Ninja (playground game)

Ninja is a common playground game, where the objective is to take turns swiping at the opponent's hands to eliminate them. The name originates from the feudal Japanese assassin. It is commonly played at meet-ups and conventions.

Rules and gameplay

The rules of ninja are simple, and have only a few pivotal rules for play. In a game, players will stand in a circle, and place their hands together, the player leading the game will say "Bow to your sensei". There, the countdown begins, and each player must strike a pose. Players take turns attacking their opponents by swiping at their hands , and must freeze in place once their attack is finished. Defending players may dodge if they think they will be hit, and must also freeze once the attack is finished. If a player is hit, the hand that is hit is out but the other hand is still in. If a player misses, they must stop moving immediately. When both hands have been hit, the player is out and must stand back until there is one player left. The only player left is the winner. However, there have been variations to how children play the game, some exercise optional rules such as, the area that is hit, timed attacks or however the players want to change the game.

Ninja (Six Flags Magic Mountain)

Ninja is an Arrow Dynamics steel suspended roller coaster located at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, California. It is the fastest roller coaster of its kind in the world, joint with Vortex at Canada's Wonderland, both with top speeds of 55 mph (89 km/h).

Roller coaster

The coaster is located in the Samurai Summit area of Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia. Ninja was built in 1988 as the fifth of the ten original Arrow suspended coasters. It is somewhat unusual in that it uses two lift hills — one at the beginning of the run and a second one just before the end, to return the train to station elevation.

Ninja's station building previously served as the upper station for Magic Mountain's dragon tram. The tram carried passengers up and down the hillside until its closure in 1981, and its abandoned lower station can still be found near the Jetstream water ride and Ninja's final brake run.

Ninja is the only Arrow Dynamics suspended swinging coaster west of the Mississippi River. The other three suspended swinging coasters in North America (Vortex at Canada's Wonderland, Iron Dragon at Cedar Point, and The Bat at Kings Island) are all east of the Mississippi.

Ninja (British rapper)

Nkechi Ka Egenamba (first name pronounced n-kay-chee) known as Ninja is an English rapper and the female lead vocalist for the British indie band The Go! Team. Doing a mixture of rapping, chanting and singing, Ninja is well known for her energetic stage performances and dancing. In 2005, NME voted Ninja the 15th coolest person in music.

Early life and education

Born Nkechi Ka in 1983, Nkechi is short for Nkechinyere, and means "what God has given" or "gift of God" in Igbo, the language of the Igbo people, an ethnic group in West Africa, numbering in the tens of millions. Ninja is from London. Her father is a Nigerian lawyer, and her mother is half-Egyptian, half-Nigerian. Ninja is one of five children and was brought up in a very strict household. She had been studying at university before she joined The Go! Team.

The Go! Team

Ninja became lead singer for the The Go! Team after founder Ian Parton created the first The Go! Team album in the studio. With Ninja, the live band became a "separate entity" to the original studio vision, as the performances became radically different from the recordings, particularly due to Ninja's freestyled vocals contrary to the sampled vocals present on the album. Parton acknowledged that Ninja had become the "face of the band" in an interview with Erik Leijon in September 2007.

Puck railway station

Puck is a PKP railway station in Puck (Pomeranian Voivodeship), Poland.

Lines crossing the station

References

Coordinates: 54°42′56″N 18°24′30″E / 54.71556°N 18.40833°E / 54.71556; 18.40833

Puck (mythology)

In English folklore, Puck is a domestic and nature sprite, demon, or fairy. "Puck" is used as a proper name of such a character, in folklore also known as Robin Goodfellow or by other names or euphemisms, but "puck" may also be used as a common noun to other groups.

Origins and comparative folklore

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the etymology of the name Puck is "unsettled"; it is compared to Old Norse puki (Old Swedish puke, Icelandic puki, Frisian Puk). Celtic origins (based on Welsh pwca, Cornish Bucca and Irish púca) have also been proposed, but as the Old English and Old Norse attestations are considerably older than the Celtic ones, loan from Germanic to Celtic seems more probable. The Old English púcel is a kind of half-tamed woodland spirit, leading folk astray with echoes and lights in nighttime woodlands (like the German and Dutch "Weisse Frauen" and "Witte Wieven" and the French "Dames Blanches," all "White Ladies"), or coming into the farmstead and souring milk in the churn. The etymology of Puck is examined by Katharine Mary Briggs, in Anatomy of Puck (New York: Arno) 1977. The term pixie is in origin a diminutive of puck (compared to Swedish word "pyske" meaning "small fairy").

Characters of Final Fantasy IX

The characters of the PlayStation role-playing game Final Fantasy IX. Filling four CD-ROMs,Final Fantasy IX featured a cast containing a variety of major and minor characters. Players could control a maximum of four characters for combat at once, with eight main playable characters in the party and a few other, temporary characters.

Concept and creation

The main characters were based on the character class archetypes from previous Final Fantasy games (for instance, Zidane is based on the Thief class while Steiner was based on the Fighter class.) The Final Fantasy series has used the same menu operated battle system in most of the games with a few minor adjustments. Each character in Final Fantasy IX has his/her own unique ability; these include summoning, black magic, white magic, blue magic and techniques such as "Jump".

Original concepts and designs were created by Yoshitaka Amano. The in-game version of each character was completed by Toshiyuki Itahana, Shunkou Murase and Shin Nagasawa.