Frank Parker Website Archives - Page 14 of 18

Online Games

The 1990’s saw the start of more people using the internet and with that online gaming started to grow rapidly over the following years.

You will find lots of fun online games to play via Blog Posts below.

About Online Games

An online game is a video game that is either partially or primarily played through the Internet or any other computer network available. Online games are ubiquitous on modern gaming platforms, including PCs, consoles and mobile devices, and span many genres, including first-person shooters, strategy games, and massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG). In 2019, revenue in the online games segment reached $16.9 billion, with $4.2 billion generated by China and $3.5 billion in the United States. Since the 2010’s, a common trend among online games has been operating them as games as a service, using monetization schemes such as loot boxes and battle passes as purchasable items atop freely-offered games. Unlike purchased retail games, online games have the problem of not being permanently playable, as they require special servers in order to function.

The design of online games can range from simple text-based environments to the incorporation of complex graphics and virtual worlds. The existence of online components within a game can range from being minor features, such as an online leaderboard, to being part of core gameplay, such as directly playing against other players. Many online games create their own online communities, while other games, especially social games, integrate the players’ existing real-life communities. Some online games can receive a massive influx of popularity due to many well-known Twitch streamers and YouTubers playing them.

Online gaming has drastically increased the scope and size of video game culture. Online games have attracted players from a variety of ages, nationalities, and occupations. The online game content can also be studied in the scientific field, especially gamers’ interactions within virtual societies in relation to the behaviour and social phenomena of everyday life. As in other cultures, the community has developed a gamut of slang words or phrases that can be used for communication in or outside of games. Due to their growing online nature, modern video game slang overlaps heavily with internet slang, as well as leetspeak, with many words such “pwn” and “noob”. Another term that was popularized by the video game community is the abbreviation “AFK” to refer to people who are not at the computer or paying attention. Other common abbreviations include “GL HF” which stands for “good luck, have fun,” which is often said at the beginning of a match to show good sportsmanship. Likewise, at the end of a game, “GG” or “GG WP” may be said to congratulate the opponent, win or lose, on a “good game, well played”. Many video games have also inspired internet memes and achieved a very large following online.

The culture of online gaming sometimes faces criticism for an environment that can promote cyberbullying, violence, and xenophobia. Some are also concerned about gaming addiction or social stigma. However, it has been argued that, since the players of an online game are strangers to each other and have limited communication, the individual player’s experience in an online game is not necessarily different from playing with artificial intelligence players.

The History Of Online Games

The history of online games dates back to the early days of packet-based computer networking in the 1970’s. An early example of online games are MUDs, including the first, MUD1, which was created in 1978 and originally confined to an internal network before becoming connected to ARPANet in 1980. Commercial games followed in the next decade, with Islands of Kesmai, the first commercial online role-playing game, debuting in 1984, as well as more graphical games, such as the MSX LINKS action games in 1986, the flight simulator Air Warrior in 1987, and the Famicom Modem’s online Go game in 1987.

The rapid availability of the Internet in the 1990s led to an expansion of online games, with notable titles including Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds (1996), Quakeworld (1996), Ultima Online (1997), Lineage (1998), Starcraft (1998), Counter-Strike (1999) and EverQuest (1999). Video game consoles also began to receive online networking features, such as the Famicom Modem (1987), Sega Meganet (1990), Satellaview (1995), SegaNet (2000), PlayStation 2 (2000) and Xbox (2001). Following improvements in connection speeds, more recent developments include the popularization of new genres, such as social games, and new platforms, such as mobile games.

Entering into the 2000s, the cost of technology, servers and the Internet has dropped so far that fast Internet was commonplace, which led to previously unknown genres like massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) becoming well-known. For example, World of Warcraft (2004) dominated much of the decade. Several other MMOs attempted to follow in Warcraft‘s footsteps, such as Star Wars Galaxies, City of Heroes, Wildstar, Warhammer Online, Guild Wars 2, and Star Wars: The Old Republic, but failed to make a significant impact in Warcraft‘s market share. Over time, the MMORPG community has developed a sub-culture with its own slang and metaphors, as well as an unwritten list of social rules and taboos.

Separately, a new type of online game came to popularity alongside World of Warcraft, Defense of the Ancients (2003) which introduced the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) format. DotA, a community-created mod based on Warcraft III, gained in popularity as interest in World of Warcraft waned, but since the format was tied to the Warcraft property, others began to develop their own MOBAs, including Heroes of Newerth (2009), League of Legends (2010), and Dota 2 (2013). Blizzard Entertainment, the owner of Warcraft property, released their own take on the MOBA genre with Heroes of the Storm (2015), emphasizing numerous original heroes from Warcraft III and other Blizzard’s franchises. By the early 2010s, the genre has become a big part of the esports category.

During the last half of the 2010s, hero shooter, a variation of shooter games inspired by multiplayer online battle arena and older class-based shooters, had a substantial rise in popularity with the release of Battleborn and Overwatch in 2016. The genre continued to grow with games such as Paladins (2018) and Valorant (2020).

A battle royale game format became widely popular with the release of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (2017), Fortnite Battle Royale (2017), and Apex Legends (2019). The popularity of the genre continued in the 2020’s with the release of the Call of Duty: Warzone (2020). Each game has received tens of millions of players within months of their releases.

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Adult Jokes

Adult jokes are just that, aimed at adults and I take no credit for any on this page. Their original source or words belong to whoever and started wherever. I tell them my way. If they make you smile or chuckle like they originally did to me then that is great. If not then I hope you find your sense of humour one day.

As defined by Collins Online Dictionary: “An adult is a mature, fully developed person. An adult has reached the age when they are legally responsible for their actions”. Generally, that means 18 and over but if you are under 18 or easily offended then you are on the wrong page!

As well as the short adult jokes on here there are longer jokes via the Blog Posts below.

Short Adult Jokes

What happened to the short-sighted circumciser?

He got the sack!

Why do elephants have four feet?

They would look daft with just 6 inches!

Two overweight regulars are sitting in the pub. “Your round,” said the one, to which the other replied, “You can talk you fat fucker!”

Did you hear about the gay magician?

He vanished with a poof!

Did you hear about the dyslexic pimp?

He bought a warehouse!

What’s the difference between erotic and kinky?

Erotic, you use a feather. Kinky, you use the whole chicken!

What is the difference between a pregnant woman and a light bulb?

You can unscrew a light bulb!

What gets longer when pulled, fits between a woman’s tits, inserts neatly into a hole and works when best jerked hard?

A seat belt!

What has a monkey got in common with a chainsaw?

They both fuck up trees!

What do you call a man with no arms or legs, playing the piano?

A clever dick!

What is the difference between burnt toast and a pregnant woman?

Nothing. In both cases, it was taken out too late!

What is the difference between a terrorist and a woman with PMT?

You can negotiate with a terrorist!

What’s the difference between a woman and a fridge?

A fridge doesn’t fart when you take the meat out!

There were two prostitutes sitting by the river on a sunny afternoon. “It’s going to be a great night tonight.” said the one, “I smell cock in the air” to which the other replied, “Oh sorry, that was me I burped!”

What is nasal sex?

Fuck nose!

When is a pixie not a pixie?

When she as her head down an elf’s pants. Then she’s a goblin!

Longer Adult Jokes

See below.

Blog Posts

Jokes: Adult Jokes (Part One).

Jokes: Adult Jokes (Part Two).

Jokes: Adult Jokes (Part Three).

Links

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Jokes

Albeit knock-knock jokes that kids love saying, corny dad jokes or dirty jokes etc people have been making people smile and laugh for thousands of years.

Here you can find jokes that will make you smile, chuckle or groan via blog posts.

About Jokes

A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laugh and is usually not meant to be taken seriously. It takes the form of a story, usually with dialogue, and ends in a punch line. It is in the punch line that the audience becomes aware that the story contains a second, conflicting meaning. This can be done using a pun or other wordplay such as irony or sarcasm, a logical incompatibility, nonsense, or other means. Linguist Robert Hetzron offers the definition:

“A joke is a short humorous piece of oral literature in which the funniness culminates in the final sentence, called the punchline… In fact, the main condition is that the tension should reach its highest level at the very end. No continuation relieving the tension should be added. As for its being “oral,” it is true that jokes may appear printed, but when further transferred, there is no obligation to reproduce the text verbatim, as in the case of poetry.^“

The History Of Jokes In Print

Any joke documented from the past has been saved through happenstance rather than design. Jokes do not belong to a refined culture, but rather to the entertainment and leisure of all classes. As such, any printed versions were considered ephemera, i.e., temporary documents created for a specific purpose and intended to be thrown away. Many of these early jokes deal with scatological and sexual topics, entertaining to all social classes but not to be valued and saved.

Various kinds of jokes have been identified in ancient pre-classical texts. The oldest identified joke is an ancient Sumerian proverb from 1900 BC containing toilet humour: “Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.” Its records were dated to the Old Babylonian period and the joke may go as far back as 2300 BC. The second oldest joke found, discovered on the Westcar Papyrus and believed to be about Sneferu, was from Ancient Egypt circa 1600 BC: “How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish.” The tale of the three ox drivers from Adab completes the three known oldest jokes in the world. This is a comic triple dating back to 1200 BC Adab. It concerns three men seeking justice from a king on the matter of ownership over a newborn calf, for whose birth they all consider themselves to be partially responsible. The king seeks advice from a priestess on how to rule the case, and she suggests a series of events involving the men’s households and wives. Unfortunately, the final portion of the story (which included the punch line), has not survived intact, though legible fragments suggest it was bawdy in nature.

The earliest extant joke book is the Philogelos (Greek for The Laughter-Lover), a collection of 265 jokes written in crude ancient Greek dating to the fourth or fifth century AD. The author of the collection is obscure and a number of different authors are attributed to it, including “Hierokles and Philagros the grammatikos”, just “Hierokles”, or, in the Suda, “Philistion”. British classicist Mary Beard states that the Philogelos may have been intended as a jokester’s handbook of quips to say on the fly, rather than a book meant to be read straight through. Many of the jokes in this collection are surprisingly familiar, even though the typical protagonists are less recognisable to contemporary readers: the absent-minded professor, the eunuch, and people with hernias or bad breath. The Philogelos even contains a joke similar to Monty Python’s “Dead Parrot Sketch”.

Read more about The History Of Jokes In Print here.

Telling Jokes

Telling a joke is a cooperative effort; it requires that the teller and the audience mutually agree in one form or another to understand the narrative which follows as a joke. In a study of conversation analysis, the sociologist Harvey Sacks describes in detail the sequential organisation in telling a single joke. “This telling is composed, as for stories, of three serially ordered and adjacently placed types of sequences… the preface [framing], the telling, and the response sequences.” Folklorists expand this to include the context of the joking. Who is telling what jokes to whom? And why is he telling them when? The context of the joke-telling in turn leads into a study of joking relationships, a term coined by anthropologists to refer to social groups within a culture who engage in institutionalised banter and joking.

The Framing Of Jokes

Framing is done with a (frequently formulaic) expression that keys the audience in to expect a joke. “Have you heard the one…”, “Reminds me of a joke I heard…”, “So, a lawyer and a doctor…”; these conversational markers are just a few examples of linguistic frames used to start a joke. Regardless of the frame used, it creates a social space and clear boundaries around the narrative which follows. The audience response to this initial frame can be acknowledgement and anticipation of the joke to follow. It can also be a dismissal, as in “this is no joking matter” or “this is no time for jokes”.

The performance frame serves to label joke-telling as a culturally marked form of communication. Both the performer and audience understand it to be set apart from the “real” world. “An elephant walks into a bar…”; a person sufficiently familiar with both the English language and the way jokes are told automatically understands that such a compressed and formulaic story, being told with no substantiating details, and placing an unlikely combination of characters into an unlikely setting and involving them in an unrealistic plot, is the start of a joke, and the story that follows is not meant to be taken at face value (i.e. it is non-bona-fide communication). The framing itself invokes a play mode; if the audience is unable or unwilling to move into play, then nothing will seem funny.

Blog Posts

Jokes: Adult Jokes (Part One).

Jokes: Adult Jokes (Part Two).

Notes And Links

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Games

Here you will read about modern games systems and the games that go with them. This section also covers board games.

For classic games machines and classic games etc. go to my Retro Gaming section.

To write about every different form of games would take forever and fill up page after page thus becoming boring indeed so I will keep it brief. You can find related topics in one form or another through blog posts or in my decades or collectables sections as well.

About Games

A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are different from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements. However, the distinction is not clear-cut, and many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (such as jigsaw puzzles or games involving an artistic layout such as Mahjong, solitaire, or some video games).

Games are sometimes played purely for enjoyment, sometimes for achievement or reward as well. They can be played alone, in teams, or online; by amateurs or by professionals. The players may have an audience of non-players, such as when people are entertained by watching a chess championship. On the other hand, players in a game may constitute their own audience as they take their turn to play. Often, part of the entertainment for children playing a game is deciding who is part of their audience and who is a player. A toy and a game are not the same. Toys generally allow for unrestricted play whereas games come with present rules.

Key components of games are goals, rules, challenges, and interaction. Games generally involve mental or physical stimulation, and often both. Many games help develop practical skills, serve as a form of exercise, or otherwise perform an educational, simulational, or psychological role.

Attested as early as 2600 BC, games are a universal part of the human experience and are present in all cultures. The Royal Game of Ur, Senet, and Mancala are some of the oldest known games.

Definition Of Games

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein was probably the first academic philosopher to address the definition of the word game. In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein argued that the elements of games, such as play, rules, and competition, all fail to adequately define what games are. From this, Wittgenstein concluded that people apply the term game to a range of disparate human activities that bear to one another only what one might call family resemblances. As the following game definitions show, this conclusion was not a final one and today many philosophers, like Thomas Hurka, think that Wittgenstein was wrong and that Bernard Suits’ definition is a good answer to the problem.

Roger Caillois

French sociologist Roger Caillois, in his book Les jeux et les hommes (Games and Men) (1961), defined a game as an activity that must have the following characteristics:

Fun: the activity is chosen for its light-hearted character.

Separate: it is circumscribed in time and place.

Uncertain: the outcome of the activity is unforeseeable.

Non-productive: participation does not accomplish anything useful.

Governed by rules: the activity has rules that are different from everyday life.

Fictitious: it is accompanied by the awareness of a different reality.

Chris Crawford

Game designer Chris Crawford defined the term in the context of computers. using a series of dichotomies:

Creative expression is art if made for its own beauty, and entertainment if made for money.

A piece of entertainment is a plaything if it is interactive. Movies and books are cited as examples of non-interactive entertainment.

If no goals are associated with a plaything, it is a toy. (Crawford notes that by his definition, (a) a toy can become a game element if the player makes up rules, and (b) The Sims and SimCity are toys, not games.) If it has goals, a plaything is a challenge.

If a challenge has no “active agent against whom you compete”, it is a puzzle; if there is one, it is a conflict. (Crawford admits that this is a subjective test. Video games with noticeably algorithmic artificial intelligence can be played as puzzles; these include the patterns used to evade ghosts in Pac-Man.)

Finally, if the player can only outperform the opponent, but not attack them to interfere with their performance, the conflict is a competition. (Competitions include racing and figure skating.) However, if attacks are allowed, then the conflict qualifies as a game.

Crawford’s definition may thus be rendered as an interactive, goal-oriented activity made for money, with active agents to play against, in which players (including active agents) can interfere with each other.

Other definitions, however, as well as history, show that entertainment and games are not necessarily undertaken for monetary gain.

Read other definitions here.

The Gameplay Elements And Classification Of Games

Games can be characterized by “what the player does”. This is often referred to as gameplay. The major key elements identified in this context are tools and rules that define the overall context of the game.

Tools

Games are often classified by the components required to play them (e.g. miniatures, a ball, cards, a board and pieces, or a computer). In places where the use of leather is well-established, the ball has been a popular game piece throughout recorded history, resulting in a worldwide popularity of ball games such as rugby, basketball, soccer (football), cricket, tennis, and volleyball. Other tools are more idiosyncratic to a certain region. Many countries in Europe, for instance, have unique standard decks of playing cards. Other games such as chess may be traced primarily through the development and evolution of its game pieces.

Many game tools are tokens, meant to represent other things. A token may be a pawn on a board, play money, or an intangible item such as a point scored.

Games such as hide-and-seek or tag do not use any obvious tool; rather, their interactivity is defined by the environment. Games with the same or similar rules may have different gameplay if the environment is altered. For example, hide-and-seek in a school building differs from the same game in a park; an auto race can be radically different depending on the track or street course, even with the same cars.

Rules And Aims

Games are often characterized by their tools and rules. While rules are subject to variations and changes, enough change in the rules usually results in a “new” game. For instance, baseball can be played with “real” baseballs or with wiffleballs. However, if the players decide to play with only three bases, they are arguably playing a different game. There are exceptions to this in that some games deliberately involve the changing of their own rules, but even then there are often immutable meta-rules.

Rules generally determine the time-keeping system, the rights and responsibilities of the players, scoring techniques, preset boundaries, and each player’s goals.

The rules of a game may be distinguished from their aims. For most competitive games, the ultimate aim is winning: in this sense, checkmate is the aim of chess. Common win conditions are being first to amass a certain quota of points or tokens (as in Settlers of Catan), having the greatest number of tokens at the end of the game (as in Monopoly), or some relationship of one’s game tokens to those of one’s opponent (as in chess’s checkmate). There may also be intermediate aims, which are tasks that move a player toward winning. For instance, an intermediate aim in football is to score goals, because scoring goals will increase one’s likelihood of winning the game, but isn’t alone sufficient to win the game.

An aim identifies a Sufficient Condition for successful action, whereas the rule identifies a necessary condition for permissible action. For example, the aim of chess is to checkmate, but although it is expected that players will try to checkmate each other, it is not a rule of chess that a player must checkmate the other player whenever possible. Similarly, it is not a rule of football that a player must score a goal on a penalty; while it is expected the player will try, it is not required. While meeting the aims often requires a certain degree of skill and (in some cases) luck, following the rules of a game merely requires knowledge of the rules and some careful attempt to follow them; it rarely (if ever) requires luck or demanding skills.

Read more about the Gameplay Elements And Classification Of Games here.

Types Of Games

For an extensive list of different types of games go here.

The above articles were taken from Wikipedia and are subject to change.

Blog Posts

Games: Nostalgic U.K. Games And Toys Adverts – Volume 1.

Games: Nostalgic U.K. Games And Toys Adverts – Volume 2.

Games: Nostalgic U.K. Games And Toys Adverts – Volume 3.

Games: Nostalgic U.K. Games And Toys Adverts – Volume 4.

Links

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Retro Gaming

Although I never played loads of console games back in the day, I did enjoy playing them. It all started for me in the 1970’s with a pong style console that came with a lightgun. I think I was about 10 or 11 years old and I may have had it for my birthday? I wish I could remember that far back. You would hit a square between two lines as bats in “tennis” or hit it against the wall “squash” style and shoot the square that moved around the screen. I can clearly remember my Mom’s old cat Bobby trying to get the square, ha ha. it sounds and looks so basic and non-exciting now but at the time it was state of the art stuff.

Of course, back in the 1970’s , 1980’s and 1990’s when I was playing the console above and the ones I owned after like the Commodore Vic 20, Amiga 500, 500 +, 600, 1200 and CD32, Sinclair Spectrum +2 and +2A and my Sega Game Gear (complete with the TV tuner), they were not retro at the time! I also used to play on Jnr’s Sega Master System, Megadrive and Playstation 1 with him too. As the years past they all become a nostalgia I fondly looked back on and I started my retro gaming collection with the above mentioned Amiga 500, 600 and 1200, the Sega Saturn and Dreamcast and the above mentioned Megadrive. As well as them I have the Nintendo NES, SNES, N64, Gameboy and Gamecube (I also have the Wii and DSi and DSi XL but they are not retro… just yet) and the above mentioned Sony PlayStation 1 and the 2 and 3 and the Microsoft Xbox. I have a lot of games for said consoles and a fair few peripherals as well and other bits and bobs. My collection spans 30 years or so and it is worth more than just money to me, it is a passion I need to play more with because being boxed up doesn’t do it justice. It needs to be on show to look at in wonder if nothing else. As well as them I have played emulation games on PC’s I have had and through my Amazon Firestick and 4K Firestick. and on as well.

So, although I do have a gaming section as part of my fun and games section, you can see why I could not justify sticking my LOVE of retro gaming as a subcategory of it. It deserves pride of place clearly on its own in my website menu.

Read about classic games machines and classic games etc. from my past and any memories regarding them in associated blog posts and in my decades section as well as in the above-mentioned fun and games section.

About Retrogaming

Retrogaming, also known as classic gaming and old school gaming, is the playing and/or collecting of older (or older versions of) personal computers, consoles, and/or video games (generally arcade), in contemporary times. Usually, retrogaming is based upon systems that are obsolete or discontinued. It is typically put into practice for the purpose of nostalgia, preservation or the need to achieve authenticity.

Retrogaming has three main activities; vintage retrogaming, retrogaming emulation, and ported retrogaming. Vintage retrogaming includes games that are played on the original hardware. Emulation involves newer systems simulating old gaming systems, while ported retrogaming allows games to be played on modern hardware via ports or compilations. Additionally, the term could apply to a newer game, but with features similar to those of older games, such as a “retro RPG” which features turn-based combat and an isometric camera perspective.

Participants in the hobby are sometimes known as retrogamers in the United Kingdom, while the terms “classic gamers” or “old school gamers” are more prevalent in the United States. Similarly, the games are known as retro games, classic games, or old school games.

Retrogaming has existed since the early years of the video game industry but was popularized with the popularity of the Internet and emulation technology. It is argued that the main reasons players are drawn to retro games are nostalgia for different eras, the idea that older games are more innovative and original, and the simplicity of the games that require fewer hours of gameplay.

Retrogaming and retrocomputing have been described as preservation activities and as aspects of the remix culture.

Origin Of The Word Retro In Gaming

The first known instance of the term “retro” in terms of gaming came from the online video game store RetroGames, which was launched in 1997 as a joint effort of Turbo Zone Direct and Robert Frasure. It specialized primarily in Turbografx-16, Sega Master System, and NES systems sales and repairs. This was quickly followed by the emulation website retrogames.com in 1998. The original word was coined by Robert Frasure when he found that “Flashback Games” was taken.

Retro Games

The distinction between what is considered retro and modern is heavily debated, but it usually coincides with either the shift from 2D to 3D games (making the fourth gen the last retro generation, and the fifth being the first modern), the turn of the millennium and the increase in online gaming (making the fifth gen the last retro generation, and the sixth being the first modern), or the switch from RCA to HDMI cables for video and sound transfer and the shift from 4:3 to 16:9 as the main aspect ratio for the games (making the sixth gen the last retro generation, and the seventh being the first modern). Some games are played on the original hardware; others are played through emulation.

Retro games can include video games as well as personal computer games for retro computing platforms. Arcade games are also popular and were frequently attributed to individual programmers. Some retro games can still be played online using just the internet browser via DOS emulation. In some cases, entirely new versions of the games are designed or remade. As well as playing games, a subculture of retrogaming has grown up around the music in retro games.

Retrogaming Methods

In the wake of increasing nostalgia and the success of retro-compilations in the fifth, sixth, and seventh generations of consoles, retrogaming has become a motif in modern games, as well. Modern retro games impose limitations on colour palette, resolution, and memory well below the actual limits of the hardware in order to mimic the look of older hardware. These may be based on a general concept of retro, as with Cave Story, or an attempt to imitate a specific piece of hardware, as with La Mulana and its MSX colour palette.

This concept, known as Deliberate Retro and NosCon, began to gain traction thanks in part to the independent gaming scene, where the short development time was attractive and commercial viability was not a concern. Major publishers have embraced modern retro gaming with releases such as Mega Man 9, an attempt to mimic NES hardware; Retro Game Challenge, a compilation of new games on faux-NES hardware; and Sega’s Fantasy Zone II remake, which uses emulated System 16 hardware running on PlayStation 2 to create a 16-bit reimagining of the 8-bit original.

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Fun

A lot of fun for me is gained through interaction with people via a good conversation, telling jokes, playing games like pool, snooker, board games, video games etc. rather than playing alone. All are enjoyed a lot more in the company of others. On here I will post jokes that hopefully make you smile or chuckle and things you can have fun doing.

You can also find related topics in one form or another through blog posts or in my decades section.

About Fun

Fun is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “Light-hearted pleasure, enjoyment, or amusement; boisterous joviality or merrymaking; entertainment”.

The Etymology And Usage Of Fun

The word fun is associated with sports, entertaining media, high merriment, and amusement. Although its etymology is uncertain, it has been speculated that it may be derived from fonne (fool) and fonnen (the one fooling the other). An 18th-century meaning (still used in Orkney and Shetland) was “cheat, trick, hoax”, a meaning still retained in the phrase “to make fun of”.

“The landlady was going to reply, but was prevented by the peace-making sergeant, sorely to the displeasure of Partridge, who was a great lover of what is called fun, and a great promoter of those harmless quarrels which tend rather to the production of comical than tragical incidents.” – Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749).

The way the word fun is used demonstrates its distinctive elusiveness and happiness. Expressions such as “Have fun!” and “That was fun!” indicate that fun is pleasant, personal, and to some extent unpredictable. Expressions such as “I was making fun of myself” convey the sense that fun is something that can be amusing and not be taken seriously. The adjective “funny” has two meanings that often need to be clarified between a speaker and listener. One meaning is “amusing, jocular, droll” and the other meaning is “odd, quirky, peculiar”. These differences indicate the evanescent and experiential nature of fun and the difficulty of distinguishing “fun” from “enjoyment”.

Fun’s evanescence can be seen when an activity regarded as fun becomes goal-oriented. Many physical activities and individual sports are regarded as fun until the participant seeks to win a competition, at which point, much of the fun may disappear as the individual’s focus tightens. Surfing is an example. If you are a “mellow soul” (not in a competition or engaging in extreme sport) “once you’re riding waves, you’re guaranteed to be having fun”.

The pleasure of fun can be seen by the numerous efforts to harness its positive associations. For example, there are many books on serious subjects, about skills such as music, mathematics and languages, normally quite difficult to master, which have “fun” added to the title.

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Links

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Blog

The West Midlands

I have lived in Birmingham all my life, which is part of the West Midlands and you can read about it here.

You can also read any relevant West Midlands topics, such as places I have visited in it, in associated pages, blog posts and in my decades section.

About The West Midlands

The West Midlands is one of nine official regions of England at the first level of NUTS for statistical purposes. It covers the western half of the area traditionally known as the Midlands. The region consists of the counties of Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, West Midlands and Worcestershire. The largest city in the region is Birmingham.

The West Midlands region is geographically diverse, from the urban central areas of the conurbation to the rural western counties of Shropshire and Herefordshire which border Wales. The longest river in the UK, the River Severn, traverses the region southeastwards, flowing through the county towns of Shrewsbury and Worcester, and the Ironbridge Gorge, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Staffordshire is home to the industrialised Potteries conurbation, including the city of Stoke-on-Trent, and the Staffordshire Moorlands area, which borders the southeastern Peak District National Park near Leek. The region also encompasses five Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the Wye Valley, Shropshire Hills, Cannock Chase, Malvern Hills, and parts of the Cotswolds. Warwickshire is home to the towns of Stratford upon Avon, the birthplace of writer William Shakespeare, Rugby, the birthplace of Rugby football and Nuneaton, birthplace to author George Eliot.

History Of The West Midlands

World War II

The RAF Fauld explosion on 27 November 1944 in east Staffordshire produced a 100-foot deep crater, and is the UK’s largest explosion, being caused by around 4,000 tonnes of high explosive, and may be the world’s largest non-nuclear explosion.

Birmingham was the third most bombed city in the UK after London and Liverpool; Spitfires were built in Castle Bromwich, Lancasters at Austin’s works in Longbridge at Cofton Hackett, and the Birmingham Small Arms Company at Small Heath produced the M1919 Browning machine gun. Boulton Paul Aircraft had their main aircraft factory in the north of Wolverhampton. RAF Defford, in the south of Worcestershire between Pershore and Croome Park, was where many important airborne radars were developed, such as H2S (radar) and anti-submarine radars.

Scientific Heritage

Thomas Wedgwood, son of Josiah Wedgwood, discovered the first photo-sensitive (light-sensitive) chemicals – silver nitrate and silver chloride in the 1790s.

Sir Norman Lockyer of Rugby discovered helium in 1868, for which he used electromagnetic spectroscopy.

Edward Weston of Oswestry, who emigrated to the US, built the first accurate voltmeter in the late 1880s, and the Weston cell in 1893.

Francis W. Aston of Harborne, educated at the University of Birmingham, developed mass spectrometry in 1919, which helped him to identify the first isotopes, receiving the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1922.

Dennis Gabor invented holography at British Thomson-Houston in Rugby in 1947, receiving the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1971.

James Glaisher in 1862 took a record balloon flight with Henry Tracey Coxwell for the BAAS near Wolverhampton. They reached 29,000 feet (8,800 m) the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere until then was not understood; the altitude records for the UK have not been exceeded since; Project Excelsior in the US in 1960 would later reach 20 miles (110,000 ft).

Philip Lawley of Burton upon Trent was the first person to realise that chemical damage to DNA caused cancer (at the Chester Beatty Research Institute in London) in the early 1960s.

Francis Galton (d. 1911) of the Darwin–Wedgwood family’s Birmingham branch was an early eugenicist rooted in improving animal breeding stock and examining heredity. He invented the terms eugenics and nature versus nurture. His limited calls for human eugenics were widened by the German Society for Racial Hygiene in 1905 founded by Alfred Ploetz, which coupled with the racial superiority fallacies of Aryanism reached its nadir in genocidal antisemitism. Moral teachings and inherent repulsions towards human eugenics were overcome by a minority of those in power espousing racial equality; European media and leaders lamented the loss of the Empire, advocated ultranationalism and prized military physical advantage; Galton saw human eugenics as part of all means to do better.

Industrial Heritage

Much of the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom began in Birmingham and the Black Country area of West Midlands. The Industrial Revolution is thought to have begun when Abraham Darby substituted coke in the place of charcoal to smelt iron, at his Old Furnace. The Black Country may be regarded as the world’s first industrial landscape, while nearby Ironbridge Gorge claims to be the Birthplace of Industry. The world’s first cast iron bridge in 1779 spans the Gorge. The first self-propelled locomotive to run on rails in 1803 at Coalbrookdale, was built by Richard Trevithick. The first iron rails for horse-drawn transport were made at Coalbrookdale in 1768 by Richard Reynolds at Ketley Ironworks. Iron rails only became widely successful in 1820 when made out of wrought iron at Bedlington Ironworks in northeast England.

Birmingham’s industrial development was triggered by discussions at the Lunar Society of Birmingham at Soho House, Boulton’s house, and products were carried along the BCN Main Line canal. Soho Manufactory was the first man-made-powered factory in the world. Chance Brothers of Smethwick built the glass for The Crystal Palace in 1851. Smethwick Engine, now at Thinktank, Birmingham Science Museum, is the oldest working steam engine, made in 1779, and is the oldest working engine in the world. Smethwick was a main centre for making lighthouse lanterns.

Valor Fires in Erdington developed the first radiant gas fire in 1967, a balanced flue fire in 1973, and a natural flame gas fire in 1978. The Erdington site, owned by Iceland’s BDR Thermea, closed in May 2012. The company also built gas cookers; since 2011 the company has been part of Glen Dimplex, which has a site at Cooper’s Bank, south of Gornalwood.

Culture

J. R. R. Tolkien grew up in Birmingham, Kings Heath, then part of Worcestershire, and was inspired by Moseley Bog and Sarehole, and perhaps by the Perrott’s Folly. Philip Larkin came from Coventry. Rowland Hill (stamps) was from Kidderminster. The writer George Eliot came from Nuneaton. Anthony E. Pratt from Birmingham invented Cluedo.

Frederick Gibberd of Coventry designed Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. Edward Cave from Rugby made Britain’s first magazine in 1731 – The Gentleman’s Magazine. Philip Astley from Newcastle under Lyme invented the modern-day circus in 1768 – Astley’s Amphitheatre.

The Castlemorton Common Festival in May 1992 near Malvern, led to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.

The Nowka Bais is a Bengali boat racing festival that takes place annually in Birmingham. It is a cultural event in the West Midlands, United Kingdom attracting not only the Bangladeshi diaspora but a variety of cultures. It is also the largest kind of boat race in the United Kingdom.

Blog Posts

Birmingham: The Old Crown In Digbeth.

Birmingham: The Old Crown In Digbeth Photos (Part 1).

Birmingham: The Old Crown In Digbeth Photos (Part 2).

Local History: The Birmingham Buddhist Vihara.

The Birmingham Buddhist Vihara Photos: Page 1.

The Birmingham Buddhist Vihara Photos: Page 2.

The Birmingham Buddhist Vihara Photos: Page 3.

Links

Denitsa Sharankova on Pixabay – The image shown at the top of this page is the copyright of DenitsaVal. You can find more great work from the photographer Denitsa and lots more free stock photo’s at Pixabay.

Local History

I have lived in Birmingham all my life, which is part of the West Midlands, and the different areas I have lived in or visited define my own personal local history.

These subjects will be covered in my decades and West Midlands sections and. as such deserve any relevant blog posts. will appear there and here. As this section, you are on now is relevant to my life it deserves a place in the menu all to itself for everyone to clearly see.

About Local History

Local history is the study of history in a geographically local context and it often concentrates on the local community. It incorporates cultural and social aspects of history. Local history is not merely national history writ small but a study of past events in a given geographical but one that is based on a wide variety of documentary evidence and placed in a comparative context that is both regional and national. Historic plaques are one form of documentation of significant occurrences in the past and oral histories are another.

Local history is often documented by local historical societies or groups that form to preserve a local historic building or other historic sites. Many works of local history are compiled by amateur historians working independently or archivists employed by various organizations. An important aspect of local history is the publication and cataloguing of documents preserved in local or national records which relate to particular areas.

In a number of countries, a broader concept of local lore is known, which is a comprehensive study of everything pertaining to a certain locality: history, ethnography, geography, natural history, etc.

Blog Posts

Birmingham: The Old Crown In Digbeth.

Birmingham: The Old Crown In Digbeth Photos (Part 1).

Birmingham: The Old Crown In Digbeth Photos (Part 2).

The Birmingham Buddhist Vihara.

The Birmingham Buddhist Vihara Photos: Page 1.

The Birmingham Buddhist Vihara Photos: Page 2.

The Birmingham Buddhist Vihara Photos: Page 3.

Links

The Lewis Building Birmingham – The image shown at the top of this page is the copyright of The Lewis Building Birmingham. On their website, you can read about the history of the building and much more.

Peace

I am a peaceful person and will always try to keep the peace if I can, however, due to my mental health it took me a long time to find my inner peace and to learn to love myself. That has changed now and when I look in the mirror I am proud of who looks back at me.

Sharing inspirational and motivational words and pictures is always a good way to help anyone’s inner peace and boost their confidence. You will find such things on this page.

When we can find our inner peace then, like a pebble that has been thrown into the sea, the outer peace ripples will spread far and wide. Love is so much better for you than hate.

Blog Posts

The Birmingham Buddhist Vihara.

The Birmingham Buddhist Vihara Photos: Page 1.

The Birmingham Buddhist Vihara Photos: Page 2.

The Birmingham Buddhist Vihara Photos: Page 3.

Peace: Buddhism – Part One.

Peace: Buddhism – Part Two.

Peace: Buddhism – Part Three.

Links

Brainy Quotes – If you are looking for inspirational and famous quotes by authors you know and love then check out Brainy Quote for their vast collection.