title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: When one of Moscow's theatre directors severely criticised Bulgakov, Stalin personally protected him, saying that a writer of Bulgakov's quality was above "party words" like "left" and "right". Stalin found work for the playwright at a small Moscow theatre, and next the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT). Bulgakov's first major work was the novel "The White Guard" (Belaya gvardiya [Белая гвардия]), serialized in 1925 but never published in book form.


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: On 5 October 1926, "The Days of the Turbins", the play which continued the theme of "The White Guard" (the fate of Russian intellectuals and officers of the Tsarist Army caught up in revolution and Civil war) was premiered at the MAT. Stalin liked it very much and reportedly saw it at least 15 times.


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: His plays "Ivan Vasilievich" (Иван Васильевич), "Don Quixote" (Дон Кихот) and "Last Days" (Последние дни [Poslednie Dni], also called "Pushkin") were banned. The premier of another, "Moliėre" (also known as "The Cabal of Hypocrites"), about the French dramatist in which Bulgakov plunged "into fairy Paris of the XVII century", received bad reviews in "Pravda" and the play was withdrawn from the theater repertoire. In 1928, "Zoyka's Apartment" and "The Purple Island" were staged in Moscow; both comedies were accepted by the public with great enthusiasm, but critics again gave them bad reviews. By March 1929, Bulgakov's career was ruined when Government censorship stopped the publication of any of his work and his plays.


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: In despair, Bulgakov first wrote a personal letter to Joseph Stalin (July 1929), then on 28 March 1930, a letter to the Soviet government. He requested permission to emigrate if the Soviet Union could not find use for him as a writer. In his autobiography, Bulgakov claimed to have written to Stalin out of desperation and mental anguish, never intending to post the letter. He received a phone call directly from the Soviet leader, who asked the writer whether he really desired to leave the Soviet Union. Bulgakov replied that a Russian writer cannot live outside of his homeland. Stalin gave him permission to continue working at the Art Theater; on 10 May 1930, he re-joined the theater, as stage director's assistant. Later he adapted Gogol's "Dead Souls" for stage.


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: In 1932, Bulgakov married for the third time, to Yelena Shilovskaya, who would prove to be inspiration for the character Margarita in his most famous novel, on which he started working in 1928. During the last decade of his life, Bulgakov continued to work on "The Master and Margarita", wrote plays, critical works, and stories and made several translations and dramatisations of novels. Many of them were not published, others were "torn to pieces" by critics. Much of his work (ridiculing the Soviet system) stayed in his desk drawer for several decades. The refusal of the authorities to let him work in the theatre and his desire to see his family who were living abroad, whom he had not seen for many years, led him to seek drastic measures. Despite his new work, the projects he worked on at the theatre were often prohibited, and he was stressed and unhappy.


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: In the late 1930s, he joined the Bolshoi Theatre as a librettist and consultant. He left after perceiving that none of his works would be produced there. Stalin's favor protected Bulgakov from arrests and execution, but he could not get his writing published. His novels and dramas were subsequently banned and, for the second time, Bulgakov's career as playwright was ruined. When his last play "Batum" (1939), a complimentary portrayal of Stalin's early revolutionary days, was banned before rehearsals, Bulgakov requested permission to leave the country but was refused.


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: In poor health, Bulgakov devoted his last years to what he called his "sunset" novel. The years 1937 to 1939 were stressful for Bulgakov, veering from glimpses of optimism, believing the publication of his masterpiece could still be possible, to bouts of depression, when he felt as if there were no hope. On 15 June 1938, when the manuscript was nearly finished, Bulgakov wrote in a letter to his wife:


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: "In front of me 327 pages of the manuscript (about 22 chapters). The most important remains – editing, and it's going to be hard, I will have to pay close attention to details. Maybe even re-write some things... 'What's its future?' you ask? I don't know. Possibly, you will store the manuscript in one of the drawers, next to my 'killed' plays, and occasionally it will be in your thoughts. Then again, you don't know the future. My own judgement of the book is already made and I think it truly deserves being hidden away in the darkness of some chest..."


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: In 1939, Mikhail Bulgakov organized a private reading of "The Master and Margarita" to his close circle of friends. Yelena Bulgakova remembered 30 years later, "When he finally finished reading that night, he said: 'Well, tomorrow I am taking the novel to the publisher!' and everyone was silent", "...Everyone sat paralyzed. Everything scared them. P. (P. A. Markov, in charge of the literature division of MAT) later at the door fearfully tried to explain to me that trying to publish the novel would cause terrible things", she wrote in her diary (14 May 1939).


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: In the last month of his life, friends and relatives were constantly on duty at his bedside. On 10 March 1940, Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov died from nephrotic syndrome (an inherited kidney disorder). His father had died of the same disease, and from his youth Bulgakov had guessed his future mortal diagnosis. On 11 March, a civil funeral was held in the building of the Union of Soviet Writers. Before the funeral, the Moscow sculptor Sergey Merkurov removed the death mask from his face. He was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: During his life, Bulgakov was best known for the plays he contributed to Konstantin Stanislavski's and Nemirovich-Danchenko's Moscow Art Theatre. Stalin was known to be fond of the play "Days of the Turbins" (Дни Турбиных, 1926), which was based on Bulgakov's novel "The White Guard". His dramatization of Molière's life in "The Cabal of Hypocrites" (Кабала святош, 1936) is still performed by the Moscow Art Theatre. Even after his plays were banned from the theatres, Bulgakov wrote a comedy about Ivan the Terrible's visit into 1930s Moscow. His play "Batum" (Батум, 1939) about the early years of Stalin was prohibited by the premier himself. Bulgakov later reflected his experience of being a Soviet playwright in "Theatrical Novel" (Театральный роман, 1936, unfinished).


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: Bulgakov began writing novels with "The White Guard" (Белая гвардия) (1923, partly published in 1925, first full edition 1927–1929, Paris) – a novel about a life of a White Army officer's family in civil war Kiev. In the mid-1920s, he came to admire the works of Alexander Belyaev and H. G. Wells and wrote several stories and novellas with elements of science fiction, notably "The Fatal Eggs" (Роковые яйца) (1924) and "Heart of a Dog" (Собачье сердце) (1925). He intended to compile his stories of the mid-twenties (published mostly in medical journals) that were based on his work as a country doctor in 1916–1918 into a collection titled "Notes of a Young Doctor" (Записки юного врача), but the book came out only in 1963.


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: "The Fatal Eggs" tells of the events of a Professor Persikov, who, in experimentation with eggs, discovers a red ray that accelerates growth in living organisms. At the time, an illness passes through the chickens of Moscow, killing most of them, and to remedy the situation, the Soviet government puts the ray into use at a farm. Due to a mix-up in egg shipments, the Professor ends up with chicken eggs, while the government-run farm receives the shipment of ostrich, snake and crocodile eggs ordered by the Professor. The mistake is not discovered until the eggs produce giant monstrosities that wreak havoc in the suburbs of Moscow and kill most of the workers on the farm. The propaganda machine turns on Persikov, distorting his nature in the same way his "innocent" tampering created the monsters. This tale of a bungling government earned Bulgakov his label of counter-revolutionary.


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: "Heart of a Dog" features a professor who implants human testicles and a pituitary gland into a dog named Sharik (means "Little Balloon" or "Little Ball" – a popular Russian nickname for a male dog). The dog becomes more and more human as time passes, resulting in all manner of chaos. The tale can be read as a critical satire of liberal nihilism and the communist mentality. It contains a few bold hints to the communist leadership; e.g. the name of the drunkard donor of the human organ implants is Chugunkin ("chugun" is cast iron) which can be seen as a parody on the name of Stalin ("stal'" is steel). It was adapted as a comic opera called "The Murder of Comrade Sharik" by William Bergsma in 1973. In 1988, an award-winning film version "Sobachye Serdtse" was produced by Lenfilm, starring Yevgeniy Yevstigneyev, Roman Kartsev and Vladimir Tolokonnikov.


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: The novel "The Master and Margarita" is a critique of Soviet society and its literary establishment. The work is appreciated for its philosophical undertones and for its high artistic level, thanks to its picturesque descriptions (especially of old Jerusalem), lyrical fragments and style. It is a frame narrative involving two characteristically related time periods, or plot lines: a retelling in Bulgakov's interpretation of the New Testament and a description of contemporary Moscow.


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: The novel begins with Satan visiting Moscow in the 1930s, joining a conversation between a critic and a poet debating the most effective method of denying the existence of Jesus Christ. It develops into an all-embracing indictment of the corruption of communism and Soviet Russia. A story within the story portrays the interrogation of Jesus Christ by Pontius Pilate and the Crucifixion.


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: It became the best known novel by Bulgakov. He began writing it in 1928, but the novel was finally published by his widow only in 1966, twenty-six years after his death. The book contributed a number of sayings to the Russian language, for example, "Manuscripts don't burn" and "second-grade freshness". A destroyed manuscript of the Master is an important element of the plot. Bulgakov had to rewrite the novel from memory after he burned the draft manuscript in 1930, as he could not see a future as a writer in the Soviet Union at a time of widespread political repression.


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: The Mikhail Bulgakov Museum (Bulgakov House) in Kyiv has been converted to a literary museum with some rooms devoted to the writer, as well as some to his works. This was his family home, the model for the house of the Turbin family in his play


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: In Moscow, two museums honour the memory of Mikhail Bulgakov and "The Master and Margarita". Both are situated in Bulgakov's old apartment building on Bolshaya Sadovaya street nr. 10, in which parts of "The Master and Margarita" are set. Since the 1980s, the building has become a gathering spot for Bulgakov's fans, as well as Moscow-based Satanist groups, and had various kinds of graffiti scrawled on the walls. The numerous paintings, quips, and drawings were completely whitewashed in 2003. Previously the best drawings were kept as the walls were repainted, so that several layers of different colored paints could be seen around the best drawings.


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: There is a rivalry between the two museums, mainly maintained by the later established official Museum M.A. Bulgakov, which invariably presents itself as "the first and only Memorial Museum of Mikhail Bulgakov in Moscow".


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: The Bulgakov House (Russian: Музей – театр "Булгаковский Дом") is situated at the ground floor. This museum has been established as a private initiative on 15 May 2004.


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: The "Bulgakov House" contains personal belongings, photos, and several exhibitions related to Bulgakov's life and his different works. Various poetic and literary events are often held, and excursions to "Bulgakov's Moscow" are organised, some of which are animated with living characters of "The Master and Margarita". The "Bulgakov House" also runs the "Theatre M.A. Bulgakov" with 126 seats, and the "Café 302-bis".


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: In the same building, in apartment number 50 on the fourth floor, is a second museum that keeps alive the memory of Bulgakov, the Museum M.A. Bulgakov (Russian: Музей М. А. Булгаков). This second museum is a government initiative, and was founded on 26 March 2007.


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: The Museum M.A. Bulgakov contains personal belongings, photos, and several exhibitions related to Bulgakov's life and his different works. Various poetic and literary events are often held.


title: Mikhail Bulgakov

text: After graduating from the Medical School in 1909, he spent the early days of his career as a venereologist, rather than pursuing his goal of being a pediatrician, as syphilis was highly prevalent during those times. It was during those early years that he described the symptoms and characteristics of syphilis affecting the bones. He described the abnormal and concomitant change of the outline of the crests of the shin-bones with a pathological worm-eaten like appearance and creation of abnormal osteophytes in the bones of those suffering from later stages of syphilis. This became known as "Bulgakov's Sign" and is commonly used in the former Soviet states, but is known as the "Bandy Legs Sign" in the west.


title: Ram (album)

text: Ram is the only album credited to the husband-and-wife music duo Paul and Linda McCartney, released on 17 May 1971 by Apple Records. It was recorded in New York with guitarists David Spinozza and Hugh McCracken, and future Wings drummer Denny Seiwell. Three singles were issued from the album: "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" (Paul's first number 1 hit in America without the Beatles), "The Back Seat of My Car" and "Eat at Home". The recording sessions also yielded the non-album single "Another Day".


title: Ram (album)

text: The album's release coincided with a period of acrimony between McCartney and his former Beatles bandmates, and followed his legal action in the United Kingdom's High Court to dissolve the Beatles partnership. John Lennon perceived slights in the lyrics to songs such as "Too Many People". Although McCartney felt that he had addressed the criticisms he received with his 1970 solo debut, "McCartney", "Ram" elicited a similarly unfavourable reaction from music journalists. It nonetheless topped the national albums charts in the UK, the Netherlands and Canada. Today, "Ram" is held in high regard by many music critics and is often ranked as one of McCartney's best solo albums. It has also been recognised as an early indie pop album.


title: Ram (album)

text: In 1971, McCartney produced "Thrillington", an instrumental interpretation of "Ram" that was released in 1977 under the pseudonym "Percy 'Thrills' Thrillington". In 2012, an expanded edition of "Ram" was reissued with over two dozen bonus tracks as part of the "Paul McCartney Archive Collection". In 2020, "Ram" was ranked number 450 on "Rolling Stone"s list of the greatest albums of all time.


title: Ram (album)

text: Paul McCartney and his family flew to New York City in October 1970 to begin working on the follow-up to "McCartney". While the previous album had featured him playing every instrument, for "Ram", McCartney decided to hold auditions for musicians, some of whom were brought in under the guise of recording a commercial jingle. Auditions were held in an attic on 45th Street for three days, where David Spinozza was recruited as guitarist by Linda, before auditions moved to a Bronx basement, where Denny Seiwell was brought in to play drums. McCartney once said he found Seiwell "lying on a mattress" in the basement. Midway through these sessions, Spinozza became unavailable and was replaced by Hugh McCracken.


title: Ram (album)

text: The basic tracks for the album were taped at Columbia's Studio B from 12 October to 20 November 1970 before the McCartneys returned to their Scottish farm for the Christmas holidays. Work continued at Studio B and A&R Recording Studios, New York, from the second week of January 1971 through to February. Playing guitar or piano and singing at the same time, Paul chose to overdub his bass later on. Although it was a collaborative project, Linda's vocal duties were mostly limited to singing harmonies and backing Paul, who sang almost all of the lead parts. Linda sang co-lead on "Long Haired Lady". The McCartneys' daughter Heather, who had been adopted by Paul the previous year, sang backing vocals on "Monkberry Moon Delight".


title: Ram (album)

text: "Ram On", from the album's first side, was reprised on the second side, before the album's final track, "The Back Seat of My Car". The New York Philharmonic was brought in by McCartney to play on "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey", "Long Haired Lady" and "The Back Seat of My Car", as well as the McCartneys' song "Another Day". "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" is in a similar vein to the "Abbey Road" medley, as the song consisted of several unfinished songs combined into one. Music videos were made for "3 Legs" and "Heart of the Country", from footage that was filmed on 2 January 1971, and edited together five months later, by Ray Benson.


title: Ram (album)

text: The project was moved to Sound Recording in Los Angeles, where much of the backing vocals were recorded. Producer Jim Guercio cancelled his honeymoon to oversee the project, but his direction was not followed by McCartney, and progress stalled. McCartney was unable to choose which of the 20+ recorded songs would be cut from the album. Guercio left the project to honour a previous booking, and Norwegian engineer replaced him, finishing the album over the course of six weeks. McCartney gave Wangberg free rein to mix the songs as he saw fit, and sequence them for the album in any way he chose. Among the creative decisions made by Wangberg was the stitching together of two songs to make "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey", and the introduction of thunder sound effects to that song; the thunder was taken from a monaural film clip, recorded by Wangberg onto two tracks with small differences to make artificial stereo. Paul and Linda were very happy upon hearing the final album mix.


title: Ram (album)

text: The recording project also yielded the independent single "Another Day" and its B-side, "Oh Woman, Oh Why", released in mid-February 1971. Session songs dropped from the album sequence included "Little Woman Love" and tracks later featured on Wings' 1973 album "Red Rose Speedway": "Get on the Right Thing", "Little Lamb Dragonfly" and "Big Barn Bed". "I Lie Around", issued as the B-side to Wings' 1973 single "Live and Let Die", was taped during these sessions. Also recorded was the first incarnation of "Seaside Woman". McCartney also recorded "Hey Diddle", "A Love for You", "Great Cock and Seagull Race", "Now Hear This Song of Mine", "Rode All Night", "Sunshine Sometimes" and "When the Wind Is Blowing".


title: Ram (album)

text: According to Peter Brown, the Beatles' former business associate, John Lennon believed that several of the songs on "Ram" contained personal jibes directed at himself and Yoko Ono, among them "Dear Boy" and, particularly, "Too Many People". McCartney later conceded that some of the lyrics of "Too Many People" had been "a little dig at John and Yoko", with "preaching practices" and "you took your lucky break and broke it in two" being direct references to Lennon. Brown also described the picture of two beetles copulating on the back cover as symbolic of how McCartney felt the other Beatles were treating him. George Harrison and Ringo Starr were said to interpret the track "3 Legs" as an attack on them and Lennon. According to McCartney, "Dear Boy" was directed at Linda's ex-husband, and not Lennon.


title: Ram (album)

text: "Another Day" / "Oh Woman, Oh Why" was released that February and became a worldwide Top 5 hit. In May, "Ram" was unveiled, on 17th in the US and on the 21st in the UK. "The Back Seat of My Car" was excerpted as a UK single that August, only reaching number 39, but the US release of the ambitious "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" proved much more successful, giving McCartney his first number 1 single since leaving the Beatles. The album reached number 1 in the UK and number 2 in the US, where it spent over five months in the Top 10 and went platinum. Despite the phasing-out of monaural albums by the late 1960s, "Ram" was pressed in mono with unique mixes that differ from the common stereo version. These were only made available to radio stations and are among the most valuable and sought-after of Paul McCartney's solo records. The album has sold over 2 million copies.


title: Ram (album)

text: In July, Northern Songs and Maclen Music sued Paul and Linda McCartney for violating an exclusive rights agreement by collaborating on "Another Day". Although six of the eleven songs on "Ram" were also co-written with Linda, both parties agreed the issue of royalties for the album could be decided at a later date. In June 1972, Associated Television (ATV), which then owned Northern Songs, announced that "all differences between them have been amicably settled" and the McCartneys signed a new seven-year co-publishing contract between ATV and McCartney Music.


title: Ram (album)

text: Upon its release, "Ram" was poorly received by music critics. McCartney was particularly hurt by the harsh reviews − especially as he had attempted to address the points raised in criticism of his earlier album, "McCartney", by adopting a more professional approach this time around. In his review for "Rolling Stone", Jon Landau called "Ram" "incredibly inconsequential" and "monumentally irrelevant", and criticised its lack of intensity and energy. He added that it exposes McCartney as having "benefited immensely from collaboration" with the Beatles, particularly John Lennon, who "held the reins in on McCartney's cutsie-pie, florid attempts at pure rock muzak" and kept him from "going off the deep end that leads to an album as emotionally vacuous as "Ram"". "Playboy" accused McCartney of "substituting facility for any real substance", and compared it to "watching someone juggle five guitars: It's fairly impressive, but you keep wondering why he bothers." In "NME", Alan Smith further called it "an excursion into almost unrelieved tedium" and "the worst thing Paul McCartney has ever done." Robert Christgau, writing in "The Village Voice", called it "a bad record, a classic form/content mismatch", and felt that McCartney succumbed to "conspicuous consumption" by overworking himself and obscenely producing a style of music meant to be soft and whimsical. In a slightly more positive note, Chris Charlesworth of "Melody Maker" found "Ram" an overall better record than "McCartney", but still found it subpar to the recent releases of Harrison and Lennon. Charlesworth concluded: "A good album by anybody's standards and certainly far better than the majority released by British groups and singers. Trouble is you expect too much from a man like Paul McCartney." Writing four years later, Roy Carr and Tony Tyler from "NME" suggested that "it would be naive to have expected the McCartneys to produce anything other than a mediocre record ... Grisly though this was, McCartney was to sink lower before rescuing his credibility late in 1973."


title: Ram (album)

text: His fellow ex-Beatles, all of whom were riding high in critical favour with their recent releases, were likewise vocal in their negativity. Lennon hated the album, dismissing his former songwriting partner's efforts as ""muzak to my ears"" in his song "How Do You Sleep?" Starr told the UK's "Melody Maker": "I feel sad about Paul's albums ... I don't think there's one [good] tune on the last one, "Ram" ... he seems to be going strange." In addition to conducting a war of words in the British music press, "Crippled Inside", another track on Lennon's "Imagine" album, was also thought to be directed at McCartney. Early editions of "Imagine" included a postcard of Lennon pulling the ears of a pig in a parody of "Ram"s cover photograph of McCartney holding a ram by the horns.


title: Ram (album)

text: The 2012 reissue of "Ram" received an aggregate score of 86 out of 100 from Metacritic, based on twelve reviews – a score that the website defines as indicating "universal acclaim". Reviewing this issue, "Mojo" said that "today it sounds quintessentially McCartney". AllMusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote: "in retrospect it looks like nothing so much as the first indie pop album, a record that celebrates small pleasures with big melodies". "Pitchfork"s Jayson Greene similarly felt McCartney was "inventing an approach to pop music that would eventually become someone else's indie pop," and called "Ram" "a domestic-bliss album, one of the weirdest, earthiest, and most honest ever made". Simon Vozick-Levinson of "Rolling Stone" dubbed it a "daffy masterpiece" and "a grand psychedelic ramble full of divine melodies and orchestral frippery".


title: Ram (album)

text: David Quantick of "Uncut" felt that, although it is not as "legendary" as publicised, the album is "occasionally brilliant and historically fascinating" as "post-Beatles mish-mash". Steven Hyden, writing for "The A.V. Club", said that the "lightweight" style that was originally panned by critics is "actually (when heard with sympathetic ears) a big part of what makes it so appealing". However, "Q" magazine still found "Ram" to be "frustratingly uneven". In a retrospective review in 1981, Robert Christgau panned McCartney's songs as pretentious "crotchets ... so lightweight they float away even as Paulie layers them down with caprices".


title: Ram (album)

text: In 1977, McCartney supervised the release of an instrumental interpretation of "Ram" (recorded in June 1971 and arranged by Richard Hewson) with the release of "Thrillington" under the pseudonym of Percy "Thrills" Thrillington. "Thrillington" was later released as part of the 2012 super-deluxe release of "Ram".


title: Ram (album)

text: "Ram", along with McCartney's "Wings over America" and "Tug of War" albums, was issued in the US on compact disc on 18 January 1988. In 1993, the album was remastered and reissued on CD as part of "The Paul McCartney Collection" series with "Another Day" and "Oh Woman, Oh Why" as bonus tracks. That same year Digital Compact Classics released an audiophile edition prepared by Steve Hoffman.


title: Ram (album)

text: On 21 May 2012 (in the UK) and 22 May (in the US), the album was reissued by McCartney's current label, Hear Music as part of the "Paul McCartney Archive Collection". This reissue included the mono mix, which had never been issued previously on compact disc, except by bootleggers. The mono version was also released commercially in 2012, albeit as a limited edition LP. The 2012 reissue was accompanied by the Record Store Day exclusive edition of "Another Day" single.


title: Ram (album)

text: In 2012, Danish rock singer/songwriter Tim Christensen, American singer/songwriters Mike Viola and Tracy Bonham, and Christensen's solo band the Damn Crystals did a one-off tribute show, performing "Ram" in full length along with other post-Beatles songs, at Vega in Copenhagen, in celebration of McCartney's 70th birthday. In 2013 this tribute concert was released as the DVD/CD and DVD/2-LP album "Pure McCartney".


title: Ram (album)

text: In 2021, Denny Seiwell teamed up with Fernando Perdomo to produce "Ram On: The 50th Anniversary Tribute to Paul and Linda McCartney's Ram". The album has over 100 musicians from all over the world creating a new version of "Ram" and the single tracks "Another Day" and "Oh Woman, Oh Why". The contributors included Seiwell, Spinozza and Marvin Stamm from the original sessions, along with Davey Johnstone, Will Lee, Joey Santiago of the Pixies, Eric Dover formerly of Jellyfish, and Carnie Wilson. Cherry Red Records released the album on May 17, 2021.


title: Ram (album)

text: All songs written by Paul McCartney, except "Another Day", "Little Woman Love", and "Hey Diddle", written with Linda McCartney.


The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is an upcoming animated fantasy film directed by Kenji Kamiyama from a screenplay by Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou, based on the novel "The Lord of the Rings" by J. R. R. Tolkien. Produced by New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. Animation and with animation production by Sola Entertainment, the film is a prequel set 183 years before the events depicted in "The Lord of the Rings" film trilogy. It stars Brian Cox as Helm Hammerhand, a legendary King of Rohan. Also starring is Miranda Otto.


title: The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim

text: Development of the film was being fast-tracked by June 2021, when it was officially announced along with the involvement of Kamiyama, consultant Philippa Boyens who co-wrote the "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy, and initial writers Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews. Animation work had begun by then, taking visual inspiration from those films. Gittins and Papageorgiou were working on the script by February 2022.


text: "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim" will be released by Warner Bros. Pictures on April 12, 2024.


text: Set 183 years before the events of the "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy, "The War of the Rohirrim" tells the story of Helm Hammerhand, a legendary King of Rohan who must defend against an army of Dunlendings. He becomes the namesake for the stronghold of Helm's Deep.


text: Lorraine Ashbourne, Yazdan Qafouri, Benjamin Wainwright, Michael Wildman, Jude Akuwudike, Bilal Hasna, and Janine Duvitski have been cast in undisclosed roles.


text: During 20th anniversary celebrations for the release of the film "" (2001), film studio New Line Cinema announced in June 2021 that it was fast-tracking development of an anime prequel film with Warner Bros. Animation. Titled "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim", the film is set 183 years before the events of the "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy and tells the story of Helm Hammerhand, who is explored in the appendices of J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" novel and is the namesake for the fortress Helm's Deep seen in "" (2002). Kenji Kamiyama and Joseph Chou were set to direct and produce the film, respectively, after doing the same for Warner Bros.' anime television series "", with Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews writing the screenplay. The film was intended to be connected to the narrative of the film trilogy, with the trilogy's co-writer, Philippa Boyens, consulting on the prequel. The trilogy's director, Peter Jackson, and other co-writer, Fran Walsh, were not involved with the project.


text: By February 2022, the script was being written by Phoebe Gittins, Boyens' daughter, and her writing partner Arty Papageorgiou, based on a story by Addiss and Matthews. Richard Taylor, the creative director of special effects company Wētā Workshop, and illustrators Alan Lee and John Howe also joined the film's creative team after all working on the live-action trilogy.


text: Voice casting for the film had begun by the time of its announcement in June 2021, and announcements were expected soon after February 2022. In June, Brian Cox was revealed to be voicing Helm, with Miranda Otto reprising her role of Éowyn from the live-action films to serve as the narrator. Also revealed to be cast in the film were Gaia Wise, Luke Pasqualino, Lorraine Ashbourne, Yazdan Qafouri, Benjamin Wainwright, Laurence Ubong Williams, Shaun Dooley, Michael Wildman, Jude Akuwudike, Bilal Hasna, and Janine Duvitski.


text: Sola Entertainment had begun work on the animation for the film by the time of its announcement in June 2021. The film draws visual inspiration from the "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy.


text: A first look at concept art from the film, showing the influence of the live-action trilogy on its visuals, was revealed in February 2022.


text: "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim" will be released on April 12, 2024, by Warner Bros. Pictures.


title: Rupali Ganguly

text: Rupali Ganguly (born 5 April 1977) is an Indian actress best known for her work in Star Plus show "Anupamaa". Prior to "Anupamaa" , she is best known for her portrayal of Monisha Sarabhai in the cult sitcom "Sarabhai Vs Sarabhai".


title: Rupali Ganguly

text: Born to film director Anil Ganguly, Ganguly started her acting career as a child, making her debut at age seven in her father's film Saaheb (1985). Following appearances in less favourably received films; Angaara (1996), and Do Ankhen Barah Hath (1997), as a teenager, Ganguly had her career breakthrough, after venturing into television with her portrayal of medical intern Dr. Simran Chopra in the Star Plus medical drama series Sanjivani (2002). She received further recognition with her portrayal of Monisha Sarabhai in the cult sitcom Sarabhai vs Sarabhai (2004). Ganguly continued to appear in numerous successful television series, notably Baa Bahoo Aur Baby (2005), and Parvarrish – Kuchh Khattee Kuchh Meethi (2011), following which she took a sabbatical from acting. After a seven-year hiatus, Ganguly returned in 2020 with the soap opera Anupamaa.


title: Rupali Ganguly

text: Ganguly was born on 5 April 1977 in Calcutta, (present-day Kolkata), West Bengal into a Bengali Hindu family. Her father, Anil Ganguly, was a director and screenwriter and her brother Vijay Ganguly is an actor-producer. She studied hotel management and theatre.


title: Rupali Ganguly

text: Ganguly made her acting debut at age seven with her father's film "Saaheb" in 1985. She made her television debut in "Sukanya" in 2000, and has also appeared in "Sanjivani" and "Bhabhi". Ganguly received widespread recognition and critical acclaim for her portrayal of Monisha Sarabhai, a middle-class young woman married in a high society, Cuffe Parade-living socialite family in the cult sitcom "Sarabhai vs Sarabhai" from 2004 to 2006.


title: Rupali Ganguly

text: In 2009, she participated in Colors TV's stunt based reality show, "". She also gave voice over in an animation film "Dashavatar" in 2008. In 2000, she established an advertising agency in Mumbai.


title: Rupali Ganguly

text: Since 2020, she is portraying the titular character in StarPlus's "Anupamaa". Ganguly made her digital debut in 2022 with her ongoing show "Anupamaa's" prequel web series named "" which premiered on Disney+ Hotstar in 2022.


title: Mode of transport

text: Mode of transport is a term used to distinguish between different ways of transportation or transporting people or goods. The different modes of transport are air, water, and land transport, which includes rails or railways, road and off-road transport. Other modes also exist, including pipelines, cable transport, and space transport. Human-powered transport and animal-powered transport are sometimes regarded as their own mode, but never fall into the other categories. In general, transportation is used for moving of people, animals, and other goods from one place to another. Means of transport, on the other hand, refers to the transport facilities used to carry people or cargo according to the chosen mode (animal, vehicle, car, airplane, ship, truck, train and so on and so forth). Each mode of transport has a fundamentally different technological solution, and some require a separate environment. Each mode has its own infrastructure, vehicles, transport operators and operations.


title: Mode of transport

text: Animal-powered transport is the use of working animals for the transport of people and/or goods. Humans may use some of the animals directly, use them as pack animals for carrying goods, or harness them, alone or in teams, to pull watercraft, sleds, or wheeled vehicles.


title: Mode of transport

text: A fixed-wing aircraft, typically airplane, is a heavier-than-air flying vehicle, in which the special geometry of the wings generates lift and then lifts the whole vehicle. Fixed-wing aircraft range from small trainers and recreational aircraft to large airliners and military cargo aircraft. For short distances or in places without runways, helicopters can be operable. (Other types of aircraft, like autogyros and airships, are not a significant portion of air transport.)


title: Mode of transport

text: Air transport is the fastest method of transport, Commercial jets reach speeds of up to and a considerably higher ground speed if there is a jet stream tailwind, while piston-powered general aviation aircraft may reach up to or more. This celerity comes with higher cost and energy use, and aviation's impacts to the environment and particularly the global climate require consideration when comparing modes of transportation. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates a commercial jet's flight to have some 2-4 times the effect on the climate than if the same CO emissions were made at ground level, because of different atmospheric chemistry and radiative forcing effects at the higher altitude. U.S. airlines alone burned about 16.2 billion gallons of fuel during the twelve months between October 2013 and September 2014. WHO estimates that globally as many as 500,000 people at a time are on planes. The global trend has been for increasing numbers of people to travel by air, and individually to do so with increasing frequency and over longer distances, a dilemma that has the attention of climate scientists and other researchers, the press, and the World Wide Web. The issue of impacts from frequent travel, particularly by air because of the long distances that are easily covered in one or a few days, is called hypermobility and has been a topic of research and governmental concern for many years.


title: Mode of transport

text: Human powered transport, a form of sustainable transportation, is the transport of people and/or goods using human muscle-power, in the form of walking, running and swimming. Modern technology has allowed machines to enhance human power. Human-powered transport remains popular for reasons of cost-saving, leisure, physical exercise, and environmentalism; it is sometimes the only type available, especially in underdeveloped or inaccessible regions.


title: Mode of transport

text: Although humans are able to walk without infrastructure, the transport can be enhanced through the use of roads, especially when using the human power with vehicles, such as bicycles and inline skates. Human-powered vehicles have also been developed for difficult environments, such as snow and water, by watercraft rowing and skiing; even the air can be entered with human-powered aircraft.


title: Mode of transport

text: Land transport covers all land-based transportation systems that provide for the movement of people, goods and services. Land transport plays a vital role in linking communities to each other. Land transport is a key factor in urban planning. It consists of 2 kinds, rail and road.


title: Mode of transport

text: Rail transport is a means of conveyance of passengers and goods by way of wheeled vehicles running on rail track, known as a railway or railroad. The rails are anchored perpendicular to railroad train consists of one or more connected vehicles that run on the rails. Propulsion is commonly provided by a locomotive, that hauls a series of unpowered cars, that can carry passengers or freight. The locomotive can be powered by steam, diesel or by electricity supplied by trackside systems. Alternatively, some or all the cars can be powered, known as a multiple unit. Also, a train can be powered by horses, cables, gravity, pneumatics and gas turbines. Railed vehicles move with much less friction than rubber tires on paved roads, making trains more energy efficient, though not as efficient as ships.


title: Mode of transport

text: Intercity trains are long-haul services connecting cities; modern high-speed rail is capable of speeds up to , but this requires a specially built track. Regional and commuter trains feed cities from suburbs and surrounding areas, while intra-urban transport is performed by high-capacity tramways and rapid transits, often making up the backbone of a city's public transport. Freight trains traditionally used box cars, requiring manual loading and unloading of the cargo. Since the 1960s, container trains have become the dominant solution for general freight, while large quantities of bulk are transported by dedicated trains.


title: Mode of transport

text: A road is an identifiable route of travel, usually surfaced with gravel, asphalt or concrete, and supporting land passage by foot or by a number of vehicles.


title: Mode of transport

text: The most common road vehicle in the developed world is the automobile, a wheeled passenger vehicle that carries its own motor. As of 2002, there were 591 million automobiles worldwide. Other users of roads include motorcars, motorcycles, buses, trucks, bicycles and pedestrians, and special provisions are sometimes made for each of these. For example, the use of bus lanes give priority for public transport, and cycle lanes provide special areas of road for bicycles to use.


title: Mode of transport

text: Motorcars offer high flexibility, but are deemed with high energy and area use, and the main source of noise and air pollution in cities; buses allow for more efficient travel at the cost of reduced flexibility. Road transport by truck is often the initial and final stage of freight transport.


title: Mode of transport

text: Water transport is the process of transport that a watercraft, such as a bart, ship or sailboat, makes over a body of water, such as a sea, ocean, lake, canal or river. If a boat or other vessel can successfully pass through a waterway it is known as a navigable waterway. The need for buoyancy unites watercraft, and makes the hull a dominant aspect of its construction, maintenance and appearance. When a boat is floating on the water the hull of the boat is pushing aside water where the hull now is, this is known as displacement.


title: Mode of transport

text: In the 1800s, the first steamboats were developed, using a steam engine to drive a paddle wheel or propeller to move the ship. The steam was produced using wood or coal. Now, most ships have an engine using a slightly refined type of petroleum called bunker fuel. Some ships, such as submarines, use nuclear power to produce the steam. Recreational or educational craft still use wind power, while some smaller craft use internal combustion engines to drive one or more propellers, or in the case of jet boats, an inboard water jet. In shallow draft areas, hovercraft are propelled by large pusher-prop fans.


title: Mode of transport

text: Although slow, modern sea transport is a highly effective method of transporting large quantities of non-perishable goods. Commercial vessels, nearly 35,000 in number, carried 7.4 billion tons of cargo in 2007. Transport by water is significantly less costly than air transport for transcontinental shipping; short sea shipping and ferries remain viable in coastal areas.


title: Mode of transport

text: Pipeline transport sends goods through a pipe, most commonly liquid and gases are sent, but pneumatic tubes can also send solid capsules using compressed air. For example liquids/gases, any chemically stable liquid or gas can be sent through a pipeline. Short-distance systems exist for sewage, slurry water and beer, while long-distance networks are used for petroleum and natural gas.


title: Mode of transport

text: Cable transport is a broad mode where vehicles are pulled by cables instead of an internal power source. It is most commonly used at steep gradient. Typical solutions include aerial tramway, elevators, escalator and ski lifts; some of these are also categorized as conveyor transport.


title: Mode of transport

text: Space transport is transport out of Earth's atmosphere into outer space by means of a spacecraft. While large amounts of research have gone into technology, it is rarely used except to put satellites into orbit, and conduct scientific experiments. However, people have landed on the moon, and probes have been sent to all the planets of the Solar System.


title: Mode of transport

text: Unmanned aerial vehicle transport (drone transport) is being used for medicine transportation in least developed countries with inadequate infrastructure by an american based start-up Zipline. Amazon.com and other transportation companies are currently testing the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in parcel delivery. This method will allow short-range small-parcel delivery in a short time frame.


title: Mode of transport

text: Worldwide, the most widely used modes for passenger transport are the Automobile (16,000 bn passenger km), followed by Buses (7,000), Air (2,800), Railways (1,900), and Urban Rail (250).


title: Mode of transport

text: The most widely used modes for freight transport are Sea (40,000 bn ton km), followed by Road (7,000), Railways (6,500), Oil pipelines (2,000) and Inland Navigation (1,500).


title: Lysette Anthony

text: Lysette Anne Chodzko (born 26 September 1963), known professionally as Lysette Anthony, is an English actress and model. She is known for her roles in the film "Husbands and Wives" (1992), as Princess Lysssa in the 1983 fantasy epic "Krull", the first season of the ITV comedy-drama series "Auf Wiedersehen, Pet" (1983), the BBC1 sitcom "Three Up, Two Down" (1985-1989) and her role as Marnie Nightingale in the Channel 4 soap opera "Hollyoaks" (2016–2022).


title: Lysette Anthony

text: Anthony was born on 26 September 1963 in Marylebone, London, the only child of actor Michael Adam Anthony (né Chodzko), an actor from Jersey, and actress Bernadette Milnes. The couple later divorced. Anthony's French-born paternal grandfather, Alexander Victor Chodzko, was a mariner and journalist of Polish descent.


title: Lysette Anthony

text: Anthony's childhood was made difficult by her mother's manic depression and schizophrenia and she left home at 19. In 1980, at age 16, Anthony was heralded as the "Face of the Eighties" by photographer David Bailey. She was a successful model before she became known as an actress at the age of 20. During the decade, she appeared in numerous music videos for artists such as Bryan Adams ("Summer of '69", "Somebody", "Heaven", and "Run to You") and Depeche Mode ("I Feel You").


title: Lysette Anthony

text: Anthony made her first stage appearance at the Cambridge Theatre at age 10. Four years later, she performed with the National Youth Theatre. She appeared at the Trafalgar Studios in the West End as Arabella Lucretia in the television comedy "The New Statesman", with Rik Mayall. She has played the role of Joanna Lyppiatt in Noël Coward's "Present Laughter" (with Simon Callow) and the role of Eleanor in Terry Johnson's "Dead Funny" at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.


title: Lysette Anthony

text: Anthony's credits include a non-speaking role in British Telecom adverts, ITV's "Murder in Suburbia", "Agatha Christie's Poirot", a regular role in the soap opera "Night & Day" (ITV), "Hotel!" for Channel 5, BBC's "Jonathan Creek", "Oliver Twist", "Dombey and Son", "A Ghost in Monte Carlo", "Campion" episode "Sweet Danger" (as Lady Amanda Fitton), "Lovejoy", "Hollyoaks" and ITV’s "Auf Wiedersehen, Pet". She also starred for four years in the BBC sitcom "Three Up, Two Down". She also portrayed Angelique Bouchard for eight episodes of the prime time revival of the gothic soap opera "Dark Shadows". She also played Miss Clarise Mimsers in "The Dead Man's Gun" in 1998 as well as Miss Scarlett in the third series of "Cluedo" on ITV in 1992.


title: Lysette Anthony

text: Her television appearances in 2006 included roles in "Casualty" and a new sitcom pilot, "Baggy Trousers". She also played the roles of Rachel Heath, a semi-regular character in "The Bill" and Veronica Cray in "The Hollow", a two-part "Poirot" film for ITV. She also appeared briefly in "Coronation Street" on 13 August 2010 and as an American patient in "Holby City" in February 2013. In 2014, she appeared on an episode of "Pointless Celebrities" partnered with Christopher Timothy. She also played the role as Lady Rowena in Ivanhoe in 1982.


title: Lysette Anthony

text: In February 2016, Anthony began appearing in the Channel 4 soap opera "Hollyoaks" as Marnie Nightingale. Her character was killed off in January 2022 after collapsing due to a brain injury caused by an explosion, ending Anthony's almost six-year-long run with the soap. In October 2022, she appeared in three episodes of the BBC soap opera "Doctors" as Mary Dougan.


title: Lysette Anthony

text: In 2008, Anthony portrayed Clara Harris in the "Doctor Who" audio adventure "Assassin in the Limelight". In February 2010, it was announced that she would be returning to the world of "Dark Shadows" starring in the audio drama "".


title: Lysette Anthony

text: Anthony married Dutch artist and entrepreneur Luc Leestemaker in 1990; they divorced in 1995 after Anthony left Leestemaker for married American film director David Price whom she met while filming "Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde". She went on to marry Price and they were together for two years until they divorced. Anthony was in a relationship with composer Simon Boswell from 2004 to 2010, with whom she has a son called Jimi. In 2008, her son was diagnosed with juvenile arthritis. She now raises funds for research.


title: Lysette Anthony

text: In "The Sunday Times" on 15 October 2017, Anthony made public allegations that Harvey Weinstein raped her in the late 1980s.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: Pulse-code modulation (PCM) is a method used to digitally represent sampled analog signals. It is the standard form of digital audio in computers, compact discs, digital telephony and other digital audio applications. In a PCM stream, the amplitude of the analog signal is sampled regularly at uniform intervals, and each sample is quantized to the nearest value within a range of digital steps.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: Linear pulse-code modulation (LPCM) is a specific type of PCM in which the quantization levels are linearly uniform. This is in contrast to PCM encodings in which quantization levels vary as a function of amplitude (as with the A-law algorithm or the μ-law algorithm). Though "PCM" is a more general term, it is often used to describe data encoded as LPCM.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: A PCM stream has two basic properties that determine the stream's fidelity to the original analog signal: the sampling rate, which is the number of times per second that samples are taken; and the bit depth, which determines the number of possible digital values that can be used to represent each sample.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: Early electrical communications started to sample signals in order to multiplex samples from multiple telegraphy sources and to convey them over a single telegraph cable. The American inventor Moses G. Farmer conceived telegraph time-division multiplexing (TDM) as early as 1853. Electrical engineer W. M. Miner, in 1903, used an electro-mechanical commutator for time-division multiplexing multiple telegraph signals; he also applied this technology to telephony. He obtained intelligible speech from channels sampled at a rate above 3500–4300 Hz; lower rates proved unsatisfactory.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: In 1920, the Bartlane cable picture transmission system used telegraph signaling of characters punched in paper tape to send samples of images quantized to 5 levels. In 1926, Paul M. Rainey of Western Electric patented a facsimile machine which transmitted its signal using 5-bit PCM, encoded by an opto-mechanical analog-to-digital converter. The machine did not go into production.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: British engineer Alec Reeves, unaware of previous work, conceived the use of PCM for voice communication in 1937 while working for International Telephone and Telegraph in France. He described the theory and its advantages, but no practical application resulted. Reeves filed for a French patent in 1938, and his US patent was granted in 1943. By this time Reeves had started working at the Telecommunications Research Establishment.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: The first transmission of speech by digital techniques, the SIGSALY encryption equipment, conveyed high-level Allied communications during World War II. In 1943 the Bell Labs researchers who designed the SIGSALY system became aware of the use of PCM binary coding as already proposed by Reeves. In 1949, for the Canadian Navy's DATAR system, Ferranti Canada built a working PCM radio system that was able to transmit digitized radar data over long distances.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: PCM in the late 1940s and early 1950s used a cathode-ray with a plate electrode having encoding perforations. As in an oscilloscope, the beam was swept horizontally at the sample rate while the vertical deflection was controlled by the input analog signal, causing the beam to pass through higher or lower portions of the perforated plate. The plate collected or passed the beam, producing current variations in binary code, one bit at a time. Rather than natural binary, the grid of Goodall's later tube was perforated to produce a glitch-free Gray code and produced all bits simultaneously by using a fan beam instead of a scanning beam.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: as described in "Communication System Employing Pulse Code Modulation", filed in 1946 and 1952, granted in 1956. Another patent by the same title was filed by John R. Pierce in 1945, and issued in 1948: . The three of them published "The Philosophy of PCM" in 1948.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: The T-carrier system, introduced in 1961, uses two twisted-pair transmission lines to carry 24 PCM telephone calls sampled at 8 kHz and 8-bit resolution. This development improved capacity and call quality compared to the previous frequency-division multiplexing schemes.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: In 1973, adaptive differential pulse-code modulation (ADPCM) was developed, by P. Cummiskey, Nikil Jayant and James L. Flanagan.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: In 1967, the first PCM recorder was developed by NHK's research facilities in Japan. The 30 kHz 12-bit device used a compander (similar to DBX Noise Reduction) to extend the dynamic range, and stored the signals on a video tape recorder. In 1969, NHK expanded the system's capabilities to 2-channel stereo and 32 kHz 13-bit resolution. In January 1971, using NHK's PCM recording system, engineers at Denon recorded the first commercial digital recordings.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: In 1972, Denon unveiled the first 8-channel digital recorder, the DN-023R, which used a 4-head open reel broadcast video tape recorder to record in 47.25 kHz, 13-bit PCM audio. In 1977, Denon developed the portable PCM recording system, the DN-034R. Like the DN-023R, it recorded 8 channels at 47.25 kHz, but it used 14-bits "with emphasis, making it equivalent to 15.5 bits."


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: In 1979, the first digital pop album, Bop till You Drop, was recorded. It was recorded in 50 kHz, 16-bit linear PCM using a 3M digital tape recorder.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: The compact disc (CD) brought PCM to consumer audio applications with its introduction in 1982. The CD uses a 44,100 Hz sampling frequency and 16-bit resolution and stores up to 80 minutes of stereo audio per disc.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: The rapid development and wide adoption of PCM digital telephony was enabled by metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) switched capacitor (SC) circuit technology, developed in the early 1970s. This led to the development of PCM codec-filter chips in the late 1970s. The silicon-gate CMOS (complementary MOS) PCM codec-filter chip, developed by David A. Hodges and W.C. Black in 1980, has since been the industry standard for digital telephony. By the 1990s, telecommunication networks such as the public switched telephone network (PSTN) had been largely digitized with very-large-scale integration (VLSI) CMOS PCM codec-filters, widely used in electronic switching systems for telephone exchanges, user-end modems and a wide range of digital transmission applications such as the integrated services digital network (ISDN), cordless telephones and cell phones.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: In the diagram, a sine wave (red curve) is sampled and quantized for PCM. The sine wave is sampled at regular intervals, shown as vertical lines. For each sample, one of the available values (on the y-axis) is chosen. The PCM process is commonly implemented on a single integrated circuit called an analog-to-digital converter (ADC). This produces a fully discrete representation of the input signal (blue points) that can be easily encoded as digital data for storage or manipulation. Several PCM streams could also be multiplexed into a larger aggregate data stream, generally for transmission of multiple streams over a single physical link. One technique is called time-division multiplexing (TDM) and is widely used, notably in the modern public telephone system.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: The electronics involved in producing an accurate analog signal from the discrete data are similar to those used for generating the digital signal. These devices are digital-to-analog converters (DACs). They produce a voltage or current (depending on type) that represents the value presented on their digital inputs. This output would then generally be filtered and amplified for use.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: To recover the original signal from the sampled data, a "demodulator" can apply the procedure of modulation in reverse. After each sampling period, the demodulator reads the next value and transitions the output signal to the new value. As a result of these transitions, the signal retains a significant amount of high-frequency energy due to imaging effects. To remove these undesirable frequencies, the demodulator passes the signal through a reconstruction filter that suppresses energy outside the expected frequency range (greater than the Nyquist frequency formula_1).


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: LPCM encodes a single sound channel. Support for multichannel audio depends on file format and relies on synchronization of multiple LPCM streams. While two channels (stereo) is the most common format, systems can support up to 8 audio channels (7.1 surround) or more.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: Common sampling frequencies are 48 kHz as used with DVD format videos, or 44.1 kHz as used in CDs. Sampling frequencies of 96 kHz or 192 kHz can be used on some equipment, but the benefits have been debated.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: The Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem shows PCM devices can operate without introducing distortions within their designed frequency bands if they provide a sampling frequency at least twice that of the highest frequency contained in the input signal. For example, in telephony, the usable voice frequency band ranges from approximately 300 Hz to 3400 Hz. For effective reconstruction of the voice signal, telephony applications therefore typically use an 8000 Hz sampling frequency which is more than twice the highest usable voice frequency.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: Some forms of PCM combine signal processing with coding. Older versions of these systems applied the processing in the analog domain as part of the analog-to-digital process; newer implementations do so in the digital domain. These simple techniques have been largely rendered obsolete by modern transform-based audio compression techniques, such as modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) coding.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: In telephony, a standard audio signal for a single phone call is encoded as 8,000 samples per second, of 8 bits each, giving a 64 kbit/s digital signal known as DS0. The default signal compression encoding on a DS0 is either μ-law (mu-law) PCM (North America and Japan) or A-law PCM (Europe and most of the rest of the world). These are logarithmic compression systems where a 12- or 13-bit linear PCM sample number is mapped into an 8-bit value. This system is described by international standard G.711.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: Where circuit costs are high and loss of voice quality is acceptable, it sometimes makes sense to compress the voice signal even further. An ADPCM algorithm is used to map a series of 8-bit μ-law or A-law PCM samples into a series of 4-bit ADPCM samples. In this way, the capacity of the line is doubled. The technique is detailed in the G.726 standard.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: Audio coding formats and audio codecs have been developed to achieve further compression. Some of these techniques have been standardized and patented. Advanced compression techniques, such as MDCT and linear predictive coding (LPC), are now widely used in mobile phones, voice over IP (VoIP) and streaming media.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: PCM can be either return-to-zero (RZ) or non-return-to-zero (NRZ). For a NRZ system to be synchronized using in-band information, there must not be long sequences of identical symbols, such as ones or zeroes. For binary PCM systems, the density of 1-symbols is called "ones-density".


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: Ones-density is often controlled using precoding techniques such as run-length limited encoding, where the PCM code is expanded into a slightly longer code with a guaranteed bound on ones-density before modulation into the channel. In other cases, extra framing bits are added into the stream, which guarantees at least occasional symbol transitions.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: Another technique used to control ones-density is the use of a scrambler on the data, which will tend to turn the data stream into a stream that looks pseudo-random, but where the data can be recovered exactly by a complementary descrambler. In this case, long runs of zeroes or ones are still possible on the output but are considered unlikely enough to allow reliable synchronization.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: In other cases, the long term DC value of the modulated signal is important, as building up a DC bias will tend to move communications circuits out of their operating range. In this case, special measures are taken to keep a count of the cumulative DC bias and to modify the codes if necessary to make the DC bias always tend back to zero.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: Many of these codes are bipolar codes, where the pulses can be positive, negative or absent. In the typical alternate mark inversion code, non-zero pulses alternate between being positive and negative. These rules may be violated to generate special symbols used for framing or other special purposes.


title: Pulse-code modulation

text: The word "pulse" in the term "pulse-code modulation" refers to the pulses to be found in the transmission line. This perhaps is a natural consequence of this technique having evolved alongside two analog methods, pulse-width modulation and pulse-position modulation, in which the information to be encoded is represented by discrete signal pulses of varying width or position, respectively. In this respect, PCM bears little resemblance to these other forms of signal encoding, except that all can be used in time-division multiplexing, and the numbers of the PCM codes are represented as electrical pulses.


title: Flair Airlines

text: Flair Airlines is a Canadian ultra low-cost carrier (ULCC) headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta. The airline operates scheduled passenger and chartered services with a fleet of Boeing 737 aircraft. The company slogan is "Plane and Simple." The airline promotes itself as being Canada's only independent ULCC.


title: Flair Airlines

text: The airline began operations as a privately owned company on August 19, 2005, under the name Flair Air. In January 2006, Transport Canada authorised the airline to operate scheduled all-cargo services between Cuba and Canada, on behalf of Cubana de Aviación, until April 7, 2006. It also operated some passenger flights on behalf of Cubana. Flair Air operated two Boeing 727-200 aircraft, one for passenger movements and the other for freight services. During this period, Flair also began providing workforce transportation services to several natural resources and major construction companies across Canada.


title: Flair Airlines

text: Flair began adding Boeing 737-400s to its fleet in 2008 to replace the 727-200s. The airline continued to add these aircraft until delivery of a fifth aircraft in 2015. In January 2014, Flair acquired a VIP Embraer ERJ-175 and a VIP Dornier Do-328. Both were retired in September 2016. In June 2017, Flair announced it had purchased the assets of Manitoba-based discount travel company NewLeaf, of which it had been the operator of NewLeaf's flights, as it was not licensed as an airline. Flair retained 85% of former NewLeaf staff in the acquisition, and the NewLeaf brand was retired on July 25, 2017, with flights subsequently operated under the Flair name thereafter.


title: Flair Airlines

text: In late 2017, Flair Air rebranded as Flair Airlines, in which it unveiled a new magenta and blue livery, acquired additional aircraft, and announced plans to add more in 2018 and 2019. Two more 737-400s arrived at the airline in December 2017. In 2018, Flair moved its headquarters from Kelowna International Airport to Edmonton International Airport, and 777 Partners invested in Flair with the goal of building a Canadian low-fare carrier. In December 2018, Flair received three leased Boeing 737-800s. These were returned to lessor Smartwings in 2019 as a separately leased trio of 737-800s arrived at the airline. Those three currently remain in Flair's fleet.


title: Flair Airlines

text: In February 2019, Flair went through a "top to bottom" makeover, changing its signature colours from purple and red to acid green and black. This reflected the airline's new "Plane and Simple" branding. The brand makeover included a new livery that currently remains on the airline's three 737-800s. New flight attendant uniforms were also rolled out in September 2019.


title: Flair Airlines

text: In February 2020, Flair offered unlimited travel in the form of a one-time fee 90-day pass valid between February 13 and May 13, 2020. Later in the year, Flair retired their final Boeing 737-400 aircraft in August 2020 as an impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Flair Airlines

text: In January 2021, Flair announced an order for 13 Boeing 737 MAX 8 jets, with plans to grow to 50 aircraft within 5 years, and the aircraft to be leased from financing partner 777 Partners. The first of these aircraft arrived in May 2021, with a total of 8 scheduled to arrive over the summer months. The remaining five were planned to arrive before 2022. 777 Partner's full order consisted of 24 MAX 8s, with options for 60 more. This order came at a crucial time for Boeing, as it dealt with a revamp of MAX operations following a months-long grounding of the type. All future aircraft deliveries to Flair were additionally to be painted in an updated livery, which includes the airline's signature acid green and black colours, as well as subtle highlights of light purple. Flair ordered an additional 14 Boeing 737 MAX 8s in December 2021.


title: Flair Airlines

text: In March 2022, the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) ruled that Flair may be in violation of the law that requires it to be controlled by Canadians, and stated that the airline's operating licence may be suspended. Flair denied that it is in violation of Canadian laws and asked for an 18-month exemption to address regulatory concerns. Flair CEO Stephen Jones stated that the company would overhaul its board and refinance its debt to reduce foreign influence on the company. The National Airlines Council of Canada, which represents Air Canada, Air Transat, and WestJet released a statement asking the CTA to reject Flair's request. In a statement issued on April 21, Jones stated that the airline had a "zero chance" of losing its operating licence and criticised the lack of competition in the Canadian airline industry. On June 1, 2022, the CTA allowed Flair to keep its operating licence after concluding the airline is Canadian.


title: Flair Airlines

text: Between 2007 and 2010 Flair was the exclusive supplier of large aircraft lift to Shell Canada's project at Albian Sands where, at its peak, the airline was moving over 10,000 construction workers per month from 14 points across Canada into Shell's project site, north of Fort McMurray, Alberta.


title: Flair Airlines

text: On October 7, 2013, Flair announced that it had entered into a ten-year agreement with Shell Energy Canada to provide exclusive air charter transportation services within Canada. Flair will provide logistics planning, passenger reservations, and third-party charter aircraft procurement, all of which will be accomplished by a new workforce transportation services company called North Sands Air Services.


title: Flair Airlines

text: In September 2010, Flair was approached by an Ontario-based tour company to operate a world tour program. The program included travelling to 14 countries worldwide. Flair reconfigured one of its Boeing 737-400s from 158 economy class seats to 76 business class seats. Flair obtained international permits, over-flight permissions, and ground arrangements to operate in each of the 14 countries.


title: Flair Airlines

text: In 2011, Flair operated another world tour to 14 new destinations. In October 2013, Flair operated a South American tour to 10 destinations.


title: Flair Airlines

text: Flair has provided ongoing personnel movement for the Department of National Defence and other departments of the Canadian federal government.


title: Flair Airlines

text: Flair also offers aircraft, complete crew, maintenance, and insurance (aircraft, complete crew, maintenance, and insurance or ACMI) charters which provide customers with a 'turn-key' aircraft package.


title: Flair Airlines

text: Flair's scheduled destinations consist mostly of destinations in Canada, with additional destinations in Mexico and the United States. The airline has also operated charter flights on demand to worldwide destinations.


title: Flair Airlines

text: Flair's aircraft are configured with 186 or 189 economy class seats in a 3–3 layout. As a low-cost carrier, the airline charges additional fees for various services and amenities, including additional baggage allowances and in-flight catering. Flair offers in-flight entertainment via mobile app or web browser, however the airline does not offer in-flight Wi-Fi internet access.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: Infamous Second Son (stylized as inFAMOUS Second Son) is a 2014 action-adventure game developed by Sucker Punch Productions and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 4. The standalone sequel to the 2011 video game "Infamous 2" and the third installment in the "Infamous" series, it was released worldwide on March 21, 2014. The player-controlled protagonist possesses superpower abilities that players use in combat and when traveling across the city. The story follows protagonist Delsin Rowe fighting the Department of Unified Protection (D.U.P.) in a fictionalized Seattle. Over the course of the game, Delsin acquires new powers and becomes either good or evil as player choices influence his morality.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: Sucker Punch began planning the game as early as 2011, when they began discussion with Sony to bring the "Infamous" series onto a new generation of hardware. They provided feedback to Sony on what hardware evolutions they would like to see on PlayStation 4. Sucker Punch considers "Second Son" a fresh start for the series because it features a new protagonist. Delsin's powers were designed to feel fluid and suited to the open world design.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: "Infamous Second Son" was met with generally positive reviews; critics praised its gameplay, combat, visuals and design, while criticism was aimed at the game's morality system, which some found to be dated and binary, as well as the game's repetitive side missions. The story was met with a mixed response, with some critics finding the narrative and characters to be a step backwards from previous installments in the series, while others viewing the writing as an improvement over its predecessors. "Infamous Second Son" was a commercial success, and sold over a million copies within nine days, making it the fastest-selling entry within the "Infamous" franchise and one of the best-selling PlayStation 4 games.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: "Infamous Second Son" is an action-adventure game set in an open world environment and played from a third-person perspective. Players control the main character Delsin Rowe, who can parkour-style climb vertical surfaces like high-rise buildings. Delsin is a Conduit, which allows him to use superpower abilities by manipulating materials such as smoke, neon, video, and concrete. These materials can be weaponized (such that Delsin can perform melee attacks or fire projectiles from his fingertips) or used to deftly navigate the game world (such as using neon to dash up buildings). Using powers depletes a meter in the head-up display (HUD), which can be replenished by drawing from power sources such as smoke from exploded vehicles. Delsin earns new powers as he progresses through the story, which sees him fight against the Department of Unified Protection (D.U.P.) during missions. Each time Delsin gains a new power set he must destroy D.U.P. Core Relays to learn the basic abilities that correspond to it. Delsin upgrades and acquires new abilities by spending Blast Shards that have been collected, they are scattered throughout Seattle. Players become more powerful in combat by expanding Delsin's suite of abilities.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: Players may choose to act in either a good or evil way. Examples including healing civilians, doing drug busts, and stopping suspect brutality for good, or killing innocent civilians and killing instead of apprehending enemies. Several times throughout the story, Delsin finds himself in a scenario where he must make a good or evil choice, such as whether to encourage Conduit vigilante Abigail "Fetch" Walker to stop slaying drug dealers, or to train her to become a more prolific killer. Player choices influence outcomes in some later missions. In combat, Delsin may use his abilities to incapacitate foes or obliterate them with headshots. He may choose to open fire on innocent civilians. Delsin's choices manifest in a logo displayed on his jacket and the HUD, which features a blue (good) and red (evil) bird. Performing actions that are villainous gradually change the logo so that the red bird dominates the other, with the opposite happening with heroism. This is a visual representation of Delsin's Karma level, that increases as good or evil depending on his choices. As his Karma level increases, Delsin can acquire new powers that correspond to his play-style (e.g. very destructive powers with high levels of evil Karma) and his jacket also changes. If you have good karma, the jacket completely changes white whereas if evil the jacket turns red. A continual streak of either good or evil actions fills up a bar in the HUD, which then lets Delsin perform a powerful finishing move called a Karma Bomb.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: When not completing story missions, players can explore the city and complete activities such as tagging graffiti spots or killing D.U.P. secret agents. The city is split into districts that are all initially controlled by the D.U.P., but Delsin gradually liberates each district by completing activities. When D.U.P. control of a district falls below 30 percent, Delsin can enter a District Showdown that requires him to eliminate a wave of D.U.P. forces, eradicating D.U.P. presence there.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: "Second Son" takes place in 2016, seven years after "Infamous 2"s Conduit protagonist Cole MacGrath sacrifices himself to cure humanity of a plague and destroy The Beast. Cole uses the powerful Ray Field Inhibitor weapon, which kills him and most of the other Conduits. The U.S. government establishes the D.U.P. to hunt down and capture the world's remaining Conduits, dubbing Conduits with the pejorative "Bioterrorists". The protagonist is Delsin Rowe (Troy Baker), a 24-year-old graffiti artist and local delinquent of the Akomish reservation. Delsin has the unique Conduit ability of Power Absorption, allowing him to absorb and copy the powers of any Conduit he comes into contact with. His brother, Reggie (Travis Willingham), is the local sheriff, and often arrests Delsin for his acts of vandalism. Both are Akomish Native Americans, whose territory lies at the shore of Salmon Bay, Washington. The antagonist is Brooke Augustine (Christine Dunford), the director of the D.U.P. and a Conduit with power over Concrete. Her actions in the Akomish reservation drive Delsin to travel to Seattle, now under lockdown by D.U.P. forces. Delsin and Reggie encounter three other Conduits: Henry "Hank" Daughtry (David Stanbra), a convict with control over Smoke; Abigail "Fetch" Walker (Laura Bailey), an ex-junkie who uses her Neon powers to hunt down illegal drug dealers in Seattle; and Eugene Sims (Alex Walsh), a reclusive video game addict who uses his Video (digital materialization) powers to save suspected Conduits from the D.U.P.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: Reggie catches Delsin vandalizing a billboard in their Salmon Bay hometown, but their subsequent argument is interrupted when a military truck carrying three Conduit prisoners crashes on the Akomish reservation. Two of the Conduits escape, but Delsin manages to pull the third one, Hank, out of the wreckage, inadvertently absorbing his smoke powers in the process. Shocked and frightened, Delsin pursues Hank to figure out what has happened and how to control his new powers. However, they are both cornered by Brooke Augustine. She encases Hank in concrete and questions Delsin, suspecting him of hiding something. Delsin can choose to either tell Augustine the truth about his powers or say nothing. Regardless of Delsin's choice, Augustine knocks him out before moving on to the other tribe members.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: Delsin awakens a week later and discovers that Augustine has brutally tortured the rest of the tribe in an unsuccessful bid to gain information. However, she has left them to gradually die from concrete shards fused into their bodies, including their leader Betty (Karen Austin). Reggie, who was spared from the torture, learns that the only way to remove the shards is to use Augustine's power on them. Delsin realizes that he can absorb Conduit powers and resolves to go to Seattle to take Augustine's powers and save the tribe. Reggie reluctantly accompanies Delsin to keep an eye on him. They reach Seattle and find that it has been put under strict martial law by the D.U.P. to find other escaped Conduits. With Reggie's help, Delsin battles D.U.P. forces and tracks down core fragments to develop his powers. He eventually encounters the other two escaped Conduits, Fetch and Eugene, and absorbs their powers. After both confrontations, Delsin defends the Conduits from Reggie, who initially views them as "freaks" and can choose to either redeem or corrupt them.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: Now possessing three powers, Delsin encounters Hank, who has escaped again. Hank tells Delsin that Fetch and Eugene have been captured by the D.U.P., and are being held on an artificial concrete island in Puget Sound. However, the situation turns out to be a trap set by Augustine. Reggie appears and rescues Delsin with a rocket launcher. While the brothers free Fetch and Eugene, Augustine encases Reggie's feet in concrete and blasts them off the platform. As they dangle above the ocean, Reggie realizes that Delsin cannot save both of them, tells him that he is proud of him, and lets Delsin's hand go, falling to his death. Distraught and enraged, Delsin climbs back onto the platform and battles Augustine, and the ensuing fight destroys the island.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: Augustine flees back to the D.U.P. headquarters while Delsin tracks Hank down to the docks, where he is fleeing from D.U.P. forces. Hank begs for forgiveness, saying that he only worked with Augustine because she had his daughter in her custody. Delsin can choose to either kill Hank out of revenge or let him flee Seattle with his daughter. Aided by Fetch and Eugene, Delsin rallies an assault on the D.U.P. headquarters. After breaking through the building's defenses, Delsin confronts Augustine and reveals to her that he has figured out she staged the Conduit escape at Salmon Bay to instill fear in the population and give the D.U.P. a reason to continue their regime. Augustine lets Delsin absorb her powers and tells him she wants to save the Conduits by imprisoning and protecting them from the population. However, Delsin points out that all she did was take away their freedom, and people should live their own lives. Delsin battles and eventually defeats Augustine.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: If Delsin has good Karma, he spares Augustine and exposes her crimes to the public. She is arrested and the D.U.P. disbands. Delsin, Fetch and Eugene successfully champion for peaceful co-existence with the Conduits, starting the Second Age. All of the imprisoned Conduits are freed from Curdun Cay. Delsin returns to the reservation and heals the tribe members with his powers, then paints a mural in Reggie's honor.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: If Delsin has evil Karma, he kills Augustine and, together with Fetch and Eugene, takes control of Seattle. He releases all of the imprisoned Conduits and absorbs their powers. Upon returning to the reservation, Delsin is met by Betty, now in a wheelchair, who exiles him from the tribe for the killings in Seattle. Shocked and angered, Delsin destroys the entire reservation.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: Sucker Punch Productions began to develop "Second Son" while the PlayStation 4 was still being designed. Having finished work on "", they began to plan a new entry in the "Infamous" series under the working title "Infamous 3". As early as 2010, they discussed with Sony their desire to bring "Infamous" to a new PlayStation platform.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: Sucker Punch were in close connection with the PS4's lead system architect Mark Cerny, who visited the studio several times. They gave Cerny feedback about how much power a new PlayStation system would require to render their ideal open world, how fast it would be capable of doing so and to what degree of texture detail. "We had some experience there that was useful for that team when they were planning some aspects of the hardware design", producer Brian Fleming explained. He found that during the PS4's development, there was a great level of interactivity between the system's designers and game developers such as Sucker Punch.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: Sucker Punch made suggested improvements they would like to see for the DualShock 4 gamepad. "Second Son"s designer Jaime Griesemer traveled to Sony's headquarters in Japan to discuss such improvements. The developers found they were able to adopt the DualShock 4's touchpad into "Second Son"s gameplay (for example, players emulate the in-game fingerprint scanner using the DualShock 4 touchpad).


title: Infamous Second Son

text: The game was envisioned to take full advantage of the hardware, without the imposition of porting to older platforms like the PlayStation 3. The hardware let developers improve the particle system that lights Delsin's face up while he draws neon power from billboards and add detailed reflections to the game world. The increased memory bandwidth let the team render characters with higher fidelity. They found the PS4's simplified architecture so easy to work with that they were able to reach very high graphical quality even though the hardware was new.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: Over 110 developers worked on the game, a number that director Nate Fox considered small. He felt that working with a small team necessitated having a defined vision for the game from the outset, "to answer those first questions about what you want your game to be". Sometimes, ideas came about during development that would have to be thrown out for not fitting with the game's original vision. "We kill our darlings at Sucker Punch. It's not easy; it's necessary", Fox explained. "Second Son" displays a native resolution of 1080p at 30 frames per second.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: Sucker Punch elected to set "Second Son" in their hometown of Seattle as they could draw from their personal experiences


title: Infamous Second Son

text: in the open world's design. During early development when team members debated where "Second Son" would be set, Seattle rated high on a list of possibilities. Fleming considered that the city had not been featured in many games prior to "Second Son" and so would not be "overblown", and felt that Seattle's weather and mixture of "old and new" architecture would make it an interesting setting. The team conducted fieldwork in Seattle's nearby forests with audio and video equipment, which was used to reproduce local flora and the chirping sounds of local American robins. Seattle landmarks such as Pioneer Square, the Space Needle and Elephant Car Washes feature in the game. The developers licensed logos and signs from local businesses. Griesemer called the game world an "abstraction" of Seattle rather than a re-creation since its layout did not suit "Second Son"s gameplay and required the team to make necessary changes. The team wanted to thematically explore Seattle's heritage of Pacific Northwest, Native American tribes in the game.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: The designers used graphic sliders in the game engine to determine the amount of water covering the streets. Like Seattle, rain is frequent in the game. The lighting effects (such as neon light from Delsin's powers) coupled with reflections help bring color into Seattle's dark and rainy atmosphere. Because of the move to the PS4, Sucker Punch were able to render more open world than what was possible in previous "Infamous" games. "You get a better feel of the city when you can see more of it", said Griesemer.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: After deciding on Seattle for the setting, the developers began to think about the superpowers that Delsin would possess. They added neon lighting to the city to amplify the "beautiful reflective streets", and subsequently decided to make neon a source of power for Delsin because of its prevalence. Animation director Billy Harper considered Delsin's smoke powers challenging to design, as the team wanted to make powers feel more fluid than in previous "Infamous" games. They removed Cole's "contorted hand poses" to improve the connection between Delsin and his powers. Fox felt that smoke helps Delsin deftly navigate the game world by letting him zip up buildings and through enemies. Griesemer (who previously worked with Bungie on the "Halo" series) wanted to bring the fluidity of first-person shooters to "Second Son"s combat. The team reviewed the control scheme of previous "Infamous" games and "removed some of the complexity that was preventing people from interacting with the game".


title: Infamous Second Son

text: Griesemer said that a recurring theme throughout "Infamous" games that they wanted to continue with "Second Son" was the idea of "modern elemental powers", variations on commonplace powers drawn from the game world. Producer Brian Fleming found that the graphical effects helped to inform players of the amount of power Delsin possesses. "This is a game about super powers, so for us, the way the effects look tells you a lot about how you're playing the game", he explained. Fox considered that the game world's resemblance to Seattle helped the superpower elements feel authentic. "Because we have that sweet foundation of plausibility, you buy into the super-powered element", he explained.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: "Second Son"s premise is built from the ending of "Infamous 2" that sees protagonist Cole MacGrath sacrifice himself to save humanity. They looked at Trophy data and found the majority (78%) of "Infamous 2" players chose this ending, and concurred with the popular choice. This allowed them to create the new protagonist, Delsin, from scratch. "Moving forward onto ["Second Son"], we said 'Alright, Cole's dead. People have voted for this. Let's make a new hero'", Fox explained. Griesemer felt that taking the "Infamous" series to the PS4 signified a new era, and that departing from the story of previous games would help them reach new audiences. "We needed a new entry point, and Delsin was the first step for that", he explained. The idea to move away from Cole's story came about during pre-production staff meetings, and was confirmed after discussions both internally and with Sony Computer Entertainment. Griesemer described the contemporaneous sentiment as "It's going to be new hardware, a new platform and we're going to have a new audience".


title: Infamous Second Son

text: Delsin's Native American heritage came from the game's setting in the Pacific Northwest, which features a large Native American population. Delsin wears a beanie inspired by one that Harper would wear around the studio (Harper recounted one particular staff meeting where four of the six team members were wearing hats). Delsin's character was inspired by United Kingdom street artist Banksy, as the development team appreciated Banksy's clandestine, satirical work. Developing Delsin's personality, the team posited the hypothetical: "What if Johnny Knoxville had powers? What would he do with it?". Harper considered Delsin "full of reckless abandon", the kind of character that would, upon gaining superpowers, jump off a cliff to see what happens. Fox considered Delsin "flawed in a way I think a lot of us can relate to", trying to live up to his successful brother Reggie. He called the game's story a "hero's journey".


title: Infamous Second Son

text: Digital Domain were brought on board for the motion capture work. Fox helped direct the actors' performances, but found that they did not need much guidance for their roles. "You need to let them understand what you need from a scene, but the actors are so much better equipped to deliver that than me", he explained. Fleming considered that using motion capture added authenticity to the characters. "The ability to capture [Delsin's] facial reaction when he's like 'Oh, shit', but doesn't say 'Oh shit'—that's a big deal", he explained.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: Most of the non-player characters (NPCs) that inhabit the open world were motion captured. The developers contacted casting agencies, and asked their friends and families if they would like to appear as extras in the game. Over 75 people were scanned in a three-day period. They were seated in chairs and told not to move or smile, and a high-definition digital camera captured a 3D model of their faces. The camera sent out strobe light patterns to capture the volume and shape of each face. A 360-degree setup captured the actors' moving bodies, but mannequins were also used to help capture different clothing styles. Data collected from the cameras was used by the designers to render digital models, each composed of roughly 1.4 million polygons—any blank spots on the models would be digitally filled in by the designers. To render the models in the game, the data would be compressed by reducing the polygon count.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: On February 20, 2013, Sony held a conference in New York that announced the PlayStation 4. Fox appeared on-stage during the conference and recounted participating in an anti-globalization protest in Seattle in 1999. He announced "Second Son", and a debut trailer was shown that introduced the game's premise and lead character. The game was privately demoed at E3 2013, and its March 21, 2014, North American release date was confirmed during a PS4 launch event on November 14, 2013. By February 25, 2014, "Second Son" went gold (finished development).


title: Infamous Second Son

text: On March 8, it was announced that "Second Son"s pre-order sales had surpassed those of "The Last of Us" in the United Kingdom. Two special edition versions of the game were produced; pre-ordered and first-run copies of the game received the Limited Edition, which includes the "Coles Legacy" mission pack that explain story events between "Infamous 2" and "Second Son". The Collector's Edition includes a unique box cover, a replica of Delsin's beanie, eight pins from his vest, an exclusive in-game vest, and a D.U.P.-themed patch. All pre-ordered copies of the game included four in-game vests for Delsin.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: "Paper Trail" is a free downloadable content (DLC) with alternate reality game features. The story is split into six parts, with the first being available after reaching a certain point in the main story. Each subsequent part was made available each Friday from March 28, 2014, in North America and, concluding with the release of the final part on April 25, 2014.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: At E3 2014, the DLC package "Infamous First Light" was announced and was released on August 26, 2014, in North America and August 27, 2014, in Europe. In "First Light", the player controls Fetch. It is a stand-alone expansion and "Second Son" is not required to play the game, but ownership of "Second Son" grants players access to exclusive content and music. The track "Sanctus Immortale" composed and produced by Menelik Eu'el Solomon also features on the exclusive content pack. "Infamous First Light" received mixed to positive reviews from critics.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: "IGN"s Vince Ingenito recalled being left "staring slack-jawed" at the visuals and praised the impressive lighting effects in the "beautifully and diversely realized" open world. "GameSpot"s Tom Mc Shea called the visuals "incredible". "Eurogamer"s Oli Welsh praised Seattle's art direction and consistent draw distances and frame rates. Though impressed with the high-definition graphics, "PlayStation Official Magazine" ("OPM")'s David Meikleham cited occasional frame rate dips during intense combat. He enjoyed roaming Seattle and levelling its destructible environments. "Computer and Video Games" ("CVG")'s Tamoor Hussain praised graphical details like the particle and lighting systems. He said the game is "colorful, rich in detail and has some of the best effects we've seen on console".


title: Infamous Second Son

text: "GameSpot"s Mc Shea noted the combat's balance between "Infamous"'s slower pace and "Infamous 2"s frenetic action. "Destructoid"s Chris Carter considered the combat's simplicity its strength and found Delsin easy to control during play. Underwhelmed with the opening chapter's "skittish" parkour, "Edge" noted the game became more fun when Delsin gained powers and reached Seattle. They felt enemies were clever enough to make combat challenging and that missions were "for the most part well designed and generously proportioned". "IGN"s Ingenito found each power set enjoyable and "strong enough to hang an entire game on". He felt the power upgrades kept combat fresh and made for good replay value. "Polygon"s Phillip Kollar favored neon, but noted the balance and variety between all sets made combat "a hell of a lot of fun". "Eurogamer"s Welsh found the combat imperfect yet fun and thought the skill upgrades made minimal difference to gameplay.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: "Destructoid"s Carter was invested in the story as Delsin's charm succeeded "wooden" Cole's listlessness. "IGN"s Ingenito thought the chemistry between Delsin and Reggie helped pique player interest. He found Troy Baker's performance "[imbued] with a charm and youthful abandon that keeps it from feeling tropey or overwrought", but thought supporting characters like Fetch were underdeveloped and the narrative too straightforward. Although calling the characters clichéd, "Edge" felt they were written and acted well. "GameSpot"s Mc Shea found Delsin annoying and immature, and that the gameplay bettered its "tired" story. "Eurogamer"s Welsh considered that "inconsequential MacGuffins" drove the plot to a rushed ending but praised its concise scope. "Polygon"s Kollar felt the lackluster examination of surveillance and security-over-freedom diminished the story's impact. He was disappointed with the narrative despite the better character writing over previous series entries. "OPM"s Meikleham was put off by Delsin's arrogance and lamented the story, but praised the quality of the motion capture performances.


title: Infamous Second Son

text: "Edge" and "Eurogamer"s Welsh faulted the morality system's lack of story influence. "IGN"s Ingenito called it "woefully outdated" as evil choices jarred with Delsin's character. He found the system redundant because Delsin's power peaked when he strictly adhered to good or evil play-styles, rather than crossing in-between. "GameSpot"s Mc Shea felt the binary system lacked a "moral gray area" between good and evil. "Polygon"s Kollar struggled to connect to his choices as they were polar opposites on a moral compass. "OPM"s Meikleham found the system had "little to no impact on gameplay". "Joystiq"s Danny Cowan thought the well-balanced system had equal incentive and drawback tied to Delsin's choices.