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Marianne G >> HAPPY TOKENS EVERYWHERE! .......................... Khai Joybringer >> KILLER SPIDERS ATTACK PHANTASUS ...........................Rosaleah >> STOP THE CRASH TIPS! .................... Milen of the Hidden Glade >> IN SEARCH OF A PONYTAIL ................................ Marianne G >> SEEN ON THE STREET ....................................... Rosaleah >> GAMING SECTION ............................Alcolytes VIQer & Serena >> ADVERTISEMENT SEGMENT ..................................Our Readers >> POETRY CORNER .............................................. Dawnne >> LETTER TO THE EDITOR ...................................Our Readers >> THE MYSTERY OF THE OIL OF OKAY ...................... Acolyte VIQer >> UPCOMING ISSUES .............................................Editor ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>< >> THE EDITOR SPEAKS --By Marianne G This is great! Once every four weeks I get a public forum to talk on. As if I ever needed one :D So, this being only the second issue, and the first I am doing, let me just tell you about myself. I am running Worlds Away on a 386 33Mhz machine with 8 Megs of RAM. Yes, that is NOT a typo. Like most of us, I have been a big victim of the memory leak. The biggest insult came, however, when I found out when my pay came that all the times I "terminated gracefully" did not count as time on the world when it came to getting tokens. Since that is how most of my sessions ended, you can imagine how poor I was till they fixed that :D I want to know, who came up with that phrase anyway? Is anyone out there "terminated clumsily"? I have been terminated gracefully so often I received a diploma from a charm school. The sad part was I was not even enrolled! So now here is your chance to tell me about your exits, and how you would finish this sentance: I've been terminated gracefully so often........ Send your answer to me in a PRIVATE forum message or E-Mail to my UID, 72007,221 I always feel like a balerina that should be dancing when I get that message. I have been terminated gracefully so often I have my exit pirouette down pat. What do you win? The best ones, as judged by myself and maybe the other editors, will be listed with names the next time I get to edit the paper. You get a brief moment of fame. Hey, remember, I'm not that rich! Oh ok, since I can't seem to find the right head to spend my tokens on, the grand prize winner will receive 100 Tokens. Your answers must be in by Midnight of September 9th. Be creative! Be original! DON'T be vulgar (but I didn't have to tell you that, right?) Now for a quote to end this editorial off with. "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away." Thoreau ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>< HAPPY TOKENS EVERYWHERE! Imagine my absolute amazement when I put my hand into my pocket only to find NO NOTEPAPER! "Oh my!" I said to myself, "What AM I to do now?" You see, on one of the islands where I served as Island Greeter and Hostess of a Trillian Hunts, I'd roam its highways, biways and beaches dropping Happy Notes EVERYWHERE! Sometimes, I'd leave infor- mation about the particular area where the the Happy Note was found; other times, it was a simple note upon which I'd weave my Happy Magic which in turn merged with the finder of the note. I used to be called the "Island Litterer" -- they *always* accused me of littering the island with paper! "B..b...but" I'd stutter, "these are *really* special pieces of paper!" And usually when my accusers found a Happy Note, they stopped calling me "Island Litterer" and started calling me the "Happy Lady"! Now *that* was nice! When I found no notepaper in my pocket here in Phantasus, I sat down and cried. I wasn't being a very good Happy Lady if I couldn't leave pieces of happiness around and I *certainly* wasn't being a very good Happy Lady sitting there crying! When the tears finally stopped, I checked my pocket again and found those really beautiful golden tokens ... and from somewhere deep within me came the inspiration to use my Happy Magic on those tokens and plant those instead -- at least until the Kymer builders create paper, that is! So, when you find a token that is a 1-5 denomination coin, know that it is a *very* special token ... it contains within it my special Happy Magic (no one else in the universe has my secret!) and it will be passed on to you when you pick it up and put it in your pocket. And if you look very carefully at the token, you just might find your own special color of joy imbedded within it. Be Joyful! Khai Joybringer ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>< >> KILLER SPIDERS ATTACK PHANTASUS --By Rosaleah It was Acolyte Lynx who first spotted the huge black cloud headed toward Kymer. He’d been out and about, greeting the citizens on the new day, when something a bit out of the ordinary just on the edge of the horizon caught his eye. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it was large ... and dark ... and moving very, very fast. At first he guessed it was a storm cloud, but then he realized that he’d never seen a storm cloud anywhere in Kymer’s always clear blue sky! It wasn’t long before the occasional stray spider began to appear on the streets of Phantasus. These were odd spiders, who weren’t busily spinning webs, nor did they seem the least bit interested in taking up residence in anyone’s pockets. Picking up one of _these_ spiders was likely to bring a bite and a nasty welt on the hand! Several citizens took it upon themselves to lodge a complaint with the shop vendroid for selling spiders who obviously didn’t want to be pets; but the vendroid denied all knowledge of the creatures. Everyone wondered where they could be coming from, if not the vendroid, when Acolyte Lynx remembered that swiftly-moving dark cloud. Could it be? A cloud of spiders, bent on, perhaps, taking over the town? It seemed a fantastical idea, but, no, here were more spiders of this ilk, causing pain for citizens who were innocently trying to claim them as pets; and there were more and more of them as the cloud approached closer and closer. It soon became clear: the spiders were coming! Indeed, they were upon us! They were harmful creatures, not the pleasant sort we’ve all come to know and love. Citizens were warned, and were asked to please sweep the streets of any spiders they encountered, lest they attack and harm unsuspecting citizens. Certainly, given their vicious bite, only the bravest of the brave would actually pick them up with their bare hands ... although, at the height of the attack, many were seen doing this very thing. The bulk of the cloud arrived on Thursday, close to 7:00 p.m. PDT, as time is reckoned in the World of the Awake. Alerted citizens took to the streets with brooms and with gloved hands, well advised to rid the streets of all spiders they might encounter! At last count, over 40 spiders were found crawling around the streets and in the open buildings about town. We’ve been told that once they’ve been pocketed, their sting is neutralized, but that they violently resist being placed in pockets. Not even the pawn broker wanted to take them in at first, but was convinced at long last to take spiders whose poisons had been neutralized by this pocketing effect. We don’t know whether we’ll ever be attacked by such a dark cloud again, but it’s always good to be careful around spiders you haven’t met before! ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>< >> SOME TIPS ON GETTING WORLDSAWAY TO STOP THAT DARN *CRASHING!* -written by Milen, noted insomniac, from advice received from Oracle Teresias Currently, WorldsAway has a memory leak. This means that, no matter what you do, WorldsAway will *eventually* crash with the infamous "Graceful Termination" exit message. A memory leak occurs, if I understand my copy of "Borland C++ For Dummies" correctly, when memory is allocated by the program for some reason and is forgotten about and never reclaimed. These pieces of memory pile up over time and eventually the program runs out. The client no longer has enough memory to allocate an additional piece, and... well, you probably have experienced the results. The memory leak is supposed to be fixed by the next beta. But, well, that's still some days off. And, in the meantime, there just *may* be things you can do to, if not prevent, *postpone* the next crash. Late Friday night I was crashing regularly. Was I PEEVED! Perhaps no one should be forced to endure the sheer number of crashes I did. Sometimes, when logging on in certain full rooms, I would crash almost INSTANTLY. Literally, if I tried to do anything other than move my ghost to another room or ESP, then I would crash. SOMETIMES I wouldn't be able to do even THOSE things, effectively locking me out of Kymer until the room emptied out! Oracles... well, they would crash me almost instantly in most cases. On one memorable occasion earlier in the beta an oracle crashed me three times in a row, within five minutes of each other. I was desperately trying to escape but it kept happening, like the cosmic forces of chance and fate were against me or something. I guess I snapped a little; that day I had already suffered through probably at least twenty Graceful Termina- tions (you tend to lose count after a while), and I was unable to welcome a friend to Kymer because of it. I realize it was a mistake now, but I taped out an ESP message to the oracle explaining my situation and wondering what it was that I had done to merit such treatment. I believe my exact words towards the end were "I mean, what do you want? Blood?" Well, Oracle Teresias was nice about it. He even offered to talk about my system with me to find out what the problem was. Unfortunately, before I could respond... well, I'm certain you can guess what happened. My system was apparently off and finding *other* ways to crash. But I remembered Teresias' offer, and Friday night I finally took him up on it. I was so taken with the advice that I asked if I could write it up in a Clarion article... and, well, here it is. (NOTE: All these tips are for the Windows 1.0b1 version of the client running off of Windows 3.1 or Windows for Workgroups 3.11.) * THINGS TO TRY: - PHYSICAL MEMORY BOX: In the client, under FILE|PREFERENCES in the menu system and after you hit the SYSTEM button, is a dialog box in which you tell the program how much physical memory you have. Teresias said that you can safely INCREASE this value without suffering ill-effects. Doing so will cause the program to rely more on Virtual Memory, thus slowing you down considerably... but at least your client will be more reliable. - CACHE MEMORY: Teresias suggested that whatever system you're using for disk caching (in my case 32-bit file access) be set to 128-512KB of memory if you have only 8MB. Within that range the precise figure that gives the best speed may vary. Anyway, I was under the impression that most speed increases gained though that method would be slight. - TRUETYPE FONTS: I remembered that I had installed a moderately- large collection of Windows TrueType fonts on my system, around fifty. I had heard that large numbers of TT fonts would eventually slow Windows down, and Teresias said that may have had some bearing on my troubles. Still, he suggested that I try other solutions before de-installing the fonts. - CONFIG.SYS: It was when he got to talking about this that I begin to see things that I had not yet considered. He said that, if you have no devices that require special drivers (like sound cards, SCSI drives or the like), WorldsAway can run off a system with a CONFIG.SYS containing these lines: DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\IFSHLP.SYS FILES=60 BUFFERS=4,0 STACKS=9,256 He said all your AUTOEXEC.BAT file should need is a PATH statement. Notice that EMM386.EXE is nowhere to be seen; Teresias said that EMM386 doesn't handle certain memory leaks very well. Also, he said that if you're using Windows for Workgroups 3.10 instead of 3.11 that you'd better be careful about what you excise from your CONFIG.SYS, as there are many network device drivers used in that version that are required. He seriously recommends, if at all possible, upgrading from WFW 3.10 to 3.11 if possible. Standard, non-Workgroup Windows 3.1 is okay. Also, note that some other Windows programs may take exception to being asked to run without EMM386.EXE; it's probably best if you use a boot disk or a special boot menu configuration to start your computer like this. About these tips; it should be realized that I, Milen, have no clue about such CONFIG.SYS matters and why and how they work. These suggestions are being provided here to try to help you out if you're having the same massive amounts of trouble I was having. Hey, don't ask *me* about them, I'm at least as confused as you are! To be honest, I haven't tested them out enough to fully determine if they work yet, although my experiences look promising. All I can suggest is that you make back-up copies of your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files and go back to them if something untoward happens. * Milen of the Hidden Glade ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>< >> IN SEARCH OF A PONYTAIL --By Marianne G We were in sight of land when we passed through something. I was at the rails, straining for my first glimpse, when this tingling went all over me. When it passed it took me a minute or two to realize it had taken my hair with it! Bald, I would be arriving in the new world bald! When I asked about it, no one would give me a straight answer. I went straight to the Captain. He said it was a magic barrier, and all new citizens passing through it seemed to lose their hair. They had made provisions for this when we docked. This was not good enough for me, and I kept pestering. Finally, the Captain gave in and told me that in very ancient times, those who created this world had had problems with refugees coming in with head lice. The magic shield had been designed to be put in place on all worlds to combat that problem. The fact that the shield was no longer needed, did not stop it being put into effect on new worlds. There was a long, tedious legislation process that would have to be gone through, and frankly no one had the time for it. Instead, tokens and a head vending machine were provided to combat the effects of the shield. Considering all we lost on the journey here, the 100 tokens he mentioned made me feel rich. Then I arrived at the dock, and was told that my Choke Machine had to be held at customs until it was cleared to enter. They hauled it over the side and held it in a locked area on the dock. It looked so said, I knew I had to try and get it past the guards, but that's another story. (See THE GREAT CHOKE CONSPIRACY in the next issue). Off to the promanade with my 100 tokens to find a suitable head. All I needed was a shaved head to mark me as someone fresh off the boat. I found the machine easily enough, and the first head I saw was that of an angelic cherub. I think not. At least not for me. Of the remaining eight, four were male heads. I did not intend to become a conversation piece as the bearded lady. That left me with four heads, none of which looked like they supported a pony tail in the back. You didn't get a side or back view of the heads, so you kinda had to guess what the back looked like, but none of them seemed the type. One looked more like a poodle head then a female one. When it came down to it, with most of them costing 70 to 80 tokens or more, I only had one choice. I chose the asian head for 35 tokens. Yep, I went for the cheapest head there. With that and the clothing they had issued me, I headed inworld. Apparently I was not the only cheap female. I had so many twins, we could have started a dance chorus line. I had to get a head with a pony tail! (Continuing in Issue 4, the saga continues with a search through the vendos!) ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>< >> SEEN ON THE STREET --By Rosaleah The eating and drinking establishments aren't open yet as of this writing, but we've seen quite a few munchies lying around town. One can always get a drink of healthful water at the fountain, of course, if one is very careful not to fall in! They say that the H2O pro- vided by the Water Dragon is particularly clear and sparkling, but others we've spoken to swear that the Fire Dragon's offerings are a lot more zestful. Some avatars have been seen _dancing_ in the fountain area lately; we suspect these had been particularly affected by the Air Dragon's water, but we still haven't received confirmation of the rumor! Some avatars, however, appear to be starving for food. Someone even suggested eating the occasional spider for sustenance! Well! Chuck and Noctem might not agree that that's such a tasty option! We noted, however, that CrazyDevil has been allowing avatars to take licks of his icecream head, as long as they leave enough in the cone so that he can still *think straight*! Speaking of heads, was that HAY U I saw outside of NuYu, with his horsie head twisted all the way around? That's some trick, HAY U! And I've no doubt that, yes, that certainly _must_ have something to do with why you can't seem to win any large purses at the racetrack! Did you see Hussong stomping on those spiders in the Visitors Center last Thursday? It didn't work, though. Those killer spiders were truly tough and were not about to squish under a little stomping!! Looked like a great tap-dance routine, though! Perhaps Hussong can work on it a little and give us a show when the Theater finally opens for business! The rumor mills are churning these days with news of an upcoming wedding: Data and Indigo are engaged! Indigo was overheard exclaiming great excitement over being Data's Dream Fiancee, to say nothing of being his Dream Wife! We know Data will be a Dream Husband. I haven't heard of a wedding date being set as yet, but we did offer to print up invitations here at the news offices, so we'll get the word out as soon as we know! Also sighted about town has been a walking, talking mahogany *table* that swears it's just barely escaped from an avatar pocket and is just trying to make it back to the Visitor's Center! But it seems to be too heavy for anyone to pick up and carry it, and it complains that its legs are too stiff for the long walk back! Too bad, as the VC certainly looks a little *bare* without it! ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>< GAMING SECTION This Section is dedicated to games, events and having fun. We also love to tell you who is winning, so let us know! We'd also like to take the opportunity to remind everyone to please help the host/ess out when events are running. When requested to dematerialize, please do so quickly. When you materialize to receive a prize, please just stand still till it is given, and then dematerialize for others. We realize that not all are having memory or movement problems, but this makes it go much faster with less crashing for those who do. Thank you. >> Star Trek Trivia Game Hosted by VIQer Starting late next week, there will be a series of Trek Trivia contests held in the Visitors Center. A variety of questions will be asked appropriate for novice and hard core fans! Prizes will be awarded for all correct answers given by contestants. The first in the series will be from the original Star Trek starring William Shatner. Come and show off your Trek knowledge, have fun and win great prizes from objects to heads and tokens! Everyone is welcome and Ghosts will be included in this game. First Ghost to ESP the correct answer wins! Future episodes of this event will delve into Deep Space Nine, Star Trek the Next Generation and of course Voyager! Here is the first question: What is the name of Mr. Spock's wife back home on Vulcan? An easy one! First ten correct answers inworld will each be worth fifteen tokens! Just tell me you want to answer the Trek Trivia question.......... I'll repeat it for you if you like. >> LOAD TEST TRIVIA By Acolyte Serena During the recent load test, Acolyte Sabertooth and myself tried to keep the group we were with amused with a few trivia questions. Many thanks to all who played, and to Oracle Vaserius for donating a Light Bulb head to the winner. Acolyte Sabertooth who modeled it during the game said it made him feel ever so bright :D Winners were Troubadour 25T, Slick Jim 33T, EDGAR the Electonic 36T, Odin 54T, Zippy 56T, Gib 58T, PunJab 74T. Second place with 95T and a shrunken head (donated by Sabertooth) went to Electra. Beating her out for first place by three points, was Handyman who won 98T and got the head which will have everyone saying You Light Up My Life when he appears. Trivia was followed by Wheel of Tokens (aka Rolling for Tokens) game at the Visitors Center. There winners were Zeldar 30T, Jax 50T, Karen Katwijk 60T, Boromere 80T and Slick Jim 100T was the grand prize winner. He also received a lantern donated by Guenhwyvar. If you like Ghost Racing, please join Acolyte Serena in front of the Isle Caribe Building on Monday at 8PM EDT for that event. Many thanks to all those who helped us try the games out. Keep an eye on the library for an upload containing rules to these and other games. >> THIS WEEKS PUZZLE By Marianne G As Editor of the week, it was my job to come up with a game/puzzle/ contest for the readers to do this week. However, after seeing how many great things we had in this issue, and how long it made said issue, I decided to scrape the puzzle for a later time, and instead, sponser a contest. So, in the spirit of Terminating Gracefully, now is the time for all of you to place your bets. You have till Midnight, EDT, of Saturday, August 26th to send in your guess for the number of times Acolyte Serena will dump while hosting Ghost Racing on August 28th. She will be hosting the games every Monday at 8PM EDT in front of Isle Caribe. Will the memory leak be fixed by then and she will be alright? Those are the chances a gambler has to take. Send your guess in private forum message to Marianne G 72007,221 by the deadline. Mark the subject as CLARION CONTEST. Since I haven't found a head to purchase yet, I'll start the pot off at 300 Tokens. Anyone wishing to contribute to the pot, which will be split among all winners, may do so by making a contribution to Marianne G or Acolyte Serena when they are in the Dreamscape. If we have no winners, we will just turn the pot over to the next contest held by the Clarion. Good luck to all! ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>< >> ADVERTISEMENT SEGMENT All Ads for the paper should be submitted in E-Mail or Private Forum Message to CIS UID 72007,221 and should be marked ADVERTISEMENT. The Board of Editors has not decided yet if they should charge for your advertisements, so get them in fast before they do! WANTED- One Pony Tail Head. Must be reasonably priced for new avatar. Please send pictures of front, back and side view. Does not need to be blue. Send photos and price to Marianne G, UID 72007,221. ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>< >> POETRY CORNER This poem was brought to our offices by Enaxtre, who thought it might be of interest here. Dawnne, we take it, plies his craft generally in the waking world, where his poem, written on the Iraqi-Saudi Arabian border during Operation Desert Storm, has been included in the collection _the sabre_. We are pleased to offer his work to the citizens of Kymer. "again, my love" born faceless in the mourning air, and dreaming with disenchantment, all the night explodes: wonder's effervescent screams.... to what then lies this form? what direction did it take, that i, uncounted, stood between the twilight's winds of everness now shorn? paleness rides in shadows, like frequency unborn. tomorrow shifts and shudders, how the night descends again! and heaven's arms enfold our hearts in ceaseless congregation of the coalition of our minds. sleep dreamingly then, and i shall come to thee. the days cannot contain our wonderings, as night cannot enfold thine eyes. and i shall cling to thee again within this dreaming sleepfulness; and with thee, in Light, i shall open the door into our Realm our own.... (c) 1993 by Dawnne ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>< >> LETTER TO THE EDITOR Greetings Editors. I just wanted to point out that an error was made in Khai Joybringer's Story. The Continent is Kymer and the city is Phantasus, not the other way around! Just wanted to clear that up. In the name of Morpheus! (Acolyte Lynx) Dear Acolyte Lynx: Please attribute my misunderstanding of the Argo Captain's words to having just been dizzily tumbling, turning and twisting through a black hole to arrive on the Island of Kymer and its city of Phantasus. (And yes, Kymer is an "Island", not a "Continent" ::giggle:: I checked that out before answering!) Yours in Joyfulness, Khai Joybringer (Special note: All comments to the Editors are welcome! Send your letters to the waking-world e-mail CIS e-mail address of 75664,663 with the subject LETTER TO EDITORS until the Temple Priests bring their own mail system into the Dreamscape. Please mark all letters you do not wish published as NOT FOR PUBLICATION. All mail to the Editors not so marked will be considered for publication, subject to editing for clarity and space considerations.) ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>< >> The Oil Of Okay A continuing Saga by Acolyte VIQer We are still trying to locate the source of this wonderful mystery oil, it would seem we have a third Kymerian painting the bodies of Phantasus residents! This Kymerian is known only as Loki. I wonder if he arrived from the world of Asgard by way of the famous Bi-Frost? Well anyway he's here now........ It seems our artists have aquired new skills necessary to change eye and hair colors as well! At this time however, they are giving priority to the new Kymerians who haven't yet had the benefits of their services....... Many have requested a scheduled time for their appearance but there is none! Charlotte-N did mention that she is usually available after 8 PM PDT. The others could not guarantee a set time. The reason they have been scarce lately is because they have been working diligently with the Temple Stewards and the Oracles to make the Oil available to everyone at some time in the future. Our artists are trying very hard to get to everyone and they are grateful for all your patience. Please hang in there and they will get to you soon.... Next issue will come with a sample of their handywork, a special photo indeed if it will get into the library. I will try......... VIQer ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>< >> UPCOMING ISSUES By Marianne G Next week a new Editor takes charge and some of the things you will see include: THE GREAT CHOKE CONSPIRACY MILEN'S TIP SHEET SEEN ON THE STREET Will the Choke Machine make it past the docks? What tips will Milen share to help you on your way? What new things will Rosaleah see? Perhaps the opening of new areas? Don't change your Paper! Make sure you download the only one that can provide all this and more! ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><