British Youth Band Association

The British Youth Band Association, or BYBA, was formed in 1974 by David Loader, John Johnson and Glen Carter. It aims to promote the marching band activity, to encourage the social aspects of bands and to enhance personal development through all aspects of bands. BYBA has also set up rules for contests, and divided all marching bands into classes. The 1992 season saw 117 units marching across the Novice, Contest, Championship and Premier Classes. By the 2003 season, the system had changed into 40 units marching across Divisions 1,2,3,4 and the Cadets league. The 2007 season saw Division 4 renamed as the Junior Division, and the introduction of the Associate division, allowing for units of any age. As of the 2008 season, BYBA runs eight summer contests annually, as well as the National Championships, an Individual & Ensembles Showcase, the 'On The Road' Tour, the Festival Of Fun & Music, and three regional concerts (Northern, Southern, and Midlands). In 2014, The class system was changed to the Premier Class, Championship Class, Associate Class, Traditional Class and Cadet Class

Equinox (comics)

Equinox (Terrance Sorenson) is a fictional character, a supervillain appearing in publications from Marvel Comics.

Publication history

Equinox, the Thermodynamic Man, first appeared in Marvel Team-Up vol. 1 #23 (July, 1974), and was created by Len Wein and Gil Kane. He also appeared in Giant-Size Spider-Man #1, also in July 1974, and a two-part story in Marvel Team-Up vol. 1 #59-60 (July–August 1977).

After a nearly twenty year hiatus, the character subsequently appeared sporadically, appearing in Marvel Comics Presents #147 (February 1994), Code of Honor #1 (January 1997), Spider-Man Unlimited #12 vol. 2 (January 2006), and Heroes for Hire vol. 2 #1 (October 2006). A Skrull impersonator of Equinox appeared in Avengers: The Initiative #12 (June 2008), and #18.

Equinox received an entry in the All-New Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z #4 (2006).

Fictional character biography

Equinox is an African-American youth who gained superhuman powers due to accidental exposure to his father's malfunctioning equipment after a lab accident. (His mother is Margay Sorenson, head of natural sciences at Bard College.)

Equinox (1993 film)

Equinox is a 1993 film written and directed by Alan Rudolph. It stars Matthew Modine in dual roles, along with Lara Flynn Boyle, Marisa Tomei, Lori Singer and Fred Ward. The film was shot in Minnesota and Utah and is set in the fictional urban city of Empire. It was nominated for four Independent Spirit Awards.

Plot

Henry Petosa and Freddy Ace are identical twins living in the fictional city of Empire with no knowledge of each other, separated at birth and given up for adoption.

Henry is a shy garage mechanic. He lives in a slum and loves Beverly Franks, his best friend's sister. He also baby-sits for his neighbor Rosie, a prostitute.

Freddy is a driver for Mr. Paris, a gangster. He is slick and self-confident, married to a materialistic woman named Sharon.

One day, a young woman named Sonya Kirk who works in a morgue accidentally comes across a letter indicating that the twins are actually the offspring of European nobility and owed a large sum of inheritance money. Sonya decides to play amateur detective and track them down.

Thief: The Dark Project

Thief: The Dark Project, also known simply as Thief, is a 1998 first person stealth video game developed by Looking Glass Studios and published by Eidos Interactive. Set in a medieval steampunk metropolis called the City, the game follows Garrett, a master thief trained by a secret society. An expanded edition of the game, Thief Gold, was released in 1999.

Thief was the first PC stealth game to use light and sound as game mechanics. Its use of first-person perspective for non-confrontational gameplay challenged the first-person shooter market, which led the developers to call it a "first-person sneaker". The game combines complex artificial intelligence with simulation systems to allow for emergent gameplay. Thief's influence has been traced to later stealth titles such as Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell and Hitman.

The game received critical acclaim and has been placed on numerous hall-of-fame lists. With sales of half a million units by the year 2000, it is Looking Glass' most commercially successful game. Thief was followed by a series of three sequels: Thief II: The Metal Age (2000), Thief: Deadly Shadows (2004) and the reboot Thief (2014). Looking Glass closed after Thief II's release, and so the latter two games were developed by Ion Storm and Eidos Montreal, respectively.

Thief (arcade game)

Thief is a 1981 arcade video game that is extremely similar to Pac-Man.

The player operates a car being pursued by several blue police cars, in a maze that is supposed to represent city streets. There are eight mazes in all, which change every level in a set order, then repeat starting with the ninth screen. The ninth through sixteenth levels are identical to the first through eighth, except the cars all move faster and the dollar signs (see next paragraph) don't last as long. After that, the game loops back to Level 9, even identifying it as such (i.e., the seventeenth stage says "Level 9 completed!" when cleared). Mazes can have up to three side tunnels that the cars can use to go from one side of the screen to the other, but a few have no tunnels at all.

Gameplay

Each maze is littered with dollar bills which the player collects by running over them. There are also several (usually four, but the first maze configuration has five) golden dollar signs placed throughout the mazes (the equivalent of Pac-Man's energizers); hitting one of these causes the police cars to temporarily turn red. While the police cars are red the player can crash into them and score extra points (100 for the first, 500 for the second, 1000 for the third, and 2000 for the fourth); if contact with the police cars occurs at any other time the player loses a life. When all the dollar bills on one screen have been collected, the player advances to the next level.

Rogue (Dungeons & Dragons)

The rogue or thief is one of the standard playable character classes in most editions of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. A rogue is a versatile character, capable of sneaky combat and nimble tricks. The rogue is stealthy and dextrous, and in 2nd edition was the only official base class from the Player's Handbook capable of finding and disarming many traps and picking locks. The rogue also has the ability to "sneak attack" ("backstab" in previous editions) enemies who are caught off-guard or taken by surprise, inflicting extra damage.

Publication history

Creative origins

The abilities of the thief class were drawn from various archetypes from history and myth, but clear debts from modern fantasy literature can be traced to characters such as J.R.R. Tolkien's Bilbo Baggins, Fritz Leiber's The Gray Mouser, and Jack Vance's Cugel the Clever.

In his article "Jack Vance and the D&D Game", Gary Gygax stresses the influence that Vance's Cugel and also Zelazny's Shadowjack had on the thief class.