How To Talk Like A Pirate

September 19th is Talk Like A Pirate Day! But how to talk like one?

A Few Tips For You Pirates!

1) Double all adjectives. Don't speak about you as a dangerous pirate, call yourself a dangerous hazardous pirate.

2) Leave out all g' and v's. Say sailin' instead of sailing or ne'er instead of never.

3) Don't speak in any other tense than the present tense. Instead of conjugating the verbs, just say me be, you be, we be.

4) Don't say I. Say me. "Lookit me new sword!"

5) Never use you or you're. Say yer, ye or ya like "here's yer dinner, ya mangy cockroach!"

6) Don't say Oh, say O'

Pirate Meanings

Pirate Slag - English

Ahoy! - Hey! or Hello!

Aye! - Yes!

Arrrr - Yes, I agree or I'm happy

Avast - To tell others stop and pay attention like "Look here everybody, I gotta tell you something"

Belay - Stop that or Cut it out

Bilge - Unwanted water collecting in your ship (weighs her down and needs to be removed)

Blaggard - An untrustworthy scoundrel

Boatswain - often pronounced Bosun. Usually in charge of the deck such as crew, equipment or activity.

Booty - Treasure

Bucko - show off

Cat O'Nine Tails - A multi-tailed whip

Dance the Hempen Jig - To hang

Doubloon - Gold coins, very precious currency

Davy Jones' Locker - A reference to death. An imaginary place that holds dead sailor and pirates.

To be in Davy's Grip - Close to death

To have the Davies or the Joneseys - To be frightened

To see you to Davy Jones - To threaten to kill someone

Dungbie - The hiney or read end

Grog - watered down rum or yum!

Fer - For

Hearty - More friendly than "matey"

Hempen Halter - the noose

Hornswaggle - to cheat or defraud

Jack Tar - seamen of the merchant navy (it's an insult if you say this to a pirate)

Jolly Ranger - The pirate flag (skull and crossbones)

Landlubber - People who are not skilled at being on a boat or people who are from the land

Loaded to the Gunwales - To be tipsy

Matey - Friendly way to call a person

Me - I

Parley - Discuss a halt to fighting or related matters.

Pieces o' Eight - Silver coins that are worth less than a Doubloon.

Shiver me Timbers! - An exclamation of surprise!

Swing the Lead - Throw a weight overboard to measure the water's depth

Scurvy Dog! - An insult

Take a Caulk - Take a nap on the deck

Yer, ye, ya - you or you're

Yo ho ho! - Pirate laughter

O' - Oh

The above list is even on our Stars of the Spiral site for future reference at:

http://www.starsofthespiral.com/how-to-talk-like-a-pirate

My Favorite Memory of Playing Video Games

It's National Video Games Day and I start thinking about my best memory of playing video games.

I was ten years old and I would be constantly fighting with my brother over the brand new game on our Nintendo game console called... Super Mario Bros! "LET ME PLAY! IT'S MY TURN!!!" we would scream at each other.

It was 1989, maybe 1990 I think. I was only 9, 10 years old and my brother was 7, 8. Even though he was two years younger, he kicked my butt all of the time. He would always be able to get pass levels I would be stuck at. I remember being angry and confused, wondering how the heck he was able to do it. It just made me want to work harder and be just as good as he was.

I loved Donkey King, Sonic the Hedgehog and of course Mario & Luigi. We started out on Nintendo, but we also had Sony. Those days were the best haha. We would play for 30 minutes or a hour, then play outside all day. My brother still can kick my butt at games. Constantly. It's annoying. But I guess that's why you have brothers for lol.

What was your favorite memory of playing video games?

New Birthday Fish In Wizard101!

For Wizard101's 8th Birthday, we now have SEVEN new fish. Introducing the Stubby Sharks! They are pretty easy to get. I was able to get all of them in the river in the Commons behind Zeke.

The Stubby Sharks:

Stubby Fire Shark

Stubby Ice Shark

Stubby Storm Shark

Stubby Myth Shark

Stubby Death Shark

Stubby Life Shark

Stubby Balance Shark

The above description is the same for all of the Stubby Sharks.

This makes 160 fish total available in game to get now. But you better hurry and get all of them colored goldfish crackers, I mean Stubby Sharks, because they are leaving after September 30th!

First Ever Closed Captioning Stream On Twitch!

When I originally wrote my post on how much the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community in the gaming world needs captioning for Twitch streams, for YouTube videos and so much more, I did not expect that progress would come this quickly. I mean within weeks, I watched my very first closed captioned Twitch livestream. I sat there, almost shell shocked and amazed at the whole thing. I kept saying to myself that I couldn't believe that a huge company like Twitch listened along with the help of an awesome group like AbleGamers and did something about it.

The First Ever Public Closed Captioned Stream

A friend alerted me to a very special livestream by Ablegamers who were allowed to livestream a closed captioning test stream with the help of Twitch.

Now who are AbleGamers? I'll let them explain that. They say it better than I can.

"The AbleGamers Foundation, also known as AbleGamers Charity, is a 501(C)(3) nonprofit public charity that aims to improve the overall quality of life for those with disabilities through the power of video games." -AbleGamers.com

Watch live video from Ablegamers on www.twitch.tv

If you don't know how to put on Closed Caption, hover your cursor over the video and click on the "CC" on the bottom right. 

If you want to adjust the captions' size, color, etc, click the gear icon next to the CC. You will see "Closed Captioning." From there, you can do anything. Change text size, color, background of the captions, etc. Go on, play around with the options.

If you watch the entire video, you can see that it's incredibly cool what they've been able to accomplish. This amazing addition will include all kinds of gamers now, even those who can't hear or barely can hear. Even hard of hearing people who have difficulty understanding accents, soft voices or anything that is hard for them to hear.

More Updates On Closed Captioning From Twitch

Then this super cool post from Twitch via Streamer News.

Cool closed captioning updates coming in the near future. #TwitchTownHall pic.twitter.com/CnlKtDKZsZ

— Streamer News (@StreamerNews) September 2, 2016

Twitch is pretty much saying that they have been having internal tests with Twitch Weekly to test their closed captioning in addition to the public test with AbleGamers. But what's even more amazing is that Amazon Pilot Program are using Twitch's caption technology.

Many people have asked how the captions work. Some people were confused about types of captioning.

Three Ways You Can Caption

Closed Captioning - there's a live person sitting and listening to the video, movie, tv show, whatever it is and typing everything down quickly following the entire time which gets turned into a file and uploaded with the video, movie, tv show.

It's almost like the way I caption my videos on YouTube. I type everything down while the video is playing. Although I do pause it when I need to fix typos lol. Then when I'm done, the file gets saved and attached to the video.

But for movies, tv shows, and others, that file gets copied with every single movie, tv show, commerical, anything on the screen, so forth. That's why you can pop in ANY "Beetlejuice" movie and they all have the exact same captions. It's all one file being used.

Automatic Captions - This is a bit different. There's a program that listens to the voice and decides what they sound like they are saying. Believe me, this is not a great program. Sometimes people are captioned saying naughty things when they have not even said it at all. This is the type that you find on YouTube for people who do not want to manually make captions.

Live Captioning - This is what Twitch did. It might be called Closed Captioning, but I call it Live Captioning because there's someone literally sitting, probably 10 feet away, listening to them and typing everything down in real time which gets also uploaded in real time to the stream.

This method also gets used during live news on TV or even Presidential debates which are live. Anything that's live is typed in real time by someone listening to it. They literally hire someone who does the captioning in real time. They really do sit in front of the screen or whatever it is and type it all as it is being said. Sometimes it gets messed up, but it's pretty good 99% of the time. Somehow they also upload it all in real time to all TVs. Don't ask me how.

Bravo, Twitch!

Honestly, this is amazing to me what Twitch has done. I mean the time, dedication, and yes, the money to hire someone to caption in real time. Imagine the hardware, technology and people they had to pull in for this? WOW. Impressive. No matter what you think about Twitch, you can't help, but be impressed.

Starting on September 9th, Twitch is having all of their in-house and event programming captioned. YAY! They also will have captions for TwitchCon on Kappa Theater.

Only The First Step

But the best part is that Twitch is not done yet. They are saying that this is just the FIRST step. I can't wait to see what other improvements they will roll out. I am actually hoping for a way to be added where people who cannot afford to hire a live person to type everything in real time to be able to put up closed captioning. I am deaf and I honestly would use it because hey, not everyone knows American Sign Language. Haha.

Can't wait to see what other innovations they'll be rolling out soon. But for now, if you have a bit of spare money, could you please go to AbleGamers and buy a t-shirt? Every t-shirt goes to support AbleGamers which in turn helps disabled gamers like me. I don't consider myself disabled. I think I'm perfectly normal, but ya get the gist. Thanks!

More Recipes & Badges Please!

So here we go, more ideas from the super weird Kelsey Fireheart's very zany brain. Keep in mind that this should apply to both Wizard101 and Pirate101. Hopefully when Pirate101 introduces crafting, they would keep my ideas in mind as well.

Furniture Recipes

One recipe I know would be well received are the school icon blocks that you can find in the houses of Serpentine Escape. But what else would you like to craft? Church pews? More antique cars? For Pirate101, I would love to craft houses that's for sure!

Crafting Table Recipes

I also would love to be able to craft new crafting tables for our schools. I would love a fire themed one that does everything, jewels, cards, reagents, furniture, etc etc. A massive cool fire crafting table. For Pirate101, it would be class themed!

Crafting Badges

I felt like we needed more recipes and badges to spice up the crafting and drop categories. For example, you should get a badge if you make 10 Carousels.

Drop Badges

We also need drop badges. Pick the rarest furniture and if you get 5 of those, you get a badge. For gear, if you get the complete gear or get a certain super super rare gear/weapon piece, you should get a badge.

Fast Runner Badges

For those who hit the max level first up to 4 people (cause four people can level up at once by chance if they're in the same battle,) they should get a super exclusive badge that nobody else can get. This would also be a great incentive for people to buy crowns and stuff in the Crown Shop by the way. This would be a great time to introduce speed potions in game.

So what other badges or recipes would you want in game for Wizard101 and/or Pirate101? Let us know.