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American Freeform: A Transatlantic Dialog
Players enact the city of Metropolis during the Intercon 2011 run of my eponymous American freeform game.
Quiet waves of change have rippled through the role-playing community. On Monday of this week, Lizzie Stark posted an introduction to American freeform on her blog, an entry that codified design practices we've been using here in the States since at least the middle of the 00s. As one of the numerous designers whose work she listed, I am both honored and humbled by having my work mentioned in a public forum. My own blog post here is intended to continue that discussion, leading into my thoughts on the development and current state of what we'd like to call "American freeform."
American freeform games are hybrid tabletop/larp creations that share the following set-up: 3-12 players in a 4-hour-or-less game act out scenes related to a single, compelling situation, having transparent access to much or all of the plotline information and altering the flow of the game using meta-techniques. The game format prioritizes emergent properties of a given scenario over someone knowing more-or-less what's going to happen in advance. In addition to the games that Lizzie mentioned, one might add Marc Majcher's game poems or Luke Crane's Inheritance. There are probably plenty of such games floating out there in the North American scene, but rarely do they get collected together and examined seriously in terms of their commonalities.
What do I already have invested in this hybrid format? Those who know me may have heard me talk of a book-length collection of freeform games that specifically treat topoi of German cinema. Films that have already received the freeform treatment from me include: Metropolis (1927), Run Lola Run (1998), the cinema of Uwe Boll and Silent Star (1960) / In the Dust of the Stars (1976), with future games planned for Marriage in the Shadows (1947), Three Good Friends (1931), Hard to be a God (1990), and 3 (2011). Such mature, odd games were only conceivable as of late, due to inspiration from the unique Nordic larp forms that have evolved over the past fifteen years through venues such as Fastaval and Knutepunkt, carried across the Atlantic by figures such as Tobias Wrigstad and Emily Care Boss. In addition, I have co-developed several "parlor sandbox" games BloodNet and The City of Fire & Coin, which emphasize player agency (working in concert with others) and gamemasters' improvisation abilities. These freeforms I have developed owe much to indie tabletop games, such that some portions of them involve not-insignificant levels of pencil and paper action. But one might also say that American freeform elements in my design emerged from a critical eye toward current practices in live-action role-playing in the United States.
My expectations for freeform games have significantly changed over the years. In effect, I have subconsciously desired the mechanical/narrative fluidity from indie tabletop RPGs such as Fiasco, 1,001 Nights, or Shock in the larps that I joined. But compared with either the indie tabletop RPG experience or the Danish freeform experience, most American larps weren't really delivering the goods. (Negativity alert: if you want to dodge my rant, skip to the end of the paragraph) Instead what I typically got for my long hours assembling my costume and "getting into character" were these awkward intrigue parties where players were sizing up each other to do rock-paper-scissors or play some card from their game-specific deck of fun. In such larps, the gamemasters were the Great Concealers of Plot, such that it was hard for me to get cues as to how to behave or what direction to push other players. What I really wanted were genre (i.e., ship crew, fantasy, steampunk) larps, comedic larps and serious/dramatic larps that gave the players the tools they needed to make the most out of the experience, rather than larps that had you read a 10-page backstory for a character who will then flounder around in an unpleasant social void for a Saturday night. By contrast, the Danish freeform larps I had played were all about playing your character to the hilt in a tightly constrained scenario, but with few rules that genuinely propelled the action along. American freeform, simply put, satisfies my demands as both a designer and consumer of larp-y games.
The American freeform community no longer wishes to be treated as the exception, but to be taken seriously. In my years as a writer for the Danish convention Fastaval, I received feedback that pointed out how much I was doing something relatively outside of the bounds of their expectation. See, for example, this Danish evaluation of The Posthuman's Progress:
The game is a daring adaption that insists on a radical decomposition of the traditional gamemaster and as a result is highly collaborative. The game design is somewhat influenced by North American gaming culture – using an analytical approach to explicate the necessary game-elements – and somewhat by a Scandinavian approach to game design – insisting on the possibility for the participants to intuitively find common ground through play.
What I could have used here was a primer on the American freeform tradition that would let the judges know how to see my work. What Lizzie has done is given voice to our in-between-ness, so that we will in the future receive evaluations that accept what we're doing as part of a certain culture, rather than as some continuously rolling role-playing "experiment."
American freeform is European-style freeform with American-style indie game mechanics. The word "American" is there to orient ourselves toward the international freeform scene, rather than colonize/exclude certain scenes that are within or outside our borders. The word "freeform" is there to say that these games are hybrids between tabletop and larp, such that we steal from both formats with equal aplomb. We want narratively rich games that let us rise up from the table and use our bodies to communicate things our voices and paper cannot. We want to welcome gamers of all backgrounds and identities to explore themselves and their emotions in a safe and supportive space. At the same time, we do not want to uncritically import the baggage of older larp traditions into our format, with their emphasis on player scheming and gamemaster-centric plotlines, though we do acknowledge our fundamental debt to these traditions. At the core of our game design lies the active emotional experience of the player, and the mechanics we design place the player experience at the very center of the game.
We have seen our fair share of criticism. There have been some long-term disputes in the online RPG community about what freeform is and how we should employ the term. Naturally, these debates were primarily about according proper credit to certain individuals for their artistic contributions and about the annoying properties of labels like "American freeform" or labels in general. There has also been a reactionary strain in discussions among larpers that this format has existed for a long time, and that they have already been generating games like this for decades. To these points, I would like to say that American freeform constitutes an inclusive community that neither stops at the borders of America nor seeks to co-opt other play cultures. Lizzie simply put words together to describe what characteristics a certain set of games share. Nevertheless, American freeform is in some respects definitely a set of a few individuals, mostly located in the American Northeast, and they appear from the outside to have a kind of hipster/scenester aesthetic. Do such attributes make the movement a worthy subject of attack? I don't think so. I would like to remind the movement's critics of the significant presence of women among our ranks. The typical American freeform creator is female, which makes me (perhaps unfairly) suspect patriarchal impulses behind some of the "controversy" we've experienced. There is a mass of gamers that would like to control what we create and play, and its designs are conservative and status quo. American freeform attempts to push beyond the status quo without sacrificing the player on the altar of our creation. Finally, the supposed monopoly on innovation that older larp communities presumably possess has not appreciably shifted the American larp culture into the space that American freeform games now occupy. The average U.S. larp still employs drawn-out combat mechanics, has no mechanical exploration of human intimacy, uses player/GM secrets as the primary narrative engine, and holds task resolution to be the focus of its rules. Little experimental larps here and there do not. a movement. make. What I'd really appreciate is if our critics were to actually play at least one of the American freeform games in question, rather than dismiss a whole format out of hand because they don't "play that kind of game." Trolls and jerks follow the road of dismissal; constructive critics do not.
Where are we headed? Well, looking at Lizzie's list, American freeform currently appears to have its hands full adapting indie tabletop games to semi-live play. We're concerned not only with expanding the scope of genre larps, but also with making space for larps to express the unconventional. Nevertheless, as awareness of the meta-techniques and philosophy of the American freeform movement spreads, we imagine we'll see effects in not only established U.S. larps like One World By Night or Dystopia Rising but also across the Atlantic in Europe, where we now will be seen as coming from a distinct tradition. The point of the movement has always been to design and play more games, and not to waste time navel-gazing about what our collective goal might be. But I do fantasize of the day when I can walk into any larp in the States and see our holistic design ideals at work. Maybe that's what American freeform is about for me.
So don't be shy – play one of the games on Lizzie's list, and let us know what you think!
Filed in 2013, Game Studies, Larp, Role-Playing Games ·Tags: 1001 Nights, 2000s, 3, America, American freeform, backstory, Bloodnet, City of Fire & Coin, Denmark, Design, Dystopia Rising, Emily Care Boss, Fastaval, Fiasco, Game Poems, gamemaster, Great Concealers of Plot, Hard to Be a God, hybrid, In the Dust of the Stars, Inheritance, Intercon, LARP, Lizzie Stark, Luke Crane, Marc Majcher, Marriage in the Shadows, meta-techniques, Metropolis, One World By Night, Role-Playing Games, RPG, Run Lola Run, Shock, Silent Star, tabletop, Three Good Friends, Tobias Wrigstad, transparency, United States of America, USA, Uwe Boll, women
Immersive Gameplay – Interview with Jussi Holopainen
In honor of the release of Bill White's and my co-edited volume with McFarland, Immersive Gameplay: Essays on Role-Playing and Participatory Media, I am conducting interviews with some of my talented and erudite contributors.
The fifth interview is with game scholar Jussi Holopainen. In the volume, he co-authored "First Person Audience and the Art of Painful Role-Playing" with Markus Montola. The article looks at experiences playing the controversial larp GR (2008) in terms of the surprising egalitarianism of shared psychological stress. They find that role-playing games specifically designed to elicit negative emotional experiences are actually considered rewarding by their participants.
Here are my follow-up questions:
Evan Torner – Last decade, you and Staffan Björk released a book called Patterns in Game Design. Could you tell us a little more about your purpose with the book and what you saw as its successes and failures?
Jussi Holopainen – I had been collaborating with Staffan since the end of 90s on experimental game design projects, especially based on ubiquitous and wearable computing principles. As we were doing the design work, we consciously tried to explore which game design suited the technologies the best. In other words, we were doing technology analysis from a game design point of view. While doing this work, we were getting frustrated about the lack of proper conceptual frameworks for game design and decided to develop our own. This framework development eventually resulted in the "game design patterns" approach. So we initially wanted to build a tool for ourselves, but then realized that the patterns approach would, if published, benefit both the game development and game studies fields.
The patterns material has mainly been used as a tool for analysis in a number of game research projects, whereas the adoption in the game industry has been limited. I guess that the patterns are more useful in analysis than in the day-to-day design work itself – although, of course, analysis is always a part of game design work process. I have not been that active in game design patterns work for some years now, as my interests have shifted somewhat, but Staffan has continued the work. Staffan is also the main force behind http://gdp2.tii.se/, a wiki-site dedicated to refining and expanding the patterns collection.
To sum it up: the main success is that the patterns approach is useful for analysis of game design, but that using it as an actual tool for game design itself has been a bit problematic.
ET – If you were going to re-write Patterns of Game Design based on the patterns you've found up until 2012, what would you add and/or change?
JH – It is not about the new or old patterns as such, but I would like to have a different overall structure to them. At the moment, we have patterns for goal structures, actions etc. but not a real coherent hierarchy or structure. Something like having a hierarchy akin to MDA (Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics) and basing at least some of the aesthetics layer patterns in existing frameworks for human emotion and understanding (e.g., Ortony, Clore, Collins: The Cognitive Structure of Emotions and Lakoff-Johnson's work on metaphor would be suitable candidates). Actually, that started to sound like a project. I have to talk to Staffan. We will keep you posted on the upcoming revised game design patterns book!
ET – What books should prospective game designers and/or game studies scholars be reading in order to best prepare themselves for the field?
JH – Patterns in Game Design, obviously! Well, there are also some books around which better prepare for the game design or game studies work in a more comprehensive manner. Salen & Zimmerman's Rules of Play and the follow-up anthology Game Design Reader are both extremely valuable sources of information for both game design and game studies. For more practical game design work, I would recommend Tracy Fullerton's Game Design Workshop and Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design. Ernest Adams and Joris Dorman's Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design is also a valuable contribution to the field of game design. Perhaps a bit less well-known but very comprehensive and enjoyable book about game design is Aki Järvinen's doctoral dissertation "Games without Frontiers." It is availble for download at http://acta.uta.fi/english/teos.php?id=11046 and is in my opinion one of the best pieces of work on game design research ever.
ET – What are some of the main issues in field research regarding larp?
JH – Perhaps the best introduction to these issues is the paper Jaakko Stenros, Annika Waern & Markus Montola (2012): "Studying the Elusive Experience in Pervasive Games." Even though they are discussing mainly pervasive games, many – if not all – of the issues are relevant to larp research as well. The ephemeral nature of larps is to blame and especially the first-person audience: that each of the players in a larp will have their own distinctive experience which can be drastically different from the other players' experiences. This makes it really difficult for the researchers to get a comprehensive view about the player experience of any given larp. I am currently interested in using methods such as psychophysiological measurements and eye-tracking in combination with the usual interviews and video analysis for investigating the players' experiences in larps. They might turn out to be too invasive and burdensome for useful research and also extremely difficult to generalize, but I would like to at least try them out.
ET – How might psycho-physiological or eye tracking measurements be conceivably woven into a larp plot somehow, combining research experiment with the game fiction?
JH – It is conceivable, but then you have to be really, really careful about the research design. For example, if you are interested in how people allocate their attention (i.e., where their gaze is focused) while attending a larp and the game mechanics using gaze-tracking favor certain focus areas, the results are going to be messed up. I would rather see two different set-ups: First, where the instrumentation as biofeedback is used conspicuously as part of the game mechanics. Second, where the instrumentation is as unintrusive as possible and they are not part of the game mechanics in order to get as reliable data as possible about how people really react and experience events in a larp.
ET – Do you think that larp will ever be "normalized" as a medium like theater, television or film? Why or why not?
JH – I doubt that larps will ever be as culturally pervasive as film or even theater. The main reason, I guess, is that larps tend to be cognitively, socially and affectionally (sometimes even physically) very demanding and many – if not most – people find very demanding entertainment (and art) out of their league. And if you make a larp less-demanding enough, it tends not to be about live role-playing anymore, but some kind of low participation theater. So somewhat paradoxically, a demanding larp will not get to be mainstream and a non-demanding larp is not a larp anymore!
ET – What is the factor that, in your opinion, is most decisive in getting individuals to committing to larp as a medium? Is it their social group? Their talents? The appeal of an individual larp?
JH – Sheesh, I was expecting easy questions! I do not think there is a common decisive factor relevant for all kinds of larps. It is more about the player's personality and expectations about the larp, including peer commenting, available information about the larp itself, organizers' previous larps, who is going to attend the larp and so on. For me, personally, the most important things are that the larp does not require much investment into physical items (e.g., having to make your own chain mail) and there are people I know who are also attending or running the larp. This also means that for lazy and shy people like myself, these are going to be the most important factors. I guess it is about feeling secure and comfortable socially even though the theme and the events in the larp itself could be extreme. For example, I guess most people would not like to play GR for the first time with complete strangers.
Jussi Holopainen is a Finnish game scholar whose main research focus has been on design and player experience principles for games of all kinds. He has long worked at the Nokia Research Center in Tampere. His publications include Patterns in Game Design co-authored with Staffan Björk and numerous conference and journal papers as well as various book chapters.
Evan Torner is a Ph.D. candidate in German and film studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is finishing his dissertation on representations of race and the global South in East German genre cinema. As co-editor of Immersive Gameplay: Essays on Role-Playing and Participatory Media, he has also written on modernist film, German science-fiction literature and live-action role-playing, and is the official translator of the Filmmuseum Potsdam's permanent exhibit "The Dream Factory: 100 Years of Babelsberg."
Filed in 2012, Immersive Gameplay, Larp, Meta-Discussion, Philosophy, Role-Playing Games ·Tags: Emily Care Boss, gamification, Nodal Point, Role-Playing Games, Solmukohta, the Forge, Trans-Atlantic Dialog
Immersive Gameplay – Interview with Todd Nicholas Fuist
The fourth interview is with sociologist Todd Nicholas Fuist. His article in the volume "The Agentic Imagination: Tabletop Role-Playing Games as a Cultural Tool" offers the notion of "agentic imagination" to explain the social interactions that pivotally shape narrative and identity within tabletop role-playing games. The essay combines ethnographic data with speculations about broader implications of role-playing research on the gaming hobby.
Evan Torner – In your article for Immersive Gameplay, you discuss a concept called "agentic imagination." What is that exactly, and how does it help us understand how role-playing games work?
Todd Nicholas Fuist – The "agentic imagination" is a theoretical concept I have been developing out of my research on gaming. In the piece in Immersive Gameplay, I specifically describe it as "the active ability of social actors to shape their identities through immersive imagination." There are two things you need to know as background to understand the concept, so I'll talk about those first:
a) Some of this concept references the notion that, in sociology, we tend to think in terms of "agency" and "structure." Structure is what is "hard" in social life: class position, the legal system, economics, politics, institutions, etc. It's often defined as the things that pattern our behavior, relationships, and expectations. Agency, on the other hand, is what social actors can do on their own: free choice, independent thinking, being able to break out of the structures of society, so to speak. Sometimes these concepts are pitted against each other, as in "agency vs. structure." This is a problematic way to approach it: agency and structure are two sides of the same coin. Agency only makes sense in a world that is structured, and structure only has meaning and relevancy if people can push against the edges of it sometimes.
b) The concept also draws on the sociological understanding of "identity." Identity is, in sociology, largely about identification with social groups and how your particular pattern of identifications makes you both different from others as well as recognizable to others as a certain "kind" of person. With regard to gaming, one could say that "identification" with gaming as a hobby and a culture provides some of your "identity," giving you and others a sense for who you are. As such, "identity" doesn't refer to some kind of fundamental, static, core being. Your identity, in sociology, is an ongoing social process that requires active identification, either by you or others, to be a thing.
Now that we have the background, we can talk about the concept a little bit more.
I am, obviously, drawing on the idea of agency for the concept of the agentic imagination. Where does agency come from? Conversely, what stifles agency? I would strongly argue that part of what is required for agency is the ability to have some sense of how things are and how they could be. This requires a bit of a reading, perhaps an intuitive one, perhaps a conscious one, of both social structure and identity. A person might think "I am poor. I know this because the things that are unavailable to me that seem to be available to other people who live in different parts of the city than me." That's a reading of both social structure and identity. This person may also think "However, if I were to attend college, I could get a degree and become successful and change my lot in life." Their ability to think and do this would represent their agency.
I would argue, however, that a large part of the background of agency comes through the ability to imagine. Can you imagine a different world? What about a different life for yourself? Can the hypothetical person in the example above imagine themselves as a doctor or an executive? Many social movements, I would suggest, have been predicated on the idea that "Another World is Possible" (to borrow the motto of the World Social Forum). The Feminist Movement, for example, involved women (and eventually men as well) imagining a world where women were able to participate in society in ways they currently were not. In my dissertation research, on progressive religious groups, a woman who is a member of the woman priest movement within Catholicism told me how soul-crushing it was to feel called to be a priest when she was a little girl but never see the female form represented on the altar or hear a woman's voice saying mass. It was literally "unimaginable" that she could be a priest. When she heard about the woman priest movement, her perspective was radically shifted and she could suddenly imagine herself as a priest. Now, she says mass regularly at an alternative Catholic community.
This circles back around to the concept and what it has to do with role-playing. As the example above suggests, imagination is a powerful tool for shaping our identities and, as such, our ability to act in the social world. We envision possible futures, different versions of our self, and ways the world could be different. Role-playing games are a fascinating place to observe and practice this sort of agentic imagination.
One theme that has emerged through the interviews I have conducted for this project is that gamers use role-playing to "try on" various selves, model different ways of behaving, work through personal issues, connect with ideas bigger than themselves, and prefiguratively live out alternative social realities. While I'm not so naive to suggest that role-playing will end oppression or usher in some kind of new utopia, I was consistently intrigued by how many people reported to me being able to come to real understandings about who they are, what their social positioning is, how they feel about social problems, etc., through role-playing. As such, while I don't believe that imagination is all it takes to change social structures, I do believe that imagination has liberatory potential, and the kinds of things that we feel capable of imagining shape the sorts of ways we conceptualize the world. As such, the creation of liminal spaces, such as is done when groups of people get together to role-play, where these sorts of imaginations can flow freely are potential sites of renewal and resistance for people.
ET – As a sociologist, what do you think the emerging field of game studies does well, and what could it do better?
TNF – I don't profess to be an expert on game studies, but my exposure to it, through the International Journal of Role-Playing, the Game Studies Journal, and various books, suggests that game studies has two main strengths:
a) Authors in game studies seem to be doing some sophisticated theorizing. In my piece for Immersive Gameplay, I cite pieces by Arjoranta, Balzar, Hitchens and Drachen, and Montola that feature some interesting and useful theorizing.
b) Additionally, work in game studies seems enviably interdisciplinary. Many sub-disciplines would be thrilled to have people from so many different fields actively collaborating on their area of study.
Having said that, as a sociologist, I tend to want theorizing grounded in as much empirical data as possible, and I do feel that game studies could, as an emerging field, use more empirical research, particularly more interviews and participant-observation. I see a lot of gaming studies research that looks at the games themselves (i.e. examining the content a particular game) or theorizing out of what appears to be the author's personal gaming experience. There's nothing wrong with this, but gaming is a broad and varied hobby and, following audience studies media theorists such as Henry Jenkins and Ien Ang, it seems to me that we do ourselves a favor by concentrating more on the actual experiences of people who game. I would recommend Sarah Lynne Bowman's book The Function of Role-Playing Games for a good example of qualitative empirical work into gaming.
ET – Participant-observer studies appear to be one of the best ways to do sociological work on RPGs. Are there other methodologies we could be using?
TNF – I had not really thought about this much prior to you asking this question, but something leapt immediately to mind when you asked this. In sociology, some researchers use a method called photo elicitation. This usually involves having someone take pictures of important things in their life (for example, you may ask someone to take a photo of ten things in their life that are important for their religious beliefs) and then the researcher would go through the photos with the subject, having them explain each one in turn. The idea is that this puts some power of interpretation in the hands of the interviewee and moves it away from the researcher. A researcher might ask "how do you feel when you go to church," for example, assuming that "church" is where this person is "religious." By asking, instead, "show me pictures of important religious things in your life," you may find that "church" is not where this person feels religious, but other place, such as nature, their bedroom, or at work.
It seems like you could do a similar thing with gaming, but as opposed to using pictures, use gaming artifacts such as character sheets, maps, dice, and gaming books. In my research, I tend to argue that culture is best understood as being "embedded" in objects, relationships, and practices. Put simply, we tend to understand culture through things. As such, I think that interviewing someone about gaming is interesting, but actually having them pull their favorite gaming books or character sheets off their shelf and explain, say, why these particular books are their favorite, what they have meant in their life, etc. would be very revealing. I suspect that gaming artifacts like books and characters sheets, like many objects, are very much containers of relationships, culture, memories, and practices and may provide interesting data on the role gaming plays in people's lives and how it shapes their social world and biography. This could also, as with photo elicitation, minimize the researcher's understanding of what gaming is supposed to look like, feel like, and be about, and privilege the understanding of interviewee.
ET – How do you see RPGs as folk art and oral culture interacting with other wider social movements across the United States and, if I may, the world right now? Is there some kind of dialog between role-playing and the Occupy movement, for example?
TNF – That's a really interesting question, and to be honest, I have no idea if there's actual dialogue going on between any movements and the role-playing world. Having said that, I can see some points where I can imagine points of contact would be, including within the work I am doing.
"Play" and "storytelling" broadly, has become a big part of cutting edge research into social movements. I'm thinking in particular here of the work of Benjamin Shepard who wrote a book called Play, Creativity, and Social Movements: If I Can't Dance it's Not My Revolution, drawing on the wonderful Emma Goldman quote, as well as work by Francesca Polletta on storytelling in movements, particularly her book It was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics. This work tends to discuss a number of things, but a predominant theme is how play and storytelling bring emotions into social movement participation. Playful protest can diffuse tension at a high stakes protest, it can provide a bit of levity while dealing with difficult issues, and it can dramatize people's experiences in a way that opens the space for multiple and varied interpretations, creating dialogue around issues.
Many social movements, I would suggest, already have a role-playing aspect built in. I remember being at a mass protest event in Buffalo, New York in 2001 and at the convergence center where all the activists were meeting people were doing training that involved playing out scenarios such as peacefully confronting police officers and dealing with a combative news reporter. The idea was that we would build up the skills necessary to be able to handle these difficult situations when they happened if we tried them out in a safe space, first.
This suggests a point of connection between movement activity and role-playing, related to what I was talking about with the agentic imagination in the piece in Immersive Gameplay. Nina Eliasoph, a sociologist of social movements, analyzes how important talk about politics is in her book Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life. What she finds that is so interesting is that people want to talk politics with each other, but often lack the spaces to do so. In my piece for Immersive Gameplay, I argue that gaming can provide safe, liminal spaces that are not "real" in that they take place in the shared imagined space of the game, but also not totally "fake" in that they represent actual interactions people are having with each other. It seems to me that these sorts of liminal, in-between, spaces are ideal contexts for serious talk about politics to happen, not necessarily in the way Eliasoph studies (linking the experiences of individuals to larger structural realities) but perhaps in the way Shepard and/or Polletta may understand (creating complex narratives that channel emotion and make room for dialogue). Part of what I suggest in the piece on the agentic imagination is that my interviewees were often able to work through complicated personal and social issues such as racism, sexism, and sexual identity through play in the safe space of role-playing.
On the gaming side of things, what games have this sort of liberatory potential? Theoretically, all of them, but I'd like to highlight a few. Robert Bohl's science-fiction game Misspent Youth is very clearly designed to trigger the righteous indignation of the players. Players will spend the game feeling helpless before a powerful authority, as well as experience the excitement of direct action against that authority as the game progresses. Julia Bond Ellingboe's Steal Away Jordan is designed to create a similar sense of feeling constrained by authority. Unlike Misspent Youth, however, Ellingboe's game deals with the very real history of slavery in the southern U.S. I can imagine almost no better game for people to create stories where they develop empathy and experience powerful emotions with regard to a social issue than Steal Away Jordan. Joshua A.C. Newman's game Shock allows players to create an alternate reality to exist in during the game, either dystopian or utopian, and provides rules to specifically explore the social consequences of living in such a world. If, as I suggest, imagination is an important component of liberation, then the ability to explore alternative realities and feel how they would be different than our own is a valuable tool. Finally, while I have little personal experience with them myself, I've heard some talk about jeepform games, which seem to place a high premium on immersively exploring a central theme. Having said all this, as mentioned in my piece in Immersive Gameplay, one of my participants said they learned about racism through playing Dungeons & Dragons. While I would suggest that certain games are more geared towards creating the kinds of liminal spaces I'm discussing here, I do believe that almost any space where people are given free reign to use their imaginations can develop liberatory potential.
To conclude and return to the original question, I would say that while I am unaware of any direct contact between social movements and role-playing, there does seem to be a number of places where social movements are exploring play and storytelling and role-playing games are confronting social and political issues. If there is any direct connection, say a social movement group that actively incorporates gaming into their work, I'd love to hear about it. If not, however, I can certainly imagine that the kinds of spaces fostered by role-playing games could have the kind of liberatory potential that scholars of social movements see in play, storytelling, and talk, and could imagine them becoming tools in movement activity in the future.
Todd Nicholas Fuist is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Loyola University, Chicago. His work is on religious communities that have messages and projects which revolve around social justice. His other academic interests include gaming and gamer culture, social movements, media, and identity.
Immersive Gameplay – Interview with Emily Care Boss
The second interview is with role-playing designer and theorist Emily Care Boss. She co-authored the article in the volume "Role-Playing Communities, Cultures of Play and the Discourse of Immersion" with Bill White and J. Tuomas Harviainen. In the article, she helps provide a breakthrough analysis of Nordic and American interpretations of role-playing immersion, contrasting emotionally resonant and creative play/design philosophies and advocating for a bottom-up definition of immersion, based on communities' play experiences.
Evan Torner – You are often cited for your 2008 article "Key Concepts in Forge Theory," which does an excellent job of summarizing key debates within the American independent role-playing games scene between 1998 and 2005. It's one of the most cited articles in the Nodal Point book series. Did you think your article would make that huge of an impact? How has the theory shifted (in your opinion) since you wrote the article?
Emily Care Boss – Thank you! That article was a labor of love. How well it was received took me by surprise. It came about as an attempt at a cultural exchange between the US independent game design community and the nordic game community where it was published. In the previous year I had visited Europe for the first time as a Guest of Honor at Ropecon, the largest game convention in Finland. The Forge was well established as an online forum where serious discussion about role-playing occurred, but the discussion happening there was viewed by outsiders variously as arcane, elite and impenetrable.
At Ropecon, I was viewed as an ambassador for the Forge (figuratively speaking), so I tried to do my best and speak well for the community. I found bafflement was a general response. Some of the games had already become successful, Primetime Adventures by Matt Wilson was translated into Finnish as well as My Life with Master by Paul Czege, but the commitment of learning the ideas that had come from the Forge community was too high a barrier for most. And the ideas that were known were also hotly contested or outright rejected.
Ironically, during my stay I was converted to being a proponent of the Nordic tradition of role play known as jeepform or jeep. Jeep is a live style of play (different from larp) that emphasizes hard hitting emotional stories and simple rules that help heighten tension. It was such an exciting new approach to play that I came home to my fellow Forge and indie game compatriots talking of nothing but jeep. It was a nice reversal of my experience in Europe: those who played learned and understood what jeep entailed (and loved it or ran screaming), but others confronted only with the website and it's principles gave a blank stare.
All this hit home that while there were ground-breaking innovations and analysis happening on both sides of the Atlantic, there was very little of this making it over the ocean. The need for dialog seemed pressing. Opportunity knocked when I heard that the Nodal Point convention, a larp oriented event hosted by four of the Nordic countries in turn (Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark) had a book associated with it that was soliciting submissions. When one of the editors, Markus Montola, mentioned that it would be a helpful thing to have a brief overview of Forge theory from a participant that sealed the deal for me. The fact that in that volume, Playground Worlds, a jeepform founder, Tobias Wrigstad was presenting an introduction to Jeep, was icing on the cake. The cultural exchange would be complete.
Shortly after that time, I was able to return to northern Europe and attend Fastaval, an avant-garde Danish game convention and Nodal Point, or Knutepunkt as it was known in Norway where it was held that year. Much more conversation had occurred during the intervening years, many other people crossed the Atlantic to attend events and share ideas, and the article had been in circulation. The difference was palpable. General exposure and understanding was near universal. One Knutepunkt participant referred to Forge theory as a "settled" body of work, not controversial in the slightest. And the best moment for me was when two Danes I met at Fastaval explained to me central tenets of the theory. I am glad to have been part of making what was once a yawning gulf of theory seem like the merest gap, easily overcome and understood.
ET – As a game designer, how do you perceive the conversations in academic game and media studies?
ECB – Currently much of the time and energy of academia seems centered on digital game play. That makes sense, that is where the money is, and also digital media are penetrating markets that tabletop role-playing historically has not been able to touch. Casual gamers, non-self-identifying-gamers. Most people now at least know what Angry Birds is, or have tried it a time or two. The applications of games are being seen. Discussion of gamification makes it a strong marketing tool, and games as a way to change people and change the world is a message that is getting attention. What seems missing is analysis both of the literary and narrative structure of games with fiction, and deeper understandings of how the rules of a game shape and interact with the emotions, choices, motivations and actions of participants. The idea of reward cycles is well understood and worked to death. But the dynamics of communication, expectation-setting, levels of identity and emotional experience triggered and explored by narrative based play are all things that have much more room to be explored.
There is also a deep divide between different communities of play and the various analytical cultures. Players need not be troubled by theory when they enjoy a game, but it would make sense for designers to be aware not only of the discussion and analysis going amongst their colleagues, but also of what's going on in other related fields. Just as the divide between the Nordic and the independent gaming communities is being bridged, better communication between academics and designers seems necessary.
ET – What recent games have you played that you think will create huge ripples in the way we think about, design and play games?
ECB – Microscope, by Ben Robbins. This is a game that takes many standard assumptions of a role-playing game (participation primarily via the use of an ongoing character, the presence of a Game Master or facilitator, chronological fiction, solitary world creation) and stands them on their head. In the game, the players share the creation of an over-arching storyline of an epic nature. Some examples are the rise and fall of an empire, the mythic beginnings of human culture, or a bloodthirsty war between interstellar species. Using an egalitarian, round-robin structure, the players create eras and specific events that create a timeline. Scenes are played out within events, in a fashion much like that found in any role-playing game. But the scenes' purposes are to clarify and define the specifics of the overall sweep of events by answering a specific question about the event, rather than for the purposes of developing the characters or gaining mechanical advantage. It's a unique storytelling engine that sweeps away blinders of limits we enforce on the medium, which, I hope, will help us better realize the full potential of this form. There is so much more we could be doing. Microscope is a great start.
ET – Given your famous aversion to the term "immersion," do you think our title "Immersive Gameplay" does participatory media and role-playing games justice? Why or why not?
ECB – As I have the pleasure of still saying after all of these years, immersion is a broad, broad term that encompasses so many facets of the experience of role-playing that further refinement and further definition and re-definition are always needed. So here we are with our endeavor taking another look at ways people can immerse, feel, experience, revolt from, subsume, identify, over-identify and reframe their view of the world through play.
Looking at participatory media, immersion is a hallmark. Not unique to role-playing and first-person narrative forms like the video game, but certainly it establishes the engagement of the immersive experience in a unique way. By asking the players to make freeform choices that determine the direction of the narrative based on taking the role of a character within the narrative itself. The restrictions of a video game are blown wide open in tabletop and live-action role-playing. (Nearly) the full realm of human choice, negotiation and adjudication are available. There is no other narrative form that allows this. And whether you are looking at the word "immersive" from the point of view of it being the holy grail of gaming experience (i.e., having a full body/mind/spirit experience of "being" the role) or merely taking the stance of the narrative person you've been issued to portray, this is the touchstone of role-playing gameplay. Certainly it is not the full complement of what could be done (as the game Microscope so clearly shows) but it takes from the linear path of acting, and adds the sculpting of events that is writing, making a gorgeous new field of expression that is role-play.
Emily Care Boss is a writer, game designer and forester living in western Massachusetts and has independently published games since 2005. Her game Under My Skin won the Player's Choice Otto award at Fastaval in Denmark. She has been published in Playground Worlds and Push: Volume 1 New Thinking About Role-playing. Her games can be found at Black & Green Games.
Figurative Destruction – A Solitary RPG
Figurative Destruction – A Role-Playing Game for One
by Evan Torner
(Submitted as a contest entry for the "Living in the Future" category of the RPG Solitaire Challenge, Jan. 1-11, 2011; see also The Robber's Tale in this webring)
Tagline: War kills, power corrupts, evil spreads — and that, friend, is only the beginning.
Fictional Synopsis: Suffering under a tyrannical and inhumane empire, two friends assemble a plucky cell of resistance and miraculously overcome the odds to defeat the source of their troubles. Yet philosophical and practical dilemmas lay before them, dilemmas that prove insurmountably divisive. Slowly their fellow resistance fighters begin to choose sides between them, until their infant society is polarized, forcing their respective armies to confront each other in a painful final showdown.
Design Premise: Upon returning home to Iowa, I discovered a vast treasure trove of RPG books, assorted characters from two decades of gaming, and a closet full of action figures. What to do with all this ephemera? Design a game around it, of course: a game that would also replicate a frequently repeated war storyline in my own imaginary play of my youth. Personal design goals include the expropriation of a large quantity of trademarked action figures and personal campaign-bound characters alike (i.e., their names, identities and powers will be fiddled with at will), their incorporation into a storyline that both showcases their formidable strengths and fatal vulnerabilities pitted against one another, and this storyline's service to both the player and others as a cautionary tale. I also want to include a system that uses both audio and digital images to document the role-playing while not kowtowing to the genres of podcasts, video or webcomics. The point, I think, is to have the game mechanics add adult pathos, nuance and ambiguity to the otherwise Manichean battlefields of the cartoons many of us grew up with.
I leave you with a video about Sectaur:
Filed in Role-Playing Games, Sci-fi, Television ·Tags: Emily Care Boss, expropriation, final battle, one person, Role-playing game, Sectaur, solitaire, solitary


text:
Serial/Series Titles 56 World Regions 1 Countries 1 Decades 2 Years 6 Months 7 Days 7
Collection: Congressional Research Service Reports Title: Fiscal Year 1980 Title: Fiscal Year 1992 Title: Fiscal Year 1995 Clear All Filters
Description: This report is a research aid that lists the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) authorization and appropriations bills for FY1961-FY2019 including: bill numbers, report numbers, dates reported and passed, recorded vote numbers and vote tallies, dates of passage of the conference reports with their numbers and votes, vetoes, substitutions, dates of final passage, and public law numbers. Significant definitions are also included.
Creator: DeBruyne, Nese F. & Torreon, Barbara Salazar
Defense Authorization and Appropriations Bills: A Chronology, FY1970-FY2005
Description: This report is a research aid, which lists the Department of Defense (DOD) authorization bills (Table 1) and appropriations bills (Table 2).
Creator: Carter, Linwood B. & Coipuram, Thomas, Jr.
International Affairs Budget Trends, FY1980 – FY2000
The Mid-Session Review of the President's Budget: Timing Issues
Description: This report provides information on the timing of submission of the mid-session review for FY1980-FY2009, a 30-year period that covers all or part of the administrations of five Presidents, applying to the last two years of the Carter Administration, and the full terms of the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush Administrations.
Creator: Keith, Robert
Description: This report is a research aid, which lists the DOD authorization bills (Table 1) and appropriations bills (Table 2). This report includes all the pertinent information on the passage of these bills through the legislative process: bill numbers, report numbers, dates reported and passed, recorded vote numbers and vote tallies, dates of passage of the conference reports with their numbers and votes, vetoes, substitutions, dates of final passage, and public law numbers. Table 3 shows real growth or decline in national defense funding for FY1940-FY2009. Table 4 gives a more detailed picture of both regular and supplemental defense appropriations from the 103rd Congress to the present (FY1993-FY2005). Table 5 shows the President's DOD appropriations budget requests for FY1950-FY2005 vs. final amount enacted.
Creator: Coipuram, Thomas, Jr.
Defense Authorization and Appropriation Bills: FY1970-FY2006
Fiscal Year 1981 8 8 Fiscal Year 1982 8 8 Fiscal Year 1983 8 8 Fiscal Year 1984 8 8 Fiscal Year 1985 8 8 Fiscal Year 1986 8 8 Fiscal Year 1987 8 8 Fiscal Year 1988 8 8 Fiscal Year 1989 8 8 Fiscal Year 1990 8 8 Fiscal Year 1991 8 8 Fiscal Year 1993 8 8 Fiscal Year 1994 8 8 Fiscal Year 1996 8 8 Fiscal Year 1997 8 8 Fiscal Year 1998 8 8 Fiscal Year 1999 8 8 Fiscal Year 2000 8 8 Fiscal Year 2001 7 7 Fiscal Year 2002 7 7 Fiscal Year 2003 7 7 Fiscal Year 2004 7 7 Fiscal Year 2005 7 7 Fiscal Year 1970 6 6 Fiscal Year 1971 6 6 Fiscal Year 1972 6 6 Fiscal Year 1973 6 6 Fiscal Year 1974 6 6 Fiscal Year 1975 6 6 Fiscal Year 1976 6 6 Fiscal Year 1977 6 6 Fiscal Year 1978 6 6 Fiscal Year 1979 6 6 Fiscal Year 2006 6 6 Fiscal Year 2007 3 3 Fiscal Year 2008 3 3 Fiscal Year 2009 3 3 Fiscal Year 2011 2 2 Fiscal Year 2012 2 2 Fiscal Year 2013 2 2 Fiscal Year 2014 2 2 Fiscal Year 2015 2 2 Fiscal Year 2016 2 2 Fiscal Year 2017 2 2 Fiscal Year 1961 1 1 Fiscal Year 1962 1 1 Fiscal Year 1963 1 1 Fiscal Year 1964 1 1 Fiscal Year 1965 1 1 Fiscal Year 1966 1 1 Fiscal Year 1967 1 1 Fiscal Year 1968 1 1 Fiscal Year 1969 1 1 Fiscal Year 2010 1 1 Fiscal Year 2018 1 1 Fiscal Year 2019 1 1
2000 1 1 2004 1 1 2006 3 3 2008 1 1 2017 1 1 2018 1 1
January 1 1 April 1 1 June 2 2 August 1 1 September 1 1 November 1 1 December 1 1
13th 2 2 14th 1 1 18th 1 1 19th 1 1 21st 1 1 27th 1 1 29th 1 1

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The starting point of our journey are modern robot-crafted wooden constructions of Gramazio / Kohler and Shigeru Ban in Switzerland. Then, in the Mercedes factories in Stuttgart, we will study the development and production of automobiles and visit the museum of UN Studio. At the Technical University Stuttgart, we will gain insight into the research and buildings of Werner Sobek at the Institut für Leichtbau Entwerfen und Konstruieren (ILEK) and see works by Achim Menges at the Institute for Computational Design. During a visit of the Weissenhofsiedlung and works by Frei Otto, we draw a historical arch to modernism and the tradition of innovation. Near Augsburg we will experience pioneering fabrication techniques for glass (Sedak) and robotics (Kuka). Relating to the current design semester, the seminar week examines innovation in material as well as new jointing techniques, enabling a genuine recycling process.


computing width and precision should be easy enough.
I think Arduino's printf doesn't support float formatting to save space by default, but there is a way to enable that functionality.
Yeah, there is no float support, this is why dtostrf() exists.
Also, float are double on AVR.
I have a library for AVR gcc that is a printf that will allow you to specify the decimal places. An integer of 123 with decimal places would be printed to a string as "1.23".


Tax Description tax_description text Short description of the type of tax.
County Code county_code text A number that identifies the county of the taxpaying entity.
County Name county_name text County of the taxpaying entity.
Year period_yyyy number The year of the return.
Quarter period_q number The quarter of the return (1-4). If blank the return is not processed quarterly.
Taxpayers taxpayers number The number of businesses reporting. If fewer than four taxpayers filed, the Total Due value is omitted for privacy.
Total Due total_due number The total amount due of sales tax collected. Unavailable if reported by fewer than four businesses.
Unavailable unavailable checkbox Indicates if the Total Due column was intentionally omitted for privacy. If fewer than four taxpayers filed for this item, the Total Due column is omitted and this column will be checked.


Imagine what cute outfits you can sew for the little girl in your life with this 1970s vintage sewing pattern from Simplicity. Cute little scooter skirt or shorts, with either a long tank top or a shortie shirt. Also a pair of 70s style pants. Great for play, summer or casual wear.
Tops are for knit fabrics. Long sleeved blouse in picture is not included.
Condition : Used. Counted and checked - complete with instructions. Store stamp on front envelope.


HARBOTTLE - The Harbottle Audio Co.
Specialists in high performance and high quality audio components for the most demanding sound system requirements. Harbottle is the choice for all high quality audio needs.
Harbottle Audio is please to announce the acquisition of FWA. In this recent change, we found it better suited to develop the brand into something unique for the audio industry while paying our respects to Funk Audio by focusing FWA on OEM driver and system design.
Ridge AC: the branded product line of raw ODM components and car audio supply.
FWA: OEM driver and system design joint venture between Funk and Harbottle.
Harbottle Audio: Consumer high-end Pro Audio, Stereo speakers, Amplification, and parent company to above ventures.
HARBOTTLE AUDIO: THE AMERICAS SOURCE FOR ALLDSP.


text:
Top Ba Colleges
List of 71 colleges for Ba-Bachelor Of Arts in Chennai
The most efficient way to know about Top Colleges in chennai for pursuing ba-bachelor of arts or other alternate trades/professional courses, is to contact the students studying in those colleges directly..
chennai has a number of colleges offering a wide range of professional degrees, diplomas and special courses. To be precise, over 71 colleges in chennai offering ba-bachelor of arts professional course/degree. But if you wish to search specific colleges, we are here to help you.
Youth4work University provides a common platform for aspirants, students and alumnis to discuss various aspects, like admission procedure, selection criteria, college atmosphere, academics and placement report, of particular colleges. You can simply do this by going in the college profile and selecting any user from the "Students" section of that particular college located in chennai.
The entire data and information mentioned in the Institute/College/University profiles on Youth4work has been crowd sourced by students, ex-students and alumnis, which further enhances the authenticity factor of these search results and college feedbacks.
MCW-Meenakshi College for Women
BA-Bachelor of Arts
314 Students 314 Students & Alumni
25 reviews See all 25 reviews
SU-Saveetha University
QEMGCW-Quaid E Millath Government College for Women
The Quaid-E-Millath Government College for Women was found in the eighteenth century by Ghulam Ghouse Khan Bahadur , ...
SSSSJCW-Shri Shankarlal Sundarbai Shasun Jain College for Women
SU-Sathyabama University
Deemed University
Sathyabama University is located in Chennai and it is established under the section act 3 of UGC ACT, 1956, and it is ...
3260 Students 3260 Students & Alumni
SJCE-St Josephs College of Engineering
Anna University of Technology(Chennai)
St Josephs College of Engineering is an educational trust by Jeppiaar Education Trust
CKNC-C Kandaswami Naidu College
MU-Madras University
Madras University is one of the prestigious University of the nation, it was established in the year 1940 with Mr. ...
UM-University of Madras
University of Madras is the famous University and it was established in the year 1854.
QMC-Queen Marys college
AACW-Anna Adarsh College for Women
SDNBVCW-S D N B Vaishnav College for Women
S D N B Vaishnav College for Women is a autonomous college for women. The college was established in the year 1968 ...
HITS-Hindustan Institute of Technology and Science
140 reviews See all 140 reviews
ICAT-Image College of Arts Animation and Technology
SJCAS-St Josephs College of Arts And Science
DGVC-D G Vaishnav College
D G Vaishnav College was established in the year 1964.
MGCAS-Mar Gregorios College of Arts and Science
79 Students 79 Students & Alumni
WCC-Womens Christian College
JCAS-Jaya College of Arts and Science
Jaya College of Arts and Science is a co-educational institution situated within the city of Thiruninravur, Chennai
STC-Sir Theagaraya College
IIKM-Indian Institute of Knowledge Management
Bharathidasan University
MSCAS-Mohamed Sathak College of Arts and Science
TNC-The New College
The New College was established in the year 1951 by the Muslim Education Association, it is the leading autonomous ...
DRBCCCHC-Dharmamurthi Rao Bahadur Calavala Cunnan Chetty Hindu College
LC-Loyola College
The LC started in 1925, by a French Jesuit, with the help of a team of Jesuit clerics who had their basis at the Oxford ...
AMCAS-Asan Memorial College of Arts and Science
Asan Memorial College of Arts and Science is a liberal arts and post-graduation college in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. The ...
TNOU-Tamil Nadu Open University
Tamil Nadu Open University
Tamil Nadu Open University was established by the Act of the Legislative Assembly
KC-Kamaraj College
AVASC-Annai Velankanni Arts and Science College
HU-Hindustan University
Hindustan College of Engineering, established in the year 1985, has been conferred the "University Status" by UGC.
PCAS-Patrician College of Arts and Science
AUDE-Annamalai University Distance Education
Annamalai University came into being in 1928 when the Annamalai University Act was passed. In 1979, The Directorate of ...
BSARU-B S Abdur Rahman University
B S Abdur Rahman University
AASC-Apollo Arts and Science College
Apollo Arts and Science College, Chennai was established in 1999 as a co-educational institution
TNC-Thiruthangal Nadar College
PSVASC-Prince Shri Venkateshwara Arts and Science College
SVASC-Shri Venkateshwara Arts and Science College
Shri Venkateshwara Arts and Science College is a liberal arts institute established in 1995 at Gowrivakkam, Chennai.
NCAS-Nazareth College of Arts and Science
MCC-Madras Christian College
Founded as a School in 1837 in the black town of Madras.MCC has its roots in a small school for boys established in ...
VCW-Valliammal College for Women
Valliammal College for Women is a women's college in Chennai, India
MOPVCW-M O P Vaishnav College for Women
MOP Vaishnav College for Women is a women college, this college was establish because to provide unique learning ...
DRBCCCHC-Dharmamurthi Rao Bhahadur Calavala Cunnan Chettys Hindu College
PC-Pachaiyappa College
Pachaiyappa College is one of the reputed college of Chennai, the motto of the college is to provide the best and ...
SMS-School of Management Studies Vels
VELS University
School of Management Studies Vels was set up in 1999 in Chennai, Tamil Nadu
DGVC-Dwaraka Doss Goverdhan Doss Vaishnav College
Dwaraka Doss Goverdhan Doss Vaishnav College was set up in the year 1964 and is affiliated to the University of Madras.
SIST-Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology
SMC-Stella Maris College
AASC-Achariya Arts and Science College
Achariya Arts and Science College is a unique institute which came into being at the turn of the 21st century in ...
STCAS-St Thomas College of Arts and Science
St.Thomas College of Arts & Science, Chennai was established in 1999 as a co-educational institution,
JBASCW-Justice Basheer Ahmed Sayeed College For Women
Search College By Name
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College For BA-Bachelor of Arts in Chandigarh
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College For BA-Bachelor of Arts in Gautam Buddha Nagar
College For BA-Bachelor of Arts in Abidjan
Colleges By Course
College For B.Plan-Business Plan in Chennai
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College For MDS-Master of Dental Surgery in Chennai
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College For M.Ed-Master of Education in Chennai
Summary, Admission & placement trends.
Inside into about College its events & happenings.
Lectures & Notes
Recommended & stored study material by students for youth.


For a while now I have been a fan of sites like mappr and flyr which allow you to integrate Google Maps with your Flickr photo collections. They offer me a chance to present students with elements of my fieldwork in cartographic form relatively easily. Still, a lot of work is required because, to be mapped by these websites, each picture in Flickr must be geocoded with the latitude and longitude of the place it was taken.
I have recently been put onto Wayfaring.com. This site uses Google Maps imagery and cartography, but it allows you to add locations and travel routes directly to the Google basemaps, and to add photographs directly from Flickr or simply by uploading them from your computer. There is no software to download, geotags are not required, and no Firefox plugins or extensions are needed. And, in true Web2.0 form, you can track other people's map creations and comment on them.
I have started a map of locations along a remote access road in northern British Columbia used by locals to drive to hunting grounds. I have added some pictures from Flickr and others directly from my computer. If you click on any of the orange 'drops,' details of the location will come up, including pictures. It is a work-in-progress and the number of points of interest will grow in coming weeks.
To try Flyr, follow the link about and then add 'TFM' in the user photo box and 'railgrade' in the tags box. Click on Google Maps and that will create a map of my photographs in the same area as the Wayfaring.com map above.
Click here for my pictures of New Mexico on mappr.
This was written by Tad McIlwraith. Posted on Wednesday, February 22, 2006, at 2:43 pm. Filed under Internet, Teaching. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed.	Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.


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text:
Rail E-ssentials
TÜV SÜD and SIGNON are TOP EMPLOYERS
TÜV SÜD has once again been ranked among the top 100 employers for future engineers in Germany in 2016. SIGNON Deutschland GmbH, a subsidiary of TÜV SÜD AG, was also awarded the "Top Job" seal by zeag GmbH, a company specialising in analysis of employer attractiveness.
TÜV SÜD once again ranked among the top 100 employers for future engineers in Germany this year. This is the result of the 2016 Graduate Barometer, the leading annual employer study carried out by trendence Institute among German graduates. We ended up in 56th place in the employer ranking for engineers.
The official rankings are published in the current issue of Manager Magazin. trendence is an independent consulting and market-research company. Every year it surveys more than 500,000 pupils, students and young professionals worldwide, asking them about their career plans and preferred employers. More than 37,000 students who were nearing graduation at 195 universities, among them around 13,000 engineers, participated in this year's trendence Graduate Barometer.
The complete rankings can be found at trendence online.
SIGNON Deutschland GmbH, a subsidiary of TÜV SÜD AG, was also awarded a "Top Job" seal of approval by zeag GmbH, a company specialising in analysis of employer attractiveness. The award for excellent employer quality was presented by former German Minister of the Economy Wolfgang Clement. CEO Steffen Jurtz, who accepted the award, said: "We pursue sustainable growth, and must therefore wage a permanent battle to win the war for talents. And to win this war, we need to be a well-known and, above all, excellent employer brand."
SIGNON provides highly specialised consulting and engineering services for the transport, industry and information technology industries. SIGNON has succeeded for decades in building long-term employee loyalty, particularly in multi-disciplinary planning and design of rail infrastructure. Characterised by extraordinarily open and broad internal and external communication that supports independent actions, innovative spirit and mutual support, SIGNON is on course for long-term sustainable growth. "Companies are not automatically attractive employers; instead, they evolve into attractive employers in a continuous and never-ending improvement process", explains Steffen Jurtz.
The family-focused and employee-friendly organisation of working hours for the company's 210 staff at its five German locations contributes significantly to strengthening its attractiveness as an employer.
Working conditions that ensure a good work-life balance also make SIGNON an excellent employer. Employees can access the company network from their notebooks, and thus work from home. The company also agrees individual part-time working offers and contributes towards childcare costs. Of course, all these extras primarily benefit parents. However, other employees who want to set off on their dream holidays, for example, benefit from the possibility of taking extended holiday time. "Within the scope of what is possibly by law, some of our long-term employees even voluntarily continue working for us beyond retirement age. We take this as a great compliment", reports Steffen Jurtz.
Marmaray: A tunnel between two continents
Railcert B.V. changes its name to TÜV SÜD Nederland B.V.
SIGNON Schweiz AG now operating as TÜV SÜD Schweiz AG
Successful homologation of the DMU Link 600-10 from PESA
Test Centre for Rolling Stock develops new testing scope: Electric arc measurement
TÜV SÜD now offers IT security consulting for railway applications
TÜV SÜD won project Västlänken
UNIFE and TÜV SÜD entered a contract on the updating of the list of applicable legislation
All Rail E-ssentials
// Zobacz lokalzacje


text:
New Priest Grade Truck Driver Identified
By Bill Johnson	 Published Oct 24, 2008 12:00 pm Updated Jan 31, 2009 01:39 pm
Groveland, Ca — The driver of the 1999 utility truck that overturned on New Priest Grade Thursday morning has been identified as 57-year-old Paul Morgan of Moccasin.
Morgan told the CHP that a vehicle crossed over the double yellow lines, forcing him to take evasive action. The truck went off the road and down a steep embankment and overturned. The vehicle then caught fire.
Morgan suffered broken ribs. New Priest Grade was closed down for approximately eight hours. The fire did an estimated $200,000 to the truck.
Written by BJ Hansen


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Home > Previous Issues of MyGeorgetownMD – Health Newsletter > Fall 2016 > Individualized Treatment Plan Helps Manage Chronic Ulcerative Colitis
Individualized Treatment Plan Helps Manage Chronic Ulcerative Colitis
By the time John Hume, now 48, reached MedStar Georgetown University Hospital by ambulance, "I was a cascading catastrophe," he recalls. Diagnosed and treated by his family doctor for a mild case of ulcerative colitis, John had seen his condition quickly progress to a critical point with an uncertain outcome. He needed immediate expert attention.
Now on a modified work schedule and diet,
John Hume is happy to be getting back to
his normal life following treatment for his
chronic ulcerative colitis. Photo by Breton Littlehales.
Ulcerative colitis is just one of a group of diseases known as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). It causes inflammation and sores— ulcers—in the lining of the rectum and colon. The most common symptoms of ulcerative colitis are abdominal pain and frequent bloody diarrhea. Weight loss, fatigue, loss of appetite and joint pain are other common symptoms.
According to Aline Charabaty, MD, director of the MedStar Georgetown Center for Inflammatory Bowel Disease, ulcerative colitis affects the body's immune system, specifically in the gut and colon. Organisms and bacteria in the gut can act as triggers and lead to chronic inflammation. Other potential triggers include certain medications and a western diet and lifestyle.
"When I first met John, he was dehydrated, had dangerously low blood pressure and was experiencing severe abdominal pain," Dr. Charabaty recalls. "He was having more than seven to eight bloody bowel movements a day.
His colonoscopy revealed severe inflammation of the colon, nearly the worst I'd ever seen. And he had lost 60 pounds in less than three months."
Dr. Charabaty often treats patients with unusually severe IBD symptoms that require personalized treatment considerations. "We have many skilled IBD specialists with a wide range of experience and, because of our research program, access to new medications and clinical trials that aren't available at other hospitals," says Dr. Charabaty.
Guided by her experience, Dr. Charabaty prescribed Remicade, an immunosuppressant medication used to treat severe ulcerative colitis symptoms. She tested dosage and timing of the medication with John until his body began to respond— an innovative and personalized approach at the time; it is now a standard course of treatment. "We needed to control the severe inflammation quickly or John was headed for colectomy, or surgical removal of part or all of his colon," she recalls.
Dr. Charabaty made me feel like I was the most important person in the world during my treatment.
John hume, Patient
"It was such a trying time for me, even beyond the stress of the flare-ups and my physical weakness," says John. "Dr. Charabaty worked hard to determine the best treatment option for me."
"Our goal is to unburden them and their families by working as a team to help patients take charge of their disease," says Dr. Charabaty. "John was amazing. He had a very positive attitude despite the severity of his symptoms."
"It's hard living with a chronic disease like ulcerative colitis, but I feel really lucky," John says. A federal employee from Mechanicsville, Md., he now works a modified schedule and has adjusted his diet to manage his weight and symptoms. And he is determined to educate others about ulcerative colitis.
"Dr. Charabaty made me feel like I was the most important person in the world during my treatment," he recalls. "And I still get a hug when I see her for follow-up care. My wife, Judy, and I consider Dr. Charabaty part of our family."
To learn more about the services offered at the Center for Inflammatory Bowel Disease, visit MedStarGeorgetown.org/UC or call 202-444-4639 to make an appointment.


New clients are expected to pay for the sample fee and the courier cost. to have the samples collected; or inform us your own collection account. b). We can produce the product under your brand name, also the fragrance can be changed as your requiremen.
Q3. What is the delivery date for a sample9 Usually about 1-3 days for items with general requirements. Q5. How do you control the quality 9 . Of course, we could accept small trial orders for certain items.
We are dedicated to manufacturing high quality household cleansing and health care products. For the past few years, we won lots of prizes and awards, which prove the quality of the products. We are also running our own brands, if you are interested , can be a member of us.
3.We promise if can't reply you asap,we will give you a free sample and gifts when you order form us . 2. The produce time is in 3 days, then you can have more time to test the sample, and we can discuss how to change the formula. 3. After many times testing, you can get the exactly product suitable for your market.
Alibaba.com offers 6,115 perfumed shower gel products. About 74% of these are shower gel, 1% are bath set, and 1% are body lotion.
A wide variety of perfumed shower gel options are available to you, such as anti-bacterial, refreshing, and bubble. You can also choose from gel, liquid, and foam. As well as from adults, babies, and children. And whether perfumed shower gel is free samples, or paid samples.
There are 6,104 perfumed shower gel suppliers, mainly located in Asia. The top supplying countries are China (Mainland), Turkey, and India, which supply 83%, 3%, and 3% of perfumed shower gel respectively.
Perfumed shower gel products are most popular in North America, Domestic Market, and Mid East.
You can ensure product safety by selecting from certified suppliers, including 2,206 with Other, 1,944 with GMP, and 1,671 with ISO9001 certification.


text:
Principles of Powder Handling - Single Use Flexible Containment
Intellectual Property and your R&D Career/Business
25 Feb 2021 (Thu)
Hello real World: An introduction to the Robot Operating System
26 Apr 2021 (Mon)
Advanced Fibre Reinforced Materials for Aerospace Applications
05 Mar 2021 (Fri)
25 Mar 2021 (Thu)
Computational Building Information Modelling (BIM) : An Introduction to Dynamo for Revit
25 Nov 2020 (Wed)
Computational Building Information Modelling (BIM): Python Scripting in Dynamo for Revit
12 Jan 2021 (Tue)
Learn How to Implement Internet of Things (IoT) Solution in a 2-day BootCamp
02 Dec 2020 (Wed)
22 Jul 2021 (Thu)
Statistical Modelling and Process Improvement via Designed Experiments
23 Aug 2021 (Mon)
13 Sep 2021 (Mon)
https://sitlearn.singaporetech.edu.sg/Single-Use-Flexible-Containment.jpg
Principles-of-Powder-Handling-Single-Use-Flexible-Containment
https://sitlearn.singaporetech.edu.sg/Intellectual-Property-and-your-R-D-Career-Business_252x180.jpg
Intellectual-Property-and-your-R&D-Career/Business
https://sitlearn.singaporetech.edu.sg/hello-real-world.jpg
Hello-real-World-An-introduction-to-the-Robot-Operating-System
https://sitlearn.singaporetech.edu.sg/AdvancedFibreReinforcedMaterialsforAerospaceApplications.jpg
Advanced-Fibre-Reinforced-Materials-for-Aerospace-Applications
https://sitlearn.singaporetech.edu.sg/PythonScriptinginDynamoforRevit_252x180.jpg
Computational-Building-Information-Modelling-(BIM)-An-Introduction-to-Dynamo-for-Revit
https://sitlearn.singaporetech.edu.sg/Computational-Building-Information-Modelling-(BIM)-Python-Scripting-in-Dynamo-for-Revit_225x180.jpg
Computational-Building-Information-Modelling-(BIM):-Python-Scripting-in-Dynamo-for-Revit
SkillsFuture Series 70% (PC4)
https://sitlearn.singaporetech.edu.sg/internet_of_things_solution.jpg
Learn-How-to-Implement-Internet-of-Things-(IoT)-Solution-in-a-2-day-BootCamp
https://sitlearn.singaporetech.edu.sg/StatisticalModellingandProcessImprovementviaDesignedExperiments.jpg
Statistical-Modelling-and-Process-Improvement-via-Designed-Experiments


Hey everyone! With the new PMMM project coming up I remembered this forum and decided to finally join! I enjoy role playing and meta discussions so feel free to friend me and send me messages on here.
Hey hey hey, welcome to the forum.
I enjoy role playing and meta discussions so feel free to friend me and send me messages on here.
Subject: Re: Sailor Zero, reporting!


text:
Obama Defends #blacklivesmatter Movement to Police
Posted on Saturday, Oct 24th, 2015
While speaking to law enforcement officials on Thursday, President Obama defended the Black Lives Matter movement, saying it is addressing an issue that has been ignored for too long.
"There is a specific problem that is happening in the African-American community that is not happening in other communities, and that is a legitimate issue that we've got to address."
"The African-American community is not just making this up. It's not something that's just being politicized. It's real," Obama said. "We as a society, particularly given our history. have to take this seriously."
The President tried to balance the conflicts between the police and the Black Lives Matter movement.
"I think everybody understands all lives matter. Everybody wants strong, effective law enforcement. Everybody wants their kids to be safe when they're walking to school. Nobody wants to see police officers who are doing their job, fairly, hurt. Everybody understands it's a dangerous job," he said
Obama spoke on a White House panel by moderated by former New York Times editor Bill Keller. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck and U.S. Attorney John Walsh of Colorado also appeared on the panel with the President.
Read full story: http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/obama-defends-blacklivesmatter-movement-...


text:
package com.lbc.nlp_algorithm.prepocess.api.api;

import java.io.File;

public interface FDMetadata {
	// 输入文件根目录
	File getInputRootDir();
	// 输出文件根目录
	File getOutputDir();
	// 输出向量文件
	String getOutputVectorFile();
	// 文件后缀
	String getFileExtensionName();
	// 标签文件
	File getLabelVectorFile();
	// 特征文件
	File getFeatureTermVectorFile();
	// 输出词表
	String getOutputDictName();
	// 输出处理后的文件根目录
	File getPreprocessDir();
	// 重复句子保存文件
	String getDupFile();

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Alexander Newley on what it was like to grow up as Joan Collins's son
By Davina Catt
Alexander Newley—the British artist best known for his "portrait of a portrait" type paintings of some of the world's most well-known faces across theatre land—has bravely confronted his singular biggest influence in a new memoir: a peripatetic, abandoned childhood as the only son of Hollywood movie star Joan Collins and Oscar-winning composer, stage genius and entertainer, Anthony Newley.
In Unaccompanied Minor, both the tag he wore on countless solo flights between London and LAX and the title of his emotionally penetrating tell-all, Newley deconstructs his childhood abyss, subservient to the whims, fantasies and ultimate emptiness of celebrity parents, themselves "enslaved" to the brutal studio system and an "ogre called show business."
A three-dimensional story seen through the prism of the "present" childhood state, experiences are tied to addresses: 1106 Summit, "my Edenic beginning and the source of all my subsequent wanderlust," and incidents: "the guy produced a large white box, tied with a ribbon, a little present from Evel Knieval." Cleverly framed by 28 of his self portraits, Newley becomes an observer of the glossy, picture-perfect family he features in and yet doesn't recognize.
From his North London studio, Newley says he stills see the book as a celebration of the drama of a unique early life and ponders what his late father would say.
DAVINA CATT: The prologue suggests writing your memoir was an unravelling and cathartic experience for you?
ALEXANDER NEWLEY: I've been into the material for a quite a while now so, in a way, the catharsis is ongoing because bringing the book out into the world is a big catharsis—the writing of it not so much because I was always in touch with the experiences—as an artist you stay in the detail. I think there are some artists that rely very much on their own story to find their way and navigate through their work, so my experiences now, when they have ripened, will also come into my work, I know that. I will never put my past completely behind me—it's always going to be fueling what I do.
CATT: There's this whole running theme throughout—the idea of make-believe. But from your point of view, you are a kid creating a make-believe world and living through that lens.
NEWLEY: Well I am a strong believer in make-believe and the importance of it. You have to be the hero of your own story in life because no one else will do it for you. And that applies to creativity—this is who I feel I really am, I am going to stay true to this, and I am going to take control and be the driver of my life—and there's a movie make-believe in that. There's a passion there. One should be passionate about ones own self and truth—if you can't be passionate about that, it's over.
CATT: You've been vocal about this idea that you felt surrounded by too much sexual proclivity at such a young age, that your father "thought innocence was an aphrodisiac."
NEWLEY: I think the thing to remember is that the times—that context—the '60s were so permissive and liberal.
CATT: Yes, but you go into detail about his X-rated film, Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?, which feels like a tipping point in the book but also his life—since it led to the end of his marriage to your mother, who played Polyester. Do you feel you were absorbing and aware of his sexual nature as a child or is it retrospective in writing the book?
NEWLEY: A bit of both. My father was obviously incredibly creative. His sexuality was very powerful and I think that often goes together. And due to the very permissive time and that belief in the '60s that to follow your bliss and passion was truth, and also the way into the truth, and sex and love was all part of that, he really went for that. The film Heironymus is a sort of sermon on the mount of sexual liberation. There's a lot that is positive about that but I think it's zany, madcap, a little crazy but it's good crazy. It's a very, very interesting film—I was in the film, I played myself at four years old—he shot the whole thing on the beach in Malta and it was just like a circus. He was very influenced by Fellini's 8 1/2 but you see lots of other hugely inventive stuff, and an amazing, full on Broadway score.
CATT: There's an affecting section when you are taken backstage at one of his Vegas performances.
NEWLEY: I was taken backstage by one of my father's friends, who was a comic at the Thunderbird, which was one of those dancing girl palaces. He took me into the dressing room and said, "This is Tony Newley's son," and they all descended upon me! Those experiences for a kid … I know that's why I wrote the book, I am always trying to pinch myself that these things actually happened to me.
CATT: That's the thing that gives the lie to the people who think the book is a bit of a downer. It's a celebration of this incredible childhood. The celebration of a drama of an early life, which was unique in what I saw. There's such a deep connection between your life and your artwork. How would you say your upbringing has influenced your portrait style?
NEWLEY: The thing that Dad really opened up for me—he was fascinated by Eastern philosophy and mysticism, this went along with his self-examination—he really wanted to get to the bottom of why he was how he was, what made him tick. He was intellectually a seeker. He discovered a writer called Alan Watts, an ex-Anglican priest, who got very into Eastern philosophy in the '50s. He went to San Francisco and was instrumental in starting the whole San Francisco renaissance, which actually led to the 60's. So you could say Alan Watts was the founding father of the whole intellectual vermin underneath the hippie movement. Dad discovered his books in the early '70s and shared them with me. So I came to portraiture through an interest in meditation, consciousness, the nature of consciousness—from my early teens. I have always been really interested in people, because people's fundamental reality is a mystery to them. I think we need that in order to live because we are upwellings of consciousness, which is divine. That really interests me. So when I am doing a portrait, that is what I am digging. I have become obsessed with this one moment of my subject's existence and I feel if I can adequately capture the power of that one moment, I have somehow captured this mystery. So that's the fountainhead of my work.
CATT: The book is structured around the portraits, in which you place yourself looking back. Tell me about the idea of time past and memory and how that plays out.
NEWLEY: The particular picture "Self Portrait with a Happy Family," which I talk about in the book because I found that still photo—it looked a lovely family but I didn't remember being part of it. I started to think, how am I going to make the self portrait as a genre new and interesting? So I did self portrait with my childhood self as no one had done that.
CATT: What do you think your father would say now if he were to read your book?
NEWLEY: I'd like to think he would be very proud of me because he was very driven by the truth and always tried to find it in his work, so the fact I have tried to do that as well, I think he would applaud it.
UNACCOMPANIED MINOR: A MEMOIR BY ALEXANDER NEWLEY, PUBLISHED BY QUARTET BOOKS, IS AVAILABLE NOW ON AMAZON.
Natalie Wynn of "Contrapoints" On Everything From Marianne Williamson To the Juul
Photo by Brigitte Lacombe.
Exploring Under The Bridge With Rebecca Godfrey
Doug Aitken's Mesmeric, Metallic, Hot-Air Balloon Odyssey


The Twenty-fifth International Conference on Learning is pleased to announce Anna Frangoudaki as a 2018 Plenary Speaker.
Anna Frangoudaki is a sociologist of education, emerita professor of the University of Athens, in Athens, Greece. Her main research fields and publications are on social inequalities and cultural discriminations in education, the Greek diglossia and its social functions, prejudiced knowledge transmitted by schools, national ideology and its relation to the rise of the extreme right in Greece.
Flavia Laviosa joined the community.
Sabria Jawhar joined the community.
Jeff Mc Laughlin joined the community.


text:
How North Pole Expeditions Work
by Tiffany Connors
North Pole Firsts
Members of an expedition to the North Pole in May 1971, led by Italian millionaire Guido Monzino
Peter Pagh/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
There continue to be many North Pole "firsts" -- it's a wonder that people aren't bumping into each other on their journeys. Here are just a few of the history-makers:
First black man: Matthew Henson reached the North Pole in 1909 as part of the Robert Peary expedition.
First confirmed flight over the North Pole: Norwegian Roald Amundsen (with Umberto Nobile, Lincoln Ellsworth and 11 others) on May 12, 1926, at 1:30 a.m. in an airship.
First submarine: the USS Nautilus was the first to navigate under the Pole on Aug. 3, 1958.
First solo journey by dogsled: Naomi Uemura of Japan, reached the North Pole on April 29, 1978, after covering 450 miles in 57 days.
First woman: Ann Bancroft, the only female member of the Steger International Polar Expedition, in 1986
First motorcycle trip: Fukashi Kazami (Shinji Kazama) on April 20, 1987
First solo, unsupported trip: Norwegian Borge Ousland, on April 23, 1994
First unsupported journey to the North Pole and back: Richard Weber (of Canada) and Mikhail Malakhov (of Russia) took a 121-day journey, ending on May 12, 1995.
First all-female expedition to reach the North Pole: McVitie's Penguin Polar Relay Team, May 26, 1997
First successful hot-air balloon trip: Debbie Harding became the first person to lead a hot-air balloon flight over the Pole in 1998.
First long-distance swim at the North Pole: Lewis Gordon Pugh made it .6 miles (1 kilometer) in 29 F (-2 C) saltwater in July 2007. According to a report in the Christian Science Monitor, Pugh had no permanent damage after the plunge, but the fingers on one hand stayed numb for several days [source: Lamb].
First black woman: Barbara Hillary was 75 years old when she reached the North Pole in April 2007.
Die Trying
Many who've attempted to reach the North Pole have perished in the effort, including:
Sir John Franklin, 1845-48. All 139 men in the expedition died while trying to find the Northwest Passage.
George Washington De Long, 1879-82. His steamship, Jeannette, drifted for 16 months in the Bering Strait before being crushed by ice; 12 men survive.
Salomon August Andree, July 1897. Andree and two others died of exposure in their hydrogen balloon before they could reach the Pole.
Dominick Arduin, April 2004. Disappeared after dropping into open water. (The book "The Secrets of the Adventurer" by Sven Pahajoki, questions whether Arduin faked her death.)
How Curling Works
Learn Proper Snowboard Care
Freezing to Compete: Winter Sports Pictures


Click to enquire and book your FREE valuation now or call us on 01355 907771.
I originally used Bensons to sell my house in East Kilbride some 10 years ago and was delighted with the service and speed of sale. I have recently moved again and went back to Bensons who again offered me an excellent sales fee and friendly service with a sale achieving well over the asking price. I would not hesitate to recommend them.
Good Value, kept in touch throughout the sale, achieved my target sales figure.
38 found. Viewing page 1 of 4.
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text:
<title>Simple Constraints - Using the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC)</title>
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Next: Multi-Alternative,
Up: Constraints

6.42.1 Simple Constraints

The simplest kind of constraint is a string full of letters, each of
which describes one kind of operand that is permitted.  Here are
the letters that are allowed:

whitespace
Whitespace characters are ignored and can be inserted at any position
except the first.  This enables each alternative for different operands to
be visually aligned in the machine description even if they have different
number of constraints and modifiers.

‘<samp>m</samp>’
A memory operand is allowed, with any kind of address that the machine
supports in general.
Note that the letter used for the general memory constraint can be
re-defined by a back end using the TARGET_MEM_CONSTRAINT macro.

‘<samp>o</samp>’
A memory operand is allowed, but only if the address is
<dfn>offsettable</dfn>.  This means that adding a small integer (actually,
the width in bytes of the operand, as determined by its machine mode)
may be added to the address and the result is also a valid memory
address.

For example, an address which is constant is offsettable; so is an
address that is the sum of a register and a constant (as long as a
slightly larger constant is also within the range of address-offsets
supported by the machine); but an autoincrement or autodecrement
address is not offsettable.  More complicated indirect/indexed
addresses may or may not be offsettable depending on the other
addressing modes that the machine supports.

Note that in an output operand which can be matched by another
operand, the constraint letter ‘<samp>o</samp>’ is valid only when accompanied
by both ‘<samp><</samp>’ (if the target machine has predecrement addressing)
and ‘<samp>></samp>’ (if the target machine has preincrement addressing).

‘<samp>V</samp>’
A memory operand that is not offsettable.  In other words, anything that
would fit the ‘<samp>m</samp>’ constraint but not the ‘<samp>o</samp>’ constraint.

‘<samp><</samp>’
A memory operand with autodecrement addressing (either predecrement or
postdecrement) is allowed.  In inline asm this constraint is only
allowed if the operand is used exactly once in an instruction that can
handle the side-effects.  Not using an operand with ‘<samp><</samp>’ in constraint
string in the inline asm pattern at all or using it in multiple
instructions isn't valid, because the side-effects wouldn't be performed
or would be performed more than once.  Furthermore, on some targets
the operand with ‘<samp><</samp>’ in constraint string must be accompanied by
special instruction suffixes like %U0 instruction suffix on PowerPC
or %P0 on IA-64.

‘<samp>></samp>’
A memory operand with autoincrement addressing (either preincrement or
postincrement) is allowed.  In inline asm the same restrictions
as for ‘<samp><</samp>’ apply.

‘<samp>r</samp>’
A register operand is allowed provided that it is in a general
register.

‘<samp>i</samp>’
An immediate integer operand (one with constant value) is allowed.
This includes symbolic constants whose values will be known only at
assembly time or later.

‘<samp>n</samp>’
An immediate integer operand with a known numeric value is allowed.
Many systems cannot support assembly-time constants for operands less
than a word wide.  Constraints for these operands should use ‘<samp>n</samp>’
rather than ‘<samp>i</samp>’.

‘<samp>I</samp>’, ‘<samp>J</samp>’, ‘<samp>K</samp>’, ... ‘<samp>P</samp>’
Other letters in the range ‘<samp>I</samp>’ through ‘<samp>P</samp>’ may be defined in
a machine-dependent fashion to permit immediate integer operands with
explicit integer values in specified ranges.  For example, on the
68000, ‘<samp>I</samp>’ is defined to stand for the range of values 1 to 8.
This is the range permitted as a shift count in the shift
instructions.

‘<samp>E</samp>’
An immediate floating operand (expression code const_double) is
allowed, but only if the target floating point format is the same as
that of the host machine (on which the compiler is running).

‘<samp>F</samp>’
An immediate floating operand (expression code const_double or
const_vector) is allowed.

‘<samp>G</samp>’, ‘<samp>H</samp>’
‘<samp>G</samp>’ and ‘<samp>H</samp>’ may be defined in a machine-dependent fashion to
permit immediate floating operands in particular ranges of values.

‘<samp>s</samp>’
An immediate integer operand whose value is not an explicit integer is
allowed.

This might appear strange; if an insn allows a constant operand with a
value not known at compile time, it certainly must allow any known
value.  So why use ‘<samp>s</samp>’ instead of ‘<samp>i</samp>’?  Sometimes it allows
better code to be generated.

For example, on the 68000 in a fullword instruction it is possible to
use an immediate operand; but if the immediate value is between −128
and 127, better code results from loading the value into a register and
using the register.  This is because the load into the register can be
done with a ‘<samp>moveq</samp>’ instruction.  We arrange for this to happen
by defining the letter ‘<samp>K</samp>’ to mean “any integer outside the
range −128 to 127”, and then specifying ‘<samp>Ks</samp>’ in the operand
constraints.

‘<samp>g</samp>’
Any register, memory or immediate integer operand is allowed, except for
registers that are not general registers.

‘<samp>X</samp>’
Any operand whatsoever is allowed.

‘<samp>0</samp>’, ‘<samp>1</samp>’, ‘<samp>2</samp>’, ... ‘<samp>9</samp>’
An operand that matches the specified operand number is allowed.  If a
digit is used together with letters within the same alternative, the
digit should come last.

This number is allowed to be more than a single digit.  If multiple
digits are encountered consecutively, they are interpreted as a single
decimal integer.  There is scant chance for ambiguity, since to-date
it has never been desirable that ‘<samp>10</samp>’ be interpreted as matching
either operand 1 or operand 0.  Should this be desired, one
can use multiple alternatives instead.

This is called a <dfn>matching constraint</dfn> and what it really means is
that the assembler has only a single operand that fills two roles
which asm distinguishes.  For example, an add instruction uses
two input operands and an output operand, but on most CISC
machines an add instruction really has only two operands, one of them an
input-output operand:

          addl #35,r12

Matching constraints are used in these circumstances.
More precisely, the two operands that match must include one input-only
operand and one output-only operand.  Moreover, the digit must be a
smaller number than the number of the operand that uses it in the
constraint.

‘<samp>p</samp>’
An operand that is a valid memory address is allowed.  This is
for “load address” and “push address” instructions.

‘<samp>p</samp>’ in the constraint must be accompanied by address_operand
as the predicate in the match_operand.  This predicate interprets
the mode specified in the match_operand as the mode of the memory
reference for which the address would be valid.

<var>other-letters</var>
Other letters can be defined in machine-dependent fashion to stand for
particular classes of registers or other arbitrary operand types.
‘<samp>d</samp>’, ‘<samp>a</samp>’ and ‘<samp>f</samp>’ are defined on the 68000/68020 to stand
for data, address and floating point registers.