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leam1983 · 3 years ago

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Krampus Wetworks

More random conceptualization that's kept me awake last night. Blah blah blah, below the cut.

Santa Claus is a figure that's gracefully mutated throughout time and that's splintered off into a dozen different interpretations and roles, depending on the local culture and traditions. The fat man with a bowlful of jelly might've supplanted Saint Nicholas of Nursia, the main concepts still apply. You're a good person, ergo an Eidolon of Goodness visits you illicitly and rewards you for being a morally-defensible person.

In the past, however, and more notably in some Germanic cultures, naughty kids would also receive particular visits. The usual doctrine states that the Krampus stuffs you in his bag and steals you away to Hell, but modern technology's made the act of vanishing kids on a serial basis a difficult act to maintain. If Santa Claus gets some leeway for his reverse Grand Larceny acts, then it follows that the Christmas Demon would need to rethink his M.O. in order to remain relevant and to maintain the North Pole's supernatural barriers...

Our narrator doesn't remember much of his childhood. What he does remember is a mixture of biting cold and greenhouse warmth, of growing older while in a strange society where your main educator will eventually become your employer - a bit like the Cyberpunk concept of the Company Lifer. The main difference, here, is that what began as a weird demon not really knowing what to do with his gaggle of spoiled brats was altered over the centuries to meet new needs and requirements.

In the early decades of the 21st Century, the Krampus doesn't get out much. He's changed, instead looking and acting like the head of a PMC or risk-consultation firm, knowing that children don't really deserve the brunt of his ire, anymore. Whipping kids with twigs and stuffing them in a basket does nothing for those who remain, and it's a massive risk in a day and age of helicopter parents sticking RFID tags on their kids' backpacks and clothing. The Big Guy couldn't work his shifts if his methods ever broke out of trade secrecy, so sacrifices had to be made.

The narrator thinks he's just part of some sort of risk-assessment and management team. He's grown up learning six languages, picking up CQC and interrogation techniques. There isn't a rifle, musket, Bullpup, pistol or SMG he can't handle, not one psyche he can't crack. He's infiltrated the East India Company, Capone's syndicate, Enron's board of directors and even prepared casework on Theranos and Liz Holmes. He's toppled dictators from within and killed a few from without.

Hitler's suicide? That's a company cover-up. One of the narrator's best buds infiltrated the bunker's staff and used designer narcotics (also known as a magic poison sourced from the Boss) and then planted a stash of cyanide pills on-site.

Time flows differently, in-between Santa's Workshop and the Wetworks compound. For our guy, the last few centuries have been two or three active decades in-service. There's an in-compound bar, there's training and rec facilities - everyone knows everyone - and most of everyone hasn't noticed how different the boss has been feeling, lately.

The narrator remembers his first few years, Mr. K. being barely clothed and looking annoyed at Santa's insistence that he had to stop taking unruly kids straight to Hell. They were all bad apples, sure - but education has its worth, doesn't it?

From a schoolteacher, Mr. K's turned into a mildly paunchy and suspender-wearing executive, with cigars on Fridays and company messages broadcast throughout the facility at regular intervals. Things used to be about making a difference, putting a dent in the world's evils and honestly confronting them, but a few other agents have noted how the Boss has grown attached to his trappings of luxury and how permissive he's become, in regards to certain slip-ups. It used to be that failure meant either fifteen lashes in the early days or a public humiliation by the nineteen-hundreds, but he's gone well past simply going soft. Some of the Elves that have been working with him since the beginning are starting to line their pockets, and are using their increased contacts with the mortal world to grow attached to fleeting concepts Santa Claus himself would've warned them about.

There's just one problem: the Narrator is one of the Krampus' favorites, someone he regularly praises and invites for dinner. Their relationship is practically that of father and son, and the Demon himself is the first to note how far they've come from their childhood days as a fresh capture still filled with bad habits. The Narrator feels he owes his moral rectitude, maturity and even-temperedness to his boss, and the floating rumours only increase his pervading sense of unease and his worry of potentially losing his father figure and mentor's trust.

Then, progressively, the scales fall from the Narrator's eyes. The corruption of the Wetworks' Board of Directors is laid bare, the concept of Elves running an insider trading ring horrifies them, and the Krampus' waning quality standards go from concerning to stomach-churning within a few days.

The Narrator was never on Santa Claus' Naughty List. The Krampus has been forging his 'Talent Acquisition' orders out of whole cloth for the past two hundred years.

Now the question remains if they can bring this truth to light in front of the Clauses before financially-motivated Elves and a few hundred trained killers get to them...

#personal writing prompt #krampus wetworks #modern fantasy

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highlevelencounters-blog · 7 years ago

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Call of Cthulhu: an over long analysis

In trying to give any video game a fair review, one faces difficulties, because games try to be and to do such a varying range of things. I think this is especially true of Cyanide’s Call of Cthulhu. There are so many metrics by which one could measure the game. Is it engaging? Is it scary? Does it do what it does well;? Is it well made? Is it true to its Lovecraft source material? Is it true to its roleplaying game source material? Is it worth the price? If you are short of time, and I would not blame you if you were, then very quickly: yes; no; yes; depends what you mean but no; sort of; yeah and that depends but probably not. If you are not short on time, then let me explain myself (in very great detail) by taking these points in turn. It is difficult to appraise the game without spoilers, but I will warn you when they are coming. If you do not want them, skip to the next heading.

Is Call of Cthulhu engaging?

Yes. Not the most engaging game, mind, but its story, characters and general sense of intrigue carry the game. There are technical problems with the writing that I will deal with below, but those are the video game equivalents of bad grammar and spelling errors (of which, while we are on the subject, I noticed a bit in the subtitles and item descriptions). Despite the animation problems, also mentioned below, the characters are well fleshed out both through direct speech and context. The graphics are nothing sensational, but are definitely good enough to create a world you want to explore. One of my favourite things, though, is that the game does not treat you like an idiot, nor does it leave you behind. My problem with the few investigation-based games I have played before is that they are determined to leave no man behind, so they bash you around the head with everything that they have lying around. Call of Cthulhu does not do this. Cut-scenes and mandatory conversations make sure you know what is going on even if you are not paying attention to anything else that is around you, but if you are looking at the details in the world, even the ones that are not in any way highlighted by the big buttons that appear over everything that you can interact with, then you can start to piece together why things are happening, as opposed to just finding out that they are happening. Intelligence, time and exploration are rewarded with details, but none are essential for understanding the gist of the story. It is difficult to say much more without spoilers, so here are some SPOILERS:

While Officer Bradley was clearly the best character, standing out from most modern video game characters you see today by being wonderfully human, but not in a broken, flawed way, I want to prove my point about good characters by pointing to Charles Hawkins. While this character is never explicitly explained, we know he has been in on everything since the beginning. He is literally a wife-beating monster and definitely a villain of the piece. But he is also conflicted and caring. He genuinely wants what is best for Sarah, even if that means abusing her. He is a bad, angry man, but he is trying to do right. And the beauty is that the game never actually tells you this. It shows you. No one really ever says anything about Charles’s character, but reading into what he says and watching what he does really gives you a feel for his character. Which is impressive for a character with such little screen time.

Is Call of Cthulhu scary?

No. I do not play horror games so I am not the person to ask really. Or maybe I am the perfect person to ask. Either way, for what it is worth, I was not scared by this game. I hate being chased and a couple of sequences made me tense up in my chair, but I would not take that as a massive indication of anything. The same fear of being chased is what made me stop playing Mirror’s Edge and that game is very far from scary. In the game’s defense, however, jump scares are cheap and I hate them and this game seems to aswell. I counted exactly two and one of them was mostly just a creepy musical trill and the other one was so obviously coming it did not even startle me. So Kudos there.

Does Call of Cthulhu do what it does well?

Yes. What I mean by this is, if you boil the game down to what it actually is, it does that well. What that means, is that it is a very good walking simulator. If that is not what you want, do not play this game. This is a walking sim with some very light RPG elements and a few sections where, undoubtedly, someone higher up the chain came in and said “we need a stealth section!” or “we need a combat section!” or “we need a horror section!” or “we need an action section!” and the developers obliged, put in one instance of each and moved on. These sections, except maybe the fun but very basic stealth section, are by far the weakest parts of the game (oh my, that combat section!). The exceptions are the many puzzles, which, like the plot in general, do not treat you like an idiot. Except for one part of one, which honestly feels like the developers made a mistake (what is supposed to be the clue for where to look for the answer instead just straight up gives you the answer, despite the fact that all the stuff for actually reasoning out the answer is right there in the game!).

I only have one problem with the walking simulator nature of the game. There are a few sections which are clearly only there to pad out time. Most of the game is a pretty tight linear tour through the story, but occasionally you are given an adventure game style ‘puzzle’ that just boils down to, “walk around this area you have already walked around for ages until you find the thing that you have to poke to make the story progress”. Anyone who has played the game will know what I mean by ‘the bust bit’. And there is another section which might work as a horror piece, maybe, but just seemed to me to be “run around this same small area 5 or 6 times till we arbitrarily let you out”. ‘Lamps’ is the clue word for that one, if you’re curious as to what I mean. But these are nit-picks. Generally the game is an excellent walking simulator.

Is Call of Cthulhu well made?

That depends on what you mean. Games are hugely multifaceted, but what often differentiates a good game from a poor one is the ability of its developers to work to its strengths. It would be an unfair criticism of Indie darling Limbo to say that it had bad facial animations. It definitely did, but this is not a problem because the characters effectively have no faces. This seems like a facile point, but I think it is important to remember that Cyanide, the developers of Call of Cthulhu, have previously been known for the Styx games, a few Games Workshop titles, a buttload of cycling games and little else. Call of Cthulhu is not triple-A, but it’s not Indie either. The game, at least visually and narratively though, tries to do everything a triple-A title would attempt to do, as opposed to the usual Indie approach of making at least one aspect in some way minimalist. This is not an excuse, merely something to keep in mind as I say that the animation is some of the worst I have seen in games for a very long time. It’s not quite as funny as Mass Effect Andromeda’s, there is not quite enough going on for it to be quite as bizarrely broken. Dialogue lines would come out of characters whose mouths were shut, arms would constantly drift around like they had slightly confused minds of their own and I hope the ‘facial expressions’ were enjoying their trip to the uncanny valley.

The writing was a bit all over the place as well. Writing, mind, not story or character construction. There is a reasonable amount of choice in the game, but an annoyingly large number of the lines of dialogue do not seem to match up with the choices you make. In the first main scene, you can go straight into a conversation with someone and mention in one conversation branch that you know that a character is a big deal on Darkwater island, and then immediately choose another conversation option where you reveal you have never even heard of Darkwater island before. In a subsequent scene, a man told me he would meet me somewhere later, but then, when I got there, my character had several lines questioning why the man was there. There are numerous moments like this and it really takes you out of the experience every time it happens. A similar issue is present whenever you enter an enclosed space and your vision starts distorting. I only knew that this was a representation of the main character’s claustrophobia because the developers mentioned it in press releases. I did not notice any mention of it in the actual game.

A bit more nit-picky, but there are a few times when the game simply does not tell you something that would be useful to know. The most egregious of these is when they give you something which has limited uses but do not tell you either that it has limited uses or how many uses are left until you have used them all up. It is never a particularly large problem, but it would have been nice to know.

Still, looking at the game as a technical work, I must say that the graphics are nice. The art style has a Dishonored feel to it, which I personally have lots of time for. It is not quite as stylised, but the game is generally very pretty, which is a good thing too since you will spend a lot of time shoving your camera into every corner of it.

Is Call of Cthulhu true to its Lovecraftian source material?

Ah, the fun question. The answer really depends on how much of a deep dive you want to do. But before I jump in, it is important to note that the developers explicitly said their game was based on the table-top RPG, rather than Lovecraft’s stories. What follows, then, is a piece of literary critique (read: w**k) and not necessarily a criticism of the game. It will also be absolutely riddled with SPOILERS:

Call of Cthulhu gets a lot right about the common conception of the Lovecraftian aesthetic: the green tinge that permeates everything gives it a distinctly Cthulhu-y vibe, the rural town is a common motif of Lovecraft’s (the game is very Shadow Over Insmouth here) and Cthulhu as an entity is almost used well. As I said at the top, SPOILERS! Cthulhu actually shows up, for about one second, in one of the game’s four endings and is presented as an unstoppable, maddening, world-ending force. This is doing Cthulhu right. There is no fighting Cthulhu: once he has been awoken from his fhtagn, the world will crumble around him. The only hope one has is to prevent that from happening, so it is appropriate that, if it is allowed to happen, the game gives you no chance to resist. The game also takes a good approach to sanity and curiosity. Fuller is the character who most explores the concept of curiosity and it is shown to warp and twist him as it opens his mind to new possibilities. This fear of curiosity is at the heart of Lovecraft’s writings. The game also plays with sanity, another of Lovecraft’s main themes, although most of the mechanical implications of that are better discussed in relation to the Call of Cthulhu table-top RPG.

However, there is one thing that the game gets seriously wrong about Lovecraft. In those moments when the game is scary, the story itself is not one of cosmic horror. Much horror is about holding a mirror up to humanity. It is about showing and exploring our darker sides. Werewolves explore our animal nature, vampires (at least traditionally) were an exploration of sexuality, serial killers explore human psychopathy, zombies represent rampant consumerism. The monster, at the end of the day, is us. This is not the goal of cosmic horror. Lovecraft is not writing stories about people. His horror is metaphysical. “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all of its contents” is how he begins his story The Call of Cthulhu and this one sentence, I think, underpins all of his work. His protagonists go mad not because they saw something scary, they go mad because they saw something they cannot explain. Their very understanding of reality is thrown out of whack and they are shown that the safe, pedestrian, societal lives they thought they were living were facades: the ignorance that our subconscious chooses for us to protect us from realisations about the universe and our tiny, utterly insignificant part in it. His entities are often not even evil, they are simply so alien and disinterested that we matter as much to them as ants matter to us. This is why Lovecraft was so revolutionary, he moved away from the traditionally biblical kind of horror where the monsters are manifestations of our own sins and turned instead to the secular world of science for his horrors. “The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little”, he continues in Call of Cthulhu, “but someday the piecing together of previously disassociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age”. I say again, Lovecraft is not telling stories about people. He is telling stories about the universe and our inability to understand or cope with it. The truth that science will one day unlock, Lovecraft seems to be suggesting, is that we do not matter at all. This is cosmic horror. But Call of Cthulhu (the video game, that is) seems to miss this. Pierce’s sanity (or insanity) progression comes the closest. I say more on this mechanic below, but the final choice that Pierce must make is the most Lovecraftian moment of the game.

There are four endings to the game, one default and three others unlocked through story actions, which is a system I like. On a very quick side note, I also really like how there is a save point just before the end, allowing you to go back instantly and replay the endings you did not choose, but only if you unlocked them (I unlocked three of the four endings on my first play-through). Suicide and accepting the ritual both present “go mad from the revelation” endings, each with a different but totally appropriate flavour of madness, while the ‘it’s over’ ending represents a flight back into a dark age, Pierce sticking fingers in his ears and yelling “la la la it’s all a dream!” I also like here that you have to unlock all but the ritual ending. I was annoyed with this ending until I found this out. The game does not really give you any reason to complete the ritual. The Leviathan and the cult have all clearly been bad the whole way through the game, there is not ever any good reason for Pierce to surrender at the last moment and perform the ritual. Having it as the default, though, makes this lack of motivation slightly more excusable, as it represents Pierce simply surrendering to what he has been told is his destiny, as opposed to having worked for the will to fight back in some way. The fourth ending, the counter ritual, is by far the poorest, which is a shame because it could so easily have been fixed. You know that Drake is planning something, but Pierce, or at least my Pierce, was never told exactly what that was. My Pierce would not logically even have known that there was a counter ritual, never mind how to do it and certainly never mind what it actually does (a point that I am still completely in the dark about). This is something, as far as I can tell, that the game never explains, even if you do choose this option. Just a little bit of exposition, probably delivered by Drake, would have cleared this all up.

But I digress. Call of Cthulhu is essentially a game about people. It is about a group of people who are more or less tricked by some powerful alien being into doing its bidding. And as I said above, it does this well. But in being about people and their struggles, it fails to focus on what Lovecraft himself actually focuses on. Now, a quick disclaimer: I do not know for a fact that Lovecraft was a racist and viewed minorities as ‘less human’ than white people (although there is evidence for this in his work), but I am going to assume this is the case, at least in some way, for what I am going to say. I think it is telling that most of the cultists in Lovecraft’s work are minorities, because this distances even his human villains from the (I think) exclusively white protagonists of his stories. This separation between the human and the alien is completely ignored in the sequences in which Pierce is visited by the Leviathan in prison. The fact that the Leviathan would take humanoid form and use human manipulation tactics to get Pierce to do what it wants is totally non-Lovecraftian. Where is the horror at our utter inconsequentiality here? Cthulhu is scary because it does not care about us, we matter so little there would be zero point in it or any of its ... associates (for want of a better word) attempting to use tactics to manipulate human kind. In The Call of Cthullhu (the story now, not the game), Cthullhu pretty much tells people to come and they just do. No need to take human form, no need to use psychological methods. Lovecraftian horrors use us like the dumb insects that, compared to them, we are.

Further the visions that haunt Pierce are visions of people, mostly, and the awful things that they do to each other. He questions his senses, but he never really questions his position in the universe or what it would actually mean if all the things that he is seeing were true. Lovecraft’s protagonists usually do believe what they see and this is what drives them mad, while Pierce is driven mad by questions about whether or not to believe what he sees. The biggest crime though, the moment that really made me feel that the developers had missed the point, is in the after-credits half of the ritual ending. Here we see the cultists all engaged in a murderous brawl, screaming with delirious madness as they punch and kick and bite each other while, presumably, Cthulhu gets on with the important job of destroying the world just off camera. But this is the wrong kind of madness. Sure, everyone would go mad as their understanding of reality snapped at the vastness and alien-ness (alienitude? alienosity?) of Cthulhu, but for all of them to just go kill-crazy? It doesn’t make sense. That does not seem to be the madness that comes of having your entire knowledge of reality shattered. It feels more like a madness that makes a flashy ending to a video game.

Is Call of Cthulhu true to its roleplaying game source material?

Yes, broadly. Firstly, I am not a CoC (which is what I’ll call the rolepaying Call of Cthulhu, because this is getting stupidly confusing) expert. I have played and run a few games, but it is not my main game. That being said, I think I know enough to say that Call of Cthulhu does a good job of translating CoC into a video game. Its plot is a little more big-leagues (bigly) and showy than your average CoC game, but that is fine. It’s the same thing that happens when a film is made from a TV series. And in this regard, Call of Cthulhu is hardly a huge offender. This might just be me, but I really like stories that know how to reign in their scale and Call of Cthulhu does a pretty good job of this. With the exception of one particular sub-plot (which is by no means overblown just a little elbowed in (the whole painting sub arc, btw)), everything is pretty well contained and not much is thrown in to escalate things to stupid levels as the game progresses.

Call of Cthulhu continues the well-practiced trend of CoC games of being incredibly linear, but while this is an actual problem for roleplaying games, where the only limitation is imagination, in a video game, which is fenced in by budget and deadline constraints, this linearity is not so much of a problem.

An area where Call of Cthulhu differs from CoC is in its use of skills. The skill list for 6th edition CoC (which is the edition I know, so don’t pester me about 7th ed) is over 50 skills long. Call of Cthulhu, on the other hand, has 7 skills. This means you never have those horrible moments where you absolutely NEED a successful library-use roll or else-you-will-all die-in-the-next-encounter-because-you-did-not-know-the-monster-is-weak-to-salt-but-you-put-all-your-points-into-Fast-Talk-so-I-guess-you-are-all-just-going-to-die-and-no-I-am-not-still-bitter. This, I feel, is an improvement. It could be argued that it reduces the scope for roleplaying, but with the limited conversation options and the actually quite well written and characterised Pierce, you are never going to be totally in control anyway. Call of Cthulhu is also paced very much like a CoC game as well, with slow, social information gathering at the beginning, ramping up to more action/horror moments later. This does make some of the skills more useless later on in the game, but this is not a major problem and a difficult one to avoid (and certainly one that CoC games usually fail to avoid). Also like CoC, there is, I think, a clearly right thing to do at character creation, but while in CoC it is because some skills (I’m looking at you, operate heavy machinery) are simply pointless, in Call of Cthulhu character gen is the only time you can use experience points to level up Occultism and Medicine, something you are definitely going to want to do and something the game does not do a good job of telling you.

CoC’s main selling point, as a system, is its sanity mechanic, something that Cyanide obviously spent a great deal of time looking at when making Call of Cthulhu. I have heard that some people did not think it was used well, but I have to disagree. Sadly though, to explain why I have to make liberal use of SPOILERS!

In CoC, sanity is effectively your character’s long-term health bar. Your sanity level sticks around from adventure to adventure with very little you can do to raise it if it falls. It is, in many ways, your character’s expiration date. It goes down whenever you see something Cthulhoid, but there is a random element to it. Clearly, this would not work for Call of Cthulhu, not in the same way anyway. If Call of Cthulhu were a CoC game, it would take at most three or four sessions, and that is not really fast enough for a character to melt completely into a gibbering puddle of insanity. So Call of Cthulhu does something very different and I think it does it very well.

At the beginning of the game, you have some control over your sanity being reduced. The most clear example of this is when you have the option of whether or not to read the Malleus Monstorum. But as the game continues, you have less and less choice over whether you get to see sanity-breaking stuff or not. It basically just happens to you. This means that really, your loss of sanity is almost 100% controlled by the game’s story. Therefore the moment that you break mechanically is also the moment that weird stuff starts happening, by necessity, in the story. Pierce starts to have visions, some of them obviously fake, some of them much more plausibly real, and because his sanity has broken we know that we are in a situation where we should be questioning everything, as opposed to earlier in the game when the lines were much more clear cut. This is a co-opting of mechanics by story, which I have not really seen before in a game. The game gives you something that appears to be in your control but then slowly and subtly takes it back. You could see this as a reduction in player autonomy, because it really is, but I think this fits very well with the themes of destiny and inevitability in the story. It also produces an organic way to show the deteriorating mental state of Pierce without it being exposition-y. If we had felt, right from the beginning, that the sanity bar had nothing to do with our own choices, the moment when Pierce breaks would have felt contrived. But by giving us that illusion of choice we are engaged with the progression of that sanity bar in a way that we would not be otherwise and when it finally shifts from stable to psychotic, we do not see this as a simple narrative move, we see this as an organic part of the story and the choices we made in it, even if really it is not. I also love how the sanity manifests itself. It is subtly done and I think interesting debates could be had about what is real and what is not (I have strong feelings about when the last time we really see Colden is, for example). A brilliant example of this is how we shoot Fuller in what is obviously a dream-scape and then come back to what we think is reality and find we have shot him there too. But this, itself, is also shown to be an illusion when, in one of the ending sequences, we hear him talking to a nurse. It is all very Inception-y and I really like it. It was a nice subversion of expectations, as I was expecting the sanity meter, as a player influenced mechanic, to be able to affect only aesthetic things and maybe minor story elements. I noticed this exactly once (a painting had blood spatters on it which disappeared when I approached), but the way the game takes control of the mechanic and allows it to have serious narrative impact, while a removal of player autonomy, was very refreshing.

Is Call of Cthulhu worth the price?

At time of writing, Call of Cthulhu is selling for £40. It is not worth that. You can go and pick up Divinity Original Sin 2, a game that is basically empirically perfect, for £10 less than that and get at the very least ten times as much play time out of it. Where the price point of Call of Cthulhu should be for you is something only you can decide. £15 seems like a more reasonable price point to me. What I look for is usually a strong enjoyment/hour ratio as opposed to a good hour/money ratio, and Call of Cthulhu has a very good enjoyment/hour ratio, but this is certainly helped by its short length. At the end of the day, I would say that whatever you would be willing to pay for two engaging, thoughtful, just below Hollywood tier films is probably the right price for Call of Cthulhu. Especially since the game has basically no replay value. In many ways it is very average, but if you have a thing for walking simulators or Lovecraftian worlds, then this game is a must buy for you. But maybe wait until the price has dropped.

#Call of Cthulhu #Cthulhu #Lovecraft #Game Review #Essay #Cosmic horror #Literary analysis #Roleplay #HashtagsHaveNoSpaces

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graphicpolicy · 7 years ago

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ComiXology Originals sponsors SPX 2018 & Spotlights Hit Reblog Print-on-Demand #comics #spx ComiXology has announced that they will be featuring comiXology Originals’ new Print-on-Demand edition of Hit Reblog: Comics That Caught…

#comixology #comixology originals #expo #hit reblog: comics that caught fire #hope nicholson #Megan Kearney #small press #spx

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coupanfree · 3 years ago

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Blood Bowl 3 closed beta preview -- Still better than actual sports games

Blood Bowl 3 closed beta preview — Still better than actual sports games

Blood Bowl has a stormy history, but what Games Workshop Specialist Game hasn’t? However, it was the first to be resurrected as a video game in an uncharacteristically good deal between Tom Kirby’s regime and Cyanide Studio, the developers of Chaos League. And now, with the game back in physical form with two editions, it returns to PC as Blood Bowl 3. For those not in the know, Blood Bowl is a…

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comiccrusaders · 7 years ago

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ComiXology will be featuring comiXology Originals’ new Print-on-Demand edition of Hit Reblog: Comics That CaughtFire at Small Press Expo 2018. Megan Kearney, writer and artist of Hit Reblog will be signing FREE copies of the Print-on-Demand edition and a limited edition poster, on a first come, first served basis, Saturday 9/15, and Sunday 9/16, from 1-2pm ET at SPX table # J7A. There will also be a special Hit Reblog signing with Megan Kearney & Shen T (Owlturd Comix) Friday 9/14 at 7pm exclusively for SPX exhibitors, special guests, and volunteers. Megan Kearney will be tabling at #J7A all weekend long.

Fans not in attendance at the Small Press Expo can still order the Print-on-Demand edition of Hit Reblog: Comics That Caught Fire, available Wednesday 9/12, exclusively on Amazon.com.

Hit Reblog: Comics That Caught Fire

Written and illustrated by Megan Kearney, edited by Hope Nicholson

Collection 120pg – $6.99 on Kindle and comiXology

Free to read for members of Amazon Prime, Kindle Unlimited and comiXology Unlimited

Available in print September 12th for $9.99 as a Print-on-Demand graphic novel exclusively on Amazon.com

ComiXology is Amazon’s premiere digital comics service with comiXology Originals providing exclusive content to comiXology and Kindle. For more updates on comiXology Originals, check out http://comixologyoriginals.comand follow comiXology on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

ComiXology Originals at SPX Spotlighting Hit Reblog: Comics That Caught Fire ComiXology will be featuring comiXology Originals’ new Print-on-Demand edition of Hit Reblog: Comics That CaughtFire at Small Press Expo 2018.

#comics #comixology #comixology originals #hit reblog #Hope Nicholson #Megan Kearney #spx

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gamegeekzeu-blog · 6 years ago

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In less than 50 days the 11th edition of GamesCom 2019 will take place together with the third Devcom, both hosted at the Koelnmesse in Cologne. We’ll give you a sneak preview about what to expect here, and off course check back after the event for all the interviews and reviews. Let’s take a look at “the Heart of Gaming” GamesCom 2019!

GamesCom, the world’s largest event for computer and video games, is opening its gates for games fans from around the world, and this year with an additional hall level! As a result, GamesCom 2019 is growing for the first time to around 210,000 square metres, which is around 5 percent more than in the previous year (2018: 201,000 square metres). Several hall sections of the entertainment area are also being revised and additional measures are being implemented for the improvement of quality of stay.

A larger area and the untangling of visitor hotspots should considerably improve the quality of stay at GamesCom 2019. Additional measures are the broadening of the corridors, additional catering and lounge areas for visitors, as well as the newly introduced evening ticket. In total, the entertainment area of GamesCom 2019 encompasses halls 5 to 10 and 11.3, as well as the outdoor event section (P8). In the (new) hall 11.3, the event arena, visitors can look forward to a special event program that differs clearly from other event areas of GamesCom. More information on the concept and the highlights of the event arena will follow in a few days. Hall 10.2 will contain the new indie village, the retro area, the GamesCom campus and the family & friends section. The merchandise area will once again increase significantly and is located in hall 5.2 and in parts of hall 5.1. The latter is also the new home of the popular cosplay village. As usual, visitors will once again find the outdoor area in P8 (car park behind hall 8). The business area is in halls 1 to 4.

“The expansion of the area and the adjustments in the entertainment area are the result of several factors. For one, the increasing demand for exhibition areas or enlargements in the entertainment halls means a need for additional space for new formats. At the same time, we have placed the improvement of quality of stay for visitors on the agenda as one of the central goals for 2019, and the various measures are paying off precisely here. For another thing, it is also the increased reinforcement of the event character of GamesCom that makes additional areas and an adjustment of the hall plan necessary. The goal is to offer visitors even more entertainment around the theme of computer and video games, and to thus enable our community an even better GamesCom experience”, says Tim Endres, Director GamesCom, Koelnmesse GmbH.

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“The focus of GamesCom 2019 is on the fans. Which is why we want to design the visit to GamesCom to be considerably more comfortable and will be implementing a whole series of measures this year to realize this goal. These include new sections, the untangling of visitor hotspots, the evening ticket, wider corridors and additional areas for relaxation. In this way, we are reacting to the greatly increased interest of visitors and exhibitors in GamesCom”, says Christian Baur, Head of GamesCom with game – the Association for the German Games Industry e.V.

Games fans from around the world can also look forward to a great gamescom in 2019. Among others, the following renowned companies of the computer and video game industry have secured their place at gamescom 2019: 2K Games, Bandai Namco Entertainment, Bethesda Softworks, Capcom, Deep Silver, ELECTRONIC ARTS/EA Games, facebook, Google, Microsoft/Xbox, Nintendo, Sony PlayStation, Square Enix, THQ Nordic, Ubisoft and Wargaming. In addition to the new products of the exhibitors, the top theme of eSports will also be present at gamescom.

Devcom 2019

Devcom takes place from 18-19 August prior to GamesCom 2019, within Koelnmesse’s Congress Centre East in Cologne, and expands the world’s biggest event for computer and video games by an international conference for game developers. Devcom’s 3rd edition offers its attendees a rich conference program presented on more than 8 stages by top-notch speakers who share their knowledge and experience in valuable talks, panels, workshops and keynotes. Among them:

Pia Jacqmart (Cyanide)

Jehanne Rousseau (Spiders)

Whitney Clayton (Compulsion Games)

Jason Hickey and Dustin Brown (Insomniac Games)

Christian Pana, Adam Olsson and Simon Koudriavtsev (Ubisoft Massive)

Catharina Bohler (Sarepta Studio)

Elena Nikolova (Snapshot Games)

David Fox & Noah Falstein

Ryuichi Nishizawa (Wonderboy-Serie)

Goichi „SUDA51“ Suda

and more than 70 additional speakers.

The expo floor is the event’s heart and center, including a large matchmaking and HR area, as well as the indie exhibition with roughly 50 indie teams on-site. More than 250 companies, 3000+ international attendees and company representatives make Devcom the perfect event for you to find future business partners or clients, or to simply grow your industry network. The icing on the cake: the first edition of the ‚Devcom „Ellie“ Awards‘ followed by the Devcom Sunset Party, as well as the Devcom Developer Night. On Monday morning, Devcom opens its doors for the Women in Games Breakfast, which also grants access to those who do not have a Devcom ticket.

Please find further detailed information at: www.devcom.global

Partner Country 2019

The Netherlands is the official partner country of GamesCom 2019. Koelnmesse GmbH, game – the Association of the German Games Industry, and the Dutch Games Association have signed a partnership agreement. With the Netherlands assuming this official role, Koelnmesse has secured a partnership with a growing games market that is also home to a diverse spectrum of games developers – from indie studios and serious games specialists to the producers of international blockbusters. The Netherlands also has large numbers of e-sports fans. This makes the country an ideal partner for GamesCom 2019, both in terms of its market potential and its industry specialisms. As GamesCom’s partner country, the Netherlands will represent international exhibitors at Europe’s leading business platform for the games industry from 20 to 24 August 2019.

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“I’m delighted that GamesCom 2019 has a very special partner country with the Netherlands. For both our exhibitors and our visitors, the Dutch are our neighbors and have always been very well represented at GamesCom . This is something we want to build on this year, and we hope to be able to welcome even more of our Dutch neighbors as visitors in the business and entertainment areas, at Devcom or the GamesCom city festival,” says Felix Falk, Managing Director of game and co- organizer of GamesCom .

“The Dutch gaming landscape is characterized by hundreds of studios, combined with a minority of larger, internationally well-established companies. The Netherlands offers a healthy working climate that fosters creativity and originality by providing the right mix of freedom and support. GamesCom is the single most important international event for Dutch game developers. That’s why we’re really excited that the Netherlands will be the partner country for GamesCom 2019. Its impact and influence not only supports Dutch companies in evolving on a professional level – it also provides a platform where we can meet gaming-focused minds and get down to work on things together – you can’t get more Dutch than that,” says Horst Streck, Chairman of the Dutch Games Association.

For those who want to be at GamesCom 2019 live, all still available tickets and further (travel) information can be found under www.gamescom.global

And if you want to let us know which developers to interview or games to check on the show floor, just let us know on any of the social media!

GamesCom 2019 and Devcom 2019 In less than 50 days the 11th edition of GamesCom 2019 will take place together with the third Devcom, both hosted at the Koelnmesse in Cologne.

#devcom #Gamescom #Insomniac Games #koelnmesse #partner #SUDA51 #ubisoft

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spencershawportfolio-blog · 6 years ago

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Midterm Review

Overall, I’m both really excited and engaged in this class, and at the same time, overwhelmed and frustrated. I’m really enjoying the workshops. I particularly liked the blocking workshop, the vocal workshop, as well as the character intentions workshop.

When it comes to my learning goals, it’s more of a mixed bag (I mean, I chose them knowing they would be challenging). When it comes to communicating, I think I’m doing pretty well. I’ve sent more facebook messages during this class than I ever have before in my time on facebook. I’m very overwhelmed with all of the coordination that is involved, but I think it’s useful.

I was expecting my perfectionist tendencies to be a problem during this course, but I actually haven’t had any problems with that at all. I think I’m only perfectionistic when making something of my own, like writing a musical for example, and not so much about performing other people’s works. So yay, I guess.

When it comes to directing, I’m frankly frustrated. Working with Jeff has its ups and downs. When it comes to organization, scheduling our rehearsals, communicating with other departments about our needs, or drawing up the stage layout diagrams, he definitely gives me enough of those responsibilities that I don’t feel steamrolled. I definitely feel like I’ve been able to practice that aspect of directing. However, when it comes to the actual directing part, giving the actors ideas or making decisions about what we liked or didn’t like, I feel totally lost. You may have noticed from when you visited one of our rehearsal sessions that Jeff does most of the directing. This is partly because he has a good idea of what he wants and partly because I don’t. He’s a very confident and experienced director and is quick to come up with ideas to try. I, however, don’t see the detail in a scene the way he does and don’t come up with ideas to offer the actors as quickly (or as confidently) as he does, so I just kind of let him take the lead. He also knows exactly how to communicate ideas so that the actors get it (eg. “Act as if that coffee grinder is your child and got food poisoning, and then child protective services came by and told you that you poisoned your own child with cyanide. Something like that.”). It seems like whenever I give a suggestion, the actors don’t really use it. I don’t know if it’s due to them not understanding what I mean, or if my lack of confidence in my direction leads them to also not be confident when trying it out.

One of my learning goals was “To learn how to compromise my ideas and not be upset by compromising.” But I’ve kind of been having the opposite problem. I compromise too easily.

Jeff will just throw out directions, some of which I like, and some of which I don’t, but I rarely challenge him, because I’ve bought into the idea that he must be right because he’s very confident in what he wants, and I also don’t want to voice disagreement in front of the actors, because I’m worried that it will come across as us being disorganized.

I don’t blame Jeff for any of this, he’s shown a willingness to “let me take the lead on directing”, but I don’t think it’s as simple as “tell Jeff to be quiet, and then I can direct with ease”, my confidence problems would still be there. These are things that I need to work on for myself.

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channelnewswire-blog · 7 years ago

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Why New Zealand requires options to 1080

Andrea Byrom

Predictably, the general public debate about the pest control contaminant 1080 has actually ramped up a notch in current weeks and months.I state naturally, due to the fact that it is not a surprise to anybody associated with conservation that bug control approaches-- whatever they might be-- are questionable. Such debate is a worldwide phenomenon, often with polarised debates.Why does such polarisation occur, and what can we do about it? 1080 is the

best tool we presently have I'm not disputing the facts here. 1080 is safe to utilize. It benefits native plants and animals, and has actually played a major role in enormously reducing the occurrence of bovine tuberculosis in possums in this nation-- the 2 main reasons that New Zealand uses 1080. It's likewise cheap, reasonably humane, does not persist in the human food cycle, breaks down into its constituent elements quickly in water, and is the only insect control tool that can cover big locations cost-effectively. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, in a influential report produced in 2011, concluded as much. Several more current studies(such as this, this, this, Green and Maheswaran Rohan cautioned that science is an important voice but not the only voice when it pertains to comprehending individuals's opposition to 1080. Andthat is where we as scientists have actually failed: we presume that others think like us, which humans utilize factor and reasoning in decision-making (in this case, to form a viewpoint about the use of 1080 ). However, individuals do not always utilize factor or logic to make choices-- otherwise by now (given the frustrating weight of evidence)we wouldn't be having

the debate in the very first place.Instead, individuals make decisions and form viewpoints based on their personal worths, belief systems, and world views.Why we need alternatives to 1080 Considered that individuals form opinions about topics such as

insect control based upon a set of personal values and beliefs, we can assume that as brand-new bug control tools appear in the future

, they too may provoke strong reactions from various parts of society.In turn, this suggests that we require to offer people with options: a variety of insect control options, finest fit to the requirements of regional communities, are needed if we are to empower individuals to take action to safeguard New Zealand's biological heritage.This is especially crucial as we increase the scale of bug control , and if we are major about a predator-free New Zealand.What alternatives to 1080 are on the horizon?In the BioHeritage Difficulty, we made a purposeful option to check out a series of possible game-changing tools and innovations for the control of pests.Super lures: James Russell

at the University of Auckland, with a group from Plant and Food Research, Manaaki Whenua, the University of Otago and Victoria University

of Wellington, are exploring the pied piper effect with new super-lures that bring in mammals.

Extremely appealing lures are an important element when using ground-based gadgets for insect control, such as traps and bait stations.Genetic technologies: James and the team are also mining genomes of insect animals to establish species-selective toxic substances. Picture being able to use a bait on farmland that is harmful to rats, however not pet dogs or livestock. This would be a game-changer for the 60%of the nation that is privately-owned. Genome sequencing of possums and rats

finishes the image for thisresearch group, so that in the future New Zealand will have the alternative of establishing new technologies such as gene modifying. Gene modifying innovations are a potentially crucial tool, for example to'drive'a trait such as infertility through the males of a population. Such a tool would not include eliminating animals-- the population would slowly pass away out through time.Similar work is being done by a group led by Phil Lester from Victoria University of Wellington

. This group are investigating a range of alternatives for the control of wasps in New Zealand. Any new technological discoveries might be moved to mammal bugs at a later date. For instance, a technique called RNA disturbance to lower fertility in male wasps would basically work in the exact same way as a targeted pesticide application, however without unfavorable effects on advantageous bugs such as bees.If you need to know more about gene modifying innovations, the Royal Society Te Apārangi has actually provided a lot of details in an excellent series here. Near-to-market technologies: In the BioHeritage Difficulty we have likewise supported workshops to check out new tools, or enhancement of existing tools and innovations, that can be used in the field now or in the near future.This work was spearheaded by Bruce Warburton and James Ross from Manaaki Whenua and Lincoln University respectively, and provided in this report. These tools include anticoagulant toxins; other acute toxins such as

sodium cyanide; the predator-specific toxic substance PAPP; and tutin, a natural toxin originated from the New Zealand native plant tutu.Understanding public attitudes to novel bug control innovations Almost 85 %of the New Zealand public concur that bug species are a considerable preservation problem.As we scale up pest control throughout a variety of New Zealand landscapes, we are going to need a variety of new tools in the tool kit. Equally importantly, we are going to require to offer individuals with options for how, when and whether

to use such tools.These options will be made from the heart, when people are empowered to do something about it in their local neighborhoods. We need to understand the various values that people hold, work respectfully to understand and attend to concerns as they emerge, and be transparent about the threats and chances associated with the advancement of each new technology.In myopinion, there is no point in establishing brand-new tools and innovations that will not be acceptable to the New Zealand public, however I would be similarly disappointed if brand-new scientific discoveries were shut down or mothballed before we had an opportunity to totally examine the pros and cons.What we do understand is that simply offering individuals with more facts and info can serve to further polarise

a debate.Social research has a crucial function to play in forming discussions between researchers and the public, and in assisting prevent polarised views from emerging.In the BioHeritage Challenge, a team led by Edy MacDonald at the Department of Preservation just recently completed among the biggest studies ever undertaken of the New Zealand public's< a href =http://www.biologicalheritage.nz/news/news/gbird-funding/related-content/public-perceptions > views on novel pest control innovations. If you have an interest in discovering more about their findings, and about the attributes of various beliefs and values in New Zealand society, Edy presents their findings in this YouTube video. This research study is an important first action towards a more considered and less polarised

public discussion-- not almost 1080, however about a range of existing and future tools.Why New Zealand needs options to 1080 Scaling up predator control will undoubtedly raise concerns about the tools and innovations we utilize for conservation.Some people will be eliminated if New Zealand is ultimately able to decrease its dependence on 1080. Some may welcome the development of gene editing technologies if they are more gentle, inexpensive and effective.

Others will argue that making use of gene modifying is inappropriate as a pest control tool. Still others will remain opposed to spreading out baits from a helicopter-- whether 1080 or a new toxin.We requirement to be able to accommodate these various viewpoints and use various tools tactically across our landscapes, informed by the underlying values kept in New Zealand society, so that we construct trust and assistance for bug control and conservation across a broad sector of New Zealand society.We urgently require

a variety of alternatives to 1080, and we require to continue to buy social research study to notify such balanced discussions.Dr Andrea Byrom is Director

of the BioHeritage National Science Difficulty.

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onestagetospace · 7 years ago

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Theme Park Mars

Imagine being a young child going to your favorite theme park. After being promised for months by your parents you and your little brother are go. You drive 1000 km just to get there and see that big roller coaster in the distance. Your heart starts pounding with anticipation, only to hear that for the next two years you first have to drive circles around the parking lot before you are allowed to get closer. You’d be underwhelmed and your parents better have a good reason… Worse: two years ago they sent in your little brother first and he was never heard of again. The little Sherlock you are, and bored as hell, this requires some serious sniffing around.

That is exactly what happened to the ExoMars probe (Exobiology on Mars) that ESA and RFSA, the Russian Space Agency, sent to MARS.

And it was on purpose:

Patience has its own rewards

Launched March 14, 2016 on a Russian Proton rocket, The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) arrived at Mars in October 2016, to investigate the potentially biological or geological origin of trace gases in the atmosphere. It will also serve as a relay, connecting future rovers on the surface with their controllers on Earth. On its back, it carried its little brother Schiaparelli, a small probe testing European landing technology.

A suite of four science instruments will make complementary measurements of the atmosphere, surface and subsurface. Its camera will help to characterize features on the surface that may be related to trace-gases sources, such as volcanoes.

It will also look for water-ice hidden just below the surface, which along with potential trace gas sources could guide the choice for future mission landing sites.

These are the four instruments:

NOMAD: The Nadir and Occultation for Mars Discovery, developed by Belgium, has two infrared and one ultraviolet spectrometer channels.

ACS: The Atmospheric Chemistry Suite , developed by Russia, has three infrared spectrometer channels. NOMAD and ACS will provide the most extensive spectral coverage of Martian atmospheric processes so far. Detection of atmospheric trace species, clues for Methane produced by a biological origin, at the parts-per-billion (ppb) level will be possible.

CaSSIS: The Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System , developed by Switzerland, is a high-resolution, 4.5 m per pixel (15 ft/pixel), color stereo camera. It will build accurate digital elevation models of the Martian surface, which is also an important tool for characterizing candidate landing sites for future manned missions.

FREND: The Fine-Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector, developed by Russia,is a neutron detector that can provide information on the presence of hydrogen, in the form of water or hydrated minerals, in the top 1 m (3 ft 3 in) of the Martian surface.

Sniffing for life

Particularly, the mission will characterize spatial, temporal variation, and localization of sources for a broad list of atmospheric trace gases.

If methane (CH4) is found in the presence of propane (C3H8) or ethane (C2H6), that will be a strong indication that biological processes are involved. However, if methane is found in the presence of gases such as sulfur dioxide (SO2), that would be an indication that the methane is a byproduct of geological processes. (*)

English: Visualization of a methane plume found in Mars’ atmosphere during the northern summer season. 15 January 2009, credit NASA/Trent Schindler, http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/news/marsmethane_media.html (Public Domain)

But before any of this could get underway, the spacecraft had to transform its initial, highly elliptical four-day orbit of about 98 000 × 200 km into the final, much lower and circular path at about 400 km. From the parking lot, to the entrance gate, so to speak.

And it took a long time.

Slowing a car with a breath of air

The method used is called aerobraking. To conserve as much propellant as possible, the TGO slows down rubbing against Mars’s upper atmosphere on each pass it makes on its elliptical path. And this is a delicate maneuver: too steep an angle and you burn up. That is the reason why only a small amount can be bled away on each pass and why it took two years to complete the maneuver.

In numbers: According to ESA, the thin upper atmosphere provides only gentle deceleration – at most some 17 mm/s each second. How small is this?

If you braked your car at this rate from an initial speed of 50 km/h to stop at a junction, you’d have to start 6 km in advance.

“Over a year, we’ve reduced the speed of the spacecraft by an enormous 3600 km/h, lowering its orbit by the necessary amount,” says TGO spacecraft operations manager Peter Schmitz.

The approach used means the probe has plenty of remaining propellant for future use and potential mission extensions.

As a result, it was only on on 20 February at 17:20 GMT, when the craft fired its thrusters for about 16 minutes to raise the closest approach to the surface to about 200 km, well out of the atmosphere. This effectively ended the aerobraking campaign, leaving it in an orbit of about 1050 × 200 km.

The 21st of February 2018, ESA finally sent out its press release with the triumphant title, “SURFING COMPLETE”.

“During some orbits, we were just 103 km above Mars, which is incredibly close.“

Are we there yet?

In the next month, the control team will command the craft through a series of up to 10 orbit-trimming maneuvres, one every few days, firing its thrusters to adjust the orbit to its final two-hour, circular shape at about 400 km altitude, expected to be achieved around mid-April.

The initial phases of science gathering, in mid-March, will be devoted to checking out the instruments and conducting preliminary observations for calibration and validation. The start of routine science observations should happen around 21 April.

“Then, the craft will be reoriented to keep its camera pointing downwards and its spectrometers towards the Sun, so as to observe the Mars atmosphere, and we can finally begin the long-awaited science phase of the mission,” says Håkan Svedhem, ESA’s project scientist, on the ESA website

Of course, that much patience is inhumane. Over the course of the past two years, the instruments had been tested on occasion and already showed us surprising

And what happened to its little brother?

Schiaparelli, the landing experiment the size of a living room table failed on 19 October 2016. Something that happens a lot when you try to land on Mars for the first couple of times. A British probe, Beagle 2, already landed in 2003 but failed to open its solar panels and communications antenna properly. It took two years of suspense before an American Mars orbiting probe in 2005 took pictures demonstrating this was the case.

Schiaparelli failed more spectacularly: Using its thrusters it first came to a perfect standstill and then still managed to crash. This is because its sensors got confused which resulted the probe coming to a vertical standstill far above the surface.

A nightmare for the nail biting engineers having labored with passion on the design, it all comes down to sensor fog. Only to see it end with a bitter taste in a somewhat slap stick fashion.

Wile E. Coyote , the comical Looney Tunes cartoon character from the Warner Bros Studios, couldn’t have executed the maneuver any better.

But this analysis wouldn’t do the little lander justice. The thrusters and heat shield worked perfectly. These items can now be erased from the European R&D to-do list.

Europe is not throwing in the glove, far from it. It is even raising it’s ambitions.

Peeking under ground

A long time in the making and less than three years from now, one of ESA’s most ambitious scientific endeavors will blast off in 2020, and head for the planet Mars. If all goes according to plan, the European-built 2020 ExoMars rover and a Russian surface platform will be delivered safely onto the planet’s orange, dusty plains in 2021.

The orbiting TGO will serve as its data communications relay while the ExoMArs rover searches for signs of past life.

It will be the first probe ever to drill down into the martian soil, 2 meters deep to look for microbes and characterize the layers of soil. A first for Europe.

ExoMars rover, you read the instructions: land safely.

Thumbs up.

Sources:

ESA website: press article, 21 February 2018, SURFING COMPLETE

ESA website: press article, 05 September 2017, A WINDOW ON THE EXOMARS ROVER’S SEARCH FOR MARTIAN LIFE

Footnote:

(*)Methane:

The nature of the methane source requires measurements of a suite of trace gases in order to characterise potential biochemical and geochemical processes at work. The orbiter has very high sensitivity to (at least) the following molecules and their isotopomers: water (H2O), hydroperoxyl (HO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4), acetylene (C2H2), ethylene (C2H4), ethane (C2H6), formaldehyde (H2CO), hydrogen cyanide (HCN), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), carbonyl sulfide (OCS), sulfur dioxide (SO2), hydrogen chloride (HCl), carbon monoxide (CO) and ozone (O3). Detection sensitivities are at levels of 100 parts per trillion, improved to 10 parts per trillion or better by averaging spectra which could be taken at several spectra per second.

Thomas, I. R.; Vandaele, A. C.; Neefs, E.; et al. (2017). “The NOMAD Spectrometer Suite on the ExoMars 2016 Orbiter: Current Status” (PDF). The Sixth International Workshop on the Mars Atmosphere: Modelling and Observation. 17-20 January 2017. Granada, Spain. Bibcode:2017mamo.conf.4401T.

Montmessin, F. “Atmospheric Chemistry Suite: Science Overview” (PDF). LATMOS CNRS, France. p. 44. Retrieved 14 March 2016. Determining the origin of methane on Mars can only be addressed by looking at methane isotopologues and at higher alkanes (ethane, propane).

McKie, Robin (20 February 2016). “‘Giant nose in the sky’ ready for lift-off in mission to sniff out traces of life on Mars”. The Guardian. Retrieved 21 February 2016.

Vandaele, A. C.; et al. “NOMAD, a spectrometer suite for nadir and solar occultation observations on the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter” (PDF). Institut des NanoSciences de Paris. Retrieved 4 September 2015.

Europe finally in orbit around Mars Theme Park Mars Imagine being a young child going to your favorite theme park. After being promised for months by your parents you and your little brother are go.

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thealkebulantrust · 8 years ago

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12 of the 20 foods that you eat that are high in starch/poison and cyanide…

Fried Chicken

Your beloved, fried chicken is coated in flour that is extremely high in starch. Furthermore chicken is not designed for human consumption.

But if you still continue to eat them this is at your discretion.

But we dare you to stop eating Fried Chicken for at least 30 days. That’s all 30 days and see the benefits for yourself.

However please join our free online workshops via:

http://www.thealkebulantrust.org/How-do-I-attend-workshops.php

Also sign up to our monthly updates via:

http://www.TheAlkebulanTrust.org

Come back tomorrow to see what food is at number 11…

#the alkebulan trust #every life matters #friedchicken #kfc chicken #kfc #carbohydrates #starch #cyanide #tumblr #food high in starch

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livwithoutlimit · 8 years ago

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Recap: Term 2

Two terms of graduate school down, 21 to go (assuming the average of about 5.7 years or 23 terms for Caltech chemists). Six months in and I’m a whole 8.7% of the way there. On the plus side, after next term I’ll both breach 10% and have completed all my classes!

Some things haven't changed since my first term:

I'm still ecstatic that I'm at Caltech.

I still love teaching scientific writing.

Being a mother in grad school is still fun.

Pasadena is still a great place to live.

Cam and I are still simpatico (even though he still encourages Alex's excessive demands for coffee breaks and frozen yogurt).

Some things, however, are new. Here are some of the highlights.

I completed another course toward my degree, bringing the tally up to four and leaving one for the Spring 2017 term. In Winter 2017, I took something-something-planetary-habitability (Ay/Ge 159), more commonly known as astrobiology. This is another interdisciplinary sub-discipline of astrophysics, specifically combining… you guessed it!... astronomy and biology. While this has some crossover with astrochemistry (my research area), I learned a lot about the thinking and methods behind astrobiology. Astrobiology isn’t so much about studying the existence of extraterrestrial biological systems (since there aren’t any that we know of yet) so much as the probability of where biological systems could exist. It’s about habitability, the -ability part of which defines possibility and separates habitable from inhabited. Planetary Science grad student Mike Wong took us on an adventure to unfold the different stories about the emergence of life, encouraging us to fit together puzzle pieces shaped like our own research disciplines. My piece looked like modeling glycine (the simplest amino acid) in protoplanetary disks (rings of dust and gas around young stars that evolve into a planetary system), assuming it exists in the interstellar medium in the first place. The project was challenging and even frustrating at first, but according to Mike Russell at JPL who came to talk to us about hydrothermal vents and green rust, "creativity is born from frustration". And indeed it is. As a result of the project, I learned about something new in the field of astrochemistry (basics of protoplanetary disk modeling) and was able to apply it to something new (true to my love of interdisciplinary science).

I began a research project. I’m looking at Orion KL—the Kleinmann-Low nebula in Orion—through the eyes of ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile. Orion KL is the most active star forming region within the diffuse Orion Nebula south of Orion’s belt along his sword. The first steps are to see what molecules are out there. There are lots of cyanides (namely methyl cyanide, ethyl cyanide, and vinyl cyanide) as well as oxygen-bearing species like methanol and methyl formate. All of these molecules are complex organic molecules (COMs) that could provide insight to the beginnings of chemistry, chemical evolution throughout the universe, and even prebiotic chemistry—the chemistry that leads to the emergence of life.

I joined Caltech’s chemistry club in demonstrating chemistry alongside some awesome undergrads. I had a lot of fun learning some new chemistry demonstrations, and I also learned that science outreach isn’t important just for K-12 students; it is also important to foster excitement from their parents/guardians, too.

I participated in my first grad school recruitment weekend. Ever. I volunteered to help with Caltech Chemistry’s two recruitment weekend in March. Since I was in my third-trimester of pregnancy a year ago, I was grounded in Germany. I got to experience the exhaustion and over-stimulation and fun that is recruitment. I can’t imagine how it would feel as a prospective to receive all of that information at once!

I began the journey toward two teaching certificates, namely the Certificates of Interest and of Practice in University Teaching offered through CPET—the Caltech Project for Effective Teaching. This consisted of attending TeachWeek events (including a panel focused on empowering learning, a talk and workshop about transparency in teaching, a seminar about transforming general chemistry into a more active hence effective learning experience for undergrads, and a rapid-fire session giving ideas and practices that can be incorporated into your own teaching), taking Principles of University Teaching and Learning in STEM (E 110), and attending CPET journal club meetings centered around active learning.

I found out I was accepted to co-teach a chemistry tutorial with none other than Cam. Chemistry tutorials (Ch 101) are a new CPET initiative to give grad students and post-docs hands-on teaching experience, from proposing a course (and simultaneously applying for the opportunity) to designing and executing it. Cam and I are giving a tutorial called Astrochemistry: Spectroscopy in Space. (You can see what we’re up to on Twitter via #astrochem101.) We had to design a syllabus and course outline and will be giving lectures during the Spring 2017 course beginning in just two weeks! I also pulled from my TeachWeek experiences with transparent teaching as well as another CPET seminar about active learning in STEM presented by Dr. Amy Vollmer from Swarthmore College to design a progressive writing assignment. The assignment allows students to connect lecture material to an area of astrochemistry research of personal interest throughout the course through short (1-3-page) writing assignments culminating in a short booklet to be used as the basis for a final presentation. I’m eager to see how it turns out!

For now, I'll enjoy my two weeks of spring "break" — doing research uninterrupted... except for the lesson planning of course!

#Term recap

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