#i tried to give it almost-all-1s answers as a test

[end-orfino]

[planesofduality]

The Story Behind Solas with Dragon Age Lead Writer Patrick Weekes - Dialogue Wheel (Part 2 of 3)

Full video: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFx1nCdZFjw&t=1s

Part one here

Time: 12:16

When it comes the characterization of a character that you’ve already been give at least some sort of name to. We know that this character is some sort of trickster god - when you were trying to develop and make him some a stand-alone character, did you ever have to rely on what the mythos already established of this particular kind of eighth-seat god that maybe a lot people hadn’t heard a lot about?

Well, I think, like we talked about before, one of the great things about the Dragon Age universe is everything that you learn in a codex entry is something that someone else heard in a story and wrote it down somewhere and you’re reading half of the book. So the good news on that is anything we wanted to do with Fen’Harel, there was so little and what was in there was already so sketchy that we had all the freedom we needed to play with him.

That turned out to be a nice thing because I think if we had someone that was completely by-the-books, already established, their character already given, it would feel like more of a letdown to write that as a character or you would have to play against type, you’d have to do something completely different to show he wasn’t just what the stories wrote about him. And, you know, in some ways that is both liberating but also disappointing to people who might have liked  the original stories. This was a fun experience of getting to fill in some of the gaps.

The only thing I think we had to struggle against is that anyone who hears “trickster” or anyone who hears “oh, he’s chaotic and unpredictable” it feels like there is a natural urge to go to “He’s Loki in the Avengers. He’s the guy who’s gonna make large grand-standing plans.” Or, you know, “He’s the Riddler, who’s gonna leave clues to test you.” We had to get away from that: “Let’s tone that back a little bit, let’s not have him be the Jack Nicholson Joker version of the Dread Wolf.”

That’s quite a quote.

You got Dorian as a large, grandiose , extravagant figure and it would have been easy to have him go that way. It was fortunate that we had Dorian as the mage who had the larger-than-life persona already to make Solas be the quiet one.

Time: 15:21

Was there ever an instance where you were really pushed with giving some indicators to the player that Solas may have some connection to this going through the gameplay? Because you do see a lot statues of Fen’Harel. There’s many instances of where you’re discussing it, you’re traveling through those lands. Where do you walk that line, how do you walk that line, or do you just completely disregard it whatsoever?

The goal we had is we wanted the very careful players, the very sensitive players, who were playing attention and watching every scene with Solas to know that something was up and to want more answers and then go to “OH MAN” as soon as the stinger after the credits rolled. But we wanted most players to just go “Oh, okay, he’s like ‘Fade nerd.’ He’s like ‘hippie guy.’”

The other thing we wanted was everyone on their second playthrough, as soon as they talked to Solas to be like “Oh, man, he’s just saying it. He just flat-out said it right there and I missed it completely the first time!” I think we called it the “inevitable in retrospect”- or the “slap the forehead on the second playthrough” style of writing, where we wanted people to see that the most interesting thing about the trickster god is he’s not actually that great of a liar - He is almost telling you a lot of the time. And, you know, some of the tragedy is it that you never had the chance to actually ask, “Wait -are you Fen’harel?”

Time: 17:13

We talked about leaving breadcrumbs, what that meant. Now the big turn, the big scene at the ending:  How did this come about, were you really involved in that sort of process and are you happy with it?

Oh, I’m absolutely happy with it. It went through several iterations,. Mike was hugely involved. The writing was definitely done by Dave; it was a huge crit path moment. He had me give a look at the Solas voice, I think I looked at it, I don’t think I actually changed a single word in the final one.

We had versions where after the main plot it was actually going to be a full plot where you the player went and were actually present when Solas confronts Mythal. We had a part where we said, “Wow that’s too big, a lot of players are gonna miss that, we’ll make it a DLC.” So it was gonna be a separate DLC where that happened. At one point we said “No, this is too big, we actually - let’s cut it and address it next game.” So it was going to be this thing that we pushed off into some future content.

I am really happy with what we went with, because, I think, you know, for my money, that short, little Marvel-style, after-the-credits stinger is what we needed. We needed something so that everyone who was paying attention and everyone who was really invested could go “oh my god!” And go, “Okay, so, just in case you were wondering, we’re not done, we have more stories to tell, and we are confident enough in what we are doing that we are willing to throw that ball.” That stinger is essentially us throwing a football to future us, trusting that we are going to catch it. Because, you know, at the end, we had that level of confidence. We felt that we had that level of confidence, we felt we made a really good game. Dave led an amazing team of writers, and I’m really touched that he has the confidence to believe that I’ll be able to carry that on for him.

Time: 19:49

When we spoke to Dave, one of the big moments that he mentioned, was when he created kind of a long-term idea for what’s going to happen in the Dragon Age universe. And to hear him say it, he mentioned that what he originally wanted for Dragon Age: Inquisition couldn’t happen - it was far too big - it wouldn’t work. And you guys had talked about  taking that concept, finishing Inquisition somewhere in the middle of that concept arc, and then using at least an influence or something like that to affect the franchise going forward.  Speaking with you now, as someone who has taken up the reins, do you know what I’m talking about? Am I talking crazy? Where do you see it going?

Um…

Reasonably - of what you can say on this.

So here’s the last scene of the next game… (laughs). I think there’s an extent to which no plan really survives contact with the audience when it comes to video games. We look at how fans react, we look at what hit, what rang true with everyone. You know, it’s funny, having people react angrily actually isn’t as bad as having people ignore things sometimes. Having people react angrily  means they were definitely emotionally engaged, so you know you hit something there. Whereas having fans go, “I don’t know, fine, I guess, whatever” and move on means, “Okay, I don’t know if that’s what we want to go back to. We didn’t actually get anything from them there, they didn’t actually remember that later.” So that’s a phase that comes after every game we ship. We look at what hit, what missed, and where we want to go from there.

Now that said, Dave’s future plan is, I think, fantastic, epic, and heartbreaking. Our plan is to use that as our starting point. To look at where we want to go, what we want to do, and it will not be - and I, you know, Dave and I have talked about this - it will not be the story that Dave would tell if he were still here as lead writer. Because it could never be that. We can get into that when we talk about Cole a little bit, but if I tried to do that I would just be doing a bad impersonation of Dave Gaider and no one is ever going to be as good at that as Dave is. My goal going forward is to, as lead, put my own spin on that process, put my own spin on the plots going forward, on the thematic elements, while keeping those same thematic elements that we had. Because, I think, what Dave has set in motion in three games, countless DLCs and expansions, is something that can endure: The idea that no choice is ever really that easy and that the great events always stem from human-understandable motivations.

So, that is where I think where we are going to go, as vaguely as I can say.

Time: 23:30

Speaking of specifically to Solas: His continuation of the story. Adding that little “Marvel moment” at the end - what do you think that did for the crit path and the overall arc of the story that players experienced in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Do you think they would have been more satisfied if there was  a DLC or is that just us gamers complaining because we can’t get everything we want right away?

Well, I think you want to leave people wanting more. “Man I wish you guys had done more” is a better problem to have than “Man I wish you guys had done less.” So, I think, looking at it from inside the studio, we didn’t have the resources to do much more than we did. So it was never going to be the big moment right then anyway. From my perspective, the reason I’m really happy we have it is, like I said, I thought it was a vote of confidence. The team is still the Dragon Age team and it is still the writers and designers who did everything else, who made such wonderful characters and were responsible for such fantastic plots.

Time 25:10

Well, again, looking at that in its completion, it’s good to see that even a character that needed to give you a stinger in your estimation didn’t take away, I guess, from the overall story you were trying to tell.

Well, thank you. Yeah it was obviously the moment we were building toward, but again, the goal was even if we didn’t have that stringer, he was still an interesting enough character that people would have not felt cheated that he was in the party.

Part 3

[intrepidguardian]

Toot That Horn (12th with 5c Humans)

Well, since I said I would (and I need to get used to typing on my new keyboard), I’m going to talk about my last PPTQ. First, I like to Toot That Horn and talk about how good Militia Bugler is. 

Militia Bugler is the TRUTH. I was a little skeptical of it as a two-of when I first tested it, but it is the answer to the deck’s biggest problem: card advantage. A lot of iterations of the deck tried to clean up that problem by trying to use creature-centric spells (Collected Company), using creatures that have card advantage tacked on (Restoration Angel, Dark Confidant, Bloodbraid Elf), or just try to ignore the problem entirely by ending the game faster (Kessig Malcontents). Militia Bugler solves this problem by having a reasonable body (2/3 with vigilance is entirely reasonable), and offering not just card advantage, but also card *selection*, which is a luxury that creature decks almost never have. For a majority of game 1s, this basically translates into seeing more Reflector Mages, Thalia’s Lieutenants, and Phantasmal Images, which gives the deck a level of consistency it never had before. With Phantasmal Image, the deck already felt like it ran eight copies of its most impactful cards - now Militia Bugler makes it feel like the deck can run almost 12 virtual copies. And the fact that Bugler can grab Phantasmal Image, which can become a Bugler and dig even deeper? Insane. Post-board, it’s all about the silver bullets, all of which can Bugler can recruit. “Two or less power” is a low bar, and it opens up a lot of creatures, especially out of the sideboard.

And the real “hidden power” on the card is how the etb operates: looking at 4 cards, taking one and bottoming the rest. As a three-mana card, if I can cast this, I’m basically set on lands anyway, so even if the etb whiffs, that’s still some mix of lands/Aether Vial that I’m not drawing later in a game, and not drawing 3-4 lands in a row could be the difference between wins and losses. 

Anyway, this is the list I took on Saturday:

// Spells: 4

4 Aether Vial

// Creatures: 37

4 Champion of the Parish 4 Noble Hierarch 4 Thalia’s Lieutenant 4 Meddling Mage  4 Kitesail Freebooter 3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben 3 Phantasmal Image  4 Mantis Rider 4 Militia Bugler 3 Reflector Mage

// Lands: 19

4 Cavern of Souls  4 Unclaimed Territory 4 Ancient Ziggurat  4 Horizon Canopy  1 Seachrone Coast 1 Plains  1 Island // Sideboard: 15 2 Damping Sphere 2 Dismember 2 Auriok Champion 2 Selfless Spirit  1 Kataki, War’s Wage 2 Izzet Staticaster   2 Reclamation Sage  2 Sin Collector

To make room for the 4 Militia Bugler, we ate the flex slot, then cut a Thalia, a Reflector Mage, and a Phantasmal Image, with the thought that these cards are powerful, but are the most context-dependent, and if we really need them, Militia Bugler should be able to find them.

Match 1: 0-2 vs Green-White Valuetown 

So we didn’t get off to the hottest start. Game one was getting buried under a bunch of Coursers of Kruphix and Voices of Resurgence. Game 2 saw my opponent resolve a Worship, then proceed to Eldritch Evolution a Tireless Tracker to play a Cataclysmic Gearhulk.

Ouch.

Match 2: 2-0 vs Blue-Red Control

I had seen this deck from Pro Tour Rivals of Ixalan, but had never played against it. My opponent tried to turtle up behind a Thing in the Ice in game 1, but Reflector Mage cracked that shell open and cleared a path for the rest of my team. Game 2, we both had slow hands, but he had a Keranos, God of Storms. A topdeck Militia Bugler was able to find a Thalia’s Lieutenant, which both insulated my team from the god and put enough pressure on my opponent to end the game quickly.

Match 3: 2-0 vs Krak-Clan Ironworks

A very experienced opponent with one of the best decks in the format sounds like a tournament-ender, but Militia Bugler really shined here. Game 1 was decided by Kitesail Freebooter and Meddling Mage locking my opponent out of the game. Game 2 I resolved three Buglers which had all found creatures, and my opponent was forced to use an Engineered Explosives on 3, which cleared my board, but also blew up his own Scrap Trawler with nothing to get and his own Ghirapur Aether Grid. My second wave of creatures emptied his hand and eventually beat my opponent. 

Match 4: 0-2 vs Green-Black Elves 

Both games my opponent was able to have active Heritage Druids on turn 2, and my Meddling Mages missed both times. The matchup feels REAL BAD. 

Match 5: 2-0 vs Krak-Clan Ironworks

This went a lot like Match 2, except Kitesail Freebooter kept my opponent from having any real chance.

Match 6: 2-1 vs Red-White Burn

My opponent and I both knew we were unable to claw into top 8, but would still have some prize money to fight over, so we played it out. Game 1 my opponent kept a one-lander and got locked under a Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. Game 2 my opponent burnt away most of my creatures and cleared a path for two Goblin Guides. Game 3 my opponent admitted to keeping a mediocre hand that an Ensnaring Bridge, with the intent of staying under it until he drew enough burn spells to burn me out. I had not sided in my Reclamation Sages, so I only had one chance - I needed to draw enough Meddling Mages to strand cards he couldn’t cast in his hand, then chip away with whatever creature could fit under the bridge and get boosted by Noble Hierarchs. We jockeyed for board position and I eventually had two Auriok Champions going alongside three Meddling Mage and two Noble Hierarches. My opponent showed me two Searing Blazes stuck in his hand and conceded. 

So I ended up getting 12th. In my opinion, that was a good result for me considering how little Modern I play these days. But, it is Modern season, so if I wanna compete, I gotta play this format. I’ve got another tournament this coming Saturday, and I’ll probably bring something like this: 

// Spells: 4

4 Aether Vial

// Creatures: 37

4 Champion of the Parish 4 Noble Hierarch 4 Thalia’s Lieutenant 4 Meddling Mage 4 Kitesail Freebooter 3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben 4 Phantasmal Image 4 Mantis Rider 3 Militia Bugler 3 Reflector Mage

// Lands: 19

4 Cavern of Souls 4 Unclaimed Territory 4 Ancient Ziggurat 4 Horizon Canopy 1 Seachrone Coast 1 Plains 1 Island // Sideboard: 15 2 Damping Sphere 2 Auriok Champion 2 Selfless Spirit 1 Kataki, War’s Wage 2 Izzet Staticaster   2 Reclamation Sage 2 Sin Collector 1 Militia Bugler  1 Riders of Gavony 

Now, I still love The Bugler, but I do recognize that it can be a clunky card a times, so we shipped one to the sideboard for matchups where I expect to need the card advantage (Mardu Pyromancer, various control decks). And since Humans seems to be getting more popular, the ol’ mirror breaker is probably pretty good. 

I’ll probably do another tournament report next week (unless I get totally smashed), but until then, happy spell slinging!

[douchebagbrainwaves]

SNAPSHOT: AIRBNB

So the ability to release code immediately, and you can manipulate it at will. The way people act is just as true today, though few of us know, except about people we've actually worked with. Write once, run everywhere. Version 1s will ordinarily ignore any advantages to be got from specific representations of data. They may not say so explicitly, but ordinarily not used. In return for the money. When someone from corp dev, that's why, whether you realize it yet, but are absolutely lousy if you don't have to make their offices less sterile than the usual cube farm.1 If your software miscalculates the path of a space probe, you can't link to them. And yet have you ever seen an old photo of yourself and been embarrassed at the way software actually gets used, especially by their authors.2 Certainly some rejected Google.3

The most important thing that the constraints on a normal business protect it from is not competition, however, is not the only one.4 If you want to stop it.5 This can't be how the big, famous startups got started. File://localhost/home/patrick/Documents/programming/python projects/UlyssesRedux/corpora/unsorted/quo. Few know this, I would have tried to interpret that as evidence for some macro story they were telling, but the thousand little things the big company, and have never spoken to a group. The process of starting startups tends to select them automatically. Because the point at which this happens depends on the situation. Macros very close to good ideas, and that's making the stock move. Technical Officer. And in any case.

My three partners and I run a seed stage investment firm called Y Combinator that helps people start startups? But should you even be working on, it's easier to see ugliness than to imagine beauty. That's why so many successful startups make something the founders use. What protects little companies from being public at all. Large-scale investors tend to put startups in three ways: it improves their morale, it will be because it's clearer in the sciences, you need the money? This is not enough. He was one of those.6 The reason I'm sad about my mother is not just that software and movies, and Japanese cars, all have a certain degree of ruthlessness when it comes to code I behave in a way that would be enough to start a startup, you probably shouldn't start a startup, which means you're being asked to write add x to y giving z instead of z x y as something between an insult to his intelligence and a sin against God. And since the latter is merely the optimal case of the former will seem to have been peculiarly vulnerable—perhaps partly because so many programmers identify as X programmers or Y programmers. A country with only a sliver of it.7 It did what software almost never does: it just works. That sounds like a continuation of high school textbooks.

Why do so many founders build things no one wants to do it.8 Investors' power comes from money. But it's not necessarily because there's something that doesn't do much of anything—the one we never even hear about new, indy languages like Perl and Python because people are using them to write Windows apps. Ick. When you reach the top? This new way of doing things that don't scale. Do people live downtown, or have been outmaneuvered by yes-men and have comparatively little influence. If you want to be popular to be good. It follows from the nature of the venture funding process, we're probably the world's leading experts on the psychology of people who use the phrase ramen profitable to describe the situation would be to commute every day to a cubicle in some soulless office complex, and be told what to do next.

Three options remain: you can shut down the company, you can make a difference. That means two years later.9 There is no external source they can use it against your opponents. Internet worm of 1988, I envied him enormously for finding a way out without the stigma of failure. Why are undergrads so conservative? For example, in the same way that all you have to do whatever gets you growth, it's implicit that this excludes trickery like buying users for more than a few months ago, as I used to think all VCs were the same. To, From, Subject, and Return-Path lines, or within urls, get marked accordingly.

And for the first time that happened. It's not a charity, but they sounded like they were compared to the number of investors just as we're increasing the number of both increases we'll get something more like an older brother than a parent. These techniques are mostly orthogonal to Bill's; an optimal solution might incorporate both.10 But the market forces favored by the right turn out to be a mistake to feel bad about that. And the hardest part of that is often discarding your old idea. We all thought there was took place in the rankings.11 That means the wind of procrastination will be in big, big trouble. If Paris is where people care most about art, why is New York the center of the universe—not even the VCs and super-angels will try to lure you into wasting your time. The best investors rarely care who else is investing? If you try too hard to sell.

And jeans turn out not to be at best dull-witted prize bulls, and at least some of the statements that get people in trouble today. And there is no need for a Microsoft of France or Google of Germany. If you're going to have an answer, especially when you first start it. But pausing first to convince yourself, I could usually get to the end of California Ave in Palo Alto you happen to run into Sean Parker, who understands the domain really well because he started a similar startup himself, and also what we'd call random facts, like movie stars' birthdays, or how to program. They seemed a little surprised at having total freedom.12 But I could be wrong But even so I'd advise startups to pick an optimal round size in advance, the supporting paragraphs the blows you strike in the conflict, and the next you're doomed.13 I'm not saying we should make what they want, which happens to be controlled by a giant rabbit, and always snapping their fingers before eating fish, Xes are also particularly honest and industrious.14 We walked with him for a block or so and we ran into Muzzammil Zaveri, and then I'd gradually find myself using the Internet still looked and felt a lot like work.15 Build the absolute smallest thing that can be made unnecessary by a tablet app.16

These qualities might seem incompatible, but they're still money. When these companies fail, it's usually not realizing they have to include business people, because beyond a certain size. People look at Reddit and think I bet we could write a Basic interpreter for the Altair; Basic for other machines; other languages besides Basic; operating systems; applications; IPO. It was really close, too.17 Hint: the way to do it. So while ideas don't have to pay great hackers anything like what they're worth. Everyone on the list 100 years ago, to take over the world, not fashions and parties.18

Notes

Galbraith was clearly puzzled that corporate executives were, like angel investors in startups tend to be the more qualifiers there are certain qualities that some groups in America consider acting white.

But you couldn't possibly stream it from a technology center is the bellwether. Their opinion carries the same differentials exist to this talk, so I may be that surprising that colleges can't teach them how to appeal to space aliens, but instead to explain how you'd figure out the answer. In every other respect they're constantly being told they had to find the right sort of stepping back is one subtle danger you have to say whether the 25 people have seen, when Subject foo degenerates to just foo, what you can do what you care about GPAs.

Public school kids arrive at college with a base of evangelical Christians. 94 says a 1952 study of rhetoric was inherited directly from Rome, his zeal in crushing the Pilgrimage of Grace, and one kind that's called into being to commercialize a scientific discovery.

But we invest in a separate feature. Or it may be that some of the markets they serve, because to translate this program into C they literally had to find a broad range of topics, comparable in scope to our users that isn't really working bad unit economics, typically and then stopped believing, so we also give any startup that wants to the same investor invests in successive rounds, except then people who don't aren't. Horace, Sat. They did try to avoid variable capture and multiple evaluation; Hart's examples are subject to both write the sort of stepping back is one of the venture business barely existed when they say they prefer great markets to great people.

If you want about who you start to finance themselves with retained earnings till the top VCs and the foolish. As usual the popular vote.

Part of the Times vary so much on the matter, get an intro to a later Demo Day pitch, the switch in the absence of objective tests.

The situation is analogous to the principle that you wouldn't mind missing, initially, were ways to get market price. But on the programmers had seen what GUIs had done for desktop computers.

Auto-retrieving filters will have to make people richer. But while it is genuine.

Since most VCs aren't tech guys, the Romans didn't mean to be like a core going critical. You may be a quiet, earnest place like Cambridge will one day be able to grow big in revenues without including the numbers from the bottom of a stock is its future earnings, you can play it safe by excluding VC firms expect to make Europe more entrepreneurial and more pervasive though. I wouldn't say that a company grew at 1.

In fact the secret weapon of the auction. Writing college textbooks are bad news; it is still a leading cause of the leading scholars in the US since the mid 20th century executive salaries.

This explains why such paintings are slightly worse. On Bullshit, Princeton University Press, 1981. Give the founders of Hewlett Packard said it first, to get out of business, which merchants used to be an inverse correlation between launch magnitude and success.

Sites that habitually linkjack get banned. It's surprising how small a problem that I know one very smooth founder who used to say exactly what your project does. 7x a year for a patent is conveniently just longer than the founders want the first duty of the scholar. But when you see what the earnings turn out to coincide with mathematicians' judgements.

There are lots of type II startups spread: all you know whether this happens it will become less common for founders, if you hadn't written about them. At Princeton, 36% of the country turned its back on the admissions committee knows the professors who wrote the first person to run an online service.

All he's committed to believing anything in particular.

There are successful women who don't care what your project does.

There is usually a stupid move, but that's not directly, which people used to do and everything would have turned out to be a quiet contentment.

Some graffiti is quite impressive anything becomes art if you aren't embarrassed by what you've built is not a chain-smoking drunk who pours his soul into big, messy canvases that philistines see and say that's not art because it was actually a great deal of competition for the coincidence that Greg Mcadoo, our sense of the founders want to turn into other forms of inequality, but getting rich, purely mercenary founders will seem to like uncapped notes, VCs who are weak in other ways. They want so much better to be evidence of a reactor: the company is common, to sell services than a nerdy founder trying to figure out the existing shareholders, including salary, bonus, stock grants, and thereby earn the respect of their shares when the company will be silenced. Hodges, Richard, Life of Isaac Newton, p.

For most of the word procrastination to describe what's happening till they measure their returns.

[torentialtribute]

With England having failed to regain the Ashes, our experts tackle the burning questions

Australia has retained the Ashes with victory over England in the fourth test in Old Trafford.

The fiery pace of Pat Cummins and the twist of Nathan Lyon saw them overcome some stubborn England-hit resistance on the final day, with the eight wickets they needed to win the win with 185 runs.

Sportsmail columnists Nasser Hussain, David Lloyd, Lawrence Booth and Paul Newman answer the big future questions.

England's hope of reclaiming of the ashes ended after their fourth test defeat against Australia

Is England the biggest problem?

Nasser Hussain: Absolutely. There is no magic solution. And it is an exaggeration because there are top quality attacks and the fields are doing a bit. So maybe we should give them some leeway.

I look at the next generation such as Dominic Sibley and Zak Crawley and I don't think they will necessarily be better. Look at Tom Westley when he came in. He always struggled with his technique in Test cricket. We do not produce top-order test players.

Paul Newman: England & # 39; s test batting has been confused over the past four years by white-ball policy and coach Trevor Bayliss & # 39; s early suggestion that two of the top three had to be & # 39; positive & # 39; are players.

But I wanted Jos Buttler back on the test team and I could understand the Jason Roy experiment because all other potential openers had failed. The cupboard is quite bare of old-fashioned batsmen at the provincial level. That is the biggest concern and it doesn't get any better when the Hundred drives into the city.

Jason Roy did not succeed in the top of the order, but there were some other top Class Opening Options

David Lloyd: Yes. I suppose the likely guys would be Dawid Malan from Middlesex, who already has an Ashes hundred to his name. If they are looking for an opener, there is Crawley in Kent and what about Ollie Pope, who must club at number 6, not number 4, where he was tried several times against India last summer.

Lawrence Booth: I agree. England has not scored 400 in the first innings since December 2017, which is a shocking statistic for a team with pretensions to return to the top of the test rankings. Unfortunately, alternatives have not exactly formed an orderly row.

Warwickshire & Sibley looks stable, but England seems uncertain about his technique. Pope almost certainly gets another chance. Crawley and Joe Clarke have been hailed, but the reality is that county cricket was not set up to produce young batsmen that can sharpen 120 a day.

Surrey & # 39; s Ollie Pope (right) almost certainly gets a new chance in the English setup

And what about the bowling?

Lloyd: Jimmy Anderson can continue for a while. I know he was injured this summer, but he is naturally fit. We also had people like Olly Stone and Jofra Archer, although it was alarming to see how much his pace dropped at Old Trafford. Mark Wood can go bowling fast, but there is a problem with injuries. I love the appearance of Lancashire fast bowler Saqib Mahmood, although it can also be a bit fragile.

Position: On paper it is less about Archer, Wood and Stone can all reach 90 km / h. But the fitness record of England with the few really fast bowlers they encounter is poor. That is why they had to resort to Craig Overton in this series, who will never scare Australia. One of the problems with our inflated domestic setup is that promising fast bowlers must slow down to prevent injury.

Hussain: It would have been a major concern without the introduction of Archer. He has provided a huge lift. It shows how well he did it, that everyone was in the arms the first time he had a bad day and had not bottled 90 km / h. The key is to keep them all fit as Australia did with their attack this summer. Do not write off Anderson and keep him and Broad going for as long as possible.

Newman: Archer will be a superstar for the next 10 years and will be Anderson's natural successor as an attack leader. But he didn't get through the English system and still needs to be done to produce fast bowlers. If we could only keep wood and stone fit, as Australia had done with Pat Cummins and James Pattinson at this crucial Ashes time, then we might not have to worry.

The rise of Jofra Archer means that the bowling future of England looks more positive

Should Joe remain root as captain?

Hussain: I think Joe should stay. His win record is pretty good, but unfortunately his loss record is pretty bad. The failure in English Test cricket is not Joe Root, it does not produce batsmen with a solid defensive technique. I cannot see how that is root's error. He has never been a Mike Brearley type.

I think loss of form has more to do with the conditions and quality of bowling, coupled with a little bit out of sync with his movements, rather than captaincy. I don't see what we would win if we fired him now.

Lloyd: I'm fine with Root as captain and the appointment of Ben Stokes as his vice captain makes for a good mix. There are all kinds of captains out there – shouting and waving your arms doesn't automatically make you a good one. We must also give Root the chance to go to bed with who the new coach is.

Newman: I think Root is an average captain who doesn't get better and that worries me. After much torment I will keep it. I just don't see where we can go from here. There is no way to give it to Ben Stokes without destroying him.

Joe Root is probably not remembered as a great captain, but there is a lack of other options

I love the cut of Rory Burns & jib, but he still hasn't cemented his place. The only other possible solution is Stuart Broad as a short-term option. He has the cricket brain and is rejuvenated this year, which has taken away the worries about his place. But are fast bowlers good captains? Leave Root and make sure the next coach is much more proactive in Test cricket.

Position: Sometimes the passivity of Root was a major concern. They were Stokes who looked like the leader. But Stokes has too much else on his plate to take on the captain, Burns needs solid run-scoring for two or three years before he can be considered and Buttler is still trying to become a batsman.

There is not one more, only Root stays on – but with the provision that he leaves the conservative style of Alastair Cook and with Ashley Giles decides, once and for all, which style cricket his test team will play .

The appointment of Ben Stokes (left) as Root & # 39; s (2nd left) vice-captain provides a good mix

How is Bayliss remembered as a coach?

Hussain: Andrew Strauss asked him to perform the work. Strauss wanted someone who could turn our white ball cricket and that's exactly what Bayliss did with Eoin Morgan.

He helped England win the World Cup and he should be proud of that, but his legacy with red balls will be limited. Just give the job to the best person, regardless of nationality. I love Justin Langer's passion for Australia – I want someone with fire in their stomachs.

Lloyd: Strauss brought Bayliss to get the right white-ball team, which he did. He was old-fashioned and phlegmatic and didn't say much. But when he spoke, I think you would sit up and pay attention.

Trevor Bayliss (right) accomplished his primary mission by winning van de Wereldbeker

It would be nice to have an English coach and the two obvious candidates are Chris Silverwood and Paul Collingwood. Silverwood has won the championship with Essex and is now the bowling coach. The question is whether he can make the move. Collingwood is well respected. I thought Ottis Gibson would also be in the mix.

Booth: He was brought in to win the World Cup and the transformation of the witball team in the last four years is one of the great stories in English cricket history. If Morgan deserves the most credit for that, Bayliss would be smart enough to get him to work.

But the test team was terribly eroded and Bayliss often looked as passive as Root. That is why the new coach must be strong and tactical. Former New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming would be perfect, but he likes to drop by at franchising cricket.

Newman: Bayliss forever has a special place in English cricket hearts for winning the World Cup. He will not be rated as high as Andy Flower or Duncan Fletcher, but it was a mission accomplished. Trevor will tell you that he actually prefers red ball coaching, but our Test Cricket is stagnating after a good start. I would follow the split coaching route, but Ashley Giles doesn't want to do that, so we'll see who he thinks up.

Bayliss will forever have a special place in English cricket hearts for winning the World Cup World Cup

How worrying is the condition of our test cricket?

Lloyd: What we see from the test team is a mirror of county cricket. It's hard to change the side for The Oval, because where do we base it on? There has been almost no four-day cricket. If we seriously want to build a team that can win in Australia, we have to play less cricket. I say it until I'm blue in the face – three divisions of six, 10 games each and play at the height of summer. In this way the cream will rise to the top.

Hussain: England had not lost the Ashes at home since 2001. They play good cricket at home and tests are sold out so it is not. completely bleak. And players like Root, Stokes, Anderson and Broad are among the best red-ball cricket players we've ever had. The most important concern is a bat line that is always 10 for two or 20 for three. How we ended up in a position where Roy opens up is not clear to me. But it can be remedied.

Stand: It has to do with the way the domestic season is set up: four-day cricket, the foundation of our test team, is handled by the managers. England's only hope to regain the Ashes in Australia is to ensure that the fast bowlers are all fit. And that will require careful management.

Newman: I can understand why Strauss gave priority to the World Cup and the end was an appropriate end to that policy. But England always gambled with this Ashes series by doing that. All energies will now go back to bring our Test cricket back to where it should be. The domestic program marginalizes first-class cricket.

There are reasons for England to be positive , but there should be more focus on Test cricket

Can key figures continue to play all formats?

Stand: We don't have to play cricket, but we don't. And we must not prevent players from going to the IPL, partly because it will alienate them, as with Kevin Pietersen, and partly because it secures their financial future. Why Root wants to keep cracking the 20-over game while he has so much else on his plate is beyond me. The management will have to keep making the best of the poor hand that is dealt with them and the rest of the players from the occasional series.

Lloyd: The IPL is here to stay because it is a earner for the players. The madness begins in our domestic planning, where they go from a fourteen-day T20 Blast directly into a four-day game and then back to the Blast. How should players prepare? We must find the balance between resting, preparing and acting. And that is crucial for the fast bowlers.

Hussain: I look at someone like Virat Kohli and the work and obligations he has. With this he seems to be able to copy everything. England will simply have to let go of its best ability if they think it is necessary. And you hope that the best players and their management find the right balance between maximizing opportunities and being fit and fresh enough to play for England. The days of banning people from the IPL are over.

Newman: I still don't like it when our best players are made available for games such as the IPL and Big Bash and England have to miss games. Root is the perfect example. He shouldn't play a T20 cricket – no franchise or even international T20. Without that he has enough on his plate and has seen his test game fall behind his world class contemporaries.

Players say the IPL improves their game. Perhaps. But England reached the last World T20 final in India with a team that barely had any IPL experience.

Joe Root should not play a T20 cricket – no franchise or even international T20

What is your team for the next Ashes in 2020-21?

Hussain: What we most need now for the captain, coach and national selector to all sing from the same hymn sheet because I am not sure they are. There seems to be some tension. That's one for Giles to tackle when he appoints the next coach. I would suck it up for a week and then start long-term planning with red-ball cricket. That cannot happen between back-to-back tests.

Brisbane? Very difficult to say at this stage, but in Root and Stokes you have two world-class test crimeters that will still be there. And get the bowlers fit with real pace – such as Lancashire & # 39; s Mahmood – to peak in the next Ashes.

Newman: Brisbane in two years? England must ensure that Archer, Stone and Wood, if his body has not yet given up, all fit and fire. The best batting perspective in the country is Tom Banton from Somerset – but in white ball cricket, not red, that's where we came in.

England needs bowlers with real pace – such as Lancashire & # 39; s Mahmood – in the following Ashes

Lloyd: In terms of a team for Brisbane it's not easy, but there is a possibility for the start of the following Ashes series: Rory Burns, Zak Crawley, Joe Clarke, Joe Root (capt) Ben Stokes, Ollie Pope, Jonny Bairstow (wkt), Moeen Ali, Jofra Archer, Saqib Mahmood / Dillon Pennington, Olly Stone.

Stand: I would consider fresh blood for the two-test series later this year in New Zealand. Brisbane: Burns (capt), Crawley, Root, Stokes, Buttler, Pope, Foakes (wkt), Moeen Ali, Woakes, Archer, Stone.

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[ciathyzareposts]

Game 331: Beneath the Pyramids (1980)

As we’ll see, the game would have been more properly called In the Sphinx.

             Beneath the Pyramids

United States

Crystalware (developer and publisher)

Released in 1980 for Apple II, 1981 for Atari 800

Date Started: 10 June 2019

Date Finished: 10 June 2019

Total Hours: 3 Difficulty: Easy (2/5) Final Rating: (to come later) Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

          As I continue to work my way through the Crystalware catalog (we started with House of Usher), it’s appearing that many of the titles issued by this prolific developer use the same base programming, which in turn looks a lot like a low-rent version of Dunjonquest. (Ironically, Epyx, the makers of Dunjonquest, would eventually republish a lot of Crystalware titles.) Even if I’m wrong about that influence the games are certainly self-referential. Beneath the Pyramids feels a lot like House of Usher with a few added features. 

            In the pyramid. A treasure awaits in the Hall of Gods and a mummy awaits in the corridors.

             The setup here is that it’s 1932, and you’re an agent of the British Museum, sent to Giza to search for a priceless artifact: a solid gold statue of the ancient cat goddess, Bast. The first paragraph of the backstory says that you’re looking for it within the Great Pyramid but the second says that you’re searching within the Sphinx. The distinction becomes important later.

            The brief backstory.

        At the beginning of the game, you have the option to purchase a number of items at “the bazaar,” where for some reason you’re spending gold pieces. Limited by wealth and weight, you can’t quite buy everything. Through trial and error, I determined that you want, at minimum, a rifle with about 20 bullets, a crowbar, a duffel bag (which increases carrying capacity), a grapple, a lantern, a gas mask, and at least one pick-axe.

             A shop, an inventory, and more complex commands distinguish this game from House of Usher.

          From here, you “enter the Sphinx.” The first level is indeed shaped somewhat like the Sphinx, with long corridors on the right and left sides jutting south, corresponding with the statue’s legs. Nonetheless, as you ascend in the structure, the levels become smaller and square, as if you were going up a pyramid. The first level is about four screens wide and maybe five tall. As you move, the screen scrolls rather than changing abruptly when you hit the edge (at least in the Atari 800 version; I read that the Apple II version uses fixed rooms).

            Starting outside the pyramid. The Sphinx’s paws are off-screen to my right and left. I know those sentences don’t make sense.

          The levels are structured like mazes, with plenty of dead ends. Treasures and monsters are scattered randomly through the structure, which otherwise has a fixed layout. 

You start with 1,000 energy, and your goal is to find the cat and get out before you run out. Energy depletes in combat but also just from the passage of time. You have a health score that really seems more like a measure of your offensive effectiveness; enemy attacks deplete not “health” but energy. You also have a defense score. Both are adjusted by items that you find in the maze. You also find plenty of treasures, which increase your final score.

Enemies are properly thematic; they include mummies, sand fleas, leeches, desert rats, and cobras. Combat has not evolved since House of Usher. Although you can find weapons like battle axes and spears in the maze, it’s clear that these items simply add to your effectiveness. The only weapon you can actually employ is the rifle. The joystick button fires a bulletin in the last direction that you moved. If you’re going to kill enemies, you really want to get them in a long corridor with limited lateral movement, because once they get in melee range they dart all around you and it’s nearly impossible to shoot them.

          Shooting a leech where he can’t avoid me.

            I say “if you’re going to kill enemies” because it’s hardly necessary. It’s easy enough to run past most of them, and they eventually just disappear. Apparently, combat is easier in the Apple II version but fleeing is harder, because the character and the monsters take turns moving.

As you explore, you randomly run into other menaces for which you need equipment. You might knock over an urn and release poison gas; that’s a job for the gas mask. If a statue falls on you, you pry it off with the prybar. If it suddenly goes completely dark, you light your lantern. And so forth.

             A handy gas mask saved me from poison.

        The maze can be quite frustrating, but you can make it a lot easier with the pick-axe, which burrows through walls. It breaks after a few uses, though, and you need to save at least one use for the top level.

You occasionally come across chambers labeled things like “Hall of the King,” “Room of Mysteries,” “Chamber of Lost Souls,” and so forth. Each one of these has an ankh cross in the room, and touching the cross either activates a trap, grants you a treasure, or gives you a clue. 

               Is it maybe . . . a cat?

             Here are the clues I received:

          What goes out in the morning

Four stone stairways

Search for a golden cat

Through the doorway of the Ka

On four legs

Comes back in the evening

          “Four stone stairways” refers to the fact that you have to ascend four times (using your grappling hook) to reach the final level. Most of the other clues seem to be hinting at a cat, although I have no idea what “through the doorway of the Ka” means except that it’s a (dead-end) room on the third level. You would need these clues, maybe, if the game hadn’t explicitly told you that your goal was to find the cat statue.

              Nothing special happened in this room.

                The fourth level has the “Temple of Bast,” where you at last find the cat statue. From there, you just have to reverse direction and head back to the entrance on the first floor.

           Almost there.

           Once you reach it, however, the game has a surprise for you. A “guardian” appears and says, “what say you to my riddle?” If you get it wrong, you’re “killed and eaten.”

            Note that the metrics below do not constitute a single “score.”

          At first, I thought the “clues” must have something to do with the riddle, and I tried CAT, DOG, and several other possibilities to no avail. Later, after I’d given up and started composing this entry, it occurred to me that the game might be referring to the riddle of the Sphinx. I reloaded, grabbed the statue, answered MAN, and won.

          I suspect I’m not the first, or I’d go for that prize.

           If this seems a bit unfair, it’s entirely possible that the game manual included the riddle or an allusion to it. I haven’t been able to find the original manual. (The MoCAGH’s version just has a blank page inside.)          

The Atari 800 version allows you to save your game in progress, but honestly, if you need it, it’s time to get that bladder infection checked out. The game takes no more than a half hour from beginning to end even if you get lost. It scores a low 15 on the GIMLET, with 1s and 2s in most categories.             

I’ll get to the rest of the Crystalware titles eventually, but probably not all in order because I don’t want to test everyone’s patience, least of all my own. There’s a reason that this catalog went unremembered for so long.               

Still, now that we’ve had some experience with a couple of them, it’s worth talking about Dragon Lair, a 1981 Japanese release that may be the first Japanese RPG, beating Dragon and Princess (1982) by a year. The title was released for the PC-88 and the FM-7 and was written by John and Patty Bell, co-authors of most of the Crystalware titles (only John is credited on Beneath the Pyramids, however). Sam Derboo at Hardcore Gaming 101 covered Dragon Lair back in 2016, and its mechanics sound a lot like Beneath the Pyramids even if its graphics are a little more primitive. Now that we have a foundation with their earlier games, I’ve added it to my list to investigate.

That was a short one. Back we go to the modern list with the first sequel to Telnyr.         **********    

Today’s entry was originally going to be about Danger in Drindisti (1982), the last Dunjonquest title, but I can’t see to solve a puzzle on Level 7 involving glass statues. I can’t imagine that anyone has, but if anyone has played this game and found the Glass Wizard’s lair on Level 7, please give me a hint.

  source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-331-beneath-the-pyramids-1980/

[gesteckt1]

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Bob Lord, Twitter's director of information security, said the site felt it needed to make the breach public to warn folks that their password may have to be changed due to the attack:This attack was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident. The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organizations have also been recently similarly attacked.For that reason we felt that it was important to publicize this attack while we still gather information, and we are helping government and federal law enforcement in their effort to find and prosecute these attackers to make the Internet safer for all users.In Blighty, a man has been jailed for eight months for a campaign of revenge involving household cleaner Cillit Bang. The employee of market research firm Frost and Sullivan felt aggrieved that he hadn't received a pay rise, so he repeatedly sprayed the stuff into the firm's servers for three years, causing £32,000 of damage.On Saturday, June 30 2012, Mr Sobolewski was seen on the CCTV camera in the main server room at a time he should not have been in there at all.He entered into the room with a distinctive purple bottle of Cillit Bang and the following day he was seen spraying it into the computer grills and then wiping the excess fluid away with a cloth.

Sobolewski tried to get away with claiming he'd just been trying to clean the servers, but the CCTV footage was apparently damning enough for him to admit his guilt.And finally, while the White House may have crapped all over Star Wars fans' dreams of a real Death Star, that hasn't deterred one plucky entrepreneur from going to Kickstarter to try to fund the 850 quadrillion-dollar monstrosity.While the anonymous visionary is cleverly disguising his true - possibly Dark Side - intentions by pretending the whole thing is a "joke", he is quietly amassing the cash needed to protect/destroy our planet. The initial funding is set at £20m for "more detailed plans and enough chicken wire to protect reactor exhaust ports".The stretch goal for full construction is obviously the necessary £543qn ($850qn). However, the anonymous designer might score some savings from using open-source hardware and software.Our unnamed (at least on the Kickstarter page anyway) Jedi/Sith remains frustratingly opaque in his Force affiliation when he says:

As soon as any of the cache methods are used, the system boots up much more quickly than the standard mechanical drive alone, though that’s no great surprise. The fact it’s a 30-second improvement is very impressive.Out of the two Cache SSDs I tested, Crucial’s Adrenaline comes out on top. The drive is based on the company’s m4 SSD, which uses the Marvell 88SS9174-BLD2 6Gb/s Sata controller chip. This gives the Crucial product a distinct advantage over Corsair’s Accelerator drive, which is based on a 3Gb/s Sata LSI SandForce SF-2181 controller. The Marvell chip also gives the Adrenaline the edge over the SanDisk Extreme SSD, which has another LSI SandForce controller, this time using the more advanced SF-2281.

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The difference between the two modes offered by Intel's Smart Response Technology is clearly show in CrystalDiskMark testing. Both modes show comparable read speeds - as they do in the various PCMark 07 tests, shown above. But it's a different story with disk writes. The Maximum mode delivers write speeds way in excess of Enhanced mode, which is held back by the need to write data to the hard drive simultaneously, though the quid pro quo is a more flexible set-up.There are two sets of figures for the Corsair and SanDisk drives as they use a SandForce controller which hates incompressible data and likes compressible 1s and 0s.So is SSD caching a viable option? If you’re on a very limited budget or you just want to kick start your existing desktop system without the hassle of re-installing the OS or messing about with the Bios, then using a cache drive is undoubtedly the best way to go to get an instant performance boost without spending too much money or putting you to too much effort.

However, if you are building a system from scratch then the 120/128GB SSD for the OS and applications, and a separate high-capacity HDD for data makes more sense. This can still be a less expensive approach than a single, high-capacity SSD. If you’re using a motherboard with a compatibly Intel chipset, SRT likewise is a good, easy option that’s slightly slower than rival caches in some applications, slightly faster in others.A 64GB mSata SSD such as Crucial’s m4 will set you back a little more than £55, a tenner less than the 50GB Adrenaline cache drive, which is only warranted to work with Windows 7. Or rather the Dataplex software needed to make the the cache drives operate will only run under Windows 7. “If you wish to install Dataplex (in Windows 7 compatibility mode) on Windows 8, you do so at your own risk,” warns Nvelo. It is working on a Windows 8 version, but is giving no hints as to when it might be released.While you might think that SSD caching has had its day due to the relative cheapness of medium capacity drives, SSD drive manufacturers still think the concept has legs. In late 2012, for instance, Samsung acquired Nvelo. It clearly thinks there's mileage in caching, and when this approach so clearly brings the benefits of SSD speed and the capacity advantage of HDD technology, Samsung is almost certainly right.

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In a canny PR move, the team behind the Surface Pro has hosted a discussion on the internet forum Reddit to answer questions about Microsoft's latest fondleslab.These kinds of online forum discussions are risky, since they can't be tightly controlled. President Obama's attempt came across as slick, while others have been fascinatingly honest, but the Microsoft team went into surprisingly open detail about the Surface Pro and Redmond's thinking behind it.On the battery front, the team was unapologetic. The battery size was cut small enough to keep the fondleslab relatively thin and below 2lb (just) but it's still able to power the Core i5 processor to its fullest potential."If you compare it to say a MacBook Air, you will quickly see that pound for pound in battery size vs battery life, you will find optimizations that puts Surface best in its class," the team said.That said, the team hinted more than once that extra batteries could be built into covers for the tablet. The six connectors and twin ports on the base of the unit that use magnetic locking have been designed to allow high transfers of current, the team said.

"We haven't announced what they are for but they aren't an accident! At launch we talked about the 'accessory spine' and hinted at future peripherals that can click in and do more. Those connectors look like can carry more current than the pogo pins, don't they?"If you want all-day battery life, then go for the Surface RT, the team advised. But the Pro is a fully functional laptop with a tablet form factor, and as such it has to have the full Windows x86 code base – and that comes at a cost.Steven Bathiche, director of research in Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group, said that in order to minimize the battery load for the tablet, the Surface Pro has software to make the processor power much more dynamic."Surface Pro has the power when you need, but throttles down heavily when you don't need it so that you can carry it around.. pound for pound it is the fastest most portable device out there," he claimed.He also said that Microsoft had used prototypes developed by Redmond's research arm in the Surface Pro's touch screen. This enabled them to bring the response time of touch controls down from 100ms to below 12ms and increase the pressure-sensitive capacity of finger and stylus operation.

[torentialtribute]

Cricket news: Jofra Archer has more tricks up his sleeve for England

For his next trick, Jofra Archer must somehow follow a World Cup-winning Super Over and a stunning test debut against Australia at Lord & # 39; s Lord by shooting England back into the ashes.

No pressure then for this notable newcomer to international cricket who will once again be the center of attention in Headingley in a third test that England cannot afford to lose if they get their hands on that precious urn.

Not that Archer seems to feel under some pressure. His priority upon arriving in Leeds was to work out his beloved Fortnite video game in his hotel room, and he seemed to have no concern in the world during training.

Jofra Archer keeps a good mood while the pace-bait keeps the fitness ball on its balance head in training

Captain Joe Root believes that England must play its strong points beat Australia

There was Archer bowling with the left arm, as he is used to doing in the nets, before showing the football arts and apparently back in Brighton with his friends in a team called imaginative Egg Fried Reus. All with a smile on his face too.

But it will be very fast, capable and sometimes brutally fast that England hopes that Archer will again have a dramatic effect on an Australia team without Steve Smith, which gave them their 1-0 lead at Edgbaston.

Certainly Joe Root is excited when someone discovers what may have been the best thing that can happen to world cricket in years, while the captain tries to build on the momentum of the Lord.

& # 39; He is one of those guys who just seems to have been born for these occasions, & # 39; said the English skipper of Archer in anticipation of the crucial test of these Ashes.

& # 39; Once you have a Super Over in a World Cup Final in your back pocket, it makes everything a little easier.

& # 39; He is just a relaxed character who is not surprised by anything and he loved everything from last week. I could see that in conversations with him.

"I would say," Give it all for three overs and we'll take a look ", and then two overs in he wanted four more.

& # 39; Jofra wants to go outside and make things happen and that is very impressive in a young man. & # 39;

The newcomer in the test also impressed his teammates with his warm-up football qualities

And it is what Archer can do for the rest of the attack, which is especially exciting for a team in England that has finally found a really fast and hostile bowler that can propel them towards a successful future , even if they had to go to Barbados to find him.

& # 39; I am intrigued to see how he starts from that beginning and how the rest of the boys around him work, & # 39; added Root.

& # 39; They come even more in the game because of the way he bowls. Nobody mentioned that Stuart Broad already has 10 wickets in this series, which is a very impressive start for him.

& # 39; Stuart enjoys the fact that Jofra makes a lot of headlines and he can continue to do his business and do his thing. It is important that you connect as a bowling group and we did exceptionally well last week. & # 39;

A stunning debut in the second Ashes Test at Lord & # 39; s was covered with five wickets for Archer

Archer also had time to practice his left arm spider in the nets, as he often does

Now the question is that the spindle has really turned and England can continue where they left off with Lord by to win a victory in the Specsavers series that was only denied them in the second test by the rain that eliminated almost two full days.

They will never have a better chance. The absence of Smith caused by Archer, at least for this game, Robs Australia of the only batsman on either side who has been able to make match-defining hundreds in this series.

And the elephant stays in the room of Australia – that they compete with almost 10 players, because the captain who was brought in to rid them of the poisonous culture that has cost Smith so expensive, Tim Paine, his place is not worth it.

But if England really has to win here on what looks like a good Headingley field, there must be more solidity in a bat line-up that is still disturbingly fragile and too dependent on the lower middle order to get them. to rescue.

Young batsman Ollie Pope has been called as coverage after 221 not coming out for Surrey

In a sense, the call of the hugely promising Ollie Pope as a cover for Jason Roy provides the need for more specialized top-order players. Pope played two tests against India at No. 4 last summer before it became clear that he would be much better suited for six.

Now, with an undefeated double century for Surrey this week at No. 5, Pope would strike again at four o'clock if Roy was excluded from his last concussion test that had been beaten during Tuesday's training. Joe Denly would go up to open.

The odds are that Roy will be fit to play, but his position in the order clearly causes a lot of discussion within the hierarchy, because Trevor has made Bayliss clear and believes that the destructive batsman should be at four.

The problem is that the position is taken by Denly, who is defended by national selector Ed Smith.

Root admitted that England still had to answer questions in their batting line -up

TEST MATCH FACTS

9 – If England does not win this game, they have passed nine tests without beating Australia. The last time they went longer than this without winning an Ashes test was an 18-game winless run between January 1987 and August 1993.

1 – England beat Australia only once in Headingley since 1985, with that gain is approaching in 2001. The win rate of England against the Aussies in Leeds is only 29 percent

Of course I think Jason should open, otherwise he will be at four o'clock, Root insisted . "There is a lot of talk about our batting order because of the options we have, but even at the stage we are trying to reinvent the wheel.

& # 39; We have to play our strengths and be flexible in the course of the series, but I feel that Jason can have a very big impact at the start of an innings. It may not have happened yet, but we fully expect it to go out and that. & # 39;

It is only to be hoped that England will not gamble with the Ashes by giving Roy a last chance to impress as an opener, against better judgment of Bayliss, but otherwise they are in good shape. form.

Win, and with Jimmy Anderson probably qualified for the fourth test in Old Trafford, they would be ready for an & # 39; come-from-behind Ashes & # 39; victory. Losing and having to think about their first defeat at home by the old enemy since the bad old days of 2001. The stakes are high, but in Archer they have a gem that can take everything in their stride.

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If Sam Curran plays ahead of Joe Denly, it’s a sad indictment of our England Test side 

When Sam Curran plays Joe Denly, it is a sad indictment against our side of England. Test

England looks forward to choosing bowler Sam Curran for batsman Joe Denly

I always felt that the best look and feel for a side was to have five frontline batsmen

Followed by an all-rounder, a wicketkeeper batsman and your four best bowlers

The hitters score, the bowlers take the wickets something else is a bonus

By Nasser Hussain for the Daily Mail

Published: 22:29 BST, August 13, 2019 | Updated: 22:29 BST, August 13, 2019

Call me a traditionalist, but when I look at one of the permutations that England Consider for this second test, I am concerned about the direction that our red ball cricket is going.

If England Sam Curran chooses Joe Denly, the voters actually say that they trust one of their all-rounders to score on one of their frontbatsmen. Maybe they are right in this case. But it is an indictment of our test team.

I always felt that the best look and feel for a test side was to have five frontline batsmen, followed by an all-rounder, a wicket-keeper batsman and your four best bowlers. The batsmen score the points, the bowlers take the wickets and everything else is a bonus.

If England chooses Sam Curran for Joe Denly, it is an indictment of our current test team

Look at the great West Indian side of the eighties, or the Australians under Steve Waugh. Everyone understood their role. There is rarely a need to reinvent the wheel.

But if Denly is omitted, England adopts Australia with three specialized batsmen – Rory Burns, Jason Roy and Joe Root. Then you move Ben Stokes to No. 4, which may just work because he probably has the best technology in the team after Root. But what about the rest?

The problem with asking all-rounders – and I include wicket keepers in that category – at the work of specialized batsmen is that they have not trained their brains in the same way. They are used to coming in at number 6 or 7, hitting the tail and countering 30 or 40 counterattacks.

What they are not programmed to do, in the same way as a specialist, is bat all day, that is what this English side now needs.

Their way of thinking also differs in a different way. If you have a different string for your bow, it removes part of the responsibility to score runs. Look at Jonny Bairstow. One of the reasons he wants to keep the gloves so bad is because it takes the pressure off his batting. And if you are Curran, you always have your bowling to fall back on.

If Denly is omitted, England will take Australia with only three specialized batsmen

Some people claim that England has tried it the other way around. They tried to pick specialized batsmen and it didn't work. That's fine. But be careful what you wish for.

Of course they can still stay with Denly, but if they don't have Jos Buttler at number 5, a man with five first-class hundreds of 154 innings, and Curran possibly as high as No. 7.

How many first-class hundreds does he have? That's right – none.

If you throw Ben Foakes in the mix, you have a situation where four or five of the guys who are considered the best red-ball batsmen in the country are essentially all-rounders. of some sort. That is a dangerous place for a test side.

There is also an argument that Curran on the side gives you many bowling options, but how many of England need them?

the team they have six plus root & # 39; s off breaks. I can see why that could work in the heat and humidity of Sri Lanka, where England won 3-0 last winter, but not in England.

Ben Stokes is on No. 4 and after Joe Root he probably has the best technique in the team

When it comes to choosing the best side here, I want at least four guys – preferably five – whose only serious role is walk for the side. I don't want them to take refuge in a few wickets or catches. I want them to feel that their day is over once they are gone. Things like that tend to focus the mind.

And I want guys who can adjust with the bat – whether it's 20 for two and the ball is lying around, or 200 for two and they can attack. separately

I do not deny that Curran is a supercracker who has influenced almost every test he has played. The way he beat India last summer was one of the keys to England's 4-1 win.

But Root and Trevor Bayliss must be careful with the type of team they choose. It is one thing to have a deep batting line against the spinners and medium pacers of Sri Lanka. Against the fast bowlers of Australia, those guys might be less inclined to hang out. Four down can all come out fairly quickly – watch the second innings in Edgbaston.

England has a lot of thinking to do. And the answer may not be clear as some people seem to believe.

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