#john macdonell

[clove-pinks]

I can't believe I didn't post about the Battle of Queenston Heights on October 13th: not just an important War of 1812 battle, but the inspiration for one of Stan Rogers' best songs! (Also on Spotify).

[blackswaneuroparedux]

The battle of Waterloo depended on the closing of those gates.

Duke of Wellington.

There were many key moments at the Battle of Waterloo. Many were only recognised after the battle had been won as a close run thing. But in the heat of the battle there was one moment that was not lost on either Wellington or Napoleon and that was the chateau and outbuildings of Hougoumont which were situated 500 yards from Wellington’s line, and if held by the Allies would disrupt any French advance. Likewise, their loss to the French would have created an immense threat to Wellington’s right flank.

Hougoumont was defended by 2600 allied crack troops including Coldstream, Grenadier and Scots Guards plus Nassauers and Brunswickers. The north gate of Hougoumont had been deliberately left open to allow friendly troops to pass through, but had to be closed rapidly when the French started to attack at about 11.30 am. This attack was the first action of the Battle of Waterloo. The gates were however not closed properly and French soldiers started to push through. Desperate hand-to-hand fighting ensued but somehow the defenders managed to close the gates. The 30 Frenchmen who had entered were swiftly dealt with, all being mercilessly killed except for a young and unarmed drummer-boy.

This brave action meant that the French were never able to take Hougoumont at any time during the remainder of the day, although 12,700 of Napoleon’s troops were tied up in the attempt.

Some years later a Reverend John Norcross left a sum of money in his will to be given “to the bravest man at Waterloo”. Wellington, who was asked to nominate the winner, said that the success of the battle turned upon the closing of the gates at Hougoumont, and the recipient was a Corporal James Graham of the Coldstream Guards. This soldier had shown immense bravery and probably saved the life of the commanding officer at Hougoumont, Lieutenant-Colonel James MacDonell.

Photo: Guards Memorial Hougoumont, Waterloo, Belgium.

[scotianostra]

23rd December 1761 saw the death of Alastair Ruadh MacDonnell, the government spy in the Jacobite camp known as “Pickle”.

Born in around 1725, the eldest son of John Macdonell (d. 1754), chief of Glengarry. He was brought up as a Catholic and sent to France while still a boy, where he later became a captain in Lord John Drummond’s Scots Royals regiment in 1743, when the French were planning to invade England under pretext of restoring the Stuarts, of which Jacobite clans like the Glengarry Macdonells were of course in favour. While in France, he met Charles Edward Stuart (‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’), who had arrived from Rome to join the expedition, and stayed with him in Paris after the French abandoned the idea of an invasion. He visited Scotland early in 1745, in order to sound out political feeling there, but returned to France to warn that clan chiefs would support a rising only if backed by French money and arms. Unfortunately, by the time he reached France, Charles had sailed for Scotland to begin the 1745 Jacobite rising.

That autumn, Glengarry sailed with the Scots Royals to join the Jacobite army, but his ship was captured by the British navy off Deal and he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. On his release in 1747 he returned to Paris, where he lived in severe poverty, unable to obtain any financial help from either Charles Stuart or his father James (‘the Old Pretender’). On the death of Donald Cameron of Lochiel, who had become Colonel of the Scots-French Albany regiment in France after his escape from Scotland, Glengarry applied to succeed him in the command, but was turned down.

By the end of 1749 he was living in London, still extremely poor, and secretly trying to obtain permission to settle in Britain. A few months later, however, he reappeared, plainly now in possession of ample funds, and it is generally believed that he had somehow managed to steal some of the Loch Arkaig Treasure, gold sent from Spain to support the Jacobite rising in 1746, which had arrived too late to be of any use and had been concealed for the use of Jacobite supporters. Glengarry was accused of forging James Stuart’s signature to obtain this money.

In the 19th century, Scottish historian Andrew Lang was able to show that Glengarry was in fact a British agent, operating under the code name ‘Pickle’, and that he had been largely responsible for the betrayal of the Jacobite Elibank plot in 1752 and the subsequent capture and execution of Dr Archibald Cameron, Lochiel’s brother, in 1753. The British government seems to have had Cameron executed on an old warrant instead of bringing him to trial in order to avoid exposing Glengarry. He continued to act as a spy until 1754, when his paymaster, Prime Minister Henry Pelham, died, and he succeeded as Glengarry chief on his father’s death in September of the same year. He never married, and on his death in Glengarry in 1761 was succeeded as chief by his nephew Donald.

It is likely that he was recruited as a spy during his imprisonment in the Tower of London, and that he accepted the job due to his poverty and a sense of disillusionment with the Stuarts. He may also have had a grudge against the Camerons, as his brother had been killed accidentally by a Cameron clansman at the battle of Falkirk. He was never exposed during his lifetime and his role as a spy was only revealed by Andrew Lang 150 years later, after extensive research.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"SAY SCARS INDICATE WOMAN DRUG ADDICT," Toronto Star. May 27, 1942. Page 2. ---- Physicians Testify at Trial of Dr. Hett, Accused of Giving Morphine ---- Multiple scars and punctures on the arms and legs of Clara Merrick, I alias Martin, were described today by two Toronto physicians as signs of drug addiction. She is a crown witness in the case of Dr. John E. Hett, Kitchener physician, charged before Judge Ian Macdonell with prescribing morphine for other than medicinal purposes. Mrs. Merrick testified Tuesday that she had obtained morphine tablets from Dr. Hett at his office and in other places, and had also been given serum treatment for cancer, although she was not suffering from cancer. She said that she had lied to Dr. Hett in giving a history of cancer so that she might. obtain narcotics. Dr. Philip Shuman of St. Michael's hospital said he had seen the marks of a hypodermic needle on Mrs. Merrick's arms while she was being treated for pneumonia and abscesses on the arms. He saw no symptoms of cancer. Dr. Robert Janes of the Toronto General hospital also said he had found the signs of drug addiction on Mrs. Mericek's arms and legs. He said he would not administer mor- phine to a cancer patient who was able to walk about.

[artist-sargent]

Letter to Kathlene MacDonell, John Singer Sargent, n.d., Brooklyn Museum: American Art

Letter written on both sides of folded sheet of letterhead with drawing on back; embossed letterhead consisting of a circular stamp of dramatic masks in wreath at upper left and "THE PLAYERS / SIXTEEN GRAMERCY PARK" at upper right. Transcription of letter (in Sargent's hand): Kathlene Dear nicest / The tickets have come / and I thank you more than / much for them -- Please dont / get more nervous than you / have to for you'r[e] going to be / good! ['good' underscored] So best dont worry / about it at all. Things have / changed and all the signs / point in the ['the' added with carat] right direction. I saw / two loads of hay yesterday ['yesterday' added with carat] -- one / drawn by a white horse. / [struck through text] / and you know what that / means. Especially when you / [struck through word] do up your beautiful / hair in the morning -- / [letter continues on other side] So there it is -- load of hay -- / white horse and a [struck through word] red haired / girl -- the combination can not / be beat -- I can not remember if it / is allowed to tell what I wished but / in this instance I do not believe it / will break the charm -- For I / wished with all my heart for the / success that you deserve and / I know that you will have it! / And that Kathlene dear is a very / great success in deed. As you have / a bit of Irish in you / I am sending these "little people." / for they are / sure to look / after you to- / morrow. / Affectionately / John Size: Sheet (unfolded): 6 7/8 x 8 15/16 in. (17.5 x 22.7 cm) Medium: Ink on paper

https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/157543

[bm-american-art]

Letter to Kathlene MacDonell, John Singer Sargent, n.d., Brooklyn Museum: American Art

Letter written on both sides of folded sheet of letterhead with drawing on back; embossed letterhead consisting of a circular stamp of dramatic masks in wreath at upper left and "THE PLAYERS / SIXTEEN GRAMERCY PARK" at upper right. Transcription of letter (in Sargent's hand): Kathlene Dear nicest / The tickets have come / and I thank you more than / much for them -- Please dont / get more nervous than you / have to for you'r[e] going to be / good! ['good' underscored] So best dont worry / about it at all. Things have / changed and all the signs / point in the ['the' added with carat] right direction. I saw / two loads of hay yesterday ['yesterday' added with carat] -- one / drawn by a white horse. / [struck through text] / and you know what that / means. Especially when you / [struck through word] do up your beautiful / hair in the morning -- / [letter continues on other side] So there it is -- load of hay -- / white horse and a [struck through word] red haired / girl -- the combination can not / be beat -- I can not remember if it / is allowed to tell what I wished but / in this instance I do not believe it / will break the charm -- For I / wished with all my heart for the / success that you deserve and / I know that you will have it! / And that Kathlene dear is a very / great success in deed. As you have / a bit of Irish in you / I am sending these "little people." / for they are / sure to look / after you to- / morrow. / Affectionately / John Size: Sheet (unfolded): 6 7/8 x 8 15/16 in. (17.5 x 22.7 cm) Medium: Ink on paper

https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/157543

[isfjmel-phleg]

Bibliography from my Psmith thesis

for @notafraidof-virginiawoolf

Alden, W. L. “Psmith of Pavia,” Harper’s Monthly Magazine, vol. 114, Feb. 1907, pp. 452-57. Google Books, books.google.com/books?id=yU_sIVnTdr4C&source=gbs_ navlinks_s.

Bell, R. S. Warren. “‘Beetle.’” The Captain, vol. 20, no. 118, Jan. 1909, p. 382.

——. Editorial. The Captain, vol. 21, no. 125, Sept. 1909, pp. 569-70.

——. Letter to “Admirer.” The Captain, vol. 23, no. 133, Apr. 1910, p. 95.

——. Letter to “Josie.” The Captain, vol. 22, no. 124, Aug. 1909, p. 480.

——. Letter to “Lancashire Lass.” The Captain, vol. 20, no. 116, Nov. 1908, p. 189.

——. Letter to “Michael.” The Captain, vol. 22, no. 125, Sept. 1909, p. 575.

——. “Valete.” The Captain, vol. 17, no. 102, Sept. 1907, pp. 568-69.

Buckler, Doris. “Thanks to ‘Psmith.’” The Captain, vol. 20, no. 115, Oct. 1908, p. 86.

Dold, Bernard E. Edwardian Fall-Out: The Ironic School. Peloritana, 1972.

Donaldson, Frances. P. G. Wodehouse: A Biography. Prion, 2001.

Dugan, Lawrence. “Worcestershirewards: Wodehouse and the Baroque.” Connotations, vol. 20, no. 2-3, 2010/2011, pp. 228-47.

Edwards, Owen Dudley. P. G. Wodehouse: A Critical and Historical Essay. M. Brian & O’Keefe, 1977.

Edwards, Thomas R. “P. G. Wodehouse.” Raritan, vol. 7, no. 4, Spring 1988, pp. 86-107.

Green, Benny. P. G. Wodehouse: A Literary Biography. Rutledge Press, 1981.

Hayward, John. “P. G. Wodehouse.” The Saturday Book, edited by Leonard Russell, Hutchinson, 1942, pp. 372-89.

Heddendorf, David. “When Plummie Met Sally: The Other P. G. Wodehouse.” The Sewanee Review, vol. 118, no. 3, 2010, pp. 411-16.

Hitchens, Christopher. “The Honorable Schoolboy.” The Atlantic, Nov. 2004, theatlantic.com/ magazine/archive/2004/11/the-honorable-schoolboy/303563/. Accessed 27 Jan. 2020.

Jaggard, Geoffrey. Wooster’s World. Coronet, 1979.

Jasen, David A. P. G. Wodehouse: A Portrait of a Master. Mason & Lipscomb, 1974.

Macdonell, A. G. “The Drama.” London Mercury, vol. 17, no. 100, Feb. 1928, pp. 456-58.

Malkinson, J. “Psmith.” The Captain, vol. 22, no. 122, May 1909, p. 190.

McCrum, Robert. Wodehouse: A Life. Norton, 2004.

Muir, Augustus. “The Popularity of P. G. Wodehouse.” The Strand, vol. 73, no. 434, Feb. 1927, pp. 128-36.

Murphy, N. T. P. In Search of Blandings. Penguin, 1986.

——. A Wodehouse Handbook. Rev. ed., Sybertooth, 2013. 2 vols.

Orwell, George. “In Defense of P. G. Wodehouse.” The Orwell Reader: Fiction, Essays, and Reportage. Harcourt, Brace, 1956, pp. 315-28.

“Psnobism.” Punch, vol. 128, Feb. 15, 1905, p. 109. Google Books, books.google.com/ books?id=iwcIAQAAIAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s.

Ramsay, Allan. “The Green Baize Door: Social Identity in Wodehouse, Part Two.” Contemporary Review, vol. 286, iss. 1668, Jan. 205, pp. 39-46.

Rea, Ann, editor. Middlebrow Wodehouse: P. G Wodehouse’s Work in Context. Routledge, 2016.

Readers of “The Captain.” “Psmith, Special Reporter: Some Examples of His Style.” The Captain, vol. 20, no. 118, Jan. 1909, pp. 362-65.

Richards, Jeffrey. “The Triumph of Athleticism: Mike.” Happiest Days: The Public Schools in English Fiction, Manchester UP, 1988, pp. 120-41.

Ring, Tony, and Geoffrey Jaggard. The Millennium Wodehouse Concordance. Porpoise, 1994-2001. 8 vols.

——. The Millennium Wodehouse Concordance. Vol. 7, Porpoise Books, 2000.

Säckel, Sarah. “What’s in a Wodehouse? (Non-)Subversive Shakespearean Intertextualities in P. G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster Novels.” Semiotic Encounters: Text, Image and Trans-Nation, edited by Sarah Säckel et al., Rodopi, 2009, pp. 137–154.

Sheed, Wilfred. “P. G. Wodehouse: Leave It to Psmith.” The Good Word & Other Words. Dutton, 1978, pp. 215-22.

Snowden, W. Crawford. “Mr. Wodehouse on ‘Psmith,’ and Others.” Lincolnshire Echo, July 17, 1933, p. 4.

Taylor, D. J. “Before There Was Jeeves: A Hundred Years of Psmith in the City.” TLS: Times Literary Supplement, no. 5607, 17 Sept. 2010, pp. 14-15.

Thompson, Allison Joy. A Culture in Change: The Development of Masculinity through P. G. Wodehouse’s Psmith Series. 2015. Liberty University, Master’s thesis. Scholars Crossing, digitalcommons.liberty.edu/masters/362/.

Thompson, Kristin. Wooster Proposes, Jeeves Disposes, or Le Mot Juste. James H. Heineman, 1992.

Usborne, Richard. The Penguin Wodehouse Companion. Penguin, 1988.

——. Plum Sauce: A P.G. Wodehouse Companion. Overlook, 2003.

Vesterman, William. “Plum Time in Nevereverland: The Divine Comedy of P. G. Wodehouse.” Raritan, vol. 25, no. 1, Summer 2005, pp. 92-113.

Voorhees, Richard J. P. G. Wodehouse. Twayne, 1966.

Wainewright, John Bannerman, editor. Winchester College 1836-1906: A Register. P. and G. Wells, 1907. Google Books, books.google.com/books?id=RQkCAAAAYAAJ&source= gbs_navlinks_s.

Waugh, Evelyn. “An Act of Homage and Reparation to P. G. Wodehouse.” The Essays, Articles, and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, Little, Brown, 1983, pp. 561-68.

Williamson, Michael T. “Before Jeeves: Impudence in P. G. Wodehouse’s Novels, 1909-23.” Middlebrow Wodehouse: P. G Wodehouse’s Work in Context, edited by Ann Rea, Routledge, 2016, pp. 51-72.

Wodehouse, P. G. “The Aunt and the Sluggard.” The World of Jeeves, Harper & Row, 1989, pp. 147-70.

——. The Gold Bat. The Gold Bat and Other Stories, Penguin, 1986, pp. 9-157.

——. Leave It to Psmith. Vintage Books, 1975.

——. A Life in Letters. Edited by Sophie Ratcliffe, W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.

——. Mike and Psmith. Penguin, 1990.

——. Mike at Wrykyn. Meredith Press, 1953.

——. Over Seventy. Wodehouse on Wodehouse, Penguin, 1981, pp. 465-645.

——. Performing Flea. Wodehouse on Wodehouse, Penguin, 1981, pp. 237-464.

——. Preface. The Man with Two Left Feet and Other Stories, Barrie & Jenkins, 1971, pp. 5-7.

——. Preface. The World of Psmith, Barrie & Jenkins, 1974, pp. v-vi.

——. Psmith in the City. Pennyfarthing, 1988.

——. Psmith, Journalist. Hutchinson, 1987.

——. Something Fresh. Life at Blandings, Penguin, 1981, pp. 7-180.

——. “Under the Flail.” Public School Magazine, June 1901. Madame Eulalie, madameulalie.org/psm/Under_the_Flail_07.html.

[ao3feed-jamiexclaire]

by Acam

Lord Adam Grey has gained and lost a lot in only one year: he lost a brother and became the sole heir of a dukedom, finally finding his calling amongst the fields of barley and wheat. When Benjamin, his older brother, returns to England with a wife and an heir of his own, Adam is left with nothing. Again.

Lonely and lost, Adam is summoned to Ellesmere Park, for the Christmas party and birth of William and Margareth Ransom first born child. There, he hopes to forget his sorrows and find strength to carry on with his life.

What he was not expecting was to find Lady Eleanor MacDonell, a rebel Scottish girl, who left with no traces from the grasp of the old and evil Gordon Wallace, chief of the Wallace clan, who believes the girls blood to be magical and a portal to the other world.

Will Adam find the happiness he craves with Eleanor, giving her the love she never had?

Words: 3227, Chapters: 1/35, Language: English

Series: Part 2 of The Time Traveler's Tales

Fandoms: Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon, Outlander (TV)

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: F/M

Characters: William Ransom, Adam Grey, Jamie Fraser, Lord John Grey, Hal Grey, Minerva Grey

Relationships: Claire Beauchamp/Jamie Fraser, Lord John Grey/William Ransom, Jamie Fraser/William Ransom, William Ransom/Original Character(s), Adam Grey/Original Character(s)

[clove-pinks]

The Battle of Queenston Heights: October 13th 1812

An Officer and Private of the 52nd Regiment of Light Infantry, 1812, from Charles Hamilton Smith's 'Costumes of the Army of the British Empire, according to the last regulations 1812', published by Colnaghi and Company, 1812-1815 (National Army Museum).

According to Jonathan Riley in his book A Matter of Honour: The Life, Campaigns and Generalship of Isaac Brock, the British troops led by Brock at Battle of Queenston Heights had a similar appearance: "Aside from the yellow facings, the light company of the 49th that Brock led up Queenston Heights would have been dressed in very much the same way."

Brock meanwhile had taken stock of the situation and come to the conclusion that the American attack at Queenston was no feint, but the real thing. The guns of Fort Niagara had begun to bombard Fort George shortly after Brock left and the batteries in Fort George had opened up in reply, which Brock would have heard as he made his way south. His aides John Glegg and John Macdonell would have been able to assure him that no landing force had appeared from the direction of Four Mile Creek, at least before they had left.

— Jonathan Riley, A Matter of Honour

After General Brock fell in battle, his aide-de-camp John Macdonell led a second counter-attack that almost succeeded, but he "was seriously wounded and the attack lost momentum as the troops lost heart without their leader. Macdonell was carried from the field; he lived another twenty-four hours in agony before his death." (A Matter of Honour)

The sacrifice of this obscure and minor officer might be forgotten, except that Stan Rogers immortalised him in the song "Macdonnell on the Heights."

[scotianostra]

23rd December 1761 saw the death of Alastair Ruadh MacDonnell, the government spy in the Jacobite camp known as “Pickle”.

Born in around 1725, the eldest son of John Macdonell (d. 1754), chief of Glengarry. He was brought up as a Catholic and sent to France while still a boy, where he later became a captain in Lord John Drummond’s Scots Royals regiment in 1743, when the French were planning to invade England under pretext of restoring the Stuarts, of which Jacobite clans like the Glengarry Macdonells were of course in favour. While in France, he met Charles Edward Stuart (‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’), who had arrived from Rome to join the expedition, and stayed with him in Paris after the French abandoned the idea of an invasion. He visited Scotland early in 1745, in order to sound out political feeling there, but returned to France to warn that clan chiefs would support a rising only if backed by French money and arms. Unfortunately, by the time he reached France, Charles had sailed for Scotland to begin the 1745 Jacobite rising.

That autumn, Glengarry sailed with the Scots Royals to join the Jacobite army, but his ship was captured by the British navy off Deal and he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. On his release in 1747 he returned to Paris, where he lived in severe poverty, unable to obtain any financial help from either Charles Stuart or his father James (‘the Old Pretender’). On the death of Donald Cameron of Lochiel, who had become Colonel of the Scots-French Albany regiment in France after his escape from Scotland, Glengarry applied to succeed him in the command, but was turned down.

By the end of 1749 he was living in London, still extremely poor, and secretly trying to obtain permission to settle in Britain. A few months later, however, he reappeared, plainly now in possession of ample funds, and it is generally believed that he had somehow managed to steal some of the Loch Arkaig Treasure, gold sent from Spain to support the Jacobite rising in 1746, which had arrived too late to be of any use and had been concealed for the use of Jacobite supporters. Glengarry was accused of forging James Stuart’s signature to obtain this money.

In the 19th century, Scottish historian Andrew Lang was able to show that Glengarry was in fact a British agent, operating under the code name ‘Pickle’, and that he had been largely responsible for the betrayal of the Jacobite Elibank plot in 1752 and the subsequent capture and execution of Dr Archibald Cameron, Lochiel’s brother, in 1753. The British government seems to have had Cameron executed on an old warrant instead of bringing him to trial in order to avoid exposing Glengarry. He continued to act as a spy until 1754, when his paymaster, Prime Minister Henry Pelham, died, and he succeeded as Glengarry chief on his father’s death in September of the same year. He never married, and on his death in Glengarry in 1761 was succeeded as chief by his nephew Donald.

It is likely that he was recruited as a spy during his imprisonment in the Tower of London, and that he accepted the job due to his poverty and a sense of disillusionment with the Stuarts. He may also have had a grudge against the Camerons, as his brother had been killed accidentally by a Cameron clansman at the battle of Falkirk. He was never exposed during his lifetime and his role as a spy was only revealed by Andrew Lang 150 years later, after extensive research.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Would Save Old Fort,” Toronto Globe. June 20, 1932. Page 8. ---- Kingston, June 19. - (Special.) - John Stiles, Chief Commissioner for Canada of the Boy Scouts, who was a guest of Lieut.-Gen. Sir Archibald Macdonell, while here, inspected Fort Henry. General Macdonell said that Mr. Stiles, after viewing the walls of the old fort, suggested that this fine old landmark could be preserved from further dilapidation by the use of liquid cement under high pressure, and that if the Government were to continue to give unemployment relief, work might be carried out at the old fort.

[marcellusbitsandpieces]

Bits and Pieces  Guelph, Ontario Canada 2019    8/25/19

On our cruise last winter, we meant a delightful couple, John and Diane Dobbie, from Guelph (Gwelf), Ontario Canada. We exchanged addresses, phone numbers and email addresses with talk of visits.

Thus, as Curt was thinking of our anniversary get-away this summer, he asked about going to Canada. I thought it was a great idea! John and Diane were equally excited. Dates were finalized, plans made and passports were at the ready.

The weather cooperated and we started with a half-day jaunt to Port Huron where we spent the night. The car GPS was set up for Canada, and in the morning, we headed toward Guelph – about 60 miles NW of Toronto.

Guelph is a fast-growing bedroom community with very historic roots. John and Diane live in a new complex of 4-story apartments, and our “little lady” took us directly there. But first Curt needed to check out the huge grocery store across the street.

Catching up over Diane’s delicious stew for dinner, we also learned that John had procured for us a special tour of the Basilica of Our Lady Immaculate.

Guelph was founded in April 1827 by John Galt, first superintendent of the Canada Company, a land development company under British parliament. Galt gave the hill in the center of town as a gift to the Catholic Church because Bishop Macdonell had given him advice in forming the Canada Company.

When Galt transferred the deed for Saint Patrick’s Church, he said, “On this hill would one day rise a church to rival St. Peter’s in Rome.” This church burned and was replaced with St. Bartholomew’s; then finally replaced with the Church of Our Lady. Due to two fires of wooden structures, the third one was built of limestone and in the Gothic Revival design.

The Sisters of Loreto were brought to Canada and one of the schools they began was in Guelph. When I first heard this, I was so excited – thinking they were the Sisters of Loretto as I had at Loretto Heights College in Denver, Colorado. Not only are the spellings different, but so are the religious orders.

This church was officially dedicated as the Church of Our Lady Immaculate and took 50 years to build. In 2014, Pope Francis designated it a basilica. This follows special specifications and allows the church the right to include the papal symbol of the crossed keys on the basilica, and the right of the rector of the basilica to wear a special vestment.

During the last church restoration, bodies of early pioneers that had been discovered in a city cemetery were reinterred in a special area of the basement, which gives a visitor a marvelous concept of the early foundation.

From the front steps of the basilica looking toward the city, one gets a beautiful view of the layout/plan by Galt of a radial street and grid system.

The building just below the church steps on the left is The Albion Hotel. Not only is it one of the first structures of Guelph, but it holds two interesting claims to fame. One is that in its early years water was piped from Catholic Hill to its basement for making beer. Another is that it is believed that Al Capone had tunnels built beneath it for escape routes during Prohibition.

It was an interesting afternoon tour, and we topped it off with a fabulous dinner at Aberfoyle Mill Restaurant. John and Diane wanted to show the finest of Guelph, and that they did.

We look forward to their promise of coming here next year – when John plans on retirement. We greeted as new friends and ended as old friends, eh!

[ijsea]

Top 10 Cited Papers Software        Engineering & Applications          Research Articles From 2017      Issue

                      http://www.airccse.org/journal/ijsea/vol8.html

 International Journal of Software Engineering & Applications (IJSEA)

                  ISSN : 0975 - 9018 ( Online ); 0976-2221 ( Print )

                   http://www.airccse.org/journal/ijsea/ijsea.html

                                                                                                   Citation Count – 04

                                Factors on Software Effort Estimation

                                            Simon WU Iok Kuan

 Faculty of Business Administration, University of Macao, Macau, China

 ABSTRACT

Software effort estimation is an important process of system development life cycle, as it may affect the success of software projects if project designers estimate the projects inaccurately. In the past of few decades, various effort prediction models have been proposed by academicians and practitioners. Traditional estimation techniques include Lines of Codes (LOC), Function Point Analysis (FPA) method and Mark II Function Points (Mark II FP) which have proven unsatisfactory for predicting effort of all types of software. In this study, the author proposed a regression model to predict the effort required to design small and medium scale application software. To develop such a model, the author used 60 completed software projects developed by a software company in Macau. From the projects, the author extracted factors and applied them to a regression model. A prediction of software effort with accuracy of MMRE = 8% was constructed.

 KEYWORDS

Effort Estimation, Software Projects, Software Applications, System Development Life Cycle.

For More Details : http://aircconline.com/ijsea/V8N1/8117ijsea03.pdf

Volume Link:            

http://www.airccse.org/journal/ijsea/vol8.html

REFERENCES

 [1]     Fu, Ya-fang, Liu, Xiao-dong, Yang, Ren-nong, Du, Yi-lin and Li Yan-jie (2010), “A Software Size Estimation Method Based on Improved FPA”, Second World Congress on Software Engineering,Vol. 2, pp228-233.

 [2]     Hastings, T. E. & Sajeev, A. S. M. (2001), “A Vector-Based Approach to Software Size Measurement and Effort Estimation”, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. 27, No. 4, pp.337-350.

 [3]      Norris, K. P. (1971), “The Accuracy of Project Cost and Duration Estimates in Industrial R&D”, R&D Management, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp.25-36.

 [4]       Murmann, Philipp A. (1994), “Expected Development Time Reductions in the German Mechanical Engineering Industry”, Journal of Product innovation Management, Vol. 11, pp.236-252.

 [5]     David Consulting Group (2012), “Project Estimating”, DCG Corporate Office, Paoli, 2007: http:davidconsultinggroup.com/training/estimation.aspx (January, 2017)

 [6]      Boehm, Barry (1976), “Software Engineering”, IEEE Transactions on Computers, Vol. C-25, Issue 12, pp1226-1241.

 [7]     Dreger, J. B. (1989), “Function Point Analysis”, Englewood Cliffs, NJ:Prentice-Hall.

 [8]     Smith, Randy K., Hale, Joanne E. & Parrish, Allen S. (2001), “An Empirical Study Using Task Assignment Patterns to Improve the Accuracy of Software Effort Estimation”, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp.264- 271.

 [9]     Sataphthy, Shashank Mouli, Kumar, Mukesh & Rath, Santanu Kumar (2013), “Class Point Approach for Software Effort Estimation Using Soft Computing Techniques, International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communications and Informatics(ICACCI), p178-183.

 [10]     Tariq, Sidra, Usman, Muhammad, Wong, Raymond, Zhuang, Yan & Fong, Simon (2015), “On Learning Software Effort Estimation”, 3rd International Symposium  and Business Intelligence, P79- 84.

 [11]     Bhandari, Sangeeta (2016), “FCM Based Conceptual Framework for Software Effort Estimation”, International Conference on Computing for Sustainable Global Development, pp2585-2588.

 [12]     Moharreri, Kayhan, Sapre, Alhad Vinayak, Ramanathan, Jayashree & Ramnath, Rajiv (2016), “CostEffective Supervised Learning Models for Software Effort Estimation in Agile Environments”, IEEE 40th Annual Computer Software and Applications Conference, p135-140.

 [13]     Mukhopadhyay, Tridas & Kekre, Sunder. (1992), “Software Effort Models for Early Estimation of Process Control Applications”, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. 18, No. 10, pp.915- 924.

 [14]     Boehm, Barry W. (1995), “Cost Models for Future Software Life Cycle Processes: COCOMO 2.0,” Anals of Software Engineering Special Volume on Software Process and Product Measurement, Science Publisher, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1(3), p45-60.

 [15]      Srinivasan, Krishnamoorthy & Fisher, Douglas (1995), “Machine Learning Approaches to Estimating Software Development Effort”, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp126- 137.

 [16]     Strike, Kevin, Emam, Khaled EI & Madhavji, Nazim (2001), “Software Cost Estimation with Incomplete Data”, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. 27, No. 10, pp215-223.

 [17]     Putnam, Lawrence H. (1978), “A General Empirical Solution to the Macro Software Sizing and Estimating Problem”, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. SE-4, No. 4, pp345-361.

 [18]     Boehm, Barry W. (1981), “Software Engineering Economics”, Englewood Cliffs, NJ:Prentice-Hall.

 [19]     Subramanian, Girish H. & Breslawski, Steven (1995), “An Empirical Analysis of Software Effort Estimate Alternations”, Journal of Systems Software, Vol. 31, pp135-141.

 [20]     Boehm, Barry W. (1984), “Software Engineering Economics”, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering”, Vol. 10, pp4-21.

 [21]     Agrawal, Priya & Kumar, Shraddha (2016), “Early Phase Software Effort Estimation Model”, Symposium on Colossal Data Analysis and Networking, pp1-8.

 [22]     Albrecht, Allen. J. (1979), “Measuring Application Development Productivity”, Proceedings of the IBM Applications Development Symposium, pp83-92.

 [23]     Albrecht, Allen J. & Gaffney. John E. (1983), “Software Function, Source Lines of Code, and Development Effort Prediction: A Software Science Validation”, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. 9, No.6, pp639-648.

[24]     Hu, Qing, Plant, Robert & Hertz, David (1998), “Software Cost Estimation Using Economic Production Models”, Journal of Management Information Systems, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp143-163.

 [25]     Bock D. B., & Klepper R. (1992). FP S: A Simplified Function Point Counting Method, “The Journal of Systems Software”, 18:245 254.

 [26]     Kemerer, Chris F. (1993). “Reliability of Function Points Measurement: A Field Experiment”, Communications of the ACM, 36(2):85 97.

 [27]     Lokan, Chris J. (2000). “An Empirical Analysis of Function Point Adjustment Factors”, Journal of Information and Software Technology, vol. 42, pp649-660.

 [28]     Jeffery, J., Low, G. & Barnes, C. (1993), “Comparison of Function Point Counting Techniques”, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. 19, No. 5, pp529- 532.

[29]     Misra, A. K. & Chaudhary, B. D. (1991), “An Interactive Structured Program Development Tool”, IEEE Region 10 International Conference on EC3-Energy, Computer, Communication and Control Systems, 3, 1-5.

 [30]     Kendall, K. E. & Kendall, J. E. (2005), “System Analysis and Design”, 6/e, Prentice- Hall.

 [31]      Brooks, F. (1975), “The Mythical Man-Month.” Addison-Wesley.

 [32]     Zhang, Xiaoni & Windsor, John (2003). “An Empirical Analysis of Software Volatility and Related Factors”, Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 103, No. 4, pp275-281.

 [33]     Kemerer, C. F. & Slaughter, S. (1997). “Determinants of Software Maintenance Profiles: An Empirical Investigation”, Journal of Software Maintenance, Vol. 9, pp235-251.

[34]     Krishnan, Mayuram S. (1998). “The Role of Team Factors in Software Cost and Quality”, Information Technology & People, Vol. 11(1), pp20-35.

[35]     MacDonell, S. G., Shepperd, M. J. & Sallis, P. (1997), “Metrics for Database Systems: An Empirical Study”, Proceedings of the 4th International Software Metrics Symposium(Metrics 1997).

[36]      MacDonell, S. G. (1994). “Comparative Review of Functional Complexity Assessment Methods for Effort Estimation”, Software Engineering Journal, pp107- 116.

                                                                                            Citation Count – 03

                             A Brief Program Robustness Survey

  Ayman M. Abdalla, Mohammad M. Abdallah and Mosa I. Salah

 Faculty of Science and I.T, Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan, 

                                       Amman, Jordan

 ABSTRACT

 Program Robustness is now more important than before, because of the role software programs play in our life. Many papers defined it, measured it, and put it into context. In this paper, we explore the different definitions of program robustness and different types of techniques used to achieve or measure it. There are many papers about robustness. We chose the papers that clearly discuss program or software robustness. These papers stated that program (or software) robustness indicates the absence of ungraceful failures. There are different types of techniques used to create or measure a robust program. However, there is still a wide space for research in this area.

 Keywords:

 Robustness, Robustness measurement, Dependability, Correctness.

 For More Details: http://aircconline.com/ijsea/V8N1/8117ijsea01.pdf

 Volume Link: http://www.airccse.org/journal/ijsea/vol8.html

REFERENCES

 [1]      IEEE Standard Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology, 1990.

 [2]      J. C. Laprie, J. Arlat, C. Beounes, and K. Kanoun, "Definition and analysis of hardware- and software-fault-tolerant architectures," Computer, vol. 23, pp. 39-51, 1990.

 [3]      A. Avizienis, J. C. Laprie, B. Randell, and C. Landwehr, "Basic concepts and taxonomy of dependable and secure computing," Dependable and Secure Computing, IEEE Transactions on, vol. 1, pp. 11-33, 2004.

 [4]      W. S. Jawadekar, Software Engineering: Principles and Practice: Mcgraw Hill Higher Education, 2004.

 [5]      J. C. Laprie, "Dependable computing: concepts, challenges, directions," in Computer Software and Applications Conference, 2004. COMPSAC 2004.Proceedings of the 28th Annual International, 2004, p. 242 vol.1.

 [6]      R. S. Pressman, Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach, Seventh edition ed.: McGraw Hill Higher Education, 2009.

 [7]      I. Sommerville, Software Engineering: Addison-Wesley, 2006.

 [8]      D. M. John, I. Anthony, and O. Kazuhira, Software reliability: measurement, prediction, application: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1987.

 [9]      L. L. Pullum, Software fault tolerance techniques and implementation: Artech House, Inc., 2001.

 [10]  D. G. Steven, "Robustness in Complex Systems," presented at the Proceedings of the Eighth Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems, 2001.

 [11]  G. M. Weinberg. (1983) Kill That Code! Infosystems.48-49.

 [12]  D. John and Philip J. Koopman, Jr., "Robust Software - No More Excuses," presented at the Proceedings of the 2002 International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, 2002.

 [13]  D. Frank, Z. Nickolai, K. Frans, M. David, res, and M. Robert, "Event-driven programming for robust software," presented at the Proceedings of the 10th workshop on ACM SIGOPS European workshop, Saint-Emilion, France, 2002.

 [14]  Y. Bi, J. Yuan, and Y. Jin, "Beyond the Interconnections: Split Manufacturing in RF Designs," Electronics, vol. 4, p. 541, 2015.

 [15]  Y. Bi, X. S. Hu, Y. Jin, M. Niemier, K. Shamsi, and X. Yin, "Enhancing Hardware Security with Emerging Transistor Technologies," presented at the Proceedings of the 26th edition on Great Lakes Symposium on VLSI, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, 2016.

 [16]  Y. Bi, K. Shamsi, J.-S.Yuan, P.-E.Gaillardon, G. D. Micheli, X. Yin, X.S. Hu, M. Niemier,

Y. Jin, "Emerging Technology-Based Design of Primitives for Hardware Security," J. Emerg. Technol. Comput. Syst., vol. 13, pp. 1-19, 2016.

 [17]  M. Rebaudengo, M. S. Reorda, M. Torchiano, and M. Violante, "Soft-Error Detection through Software Fault-Tolerance Techniques," in IEEE International Symposium on Defect and Fault-Tolerance in VLSI Systems, 1999.

 [18]  R. L. Michael, H. Zubin, K. S. S. Sam, and C. Xia, "An Empirical Study on Testing and Fault Tolerance for Software Reliability Engineering," presented at the Proceedings of the 14th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, 2003.

 [19]  N. H. Michael and T. H. Vance, "Robust Software," IEEE Internet Computing, vol. 6, pp. 80-82, 2002.

 [20]  M. Dix and H. D. Hofmann, "Automated software robustness testing - static and adaptive test case design methods," in Euromicro Conference, 2002.Proceedings.28th, 2002, pp. 62- 66.

[21]  N. H. Michael, T. H. Vance, and G. Rosa Laura Zavala, "Robust software via agent-based redundancy," presented at the Proceedings of the second international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems, Melbourne, Australia, 2003.

 [22]  T. Rajesh and N. H. Michael, "Multiagent Reputation Management to Achieve Robust Software Using Redundancy," presented at the Proceedings of the IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology, 2005.

 [23]  V. T. Holderfield and M. N. Huhns, "A Foundational Analysis of Software Robustness Using Redundant Agent Collaboration," in Agent Technologies, Infrastructures, Tools, and Applications for E-Services.vol. 2592/2003, ed Berlin / Heidelberg: Springer, 2003, pp. 355- 369.

 [24]  R. Laddaga. (1999, May/June) Creating Robust Software through Self-Adaptation.IEEE Intelligent systems.26-30.

 [25]  M. K. Mieczyslaw, B. Kenneth, and A. E. Yonet, "Control Theory-Based Foundations of Self-Controlling Software," vol. 14, ed: IEEE Educational Activities Department, 1999, pp. 37-45.

 [26]  C. Petitpierre and A. Eliëns, "Active Objects Provide Robust Event-Driven Applications," in SERP'02, Las Vegas, 2002, pp. 253-259.

 [27]  G. C. Philip, "Software design guidelines for event-driven programming," Journal of Systems and Software, vol. 41, pp. 79-91, 1998.

 [28]  B. P. Miller, D. Koski, C. P. Lee, V. Maganty, R. Murthy, A. Natarajan, J. Steidl, "Fuzz Revisited: A Re-examination of the Reliability of UNIX Utilities and Services," Report: University of Wisconsin, 1995.

 [29]  M. Schmid and F. Hill, "Data Generation Techniques for Automated Software Robustness Testing," in Proceedings of the International Conference on Testing Computer Software, 1999, pp. 14-18.

 [30]  J. P. DeVale, P. J. Koopman, and D. J. Guttendorf, "The Ballista Software Robustness Testing Service," presented at the Tesing Computer Software Coference, 1999.

 [31]  P. Koopman. (2002, 2nd September). The Ballista Project: COTS Software Robustness Testing. Available: http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/ballista/index.html

 [32]  K. Kanoun, H. Madeira, and J. Arlat, "A Framework for Dependability Benchmarking," presented at the The International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, Washington, D.C., USA, 2002.

 [33]  A. B. Brown and P. Shum, "Measuring Resiliency of IT Systems," presented at the SIGDeB Workshop, 2005.

 [34]  A. B. Brown, J. Hellerstein, M. Hogstrom, T. Lau, S. Lightstone, P. Shum, M. Peterson, "Benchmarking Autonomic Capabilities: Promises and Pitfalls," in International Conference on Autonomic Computing (ICAC'04), Los Alamitos, CA, USA, 2004, pp. 266-267.

 [35]  H. Zuse, A Framework of Software Measurement: Walter de Gruyter, 1998.

 [36]  N. E. Fenton and S. L. Pfleeger, Software Metrics, A Rigorous and Practical Approach, 2 ed.: PWS Publishing Company, 1997.

 [37]  ISO/IEC 15939: Systems and software engineering -- Measurement process, ISO/IEC, 2007.

 [38]  K. Kaur, K. Minhas, N. Mehan, and N. Kakkar, "Static and Dynamic Complexity Analysis of Software Metrics," Empirical Software Engineering, vol. 56, pp. 159-161, 2009.

 [39]  D. M. Jones, The New C Standard: A Cultural and Economic Commentary, 1st edition ed.: Addison-Wesley Professional, 2003.

 [40]  International Standard ISO/IEC 9899, 1999.

 [41]  D. M. Jones, The New C Standard: An Economic and Cultural Commentary, 2002.

 [42]  C programming language coding guidelines, www.lrdev.com, 1998.

 [43]  M. Arup and P. S. Daniel, "Measuring Software Dependability by Robustness Benchmarking," vol. 23, ed: IEEE Press, 1997, pp. 366-378.

 [44]  B. Eslamnour and S. Ali, "Measuring robustness of computing systems," Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory, vol. 17, pp. 1457-1467, 2009.

 [45]  H. Arne, R. Razvan, and E. Rolf, "Methods for multi-dimensional robustness optimization in complex embedded systems," presented at the Proceedings of the 7th ACM & IEEE international conference on Embedded software, Salzburg, Austria, 2007.

 [46]  M. Abdallah, M. Munro, and K. Gallagher, "Certifying software robustness using program slicing," in 2010 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance, Timisoara, Romania, 2010, pp. 1-2.

                                                                                           Citation Count – 02

                 Culture Effect on Requirements Elicitation Practice in 

                                         Developing Countries

Ayman Sadig1  and Abd-El-Kader Sahraoui2 1Ahfad University for Women                                   and SUST Khartoum Sudan

2LAAS-CNRS, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, U2J, Toulouse, France

 ABSTRACT

 Requirement elicitation is a very important step into developing any new application. This paper will examine the culture effect on requirement elicitation in developing countries.

 This is a unique research that will look at requirement elicitation process in 10 different parts of the world including Arab word, India, China, Africa and South America. The focus is how the culture affects (RE) and makes every place has its own practice of RE. The data were collect through surveys and direct interviews. The results show astonishing culture effect on RE.

 The conclusion is that culture effects deeply the technique gets chosen for requirement elicitation. If you are doing RE in Thailand, it will be very different from RE in Arab world. For example in Thailand respect for leader is critical and any questioning of manager methods will create a problem while in Arab world decision tree is favourite RE technique because visual are liked much more than documents.

 KEYWORDS

 Culture impact, requirement elicitation.

 For More Details:http://aircconline.com/ijsea/V8N1/8117ijsea05.pdf

 Volume Link: http://www.airccse.org/journal/ijsea/vol8.html

REFERENCES

 [1]       Lee, S.hyun. & Kim Mi Na, (2008) “This is my paper”, ABC Transactions              on ECE, Vol. 10, No. 5, pp120-122.

 [2]         Gizem, Aksahya & Ayese, Ozcan (2009) Coomunications & Networks,                Network Books, ABC Publishers.

 [3]                   Sadiq .M and Mohd .S (2009), Article in an International journal, “Elicitationand Prioritization of Software Requirements”. Internation Journal of RecentTrends in Engineering, Vol.2, No.3, pp. 138-142.

 [4]                   Bergey, John, et al. Why Reengineering Projects Fail. No. CMU/SEI-99-TR-010. CARNEGIE-MELLON UNIV PITTSBURGH PA SOFTWARE ENGINEERING INST, 1999.

 [5]                   Goguen, J. A., Linde, C. (1993): Techniques for Requirements Elicitation, International Symposium on Requirements Engineering, pp. 152-164, January 4-6, San Diego, CA.

 [6]                   Robertson, S., Robertson, J. (1999) Mastering the Requirements Process, Addison Wesley: Great Britain.

 [7]                   Iqbal, Tabbassum, and Mohammad Suaib. "Requirement Elicitation Technique:-A Review Paper." Int. J. Comput. Math. Sci 3.9 (2014).

 [8]                   HOFSTEDE G (1980) Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work- Related Values. Sage, Newbury Park, CA.

 [9]                   SCHEIN EH (1985) Organisational Culture and Leadership. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA.

 [10]              LYTLE AL, BRETT JM, BARSNESS ZI, TINSLEY CH and JANSSENS M (1999) A paradigm for confirmatory cross-cultural research in organizational behavior. Research in Organizational Behavior 17, 167–214, https:// lirias.kuleuven.be/handle/123456789/31199.

 [11]              Kluckhohn, K (1954) Culture and behavior. In G. Lindsey (ED.) handbook of social psychology

 [12]              TRIANDIS HC (1995) Individualism & Collectivism. Westview Press, Boulder, CO.

 [13]              ROKEACH M (1973) The Nature of Human Values. Free Press, New York.

 [14]              KARAHANNA E, EVARISTO JR and SRITE M (2005) Levels of culture and individual behavior: an integrative perspective. Journal of Global Information Management 13(2), 1–20

 [15]              Fernández, Daniel Méndez, and Stefan Wagner. "Naming the pain in requirements engineering: A design for a global family of surveys and first results from Germany." Information and Software Technology 57 (2015): 616-643.

 [16]              Davis, Gordon B. "Strategies for information requirements determination."IBM systems journal 21.1 (1982): 4-30.

 [17]              Rouibah, Kamel. "Social usage of instant messaging by individuals outside the workplace in Kuwait: A structural equation model." Information Technology & People 21.1 (2008): 34-68.

 [18]              Byrd, Terry Anthony, Kathy L. Cossick, and Robert W. Zmud. "A synthesis of research on requirements analysis and knowledge acquisition techniques."MIS quarterly (1992): 117-138.

 [19]              Arnott, David, Waraporn Jirachiefpattana, and Peter O'Donnell. "Executive information systems development in an emerging economy." Decision Support Systems 42.4 (2007): 2078-2084.

 [20]              Kontio, Jyrki, Laura Lehtola, and Johanna Bragge. "Using the focus group method in software engineering: obtaining practitioner and user experiences."Empirical Software Engineering, 2004. ISESE'04. Proceedings. 2004 International Symposium on. IEEE, 2004.

 [21]              Agarwal, Ritu, Atish P. Sinha, and Mohan Tanniru. "The role of prior experience and task characteristics in object-oriented modeling: an empirical study." International journal of human-computer studies 45.6 (1996): 639-667.

 [22]              Liu, Lin, et al. "Understanding chinese characteristics of requirements engineering." 2009 17th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference. IEEE, 2009.

 [23]              Rouibah, Kamel, and Sulaiman Al-Rafee. "Requirement engineering elicitation methods: A Kuwaiti empirical study about familiarity, usage and perceived value." Information management & computer security 17.3 (2009): 192-217.

 [24]              Liu, Lin, et al. "Understanding chinese characteristics of requirements engineering." 2009 17th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference. IEEE, 2009.

 [25]              Fernández, Daniel Méndez, and Stefan Wagner. "Naming the pain in requirements engineering: A design for a global family of surveys and first results from Germany." Information and Software Technology 57 (2015): 616-643.

 [26]              Winschiers-Theophilus, Heike, et al. "Determining requirements within an indigenous knowledge system of African rural communities." Proceedings of the 2010 Annual Research Conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists. ACM, 2010.

 [27]              Mursu, Anja, et al. "Information systems development in a developing country: Theoretical analysis of special requirements in Nigeria and  Africa."System Sciences, 2000. Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Hawaii International Conference on. IEEE, 2000.

 [28]              Anwar, Fares, and Rozilawati Razali. "A practical guide to requirements elicitation techniques selection-An empirical study." Middle-East Journal of Scientific Research 11.8 (2012): 1059-1067.

 [29]              HELLIWELL J, LAYARD R and SACHS J (2013) World happiness report 2013, United Nations.

 [30]              HOFSTEDE G andHOFSTEDE GJ (2005) Cultures and Organisations: Software of the Mind. McGraw-Hill, New York.

 [31]              Thanasankit, Theerasak, and Brian Corbitt. "Cultural context and its impact on requirements elicitation in Thailand." EJISDC: The Electronic Journal on Information Systems in Developing Countries 1 (2000): 2.

 [32]              Komin, S. (1990). Psychology of the Thai People: Values and Behavioral Patterns. Bangkok, Thailand: NIDA (National Institute of Development Administration).

 [33]              Khan¹, Shadab, Aruna B. Dulloo, and Meghna Verma. "Systematic review of requirement elicitation techniques." (2014).

 [34]              Sadig, Ayman. "Requirements Engineering Practice in Developing Countries: Elicitation and Traceability Processes." Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering Research and Practice (SERP). The Steering Committee of The World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Applied Computing (WorldComp), 2016.

 [35]       Wiegers, Karl, and Joy Beatty. Software requirements. Pearson                            Education, 2013

                                                                                            Citation Count – 02

          A User Story Quality Measurement Model for Reducing Agile 

                                   Software Development Risk

                                              Sen-Tarng Lai

 Department of Information Technology and Management, Shih Chien                                             University, Taipei, Taiwan

 ABSTRACT

 In Mobile communications age, the IT environment and IT technology update rapidly. The requirements change is the software project must face challenge. Able to overcome the impact of requirements change, software development risks can be effectively reduced. Agile software development uses the Iterative and Incremental Development (IID) process and focuses on the workable software and client communication. Agile software development is a very suitable development method for handling the requirements change in software development process. In agile development, user stories are the important documents for the client communication and criteria of acceptance test. However, the agile development doesn’t pay attention to the formal requirements analysis and artifacts tracability to cause the potential risks of software change management. In this paper, analyzing and collecting the critical quality factors of user stories, and proposes the User Story Quality Measurement (USQM) model. Applied USQM model, the requirements quality of agile development can be enhanced and risks of requirement changes can be reduced.

 KEYWORDS

 Agile development, user story, software project, quality measurement, USQM.

 For More Details : http://aircconline.com/ijsea/V8N2/8217ijsea05.pdf

 Volume Link : http://www.airccse.org/journal/ijsea/vol8.html

REFERENCES

 [1]                   S. A. Bohner and R. S. Arnold, 1996. Software Change Impact Analysis, IEEE Computer Society Press, CA, pp. 1-26.

 [2]                   S. A. Bohner, 2002. Software Change Impacts: An Evolving Perspective, Proc. of IEEE Intl Conf. on Software Maintenance, pp. 263-271.

 [3]                   B. W. Boehm, 1991. Software risk management: Principles and practices, IEEE Software, 8(1), 1991, pp. 32-41.

 [4]                   A. Cockburn, 2002. Agile Software Development, Addison-Wesley.

 [5]                   M. Cohn and D. Ford, 2003. Introducing an Agile Process to an Organization, IEEE Computer, vol. 36 no. 6 pp. 74-78, June 2003.

 [6]                   V.    Szalvay,    “An    Introduction   to    Agile    Software    Development,”    Danube Technologies Inc., 2004.

 [7]                   C. Larman and V. R. Basili, 2003. Iterative and Incremental Development: A Brief History, IEEE Computer, June 2003.

 [8]                   C. Larman, 2004. Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager's Guide, Boston: Addison Wesley.

 [9]                   S.    R.    Schach,    2010.    Object-Oriented    Software   Engineering,    McGraw-Hill Companies.

 [10]              J. L. Eveleens and C. Verhoef, 2010. The Rise and Fall of the Chaos Report Figures,” IEEE Software, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 30-36.

 [11]              The Standish group, 2009. “New Standish Group report shows more project failing and       less      successful                  projects,”  April                    23,                      2009.

(http://www.standishgroup.com/newsroom/chaos_2009.php)

 [12]              B. W. Boehm, 1989. “Tutorial: Software Risk Management,” IEEE CS Press, Los Alamitos, Calif.

 [13]              R. Fairley,1994. “Risk management for Software Projects,” IEEE Software, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 57-67.

 [14]              R. S. Pressman, 2010. Software Engineering: A Practitioner’s Approach, McGraw- Hill, New York, 2010.

 [15]              David S. Frankel, 2003. Model Driven Architecture: Applying MDA to Enterprise Computing, John Wiley & Sons.

 [16]              Mike Cohn, 2004. User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development, Addison- Wesley Professional; 1 edition.

 [17]              Ron Jeffries, 2001. “Essential XP: Card, Conversation, Confirmation,” Posted on: August 30, 2001. (http://xprogramming.com/index.php)

 [18]              Bill Wake, 2003. “INVEST in Good Stories, and SMART Tasks,” Posted on August 17, 2003, (http://xp123.com/articles/invest-in-good-stories-and-smart-tasks/)

 [19]              Bill Wake, 2012. “Independent Stories in the INVEST Model,” Posted on: February 8, 2012, (http://xp123.com/articles/independent-stories-in-the-invest-model/)

 [20]              T. J. McCabe, 1976. A Complexity Measure, IEEE Trans. On Software Eng., Vol. 2, No 4, pp.308-320.

 [21]              M. H. Halstead, 1977, Elements of Software Science, North-Holland, New York.

 [22]              Ivar Jacobson and Pan-Wei Ng, 2004, Aspect-Oriented Software Development with Use Cases, Addison-Wesley Boston, 2004.

 [23]              Ralph Young, 2001, Effective Requirements Practices, Addison-Wesley, Boston, 2001.

 [24]              S. D. Conte, H. E. Dunsmore and V. Y. Shen, 1986. Software Engineering Metrics and Models, Benjamin/Cummings, Menlo Park.

 [25]              N. E. Fenton, 1991, Software Metrics - A Rigorous Approach, Chapman & Hall.

 [26]              D. Galin, 2004. Software Quality Assurance – From theory to implementation, Pearson Education Limited, England.

                                                                                          Citation Count – 19

                    A Survey of Verification Tools Based on Hoare Logic

                                                   Nahid A. Ali

 College of Computer Science & Information Technology, Sudan University                       of Science & Technology, Khartoum, Sudan

 ABSTRACT

The quality and the correctness of software has a great concern in computer systems. Formal verification tools can used to provide a confidence that a software design is free from certain errors. This paper surveys tools that accomplish automatic software verification to detect programming errors or prove their absence. The two tools considered are tools that based on Hoare logic namely, the KeY-Hoare and Hoare Advanced Homework Assistant (HAHA). A detailed example on these tools is provided, underlining their differences when applied to practical problems.

 KEYWORDS

 Hoare Logic, Software Verification, Formal Verification Tools, KeY-Hoare Tool, Hoare Advanced Homework Assistant Tool

 For More Details : http://aircconline.com/ijsea/V8N2/8217ijsea06.pdf

 Volume Link : http://www.airccse.org/journal/ijsea/vol8.html

REFERENCES

 [1]  D'silva, Vijay and Kroening, Daniel and Weissenbacher, Georg, "A survey of automated techniques for formal software verification." IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, vol. 27(7), pp.1165- 1178, 2008.

 [2]  C. A. R. Hoare, "An Axiomatic Basis for Computer Programming," Communications of the ACM, vol. 12, no. 10, pp. 576 - 580, 1969.

 [3]  R. W. Floyd, "Assigning Meanings to Programs," Mathematical Aspects of Computer Science, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 19-32, 1967.

 [4]  Mili , Ali ; Tchier, Fairouz ;, Software Testing: Concepts and Operations, Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2015.

 [5]  "Isabelle," [Online]. Available: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/hvg/Isabelle/.

 [6]  S. Owre, J. Rushby and N. Shankar, "PVS: A Prototype Verification System," in 11th International Conference on Automated Deduction (CADE), vol. 607, Springer- Verlag, 1992, pp. 748-752.

 [7]            "Symbolic              Model             Verifier,"              [Online].             Available: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~modelcheck/smv.html.

 [8]  J. Winkler, "The Frege Program Prover FPP," in Internationales Wissenschaftliches Kolloquium, vol. 42, 1997, pp. 116-121.

 [9]  D. Crocker, "Perfect Developer: A Tool for Object-Oriented Formal Specification and Refinement," Tools Exhibition Notes at Formal Methods Europe, 2003.

 [10]  H¨ahnle , Reiner; Bubel, Richard, "A Hoare-Style Calculus with Explicit State Updates," Formal Methods in Computer Science Education(FORMED), pp. 49-60, 2008.

 [11]    "Hoare Advanced Homework Assistant (HAHA)," [Online]. Available: http://haha.mimuw.edu.pl/.

 [12]  T. Sznuk and A. Schubert, "Tool Support for Teaching Hoare Logic," in Software Engineering and Formal Methods, Springer, 2014, pp. 332-346.

 [13]        "Key-        Hoare        System,"        [Online].        Available:        http://www.key- project.org/download/hoare/.

 [14]   L. de Moura and N. Bjørner, "Z3: An efficient SMT solver," in Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, Springer, 2008, pp. 337- 340.

 [15]  C. Barrett, C. L. Conway, M. Deters, L. Hadarean, D. Jovanovi´c, T. King, A. Reynolds and C. Tinelli, "CVC4," in Computer Aided Verification, Springer, 2011, pp. 171-177.

 [16]  Feinerer, Ingo and Salzer, Gernot , A comparison of tools for teaching formal software verification, Formal Aspects of Computing, vol. 21(3), pp. 293–301, 2009.

                                                                                          Citation Count – 18

 The Impact of Software Complexity on Cost and Quality - A Comparative                 Analysis Between Open Source and Proprietary Software

                            Anh Nguyen-Duc IDI, NTNU, Norway

 ABSTRACT

 Early prediction of software quality is important for better software planning and controlling. In early development phases, design complexity metrics are considered as useful indicators of software testing effort and some quality attributes. Although many studies investigate the relationship between design complexity and cost and quality, it is unclear what we have learned beyond the scope of individual studies. This paper presented a systematic review on the influence of software complexity metrics on quality attributes. We aggregated Spearman correlation coefficients from 59 different data sets from 57 primary studies by a tailored meta-analysis approach. We found that fault proneness and maintainability are most frequently investigated attributes. Chidamber & Kemerer metric suite is most frequently used but not all of them are good quality attribute indicators. Moreover, the impact of these metrics is not different in proprietary and open source projects. The result provides some implications for building quality model across project type.

 KEYWORDS

 Design Complexity, Software Engineering, Open source software, Systematic literature review

 For More Details : http://aircconline.com/ijsea/V8N2/8217ijsea02.pdf

 Volume Link : http://www.airccse.org/journal/ijsea/vol8.html

REFERENCES

 [1]                   T. DeMarco, “A metric of estimation quality,” Proceedings of the May 16-19, 1983, national computer conference, Anaheim, California: ACM, 1983, pp. 753-756.

 [2]                   R.B. Grady, Practical Software Metrics for Project Management and Process Improvement, Hewlett-Packard Professional Books, Prentice Hall, New Jersey,1992.

 [3]                   C. Catal and B. Diri, “A systematic review of software fault prediction studies,” Expert Systems with Applications, vol. 36, 2009, pp. 7346-7354.

 [4]                   O. Gomez, H. Oktaba, M. Piattini, and F. Garci¬a, “A systematic review measurement in software engineering: State-of-the-art in measures”,  1st International Conference on Software and Data Technologies (ICSOFT), 2006, pp. 224-231.

 [5]                   E. Arisholm, L. Briand, and E. Johannessen, “A systematic and comprehensive investigation of methods to build and evaluate fault prediction models,” Journal of Systems and Software, vol. 83, 2010, pp. 2-17.

 [6]                   C. Bellini, R. Pereira, and J. Becker, “Measurement in software engineering: From the roadmap to the crossroads,” International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, vol. 18, 2008, pp. 37-64.

 [7]                   IEEE, IEEE Standard Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology, report IEEE Std 610.12- 1990, IEEE, 1990.

 [8]                   L. Briand, J. Wuest, S. Ikonomovski, and H. Lounis, “A Comprehensive Investigation of Quality Factors in Object-Oriented Designs: An Industrial Case Study” Technical Report ISERN-98-29, International conference on Software Engineering, 1998.

 [9]                   K. El Emam, W. Melo, and J. Machado, “The prediction of faulty classes using object-oriented design metrics,” Journal of Systems and Software, vol. 56, 2001, pp. 63-75.

 [10]              B. A. Kitchenham, “Guidelines for performing Systematic Literature Reviews in Software Engineering”, Ver 2.3, Keele University, EBSE Technical Report, 2007

 [11]              L.M. Pickard, B.A. Kitchenham, and P.W. Jones, “Combining empirical results in software engineering,” Journal on Information and Software Technology, vol. 40, Dec. 1998, pp 811-821

 [12]              M. Ciolkowski, “Aggregation of Empirical Evidence,” Empirical Software Engineering Issues. Critical Assessment and Future Directions, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, 2007, p. 20

 [13]              LV. Hedges, I. Olkin, Statistical Methods for Meta-analysis. Orlando, FL: Academic Press, 1995.

 [14]              H. Cooper, L. Hedges, “Research synthesis as a scientific enterprise”, Handbook of research synthesis (pp. 3-14). New York: Russell Sage, 1994.

 [15]              J. E. Hannay, T. Dybå, E. Arisholm, D. I. K. Sjøberg, “The Effectiveness of Pair- Programming: A Meta-Analysis”, Journal on Information and Software Technology 55(7):1110-1122, 2009.

 [16]              M. Ciolkowski, “What do we know about perspective-based reading? An approach for quantitative aggregation in software engineering”, 3rd IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, 2009, pp. 133- 144.

 [17]              ISO, “International standard ISO/IEC 9126. Information technology: Software product evaluation: Quality characteristics and guidelines for their use.” 1991

 [18]              S.R. Chidamber and C.F. Kemerer, “Towards a metrics suite for object oriented design,” SIGPLAN Not., vol. 26, 1991, pp. 197-211.

 [19]              J. M. Scotto, W. Pedrycz, B. Russo, M. Stefanovic, and G. Succi, “Identification of defect-prone classes in telecommunication software systems using design metrics,” Information Sciences, vol. 176, 2006, pp. 3711-3734.

 [20]              R. Subramanyam and M. Krishnan, “Empirical analysis of CK metrics for object- oriented design complexity: Implications for software defects,” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. 29, 2003, pp. 297-310.

 [21]              Y. Zhou and H. Leung, “Empirical analysis of object-oriented design metrics for predicting high and low severity faults,” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. 32, 2006, pp. 771-789.

 [22]              L. Briand, W. Melo, and J. Wurst, “Assessing the applicability of fault-proneness models across object-oriented software projects,” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. 28, 2002, pp. 706-720.

 [23]              G. Succi, W. Pedrycz, M. Stefanovic, and J. Miller, “Practical assessment of the models for identification of defect-prone classes in object-oriented commercial systems using design metrics,” Journal of Systems and Software, vol. 65, 2003, pp. 1-12.

 [24]              T. Saracevic, “Evaluation of evaluation in information retrieval”, 18th annual international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval, Seattle, Washington, United States, 1995, pp. 138-146.

 [25]              Paulson, J.W.; Succi, G.; Eberlein, A., "An empirical study of open-source and closed-source software products”, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol.30, no.4, pp. 246- 256, April 2004.

 [26]              A. Bachmann and A. Bernstein, “Software process data quality and characteristics: a historical view on open and closed source projects,” Joint international and annual ERCIM workshops on Principles of software evolution (IWPSE) and software evolution (Evol) workshops, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: ACM, 2009, pp. 119- 128.

[27]              J. Cohen, Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences (2nd Edition), 2nd ed. Routledge Academic, January 1988.

[28]              J. Devore, Probability and Statistics for Engineering and the Sciences, 7th Ed. Thomson Brooks, 2008.

 [29]              N. D. Anh, “The impact of software design complexity on cost and quality”, Master thesis, [Available ONLINE] http://www.bth.se/fou/cuppsats.nsf/$$Search

     International Journal of Software Engineering & Applications (IJSEA)

                  ISSN : 0975 - 9018 ( Online ); 0976-2221 ( Print )

                    http://www.airccse.org/journal/ijsea/ijsea.html

[atlanticcanada]

Nova Scotia Election: Hants East candidates

This will be a riding to watch. Incumbent MLA Margaret Miller won the riding in 2013, defeating longtime NDP MLA John MacDonell as part of the Liberal wave. from : Halifax http://ift.tt/2qm8max

[judefan835-blog]

make out with a mounted wolf head

Upon termination, New Jersey employees must receive all owed wages by the next scheduled payday. Employers do not have to pay severance based on, for example, years of service or Cheap Jerseys free shipping unused vacation time. State law considers severance pay a fringe benefit and thus leaves it to the employer's discretion.

Very Compact. A must where spearguns aren't allowed. Travel polespears feature precision machined unions for seamless fit and feel and allow for infinite extendability. The three leaders have already received a running start. In April, the World Bank announced a cheap nfl jerseys $650 million support programme. Before then, the bank had committed nearly $1 billion for response and recovery efforts and had also announced a $2.17 billion in debt relief, which will save the three countries about $75 million annually.

The logic behind not telling employees of the store pending demise is that it would lead to employees leaving wholesale jerseys from china right away, causing the store to close even sooner than planned. It might also cause business in that lame duck period to dry up; some folks might want to go one more time, but national chains might want to keep up appearances before pulling www.cheapjerseysofchina.com the plug. Also, restaurants don have going out of business sales, since they wholesale jerseys from china only have a small amount of perishable inventory that doesn lend itself to selling at 50% off..

Seriously? No one, not one Urban Outfitters employee from finding/making this sweatshirt allllll the way to posting it on the site stopped and said: "Hey, you know what? This red paint looks like blood. And Kent State had a shooting back in 1970 that left many people hurt or dead. Maybe this will be seen as tasteless.".

For the Nov. 25 match up, both the KEC and Miles Macdonell squads will be raising pledges beforehand and charging a nominal $2 admission fee. Fritzsche and Klassen noted that, along with the on ice rivalry, there is a friendly competition to see which wholesale jerseys school can raise the most money for prostate cancer research..

6, 2003). He was born on June 6, 1945 to the late Arthur and Cassie Jones of Cox, GA. Troy was a retired Fire Fighter for the City of Hartford and a member of the Hartford Phoenix Society. They feel threatened and afraid of socializing, as they fear being ridiculed. This stage lasts for 2 3 years, before it gets more severe, if left uncared for. They need help, in order to do simple tasks, such as dressing up, cooking, and looking after themselves.

I thought writing would then go to another level, where someone sits and writes a beautiful story of all that happened during the day. It went exactly the other way. It went into a situation where editors were asking reporters only to go to the press conference and get the www.cheapjerseys-football.com quotes back and there is nothing more boring in Indian cricket than quotes from a press conference.

Curt starts turning into the dumb jock character and Jules starts dancing seductively in front of them. The group starts playing truth or dare and Marty dares Jules to make out with a mounted wolf head. She does so, showing that her character has truly become the dumb blonde character.

Italy won back to back World Cup titles in 1934 and 1938. Juventus of Turin has wholesale nfl jerseys from china won the league title a record 27 times since the league inception in the 1890s, World Football reports. International of Milan, better known as Inter, has won the Serie A title 18 times, including five consecutive times from 2006 to 2010.

The game is also physically tough; you have to Cheap Jerseys free shipping run jump, crawl and sit, depending on what type of game you're playing. When I first started I was playing speed ball, took a run off the starting box and did a dive into a bunker. To this day I still have a chunk missing out of my thumb from where it slammed into the ground. wholesale jerseys

These days, the environmentally wholesale nfl jerseys conscious are excited about energy efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs and rightfully so. Compact fluorescents that have earned the US government's energy star use, on average, 75% less energy than regular incandescent light bulbs, and they last up to ten times longer. What's more, each light bulb should wholesale jerseys save consumers about $30 over the life of wholesale nfl jerseys from china the light bulb making their price, which in general is much higher than an old fashioned incandescent bulb, pay off in the end..

Who are the Vikings fans who are making the trek to London? They students and couples, season ticket holders and expats living in Europe. They college students studying abroad and a native of the UK who sports his purple proudly. Two fans live in Iowa and have to to every home game.

O'Gara with the kick but it sounds a little fat and the ball drifts right of the posts.17 mins: PENALTY Scotland 6 7 Ireland Another penalty to Scotland. Heaslip grabs John Barclay's shirt over the top of a ruck when Scotland again get into Ireland territory. Here's Paterson from around the 40m mark cheap nfl jerseys and he nails it.

"The Brooklyn Nets logos are another step we've made to usher the organization into a new era," Jay wholesale nfl jerseys from china Z said in a statement. "The boldness of the designs demonstrates the confidence we have in our new direction. Along with our www.cheapjerseyssalesupply.com move to Brooklyn and a state of the art arena, the new colors and logos are examples of our commitment to update and refine all aspects of the team."NBA Fans.

[swipestream]

Sensor Sweep: Merritt, Howard, Merle Constiner, D&D, Warhammer

Book Collecting (DMR Books): As important to me as Abraham Grace Merritt (I prefer his byline – A. Merritt) is, it constantly surprises me that there are still many today who have never heard of him.  Actually – let me walk that back a bit.  It used to surprise me.  I’ve seen that blank look so many times by now that the follow-up comment comes all-too automatically as I try to place Merritt in some context the rest of the world understands: “He was a famous pulp author who was admired by Lovecraft and Howard…”

And then it kind of trails off when some reply: “Howard?”  “Lovecraft?”  “Pulp what?”

What’s a pulp-story-loving guy to do?

  Authors (DMR Books): The merits of Robert E. Howard’s fiction have long been overshadowed by public perception of him as a one-dimensional writer of simple-minded adventure and fantasy stories. This is particularly the case when recognition of him is conflated with the image of “Conan the Barbarian”: in some minds, the two are virtually indistinguishable. (I recall reading a reference to Howard some time ago in which he was referred to as “a Texas bodybuilder,” which is true as far as it goes but is on par with identifying the Pope as a bachelor—also literally true, as far as it goes, but not quite the whole story.)

  History (Men of the West): The ancient Chapel of Cilliechriost, in the parish of Urray, in Ross-shire, was the scene of one of the bloodiest acts of ferocity and revenge that history has recorded. The original building has long since disappeared, but the lonely and beautifully situated burying-ground is still in use. The tragedy originated in the many quarrels which arose between two great chiefs of the North Highlands—Mackenzie of Kintail and Macdonell of Glengarry. As usual, the dispute was regarding land, but it is difficult to arrive at the degree of blame to which each party was entitled; enough that there was bad blood between these two paladins of the North. Of course, the quarrel was not allowed to go to sleep for lack of action on the part of their friends and clansmen.

  RPG (Black Gate): I just purchased a copy of the Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, “a rules-light game system modelled on the classic RPG rules of the early 1980’s”, which is code for an Old School Revival (OSR) game based on the old D&D mechanics that Wizards of the Coast released under open license some twenty(!) or so years ago.

The thing about OSR games is you never quite know whether they are reviving the experience or just the rules of yesteryear’s roleplaying. The two are different because the world has changed.

  Authors (Pulp Flakes): The definition of an “adult Western,” Steve Allen says, is that 20 years ago a cowboy was in love with his horse; today, he’s still in love with his horse— but he worries about it.

Merle Constiner, Butler County author who lives in a 130-year-old house in Monroe finds that adding some Western lore to his writing activities brings variety into his profession. Constiner, who in the past has written historical short stories and novelettes for magazines, has recently finished his second Western novel.

    Gaming (Dreams of Mythic Fantasy): Echoes From Fomalhaut #04: Revenge of the Frogs by Gabor Lux. Published by First Hungarian d20 Society. Available from the Publisher in Print/PDF combo for $8.00. (PDF forthcoming and will be available on DTRPG.) 40 pages.

A 40-page fanzine featuring adventures and GM-friendly campaign materials for Advanced old-school RPG rules, with cover art by Matthew Ray, and illustrations by Denis McCarthy, Stefan Poag, and Andrew Walter. This issue contains… 

  Gaming (Old Skulling): I love the Adventure Title Generator in the Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells – Addendum book and the one in Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells. I think they are so inspiring. When I generate a name, they always come with visual imagens in my mind and immediate plots that could transpire with a story with that name.

But a friend of mine has come up with a cool way to start a game using the Adventure Title Generator and make the players do all the work. His name is Filipe “Pep” and he calls this the “I Know What You Did Last Adventure” method!

  Gaming (Monsters and Manuals): Until last year, I did not know there was such a thing as “Age of Sigmar”. Currently, my knowledge of the setting extends to its wikipedia page. I ought to hate it. I do, happily, hate aspects of it. The names are horrendous – not just the druadin=dwarves, orruks=orcs nonsense, but the terrible unimaginative pseudo-exotic rubbish monolingual English speakers come up with when they try to think of a place name that sounds fantastical (“Ghur”, “Ghyran”, “Ulgu” – give me “Bretonnia” any day). The “Stormcast Eternals” concept is dreadful (you can just imagine the conversation in the board room: “People love Space Marines. We’ve got to find some way to get Space Marines into Warhammer”).

  Fiction (Jeffro’s Space Gaming Blog): Zaklog the Great, John C. Wright, and Nate discuss the Robert E. Howard poem “Solomon Kane’s Homecoming” in this recent podcast.

My take on this…? The guy that acts like a T-800 terminator cast in multiple year(s) long Taken scenarios is going to continue soldiering away on the vengeance front until he drops.

More importantly, if you’re talking Solomon Kane, then you’ve got to have Howard’s pulp fantasy Africa. Africa, the Dark Continent, land of shadows and horror, of bewitchment and sorcery, into which all evil things had been banished before the growing light of the western world! (One more reason why the Solomon Kane movie isn’t a Solomon Kane movie, y’all!).

  Amateur Press (Don Herron): First Brian alerts me to the fact that REHupa mailings from the estate of Carl Osman are on the block at eBay (some with deadlines today).

Now he sends at least tentative proof that Carl is in fact a goner, with an online obit.

When Carl was in REHupa he titled his zine The Burkburnett Papers — at the time he was living in 926 Cropper in the burg of Burkburnett, Texas. Since Carl Osman isn’t that uncommon a name, Leno needed to reconcile the info that Obit Carl was a resident of Baraboo, Wisconsin at the time of his death. He does so in classic deductive style:

  Authors (Charles Gramlich): Black Gate Interview, with Seth Lindberg.

As far as publications and other literary endeavors go, January 2019 has been the most successful month that I’ve had in a long time. Quite a lot of things have appeared. I figured it was worth a blog post. Helps me keep everything straight myself, so here they are—in no particular order.

Interview. I did an article a couple of years ago for Weird Fiction Review #7 on the “beautiful and repellent” in the work of such Weird Tales authors as Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore, and Clark Ashton Smith. Seth Lindberg, a fine writer himself, did an interview with me about that subject and it went up early today over on Black Gate. We get into some interesting topics so you might enjoy checking it out.

  Fiction (Too Much Horror Fiction): From a mind deranged springs this ludicrous, bat-shit bonkers sleaze-horror novel. This is the book that’s either the zenith or the nadir of paperback pulp-horror fiction. In fact I feel guilty selling it as either because as of today, this book is impossible to obtain for less than $300, and it is not worth that no matter where it stands on the horror scale. Eat Them Alive—its title alone appealing to our basest fears, crude and simplistic as a tabloid headline, humanity reduced to food—is truly garbage. There’s no percentage in arguing otherwise. And yet…

  RPG (Playing at the World): Back when D&D turned 40 in 2014, I put up a post about the date I favored for celebrating its anniversary: the last Sunday in January. Today, January 27, is the last Sunday in January 2019, and the day that I will be tipping a glass to Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, and the many others who made D&D possible 45 years ago. Above is an excerpt from a letter that Gygax sent to Arneson — as it reads, just days away from the printing.

  Gaming (Pulsipher Game Design): This is from a quora question: “James Simonse wants an answer to: What are some examples of badly balanced board games?” Rather than list some unbalanced games, I want to talk about unbalance itself. It isn’t always clear whether a game is unbalanced. Perhaps a group of players haven’t figured it out, and as a result one side or another enjoys a big advantage or disadvantage. Or “the jury may still be out”. Take Scythe as an example. It’s a popular game, though released only recently.

Sensor Sweep: Merritt, Howard, Merle Constiner, D&D, Warhammer published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames