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((Alleb/Marty Robbins, American singer, songwriter, actor, multi-instrumentalist, and racing driver. SFW, SFA, SFEEPAOC (safe for everyone except people afraid of cowboys) ))

Alleb bloody loved this song. As far as western-cowboy-country-hoo-wee-pardner-songs sung by Marty Robbins, American singer, songwriter, actor, multi-instrumentalist, and racing driver went, this was certainly her favourite.

And the Texas Ranger went on down the old rooooooad

She bobbed her head along to the music.

And he walked to the young maiden and spoooke...

Alleb moved her whole body as the bass dropped.

And the Texas Ranger bought himself a carton of milk that daaaaay

Alleb leapt off the couch, breakdancing on the floor.

The carton was 1 litre and contained 252kJ per 100g

Alleb backflipped and leapt off a wall, moving her body to the music. Then the music stopped. Alleb stopped, too, arms thrust in the air, leg up high, sweat dripping over her still frame. She stepped to the gramophone, the sweat disappearing from her body in a fine mist, leaving her straight, smooth hair to float and move very beautifully in the breeze it left. The smell of sweat was technically still around, but her natural smell was so gorgeous, nobody noticed it (this was also helped by the fact that nobody was around.) The gramophone shook. It shuddered. It made a noise of skittering, and metal bending. Alleb stood back, getting into her classic Krav Maga 'Adam's apple grab' pose, the most powerful pose there was to learn in Krav Maga. A hand appeared from the horn. It grabbed the edge of the horn, pulling itself out, revealing an arm. It pulled harder, and then a head appeared. Alleb gasped, letting her 'Adam's apple grab' pose down for a split second. 'Marty Robbins, American singer, songwriter, actor, multi-instrumentalist, and racing driver!' she exclaimed, stepping back.

‘That’s me, pardner, yippie-ki-yay. I, Marty Robbins, American singer, songwriter, actor, multi-instrumentalist, and racing driver,’ he said, taking his cowboy hat from his moustache-less head. She could tell he was a cinnamon roll, just looking at him.

‘I-I,’ Alleb sputtered, as he approached and stretched. She had done extensive research on him, and was deeply aware of the fact that she was two inches taller than him. What she hadn’t researched was his incredible fondness for people two inches taller than him. She also hadn’t researched his love for people who knew Krav Maga, people who used Krav Maga to grab Adam’s apples, people with blonde/brown hair, and people with eyebrows reminiscent of Gandalf. ‘I’m a big fan,’ she murmured, face turning red like a tomato, but in a really pretty and graceful way.

‘I’m a big fan of you, pardner, yippie-ki-yay,’ he said. ‘And your dancing, too.’

‘And my dancing, too?’ Alleb murmured.

‘And your dancing, too, pardner, yippie-ki-yay.’ He extended his arm and bowed. ‘Will you dance with me, pardner, yippie-ki-yay?’ he asked.

Alleb made a splurting noise that went ‘Mryes!’ (but a really pretty and graceful splurting noise,) and took his hand. And so they danced. A few neighbours glanced in through the window and thought to themselves: ‘By Zeus, master of lightning and ruler of Mount Olympus, is that Marty Robbins, American singer, songwriter, actor, multi-instrumentalist, and racing driver?’ but this was not true, they thought, and they shook their foolish heads and went on their merry, foolish ways, unaware of the true reality of the situation. Alleb and Marty Robbins danced into the night, and until daybreak, when the sunlight began shining through the window.

‘I must go, now, pardner, yippie-ki-yay,’ Marty Robbins explained, releasing Alleb's hand and stepping back. The sunlight shimmered and glowed against his clothes. ‘For as a cowboy, I am banished back to the lands of the West by the power of the morning sunlight.’ And with a fwump, he caught fire.

‘Will you visit again?’ Alleb said, fighting back tears from both the sheer sadness of the situation, and from her proximity to the raging fire.

‘I’ll always visit, pardner,’ he said. ‘As long as you listen to my music, I’ll be right there with you…’ And suddenly he was gone, nothing remaining but faint scorch marks on the floor and the faint scent of garlic (which cowboys are known to excrete when they feel bittersweetness.) A single tear dripped from Alleb’s eye, shining like a diamond, and she looked to the gramophone, and nodded, wiping it away with a graceful hand.

I mean, there's a certain series of letters that simply has to translate to a certain other series of letters we all know and (mostly) love. Then added onto the fact that I can't think of anyone who uses the long dashes in their posts, made me work out exactly where the plaintext came from. Then finally the 'spoken' part at the end confirmed exactly where it was from. I then used a small sample of letters from the plaintext and ciphertext to work out the cipher itself.

All I'll say is it's not the normal PPC censoring code (for those on Discord), and that if it was me I'd of used the Vignere Cipher, because I'm nice like that.


Storme Hawk


P.S Hey Maxewell.

I'll be your clown

Scapegrace stepped into the darkened room, head held high. She walked slowly to the centre of the floor. There she closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and raised her arms to embrace an imaginary partner.

Behind the glass

There was no music, not even in her mind. There was no-one to encourage her, to urge her on or applaud her courage. (There was no courage, for how could there be, in the dark?) But she held her arms high, maintaining the posture, and took the first careful steps of the dance.

Go 'head and laugh, cause it's funny

Scapegrace moved slowly, with a grace that spoke of long practice. She made the turns with exquisite care, compensating for the missing weight of her absent partner. Her feet moved silently on the cold floor.

I would too if I saw me

She didn't open her eyes. There was nothing to see in the darkened room - but there was nothing to see in her mind's eye, either. Whatever images she might have conjured up were long gone, washed away by disuse.

I'll be your clown

She didn't cry. She refused to cry. The tears welled in her eyes, but she wouldn't let them fall. She would remain the picture of perfectly-composed elegance - until the dance was over, and the moment passed again.

On your favourite channel

She circled across the floor, swirling through the moves. Her steps remained textbook-perfect, the emptiness in her arms forbidden from altering them. She leant back, counterbalancing herself, wishing she could even remember imagining the feel of her partner's hands supporting her, letting her fly.

My life's a circus (circus), round in circles

She stumbled to a halt, the dance not to much finishing as fading away. Her arms fell to her sides, and she let her head hang loose, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Her tears, held in for so long, tumbled down to splash on the wooden floor.

I'm selling out tonight

A hand touched hers, and Scapegrace raised her head to see Iximaz standing in front of her. The other woman smiled slightly, and held out her arms to Scapegrace.

"Mind if I… cut in?"

I'll be your clown...

((With sincerest apologies to Scapegrace, Iximaz, Emeli Sandé, and Wicked for nicking G(a)linda's line. Docs version))

hS

I never said it was a tradition everyone followed. But waaaay back in 2004, Twiggy gave us this little number, which for many of us (well... at least two) set the tone for Shipfests ever after.

hS

My first guess is an ad gone wrong (it happens), but on the off-chance that it's sprung out of the stylesheet somehow, if you happen to remember where you ran into it, could you please let me know?

hS

It's certainly possible you don't like the idea of hidden messages, but you don't speak for the Board as a whole. I don't think you were active when we played around with HTML colours - it was a few years back now - but it was quite fun at the time.

I'll draw your attention to the Constitution, and specifically Articles 16 (silliness) and 20 (randomness). As long as it isn't being used to misbehave, this is hardly that requires such a comprehensive put-down.

hS

PS: What JavaScript? Maxewell doesn't seem to have used any. Do you have a specific reason to think they might?

Aw, mate, love that series. I need to get on rereading that. Absolutely brilliant. The kind of thing I keep forgetting how brilliant it is, so when I read it I think 'why aren't I rereading this?'
And then I forget to reread it again, and the cycle repeats endlessly.

I will recommend Catch-22 to you.
I recommend it to everyone because it's my favourite book, but I especially recommend it here, because it's got a very similar style of humour. And a very similar absurdist philosophy through the whole thing. It's also much more sad and horrifying and may or may not make you cry.

I have heard of Abhorsen, but, er. That's it. I have not heard of Hamish X, but it's by a comedian and the first book involves cheese pirates, so consider me interested.

This was completely by chance. I haven't even taken a look at the site's code. This is certainly new to me - I don't intend on replicating this error. When I said I clicked on a part of the page, I meant passively, as something I do when I'm bored. It was by sheer accident that I was prompted with this.

... or otherwise poke at the boundaries of the code running here, please use your own YourWebApps instance, since this one is in active use.

And if you do manage to replicate this (again, I'd prefer you not try here), please let me know how you hit that error page.

(It's possible you were hitting an admin interface of some sort, but that wouldn't explain the long binary blob in the URL)

I believe I clicked on a certain part of the board when it happened. I'm not even what would be worth hiding in this board.

Clearing cookies might cure it. I don't think I've seen any long Base64 strings on this board before, so I'm not sure where that would have come from.

Where'd you encounter that URL, anyhow?

I've been here for about an hour and a half and I've already broken it...

"Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /wNZMs1kqjh5l0NL6N1tFlzUEVXh1nVEmI9ZXxL2+g+QWg2iDRbCHLvPn3E03PFnoUvr9z5W2PXGqk9gVnquxchODqvNa5uRZ+Z9LgEgbxnGGH6uukbjOXIFbcOE0DWUeuh0ZenOLRzCrf4WbVQXJKvibFH1Pb8gj3HieTDdaVH28UF1MhUIRGjlE6wclaiZ9ibtZX0ugNHLUk79Vld2+NLgmy4OxQKmXIWkdMzUQkZBWrbugptE42aean32edW59kYU+YqHnDoKdk3ozrHmzXG6/sVjPgjPz1AisUycpL0E= on this server."

I could swear I remembered people last year asking for descriptions. Or at least making a thing out of which Boarders had beards. Or maybe nothing at all. . . my memory is not trustworthy.

Anyway, this is a lovely story. Your vivid imagery is all the more enjoyable for its inaccuracy.

--Key and her golden tresses

First, for those of you who don't feel like looking for elements with "display:none;" on them as if this Board were a Capture The Flag, the message was

Hidden Message Found! Congratulations. I'll be doing this in whatever I post, purely for that little bit of added commentary. I'm a major code and cryptology nerd.

This sort of thing is, well, not appreciated here. We'd like to read your posts and hear what you have to say, but most of us don't feel like digging through rather flimsy concealment mechanisms to do it. In other words, please don't pull these message-hiding tricks anymore.

Actually, "display:none;"ing out spoilers might be a clever trick if you really want to hide them. However, if you're doing that you should probably tell people how to see them (or just go with white font on white).

Furthermore, I strongly suspect (but am not entirely certain) that trying to sneak Javascript onto the Board will get the Nameless Admin to stir from wherever they are to at least delete your post.

Anyways, since I haven't said it below, welcome to the PPC!

And just for fun, I think the following piece of encrypted English text might be of interest to you (you've probably seen the plaintext recently)

Lzgm kzsdl escw lzqkwdx dwyatdw. Khwdd ugjjwuldq sfv mkw yggv yjseesj lg lzw twkl gx qgmj stadalq — jwewetwj, lzw HHU ak s xgjuw xgj yggv ojalafy, sfv lzsl afudmvwk KHsY. Ozwjwnwj qgm sjw af lzw HHU ugeemfalq, khwdd, hmfulmslw sfv yjseeslakw lg lzw nwjq zayzwkl klsfvsjv. Guuskagfsd zgfwkl eaklscwk oadd tw xgjyanwf, gx ugmjkw — tml wnwjqlzafy wdkw skavw, al’dd tw zsjv xgj wnwjqgfw lg mfvwjklsfv qgm sfv jwkhgfv lg qgm ax qgm yg, "GEY! A usfl twdanw lszl fwokl egnaw ak gml! Alk kg yj8!"

- Tomash

The Cat-on-the-Keyboard is real, as far as I know. I've enjoyed many a good conversation about overthrowing mythological governments such as the Underworld, and general good fun.

I enjoy FPS games, puzzle games, MOBAs, and some other genres. As for board games, I haven't played many. The only one that I've played recently was Monopoly, but that never ends well. I do play a couple card games, such as Spite and Malice, Golf, Texas Hold'em, and others I cannot remember as of this moment.

The point of this post is a feeler, one could say - I was unsure if people were interested in this general area, so I made this. This community is built on intelligent criticism, and I've been meaning to write a story involving code. To be more specific, I've been thinking about creating a game with a storyline based heavily around code, which involves solving puzzles and ciphers in order to guide the player through the story. Sorry for any misunderstandings; I do enjoy to be vague sometimes purely to watch and judge a reaction as a way to gauge people's attitudes. Cheers.

Unrelated, but what kind of video games, and do you like board games?

Quite what for, though, I'm not entirely sure. You don't really appear to have given any sort of reason--or call, if you will--to get all up in arms. More let us know that you like to obfuscate your methods of communication.

I have no problem with puzzles, personally, but why would you want to hide your commentary in a place literally built on intelligent criticism?

Also, remember that with every new post made, an older discussion drops off the bottom of the page, so be mindful of whether or not your topic warrants its own thread. Perhaps the coders here will want to discuss this in thorough detail, but to me it seems like this could probably have been posted as an addendum to your intro post.
Just in case you were feeling like a 1337 haxxor, remember my coding ability.
--Key is a pillar of the community; she gets to be standoffish and haughty. Especially to the people she knows in Real Life :P

P.S. Let me know if I'm annoying you

A few personal favorites of mine are the Hamish X series, The Hitchhiker's guide, and the Abhorsen books.

This is for those who can read it. Look closely.
Hidden Message Found! Congratulations. I'll be doing this in whatever I post, purely for that little bit of added commentary. I'm a major code and cryptology nerd.