Shingles, also called herpes zoster, gets its name from both the Latin and French words for belt or girdle and refers to girdle-like skin eruptions that may occur on the trunk of the body.
The virus that causes chickenpox, the Varicella zoster virus (VSV), can become dormant in nerve cells after an episode of chickenpox and later re-emerge as shingles.
Initially, red patches of rash develop into blisters. Because the virus travels along the nerve to the skin, it can damage the nerve and cause it to become inflamed. This condition can be very painful. If the pain persists long after the rash disappears, it is known as post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN).
Any individual who has had chickenpox can develop shingles. Between 600,000 and one million Americans are diagnosed with shingles each year. Overall, approximately 20% of those who have had chickenpox as children develop shingles at some time in their lives. People of all ages—even children—can be affected, but the incidence increases with age.
Newborns, bone marrow and other transplant recipients, and individuals with immune systems weakened by disease or drugs are also at increased risk. However, most individuals who develop shingles do not have any underlying malignancy or other immunosuppressive condition.
Shingles erupts along the course of the affected nerve, producing lesions anywhere on the body. The condition may cause severe nerve pain. The most common areas to be affected are the face and trunk, which correspond to the areas where the chickenpox rash is most concentrated. There is usually a line of eruptions running from the spine along the path of the affected nerve on one side of the body.
The disease is caused by a reactivation of the chickenpox virus that has lain dormant in certain nerves following an episode of chickenpox. Exactly how or why this reactivation occurs is not clear. In 2002 clinicians pointed out that one of the causes of increasing cases of shingles was actually the success of chicken pox vaccinations.
It is believed that the reactivation is triggered when the immune system becomes weakened as a result of age, stress, fatigue, certain medications, chemotherapy, or diseases such as cancer or HIV. Furthermore, in persons with HIV, shingles can be an early sign that the immune system has deteriorated.
Early signs of shingles are often vague and can easily be mistaken for other illnesses. The condition may begin with fever and malaise (a vague feeling of weakness or discomfort).
Within two to four days, severe pain, itching, and numbness/tingling (paresthesias) or extreme sensitivity to touch (hyperesthesia) can develop, usually on the trunk and occasionally on the arms and legs.
Pain may be continuous or intermittent, usually lasting one to three weeks. It may occur at the time of the eruption, but can precede the eruption by days, occasionally making the diagnosis difficult.
Diagnosis usually is not possible until the skin lesions develop. Once they develop, however, the pattern and location of the blisters and the type of cell damage displayed are characteristic of the disease.
Viral culture of skin lesion.
Microscopic examination using a Tzanck preparation. This involves staining a smear obtained from a blister. Cells infected with the herpes virus appear very large and contain many dark cell centers or nuclei.
Complete blood count (CBC) may show an elevated white blood cell count (WBC), a nonspecific sign of infection.
A person with shingles should immediately see a doctor or health practitioner. Although the condition generally clears up within three to five weeks, treatment can ease the painful symptoms. Alternative medicine remedies and therapies will not cure shingles, but they will provide pain relief, reduce inflammation, and speed recovery.
Red pepper, also known as capsicum or cayenne, is so effective that it's an ingredient in commercial ointments approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Commercial preparations include Zostrix and Capzasin-P. Red pepper is hot, so the ointment should be applied only to healed blisters. Red pepper is useful for treating painful PHN.
Topical applications of lemon balm, licorice, or peppermint may reduce pain and blistering. These herbs may be brewed as teas and then consumed and applied to the skin.
Herbal antivirals, such as echinacea , can be effective in fighting infection and boosting the immune system.
Calendula ointment or lotion works to counter the virus.
Sedative herbs such as passionflower can be brewed for a tea. Such herbs can help with treatment of post-herpetic neuralgia.
Vervain helps relieve pain and inflammation. St. John's wort, lavender, chamomile, and marjoram also help relieve inflammation.
A person with shingles should consult a homeopath for specific remedies and dosages. Homeopathic remedies include Ranunculus, which is effective for shingles on the trunk. It is also taken for itching. A homeopath may recommend Rhus toxicodendron for blisters and Arsenicum album or Hypericum for pain.
Practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) recommend acupressure and acupuncture to alleviate pain. Acupuncture can help with post-herpetic neuralgia.
In addition, a TCM practitioner may recommend herbal remedies such as Chinese gentian root, which is used to treat the liver. In addition, Chinese skullcap root is combined with water and used as a folk remedy for treating shingles in China.
Also, certain herbal combinations can treat specific symptoms and contributing causes. For example, Long Dan Xie Gan Tang can quell the accumulation of damp toxic heat in the liver. For damp infected painful eruptions on the torso, Huang Qin Gao can be applied to the surrounding area.
To boost the immune system, supplement the diet with vitamin B during the first one or two days. Until health returns, continue to supplement with vitamin B complex, high levels of vitamin C with bioflavonoids, and calcium.
Food seasoned with red pepper (capsicum) may provide relief, as may foods containing the amino acid lysine. High-lysine foods include soybeans, black bean sprouts, lentils, parsley, and peas.
Cool wet compresses may help reduce pain while blisters or crusting is present. Patients may be made more comfortable with the application of a cloth dipped in one-quarter cup (60 ml) of white vinegar mixed in two quarts (1.9 l) of lukewarm water. Compresses should be used twice daily for 10 minutes. When blisters dry up, the compresses may be discontinued.
Soothing treatments such as colloidal oatmeal baths, starch baths or lotions, and calamine lotion may help to relieve itching and discomfort.
When the crusts and scabs are separating, the skin may become dry, tight, and cracked. If that happens, a small amount of plain petroleum jelly can be applied to the area three or four times daily.
Ayurveda is an Indian healing science that is more than 5,000 years old. Treatment is based on maintaining a balance between the body and the world. Treatment for shingles may include applying a turmeric paste to the skin.
Relaxation techniques can be used to treat symptoms of shingles. Techniques such as hypnotherapy and yoga can help a person relax.
Flower remedies are liquid concentrates made by soaking flowers in spring water. Also known as flower essences, 38 remedies were developed by the homeopathic physician Edward Bach during the 1930s.
A 39th combination formula, known as Rescue Remedy is taken to relieve stress. The remedy is taken by placing several drops under the tongue four times daily. Alternately, the drops may be added to a glass of water. The patient drinks the mixture throughout the day.
Reflexology is the manipulation of the foot to bring the body into balance. Reflex points on the foot correspond to parts of the body. These points can be treated by a reflexologist or at home by following instructions on a reflex chart.
The antiviral drugs acyclovir, valacyclovir , and famciclovir can be used to treat shingles. These drugs may shorten the course of the illness. More rapid healing of the blisters results when drug therapy is started within 72 hours of the onset of the rash. In fact, the earlier the drugs are administered the better, because early cases can sometimes be halted.
If taken later, these drugs are less effective but may still lessen the pain. Antiviral drug treatment does not seem to reduce the incidence of postherpetic neuralgia (PHN), but recent studies suggest famciclovir may cut the duration of PHN in half.
Side effects of typical oral doses of these antiviral drugs are minor, with headache and nausea reported by 8–20% of patients. Severely immuno compromised individuals, such as those diagnosed with AIDS, may require intravenous administration of antiviral drugs.
Corticosteroids such as prednisone may be used to reduce inflammation but they interfere with the functioning of the immune system. Corticosteroids in combination with antiviral therapy are also used to reduce severe pain and to treat severe infections, such as those affecting the eyes.
After the blisters heal, some people continue to experience PHN for months or even years. This pain can be excruciating. Consequently, the doctor may prescribe tranquilizers, sedatives, or antidepressants to be taken at night. Attempts to treat PHN with famciclovir have shown some promising results. When all else fails, severe pain may require a permanent nerve block.
Shingles usually clears up within three to five weeks and rarely recurs. There have been reports that shingles cleared up several days after licorice ointment was applied to the skin or when the homeopathic remedy Ranunculus was taken.
If the nerves that cause movement are affected, temporary or permanent nerve paralysis and/or tremors may occur. Elderly or debilitated patients may have a prolonged and difficult course and recovery.
For them, the eruption is typically more extensive and inflammatory, occasionally resulting in blisters that bleed, areas in which the skin actually dies, secondary bacterial infection, or extensive and permanent scarring.
Similarly, patients with compromised immune systems usually have more severe courses that are often prolonged for weeks to months. They develop shingles frequently and the infection can spread to the skin, lungs, liver, gastrointestinal tract, brain, or other vital organs.
Cases of chronic shingles have been reported in AIDS patients, especially when they have a decreased number of one particular kind of immune cell called CD4 lymphocytes.
Depletion of CD4 lymphocytes is associated with more severe, chronic, and recurrent varicella zoster virus infections. Lesions are typical at the onset but may turn into ulcers that do not heal. Herpes zoster can lead to potentially serious complications.
Many individuals continue to experience persistent pain long after the blisters heal. This post-herpetic neuralgia can be severe and debilitating. The incidence of post-herpetic neuralgia increases with age, and episodes in older individuals tend to be of longer duration.
Most patients under 30 years of age experience no persistent pain. By age 40, the risk of prolonged pain lasting longer than one month increases to 33%. By age 70, the risk increases to 74%. The pain can adversely affect quality of life, but it usually diminishes over time.
Other complications include secondary bacterial infections.
Strengthening the immune system by making lifestyle changes is thought to help prevent the development of shingles. These changes include eating a well-balanced diet rich in essential vitamins and minerals, getting enough sleep, exercising regularly, and reducing stress.
In 2002, reports from a large, five-year study showed that researchers might be nearing a workable vaccine for shingles. The vaccine is 10 times stronger than the chickenpox vaccine and similar in nature. Study results were planned for release in mid-2004.


I was offered a Sony Ericsson Xperia™ X10 mini pro phone to try and thought why not, is there life outside of the iPhone I wonder? It made me think about all the phones I've had over the years. I started with Nokia 5.1 – a brick with an extendable aerial – woo, get me! I bought it in 1997 and I still have the same number and my best friend bought hers at the same time and we have the same number apart from the last digit and she still has hers too – aw, cute!
Remember when phones just for calls oh and playing snake?! I moved from Nokia to Sony Ericsson for quite a few years when colour screens and cameras were a must as they were the leaders in phone cameras. Then came the iPhone nobody can deny it was totally different (and in a good way) touch screen, user friendly and comfy in your hand. It had Angry Birds. Oh and Angry Birds The Seasons!
I thought it might be too small but its not. On the first day I thought my fingers might be too big but you quickly get used to it. The keyboard is small, just like the phone but surprisingly useable. It's nice the way this phone fits easily into one hand and can be completely navigated through with just your thumb.
This was my first experience of a piece of android kit and phone has apps for everything, I almost snobbishly thought there was nothing like the choice of apps in the Apple Store – wrong – it is basically the same choice from my perspective as a user. I was wrong. There wasn't an app on my iPhone I couldn't get for this, Angry Birds? Check!
The thing for my that was my favourite and really impressive is the camera, I always have my phone in one hand and used to take lots with my phone in the days before my iPhone (I have a iPhone 3G by the way) but have given up a lot because the camera is pretty rubbish on my iPhone – but this is great, really great 5megapixels – see my on the hoof Silent Sunday post and I have even printed some new moo mini card with shots taken with the Sony Ericsson Xperia™ X10 mini pro. Never mind Hipstamatic – this bad boy has a FLASH! Also as its android it links through your Google account so you can upload straight to Picassa and beyond – I *heart* this function a lot!
One great app already on this phone was Timescape, if you love social networking *cough* who me? or just communicating with friends through more than just by phone calls this gives you everything in one place as text messages, calls, Twitter and Facebook updates all scroll across this phones touch screen in one at a glance page.
I love, love, loved the camera and its FLASH!
Overall this is a great little phone very small but very useable.
By the way Sony Ericsson sent me the Xperia™ X10 mini pro to try and return which I have.


60 g Tylo CMC powder to harden your sugar paste or almond paste.
Tylo CMC powder will allow you to harden your sugar pastes or almond pastes to work better and use them in cake design. You can even make your own sugar paste or decorative elements with tylo powder. To harden your dough, add 1 teaspoon of CMC powder to 250 g of dough. To make edible sugar dough, use 1 dose of CMC powder for 30 doses of water. We advise you to let the mixture sit overnight before using it. Ingredients: carboxymethylcellulose: E466 (100%). The pot contains 60 g.


text:
Topic SDLC
SubTopic CI/CD
Software documentation
Test & Release
View All Series Articles
DevOps in the enterprise requires focus on security, visibility
David Carty, Site Editor
Microservices and containers can simplify DevOps security
What the DevOps movement has done for -- and to -- developers
Prioritize DevOps and Agile outcomes, not transformation
Dissect DevOps problems with this expert podcast
App dev, quality and delivery challenges constantly pop up in DevOps implementations. Hear how overworked IT professionals deal with these challenges, and how tools can help -- or not.
It's one thing to prioritize DevOps in the enterprise, but it's another challenge altogether to deal with oft-complex toolsets that are part of this strategy. Automation only goes so far, and there's a lack of skilled workers to carry the torch.
Constant improvement is at the heart of DevOps transformation in established IT organizations. For enterprise IT, the answer can be as convoluted as a multi-cluster container orchestration tool, or as simple as a bowl of candy to get teams collaborating. Identify your problems, address them and repeat.
"Instead of doing DevOps as a project and declaring victory, you look at it as a continuous process," said Beth Pariseau, senior news writer at TechTarget. "You look at everything from your software delivery pipeline to your infrastructure platform as a product, [as with] whatever your business offers, that you need to maintain, in terms of its quality, that you need to update, in terms of its relevance to your market, and that it's not something that's ever finished."
In this episode of Test & Release, Pariseau, who writes for SearchSoftwareQuality and SearchITOperations, discusses technology topics that will matter in 2020. She also shares experiences from containers, cloud and DevOps conferences such as KubeCon and DevSecCon, where diverse leaders related the many challenges associated with DevOps and Agile transformation. Success for DevOps in the enterprise starts with small wins and a consistent march toward improvement.
"It's clear that enterprises have had to handle this digital transformation in phases," Pariseau said. "You have to eat the elephant one bite at a time."
Take security in the SDLC. DevOps purists, she says, intended for business and security concerns to get rolled into the natural cadence of a lifecycle. However, as many teams struggle with pipeline complexities bringing DevOps to mainstream enterprise IT, those concerns took a back seat.
Now, enterprises are putting security back into focus, as high-profile breaches carry potentially disastrous repercussions. It's not enough to simply preach shared security responsibility, she said; you must get dev, ops and security to communicate and cooperate on a deeper level, which can mean fundamentally rethinking how work is done. And soon, as attackers have grown increasingly sophisticated in their efforts.
"In a world where a company as technologically cutting-edge as [banking company] Capital One can have a high-profile data breach, sometimes it's hard to imagine what chance anybody has," Pariseau said, referring to the 2019 data breach perpetrated by an AWS-savvy attacker. "Even as enterprises get better at securing their assets, people whose business is breaking in are getting better and more advanced. I heard one expert estimate that we're still about five years behind the attackers as it is, and they're not stopping, they're not slowing down."
AI-enabled development, testing, monitoring and management tools can bridge the gap in some ways, but it presents a whole new subset of problems, she says, especially for veteran IT professionals who have been burned by vendors in the past.
Perhaps the market with the most instability heading into 2020, she says, is observability. Teams with distributed, cloud-native applications struggle to pinpoint where errors occur. As application performance monitoring vendors and specialty startups flood the market for this increasing need, a clearer picture should emerge -- especially after some consolidation.
Pariseau also spoke about containers in the DevOps toolbelt, including what she makes of the recent Docker-Mirantis deal, which will have ramifications across the open source community. And she explains the glut of Kubernetes distributions on the market for enterprise DevOps adopters.
Editor's note: Pariseau spoke with site editor David Carty and assistant site editor Ryan Black. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
David Carty: Thanks for being here, Beth. First of all, let's start off with a really high-level question. You cover a lot of shows. It seems like you're constantly on the way to a conference or catching up from a conference. Looking back at 2019, what was the most interesting tech conference you covered, and what kinds of conversations did you have there?
Beth Pariseau
Beth Pariseau: I think the show in my world is still KubeCon. That show has exploded in growth over the last three conferences that I've been to. [In] 2017, it was about 3,500 people maybe; it filled up one wing of the Austin Convention Center in Texas. And then last year in Seattle, they had about 8,500 and a 2,000-person waiting list. They were not prepared for the onslaught of people who wanted to go to Seattle. And then, this year, it was in San Diego at the much bigger [San Diego Convention Center], and it was 12,200, I think, the official attendance -- plus all the vendors and exhibitors. It was a madhouse, and the energy there is just frenetic, there's so much going on. It seems like every company that's remotely attached to DevOps and cloud-native technologies, which is kind of all of them, is there. Users are there, and [there's] such a broad array of highly complex topics, that there's a lot to talk about.
What's interesting about the conversations this year is, in the past, even last year, the focus was on Kubernetes itself, the core platform, and what features was it still missing, like Windows host support, for example, last year was a big thing, because that got pushed out or released from when it was supposed to be out. This year, there was a Kubernetes core platform release, 1.17 -- today, actually -- and it got no play at the conference. The focus was now on what other things you need, like service mesh was a big one, or multi-tenant security was another hot topic, as kind of an advanced use case, or what can you do with this now? It's not just what is Kubernetes, and how does it work? [It's] okay, how do we get to a specific workflow like GitOps? You know, how do we actually apply this to our business problems? So that's a huge leap in maturity for two calendar years.
Ryan Black: Actually, to stay on the business point, we've been hearing more emphasis on BizDevOps, or DevOps 2.0, which, in a nutshell, encourages more collaboration between IT and the business teams, you know this. But, I'm wondering, what have you heard about how is this done in a practical way without delaying production? And what are the sorts of impediments that usually pop up from what you've heard?
Pariseau: Well, if you talk to DevOps purists, they object to things like DevSecOps and BizDevOps, because their argument is that they've always considered those things -- alignment with the business and secure code -- to be part of DevOps. You don't need a separate term. But it's clear that enterprises have had to handle this digital transformation in phases. You have to eat the elephant one bite at a time. So a lot of it has been the technical folks getting their arms wrapped around the complex infrastructure automation and pipeline technology, but it is starting to branch into broader conversations about, 'How do we secure our enterprise, not just our servers, but our enterprise? How do we avoid making the wrong kind of headlines from a bridge? And, also, how do we actually realize that return on all this investment?'
It's not just a science project. Businesses need to transform for a reason. And so people are getting back to that initial mission, I think, because it is really complex technical work that they have to do just to establish the capabilities, but now it's about, 'What are the capabilities, and what do we want to use them for?' You see this reflected not just in how people are using products, but in what's going into products. So, for example, Atlassian, which has long been a really strong player in the defect management and software planning space, the collaboration space, which is at the far left side of that DevOps pipeline, they acquired AgileCraft this year, which has become their Jira Align product that has a lot more to do with enterprise-level portfolio management, kind of a bird's eye, a 30,000-foot view into all the projects and what they call value streams that are serving the business from a software delivery point of view. There are a lot of experts out there putting out material and guidelines, best practices around what's called a 'project to product' mindset. So instead of doing DevOps as a project and declaring victory, you look at it as a continuous process. You look at everything from your software delivery pipeline to your infrastructure platform as a product, [as with] whatever your business offers, that you need to maintain, in terms of its quality, that you need to update, in terms of its relevance to your market, and that it's not something that's ever finished.
Carty: Right. And this gets into value stream management, right? We see a lot of vendors in the space CollabNet, Plutora, Tasktop, XebiaLabs. This seems like a really emerging space and one that I imagine you'll be covering quite a bit in the next year.
Pariseau: Yes. CloudBees is another one with their acquisition of Electric Cloud. A lot of the Kubernetes and infrastructure automation platforms, not to mention the cloud providers, are also offering pipelines built in, so that you're starting to get more cohesion on the technical side, sort of that middle of the DevOps process, but bringing it into line with the business itself, how ideas are generated, how they are picked up and moved from a piece of paper or word of mouth in a meeting to a deliverable. That's where I think the efforts will be focused next year.
Black: On that note, I did want to also ask you about what sorts of things you're hearing from people in terms of what they want from tools. It sounds like it might be that people just want the whole package in one tool. They want to buy whole platforms of tools that include … everything under the sun.
Pariseau: That's at least what industry analysts are telling me. I know that having been on this beat since 2016, early on, it was a lot of sort of artisanal craftsmanship that went into building your own tool chain out of open source components. That was all well and good for early adopters that really had the skills. But, as every business needs to at least have an app and a website, they at least need to do that amount of software development, not everybody is going to have the skill set in-house to put together the platform. Putting together an infrastructure or software delivery platform is not the ultimate goal for most businesses. So, if you're a mainstream business, it's not even necessarily worth the investment to put together your own platform. For compliance purposes, a lot of them need to have someone to rely on for support, security, expertise and in many different areas -- it just isn't possible to source from within. Frankly, this stuff is so complicated. It's so sprawled out. There are so many layers and layers of complicated things that you have to get to work and then work together; they just want somebody to figure it out for them.
Black: So, it sounds like it's less those people who craft together their own tool chains that are disappearing. It's more just the overall pool's getting bigger, and the new entrants into the pool are people who want your more generic [platform].
Pariseau: In terms of the market, yes. In terms of IT skills, that pool is not getting bigger. That's another major problem that I started to cover this year that is really weighing on the minds of enterprises, across the board, even the U.S. Air Force that has a lot of cachet, that's doing a lot of cutting-edge things with Kubernetes and service mesh, is struggling to find people with the right skill set. There are a lot of other kinds of approaches, and, I guess, sort of academic-level theories about the best way to approach that, but the reality is that there just aren't enough people to build these things bespoke.
Black: So, we were talking about before how you're expecting DevSecOps to continue being a big area of coverage for you going into 2020. One of the things that -- I was reading through some of your recent articles before this interview. You were [writing] about how one of the biggest unaddressed challenges is human error, it's much less people not having the tools or the actual software to address the things. It's [that] they're missing the signs, or just the workflow's not in place for them to actually address and fix these vulnerabilities.
Pariseau: Yeah. A security operations monitoring tool is only as good as the eyes that are looking at it. It can be flashing [a] red alert at you, but if you don't know what you're looking at, you're not going to respond to it. In a world where a company as technologically cutting-edge as Capital One can have a high-profile data breach, sometimes it's hard to imagine what chance anybody has, because even as enterprises get better at securing their assets, people whose business is breaking in, are getting better and more advanced. I heard one expert estimate that we're still about five years behind the attackers as it is, and they're not stopping, they're not slowing down. It gets back to that skills issue, which is where some people think AI will bridge the gap. But other people are trying to teach leadership, things that didn't used to be considered inside the purview of IT, at least for certain people within IT. VPs of engineering, CTOs, CIOs and even at the team level, practitioners and consultants, enterprises are starting to realize that the so-called soft skills are really crucial to the next phase of transformation. It's not just about having the right tools in place -- although that is important -- it's also about what you do with those tools, how you respond to what those tools tell you, and the old adage of garbage-in, garbage-out. How do you align people to collaborate effectively on the product you produce, so that it is not only delivered quickly, but also of high quality? Quality includes security.
Carty: That's a great point too, because we know you can't preach DevOps. And that goes to the DevSecOps point too -- you can't preach DevSecOps. You can't preach shared responsibility for security. It's not that simple. It's got to be a really malleable sort of process, depending on your teams, your processes. That's, I think, where so many people struggle.
Black: And that's something so intangible. It's easy to come in [and] have a workshop one day and say, 'You all need to be better leaders.' And everyone's scratching their head. It's like, cool.
Pariseau: There are, but there are experts in the field like Gene Kim, for example, who wrote The Phoenix Project that got this all kicked off. He has another more recent book called The Unicorn Project, about methods, about tangible steps for organizing people and organizing teams. Organizational dynamics is an established field of study that can be brought to bear here. There are tangible methods. At DevSecCon, which was another really interesting conference for me this year, most of the discussion was about practical do's and don'ts and experiences and takeaways from the efforts of companies at the forefront of these things like Mozilla and Apple, about how they organize people, about how they've focused on not really saying that security is everyone's job, as just giving security, and IT ops, and devs, and the business all a seat at the table. That it takes everybody.
Black: Was that the conference where you heard the story about the one chief security officer putting out the bowls of candy in a security team's area?
Pariseau: Yes. There was also discussion of cookies.
Black: For our listeners, Beth, in one of her recent stories, essentially related an anecdote about how one chief security officer would go put out bowls of candy in the security team's area, and that would actually get folks on other teams to stop by. And, well, because they're close by, they would then [ask] questions.
Pariseau: What a lot of IT security people within established enterprises have to overcome [in DevOps] is not just a new way for them to work, but a new way to approach their colleagues in IT ops and development. Unfortunately, the history is not just of developers throwing things over the wall to ops and saying, 'It worked on my machine, you handle it,' but also of IT security being the party of 'no,' to everyone. 'Hey, we want to do this really cool thing. We just need you to sign off on it.' Well, no.
Black: Or even the party that delays releases.
Carty: There's so much baggage there.
Pariseau: So they've got to get in as soon in the process as possible, which means they have to be let in as soon as possible, but it doesn't hurt to catch more flies with honey, and to address those historical resentments, and sort of start over, in terms of how these different factions have traditionally treated each other. So, it sounds really silly, but it's a little human thing. I think a lot of times people want to talk about some kind of super crunchy data science tech that's super awesome. And [instead] something like, 'Make sure people want to talk to you,' [is effective]. I think a lot of people that went to school for computer science, I don't think they imagined that they'd have to think about that sort of thing. I'm not just saying that, that's something that I'm paraphrasing [from] what an IT person has told me is how they feel. 'I was told that there would be no social engineering on this career.' And it turns out that it's quite the opposite. Encouraging that collaboration and that trust is hugely important. It often gets overlooked, and it can seem really silly and really simple, but it's hugely important. I think companies are waking up to that.
Black: It makes sense. It's just like, if you go to work, you want to have the sort of work culture where you could talk to your co-workers about what you're working on.
Pariseau: Right, but to your point earlier, it is intangible. It's not something that there's a set of 10 steps to accomplish, and it varies by organization. One of the trickier problems in DevSecOps and security in general is asset inventory, knowing what you have, knowing who you are. I think that extends to every part of DevOps and Agile transformation. First, you need to know where you are, to know where you're going, and that's really hard. It's actually a really long-standing problem in security software is doing effective asset inventory.
Carty: You spoke earlier about how AI can bridge the gap with security a little bit. Let's talk AIOps, another big area that you that you'll be covering in 2020. As with any kind of implementation of AI, there's a little bit of a hype versus reality element to it. So, what's the reality with AIOps right now? And where do you see that going in the near future?
Pariseau: I think the real-world use case that I've seen in any kind of statistically significant use so far is people using machine learning and algorithmic analysis to reduce the fire hose of alerts their IT teams get. So alert reduction and correlation is real. It is something that I know mainstream enterprises with compliance concerns, like Keybank, for example, are using Moogsoft and they feed it with a Kafka [open source stream processing software] pipeline. But data cleansing and data management is an overlooked part of that because, again, garbage in, garbage out. You can have all the whiz-bang algorithms in your AIOps where you want, but if you're feeding it garbage, or you're feeding it unreliable data, it's not going to give you anything useful. So, early adopters of AIOps tools have had to tackle the challenge of getting their data consistently stored in one repository that can be read by the AIOps tool, so that it will deliver them useful information. As far as the dream that started to get articulated, probably in 2017 or so, maybe late 2016, about AI and algorithms and machine learning replacing human intervention for things like incident response and remediation, it's getting there, but I'd say it's still on the cutting edge, if not the bleeding edge. Some companies are more ambitious than others in what they believe they'll offer by this time next year. For example, Dynatrace just came out with a set of services and an open source tool that they talk about being autonomous cloud, but they use the term NoOps, which had sort of become a dirty word, at least in the [SearchITOperations.com] world. But it's still not clear how far automation will go. And the other thing that's really clear, is that IT guys, especially those who've been around a lot longer than, like, two years, don't trust it, because of vendors coming to you saying, 'We have these world-class eggheads with multiple PhDs that designed this algorithm that's going to automate your IT ops, so you can put your feet up, and you can never worry about anything again. It'll just take care of it for you.' And they're saying, these enterprise IT guys, the first question they ask is, 'What happens when your software screws up? Do I need data scientists on my team to figure out if it's your software or something else?' Finger pointing is the first time-honored problem that they anticipate having to deal with. And, of course, the idea is that no, you don't need your own data scientists because you're buying the work product of another company's data scientists being your vendor, but IT guys [are skeptical], I think, with good reason -- they've been burned so many times with the latest software automation that's going to cure cancer and solve world hunger. Their question isn't even, 'Is that possible?' but, 'What happens when it fails?'
Carty: Right. That goes beyond the inherent skepticism toward AI or the fact that maybe it's being oversold or overmarketed. I mean, that goes into how do we debug this problem right now, that's happening right now?
Pariseau: Right. However, the problem is, there's a huge business mandate to transform in these ways that bring this stuff of unfathomable complexity into your world. That unfathomable complexity is going to need to be automatically managed at some point, because it's just beyond the capabilities of even 20 human beings working full time, if not more, to actually get their arms around it. But, it's scary. It's not something that people trust, whose business has essentially been risk management.
The next question that people ask is, 'What happens when and if your company goes away?' Now I've got this thing in the middle of my data path, not just between my users and my infrastructure, but between me and what's going on in the infrastructure. And, all of a sudden, your company goes out of business or you get acquired by a company that we consider a competitor. Example, Amazon, right? If I'm Walmart, and I buy this little startup's product, and then AWS picks them up, now what? So the whole AIOps idea is that it's just asking a lot of trust from people who've learned the very hard way, so far in the history of this industry, to trust no one. So, they are facing a problem that they probably need some level of a leap of faith to solve between trusting new technology and trusting new work processes, but it's a big ask.
Black: Regarding AI, would you say people's apprehension is more that it can be a huge headache for them if they take this AI-driven product, and it goes wrong, and less that, 'Oh, I'm really skeptical of this technology because it's going to replace my job.'?
Pariseau: Yeah, I think that whole thing, people have moved past that. People understand that the magnitude, that the complexity and the number of resources that their team, which is not getting any bigger, is being asked to manage, is beyond human capacity. That is true. I don't think anybody has to worry about not having enough work to do. And, I think people are sold on the idea of doing more meaningful work than break fix and responding to help desk tickets and kind of drone work all day. They want to become SREs, they want to work on higher-level problems, which automation, when it works, can absolutely help them with.
I don't want to seem too pessimistic about the automation techs that are out there, because I do know enterprises, mainstream enterprises, including health care companies with lots of compliance to worry about that are putting these things to use. It's just when people talk about this idea of unsupervised AI algorithms, autonomously responding to incidents in your production infrastructure, and letting you know that they're fixed, that's a long way off, not necessarily because the technical capabilities aren't there anywhere, but because people are not going to trust that sight unseen. People are going to really have to test, and they're going to have to take baby steps. They're gonna have to put part of it into production and let a human push the button for a while. And you know, they do eventually get to a point of gradually turning over that control, but it's not something that's going to happen quickly.
Carty: To your point, I've found that people are almost more flippant about AI and automation taking over some of their responsibilities, right? It's like, 'Yes, automate me away, I have enough else to do.' So it's almost having this opposite reaction now, where it's like, 'No, we want this to advance to this next level.' But, speaking of complexity, in this age of cloud-based, distributed apps with microservices and serverless, orchestration with containers -- all of this -- observability is so important now. But it's such a difficult task to try to tackle. How are you seeing [observability] emerge as a topic? And how are people in the industry tackling these kinds of [distributed] apps?
Pariseau: You know, again, in the original vision for Agile and DevOps, fast feedback to developers and observability were part and parcel of the whole thing, but, as with security and value streams, the focus has been on the core pipeline and infrastructure first, and it's expanding out. So, monitoring and observability do tend to follow those initial efforts.
In terms of the vendor space, it's really volatile. You know, CI/CD tools are starting to kind of coalesce into a few large companies. Same with Kubernetes, although that market is still way too overcrowded. But, a few of the big heavyweight vendors and some plucky upstarts are starting to make names for themselves and infrastructure automation and Kubernetes management. But, in terms of AIOps, observability and IT monitoring, it's such a fragmented space. I actually did a story just this week about companies to watch in 2020. The people I talked to about it, we checked off the list of major areas within DevOps, DevSecOps, CI/CD, Infrastructure automation. I did bring up, 'What about AIOps and observability?' I think the best answer I got about that was, 'Ask me this time next year, because I think it's going to take that long for there to be any kind of clear leader in this space, let alone a winner.' You have so many companies coming at it from so many different angles. You have companies that started on the infrastructure side, adding the application side; APM tools that have added the infrastructure side; then you have specialists that come along with every wave of new technology that there is to observe, like serverless right now. Then those get bought up, and they get consolidated. You also still have container security specialists that are now expanding into hosts because they're not getting snapped up by the bigger fish the way that a lot of people thought they would. So there's all this churn, all this volatility, new companies coming to market every day. That same analyst told me that fully half of his briefings at KubeCon were monitoring and observability vendors. I talked to another analyst just today whose whole focus is monitoring and observability tools, who said that there were [about] a dozen companies at [KubeCon] that she'd never heard of. So, it's just so volatile. There are so many different angles, so many different players. It's really hard to know, in terms of market winners and losers, where we will be this time next year.
I think people are starting to embrace the need for automation. They are starting to get to the observability aspect that they have known is on their to-do list for a long time. But that same analyst that saw all those vendors pop up at KubeCon has told me that, in her experience working with enterprise clients, it gets worse before it gets better. [When] you have a proliferation of tools in-house the way we have in the market, confusion reigns, things get more murky and less clear, until a company finally decides to get a strategic hold on everything it has, streamline its tools, find one tool to rule them all, and send the other data sources into that, have that fabled single pane of glass -- which is a term I've hated for a decade. But, you know, start to get a handle on things, start to just whittle things down to what's really important. The process of getting there gets muddier actually, with more data and more observability information before it gets clearer.
Carty: Well, you have quite the background covering emerging markets with your experience with cloud and with containers, and you are our resident container expert.
Pariseau: And I'm on the container beat.
Carty: That's right, and your reporting on the Docker-Mirantis deal was very interesting. Lots of great insight in there. Now that the dust is settled a little bit, how does this look for the container market moving forward?
Pariseau: So it's interesting because that Docker-Mirantis was … inevitable -- I mean, I had been talking to people and hearing speculation about Docker being an acquisition target for quite a while. And I had been hearing rumblings and criticisms of Docker's business strategy since 2016. It's not news that people had questions about Docker's business strategy and where they'd ultimately end up, especially as Kubernetes ate the world. However, I don't think anybody saw Mirantis being the one to acquire them. I've known Mirantis since the early OpenStack days. I've known Boris [Renski, cofounder and CMO] over at Mirantis; I've been running into him at conferences for probably 10 years. That name [Mirantis] would never have crossed my mind [to acquire Docker]. So, it was shocking, but it wasn't. Docker had been sort of on the bubble, as they say, for a while with Docker Enterprise. At the end of 2017, they did concede to Kubernetes essentially and pledged their support for it. But, the problem is that OpenShift has already beaten them to the punch. Cloud Foundry has had the same problem. They got to Kubernetes integration with Kubo in 2017, but OpenShift made that move in 2014, OpenShift version 3. Cloud Foundry and Docker both continued to offer their own orchestrators alongside Kubernetes as a choice, or because they didn't want to just throw away what they'd already done. But Red Hat got in so early with Kubernetes, and so early in the life of OpenShift, that they did just throw away their previous orchestrator and just go whole hog into Kubernetes. That turned out to be the right bet, and they still have the largest market share among enterprises, and they've got a head start. And there were also lots of -- I heard consistently people having technical issues with Docker's Universal Control Plane, that backed Swarm and their Kubernetes implementation under Docker Enterprise, some issues at scale that companies consistently reported. As far as how it's going to affect the market further, I think it's not necessarily good for the market to have it be kind of a Kubernetes monopoly.
Black: Monopolies are never good.
Pariseau: However, it's not a proprietary corporate monopoly. It's a monopoly belonging to an open source platform that is governed in the open. So that's better than it could be. But, it's also, again, it's not really about the container orchestration platform. It's about what people are doing with it. So, for it to be a standardized, agreed-upon component is going to enable a lot of things that have been a long time coming in IT. As an old storage reporter, interoperability is one of the long-standing issues in IT in general. The promise that containers and Kubernetes have for multi-cloud mobility, and for things like cloud bursting, and follow-the-sun, and all these kind of pie-in-the-sky things that companies like VMware were talking about 10 years ago is really great. You do need to have some sort of standardization for that to happen. But it also means that you have a lot of vendors -- I think there are 95 Kubernetes [distributions] that CNCF [Cloud Native Computing Foundation] recognizes now. Name the major IT vendor, they're in the market with a Kubernetes distribution, even HPE [Hewlett Packard Enterprise] just came out with one at KubeCon. [Others include] Cisco, IBM, Red Hat, Pivotal, VMware, which obviously falls under Dell. Then you have Rancher and you have a million, bazillion little startups nobody's heard of. And then if you expand it to things that are like Kubernetes accessories, like service mesh, it's still just a huge universe of really complex technology.
Carty: And that's just over the last year or two.
Black: I was going to say, it sounds like there's more [Kubernetes distributions] than there are cryptocurrencies.
Pariseau: So, maybe a little simplification or standardization is a good thing. But, the idea that this kind of major player in containerization has all but disappeared, at least in the form that we know it, I think it's a sign of how fast this market moves now. I think it's also -- the warning I think here is in the open source and open core business model. Open source is all the rage. One of the things that happened was Docker tried to claw back some of its differentiation into its proprietary product, and they got killed for it -- when they tried to build Docker swarm into Docker Engine. But that also meant that, in the long run, they couldn't figure out how to make money on this technology that they had made ubiquitous. Everybody wants open source, but then what happens when your open source vendor you come to rely on, say for IT automation that is too complex for you to pull back apart and understand as we were talking about, can't make money? So, there's kind of a two-edged sword there, right? To me, Docker took so much funding, they were such a huge force to be reckoned with, even a year ago. To see the rise and fall be so meteoric, it does raise, I think, broader questions about the open source craze and vendor stability that I think enterprises really do need to consider carefully.
Carty: Certainly not what we would have expected four or five years ago, when Docker made containers ubiquitous, as you mentioned. Well, this has been great, a lot of great topics we've been able to discuss, and thanks for joining us here.
Pariseau: Thanks for having me.
David Carty asks:
What types of tools will your team purchase in 2020?
David Carty - 20 Dec 2019 4:32 PM

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The main perk you get from shopping in a brick and mortar clothing store is the availability of a few suit styles. But when you shop for mens suits online, you'll find what seems like an endless supply of new styles and colors to rock your world. Men are finally shopping online and it's getting real. Most men don't want to go through the hassle of visiting a retail store in a mall or strip center. Men's clothing stores have a limited selection of suits that fit a select group of male consumers. Keep reading to discover the best way to find mens suits online.
Most retailers can't afford to carry a lot of different styles in a range of colors and sizes. So, they pick a few suits in two or three colors, using the standard size scale. If you need a size that is not part of that standard size scale, you are out of luck. You must keep shopping until you find the right suit in your size. That might even mean a trip to New York City or downtown San Francisco.
Traveling to shop is not an option for most men, so shopping for a suit online is the way to go. It takes a little research to find the right online suit vendor who has what you need in terms of suit style, color and size. But the good news is, there is more than one suit for you online. Your mission is to find the online suit brands that make what you wear.
Most men usually ask a friend about suit brands, and then they surf the net to find that brand. Other men only wear Italian suits, so they know where to shop for mens suits online. But to shop from your couch successfully, you need to know a few things about your body type. The first thing to do is let a tailor measure your chest, arms and torso, as well as your inseam length. Knowing your true suit size eliminates the size question when looking for the right suit.
Another tip is to identify your body type before you shop. A double-breasted suit is not always the best choice for a tall, slender man. And, a two-button suit jacket doesn't always work for short, stocky men. Some men like to wear one or two suits in unusual colors and different fabrics. Those men must find a suit vendor online that focuses on an array of colors in different fabrics.
Shopping online is a great way to cut all the guesswork that comes with retail suit shopping. When you find the right online retailer, who changes suit selections and color selections often, you'll win. And you keep winning because those online sites make it easy for you to update your wardrobe without leaving home. Let's face it, buying mens suits online is a win-win for busy men today.


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I haven't been sick in a few years, which is quite a progress considering that I had such a weak immune system before that and got seriously sick multiple times a year.
That, of course, led to taking antibiotics, which may kill the symptoms but not the illness itself, and harms the body in the long-term.
To fix my situation, I started doing simple things like dressing warmly, shying away from the outdoors if I felt the flu coming on, drinking Propolis Tincture almost every day, and just having in mind that I'm not invincible. That last part really helps.
But every now and then, be it in the winter or early spring, we all feel our throats begin to ache, get either stuffy or runny noses and sometimes both somehow, headaches, chills, exhaustion, or have other early symptoms that mean we're on the verge of catching a cold.
And instead of panicking, taking medications and considering ourselves seriously sick and committing ourselves to a week of bed rest, we should change our lifestyles a bit for a few days and do something real to fight the flu.
Naturally, there are several simple hacks everyone should use in the early stages to beat the cold and stay healthy.
Your immune system needs to be boosted and the first thing you should do is start eating more fruits. You may roll your eyes when you hear an advice like that, but in this situation it helps a lot.
I've been eating proteins only for the last few days and of course that is not the best choice of a regimen. But now that I feel I may get sick, I started eating fruits.
I'll also go out to buy vitamin C now. That's another key thing. Actually, any other vitamin you start taking now will also improve your condition.
I was having tea first thing in the morning. I put honey into it – an important ingredient, and Propolis Tincture. Seriously, drink that 2-3 times a day and it will help.
Many people underestimate Propolis or don't give it a try at all, but you should know that it's a seemingly magical product. It has vitamins, minerals, proteins and is an antioxidant. It's a supplement and a completely natural antibiotic. A combination of Propolis extract and food-grade alcohol used medicinally.
If you haven't tried it yet and tend to get sick often, or just need to improve your health, make it a daily supplement.
I didn't expect sweating in a sauna to help when doctors recommended it to me a year ago, but it sure did. The high temperature really helps weaken the virus and bring down the fever, and breathing deeply helped soothe my nose and throat.
That's why I think I'll have a sauna session later in the day.
Have you ever wondered why we get sick in the winter and almost never in the summer?
The reason is vitamin D, and the best way to get it is from sunlight. So if you can find a way to go out for a walk while the sun is still shining, it will be great for your immune system. 15 minutes of sun a day can have a huge impact on our health in general.
But if you can't do it, as many northern countries don't have any sun in the winter months, get Vitamin D from other sources. It can be found in fatty fish or tuna, egg yolks, UV light or in the form of supplements.
For the next few days try to eat a lot of fruits and veggies. Also add antibacterial foods like garlic, ginger, honey, lemons, carrots and tomatoes. Protein is also a must. Everything else you crave can wait for when you feel better and have fought off the flu.
Don't underestimate the amount of liquid your body needs and the power it has. Drink a lot of water, along with the tea, and nothing else.
Wash your hands more than you usually do to avoid spreading germs. A hand sanitizer is also a good idea. Another thing I find useful is to change sheets and towels more often when you feel a little sick.
Last but not least, airing out all rooms throughout these days of sickness will prevent you from breathing dust. Fresh air is great for the immune system, so expose yourself to it as much as you can.
All of these tips aren't things you haven't heard of, but don't let that make you neglect them. Simple as they may seem, implementing all of them into your lifestyle for a few days and focusing on getting better is the key to holding off the flu and colds.
What other remedies have you tried to get rid of the flu?


Rob Bennett is an associate at Powers Miller specializing in personal injury litigation, insurance litigation and vehicle law. As a law student he clerked for several civil litigators, gaining valuable experience in personal injury and civil litigation.
Clients appreciate Rob's steadfast commitment to educating and informing them about the legal process as they are experiencing it. "An individual who is being sued has typically not been through the process before, so it's satisfying not only to position them for a successful result but also to guide them so that they feel properly represented," says Rob.
From 2009 through 2016, Rob served as an attorney coach for the El Camino High School Mock Trial team in the Sacramento County Mock Trial Program. He is an avid fan of Boston sports teams, especially the Red Sox. Rob resides in Elk Grove with his wife, Veronica, daughter, Lucia, and son Benjamin.
Rob can be reached at (916) 666-7776 or rfb@powersmiller.com.


text:
A delicious dockside restaurant and gorgeous water views await in Gig Harbor - Neighbor in the Know
Gig Harbor is a maritime paradise with rich tradition and lots of great spots to check out. Sponsored by Windermere Real Estate.
Author: Ellen Meny (KING 5), KING 5 Evening (KING 5)
GIG HARBOR, Wash. — Gig Harbor as we know it was born from a boat- at least, that's where the name came from, according to Amanda Kooley.
"Gig Harbor got its name because, way back when, an explorer came in here to seek shelter," Kooley says. "And he came in on the captain's gig, hence the name."
My guide, Amanda Kooley, is not only a (pretty much) lifelong resident of Gig Harbor, but a Windermere Real Estate agent there as well. So, she was a wealth of knowledge- starting with the origin of the name Gig Harbor.
But she didn't just give me a lesson in Gig Harbor history- Kooley also showed me some great Gig Harbor spots.
Credit: KING 5
Tides Tavern serves ice-cold oysters and much more.
If you're looking for a place to grab a beer or a bite, there's really no better place than Tides Tavern. Since 1973, this restaurant has been a docking place for hungry and thirsty Gig Harbor residents and visitors. It's also literally a docking place, because boats can sail up to their back deck and pick up some food for the road...er, water.
It's a great spot for oysters on the half shell, and they do a mean fish and chips basket. And according to Kooley, it's the spot to celebrate one's 21st birthday:
"When I was 21 I got to come here because it's a rite of passage" Kooley says. "It's the tavern of the town, so teenagers do that here. Which I think is awesome!"
Tides Tavern | 2925 Harborview Dr, Gig Harbor
Gig Harbor Fly Shop has everything you need for a fun day exploring the outdoors.
If you're an outdoorsperson or an aspiring fisherperson, Gig Harbor Fly Shop is a great place to check out outdoor supplies. And if you're into fly fishing, step in here and you'll feel like you've hit the jackpot. They even have fly tying nights on Thursdays from 6-8pm. They provide the tools and materials, and sell beers for $3 each.
There's so much more to Gig Harbor than just this story, but it's a start!
Gig Harbor Fly Shop | 3115 Harborview Dr, Gig Harbor
This story is sponsored by Windermere Real Estate. KING 5's Evening celebrates the Northwest. Contact us: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Email.
The larger-than-life birds of Tacoma artist Curtis Ashby


committed to solving social challenges of this Imagination Age!
Here are our ChangeMakers who carry a passion for using their coding skills to make this world a better place!
If you think you (or somebody else who you know) belong here, please let us know.
Harvix.org provides users with a state of the art searching experience while allowing them to choose which organization or cause to support with generated ad revenue from the search page.
LateraLogics is a technology startup being led by a vision 'to leverage its passion, creativity, knowledge, skills and attitude to create innovative technology solutions that can transform lives'.
Are you a young ChangeMaker who wish to join us?
Or, do you know someone whom you would like to recommend?
Please e-mail us us any questions you have to be answered here.
#1. What is 'Code for Social Change' all about?
'Code for Social Change' empowers young changemakers who are working to solve social challenges in our community so that they can make a stronger impact on the society, as well as inspire other young coders with their stories.
#2. Who is eligible to become a 'Code for Social Change' ChangeMaker?
The idea behind 'Code for Social Change' is to inspire the young coders across the world to become social ChangeMakers.
Anyone below the age of 20 can apply as a 'Code for Social Change' ChangeMaker.
#3. How do one become a 'Code for Social Change' ChangeMaker?
Just sign up here to express your interest, we will get back to you to learn about you and your projects.
Drop us a message. And we promise to respond.


The intent of this letter is to provide you with between-the-lines access to Kaleidoscopes and Quilts. I wrote the book exactly as I teach my workshop, and strongly suggest you do the same…which means begin with the how-to stuff in TECHNICAL SENSE and don't stop to sew until the class has thought its way through DESIGN SENSIBILITY. This takes from three to five hours. Explain to the class that there's good news and bad. The good news is, the critical information needed to get started builds logically in a developmental way. On the other hand, you have to understand the whole shebang before starting off on your own project.
I'm hoping that, after you've read the INTRODUCTION and HOW TO USE THIS BOOK sections, you'll want to create a classroom ambiance that focuses not on rules but on guidelines. Don't try to turn this concept into a beginner's class. It works with intermediate students who are ready to merge control and spontaneity to produce the unexpected.
The design begins by drafting a single full-size triangle on a long sheet of 1/8" graph paper. Throughout the design stage, the focus is on this single piece-of-the-pie. By marking every sewing line on this diagram it evolves into a blueprint that results in a design plan and maintains the accuracy of the 45° angle. Using an assembly line approach to sew identical units at one time, this piece-of-the-pie is duplicated eight times.
The symmetrical repetition from one piece-of-the-pie to another and another creates visual pathways. The portion of fabric that winds up along the seamlines connects to its mirror image. Seamlines will disappear, intricacy will reign, and we will get credit for the magic that happens when the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
Embracing the possibilities offered by choice can be liberating. I have come to believe in the notion that there isn't a correct or best selection -- that fabric choices made today will be different from the ones made tomorrow. After all, a breathtaking collision of color in a scope will maneuver into something different, something slightly new, during even the instant it takes me to hand it to you.
When I am piecing a kaleidoscope, I don't know what the final image will be. Making kaleidoscopic designs satisfies my urge to be both the one who makes the magic and the one who feels the surprise. If this makes you or your students uncomfortable, offer mirrors (discussion: page 127).
I appreciate your effort to promote this technique.
The kaleidoscope configuration and its symmetrical repetition allows students to explore a clarity of design possibilities using intricately printed fabric. The class covers a unique machine-piecing technique and both color and fabric guidelines for fabricating the complex and mobile reflection of a kaleidoscope.
Two all-day sessions followed by two 2-3 hour sessions allow students the hands-on experiences that result in integrated techniques. The opportunity to watch other students' kaleidoscopes evolve fosters an appreciation of how printed fabric can be manipulated to achieve a wide array of visual imagery.
Create an octagonal kaleidoscope from eight 45° triangles that meet in the middle of the block.
FYI: I like the 8-to-the-inch grid because this smaller division promotes a detailed, intricate image with very little fuss.
Graph paper with eight-to-the-inch grid and bold inch line.
Visi-GRID™ Quilter's Template Sheets (or sheets of see-through plastic template material with an eith-to-the-inch grid and a bold inch line).
A thin 12" x 2" ruler made of clear plastic with accurate one eighth-inch grid line. (Available through C-Thru Rule, Bloomfield, CT).
Well-sharpened pencils with ample and accessible erasers.
An extra fine-point permanent marker. (My favorite pen: PILOT Extra Fine Point permanent marker, SCA-UF).
A protractor with notations for both whole and half degrees. Bigger is better, if possible, collect protractors of different sizes. (Big protractors are available through C-Thru Rule, Bloomfield, CT).
Set-up for rotary cutting, including a rotary cutter, ruler and mat.
Sewing machine with well-defined quarter-inch seam allowance guide.
If it catches your eye, bring it! The palette of fabric does not have to match. Diversity is the key. Remember, more is more! Important: Intricately printed fabrics with at least 8 or 16 identical and symmetrical motifs, ie: border prints, wallpaper stripes. Also: a wide variety of 1/4 to 1/2 yards of big and small all-over prints, textures, gradations, stripes, marbled and stuff speckled with gold. Include painterly fabrics that evoke luminosity and rich, saturated, jewel tones.
Go step by step through the subheadings of TECHNICAL SENSE AND DESIGN SENSIBILITY, focusing the discussion on the following key points. The topics printed in bold are the technical linchpins that makes this type of design possible. Make sure the student gets started on a kaleidoscope which they should continue at their own comfortable pace at home. Most students want to go home after Day 1 and explore their personal fabric stash with their new found appreciation for fabric. At the end of Day 1, when the studnets may be feeling overwhelmed, remind them of how much they know NOW compared to the beginning of the day.
A couple of mismatched points are not going to be noticed in an image filled to the brim with complexity.
After Show and Tell, have each student work individually. Move from student to student, providing individual attention. Call the whole class together to analyze interesting use of fabric, technical problems and piecing solutions.
Use class time to analyze the quilts and individual kaleidoscopes in THE GALLERY, and the interior images of the actual kaleidoscopes throughout the book.


text:
A Man Who Opened Indian Racing to the World - RIP Anil Mukhi
When I spoke to Anil last night I didn't want to believe it, but my breaking heart told me that it was the last time we would do so. That was confirmed when I saw his son Karun's name flash on my phone this afternoon, writes Jehangir Rustomjee.
Born in Delhi in October 1947, Anil Mukhi was nearly as old as independent India itself. Popo to most of his friends all over the world was always Anil for me out of respect for our difference in age. He was one of my closest friends and remained so even after we were geographically separated with my move to Bahrain and his to Canada a few years later. It was first phone and fax, then email and SMS and thenWhatsApp that kept us constantly connected. We always made sure to keep each other abreast of our travels to India so we could meet and indulge in our love for fish and racing banter at the legendary Mahesh Lunch Home in the Fort area of Mumbai. Our families did occasionally join us only to be soundly beaten in the talking stakes. Then of course if there was racing, we'd be at the races together. The last time it was at the Invitation Weekend in Kolkata in 2018.
We are getting way ahead of ourselves and need to go back a bit. Anil was a non betting racing enthusiast with a remarkable memory and love for statistics. This resulted in a now defunct annual Indian Turf Statistical Review which was a comprehensive publication of every possible permutation and combination of numerical figures in Indian racing. This was initially done without the help of computers, but Anil quite the whiz was possibly the first to employ the use of one of the first personal computers in India. He first operated out of a tiny, shared office on Veer Nariman Road (Churchgate Street for us oldies) and then slowly expanded to the whole office and a neighboring one across the hallway as he expanded his own business as India's first Bloodstock Agent in the avatar of Indian Turf Services.Anil built a trusty team, which for a few years included myself on airport runs to be an extra hand with the horses that arrived.
Indian Turf Services became India's premier bloodstock agency not merely for the lack of any worthy competition, but due to Anil's canny eye for a good horse and of course his encyclopedic knowledge of pedigrees. I would not be exaggerating in saying that most of India's stud farms large and small have benefited greatly from his acumen and experience in picking a good stallion or mare. Going into details of all the good horses he selected and bought over the years would fill too many pages for this piece. Proven stallions Air Support and Whatsthescript currently at stud in India are just two of the hundreds of good horses imported to India by the then Indian Turf Services and later Galaxy Bloodstock.
On a personal note again, Anil was one of my very first owners when I set out on my own steam. He asked me to go to Yerevada Stud to look at a late developing Kunigal Stud bred filly by the proven producer of speed Tecorno out of In Style. She wasn't very big or imposing, but I liked her attitude and was happy to take her on. Named Enamorados and if memory serves me right, the only horse Anil owned to carry his own colours went to the top of Class II in the competitive sprint division under the care of trainer S.S. Shah as she was transferred to him when I stopped training in India.
Every time she won, I was sent a congratulatory fax never failing to thank me for my efforts in nurturing her in her difficult two-year-old days - that was Anil. His reassured and calming presence was his hallmark; and when he said something in his soft baritone, one needed to listen because it was important, made complete sense and was usually a mini life lesson.
We shared huge mutual respect and so I don't remember us ever exchanging a harsh word. He had that way and it won him admiration and respect in the thoroughbred breeding and racing industry all over the world. In an age of flamboyance and influencers, Anil was an influencer in his own right, yet distinctly old school, always generous with his knowledge and experience.
Though Anil lived abroad, his love for Indian racing and breeding never ever waned and sometimes we'd bemoan the state of the industry or feel irked by an instance or situation. More often than not he would voice his disappointment, which was rarely appreciated. That possibly hurt a lot because his sentiments were from the heart about an industry that had made him what he was.
Anil was a prolific writer and previewed and reviewed racing and breeding all over the world in virtually every racing periodical that has been published in India in his time and of course for this very website. His attention to tiny detail and evocative prose made reading his work a complete experience.
We always watched all the important international races and meetings "together" with at least for the last 9 years WhatsApp on the ready and before that the archaic SMS. His failing health prevented him from watching live the last big meet of the year, The Hong Kong International Races. We didn't even get a chance to dissect it as we so loved to do. It's not going to be the same again for me as I see all the sport now on without him at the other end.
He leaves behind a giant hole to fill in Indian racing and breeding and the place he held in his beautiful family. Anil is survived by his wife the ever vivacious and positive Sreedevi, his sons Rajiv, Karun and Akshay, daughters in law Rupinder and Minsun and granddaughters Ananya and Aisha. We will all miss him dearly in our different ways. Goodbye my friend. Go gently into the night. Au revoir.
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Santa Parade, 2017 - Asperger Works Inc.
The weather was really crazy. The morning started off very cold, windy, and the rain poured down as if poured from buckets. But the organizers did not cancel the Parade, so members of the AWorks Team decided to participate despite the weather. By the time Tom "Woody" Wood arrived at the Rajczyk home, things started to settle down. Adam, Daniel, Lisa, and Eva Rajczyk piled into Woody's car and went to the staging area at the Wood School in Bradford.
Initially, we planned to take both Molly and Dakota with us. But because of the fact that Dakota is not yet comfortable with strangers and because of the weather, we decided to leave the dogs at home. And while we were waiting for the parade to start and hoped for a chance to decorate the car, the sky cleared up and the sun warmed us. We all had a good time. Adam rode in Woody's car (Besides Asperger's, Woody also has Cerebral Palsy and cannot walk long distances). The rest of us marched ahead of the decorated car carrying the AWorks banner. Although the sun was out, the wind did not abate and often we had the feeling that we would fly away as the wind lifted our banner.
Take a look at the dog! The kids are cute too.


text:
La ligne Yverdon – Sainte-Croix (YSC) est une ligne de chemin de fer longue de , à voie unique et à écartement métrique, reliant la gare d'Yverdon-les-Bains à Sainte-Croix et une ancienne entreprise ferroviaire.

Sa direction fusionne en 2001 avec d'autres compagnies de transport de la région pour devenir les Transports Vallée de Joux, Yverdon-les-Bains, Sainte Croix (Travys).

Histoire

 1887 : La confédération accorde la concession
 1892 : Début des travaux
 1893 : le , début du trafic, financement par le député et homme d'affaires de Valeyres-sous-Rances, William Barbey.
 1918 : le train circule le dimanche, ce que son fondateur, fervent croyant, avait interdit jusqu'à son décès
 1945 : électrification.
 1950 : utilisation d'un système de truks porteurs, permettant de transporter des wagons de marchandise à voie normale.
 Le , deux convois se percutent sur la ligne entre les gares d'Essert-sous-Champvent et Valeyres-sous-Montagny. La collision qui s'est produite vers , a fait sept morts et quarante-trois blessés
 En 1981, dans le cadre de la modernisation de son matériel roulant, la compagnie abandonne la . Cette dernière est réintroduite avec la commande de nouveau matériel roulant qui sera mis en service en .
 Au changement d'horaire de , la gare de Trois-Villes ne sera plus desservie. Ne disposant pas de quai pour les passagers, elle ne répond plus aux normes. En 2020 toujours, la gare de Sainte-Croix connaît d'importants travaux : démolition du dépôt construit en même temps que la ligne, reconstruction d'un dépôt moderne permettant des petites réparations, nouveau quai, et nouveaux passages a niveaux. Les travaux seront terminés en 2021.

Caractéristiques
Subvention :  de francs suisses en 2005
 Longueur :
 Voie métrique
 Alimentation électrique , 16 2/3 Hz, comme les CFF.
 Déclivité maximum : 4,4 %
 Voyageurs :  en 2004
 Taux de couverture : 16 % par les billets

Matériel roulant

À l'ouverture de la ligne, la compagnie disposait de trois machines à vapeur de type Mallet à quatre essieux et de vingt-huit voitures et trois fourgons à deux essieux.

Le , la compagnie Travys annonce avoir signé un contrat de 30 millions de francs pour l'achat trois nouvelles rames auprès de Stadler, ce qui permet d'assurer un horaire cadencé à la demi-heure depuis l'automne 2015.

Notes et références

Voir aussi

Articles connexes
 Liste des chemins de fer suisses
 TRAVYS

Liens externes
 Site officiel

Ancienne compagnie de chemin de fer en Suisse
Entreprise ayant son siège dans le canton de Vaud
Yverdon-Sainte-Croix
Yverdon-Sainte-Croix
Yverdon-les-Bains

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia