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StarMUD is a scifi themed text-based MUD (Multi-User Dungeon or Domain or Dimension) based on the MudOS driver and written in the LPC programming language. StarMUD was first opened to the public in 1992, run by Dent and Butter. It originally made use of the TMI Mudlib, but in 1994 underwent a completely custom recode by Dent to what has become known as Starlib. StarMUD holds the distinitions of being almost completely custom coded from scratch. It has also been rated one of the top MUDS on the MUDLIST. StarMUD is completely free to play.

Administration & History

StarMUD was originally housed at Solace Computer Society's servers at Mid Sweden University in Sundsvall, Sweden. In 1999 it moved to a privately owned, dedicated server in Austin, Texas.

StarMUD has undergone changes in management over the years, its original administrators, Dent and Butter (who later changed his name to Blackheart) having retired and left MUD maintenance to newer admins, Zac and Ravnos. All new code implementations are overseen by the administration, and the day to day operations of the game are lead by a group of dedicated Archwizards.

StarMUD has undergone several drastic overhauls of its codebase over the years, and is still currently being actively worked on.

Game play

StarMUD has few roleplaying elements, instead favoring a complex combat system and extensive inter-player communication system. Players may play one of many available species, and join one of several professions, subprofessions, or player organized factions. Killing monsters and solving quests earns the players experience points and credits, which they can spend to raise their skills and statistics. Those skills and statistics are ranked against the other players in an evaluation system, instead of the typical level systems seen in many more traditional MUDs.

Several professions are available, loosely based on various sci-fi novels and movies. Professions include space marines, cybermercs, scientists, cybermages, cavaliers, martialists, and a few others. Most professions also have specializations, or subprofessions which give a little more variety in game play. Several professions have also been folded or renamed over the years. For example the martialists were previously known as kombatants (in homage to the video game Mortal Kombat, which was quite popular when they debuted on StarMUD) and scientists were once known as doctors. There were originally only three professions available marines, cybermercs, and doctors.

This a group for professionals and experts interested, qualified or involved in all aspects of the energy situation: technology, resources, policy, modelling, geopolitics, economics, politics, conservation, renewables, transmission, power grids, construction rates.

Climate change and peak oil are taken as givens.

Its objectives are to produce a genuine network of interconnected experts (ie an interlock diagram not merely a list), covering all aspects of the energy problem who together can provide authoritative and coherent understanding and explanation of the way forward at a detailed and macro level, over a 50 year time frame and going from UK to Europe and World level.

This network is a resource providing anything form a one page briefing to a complete book; able to answer questions from journalists and policy makers.

Participants include 150 senior executives of large power station operators, energy utilities, UK and other National Grids, Civil Service, senior academics, engineers, managers, consultants, biologists, economists, policy analysts, architects, sociologists, agronomists, reflecting a wide range of expertise and knowledge.

A subset of members are producing the Claverton Energy Briefing Note - a coherent statement of the critical issues facing us and the appropriate well thought out responses. Whilst it is impossible to produce a total consensus, by means of intense online debates and several conferences a workable majority consensus can be produced. This will appear as a book in 2008.

The intention is to grow the network to have enough experts at the various nodes ( ie points in the interlock diagram containing real world subsystems - resource stocks, power generating systems, housing stocks, etc) to be able to map and model the real world interactions between various components of real world energy systems.

This then makes it easier for detailed computer modellers to take rough cuts and to do detailed analysis. this is along the lines of Interlock research and the Claverton Energy Group is and Information Routing Group.

Thinspiration (a portmanteau of thin and inspiration) is a term that refers to a role model used by people (often individuals with eating disorders) to inspire them to lose weight. The term (sometimes shortened as "thinspo") is most common in the pro-ana or pro-mia communitys.

Typically the thinspiration is a very thin female, usually a well known actress or a model, particularly one who successfully lost weight, or is known or rumored to have (or have had) an eating disorder.

Thinspiration is displayed through pictures and, more recently, YouTube videos made by pro-Ana supporters. These videos are often a series of pictures of thin, often emaciated, girls backed up by a “thinspirational song” such as "Paper Bag" by Fiona Apple or "Courage" by Superchick. Celebrities co-opted as thinspirational role models, such as Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie, often are the subjects of "before" and "after" weight loss videos.

"Negative thinspiration" (also called a reverse trigger) is sometimes used to describe photos of obese people. An eating disordered individual projects his/ her feelings of self-disgust, in response to perceived "fatness" and the "weakness" of hunger, onto the overweight person pictured, effectively reinforcing the importance of starvation.

Blogging sites such as Xanga and Livejournal offer communities and groups that post pictures of thin people that will be used for the purpose of starving.




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