Pyramid sets are among the most simple methods to leave behind a workout plateau that seems impossible to overcome. Here is how to use them in all their glory.
No, not really, although I would have loved to connect pyramid sets with ancient Egypt and thousands of years of culture. Hinting at that always gives off that aura of solidity. And you can't get much more solid than a pyramid.
This is the entire concept in a nutshell and just applying these pure basics can give your muscular development the bit of oomph it might be missing. If you want to take pyramids to the edge and find out what else they can do for you, check Wolf's article!
Picture courtesy of Aleksandar Cocek.
I love to do pyramids – whether it is the same exercise done for a different # of reps with different pounds or different exercise at each # of reps – I think pyramids are a great way to mix things up.
Yep! I had some great success with them myself!
Love pyramids. Used to do them all the time with my swimmers (ex swim coach). They are good for the body AND the mind.
Oh great reminder! I haven't done pyramid sets in a long long time. Definitely help to mix things up, keep them interesting and challenging!


My little sister jumped out of an airplane.
February 20th, 2009 | Author: Dave Q.
I just have one question for you, Olga. Does the word "splat" mean anything to you?
I'm glad there was visual evidence of this, because I had a hard time believing my little sister would do this. Wow. Gotta give you props, Olga. I'm glad you made it down in one piece.
Surprisingly, skydiving is actually on my to-do list. Right between finding a cure for hickups and testing a beef-flavored sunscreen in shark infested waters.


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A Tale of Two Tales of One Zombie Tale
Throughout its just-concluded seven-week run, the first season of FEAR THE WALKING DEAD drew a wide range of responses in internet locales where people gather to discuss such things. My entirely anecdotal impression is that reaction to the show was closely divided, with those registering in the negative holding a slight majority and virtually no one offering entirely unalloyed enthusiasm. Take that for what it's worth. Not much, in my view.[1] It's enough to say a lot of people didn't like it and even those who did like it didn't like big, meaty chunks of it.
A persistent feature of this commentary, offered by partisans both pro and con, is the idea that FTWD is significantly inferior to its parent series, THE WALKING DEAD. This sentiment has, I'll confess, somewhat baffled me. FTWD is little more than a cut-and-paste of TWD. Every one of the shortcomings that made it such a spectacular creative failure is a direct import from the parent. But while FTWD carried over nearly all of TWD's problems, it carried over few of the gimmicks TWD has developed to conceal them.
Obviously, there's a lot in that to unpack. While FTWD has only one season under one creative team, TWD has had five featuring episodes of often wildly varying quality crafted under three different showrunners. Insofar as comparisons go, this makes TWD stubbornly resistant to any overly broad generalizations--for any pound-for-pound evaluation, one must break it down a bit.
To get the easy part out of the way up front, nothing FTWD has done can touch the best of TWD. The awesome TWD pilot, for example, or "The Grove" from season 4 shame the entire FTWD project. But of course very little TWD has done can touch the best of TWD either. Its a series that peaked in its first ep, "Days Gone Bye," which still absolutely towers over everything that has followed. Beyond it, TWD's top-shelf episodes could be counted on the fingers of one hand with digits to spare. Very few and far between and so anomalous they usually seem more like happy accidents that creeped in from some other series.
Below that, there are the more numerous eps that, while perhaps quite good by TWD standards, aren't ones that, outside that comparative context, would necessarily earn the word "great. These are disproportionately concentrated in TWD's first and fourth seasons and nothing offered by FTWD can touch them either.
But then we come to the rest. Many fans who comment on TWD seem to have allowed their overall impression of it to be disproportionately shaped by its few better moments but no reasonable evaluation can fairly ignore the great mass of TWD, the problem-plagued mediocre-to-godawful eps. These make up most of the series' run; they must form the bulk of any general estimation of its merits. And by any comparative estimation, FTWD fits in among them rather neatly. I don't really care to spend much time weighing the relative merits of such poorly constructed episodes in order to more precisely pinpoint where FTWD's installments may fall in relation to them.[2] Mine is a pound-for-pound comparison, not a kilogram-for-kilogram one. It's sufficient to say FTWD's eps are certainly as "good" as or better than most of what happened in TWD seasons 2 and 3 and as "good" as or better than large swathes of season 5 and a not-insignificant number of eps from even season 4.
More to the point here are the reasons these eps are, qualitatively, such close acquaintances. FTWD is simply a clone of TWD, basically the same show set on a different coast, and the problems that sank it are all direct inheritances from the parent. They aren't just both poorly written in general; they're poorly written in the same way.
Both are populated by a raft of extremely unlikable characters. From the gullible wimp Travis to the petulant brat Chris, from junky Nick, who feeds his habit by stealing the meds of a dying old man, to Madison, who refuses to render aid as her neighbor is attacked by a zombie, FTWD's characters were an across-the-board fail of epic proportions, leaving viewers with no one interesting to follow and no one about whom they could care in the least. The top item cited by those who have, in recent weeks, tried to make a case for the superiority of TWD is that it, unlike FTWD, features likable characters. Again, TWD's much longer run can complicate comparisons--it has featured many more characters over a much longer period of time--but taken as a whole, it has the same problem. From Rick 5.0, who was prepared to turn over Michonne to GINO to be slowly tortured to death even while admitting this wouldn't save the rest of them, to Andrea and Lori, who were so hated that fans openly celebrated their eventual deaths, from Shane the obsessive, murderous cartoon maniac to early Carol, who angrily blamed Rick for her own daughter's stupidity then declined to even take part in the search for the missing girl, TWD's ensemble has also been a parade of off-putting personalities.
Where the TWD partisans sort of have a point is that, unlike with FTWD so far, they're not always off-putting. That sort of gets to the item that makes this particular comparison the most difficult, TWD's abandonment in its second season of any effort at being a character drama and its descent, instead, into full-blown soap melodrama. I've written a lot about this here over the years. My piece "A Melodrama Problem" hits most of the significant points. The short version is that this low-grade melodrama model largely eschews any effort at creating strong, consistent characters in favor of characterizations that are dictated almost entirely by temporary plot needs and that arbitrarily shift, often radically, with those needs. Characters don't evolve in any logical way; they're just suddenly changed. Then changed again. Then changed again:
"TWD's central concern is merely to create one artificial scenario after another aimed at generating those emotional reactions. In one episode, Lori berates Shane for his selfishness in suggesting they should call off the search for Sophia; an ep or two later, she's berating Rick for volunteering to go to the tavern in town to fetch Beth's father after Beth falls ill; she guilt trips Rick and says their son, who had no pressing need for Rick at all at the moment, needed him there, as if he was entirely abandoning the boy if he left long enough to drive a mile up the road and back; minutes after Rick leaves, she, herself, abandons their son and takes a car to pursue and retrieve Rick; she tells Rick to kill Shane; a few eps later, after Rick did that very thing, she's furious about it. Lots of overwrought melodrama in all of those situations but no effort at anything remotely resembling consistent characterization.
"Multiply that by every significant character and you have TWD."
Among other things, this means we do, indeed, sometimes get likable characters from TWD. Carol from the early seasons was a cringe-worthy presence. Then she was suddenly converted into a sort of grim survivalist, much more interesting. That character was assassinated by having her commit two utterly pointless, cold-blooded murders (in one of TWD's many rounds of "demonize the survivalist"). Later still, she suddenly became a character who pretended to be a mousy housewife in public while privately scheming and offering up a string of blackly humorous wisecracks. Easily the most entertaining version of the character but one whose most amusing element has absolutely no basis in any previous version and was suddenly tacked on to Carol solely because Z NATION, with its black humor schtick, had appeared. With TWD, the characterizations are changed on a dime and by no means are the changes always for the better. In the first season, Rick was written as tough, smart, brave, a fellow who had demonstrated significant leadership skills. With season 2, that original character basically ceased to exist and the 2.0 version was plopped down in his place, a character who was, as I've written in the past, "overly emotional, weak-willed, indecisive and just plain dumb--almost the polar opposite of 1.0 in every way and no leader at all." To date, there have been 8 major versions of Rick. Most of them have sucked.[3] Whether or not a given character is written as likable at any given moment is entirely dependent on whether the writers of a given ep are spinning a story that, for that moment, requires the character be likable. FTWD hasn't managed any likable or interesting characters yet. TWD hasn't managed any stably likable or interesting ones.[4]
FTWD's creators have opted to make of it a melodrama rather than a character drama--cut-and-paste, cut-and-paste. How far down that trail it will eventually go remains to be seen. Its first season didn't inspire much hope that it will be handled in the finer tradition of the classic melodrama. Rather, its writing persistently displayed the same sloppiness, randomness and what-the-hell contempt for logic, character motivations, consistency and everything other than generating that melodrama to be found in the sorriest specimens of the species. The stuff we get from TWD.
I've documented TWD's hopelessness on this at greater length than even I'd care to believe. In season 3, Andrew, one of the former prisoners, opened the gates to the prison to allow zombies to enter and baited the creatures into the facility. Chaos ensued. In "Say The Word," the next ep, Lori has just died, T-Dog has died and Carol is missing. Rick is out of his mind with absurdly over-the-top grief over the death of his awful wife and is entirely unresponsive. And they have a newborn baby on their hands. With all of this and with the prison full of zombies and an entire army of the creatures probably bearing down on it from every direction--Andrew repeatedly sounded the huge prison alarm in order to attract them--Daryl, Glenn and Maggie--every remaining able-bodied adult--immediately decide their most pressing priority is to leave the prison grounds entirely and try to find some baby formula somewhere. Daryl, in solemnizing the decision, declares they're going to find that formula because they aren't going to lose another of their own this day but they're leaving the infant about whom they're allegedly so concerned in the care of a crippled old man who had only just recently lost one of his legs and is, at the moment, stuck standing on the remaining one in the yard. He can't get out of the sun or even sit down--the building is full of zombies. He certainly has no way of defending the facility if Andrew's alarm draws more. He's left to tend the baby with, as his only company, two children, a lunatic and two former prisoners no one even trusts. Glenn ultimately opts to stay behind only because Daryl can't fit three people on his motorcycle. And why is it so important to immediately go out and find formula for baby? Well, in nine months of pregnancy, neither Lori nor anyone else has bothered to acquire any.
Must it really be noted that nothing about any part of this makes a damn bit of sense?
FTWD plots the same way. In "The Dog," Madison and her family are so sure there's a major crisis afoot they're preparing to abandon their home, the sort of thing people would only do in the most extreme circumstances. Travis has been caught in a riot in Los Angeles. Rather than staying glued to the television in an effort to learn as much as possible about what's happening--the thing everyone would do in such a situation--Madison sits down with her kids for a game of Monopoly. When the power fails and they hear a zombie creeping around outside their home, they try to locate it via the stealthy technique of shining a really bright light out the window. They hear something at the sliding glass door and jerk back the curtain to find a dog. Nick then opens the door and immediately turns his back on it to pet said dog and talk to the others. They decide the thing to do is go next door and try to steal a neighbor's shotgun and as they depart, they leave their own door standing wide open behind them, allowing the zombie to enter. From the neighbor's house, they see Travis return. To the home they've just allowed to be invaded by the zombie. Rather than running out the neighbors' front door, which would put them within a few strides of Travis as he sits in the driveway or just opening the window through which they're watching and sounding a warning, they opt to return home via the much more elaborate and time-consuming route they took on the trip over, navigating a garden maze, climbing a fence, crawling down a big dumpster. So concerned are they about getting back home to use their purloined gun to save Travis from being eaten that they don't bother to bring with them the shells for the gun and Alicia has to race back to get them. And so on.
This sounds like a comedy spoofing zombie fiction but the only laughs here are entirely unintentional.
Character motivations in both series trend from poorly conceived to non-existent to vehemently counter-logical. Andrew's big plan in TWD was to flood the prison with zombies so that the creatures could kill all our heroes then he and the other former inmates--guys who would also be in the path of the zombie horde he's unleashing and are, unlike our heroes, entirely unarmed--could retake it for their own. That same season, ("Made To Suffer"), GINO gathers his lieutenants around him and says he wants to destroy the group at the prison. He has absolutely no reason for wanting to do this and doesn't offer one--even says he has no interest in the prison itself. He's just the designated villain and the designated villain, it seems, must do villainous things. In FTWD ("Cobalt"), the story is the same; it's revealed that the Evil Military has decided the way to deal with an extinction-level event in which the dead become the army of the enemy is to kill the few living people who are left. In "The Good Man," Cpl. Andy, who has been tortured by Daniel, believes Daniel is intent on killing him and convinces Travis to release him. Near the end of the ep, he becomes one of the most tired cliche's in movies and television--that bad decision that comes back to bite you--as he returns, waving a gun with blood in his eye. The corporal's military has been wiped out. He has nowhere to go. It's perfectly understandable he would want revenge on Daniel but instead of shooting the fellow who hurt him, he turns and randomly shoots his girlfriend instead! Probably the only person left in the world who still loves him.
The writing of both series is perpetually plagued by another tired hack's trope, poorly-constructed plots that are artificially extended far beyond their natural expiration date by characters who decline to share critical information with one another, information they wouldn't, under any circumstances, actually fail to share. In TWD season 2 ("Nebraska"), Dale collects a great deal of evidence that Shane is an unbalanced killer, an ongoing danger to the entire group, yet when he confronts Lori about this he declines to share any of that accumulated evidence, even when Lori specifically demands it from him. He just chalks it up to a bad feeling he's gotten because he's known guys like Shane in the past! Dale sees Andrea falling under Shane's spell and talks to her about it--he again declines to share what he knows. The same dynamic is repeated in season 3 between Michonne and Andrea over GINO. Michonne collects a lot of evidence that something is rotten in Woodbury but whenever she tries to convince Andrea to leave refuses to share any of it, saying only that her "gut" tells her something is wrong. In FTWD, Alicia is tending to her zombie-bitten boyfriend and Madison virtually kidnaps her while refusing to explain why Alicia must leave and stay away (later, away from Madison's watchful eye, Alicia nearly returns to him). While the world may be coming to an end around them, Madison keeps Alicia entirely in the dark as to what's happening, putting Alicia in a great deal of danger. When Travis is afraid his son may be in danger, he talks to the boy's mother, his ex-wife Liza. He doesn't bother to tell her what it's all about and she becomes incredibly bitchy, basically rearguing their former custody dispute rather than trying to be helpful.
That last touches on another unfortunate aspect of FTWD ported over from the parent, a rather ugly streak of misogyny. As I've covered, the creators of TWD, for a very long time, wrote the lady characters like their own least favorite ex-wives--bitchy, stupid, unhelpful and unpleasant. On FTWD, Liza's petty bitchiness made her instantly unlikable. Later, she was recruited by a sinister doctor to lie to the civilians and help the Evil Military whisk away a number of them, including Nick. When Madison's neighbor is attacked by a zombie, Madison not only fails to render any aid, she physically bars the door in order to prevent her daughter from doing so. Then later, when she and the others are preparing to leave the safe-zone after they've learned the military intends to kill everyone in it, she doesn't bother to warn her neighbors, self-righteously sniffing that when the military came for her Nick, none of those neighbors came to her aid. When the military had occupied her neighborhood, she unleashes on Travis a torrent of absolutely pointless abuse about being left to handle too many domestic affairs herself--a cliche' monologue phoned in from some daytime soap or Lifetime movie.
On neither series do the writers do a very good job of keeping up with what they've written in the past. In "Clear," Rick returns to his hometown in order to recover guns from the storage cage of the police station where he once worked--guns he, himself, had cleaned out in the TWD pilot. In FTWD "So Close, Yet So Far"), Travis realizes the dead are, in fact, dead. "They come back," as he puts it. Then in the next ep ("The Dog"), he reacts with disbelief when Nick suggests the zombies are dead. "Why would you say that?" Minutes later, he has a discussion with Liza in which she says he was right. Right, that is, in previously saying "they come back." Shortly after that, he's flipped again, arguing that Madison shouldn't kill her zombified neighbor because they don't know if the woman is dead. "We don't know that. We don't know anything."
Much of TWD and all of FTWD could be summed up as "really stupid people randomly crashing into one another." While FTWD inherited its problems from TWD though, it didn't adopt the gimmicks by which TWD has concealed those problems. Glen Mazzara assumed TWD's showrunner post during production of TWD's second season. The first half of that season was disastrous. A pair of planned eps that would have launched it with much more of a bang ended up being abandoned.[5] The gap created by their loss was filled by simply stretching the plot of what was left to cover more eps and still get events to the same point by the already-carved-in-stone midseason break. The result was deadly dull, a poorly-paced, poorly written, repetitive mess. Rather than addressing the series' mounting problems, Mazzara adopted the tactic of throwing zombies at them, or, more generally, throwing action at them. In the second half of the season, the zombies, who had practically disappeared for a time, were suddenly back in force. The effect of picking up the pace and adding more action--even, as was often the case, entirely gratuitous action--pacified viewers and acted as a sort of camouflage for the problems. TWD has used this tactic ever since. FTWD, partly due to the nature of the series' story and largely, one suspects, as a consequence of budgetary limitations, didn't have this option open to it. All of its budgetary resources for such things seemed to have been poured into its season ender and the massive zombie horde unleashed in that ep did, indeed, manage to convince some who had been quite critical of the series up 'til then to praise that ep as its best, though it was, in reality, just as problematic as every other ep had been. It just wasn't as boring.
The most significant thing FTWD lacked right out of the gate, though, was TWD's superior first season. TWD began as a spectacularly appealing novelty, not only a zombie apocalypse on weekly television but one that had been specifically tooled for a mainstream audience--watered down, dumbed down and with the horror and survivalist elements significantly dialed back. TWD's great pilot was followed by a serviceable if flawed first season with a relatively good lead in Rick 1.0, some very solid character interactions and memorable moments that allowed the series to build a great deal of good will among its audience. It became a water-cooler show, the thing about which everyone talks the next day. When this happens, viewers commit to a series. This attachment can be extremely difficult to break. When Mazzara assumed the reins as showrunner, the series creatively collapsed as dramatically as a truckload of pianos going over a cliff but by then, it had already sunken a hook deeply into its audience. FTWD didn't have these advantages. As I and others have noted, it's more like what TWD would have been had its first season never happened and it had instead started under the season 2 Mazzara regime.
And to state the obvious, had that happened with TWD, TWD would have ceased to exist years ago.
[1] The only firmer data we have come from the series' Nielsen ratings. According to Nielsen, the series opened to a large audience exceeding 10 million viewers. This plummeted until FTWD's 4th ep, when it evened out at 6.6 million viewers. Still in themselves respectable numbers for a cable series but a pretty steep drop. And the lost audience didn't return at the end either. Traditionally, the season opener and ender are the highest-rated eps of a series' season. FTWD's season ender barely increased over its ratings nadir, rising only to 6.8 million. It's safe to say that nearly 100% of FTWD's viewership is derived from TWD's viewership but TWD was drawing more than 15 million viewers at times last season. FTWD's ratings mostly mirror the "where's Sophia?"-into-infinity low-point of TWD season 2.
Insert as caveat my usual rant about the Nielsens, a ratings system riddled with problems everyone seems to acknowledge, even as no one is willing to give up the system.
[2] And I realize this refusal to parse things to that fine a degree is arguably a weakness of my analysis but when one is talking about the bottom of the barrel, what's the point, really? When the eps are bad, stupid and just don't work, they're bad, stupid and just don't work.
[3] I included an appendix to this article outlining "The Eight Ricks" to date.
[4] And before anyone yells "Daryl"--for much of TWD's run, the series' most popular character by far--I'd remind them that even Daryl spent the first season as a dumb, unlikable, unidimensional redneck jerk
[5] Frank Darabont, while he was still showrunner, wanted to open the season with an ep described as "Blackhawk Down With Zombies," a story of a group of soldiers who are cut off from their unit and have to try to escape Atlanta. His next ep was one in which our heroes revisit the Atlanta nursing home from "Vatos," find it overrun by the dead and have to fight their way out of town. The first of these was vetoed, the second filmed but abandoned, apparently because AMC didn't like it.
Posted by cinemarchaeologist at 4:41 PM
veep October 9, 2015 at 9:57 PM
Well done review. Sadly - even though FTWD doesn't deserve it - it will be back for at least another season only because of built-in audience from TWD and who'll watch and defend any drivel "as long as hits got zombies innit" When it returns, it will return with its creative staff convinced they hit a home run last season and, so, should make no adjustment to what seems to work so well.
SUPERGIRL: The Pilot
WALKING DEAD, No Thank You [Updated Below]
Z NATION Goes Down the Mississippi
WALKING DEAD, Just Stop the Stupid
Z NATION's Absentee Zombie Baby Daddy
WALKING DEAD's First Time Again Much Like The Last...
Z NATION Gives Birth To A Zombaby!
FEAR THE WALKING DEAD: When the Good Man Has Bad W...
Z NATION Whips Up Batch 47

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team the Red Arrows
Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team the Red Arrows pictured at the 2018 Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire.
F-15E Strike Eagle taking to the skies
F-15E Strike Eagle assigned to the 494th Tactical Fighter Squadron launching for a training sortie from RAF Lakenheath in April 2019.
Ukrainian Air Force IL-76 Candid
Ukrainian Air Force IL-76 Candid pictured at the 2018 Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire.


Creating a horror game out of folklores of one's country of origin can be both rewarding and educational to its players. As there are many ways to haunt people, it can lead to unique ideas and concepts that the main realm of Western developers haven't yet touched. It's why a game like Antagonist's Through the Woods has left me with a good enough satisfaction after playing through it, despite some of its glaring issues.
Through the Woods has you take control of Karen, a single mother who lives in a cabin with her son Espen. Due to her work, she doesn't take as much time to be a strong parental figure to her son, leading her to sleep in days while Espen feels neglected. When waking up one morning, Karen finds her son being taken on a boat, forcing her to swim towards a new land filled with Norse monsters and creatures. As time runs down to save her son, Karen realizes that she'll have to confront both external and internal demons before the sun rises once more.
Taking a gameplay route similar to that of Outlast or The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Through the Woods will have you traversing through dark forests in search of clues and items that will bring Karen back to Espen. Along the way, you'll find out why her son was taken, leading up to run-ins with the strange locals who speak of sacrifices and grim prophecies. It's when the monsters of mythology slowly emerge when the real heart-stopping moments occur.
What this game gets done right is its atmosphere. Practically throughout my play-through, I felt my heart jump through my rib cage more times than I could count. The darkness of the forest and the feeling of dread as my controller shook with each giant troll's footsteps kept me at a state of urgency all during my time playing this game. Even when you actual see the monsters on-screen, the sight of them chasing down a concerned mother can get freaky as hell!
Of course, like most of the recent survival horror games, Karen is armed only with a flashlight. There's no way to defend yourself, nor are there more than one chance to get away. If you get caught, you're dead. All you can do is light the way somewhat better so as to see the paths you're supposed to take. Be thankful there isn't a battery limit like many of these other titles; otherwise, you would be greeted with death more than you already will.
As you progress, you'll have the chance to learn about Karen and Espen. The revelations that will unfold will make you question the actions of this distraught mother, to the point where she slowly becomes quite the unlikable character. It is when some of the major bombshells are dropped when you start to wonder which fate would've been better for the captured son, all the way down to the game's final minutes. One moral compass will have a hard time with the shocking truths of the mother and son, this reviewer can tell you!
Sadly, while the gameplay mechanics and story are pretty good, it's the technical aspect that keeps Through the Woods from being a completely memorable experience. From how stiff the characters seem to move to its last-gen visuals, Antagonist's game isn't quite the beauty that the Scandinavian nations are known to present to the world. (However, the sights of the trolls and other Norwegian monsters will leave a sufficient chill down one's spine.) It also doesn't help that the forests are riddled with bugs, some of which can cause Karen to be trapped in an area that'll force you to restart from a previous checkpoint.
One of the other flaws of this game is its English dub, which comes off rather wooden for what occurs in the game. With that being said, I highly suggest switching the audio to the original Norwegian, as the voice actors there are filled with the emotional punch that the English one was acting. Also on-par is Dan Wakefield's nerve-shattering score, which takes a minimalistic approach with a heavy string emphasis that harkens to the soundtrack works of Nick Cave & Warren Ellis. It's the right kind of sound that adds to the creepiness factor that the tone of the game delivers so nicely.
What Through the Woods gets right makes it worth traversing through its mysterious forest. Although it could've used a better coat of paint or a better debugger, the overall experience this game delivers is quite satisfying in the very least. Needless to say, this is one horror journey best played with the lights on, even if that'll reveal some of its visual flaws.
Promotional consideration provided by Daniel Matena of 1C Publishing EU. Reviewed on the Xbox One.
We're now on the Apple News app!


As the holiday season gets into full swing, I am again reminded to count my blessings. One of the most precious blessings is my freedom. I can go where I want, eat what I want, watch what I want and so on. We all need to be aware of that freedom, because many of our peers have lost theirs. The "War on Drugs" has created victims, casualties and POWs, in ever increasing numbers.
One of those POWs is from our Big Island "ganja ohana", Rev Roger Christie. He sits in the Federal Detention Center in Honolulu, held without bail for more than five months. This FDC is designed for short-term detention, and has no outdoor yard. Roger hasn't seen the sun or felt the balmy trades in 164 days. His fifth motion for bail was denied by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco recently, and his trial is not until April 26, 2011.
I've sent letters of support to two other heroes of the reform movement, Marc Emery and Rev Eddy Lepp.
Taking a few minutes out of our day to write a letter is easy, and so beneficial to those POWs. Share a photo, or a story about your life. Something, anything to help break up the monotony of the day.
There is a web site which has information about other people in jail for medical cannabis related crimes.
Below are the mailing addresses for Roger, Marc and Eddy. Please find some time to write them and share some aloha.
Thank you for your support and info. I just learned that newspaper articles have to copied.
A newspaper subscription for one month is $70. He can listen to radio and loves C2C.
His latest interest in Remote Viewing by Ed Dames.
I met a young woman in jail and she had spent a year in that FED PEN.
Hey, now PA Jay Kimura's bad-man brother is being sent their for a very long time.


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Q: Find whether the following point of straight lines are intersecting or skew,if they intersect find the point of intersection My attempt:
Let $\frac{x-6}{1}=\frac{y+2}{5}=\frac{z+2}{7}=t$
and $\frac{x-1}{3}=\frac{y-3}{5}=\frac{2-z}{-8}=s$
$L_1$:$x=t+6$;$y=5t-2$;$z=7t-2$
$L_2$:$x=3s+1$;$y=5s+3$;$z=2+8s$
$t+6=3s+1$
=>$t=3s-5$
Again
$5t-2=5s+3$
=>$15s-25-2=5s+3$
=>$s=3$
Substituting s we get
$t=4$
Therefore they are intersecting at one point and the point is $x=4+6$
   => $=10$,
$y=18$,
$z=26$
Pardon me if I did any mistake while writing. I am trying my best.

A: Let's check whether the point you found $(10,18,26)$ on both lines.
$$\frac{10-6}{1}=\frac{18+2}{5}=\frac{26+2}7$$ holds, they are equal to $4$. The point lies on the first line.
$$\frac{10-1}{3}=\frac{18-3}{5}=\frac{2-26}{-8}$$ holds, they are equal to $3$. The point lies on the second  line.
Also, $(1,5,7)$ and $(3,5,8)$ are not multiple of each other, they are not parallel to each other.
You have solved the problem correctly.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Dalakhani (16 February 2000 – 15 January 2021) was an Irish thoroughbred race horse owned and bred by Aga Khan IV and trained by Alain de Royer-Dupré. therefore half-brother to Daylami.

Racing career
Dalakhani won four Group One races: Critérium International as a 2-year old, Prix Lupin, Prix du Jockey Club, and Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe. He was beaten by half a length in the Irish Derby by another Aga Khan Studs horse, Alamshar. He also won two G2 races; overall he won eight of nine starts. In 2003, Dalakhani was voted European Horse of the Year.

Stud career
In 2004, Dalakhani was standing at Gilltown Stud.

In 2008, Dalakhani's colt Conduit won the St. Leger Stakes, the third and longest leg of England's Triple Crown, as well as the Breeder's Cup Turf at Santa Anita. His progeny also include Duncan, Integral and Reliable Man.

Dalakhani was moved to Haras de Bonneval for 2016 and was retired from stud in July 2016. Died on 15 January 2021.

Notable progeny

Dalakhani has sired 10 individual Group 1 winners:

c = colt, f = filly, g = gelding''

Pedigree

References

 Dalakhani's pedigree and racing statistics
 Dalakhani's photo

2000 racehorse births
2021 racehorse deaths
Racehorses bred in Ireland
Racehorses trained in France
Arc winners
European Thoroughbred Horse of the Year
Thoroughbred family 9-e

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


An arm and a leg. Very expensive or costly. A large amount of money. At the drop of a hat. Meaning: without any hesitation; instantly. Back to the drawing board. Idiomatic expressions have long played an important role in the English language. student a surer grasp of the meaning of the English idioms and greater. replace a literal word or expression, and many times the idiom better describes. the full nuance of meaning. Idioms and idiomatic expressions can be more.
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A to Z list of Idioms and phrases with their meanings and examples PDF free download. This lesson you will learn the meaning of some of the idioms from the . Most Important Idioms and Phrases with Meaning and Example PDF Download. 1 year ago List of Idioms and Phrases with Meaning and Exam ple. What are idioms? Idioms and meaning. Idioms are expressions which have a meaning that is not obvious from the individual words. For example, the idiom drive. An idiom is a phrase that has a meaning which is different from the meanings of each individual word in it. For example, if someone says to you "I'm pulling. The goal of this book is to teach you English phrases (not just individual. English words) that you Sometimes I have included a small explanation about when to use the phrase or what exactly it means; Business English. • English Idioms.
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The beautiful sights nature has to offer never seize to captivate me. I like to pay special attention to the lines, patterns, colors and contrast of the elements in a scene. As of late I have become interested in the human figure in nature as a juxtaposition of the natural world and a person path through it.


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In-custody death of inmate from Intake Release Center
Santa Ana, Ca. (Nov. 6, 2022) – On Sunday, Nov. 6, 2022, an inmate housed at the Intake Release Center in Santa Ana died of complications related to a medical condition. The decedent is Roderick Dunning, 58. He was booked into jail on Feb. 21, 2022, from the Metropolitan State Hospital to have a competency hearing related to a robbery and assault on a peace officer charge.
On the morning of Oct. 20, 2022, Dunning was transported to OC Global Santa Ana for evaluation. He died at OC Global on the morning of Nov. 6, 2022. A final cause of death will be determined following toxicology testing and an independent autopsy.
The Orange County District Attorney's Office will investigate the in-custody death. The Orange County Sheriff's Department will conduct an in-custody death review. No additional information will be released at this time.
22-11-06 IRC In-Custody Death.pdf
230.93 KB November 7, 2022


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Sanded the fender flares and as hot pink and purple appeared, my shop radio started playing a Donna Summer song really loud. I think it was Hot Stuff!!!
Last week the car went in for painting and I went out to Pinon, New Mexico to where the original owner use live and race. Fun trip and great rally roads in that area. Unfortunately he lived there so long ago that the people I met at the town store did not remember him. Bummer but still fun. Lots of rocks, through the missile range and dried up river beds. Might have bring the Eagle rally car out there!
Got the car home between showers. Will unload it this weekend. The big stickers had to get removed. Unfortunately they were too far gone. New ones are being made to replace them. I'll start placing the others as well. Then fill with fuel and head to the woods and sand of northern lower!
Looking good! Were they able to use the original silver paint code? It almost looks matte, but that may be my imagination.
Gorgeous paint! Curious as to what the holes cut in the hood are for?
Those are speed holes Ace, they add .5 horsepower each.
Love the car rally, you should put a video of it up on youtube, id love to hear that 390 roar from an eagle.
I believe those holes in the hood were installed a very long time ago. This engine ran hot according to po. The real issue for that that I found was bad ignition timing, advanced too far, and crappy cooling setup. That's all fix now and it runs around 180 now. That cast block generates a lot of heat so the more venting the better climate inside the cab.
Got to spend a short time today placing some stickers and the windshield trim. Need the passenger side top of door trim piece. Need to find one and a mirror for the door.


Real estate folks will start to shoot dirty looks at me. Economists will call me "nay sayer". But I have come to the opinion of late that a house is just a pile of sticks. It is not a golden idol that gets more valuable with time. We spend our adult lives trying to figure out how to acquire this pile of sticks, carefully wrought, in the "right" neighborhood, that says all the right things about us. We willingly commit the next 30 years of our labor to pay for it. It is a transmitter for our souls. Or is it?
Does our home tell everyone who we are inside? Inside our lives and inside ourselves? Maybe. It tells others what we have picked for our shell. The tortoise shell that we carry around on our backs. It is the financial burden on our backs and it is not weightless. It is both refuge and fear. It is the material possession that we most fear losing. Everything will fall apart. Without an address we become "homeless" and most of us are much closer to this possibility than we care to realize. Tottering on the brink. One good financial tweak, or physical injury, and it can all be gone. It is something that many folks long for but cannot obtain. Why?
Whom is building these castles for us? If I just sat down and added up all the lumber, all the drywall, all the shingles, paint, plumbing and wires, how much money would be on this list? For a 2000 SF house, would it all add up to $300,000-$500,000 (or more) worth of materials? I would guess not, but we are willing to plunk that money down and sign up for 30 years of fear. A mortgage. Everyone in charge of this industry is working to make certain that it functions as an ever-increasing value. There is no upper bound. Invest in housing, you will get a big return....right. Many of us learned the hard way in 2008 that false market value is just well, false.
I think those of us in the US remember the Beanie Baby toys? Those plush little toy critters of all colors and of every description. Those seemingly worthless toys made of faux fur, stuffing and synthetic beans had a run of "irrational exuberance", a value bubble that is now burst. Folks were fighting for them in stores. People were selling them in want-ads for $800 or $2000 each. They held conventions for the collectors. Fundamentally, the material content within them was worth pennies. The only thing that gave them value was how people felt about them. Yes, opinion set the market price. Sounds an awful lot like the housing market to me.
Sometimes on the farm, we lose. I could present an upbeat, wholly untruthful narrative about the way things turned out on the farm this year. And, if I did so, I would be lying. We had our share of losses. No corn, and as it turns out, a pitiful vegetable garden plagued in a Biblical fashion. Yes, I would have to call it a plague; RATS.
I have always been aware of their existence on this farm but this past winter was especially easy and I noticed them jumping out of the way in front of my tractor when I mowed in early spring.
They haunted all of my dreams of abundance. I planted 50 of the most lovely, lush paste tomato plants one could ever hope for. I tended them, put manure around their roots, limed the soil to a perfect pH and watched them grow, expand, set flower and fruit. I staked them with a Florida weave, and the green tomatoes abounded.
Then, in the heat of summer, just when the fruit was taking on a nice blush of red, the plague attacked. I entered the garden daily to find each fruit still green at the top and eaten on the red-tinted blossom end. Grrr. Ok, I thought, just a rat or two (there is never just two where they live in cities). Indeed they are a force of destruction, taking a few nibbles out of each-and-every-somewhat-ripe---tomato. While they plundered the tomatoes, my beans grew nearby, untouched and unravaged. Lucky for me my taste runs toward the "haricot vert" side and I picked probably 10 lbs of beans for the freezer. I felt like I was winning. Why is it that I had to erase this last sentence and rewrite it because of Charlie Sheen? He does not belong in my paragraphs.
All went well until the bean shells swelled with fat seeds inside. Now there was a higher nutrient value within the seeds, and the instinct of these remarkable yet disgusting creatures lead them to the bean patch.
Half eaten beans, just barely chewed beans, completely eaten beans and very, very few pristine beans left for me.
The beet seedlings; sheared off at the sprouted tops.
Sweet corn seeds were snatched out of their rows in the ground. No sign of disturbance at the soil surface, just unrealized corn. Again, corn is an abstract this year on the farm.
I checked the sweet potatoes, previously pushing their tough shoulders against the soil, and rupturing it in great cracks above as they muscled through the dirt. All dug out of the soil, and eaten.
My heirloom squash seemed to be defiant. Tough shelled and smooth with a reasonably large diameter, they resisted assault. Fine pairs of flat chisel marks from rodent incisors began to appear on some of the fruit. HA HA! The vermin cannot bite the squash. I quickly harvested all the ripe and near ripe fruits. This may be a sign, and adaptive gardening measure. One should only plant hard shelled veggies. Sigh…not the diverse and tasty garden of my dreams.
The organic, environmental reason for this plague is an imbalance in the ecosystem. Perhaps it is the warm winter we had last year? Perhaps it is the presence of Livestock Guardian Dogs keeping rat predators at bay while ignoring the rats themselves? Perhaps it was the lack of a human presence pushing them back for the past 20 years? Who knows, but this year I am hoping for a mighty winter to descend upon these fields, and for balance to return to the farmstead.
We have two full time working dogs on our farm. One is a Great Pyrenees mix (with Collie I understand), and the other is part Anatolian and part Pyr, which part is which I have no idea. That's her in the back wearing the mask..
These are beautiful, true working dogs. They won't win any pageants covered in burrs as they usually are. But they are on the job all day and all night. Not much escapes their notice and they hear, see and smell all of the threats to their flock. We were told by the breeders of our raccoon masked dog, Daisy, that she would grow up not really caring about people. She was to care for the animals and not much else. We have found this to be very untrue. She loves people, and considers them to be equally as important to protect, especially kids. When working on different areas of the farm, it is very common to have the dogs follow us, and just sit there watching as we mow, make fence, dig or plant. We are part of the flock they are guarding. When the kids go walking, almost always one or the other dog follows with them.
It is truly a safe feeling to be awakened in the night by their barks, and to hear them race off across the farm to protect against some other critter. When you are tent camping, is is reassuring to hear them just outside your canvas wall. They are awake while we sleep. They do an excellent job, and we have lost very few chickens as a result. One can lie in the dark, and listen to their two barking voices, each very unique. Lexie's bark is higher, a bit raspy and squeaky. Daisy has the deepest most improbable voice for a lady, a rumbling low register, big dog bark.
I am amazed by their camaraderie. Lexie the Pyr mix, was brought in as an adoption. Her former farm could not handle her anymore as she was rumored to be chasing their goats. When she arrived, she walked out amidst our chickens, took up a commanding strategic location in the chicken yard, and went to guarding immediately. She has been a steady part of the team ever since. Daisy arrived from her litter in Georgia as a 10 week old pup. She did not guard right away, and took several months to mature. At approximately 8 months old, the guard dog powers were activated. With the teaching example of the older dog, Lexie, she has become the finest of guard dogs. It is impossible to teach these dogs to do what they do. It is pure instinct. It is unique experience to watch a creature fulfill what they are meant to be, and without any human interference. When one dog darts away chasing something, the other is quickly up and away after her.
These dogs are not without their shortcomings however, and we have been working to teach them the boundaries of the farm. It is in the dogs nature to maintain a secure territory. Sometimes this means going on "walkabout" and taking the fight to the coyotes. They dogs will wander, seeking to push the predators further and further away from the home territory. Often this causes them to "go missing" for hours. For a caring dog owner, this is torture. Every Pyr owner I have talked too can tell me a similar story. It is a priority for the dog's boundaries to be clearly established.
These dogs are a great asset on the farm. So much would be lost to predators without them. They completely earn their keep.
My To-Do list got the best of me this year. Or perhaps it was luck? Just as the Midwest is reeling and crops are dying, we in East TN are having climate issues as well. The month of June, I recorded only .65" of rain for the entire calendar month. That is terrible I must tell you, plus for a good part of the month, the daytime high temperatures were over 100 F. Almost unbearable to work in. For sure impossible to grow corn in without irrigation.
In 2011 I planted about 1/4 acre in Oxacan Green Dent Corn. I got it from heirloom seed sellers. My hope was that I would be soon filling my corn crib, and building a seed bank to plant with continuously. I saved two bursting 1 gallon zip lock bags with the seed product of that 2011 crop, fully intending to replant and expand in 2012.
I never got it planted.
Too much infrastructure building going on. Too much bush hogging to do. Too much of too much. Not one kernel of green corn got planted in the ground.
I never thought I could ever be so lucky.
The farm has no formal irrigation system. The system is me with buckets. There is no way I could have kept that crop alive through June, July and August without mechanical/petroleum powered irrigation. I would have lost every last kernel in the weeks of 100 F and higher heat.
So, a failure turns out not be a failure after all, but merely another chance to gamble with nature next year.
LJF 1, Nature 0--- But Nature bats last.
Fall is nearly here, the sun is slanted low in the sky. The evenings have cooled from their uncomfortable highs of summer. And, I have hay in the barn. Hay from my own property. This hay also brought some beautiful friends into our lives. The man we hired to mow it, brought his wife to help us load it into the barn the next day. A blessing, a gift of labor, and we are pleased to now have them as friends.
It is wealth from the bottom of the food chain, the most basic of blessings, the kind of bank that can keep a farm and feed all the animals and people on it. I am a wealthy woman indeed.
I will only have 10% of my running to-do list ever completed.
The Oxacan Green corn above was on the to-do list, but was and epic to-do list failure, or was that a triumph of luck?
I was very pleased when Bear came up to me this weekend, his little hands outstretched, face beaming. In his palms he held some small squash seeds. He was so proud. I asked him where he got those. He told me that the dried gourd on our mantle had fallen down and broken, and that he was saving the seed from inside, because it grew more food, and that it was important to save seeds.
I am proud of my Bear, very proud.
We are born not knowing anything.
The nightshade plant family is as varied as large family full of relatives can be. Many of our favorite vegetables are nightshades; potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and okra. Even the habit forming tobacco plant is in the nightshade family. In addition, there are quite a few unsavory characters lurking around the family reunion; belladonna, ground cherries and horse nettle to name a few. These plants are toxic. And wouldn't you know it, some of the horse nettle variety are lurking around the farm.
A "diva of dirt" gardener friend has often said to me that a weed is just a plant that is in the wrong place. This definitely applies in this situation. A toxic weed is taking up residence near my gardens, and even in them. Wrong plant, wrong place. Unfortunately my organic eradication plan is going to take some time. I have been selectively cutting these with my scythe wherever I can find them, but it seems hopeless, they are persistent, mostly where ground has been disturbed, like my garden. They are especially dangerous to small children whom may find their bright yellow berries to be appealing and eat them.
I feel very little attachment to these wicked little plants. They are bold enough to sport thorns on their stems and on the undersides of their leaves. I have to suppress the urge to lean over and pull them with my bare hands, an act that leads to instant punishment. My drive to remove them often outweighs my fear of thorns, and I have been known to gingerly move the plant stem around looking for a place to get a purchase on it and pull without being bitten. I rarely succeed.
I have noticed this year, that these plants are under particular stress. Pests have played havoc on them, nearly all are blighted and suffering. The drought conditions of June really stress these plants out and to top it off, the potato beetles and flea beetles love them.
Take a look at how utterly wasted this plant looks. The leaves are all thickened and scarred from repeated pest attacks, leaving the plant susceptible to viral and bacterial attack. BONUS!
Then there is the organic gardener's principle of trap crops. Should I even be pulling this plant out at all? If they are so tasty, and in such a weakened state, perhaps these little buggies will leave my beloved nightshades alone, and only harass these ugly nightshades?
I know last year that I was astonished at the speed with which the Colorado Potato Beetles reached my potato plants. Almost immediately upon emergence, they attacked. Within a couple of weeks my poor taters were shredded. It was all because this plant acts as a harborage plant in addition to its trap crop duties. I have squished many a Potato Beetle as it perched on these plants and munched. Glass half empty/glass half full quandary.
Since I seem unable to get totally ahead of the nightshades near the garden, I can always dump the dang glass out and make sure that my desirable nightshades (tomatoes, peppers, potatoes)have all of their immune systems functioning, and that they resist pests with full strength due to good cultural practices.
3) additions of lime to straighten out the pH of the soil. Acid soil binds the minerals and prevents plants from using them. Maintaining the proper pH gives the minerals mobility and they can be used by the plant to build their biological defenses. Oh yes, and store these minerals in their fruit, which we humans like to eat. More nutrients for us bipeds.
Another neat observation; with the stress and possibly disease going on with these, the horse nettle may be its own worse enemy this year. They are potentially, in their weakness, spreading disease amongst themselves. Self annihilation.
Now if only crabgrass could annihilate itself from my garden, we would be on to something.
Label Rouge is what they're called....in France. They are called that here too. But mostly, they are known as "pastured poultry" in the US. These are some pretty unique birds and we received them via mail on June 27th. Since that time they have grown to four times their original size. This is not the typical growth rate of your standard barnyard chicken. These chickens grow to full size in about 12 weeks, at which time they are ready for processing. A typical laying hen can take 6 months to reach full maturity.
I have to preface the following by mentioning that I have no affiliation with the hatchery nor any connection to them. These birds in particular come from the JM Hatchery in PA. They are called "Freedom Rangers". They are a true meat type. One can tell from simple observation that they are bulky and thick in the legs. They have been really interesting to raise so far. While in the brooders, they did not seem to fear humans like other egg breed chicks do. These chickens quickly learn that humans = food. They eat; a lot. And, they grow; fast. When I reached in to place the refilled feeder, some would leap up and try to peck the freckles off my arm. That dear friends, is a sassy chicken.
Today, as I tended them, I watched as they aggressively hunted for the bugs in their pen. Let's face it, when your body grows that fast, you'd better be eating something to fuel it. I saw one chick take a hop-flight in pursuit of a scarab dung beetle that haplessly flew into their pen. The chick caught it, and in doing so alerted his pen mates to the tasty treat. Then, the chick with the bug did the typical chicken with a bug prize evasive maneuvers. About 4 chicks were in hot pursuit. Just in time I set the feeder back in the paddock and the chasers left the chick to his bug snack.
More on these later, I am sure that they will more than keep us amused. These photos were taken last Sunday afternoon. And today the chicks are noticeably larger.
What an upside down weather pattern we have had this summer. We recorded .65" of rain for the entire month of June, and were down to the last 8 inches of water in ten rain barrels. This was all that was left to water the chickens. Indeed, the weather was so hot that I heard of someone's potato crop getting partially cooked in the soil due to nearly two weeks of 100+ temperature. The humidity was ultra low for East TN, where the rain probability was at 10% chance daily. That is horrible I tell you, when you have plants trying to grow.
We used irony to break the drought, and our friends Tim and Kim helped us haul 3 barrels to the lake to bucket-fill. It is this act of desperation alone that caused it to rain two days later, and we have got about 3 inches total this month since then. It is amazing how this works. Hand bucket 165 gallons of water, only to get effortless water just two days later. I cannot complain. I have some really happy tomato plants and about 100 grateful chickens. Not to mention two very hairy dogs whom were very pleased to see the weather change.
As a mom is has been always somewhat bittersweet to purge the house of old baby items. Pacifiers here, jumper suits there. I have a little longing for the baby that once was, at the same time reveling in the child that is. Here is a bit of fun with some of my first son's baby overalls, re purposed into a clothespin bag. This way they aren't wasted, they aren't discarded and are not forgotten. On my pilgrimage to the clothesline, my little one is with me, and I can remember his sweet little time.
In case you are wondering, it is the easiest project ever. Just sew the legs closed and trim the pant leg off about 1/2 inch from the seam. Voila! Clothespin bag.
Off in the distance, a thunder of webbed feet. Duck parade. They travel this way, criss-crossing the farm. Usually follow the leader. Always greeting us looking for food. When they discover that we aren't going to feed them again, away they go, single file back to the pond.


Cloud computing is now growing at a very fast pace for over 4 years now. Strictly related to the increased adoption of cloud technologies there is also an increasing interest in software as a service, as companies of all sizes around the world realized the benefits of paying a subscription for the software they use. In these perspective, software development companies and independent developers around the world build now multi tenant applications. However, multi tenant applications are a tricky from the planning phase, since customer data needs to be strictly isolated, the application itself must be highly available and easily scalable. And, as I also briefly mentioned in my previous article, everything starts from the database. That;s why I would like to briefly point out the main SQL design patterns for multi tenant applications.
In practical examples I will refer mostly to Azure SQL databases and the .NET ecosystem, although the main design patterns are still valid for any relational databases you might want to use. A lot of these aspects are described in different Microsoft Azure documentation articles. My goal is to summarize information that is otherwise dissipated in different sources.
Based on my experience there are two different database design patterns that, whereas a hybrid approach is also possible. These main design patterns are: one database per tenant and a sharded database approach where information generated by several tenants is stored in the same shard of a database.
So why do we need the catalog database? Well, as a developer imagine that if Customer A wants to access some information, you would need a database specific connection string. If customer B wants to access some information, you need a different connection string. If you have 100 customer, than it will be really a huge pain to programmatically play wit connection strings or environment variables and so on. That's where the catalog database comes in. You can use this database to hold information and mappings to each database. And developers can use the Elastic Database Client Library to manage all this information. A major point here is that we will need only one connection string, the one for the catalog database.
However, sharding adds complexity to both the design and operational management. A catalog is required in which to maintain the mapping between tenants and databases. In addition, management procedures are required to manage the shards and the tenant population. For example, procedures must be designed to add and remove shards, and to move tenant data between shards. One way to scale is to by adding a new shard and populating it with new tenants. At other times you might split a densely populated shard into two less-densely populated shards. After several tenants have been moved or discontinued, you might merge sparsely populated shards together.
Another drawback is the lack of isolation. It's true that a logical isolation can still be achieved, however the risks of misplacing information are clearly higher. On the other side, this model has some positive economical advantages which translate into lower costs and higher profit margins.
The easiest way to implement both design patterns programmatically is using Entity Framework and the Elastic Database Client Library (EDCL). I've spent some real time till I managed to find out how to implement these patterns since EDCl was the missing puzzle piece. However, beware that the EDCL is not working with .NET Core and Entity Framework Core for now. But there is also some good news: Microsoft and the entire community are already on it. Even if there's still no official NPM Package, there is a branch where EF Core support is already implemented. You can clone it, deploy it as a local NPM Package and play around with it.
From a devops perspective there is still a lot of knowledge needed to automate atabase deployment, scaling and so on. So if you seriously think about building a multi tenant application, make sure that you have the necessary knowledge on the team.
A deeper description of all these patterns.
Your feedback is highly appreciated so if you want to drop your two cents on this topic, you're more than welcome!


Ohio University Zanesville is located at 1425 Newark Road (State Route 146). Go to http://www.zanesville.ohiou.edu/visiting-zanesville/directions-to-campus.htm for detailed driving directions.
Ohio University Zanesville serves commuter students who seek associate, bachelor's or master's degrees, community education, or business and industry training. Our students join us right out of high school, from years of working on the job, or from other colleges, universities or technical schools.
With a world-renown faculty and staff, Ohio University Zanesville provides a high quality educational experience complete with academic advising, tutoring, and specialized testing services.
Our facilities feature state-of-the-art wireless internet access, a cafeteria, a coffee café, a bookstore, a 62,000 volume library with vast electronic databases and resources, a fitness center and the Collegial Woods walking trails.


Items that you would like to transfer will be sent to the State Coordinator for approval. Once approved, the State Coordinator or the LEA initiates the transfer in the "Modify" module of FEPMIS. A LESO Representative will approve the transfer (modification) and forward the DD Form 1348-1A to the State Coordinator.
To turn-in items to a DLA Disposition Services Site (usually DEMIL items), a Change of Status (COS) action must be initiated in FEPMIS by the State Coordinator or the LEA. A LESO representative will approve the COS (turn-in), generate and sign a DD Form 1348-1A, which will be forwarded to the State Coordinator's office. After receiving the DD Form 1348-1A, the LEA must contact the DLA Disposition Services Site for a disposal date. The turn-in DD Form 1348-1A document must accompany the property being turned in.
Demilitarization is the act of destroying the offensive or defensive advantages inherent in certain types of military equipment. Manual 4160.21-M-1, entitled "DoD Demilitarization Manual" governs all property that requires demilitarization.
Munitions List items (MLI) is property that is listed in the International Traffic in Arms Regulation, published by the U.S. Department of State (DoS). The export of this property requires DoS approval and appropriate licensing. There are two categories of MLI; those that require demilitarization (DEMIL), and those that do not. A good example of a MLI requiring DEMIL is a "Peacekeeper" vehicle.
Commerce Control List Items: Through its Export Administration Regulations, the Department of Commerce places export controls on many commodities, some of which can be obtained as DOD excess property through LESO. The reasons for these controls include national security, antiterrorism, chemical and biological weapons, missile technology, nuclear proliferation, crime control, technology transfer, and scarcity of materials. These regulations, in short, prohibit transfer of this property to foreign governments or non-U.S. citizens, without a validated export license. How does this affect you? When disposing of 1033 property, you should be aware of these regulations, and pass the information along to the agencies that have DEMIL Q property with an integrity code of 6 (Q6), as it is Commerce Controlled. See requirements in the 2018 version of the DLA Memorandum of Agreement signed by the States and the State Plan of Operation signed by each Chief Law Enforcement Official.


text:
Risk Bulletin #12 – May 2022
Could war in Ukraine affect organized crime in the Western Balkans?
Organized crime is not foremost in our minds as we watch with horror the devastation in Ukraine. But all wars have spillover effects and long-term consequences, as witnessed in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The war in Ukraine might expand the opportunity space for organized crime in the Western Balkans, including as a result of arms trafficking, money laundering, sanctions busting, the movement of fighters or a possible shift in trafficking routes.
Ukrainian refugees cross into Poland, March 2022.
Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
One of the most astounding responses of the West to Russia's aggression against Ukraine has been its economic restrictions, including sanctions and travel bans. One of the few remaining routes for Russians to travel is via Belgrade. No doubt their money may also move into or through the region. Indeed, in recent years, several thousand foreigners have taken advantage of so-called 'golden' passport schemes in some European countries, including in south-eastern Europe.1 And some Western Balkan countries, like Montenegro and North Macedonia, continue to offer 'citizenship for investment' schemes.2 In a recent case, Montenegro granted asylum to a Russian tycoon wanted for murder.3
While not among the biggest investors in the Western Balkans, in the past Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs have parked their wealth in Serbia, for example, or along the Montenegrin coast. The Adriatic coast is a playground for the ultra-wealthy; one of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich's superyachts recently docked at a marina in Montenegro.4
Wealthy Russians on the move could seek investment opportunities in the region and might well draw on the connections of well-established criminal groups with contacts in political and business circles. There is a danger that Russian money could be laundered into real estate, tourism, gambling and other sectors vulnerable to IFFs, impacting local economies and politics.
Russia is facing almost unprecedented sanctions, and if the conflict continues, further penalties may be imposed. Some countries of the Western Balkans have not joined the ban on Russian flights, so airports such as Belgrade's (and via Istanbul to all capitals in the region) have become key hubs for Russian travellers. It is possible that Russian assets, which are frozen in many countries, could find a safe haven in countries of the Western Balkans where Russians already feel comfortable doing business. The Western Balkans could also be a conduit for the trafficking of luxury goods, alcohol and cigarettes. But the region is not contiguous to either Ukraine or Russia and the amount of sanctions busting will probably be limited – but worth keeping an eye on.
A frightening sign of the times is that a black market could develop for medications that are designed to reduce the impact of nuclear radiation: at the moment, there are almost no potassium iodide pills available in pharmacies in North Macedonia.5 As in other parts of Europe, there are also concerns about shortages of certain commodities and rising prices; two of the most obvious in the Western Balkans thus far are gasoline and sunflower oil.6 Scarcity markets could create incentives for smuggling.
Shifts in trafficking routes
As Turkey clamped down on smuggling (particularly of migrants) after 2015, it is thought that some trafficking routes for drugs shifted towards maritime routes across the Black Sea or even into the Adriatic.7 The former trend is confirmed by notable seizures of 400 kilograms of heroin from Iran in the port of Varna, Bulgaria, and 1 400 kilograms in Constanta, Romania, by authorities in February and May 2021, respectively.8 These ports may become more attractive to illicit flows if trafficking is disrupted in Odessa and other Black Sea ports because of the war in Ukraine. An increase in trafficking through a maritime Balkan route can also be noted by major seizures in the north-eastern Adriatic ports of Koper, Slovenia (where more than one tonne of heroin was seized between 2019 and 2021); Ploce, Croatia; and Trieste, Italy, in recent years.9 This shift in heroin trafficking comes at a time when there is increased evidence of cocaine trafficking into Adriatic ports. The Danube river could also become a conduit for smuggling.
A massive amount of weaponry is pouring into Ukraine, including from the Western Balkans. There are indications that automatic rifles and mortars made in Serbia are being used on the battlefield.10 According to a source familiar with the criminal milieu in Bosnia and Herzegovina, prices of firearms on that country's black market have risen by more than 100 per cent since late February – a trend that is also apparently evident in some countries of western Europe. It is possible that the war has created an increase in demand, not least from those heading to the region as volunteer fighters. There is a danger that some of the weapons flooding into Ukraine will trickle back into the Western Balkans, either to be used by criminal groups or paramilitaries, or sold on the black market.
Young men from south-eastern Europe have gone to fight in Ukraine – on both sides – since the outbreak of the crisis in 2014,11 although it is illegal to do so in most countries of the region. It is anticipated that the numbers will grow if the war drags on, not least since Ukraine has created a so-called 'foreign legion'.12 As in other situations, such as fighters going from Europe to Syria or Iraq, many will not return home.
But the flow of weapons and fighters between the Western Balkans and Ukraine could increase the risk of (particularly right-wing) violent extremism, homicides and paramilitary violence. The latter threat is particularly worrisome in relation to the destabilizing impact of armed groups in regions where ethnic tensions can be quickly stoked. The Night Wolves motorcycle club, for example, has branches in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro. There have been reports in the past of Russian-trained mercenaries in Serbia and the Republic of Srpska with links to organized crime.13 The flow of weapons and fighters back and forth from the war zone in Ukraine could swell the ranks of criminal and paramilitary groups in the Western Balkans, strengthen their arsenals and increase radicalization.
The high number of people – particularly women and children – fleeing Ukraine could increase vulnerability to human trafficking. The longer the crisis goes on and the more desperate people become, the greater the danger that some could be vulnerable to becoming victims of sexual exploitation, including in the Western Balkans – for example in big cities, resorts on the Adriatic coast or online. Indeed, Europol has issued an early warning notification highlighting how women, children and vulnerable persons are potential victims of criminal networks engaging in trafficking in human beings.14 They have warned that unaccompanied minors are most at risk for sexual and labour exploitation, as well as forced criminality and begging, or other criminal activities.
The war in Ukraine has created the biggest upheaval in European security since the end of the Cold War and the most profound shake-up of the world order since 1945. Criminals are always first movers in times of change and conflict. The war will no doubt affect geopolitics in the Western Balkans and possibly even national politics and inter-ethnic relations. It could also revive discussions about the EU accession process, particularly given Ukraine's application for EU membership.15
But it will probably also have an impact on criminal markets and IFFs, and it has triggered the departure of young men to Europe's new battlefield. This is something national law enforcement agencies as well as regional organizations and all stakeholders with an interest in stability in the Western Balkans should anticipate and watch closely, not least when these fighters and their weapons return home. For its part, the GI-TOC will continue monitoring the impact of the war on criminal markets.
Clara Hernanz Lizarraga, Russia's war puts Europe's 'golden passports' under microscope, Bloomberg, 15 March 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-15/russia-s-war-puts-europe-s-golden-passports-under-microscope. ↩
Samir Kajosevic, Montenegro extends 'golden passport' program despite EU criticism, BalkanInsight, 31 December 2021, https://balkaninsight.com/2021/12/31/montenegro-extends-golden-passport-program-despite-eu-criticism/. ↩
Montenegro grants asylum to tycoon wanted in Russia for murder, The Moscow Times, 23 October 2021, https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/10/23/montenegro-grants-asylum-to-tycoon-wanted-in-russia-for-murder-a75381. ↩
Abramovich's superyacht cruises in to Montenegro marina, France24, 12 March 2022, https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220312-abramovich-s-superyacht-cruises-in-to-montenegro-marina. ↩
Срѓан Стојанчов, За пандемијата се бараше тоалетна, за нуклеарната закана јод, Радио Слободна Европа, 3 March 2022, https://www.slobodnaevropa.mk/a/за-пандемијата-се-бараше-тоалетна-за-нуклеарната-закана-јод-/31734027.html. ↩
N1, Zašto je poskupilo domaće suncokretovo ulje – 4,85 KM po litru?, 15 March 2022, https://ba.n1info.com/vijesti/zasto-je-poskupilo-domace-suncokretovo-ulje-485-km-po-litru. ↩
Ben Crabtree, Black Sea: A rising tide of illicit business?, GI-TOC, 1 April 2020, https://globalinitiative.net/analysis/black-sea-illicit-flows/. ↩
Bulgarian prosecutors say heroin found in cargo from Iran, ABC News, 16 February 2021, https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/bulgarian-prosecutors-heroin-found-cargo-iran-75923810; 'Historical seizure' of heroin at Romanian Black Sea port, AP News, 20 May 2021, https://apnews.com/article/black-sea-europe-romania-business-government-and-politics-a048a5d3cb5ad48f20067c3d11edc58e. ↩
I. Hina, Slovenska policija u Kopru otkrila 730 kilograma iranskog heroina, T Portal, 13 November 2019, https://www.tportal.hr/vijesti/clanak/slovenska-policija-u-kopru-otkrila-730-kilograma-iranskog-heroina-20191113; R K, V Luki Koper zasegli več kot 200 kilogramov heroina; Siol, 16 June 2021, https://siol.net/novice/slovenija/v-luki-koper-zasegli-vec-kot-200-kilogramov-heroina-554783; Maxi sequestro di eroina al porto, i cani fiutano un carico da 50 chili, Trieste Prima, 20 July 2018, https://www.triesteprima.it/cronaca/maxi-sequestro-eroina-porto-trieste.html; Hina, Croatian police seize 220 kg of heroin and 62 kg of cocaine in the port of Ploce, N1, 11 January 2022, https://hr.n1info.com/english/news/croatian-police-seize-220-kg-of-heroin-and-62-kg-of-cocaine-in-the-port-of-ploce/. ↩
Aleksandar Radić, Oružje iz ex YU na ukrajinskom ratištu, Balkanska bezbednosna mreža, 15 March 2022, https://www.balkansec.net/post/oru%C5%BEje-iz-ex-yu-na-ukrajinskom-rati%C5%A1tu; Vuk Cvijić, Srpske mine na ukrajinskom frontu, NIN, 31 March 2022, https://www.nin.co.rs/pages/article.php?id=102361781; Battle of Kyiv. Moshchun. Hostomel, Direction Ukrainian military TV, 13 March 2022, https://youtu.be/NdZVNU93Bvs. ↩
Mila Đurđević, Dobrovoljci iz Srbije u Ukrajini: Politička i vojna smetnja, Radio Slobodna Evropa, 24 February 2022, https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/srbija-ukrajina-borci/31718923.html. ↩
Rusko ministarstvo: 'U Ukrajini je 200 hrvatskih plaćenika'. Tvrde da ih je organizirao Hrvat koji je šest godina ratovao u pukovniji Azov, Slobodna Dalmacija, 3 March 2022, https://slobodnadalmacija.hr/vijesti/svijet/rusko-ministarstvo-u-ukrajini-je-200-hrvatskih-placenika-tvrde-da-ih-je-organizirao-hrvat-koji-je-sest-godina-ratovao-u-pukovniji-azov-1172456. ↩
Julian Borger, Russian-trained mercenaries back Bosnia's Serb separatists, The Guardian, 12 January 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/12/russian-trained-mercenaries-back-bosnias-serb-separatists. ↩
European Migrant Smuggling Centre, War in Ukraine – refugees arriving to the EU from Ukraine at risk of exploitation as part of THB, Europol, March 2022, https://www.europol.europa.eu/cms/sites/default/files/documents/Early_Warning_Notification__War_in_Ukraine_–_refugees_arriving_to_the_EU_from_Ukraine_at_risk_of_exploitation_as_part_of_THB.pdf. ↩
Erwan Fouéré, Can the war in Ukraine revive the EU's enlargement agenda for the Western Balkans?, CEPS Policy Insights, No 2022-11, 24 March 2022, https://www.ceps.eu/download/publication/?id=35980&pdf=PI2022-11_Can-the-war-in-Ukraine-revive-the-EUs-enlargement.pdf. ↩
Bosnia and Herzegovina has become a key transit country for weapons smuggling in Europe. →
1 Could war in Ukraine affect organized crime in the Western Balkans?
2 Bosnia and Herzegovina has become a key transit country for weapons smuggling in Europe.
Arsenals past and present
Drugs and guns follow similar routes
3 Brcko: A market for organized crime.
Cooperation among criminals, corruption within the police
4 Extortion is underestimated and under-reported in Serbia.
5 Allegations of missing babies still haunt Serbia.
How is the market organized?
A wider problem
Latest from the Observatory of Illicit Economies in South-Eastern Europe


text:
Finding Clarity in The Dispute Between Zedd and Singer-Songwriter Matthew Koma
ON: June 13, 2019 GUILTY PLEASURE
Early musical collaborations between Matthew Koma and Zedd mutually propelled their careers in several ways, most notably resulting in their song "Clarity", winning a Grammy Award and Billboard Top 10 position. However, in a relatively uncommon occurrence in music industry, Koma has publicly spoken out against his collaborator Zedd in an Instagram post made last week, stating that despite writing three out of four of Zedd's earliest singles, Zedd snubbed mentions of him during interviews, did not invite him to the Grammy Nomination for their collaboration, and in addition, fought for three years to receive compensation for his work. His post was met with empathy from countless songwriters and musicians ranging from Tiesto to Bebe Rexha and Ashley Tisdale.
About a week later in response to these scathing allegations, Zedd states that he properly accredited Koma with songwriting on all the songs they collaborated on and did the most he could to promote him when possible. Zedd declares the Instagram post a personal attack, largely deflecting the specific incidents mentioned by Koma and instead places the focus more on his production process, willingness to collaborate and that he wishes Koma the best.
It is difficult to find any clear conclusion between the two statements. Koma's character-based assessment and experiences with Zedd are difficult to evaluate from an outsider's perspective, but such a public post by an established musician against another is very unusual in the music industry. Zedd's statement airs more on diplomatic side by avoiding direct response to Koma's claims, and instead focusing on the literal documentation of the legal credit allotted to Koma. Nonetheless, the responses from other artists communicating a similar struggle indicates that this was an issue that needed to be addressed industry wide. By having this dispute in the public eye, it can hopefully lead to a healthier relationship between artists and their collaborators.
By Ty Morris
Photo by Jordon Conner @jordonsconner
https://unsplash.com/photos/e6BOcvKvphE
Matthew Koma's Instagram Post:
https://www.instagram.com/p/ByVonVyhyGw/
Zedd's Tweet:
https://twitter.com/Zedd/status/1137894775212761088
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text:
Q: How can I display WordPress posts in Flutter app? I am trying to implement a simple discussion board in my Flutter app. To do this, I wanted to connect a WordPress blog site to the app. I followed this tutorial and slightly edited to get my code:
import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
import 'package:flutter_wordpress/flutter_wordpress.dart' as wp;
import 'package:flutter_html/flutter_html.dart';
import 'package:url_launcher/url_launcher.dart';
import 'package:azingg_starter/MomTalk_Home/wp_details.dart';

class LandingPage extends StatelessWidget {
  wp.WordPress wordPress = wp.WordPress(
    baseUrl: 'https://example.com/',
  );

  _fetchPosts() {
    Future<List<wp.Post>> posts = wordPress.fetchPosts(
        postParams: wp.ParamsPostList(
          context: wp.WordPressContext.view,
          pageNum: 1,
          perPage: 10,
        ),
        fetchAuthor: true,
        fetchFeaturedMedia: true,
        fetchComments: true);
    if (posts == null) {
      return posts;
    }
  }

  _getPostImage(wp.Post post) {
    if (post.featuredMedia == null) {
      return SizedBox();
    }
    return Image.network(post.featuredMedia.sourceUrl);
  }

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return Scaffold(
      appBar: AppBar(
        title: Text('MomTalk'),
        centerTitle: true,
      ),
      body: Container(
        child: FutureBuilder(
          future: _fetchPosts(),
          builder:
              (BuildContext context, AsyncSnapshot<List<wp.Post>> snapshot) {
            if (snapshot.connectionState == ConnectionState.none) {
              return Container();
            }
            if (snapshot.connectionState == ConnectionState.waiting) {
              return Center(
                child: CircularProgressIndicator(),
              );
            }
            return ListView.builder(
              itemCount: snapshot.data.length,
              itemBuilder: (context, index) {
                wp.Post post = snapshot.data[index];
                return InkWell(
                  onTap: () {
                    Navigator.push(
                        context,
                        MaterialPageRoute(
                            builder: (context) => DetailsPage(post)));
                  },
                  child: Padding(
                    padding: const EdgeInsets.all(5.0),
                    child: Card(
                      child: Padding(
                        padding: const EdgeInsets.all(8.0),
                        child: Column(
                          children: <Widget>[
                            _getPostImage(post),
                            SizedBox(
                              height: 10,
                            ),
                            Text(
                              post.title.rendered.toString(),
                              style: TextStyle(
                                  fontWeight: FontWeight.bold, fontSize: 20),
                            ),
                            SizedBox(
                              height: 15,
                            ),
                            Html(
                              data: post.excerpt.rendered.toString(),
                              onLinkTap: (String link) {
                                _launchUrl(link);
                              },
                            ),
                            Row(
                              mainAxisAlignment: MainAxisAlignment.spaceBetween,
                              children: <Widget>[
                                Text(post.date.toString().replaceAll('T', ' ')),
                                Text(post.author.name),
                              ],
                            )
                          ],
                        ),
                      ),
                    ),
                  ),
                );
              },
            );
          },
        ),
      ),
    );
  }
}

_launchUrl(String link) async {
  if (await canLaunch(link)) {
    await launch(link);
  } else {
    throw 'Cannot launch $link';
  }
}

Previously, I was getting an error about "the getter 'length' was called on null", so I added the "if (posts == null)" line of code to solve this. However, now I am getting a blank screen (even though I have posts in my site). Any ideas on why it seems to think there are no posts in my site, or why it is not getting them?

A: Your use of _fetchPosts has a number of issues.
First, make it async. This will make waiting on futures within it a lot more intuitive.
Second, await wordPress.fetchPosts. Right now you are calling it directly which will just return a list of futures, and you can't use futures directly to populate your page.
Third, you have a typo in this code:
if (posts == null) {
  return posts;
}

This will mean you only return posts when it is null. When posts is not null, the function won't return anything, and in Dart, functions will always return null if they aren't returning anything else. As a result, this function will always return null. As such, you could just change == to !=, but that would then introduce a redundancy as you will only return posts when it isn't null but the function would then return null anyway. As such, you could do away with the if check entirely. (This is assuming you are not working with null safety, which your code would suggest you are not.)
With these considerations, the full function should look like this:
Future<List<wp.Post>> _fetchPosts() async {
  List<wp.Post> posts = await wordPress.fetchPosts(
    postParams: wp.ParamsPostList(
      context: wp.WordPressContext.view,
      pageNum: 1,
      perPage: 10,
    ),
    fetchAuthor: true,
    fetchFeaturedMedia: true,
    fetchComments: true,
  );

  return posts;
}


What happens when the robots steal our jobs? Speculative fiction novel "In the Gleaming Light" gives a much needed plausible imagining of the world thirty years from now.
Automation, robots, and job stealing are topics that capture the imagination of many, but the big question is this: what's to be done when these things start to have a meaningful impact on our lives? Universal Basic Income, the favoured solution of entrepreneurs and academics alike, has been creeping into the press, but if you stop someone on the street and ask them about it, the chances are you'll get a blank look.
"In the Gleaming Light" gives an engaging, pacey, intrigue-filled look at the world thirty years from now, complete with a clear representation of the complex and controversial political issues that underpin it all.
It's 2048. Automation has stolen vast swathes of jobs, and the government pays everyone a no-strings-attached income, enough to live on, in order to keep the economy going. Society is split into those who can get jobs; engineers, managers, creatives, and those who cannot.
Iva Brooksbank, Senior Investigator of the Enforcement Office, has made a career of taking down corporate moguls who flout the rules, and now she has Guy Strathclyde, CEO of Cybax Technologies, firmly in her sights. She's sure he's up to something, and races to find evidence that will stick, before her time runs out.
Lulu Banks, a world famous artist, uses her work to highlight the deep inequalities and injustices the world now faces, perpetuated, she thinks, by the relentless march of technology. But when she finds herself the object of Guy's affections, she has to decide if she can trust his intentions, or if he's just the same as all the other corporate big dogs.
"In the Gleaming Light was born out of my experience and observations in life and at work, and also through a general interest in the not-too-distant future of our world. With a background in financial services and change management, I've seen first-hand the unrelenting pace of change and drive towards automation, that is having, and will continue to have, a significant effect on everyone.
The changes that have taken place in the last twenty years are mind-boggling, and there's no evidence of the pace slowing down. Indeed, automation is predicted to put significant numbers out of work, and, if that happens, the social consequences will be extreme.
Automation and Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a solution, are areas gaining a great deal of traction, with entrepreneurs and academics shouting about the need for governments to step in, governments running UBI trials in response, and the media starting to step up their coverage. However, the topic is currently stuck in (relatively boring) academic and political channels, and I think there's a real need to bring these important topics to life through engaging, fictional portrayals. In the Gleaming Light aims to do this in a plot and relationship-driven way; it's book club fiction, designed to stimulate conversation, with drama and romance throughout.
Importantly, "In the Gleaming Light" is not passing judgment on the march of technology, or UBI as a potential solution, but I feel passionately that this is a conversation that effects everybody. The more that can be done to get people involved from all backgrounds, now, as opposed to after the fact, the better.
In the Gleaming Light will be released on Amazon on 1st March, 2019 in both eBook ($4.99 / £3.99) and paperback ($10.99 / £7.99) formats.
Lulu flopped to the ground as she crossed the makeshift sprint finish line in the sand, her chest heaving as she tried to regain her breath. It was a glorious morning, even at this early hour, the sun reflecting furiously on the flat calm of the sea, playing about as the water moved gently up and down, slivers of silver light trying to fool onlookers into believing it could be warm. Tiny waves lapped lightly at the beach, the sound calming Lulu's exhausted body, helping her settle her racing heart.
'Darling, you're a little distracted this morning,' said Bertie Baqua, her slight, Asian fitness instructor, as he caught up with her. He was renowned the world over and in great demand, but he and Lulu had been friends for years, Lulu having attended his classes before he was famous, their friendship secured on the dance floor of a dubious Salsa club in Brighton.
'I opened my exhibition last night,' she replied, as though this were enough.
'And?' he replied, clearly requiring more.
'Did he indeed?' flounced Bertie, laughing with his eyes.
'He keeps asking me out,' she shrugged, as though this were obviously a problem.
'Which is frowned upon these days,' said Bertie, frivolously.
'Which is illegal these days,' snapped Lulu, rolling over and propping herself up on her arms.
Lulu rolled her eyes. 'Maybe,' she pouted, playing with the grains of sand between her fingers.
'You're welcome,' he said, reaching down to help her up.
'You're insufferable,' she said, refusing his hand and throwing a towel at him instead. Bertie snickered, and didn't stop. 'What now?' she asked, not understanding the joke.
'Looks like you've got company,' he said, nodding up the beach.
Lulu's head whipped round. 'Oh God,' she breathed.
'I'll say,' said Bertie, nodding his head in approval.
Bertie nudged Lulu towards Guy. 'I've got another client, so I really must be going,' he said, as though the breakfast invitation had also been extended to him, which of course they all knew it hadn't. 'Have fun,' he said, suggestively. He stuffed dumbbells, balls and elastics back into his bag, hoisted it over his shoulder, and headed back up the beach, throwing Lulu a double thumbs up, complete with accompanying indelicate head nod behind Guy's back.
Lulu ignored him. 'You've been watching me work out?' she asked, not sure whether to be flattered or a little bit freaked out.
Harriet was born in Germany in 1987, her family returning to the UK, to Dorset shortly afterwards. She lived there until she was 5, her grandfather teaching her the basics of cheating at cards and swindling chocolate, her mother starting to instil a (some would argue) unhealthy relationship with cake, and the neighbours demonstrating that some people don't understand cherry blossom is there to be picked, mixed with mint and water and sold as perfume.
Harriet has recently moved from Bristol in the UK to Portsmouth in New Hampshire, with her husband Chris and two young daughters. When she isn't writing, editing, eating, running around after her kids, or imagining how much better life would be with the addition of a springer spaniel, she occasionally finds the time to make hats.


Eligibility : For Specialists – PG Degree in concerned field of specialization along with the valid and current registration with MCI/State Council. If Sufficient PG Degree Holders are not found than PG Diploma holders are not found than PG Diploma holders shall be considered for specialists posts.
For GDMO – MBBS with valid and current registration with MCI/State Council.
Remuneration : For Specialists — A lump sum amount of Rs 95000/- 1st Year & Rs 105000/- 2nd Year. For GDMO duty — A Lump sum amount of Rs. 75000/-For Retired Railway Medical Officer it shall be 46000/- per month (subject to the condition that remuneration + Pension drawn by retired Railway Doctors should not be exceed the last pay drawn.
North Western Railway came being on 1st October, 2002. It was carved out of 2 divisions each from Northern and Western Railways. The formation of this zone along with five other new zones was first approved by Railway Board on 16th September, 1996 and foundation stone for this zone was laid on 17th October 1996 by the then Prime Minister Shri H.D. Deve Gowda at K.P. Singh Stadium, Jaipur. The impetus for formation of New Zone came with the Government of India notification no. 97/E&R/700/1/Notification dated 14.06.2002 wherein it was decided that North Western Railway with its jurisdiction over existing Jaipur and Ajmer divisions of Western Railway and Jodhpur and Bikaner divisions of Northern Railway was to come into effect from 1.10.2002.


Whole seed bites with rhubarbs Delicious sweets from whole sesame and sunflower seeds mixed with natural brown sugar and various dried fruit.
Vareniki with cottage cheese- quick frozen Vareniki contain 80,9% cottage cheese and have interesting shape. Vareniki are made from high-quality wheat and raw materials which origin is Latvia.
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Vanilla ice cream Ice cream hand made from natural ingrediants.
Waffle cone ice cream The most famous ice cream made in Rūjiena – the waffle cone ice cream. The Rūjiena cone with cranberry jam is widely known. Available with strawberry, raspberry and and condensed milk flavor.
Whole seed bites with raisins Delicious sweets from whole sesame and sunflower seeds mixed with natural brown sugar and various dried fruit.
Pilaf with Meat A delicious and nourishing pilaf with pork, carrots and onions. Cooked according to traditional recipes.
Pancakes with cottage cheese - quick frozen Pancakes contain 62,6% cottage cheese. Pancakes are made from high-quality wheat and raw materials which are made in Latvia.