Jim Piddock

James Anthony "Jim" Piddock (born 8 April 1956) is an English actor, writer, and producer who began his career on the stage in England, before emigrating to the U.S. in 1981.

Personal life

Piddock was born in Rochester, Kent, the son of Celia Mary (née O'Callaghan) and Charles Frederick Piddock. After completing his tertiary studies at Worth School, a Benedictine boarding school in the south of England, Piddock attended London University, gaining an Honours degree in English literature.

After contemplating becoming an anthropologist, Piddock ended up pursuing his other passion and began his acting career on the stage in the UK, before emigrating to the U.S in his early twenties. He made his U.S theatrical debut in The Boy's Own Story in 1982. A number of film and television credits followed, most notably several Christopher Guest films, including Best in Show and For Your Consideration.

Stage career

Piddock made his theatrical debut in the U.S. in The Boy's Own Story, a one-man show about a football (soccer) goalkeeper, at the Julian Theatre in San Francisco. The show won Piddock the Bay Area Critics' Best Actor Award. The show was then produced Off-Broadway. That same year (1982), he was cast in Noël Coward's Present Laughter, and other Broadway and Off-Broadway shows followed, including the original US production of Noises Off, The Knack at the Roundabout Theatre, Make and Break, and Design For Living.

List of characters in the Metal Gear series

The Metal Gear franchise features a large number of characters created by Hideo Kojima and designed by Yoji Shinkawa. Its setting features several soldiers with supernatural powers provided by the new advancements of science.

The series follows mercenary Solid Snake given government missions of finding the Metal Gear weapon, resulting in encounters with Gray Fox and Big Boss in Outer Heaven (Metal Gear) and Zanzibar Land (Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake). Later, Solid Snake meets Otacon and opposes Liquid Snake's FOXHOUND in Metal Gear Solid then assists Raiden in fighting both Solidus Snake and the Patriots in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Additionally, there are several prequel games that follows Big Boss's past and legend development as well as the origins of FOXHOUND, Outer Heaven and the Patriots.

While the original Metal Gear games had their characters designs modeled after Hollywood actors, the Metal Gear Solid games established a series of consistent designs based on Shinkawa's ideas of what would appeal to gamers. Additionally, several of the characters he designs follow Kojima and the other staff's ideas. Critical reception of the game's cast has been positive as publications praised their personalities and roles within the series.

Numeral (linguistics)

In linguistics, a numeral is a member of a word class (or sometimes even a part of speech) designating numbers, such as the English word 'two' and the compound 'seventy-seven'.

Identifying numerals

Numerals may be attributive, as in two dogs, or pronominal, as in I saw two (of them).

Many words of different parts of speech indicate number or quantity. Quantifiers do not enumerate, or designate a specific number, but give another, often less specific, indication of amount. Examples are words such as every, most, least, some, etc. There are also number words which enumerate but are not a distinct part of speech, such as 'dozen', which is a noun, 'first', which is an adjective, or 'twice', which is an adverb. Numerals enumerate, but in addition have distinct grammatical behavior: when a numeral modifies a noun, it may replace the article: the/some dogs played in the park → twelve dogs played in the park. (Note that *dozen dogs played in the park is not grammatical, so 'dozen' is not a numeral.)

Metal Gear

Metal Gear (Japanese: メタルギア, Hepburn: Metaru Gia) is a series of action-adventure stealth video games, created by Hideo Kojima and developed and published by Konami. The first game, Metal Gear, was released in 1987 for the MSX2. The player takes control of a special forces operative Solid Snake who is assigned to find the titular superweapon "Metal Gear", a bipedal walking tank with the ability to launch nuclear weapons. Several sequels have been released for multiple consoles after requests from Konami to produce new Metal Gear games. The sequels expand the original game's plot adding new characters opposing and supporting Snake, while there have also been a few prequels exploring the origins of the Metal Gear and recurring characters. Various parts were inspired by Hollywood films with character's names, settings and artworks often referencing them.

Other notable traits are cinematic cut scenes, intricate storylines, offbeat and fourth wall humor, and exploration of political and philosophical themes, with references to Hollywood films to add flavor. As of March 2015, 41.2 million copies of the game franchise have been sold worldwide, with individual installments having been critically and commercially acclaimed and having received several awards. The franchise has also been adapted into other media such as comics, novels, and drama CDs. Snake also appeared as a guest character in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.