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Television General An old television, complete with a "rabbit-ears" antenna. |
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Tempest Ship Video Games The ship from Atari's "Tempest" arcade game. |
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Tengwar Romen Literature The letter romen, in J.R.R. Tolkien's Elvish Tengwar alphabet, is the hard r sound (as in road or Elrond). Notes: During my study of the Elvish languages, I learned how to write (but not necessarily read) the letters. |
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Tengwar Ungwe Literature The letter ungwe, in Tengwar, is the g or gw sounds (as in Gandalf or Tengwar) and sometimes ngw, depending on the mode of Elvish used. |
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Tetris Video Games A T-shape tetromino, as used in the puzzle game Tetris. |
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Thief General A knife. Notes: For base thieves, fuel thieves… |
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THINK General A representation of IBM's "smarter planet" logo. Notes: This is a play on two things: the old IBM slogan "THINK", created by their first chairman, Thomas J. Watson, in 1935; and his namesake, the Watson AI supercomputer that competed on the quiz show Jeopardy! in 2011. The Watson computer's "avatar" on the show was this symbol. |
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Thrust Ship Video Games The ship from the Commodore 64 game Thrust, on which XPilot is partially based. Notes: Yes, it's supposed to look off-yellow. (C64 palette, remember?) |
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Thunderbolt General A thundercloud. |
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Tick Tock General An old-fashioned alarm clock. |
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TIE Advanced Star Wars The TIE Advanced X-1 prototype is Darth Vader's personal fighter. Unlike other TIEs, it is equipped with a shield generator and hyperdrive, and thus is a bit slower. Notes: From the original Star Wars movie. |
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TIE Advanced (dorsal) Star Wars An overhead view of the TIE Advanced. Notes: I often wonder whether XPilot ships ought to be designed as they would look from the top, the front, or the side. So I modified some of these TIEs to see how they'd look from the top. |
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TIE Bomber Star Wars These are obviously TIEs used for bombing missions. Notes: From The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. |
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TIE Fighter Star Wars Your generic, garden-variety TIE fighter. Notes: From the original Star Wars trilogy. |
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TIE Fighter (dorsal) Star Wars An overhead view of the generic TIE fighter. |
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TIE Interceptor Star Wars These fast and agile TIEs can nearly outfly Rebel A-wings. Notes: From Return of the Jedi. |
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TIE Interceptor (dorsal) Star Wars An overhead view of the Interceptor. |
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Toilet General A flying toilet! Notes: ***F L U S H*** |
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Tool Man General An end-wrench. Notes: This was originally called simply "Wrench", but that word was getting repetitive. Then I thought of the TV show Home Improvement, and settled on this name. |
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Tornado General A tornado. |
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Tower of Hanoi Games The "Tower of Hanoi" or "Towers of Hanoi" is a mathematical puzzle involving three poles and many \ isks of different sizes. The object is to move the stack, one disk at a time, from one pole to another, without placing a larger disk on top of a smaller one. Notes: The minimum number of moves to solve the puzzle can be calculated with the formula x=2n−1, where n is the number of disks. |
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Trash Can General, Television A trash can. Notes: This persona was appropriately named Oscar (the Grouch). |
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Treasure Egg General A treasure chest. Notes: Kind of like a Nest Egg, except it's in a chest. |
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Treebeard Literature, Movies A tree. (The name refers to the character of Treebeard the Ent in The Lord of the Rings.) Notes: I know, I know…it looks nothing like an Ent. Quote: "It takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish..." |
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Triforce Video Games The symbol of the Golden Power in The Legend of Zelda series of Nintendo video games. |
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Triple Bar Games A triple-bar from a slot machine. Notes: The words BAR were added to the color version. |
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TriStar General Based on the logo from the early '90s "Exploriens" LEGO sets. Notes: No idea why I picked this name. |
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Tron Movies It is the 'N' from the logo of the original TRON (1982). Notes: I couldn't think of anything better that I haven't already made. |
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Tron Tank Movies One of the tanks from the original TRON (1982). Notes: The color version still needs work. Quoth Flynn: "I should never have written all those tank programs…" |
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Turkeyoid Animals, Arthropoids A turkey. Notes: I use this on Thanksgiving occasionally. |
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UFO General An… unidentifiable flying thing. Notes: Made out of boredom. |
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Uncle Pennybags Games A top hat, like the token in the board game Monopoly. Notes: "Uncle Pennybags", of course, is the mascot of that game. |
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USB Technology The Universal Serial Bus (USB) symbol. |
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US Route Road Signs The US Federal Highway route marker. Notes: There are 7 remaining active US highways in California (there were about 16 before 1964); however, I chose 12 routes, both old and new, for the animation here. |
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Vac'n Shake General A vacuum. Notes: This pokes fun at an old XPilot player named Shake'n Vac. |
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Vegetable General A carrot. Notes: "Regrettable vegetable" is another of our private jokes. |
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Vulcan Shuttle Star Trek Star Trek: The Motion Picture. |
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Vulture Animals A vulture. Notes: "VULTURES… VULTURES!!" |
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Whale Animals It's a whale. Notes: I was thinking of Shamu from Sea World. |
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Wheat Thins General, Mrnexrad A facsimile of a box of Wheat Thins crackers. Notes: This was another of Mrnexrad's frequently-used personas. |
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White Rabbit Animals, Literature, Music A rabbit. Notes: This refers both to the character in Lewis Carroll's Alice books, and to the Jefferson Airplane song of the same name. |
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Who Cares? Mrnexrad Who cares if this has a description? |
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WinBrick Video Games From the European shareware block breaking game of the same name. By Stefan Kuhne of Soft & Fun; the website is here. |
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Windows Technology It is the Windows logo. Notes: Don't sue me Bill… |
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Woodpecker Animals It is a pileated woodpecker. Notes: You know that noise you make when you tap on a door with your fingernail…? |
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X Logo Technology The logo of the X Window System. |
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Xmas Light General A Christmas light. |
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Xmas Present General A gift-wrapped package. Notes: Sometimes our personas using these three ships were "Xmas Past", "Xmas Present", and "Xmas Future", like the three ghosts in A Christmas Carol. |
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Xmas Tree General A Christmas tree. |
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X-Wing Fighter Star Wars Arguably the most advanced single-pilot starfighter in the galaxy. Notes: From the original Star Wars trilogy. |
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Yabba Dabba Doo Television A representation of Fred Flintstone's car from the animated sitcom The Flintstones (1960-1966). The name, of course, is Fred's well-known exclamation "YABBA-DABBA-DOO!". Notes: While playing a game of TZX with us during a visit to our house recently, our uncle uttered that very exclamation, seemingly out of the blue; I looked over at his screen and saw that he had destroyed a cannon and gotten a couple of wides. Though I didn't make the ship immediately (lazy, remember?), that was when I thought of it. |
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Y-Wing Fighter Star Wars An older, slower starfighter in the Rebel fleet, often used as a bombing craft. Notes: From the original Star Wars trilogy. |
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Zapper Bug Arthropoids A bug of some sort—waterbug, perhaps? Notes: One of my oldest ships. |
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Zefram Cochrane's Phoenix Star Trek Star Trek: First Contact. Notes: Pfft. That's three ships named "Phoenix" in this mess. Next thing I'll have an actual burning phoenix! |
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