG entitled "Shadow of the Demon Lord".
In 2018, Schwalb contributed to the new Judge Dredd role-playing game, "Judge Dredd & The Worlds of 2000 AD", by EN World's EN Publishing.


Soccer shoe


L. Ross Babcock III

L. Ross Babcock III is a game designer who has worked primarily on role-playing games.
Career.
When Jordan Weisman asked his friends in 1980 if anyone else would join him in starting a company to print adventures and deckplans for "Traveller", and L. Ross Babcock III had the money and together they formed FASA. Weisman and Babcock printed up a few hundred copies of Weisman's early adventures, and sold them to a local Chicago store; shortly they began sending samples to distributors who were soon selling them to retailers nationwide. Babcock and Weisman knew of William H. Keith Jr. and Andrew Keith as freelancers who regularly wrote and drew for Game Designers' Workshop, and their knowledge of GDW encouraged them to bring the Keith brothers into the company as their first recruits in 1980. In August 1981, FASA came to an agreement to publish the magazine "High Passage", for which Weisman and Babcock did layout and editing. Babcock helped design the role-playing game "Behind Enemy Lines" (1982). After obtaining the license to create a "Star Trek" role-playing game, Weisman and Babcock looked out-of-house for a "Star Trek" design team, and Fantasimulations Association ultimately created "" (1983) for FASA.
When FASA Interactive became Microsoft's FASA Studio, both Babcock and Weisman went over to Microsoft. In early 2000, Babcock stepped up as the final president of FASA, overseeing the company as it was ready to get out of the tabletop publishing business. On January 25, 2001, Mort Weisman (father of Jordan) and Ross Babcock announced that FASA was closing down in an orderly way after producing a few final products.


David Kalvitis

David Kalvitis is an artist, graphic designer, puzzle inventor, and owner of Monkeying Around, publisher of his collections of dot-to-dot-puzzles. Born in Poughkeepsie, New York, Kalvitis is the eldest of three children. He currently resides in Rochester, New York.
Kalvitis is a graduate of Syracuse University, where he earned a Fine Arts degree in Editorial Design. During his senior year, he placed second in the International Print Magazine Cover Design Contest.
After running his own graphic design business in Rochester for 13 years, Kalvitis began his publishing career with the creation of "The Greatest Dot-to-Dot Books in the World" in 2000.
Since 2000 Kalvitis has published 18 hand-designed puzzle books, which have received numerous awards by parenting, educational, and toy organizations. Bernie DeKoven, of Major Fun!, awarded Monkeying Around the Major Fun! Award saying, "in all of his work, it’s [the] quality of the drawings themselves that makes the fun so major: always surprisingly masterful, and deeply satisfying when you complete them – satisfying enough to...color them in." He goes on to say, "it’s not just dot-to-dot, it’s dot-to-OMG-to-dot...There’s a puzzle where you connect the coordinates and another where instead of dots you have words, and you connect them "alphabetically"."
The Toy Man heralds Kalvitis books as tapping into "Creative Expression...Gross [and] Fine Motor Skills...Cognitive...[and] Language development for children of all ages. Monkeying Around has been dedicated to offering innovative dot-to-dot products that delight and entertain children and adults of all ages.
On September 8, 2017, Kalvitis participated in the Parkway 100 We Are Connected Centennial Celebration in Philadelphia, PA. This event kicks off 14 months of community celebrations heralding and commemorating the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Kalvitis was honored to be asked to create his 19th dot-to-dot book with puzzles that represent different scenes in and around the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
To date, his books have sold over one million copies worldwide.


Trochadi

The trochadi ("τροχάδι") is a type of leather sandal that is produced and used exclusively in the island of Skyros, Greece, while its roots are claimed to lie deep in antiquity. The name comes from the Greek verb "τρέχω", which means to run. It is the responsibility of the father to make trochadia for his sons (in the past the trochadi was exclusively worn by men).
The continuous production of the trochadi is an example of how tradition and heritage survive through time.


Jimmy Wong

James Franklin Wong (born March 28, 1987) is an American actor and musician. He is best known for his 2011 music video, "Ching Chong: Asians in the Library Song" and for his role as Ted in the web series "Video Game High School". In 2017, he and YouTuber Meghan Camarena co-hosted the video game themed variety show "Polaris Primetime", which was created as part of Disney's "DXP" programming block on Disney XD.
Wong has appeared in feature films such as "John Dies at the End," "The Circle", and the live-action version of "Mulan".
Early life.
Wong grew up in Normandy Park, Washington. He graduated from Middlebury College in 2009, where he majored in theater and drama. After graduating, he moved to Los Angeles to become an actor.
Career.
Wong garnered national news coverage in March 2011, when he uploaded his music video, "Ching Chong: Asians in the Library Song" to YouTube. He created the video as a response to a UCLA student's vlog rant against Asian students using mobile phones in the UCLA library, one which MSNBC qualified as "offensive." NPR suggested that Wong's video response was one that "effectively turn[ed] the tables on the original rant," offering an alternative method of defense against cyberbullying. Wong later said in an MSNBC interview that while he was initially frustrated by the video rant, he realized that humor offered a better response, as he hoped to "put a positive spin on all of it." Furthermore, he stated, an eye for an eye approach would only encourage "this behavior to continue." "Ching Chong: Asians in the Library Song" went viral and was covered nationally by the American media.
That same year, he co-launched and co-host the YouTube cooking show "Feast of Fiction with Ashley Adams."
Wong later portrayed Ted in the web series "Video Game High School". He was also invited by Lionsgate and Google to create the web series "District Voices". In 2014, Wong was ranked #73 on New Media Rockstars Top 100 Channels.
Wong played Ling in Disney's 2020 live action remake of the 1998 "Mulan" animated movie.
Gaming.
Wong is an avid player of "", specifically the . He hosts a podcast with co-host Josh Lee Kwai called "The Command Zone", where he and Josh discuss their experiences playing the Commander format. Wong is referred to by his co-host as "Jimmy the Red" due to the fact that he often plays red decks when playing commander. He has also been called upon by Wizards of the Coast to preview new sets at exhibitions and on their YouTube channel.
Personal life.
His father is Chinese, from Canton, and his mother is of Chinese and Mongol ancestry. He is the younger brother of filmmaker Freddie Wong.


Martin Brennan (engineer)

Martin Brennan is a computer engineer who developed pioneering personal computers such as the Loki (for Sinclair Research) and the Atari Jaguar video game console.
A physics graduate of Cambridge University, he was a co-founder of Flare Technology, a design house involved in the design of the ill-fated Konix Multisystem.
Brennan initially worked for Sinclair Research where he designed the digital electronics and software in ZX Interface 1 before going on to found Flare with ex-Sinclair colleagues John Mathieson and Ben Cheese. After working at Flare on the "Flare 1" and its development into the Konix Multisystem he went on to work for Atari developing the Atari Panther and the Atari Jaguar.
In 1997 Brennan founded the "Cheap & Cheerful Chip Company" which later went on to become Global Silicon Limited.
In 2007 Brennan designed the Brennan JB7 digital jukebox produced by 3GA Ltd (Third Generation Audio). The second generation audio player, Brennan B2 with web interface, based on the Raspberry PI chipset, is available as of 2015.


3-D Ultra Pinball (video game)

3-D Ultra Pinball is video game released in 1995, and is the first game in "3-D Ultra Pinball" video game series.
Gameplay.
The original 3-D Ultra Pinball game was released in 1995. This game is based on the space simulation game "Outpost". There are three tables named "Colony", "Command Post", and "Mine". Each table holds a set of five challenges. Smaller "mini-tables" are featured with their own set of flippers. The goal is to build and launch a starship, completing the game's entire course.
Reception.
Reviewing the Macintosh version, a "Next Generation" critic commented that "there is some substance to the argument that pinball is not a game meant for the monitor, but "3-D Ultra Pinball" works, and it works very well". He particularly praised the fact that the graphics and physics both include elements not possible on a real pinball table, while remaining "true to the pinball spirit". Despite this, he gave it only two out of five stars. It received a score of 3.5 out of 5 from "MacUser".
According to market research firm PC Data, "3-D Ultra Pinball" was the 18th-best-selling computer game in the United States for the year 1996. According to Sierra On-Line, its sales surpassed 250,000 copies by the end of March 1996.
Development.
A port on the Sega Saturn was planned, but it got cancelled due to unknown reasons.


Power-up

In video games, a power-up is an object that adds temporary benefits or extra abilities to the player character as a game mechanic. This is in contrast to an item, which may or may not have a permanent benefit that can be used at any time chosen by the player. Although often collected directly through touch, power-ups can sometimes only be gained by collecting several related items, such as the floating letters of the word 'EXTEND' in "Bubble Bobble". Well known examples of power-ups that have entered popular culture include the power pellets from "Pac-Man" (regarded as the first power-up) and the Super Mushroom from "Super Mario Bros.", which ranked first in UGO Networks' "Top 11 Video Game Powerups".
Items that confer power-ups are usually pre-placed in the game world, spawned randomly, dropped by beaten enemies or picked up from opened or smashed containers. They can be differentiated from items in other games, such as role-playing video games, by the fact that they take effect immediately, feature designs that do not necessarily fit into the game world (often used letters or symbols emblazoned on a design), and are found in specific genres of games. Power-ups are mostly found in action-oriented games such as maze games, run and guns, shoot 'em ups, first-person shooters, and platform games.
History and influence.
Origins of the term.
"Power-up" and "1-up" are examples of a common form of "wasei-eigo" (Japanese pseudo-Anglicisms), in which the word "up" is prefixed by some desirable quality. The general meaning of "X-up" in Japanese is "this will increase your X", and this construction is regularly used in areas such as advertising. This is similar to another phrase, "X get!", as seen in Super Mario Sunshine's Japanese version's "Shine Get!" phrase.
First instances.
"Pac-Man" from 1980 is credited as the first video game to feature a power-up mechanic. Every maze in the game contains four Power Pellets which temporarily give Pac-Man the ability to eat ghosts, turning the tables on his pursuers. The effect of the power-up was illustrated by one of the first cut scenes to appear in a video game, in the form of brief comical interludes about Pac-Man and Blinky chasing each other around. The power pellet entered popular culture with a joke on video game controversies regarding the influence of video games on children.
In 1984, "Sabre Wulf" introduced power ups in the form of flowers which, when blossoming, provided effects such as speed up and invincibility.
In 1985 "Super Mario Bros." introduced the Super Mushroom, which has entered popular culture, being described as "the power-up". The original game idea was to have an always big Mario as a technical advance, but later the power-up was introduced to make him "super" as a bonus effect. The development team thought it would be interesting to have Mario grow and shrink by eating a magic mushroom, just like in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Other power-ups introduced in this game were the Super Stars and Fire Flowers, which gave Mario invincibility and the ability to shoot fireballs at enemies, respectively.
Konami's 1985 game "Gradius" had the first use of a selection bar where the player could select which power-up effect to trigger, instead of having a fixed instant effect.
In 1986 and the years after, the concept of permanent power-ups appeared in the action role-playing genre in the form of "perks".
Types of power-ups.
Power-ups can be classified according to the type of benefit they give the player.
Offensive abilities.
Gives a new weapon, or transforms the player character into a more aggressive form that increases its attack power or makes some enemies vulnerable. This also includes "nukes", which are weapons that destroy every enemy on the screen at once; these are prevalent in many different genres including vehicular combat, run and guns, and platform games. The effect of the power-up can be time-limited, have a limited number of uses, last until the player is hit, last until the player is killed, or last until game over.
Examples:
Defensive abilities.
These typically consist of items like "shields" (usually a "force field") surrounding the character that deflects projectiles or absorbs a certain amount of damage, or invincibility/invulnerability. In the case of invincibility, this is nearly always granted as a temporary bonus; otherwise it would negate the challenge of the game.
Invincibility (or "invulnerability") comes in two main forms: either the player character merely becomes intangible to harmful things, or can also damage enemies by contact. In either case the character is often still vulnerable to some threats, such as bottomless pits. In many games, invulnerability is also temporarily granted after the player gets hit or loses a life, so that the character will not be hurt/killed twice in quick succession. The effect is commonly indicated by making the player character flash or blink or by musical cues.
Examples:
Evasive abilities.
Items which help the player avoid or escape enemies or enemy weapons. This category includes "speed boosts" and other power-ups which affect time, which can be temporary, permanent, or cumulative, and "invisibility" power-ups which help the player avoid enemies.
Access abilities.
Items which help the player enter new or previously inaccessible areas, or "warp" to another level. Access abilities, depending on the game, can be required to progress normally or be entirely optional.
Examples:
Health and life reserves.
Typically consists of items which restore lost health (most typically in med. kits, food, or as energy), items which increase health capacity and 1-ups (which give an extra chance to continue playing after losing, commonly called a 'life').
Examples:
Ammunition and power reserves.
In some games, using certain items or abilities requires the expenditure of a resource such as ammunition, fuel or magic points. Some games use a single resource, such as magic points, while others use multiple resources, such as several types of ammunition. Some games also have power ups which increase the player's maximum ammunition or power capacity.
Examples:
Token abilities.
Items whose main feature is that they are found in large numbers, to encourage the player to reach certain spots in the game world. They have various cumulative effects, often granting the hero an extra life.
Examples:
Trick power-ups.
These power-ups try to trick the player into grabbing them, only to result usually into damage, removed abilities, or player death.
Examples:
Attaining power-ups.
There are many different methods of obtaining power-ups:
Treasure chests.
In many video games, especially role-playing video games, treasure chests contain various items, currency, and sometimes monsters. For certain role playing games, some chests are actually mimics, in which a monster looks like a chest, but will attack the player when they attempt to open it. This is notably seen in the "Seiken Densetsu" and "Dragon Quest" series.
Treasure chests provide a means for the player to obtain items without paying for them in stores. In some cases, these chests contain items that cannot be purchased at stores. Chests may be locked, requiring a key of some sort. For certain games, keys can only be used once, and the key is destroyed during its use. For other games, having a particular type of key means that the player can open any of the chests with a matching lock.
For most games, once a chest has been opened, the contents remain empty, although they may be repopulated with possibly different items during different stages of the game. This is different from perishable containers, such as crates and jars, which tend to reappear if the player exits the area and then returns.
Selection bar.
Instead of having players collect a power-up that is instantly activated, the players may be allowed to select which power-ups they want to use. This is commonly implemented through a 'selection bar' which contains a number of power-up effects. To access the bar, the player must collect power-up items; the more they collect, the further along the bar they can access. The more powerful power-ups are traditionally placed further along the bar, so that more effort is required to obtain them. The selection bar was first used in Konami's 1985 game, "Gradius".
Perks.
"Perks" are a variation of the power-up mechanic, but permanent rather than temporary. The concept of permanent power-ups dates back to the early NES action RPGs, "Deadly Towers" (1986) and "Rygar" (1987), which blurred the line between the power-ups used in action-adventures and the experience points used in console RPGs. An early video game that used perks, and named it as such, was the 1997 computer RPG game "Fallout". Perks have been used in various other video games in recent times, including first-person shooters such as "", "Modern Warfare 2", and "Killing Floor", as well as action games like "Metal Gear Online".