Are you considering about going to Boston for the day and require to know the very best locations to consume, but not just any location but the best burger restaurant in Boston? If you are you have come to the right place. I know three of the very best locations in Boston to get the best burgers.
Use washed, reduce lemons in your drinking drinking water. The lemony flavor will make the water style better and that will inspire you consume much more of it. You can reduce up lemons and place them straight into a pitcher of ice water in the refrigerator to make consuming water fast and simple.
Healthy foods are all about us, like those which provide protein, fiber and Omega-three fatty acids. Of program, not all are produced equal as only some have the quality of being satisfying and filling in smaller sized quantities. Heading for these types of wholesome meals is the solution to consuming much less for weight loss.
87 percent of kids watch in between 2 and 6 hrs of tv every single day. Their break time from that is spent sitting in front of a pc. Remember when there had been no this kind of issues? An obese child was uncommon, and the only time a child was sedentary apart from sleeping was when they had been engrossed in a guide. Restricting the use of the television and pc will force your children to be much more bodily active, and they will shed excess weight. Want an additional reward? It will restrict the quantity of foul language and violence your kid could be exposed to.
French fry cutters are used to reduce fries in the convenience of your personal location, rapidly and merely. The greatest component about this equipment is that they give you the capability to assign the dimension of your French best fries in chicago. Whether you want thin snacking style fries or whether you need big fries, these will assist you put together potatoes into the form you want.
Breakfasts are great right here, whether you're building your own or choosing on pancakes (delicious but huge, may want the short stack) or an omelette with all the fixins. Hash browns are crispy on the outside and fluffy within, just like Mother produced.
Because of my function routine, or what ever it is I do, I have a tendency to eat at night, which is why I acquire excess weight. Incorrect. There's a kind of math concerned in maintaining your physique's gas and how it burns that gas. If you eat extra energy throughout any time of the working day, it will flip to body fat. People usually presume that because 1 is sleeping at night, he isn't burning those energy, so they'll turn to body fat; however, if that person ate the correct quantity of energy for his body excess weight and was active during the day, those energy shouldn't turn to fat any more effortlessly than they would if he ate throughout the day.
Eat saturated body fat. Read about "The Reality About Saturated Body fat" in The Diet Answer Plan and you will discover that that consuming saturated fats is not what cause people to get heart illness. Processed meals, sugars and refined carbohydrates are the culprits that lead to the illness.


text:
protektor – można osoba wspierająca kogoś
 protektor (szermierka)
 protektor – zewnętrzna warstwa opony pokryta rowkami zabezpieczająca samochód przed poślizgiem
 protektor – głęboko żłobiona podeszwa zabezpieczająca przed ślizganiem
 protektor – składnik kremu (filtr) chroniący skórę przed ultrafioletem
 Protektor – film z 1985
 Protektor – czesko-niemiecki film z 2009 roku
 Protektor – film z 2012
 Protektor S.A. – firma produkująca obuwie z Lublina

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Newspaper campaigning in Britain in the late 1990s
Howarth, Anita (2013) Newspaper campaigning in Britain in the late 1990s. In: Howley, K., (ed.) Media Intervention. New York, U.S.A. : Peter Lang. pp. 37-54. ISBN 9781433112119
Official URL: http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?event=cmp.ccc.s...
Since the late 1990s there has been an expansion in the number of British newspaper campaigns, but studies have yet to explore the culture of this particular form of intervention in terms of its roots, mythology and how these have influenced its modern manifestations. This chapter argues that while the decision and the reasons for campaigning are likely to be made in secret, the particularities of campaign discourses, processes and practices can elucidate a much more sophisticated range of reasons that are not limited to a commercial imperative but they are also strongly infused by constructions of moral principles and journalistic values. The use of the war metaphor of a 'campaign' in the GM food case signified a clearly orchestrated and articulated determination to mobilize public opinion and influence policy. The agenda was broad-ranging, the objectives were clearly stated, the function of the campaign served to sustain pressure and the tactics adopted sought to negotiate challenges posed by this particular type of intervention. This chapter uses a critical case study of the GM campaigns to derive a fuller conceptualization of campaigns than has hitherto been possible and to distinguish it from other forms of media intervention.
http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?event=cmp.ccc.s...
Campaign, newspapers, media intervention
Research Areas > Communication, cultural and media studies
Research Areas > History
Research Areas > Politics and international studies
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (until 2017) > School of Performance and Screen Studies

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The sun rises while I sit in a cabin in the country, watching quiet resolution. What shall I do today? Shall I read, sleep, create? All sound inviting and wonderful in front of a roaring fireplace; there is something so magical in the flickering of a flame.
Crafting and creating can be relaxing when we let our imaginations float free. So I take a walk in the woods and pick up loose bark pieces, logs and pinecones. I find a few sections of moss peeking up through the leaves. I tuck them into my pocket gently. I carry fallen white pine bough branches back to the cabin and lay out my loot on a table.
I rummage for small glass globe votive holders to fill, not only with candles, but plants. I find two fishbowls in various shapes from past floral arrangements stored under the kitchen sink. Everything is out, ready to form some woodland creation to admire and hold dear.
Arranging the wood over the pine boughs with crevices and pockets upward that will fit a small votive holder, I nestle the tiny glass in the natural holders. The fishbowls are going to take a bit more ingenuity. What houseplants can I steal from the book shelves? Common green Swedish ivy? A pothos vine? Fern?
The fishbowls need cleaning with dish soap and a sponge. I wipe them dry and clear. Where is that bag of potting mix? Oh, and the gravel in the saucer under the orchid plant. I borrow and steal my terrarium ingredients from all over the home. I refuse to leave the refuge of the fire. But I know I can make this work because creating terrariums is like folding in baking ingredients.
I wash the gravel clean, drain it in a colander and pat it dry with paper towels. I pour a layer in the bottom of each fishbowl. Then I cut a circle from the dry paper towels to place on top as a divider before adding scoops of soil. I then spoon small amounts of potting soil over the paper-towel divider as a ground foundation.
I pull the ivy, fern and vine out of their pots, then clip and trim the roots with scissors to loosen the tangles. I dip each one in a bowl of water for a bit of a drink before placing them into the fishbowl. Maybe I should trim the ivy and vines some, too. I arrange and turn each plant till they cuddle up to one another like cats on a leather chair.
Fresh, moist woodland moss can carry a living beetle or two, so I poke at the section with a knife, but none shows its face. So I place the three small moss pieces in the bowl around the stems of the plants, pushing into the outer glass walls. The terrarium starts to take shape and form like a snapshot of my woodland walk. I find the small hemlock pinecones and sprinkle a few atop the live moss. And right in the center goes my brand-new terrarium! I love it! I feel brilliant and happy.
How divine is my new Woodland Terrarium & Votive Tablescape, nature-made with my own hands and what I had available. I light the votives, take photos with my cell, post, gram, Tweet! Whew…Now it's time to nap!
For more information about Maria Colletti and her terrariums, visit www.green-terrariums.com.


text:
Hispanic Heritage Month: Celebrating Authenticity, Leadership and the Joy You Bring to Our Organization
Hispanic and Latina/Latino terminology is often used interchangeably. However, there are distinct differences to be pointed out. Hispanic refers to people who speak Spanish and/or are descendants of Spanish-speaking population. Latina/Latino refers to people who are from and/or descendants of people from Latin America. Latinx is a newer phrase meant to represent a gender-neutral representations of Latina/Latino. Most importantly, people can choose to identify as Hispanic, Latina, Latino, or Latinx and they are all correct. People have a right to self-identify in a way that feels most authentic to their lived experience.
September 15 to October 15 marks the celebrations of Hispanic Heritage Month, a month-long celebration of the contributions and cultures of Hispanic and Latino-Americans whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America. Here at UiPath, we have employees from all around the world, and we love celebrating their individual cultures and traditions. Being Hispanic is not a monolithic experience, but one full of shared experiences and unique differences.
Rodolpho Fidalgo, head of marketing LATAM, and Integrated Marketing Americas, is originally from Sao Paulo, Brazil and moved to the US when he was eight years old. "People assume that I am Hispanic, but I am actually Brazilian, and I speak Portuguese. I speak Spanish as well but learned it later in life. I identify as Latino; however, I don't identify as Hispanic because I don't come from a Spanish background."
After receiving his degree in global business, Rodolpho used his multi-cultural upbringing to look at businesses from a global lens. He truly understood how someone's perspective can alter their decision-making process. He even moved back to Brazil for six years with his prior company and managed the Latin American markets.
All Rodolpho's travels have brought a perspective that he wishes more people shared. "I want people to understand that although countries can be underdeveloped, doesn't mean that they don't have highly developed areas and can't have world class cities. There are so many well-educated folks from those countries and their markets are huge. Sao Paulo is one of the biggest cities in the world! Also, I am a huge believer that people should travel. It helps you to understand the world outside your bubble."
For Karen Garcia, Sales Manager for US and Latin America, being Hispanic is all about family. "I am Honduran, and family is everything in Hispanic culture. No matter where you are from, family influences who we are, what we do and why we do it. My mom came to the US over 30 years ago and it was extremely important for her kids to get an education. There are four of us and two have MBA's, two are in the medical field and one works in the government. We are making sure that all the hard work put in by everyone who came before us wasn't taken for granted."
Even though Karen and her siblings have accomplished so much, she still sees more mountains to climb. "I wish I saw more Hispanic and Latina women in managerial and C-suite level positions. We are equally as smart and as hardworking. I do feel like it helps to empower me to work harder and do better."
Juan Felipe Mejia, director of global compensation and Operations, keeps his heritage close by maintaining traditions from his home country of Colombia. "For New Year's, we eat twelve grapes at midnight and that is something that has cascaded from family member to family member for generations. The grapes symbolize a wish that brings wealth. You eat a grape and make a wish for every month of the upcoming year. Another fun tradition that we have is we keep lentils in our pockets on New Year's because lentil also symbolize wealth."
Juan experienced hardships when he first moved to the US and quickly learned the value of diverse and inclusive environments. "When I moved to the States, it was a challenging time because I didn't speak a word of English. I had to deal with a lot of uncomfortable situations until I got accustomed to the new culture. I was very fortunate that the area that I moved to was very diverse and that is extremely important.
That is one of the things that drove me to UiPath because the company is diverse, and we have so many people from different cultural backgrounds. It doesn't matter what you sound or look like, what you bring to the table is what is important and how you deliver results. And that is why I love this company."
Thank you to all our Hispanic and Latina/Latino employees for bringing so much authenticity, leadership and joy to our organization. We celebrate you!


text:
Russian Observers to Inspect Croatian, Albanian Military Activity
© Flickr / Lee Phelps Photography
https://cdn1.img.sputniknews.com/i/logo-itemprop.png
https://sputniknews.com/military/201609271045732162-russian-observers-inspect-croatian-albanian-military-activity/
Russian experts will carry out military activity assessments in several regions of Croatia and Albania under the Vienna Document on Confidence- and Security-Building Measures on September 27-30, the head of Russia's Nuclear Risk Reduction Center said.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Russian experts will visit training grounds and ranges, receive briefings on military activities, formations and units in the specified areas, as well as attending Albania's military exercises taking place on September 19-30, he added.
"The inspection is being carried out in order to determine the scale of declared military activity in the given area or to confirm an absence of military activity that must be declared in advance. The area measures 16,000 square kilometers (6,200 square miles) in Croatia and 12,000 square kilometers in Albania," Sergei Ryzhkov said on Monday.
The Vienna Document is aimed at confidence and security building in Europe and envisages Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) member states providing each other with information on their armed forces, defense planning and military budget details, as well as exchanging military observers and carrying out inspections.
New Hague Trials 'Irrelevant' if Albanian War Criminals Get Free Pass
IMF Approves 36Mln Euro Disbursement for Albania
'An Act of Capitulation': Why Does Montenegrin PM Root for 'Greater Albania'?
Croatia, Albania, Russia
01:07 GMT Iranian Missiles Reportedly Fell 100 Miles From of USS Nimitz Strike Group
16/01 23:25 Migrant Caravan Heads to US From Honduras, Calls on Biden Administration to 'Honor Its Commitments'
'This is Going to be Much Bigger': Twitter CEO Charts Agenda Beyond Trump Ban in Leaked Video


text:
Brădeni (în maghiară: Hégen, în germană: Henndorf) este o comună în județul Sibiu, Transilvania, România, formată din satele Brădeni (reședința), Retiș și Țeline.

Demografie

Conform recensământului efectuat în 2011, populația comunei Brădeni se ridică la  de locuitori, în scădere față de recensământul anterior din 2002, când se înregistraseră  de locuitori. Majoritatea locuitorilor sunt români (55,38%). Principalele minorități sunt cele de romi (37,27%) și maghiari (1,87%). Pentru 5% din populație, apartenența etnică nu este cunoscută.
Din punct de vedere confesional, majoritatea locuitorilor sunt ortodocși (90,98%), cu o minoritate de penticostali (2,57%). Pentru 4,93% din populație, nu este cunoscută apartenența confesională.

Politică și administrație
Comuna Brădeni este administrată de un primar și un consiliu local compus din 11 consilieri. Primarul, , de la , este în funcție din . Începând cu alegerile locale din 2020, consiliul local are următoarea componență pe partide politice:

Atracții turistice
 Biserica fortificată din Brădeni
 Biserica Sfântul Nicolae din Retiș

Primarii comunei
  - 2000 - , de la
  - 2004 - , de la
  - 2008 - , de la
  - 2012 - , de la
  - 2016 - , de la
  - 2020 - , de la

Note

Brădeni
Brădeni


was drafted but had a hunch that Barry was yellow. Guess he thought more of his job as a salesman that of his 30 bucks per month in the army serving his country. When us fellows first came home from Lone Tree he made fun of our suits. So we sent him a copy of "Why didn't I wait to be drafted" and all signed our names to it. That is all of us fellows from home. Don't know whether you ever read it or not but it hits the conscript and hits him hard.


text:
The man who made it back from paralysis - and who's supporting a Royal Preston project to help seriously ill patients breathe for themselves
Paul Faulkner
Imagine not being able to eat freely, talk properly or even just cough – all of them daily functions denied to anybody who has undergone a tracheostomy.
The procedure – which involves inserting tubing into a patient's windpipe to help them breathe – is often key to keeping people alive after damage to their brain or spine, caused either by injury or illness. But, in the process, it can rob them of many of life's necessities.
Nick Lovell was rushed to hospital in 2015 - and didn't leave for nearly two years.
That was the outlook which confronted Nick Lovell from Blackpool when he awoke from a coma after a devastating brain condition befell him almost four years ago. The then 32-year-old had gone to bed with a strange feeling in his feet – but within hours of getting up the next day, he was on his hands and knees, unable to move.
Nick had been dealt an extremely rare double blow – the onset of the neurological condition Bickerstaff Brainstem Encephalitis, together with the autoimmune disorder Guillain Barre Syndrome.
He would spend nearly two years in Blackpool Vic and the Royal Preston, after initially being paralysed from head to toe.
"I remember coming round and, mentally, I was able to do everything," Nick recalls. "The message goes from your brain to your arm to scratch an itch, but there's no response – that felt a bit strange."
The tracheostomy team at the Royal Preston (l-r): Lisa Hayward - specialist physiotherapist; Lee Hughes - specialist speech and language therapist; Sandra Davey - clinical business manager; Dr. David Shakespeare - consultant in neuro rehabilitation; Rachael Moses - consultant physiotherapist; Emma Forster - clinical specialist practitioner
The father-of-two was immediately aware of everything that was going on around him, but unable to do anything other than offer the first flickering of a smile.
Sadly, he had little reason to do the one thing which his body grudgingly permitted. The road to recovery was going to be long and would involve many months using a tracheostomy to enable him to breathe.
"The weirdest part was not having any cough reflex. Instead, there was a machine which mechanically makes you cough and then they used to suck all the sputum away. That was the worst bit – you didn't look forward to that half hour", Nick says.
Given the scale of the other challenges facing him, it is perhaps unsurprising that Nick accepted the effect of the tracheostomy on his life more readily than many people might have done.
Former tracheostomy patient Ian Wardle receiving speech therapy from the Royal Preston via the internet.
But even as he slowly regained movement, the equipment left him unable to eat – a keenly-felt loss for somebody who, prior to his illness, could often be found in the kitchen. Yet Nick still managed to find pleasure in talking about meals, even if he could not enjoy partaking in them.
"I'd sit there in intensive care, nil by mouth, and I'd be watching one cookery show after another," he remembers. "You don't feel hungry or thirsty with the liquid food they give you, but the one thing I wanted to be able to do was eat.
"I'd be thinking about what I could have for my tea and I'd always talk to visitors about what they'd eaten. There were a few nurses on the ward from different countries and they'd be talking to me about their own national dishes.
"I was next to another patient whose wife used to bring him fish and chips. It was torture and I'd be drooling over the side of my bed – but I thought, 'One day, I'm having that,'" he smiles.
For Nick, that day came after six months when he was transferred to the Royal Preston for rehabilitation and was seen by a respiratory team who had made it their mission to remove tracheostomies the moment patients could cope without them.
Now, that same team at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is spearheading a county-wide effort to take out any tracheostomy which has been left in place for longer than necessary – or even indefinitely.
According to Nick, removing the tube is key to helping people recover from whatever underlying condition caused them to require it in the first place.
"Early on, I was told that I wouldn't get down to rehabilitation if I'd had the tracheostomy in – so, for me, I had to get it out as soon as possible.
"There is a non-invasive, portable machine available which can be used as and when you need it. You can always have it with you, but you don't have to carry round a ventilator, suction and all that goes with a tracheostomy – it just allowed me to take the next step of freedom," Nick explains.
Taking out the tubing also gave him one less thing to worry about when his recovery hit bumps in the road.
"The goal was to get out of hospital and [when] that day came, everything was great and I was at home with the family. But the following week, I was on my own for the first time.
"That was the biggest shock – all of a sudden, you're sat there in a wheelchair in front of the TV and it suddenly dawns on you. I was worried that I couldn't be the dad I wanted to be and I couldn't do the stuff that I'd imagined I'd be able to."
Nick now wants to help others avoid the "psychological dip" which he experienced and hopes that fellow patients suffering from debilitating conditions will be more receptive to help with their recovery if they do not also have to contend with a tracheostomy.
"I had nobody to talk to. If somebody who had been through it had been able to tell me that life would be different, but not over, it would have given me that positivity.
"If I can give somebody a better outlook on life, I'll have achieved something.
"I'd love to be able to use aids to walk just to the shop around the corner and to be more independent without having to rely on my wheelchair. Over time, I'd love to be able to get back to work at [services company] Sodexo."
Of all that he has already achieved, there was one battle which the born and bred Blackpool lad was particularly eager to win – losing the Liverpudlian accent which he had strangely developed during the months spent without speech.
"My tongue and vocal chords were paralysed and when I got my voice back, for some reason, I had a Scouse twang.
"I had Liverpool-supporting friends who bought me a mug saying, "Liverpool's No.1 fan", laughs the Tangerines supporter.
TRACKING DOWN THE TRACHEOSTOMIES
Medics at the Royal Preston Hospital are trying to track down patients from right across Lancashire and South Cumbria who could benefit from having tracheostomies removed.
Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (LTH) has been handed £135,000 by health service commissioners to run a 12-month pilot project identifying people who should have the breathing tube taken out.
Tracheostomies are usually put in place if a person has suffered a brain or spinal injury or a medical episode like a stroke, which leaves them unable to breathe unaided.
But while the procedure is relatively straightforward to reverse, finding the people in need of it is not as simple as it may seem.
"In recent years, there have been more tracheostomies performed to help get people out of intensive care and onto the wards," consultant physiotherapist Rachael Moses explains.
"Unfortunately, a lot of these patients are [then] discharged into specialist nursing or residential homes, with no [hospital] follow up.
"But the impact for that individual and their families is massive, particularly for younger patients who maybe have children whom they can't communicate with. And the other problems of not being able to talk or eat [lead to] a poor quality of life."
Tracheostomy patients require their tubing to be changed on a regular basis, but this is often done in a community setting – meaning there is no central register of those living with the procedure over the long-term.
"As crazy as it sounds, we don't know where [all of] the patients are – some may have been discharged many years ago and are lost in the system," Rachael says.
"A lot of the care packages [required for tracheostomy patients] were historically funded – so it was agreed when they were discharged from hospital that this level of funding would be in place. And because of resources and time, these care packages aren't reviewed regularly."
Before getting the go-ahead to launch the new project, Rachael and her team found five patients who had been left with tracheostomies in place for at least three years. All were successfully weaned off them and had the tubes removed – and then received speech and language therapy to regain their voice.
It is estimated that the saving for the NHS amongst those five patients alone is half a million pounds each year, as they will no longer need the daily – or, in some cases, hourly – monitoring of their tracheostomy equipment. They will also be at a far reduced risk of infection.
But while Rachael is hoping to help as many patients as possible over the next year, she believes the fewer people sent home with a tracheostomy in the first place, the better.
"At Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, we've not discharged one patient in the last 14 months with a tracheostomy," Rachael says.
DO YOU KNOW ANYBODY WHO COULD BENEFIT?
Relatives or medical professionals who know of anybody in Lancashire and South Cumbria with a long-term tracheostomy in place are asked to e-mail: trache.team@nhs.net
THE TRACHEOSTOMY WITH ITS OWN TWITTER HASHTAG
He may live 70 miles from the Royal Preston, but Barrow resident Ian Wardle is one man glad that Lancashire Teaching Hospitals (LTH) is casting its net across the whole of Lancashire and South Cumbria in the search for tracheostomy patients in need of help.
The 69-year old has lived with a progressive condition which has reduced his muscle control since he was in his early 20s. He has been tetraplegic for the last 15 years, during five of which he has also had to live with a tracheostomy which left him unable to speak or eat.
It was finally removed last April and Ian is gradually rediscovering his voice, in part thanks to speech therapy over social media.
"Obviously, it would have been unrealistic to expect muscles not used for so long to start working immediately," he says, via the speech synthesiser on which he still relies to communicate for now.
"With the support of the LTH team and my care staff, my lungs and airway have gradually strengthened and I am confident this improvement will continue as the muscles get more use.
"The process of using Twitter was a new experience for me, but the speech therapy, in conjunction with better breathing, means my ability to communicate directly with people is now possible again. Usually, it's just single words at the moment, but it is a work in progress and it gives me a goal to work for," Ian says.
The LTH staff have even built up an online following of people wanting to see how Ian is progressing – using the hashtag, #ianstrache.
His carer, Derek Jefferson, adds that there have been some other unexpected bonuses of having the breathing tube taken out.
"His first request was to get back into polo neck jumpers," Derek laughs.
"But in all seriousness, Ian is a very intelligent man and for him to have his voice back will be amazing. It isn't a quick process, though – there is a lot of effort which he has to put in."


De Baak is a training and knowledge institute in the field of leadership and entrepreneurship. It focuses on the 'Human Side of Enterprise' - on the development and effectiveness of people in organisations. At De Baak learning means: discovering unexpected talents, identifying surprising opportunities and combining intelligence with creativity. De Baak develops open and custom programs in Dutch and English, supports sustainable business practices and contributes to many social learning and development projects. De Baak is affiliated with the Confederation of Netherlands Industry and Employers, the VNO-NCW.
De Baak hosted the Future of Learning discussion in the Netherlands.


text:
Qatar's emir promises Shura Council elections next year
APNovember 3, 2020
Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani is seen during a joint news conference with Indonesian President Joko Widodo at the presidential palace in Bogor, West Java province, Indonesia October 18, 2017. REUTERS/Beawiharta
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Qatar's emir announced on Tuesday that the country will hold long-promised elections for its top advisory panel next year.
In a speech before the legislative body, known as the Shura Council, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said the first-ever vote will take place in October 2021. He described it as "an important step" for the tiny energy-rich Gulf state to "develop the legislative process with a wider participation of citizens."
Last year, Sheikh Tamim ordered the formation of a committee to organize elections, but never announced a date for the vote. Following elections, the council's power would be expanded to include the ability to dismiss ministers, approve the national budget and propose legislation.
The country's constitution, approved in a 2003 referendum, calls for elections for 30 seats of the country's Shura Council, which advises the hereditary rulers. The other 15 seats are appointed by the emir.
Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani is seen during a joint news conference with Indonesian President Joko Widodo at the presidential palace in Bogor, West Java province, Indonesia October 18, 2017. REUTERS/Beawiharta
Elections Gulf States politics Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani shura council
New Zealand Education Minister Chris Hipkins bids to replace Jacinda Ardern as PM
Qatari investment company offers to buy Ramses Hilton Hotel
Football, gas and bribery allegations: How Qatar-EU relations deteriorated


I am trying to build an excel sheet with the classification of the models I buy. I do like this.
I buy a model, mainly looking for groups of animals that I still don't have, starting from classes and then going down to orders, families and other intermediate groups.
Then I identify the precise species, and build back the classificationtree. First the genus, then the family and so on.
In this way I arrive to the point where the various animals' classification trees link together forming a complete structure, pending from the first devide biota/abiota.
Until now I tried to get the classification infos from wikipedia, and even if I often found different systems of classification used for different animals files, I could manage to reasonably solve the mismatchings.
But now I began looking into the direction of extinct animals, and here comes the armageddon. A total mess. A tragedy.
How can I find a solution? Is there a place where I can get a complete classification of the extinct animals?
Please help me, I am a desperate taxonomist.
Short answer is no that's not possible, there are things we simply don't know.
Trying to work out the current classification of modern animals is hard enough, to say nothing of extinct ones. The paleobiology database site is a good place to start, although it is not always complete either. Sometimes it's just a matter of chasing down primary references. For every taxon. No biggie!
I keep them sorted by: Category, Figure, Manufacturer for quick reference, so species are alphabetical within a given order, and then alphabetical by manufacturer.
If you talk to me by pvt message, we can exchange emails and I can share it with you.
I still have to work out a taxonomic database of my figures, currently they are arranged by company. However, since I have photographed most of my figures I have photo albums of them arranged by major taxonomic groups (well sometimes not so major, I have a Lucanidae album). I uploaded these to facebook but honestly, these albums are largely for my own orientation.
Brotondocus you are my hero!
This is a fantistic source, and that's exactly the kind or thing I was looking for.
Now I have to browse a bit the groups where I can find dinos and the other prehistoric animals, very curious to see what's going on here.
I have an Access Database that I maintain with separate tables for collection, taxonomy, distributions, manufacturers, etc. And all of these are of course linked in a massive database map. And every figure is linked to at least one photo...that is a really big file as well.
It is about ten years old now, and there are parts of it I don't like of course (but changing it now would be a small nightmare). The taxonomy I tend to use is as much functional as phylogenetic--for example, fish and mammals are classed in much greater detail than, say, birds or arthropods, which I don't tend to collect much.
It is often a problem anyway, especially in prehistoric animals, which don't tend to fit our categories easily. And even the site given by Bronotdocus has some questionable points in it; taxonomy is never finished.
So guys, looks like I came up with an achievement.
I finished few weeks ago the first level of my global living beings database.
I started the first level of it from biota/abiota, that means that eventually I might even include a classification of the minerals, and went down pointing out all the forks of the tree, beginning to open branches starting from the level Animalia. Actually there are some lists even of prions, viruses, archaea, bacteria and the very first levels of Chromista, Protista, Plantae and Fungi, but they are just few lines. Into Animalia, from the level of Chordata the tree is completed at least up to Families, and Tunicata, Amphibia, Reptilia, Synapsida and Mammalia are completed at least up to level of genus. Manz of these up to the level of species, and some even of subspecies. There is also a column for races and chromatisms, that have been compiled for very rare cases indeed (black panther jaguar and leopard, king cheetah, a few races of horse, cows, sheeps...).
Every animal present in the current catologues of Safari, Schleich, Collecta, Papo, Mojo, Bullyland and Likaonmodels and some from the catalogues of Maia &Borges and Geoworld is listed aside the proper species.
Moreover, I like the possibility to check out with him how complete is the coverage of the different classes, orders, families. For example, we were waiting for a long time a Viverridae and it's been a great pleasure to discover that finally Collecta made one of them, and the same goes for Estemmenosuchus that is the second Therapsida in the market made by major producers after Inostrancevia by Safari, and so on.
If anyone would like to have the file I will be pleased to pass it on, I put a quite big number of hours in making it, but sure sharing it will only increase the pleasure, if ever someone will show interest for it.


Pupils were set on entry to school based on KS2 SATS in conjunction with the Technology Department.
There are two equal bands of 6 sets in Year 7.
The membership of each set is reviewed as an ongoing process throughout the year in order to identify any necessary alterations. On occasion these changes are made in order to better balance set sizes.
All pupils are given a target end of Year 7 grade based on the information above.
These targets are reflective of the GCSE grading 1-9 (9 is highest).
Targets are regularly reviewed in order to ensure aspiration for all pupils.
Pupils undertake a sequence of units which vary in length dependent upon content.
Each week pupils complete a Learning Log as part of their homework. Additional work is set in order to extend understanding when appropriate.
At the end of each unit an indicative grade is given together with summative feedback on the unit completed.
A mid-year exam is taken in January which will cover all the topics in the Autumn term as well as aspects of the skills learned in previous years at Sharples.
A final, end of year exam will be taken in June which will cover all the topics taught in to date.
A review of sets is made following the end of year examinations in June.
Some topics are dependent on which set pupils are in. Higher sets have a more programming based focus.
The KS3 scheme of work is constantly under review for content and coverage as well as remaining "up to date". As such topics may be subject to change. We will endeavor to keep this page fully updated with any changes.
The AQA GCSE Computer Science course is taught in 3 periods per week.
At KS4 pupil targets are given using the same rationale as at KS3. Continuation of the progress flight path that was set using KS2 data on entry (and amended regularly to ensure aspiration) is used. At the start of KS4 each pupil is given a target for the end of their GCSE course at Sharples.
Pupils are assessed during lessons using examination style questions, homework tasks and extended programming tasks.
In addition to in-class assessment, pupils undertake Pre-Public Examinations (PPEs) in both Year 10 and Year 11. These are conducted under strict exam conditions in the school theatre and provide further information for the teacher and pupil on next steps to improve progress.
Grades achieved in the PPEs are recorded on the front of pupil exercise books alongside the target grade so that progress can be monitored.
Computational thinking, problem solving, code tracing and applied computing as well as theoretical knowledge of computer science from subject content 1– 4 above.
There will be one homework per week. This will include using an online MOOC, exam style questions and problem solving tasks.
This must be completed in year 11 and is a 20 hour task taken under strict control. A significant proportion of year 10 work is in preparation for this component. Following a government consultation in December 2017 this component of the course no longer contributes towards the final grade. However, it is a required element and the exam board require a sample of work as well as evidence of the full time being allocated.
Final examinations in May of year 11 will produce the final GCSE grade. There are two papers each worth 50%. The content of these is as above for the Year 11 March PPE.
Revision guides and workbook (with answers) will be able to purchase from school (prices to be confirmed). This covers the whole of the two year course.
Oversee use of the MOOC. All pupils have a username and password for this facility.
Ensure all homework is completed and submitted on time.
Encourage your child to attend any additional sessions taking place. These will be held throughout Year 11.
This course actively engages students in the study of business to develop them as effective and independent learners and as critical and reflective thinkers with enquiring minds. This course is assessed by a two-hour written exam and one piece of controlled assessment.


I am so in love with these! PLEASE do dappled light when it hits your subjects perfect collar bones and cheek bones like this! We had quite an eventful night full of unexpectedness. However, it made for so much fun…along with alot of imagry! We had everything from ice in June, to an amazing herd of sheep with little babes all over. Thanks to all of you for trooping up into the thickets of the aspen groves with me. The natural beauty of these bridals is perfection to me… and fits your amazing natural beauty perfectly. Thanks for waiting so long for your preview….can't wait for you to see all of them!
I don't know if this will be your favorite Mal…but I so love your look in this first one…playful and beautiful…perfect model look!


If you are a responsible dog owner, you've picked up lots of poo!
You may have also experienced ripped bags, unrolled rolls, faulty holster clips or forgetting poo bags all together.
We tested out the Nite Ize Pack-a-Poo on one of our recent walks with Bee and Rigby and really enjoyed using it.
The Pack-a-Poo has an S-Biner that lets you attach it to your belt loops for easy access and a special clip designed to attach it flush to the leash. Our previous poo bag holder would sway and smack us in the knuckles, especially if Bee and Rigby saw a squirrel! The cheap plastic clip would often break and cause the holder to fall and crack open.
To avoid bruised knuckles, we would carry the rolls solo. If you are as clumsy as we are, the roll would slip out of our hands and unravel. This happened way too often!
The Nite Ize Pack-a-Poo on the other hand, has a revolving center that lets you roll up any excess bags. This comes in handy, especially when you have your hands full with two dogs.
In comparison to discount poo bags, the quality of the bags that come with the Pack-a-Poo are paws down, much higher quality! The texture of the bag is soft to the touch and has a rubbery feel. We weren't concerned the bag would tear and cause a hand full of poo. Not to mention, the bags are certified compostable! Your dogs can poo and protect the environment at the same time.
You can purchase a Nite Ize Pack-a-Poo via the Nite Ize website.
Disclaimer: This content has been sponsored by Nite Ize, but the opinions expressed here are our own. Nite Ize is also sponsoring our Pet Photo Shoot Fundraiser Road Trip.


The VCSE Health and Wellbeing Alliance is a partnership between the voluntary sector and the health and care system to provide voice and improve health and wellbeing for all communities.
The 21 members of the HW Alliance have been selected for their demonstrable reach into a wide range of communities facing significant health inequalities, and their ability to represent the collective views of the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector.
Facilitate co-produced solutions to promote equality and reduce health inequalities.
The HW Alliance will amplify the voice of the voluntary sector and people with lived experience to inform national policy, facilitate integrated working between the voluntary and statutory sectors, and co-produce solutions to promote equality and reduce health inequalities.
You can find out more at www.england.nhs.uk/hwalliance, contact the Alliance by email at HWAlliance@dh.gsi.gov.uk or use #HWAlliance to join us on Twitter.
FaithAction represents the voice of faith groups in the programme, which replaced the Voluntary Sector Strategic Partnership programme in 2017. We were a member of that programme since it began in April 2009.
FaithAction builds organisations' capacity to demonstrate the impact of their work on health and wellbeing, and facilitates their involvement in local decision-making and networks. We work with the health and care system to highlight the issues faced by faith-based organisations and the difference their work makes to health and wellbeing locally and nationally.
Contact us about the HW Alliance!
If you would like to know more about working with faith-based organisations, or you're a faith group wanting to connect with the health and care system – or if you have any issues you would like us to raise – please contact Rodie Garland: rodie.garland@faithaction.net / 0845 094 6350.
All members of the HW Alliance support the development of knowledge and capability in the sector to engage in the wider health and social care reform agenda, and are selected to reflect the views of their members and networks.
Our work will be two-way. One, we will input to policy makers and commissioners to encourage an intelligent design of health and social care services, and two, we will give advice and support to faith-based groups on how they can support their community in the area of health and wellbeing.


text:
CBS Local Media
The Foote Files: Shaun Cassidy And Hey DeanieThis talented singer/actor was the brother of the late David Cassidy and son of actors Jack Cassidy and Shirley Jones.
The Foote Files: Annie Lennox & Walking On Broken GlassOne of the most talented musical performers of the 80's and 90's of all time is definitely Annie Lennox.
The Foote Files: A Lost Hit Of The 90's: 'Baby, It's Tonight'This song is truly a lost hit from 1990 and I think it should have done better on the Billboard Hot 100 than it did! And it doesn't sound like a song of the 90's either!
The Foote Files: An Olivia Newton-John Lost Hit Of The 80sOlivia Newton-John (born September 26, 1948 in Cambridge, England and raised in Melbourne, Australia) had a top five hit on the Billboard charts in the fall of 1982.
The Foote Files: Joe Cocker, Leon Russell, Mad Dogs & EnglishmenHow about a #1 song from 1967 originally done by the American pop-rock group The Box Tops, but was also a hit in 1970 for an Englishman named Joe Cocker?
AT&T And NASA Collaborate To Shield Drones From HackersAT&T and NASA are building a national drone tracking system to allow agencies to monitor drones.
1 Killed, Fire Truck Burns In Killeen Gas Tanker Truck BlazeA tanker truck explosion and fire at a Central Texas gas station left one person dead, destroyed a fire truck and forced more than 50 nearby residents to evacuate.
Records: Dallas DA Susan Hawk Worked 2 Days In MayNew records tonight show Dallas County District Attorney Susan Hawk worked just two days this month.
Dallas Police Unions Frustrated With Chief BrownSome Dallas police unions have expressed frustration with Chief David Brown after the latest crime numbers, and are looking for changes.
Paralyzed Teen Pursues Dreams, Vows To "Live Life"A North Texas teen who was paralyzed is not giving up on returning to the life he once lived.
Von Miller Reveals 'DWTS' Partner On FacebookSuper Bowl 50 MVP Von Miller wows with his moves on the football field, but does he have what it takes to go all the way on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars?"
Police Searching For Man Attacking Women In Northeast DallasPolice are asking for the public's help identifying a man who's attacking women in Northeast Dallas.
New Violent Crime Task Force Already Making ArrestsThe new Violent Crime Task Force in Dallas has hit the ground running, according to its Twitter page.
Insurance Agent Advises Homeowners To Clear Brush From HomesIn these unseasonably warm and dry conditions homeowners should cut back brush, grass and tree limbs away from their homes.
DISD Partners With UTD To Help Children Overcome Language BarriersAt times called a 'vocabulary gap'... the worrisome difference between the language skills of poor kids and their more affluent peers is something Dallas ISD and the University of Texas at Dallas are addressing.
« Previous1234Next »


text:
— Main Menu —HomeBFSIEnergyInfocomMiningVentureIndustryTravelCivicFood, Health, AgReal EstateResponsibilityEconomyLaw & JusticeInterviewAnalysis
Food, Health, Ag
Alfonso Bonilla Aragón Airport in Cali Opens New International Terminal
By :Jared Wade
Tag: Aerocali, airport, alfonso bonilla aragón, american airlines, ani, Antonio Silva, avianca, cali, copa airlines, Copa Airlines Colombia, luis fernando andrade, National Infrastructure Agency, Tame, valle de cauca, Wingo
Operations began today at the new international terminal of Cali's Alfonso Bonilla Aragón airport. With a dozen flights scheduled, this high-traffic travel day marked the culmination of a long-planned investment of $75 million USD (230 trillion pesos) intended to upgrade the primary landing ground for flights arriving in western Colombia.
The first flight departed for Panama at 5:15 am to kick off the new concourse's first day of service, during which officials projected the new wing to transport more than 2,600 passengers on 12 flights.
A test flight arrived at the terminal last Saturday, and an ceremony attended by Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos was held in March. But this weekend, in the midst of high travel season in Colombia during a month with several holidays, launched the true start of operations, including inaugural flights that arrived in Cali today from the United States, Spain, Panama, and Peru.
Officials say that, in part due to the new international terminal, which measures 19,600 square meters, the airport is now able to handle up to 10 million passengers per year.
Antonio Silva, manager of Aerocali, the organization that operates Alfonso Bonilla Aragón, said that the updates have transformed the airport into a modern facility more capable of managing large traffic loads and accommodating international travelers accustomed to the convenience widely available in Europe and the United States.
"We have state-of-the-art technology, state-of-the-art boarding bridges, an x-ray system, passenger information," said Silva while addressing the media recently. "Everything has been checked and tested, and we hope that the Vallecaucans are very happy with all these new facilities."
Luis Fernando Andrade, president of Colombia's National Infrastructure Agency (ANI), and other public officials have been pleased to bring the new terminal online before the upcoming summit for the Pacific Alliance this week in Cali. Heads of state from each of the free-trade agreement member nations — Colombia, Mexico, Chile, and Peru — are expected to attend, as are top foreign officials from various nations.
Andrade also said that some 1,400 direct and indirect jobs resulted from the large construction project, which was planned in order to allow for further expansion down the road if the demand for air travel in the region calls for it. "The building was constructed in such a way that it may be extended in the future according to the needs of the region and the country," said Andrade. "It is a development that will allow efficient and secure modular growth."
Currently, there are at least 10 different recurring direct flights that will use the new terminal. Avianca, the largest carrier in Colombia, will operate routes between Cali and Miami, New York, Madrid, Lima, San Salvador, and Guayaquil. Avianca also has set up a VIP lounge in the terminal.
Additionally, American Airlines has a flight between Cali and Miami, the Colombian arm of Copa Airlines will run a route to Panama City, and Ecuadorian carrier Tame will operate a flight to Esmeraldas. The discount Copa-owned airline Wingo will also offer a route between Cali and Panama City.
The airport expansion was one of many planned throughout the country. Bogotá is continuing on a plan to build an entire second airport in the capital, and the large airports in Medellín, Cartagena, and Barranquilla are all in various stages of expansion.
Simón Bolívar International Airport in Santa Marta has already completed a major renovation that turned it from an outdated, mostly open air terminal to a more modern facility that offers convenient service for tourists who want to visit the popular Tayrona National Park on the Caribbean coast.
Photo credit: National Infrastructure Agency
DON'T MISS OUT: The only English-language Colombia news that's strictly business, markets, & investment!
Join global executives & investors by subscribing to our FREE weekly updates
I agree to have my personal information transferred to MailChimp ( more information ) DISCLAIMER: Protección de Datos Personales Artículo 15 de la Constitución Política de Colombia, ley 1581 de 2012 y decreto 1377 de 2013.
We will never spam you or share your email address ¡Nunca Jamás!
Share the news!
Jared Wade is editor in chief of Finance Colombia. He is a Bogotá-based journalist with 15 years of experience covering topics including business, financial services, Latin America, and sports. Email him at jared.wade(at) financecolombia.com or follow him on Twitter at @Jared_Wade.
Air Canada to Offer Seasonal Direct Flight from Toronto to Cartagena Starting December 18
Copa Airlines Orders 15 Boeing 737 MAX 10 Aircraft for Delivery in 2020
, ByLoren Moss
Avianca Changes Redemption Model, Making It More Expensive To Earn LifeMiles & Difficult To Attain Elite Status
Viva Air Opens New Operations Base In Cali, Colombia; Adds New Routes To Barranquilla & Santa Marta
Viva Air Relaunches Medellín, Colombia - Lima, Peru Nonstop Flights
Moody's Says Outlook Negative on Colombian Banks Davivienda, Bancolombia, & Grupo Aval's Banco de Bogota
Ecopetrol CEO Felipe Bayón Innocent, No Longer Faces Jail, Rules Colombian Court
EPM's Board of Directors Resign En Masse, Creating Crisis For Mayor Daniel Quintero
Court Blocks Colombia's $370 Million USD Emergency Loan To Bankrupt Avianca Airlines
Declan Ryan Says Viva Air Not Being Treated Fairly By Colombian Government: Exclusive Interview
Colombia's Homicide Rate Reaches 30 Year Low In 2014
Spanish Airline Plus Ultra Arrives In Colombia With Madrid-Cali-Cartagena Routes
[…] Moody's Investors...
[…] Travelers Beware: Avianca...
[…] of financing becomes so...
[…] be sure to view Sengar's...
[…] Renovatio Launches Colombia's...
Don't Miss Out! Subscribe Now:
State/Dept/Province:
Your Background / Function: Corporate / Business Government NGO / ONG / Nonprofit Individual Investor Academic Investment Professional (Broker, Analyst, Fund Manager) Traveler / Interested Individual Journalist
Consider Advertising With Us
Click here to visit Expat Group's English site
Contact Us (Click the image):
Colombia Events, Conferences, Festivals and Important Dates
Whatsapp test page
Copyright 2014-2020 Finance Colombia All Rights Reserved. We may earn commissions from qualifying purchases.


If you want to move to the least sexist state in America, then head to New Hampshire, according to an index of sexist attitudes developed by economists at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University and National University Singapore.
Alternatively, they found the most sexist state to be Arkansas.
Kerwin Kofi Charles and his colleagues wanted to know how the prevalence of sexist beliefs in the places where women grew up and in the places they worked as adults affected outcomes such as wages, workforce participation, and age at marriage and childbirth. To do that, they gathered multiple years of data from the General Social Survey, a biennial nationally representative survey measuring Americans' beliefs on a wide variety of subjects.
They also ask respondents if they would ever vote for a female president and whether men are "better suited emotionally" for politics.
It's tempting to explain away these differences as a function of say, political beliefs: Is this just a measure of conservative attitudes toward gender and family?
According to the research by Charles and his colleagues, these state-level distinctions can have significant impacts on women's lives.
"Sexism in a woman's state of birth and in her current state of residence both lower her wages and likelihood of labor force participation, and lead her to marry and bear her first child sooner," they find.
One piece of good news is that the General Social Survey data shows sexist attitudes are declining across the board. Nationwide, the share of Americans who say men are "better suited" for politics than women has fallen from 48 percent in 1977 to 18 percent in 2016, for instance.
But the state-level differences persist, and they have been remarkably consistent over time, Charles and his colleagues find. "There happens to be substantial stability in cross-state differences in sexism over time, even as sexism has declined everywhere," they write.


text:
ShareFile | Pay Your EGP Bill
Firm Executives
Pay Your EGP Bill
Success can be measured by the company you keep.
< Back To Firm Executives
Colin Gorman, CPA/PFS, CVA, CCIFP, CIT
Managing Partner: Firm Strategic Growth
Colin is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), Personal Financial Specialist (PFS), Certified Valuation Analyst (CVA), Certified Construction Industry Financial Professional (CCIFP), and Construction Industry Technician (CIT).
He has been in public accounting since 2000. He graduated from Catholic High School in Little Rock and earned a Bachelor of Arts in Business and Economics and Master of Arts in Accounting from Hendrix College in Conway.
Colin was an infantryman in the United States Marine Corps Reserve and was called to active duty in 2003, spending seven months in Iraq leading foot and mechanized patrols. He received a meritorious field promotion to Sergeant, a Combat Action Ribbon, and a Presidential Unit Citation, along with other medals while in Iraq.
Although he has extensive experience in many areas of taxation, accounting, and financial management, he has specialized experience with construction accounting, small businesses, mergers and acquisitions, and litigation support and valuations planning.
Associated Builders & ContractorsAssociation: 2012 Board of Directors Chairman
Associated General Contractors of America: Member
Veteran of Foreign Wars Post 9095: Member
Marine Corps League: Member
Catholic High School Alumni Association: Lifetime Member
Construction Industry CPAs/Consultants Association (CICPAC) - Member
Sid McMath Marine Corp League Detachment - Junior Vice Commandant
North Little Rock, AR 611 Main Street
Little Rock, AR 11809 Hinson Rd #200
Bryant, AR 3310 Main St., Ste 100
Heber Springs, AR 421 South 7th Street
EGP, PLLC opened its doors in 1981 in North Little Rock, Arkansas and has since grown to three offices including Heber Springs and Bryant. The firm's growth is due in part to our ability to attract highly talented associates. Bruce Engstrom, Founding Partner, along with the firm's Executive Partner Committee, credit this growth to the firm's philosophy: We work with people, not just numbers. This philosophy derives from a belief that the commitment to our clients and to our associates of EGP is top priority.
RESPONSIVE | PROACTIVE | KNOWLEDGEABLE | EMPATHETIC
2022 NLR Chamber Medium Size Business Partner of the Year
Arkansas Money & Politics 2022 Most Admired
Olivia Farrell Gender Equality 2018 Finalist
2013 Best in Biz: One of the Best
2012 Best in Biz: Top Firm
Copyright 2023 • Legal • Privacy Policy • Independently Owned member of Allinial Global • Arkansas Web Design by Doc4


text:
Home To Be Continuous
To Be Continuous: Transforming Microsoft Into An Open Source Company
Andrea Echstenkamper
In the latest episode of To Be Continuous, Edith and Paul are joined by Martin Woodward from Microsoft and Ed Blankenship from Algorithmia. They discuss the cultural and technological shift that was necessary to transform Microsoft into an open source company. Martin talks about how as the owner of CodePlex, Microsoft's open source community, he created Microsoft's Github account. He also shares tricks he used to drive adoption inside Microsoft, such as allowing people to use their personal GitHub accounts, the subsequent challenges that this created and how he overcame them.
This is episode #39 in the To Be Continuous podcast series all about continuous delivery and software development.
This episode of To Be Continuous, brought to you by Heavybit. To learn more about Heavybit, visit heavybit.com. While you're there, check out their library, home to great educational talks from other developer company founders and industry leaders.
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Martin Woodward: is Principal Group Program Manager at Microsoft and Vice President of the .NET foundation. Martin works on Visual Studio Team Services. Prior to Microsoft, Martin was Senior Software Engineer at Teamprise.
Ed Blankenship: is Head of Product at Algorithmia, an API for algorithms, functions, and models that run as scalable microservices. Prior to that, Ed worked as Product Manager at Microsoft for DevOps, Visual Studio Team Services/Team Foundation Server, Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), and Dev/Test Workloads on Azure on the C+E Developer Platform Product Marketing team.
Paul Biggar: So what do you like least about open source?
Martin Woodward:
As somebody who has to help teams become open from Microsoft and learn how to work in an open source community, sometimes people aren't always very friendly, and it takes a lot of mental energy to be nice and be professional and be polite and suck it up.
And there's a reason why we can't have nice things on the Internet and why you never read the YouTube comments, and sometimes you just have to go with it. And I actually do worry about the wellbeing of our employees sometimes making sure we're not putting them under too much pressure.
Ed Blankenship: Yeah, just a piggyback, I think that's probably the thing I would say, too, but thinking about the morale of engineers, especially at Microsoft, who have never really been out in the open and been transparent about the code that they write.
Edith Harbaugh: Yeah, I read this great tweet from Solomon Hykes, the co-founder of Docker, and he said he wanted to restart in open source without his own name. But now would be a great time. We're recording from the floor of Microsoft Build, Microsoft's biggest developer conference. I'd love for you two to introduce yourselves.
Martin: Sure, so my name is Martin Woodward. I work on the Visual Studio Team Services Team over there and work with a bunch of communities. Before that I was the executive director of the .NET Foundation. And then before that, I helped introduce Git into Microsoft. And then I was with a company that did Java tools and things like that, we got acquired, where I used to work with Ed as an MVP.
Ed: Yeah, we've been together 12 years. Since the beginning of TFS. So, we went through all those years. But I'm Ed Blankenship. I'm now the product manager for our devops family of products and services. So, that includes team services, and TFS, and application insights, and hockey apps, so yeah.
Paul: So, I'm interested in this thing that you said, because the idea that maybe people are a little unpleasant in the open source community and the Internet in general, that's an idea I've never actually come across before. First time hearing this.
Edith: Are you being sarcastic though?
Paul: Okay.
Martin: The favorite part of my job as executive director is I got to work with the coolest people. There's so many people out there who are just awesome, like Shif-gee Bren-don-foss, he works at GitHub, and Brad Wilson, and Oren Novotny, and just these awesome, awesome people in the community. They're just amazing fountains of energy and creativity. And I've been in startups before.
Had a real job before I came to Microsoft. You always build this list of the people you want to go steal when you do your next startup. These are people I'm going to get to work for me sometime if I can. And I get to work with all those people. And we don't pay them. We don't pay each other. I was just there helping them be better at doing it. So, that side is awesome, and you've got to hang onto that side.
And you get people turning up with amazing gifts of code and amazing like detailed bugs and things like that, and it's all awesome. And then you get the other people who like to troll. You get the other people who like to be snarky on comments. And they just kind of forget that there's people behind those things. And if we could keep the conversation focused. Like it's okay to disagree, but let's disagree about technical stuff.
Paul: It's funny, because I see that
There are two camps of people. One camp says "let's be nice to each other on the Internet. We're a big community. We're people. Let's all be nice. And there's the other camp, which has some very famous people in it, Linus Torvalds, Eric Raymond who are like, "Who gives a shit about people's feelings? Code is the only thing that counts."
Edith: The feelings count. And just to check, you're not being sarcastic right now.
Paul: Not being sarcastic. I like people. It's kind of hard to explain to someone why they should care about the feelings of other people.
Ed: And I also wonder sometimes if it's because we're Microsoft employees.
Martin: Yeah, we've got a lot of history. And because you represent an entity that's kind of…
Ed: Historically evil.
Martin: Yeah, but you are the face of it, you know what I mean? And so people think, "Well, you work there you suck it up." And we do have to, but it does take a toll on us so we have to help them. But you were saying about Linus. I mean he can be sweary at times. One of my first visit a famous commit over a pull request on Libgit2, which is a project I'm committed to, and I had to help get Libgit2 to be able to shipped in a Microsoft product.
And this was actually the first time we'd ever shipped a GPL v2 type license product inside any Microsoft product. And so there was a few nervous things about it. And there were certain things I had to do, and I'm always trying to balance requirements from the lawyers and different people and actually what I'm going to get left at call for.
Paul: And it's full GPL. It's not LGPL.
Martin: Well no, well it's actually more liberal than GPL, because Libgit2 is GPL v2 with a linking exception, which was licensed means you're allowed to link to it, whereas LGPL we certain, anyway. I'll swerve away for that topic.
Ed: I think it was just so funny like how much we were trying to go under the table like as much as possible, like not be seen at Microsoft.
Martin: Well yeah, and still try to do it. We were very open with the actual community themselves. But we hadn't announced that we were going to ship Git in a Microsoft product. But, we were contributing to the projects we needed to contribute in. So, with Libgit2, because we were going to actually ship the source code with the binary, because that's part of the license, we wanted to make sure we did that, we have a rule inside Microsoft of making sure we don't ship swear words in products.
Edith: Oh. That's not true of Paul's podcast.
Paul: Yeah, it's completely legit, so swear as much as you like on this podcast.
Ed: Okay, perfect, it's fine.
Martin: So definitely one of my early pull requests into Libgit2, whereas to remove Linus's sweariness from the comments. Now, so like and this is an interesting skill you've got to teach developers inside the team is how to get a pull request merged. Because it's no good just coming along and going, "I work for Microsoft. And we don't have to swear by the way. I'd like to remove some swear words from this," and they're just going to laugh you out.
I was like, "How am I going to get this pull request to get accepted?" And the obvious way to do it is to turn it into a joke. So, I sent the submission in and it was basically removing expletives and all that sort of stuff from the code and tidying up the code because it had to pass our internal quality checks.
That was the pull request that it came in. But actually I'm thinking, "How do I make this into a joke? "How do I make this into a joke?" So, I checked, I made the branch name was fuckity fuck. And so the first comment was, "I love fuckity fuck." It's now been embedded into the Libgit2 history, which doesn't ship with the product, you see.
Paul: Genius!
Martin: So yeah, and we laugh at that. But still, it's like it's in Libgit2. You can find that anyone can find the pull request. It's great.
Paul: This could've backfired hardly. I'm imagining like they put it right into the change log and it's like, "The new fuckity fuck release."
Martin: Yeah, from Microsoft.
Ed: And I think that was a really interesting thing though. So, Martin said like, "Hey, we hadn't actually announced that we were going to have distributed version control if anything else get inside of our products." And for the whole year, right, before it was like open commits happening. And I've always wondered like what other big news is happening just in Git commit history like all across.
Martin: And with that particular one, we'd actually gone out and so back then. So, we basically I was on an airplane and I was traveling over to Seattle and I was reading The Innovator's Dilemma. And it's a book everyone has seen the title of and everyone thinks they know what it means from reading the title, and there's lots of people that haven't actually read it. And if you actually get to read it it's really, really good.
Edith: I love that book.
Paul: Extremely appropriate for modern Microsoft.
Martin: Every manager in Microsoft should be forced to read it every year. It's that important. Because it helps to identify disruptive technologies and also business tactics and how to organize a business to do it. We did it wrong, but it still worked, which I'm always amazed about. So I was reading this book and I was thinking, "It's so hard to identify a disruptive technology."
And I'd also been mulling in my head like distributed version control and centralized version control. And I was like, "Oh my god, distributed version control is a disruptive technology to us."
Paul: What year is this?
Martin: This is 2009 I would say. Yeah, 2009, November 2009 it was when I flew over. I see wow, it's a disruptive technology and it's like huh? Because it had a completely different cost model. Because all the processing is done on the client it's really cheap to host.
Ed: I see where we're going.
Martin: In terms of managing the cogs in a cloud service. And then where you see these centralized version control systems, which are really hard to scale, because like when you've got a load of Microsoft 65,000 developers hacking on that thing all day your services have to be really beefy. And so it's a really interesting problem space, and I was like, "Oh, disruptive technology. What do we do with it?"
So, you have to identify it. Then how are we going to adopt? Then we have to make the decision. It's again 2009, so the three options on the table were. We need distributed version control, so we at Microsoft three options now. One, buy or build is the first option. So with Microsoft the initial preference is to go build it yourself, because we're smarter than everybody else. That'll work out fine. The next option.
Paul: It worked out really well with the Team Foundation Server or whatever.
Martin: TFVC, Team Foundation Version Control, which is still in the product. What I still wanted to do was add a distributed version control, too. And I was talking to one of the engineers and he was like, "Yeah, what we'll do is we'll ship a version of SQLite onto everybody." I'm like, "Oh."
Paul: Oh no!
Martin: So there was that or we could've worked with the Mercurial community and added Mercurial into the product. Or we could look at Git. And then so we sat down and we had a look at that. And there was lots of different things that went into it. One was we were seeing that Git was being used more and more in actual continuous delivery cycles as the channel by which you transfer changes, which was a fascinating thing.
And once you dig into Git you realize the way it transfers the network protocol is the file protocol. It's basically the repository moving across disc. It's very, very minimalist. It's great classic. I love Linus. It's great classic Linus architecture, because it's simple and yet works.
Paul: Yeah. It's very immutable.
Edith: Have you seen that talk where he announced Git at Google? It is an amazing talk. You could look it up on YouTube, and it's basically him himself announcing Git and the Google engineers shouting him down. Them being like, "This will never work. "This is idiotic. "How do you sync changes?"
Martin:
There's so many things in Git that as a source control are wrong. It makes guesses about things. You don't make guesses with version control. It uses heuristics, but they're always right.
Even like using SHA for hashing and things like that. And it's like, "What if you have a hash glitch?" and it never happens. So you know.
Edith: It's a brilliant video, just because it's showing how nobody understood it at the time.
Paul: So interestingly, so I have a backstory of Git.
Edith: Is this a backstory for my backstory?
Paul: A backstory for your backstory. And I have no idea if this backstory is true or not, though I don't want to inquire because if you get too close to the truth you might not be able to tell the story again.
Edith: Is it like looking at the sun?
Paul: So, Git was apparently based on Monotone, and Monotone was this thing that was written by Graydon Hoare who's the guy who wrote Rust. And he had been writing it, and it was slow for reasons I don't remember.
And Linus had looked at it and was like, "Monotone is the thing I want to hack on," sent Graydon an email, and Graydon replied, "Would love to help, but I'm in Greece and have no Internet for several weeks." And he came back and then Git was written. And it's like Monotone is now dead and Git has taken over and there's no credit for Graydon as far as I can tell.
Martin: It comes down to him, as well, in terms of Linus like creating it over a weekend and all these sorts of things. The initial things began did begin very early, but then very quickly people came on and started contributing. Like people very, very quickly piled onto that central community in the buildup, but anyway.
It was an interesting question when we were doing it, which one do we pick? And Git was winning in those areas, but then everyone would say, "But Mercurial works better on Windows. Mercurial works better on Windows and Mercurial is more user friendly." And it is.
Edith: They're both true.
Martin: At the time anyway, especially on the works well in Windows. And then so I was like, "Huh, that's interesting." And then I went to a couple of different conferences, and I thought, "I'm going to go to every session I can go to about Git or Mercurial." And this was like an EclipseCon or something, because I was in the Eclipse community and this was at the EclipseCon. And there was sort of 90 bagillion Git sessions and four Mercurial sessions.
I'm like, "Huh?" And then the final one was
I just sat there and I was thinking, "So the reason we would pick Mercurial is because it works better than Git on Windows? I work for Microsoft. Surely we can fix that part.
And then let's just have Git. And they'll have every reason for backing Git was because it wasn't just better for the whole community, but it also makes sure it was pretty looking like Git was going to win, and then if Git was going to win but it didn't run well on Windows then the whole Windows developer community would get left behind in this little.
Edith: Galapagos Island.
Martin: Yeah, so again, it was to make sure that the Windows developers weren't left behind in their own little ghetto. Mercurial is awesome. Don't come after me. How would you know someone is a Mercurial user? Don't worry, they'll tell you.
Paul: I worked at Mozilla at the time that that decision was being made, like Mercurial Git. And the thing that I think that everyone missed, people made the decision on technical merits, right? And exactly like you're saying it works better on Windows, which is a consideration for us, and more user friendly. And the thing that I think that they missed then is that is not how developer communities work.
Developer communities make decisions on fashion, right? They're extremely fashion conscious. The thing that looks cool is the thing that's going to win.
And the technical merits matter basically fuck all.
Martin: It's also you get to like there's a curve isn't there, as well? You get past this curve where it just starts to snowball and then you've gone.
Paul: Yeah, yeah.
Martin: One of the clinchers for us, as well, was we were looking at Xcode. And Xcode used to have a pluggable SEM model, because SEM was always very, source control, sorry, was always very sticky, and then Xcode used to have a pluggable model for source control providers. And then with the new Xcode and I'm so, like I can use Xcode 3, Xcode4 but never quite remember now because it was that long ago, but with the new version of Xcode it was no longer pluggable.
And then we were like, "Huh. And the only options were Git and SVN. I'm like, "Huh. "So, we're going to have to build some kind of Git translation. If we built our own we'd have to build Git translation. Let's just build Git." So that's what we did. And then we had to work with the open source community. We had to, because if we're making that much of a strategic bet on an open source product,
It's no good just adopting Git. You have to contribute, because code talks.
Code does talk, it always does. It talks to you. Unless you come with solutions it's no good. So, we had to get there and provide stuff.
Paul: So you were telling us just for the show, you signed up for the GitHub account.
Martin: So, I created Microsoft's GitHub account.
Paul: Tell us about that.
Edith: I was going to say the backstories are way more interesting.
Martin: There's a few in here that are interesting. So, let's see. So, the highline news right now is is like six, seven thousand engineers from Microsoft working on GitHub day in, day out. That is their job. That's an amazing transition.
Paul: That's today?
Martin: That's today.
Ed: That's today.
Martin: So, back then, so I, so at this point it's zero. And now all the GitHub orgs that belong to Microsoft, I was the owner for CodePlex, which was Microsoft's open source community. And at the time kind of the rule was, it's a couple of rules, but one of the rules was, which we've slowly been walking back. That's one of the nice things in the company is we've got the process now a lot more streamlined.
But back then, yeah. So, one of the rules was like, "Open source goes to CodePlex. And then open source goes to CodePlex basically." And then there were teams that were like, "Well, I don't want to go to CodePlex because I need to talk to XYZ community. They don't use CodePlex and blah, blah, blah. I'll never get supported." And they were right. They need to go where the community is.
So people were not wanting to fight the battle about creating the Microsoft org, and so then they would create like team accounts. And another problem was they would also do, "Well, Microsoft has got a really bad reputation in the open source community. I don't want to affiliate myself with Microsoft because then they'll not take me serious." So, they'd create like a digital studio account. Well yeah, Azure, andwith .NET it was different. We deliberately created that, because that's a separate foundation.
Edith: So you had stealth. You had.
Martin: Well no, so I decided to fight the battle, because I don't know why.
Ed: Because you're Martin. And we had Bryan.
Martin: Yeah, it helps when you've got air cover, when you've got executive air cover. But yeah, so no, it was the right thing to do, because we're never going to convince the community that Microsoft is serious about open source if you kept hiding. And the only points of branding within a GitHub org are the URL and like the org logo. They're the only branding points.
And so we needed that to be Microsoft. We need to score brand credits everywhere. So when you go, you know, when you go look at PowerShell, when you go look at TypeScript, when you go look at .NET, well .NET is different.
So then when you look at these different open source projects that Microsoft contributes to, you want to know in your mind that they're coming from Microsoft, and that's the only way we're going to start to change perception.
And I think we're beginning to. I hope so anyway. So, we needed to do that. We needed to accrue to the brand. But, what I also needed to do was make sure then that CodePlex was change the rules so people didn't have to publish to CodePlex, and allow them to go to the Microsoft org. And then you've got to have an interesting question about how do you make it not the Wiki Wild West, you know, and how we actually do that in a controlled way. Like we've always got policies around it.
Ed: Yeah, I was going to say like that was the beginning of where we needed to really think about tooling within the company to help manage our GitHub tenant.
Martin: We have one of the biggest GitHub tenants in the world.
Ed: It is. But you want to make sure like we get security right. We ended up building the whole contributor licensing agreement like system.
Martin: And we have systems to help manage teams around AD groups and stuff, because it's just fine. But anyway, yeah, so I created the GitHub org, and it was cool. And then TypeScript. Yeah, it's just gone great. And then we did a lot of stuff to change the policies inside the company to make it easier for the people to contribute to open source, because again, there were hurdles they had to go through. And part of the team that did this. Well, one of the things we helped people realize was if we're going to take bets on open source technologies. Everybody wants to consume open source, because hey, that's free, whatever.
If you want to take bets on these open source technologies, you need to be able to fix those open source technologies.
If you're not contributing to those open source communities, if you're not fixing them and doing the effort to get a pull request merged, you're going to now be just forking. You're going to slowly diverge away from the open source project if you're not constantly getting your PRs merged. And that means you're going to miss out on the free new features that arrive, and then what was the point? You're now just giving yourself debt.
Ed: And the other thing I thought that was really interesting during this time is our attorney for developer division, Jason Barnwell.
Martin: Awesome guy.
Ed: Was like, he's like the coolest guy ever.
Edith: I have never heard before.
Martin: Our attorneys are special.
Ed: Yeah, they are very special.
Martin: They're awesome, because again, when you're a company that, you know, when you're a company like Microsoft you hire a lot of lawyers, you get to interview a lot of lawyers I guess. I took a picture of the meeting, because it was all very hush hush secret. I'm going to have the first meeting with the lawyers where I'm going to talk to them about the possibility of maybe introducing Git into Microsoft, the very, very, very first meeting. And it was just it was like I held it in a building that was away from where we normally are.
Another place is good. But when you book a meeting room in Microsoft you have to like add the meeting room into the meeting request. And so I added the meeting room into the meeting request and I was like, "Oops," because there on the wall in massive letters next to the meeting room is the schedule for the day along with, "Git and Microsoft, how do we do it?" right next to the thing. So, we got to book it private.
So, I booked a meeting with the lawyer, and the first thing he said when I was like I came into him, and I was like, "Hey, so we're thinking about introducing Git into TFS. This is why." I explained it all. He was like, "Oh, does that mean I can stop paying for my GitHub account?" So like my lawyer has a GitHub account?
Edith: That's what I meant by like shadow GitHub accounts.
Ed: So like Jason is an engineer at night. He does his legal stuff during the day.
Martin: But he's kind of cool because if we have like a license issue he'll send you a PR to fix your licensing issue. That's what you want from legal.
Ed: It is though. Like I had lunch with him recently. All the stuff that he's trying to do, like transform like our legal internally to Git. But anyway, so it was a good transition.
Edith: Maybe we'll have legal.
Paul: I get redline documents from my lawyers. I'd really like a pull request.You can see the history. Yeah, legal ops.
Edith: Bloomberg Beta, one of our investors, they actually have their manual in GitHub.
Martin: The way to understand lawyers is they're people who program in English. Because words have very specific meanings to them. But anyway, it was good fun, it was a good time. So then we helped transition the whole company into being open source and help our engineers. Like we had engineers who never ever used GitHub before. And the way of developing software at Microsoft, because we are such a lot of IP in house, was basically don't go out there. Look, we did everything inside. So, it was a very introverted opinion, and now it's transitioned amazingly to be much more external.
Ed: That also helped us about 2 1/2 years ago. We started thinking about how we built software, and we were learning about like all the different open source workflows and how they could actually help enterprise software development, as well.
Martin: Yeah, with InnerSource.
Ed: In InnerSource, right. And so like I think one of the best decisions that came out of even all of our transformation here was we used to have engineering systems all over the place internally, and then we also had an engineering system that we made available to our customers and our developers. And so 2 1/2 years ago we decided"Hey, why don't we have different engineering systems? Why can't we just build the best engineering system and have good portability across the company?" All of this was happening all at the same time, and then finally we made a decision at the senior leadership level.
Martin: Yeah. But the interesting thing about the reason why we had separate ones was because the Windows team have specific requirements and they want to do something to work on their system. So, we've got source control and issue tracking and building RM and all that stuff built into VSTS, which is Visual Studio Team Services, is what Windows now use. But when we had that system they were like, "Well, the reason I'm not is because". Classic corporate architecture, the further somebody is from you in the orgchart the more stupid they are.
Paul: That's just how it is.
Martin: Yeah. And so we're not going to use their thing, because their idiots, and we need to do our thing and we're super special. We have very different problems from everybody else.
Paul: And they're saying the exact same thing about you.
Martin: Yeah, yeah, exactly, everybody is. So, the trick that we had to do is we had to basically invest in a very, very deep extensability model into VSTS so that then the Windows team if they want VSTS to work a certain way, "Here you go. Here's the API." And it was very much of an open source workflow. You want you extend it. If you want to do it, you bring your people, add it. But what we did as well we opened up the source control.
In the old days, everybody's source control repositories were locked down.Nobody had access to everybody's else's source control. Now, I'm in engineering. I have access to the Windows source control code base, and I have access to Office, as well as my own.
And if I want to go send a pull request to Notepad to add Unix line ending support finally, which I've tried to do about five times. It's surprisingly a hard engineering problem, and I can explain why if you really want to know. But, if you want to add, hypothetically speaking, if you wanted to add Unix line ending support into Notepad, yeah, I could send that pull request. It wouldn't get approved, because it affects like 90 bagillion files, but you could. And that was the other thing is getting people used to a model of restricted write permissive read, again in a source. Because inside Microsoft when you had access to version control you had access. You didn't necessarily exercise it. And to get into that model has been a fascinating transition.
Ed: It's been a big transformation for us.
Martin: I knew we'd won though. I knew we were winning like the lion's share of developers.
Paul: You mean as Microsoft?
Martin: Inside Microsoft. So by we I mean us open source people infecting Microsoft with a disease. I knew we were winning when Microsoft. We're a very email centric company still. We use Teams and Yammer and things like that, as well, but we're very, very email centric still. When you have a baby you send out the usual, "We've had a baby," and a picture comes out, and then everybody sends out the obligatory, "Oh, lovely baby pics!" You know, it's what you do. It's email etiquette.
So, somebody sent out the obligatory, "We've had a baby," picture. "Everybody doing well?" And then the first reply came back from one of the devs saying, "Plus one, looks good to merge." We've won!
Paul: Nice, nice. So it's funny that all the large companies in tech have their own unique dev culture. And some of it leaks out and some of it looks like what the open source world and what all the small companies look like, and some of it doesn't. And now compared to Google, which just is its own unique thing, Apple who doesn't talk to anyone, Amazon which has 50 million unique things and who knows, and Facebook which is its own unique monoculture, as well, and doesn't really make dev tools so it doesn't matter, like Microsoft is the one that looks closest to what the open source people are doing, and who the fuck saw that coming?
Edith: Maybe Martin.
Martin: It was a big team effort.
So, one of the tricks we did there, was to make sure people used their personal GitHub accounts. So, we didn't require somebody to create a Microsoft specific GitHub account.
We instead realized that it's a social thing, so we managed to convince our lawyers that maybe what we should use is, we've already got guidelines for this produced, it's our blogging guidance. And that was kind of the guidance that we used as a template for the rules around open source, and it's to do it very much as an individual, as a person, who works for a company.
And so when you sign up, when you associate your Active Directory account, your CorpNet account, with your GitHub account it makes sure that you are associating Microsoft as your company, that you remember the Microsoft org so you get the little Microsoft badge, and so people don't feel tricked into accepting a pull request from Microsoft. They're not merging, but it still comes from you as a person.
Edith: Have you ever then had a person who's working on embarrassing side projects?
Martin: Well, so, yeah. We have had people, so this, again, this goes back to how we opened the show. We have to be responsible employers. You have to still protect your people. And there are people who are vulnerable and you have to be careful. And so you allow people to create pseudonyms, especially if they need to. We have had the odd people who we've had to give guidance to about appropriate profile pictures and things. But yeah, mostly it's, "Look, you're doing this wrong"
Edith: So there's HR for open source.
Martin: Yeah. You know, so it's interesting, but it's a good problem to have anyway, and it's fascinating. So, and one of the good things about that is because you're under your own name you build up your profile. And I see two reactions to this, which is hilarious. One is
Whenever a new team are thinking about going open source there's a huge fear from their engineering group. "Oh, let me just spend a year refactoring everything so the code looks nice before I make it public."
Why is that? They say, "Oh, well you know, it's going to be public. I don't know if I want people to see it." I'm like, "This code runs on a billion machines. You're telling me it's not good enough?" It's totally the human reaction to that. But it improves code quality, because everyone is like now they want to do a pull request they want it to be good, so yeah, it improves code quality, because you know everyone is going to look at it. And you can't slip in hacks for a deadline because people get shouty. You can't hide behind.
It's fascinating. And then the other thing is obviously people build up their GitHub commit graphs and things, it's history, and so you get that side, as well. And so you have to look after your staff, because now we're a lot more visible and they can see you fairly good. We have a chat ops bot called .NET Bot and a .NET team. And it's a chat bot we have that we get him to do stuff for us.
If we need to grep a bunch of files and make a bunch of changes across a lot of things, like do it manually or should we get .NET Bot to do it? If we're going to do some moving around the code, .NET Bot does it for us. And so you're in teams or you're in like GitHub and you're sending commands, or in the pull request you're sending commands to .NET Bot to do things for you.
So therefore .NET Bot has an amazing GitHub commit graph, because he's committing to one of the biggest open source projects on the Internet like every day completely. And so yeah, so he gets emails from recruiters like three a week.
The funniest thing is I'm actually almost convinced a robot is getting recruitment emails from another robot. The robots are giving robots jobs.
Ed: Oh my god.
Martin: It's the end of the world.
Edith: Well, I have a question. So we heard from another guest about how Windows itself started using Git.
Martin: So I was, yeah, that nearly killed me if I'm honest. Yeah.
Edith: Were you responsible for the Five Stages of Git posters?
Martin: I wasn't actually, that was genius.
Ed: That was genius.
Martin: No, so I was responsible in the people learning the five stages of Git potentially. Yeah.
Edith: The anger one.
Martin: No, we came in and sat down with the Windows team and we were like, "Hey, we need to rationalize your engineering systems. What's the deal?" And so Windows is a big code base. It's been built up over a lot of years. It's a big monolithic code base. It's all in one hunk of stuff.It was like so big, we had our own version control system that we'd written to handle the load of Windows, and it wasn't big enough to support them, so we had 26 instances of those. It was enormous. And then so we came in and it was like, "Well, Git is not going to work for that. Git works for really small. This is stupid. Git works for small modules.
You need to break up the code. But we don't want to break up the code. You're an idiot going to Git. Like why would you do that? And they were like, No, no, no, we really want to use Git. Git is really important. It'll help us recruit. It'll help us use standard tools. It's important. So I'm like, "Huh." And then so you come down the discussion and you think, "Well, let's break Windows open "to lots of little bits." Let's just componentize Windows.
Paul: I feel like this is how microservices happened. It was like when you thought about the world in SVN ways it was like monoliths make sense.
Ed: There you go.
Paul: But now, each team we want to have our own repo. So like the idea that Git also did the same thing to Windows?
Martin: Yes, well it didn't in the end.
Ed: It didn't, okay.
Martin: We'll come to that. It tried. Git does lead you to more component based architectures, which is actually better architecture, so it's interesting. That's probably why the teams have been successful. But yeah. So we moved Windows to the component based model. And it was insane, and it wasn't going to work, and it was horrible, and we tried.
Ed: It took us a year to figure that out, too.
Martin: Because we have the best engineers, we have lots of engineer, we can solve it.
Ed: They're like, "We're going to solve this."
Martin: Turned out we can't. So what we did instead was wrote, but what we can do is we got a lot of computer scientists. So, we ended up writing a file system, a virtual file system, GVFS, Git Virtual File System, which is open source. It's GitHub.com/microsoft/gvfs, and it's, yeah, a virtual file system driver that knows about Git repositories. And it has a deep understanding in how Git repositories work. And so when you clone the Git repo it only pulls down the portions of the Git repo you need to be able to do various operations, and in the background it hydrates. It has lots of pointers, and then it hydrates the real files and it can pull them down.
Rather than using the Git protocols to pull them down from one master server, it pulls down binaries from proxy servers from images that are nearer by and like virtualize a bunch of stuff. And yeah, and it's amazing to me that it works. I was like when the guys proposed this. A guy called Joe Duffy, who's a very clever guy from the Midori Team. He's this incredibly clever guy. I remember he first proposed it in this architecture meeting. I went, "Joe, you're insane. "That's never going to work."
Ed: It's never going to work.
Martin: Because there are times when being the open source guy I find sometimes our audacity is annoying me at times. I'm like, "Why would you do that? That's crazy, nobody would do that. That's insane." TypeScript, I thought TypeScript was going to fail. Andrew comes to me with TypeScript, "I'm going to open source this thing." I'm like, "You're going to do a thing on JavaScript. Dude, nobody is going to do that. Like what's wrong with JavaScript? It's fine." And then what do I know? Anyway. But I didn't think this was going to work either, and turns out I was wrong.
Ed: Two weeks ago, or two weekends ago.
Martin: Two weeks ago we moved Windows over, yeah.
Ed: All in one Git repo.
Martin: Yeah. And we're using GVFS. And that gives them the performance that they need. And they're still learning, you know. Everybody has that moment where you think you've lost your code in your Git repo. And there's operations, because it's such a different form of version control, there's some operations which work really well and are a lot faster than they were, but then there are other operations which are a lot slower than they were because it's got to analyze the whole tree to get the answer, so anyway.
Ed: You know, Sayid has been doing a bunch of different talks about like, "Hey, on this journey.."
Martin: Yeah, GitMerge has the big commit view. And so yeah, Sayid has got those views. Yeah, tonight's news story. And then it's all open source and we're trying to, we're actually working with different people to see if we can get GVFS actually bundled with different Git distributions, as well, so other people can take advantage of it.
Ed: The tower guys, the Atlassian team.
Martin: It's all good. Don't use it if you can possibly avoid it. Go component based. Go for small, discrete bits of code and your code will be better code, but we do have an option.
Edith: Yeah, well this was a fascinating journey here, everything from the first account to Windows moving to Git. Thank you so much for coming by today.
Martin: Thank you for having us.
Ed: Yeah, this was awesome.
Ed Blankenship
Martin Woodward
http://www.launchdarkly.com
Andrea does marketing for developer-focused companies. Before LaunchDarkly she worked at Terracotta, acquired by Software AG, and built the demand generation programs at open source in-memory computing company Hazelcast. Andrea is happiest when she's swimming, karaoking or learning something new.
To Be Continuous: Marketing an Open Source Project
To Be Continuous: Another Look at Product Management
To Be Continuous: Resolving Accidental Complexity with Dark
To Be Continuous: Microsoft Acquires GitHub