PHL's Air Flying game 2 concept art.

PHL's Air Flying game 2 concept art.

http://www.imagekind.com/PHLs-Air-Flying-game--concept-art-dpi-art?IMID=dcd122c8-1b19-46f2-9970-89bdf357e79b

PHL's The Sage of Times story

PHL's The Sage of Times story

Author’s word: My story is for entertainment and is fiction. To my knowledge it has never happened in real life.

THE SAGE OF TIMES.

By Tamajong Tamajong Philip (PHL)

    There was a city in a land in the world. The city was ruled by a King; and the city was part of a wider kingdom over which the king ruled. The king lived in a palace near the city. The common people lived in the city.

   The King had a daughter, who was the Princess, a young woman. He (the King) also had a Magician who lived in the palace.

       In the city, where the common people lived, there was a young man. This young man was not materially wealthy and he liked a young woman and sought to marry her. But the young woman’s family disapproved of him because he was not rich. Her family expected him to be able to provide for her (the young woman’s) needs. She was of low social rank and not rich either. So the young man went away and struggled hard to earn her guardians’ favour by getting a livelihood. And finally he was allowed to marry her. The wedding day was planned for. The King heard of the young woman who lived in the city, that her beauty was desirable. He also knew of her impending wedding to a common man. But the king wanted the girl for himself, and he told his magician to go and get the girl for him (the king) before she could lose her virginity on her wedding night.

       In the city the wedding was held, and there was celebration all the day until the night, at which time the Bride (the girl or young woman) was arrayed and adorned by her female kinsfolk and then went to wait for her Husband (the young man) in the bedchamber. In the bedchamber, which was dark, she perceived a human presence but did not know it was. It was the Magician, and he gripped her while she was confused and a blue light appeared and she found herself flying in a blue tunnel of light with a strange man holding her. Then she found herself in a forest with the Magician, who stood over her while she sat on the floor crying.

   “Please do not take my virginity,” she wept. “It belongs to another man.”

   And she said: “My husband will come and get you!”

   The Magician laughed: “Hau, haw, haw; how can he get me when he is not even yet born?”

   The Magician said this because he(the Magician) had taken the Bride back in time, to the distant past, so that he could have the girl to himself and be free of the King (who was now yet unborn).

       Meanwhile on the wedding night years later, the Husband entered the bedchamber but could not find his Bride. He was ashamed and avoided raising an alarm, and spent the wedding night alone in his bed, weeping and gnashing his teeth. He stayed indoors and avoided visitors. Finally he despaired and revealed his wife’s disappearance. An uproar arose and the town heard the news soon. The parents-in-law threatened him for their daughter. He quickly became very unhappy.

       The King in the palace heard of the missing Bride, but he waited in vain for the Magician to bring her. Then he became angry with the missing Magician and said to himself: “Ah ha! So he has double-crossed me! A man remains a man, with man’s desires, though he profess celibacy and abstention,” but he pretended to sympathize with the story of the Husband, saying to those around himself : “A man should make sure of his wife’s fidelity before even marrying her.”

      Meanwhile in the past, years earlier, the Magician was with the stolen Bride. She wept and implored him for mercy until he had pity on her and repented of his action. He decided to take her back to their time (in the future) but realized that he did not have enough energy for a return trip (because he had never intended to make a return trip). So they had to wait till his energy was restored, and they lived peaceably in a house in the forest.

      Then one day a visitor came to the Husband (in the future) and revealed herself as the King’s daughter, the Princess. The Princess knew what might have happened and she told him so. She had heard her father telling the Magician to take the Bride away from her husband, but the Bride had not yet been brought to the king. The Magician too had disappeared. The Princess revealed that the Magician trusted her and that she knew some of his arts since her childhood, though she had never learnt to do them, it (magic) being contrary to the will of God. She believed that she knew what the Magician had done to disappear so utterly, and said that she would come the next day to take the Husband secretly to the palace.

       The next day the Princess came to the Husband’s house in the city and took him to the palace under disguise. They entered a room in the palace where a swirling tunnel of fog-like appearance hung in the air. They had equipped themselves as for a long journey already, and entered the portal. (It was not the portal that the Magician had used to abduct the Bride; it was one that the Magician just kept in his room.) Through it they went to the past for the first time ever.

         The king was irate about the Magician but he did not talk about it lest he betray himself. He decided to search the land and he went into disguise. So for a period of time this King was out disguised as a common citizen, in the company of some of his guards, who were disguised too. In his journeys, he saw the state of his people, saw their problems and got wiser. But he met thieves and other deviants who were a threat to him. Finally, he returned to his palace home, tired.

       By now, the King’s missing daughter was news.

       In the past the Princess and the Husband were looking for the Magician and the Bride by enquiring at towns and places. Communication was not easy because the language of this time was familiar but older. At nights they rested in inns or in the open. They developed an emotional intimacy but did not have sex. Finally they found the Magician in the forest.

      What happened with the Magician and the Bride before this? In the past the Magician discovered his ancestral family and saw the trouble that they were in, and tried to solve the problem, with the Bride (who was now his friend) helping him. He was sure that solving the problem would merely create an alternate future instead of changing his own situation, but he was happy that his alter ego who would be born centuries later in the new future would be in a better case than himself. But if they returned to the future now, things might have changed; in fact, they would be in the new future that they created. So the Magician wanted to do some study to discern their own future time from this alternate one, so that they could return to where they belonged, where everything would be as they had left it on that wedding night.

      Finally, one day, the Magician succeeded in generating a portal outside their forest house, but as he went to get the Bride from the House he was attacked by the Husband who was accompanied by the King’s daughter. There followed a furious battle, wherein the Husband tried to damage the Magician with his violent physical strength and the Magician defended himself with his wonderful powers. Afterward the Magician lay feebly on the ground, wounded, and said that the portal was going to close.

      “What?” replied the Husband.

      “The portal is going to close,” said the Magician. “It is behind the house. Your wife is in the house. Hurry and take her … Go left when you see two tunnels”.

      So the Husband went into the house, found his surprised Bride and hurriedly took her to the portal, but she saw the wounded Magician on the ground and began to weep aloud though her Husband was forcing her toward the portal. The Husband called for the Princess as he went but the Princess stopped beside the Magician and called him tenderly by name. Then she tried to drag him to the portal but it closed before they reached it. The Husband and his wife had already entered it. The Magician and the Princess were left on this side.

      “Oh, (Princess),” sighed the Magician. “Just for me…”

       She said that she was happy to be with him, though in her heart she was disappointed at being stuck in the past. They stayed in the forest house. She tended on him in the house, going to buy food in the village when they needed it, but their currency was a bit different from the current one and they knew that they could not stay long. But although the Magician tried, he did not have enough energy left in his body to create a portal with. So they resigned themselves to living in the past.

     One day the Magician and the Princess were attacked by a huge knight-like creature from nowhere in the forest and it was going to kill them.

The Husband and the Bride found themselves flying through a tunnel and they saw two forked paths that branched from the main tunnel that they were in. They took the left tunnel as the Magician had instructed the Husband and they found themselves in the street in their town and went home. They discovered that they were not back on their wedding night but days thereafter. They went home. The wife often thought of the Magician who had been kind to her and the Husband often thought of the Princess who had kept him company on his quest. They were also trying to get used to each other.

      In the palace the King ventured upon his Magician’s room. The door was open and inside the room was a blue swirling portal. He had never seen it before in his life. He got a sword, put on armour and entered the portal alone. He found himself in a forest and saw his daughter and the Magician being attacked by a huge armoured creature. He told them to go to the portal and he went to fight the creature.

       The huge creature shook the earth and the Magician and the Princess ran, dodging falling trees caused by the shaking. They reached the portal and looked back for the King, but the portal was closing and they jumped into it. Inside they were surprised to see about five different forks, and the Magician pondered that their activities in the past must have created other alternate futures. They chose one by a guess and ended up successfully in their own time.

       After a furious and tedious battle, the King killed the huge creature. The portal had disappeared and he was lost in the forest.

       The Magician and the Princess arrived in the Magician’s room. The Magician vowed to end his art of time travelling if the king returned, for it was an art with dangerous consequences when misused. They learned that the King was not in the palace, nor were his whereabouts known.

     “Nor even his whenabouts,” muttered the Magician to the Princess. “Before the King was born, he was. But when ?”

     The Magician wanted to marry the Princess who loved him very much but they agreed that the king must give his consent to it. And they promised to get married when the King returned.

      The King was lost in the forest in the past, and soon despaired. Then he said that he deserved it for all his evil ways. When evening fell, he was sitting on a rock thinking sadly, when suddenly he saw a faint puff of blue shining brightly in the air in the darkness.

       The Husband and the Bride were visited one day by the Magician and the Princess, who announced that they were married to each other. So the Bride realized that her vain thoughts of the Magician should be destroyed, and decided to focus on knowing her Husband better. Likewise the Husband, seeing the Princess married, was now easily able to see her as a good friend and not a romantic interest.

                                              THE END.

Num Lock

On a Windows-using computer , if you turn Num Lock off , some of the number keys on the keypad(at the right end of keyboard) start acting as arrow keys and you cannot use them to type numbers or type a full stop symbol, but you can still use the number keys under the function(F) keys to type numbers.

The waists of Disney princesses are too thin. Inhumanly thin.

The waists of Disney princesses are too thin. Inhumanly thin.

The Little Mermaid(Ariel), Belle , the princess of the frog and others have very frighteningly thin waists.
If they got pregnant and/or gave birth the child might even be wider than their waists and the child would just get stuck inside. If their waists are so thin then what is the size of their bones?

The waists look as if you can squeeze them with only one hand.

I don't know why being full-bodied seems to scare some people.

Why does Jasmine allow Aladdin to continue wearing rags and going barefoot when she is a princess and his wife?

Why does Jasmine allow Aladdin to continue wearing rags and going barefoot when  she is a princess and his wife?

There is a cartoon called Disney's Aladdin. The hero is a poor boy wearing rags and going barefoot. He likes Jasmine, the princess, who is the daughter of the city's unnamed Sultan. In the end she says she wants to marry him. Therefore he would become a prince. And he would start dressing in richer clothes, right ? Wrong.

The Disney makers of the cartoon decided that even after he married her, he would continue wearing rags and going barefoot and it would seem normal to everybody. In the sequel "The Return of Jafar", he(Aladdin) is still barefoot and wearing rags WHILE living in the palace as a PRINCE.

Even in the video game "Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days", which at one point shows Jasmine and Aladdin talking about the Genie, a friend who left them in the original cartoon, Aladdin is still barefoot and wearing rags. Aladdin wants to repair some physical damage done to the city Agrabah. And Jasmine is smiling at him and telling him not to wear himself out , but she does not put shoes on his feet. What kind of love does she have? And even if the Disney characters were the kind of ones who do not worry what others think about them, it is still not good to move barefoot on certain kinds of surface, such as dusty ones where you can get jiggers.

Maybe the Disney creators keep him in rags so that he can be easily recognized by those of us who watched the original cartoon. But if that is their goal then seriously I think that they can simply improve his attire while keeping it in the same style.

Why game sprites are coloured in the computer instead of colouring them outside and scanning them in.

Why game sprites are coloured in the computer instead of colouring them outside and scanning them in.

I just had a thought today. I usually see video games where it appears that the creators used a graphics program like MS Paint to colour the sprites (for example games like King of Fighters, Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories). I wondered why they couldn't just colour those sprites with their hands to make them look nicer and richer. I still don't have the answer.

But I have realized that with graphics programs the image filesizes are smaller because fewer colours are used. You just flood-fill an area with a uniform colour. Whereas if you coloured it on paper before scanning it into computer, there would be multiple colours(or shades of colour) on the image due to the rough way the hand coloured the picture. And if you tried to reduce the colour depth of the image to reduce filesize, it might end up looking uglier than an image coloured with a graphics software