Dawn (Guitar Vader album)

Dawn is the fourth studio album by Japanese rock band Guitar Vader, released in 2003. The first track, "Satisfy," is notable for containing many lyrical references to "You Make It Easy" by Air.

Track listing

List of The Keys to the Kingdom characters

The Keys to the Kingdom is a fantasy-adventure book series, written by Garth Nix, started in 2003 with Mister Monday and ended with "Lord Sunday". The series follows the story of Arthur Penhaligon and his charge as the Rightful Heir of the Architect to claim the Seven Keys to the Kingdom and the seven demesnes of the House.

Heroes

Arthur Penhaligon

Arthur, a 12-year-old boy, has recently moved to a town and wants to fit into it. After suffering an asthma attack, he is saved by a mysterious metal object, called a Key, given by an even stranger character, Mister Monday, whose servants bring an incurable plague to Arthur's town. Arthur hurries to the House, a mysterious structure that only he can see. Shortly after arriving in the House, Arthur discovers the structure of the house is a complete universe and is informed of his duty to unseat the seven Trustees who run the House, claim their Keys, and rule all of Creation. Arthur cannot live an ordinary life unless he overthrows all of the Trustees, who are also known as the Morrow Days. To do this, however, he must use the Keys, which infect him with sorcery and make him a Denizen of the House; and whenever Denizens appear in the Secondary Realms (everything in Creation that is not in the House, including Earth), they are "inimical to mortal life", i.e. incredibly harmful to reality. This dilemma is a constant theme in the books: as Arthur does not wish to turn into a Denizen; he often resists using the Keys, and only does when it is absolutely necessary.

Dawn (McLaughlin novel)

Dawn is a science fiction novel written in 1980 by Dean McLaughlin. A re-imagining of Isaac Asimov's classic 1941 short story, "Nightfall", it was serialized in Analog magazine (April–July 1981), with — unusually — two cover illustrations, for both its first and last segments. The story was republished in hardcover in 2006.

Background

Dawn is set on a world with six or seven "gods" — "Blazing Alpher", "Red Bethe", "Actinic Gamow", "Bright Dalton", "Gold Ephron", and "Embrous Zwicky"; and also "The Pale One", which is the largest but dimmest, and variable in color. There is always at least one of the suns in the sky, so there is no place that experiences nightfall; the only truly dark places are in enclosed spaces such as caves or windowless rooms.

The passings of Alpher from east to west across the sky are the primary units of time, but longer periods are marked by the seasonal shift of Alpher north and south, and the overtaking of one god by another, and sand glasses are used for shorter periods. With two important suns in the sky, the ability to predict their movements would be very valuable to predict conditions over future growing seasons. Alas, while the priests can make useful short-term predictions, over the long term the gods seem to go where they will. The world is a roughly medieval stage of development. The priests of the Temple hold all political power.

Alchemy

Alchemy is a philosophical and protoscientific tradition practiced throughout Egypt and Eurasia which aimed to purify, mature, and perfect certain objects. Common aims were chrysopoeia, the transmutation of "base metals" (e.g., lead) into "noble" ones (particularly gold); the creation of an elixir of immortality; the creation of panaceas able to cure any disease; and the development of an alkahest, a universal solvent. The perfection of the human body and soul was thought to permit or result from the alchemical magnum opus and, in the Hellenistic and western tradition, the achievement of gnosis. In Europe, the creation of a philosopher's stone was variously connected with all of these projects.

In English, the term is often limited to descriptions of European alchemy, but similar practices existed in the Far East, the Indian subcontinent, and the Muslim world. In Europe, following the 12th-century Renaissance produced by the translation of Arabic works on science and the Recovery of Aristotle, alchemists played a significant role in early modern science (particularly chemistry and medicine). Islamic and European alchemists developed a structure of basic laboratory techniques, theory, terminology, and experimental method, some of which are still in use today. However, they continued antiquity's belief in four elements and guarded their work in secrecy including cyphers and cryptic symbolism. Their work was guided by Hermetic principles related to magic, mythology, and religion.

Alchemy (video game)

Alchemy is a computer puzzle game from PopCap Games. This title can be played for free online at various websites minus some components, or a full version can be downloaded and unlocked for a fee. On mobile devices, the game can only be played if downloaded for a fee.

Release

Alchemy was first introduced on August 29, 2001. The original version released for only available on the Windows platform. But in May 2002, a version was made for the Mac platform. In June 2002, a version was released that was available for shipping. In September 2002, a handheld version was released.

Gameplay

The object of the game is to turn a board of squares from lead to gold by placing randomly generated symbols called runes on every square. The symbols used as runes in the lower levels are astrological glyphs (symbols) Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces, Mercury, Venus, a symbol like that of Uranus, and Neptune (Virgo is missing). As higher levels are reached, additional symbols (e.g., droplet, lightning, cup, and om) appear, as do additional colors. New colors appear every three levels.

CrossBridge

CrossBridge is an open-source toolset developed by Adobe Systems, that cross-compiles C and C++ code to run in Adobe Flash Player or Adobe AIR. Projects compiled with CrossBridge run up to 10 times faster than ActionScript 3 projects. CrossBridge was also known as "Alchemy" and the "Flash Runtime C++ Compiler", or "FlasCC".

CrossBridge uses high-performance memory-access opcodes in the Flash Player (known as "Domain Memory") to work with in-memory data quickly. CrossBridge uses the LLVM and GCC as compiler backends, in order to compile C++ code, optimize it, and transform it to run within AVM2 (the ActionScript Virtual Machine). Programs built with CrossBridge are up to 10 times faster than normal ActionScript code, but up to 2× to 10× slower than native C++ code.

CrossBridge can generate Flash Player movies (.swf files), or Flash Libraries (.swc files), which can then be used by larger projects written in ActionScript 3 and compiled using the free Apache Flex SDK (formerly the Adobe Flex SDK). CrossBridge also uses the GPU-based 3D rendering acceleration present in Flash Player 11 (known as Stage3D).