text:
Krems an der Donau

Krems an der Donau is a town with 25,271 inhabitants end 2022 in Austria, in the federal state of Lower Austria. It is the fifth-largest city of Lower Austria and is approximately 70 km west of Vienna. Krems is a city with its own statute (or Statutarstadt), and therefore it is both a municipality and a district.

Geography
Krems is located at the confluence of the Krems and Danube Rivers at the eastern end of Wachau valley, in the southern Waldviertel.

Krems borders the following municipalities: Stratzing, Langenlois, Rohrendorf bei Krems, Gedersdorf, Traismauer, Nußdorf ob der Traisen, Paudorf, Furth bei Göttweig, Mautern an der Donau, Dürnstein, and Senftenberg.

History

Krems was first mentioned in 995 in a certificate of Otto III, but settlement was apparent even before then. For example, a child's grave, over 27,000 years old, was found here. This is the oldest grave found in Austria.

During the 11th and 12th centuries, Chremis, as it was then called, was almost as large as Vienna.

At the end of the Thirty Years' War, Swedish troops captured Krems in 1645 during their invasion of Lower Austria. The city was recaptured by Imperial troops under Hans Christoph von Puchheim and Johann Wilhelm von Hunolstein on 5 May 1646.

Krems is the primary producer of Marillenschnaps, an apricot brandy. It is also the hometown of Martin Johann Schmidt, called "Kremserschmidt", the leading painter, draughtsman and etcher of the Austrian late Baroque.

City division

 * Innenstadt (Inner City)
 * Weinzierl
 * Mitterau
 * Stein
 * Egelsee
 * Rehberg
 * Am Steindl
 * Gneixendorf
 * Lerchenfeld
 * Krems-Süd (South Krems)

Population development
The population (with principal residence status) in the agglomeration was about 50,000 at the end of 2010.

Old town

 * Bürgerspitalkirche
 * Dominikanerkirche
 * Dreifaltigkeitssäule
 * Göglhaus
 * Gozzoburg
 * Großes Sgraffitohaus
 * Pfarrkirche St. Veit
 * Piaristenkirche
 * Pulverturm
 * Rathaus
 * Simandlbrunnen
 * Steiner Tor: The gate, erected in 1480, is the second remaining medieval gate

Outside the Old Town

 * Frauenbergkirche
 * Göttweigerhofkapelle
 * Großer Passauerhof
 * Karikaturmuseum Krems
 * Kloster Und
 * Kremser Tor
 * Kunsthalle Krems
 * Forum Frohner
 * Landesgalerie Niederösterreich
 * Linzer Tor
 * Mauthaus
 * Minoritenkirche
 * Pfarrkirche Hl. Nikolaus
 * Salzstadl
 * University Krems

Transport

The city's main railway station is a junction of the Franz-Josefs Railway to Vienna, the Kremser Railway to St. Pölten, the Donauufer Railway to Spitz and the regional railway to Horn. It is at the intersection of the Stockerauer Speedway S5 and the Kremser Speedway S33, and is traversed by the Danube Road B3, the Retzer Road B35, the Kremser Road B37 and the Langenloiser Road B218. Krems is a junction of the Wieselbus bus lines, which provides radial connections between Sankt Pölten and the different regions of Lower Austria.

Main Roads
 * Stockerauer Schnellstraße (S5) from Krems to Vienna
 * Kremser Schnellstraße (S33) from Krems to St. Pölten
 * Donau Straße (B3) from Krems to Linz
 * Aggsteiner Straße (B33) from Krems to Melk
 * Aggsteiner Straße (B33a) from Krems to Mautern an der Donau
 * Retzer Straße (B35) from Krems to Retz
 * Kremser Straße (B37) from Krems to Rastenfeld
 * Kremser Straße (B37a) from Krems to Traismauer
 * Langenloiser Straße (B218) from Krems to Langenlois

Railroad
 * Franz-Josefs-Bahn from Krems to Vienna
 * Kremser Bahn from Krems to St. Pölten
 * Donauuferbahn from Krems to Spitz
 * Kamptalbahn from Krems to Sigmundsherberg

Air traffic
 * Gneixendorf airfield is a small general aviation airport.

In the city
A network of four bus lines operates at regular intervals within the city. Every summer, a tourist train connects the ancient parts of the city with museums, the central railway station and the passenger ship terminal of Krems.

Municipal council
The municipal council consists of 40 members and since the municipal elections in 2017 it consists of the following parties:

 * 19 Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) – the mayor and the first vice mayor
 * 8 Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) – the second vice mayor
 * 5 Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ)
 * 2 KLS
 * 1 Austrian Green Party
 * 1 PROKS

Municipal elections in Krems were held, at the same time as the Austrian legislative election, 2017 on 15 October 2017.

City's senate
The city's senate consists of 10 members:
 * SPÖ: 5 members
 * ÖVP: 4 members
 * FPÖ: 1 members

Educational facilities

 * BHAK/BHAS Krems
 * Bundesgymnasium Piaristen
 * Bundesgymnasium Rechte Kremszeile
 * Bundesreal- and Bundesoberstufenrealgymnasium (BORG) Krems Heinemannstraße
 * Bundesrealgymnasium Krems Ringstraße
 * Danube Private University
 * University for Continuing Education Krems
 * Adult education centre
 * HLA/HLW Krems
 * HLF Krems
 * HTBL Krems
 * IMC Fachhochschule Krems (University of Applied Sciences)
 * Karl Landsteiner Privatuniversität für Gesundheitswissenschaften
 * Oberstufenrealgymnasium Englische Fräulein
 * School of education

Prison

 * Justizanstalt Stein is a prison housing some of Austria's worst offenders.

Leisure and sports sites
Swimming is available at Kremser Strandbad (indoor swimming pool) and outdoor.
 * Football – Kremser SC
 * Ice hockey – KEV Eagles
 * Miniature golf
 * Rugby Club Krems
 * Skatepark
 * Team handball – Union Handballklub Krems
 * Union Badminton Krems

Notable people

 * Ava (ca.1060–1127), poet, the first named female writer in the German language; she lived in Krems
 * Margaret of Austria (1204–1266), German queen, (1225-1235) & Queen of Bohemia, (1253-1260).
 * Johann Georg Schmidt (1685–1748), called the "Wiener Schmidt", an Austrian Baroque painter, he died in Krems
 * Martin Johann Schmidt (1718–1801), called the "Kremser Schmidt", painter of the Austrian Rococo, he died in Krems
 * Michael Wutky (1739–1822), an Austrian landscape painter in the Rococo style
 * Ludwig Guttenbrunn (1750–1819), an Austrian artist of portraits and history painting.
 * Vinzenz Eduard Milde (1777–1853), Dean of Krems and Archbishop of Vienna, pastor of Krems and teacher at the former Piarist Gymnasium Krems, (DE Wiki).
 * Ludwig Ritter von Köchel (1800–1877), an Austrian musicologist, writer, composer, botanist and publisher.
 * Franz Schneider (1812–1897), physician and chemist
 * Eduard Melly, (DE Wiki) (1814-1854), art historian, politician and numismatist
 * Johann Nordmann (1820–1887), journalist, travel writer and poet
 * Wilhelm Gause (1853–1916), painter, he died in Krems
 * Josef Maria Eder (1855–1944), photochemist and pioneer of Picture & Photography
 * Julius Ernest Wilhelm Fučík (1872–1916) composer and conductor; military musician in Krems, 1891-1894
 * Wilhelm Miklas (1872–1956), politician (CS) and the third President of the 1st Republic, 1928-1938
 * Josef Meller, (DE Wiki) (1874–1968), university professor of ophthalmology
 * Josef Bayer, (DE Wiki) (1882–1931), director of Natural History Museum, Vienna, helped find Venus of Willendorf
 * Fritz Dworschak (1890–1974), an Austrian numismatist, art historian and museum director
 * Rudolf Redlinghofer (1900–1940), Conscientious objector, Nazi victim, beheaded in 1940, now rehabilitated
 * Peter B. Neubauer (1913–2008), child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst
 * Wolfgang Kummer, (DE Wiki) (1935–2007), physicist
 * Dagmar Braun Celeste (born 1941), an American counselor, author and former first lady of Ohio
 * Ulrike Lunacek (born 1957), journalist and politician (Green)
 * Robert Streibel, (born 1959), historian, writer and poet.

Sport

 * Gregor Hradetzky, (1909–1984), organ builder and canoist, two gold medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics
 * Marko Stankovic, (born 1986), football player, played 371 games
 * Lukas Thürauer (born 1987), Austrian footballer who has played over 340 games

Twin towns
Krems is twinned with the following cities:
 * Ribe, Denmark, since 1971
 * 🇩🇪 Böblingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, since 1971
 * 🇫🇷 Beaune, Côte-d'Or, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, France, since 1973
 * 🇩🇪 Passau, Bavaria, Germany, since 1974
 * 🇨🇿 Kroměříž, Czech Republic, since 1994
 * 🇺🇸 Grapevine, Texas, United States, since 1999

title: Krems an der Donau


text:
ViolaWWW

ViolaWWW is a discontinued web browser, the first to support scripting and stylesheets for the World Wide Web (WWW). It was first released in 1991/1992 for Unix and acted as the recommended browser at CERN, where the WWW was invented, but eventually lost its position as most frequently used browser to Mosaic.

Viola
Released in 1992, Viola was the invention of Pei-Yuan Wei, a member of the Experimental Computing Facility (XCF) at the University of California, Berkeley. Viola was a UNIX-based programming/scripting language; the acronym stood for "Visually Interactive Object-oriented Language and Application".

Pei's interest in graphically based software began with HyperCard, which he first encountered in 1989. Of that, Pei said, "HyperCard was very compelling back then, you know graphically, this hyperlink thing, it was just not very global and it only worked on Mac... and I didn't even have a Mac". Only having access to X terminals, Pei, in 1990, created the first version of Viola for such terminals: "I got a HyperCard manual and looked at it and just basically took the concepts and implemented them..."

Pei released Viola 0.8 in 1991.

History of ViolaWWW
After graduating, Pei developed Viola further while working with the XCF and startups. Later, he would be funded by O'Reilly Books, the technical publisher, which used the software to help demonstrate its Global Network Navigator site. His major goal was to create a version of Viola for the Internet:

"X-Window [sic] was a Unix-based system so it had TCP/IP built in and the Internet was a logical step. The question was how to transport his Viola pages across the Internet. He was on the verge of an independent invention of networked hypertext. 'And that's when I read Tim's e-mail about the World Wide Web' he explains. 'The URL was very, very clever, it was perfectly what I needed. He dropped Tim a line saying that he was thinking of writing a browser for X. 'Sounds like a good idea,' said Tim in a reply posted to www-talk on 9 December [1991]. Four days later, Pei Wei told www-talk that he had made a browser."

Released in 1992, ViolaWWW was the first browser to add extended functionality such as embedded scriptable objects, stylesheets, and tables. Early versions were received well at CERN. Ed Krol also highlighted the browser in his popular 1992 text, Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog.

As ViolaWWW developed, it began to look more like HyperCard:

"It had a bookmark facility so that you could keep track of your favourite pages. It had buttons for going backwards and forwards and a history feature to keep track of the places you had been. As time went on, it acquired tables and graphics and by May 1993 it could even run programs."

ViolaWWW was based on the Viola toolkit, which is a tool for the development and support of visual interactive media applications, with a multimedia web browser being a possible application. Viola ran under the X Window System and could be used to build complex hypermedia applications with features like applets and other interactive content as early as 1992.

Firsts
Viola was the first web browser to have the following features:

 * client-side document insertion, predating frames, or syndication via JavaScript output writing, which are used commonly today.

 * a simple stylesheet mechanism used for inserting style information such as fonts, color and alignments into a document. This was implemented in Viola well before CSS was developed in 1998:

 * a sidebar panel used for displaying "meta" information, intra document navigational links, and other information, similar to (but not as sophisticated as) features found in several modern browsers.
 * a scripting language that can be accessed from an HTML document, such that an HTML document can embed highly interactive scripts/applets. This can be seen as the precursor to JavaScript and embedded objects.

 * Forms

Competing against Mosaic
While ViolaWWW opened the door to the World Wide Web, its limitations, including it only being implemented on the X Window System, meant it could not compete with Mosaic, the browser which brought the Web into the mainstream. Among other things, Mosaic was easier to install on the computers most people were using. Originally developed for UNIX, Mosaic was soon ported to Microsoft Windows, a platform on which ViolaWWW never ran.

ViolaWWW in patent lawsuits
In 1999, Eolas Technologies and the University of California filed suit in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against Microsoft, claiming infringement of U.S. patent 5,838,906, (covering browser plugins) by the Internet Explorer web browser. Eolas won the initial case in August 2003 and was awarded damages of $ from Microsoft. The District Court reaffirmed the jury's decision in January 2004.

In March 2005, an appeals court directed that there be a retrial, overturning a decision that Microsoft pay $521 million in damages. The appeals court said that the initial ruling had ignored two key arguments put forward by Microsoft. Microsoft had wanted to show the court that ViolaWWW was prior art, since it was created in 1993 at the University of California, a year before the key patent were filed. Microsoft had also suggested that Michael David Doyle, Eolas' founder and a former University of California researcher, had intentionally concealed his knowledge of ViolaWWW when filing the patent claim. Microsoft subsequently settled with Eolas, in August 2007, without a retrial. Eolas continued to file suits against dozens of other technology companies.

In February 2012 a Texas jury found that two of Eolas' patents were invalid after testimony from several defendants including Tim Berners-Lee and Pei-Yuan Wei, credited as creator of the Viola browser. The testimony professed that the Viola browser included Eolas' claimed inventions before the filing date (September 7, 1993). There is "substantial evidence that Viola was publicly known and used" before the plaintiffs' alleged conception date, it added. The ruling effectively ended a pending lawsuit against 22 companies including Yahoo, Google, and many online retailers.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: ViolaWWW


text:
Rafe Mair

Kenneth Rafe Mair (31 December 1931 – 9 October 2017) was a Canadian lawyer, political commentator, radio personality and politician in British Columbia, Canada. He served in the British Columbia Legislative Assembly as the member for Kamloops from 1975 to 1981 in the caucus of the Social Credit Party.

In his post-political career, Mair became a radio personality and political commentator, raising controversy for his views on both the Meech Lake and Charlottetown constitutional accords. He served as the plaintiff of the historic Supreme Court of Canada decision Rafe Mair v. Kari Simpson.

Early life
Mair was born in Vancouver and grew up in the neighbourhood of Kerrisdale. His mother was Frances Tyne (née Leigh), known as Frankie, and his father was Kenneth Frederick Robert Mair, a salesman born in Auckland, New Zealand. They had married in Vancouver 16 months earlier.

Mair became an avid fisherman and developed an interest in public affairs from his mother's work at The Province newspaper.

Mair entered the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 1949 and went on to law in 1953. He worked for a lumber company and then in the oil industry in Edmonton before spending three years as a claims adjuster with an insurance company.

In 1960, Mair began articling with Vancouver lawyer Tom Griffiths. Called to the bar in 1961, he handled many personal injury cases. He practiced law in Vancouver until 1968, when he moved to Kamloops to join the practice of his law school classmate Jarl Whist, a Liberal who had run twice unsuccessfully against Progressive Conservative MP E. Davie Fulton.

Political career
His electoral career began with his election to Kamloops city council in the early 1970s. Previously involved with the Liberal Party, he was an opponent of the NDP government of premier Dave Barrett. He won the Social Credit nomination for Kamloops in May 1975, going on to defeat NDP incumbent Gerry Anderson in the December election by 14,639 votes to 10,975. Mair won re-election four years later by 3,309 votes. He held the seat until retiring from politics in 1981; the seat was taken over by Claude Richmond, also of the Social Credit Party.

Mair served in Premier Bill Bennett's cabinet in a variety of portfolios, including health, environment, consumer services, and consumer and corporate affairs. During the negotiations in 1980 and 1981 to patriate the Constitution of Canada, he was BC's chief delegate on constitutional matters.

Media personality
In 1981, Mair left government and served as a radio talk show host in Vancouver at CJOR. The station fired Mair in 1984, replacing him with former premier Dave Barrett. Mair moved to rival CKNW.

In the early 1990s, he gained national notoriety and support alike for his role as an outspoken opponent of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown constitutional accords.

Despite high ratings, his show was cancelled by CKNW in 2003, and he was subsequently hired at CKBD (600 AM), an oldies station, to start a morning talk show until the show's ending in 2005. In the fall of 2005, he became a regular commentary guest on Omni Television's prime time current affairs program, The Standard (seen in Vancouver on CHNU-TV).

Mair contributed three commentaries a week until January 2006 when the Commentary segment of the program was axed. However, he continued his relationship with The Standard, guest-hosting the program from time to time. Until his death, he was as a regular columnist for a chain of community newspapers as well as for the online magazine The Tyee and often appeared nationally as a political commentator for several outlets including CBC Radio.

In 2008, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously ruled in Mair's favour in Rafe Mair v. Kari Simpson, his appeal against a provincial court decision that he had defamed social activist Kari Simpson in his editorial in 1999.

Views
Although he was traditionally considered a political conservative, Mair's views were moderate on certain issues; notably the environment and social welfare. Disillusioned with the three mainstream federal parties, he became a significant supporter of the Green Party urging people to vote for them in recent federal and provincial elections. Though he shied away from endorsing entire parties, he supported individual candidates, such as New Democrat candidate Svend Robinson in Vancouver Centre.

In 2009, Mair publicly stated that he voted NDP in that year's election. He had written why he thought that Premier Gordon Campbell failed British Columbians; among the reasons he cited were that the BC Liberals were destroying the publicly owned utility, BC Hydro, and were giving away British Columbia's water rights to international corporate interests.

Mair was the spokesperson for Save Our Rivers, a group organized to fight private run-of-the-river hydroelectric developments.

Personal life
Mair was a Type II diabetic and publicly announced his experiences with depression in 1995 while working as a broadcaster.

Mair authored several books on Canadian politics, including his memoirs, and was a regular columnist at the online newsmagazine The Tyee. He was a principal contributor until his death to The Common Sense Canadian, a news and opinion site with a British Columbia focus. He hosted a program called The Search with Rafe Mair on Joytv.

Mair died on 9 October 2017 in Vancouver at the age of 85.

Selected works

 * Canada, is anyone listening? (1998) ISBN 1-55263-000-5
 * Rants, raves and recollections (2000) ISBN 1-55285-145-1
 * Still Ranting: More Rants, Raves, and Recollections (2002) ISBN 0-8020-7458-8
 * Rafe : a memoir (2004) ISBN 1-55017-319-7
 * Hard talk (2005) ISBN 1-55017-374-X
 * Over the Mountains: More Thoughts on Things that Matter (2006) ISBN 1-55017-371-5
 * I Remember Horsebuns (2015) ISBN 978-1-987857-25-2
 * Politically Incorrect: How Canada Lost its Way and the Simple Path Home (2017) ISBN 978-0-9953286-2-4

Awards

 * 1977 – Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Anniversary Medal
 * 1993 – B.C. Association of Broadcasters "Broadcast Performer of the Year"
 * 1995 – Haig-Brown Award for Conservation work
 * 1995 – Received prestigious Michener Award from the Governor-General of Canada for courageous journalism, the first radio broadcaster to do so (nominated on two other occasions)
 * 1997 – BC Branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association "Media Person Of the Year"
 * 1997 – National Canadian Mental Health Association Media Person of The Year (shared with Pamela Wallin)
 * 1998 – BC Branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association "Media person of The Year"
 * 2003 – Bruce Hutchison Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Jack Webster Foundation
 * 2005 – Inducted into the Canadian Association of Broadcasters' Hall of Fame
 * 2005 – Named by readers poll of Georgia Straight (78,000 responses) as best talk show host in Vancouver

title: Rafe Mair


text:
Ornament

An ornament is something used for decoration.

Ornament may also refer to:

Decoration

 * Ornament (art), any purely decorative element in architecture and the decorative arts
 * Ornamental turning
 * Biological ornament, a characteristic of animals that appear to serve only a decorative purpose
 * Bronze and brass ornamental work, decorative work that dates back to antiquity
 * Christmas ornament, a decoration used to festoon a Christmas tree
 * Dingbat, decorations in typography
 * Garden ornament, a decoration in a garden, landscape, or park
 * Hood ornament, a decoration on the hood of an automobile
 * Lawn ornament, a decoration in a grassy area
 * Ornamental plant, a decorative plant
 * Peak ornament, a decoration under the peak of the eaves of a gabled building

Music

 * Ornament (music), a flourish that serves to decorate music
 * Ornament, a Russian band, forerunner to the band Kukuruza

Other uses

 * Ornament (football), the football team from Hong Kong
 * Ornaments Rubric, a prayer of the Church of England

title: Ornament


text: Talk:Ornament

title: Talk:Ornament


text:
Talk:Cryptomeria

The picture in use is disputed as to identity. WormRunner 18:11, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * Definitely Giant sequoia! I'll scan and upload a real Sugi shoot with cones in the next day or two. - MPF 18:49, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * Right-o; image deleted.
 * James F. (talk) 20:27, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Finally got round to uploading new pic! MPF 15:08, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:Cryptomeria


text:
Talk:Hong Kong Monetary Authority

Macau
Write Monetary Authority of Macau also, please. -- Kaihsu 18:14, 2004 Mar 1 (UTC)

I wrote something about the Monetary Authority of Macau (AMCM). Please have a look. -- 05skychau 02:28, 2004 Mar 3 (HKT)

 * Nice one. Good job.  Thanks!  By the way, I created Hong Kong honours system today.  The article Independent Commission Against Corruption of Hong Kong is still to be written.  All the best for you and your Hong Kong cohort. -- Kaihsu 18:33, 2004 Mar 2 (UTC)

 * Welcome. --05skychau 16:09, 2004 Mar 3(HKT)

Insurance vs Issuance
Note insurance or Note issuance? olivier 05:21, Mar 29, 2004 (UTC)

So who is the authority?
Who is the final authority of HKMA? PRC government? SAR? Indepedent organization of banks? It is not clear to people who don't know where the old "Office of the Exchange Fund" and the "Office of the Commissioner of Banking" originate from. Who provided the initial funding? Does the HKMA hold collateral in gold? -- Emana 02:47, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup
I did a big round of cleanup. Mostly I got rid of marketing info that were straight copy/paste from the HK gov website. The sections were split without much reasoning, such as Infrastructure having a Financial Infrastructure underneath for example. There were also grammar and wording that needed repair. There is an endless amount of info that can be researched, and few sources have been tapped. This page is very much a government marketing site right now. Anything in quote/italics can be a whole article itself. Benjwong 06:31, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Expansion phase
I am currently expanding the article from on-line sources, in order to buid it up. I am not satisfied with the structure of the article at present, and will be regrouping/rearranging these along slightly different lines, or deleting sections. Any help would be appreciated. Ohconfucius 06:33, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071124082851/http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=&art_id=46718&sid=&con_type=1&d_str=19950220&sear_year=1995 to http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=&art_id=46718&sid=&con_type=1&d_str=19950220&sear_year=1995
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071124082856/http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=&art_id=48262&sid=&con_type=1&d_str=19980816&sear_year=1998 to http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=&art_id=48262&sid=&con_type=1&d_str=19980816&sear_year=1998
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071124082922/http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=1&art_id=48335&sid=14350285&con_type=1&d_str=20070705&sear_year=2007 to http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=1&art_id=48335&sid=14350285&con_type=1&d_str=20070705&sear_year=2007
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A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion: You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 03:06, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Chan Tak-Lam Norman 陳德霖.jpg

title: Talk:Hong Kong Monetary Authority


text: Talk:Macanese pataca

title: Talk:Macanese pataca


text:
Midgar

Midgar (ミッドガル) is a fictional city from the Final Fantasy media franchise. It first appears in the 1997 video game Final Fantasy VII, and is depicted as a bustling metropolis built, occupied, and controlled by the megacorporation Shinra Electric Power Company (神羅電気動力株式会社). The city is powered by electricity drawn from reactors which run on "magic light" (魔晄), the processed form of spiritual energy extracted by Shinra from beneath the surface of the planet on which the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII takes place. Shinra's activities drain the world of its life force, the "Lifestream", threatening the existence of all life as the planet weakens. In spin-offs of the game, the city spanned a town named Edge (エッジ).

Midgar is a major aspect of the metaseries' industrial or post-industrial science fiction milieu with recurring appearances in related media, and is the centerpiece of Final Fantasy VII Remake. Midgar is considered to be one of the most memorable aspects of the original Final Fantasy VII, and has been well received by critics and the video game community for its cyberpunk aesthetic and dystopian setting. Midgar is featured prominently in discussions about Final Fantasy VII themes of class conflict and environmentalism.

Development
Final Fantasy VII was originally envisioned to be set in an alternate version of New York City, before the development team decided to switch to the fictional city of Midgar. Yusuke Naora, the art director for Final Fantasy VII, designed many of the locations for the game. Contrary to popular belief that Midgar's steampunk aesthetic is influenced by works such as Blade Runner, Naora said that he had the image of a pizza in mind when he originally designed Midgar and its distinctive plate-like structure. Other in-game elements themed after pizza include Midgar's mayor Domino and the musical theme "Underneath the Rotting Pizza", which plays in various Midgar levels. Like other story elements in Final Fantasy VII, Midgar's name is inspired by Norse mythology.

The 2020 video game Final Fantasy VII Remake focuses on the city of Midgar due to it being a highly recognizable symbol of the world of Final Fantasy VII. The iteration of Midgar for Remake had to be redesigned from scratch, as the process of converting the original's 2D backgrounds into a 3D space reveal many "structural contradictions". The planning process began with Midgar's original design, and from there, the team created architectural documents outlining how its various aspects should work. The development team aimed to make Midgar's environments larger and denser while taking into consideration their functionality, as they wanted to expand the city in a way that made sense. The developers set out to make Midgar's environments realistic by adjusting its scale regarding the size between the buildings and the density. In Remake, Midgar's sights and locales references different types of world architecture and channel these influences through the developers' use of materials, light, and space. For example, the city's bus signs heavily resemble their real-world counterparts in New York City. Remake producer Yoshinori Kitase noted that the developmental team wanted to show a different design aesthetic which presents Midgar with strong elements of colour and variety, and the lighting and colouring used in Remake is intended to accentuate the uniqueness of the game world. The development team opted not to use a "photo-realistic approach", but instead something more stylized to honor the artistic designs and choices of the original game. Environment director on Final Fantasy VII Remake Takako Miyake noted that whenever the team extracted Midgar's design elements from the original, they were "focused on combinations that unconditionally inspired excitement, consistency aside". In retrospect, the team praised Midgar's eclectic aesthetic from the original game, as they felt it was the most captivating aspect of its setting, and felt that it is important to ensure each area felt distinct to prevent it from becoming monotonous.

The developers of Remake wanted to show more of the lives of Midgar's ordinary citizens to give players a better sense of it and its culture, which is why they expanded the roles of previously minor characters. The original game opens with Cloud's first bombing mission with AVALANCHE, as the intention at the time was to start the game in the middle of the action. Remake instead opens with mundane scenes of everyday life for Midgar's citizens, as it developers felt that going straight from the bombing mission into the streets was insufficient to convey the impact the destruction of Mako reactors has on people's lives. The developers also wanted to add nuance to the events before and after the explosion of the Mako reactor by making players question AVALANCHE's eco-terrorist activities and emphasizing that innocent people suffer regardless of who is responsible for the chaos following the reactor's destruction.

Director Tetsuya Nomura acknowledged that concerns were raised regarding the scope of Remake, but did not feel that expansion of Midgar as a setting would be problematic. He explained that while it takes about seven hours to go through the Midgar section in the original game, he said the overall gameplay of Remake, when taking into consideration travel time involved with traversing a fully three-dimensional map in Midgar along with expanded story content, is enough to cover an entire game. The story and scenario writer for Remake, Kazushige Nojima, said that stopping the game at the point the party departs Midgar would also allow for an adequate amount of planned story scenarios to be incorporated throughout its narrative.

Background
Midgar is located on a world referred to as "the Planet" by the characters, and which is retroactively named "Gaia" in some Square Enix promotional material and by Square Enix staff. Midgar is originally formed from the consolidation of several smaller, independent towns in the distant past; each settlement made up one sector and gradually lost its original name. The city is ruled by the Shinra Electric Power Company and powered by Shinra's "Mako" reactors. The city has two principal components: an elevated, circular plate supported by a central pillar and a system of smaller columns, and a network of slums beneath the plate. The upper plate contains office buildings and similar complexes, as well as theatres, bars and various residences. The plate is divided into eight sectors, with each sector punctuated by two walls and a Mako reactor. The city's prosperity is due to the abundance of Mako energy near it, and the reactor complex meaning that there is little to no vegetation within or near it. A commuter railway system carries workers to and from the slums, and security measures are implemented throughout the city. A network of maintenance platforms are suspended beneath the plate. Many citizens live in the slums beneath the sections of the plate. Most buildings there are made of collected scrap shaped into dwellings; most lack architectural planning, with the slums as a whole littered with wreckage.

At some point in its history, Midgar went to war with the nation of Wutai. Shinra developed a means of mass-producing and weaponizing "materia", small spheres of crystallized Mako energy that grant their user magical abilities, as well as an army of genetically enhanced elite military units called "SOLDIER". Shinra ultimately won the war and established Midgar as their seat of power and influence in the wider world by the events of Final Fantasy VII. At one point, Shinra had developed a space exploration program, but following the war with Wutai and the discovery of how profitable processing Mako energy was, Shinra prioritized research on Mako and its applications and consolidated their operations around harvesting Mako energy, effectively cancelling the program.

Level content
In Final Fantasy VII and spin-off media, player characters may visit multiple sectors within Midgar. Noteworthy sectors include:

 * The Sector 5 slums, home of Aerith Gainsborough and her adoptive mother, Elmyra Gainsborough. A disused church tended to by Aerith and the area adjacent to Elmyra's house are among the few places with greenery in the city.
 * The Sector 6 slums, a broken-down passageway between Sectors 5 and 7. Wall Market is its largest and most populated area and serves as a red light district. Noteworthy locations include the Honeybee Inn and Don Corneo's mansion.
 * The Sector 7 slums, where AVALANCHE is headquartered in a bar called "7th Heaven" run by Tifa Lockhart. Inside the Sector 7 slums is the Train Graveyard, a dark and dangerous area of scrapped trains resembling a maze.
 * Sector 0, which contains Shinra's headquarters, a massive building located in the center column of the upper plate which is the tallest structure in Midgar. From their offices, Shinra staff run almost every element of Midgar, from the news media to the reactors that power the metropolis.

Final Fantasy VII
Midgar serves as the setting of the opening section of Final Fantasy VII. The eco-terrorist group AVALANCHE, with assistance from Cloud Strife, engineered successful bombing missions that temporarily put two Mako reactors out of commission by the events of Final Fantasy VII. In retaliation, the Turks destroyed the pillar holding up the section of the upper plate above Sector 7's slums. This caused the plate to collapse and crush the slums below, killing many residents. Shinra executives, hoping that all of AVALANCHE's members would be killed in the incident, blamed it on them to sway public opinion against them.

Following Shinra's capture of Cloud's party during their raid on the company's headquarters, President Shinra reveals his desire to discover the supposed Promised Land, where a "Neo-Midgar" would be built. He claims this land would be so abundant in Mako that it would flow out of the ground without needing Mako reactors to siphon it, which would increase Shinra's profits exponentially.

Some time later, Shinra moves a large Mako-powered cannon from a military installation in Junon to Midgar. It is modified into a superweapon called "the Sister Ray" through its integration with the city's Mako reactor network, with the goal of destroying an energy barrier Sephiroth conjured to protect himself in the Northern Crater after summoning the planet-destroying spell "Meteor". The cannon succeeds, but a simultaneous attack by a rampaging Weapon damages some areas of Midgar and destroys the upper floors of the Shinra headquarters. At the same time, Cloud's party infiltrate the city, defeating several of Shinra's remaining Shinra and disabling the Sister Ray, which is on the verge of destroying the city due to a power overload incited by Professor Hojo, the head of Shinra's Science Department.

The game's ending cutscene reveals that the Meteor nearly destroyed Midgar, but it is stopped by the combined effort of a Holy spell summoned by Aerith and the planet's Lifestream. In a post-credits scene set five hundred years later, Midgar is shown to be abandoned and overgrown with greenery.

Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII
In the prequel Before Crisis, Midgar experiences an insurgency waged by an earlier iteration of AVALANCHE. The story follows several Turk operatives working with Shinra's armed forces to combat the threat. During the game's events, Midgar is nearly destroyed by the large cannon stationed at Junon, which AVALANCHE had temporarily seized. Eventually, the original incarnation of AVALANCHE was crushed and its name was taken up by a new group that only consisted of a handful of operatives.

Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII
Dirge of Cerberus reveals that while Reeve Tuesti, Yuffie Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine and the Turks managed to evacuate the populace of the upper plate to Midgar's slum sectors prior to the ending of Final Fantasy VII, storms spawned by the intense gravity generated between Meteor and the Planet tore apart several of the city's upper plates. The main antagonistic faction of Dirge of Cerberus is Deepground, a SOLDIER sect developed as an experimental military project by President Shinra prior to his death. Trapped deep underground in Midgar by the effects of the Meteor crisis, Midgar becomes a battlefield during the events of Dirge of Cerberus as the World Restoration Organization (WRO), led by Reeve Tuesti, battles the re-emerged Deepground forces.

Final Fantasy VII Remake
Final Fantasy VII Remake, the first in a planned series of games remaking 's Final Fantasy VII, is set in Midgar. The narrative of Remake covers the beginning of the original game to the escape from Midgar by the surviving members of AVALANCHE and their allies with expanded story content. The setting of Midgar in Remake is noted for its linear nature; while the upper plate regions were mostly inaccessible in the original game, Remake allows players to explore many of these areas and interact extensively with its residents through new story scenarios.

Other games
Midgar has appeared as a level or stage in various Final Fantasy spin-off titles outside of the Compilation metaseries. These include Final Fantasy VII G-Bike; Dissidia Final Fantasy and its sequels Dissidia 012 and Dissidia NT; Theatrhythm Final Fantasy and its sequel Curtain Call; and Final Fantasy Airborne Brigade.

Outside of the Final Fantasy franchise, Midgar has appeared in the Itadaki Street series, the Super Smash Bros. series, Rampage Land Rankers, and PowerWash Simulator.

Other media
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children expands upon the original ending of VII, and reveals that the survivors of Midgar used debris from the city to build a new town called "Edge" on the outskirts of Midgar, though much of the population suffer from a plague known as "Geostigma".

Cultural impact
Julie Muncy from Wired noted that the city of Midgar, along with characters like Cloud Strife and Sephiroth, have achieved a level of cultural impact far beyond the games they originate from and "exist with power outside of their context". Stephen K. Hirst from Ars Technica suggested that a major theme of Final Fantasy VII, which involves an armed struggle between members of the working class and a "hyper-capitalist machine hellbent on extracting every ounce of value from the planet" to benefit Midgar's elite, resonated with a generation of players and inspired some to become environmentalist advocates and activists. The city is the namesake and inspiration behind Midgar Studios, the developer of the role-playing game Edge of Eternity.

Midgar has been a popular subject of fan labor, with some fans attempting to recreate the city's likeness in a real world or fictional context. Midgar city has been digitally recreated by fans within other game worlds like Minecraft, and Second Life.

Critical reception
Harry Mackin from Paste Magazine said the opening act of Final Fantasy VII in Midgar is the game's mostly fondly remembered aspect, and that the city recalls the cyberpunk themes of Akira and Blade Runner. Konstantinos Dimopoulos from WireFrame concurred, noting that Midgar is a "place that managed to define, encapsulate, and summarise a whole setting – a pithy urban symbol of FFVII's world". Jason Faulkner from GameRevolution opined that Midgar is an exemplary JRPG setting which "stands as one of the best examples of world-building in the genre", and the "crowning achievement" of the entire Final Fantasy series. Tom Senior from PC Gamer perceived Midgar's "contradictory identity" to be fascinating in its level of detail, "a breathtaking vision of industrial living gone wrong".

Joe Juba of Game Informer lauded the handling of the city in Remake, specifically the expanded detail of its "political conspiracies, everyday desperation, and quiet hope". Marty Sliva of The Escapist approved of the developers' decision to expand the early hours of Final Fantasy VII into a "30-40 hours" experience, noting that he could experience a "new side of Shinra and Midgar", the latter now with its distinct district and fully realized populations instead of the "single amorphous blob of a city" in the original. EGMNOW praised the themes of ecoterrorism and war and the prominent role Midgar had in the narrative. Nadia Oxford of US Gamer found that the visual upgrade of Midgar in Remake provides an unsettling observation on how Midgar's expansion damages the planet it is located in environmentally, as well as the parallels of "human excess and hubris" between the real world and the game's world.

In regards to the remains of Midgar from Advent Children, Destructoid noted the message within its writing regarding the characters' lives in Midgar, as its people are able to move on with their lives, but Cloud is unable to due to past trauma. They compared this to how the team behind Final Fantasy VII and its fans are still attached to it and unable to move on. Kotaku saw the focus on Midgar's ruins as a parallel with psychological trauma due to how some of its survivors suffer from Geostigma, a disease that cannot be fought physically.

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Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is a 2004 action-adventure game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It is the seventh title in the Grand Theft Auto series, following 2002's Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Set within the fictional state of San Andreas, the game follows Carl "CJ" Johnson, who returns home after his mother's murder and finds his old gang has lost much of their territory. Over the course of the game, he attempts to re-establish the gang, clashes with corrupt authorities and powerful criminals, and gradually unravels the truth behind his mother's murder.

The game is played from a third-person perspective and its world is navigated on foot or by vehicle. The open world design lets the player freely roam San Andreas, consisting of three metropolitan cities: Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas, based on Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas, respectively. The narrative is based on multiple real-life events in Los Angeles, including the Bloods and Crips street gang rivalry, 1990s crack epidemic, 1992 Los Angeles riots, and the Rampart scandal. The game was released in October 2004 for the PlayStation 2, and in 2005 for Windows and the Xbox. Enhanced versions were released in the 2010s, followed by a remastered version in 2021.

The game received critical acclaim for its characters, narrative, open world design, and visual fidelity, but mixed responses towards its mission design, technical issues, and portrayal of race. It generated controversy when the discovery of the "Hot Coffee" minigame unlocked a hidden sexual scene. Several gaming publications awarded the game year-end accolades, and it is considered one of the sixth generation of console gaming's most significant titles and among the best video games ever made. San Andreas became the best-selling video game of 2004 and the best-selling PlayStation 2 game, with over 27.5 million copies sold. Its successor, Grand Theft Auto IV, was released in April 2008.

Gameplay

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is an action-adventure game played from a third-person view. In the game, players control criminal Carl "CJ" Johnson and complete missions—linear scenarios with set objectives—to progress through the story. Outside of missions, players can freely roam the game's open world and complete optional side missions. A multiplayer mode allows two players to roam the world. The fictional state of San Andreas, which makes up the open world, comprises three metropolitan cities: Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas. The cities are unlocked as the story progresses; airports allow teleportation between each city using fast travel. Scattered throughout the map, safehouses can be purchased to save the game and store vehicles.

Players may run, swim, and use vehicles to navigate the world, and use melee attacks, firearms and explosives to fight enemies, including the ability to dual wield firearms and commit drive-by shootings. Weapons are purchased from local firearms dealers, retrieved from dead enemies, and found scattered through the world. In combat, auto-aim is used to lock on to targets. Should players take damage, their health meter can be fully regenerated through health pick-ups, and body armour can be used to absorb gunshots and explosive damage. Players respawn at hospitals when their health depletes. If players commit crimes, law enforcement may respond as indicated by a "wanted" meter in the head-up display. Stars displayed on the meter indicate the current wanted level; at the maximum six-star level, police helicopters and military are sent after players. Officers will search for players who leave the wanted vicinity. The meter enters a cool-down mode and eventually recedes when players are hidden from the officers' line of sight. The game features more than 180 vehicles, including cars, motorcycles, aircraft, boats, and remote-control vehicles, and most can be accessorised with modifications like hydraulics, nitrous oxide engines, and stereo systems.

In the world, players can fight for territory by attacking rival gang members; the territory is won when players survive three waves of responding enemy attacks. Won territories are subject to periodic enemy gang attacks—they must be successfully defended or else lost. While free roaming the world, players may engage in activities such as burglary, fire fighting, pimping, taxi, and vigilante missions; completion rewards players with cash, which can be spent on CJ's accessories, clothing, hairstyles, and tattoos—new role-playing elements for the series. Balancing food and physical activity impacts CJ's appearance and physical attributes; eating and exercising maintains health, while losing muscle lessens combat effectiveness. Three styles of hand-to-hand combat—boxing, kickboxing, and mixed martial arts—are taught at gyms in each city. The game tracks respect among CJ's friends, which varies according to his actions and appearance. Acquired skills are also tracked, such as driving, firearms handling, lung capacity, muscles, and stamina, which unlock additional game mechanics. Players can date six different girls and take them to dinner, drinks, or dancing.

Plot
In 1992, after five years in Liberty City, gangster Carl "CJ" Johnson (Young Maylay) returns to Los Santos following his mother's death in a drive-by shooting. He is intercepted by corrupt C.R.A.S.H. officers led by Frank Tenpenny (Samuel L. Jackson), who threaten to implicate CJ in the killing of a fellow police officer unless he co-operates with them. CJ returns to Grove Street and reunites with his brother Sean "Sweet" Johnson (Faizon Love), sister Kendl Johnson (Yolanda Whittaker), and members of his old gang, Big Smoke (Clifton Powell) and Ryder (MC Eiht). Discovering the Grove Street Families (GSF) have lost much of their territory, CJ restores the gang to power by helping to reunite the various GSF sets who had splintered and allying himself with Cesar Vialpando (Clifton Collins Jr.)Kendl's boyfriend and leader of the Varrios Los Aztecas gang. CJ and Cesar witness Smoke and Ryder meeting with Tenpenny and the rival Ballas gang, and discover they betrayed the GSF and were responsible for killing CJ's mother. Suspecting a set-up, CJ rushes to Sweet's aid in a showdown against the Ballas.

Sweet, who was wounded in the ambush, is imprisoned while Tenpenny exiles CJ to the countryside and forces him to eliminate witnesses to C.R.A.S.H.'s corruption. CJ befriends a hippie named the Truth (Peter Fonda) and Triad leader Wu Zi Mu (James Yaegashi). He participates in a street race and wins a garage in San Fierro, which he sets up to earn money, and crosses paths with the Loco Syndicate, Smoke and Ryder's drug connection. Infiltrating the organisation, he identifies its leader: the mysterious Mike Toreno (James Woods). Alongside Cesar and the Triad, CJ kills Ryder and the other Loco Syndicate leaders, and destroys their drug factory. CJ is contacted by Toreno, who survived his attack and reveals himself to be an undercover government agent, enlisting CJ's help in several shady operations in exchange for Sweet's release from prison. Meanwhile, CJ and Wu Zi Mu establish a casino in Las Venturas and clash against a rival, Mafia-run casino.

After his release, Sweet and CJ revive the GSF, driving off the rival gangs from their territory and rebuilding throughout Los Santos. Tenpenny is arrested and tried for several felonies, but the charges are dropped due to lack of witnesses, prompting a city-wide riot. CJ soon discovers Smoke's hideout. The two engage in a gunfight; CJ wins, and before dying, Smoke confesses he got caught up with the power and money. Tenpenny arrives, holding CJ at gunpoint while he steals Smoke's drug money, and causes an explosion in the building to escape. He drives off in a fire truck, followed by CJ and Sweet, but eventually loses control of the vehicle, crashing over the side of a bridge overlooking Grove Street. CJ and his friends watch as Tenpenny dies of his injuries. In the aftermath, CJ's family and friends celebrate their success at the Johnson house. In the midst of the celebrations, CJ leaves to check on the neighbourhood.

Development
Rockstar North began development of San Andreas following the release of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City in October 2002. Having two years of development, as opposed to one year for Vice City, gave the team more opportunity to experiment and reevaluate the previous games. Producer Leslie Benzies hoped San Andreas would redefine the Grand Theft Auto series and "revolutionize open-ended gameplay and video game production values". Rockstar Games's The Warriors, scheduled to release in 2004, was delayed to 2005 to provide additional resources to San Andreas. San Andreas had a budget of under US$10 million.

Rockstar North's minimal turnover since the development of Grand Theft Auto (1997) allowed them familiarity with the series. Some developers were concerned about working conditions at Rockstar during the development of San Andreas as they were unable to take an adequate break after Vice City. Programmer Gary Foreman feared the company had entered a "constant crunch", as some developers worked for 17 hours per day. Some stepped away after disagreements with Rockstar president Sam Houser about working conditions, and one veteran employee quit in objection to the portrayal of African Americans and what he perceived to be a gloomier and more exploitative tone in Rockstar's output, particularly San Andreas and Rockstar North's previous game, Manhunt (2003).

Technical and open world design
San Andreas's cities are inspired by real locations: Los Santos by Los Angeles, San Fierro by San Francisco, and Las Venturas by Las Vegas. Early in development, the team travelled to each city for research and photography,  including Los Angeles's gang territory, which art director Aaron Garbut felt was difficult to capture without first-hand experience. Rockstar's New York-based research team took thousands of photographs and video. The world is 36 km2, about four to six times larger than Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City's; each city in San Andreas is approximately as large as Vice City. Garbut faced more difficulty familiarising San Andreas's map than its predecessors'. The team wanted all elements—including packaging and marketing—to maintain a consistent theme to ensure players felt they were connected.

Benzies felt the developer's relationship with Los Angeles natives Estevan Oriol, Mister Cartoon, and DJ Pooh assisted imitation of the city's 1990s street culture. The team wanted to ensure the world did not look too "toy-towny" nor too precise, seeking "depth" over quantitative size; Garbut wanted players to "feel like [they] can stop at any point and discover new things". In-game locations were inspired by real areas, such as Los Santos's suburbs by Compton, California, and San Fierro's bridges by the Golden Gate Bridge. The team were enthusiastic about the inclusion of mountains, forests, and a desert—firsts for the series. San Fierro's hills, representative of San Francisco's, were intended to draw focus towards vehicle gameplay, and the open countryside driving was inspired from a technical perspective by Rockstar's Smuggler's Run (2002). Producer and co-writer Dan Houser felt returning to Los Santos in the narrative's third and final act allowed players to view it differently.

San Andreas was built using the game engine RenderWare. Its render pipeline was rewritten for increased graphics and scope, allowing 35–50% more polygons on screen, real-time reflections and volumetric lighting, and unique models for day and night. According to Garbut, the world is built with around 16,000 unique objects and buildings. Several models share a single low-detail model, allowing them to be loaded as players traverse the map instead of being interrupted by a loading screen like in Vice City. Textures were created at a high resolution and scaled down for platforms unable to handle them. Remodelled systems allowed different lighting sets for day and night. The driving physics were reworked in consideration of the more open areas. Manhunt inspired San Andreass stealth elements, and the "physicality" of Manhunts targeting and gun gameplay was adapted to the open world formula. Scripting advancements allowed gameplay features not possible in predecessors, such as the casino games.

Story and characters
Several historical events influenced the narrative, including the Rampart scandal of the Los Angeles Police Department, 1990s crack epidemic, 1992 Los Angeles riots, and the rivalry between the Bloods and Crips street gangs. Sam Houser recounted being fascinated by the appearances of street gangs and terrified by their behaviour; the writers sought to accurately portray gang violence without glorifying it. DJ Pooh was hired to co-write the game from an American perspective. The narrative was influenced by Hollywood films; Dan Houser said the team watched "hundreds of movies to get the California vibe". The developers referenced Boyz n the Hood (1991), Colors (1988), and Menace II Society (1993) as narrative inspiration, and compared locations to different films: the countryside to Deliverance (1972), San Fierro to Bullitt (1968), and Las Venturas to Casino (1995). Journalists identified references to other films like Juice (1992) and New Jack City (1991).

While the stories are largely unconnected, San Andreas concluded a trilogy that started with Grand Theft Auto III, allowing Rockstar to explore the 1980s (Vice City, 1990s (San Andreas, and early 2000s (III. The team felt "the world's attention was on California" in the 1990s in regards to news and music, and that it translated well to the game. Dan Houser said the game's satire was aimed towards the "broader weirdness" of American consumerism and action movies. He noted the writers attempted to outdo each other's humour. The team wanted to allow players freedom to make choices while maintaining interest in the story. The game features over 400 speaking actors and over 60,000 lines of dialogue, including over 7,700 for CJ; it broke a Guinness World Record for the largest video game voice cast with 861 credited actors. Non-player characters each had around an hour of dialogue, in contrast to Vice City's ten minutes.

Sam Houser sought an unknown actor for CJ as he found Ray Liotta's performance as Tommy Vercetti in Vice City "conflicting" due to his familiarity with Liotta's previous work. He opted to cast celebrities in secondary roles, such as Jackson as Tenpenny, and felt Young Maylay's obscurity in the industry made CJ feel "very, very human". Rockstar asked Young Maylay to audition after overhearing him speak with DJ Pooh; he was cast in the role—his first acting performance—a few weeks after auditioning. He felt the developers gave him freedom to insert his own personality into CJ. They aimed for CJ to be their "most human" character, ensuring he had "the most intense story around him" to allow players to identify. DJ Pooh compared CJ to Tupac Shakur in his fierce dedication to family but ability to become "cold-blooded" when necessary. The team felt the ability to adjust CJ's weight helped players feel their actions could have consequences. Dan Houser felt CJ's customisability allowed players to better connect with the characters. The focus on several communities was prompted by the variety of the West Coast in the 1990s.

Music
Rockstar partnered with Interscope Records to create the soundtrack. The in-game radio features eleven radio stations with twenty DJs—including Axl Rose, Chuck D, and George Clinton —and more than three times as many licensed songs and original in-universe advertisements as Grand Theft Auto III. The radio features were overhauled; instead of looping sounds, each station became dynamic, allowing randomised song order, accurate weather predictions, and story-relevant news announcements. Michael Hunter wrote the game's main theme. Interscope published two albums for the game: a two-disc album in November 2004, and an eight-disc box set in December. Post-PlayStation 2 versions of the game added an additional radio station supporting a custom, user-imported soundtrack.

Release and promotion
In October 2003, Rockstar's parent company Take-Two Interactive announced the next Grand Theft Auto game would release in 2004's third quarter, and prompted speculation after patenting GTA: San Andreas in December. Rockstar announced the game in March 2004, scheduled to release on 19 and 22 October in North America and Europe, respectively. The first details and screenshots were released at E3 in May alongside a cover story in Game Informer, followed by the cover art in July. Rockstar launched the official website and first trailer in August and the second in September. In September, Take-Two announced the game's delay to 26 and 29 October in North America and Europe, respectively, and revealed it would be released for Windows in early 2005. Rockstar commissioned hand-painted advertisements for San Andreas around the world in late 2004; one in Melbourne remained partially visible in 2020.

In October 2004, an early version of the game was leaked by hackers; Rockstar asserted it would "aggressively pursue this matter" and asked for information. The game was released for the PlayStation 2 in October 2004. A special edition version was published for the PlayStation 2 on 8 October 2005, featuring Rockstar's debut documentary film Sunday Driver, about a lowrider car club in Compton. It also included , an in-engine video previously provided on a DVD with the game's soundtrack. The 21-minute video chronicles the events leading up to San Andreas, featuring CJ, Sweet, Big Smoke, Ryder, and Tenpenny. GameSpot recommended the film for fans of the series; IGN's Chris Carle enjoyed the voice acting but found the narrative uncompelling and felt the film alone was not worth purchasing the special edition. Capcom published the game in Japan on 25 January 2007.

Critical response
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas received "universal acclaim" from critics, according to review aggregator Metacritic. It is the site's fifth-highest-rated PlayStation 2 game. PSM2's Daniel Dawkins declared it "the single most complete, unique, universe in console history" after The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998) and "the best entertainment console gaming can offer". Game Informers Andrew Reiner called it "entertainment at its best" and GameSpys Miguel Lopez wrote it reminded him why he plays games: "to be liberated from the constraints of reality, and explore living, breathing worlds".

Several reviewers considered San Andreass world an improvement over its predecessors',  praising the attention to detail in its areas and characters;  IGNs Jeremy Dunham cited the differences in each city's weather as a highlight. 1Up.com's Jeremy Parish considered it "the most complete, complex and detailed environment ever crafted for a game", praising the complexities of the freeway system and social dynamics. GameSpy's Lopez lauded its accurate imitation of the American West Coast. Critics considered the graphics an improvement over Vice City, particularly regarding the animations, foliage, lighting, and weather effects;   PALGN's Chris Sell called it "one of the most visually absorbing games ever". Criticism was directed at the game's technical issues, with several reviewers encountering pop-up,  and unstable frame rates;   some felt the game pushed the PlayStation 2 hardware to its limit.

Game Informer's Reiner considered gameplay a dramatic improvement over previous entries. PSM2's Dawkins found the missions were rarely repetitive and blended difficulty with comedy. GameRevolutions Joe Dodson lauded the freedom provided to players, while 1Up.coms Parish felt the previous games' improvisation had been removed and Electronic Gaming Monthly's Dan Hsu thought it could have benefited from branching paths. The New York Times's Charles Herold found the game's structure diminished enjoyment of its missions, forcing players to drive long distances and replay extensive sequences upon failing, a complaint echoed by others. Some reviewers criticised the combat targeting (though acknowledged the usefulness of auto-aim)  and the flight, racing, RC car, and minigame controls. The addition of role-playing elements was praised for its simplicity, subtlety, and effectiveness,   though 1Up.com's Parish denounced some missions' statistical prerequisites.

Several critics considered the narrative the series' best to date, which Eurogamer's Kristan Reed attributed to its focus on dialogue and scene-setting, both in and out of cutscenes. Game Informer's Matt Miller enjoyed the narrative's ridicule of modern culture. Some reviewers compared the story to Hollywood films and similar popular culture; PSM2's Dawkins felt the finale "outstrips the collected work" of filmmakers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson. Critics praised the cast's performances, particularly that of Young Maylay, Samuel L. Jackson, James Woods, and David Cross. Official U.S. PlayStation Magazines John Davison considered CJ "possibly one of the most well-developed and believable videogame characters ever made" due to his layered personality and realistic behaviour; 1Up.coms Parish concurred but felt CJ's kind nature made his in-game actions less believable, a problem that may have been circumvented through a branching narrative.

Some critics and scholars criticised the game for perpetuating racial stereotypes. Seeing Black's Esther Iverem condemned the series for "validating ... an accepted caricature" rather than teaching respect and tolerance. Dean Chan felt the series' protagonist shift from Tommy (an Italian American) to CJ (an African American) without subverting archetypes made it "complicit in the pathologization and fetishization of race". Paul Barrett found its disregard and decontextualisation of institutional racism's structures suggest "that the problems that African Americans experience is due to individual failure", reinforced by the concept that white players can simply experience "black identity". A Games and Culture study found youth groups "do not passively receive the games' images and content": white players expressed concern about its racial stereotypes, while African American players used it "as a framework to discuss institutional racism". Rachael Hutchinson considered San Andreas "a critical reflection on racial conflict in America" and found several criticisms were based on limited viewings instead of the whole story. Kotaku opined some in-game interactions could be portrayed as a lack of racism, such as characters conversing without moderating vocabularies or commenting on others'. 1Up.com's Parish lauded the references to Rodney King's assault and the sophisticated writing addressing race in South Central Los Angeles. David J. Leonard felt politicians and legislators were more concerned about the game's violent and sexual content than its racial stereotypes.

Windows and Xbox versions
San Andreas's June 2005 release for Windows and Xbox received "universal acclaim" according to Metacritic. It was the second-highest-rated Windows game of 2005, behind Civilization IV, and the third-highest-rated Xbox game, behind Ninja Gaiden Black and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory.

PALGN's Matt Keller considered the Windows release the best version of the game. Reviewers lauded the improved graphics, particularly the detailed textures and models, higher draw distance, and improved frame rate, loading times, and anti-aliasing,    though some considered the graphics outdated for the platform. PALGN's Keller found the increased population density improved the world's overall atmosphere. The mouse and keyboard controls were generally praised as an improvement over the console versions and the series' previous Windows ports,  especially during combat gameplay,    though responses to driving controls and keyboard mapping were mixed. Praise was directed at the custom radio and physical packaging and manual. Some critics bemoaned the lack of changes to the mission structure, and some encountered technical difficulties like sudden and major lagging spikes.

GameZones Eduardo Zacarias called the Xbox release the "definitive version of the game", and GameSpys Will Tuttle considered it better than the original. Several reviewers praised the improved assets, reflections, shadows, and load times,  as well as the addition of a custom radio station  and video replay mode,  though GameSpy's Tuttle felt the latter was pointless without the ability to save videos. Some critics thought the controls had not been improved since the original, and others considered it a downgrade,  though GameSpot's Jeff Gerstmann appreciated the Xbox controller's analogue triggers when driving. Some technical problems occasionally persisted, including pop-up, inconsistent frame rates, and poor aliasing,  and some reviewers bemoaned the lack of significant graphical improvements.

Mobile version
San Andreas's mobile version received "generally favorable" reviews according to Metacritic. TouchArcades Eli Hodapp considered it "the best the game has ever been", while Digital Spys Scott Nichols said it was "easily the worst way to experience" the game, only recommending that players with newer mobile hardware consider purchasing. Its US$6.99 price point was praised.

Reviewers praised the port's graphical enhancements, including increased draw distance, improved frame rates and load times, and enhanced models, reflections, shadows, and lighting, though IGN's Leif Johnson found the textures remained dated and some critics encountered technical issues like pop-up. Digital Spys Nichols lauded the addition of mid-mission checkpoints, and TouchArcades Hodapp found cloud saves the port's best feature. Responses to the controls were generally positive, considered an improvement over the series' previous mobile ports, though critics concurred that playing with a controller improved the experience and better imitated the original versions.

Accolades
San Andreas won four of its five nominations at the Spike Video Game Awards, including Game of the Year, Best Action Game, and Best Performance by a Human Male for Jackson as Tenpenny. It received four nominations at the British Academy Games Awards and five at the Game Developers Choice Awards; according to The Guardian, the developers walked out during the latter after winning nothing. It won five awards at the Golden Joystick Awards, including Ultimate Game of the Year and Hero and Villain for CJ and Tenpenny, respectively, and received six nominations at the Interactive Achievement Awards, of which it won Outstanding Achievement in Soundtrack and Console Action/Adventure Game of the Year.

San Andreas was named 2004's best game by GamesMaster and runner-up by PSM. It won PlayStation 2 Game of the Year and Best Game Within a Game (for pool) from Electronic Gaming Monthly, Best PlayStation 2 Game, Best Action Adventure Game, Best Voice Acting, and Funniest Game from GameSpot,   Best Action Game and Best Story for PlayStation 2 from IGN,  and Best Replay Value and Best Voice Acting from PSM.

Sales
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas sold 4.5 million copies in its first week, outselling Vice City by 45%. In the United States, it sold 2.06 million units within six days of release and generated US$235 million in revenue in its first week; it sold 1.5 million units in November, totalling 3.6 million sales overall. Analysts noted the game, alongside Halo 2, led the industry to an 11% annual increase instead of a 21% decrease. In the United Kingdom, it sold an estimated 677,000 copies and grossed about GB£24 million within two days, setting the record for the most copies sold during a weekend, and over 1 million copies and GB£35 million in nine days, becoming the country's fast-selling game. In Australia, it sold over 58,000 copies in its opening weekend, becoming the country's eleventh-best-selling game.

Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan estimated the game had earned a gross profit of around US$285 million within three months, and would generate US$400 million in worldwide sales by the year's end. San Andreas was 2004's best-selling game, with 5.1 million copies sold in the United States and over 1.75 million in the United Kingdom. The game topped the charts upon release in Japan, selling over 227,000 units in its first week. It was the best-selling game in the United States by April 2008, with over 8.6 million units sold, and the best-selling PlayStation 2 game with 17.33 million units sold by 2009. Worldwide sales reached 12 million units by March 2005, 21.5 million by April 2008 and 27.5 million by 2011.

"Hot Coffee" controversy
The development team curtailed planned nudity and sexual content to meet the requirements for a "Mature" rating from the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB); rather than removing the content, they made it inaccessible to players. Modders discovered the code on the PlayStation 2 release, and modder Patrick Wildenborg found how to enable the code after the Windows release. He released this modified code online under the name "Hot Coffee" after the euphemism used in the game, and it was downloaded over one million times within four weeks. The discovery of "Hot Coffee" resulted in legal backlash for Rockstar and Take-Two; both remained mostly silent on the matter. The ESRB re-rated the game "Adults Only" after an investigation, while the game was banned in Australia until the explicit content was removed. Rockstar and Take-Two received a warning from the Federal Trade Commission for failing to disclose the extent of graphic content present, while a class action lawsuit alleged that the company had misled customers who believed the game's content fell along the lines of a "Mature" rating. As a result of "Hot Coffee", the ESRB announced fines of up to US$1 million for game developers who failed to disclose the extent of their graphic content.

Legacy
Critics agreed that San Andreas was among sixth-generation console gaming's most significant titles and among the best games ever made. Rockstar established a new narrative continuity for the series with the advent of seventh-generation consoles, focusing more on realism and details. With Grand Theft Auto IV (2008), the team focused on increasing the amount and detail of buildings, removing dead spots and irrelevant spaces to allow "a more focused experience" than San Andreas. The focus on realism and depth was continued with Grand Theft Auto V, with the development team re-designing Los Santos; Dan Houser felt San Andreas's three cities had limited the emulation of Los Angeles, choosing to focus only on Los Santos in Grand Theft Auto V. Garbut felt San Andreas's rendition of Los Santos was unable to capture Los Angeles properly due to technical limitations, making it feel like a "backdrop or a game level with pedestrians randomly milling about" and effectively deeming it as a jumping-off point for the development of Grand Theft Auto V.

Several moments from the game became common internet memes, such as Big Smoke's extensive fast food order in 2016  and one of CJ's first lines—"Ah shit, here we go again"—in April 2019. An early mission, "Wrong Side of the Tracks", became notable for its difficulty; Big Smoke's dialogue upon failing the mission—"All we had to do was follow the damn train, CJ!"—was considered an iconic catchphrase  and later referenced in Grand Theft Auto V. Modders have been known to frequently insert CJ into other games, such as Dark Souls (2011), The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017), and Street Fighter 6 (2023).

Ports
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was released for Windows and the Xbox on 7 and 10 June 2005 in North America and Europe, respectively, supporting higher screen resolutions, draw distance, and more detailed textures. The Xbox version was released for the Xbox 360 on 20 October 2008 as part of Xbox Originals, and the PlayStation 2 version for the PlayStation 3 on 11 December 2012 as part of PS2 Classics. The Xbox Originals release was replaced with an enhanced version as part of the game's tenth anniversary on 26 October 2014, featuring higher resolution, enhanced draw distance, a new menu interface, and achievements; the PS2 Classics release was replaced with this enhanced version on 1 December 2015, and the PlayStation 2 version was released for the PlayStation 4 on 5 December.

San Andreas was bundled with predecessors Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City in a compilation titled Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy, released in North America for the Xbox on 8 October 2005, PlayStation 2 on 4 December 2006, and Mac OS X on 12 November 2010. A remastered version of The Trilogy subtitled The Definitive Edition was released for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on 11 November 2021, and for Android and iOS on 14 December 2023. Existing versions of the game were removed from digital retailers in preparation for The Definitive Edition, but later restored as a bundle on the Rockstar Store.

A mobile port of San Andreas, developed by War Drum Studios, was released for iOS devices on 12 December 2013, Android on 19 December, Windows Phone on 27 January 2014, and Fire OS on 15 May 2014. The port featured updated graphics, shadows, and character and vehicle models. In October 2021, Meta Platforms announced a virtual reality (VR) version of the game was in development for Quest 2 by Video Games Deluxe. Following the release of the Meta Quest 3 in October 2023, players questioned the status of the VR version and some suspected it may have been quietly cancelled; Meta said it did not have any updates at the time.

title: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas


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Nicholas Parsons

Christopher Nicholas Parsons (10 October 1923 – 28 January 2020) was an English actor, straight man and radio and television presenter. He was the long-running presenter of the comedy radio show Just a Minute and hosted the game show Sale of the Century during the 1970s and early 1980s.

Parsons was born and grew up in Grantham, Lincolnshire, and was educated at St Paul's School, London. He became a full-time actor following the Second World War and began appearing in various theatre, film and television roles, including support to Arthur Haynes as his straight man. He began presenting Just a Minute in 1967 and never missed a show until 2018. In addition to his well-known roles on this and Sale of the Century, he appeared as a guest on other television shows, including Doctor Who and Have I Got News for You.

Early life
Christopher Nicholas Parsons was born on 10 October 1923 at 1 Castlegate, Grantham, Lincolnshire; he was the middle child of the family, having an older brother and a younger sister. His father, Paul, was a general practitioner whose patients included the family of Margaret Thatcher; claims that he delivered her are apocryphal. His mother, Nell, née Maggs, was a nurse before her marriage.

Parsons was born left-handed but was made to write with his right hand. As a child, he had a stutter, which he managed to control as he grew older, and was slow to learn owing to dyslexia. He also suffered from migraines but nevertheless excelled at school.

After education at Colet Court and St Paul's School in London, Parsons' initial career plan was to become an actor. However, his parents believed that a career in engineering would be better, as he had repaired grandfather clocks as a young man and was creative with his hands. While at school, he was best friends with John Treacher who later joined the Royal Navy and rose to become Commander-in-Chief Fleet. Parsons' nickname at school was "Shirley" after Shirley Temple.

After he had left school, his family contacted relatives in Scotland, who arranged a job for him in Clydebank near Glasgow, where he spent five years employed as an engineering apprentice at Drysdales, a maker of marine pumps. Parsons was 16 when his parents sent him from his relatively privileged home in London to the industrially-hardened city of Glasgow. Sixty years later, in 2010, he recorded a nostalgic radio programme, titled "Doon the Watta" (on Youtube) about his time as an apprentice, highlighting his posh middle-class accent amidst the Glasgow working-class dialect. While there, he also spent two six-month periods studying engineering at the University of Glasgow. He never graduated, but finished his apprenticeship and gained sufficient qualifications to become a mechanical engineer. He was offered a posting in the Merchant Navy during the Second World War, but he did not join the service after falling seriously ill with pleurisy. He spent five months in hospital and at one point his survival chances were rated only 50-50.

Career in entertainment
Parsons started his career while training as an engineering apprentice; he was discovered by Canadian impresario Carroll Levis, and appeared in his radio show.

Early career in theatre
At the end of the Second World War, Parsons became a full-time professional actor. He made his stage debut in the West End as Kiwi in The Hasty Heart at the Aldwych Theatre in 1945 which ran for over a year, then played the lead in a tour of Arsenic and Old Lace. He made his film debut in Master of Bankdam in 1947 and continued his stage career, with two years in repertory at Bromley, and later, Windsor and Maidstone. In 1952, he became a resident comedian at the Windmill Theatre, performing regular nights of stand-up comedy to packed houses.

He starred in the West End show Boeing-Boeing and other West End productions.

Film, TV and radio
In the 1950s and 1960s, he appeared in many supporting roles in British films. In the late 1960s, he portrayed David Courtney in the American sitcom The Ugliest Girl in Town.

In the 1950s, Parsons provided the non-singing voice of Tex Tucker in the children's TV puppet series Four Feather Falls, having put himself forward for the job at the suggestion of his first wife, actress and voiceover artiste Denise Bryer, who was in the show. During the late 1960s, he created and presented a satirical programme on BBC Radio 4 called Listen to This Space, which by the standards of its time was very avant-garde, and he received the Radio Personality of the Year Award for his work on this programme in 1967.

Parsons became known to TV audiences in the 1950s and 1960s as the straight man to comedian Arthur Haynes for ten years; the partnership broke up at Haynes' request. They had a successful season at the London Palladium in 1963, and shortly before the split appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in the United States, although Parsons was not credited. Subsequently, Parsons returned to the stage, before becoming a regular on The Benny Hill Show from 1968 to 1971.

After Haynes died, Parsons appeared as a personality in his own right on television, including in the long-running Anglia Television quiz show Sale of the Century, broadcast weekly from 1971 to 1983. In 1983 Hill wrote and performed in the sketch "Sale of the Half Century", with himself cast as Parsons.

Parsons was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1978 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews.

Just a Minute
Parsons was the host of the BBC Radio 4 comedy panel game Just a Minute from its first broadcast on 22 December 1967.

Although there were a number of early episodes when he relinquished the chair and was a panellist, Parsons never missed an episode until 2018, when regular panellist Gyles Brandreth stood in for him for two episodes that were recorded in April and broadcast in June, due to a bout of illness: Parsons was then 94 years old. Brandreth again stood in the following year for two shows recorded at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Just a Minute continued to be transmitted with Parsons as host until his last show on 23 September 2019.

1980s
In 1988, Parsons appeared as himself in The Comic Strip episode "Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door", alongside Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson. The following year, he guest-starred in Doctor Who, playing Reverend Wainwright in the Seventh Doctor serial The Curse of Fenric.

1990s
Parsons featured in the original London cast of the Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods at the Phoenix Theatre in 1990 as the Narrator. In 1991, he appeared as the Mayor in the BBC's children's series Bodger & Badger. This was followed by an appearance in the fourth and final series of the UK TV show Cluedo as Reverend Green in 1993.

Parsons took the role of the Narrator in the 21st anniversary revival of the stage musical The Rocky Horror Show at the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End in 1994.

Later career
In 2005 Parsons was guest presenter on the BBC topical quiz show Have I Got News for You. He appeared on Celebrity Mastermind in 2007. Just a Minute transferred to television in 2012 for a ten-part early-evening series to celebrate its 45th anniversary, with Parsons and regular panellist Paul Merton. He appeared opposite ex-wife Denise Bryer in the Big Finish adaptation of the Gerry Anderson series Terrahawks, playing the ex-husband of Bryer's character, Zelda.

Parsons wrote an autobiography entitled The Straight Man: My Life in Comedy, which was published in 1994, and he produced a book of memoirs in 2010 called Nicholas Parsons: With Just a Touch of Hesitation, Repetition and Deviation.

In October 2016, at the age of 92, Parsons presented the BBC documentary The Incredible Story of Marie Antoinette's Watch, following the story of the Marie Antoinette watch created by Abraham-Louis Breguet. Parsons was a life-long collector of clocks and watches.

He played himself and provided the voice of Dagon, Lord of the Files in Good Omens, filmed between 2017 and 2018.

From 2001, he appeared annually at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe presenting his comedy cabaret show The Happy Hour.

Other roles
From 1988 to 1991, he served as Rector of the University of St Andrews. In 2005, he became for a short period honorary Chairman of the International Quizzing Association (IQA), a body that organises the World and European Quizzing Championships. He was a leading member of the Grand Order of Water Rats charity and was King Rat in 2019. He was also a patron of the British Stammering Association and was the president of the charity the Lord's Taverners from 1998 to 1999, a charity that he joined in 1964 and remained a member of until his death. He was an Ambassador for Childline and The Silver Line.

Parsons was a supporter of the Liberal Party and the Liberal Democrats. He was invited to stand as a Liberal Party candidate for Yeovil in the 1970s, but he turned down the opportunity in order to remain in the entertainment industry. On 17 October 2013, a week after his 90th birthday, he appeared as a guest on the BBC One political discussion show This Week.

Awards and recognition
Parsons was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2004 New Year Honours for services to drama and broadcasting. He was promoted to Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2014 New Year Honours for charitable services, especially to children's charities.

Having served as rector of the University of St Andrews from 1988 to 1991, he was awarded an honorary LLD by the university in 1991. He was also awarded an honorary LLD by the University of Leicester in 2016, and an honorary D.Litt by the University of Lincoln in 2014.

He held the Guinness World Record for the longest after-dinner speech (11 hours) until it was reclaimed by former holder Gyles Brandreth.

Personal life
Parsons was married twice. He was first married to actress Denise Bryer in 1954; together they had two children. The couple divorced in 1989. He subsequently married Ann Reynolds in 1995. He was a keen cricket fan, both as a player and supporter, and had a lifelong enthusiasm for clocks.

Health and death
In August 2019, Parsons suffered a fall on a train to Edinburgh, while travelling to perform his show The Happy Hour at the Edinburgh Fringe. On admission to hospital a few days later, he was found to have prostate cancer, a stomach ulcer and anaemia, and remained hospitalised in Edinburgh for 10 days, before being moved to Stoke Mandeville Hospital, near his home in Aylesbury. After two more weeks in hospital, he returned home and began a slow recuperation from the fall. Despite his illness, he continued to work through his final months of life, until his death at Stoke Mandeville Hospital on 28 January 2020, aged 96.

Publications

 * The Straight Man: My Life in Comedy, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994. ISBN 978-0297812395
 * Nicholas Parsons: With Just a Touch of Hesitation, Repetition and Deviation: My Life in Comedy, Mainstream Publishing, 2011. ISBN 978-1845967123
 * Welcome to Just a Minute!: A Celebration of Britain's Best-Loved Radio Comedy, Canongate Books, 2014. ISBN 978-1782112471

title: Nicholas Parsons


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James Ivory (mathematician)

James Ivory, FRS FRSE KH LLD (17 February 1765 – 21 September 1842) was a British mathematician. He proposed Ivory's theorem.

Life
Ivory was born in Dundee, son of James Ivory the renowned watchmaker. The family lived and worked on the High Street in Dundee.

He was educated at Dundee Grammar School. In 1779 he entered the University of St Andrews, distinguishing himself especially in mathematics. He then studied theology; but, after two sessions at St Andrews and one at Edinburgh University, he abandoned all idea of the church, and in 1786 he became an assistant-teacher of mathematics and natural philosophy in the newly established Dundee Academy. Three years later he became partner in, and manager of, a flax spinning company at Douglastown in Forfarshire, still prosecuting in moments of leisure his favourite studies. He was essentially a self-trained mathematician, and was not only deeply versed in ancient and modern geometry, but also had a full knowledge of the analytical methods and discoveries of the European mathematicians.

His earliest memoir, dealing with an analytical expression for the rectification of the ellipse, is published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1796); and this and his later papers on Cubic Equations (1799) and Kepler's Problem (1802) evince great facility in the handling of algebraic formulae. In 1804 after the dissolution of the flax-spinning company of which he was manager, he obtained one of the mathematical chairs in the Royal Military College, Great Marlow (afterwards removed to Sandhurst); and until the year 1816, when failing health obliged him to resign, he discharged his professional duties with remarkable success.

During this period he published in the Philosophical Transactions several important memoirs, which earned for him the Copley Medal in 1814 and ensured his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1815. Of special importance in the history of attractions is the first of these earlier memoirs (Phil. Trans., 1809), in which the problem of the attraction of a homogeneous ellipsoid upon an external point is reduced to the simpler case of the attraction of another but related ellipsoid upon a corresponding point interior to it. This theorem is known as Ivory's theorem. He also published anonymously an edition of Euclid's Elements, which was described as having brought the difficult problems "more within the reach of ordinary understandings." His later papers in the Philosophical Transactions treat of astronomical refractions, of planetary perturbations, of equilibrium of fluid masses, etc. For his investigations in the first named of these he received a royal medal in 1826 and again in 1839.

In 1831, on the recommendation of Lord Brougham, King William IV granted him a pension of £300 per annum, and appointed him Knight of the Royal Guelphic Order, but was not subsequently made a knight bachelor to entitle him to the prefix Sir, which often came with appointments to that order. Besides being directly connected with the chief scientific societies of his own country, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Irish Academy, etc., he was corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Sciences both of Paris and Berlin, and of the Royal Society of Göttingen.

In 1839, the University of St. Andrews conferred on him an honorary degree as a Doctor of Laws (LLD).

He died in Hampstead in north London on 21 September 1842.

title: James Ivory (mathematician)


text:
User:Gedersdorf

I'm a Wikipedian since March 1, 2004. My watchlist involves austrian themes.

title: User:Gedersdorf