Nicholas Fortugno

Nicholas Fortugno (born May 13, 1975) is an American game designer and educator. Fortugno is CCO of Playmatics LLC, a New York City-based game development studio focusing on casual games and co-founded with Margaret Wallace.
Fortugno is perhaps best known for designing "Diner Dash", a top-selling casual game developed by Gamelab, and the award-winning "Ayiti: The Cost of Life". In addition to his large body of digital work, Fortugno has been involved in the design of numerous non-digital projects, including board games, collectible card games, large-scale social games, and live-action role-playing games (LARP).
Since 2002, Fortugno has taught the Game Design and Interactive Narrative program at Parsons School of Design, and has contributed to the development of the school's game design curriculum. Fortugno also hosts and writes for the game journal and review site "Critical Smack!".
Early life and education.
Born in the Bronx, New York, Fortugno was raised primarily in Yonkers, New York, where he attended Gorton High School. Fortugno earned Bachelor of Arts in English and Philosophy from the State University of New York at Purchase in 1997. Between 2000 and 2002, he attended the City University of New York as a doctoral student in English Literature, and then Hunter College as a Master's student, with a concentration on post-war American novels.
Career.
Gamelab.
Fortugno worked at Gamelab starting in 2000, ultimately becoming Director of Game Design before leaving in 2006. Fortugno acted as lead designer and co-designer for many digital Gamelab projects, including:
Diner Dash
"Diner Dash" is an action strategy game in which the player takes the role of Flo, a stockbroker who quits her job to run her own diner. One of the top-selling downloadable games of 2004, "Diner Dash" was later ported to mobile phone, given a retail release and made available via 100% advert-supported download. Versions have been created for the PSP, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo DS platforms. GamingTalkHQ reported that a version for Xbox Live Arcade for the Xbox 360 was imminent. To date, "Diner Dash" has been downloaded over a half a billion times across all of its platforms.
Rebel Monkey.
Co-founded in 2007 by Fortugno and Margaret Wallace, Rebel Monkey is a New York City-based casual game development studio. Rebel Monkey received $1 million in first-round funding from Redpoint Ventures in February 2008. In July 2008, Rebel Monkey released "Habitat Rescue", a downloadable strategy game designed by Fortugno in which the player directs a group of lions in restoring their polluted savanna habitat. "Habitat Rescue" is currently distributed by National Geographic and RealArcade. In early 2009, Rebel Monkey announced the launch of casual massively multiplayer online game "CampFu".
CampFu
"CampFu" was an online virtual world with a summer camp theme. Emphasizing collaborative team play and aimed at the teenaged demographic, "CampFu" officially launched on March 17, 2009 after a beta stage that began in February of the same year. "CampFu" was free to play, but users could access premium content by purchasing in-world currency called "FuCash" and/or a VIP membership subscription. Users could also earn Tickets, which could be exchanged for clothing items by playing "CampFu" games. Games that were playable in "CampFu" included:
"CampFu" was built on Rebel Monkey Inc.'s Monkey Wrench development platform.
Playmatics.
In September 2009, Fortugno and Wallace started a new company focused on game design and development called Playmatics, LLC. In 2010, Playmatics created the Fortugno-designed interactive comic "The Interrogation" for the television series "Breaking Bad". The game went on to be recognized for a CableFAX Best of the Web award. Other titles by Playmatics include Disney's "The Kingdom Keepers" "Race to Save the Magic."
Social and non-digital games.
In 2003, Fortugno teamed with Katie Salen and Frank Lantz to design the Big Urban Game (BUG) for the University of Minnesota's Design Celebration. The BUG consisted of a race between three teams, each of which attempted to move a 25-foot high inflatable game piece past a series of checkpoints set through the Twin Cities.
Fortugno, Salen, and Lantz later collaborated again to make Slow Games, a two-page spread of games for Metropolis Magazine's 25th Anniversary issue in April 2006.
Later that year, Fortugno was one of five founders (including Greg Trefry, Catherine Herdlick, Mattia Romeo, and Seung-Taek "Peter" Lee) of Come Out & Play (CO&P), the world's first street game festival. The first CO&P ran in New York City from September 22 to 24. With Trefry and Romeo, Fortugno designed the street game Insider; Fortugno also ran his original existential horror LARP entitled Ghost Engines in the Sky. The following year, Amsterdam hosted the CO&P as part of the PICNIC Festival in 2007. CO&P returned to NYC June 6 to 8, 2008.
In Come Out & Play 2010 in NYC, Nick Fortugno partnered with Samuel Strick to create "Humanoid Asteroids". Humanoid Asteroids has run in New York City, the following CO&P in San Francisco, and at IndieCade in Los Angeles. "Humanoid Asteroids" has also been covered by the game news blog Kotaku.
As part of Gamelab, Fortugno has designed several non-digital games for the Game Developers Conference, including: "Alphabet City", "Confquest", "Leviathan", "Pantheon", and "Supercollider". He was also involved in the design process of the Mighty Beanz collectible card game and the X-Pod Face-Off board game.
Live-action role-playing games.
While attending SUNY Purchase in the mid-1990s, Fortugno began his Seasons of Darkness LARP, which ran for several years and was reported on in "Rules of Play" by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman and Daniel Mackay's "The Fantasy Role-Playing Game".
In addition to Seasons of Darkness and CO&P's Ghost Engines in the Sky, Fortugno has created a multitude of additional LARPs, including A Measure for Marriage, a live-action role-playing game modeled after a Shakespearean comedy designed to facilitate a friend's marriage proposal. Fortugno also created No Meaner Name Than Diplomacy, an upstairs/downstairs LARP performed at Gen Con.
Writing.
Fortugno has written a number of articles on game design and interactive narrative, including educational games, live-action roleplaying games, game usability, and interactive narrative in console games such as "Shadow of the Colossus". Fortugno also hosts and writes for the games blog "Critical Smack!", in which Fortugno plays and live-blogs his critical reactions to the games he plays in approximately hour-long sessions.


Catherine Murray di Montezemolo

Catherine Murray di Montezemolo (September 18, 1925 – April 22, 2009) was a fashion editor with a prominent position in Southampton society.
Di Montezemolo was born to a wealthy family—her grandfather was the prolific inventor and engineer, Thomas E. Murray, who together with Thomas Edison helped to found the NY-based utility, Con Edison, in the early twentieth century. The Murray family was the main subject of Stephen Birmingham's book "Real Lace: America's Irish Rich" and John Corry's "Golden Clan: The Murrays, the McDonnells, & the Irish American Aristocracy". Mrs. di Montezemelo attended Catholic school in Suffern, New York. After graduation, she took a job at Vogue, where she worked for 30 years. She advised and promoted the work of young designers such as Anne Fogarty and Claire McCardell.
Athletic, she was an early student of Joseph Pilates.
In 1958, she married an Italian nobleman, Alessandro di Montezemolo (Nobile of the Marchesi di Montezemolo), who was a senior executive at Marsh & McLennan.
She and her husband became fixtures in the Southampton, where she spent her summers as a child on a vast beachfront property along Wickapogue Road that came to be known as the "Murray Compound" because so many family members built houses near one another. Until the 1970s, the only residents of the plot were the Murrays and their cousins, the McDonnells.
She left Vogue in the late 1970s. Later, she designed her own fashion collection and was active in Southampton charity activity.
Di Montezemolo died at age 83 of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.


Escape from Monkey Island

Escape from Monkey Island is an adventure game developed and released by LucasArts in 2000. It is the fourth game in the "Monkey Island" series and the first to use 3D graphics.
The game centers on the pirate Guybrush Threepwood, who returns home with his wife Elaine Marley after their honeymoon, to find her erroneously declared dead, and her office of governor up for election. Guybrush must find a way to restore Elaine to office, while uncovering a plot to turn the Caribbean into a tourist trap, headed by his nemesis LeChuck and an Australian conspirator Ozzie Mandrill. "Escape from Monkey Island" was the second game to use the GrimE engine, which was upgraded from its first use in "Grim Fandango".
"Escape from Monkey Island" won positive reviews and was a moderate commercial success. It was ultimately the last LucasArts adventure game to be released, as the company's later projects ' and ' were canceled in 2003 and 2004, respectively. A follow-up to "Escape", entitled "Tales of Monkey Island", was released by Telltale Games in 2009.
Gameplay.
"Escape from Monkey Island" is an adventure game that consists of dialogue with characters and solving puzzles. The game is controlled entirely with the keyboard or alternatively with a joystick, making it the only non-point-and-click game in the "Monkey Island" series.
A feature of the game are action-lines: Guybrush will glance at any items that can be interacted with; the player can use 'Page Up' or 'Page Down' to select the item that he wants Guybrush to look at.
One of the hallmark aspects of the "Monkey Island games", the insult swordfighting — the sword duels which were won by knowing the appropriate insults and responses — is briefly touched upon in the game as "insult armwrestling", and in an unwinnable insult duel against Ozzie Mandrill. In the second part of the game, the insult games are replaced by "Monkey Kombat", the name being a parody of "Mortal Kombat" with a symbol to match. Monkey Kombat is a sub-game akin to rock-paper-scissors, where the player needs to memorize lines of "monkey insults and retorts" which consist of per-game randomized compositions of "monkey words" like "oop", "chee", "ack" and "eek".
Story.
Guybrush Threepwood and Elaine Marley return to Mêlée Island from their honeymoon. They find that Elaine has been declared officially dead, her position as governor has been revoked and her mansion is scheduled to be demolished. The governorship is up for election, and suddenly a person known as Charles L. Charles presents himself as the lead candidate. As Elaine begins her campaign to recover her position, Guybrush hires navigator Ingacius Cheese in a game of insult arm-wrestling, meets again with two of his old "friends", Carla and Otis, and heads out to Lucre Island to recover the Marley family heirlooms and obtain the legal documents to save her mansion. During his trip, Guybrush learns of the Marley family's greatest secret: a voodoo talisman known as the Ultimate Insult, which allows the user to spread insults so heinous, it destroys the spirit and will of those who hear it. He is framed for bank robbery by crook Peg-Nosed Pete at the hiring of the Australian land developer Ozzie Mandrill, but proves his innocence.
After acquiring the legal deeds and returning to the manor, Guybrush and Elaine discover that Charles L. Charles is really the shape-shifting Demon Pirate LeChuck, having been freed from his ice prison and seeking the Ultimate Insult. As Elaine continues her campaign, Guybrush searches the Jambalaya and Knuttin Atoll islands and recovers the pieces of the Ultimate Insult. Upon returning home, he is ambushed by the newly elected governor LeChuck and Ozzie Mandrill, who steal the pieces from him. The two villains are revealed to be working together, with Ozzie to rid of all pirates and turn the Caribbean into a resort and LeChuck out of debt to Ozzie for freeing him from his icy tomb and to use the Ultimate Insult to break Elaine and marry her. Feeling they might need Guybrush as a hostage, the two dump him on Monkey Island.
Despite temporary discouragement, Guybrush sets about making his escape. He learns the art of Monkey Kombat from the "monkey prince of Monkey Island" and, upon restoring the hermit Herman Toothrot's memory, discovers that the old man is actually Elaine's missing grandfather, having contracted amnesia twenty years prior due to being pushed into a whirlpool off the coast of Australia by Ozzie. After constructing an even bigger Ultimate Insult, Guybrush discovers that the colossal monkey head statue of the island hides a giant pilot-able monkey robot. He reactivates the Mecha and powers it and Herman and the island's monkeys join him in piloting it. With the robot, Guybrush manages to disable an Ultimate Insult amplifier made by Ozzie before returning to Mêlée. During this time, Ozzie has managed to capture Elaine and assemble the Ultimate Insult. When it appears to fail due to the lack of the amplifier, LeChuck takes matters into his own hands and possesses a statue of himself he had built shortly after his gubernatorial victory. Ozzie uses the Ultimate Insult to take control of LeChuck's statue form and engages Guybrush's monkey robot in Monkey Kombat. During the duel, Guybrush performs repeated ties, allowing Elaine to escape and causing LeChuck to smack his head in exasperation, crushing Ozzie and destroying the Ultimate Insult. LeChuck explodes. Guybrush and Elaine are reunited and Grandpa Marley resumes being the governor of Mêlée Island, so that the couple can go back to being pirates.
Development.
The game was made with Sean Clark and Michael Stemmle as lead designers, both of whom worked on LucasArts' previous adventure titles "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis" and "Sam & Max Hit the Road". Sean Clark also worked on "Loom" and "The Dig". "Escape" uses a slightly improved version of the GrimE engine introduced by "Grim Fandango". Compared to the rest of the series, the SCUMM scripting language was replaced by the Lua programming language. This is referenced in-game; the pirate-themed SCUMM Bar, which first appeared in "The Secret of Monkey Island", is replaced during the game with the tropical-themed Lua Bar.
A new version of the iMUSE interactive music system incorporating MP3 compression, among other changes, was built and used for the game. Interactive programming of the music and ambiance streams in the iMUSE system was done by lead sound designer Larry the O. "Escape's" introductory music is identical to that of the third game, unlike the earlier sequels which featured newly composed remixes of the well-known "Monkey Island" theme. Clint Bajakian, who had previously been an additional composer on "Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge", acted as the game's main composer, with additional tracks by Michael Land (who had been the lead composer on the previous three "Monkey Island" games), Peter McConnell, Anna Karney, and Michael Lande (not to be confused with Michael Land).
The voice cast saw the return of Dominic Armato as Guybrush, Earl Boen as LeChuck, Leilani Jones Wilmore as the Voodoo Lady and Denny Delk as Murray. The only major voice not to return was Alexandra Boyd who voiced Elaine in the previous game. She was replaced by Charity James. Stan is also voiced by a different actor, Pat Fraley. Additionally, characters who had previously appeared in "The Secret of Monkey Island" such as Carla, Otis and Herman Toothrot, are heard with voice actors for the first time.
The game was also released on PlayStation 2 in 2001. Apart from obvious control differences, the PS2 version only varies by a slightly higher polygon count and use of less pre-rendered material. "Escape" is the third LucasArts adventure game to have a console release, following "The Secret of Monkey Island" for the Sega CD and "Maniac Mansion" for the NES.
According to Heinrich Lenhardt of "PC Gamer US", "[I]f it wasn't for the sales figures in Germany, LucasArts probably wouldn't have bothered doing another "Monkey Island"" after "The Curse of Monkey Island". In response to questions about the success of "Grim Fandango" and the viability of adventure games in the United States market, Tom Sarris of LucasArts defended the company's decision to make "Escape from Monkey Island" in 2000. He told GameSpot, "We look at the sales figures from a worldwide standpoint and ask ourselves if it still makes sense to make adventure games. "Grim Fandango" made a profit, so the answer is yes, it's still viable from a financial point of view."
Reception.
Sales.
Discussing "Escape from Monkey Island"s performance in December 2000, Simon Jeffery of LucasArts said that the company was "really happy with the [game's] success". He noted that it was "selling well" in the United States and "incredibly well in Europe", which he called proof that a market still existed for adventure games, despite a widespread belief that the genre had died. The game's computer version sold 55,275 copies and earned $2 million in the United States by the end of 2000, according to the market research firm PC Data. In the German market, "Escape" debuted at #4 on Media Control's computer game sales chart for November 2000. It placed ninth and 16th in its following two months, respectively. PC Data estimated its sales in the United States at 32,576 units for 2001, and 9,168 for the first six months of 2002. Its jewel case SKU sold 11,061 copies in North America during 2003.
In March 2003, LucasArts' Bill Tiller remarked, "I am not sure what "EMI" sold, but I think it had decent numbers on the PC." However, he reported that he "heard rumor of ... abysmal" sales for its PlayStation 2 release. In retrospect, Rob Smith wrote in "" that "the stateside reception [for "Escape of Monkey Island"] was disappointing, but retail response was buoyed by overseas interest and sales—particularly in Europe, where the demand for adventure games hadn't fallen as flat".
Critical response.
The game was met with a generally favorable reception. The gameplay received criticism for its interface and the difficulty of keyboard or joystick control as compared to mouse controls. The "Monkey Kombat" was also criticized, with the GameSpot review stating that "unfortunately Monkey Kombat may be the single biggest problem with "Escape from Monkey Island"". Another reviewer speculated that "Perhaps the designers figured that combining insult fighting, cute monkeys, and a "Mortal Kombat" spoof would work well, but it didn't."
"PC Zone" gave it 82% and called it "an enjoyable, professionally created and amiably funny game. It doesn't do anything startlingly new, but is still an essential title for the hordes of people who grew up playing adventures." Adventure Gamers gave it four stars out of five and called it "a quality adventure game even though the restyling of the old locations on Mêlée Island and Monkey Island is a bit of a mixed bag. The ending is long, satisfying and almost as disturbingly weird as the ending of "LeChuck's Revenge" (but without being such an anti-climax)." Jeff Lundrigan in "Next Generation", rated it three stars out of five, and stated that "If the puzzles are a good example of why adventure games have been self-destructing for years, the story, characters, and production values show just how entertaining they can be at their best."
"Playboy" gave the PS2 version a score of 85% and said that it "captures aging Marx Brothers appeal, but does so with modern-day flair. From battles against undead cutthroats to talking skulls, voodoo women and Monkey Kombat mini-games, you'll never know what to expect next. Then again, provided it's good times that come to mind, you won't be far off the mark. So set a course for the local retailer ASAP, matey - your ship's just come in." "Maxim", however, gave the same version six out of ten and said, "If you’re keen on tasteless, tongue-in-cheek jokes, smooth sailing lies ahead." Jeff Lundrigan reviewed the PlayStation 2 version of the game for "Next Generation", rating it three stars out of five, and stated that "The puzzles are as inscrutable as ever, but if you have the patience, this is one terrifically entertaining game."
Awards.
"Escape from Monkey Island" was a runner-up for GameSpot's, "The Electric Playground"s, IGN's and "Computer Gaming World"s awards for the best computer adventure title of 2000, all of which went to "The Longest Journey". "Computer Gaming World"s editors remarked that "Escape from Monkey Island" is "a lot of fun and is strongly recommended to fans, but it's a few jokes and puzzles short of being a classic like the other games in the series." However, CNET Gamecenter named it the year's best adventure game over "The Longest Journey", and its editors wrote that they could not "imagine a better graphic adventure" than LucasArts' title. It was also a finalist for their overall game of the year award, which went to "The Sims".
The editors of "Computer Games Magazine" similarly nominated "Escape from Monkey Island" for their 2000 "Adventure Game of the Year" award.


Rufus (crossword compiler)


Perrotine printing

The perrotine is a block-printing machine invented by Louis-Jérôme Perrot (1798 in Senlis – 1878 in Paris), and practically speaking is the only successful mechanical device ever introduced for this purpose. For some reason or other it has rarely been used in England, but its value was almost immediately recognized on the Continent, and although block printing of all sorts has been replaced to such an enormous extent by roller printing, the perrotine is still largely employed in French, German, and Italian works.
Operation.
The machines mode of action is roughly as follows: Three large blocks (3 ft. long by 3 to 5 in. wide), with the pattern cut or cast on them in relief, are brought to bear successively on the three faces of a specially constructed printing table over which the cloth passes (together with its backing of printers blanket) after each impression.
The faces of the table are arranged at right angles to each other, and the blocks work in slides similarly placed, so that their engraved faces are perfectly parallel to the tables. Each block is moreover provided with its own particular colour trough, distributing brush, and woolen colour pad or sieve, and is supplied automatically with colour by these appliances during the whole time that the machine is in motion. The first effect of starting the machine is to cause the colour sieves, which have a reciprocating motion, to pass over, and receive a charge of colour from, the rollers, fixed to revolve, in the colour troughs. They then return to their original position between the tables and the printing blocks, coming in contact on the way with the distributing brushes, which spread the colour evenly over their entire surfaces.
At this point the blocks advance and are gently pressed twice against the colour pads (or sieves) which then retreat once more towards the colour troughs. During this last movement the cloth to be printed is drawn forward over the first table, and, immediately the colour pads are sufficiently out of the way, the block advances and, with some force, stamps the first impression on it. The second block is now put into gear and the foregoing operations are repeated for both blocks, the cloth advancing, after each impression, a distance exactly equal to the width of the blocks. After the second block has made its impression the third comes into play in precisely the same way, so that as the cloth leaves the machines it's fully printed in three separate colours, each fitting into its proper place and completing the pattern. If necessary the forward movement of the cloth can be arrested without in any way interfering with the motion of the block, an arrangement which allows any insufficiently printed impression to be repeated in exactly the same place with a precision practically impossible in hand printing.
Usage.
For certain classes of work the perrotine possesses great advantages over the hand-block; for not only is the rate of production greatly increased, but the joining up of the various impressions to each other is much more exacting; in fact, as a rule, no sign of a break in continuity of line can be noticed in well-executed work. On the other hand, however, the perrotine can only be applied to the production of patterns containing not more than three colours nor exceeding five inches in vertical repeat, whereas hand block printing can cope with patterns of almost any scale and continuing any number of colours. All things considered, therefore, the two processes cannot be compared on the same basis: the perrotine is best for work of a utilitarian character and the hand-block for decorative work in which the design only repeats every 15 to 20 in. and contains colours varying in number from one to a dozen.


Impact Plus Monthly Specials

Impact Plus Monthly Specials are a series of live professional wrestling events held by Impact Wrestling and seen exclusively on their streaming service, Impact Plus. On April 28, 2019, during its Rebellion pay-per-view, Impact announced the launch of Impact Plus, which replaced their previous streaming service, the Global Wrestling Network. These monthly specials succeed the previous One Night Only series of events, which were primarily taped for pay-per-view and GWN. Unlike those events, Impact Plus specials are broadcast live on the service and are sometimes connected to the angles leading into the company's main pay-per-view events.


Claire Stansfield

Claire Stansfield is a British-Canadian actress, director, fashion designer and former model. She is best known for her recurring role as Alti in several episodes of the TV series "".
Personal life.
In the early 1980s, Stansfield was engaged to then boyfriend Simon LeBon, the lead singer of the band Duran Duran. After breaking it off with Stansfield, he wooed model Yasmin Parvaneh. Even as magazines speculated on a possible wedding with Stansfield, LeBon and Parvaneh married in 1985.
Life and career.
Stansfield was born in London, England, to an English father and German mother. She was brought up for most of her youth in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and despite having a British passport she considers herself a Canadian. As a teen she worked as a model in Canada and Britain before turning to acting. She studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London before moving to Hollywood, USA.
Besides her role as "Alti" in "", Stansfield's other roles include "Sid" in two episodes of the cult TV series "Twin Peaks" and one episode as "Kristina" on the show "Frasier". She played in one episode of the 1990s TV series "The Flash" as the humanoid android A.L.P.H.A. and she guest starred in the fifth "X-Files" episode during season 1. In 1998, she starred opposite Dolph Lundgren in the Angolan set film, "Sweepers". The film was shot and partly produced in South Africa.
Stansfield directed "The Lovely Leave" in 1999, based on the short story of the same name by Dorothy Parker.
Stansfield founded C&C California, a clothing line specialising in 1970s-style T-shirts, in partnership with Cheyann Benedict in 2002. C&C was acquired by Liz Claiborne in 2005.


Erik Proper

Henderik Alex (Erik) Proper (born 22 May 1967) is a Dutch computer scientist, Professor of Information Systems at the Radboud University Nijmegen, and IT consultant, known for work on conceptual modelling of information systems and enterprise engineering.
Biography.
Born in Rheden, Proper studied Computer Science at the Radboud University Nijmegen. In 1990 he received his MA, and in 1994 his PhD with distinction with a thesis entitled "A Theory for Conceptual Modelling of Evolving Application Domains" under supervision of Eckhard D. Falkenberg.
After graduation Proper started his academic as Computer Science researcher at the University of Queensland in Australia, and lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology. Back in The Netherlands in 1997 Proper started working in the software industry as consultant at Atos Origin in Amsterdam, and later for in Gouda. Back at the Radboud University Nijmegen he was appointed Associate Professor in 2001, and since 2002 Professor of Information Systems. From 2008 to 2010 he has been part-time consultant for Capgemini. Since 2010 he is also Professor and researcher at the Public Research Centre Henri Tudor in Luxembourg.
In 2012 Proper was awarded the IFIP Outstanding Service Award from the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP).
Work.
"A Theory for Conceptual Modelling of Evolving Application Domains," 1994.
In his 1994 PhD thesis "A Theory for Conceptual Modelling of Evolving Application Domains," Proper developed a formal specification of information system development. This specification was based Object-role modeling, and was one of the many extensions to its basic framework. These extensions are basically abstract mechanisms, that "allow users to control the amount of detail seen at any given time."
While Proper focussed on schema evolution with Object-role modeling, other researchers in the 1990s had focussed on a range of related topics. Halpin (2006) summarized that that research ranged from "reverse engineering, support for complex objects, process-event modeling, external schema generation... schema optimization, meta-modeling, subtype extensions, null handling, object-oriented mapping, unary nesting, [to] empirical research."
"Enterprise Architecture," 2009.
In the 2009 "Enterprise Architecture: Creating Value by Informed Governance," Op 't Land and Proper traced the notion of architecture in the field of information systems development. They summarized:
When software applications became larger and larger, people such as Shaw and Garlan coined the term software architecture. This notion of architecture deals with the key design principles underlying software artefacts. In the 1980s and 1990s, people became aware that the development of information technology (IT) should be done in conjunction with the development of the context in which it was used. This led to the identification of the so-called business/IT alignment problem. Solving the business/IT alignment problem requires enterprises to align human, organizational, informational, and technological aspects of systems..."
And furthermore:
Quite early on, the term architecture was also introduced as a means to further alignment, and thus analyzes and solves business?IT alignment problems, Recently, the awareness emerged that alignment between business and IT is not enough, there are many more aspects in the enterprise in need of alignment. This has led to the use of the term architecture at the enterprise level: enterprise architecture.
"Architecture Principles," 2011.
In "Architecture Principles – The Cornerstones of Enterprise Architecture," (2011) Greefhorst and Proper present an extensive study of architecture principles. They presume that "enterprises, from small to large, evolve continuously. As a result, their structures are transformed and extended continuously. Without some means of control, such changes are bound to lead to an overly complex, uncoordinated and heterogeneous environment that is hard to manage and hard to adapt to future changes. Enterprise architecture principles provide a means to direct transformations of enterprises. As a consequence, architecture principles should be seen as the cornerstones of any architecture."
Furthermore they argue, that this work "provide[s] both a theoretical and a practical perspective on architecture principles. The theoretical perspective involves a brief survey of the general concept of principle as well as an analysis of different flavors of principles. Architecture principles are regarded as a specific class of normative principles that direct the design of an enterprise, from the definition of its business to its supporting IT. The practical perspective on architecture principles is concerned with an approach to the formulation of architecture principles, as well as their actual use in organizations."
Publications.
Proper has authored and co-authored numerous publications in the fields of enterprise engineering, enterprise architecture and enterprise modelling. Books, a selection:
Articles, a selection:
External links.


Platform (art group)

Platform London is an interdisciplinary London-based art and campaigning collective founded in 1983 that creates projects with social justice and environmental justice themes. Platform describes itself as "bringing together environmentalists, artists, human rights campaigners, educationalists and community activists to create innovative projects driven by the need for social and environmental justice. This interdisciplinary approach combines the transformatory power of art with the tangible goals of campaigning, the rigour of in-depth research with the vision to promote alternative futures."
A 1992 project by Platform sparked a local campaign to dig up the River Effra in London, England.
Their ongoing research into the political economy of oil is called the Unraveling the Carbon Web. Platform has written several books tracking the oil industry, including "The Oil Road: Journeys from the Caspian Sea to the City of London" published by Verso Books in 2013 and "The Next Gulf: Britain, the USA and the politics of oil in the Gulf of Guinea" published in 2005 by Constable & Robinson. "Some Common Concerns - Imagining BP’s Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey Pipelines" was released in October 2002.
Past work has included a campaign against the proposed oil law in Iraq, a series of performances about BP and climate change for oil analysts and journalists, a living memorial to the Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, a book exploring the psychology of those who work within major corporations, and a campaign to stop the Royal Bank of Scotland being the major European private financier of oil and gas.
Platform is in a long-running argument with the Tate over its sponsorship by BP, describing it as "a serious stain on the UK's cultural patrimony". Some artists with work in the Tate have backed Platform's opposition to BP, including Conrad Atkinson. Art critic Jonathan Jones opposed Platform's demands: "If they can get money from Satan himself they should take it." Interviewed during BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Tate Director Nicholas Serota explained "We look for long-term partners and one of those long-term partners is BP. They have been with us for 20 years. We all recognise they have a difficulty at the moment but you don't abandon your friends because they have what we consider to be a temporary difficulty."
A "Living Memorial" to Ken Saro-Wiwa was unveiled in London on 10 November 2006 by Platform, on the 11th anniversary of his execution. Created by Nigerian-born artist Sokari Douglas Camp, it consists of a steel sculpture of a bus with Saro-Wiwa's words inscribed in the side: "I accuse the oil companies of genocide against the Ogoni". It has toured England, visiting the Shell headquarters and Glastonbury.
In 2006, with funding from Arts Council England, they produced "And While London Burns", an operatic audio tour of the City of London.


New Woman (magazine)

New Woman is an Indian lifestyle magazine. It is published by Pioneer Book Company Private Limited. "New Woman" is based in Mumbai, India. Hema Malini is its editor.
History and profile.
The first edition was published in December 1996.
The magazine covers beauty, fashion, cosmetics, apparel, jewellery, the latest products, fitness, health, finance, career, self-help, relationships, sex, parenting, travel, art, music, books, cinema, social issues, legal matters, enterprise, and food. Its main focus is in-depth articles, stunning photo features, fashion and beauty spreads, fiction, and highly inspirational interviews. "New Woman" covers aspects of women's lives in language that is contemporary and young.
Well-known actress Hema Malini is its mentor and guide.


Pinball Fantasies

Pinball Fantasies is a 1992 pinball video game originally developed by Digital Illusions and published by 21st Century Entertainment in Europe for the Amiga home computers. It is the sequel to "Pinball Dreams", which was released earlier in the same year on multiple platforms. In the game, players can choose between any of the four available playfields, both of which have their own thematic and main objectives in order to obtain the highest score possible.
"Pinball Fantasies" was created by the same team who previously developed "Pinball Dreams" and although it was initially released for the Amiga computers, the title was later ported to other computers and consoles including the Amiga CD32, Atari Jaguar, Game Boy, MS-DOS, PlayStation and Super Nintendo Entertainment System, with each one featuring several changes and additions compared to the original version.
Upon its release on the Amiga, "Pinball Fantasies" was met with critical acclaim from video game magazines and garnered praise for several aspects such as the presentation, visuals, audio, gameplay and overall improvements from its predecessor. Other versions of the game were met with a mostly similar positive response from reviewers, with some publications like "PC Gamer" regarding it as one of the best video games of all time. A follow-up, "Pinball Illusions", was released in 1995.
Gameplay.
Like "Pinball Dreams", "Pinball Fantasies" is an arcade-style pinball game featuring four types of pinball tables and each one has their own main objective, gameplay mechanics and thematic. The game has various levels of difficulty and the player can set the number of balls for play, among other gameplay options. In certain versions of the game, high-scores and other settings made by the player are automatically kept via the cartridge's internal EEPROM, as well as reset the internal memory of the cartridge to erase saved high-scores and personal settings.
Tables.
"Party Land", the table included in the shareware release, is oriented around an amusement park where the letters of either "PARTY" or "CRAZY" must be lit to start a high-scoring event. "Speed Devils" is focused on car racing and the players must overtake cars to take the lead position. "Billion Dollar Gameshow" is a game show-style table where players attempt to win prizes by achieving certain combinations of ramps. "Stones 'N Bones" is based on a haunted house, where players must light eight successively more rewarding modes by completing a bank of targets marked "STONE-BONE" and then cycle continuously through the modes.
All four tables award one extra ball at the instant the highest score on the list is exceeded, and when the match at the end succeeds. Each table also has one special ramp (Speed Devils has two), which keeps track of the number of hits as a running total of Cyclones (Party Land), Miles (Speed Devils), Skills (Billion Dollar Gameshow) or Screams (Stones 'N Bones). The first shot counts for two. Each of these shots is worth 100,000 points in the bonus. With the exception of Party Land, the tables also award special awards at specific numbers. Each of the four tables has one or two high-scoring rounds that can be started by achieving certain objectives. Specific numbers of Miles and Skills trigger their respective tables' rounds. The scores for these modes, excluding "Tower Hunt", are awarded as part of the bonus though not multiplied and can be lost if the game is tilted.
Development and release.
"Pinball Fantasies" was created by the original team who previously developed "Pinball Dreams" at Digital Illusion. Producer Barry Simpson led the project's development process, with Fredrik Liljegren acting as manager and chief. Andreas Axelsson and Ulf Mandorff served as programmers, while Olof Gustafsson composed the soundtrack and created the sound effects. Markus Nyström acted as the game's sole artist. The game was first released for the Amiga by 21st Century Entertainment in Europe in October 1992. In September 1993, an Amiga CD32 conversion was released, based upon the improved Amiga Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA) version for the Amiga 1200 and Amiga 4000. It was later ported to MS-DOS computers by FrontLine Design, offering multiple audio options. The DOS port was digitally re-released by Rebellion Developments on 22 February 2011 on Good Old Games with support for Microsoft Windows. It received an OS X build on 23 April 2013 and a Linux build on 19 August 2014 respectively. A compilation including the tables from "Pinball Mania" was released for DOS as "Pinball Fantasies Deluxe".
In February 1995, versions for both the Game Boy and Super Nintendo Entertainment System were developed by Spidersoft and released in North America and Europe by GameTek. The Super NES port contains all four tables and the same music as the Amiga version, but suffers from a limited color palette. The SNES version was also published in Brazil by Playtronic in February 1996. In June 1995, an Atari Jaguar conversion by Spidersoft with extra colors was co-published by 21st Century Entertainment and Computer West in North America and Europe. The Jaguar port was also distributed in Japan by Messe Sansao. A PlayStation compilation created by Spidersoft titled "Pinball Fantasies Deluxe" was published exclusively in Japan by VAP on 25 October 1996, which also includes the "Pinball Mania" tables but these have to be unlocked first.
A Game Boy Advance version of the game, under the title "Pinball Challenge Deluxe", with tables added from "Pinball Dreams", was released only in Europe by Ubi Soft. On 20 July 2009, an iOS version was released by Cowboy Rodeo. Between October and December of the same year, a PlayStation Network version was released by Cowboy Rodeo for PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 3. A Nokia N9 version was released 20 July 2011 by Cowboy Rodeo in the Nokia Store. In 2012, a 3D/HD rendition was released for iOS by Cowboy Rodeo.
Reception.
"Pinball Fantasies" was a major commercial success, and among its era's highest-selling games.
"GamePro"s The Unknown Gamer panned the Super NES version. He remarked that though there is a large number of tables, the scrolling is so jerky that the game is almost unplayable. He further criticized that the graphics are dull and fail to make the ramps and obstacles of the tables stand out from the backgrounds. A reviewer for "Next Generation" also found the fact that the Super NES version displays less than half of the table at a time to be a problem, in part because of the poor scrolling, but also because "Since a lot of the scoring devices are near the top of the table, it means that most of the time you're shooting blind". He gave it two out of five stars.
Captain Squideo of "GamePro" gave the Jaguar version an only slightly more positive assessment. He praised the graphics but assessed the game to be completely lacking in fun due to the limited gameplay, stating that "anybody who thinks a $60 video game should offer some imaginative surprises will be severely disappointed".
In 1994, "PC Gamer US" named "Pinball Fantasies" the 33rd best computer game ever. The editors hailed it as "the best and most realistic pinball action ever seen on a PC screen". That same year, "PC Gamer UK" named it the 19th best computer game of all time. The editors wrote, "[I]f Pinball's your thing, there's currently nothing on the PC (or any home system, for that matter) better than this". In 1995, "PC Gamer US" presented "Pinball Fantasies" with its 1994 "Best Arcade Game" award.
The four reviewers of "Electronic Gaming Monthly" gave the Game Boy version a 4 out of 10, citing a lack of excitement in any of the tables, overly simplistic graphics, and annoying sound effects.


Migrantas

Migrantas are an artist collective based in Berlin, Germany that formed in 2004. The collective focuses on themes such as migration, identity and intercultural communication and designs pictograms together with migrants which are then placed in public spaces in order to give voice to migrants living in Germany.
The collective is made up of migrants and is organised non-hierarchically. Since 2004, the project has been organising exhibitions in various European cities. In 2011, the collective was awarded the German award for integration and tolerance by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel on behalf of the Initiative Hauptstadt Berlin.
Migrantas views pictograms as universally understandable images and a global language. Pictograms designed by Migrantas are similar to those found all over in the world in public spaces where they are normally used in place of written language in advertising and street signs. The difference between Migrantas' pictograms is that they are used to highlight the individual, cultural, socio-economic and political aspects of migration.
The pictograms are developed during workshops together with migrant groups and associations. The idea is then to make visible the feelings and everyday experiences of migrants, which migrantas argue otherwise receive very little publicity. The collective mostly works with women and encourages workshop participants to express their everyday experiences, feelings and views of life as a migrant living in a foreign culture. The sketches produced in these workshops are then developed into pictograms by the collective members themselves.
Finally, the pictograms are placed in public spaces during 'urban actions' which until now have included using posters, billboards, and advertising on public transport. At the same time, migrantas also organises exhibitions of its work and the sketches produced during its workshops. Migrantas argues that this gives the migrants themselves the opportunity to receive public recognition for their own work. At the same time, this provides individuals who have very little access to the media the opportunity to publicise their own experiences of migration and immigration.


Sally Cruikshank

Sarah Cruikshank (born 1949) is an American cartoonist and animator whose work includes animation for the Children's Television Workshop program "Sesame Street", and whose short "Quasi at the Quackadero" (1975) was inducted into the United States National Film Registry.
Biography.
Early life and education.
Sally Cruikshank was born in Chatham, New Jersey, the daughter of parents Rose and Ernest. Her parents were both Southerners, with her father, an accountant who worked in nearby New York City, New York, holding a Phi Beta Kappa key from Duke University, in North Carolina. Ernest's mother had been the president of the boarding school formerly known as St. Mary's College in that state. Cruikshank has a brother, and had a sister, Carol, who died in 1991. Their maternal aunt, Bea, was a painter from the 1910s to the 1940s, whose work included a portrait commission by US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Cruikshank studied art at Smith College, where in her junior year art teacher Elliot Offner sent slides of her colored-pencil and clay-relief-on-paper drawings to a screening committee that resulted in a scholarship to the two-month Yale Summer Art School. At the urging of a classmate there, Warner Wada, she began considering adapting her drawing style to animation. Returning to Smith for her senior year and obtaining the primer "Animation" by Preston Blair, Cruikshank, with additional research, arranged for a special-studies class in animation. With an animation stand consisting of a Bolex camera attached to a photo enlarger, constructed by instructor David Batchelder, she produced her first animated short, the three-minute, 16mm "Ducky". Done with watercolor and paper animation, it starred a prototype version of her future recurring character Quasi, which one writer characterized as "an infantile duck with buck front teeth, thick glasses and a red cape". Cruikshank, describing her anthropomorphic characters, said, "My ducks are based on the ducks from Carl Barks' comics. But I guess they got twisted in memory, because people don't seem to see much similarity between them."
Encouraged by the response of "Ducky", Cruikshank, after graduation, enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute, in San Francisco, California, to study filmmaking. Under instructor Larry Jordan, she made the five-minute animated short "Fun on Mars" (1971), which used watercolor, crayon markers on paper, cutouts, and collage. Produced for $100, it also featured early versions of her trademark duck-creatures. Her next short, "Chow Fun" (1972), created with a $400 grant secured in association with PBS, mixed paper animation and cutouts glued onto animation cels.
"Quasi at the Quackadero".
While editing "Chow Fun" at San Francisco's Snazelle Films, a commercial-film company that also rented out space and film equipment, Cruikshank, at an employee's suggestion, showed her work to company president E. E. Gregg Snazelle, who gave her a job a week later "to experiment in animation and do TV commercials when there was work". By the end of summer 1972, Cruikshank was head animator there. In 2009, she recalled of her time with Snazelle,
 In 1975 Cruikshank made a comic strip based on her characters Anita and Quasi, which was published in the third issue of the underground comics magazine Arcade.
At Snazelle, Cruikshank began developing her best-known work, "Quasi at the Quackadero" (1975), working titles of which included "I Walked with a Duck", "Hold That Quasi", and "Quasi Quacks Up". The 10-minute, 35mm short, with 100 watercolor backgrounds and approximately 5,000 cels, took two years for Cruikshank to draw, followed by four months for photography and post-production. Cruikshank independently financed the $6,000 budget, which went primarily for cel painting, sound recording and lab and camera work. Underground cartoonist Kim Deitch, then Cruikshank's boyfriend, did much of the inking, using dip pen and rapidograph, with Kathryn Lenihan doing most of the cel painting. The short starred Quasi, voiced by Deitch; Anita, which one writer described as "Betty Boop with a New Wave wardrobe" and whose Mae West-like voice was supplied by Cruikshank; and robot Rollo. They progress through the Quackadero, a Coney Island-esque sideshow with such attractions as the Hall of Time Mirrors, which depict the viewer as he or she will look in "old age" or "100 years from now", and the Time Holes, in which one can lean on a railing and see a live slice of three million years B.C. unfold. The music, by the Berkeley, California band the Cheap Suit Serenaders, used slide flute, xylophone, ukulele, duck call, boat whistle and bagpipe to create what Cruikshank called the "strange, gallopy feeling" of 1920s/1930s dance-band music, of which she is a devotee.
"Quasi at the Quackadero" won awards and was shown at the Los Angeles Film Exposition, and made its first theatrical booking at the Northside Theater in Berkeley, not far from Cruikshank's home at the time at 1890 Arch Street in that city.
Other early projects.
Cruikshank's next short, the eight-minute, 35mm "Make Me Psychic" (1978; working title "Mesmeroid Madness") returns Quasi and Anita and adds the suave Snozzy. Built around a device that taps into one's latent telekinetic power, leading to slapstick at a party, the $14,000 film also was financed by Cruikshank, with the higher budget going toward the hiring of additional cel painters and increased lab fees. Of its slicker look than her previous short, Cruikshank said, "People didn't know what to make of 'Quasi.' It was pretty hard to absorb in one sitting, solid. So, I thought I would try directing the eye more, by simplifying things and giving the next film a clearer focus." The Cheap Suit Serenaders again supplied music.
In 1980, Cruikshank won a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to create a storyboard and three-minute sample reel for a proposed animated feature, "Quasi's Cabaret", which she described as involving "three hedonistic ducks who try to open the ultimate tropical nightclub." She also tried developing feature projects combining live action and animation, one a comedy set in a mental institution, the other, "Joystick", "sort of a humorous horror story" about the effects of computer animation on an artist modeled on herself. Additionally, she attempted to sell cable-TV networks on "Weird Airways", a projected series of three-minute shorts starring Snozzy as the owner-pilot of a charter airline and Anita as a flight attendant.
Later work and life.
Cruikshank evolved a recognizable style with surrealistic and psychedelic elements. Her film "Face Like a Frog" (1987) bears a musical score by Oingo Boingo, with the group's Danny Elfman singing his song "Don't Go in the Basement."
Cruikshank has contributed animation sequences to feature films, including "" (1983) and "Top Secret!" (1984), as well as the opening title sequences to "Ruthless People" (1986), "Mannequin" (1987), "Loverboy" (1989), "Madhouse" (1990), and "Smiley Face" (2007). She has also worked in commercials and website design. Cruikshank also animated and produced many music videos for "Sesame Street" from 1989–1999.
For a short time in the 1990s, Cruikshank was employed by the Palo Alto laboratory and technology incubator Interval Research Corporation as an animator.
Cruikshank is in the process, as of 2011, of transferring her works into 35mm film format, for archival purposes, In October 2012, several 35mm prints of her work were screened at the Museum of Modern Art.
Personal life.
Cruikshank was in a relationship with underground cartoonist Kim Deitch during the period 1971–c. 1982.
On March 17, 1984, she married producer Jon Davison, with whom she has a daughter, Dinah.
Influences and style.
Cruikshank prefers the early New York City animation of such producers as the Fleischer Studios and the Van Beuren Studios, as well as early Bob Clampett. In a 1981 interview, she said of her own style at the time,
Animated short films.
Several other short films are on Cruikshank's YouTube channel.
Awards and honors.
In 1986, Cruikshank won the initial Maya Deren Award for independent film and video artists, given by the American Film Institute, along with Stan Brakhage and Nam June Paik.
In 2009, "Quasi at the Quackadero" was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. It was voted in the 1994 book "The 50 Greatest Cartoons: As Selected by 1,000 Animation Professionals".


Worms (series)

Worms is a series of artillery tactical video games developed by British company Team17. In these games, small platoons of anthropomorphic worms battle each other across a deformable landscape with the objective being to become the sole surviving team. The games are noted for their cartoony animation and extensive use of surrealism and slapstick humour.
The game, whose concept was devised by Andy Davidson, was described by the Amiga gaming press as a cross between "Cannon Fodder" and "Lemmings". It is part of a wider genre of turn-based artillery games involving projectile weapons; similar games include "Scorched Earth" (1991), "Gorillas" (1991) and "Artillery Duel" (1983).
Gameplay.
"Worms" games are turn-based artillery games presented in 2D or 3D environment. Each player controls a team of several worms. During the course of the game, players take turns selecting one of their worms. They use whatever tools and weapons are available to attack and kill the opponents' worms, thereby winning the game. Worms may move around the terrain in a variety of ways, normally by walking and jumping but also by using particular tools such as the "Bungee" and "Ninja Rope", to move to otherwise inaccessible areas. Each turn is time-limited to ensure that players do not hold up the game with excessive thinking or moving. The time limit can be modified in some of the games.
Over fifty weapons and tools may be available each time a game is played, and differing selections of weapons and tools can be saved into a "scheme" for easy selection in future games. Other scheme settings allow options such as deployment of reinforcement crates, from which additional weapons can be obtained, and sudden death where the game is rushed to a conclusion after a time limit expires. Some settings provide for the inclusion of objects such as land mines and explosive barrels.
When most weapons are used, they cause explosions that deform the terrain, creating circular cavities. The types of playable terrains include "island" (terrain floating on a body of water), or "cave" (cave with water at the bottom and terrain at both top and bottom of the screen that certain weapons such as "Air Strike" cannot go through; this type is not available in 3D versions due to camera restrictions). If a worm is hit with a weapon, the amount of damage dealt to the worm will be removed from the worm's initial amount of health. The damage dealt to the attacked worm or worms after any player's turn is shown when all movement on the battlefield has ceased.
Worms die when one of the following situations occurs:
Weapons and tools.
The "Worms" series is notable for its extensive variety of weapons. With each new game that is released, weapons are added, though many were removed in the 3D versions for gameplay reasons. As a result, the 2D series has accumulated 60 weapons, and the 3D series 40 weapons.
The weapons available in the game range from a standard timed grenade and homing missiles to exploding sheep and the highly destructive Banana Bomb, both of which have appeared in every "Worms" game so far. The "Worms" series has seen weapons such as the iconic Holy Hand Grenade, the Priceless Ming Vase and the Inflatable Scouser.
Some of the bizarre weapons in a particular game are based on topical subjects at the time of the game's release. The Mail Strike, for example, which consists of a flying postbox dropping explosive envelopes, is a reference to the postal strikes of the time, while the Mad Cow refers to the BSE epidemic of the 1990s. The French Nuclear Test, introduced in "Worms 2", was updated to the Indian Nuclear Test in "Worms Armageddon" to keep with the times.
Other weapons are inside jokes. The MB Bomb, for example, which floats down from the sky and explodes on impact, is a cartoon caricature of Martyn Brown, Team17's studio director. Other such weapons include the "Concrete Donkey", one of the most powerful weapons in the game, which is based on a garden ornament in Andy Davidson's home garden, and an airstrike known in the game as Mike's Carpet Bomb was actually inspired by a store near the Team17 headquarters called "Mike's Carpets".
Since "Worms Armageddon", weapons that were intended to aid as utilities rather than damage-dealers were classified as tools. This classification mainly differs in the fact that they do not fall in ordinary weapon crates, and instead appear in toolboxes. Many tools were left in the wrong class for the sake of keyboard-shortcut conveniences. This was resolved in "Worms 3D".
Some weapons were inspired from popular films and TV programs, including the Holy Hand Grenade (from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail") and Ninja Rope (named the Bat Rope in early demos of the original game).
History.
Creator.
Andy Davidson is the creator of the original "Worms" video game by Team17. The game "Worms" is based on the 2D classic "Artillery", and originally did not feature worms, but the "Lemmings" from the popular game of the same name.
Background.
Davidson was working on a program called "Jack the Ripper" for the Amiga personal computer, which allowed him to trawl the residual contents of RAM after applications had been run and quit. In this way, he "ripped" the graphics from Lemmings, and used them while developing his version of "Artillery". The original name of the game was "Lemartillery", and it was created purely as a bit of fun for him and his school friends in 1993. The positive reaction he witnessed encouraged him to develop it further. Knowing he could never commercially release the "Lemmings" characters, he changed them to worms and changed the name of the game to "Total Wormage".
Development.
Created as an entry for a Blitz BASIC programming competition run by the "Amiga Format" magazine, a cut-down version of the programming language having been covermounted previously. The game at this stage was called "Total Wormage" (possibly in reference to "Total Carnage") and it did not win the competition. Davidson sent the game to several publishers with no success. He took the game to the European Computer Trade Show in London in September 1994, where Team17 had a stand. Team17 made an offer on-the-spot to develop and publish the game. It subsequently evolved into a full commercial game, renamed "Worms", available initially for the Commodore Amiga. As the game was popular, it was regularly released for other platforms.
During the development of "Worms 2", Davidson wrote "", a special edition produced for the Amiga. "The Director's Cut" would be the last "Worms" game released for the Amiga.
For "Worms 2", the engine was redesigned using Microsoft's DirectX. The game would overhaul the series' visuals, dropping the darker tones of its predecessor and adopting a more cartoonish look. "Worms 2" would be the first game in the series to introduce internet play. The following release, "Worms Armageddon", featured the series' first campaign mode and was initially intended to be released as an expansion pack for "Worms 2". "Armageddon" marked the introduction of "WormNET", an online services which required registration and provided leagues and ranks. A variety of "schemes" have been developed by the WormNET community that are often played instead of the official schemes created by Team17. Some schemes have "rules" agreed to by the players but not enforced by the game itself.
"Worms 3D", released in 2003, was the first installment of the series with three-dimensional gameplay. The game features a 'poxel' engine, described as a hybrid of polygons and voxels (the 3D analogues of pixels), which allows for pseudo-realistic terrain deformation similar in style to the 2D games, in which the terrain was represented by a bitmap. The game was followed in 2004 by a spin-off, ', and the fourth-numbered sequel, ', in 2005. In the same year as "Worms 3"'s release, Team17 would announced the cancellation of "Worms Battle Rally", a karting game that would allow players to frag their opponents.
', a handheld game was released in March 2006, returned to the original 2D gameplay and was considered to be a remake of the first "Worms" game. In addition to , a console port of "Open Warfare" would be first released on Xbox Live Arcade in 2007. In turn, the port would be followed by 2009's ', which was directly inspired by "Worms Armageddon", and tries to mimic the game's physics and several other aspects. "Worms 2: Armageddon" would itself be ported to home computers as "Worms Reloaded" in 2010.
In an attempt to revamp the series' gameplay, "Worms Revolution" was released in 2012. "Revolution" was a 2.5D game that features a class-based mechanic, with each class having their own advantages and disadvantages. "Worms W.M.D", released in 2016, introduced vehicles to the series.
Reception.
While initial installments were generally praised, later games in the series have been criticized for the lack of meaningful additions. In 2001, Metacritic quoted "Worms World Party" reviews with comments such as "it's virtually nothing more than an expansion pack for "Worms Armageddon"" and, as ActionTrip's Dejan Grbavcic put it: "And I thought that only Eidos was impertinent enough to keep selling the same game with a slightly different name...". In 2007, "IGN" included the "Worms" series in its list of game franchises that have jumped the shark.
Sales.
The "Worms" series are commercially successful. Its combined sales by January 2002 had reached 6 million copies. By May 2014, 60 million copies of the games in the "Worms" franchise had been sold since launching in 1995. By December 2015, the 25th anniversary of Team17, the franchise has sold over 70 million game units. By March 2020, the 25th anniversary of Worms series, the franchise has sold over 75 million game units.
Awards.
Titles in the franchise have received a variety of awards.


Battlecars (video game)

Battlecars is a vehicular combat game released for the ZX Spectrum in 1984. It is based on Games Workshop's miniature wargame, "Battlecars." The game is set in 2084 in a future where road accidents have been eliminated by technology, and the world is relatively bloodless; however, people now entertain themselves by drivers using 20th century automobiles in violent, gladiatorial contests.
Gameplay.
Up to two players battle each other or the computer with vehicles that use an assortment of armor, weapons, and other components including missiles, mines, machine guns, lasers, oil, and smoke. Players can fight their cars on a racetrack, in an arena (the Autodrome), or on the streets of Slug City. On the racetrack, players navigate through a narrow circuit, competing primarily against rough terrain and a clock. The Autodrome is a bare arena where two cars can focus on battling each other. Slug City is a townscape where cars could battle each other on narrow streets. A player can play against the computer or a second player in either the racetrack or Autodrome; however, players can only play each other in Slug City.
Except for when racing on the racetrack, the primary goal of the game is to find your opponent and destroy their car. Players can take advantage of gas stations and service garages to obtain fuel or repairs, but using either makes a player vulnerable to attack from their opponent. A notable gameplay element at the time of the game's release in 1984 was that cars would realistically "drift" when they tried to turn at a high rate of speed.
When playing a game, players are presented a screen that shows the area in which they are driving their car, a map of the entire venue, the current speed and fuel of their car, any damage it receives, and information about available weapons. When there are two players, each player has their own playing screen on the computer monitor. The game is played using twelve keys on a keyboard to control each car and its weapons. The game has eight car configurations from which players could choose. "Battlecars" also comes with a program, "Designer", which allows players to customize the vehicles they want to use in battle.
Development.
"Battlecars" was developed for the ZX Spectrum by SLUG (a Harlow co-operative of ex-programmers from Red Shift) using BASIC. Julian Gollop notably developed the "Designer" program which allows players to edit the cars in the game. Games Workshop released "Battlecars" as a computer game for the ZX Spectrum in 1984. The game came with a sixteen-page instruction manual. Summit Software re-released the game in 1988.
Reception.
Roger Kean previewed "Battlecars" in "Crash" #9 (October 1984), calling it "rather more straightforward than one would expect from a company so immersed in the occult", and described the handling of the game's high speed vehicles "quite alarmingly realistic".
Kevin Westbury reviewed "Battlecars" for "White Dwarf" #60, giving it an overall rating of 8 out of 10, and stated that "All in all, "Battlecars" is fast, furious and great fun, and manages to combine simple operations with quite complex play, where only the best drivers and the surest shots will survive."
Representative of the game's positive reception, Bob Wade reviewed "Battlecars" for "Personal Computer Games", calling the game "a bleak view of an automative future but terrific to play".
Representative of the game's negative reception, "Computer and Video Games" was critical of "Battlecars", saying "It's one thing to have a good idea for a game, but another one to actually write the program." "Your Sinclair" elaborated on this criticism a few years later by noting "the horrid thing kept crashing on me."
References.
Other references.
"Super Play" #12 (October 1993) featured a preview of "Battlecars".


Renegade Game Studios

Renegade Game Studios is an American game company based in Escondido, California that creates and publishes board games, card games and role-playing games. In 2020, they also began producing jigsaw puzzles using art from their games.
History.
In 2014, Scott Gaeta, a former Colorado games store owner and co-founder of Cryptozoic Entertainment, founded Renegade Game Studios.
From 2014 to 2017, RGS used traditional industry methods to finance publication of their games. Starting in 2018, RGS used Kickstarter community funding to finance some larger licensed game projects such as "Power Ranger: Hero of the Grid" and "Scott Pilgrim Miniatures the World"., and most recently Rivals Expandable Card Game which is slated to launch on Kickstarter in Q3 of 2020.
Games published.
Game published by RGS between 2014–2020.
Notable Awards.
A number of RGS games have been nominated for or have won awards. The most prominent include:


Eric Harshbarger

Eric Harshbarger (born 1971) is an Alabama-based builder of large-scale Lego brick mosaics and sculptures. From around 2000 to 2006 he was commissioned to build for television shows and magazines for promotional purposes.
Harshbarger is also well known for his work in puzzle and game design. His "Digits in a Box" toy has been produced by Popular Playthings since 2007. "Wired" magazine featured an optical illusion puzzle of his design in 2009. Collaborating with Mike Selinker, Harshbarger co-authored an optimization puzzle for the "Maze of Games" in 2015. He also has hosted one or more puzzle parties in and around his hometown of Auburn, Alabama, every year since 2004. His puzzle TicTac's Tactics won Jury Honorable Mention at the 2018 International Nob Yoshigahara Puzzle Design Competition.


Elsbeth Ebertin

Elsbeth Ebertin (May 14, 1880 – November 28, 1944) was a German graphic artist, writer and astrologer. Elsbeth used the pseudonym Elsa Gorlizia in her writings.
She is most notable for predicting the rise of Adolf Hitler.
She was the mother of Reinhold Ebertin, who was also a publisher and astrologer.
Life and work.
Eslbeth was born on May 14, 1880 in Görlitz, Germany.
She was interested in philosophy and graphology at an early age and from 1900 onward she was active as a writer for various magazines. She became a well known astrology publicist after World War I. It has been reported the former king of Bulgaria was one of her customers.
In 1923 a supporter of Adolf Hitler sent Ebertin the 34-year-old future leader's detailed birth date, while concealing his identity. She drew up a horoscope based on the given birth date of April 20, 1889, Sun at 29° in Aries. (Hitler's Sun actually stood at 00° 49' in Taurus.) Statements in this horoscope were later interpreted as a prediction of the Beer Hall Putsch of November 8, 1923. Ebertin - who could easily have inferred the subject's identity - was very impressed by Hitler and his ideas, as can be seen in her publication of the horoscope in June 1923:
In 1935, Ebertin sent flowers and a collection of poems to Hitler with a personal dedication. She wrote:
Death.
Elsbeth died November 28, 1944, Freiburg, Germany at the time of an Allied bomb attack during World War II.
Works.
In 1926 "In the Stars", a film adaptation of her novel "Der Mars im Todeshaus" was released in many German cities, according to a report in the Berlin journal Die Filmwoche (No. 19). As astrology was taken seriously in Germany, the Nazis attempted to suppress any associations and publications concerning astrology. The suppression continued as Hitler and the Nazis increased their power, until they imposed a complete ban on astrology in the later years of their rule.


Eileen Evans

Eileen Margaret Evans (8 November 1921 - August 2006) was a British graphic designer who co-founded the Mount/Evans design studio with graphic designer, Reginald Mount after World War II.
Biography.
Evans studied commercial art at the Reimann School in London, graduating in 1939. Evans selected this school expressly due to its reputation for providing good employment opportunities. Shortly afterwards, she joined the Ministry of Information (which later became the Central Office of Information or COI).
During the war Evans and Mount worked together at the Ministry of Information designing many public information and propaganda posters. Evans also created posters independently of Mount, including at least one recruitment poster for farm workers, plus several for the "Lend A Hand on the Land " campaign which encouraged city families to take working holidays to help with wartime harvests.
Evans is one of the featured artists in the National Archives 'The Art of War' collection. Her collaborative work with Mount is also included in the Victoria and Albert Museum collections. Their anti-smoking and road safety posters won awards.
In their joint work and commissions, Evans was responsible for the typography and layout of the posters. Their partnership continued into the 1950s and 1960s with posters such as "The Parachute Regiment" for the British Army Recruiting Office, the 1967 "Britain in Montreal" poster for the Department of Trade and further work for the Department of Health.


JEUS

JEUS (an abbreviation of Java Enterprise User Solution) is a Korean Web application server which is developed by TmaxSoft. JEUS provides the web application server component of TmaxSoft's middleware-tier framework solution. It has been widely adopted in Korea where it holds the largest (42.1%) share of the market.
TmaxSoft released JEUS 1.0 in 2000. In 2001, it received J2EE 1.2 certification for JEUS 3.0., In 2013, it received the world’s first Java EE 7 certification for JEUS 8.
History.
JEUS was launched in April 2000. The following table shows a list of versions and release dates:
Features.
JEUS 7 provides the following features:
Domain Architecture: (JEUS 7) supports a massive scale computing environment with lightweight and speedy distributed clustering.
Dynamic Clustering: A core function that enables rapid elasticity which allows the administrator to easily add and delete idle resources as needed.
Graceful Redeployment: When application redeployment is needed during operation, a continuous service environment is provided by guaranteeing the completion of processing of session requests prior to redeployment.
Superior performance is provided for large-scale requests, by the improved caching function.
Memory is managed efficiently by the use of an optimized LRU Processing Algorithm that improves performance.
When connected to the WebtoB server, stable large-scale transaction processing ability is exhibited, due to Multiplexing I/O, Request Queuing, Dynamic Load Balancing, and Stream Pipe Communication
By reloading only the modified class instead of the entire class, when a function is modified, development productivity is dramatically improved.
WebtoB.
WebtoB is the web server component that complements JEUS as TmaxSoft's middleware-tier solution. WebtoB uses a multi-thread architecture, which allows it to address multiple requests through a single process. Other features include disk and memory caching, load balancing, clustering, dynamic queuing and the ability to add additional nodes without interrupting operations, all of which help improve the server's speed and stability. WebtoB uses secure sockets layer and operates without open firewall ports, which inherently provides for stronger data security. Administrators can also configure access control lists.
Minimum Installation Requirements.
The following shows the minimum installation requirements for JEUS
Windows 2000, 2003, XP, Vista
Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, Linux
Edition.
There are two editions of JEUS available:


Anna Shechtman

Anna Shechtman (born 1990/1991) is an American journalist and crossword compiler. Shechtman is film editor for the "Los Angeles Review of Books", and compiles crossword puzzles for "The New Yorker" and "The New York Times".
Early life.
Shechtman grew up in a Jewish family in New York City's Tribeca neighborhood. She earned a bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College, and in 2020 received a PhD in English Literature and Film & Media Studies at Yale University.
Crosswords.
Shechtman was 19 when her first crossword appeared in the New York Times.
In May 2019, "The Guardian" called her "the new queen of crosswords".


Saddle shoe

The saddle shoe, also known as "saddle oxford", is a low-heeled casual shoe, characterized by a plain toe and saddle-shaped decorative panel placed mid foot. Saddle shoes are typically constructed of leather and are most frequently white with a black or dark blue saddle, although any color combination is possible.
Saddle shoes are worn by both men and women in a variety of styles ranging from golf cleats to school uniform shoes. They have a reputation as the typical shoes of school-girls, especially in the 1940s.
External links.
How to style saddle shoes


Oskar van Deventer

Oskar van Deventer (born 1965) is a Dutch puzzle maker. He prototypes puzzles using 3D printing. His work combines mathematics, physics, and design, and he collaborates at academic institutions. Many of his combination puzzles are in mass production by Uwe Mèffert and WitEden. Oskar van Deventer has also designed puzzles for Hanayama.
He was a Guinness World Record holder for his 17×17×17 "Over the Top Cube" Rubik's cube-style puzzle from 2012 to 2016, when it was beaten by a 22×22×22 cube.
In addition to being a puzzle maker, Oskar is a research scientist in the area of media networking and holds a Ph.D. in optics. He has over 100 publications, over 80 patents applications, and hundreds of standardization contributions.


Lucky Morani

Lucky Morani is an Indian fashion designer, model, stage and film actress. Morani is a noted fashion designer, and has designed, and modeled for several brands in India.
In 2014, she ventured into mainstream acting with the bollywood crime thriller film Main Aur Charles.
Early career and cinema.
Morani was born in Mumbai, India. She did her schooling at St. Joseph's Convent High School, Mumbai. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce from Narsee Monjee College of Commerce and Economics, and Diploma in Fashion design from SNDT Women's University. Morani was an apprentice to fashion designer Hemanth Trivedi. She subsequently worked as Creative and Event Planner for the Cineyug Group Of Companies. She subsequently ventured into theater and stage acting through playwright and director Nadira Babbar's works. Lucky Morani received the 'I Am Woman' women empowerment award in 2016.
Personal life.
Morani is the wife of Bollywood film producer Mohamed Morani, and sister in law of Karim Morani, the director of Cineyug Entertainment, one of India's event management companies.


Second New England School

The Second New England School or New England Classicists (sometimes specifically the Boston Six) is a name given by music historians to a group of classical-music composers who lived during the late-19th and early-20th centuries in New England. More specifically, they were based in and around Boston, Massachusetts, then an emerging musical center. The Second New England School is viewed by musicologists as pivotal in the development of an American classical idiom that stands apart from its European ancestors.
Origin of the name.
The Boston Classicists were first referred to as a "school" in the second edition of Gilbert Chase's "America’s Music" (1966).
We must attempt to define the prevailing New England attitude toward musical art, that is to say, the attitude that dominated the musical thinking of those New England composers who, in the final decade of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth, succeeded in forming a rather impressive school variously known as the “Boston Classicists” or the “New England Academicians.” It might be denied that they formed a “school” in the strictest sense of the term... I think it can be shown that it stemmed from a fairly homogeneous cultural and aesthetical background.
The full-fledged term "Second New England School" Was used by H. Wiley Hitchcock soon afterwards, in 1969. generating the term "First New England School" as a by-product.
No actual organization or conscious association of composers existed in the Second New England School, though some male members of the group did gather socially, so its "membership" can only be approximated by musicologists who draw aesthetic and philosophical links between composers.
Members.
The specific "Boston Six" are named as John Knowles Paine (1839–1906), Arthur Foote (1853–1937), George Chadwick (1854–1931), Amy Beach (1867–1944), Edward MacDowell (1861–1908), and Horatio Parker (1863–1919). Other composers associated with the group include Edgar Stillman Kelley (1857–1944), George Whiting (1861–1944), and Arthur Whiting (1861–1936). These composers were greatly influenced by German Romantic tradition, either through direct study with Germans or by association with German-trained musicians in America. Their works were published by A. P. Schmidt, the most important music publisher of that time.
Origins in the First New England School.
Chamber music of the Second New England School is considered the first successful body of American repertoire. While there was no official "First New England School," many independent composers heavily influenced the development and success of The Second New England School. The first influential figure was William Billings (1746–1800), a native of Boston, who was a self-taught amateur musician and a tanner. William Billings was part of the colonial working class and lacked the benefit of much formal education, let alone the chance of attending college (which remained a privilege of the genteel class). Billings gave expression to a provincial, American culture instead of aspiring to the cosmopolitan ideal of British culture. At the age of twenty-three Billings had already composed more than one hundred original pieces of sacred music, and in 1770 he published his first tunebook, "The New England Psalm Singer." Only a dozen or so American-composed tunes had previously been published. Collecting more than 120 new compositions, "The New England Psalm Singer" was the first published compilation of entirely American music and the first tunebook composed by one American composer. Perhaps even more significant as a sign of both Billings’s intentions and the times in which he lived, he advertised the work as “never before published” and stressed that it was composed by “a native of Boston”—made in America by an American. Published by Benjamin Edes and John Gill, who also published "The Boston Gazette and Country Journal", a major Patriot newspaper, and including an engraving by Paul Revere, the book suggested that Billings was strongly aligned with the Rebels. His tunebook is striking for the manner in which it boldly signals these nationalist sentiments. For example, Billings’s best-known tune, “Chester,”declares:
"Let tyrant shake their iron rod"
"And slav'ry Clank her galling Chains"
"We fear them not we trust in God"
"New Englands God for ever reigns."
His most significant contribution to the history of American music was the publication of his two tune-books. The first one, the New England Psalm-Singer, was published in 1770, and the second and more popular collection, the Singing Master’s Assistant, was published in 1778. It includes a paraphrase of Psalm 137 that refers to the occupation of Boston in 1775–1776. These selections captured the mood of confident defiance with which New England patriots entered the new era.
Influence of Lowell Mason.
The second influential figure was Lowell Mason (1792–1872) born in Medfield, Massachusetts. His family education was rooted in the New England singing school tradition handed down by his grandfather. In 1822 he published "The Handel and Haydn Society’s Collection of Church Music". The first edition was published without attribution, but later editions acknowledged the Mason as editor. Mason returned to Boston in 1827, having negotiated a position as music director at three Boston churches. Between 1829 and 1869 he published about 20 further collections of hymns. Those collections favored adaptations of tunes by prominent European composers rather than the traditional rural hymn tunes. He expertly adapted the melodies of instrumental works from European masters such as Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart, and Schubert into his collections of sacred music and published them. By simplifying their musical content and harmonic language he introduced them to the American public. His compositions include the hymn tunes for "From Greenland’s Icy Mountains", "Nearer, My God, to Thee", and "My Faith Looks Up to Thee". Mason devoted his life to music as a composer, a publisher and, most significantly, a music educator. In 1832 he founded the Boston Academy of Music. In 1838, because of his insistence that singing should not be absent from children’s education, the Boston School Committee added introductory music to the primary and secondary school curriculum, appointing Mason to lead the program.
The Boston Six.
American musicians such as William Billings and Lowell Mason educated and enriched aspiring musicians of their time such as George Chadwick and Horatio Parker. Amy Beach, George Chadwick, Arthur Foote, Edward MacDowell, John Knowles Paine and Horatio Parker collaborated and eventually became known as the Boston Six. In 1815, the Handel and Haydn Society was formed, followed by the Boston Academy of Music. In 1867, The New England Conservatory was founded. It is not surprising then, that Boston should have nurtured a tradition of musical composition and a group of composers who are often considered together a "school."
Many of the New England composers had academic affiliations and were among the pioneers of academic music education in the United States. John Knowles Paine, who served as the first Professor of Music at Harvard University, was considered as the leading compositional authority during his lifetime and, unofficially, the leader of this group. Paine held seniority in age and experience over most of his colleagues. Horatio Parker became Professor of Music at Yale University, and Edward MacDowell at Columbia University.
Music education in relation to Europe.
During the Second New England School's years of prominence, American musical education was still in its infancy. Americans often learned music theory and composition in Europe or from European musicians who had emigrated to the United States. As a result, large portions of American classical music written at the time reflect European influences, especially from Germany. Although America lagged in composition, in the second half of the 20th century the country developed permanent and robust opera and symphonic organizations and exceeded Europe in the quality of piano manufacture and piano ownership per capita.
Influence on subsequent composers.
The composers of the Second New England School are considered the artistic ancestors of later "academic" and "conservative" U.S. composers such as Walter Piston, Howard Hanson, Douglas Moore, and Carlisle Floyd. The Americanist nationalist school of Aaron Copland and Roy Harris has no direct connection except nationality. Some composers who were students of the Boston Classicists, such as Henry F. Gilbert (student of MacDowell) and Charles Ives (student of Parker), rejected much of their masters' styles and embarked in radical new vernacular directions.


Hasan Ferit Alnar

Hasan Ferid Alnar (11 March 1906 – 30 July 1978) was a Turkish classical music composer.
He was a member of the Turkish Five, in the first half of the 20th century. Alnar is known for his efforts for harmonization of classical Turkish music elements and the classical music techniques. His best-known works are the Concerto for Kanun and String Orchestra and the Cello Concerto.
From 1946 to 1952, he was the conductor of the Presidential Symphony Orchestra, and from 1955 to 1960, he was the General Music Director of the Ankara Opera House at the State Theaters. After retiring in 1961, Alnar lived in Vienna and managed concerts in Central European cities. In 1964, he returned to Ankara and taught harmony, form knowledge and orchestration at the Ankara State Conservatory until his death in 1978.
Life.
Alnar was born in 1906 in Sarachane, Istanbul. His father was General Manager of PTT Hüseyin Bey and his mother was Saime Hanım. The first child of the family; his brother Orhan Alnar is six years younger than him.
References.
Notes
Further Reading


Sara Berman (fashion designer)

Sara Berman is a British fashion designer whose eponymous womenswear brand operated from 1998 until 2012, when she put the label on hold to focus on fine art. Producing clothing for London stores before she graduated and achieving success within a year of leaving fashion college, she won both New Generation (NewGeN) awards and a UK fashion export award.
The brand was renowned for its knits, quirky prints and tailored pieces.
Early life and career.
Sara Berman was born in 1976 and is the daughter of the fashion designer Helene Berman. She studied at Fine Arts College in Hampstead, and Central St Martins College of Art and Design. While at St Martins she worked with Jasper Conran, Charles & Patricia Lester, and Armani, and, after she left, she worked for Maria Grachvogel. Berman's graduate collection was taken up by Fenwicks.
Establishment of eponymous label.
Some sources place the launch of Sara Berman in 1999, but her label first featured in "The Times" in 1998, which showcased Indian embroidered silk skirts available at Fenwicks. She was described then as: "a new British design talent". These first skirts had been created while Berman was still at design college and made from saris. Thanks to her mother's connections she managed to get them produced and they appeared in Joseph as well as Fenwicks.
In 1999, her designs featured in Fenwicks' Bond Street store window during London Fashion Week. Examples from her collections – including sheepskin accessories, spotted cotton summer skirts and blouses and full silk skirts with net layering – appeared regularly in the fashion pages of "The Times" throughout this period. The paper also noted that within a year of graduating, Berman had made it into the boutiques Mimi and Tokio, alongside Fenwick.
Berman took advantage of her mother's contacts in building the company. Her sister Amiee Berman joined the company as a business partner and co-designer, having herself studied at Central Saint Martins. By 2002 Sara Berman had won the Marks and Spencer New Generation award three times, which was seen as an unusual achievement.
In 2002, Berman featured – alongside Burberry, Paul Smith and Eley Kishimoto – in a feature about the direction of London designers. She was described as: "shaping up to be the thinking It girl's darling". In a profile that year, she described how she had turned down a fashion job offer in Italy after realising the salary was in lira rather than sterling. She also revealed that she managed all stages of production of her garments and of fabric selection – having grown up visiting garment factories with her mother. By 2003 "The Guardian" had listed Sara Berman as one of three women in the field of fashion to keep an eye on, noting that her designs were Liberty's second-highest seller and that she was often featured in "Vogue" magazine.
In 2005 Sara Berman won the UK Fashion Export Award for designer womenswear. The label developed a range of lines for American brands Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters. High-profile wearers included Gwen Stefani and Zadie Smith. By then, the label was being sold in 60 stores around the world. This included trousers for a US department store and pieces for Harrods and Harvey Nichols.
Launch of second label.
By 2008 the Sara Berman brand had a second label, Berman Black, and Berman also acted as creative director of the cashmere brand N.Peal. Berman also created ranges for Urban Outfitters and ASOS.
In 2012 Sara Berman withdrew from fashion design to focus on fine art.


The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner

The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner (shortened to 3-D WorldRunner on the North American box art), originally released in Japan as , is a 1987 third-person rail shooter platform video game developed and published by Square for the Family Computer Disk System. It was later ported to cartridge format and published by Acclaim for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
For its time, the game was technically advanced; the game's three-dimensional scrolling effect is very similar to the linescroll effects used by "Pole Position" and many racing games of the day as well as the forward-scrolling effect of Sega's 1985 third-person rail shooter "Space Harrier". "3-D WorldRunner" was an early forward-scrolling pseudo-3D third-person platform-action game where players were free to move in any forward-scrolling direction and had to leap over obstacles and chasms. It was also notable for being one of the first stereoscopic 3-D games. "WorldRunner" was designed by Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nasir Gebelli, and composed by Nobuo Uematsu. All would later rise to fame as core members of the team behind the popular "Final Fantasy" role-playing video game series.
Gameplay.
"WorldRunner" features many sprite-based elements that are typical of a forward-scrolling rail shooter game, where the player focuses on destroying or dodging onscreen enemies against a scrolling background. "3-D WorldRunner" incorporates a distinct third-person view, where the camera angle is positioned behind the main character.
As Jack, players make their way through eight worlds, battling hostile alien creatures such as blob monsters and leaping over bottomless canyons. Each world is divided into different quadrants, and the player must pass through each quadrant before the time counter on the bottom of the game screen reaches zero. In each quadrant, the player can find pillar-like columns that house power-ups, objects that are beneficial or add extra abilities to the game character such as temporary invincibility or laser missiles. At the end of each world's last quadrant is a serpentine creature which must be defeated to advance. A status bar at the bottom of the screen displays the player's score, the time counter, the world number, the world quadrant, the number of bonus stars (items that increase the player's score count) collected by the player, and the number of lives remaining.
Because the game is set against a constantly scrolling screen, Jack's movement cannot be stopped, but the player can speed up or slow down Jack's pace. The player is also allowed a degree of limited horizontal movement. When fighting Serpentbeasts at the end of each world, the player is capable of moving Jack freely in all directions. Jack's basic actions consist of jumping, used to dodge canyons and enemies, and firing collectible missiles of various types to destroy enemies.
Part of the appeal and selling point of "WorldRunner" was its "3D mode". and It was the first of three games by Square to feature such an option. To enter or exit 3D mode, players would press the select button. To view the game in 3D, players had to use the included pair of cardboard Nintendo-developed LCD shutter glasses. When the 3D mode is selected, the game uses computer image processing techniques to combine images from two slightly different viewpoints into a single image, known as anaglyph images.
Plot.
Players assume the role of Jack the WorldRunner, a wild "space cowboy" on a mission to save various planets overrun by serpentine beasts. The game takes place in Solar System #517, which is being overrun by a race of aliens known as Serpentbeasts, who are led by the evil Grax. As WorldRunner, the player must battle through eight planets to find and destroy Grax with fireballs.
Development.
In a 1999 interview with "NextGeneration" magazine, Sakaguchi admitted that he "liked "Space Harrier"", but said that his main reason for the development of the game was that Square owner Masafumi Miyamoto wanted to demonstrate Nasir Gebelli's 3D programming techniques for which he had been hired.
Reception.
At the time of release, "Cashbox" magazine praised the games visual effects and the variety of enemies and obstacles.
In retrospective reviews, the game had a mixed reception. "Game Informer" praises the surrealistic landscape and behind the character running capability, but noted that they were not capable of seeing the 3D effect even with the 3D glasses on. "Retro Gamer" criticized for being a seeming ripoff of Sega's "Space Harrier," noting that even the bosses of both games look similar. they did applaud the soundtrack and the bright visual, comparing the color palette to "Fantasy Zone" Vito Gesualdi of "Destructoid" named it among the "five most notorious videogame ripoffs of all time" in 2013.
Commercially, the game was met with modest success, selling roughly 500,000 copies worldwide. The sales of this game title and other titles from Square at this time were not enough for Square to stay in business, and the companies fortunes only turned around with the release of the first "Final Fantasy".
Sequel.
 is a 1987 Japan-only follow-up to the game, developed and released by the same team who did the original, but as a regular cart instead of for the Disk System. "JJ" was one of the few games to utilize the Famicom 3D System, and was Square's last work before the inception of the popular "Final Fantasy" franchise.
"JJ" is a sort of "dark version" of the original game; it moves at a much faster pace with increased difficulty, plus a more "sinister" art style and use of color. The soundtrack was again composed by Nobuo Uematsu, and each track was made to match the respective track from the first game.


Ritu Beri

Ritu Beri () () is an Indian fashion designer.
She became head of the Ready to Wear section of French fashion brand, Jean-Louis Scherrer, in March 2002.
She launched a not-for-profit organisation, The Luxury League to promote creativity and innovation in the luxury industry of India. She was appointed an advisor to the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC), a part of the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Government of India. She is also an advisor to Rishihood University.
Personal life.
In 2004 she married exporter Bobby Chadha.
Career.
In 2000, Beri became head of the French fashion house, Jean Louis Scherrer, to design their pret-a-porter collections.
Ritu Beri was awarded the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) by the French government in 2010.
On 9 April 2016, Beri launched two books, "The Designs of A Restless Mind" and "The Fire of A Restless Mind".