text:
Italians have become very concerned [Corriere della Sera] about ISIS' recent inroads into Libya, adding a new twist to a humanitarian crisis that has been going on for years [The Migrants Files]. Deutche Welle summarizes the situation in Lampedusa:
"The residents of the island are waiting and hoping that no war breaks out right at their doorstep. There are frightening new rumors that have found their way across the Mediterranean.
The Italian secret service is said to have worked out that more than 250,000 refugees currently living in camps in Libya are willing to risk the dangerous trip to Europe. Rumor has it that Islamist terrorists are forcing people to flee in order to cause chaos in Europe. With it comes the worry that terrorists are among the refugees flooding into the continent."
Meanwhile Russia and China may be waiting for the right opportunity to bail out Greece in case that country actually exits the Euro desperately seeking financial support anywhere it can get it. China's COSCO made big investments [WSJ] in Greek port facilities, and Greece's new government halting [AFP] of its privatization plans turned out to be temporary. A Chinese naval fleet paid a friendly visit [Xinhua] to the port just days ago, which no less than Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras took the time to visit. To put day-to-day developments into perspective, here's how the flow of global trade [map] looks like.
There's also been talks [Hurriyet] of Cyprus allowing increased use of its naval and air facilities by Russia. Remember that Cyprus, where a lot of Russian money is parked, has been facing its own severe financial crisis fairly recently.
Now note that Russia and China announced [Interfax] in 2014 that they'd hold their first-ever joint naval exercise in the Mediterranean in the spring 2015. Russia's ability to sustain naval forces in the region so far solely relies on access to their facilities in Tartus, Syria. The Russians reportedly evacuated [RT] that naval base in June 2013, though their defense ministry denied [Pravda] having done so. I'm eagerly awaiting to see how large and sustained this naval drill will be as a show of regional interest and projection ability from China and Russia, as well as a way for them to demonstrate very visibly that they are willing to cooperate right in the backyard of the Western world.
On the Black Sea, there have been concerns ever since Russia's annexation of Crimea that they wouldn't stop there, but also follow the Ukrainian coast from Mariupol to Kalanchak, and possibly all the way to Odessa then the Transnistria breakaway region in Moldova. There, a new pro-EU prime minister has just been appointed [Reuters]. Expect the young Chiril Gaburici to have his work cut out for him.
Overall, there is a strong confluence of interests and tensions at play in the same space and time. That doesn't mean Russia and China will make a significant, let alone concerted and thorough, push into the region, but it seems certain they are gauging Europe's lack of determination and probing for relatively cheap opportunities to step in and serve their military and economic interests in one swoop. Sounds very much like a "Balance of Power" approach from the Cold War, doesn't it?
The FT thinks that the sums at stake are too large for an Eastern bailout to be credible. Yes, if you look at debts at full value in hard currency. But if there's a Greece default and Euro exit, I'd say all bets are off, opening the door for deals paid in kind or in Renminbi, in the process showing the world that weakening and possibly displacing the US dollar and Euro as reserve currencies is more than talk.
The Russians might be tactical, but the Chinese are playing a long game and may well be satisfied by incremental progress such as having their currency become [East Asia Forum] part of IMF special drawing rights. In the meantime they'll let the EU and IMF exhaust themselves, and countries like Greece, before throwing a lifeline. But wait until it's over to say it's over.
Europe has a weak underbelly, and the EU is doing preciously little to address these weaknesses, leaving already struggling nation states under a huge amount of pressure. Watch this sea, and watch what happens in places such as Lampedusa, Piraeus or Limassol!
Remember that for years mainstream politicians and media would have you believe that talks of any member of the Euro ever leaving the currency union were sheer lunacy or idiocy. Then all of a sudden this scenario is presented as a distinct possibility. Political, economic, and military alliances break down under pressure all the time, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. This is not just Zero Hedge fringe talk. Instead, this is what history in the making looks like!
The FT has ongoing coverage of Europe's migration crisis, while IHS's JOC keeps taps on China's "Belt and Road".
06/23/16 – Migrant crisis: 4,500 rescued in Mediterranean in one day [BBC].
06/22/16 – Moldova asks Russia to stop recruiting its citizens to Army [AP]. You rarely hear about it in Western media, but it's very much on the Russian agenda, as shown by the frequent coverage on Russian government mouthpiece Sputnik.
06/22/16 – 'China's Offensive in Europe;' Is There a Master Plan in Beijing? [WSJ, Amazon link for the book].
06/21/16 – SASC Supports Marine Lt. Gen. Waldhauser's Nomination For AFRICOM Commander [USNI News].
06/17/16 – More funding lifts China's Belt and Road strategy to $1.2 trillion [JOC]. Trillion with a T. Not all of this will pan out, but the scale is staggering, on the order of 10x the inflation-adjusted cost of the Marshall Plan.
06/08/16 – The Mediterranean Microcosm [War On the Rocks]
05/26/16 – CNN Exclusive Explores ISIS Fighters Mixing In with Refugees. A "new threat" that I mentioned here more than a year earlier…
04/19/16 – China's Mediterranean Odyssey [The Diplomat], and its limits, as the Chinese have found in Libya.
02/25/16 – The astonishing new numbers behind the migrant crisis [WaPo / IOM].
02/25/16 – Cyprus picks 2 consortiums to run Limassol port [Kathimerini]. Cosco had bid but lost this one.
02/01/16 – The Grexit that Could Actually Happen [Peterson's Institute] | Why we're not safe from Grexit yet [Politico EU]. The Schengen space is under heavy pressure.
01/20/16 – Greece picks China's Cosco in port deal [FT], the deal ended up being signed in April 2016.
01/14/16 – EU migration commissioner warns refugee crisis 'getting worse' [DW]
01/12/16 – China's Cosco Group has just made the sole bid for a majority share in Piraeus Port Authority [Greek Reporter]. See also One Port, Two Worlds: China Seeks Dominance in Athens Harbor [Der Spiegel, April 2015]:
"In the span of four years, Cosco has quadrupled container traffic, to just under 3 million units a year. If all goes well, annual capacity will be expanded to 6.2 million containers in 2016. Together with Pier I, that would put it in the same league as Europe's largest ports in Hamburg, Antwerp and Rotterdam."
12/22/15 – Irregular Migrant, Refugee Arrivals in Europe Top One Million in 2015 [IOM]
12/03/15 – Putin: Turkey will regret jet shooting 'more than once' [AJ]
12/02/15 – Hungarian PM warns of 'secret' EU plans to bring Syrian refugees from Turkey [DW] |
11/29/15 – Turkey, EU agree 3-billion-euro aid deal to stem migrant crisis [DW]
11/26/15 – China Retools Its Military With a First Overseas Outpost in Djibouti [NYT]. That's 2,500 km south east of Port Said, and about 3600 km north (by sea) of the China-financed Tanzanian port being built in Bagamoyo. I wrote about this eventuality on Defense Industry Daily back in February 2014. There is also another smaller Chinese project in Lamu, Kenya.
See also China Signpost on background, and Mapping China's Maritime Ambition [Stratfor, November 2014].
11/26/15 – Caspian Sea Port of Baku builds for China-Europe overland links [JOC].
11/15/15 – ISIS' attacks two days ago in Paris, unprecedented (in Western Europe) in their scale and organization, were predicted by savvy observers such as judge Marc Trevidic (for instance in this 09/30/15 JDD article, in French). It's not yet certain whether one of the terrorists had spent some time in Syria. It seems very likely that other similar coordinated attacks will take place in Europe in the months to come.
10/21/15 – Russia's Syria strategy poses challenge to Nato in Mediterranean [FT]
10/10/15 – First round of talks for Limassol port privatisation [in-cyprus]. COSCO said to be among the interested parties.
09/17/15 – CMHI and COSCO acquire equity interests in Kumport terminal in Turkey [press release]. The deal was done with help from VTB Capital, a Russian investment bank which incidentally also helped Cyprus sell some of its sovereign bonds.
09/14/15 – Putin shifts fronts in Syria and Ukraine | From west to east, Europe tightens borders as refugees scramble [both WaPo]
09/08/15 – The New Silk Road and Eastern Europe [PIIE]
08/18/15 – Germany expecting 650,000 refugees this year [DW]
07/22/15 – Did Putin Sell Out Greece? [BB View] | Thibault de Montbrial on Islamic terrorists planning to use mass immigration as a vehicle to infiltrate Europe [in French]
07/05/15 – Russia: Powers in the balance [FT]
07/02/15 – Could China or Russia Bail Out Greece if Europe Won't? [Slate]
07/01/15 – The Sea Route to Europe [UNHCR] | Russia, China cozying up to Greece [Nikkei Asian Review]
06/25/15 – Russia's Pivot to China Is Real [Bloomberg View]
06/15/15 – A new age of isolation for Europe? [DW]
05/22/15 – China and Russia Conclude Naval Drill in Mediterranean [The Diplomat]
05/14/15 – Ankara skittish over role in NATO alliance [DW]
05/13/15 – Shell Game? How Greece's Latest IMF Repayment Cost Athens Very Little [WSJ] | The View from Vilnius [Scott Sumner]
04/20/15 – What's Behind the Surge in Refugees Crossing the Mediterranean Sea [NYT] | The victims of the migrant disaster in the Mediterranean [Die Zeit].
04/13/15 – More cooperation in the Mediterranean region to combat terrorism [DW]. Spain is trying to revive Sarkozy's failed Mediterranean Union.
04/09/15 – A leaked memo [Reuters] from the Finnish finance ministry said Finland must prepare itself for Grexit possibility. For now: Greece Meets Deadline to Repay IMF Bailout Loan [WSJ], but that's a drop in the bucket [WSJ debt timeline].
04/08/15 – Europe's manhandling of Greece is a strategic gift to Russia's Vladimir Putin [The Telegraph]
04/07/15 – Poland to build watchtowers in Kaliningrad in response to Russian missiles; The 'long goal is to weaken the EU,' expert says [both DW]
04/03/15 – Long live Ruthenia [TE]
04/01/15 – To Russia with love: Greece's flirt with Moscow [DW]
03/27/15 – China, Europe and the Maritime Silk Road [Clingendael, PDF]. See also China's foreign ports [The Economist, June 2013], China's port operators harbour global ambitions [FinanceAsia], and extensive work by Clingendael, a Dutch think tank.
03/26/15 – Washington's Big China Screw-up [FB]; China's rise confounds a splintered west [FT]
03/24/15 – Chinese Company to Run New Haifa Port [Haaretz]
03/23/15 – Presidents, Bankers, the Neo-Cold War and the World Bank [Nomi Prins]
03/21/15 – RealClearDefense with US Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain on Mariupol, Moldova, and the Baltic countries.
03/17/15 – Europeans defy US to join China-led development bank [FT]
03/09/15 – Defiant Greece at daggers drawn with EU creditors [The Telegraph]
03/03/15 – Moldova: Europe's next powder keg? [DW]; Is Islamic State a credible threat to Mediterranean shipping? [Seatrade]
03/02/15 – China and Russia vs. the United States? [The Diplomat]
03/01/15 – Europe puts future at risk by playing safe [FT].
02/26/15 – Russia and Cyprus sign military deal for Mediterranean ports [DW]. Meanwhile it looks like Greece is buying a few months of respite with its creditors, at the expense of straining [Greek Reporter] the freshly elected Syriza parliamentary group. Michael Pettis offers a very good framework to think about the Europan debt crisis.]]>
By definition Software as a Service is easier to roll out than on-premises software because you don't have to install it on your own servers, let alone desktops or mobile devices. This favors a best-of-breed approach rather than picking monolithic suites from the same vendor. That alone is a big market shift from the steamrolling that Microsoft was able to inflict in the 90s on the desktop with Office, and to a lesser extent on servers with what was then known as BackOffice. Over the past decades, IBM became DEC, Microsoft became IBM, Google became Microsoft, and a thousand SaaS players are now blooming – though none of them has quite become the next Google yet. Facebook and Apple, consumer companies at heart, are shunning this market for the most part .
As of the mid 2010s there's SaaS not just for broad enterprise functions such marketing, sales, or HR, but it's also getting very granular within these functions. The "tech marketing" space has been booming for years with ever more targeted applications (split tests for freemium mobile games anyone?) mushrooming every day, while other functions such as HR have been receiving increased attention as of late.
Which means team, departments and whole organizations increasingly need to integrate this plethora of applications, especially if they're trying to, say, build a common view of their customers.Like most things SaaS, Salesforce has led the charge years ago to the point of turning into a platform. Beyond granddaddy SFDC, the marketplace has responded with the emergence of SaaS middleware, as well as an increased number of bilateral integration efforts among vendors. This is what this entry is about.
The following vendors are primarily pitching themselves as integration tools. Some are pure middleware (i.e. you can't do much with them by themselves), while others want users to spend quality time in them once data has been sucked in from external sources. To some extent, more and more apps will want to have some integration layer, and it is likely that middleware vendors will gravitate up the food chain as mere plumbing becomes commoditized, if only via webhooks (which happen to have a dedicated management platform SaaS in webhooks.io).
|More Info
|Task automation
|Strong momentum, with a distributed team of 40+ people as of mid-2016.. You often see them mentioned by other vendors. It's IFTTT for business, doesn't sync data. I like the team, they're good at support and marketing.
|Status page - Twitter
|Task automation
|Nubera knows SaaS well thanks to their GetApp portal, and this looked originally like a Zapier clone.
|As of mid-2016 the integration product seems to be gone, all is left is a directory. They originally had plans going from free to $50/mo.
|Task automation
|Emerged out of stealth as of the spring 2015. Interesting spin: generates Docker containers that you can then run in your own infrastructure. The loops and conditional workflows remind of Yahoo Pipes.
|Status page
|We Wired Web
|Task automation
|Seems the closest to the defunct Yahoo Pipes.
|40+ people as of mid-2016.. Like Tray.io they underline that they have data mapping/modeling/quality, beyond simple integration workflow.
|About 90
|$99-$1999/mo, enterprise pricing used to be $499/mo.
|Bedrock Data
|Data sync
|Data integration focused on marketing and CRM apps. 25+ people as of mid-2016.
|Data sync
|Initially it looked like it was most directly competing with Bedrock. Pivoted to focusing on ecommerce in 2015, a la Bronto.
|$250-$1,200+/mo, they too moved upmarket, from $100-$500/mo.
|Data sync
|Not as visible or connected as some others, probably because of its location in Australia. Doesn't seem very active either.
|Data sync
|Personal project, not that there's anything wrong with that
|Event/data integration
|Seems to have momentum, with about 100 people as of mid-2016. Good documentation and easy to implement.
|Twitter, web
|Data integration
|Like Segment but focused on mobile, more expensive.
|Used to be from $199/mo, they removed their pricing page. If you have to ask, you can't afford it.
|Data consolidation
|Somewhere between Bedrock and Woopra, positioning-wise. Pitch focused on lead/customer profiles.
|From $89/mo
|Data Hero
|Multi source visualization
|User-friendly dashboards.
|Multi source visualization
|User-friendly dashboards. 10 people as of mid 2016.
|Snap Logic
|Enterprise ETL
|Older and better funded, but should pay heed to its younger competitors.
|If You Have to Ask You Can't Afford It
|Mulesoft CloudHub
|Enterprise ETL
|The best funded and oldest. SFDC or Oracle will probably buy them soon.
|From $1,200/mo
|Built.io Flow
|Enterprise ETL
|Their pitch: "Powerful like MuleSoft, intuitive like IFTTT." Founded in 2007, 200 people.
I am roughly mapping above the "cloud connectors" box within chiefmartec's landscape (the clostest thing at Growthverse is "data centralization"). This list is not exhaustive and leaves out more traditional vendors such as Adeptia for whom SaaS-SaaS integration is an afterthought (vs. Saas to on-premises applications and databases), or IFTTT given its consumer focus. Also I'm more interested in affordable tools that people in small businesses or corporate departments can pay right there with a credit card.
I'm sure I missed a few as well if they're less visible. Cloudpipes for instance seems to be a Zapier clone but they haven't publicly launched at the time of this writing. They're copying down to Zapier's Hollywood-stype way to name drop for SEO purposes: it's like Out of Africa meets Pretty Woman, huh I mean, it's ExactTarget meets Zendesk.
As I said the lines are often blurry between application categories, as vendors learn from each other and end up in similar places from different starting points. Thus, Keen.io (status page, AL) is nominally focused on analytics, but they also heavily rely on their data collection APIs and integration points. So they may market themselves differently from Segment, but in the end they may look increasingly similar. Likewise Woopra's point of departure is customer analytics, but to get there they pitch the 20+ apps available through AppConnect.
In other words, do you buy Woopra for the analytics and get integration for free, or is integration going to be a big selling point for them? Is it a case of come for the integration, stay for the visualization or automation or analytics or {insert whatever your app does between apps and their data}, or is it come for the visualization, stay for the integration?
Eventually more and more vendors will want to integrate with each other, whether directly or through 3rd-party hubs. Some products such as TrialFire or Popcorn Metrics look more like features to me than the foundation for a lasting stand-alone company. On the other hand a case can be made that companies like Zapier should remain independent as ubiquitous, neutral brokers. Many people may not be comfortable having powerful companies such as Google or Oracle own their critical middleware.
I think some of these companies will look more and more alike, as it only makes sense that, say, Segment turns into a hub that can not only write into a bunch of apps, but also read from these same apps as a bidirectional connector.
Expect to see a lot more apps touting integrations in months to come. Some quick sampling:
Well, you should ask them, but I think the business case is pretty clear:
03/15/16 – itDuzzit Shutting Down:
In August 2014, we announced that Intuit acquired itDuzzit. Since then, we've made some great progress with integrating itDuzzit into the Intuit ecosystem. At Intuit, our technology has been re-branded as Intuit AppConnect, and is already powering a significant share of QuickBooks integrations. What does this mean for itDuzzit customers and partners? There's no easy way to say this – most of you will not have a migration path from itDuzzit to Intuit AppConnect. […] The itDuzzit service is planned for an end-of-life date of July 15, 2016.
Workato jumped on the opportunity.
02/01/16 – Zapier adds multi-step workflows.
12/12/15 – SnapLogic Raises $37.5M
10/09/15 – Segment Raises $27 Million Series B
06/19/15 – SaaS and The Integration Economy
05/19/15 – DataHero raises $6.1M
05/10/15 – What's Happening in SaaS in 11 Charts
05/05/15 – Dasheroo raises $3M
04/16/15 – Tray.io raises $2.2M
04/14/15 – Bedrock Data raises $3.1M
04/08/15 – Domo at public launch comes with hundreds of connectors.
03/30/15 – Cyfe dashboarding + Zapier]]>
06/2016: Google Fiber's wireless plans take shape with purchase of a gigabit ISP Webpass.
04/2016: Google Fiber planning wireless home Internet where fiber is too pricey. Facebook is big on connectivity too.
03/2015: Introducing Fiber Phone.
03-04/2015: Google to launch its own "white label" MVNO cell network. See Scott Cleland's take and Den Bubley's post-launch analysis. Project Fi is limited to people with an address in the US and willing to buy a Nexus 6, but it does some interesting things like seamlessly switch between Wifi and cellular networks (based on availability as you move) during the same conversation.
04/2014: The P in P2P in People – Jon Udell sends us back to a time when a billion people hadn't already surrendered their privacy in exchange for free functionality and convenience. See how Thali's architecture is very close to what I described below, back in 2004. It's brilliant, the right thing to do so that you're the user rather than the product, and it's going nowhere.
03/2014: All About Google Loon's Low-Cost Space-Based Competitor, Outernet
01/2014: Cisco's "fog computing":
"Fog Computing is a paradigm that extends Cloud computing and services to the edge of the network. Similar to Cloud, Fog provides data, compute, storage, and application services to end-users. The distinguishing Fog characteristics are its proximity to end-users, its dense geographical distribution, and its support for mobility. Services are hosted at the network edge or even end devices such as set-top-boxes or access points."
06/2013: Introducing Project Loon: Balloon-powered Internet access
03/2010: Google traffic
02/2010: How much should Google be subsidized?
02/2010: GOOG's experimental fiber network
01/2008: Broadband Capacity Is The Alternative Minimum Tax Of The Web
09/2007: Google plans new undersea "Unity" cable across Pacific
02/2006: All Your Information Are Belong to Google
11/2005: Google's Shipping Container
09/2005: Cerf's Up for Google
08/2005: Free Wi-Fi? Get Ready for GoogleNet (speculation too)
05/2005: Google Web Accelerator
02/2005: Google Now a Registrar
Continuing with my theory, Google will give away free domain names as part of their Broadband offering. Much more elegant and less arcane than dynamic DNS.
01/2005: CNet: Google wants 'dark fiber'
Initial October 2004 entry (magnificently obsolete in some way, yet dare I say otherwise visionary)
Despite the buzz, I'm not really excited about Google working on a browser or IM client, though I definitely can imagine them buying Trillian and giving its Pro version for free. I guess they'll negotiate interop with AIM and they might even force the hand of Microsoft and Yahoo, which would be a Good Thing. But looking at Google Desktop and its local web server comes a more intriguing thought. How about partnering with or acquiring a large ISP/WISP (say, Earthlink) to deliver an affordable service bundle with symmetrical bandwidth, static IPs, reliable DNS, and self-publishing with Blogger, Picasa and Hello.
Let millions of personal web servers bloom and piggy back on that big wave of user-generated content. Google would basically re-index their customers' sites (just a directory on their desktop really) on the fly, and share the results with the rest of the world (or not) based on user settings (do not confuse the wedding pictures and the honeymoon sex tape, ok). And now it makes sense to give software for free because you have other ways to bill consumers and learn about them. How's that for increasing targeted ad inventory while diversifying your revenue sources, and wiring yourself into people's life as well as within the fabric of the internet? There might also be a side business out of caching in there for Google, they already have part of the infrastructure and would only need to move to the edge. (Hmm, ok, looking at Akamai's $150M in yearly revenue, caching is not that exciting from Google's perspective at this point.) Add P2P (the Hello angle) to that to take care of content propagation so that publishing something popular is not asking for a DDOS.
Anyway, imagine the landscape 5/10 years from now with ubiquitous PDA/cam/phones/whatever, lots of connectivity all around, more occasions and ways to generate content and to put it online instantly. Uploading pictures to a damn server with restricted storage just to share them with friends and family is akin to going to the telegraph office to send messages. It's just a transient state in the infrastructure that doesn't make any sense in the long run (provided we eventually get decent security on the desktop). Google is not going to win against Microsoft or even decisively beat Yahoo by going through predictable motions. GBrowser is just a way to wave a red flag at Microsoft with "please come and squash me" written on it. I find it funny that the same people who get all excited about the GoogleOS are claiming that operating systems are a commodity and there's no money in there anymore. So why should Google do it then?
Instead, Google has to keep being disruptive and unpredictable. Microsoft never made much out of its broadband investments, Yahoo is humming a boring song with SBC, AOL TW is toast. Incidentally all seem to confuse the Internet with TV. Maybe Google could really turn the tables. It's all about empowering end users… Right now even Altavista is better than Google at indexing media content. A first telling sign would be a Google Images that doesn't suck. We'll see (literally).
In other news, I'm amused to see CNet slowly wake up to search engine optimization techniques that we small fish have been using for years. First they started stuffing keywords into their URLs, now they look at their referrers to welcome Google users and suggest other relevant stories besides the one displayed. Wow, leading edge!]]>
Like many people developing with WordPress, I used to use XAMPP to run a Linux/Apache/MySQL stack under Windows. This beats developing directly off a remote server by a long stretch (in case anybody still does that), but it turns out to be quite a hassle as you wrestle with / vs \ in paths and other discrepancies between the Unix and Windows worlds. Developing in an environment as close to production as possible ends up being a much better choice. Popular free tools to do so are:
Yes, these work somewhat like Russian dolls, as modern web development has a severe case of tools to set up tools to set up tools. It can get a little crazy at times, so you want to find the sweet spot where you gain efficiency without becoming a slave to your toolset (which is supposed to save you time in the first place). Getting this up and running is a big enabler for continuous integration, and why you would want to think and develop that way is the topic of a separate entry.
In this post I'll share some practical details to contribute a little back to the open source community and not just consume its benefits passively. The end result is a fully functional Unix environment serving a WordPress website locally on a Windows PC, across a whole local network.
This entry is written from the perspective of "Unix as a foreign language" from a Windows native. It does assume that you have read the basics about VirtualBox and Vagrant, and focuses on common roadblocks that I've encountered along the way. As always, the key to learning a whole new way of doing things is to break it down in small digestible chunks.
It took me hours to get the VirtualBox /Vagrant combo to fully run like I wanted, so for the benefit of others trying to get it up and running, here are things to watch for in order to run a Linux guest from a Windows host, though some of these things also apply if you use a Mac. I'm running CentOS as a guest OS, you may need to adjust your syntax slightly with other Linux builds but the below should mostly apply with Ubuntu et. al.
First of all, check that your BIOS is set up to with virtualization enabled, which is often not the case by default.
Second, VirtualBox can be a pain to install/update in Windows. One thing that can help is to install it after disabling network devices or unplugging your Ethernet cable (source). You may want to install it as an administrator and use bridged networking, for reasons explained further below.
Third, on Windows it is safer to install Vagrant off the root of one of your hard drives, in a directory without spaces (say D:\Vagrant). A few Vagrant settings help with troubleshooting and overall quality of life, such as picking a short friendly name for your VM (defaults tend to be very long and unwieldy), or triggering the VirtualBox UI for the guest OS to let you see what's going on during its boot sequence. You'll want to edit your parent Vagrantfile with these default customizations, and add a system environment variable pointing to your Vagrant directory (batch file). That way, these settings will apply across all boxes you may create manually or with a tool such as Puphpet.
Fourth, you'll find you need to run a bunch of command line instructions to manage Vagrant then dive into your Linux host. Out of the box Windows is poorly equipped for that. After trying Console2, I settled on ConEmu which lets me run PowerShell in one tab (Windows host), vagrant ssh in a 2nd tab, the mysql command line in the third… (Understand though that it's a console, not a shell.) I recommend using different color schemes in ConEmu for different tabs/environments, that way you'll instantly see whether you're in your Windows PowerShell vs. your Linux command line vs. MySQL.
Fear not the command line, you're gonna need it! Here are some shortcuts to make your life easier. It looks more complicated than it really is, just take it one step at a time as you bump into the need for new instructions. Soon enough you'll be comfortable with the likes of ls (=dir) or ifconfig (=ipconfig).
At this point I'll skip a bunch of install/setup steps already well documented in the links at the bottom of this entry. You should find the basics rather easy, but once you're to the point where Vagrant is serving a website that you're able to browse from Windows, several problems could still be in your way that I haven't seen documented in one place, so here we go:
a) If Vagrant complains that it can't find the ssh executable, 1) make sure you do have it somewhere (typically from installing Git or Cygwin, in their bin subdirectory) and 2) add the directory where ssh. exe is located in your user PATH variable (source). You may need to close and reopen your console for PATH changes to be recognized (rebooting shouldn't be necessary), type SET PATH to check what you have (more here).
b) If PHP sessions can't be written to disk, there are a couple different fixes so that Apache cooperates. That issue is easy to spot as PHP error messages will probably pollute your pages when you browse your brand new virtual local web server. Typically running this from your guest command line should do it:
sudo chown www-data:www-data /var/lib/php/session
sudo nano /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
sudo service httpd restart
I like to switch KeepAlive to On while I'm at it. This problem can also occur with Nginx, just google for the slightly different syntax. Update: newer versions of Vagrant took care of the EnableSendFile default.
Note: Sudo lets you run commands as root (i.e. admin), while nano is a text editor that's easier to use by noobs like us than vi (oh god).
d) If some npm packages can't be fully installed (say some Grunt modules, a topic I'll cover in a future entry), that happens for two reasons: 1) problems with symlinks 2) because Windows paths are limited to 260 characters (yes this is crazy), while Node dependencies are sometimes installed very deep into subdirectories.
To solve these two issues in one swoop, in your guest OS move the node_modules directory off your shared folder (i.e. your project folder shared from the Windows file system) and create a symlink to it (source) before executing npm install. To do so from the guest command line (i.e. after vagrant ssh):
cd /var/www/yourproject (i.e. whatever's your Vagrant shared folder)
rm node_modules (delete any half broken install you might have had)
mkdir node_modules
mv node_modules /tmp/node_modules
ln -s /tmp/node_modules ./node_modules
sudo npm install –no-bin-links
In case you haven't installed npm yet:
sudo yum install npm
To check whether node.js and npm are installed, in which versions, and to list installed npm modules:
node –v
npm -v
npm list
If you run into a read-only or protocol error while creating the symlink, you need to enable symlinks in your VM and run VirtualBox as an administrator (source). To check that VirtualBox has symlinks enabled, open a Windows command line, move to the directory where VirtualBox is installed, and type (source):
VBoxManage getextradata YOURVMNAME enumerate
Because these issues have a way to cascade into a series of roadblocks, if Vagrant returns an error message when trying to relaunch it while VirtualBox is running as admin, it turns out you need to edit DCOM permissions in component services for things to work. For me this still wouldn't work… and I finally resolved the issue by reinstalling Virtualbox as an admin. Note that when you run VirtualBox as an admin, you also need to run Vagrant as an admin (in practice in my case: launch ConEmu as an admin). In other words: ugh!
e) If you can't access MySQL directly from the host, say using a GUI like SQLYog:
sudo nano /etc/my.cnf
sudo mysql
mysql>GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'root'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'pwdhere' WITH GRANT OPTION;
mysql>FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit mysql then:
sudo service mysqld restart
sudo /etc/init.d/iptables stop
This last instruction turns off the guest firewall entirely. If that strikes you as a sledgehammer approach it is, feel free to find out how to open just port 3306 (the default for mysql) if you still want to run the guest OS firewall (of course you still have the Windows firewall standing between the internet and you). But the point is that your VM has likely the firewall blocking external access to mysql by default.
f) If you want to test your websites in Safari / MacOS, install OS X Mountain Lion with iAtkos ML2 and make sure to use bridged mode in your two virtual machines. Edit the hosts file in your brand new virtual Mac, and in my case I gained both extra testing capability and lots of cool points with my geek son who found this extremely cool! Screenshot to prove it did happen.
g) Better than editing hosts files on clients on your LAN, set up a local DNS server to point to your VM's IP address (again, bridged mode FTW). I have a Synology NAS that does this very well. On most smartphones and tablets you can't even edit the hosts file unless you root your device, so this trick comes very handy for easy mobile testing. This will also speed up your external web browsing. Here's more on DNS and Windows.
h) Apache and PHP error logs in CentOS are at /var/log/httpd, here's what to do from the guest command line if you get "permission denied" when you try to cd to that directory (source):
sudo chown -R root:apache /var/log/httpd
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/log/httpd
Then ls -tl to show a reverse chronological list of logs (i.e. most recently updated on top), then tail, grep or nano the file you want to read. If you have doubts about the location of your php error logs, grep error_log /etc/php.ini. Bugsnag is a nice online service to keep on top of app errors, there's a limited but still useful free tier (2,000 errors/mo for 1 user and 1 app).
In my experience, you might end up having to destroy the VM (vagrant destroy) and start from a full fresh vagrant up. Breathe, this can happen, you may have to go through a couple of these slow (10+ minutes) full VM rebuilds, but it seems sometimes a fresh start is really the best way to get Vagrant working. Once you're in a stable place, you'll use vagrant suspend and vagrant resume whenever you need to turn the VM off and back on.
Yes, it can be a significant learning curve, but if you do any serious web development at all basic UNIX skills are a necessity, and once you get it all working, you'll wonder how you survived without such a setup.
Since I initially wrote this entry, Vagrant kept evolving, especially with the addition of Linked Clones and Snapshots in v1.8. Also, in September 2015 launched Otto as the successor to Vagrant (Hacker News thread). Otto intends to help with deployment and address some of Vagrant's longstanding shortcomings. But by their own admission, Otto is nowhere near the level of maturity now reached by Vagrant, and the two will evolve in parallel, at least for a while. They still intend to release Vagrant 2.0 "sometime in 2016", and in reality Otto is somewhat of an abstraction layer and under the hood uses Vagrant for some of its functionality.
Docker is another project that's been gaining a lot of momentum recently. It's not strictly competing with Vagrant, and both can be used together, but there is increasing overlap between the two ecosystems. The main benefit of Docker is its modular approach thanks to containers that can be added to your project, while Vagrant's boxes are monolithic. Also, Docker runs processes while Vagrant creates a whole virtual PC within your computer, which consumes more hardware resources. Technically Docker does containerization but not virtualization.
The Kitematic desktop client does a lot of you'd do with Vagrant to provision your VMs, while Docker Compose/Dockerfiles handle orchestration (i.e. what you'd do with Puphpet). As of 2014 there were significant practical differences between Vagrant and Docker, but I feel like they've been moving towards each other (functionally if not in strict architectural terms) as Docker Inc. has been gobbling components with the acquisition of Kitematic, Tutum and other projects.
There's a Mac/Windows beta project that I didn't get around to testing yet because at the moment it requires Windows 10 Pro (Hyper-V virtualization is not available in Windows Home). To see how Microsoft and Docker work together at a strategic level, see Q&A: Why Patrick Chanezon Left Microsoft To Join Docker; Microsoft brings Hyper-V containers to latest Windows 10 build; Windows Containers.
Meanwhile HashiCorp is not standing still and is also creating a whole suite around Vagrant. Docker sounds great on paper, but raises some alarm bells in terms of potential complexity in practice. Hashicorp recognizes that Docker is complex and they're positioning Otto as a simpler answer to common dev/deploy challenges.
I'll write more here once I've had personal experience with it, in the meantime see:
Fast forward 30+ years, and when I wanted to practice again, I found that judo had devolved into a standing-focused sport because of how official competition rules changed over the past decades. I heard about brazilian jiu jitsu and instantly fell in love with its intricate ground game and focus on submissions (as opposed to pins). But again it turns out sports competition took its toll to undermine the essence of the underlying martial art.
Indeed BJJ has evolved in the other direction, with many practitioners displaying poor takedown skills and resorting to pulling guard and butt scooting, which makes absolutely no sense outside of the confines of a sports competition. Moreover, first you have to take the fight to the ground if you want to finish it there.
So, because I'm interested in being a complete grappler, I'm now training Judo once a week and BJJ 3+ times a week. Last year I also dabbled a bit with MMA and SAMBO, but I ended up deciding there's only so much I can train with a credible chance at making significant progress.
As a middle-aged guy who neglected his once very fit body for a number of years, the more cerebral and deliberate pace of BJJ suits me best, but Judo will keep me honest with its explosiveness, sense of urgency, strong grips, and solid takedowns. At this point in time, BJJ's guard work, both in terms of playing and passing guard, is more developed than time-constrained judo. And BJJ is arguably the best at chokes, and I love chokes! Ideally I'll also figure out good transitions from standing to ground work, such as Sumi Gaeshi into mount, or Tani Otoshi into taking the back .
I've been reading a lot about the history and idiosyncrasies of the various grappling arts/sports, and found that each has its blind spots and myths:
I'm not advocating groin strikes, finger locks, or head butts, and I do think some techniques should be either forbidden or limited to black belt competitions for safety purposes. That's the essence of judo as a "sport" meant to be safely practiced against resisting opponents, as opposed to old jujutsu as done by samurais with intent to kill on the battlefields of medieval Japan. If you allow body slams from head height or full-speed neck cranks, you risk inflicting crippling injuries or worse. On the other hand wrist locks for instance can be practiced safely and at a controlled speed that lets your partner time to tap, so why forbid them altogether?
Incidentally live sparring (aka randori aka aliveness) is essential to proving that techniques actually work, and its absence in how most traditional martial arts are usually taught is their great weakness. I tried Aikido for a few months and stopped pretty much because it was so choreographed with little credible, practical application. There's a time and place for technical drilling and katas, but in my opinion there's no genuine martial practice without live sparring. And you do need to put some rules into place to preserve yourself and your partners if you want to be able to keep practicing!
Fortunately, there is a number of both judokas and BJJ fighters who are cross-training and bridging a gap that shouldn't exist in the first place within what historically and logically is the same martial art. After all Mitsuyo Maeda who taught Carlos Gracie and Luis França was a judoka under Kano Jigoro. Among people training and teaching both judo and bjj:
You'll notice they're mostly from the US (where everything seems to go back to Jimmy Pedro) and Brazil (where Judo is much bigger than in the US). This makes sense because BJJ is not yet that widespread in Europe or Asia. That said, it looks like ne waza may be about to make somewhat of a comeback in judo competition, and there are great competitors like Dimitri Peters (Germany) or Kaori Matsumoto (Japan) who won many matches with newaza. There are probably people expert at newaza from, say, the Netherlands or Korea, that I've never heard of because they're not featured in videos in languages I speak.
In my native France – a country where Judo is widespread, and like everything there, under governmental influence – the powers that be are doing everything they can to denigrate MMA and pretend BJJ doesn't exist. Yet you have people like Olympian Patrick Roux who recognize what judo can learn (or relearn after having forgotten it) from BJJ (see this article and video, both in French). Larbi Benboudaoud, another former competitor and now trainer, considers that BJJ is "basically just judo" but acknowledges (video in French) that BJJ has the edge in newaza because of its specialization. Like Roux, Benboudaoud is teaching BJJ-inspired mobility on the ground, as opposed to passive turtling.
Christian Peden, a 6th dan judo black belt, has been giving BJJ seminars (videos in French) for a number of years, though from their choice of wording you do get the sense that from the perspective of the Fédération Française de Judo, BJJ is just a regional ruleset variant. Again, co-opt them if you can't beat them, that's how ground work made it into Kano's curriculum in the first place. There's a French IBJJF affiliate called the CFJJB, but with 5,000 members, it remains tiny in comparison to the IJF-sanctioned FFJDA. Christian Durval (who pioneered BJJ in France under Rickson Gracie) and his pupil Olivier Michailesco (video) are other cross-trained practitioners worth mentioning in the French landscape.
You do have to adapt your judo to use it against BJJ specialists, and vice versa, because of how each sport evolved to fit its rules. For instance in BJJ people tend to crouch in a wrestler stance and use a stiff arm in a a very defensive posture that would get you a penalty in judo competition, so your textbook Uchi Mata is not going to be successful in that context.
I'd be remiss not to mention that I respect the various forms of wrestling and recognize their effectiveness, especially in the absence of gi grips. Again, there are only so many hours in the day, wrestling is not taught where I live, and many forms of wrestling exclude submissions to focus on throws and pins. Maeda was influenced by these practices from his bouts in the US, and they made it into BJJ to some extent. I believe that any grappler should have at least decent single leg and double leg takedowns (aka Morote Gari), as well as a strong sprawl. BJJ seems much more open to outside influences than modern "official" judo.
I went once to a Lita Livre club, and practiced no gi BJJ once in a while, and they have merit too. But I have to admit I do like the gi, it helps me slow down young punks!
To find files based on their names and do so across all local drives, whatever the file type and location may be, I use Everything in combination with Launchy [how to] and Directory Opus [how to]. This combo is extremely fast even if you have hundreds of thousands of files. Of course you can use Everything by itself, but I highly recommend both Launchy and Dopus as well.
The main limitation is that Everything does not index the content within files, as of version 1.3 (1.4 may change that). UltraSearch is a decent alternative to Everything which added file content searching as of v2.1, but I gave it a try and found that part sluggish. So I still use other applications for full text search, as explained below.
For these types of documents full-text indexation is essential. It's also likely you're collaborating with other people, and really need to make sure you have a backup, and ideally, versioning. For all these reasons I've picked Google Drive to handle work files. In order to get search results even faster, I integrate Gdrive with Launchy using a Weby agent with this argument:
It may seem a bit counter-intuitive to use a cloud service to search "local" files, but it works really well. And you get cloud goodies on top. I love having the same browse/search/share capabilities for work files from my phone or tablet, as well as fine-grained access management by user to control how files are shared with team members and customers.
Incidentally I've started looking into third-party apps that let you mount cloud storage as a network drive, but didn't pick one yet, and I'm not sure what the best search solution may be on top of these cloud "wrappers". Here's what's out there in that category:
To make the best use of metadata specific to each type of media, I use specialized applications:
I integrate Plex with Launchy with this Weby agent:
(Well in my case, rather than the loopback IP address, I have a domain name because I run a custom DNS server on my local network, but you get the gist). Unfortunately you can only search Plex by title, the metadata (e.g. genres, directors, actors) is not exposed through a REST interface.
The same can be done with the Calibre browser interface to its embedded content server, but I haven't found a way to launch Helium or Calibre desktop searches from Launchy.
I'm always looking for better mousetraps, so feel free to post your thoughts and experience in the comments.]]>
Thus taking for granted that for better or worse, we're not going to opt out from being babysat by AIs, here are some notes on where's Google at.
First off, let's backtrack for a minute. Since the late 2000s I felt that the quality of Google organic (desktop) search results was on a steady declining slope. Self-proclaimed efforts to fight spammers and content farms often rang like lip service. In practice it seemed the company was happy to milk its quasi-monopoly and let the user experience of its core product slide. In the process, Google contributed to effectively drive the "traditional" and indie web into the ground, buried under endless content marketing native advertorials and the Taboola/Outbrain plague of 2014. No wonder everyone started to use ad blockers.
It became obvious that 2010s-Google was excited about radically new technology (e.g. self-driving cars) as well as distracted by its competition (e.g. chasing Facebook's tail with Google+), and dropped the ball on core search.
However, in the past couple of years, I've been more and more satisfied by the Android user experience. The introduction of material design in 2014 was a big step, and Android 6.0 was another big one in 2015. This got me increasingly convinced that "beyond search / beyond desktop" was a real tectonic shift and not just hype. Since I live in an emerging country (Chile) it's even more prevalent because for many people here, their smartphone is their computer. And most people have a smartphone.
Right when Google started to follow the likes of IBM or Microsoft as another complacent, out-of-touch incumbent, it became an interesting company again. So here are some pointers about their 2016 I/O event:
"[A]ny time spent using the increasing number of Google products that rely on machine learning-based artificial intelligence — translation, voice and image recognition, and yes, search — quickly make it obvious just how much better Google is, and, thanks to the copious amount of data at the company's disposal, how much better they are likely to become. The problem is that in today's world being the best may not be enough. […]
The problem is that as much as Google may be ahead, the company is also on the clock: every interaction with Siri, every signal sent to Facebook, every command answered by Alexa, is one that is not only not captured by Google but also one that is captured by its competitors. Yes, it is likely Apple, Facebook, and Amazon are all behind Google when it comes to machine learning and artificial intelligence — hugely so, in many cases — but it is not a fair fight. Google's competitors, by virtue of owning the customer, need only be good enough, and they will get better."
I don't speak Chinese, so I rely on English editions of Chinese media to have a bit of a local perspective. The state-owned media such as Xinhua tends to run pure propaganda right out of their government/party/military masters. It's so laughably bad it's good. There is some fledgling independent media though, and among them I've been reading Caixin with interest for a while. I think Western media – and its media about the media – should stop their navel gazing and pay more than token attention to events such as China Media Capital (CMC) taking a stake in Caixin Media at the end of 2013.
There is of course some amount of Western reporting, and meta reporting, on this, but it tends to be ghettoized in sections about China/Asia. Approaching such issues primarily through the lens of geography strikes me as somewhat provincial, but this may reflect audience preferences that publishers don't dare challenge. Anyway, this recent acquisition raises serious questions. What will CMC chairman Li Ruigang do and will Caixin continue the kind of reporting that can land its journalists in jail? State-owned China Daily rubs in the fact that major Western media outlets have no qualms riding on Caixin's exposes of official corruption – here for instance the WSJ can't be bothered to even hyperlink. Caixin EiC Hu Shuli complains about it but there's little else she can do. I can only speculate, but she might have been left with little financial choice but to take CMC's money to sustain Caixin's operations. CMC, Shanghai Media Group (which Li led for a decade – or still is?) are busy making deals with the likes of Time Warner and WPP that seem focused on entertainment rather than "serious" media.
What will become of little Caixin in all of this? As often with China it is hard to know for sure who ultimately pulls the strings. Will Caixin continue to writes pieces like this when Chinese official tend to react like this? And if they do, will that be limited to their English edition? Will it start featuring titillating thumbnails and celebrity gossip to pay the bills, and as on more and more Western news websites, trivialize and bury actual issues in the process? I have no idea, but this deserves more attention in media-about-media circles relative to the huge amount of coverage dedicated to, say, 538 or Vox at the moment.
That China doesn't entirely stifle its independent media, and that us Westerners can learn about and from China through their own voices rather than solely via our own media, could have wide internal and international repercussions. There's more to media in China than their blocking of Western websites! Especially when Bloomberg seems ready to make its reporting palatable to the powers that be in order to make sure its terminal business doesn't suffer.
Meanwhile in Russia RIA Novosti, which used to provide somewhat neutral reporting, is being liquidated. As they themselves pointed out in a final spasm of independence, "the move is the latest in a series of shifts in Russia's news landscape that appear to point toward a tightening of state control in the already heavily regulated media sector." Instead, Rossia Segodnya is set up for clear propaganda purposes. It will be interesting to see where RIA's journalists will end up working. Next thing you know, US-funded Voice of America doesn't get its broadcasting license renewed by Russian authorities.
Big picture: it is worrying that China and Russia clamp down on independent media just as the former builds up territorial pressure with its neighbors, while the latter invades Crimea.
March 2016 – Jack Ma's Ant Financial Said to Be in Talks for Caixin Stake [Bloomberg] – Jack Ma's Ant Financial in talks to buy Caixin stake [FT] – Is China's media tycoon Jack Ma the new Rupert Murdoch? [BBC].
And here we go: Jack Ma probably isn't feeling too good about his media investments right now [TechAsia] mentions recent censorship of SCMP and Caixin articles. See Chinese Publication, Censored by Government, Exposes Article's Removal [NYT]:
Caixin Media posted an article on its English-language website reporting that the country's Internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, which it called "a government censorship organ," had deleted a March 3 article on Caixin's Chinese-language website because it contained "illegal content."
The English-language article denouncing the censorship has since then been replaced by a completely different piece at the original URL…
Xi Jinping's crackdown on free speech is being criticized—by advisers to China's Communist Party [QZ]:
Jiang Hong, a professor at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, told news outlets he planned to speak about freedom of speech at a closed-door session in the meetings, after a March 3 interview he gave to well-respected business publication Caixin was scrubbed from websites. In the interview, he argued that the government had an obligation to ensure that the Chinese people could express themselves.
How Xi Jinping Views the News [China Media Project]:
Wherever the readers are, wherever the viewers are, that is where propaganda reports must extend their tentacles, and that is where we find the focal point and end point of propaganda and ideology work.
Alibaba bought SCMP for $266M in December 2015. Quartz asked at the time: Who cares if Jack Ma buys a tiny, dwindling newspaper in Hong Kong?]]>
Warning: this is a relatively geeky entry, but these recommendations are the fruit of years of hard-won experience! Beyond advice about specific products, I hope you'll get some broadly applicable help out of this entry, as technology adoption is a madness that requires method.
I'll elaborate for each product category, but generally speaking:
First off, and perhaps counter-intuitively, a PC's central processor is not its main performance bottleneck for most applications anymore. Get a good mid-range Intel quad core CPU and you're good to go until the end of the decade. Don't bother going down the overclocking rabbit hold unless you have specific needs that justify the unavoidable hours of reading, testing, and finetuning.
I'm still using a custom-built desktop computer bought from IbuyPower in 2009. Though I made several upgrades to it since then, its original Intel I7 920 processor has proven a winner over the long term. It's the first time since my first 8086 PC almost 30 years ago (dual 5 1/4″ floppies and 20MB hard drive baby!) that I haven't felt the need for a CPU upgrade after 18 months. But there are many other components worth paying attention to:
There's plenty of gear that I've had for almost a decade, and with good care, I intend to keep using it for years more. Computing hardware doesn't have to be throwaway junk if you're picky and careful, nor does it have to be overpriced luxury (e.g. most of Apple's hardware). It's hard to preserve that value though if you stick to laptops which tend to offer much less power for the buck. For this reason I tend to buy $400 laptops that get passed along through the family and which we can afford to lose/break/get stolen/whatever always eventually happens with laptops.
I think of the desktop PC as the versatile workhorse that you can build upon for the long term, which makes it worth spending more on. It is however clearly a home office/den device.
By 2013 tablets, in conjunction with a bluetooth keyboard, were becoming good replacement for entry level laptops, and the waning netbook market seems to reflect that. In just a few years huge progress has been made since the odious Ipad1 (probably the worst device I've ever used). At the moment I quite like my Nexus 7 (2013 vintage) and I'm trying to steer away people from cheap dual core tablets which tend to feel unresponsive.
Of course if you're working away from your desk all the time and/or money is not an option, then go and spend 2 grand on a fancy Mac or Alienware laptop. I just don't find them to be great value for my own needs. I like the 7″ form factor most, which has put such a dent into my phone use that I haven't felt the need to upgrade my Galaxy SII. But then I don't make many cell phone calls.
Android mini-PCs are a newer option for affordable "side" PCs that are well worth paying attention to. I bought for my son an RK3188 quad core mini PC, which bundled with an Rii i8 keyboard cost the princely sum of $83. We hooked the device to a TV and that's really a nice way for our kid to play / watch Youtube / read Wikipedia or whatnot.
Then there's the dedicated devices for storage, media consumption, and gaming. In my experience they work best as complements to PCs and tablets, but in the end there's room for a lot of types of devices, each with their strengths and weaknesses. More on these further below.
First, a caveat, you need to have good discipline and not try to multitask like crazy, which has been known to be inefficient because of task switching costs for more than a decade. That being said, to the extent you set up your screen real estate in a way that is task-oriented (more on that below), I personally really like having more.
I currently run a triple screen setup with the following:
Aside from the advice above on hard drives, I recommend the following:
For personal purposes I've been using Localphone lately, as well as Callcentric as a fallback service. In the end there is no perfect service, it really depends on your needs. We for instance maintain US phone numbers, a French personal number, and we make outbound work and friends/family calls worldwide. These two services work well for me and tend to get good review from many other customers.
I was a Vonage customer since 2003 and have been a Skype user since 2005, and millions of people still use them because of brand recognition and inertia. However these services have not aged well, whether in terms of value for money or technology. I ditched Vonage to move towards SIP, a standard that gives you access to many more options. It is not the most user-friendly market, which explains some of the inertia, but you'll get better voice quality, much better pricing, and more control/features from a variety of SIP providers and devices. I'm still using Skype on my tablet since I really like to have a variety of options and get single points of failure out of the way.
I've also used VirtualPBX for a prior venture, which is inexpensive and overall OK though the admin interface could really use a makeover. There's a bunch of other small/medium business providers such as OnSIP with slightly different pricing and feature sets.
My desk phone is a Panasonic KX-TGP550, which doesn't have the most intuitive interface but is solid hardware. Grandstream seems to make good SIP phones too, though I've never owned one. On PCs, Google Hangouts might be the only thing really valuable out of the whole Google+ death march, and it's been taking a lot of marketshare from Skype for good reason.
If you have a cheapo router provided by your ISP (say from Linksys) and wonder why you have to reboot it twice a week, seek no more: it's time to get your own networking equipment. I'm partial to Netgear (our main router is an R6200) though they can be a little weird to set up as an access point. I'd avoid Linksys or cheapo no-names: A router is not a router is not a router: it's worth spending an extra $100 and get something really stable.
It's also better to avoid using your usually under-powered cable modem as a router, better get your ISP to set the box as a bridge and, again, use your own router. Or google around your modem model/ISP and you may find how to do so yourself.
In larger houses you'll want to learn basic networking concepts – DNS, DHCP, NAT… – so that you know how to set up extra routers / wifi APs. I keep extending our coverage (we have five floors), sometimes a simple gigabit switch (from Trendnet for instance) is all it takes, I have also started looking into Power over Ethernet for extras such as outdoor security cameras. Here's a good supplier of PoE injectors. It's hard not to become somewhat of a network administrator when you have north of 15 IP addresses on your home network.
If you're cabling your house, use Cat6 ethernet cable so that bigger and bigger video files can be streamed smoothly. Here's a good article on how to do so.
Here are a couple good general utilities to have at hand:
Keyboard shortcuts: learn them, use them, love them. In complement to knowing a bunch of Windows and Chrome shortcuts (what, you don't know how to paste text without its source formatting?), I roll with:
I wrote a separate entry on desktop search tools, covering cloud/desktop integration, fast and deep search options for everything from PDFs to mp3s to ebooks.
This is a matter of endless debates, but I've found the following to work well for me:


text:
The U.S. Commerce Department's International Trade Administration released a report Wednesday, showing that 92 percent of more than $1.3 trillion worth of U.S. goods exported in 2015 were likely affected by foreign technical regulations.
The Arab ocean carrier's shareholders would own 28 percent of the combined company, while the existing shareholders of Hapag-Lloyd would own 72 percent of the new company.
Over 50 percent of respondents said their business would be impacted by a vote for the United Kingdom to leave the EU, but just 18.4 percent had a plan in place in the event of a Brexit, according to a recent survey conducted by Logistics Manager.
Registration takes less than 1 minute.
The International Cargo Handling Coordination Association reminded shippers and forwarders that the container weighing rule will go into effect Friday, with no three-month grace period as some have mistakenly understood.
The United Kingdom's vote to leave the European Union last week could have implications for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the U.S. and EU, as well as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, according to experts at the Stimson Center.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Whale fest
Whale fest
The 42nd annual Dana Point Festival of Whales is coming up, with activities Saturday and Sunday and the following weekend, March 9-10.
The event draws about 100,000 people during the two weekends for the parade, art exhibits, classic car exhibits, paddling events, sand sculpting, concerts on land and water, environmental activities, educational opportunities, interpretive crafts, kids activities and whale-watching excursions.
For more info: festivalofwhales.com
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text:
International Gem & Jewelry Show - Marlborough (Gem & Jewelry Show Marlborough)
01-03 Jul 2016 3 days to go
Marlborough, USA
India GemsSilver PlanetPearl Creations, Inc. & 82 more will exhibit on Natural Moldavite Silver RingSilver EarringsSEO Copywriting Services & other products
International Gem & Jewelry Show Seattle
08-10 Jul 2016 10 days to go
Seattle, USA
Columbia Gem House, Inc.SPARCO INTERNATIONAL INCGemstones of Africa & 68 more will exhibit on Gemstones & other products
International Gem & Jewelry Show
08-10 Jul 2016 10 days to go
Philadelphia, USA
Moonmars 1 Inc. dba Indo-Thai ImportsChadha Imports-Exports, Inc.La Point Of Clay & 72 more will exhibit on Diamond & Sapphire PendantViscose Jamavar ShawlsTrade Shows Organizing Services & other products
Gem-Jewelry-Bead Show Raleigh
10-12 Jul 2016 12 days to go
Raleigh, USA
Visitors from companies like Assaabloy (China) Investment Co., Ltd.Yuvelirny Zavod 3. Yantar are attending this event
International Gem & Jewelry Show Novi
15 Jul 2016
Novi, USA
Moonmars 1 Inc. dba Indo-Thai ImportsChadha Imports-Exports, Inc.D & C International Co. & 54 more will exhibit on Diamond & Sapphire PendantViscose Jamavar ShawlsMlh Core Veneer & other products
Gem & Lapidary Wholesalers Show-Detroit (G&LW Show)
15-17 Jul 2016
Livonia, USA
DELUX CO.Best In GemsEVERGREEN TRADING CO. & 296 more will exhibit on Concrete Floor SealerBlack DiamondGarlic Powder & other products
My Favorite Bead Show San Mateo
15-17 Jul 2016
San mateo, USA
Visitors from companies like Birds Of A Feather, TooPPLindas Antiques are attending this event
China (North) International Stone Fair
16-19 Jul 2016
Qingdao, China
RSG StonesWing Hing (China) Machinery TechnologyGlobal Sources Exhibitions & 23 more will exhibit on Madura Gold GranitesAlarm Clock RadioDandruff Control Shampoo & other products
The American Bead and Merchandise Show
23-24 Jul 2016
Jacksonville, USA
Visitors from companies like GnwtShort Dog Jewelry Design(null) are attending this event
The 8th natural stone , mine , related machinery & equipment exhibition
21-24 Jul 2016
Tehran, Iran
Visitors from companies like Technistone, A.s.Creative ConsultantSica Co. are attending this event
Gem & Lapidary Wholesalers Show-Franklin (G&LW Show)
28-31 Jul 2016
Franklin, USA
Gems Ocean, Inc. dba Sheen CollectionBond Street USA, Inc.ADIVASI, INC. & 246 more will exhibit on Carnelian Faceted Roundel Gemstone BeadsMound Gold Enamel Stretch BraceletsJewellery & other products
01-04 Aug 2016
Sao Paulo, Brazil
AngloGold Ashanti North America Inc.VERA LOPESREVISTA JOIA & CIA & 164 more will exhibit on Gold Miner Services & other products
American Bead & Merchandise Show-Memphis
06-07 Aug 2016
Memphis, USA
Visitors from companies like Freels The Love JewelryMani GemsBarbs Beads are attending this event
Stone Harbor Arts & Crafts Festival And Exhibition
06-07 Aug 2016
New Jersey, USA
Michele King JewelryCol de Mar Sea Leather AccessoriesMade from Coins & 124 more will exhibit on Champagne Quartz Nugget BraceletBraceletsKey Rings & other products
Gem Faire Sacramento
12-14 Aug 2016
Sacramento, USA
Beads & EtcASHLEY D. PEREZBlue Gem & 342 more will exhibit on Chain & other products
Gem Faire-San Diego
19-21 Aug 2016
San Diego, USA
Wize Guyz FoodzG.E.M. EnterprisesJ K Industries & 931 more will exhibit on Artificial Boxwood Hedge Fence Fake Leaves Garden Boxwood MABarcode ScannerStainless Steel Flanges & other products
Cachoeiro Stone Fair
23-26 Aug 2016
Cachoeiro De Itapemirim, Brazil
GMMDELLAS SPAMetisa & 58 more will exhibit on CubeDiamond BladesWashers & other products
American Gem Expo Louisville
22-28 Aug 2016
Louisville, USA
Visitors from companies like Design BeautifulGrote IndustriesFuel Total Systems are attending this event
International Gem & Jewelry Show-Chicago
26-28 Aug 2016
Chicago, USA
Best In GemsSilver PlanetMaharaja Jewels, Inc. & 83 more will exhibit on Black DiamondSilver EarringsDiamond Jewelry & other products
Shanghai Intelligent Building Technology (SIBT)
31 Aug-02 Sep 2016
Shanghai, China
Suffice Electronics (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd.Suzhou DAE Instrument Co LtdFoshan Savekey Technology Co Ltd & 49 more will exhibit on SwitchTouch PanelSwitch & other products
Green Is Life
01-03 Sep 2016
Warsaw, Poland
Visitors from companies like Del Star Global Resources LtdCnbm International Corporationmount glory trade are attending this event
International Gem & Jewelry Show in Pasadena
02-04 Sep 2016
Los Angeles, USA
Tempus GemsAbhay Jewels IncBest In Gems & 145 more will exhibit on NecklacePave Diamond Long Moon 77x5Black Diamond & other products
07-11 Sep 2016
Madrid, Spain
Wize Guyz FoodzAbigailsCLAROU GROUP, SA & 231 more will exhibit on Artificial Boxwood Hedge Fence Fake Leaves Garden Boxwood MAOnline Hotel Booking ServicesPa & other products
Jogs Tucson Gem and Jewelry Show (Gem & Jewellery Show)
08-11 Sep 2016
Tucson, USA
M. S. InternationalBravo HandbagsPointers Gemcraft & Jewellery Mfg. & 529 more will exhibit on Granite-Bash ParadisoKelly BagBracelet & other products
International Gem & Jewelry Show Denver
15 Sep 2016
Denver, USA
India GemsRISHAB ENTERPRISESLin Overseas Jewelry & 210 more will exhibit on Natural Moldavite Silver RingBall ValveMotors & other products


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'Hunger Games', 'Divergent' and 'Thor' Up for Best Character at 2014 MTV Movie Awards
MTV Movie Awards reveals an additional nomination, days ahead of its 23rd annual ceremony on April 13. The category is Favorite Character which winner will be determined via fans' hashtag-votes on social media like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Vine.
The candidates are "The Hunger Games" heroine Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), "Divergent" female lead Beatrice "Tris" Prior (Shailene Woodley), "Veronica Mars" title character (Kristen Bell), "Thor" nemesis Loki (Tom Hiddleston), and "Star Trek Into Darkness" main baddie Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch).
The voting starts April 1 and continues until the live telecast. Fans can write #votekatniss, #votetris, #voteveronicamars, #voteloki, or #votekhan to help their favorite character win the Golden Popcorn which will be awarded at the event at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles.
"The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" now bags a total of eight nods, thanks to the newly-announced nomination. It dominates the pack along with "American Hustle" and "The Wolf of Wall Street", followed by Jennifer Aniston's "We're the Millers" with six.
Woodley is set to present at the awards show along with her "The Fault in Our Stars" co-star Ansel Elgort. Other confirmed presenters are "The Other Woman (2014)" cast Cameron Diaz, Kate Upton, and Leslie Mann.
Conan O'Brien will host the event. Mark Wahlberg will be presented with Generation Award by "Entourage" cast like Adrian Grenier, Kevin Connolly, Kevin Dillon, and Jerry Ferrara. Ellie Goulding and Zedd will perform "Divergent" theme songs, "Beating Heart" and "Find You" respectively.
- Steven Tyler Confirms Aerosmith's 2017 Farewell Tour
- 'Rogue One' Releases More New Photos. Also Get Detail of Mon Mothma's Bigger Role
- Taylor Swift Flies to U.K. to Meet Tom Hiddleston's Mom. See Picture of Their Happy Outing
- 'Game of Thrones' Season Finale Won't Slow Down the Pace, People Will Die
- Audrina Patridge and Fiance Welcome Baby Girl Kirra Max
- Getting Married? Tyga Calls Kylie Jenner His 'Wifey'
- Christina Aguilera Performs 'Change' on 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' to Support Orlando
- Justin Bieber's Music Video Vixen Xenia Deli, 26, Marries 62-Year-Old Man in Lavish Wedding


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funny skit ideas for high school concert
funny skit ideas for high school concert
Testimonials page – free christian skits and plays for, Testimonials page. ever since i began making these original scripts available, i have been getting great feedback. Skits and stuff, We offer a variety of written materials that are fresh, fun, creative and different. not sure if a skit is right for you?. Comedian profiles - gc@t: gag concert tumblr fanpage, 2016 게놈 프로젝트, veteran, bad guys, explosive situation 2015 owls, released, minsang debate, last health boy, nami and bung bung, reaction league baseball.
History of morocco high school, Home . honor class year. 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 . principals who served at m.h.s.. 70 fundraising ideas - the borgen project, Looking for fundraising ideas? try one of these or brainstorm your own. work for it: offer your time in exchange for a donation to the cause. repair grandma's. Plot ideas 1000 - slideshare, Plot ideas 1000 1. plot ideas1000 - a work in progress: http://www.angelfire.com/nc/tcrpress/plotbank.html 1 surprised the circus sideshow is a letdown.
Ready for prime time - the new yorker, An "s.n.l." audition is notoriously tough: the studio is dark and cavernous, and the producers sit silently near the back. jones recalled, "i got onstage, took. Best buy flash mob - best buy – improv everywhere, We met at union square north at 3:30 pm. around 80 agents showed up, most them looking like wonderful best buy employees. more than a few came dressed in navy or teal. U.s. news | national news - abc news, Abc news reports on united states politics, crime, education, legal stories, celebrities, weather, the economy and more.


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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Virtually Perfect, Virtually Unknown,
This review is from: The Power to Believe (Audio CD)
Well, it seems that King Crimson has done it. They've released an album that not only sounds good, but really explores new ground. The percussive PTB II is perhaps the most interesting on the album. Dangerous Curves is unlike anything that i've heard. The distorted vocals on the title tracks and throughout the album are appropriate and cool, to say the least.
Two vocal tracks really shine on this album - Eyes Wide Open, and Facts of Life. Eyes Wide Open takes a well-deserved break from the heaviness of the surrounding tracks, and is unforgetable to say the least. Facts of Life is an incredible song with music that's as biting and jumpy as the lyrics. Appropriately harsh, yet somehow very classy.
While "Happy With What You Have to be Happy With" is a decent song with a powerful message, I don't like it as much as the other longer and more powerful vocal tracks.
While I noticed those four incredible standout tracks, the rest of the album deserves equal attention. Really, you can't go wrong with this album as long as you have an open mind towards music.
My only problem is that there could have been one more song (4 or 5 minutes long) similar in structure to the three present. I didn't quite feel a balance in that respect. Otherwise, perfect.
Review Details
Location: Arapahoe, NC United States
Top Reviewer Ranking: 946,328


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Hi All! I am fairly new to Fodors. My husband and I both in our early 30's are planning a week vacation the 3rd week of March 2013. We are trying to decide between another cruise or just going to an island. We have taken two Caribbean cruises on Princess staying in mini suites and loved them both.
Things we love about cruising:
1. Being on the water
2. Anytime Dining & Specialty Dining
3. Adult only swim/lounging areas
4. Spa & Fitness center
5. ALWAYS something to do (we can only take laying out in the sun for so many hours)
6. ALWAYS some kind of night life after dinner
7. Excursions
8. Being taken care of, service, being pampered
Things we do not love:
1. Only a few hours at each island
2. Sometimes the crowds on sea days
If we decide to cruise for 7 days, we would like to try a different cruise line. We are considering:
Celebrity on the new ship Reflection sailing from Miami to San Juan, St Maarten, and St Kitts with 3 days at Sea
RCL on Freedom of Seas sailing to Labadee, Falmouth Jamaica, George Town Grand Cayman, and Cozumel Mexico
RCL on either Oasis or Allure
Looking for some advice and help on which cruise to choose if we decide that is what we want to do for our vacation, Or should we just pick an island to go to? Thanks!!
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New to Fodors: Celebrity or RCL?
Hi All! I am fairly new to Fodors. My husband and I both in our early 30's are planning a week vacation the 3rd week of March 2013. We are trying to decide between another cruise or just going to an island. We have taken two Caribbean cruises on Princess staying in mini suites and loved them both.
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If you are looking for the wow! factor then go with the reflection or either the Allure or the Oasis. All of the ships should have plenty to ofer on sea days so I think thats not a factor to consider. So what about the ports? Does that matter? The ports offered on the Rflection are preferable for me, esp. St Maarten though it seems there are quite a few sae days with only three stops. Personally i prefer more and as you say it might be a bit crowded on sea days.
As for service all should be good though Celebrity is a notch above and as its a newer ship they will be working hard to be impressive I would think.
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Jacketwatch: Thanks for your response! I was leaning more towards celebrity because it is a brand new ship and curious to compare Celebrity with our Princess cruises, however I'm just a little concerned with being at sea for 3 days. With our two Princess cruises the most we were at sea was 2 days and that was great....kinda of nice to just relax after a full day of sightseeing on an island.
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One other question regarding Celebrity. I know Reflection is their brand new ship so that is pretty exciting to be able to cruise on their new one, however they are also offering a cruise on the Summit
Day 1 San Juan, Puerto Rico
Day 2 St. Croix, U.S.V.I.
Day 3 Basseterre, St. Kitts
Day 4 Roseau, Dominica
Day 5 St. George's, Grenada
Day 6 At Sea
Day 7 Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas
Day 8 San Juan, Puerto Rico
There is one day at sea only. I know this is a smaller and older ship, but I had heard they did a lot of work on it. Would this be a cruise to consider as well or should I stick with the Reflection?
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Well its up to you. The Summit is as you have noted smaller and is one of their Millenium class ships. We were on one of the others, the Connie last fall and it was fine but I think will not have that wow! factor that the Reflection should have even after the upgrades. The Reflection is the newest of their solstice class ships which have been getting great, great reviews. The flip side is the itinerary is great on the Summit as these are all neat islands and you have only one day at sea so its a toss up. Do you want the wow! ship with more sea days or the older one with more islands. As you have noted you seem to like sea days so perhaps the Reflection is a good choice. What do you think?
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Well...our first two cruises on Princess were picked because of the itinerary, but it just happened to be on The Caribbean and Ruby so we were spoiled with nice ships and great itineraries. I do remember after our first cruise we only had one day at sea and said we kind of wished we had one more day at sea to get that other relaxation day in.
The itinerary on the summit looks great especially because my husband and I have only been to St Thomas and San Juan, however maybe this time we pick a cruise because of the ship and go with reflection? hmmm.....
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If you liked those Princess hips then I think you will flip over the Reflection.
St Maarten is my personal fav Caribbean island as it has a Dutch and a French side. We found it to be very clean and the people were very freindly. Also if you have the time you can catch a ferry from the French side to Anguilla as well. Just a thought. I find a lot of the fun is in the planning. Please ask away for any other concerns. Cheers, Larry
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Oh wow! We went to St Maarten on our 2nd cruise and also liked it. I did not know you could take the ferry to Anguilla. How long does it take? Thats a great idea
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We did not do it but as you can see Anguilla from the beach i imagine not too long. Did you go to the airport in St. M and check out how close you can get to the planes/ I mean like they are right on top of you as they land!!
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Thank you for the links! And wow....that pictures of the planes landing is incredible!
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You're welcome. Have fun hun.
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After two Caribbean cruises, we felt it was time to branch out. Have you thought of Alaska or the Mediterrean? Fares are not a lot different, but the sights certainly are. Not a lot of party, but otherwise you are on a cruise. Much more interesting.
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Reme: I would love to do an Alaskan or Med cruise, but we only have the one week in March available to do a cruise or vacation somewhere. We really want a warm destination after a cold winter in NJ
Comment has been removed by Fodor's moderators
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See ya!
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BTW CMurphy my last comment was in reference to a verboten post advertising something naughty. I knew it would deleted by the mods.
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I woudl pick Celebrity over RCL any day ... if you have been on Princess, you should like the Celebrity experience.
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CC Murphy,
I took that Summitt trip out of San Juan this past winter and it was amazing. The ship was beautiful. It was actually the first sailing after the refurbishment and they did a good job. The ship might not have had all the bells and whistles that the newer ones have, but there was still plenty to do onboard. The staff were great, the food was good and the rooms were nice. In some ways, it felt more like a boutique hotel than a floating megaresort, and I was never bored. I would definitely recommend Summitt -- and that itinerary.
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It has been my observation that if
free( ptr ) is called where
ptr is not a valid pointer to system-allocated memory, an access violation occurs. Let's say that I call
free like this:
LPVOID ptr = (LPVOID)0x12345678;
free( ptr );
This will most definitely cause an access violation. Is there a way to test that the memory location pointed to by
ptr is valid system-allocated memory?
It seems to me that the the memory management part of the Windows OS kernel must know what memory has been allocated and what memory remains for allocation. Otherwise, how could it know if enough memory remains to satisfy a given request? (rhetorical) That said, it seems reasonable to conclude that there must be a function (or set of functions) that would allow a user to determine if a pointer is valid system-allocated memory. Perhaps Microsoft has not made these functions public. If Microsoft has not provided such an API, I can only presume that it was for an intentional and specific reason. Would providing such a hook into the system prose a significant threat to system security?
Situation Report
Although knowing whether a memory pointer is valid could be useful in many scenarios, this is my particular situation:
I am writing a driver for a new piece of hardware that is to replace an existing piece of hardware that connects to the PC via USB. My mandate is to write the new driver such that calls to the existing API for the current driver will continue to work in the PC applications in which it is used. Thus the only required changes to existing applications is to load the appropriate driver DLL(s) at startup. The problem here is that the existing driver uses a callback to send received serial messages to the application; a pointer to allocated memory containing the message is passed from the driver to the application via the callback. It is then the responsibility of the application to call another driver API to free the memory by passing back the same pointer from the application to the driver. In this scenario the second API has no way to determine if the application has actually passed back a pointer to valid memory.


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Music Gear News
More tour action from The Killers
Previously revealed to be gigging at a collection of locations in the UK, including Sheffield, Glasgow and London, the music instruments playing group have since been revealed to be bringing even more tour action to these shores.
While Birmingham was due to get an October 31st Halloween gig, it has since been revealed to be getting a second come November 1st.
And while Manchester had been lined up for a November 13th performance, another on October 14th will also be taking place, it has emerged.
The Killers have been behind such albums as Day & Age and Hot Fuss, and they have another due out this month.
Coming out on September 17th, it's called Battle Born and contains currently available single Runaways, alongside the likes of The Way It Was, Flesh and Bone and The Rising Tide.
Arguably the most famous songs by The Killers – who are fronted by Brandon Flowers – include Mr Brightside and Human.
Published by AW.Posted on 10 Sep 2012 13:54 to category : Band / Celebrity News
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UK Postal service mark 50 years of Pink Floyd with special Pink Floyd stamp set.
Iconic Motorhead bass player Lemmy is set to be commemorated with limited edition stamp run.
Andrew Tkaczyk takes to the drums again for the first time since November 2015 who had lost his leg following a road-traffic accident.
Can you vote for your favourite band?
The drum world mourns the loss of innovator, pioneer and drum icon Remo D Belli.
Recent Music News
Jury confirms Led Zeppelin did not copy the opening chord sequence of Stairway to Heaven.
DigiTech reveal a new modulation effect for Summer NAMM 2016
The desktop OB-6 has been revealed!
Fender has added five new products to their extensive range of amplifiers.
This isn't an April fool!
Save up to 230 GBP on selected Native Instruments software whilst stocks last.


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Betsy Longhorn Feeling Under the Weather
Betsy Longhorn is a long-time member, actually the senior member, of the Homestead Critters. She has been with us for 21 years and is at least 22 years old (but doesn't look a day over 15).
She has always been shorter in stature than the full-blooded longhorns, because she is part corriante. We had been approached several times over the years by ropers who wanted to buy her for practice. We were told her breed is good for roping.
Timber MaKay Middleton, daughter of Cody and Lydia (Engel) Middleton was baptized on Saturday at St. Peter's Lutheran Church. Timber's Godparents are Danielle Chasteen and Mike Wollin.
Short Visit
Ben and Amanda Eller, and Mitch Harpster, all of Jackson, Mo., came up on Sunday afternoon to get some things from their grandmother's house.
They also visited with their parents, Dane and Belinda Harpster of St. Peter.
St. Peter's Lutheran Church
Worship attendance on Saturday night was 99.
Friday, January 22
• St. Elmo Education Foundation will have its annual soup supper, 5-7 p.m., in the high school cafeteria. The menu includes vegetable soup or chili, peanut butter or chicken salad sandwich or hot dog, dessert and drink for $6 for adults and $4 for children under age 12.
Sunday, January 23
• Detour youth, 6 p.m., First Church of God S.H.E.D.
• Amp'd high school youth, 6 p.m., St. Elmo Christian Church.
• Youth Night Breakthru, 6:30 p.m., Freedom Reigns in Christ Church.
Mindy Miller, who was diagnosed with stage two triple negative breast cancer at the age of 34, " was blessed to be surrounded by family and a community that supported me."
"Ice-Breaker" on the Homestead …
… is the ax or sledgehammer; not conversational words at a social/party gathering to "break the ice," but a healthy swing with said tools to break the ice in the critters' "watering holes" (translation-water tanks, buckets, pans, birdbaths).
As we have several such items and some farther away from the house, it has not seemed feasible to try to run electric cords to the assorted containers.
Weekend Visitors
Nathan, Mahala, and Harper Jacquin spent the weekend with Dane and Belinda Harpster of St. Peter. They worked on renovating Mary's house in St. Peter for Nathan and Mahala's move in February.
Fun Fair
St. Peter's Lutheran School and Little Saints Preschool Fun Fair supper and auction will be held on Sunday at St. Peter's Lutheran School Gym.
Wednesday, January 13
• Reverb Youth 56, 5:30-6:30 p.m.; Reverb Youth 78, 6:45-8 p.m., St. Elmo Christian Church.
Thursday, January 14
• Lunch Bunch, noon, Mary Ann's Restaurant.
• St. Elmo Public Library District Board, 7 p.m., St. Elmo Public Library.
• Effingham Chapter #110 Order of the Eastern Star, 7:30 p.m., Effingham Masonic Temple.
Sunday, January 17
• Sunday Night Live Youth, 6-7:30 p.m., First United Methodist Church Parsonage.
Vandalia native Paul Stroble recently published his 17th and 18th books.
"Walking with Jesus through the Old Testament" is published by Westminster John Knox Press in Louisville, Ky.
Drawing on the New Testament story of the Walk to Emmaus, where Jesus explains the scriptures to two travelers, Stroble selects scriptures that Jesus might have explained to his companions on the road.
By Charlene M Jett
The joy of Christmas rang true in Wesley Hall on Monday as Evergreen Outreach embarked on the beginning of another successful year. HAPPY NEW YEAR! There was a savoring of the last few days of the lighted Christmas tree, the table full of Poinsettias and tons of cookies.
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