Chapter 15 Part 1 of The House by the Meddler Tree by Giovanni Verga Translated by Mary A. Craig This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Tom Denham. People said that Leah was going to live with Don McKaylee, that the Malavolia after all had nothing left to lose, and Don McKaylee would give her bread to eat. Padron and Tony was of no use to anybody any more. He did nothing but wonder about, bent almost double, and uttering at intervals proverbs without sense or meaning like, a hatchet for the fallen tree, who falls in the water gets wet, the thinnest horse has the most flies, and when they asked him why he was always wondering about, he said, hunger drives the wolf out of the wood, or the hungry dog fears not the stick. But no one asked how he was, or seemed to care about him, now he was reduced to such a condition. He teased him and asked him why he stood waiting with his back against the church tower like Uncle Crucifix when he had money to lend, or sitting under the boats which were drawn up on the sand as if he had Padron Fortunato's bark out at sea. And Padron and Tony replied that he was waiting for death, who would not come to take him for long other days of the unhappy. One in the house ever spoke of Lear, not even St. Agatha, who if she wished to relieve her feelings, went and wept beside her mother's bed when she was alone in the house. Now this house too had become as wide as the sea, and they were lost in it. The money was gone with Tony. Alessio was always away here or there at work, and Nunciate used to be charitable enough to come and kindle the fire when men used to have to go out towards evening and lead her grandfather home in the dusk, because he was half blind. Don Silvestro, and others in the place, said that Alessio would do better to send his grandfather to the poor house now that he was of no more use to anybody, but that was the only thing that frightened the poor old fellow. Every time that men are led him out by the hand in the morning to take him where the sun shone, to wait for death, he thought that they were leading him to the poor house, so silly was he grown, and he went on stammering, but will death never come? So that some people used to ask him laughing where he thought death had gone. Alessio came back every Saturday night and brought all his money and counted it out to his grandfather as if he had still been reasonable. He always replied, yes, yes, and nodded his head, and they always had to hide the little sum under the mattress in the old place, and told him to please him that they were putting it away to buy back the house by the meddler tree, and that in a year or two they should have enough. But then the old man shook his head obstinately, and replied that now they did not need the house, and that it would have been better if there had never been the house of the Malavoglia, now that the Malavoglia were all scattered here and there. Once he called Nunziata aside under the almond tree, when no one was by, and seemed to be anxious to say something very important. But he moved his lips without speaking, and seemed to be seeking for words, looking from side to side. Is it true what they say about Lia? he said at last. No! replied Nunziata, crossing her hands on her breast. No! by the Madonna of Oninno, it is not true. He began to shake his head, with his chin sunk on his breast. Then why has she run away too? Why has she run away? And he went about the house, looking for her, pretending to have lost his cap, touching the bed and the cupboard, and sitting down at the loom without speaking. Do you know, he asked after a while, do you know where she is gone? But to Menna, he said nothing. Nunziata really did not know where she was, nor did any one else in the place. One evening there came and stopped in the black street, Alfio Mosca with the cart, to which was now harnessed a mule, and he had had the fever at Picocca, and had nearly died, so that his face was yellow as saffron, and he had lost his fine straight figure, but the mule was fat and shining. Do you remember when I went away to Picocca, when you were still in the house by the medlar, he asked? Now everything is changed, for the world is round, some swim and some are drowned. This time they had not even a glass of wine to offer him in welcome, because Alfio knew where Leah was. He had seen her with his own eyes, looking just as cousin Menna used to, when she used to come to her window, and he talked to her from his. For which reason, he sat still, looking from one thing to another, looking at the furniture and at the walls, and feeling as if the loaded cart were lying on his breast, while he sat without speaking beside the empty table, to which they no longer sat down to eat the evening meal. Now I must go, he repeated, finding that no one spoke to him. When one has left one's home, it is better never to come back, for everything changes while one is away, and even the faces that meet one are changed, so that one feels like a stranger. Menna continued silent. Meanwhile Alessio began to tell him how he had made up his mind to marry Nunciata, as soon as he had put together a little money, and Alfio replied that he was quite right, if Nunciata had also saved a little money, for that she was a good girl, and everybody knew her in the place.  Nunciata had her own dowry by this time, for her brothers were growing big enough to earn their own bread, and even to put by now and then a soldor, and she had never bought jewelry or good clothes for herself, for, she said, gold was for rich people, and white clothes it was nonsense to buy while she was still growing. By this time she was grown up, a tall, slight girl with black hair and deep sweet eyes, that had never lost the look they wore when she found herself deserted by her father, with all her little brothers on her hands, whom she had reared through all those years of care and trouble. Seeing how she had pulled through all these troubles, she and her little brothers, and she a slip of a thing no bigger than the broom handle, everyone was glad to speak to her and to notice her if they met her in the street. The money we have, she said to cousin Alfio, who was almost like a relation, they had known him so long. At all saints, my eldest brother is going to Master Filippo as high-ed man, and the second to Padron Cipolla in his place. When we have found a place for Turi, I shall marry, but I must wait till I am older, and my father gives his consent.  If he were to come back now, said Nunciata calmly in her sweet voice, sitting quietly with her hands on her knees, he would stay, because now we have some money. Then cousin Alfio repeated to Alessio that he would do well to marry Nunciata. Now that she had money, we shall buy back the house by the medlar, added Alessio, and grandfather will live with us. When the others come back, they will live there too, and if Nunciata's father comes, there will also be room for him. No one spoke of Lia, but they all thought of her, as they sat with arms on their knees, looking into the moonlight. Finally cousin Mosca got up to go, because his mule shook his bells impatiently, almost as if he had known who it was whom cousin Alfio had met, and whom they did not expect at the house by the medlar tree. Uncle Crucifix expected that the malevolia would come to him about that house by the medlar, which had been lying all this time on his hands, as if nobody cared to have it, so that he had no sooner heard that Alfio Mosca was come back to the place than he went after him to ask him to speak to the malevolia, and induced them to settle the affair, forgetting, apparently, that he had been so jealous of Alfio Mosca when he went away, that he had wished to break his ribs with a big stick. Listen, cousin Alfio, said Dumbell, if you'll arrange that affair of the house with the malevolia, when they have the money, I'll give you enough to pay for the shoes you'll wear out going between us. Cousin Alfio went to speak to the malevolia, but Padron and Tony shook his head and said, No, now we should not know what to do with the house, for men are not likely to marry and there are no malevolia left. I am still here, because the afflicted have long lives, but when I am gone Alessio will marry Nunciata, and they will go away from the place. He too was going away. The greater part of the time he passed in bed, like a crab under the pebbles, crying out with pain. What have I to do here? he stammered, and he felt as if he was robbing them of the food they gave him. In vain did Mena and Alessio seek to persuade him otherwise. He repeated that he was robbing them of their food and of their time, and made them count the money hidden under the mattress, and if it grew less he muttered, At least if I were not here you would not need to spend so much. There is nothing left for me to do here. And at his time I was gone. The doctor, who came to feel his pulse, said that it was better they should take him to the hospital, for where he was he wore out his own life, and theirs too, to no purpose. Meanwhile the poor old man looked from one to the other, trying to guess what was said, with sad faded eyes, trembling lest they should send him to the poor house. Alessio would not hear of sending him to the poor house, and said that while there was bread for any of them there was for all. And Mena, for her part, also said no, and took him out into the sun on fine days, and sat down by him with her distaff, telling him stories as she would have done to a child, and spinning when she was not obliged to go to wash. She talked to him also of what they would do if any little providential fortune were to happen to them, to comfort him, telling him how they would buy a car for St. Sebastian, and how she would be able to cut grass enough to feed it through the winter. In May they would sight again at a prophet, and she showed him the brood of chicken she had, and how they came picking about their feet as they sat in the sun and rolling in the dust of the street. With the money they would get for the chickens they would buy a pig, so as not to lose the fig peelings or the water in which the macaroni had been boiled, and at the end of the year it would be as if they had been putting money in a money-box. The old man, with his hands on his stick, gave approving nods, looking at the chickens. He listened so attentively that at last he got so far as to say that if they had got back the house by the meddler they could have kept the pig in the court, and that it would bring a certain profit with cousin Nassau. At the house by the meddler tree there was also the stable for the calf, and the shed for the hay, and everything. He went on recalling one thing after another, looking about him with sunken eyes, and his chin upon his stick. Then he would ask his granddaughter under his breath, What was it the doctor said about the hospital? And men would scold him as if he were a child saying to him, Why do you think about such things? He was silent, and listened quietly to all she said. But then he repeated, Don't send me to the hospital, I'm not used to it. At last he ceased to get out of bed, and the doctor said that it was all over with him, and that he could do no more. But that he might live like that for years, and that Alessio and Mena and Nunziata too would have to give up their day's work to take care of him, for that if there were not someone near him the pigs might eat him up if the door were left open. Padron and Tony understood quite well what was said, for he looked at their faces one after another, with eyes that it would break one's heart to see. And the doctor was still standing on the doorstep with Mena, who was weeping, and Alessio, who said no, and stamped and stormed when he signed to Nunziata to come near him, and whispered to her, It would be better to send me to the hospital, here I am eating them out of house and home, send me away some day when Mena and Alessio are gone out. They say no because they have the good heart of the Malavalia, but I am eating up the money which should be put away for the house, and then the doctor said that I might live like this for years, and there is nothing here for me to do, but I don't want to live for years down there at the hospital. Nunziata began to cry, and she also said no until all the neighbourhood cried out upon them for being proud when they hadn't bred to eat. They ashamed to send their father to the hospital, when the rest was scutted about here and there and in such places too. So it went on, over and over, and the doctor kept on saying it was of no use his coming and going for nothing, and when the gossips came to stand round the old man's bed, because Nunziata, he went on saying that the fleas were eating him up. Padron and Tony did not dare to open his mouth but lay there still, worn and pale, and as the gossips went on talking among themselves, and even Nunziata could not answer them, one day when Alessio was not there he said at last, go and call Cousin Alfio Mosca that he may do me the charity to carry me to the hospital in his cart. So Padron and Tony went away to the hospital in Alfio Mosca's cart. They had put the mattress and pillows in it, but the poor, sick man, although he said nothing, looked long at everything while they carried him to the cart, one day when Alessio was gone to riposte, and they had sent Mena away on some pretext, or they would not have let him go. In the black street, when they passed before the house by the medlar tree, and while they were crossing the piazza, Padron and Tony continued to look about him as if to fix everything in his memory. Alfio led the mule on one side, and Nunziata, who had left Turi in charge of the calf, the turkeys and the fowls, walked on the other side with the bundle of shirts under her arm. Seeing the cart pass, everyone came out to look at it, and watched it until it was out of sight, and Don Silvestro said that they had done quite right, and that it was for that the commune paid the rate for the hospital, and Don Franco would also have made his little speech if Don Silvestro had not been there. At least that poor devil would be left in peace, said Uncle Crucifix. Necessity abases nobility, said Padron Cipolla, and Santuzza repeated an arve Maria for the poor old man. Only the cousin Anna and cousin Grace Gussfurt wiped their eyes with their aprons as the cart moved slowly away, jolting on the stones. But Uncle Tino chid his wife, what are you whining about? Am I dead? What is it to you? Alfio Mosca, as he guided the cart, related to Nunziata, how and where he had seen Lea, who was the image of Santa Agata, and he, even yet, could hardly believe that he had really seen her, and his voice was almost lost as he spoke of it, to while the time as they walked along the dusty road. Ah, Nunziata, who would have thought it, when we used to talk to each other from the doors, and the moon shone, and we heard the neighbours talking in front, and Santa Agata's loom was going all day long, and those hens that knew her as soon as she opened the door, and the longer who called her from the court, and everything could be heard in my house as plainly as in theirs. Poor Longa, see now that I have my mule and everything just as I wished, and I wouldn't have believed it would have happened if an angel had told me. Now I am always thinking of those old times and the evenings when I heard all your voices when I was stabling my donkey, and saw the light in the house by the medlar, which is now shut up, and how, when I came back, I found nothing as I left it, and cousin Mena so changed. When one leaves one's own place, it is better never to come back. See, I keep thinking too about that poor donkey that worked for me so long, and went on always rain or shine with his bent head and his long ears. Now who knows where they drive him, by what rough ways, or with what heavy loads, and how his ears hang down lower than ever, and he snuffs at the earth which will soon cover him for he is old poor beast. Padron and Tony stretched on the mattress, heard nothing, and they had put a covering drawn over canes on the cart, so that it seemed as if they were carrying a corpse. For him it is best that he should not hear, continued cousin Alfio. He felt for Tony's trouble, and it would be so much worse if he ever came to hear how Lear has gone. He asked me about her often when we were alone, said Nunciate. He wanted to know where she was. She is worse off than her brother is. We poor things are like sheep. We go where we see others go. You must never tell anyone, especially anyone in our place where I saw Lear, for it would kill Santa Agatha. She recognised me certainly when I passed where she stood at the door, for she turned white and then red, and I whipped my mule to get past as quick as I could, and I am sure that poor thing would rather have had the cart go over her, or that I might have been driving her the corpse that her grandfather seems. Now the family of the Malavolia is destroyed, and you and Alessio must bring it up again. We have the money for the planishing. At St John's Day we shall sell the calf. Bravo! So when the money is put away there won't be the chance of losing it in a day as you might if the calf happened to die, the Lord forbid. Here we are at the first houses of the town, and you can wait for me here if you don't want to come to the hospital. No, I want to go too, so at least I shall see where they put him, and he will have me with him to the last moment. Padron and Tony saw them even to the last moment, and while Nunciata went away with Alfio Mosca, slowly, slowly, down the long, long room that seemed like a church, he accompanied them with his eyes, then turned on his side and moved no more. Cousin Alfio and Nunciata rolled up the mattress, and the cover, and got into the cart, and drove home over the long, dusty road in silence. End of chapter 15 part 1 Recording by Tom Denham Chapter 15 part 2 of The House by the Medlar Tree by Giovanni Verga Translated by Mary A. Craig This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Tom Denham Alessio beat his head with his fists, and tore his hair when he found his grandfather no longer in his bed, and when they brought home his mattress rolled up, and raved at menna as if it had been she who had sent him away. But Cousin Alfio said to him, What will you have? The house of the malevolia is destroyed, and you and Nunciata must set it going again. He wanted to go on talking about the money and about the calf of which he and the girl had been talking as they went to town. But menna and Alessio would not listen to him, but sat with their heads in their hands, and eyes full of tears at the door of the house, where they were now alone indeed. Cousin Alfio tried to comfort them by talking of the old days of the house by the Medlar Tree, when they used to talk to each other from the doors in the moonlight, and how all day long Santa Agata's loom was beating, and the hens were clocking, and they heard the voice of La Longa, who was always busy. Now everything was changed, and when one left one's own place it was best, he said, never to come back. For even the street was not the same, now there was no one coming there for the mangia carube, and even Don Silvestro never was seen waiting for the Zupita to fall at his feet, and Uncle Crucifix was always shut up in the house looking after his things or quarrelling with Vespa, and even in the drug shop there wasn't so much talking since Don Franco had looked the law in the face and shut himself in to read the paper, and pounded all his ideas up into his mortar to pass away the time. Even Padron Cipolla no longer wore out the steps of the church by sitting there so much, since he had no peace at home. One fine day came the news, that Padron Fortunato was going to be married in order that the mangia carube might not devour his substance in spite of him, for that he now no longer wore out the church steps, but was going to marry Barbara Zupita. And he said, madrimony was like a rat trap, growled Uncle Crucifix, after that I trust nobody. The curious girls said that Barbara was going to marry her grandfather, but sensible people like Pepinasto and Goosefoot and Don Franco too, murmured, now Venera has got the better of Don Silvestro and it is a great blow for Don Silvestro and it would be better if he left the place. Hang all foreigners, here no foreigners ever really take root. Don Silvestro will never dare to measure himself with Padron Cipolla. What did he think, screamed Venera with her hands on her hips, that he could starve me into giving him my girl? This time I will have my way and I have made my husband understand as much. The faithful dog sticks to his own trough. We want no foreigners in our house. Once we were much better off in the place before the strangers came to write down on paper every mouthful at 1-8 or to pound marshmallows in a mortar and fatten on other people's blood. They had everybody, knew everybody and what everybody did and what their fathers and grandfathers had done, even to what they had to eat. If one saw a person pass, one knew where they were going and the fields and the vineyards belonged to the people who were born among them and the fish didn't let themselves be caught by just anybody. In those days people didn't go wandering here and there and didn't die in the hospital since everybody was getting married. Alfio Mosca would have been glad to marry cousin Mena who had no longer any prospect of marrying since the Malavolia family was broken up and cousin Alfio could not now be called a bad match for her with the mule which he had bought. So he ruminated one Sunday over all the reasons which could give him courage to speak to her as he sat by her side in front of the door with his back against the wall breaking twigs off the bushes to give himself a countenance and pass away the time. She watched the people passing by which was her way of keeping holiday. If you are willing to take me now, cousin Mena, he said at last, I am ready for my part. Poor Mena did not even turn red feeling that cousin Alfio had guessed that she had been willing to have him at the time when they were going to give her to Brasi Cipolla. So long ago that time appeared and she herself so changed. I am old now, cousin Alfio, she said, I shall never marry. If you are old, then I am old too for I was older than you were when we used to talk to each other from the windows. And it seems as if it was but yesterday I remember it all so well. But it must be eight years ago and now when your brother Alessio is married you will be left alone. Mena drew her shoulders together with cousin Anna's favourite gesture for she too had learnt to do God's will and not complain and cousin Alfio seeing this went on. Then you do not care for me cousin Mena and I beg you to forgive my asking you to marry me. I know that you are above me for you are the daughter of a shipmaster but now you have nothing and when your brother Marys you will be left alone. I have my mule and my cart and I would let you want for nothing cousin Mena but pardon the liberty I have taken. You have not taken a liberty cousin Alfio nor am I offended. I would have said yes to you when we had the Providenza and the house by the medlar tree if my relations had been willing and God knows what I had in my heart when you went away to Bicocca with the donkey cart and it seems as if I could see still the light in the stable and you piling all your things in the little cart in the court before your house. Do you remember? Indeed I do remember. Then why do you not take me now when I have the mule instead of the donkey and your family will not say no? I am too old to marry said Mena with her head bent down. I am 26 years old and it is too late for me to marry now. No, that is not the reason you will not marry me said Alfio with bent head as well as she. You won't tell me the real reason and they went on breaking the twigs without speaking or looking at each other. When he got up to go away with drooping shoulders and bent head Mena followed him with her eyes as long as she could see him and then looked at the wall opposite and sighed. As Alfio Mosca said Alessio had taken Nunciata to wife and had bought back the house by the medlar tree. I am too old to marry said Mena get married you who are still young and so she went up into the upper room of the house by the medlar like an old saucepan and had set her heart at rest waiting until Nunciata should give her children to be a mother to. They had the hens in the chicken coop and the calf in the stable and the fodder and the wood in the shed and the nets and all sorts of tackle hanging up just as Padron and Tony had described them. Nunciata had planted cabbages and cauliflower in the garden with those slender arms of hers that no one would have dreamed could have bleached such yards and yards of linen or that such a slip of a creature could have brought into the world those rosy fat babies that Mena was always carrying about the place as if she had borne them and was their mother in very truth. Cousin Mosca shook his head when he saw her pass and turned away with drooping shoulders. You did not think me worthy of the honour of marrying you he said once when they were alone and he could bear it no longer. No Cousin Alfio answered Mena with starting tears. I swear it by the soul of this innocent creature in my arms that is not my motive but I cannot marry. And why should you not marry Cousin Mena? No, no repeated Cousin Mena now nearly weeping outright. Don't make me say it Cousin Alfio don't make me speak if I were to marry now people would begin to talk again of my sister Leah so that no one can marry a girl of the Malavolia after what has happened. You yourself would be the first to repent of doing it leave me I shall never marry and you must set your heart at rest. So Cousin Alfio set his heart at rest and Mena continued to carry her little nephews in her arms almost as if her heart too were at rest and she swept out the room upstairs to be ready for the others when they came back for they also had been born in the house as if they were gone on journeys from which anyone ever came back said Cousfut. Meanwhile Padron and Tony was gone gone on a long journey farther than Trieste farther than Alexandria in Egypt the journey whence no man ever yet came back and when his name fell into the talk as they start resting counting up the expenses of the week or making plans for the future in the shade of the medlar tree with the plates upon their laps a silence fell suddenly upon them for they all seemed to have the poor old man before their eyes as they had seen him the last time they went to visit him in that great wide chamber full of beds in long rows where they had to look about before they could find him and the grandfather waited for them as the souls wait in purgatory with his eyes fixed on the door although he now could hardly see and went on touching them to be sure that they were really there and still had nothing though they could see by his face that there was much he wished to say and their hearts ached to see the suffering in his face which he could not tell them when they told him however how they had got back the house by the medlar and were going to take him back to Trezza again he said yes, yes with his eyes to which the light came back once more and he tried to smile with that smile of those who smile no more oh, smile for the last time which stays planted in the heart like a knife and so it was with the malevolia when they went on Monday with Alfio Mosca's cart to bring back their grandfather and found that he was gone remembering all these things they left the spoons on their plates and went on thinking and thinking of all that had happened dark as it was under the shade of the medlar tree now when their cousin Anna came to spin a little while with her gossips she had white hair and had lost her cheerful laugh because she had no time to be gay now that she had all that family on her shoulders and rock or two and every day she had to go hunting him up about the streets or in front of the tavern and drive him home like a vagabond calf and the malevolia had also two vagabonds and Alessio went on beating his brains to think where they could be by what burning hot roads white with dust that they had never yet come back after all that long, long time late one evening the dog began to bark behind the door of the court and Alessio himself, who went to open the door did not know Antoni, who had come back with a bag under his arm so changed was he, covered with dust and with a long beard when he had come in and sat down in a corner they hardly dared to welcome him he did not seem like himself at all and looked about the walls as if he saw them for the first time and the dog, who had never known him, barked at him without stopping they gave him food and he bent his head over the plate and ate and drank as if he had not seen the gifts of God for days and days in silence but the others could not eat for sadness then Antoni, when he had eaten and rested a while took up his bag to go Alessio had hardly dared to speak his brother was so changed but seeing him take his bag again in act to go his heart leaped up into his breast and men are said in a wild sort of way you're going? yes, replied Antoni and where will you go? asked Alessio I don't know, I came to see you all but since I have been here the food seems to poison me besides I can't stay here where everybody knows me and for that I came at night I'll go a long way off where nobody knows me and earn my bread the others hardly dared to breathe for their hearts felt as if they were held in a vice and they felt that he was right in speaking as he did Antoni stood at the door looking about him not being able to make up his mind to go I will let you know where I am he said at last and when he was in the court under the medlar tree where it was dark he said and grandfather? Alessio did not answer Antoni was silent too for a while and then said I did not see Leah and as he waited in vain for the answer he added with a quiver in his voice as if he were cold she did too still Alessio did not answer then Antoni who was under the medlar tree with his bag in his hand sat down for his legs trembled under him but rose up suddenly stammering dear I must go before going away he wanted to go over the house to see if everything were in its old place but now he who had had the heart to leave them all and to stab Don Michele and to pass five years in prison had not the heart to pass from one room into another unless they bad him do it Alessio who saw in his eyes that he wanted to see all the place took him into the stable to show him the calf Nunziata had bought which was fat and sleek and in a corner there was the hen with her chickens and then he took him in the kitchen where they had made a new oven and into the room beside it where men are slept with Nunziata's children who seemed to her like her own and Doni looked at everything and nodded his head saying there grandfather would have put the calf and here the hens used to be and here the girl slept when there was the other one but there he stopped short and looked about him with tears in his eyes at that moment the manja Karube passed by scolding Brasi Cipolla her husband at the top of her voice and Doni said that one has found a husband and now when they have done quarrelling they will go back to their own house to sleep the others were silent and all the village was still only now and then was heard the closing of some door and Alessio at last found courage to say if you will you too have a house to sleep in the bed is here kept on purpose for you no replied Doni I must go away there is my mother's bed here too that she wetted with her tears when I wanted to go and leave her do you remember the pleasant talks we used to have in the evenings while we were salting the anchovies and Nunciata would give out riddles for us to guess and Mama was there and Leah and all of us and we could hear the whole village talking as if we had been all one family and I was ignorant and knew no better then than to want to get away but now I know how it all was and I must go I must go he spoke at that moment with his eyes fixed on the ground and his head bent down between his shoulders then Alessio threw his arms round his neck Adieu repeated Doni you see that I am right in saying that I must go Adieu forgive me all of you and he went with his bag under his arm then when he was in the middle of the piazza now dark and deserted for all the doors were shut he stopped to hear if they would shut the door of the house by the medlar tree while the dog barked behind and told him in that sound that he was alone in the midst of the place only the sea went on murmuring to him the usual story down there between the farilione for the sea has no country either and belongs to whoever will pause to listen to it here or there wherever the sun dies or is born and at acitrezza it has even a way of its own murmuring which one can recognise immediately as it gurgles in and out among the rocks where it breaks and seems like the voice of a friend then Tony stopped in the road to the village and it seemed as if he could not bear to leave it now that he knew all and he sat down on the low wall of Master Filippo's vineyard he sat there for a long time thinking of many things looking at the dark village and listening to the murmur of the sea below he sat there until certain sounds that he knew well began to be heard and voices called to each other and the doors and shutters banged and steps sounded in the dark streets on the beach at the bottom of the piazza lights began to twinkle he lifted his head and looked at the three kings which glowed in the sky and the pudara announcing the dawn as he had seen it do so many times then he bent down his head once more thinking of all the story of his life little by little the sea grew light and the three kings paled in the sky and the houses became visible one after another in the streets with their closed doors that all knew each other only before Vani Pizzotti's shop there was the lamp and the Rocco Spattu with his hands in his pockets coughing and spitting before long when the door thought in Tony and curl himself up beside it and begin his day's work he looked at the sea again that now had grown purple and was all covered with boats that had begun the day's work too then took his bag and said now it is time I should go for people will be beginning to pass by but the first man of them all to begin his day's work has been Rocco Spattu End of Chapter 15 Part 2 Recording by Tom Denham End of The House by the Medlar Tree by Giovanni Verga translated by Mary A. Craig


الموضوع المتوسطة والموضوع are the most adverse stresses faces the agriculture development in Jordan besides the available fresh water that is used by the farmers here are consumed irrationally that leads in vast salalization of lands and underground water Nowadays we are working on several projects one of them is about the utilization of the solid waste in order to produce compost and we hope that this project will be successful which will help us in changing challenges into opportunities To answer these questions we grow six different forage crops under natural soil and we compare it with using different levels of the compost as well different levels of synthetic fertilizers The lab analysis showed that the compost is free from the pathogens that encourage its use also adding the compost to the saline soil enhance the seed germination for the six crops in comparison with the natural soil From safety perspectives the finding from this project encourage the use of compost for restricted agriculture This includes using compost for the forage production and for the forest restorations or forest trees a new establishment


Good morning, everyone. My name is Marek Tizayardis, and I came here from Finland. And I have the privilege of sharing some of my lessons and stories and things that I have gone through at work. A lot of times, I find that when I go to Agile conferences and I listen to so-called gurus, the people that I have read books from, like the morning's keynote, I feel like a total imposter. I've been only doing Agile since 2001. Like, you know, I'm completely new to this. 2001 is a few years back. And, well, I've been around in the software industry for 25 years, but it still feels like it was yesterday when I started. And a lot of the stuff, kind of like what I read in books, I get inspired by that, and I try very hard to apply that at work. I do stuff around continuous deployment, continuous delivery. I'm a huge fan of more programming. That's absolutely one of the most biggest favorite things that I have. And I do things like what I talked about yesterday, things like having no product owner so that the team holds all of the power. So I do many things around Agile in the organization. But still, kind of the thing that I have, because I work as part of a team, usually my title is the lead quality engineer, but for the last about six months, I've held the title of a senior manager. So I'm managing a team of 12 developers and we are delivering software together. I'm a manager with very hands on roll, so I still test with my team most of my time. I just have to do certain procedures around growing people and making sure we make notes of having had discussions about their career path and growth. But a lot of this stuff, kind of like, you know, working in the real project and particularly being stuck in one organization. I don't actually think of it as being stuck. I think of it more as than like choosing to be stuck, choosing to spend a relevant amount of time with a particular organization. Some of the things that I feel in that case is that I can't do all of the things as the books say.  But I actually have to, you know, do those things and that's kind of one of the motivations of this talk here today, that I keep on striving for better. We keep on striving for better. We keep on trying to change things. But the change, sometimes it's costly, it takes money, but especially what I find is that it takes patience. It takes time, it takes continuous, small changes, mentioning stuff that you would like to be different for multiple people and just not giving up, being persistent, being, you know, driven towards whatever change you're trying to drive in your organization. And again, I kind of tell these stories that I tell here from the position of my title was one of a QA engineer. So that's not the highest title in the organization. And still I'm telling stories, usually, around things where we could make a relevant change starting from something that I initiate as just someone working in the team. So I hope that's part of the story and inspiration that you can take home today. But I believe that, you know, all of us with persistence can do stuff like this. So we're gonna talk about an experience of moving into continuous delivery. This is actually an experience that I have had in multiple organizations when I have changed jobs. I enter a place where we don't quite yet get it and then I try to get us to move there and then kind of like, you know, take us through that route. And it seems to be a repeating pattern and it's a journey that is not always, well, never completely there. So when I talk about continuous delivery, what I mean is that we have probably still somewhere in this overall pipeline, a person involved. So it's not automatically from checking something into the baseline that we get it all the way through. There's usually still in my processes, there's someone at some point doing some kind of decision at least, if nothing else. Nothing else and we're still striving to get to the other CD, which is the continuous deployment part where all of the decisions would be made as the code is being created. So that's the world that we're talking about. So I worked in a company called F-Secure. F-Secure does cybersecurity software and my team in particular is a corporate endpoint team and we do Windows endpoint protection clients, which basically means, you know, simply said antivirus, firewall, that type of things. So different mechanisms of keeping a personal computer safe. And I joined this particular team and this particular company two and a half years ago. It's now my second time around in the same company. I also used to work there 12 years ago when that company was starting to implement Agile in the first place and it's actually a really fascinating thing to kind of like, you know, going into a different organization or actually a couple of different organizations and then coming back home, so to speak. And I'm looking at kind of like, what has changed while you were gone? And I'm looking at some of the things where kind of, you realize that you were some of the blocks of progress while you were there. So it was actually good that you were away for a while. But again, when I came back, I came back still at 2016 into an organization that told me that in the team that I joined, delivering frequently would be impossible. So we had usually, typically, we would have smaller, we call the maintenance releases about quarterly and then a major release about two times a year. So every second one of the releases was a major one with some cool new features. And every second one was kind of like patching it. And we were very used to that rhythm of working. And as someone who works a lot with testing, I know how painful it is to be in that kind of project. The last weeks just before release are awful. And having been in better places, I know that that's not the life of a human being. If you can have a choice, you do not want to have that. But you would want to have this steady pace of getting a good night's sleep and not having this rushed feeling in the end, trying to get the right information together at the right time. It should be, every day is the good time to get that information. And I knew from my past experience in other companies that had implemented things like continuous delivery, that it was a complete game changer for testing related stuff. So again, doing smaller things was a lot easier. So I started having this discussion around like, well, why is it impossible? Like I believe we could do it. And I got a couple of answers that were kind of relevant and foundational. The first answer was that, well, the type of software we are doing, no one does continuous delivery on that type of software. So even Amazon, they have whatever, 30,000 computers. That's only 30,000. We have five million. We have to install in millions, basically. Like any time we deliver, we talk about millions of computers because we're talking about home PCs, not servers somewhere. So while the usual stories around continuous delivery that I could find were around this idea that your users in masses were somewhere and they were connecting to a service with some interface somewhere, the world that I was now joining again was a world where an individual computer could basically have whatever in it. If it was a consumer's computer, your home home computer, I can't prevent you from installing a VPN client there that maybe doesn't work together with our software. And I have no idea which VPN client you're gonna be using. Same thing with other antivirus software, most networking applications, and a lot of the programming tools that we actually use. Conflict with antiviruses, because there's so much file editing going on in the way that we work that depending on how your environment is set up, I just cannot have all of your computers at my work. I can't build that kind of environment. So there's no docker image that I can take out of all the millions of different kinds of computers that are completely under someone else's control. But of course, the situation that I came into, the team that I came into, is a little bit different. So I don't work with all of our products. We have a shared code base, but I don't work with all of our products. I work in particular with this one product which is oriented towards a service, security as a service. And that, since it's for corporations, also means that corporations have this habit of just at least a little bit having a more similar environment within their company so that their admins don't actually have to see the whole scale of variety. But the basic software that we're building, it's still essentially millions of different computers. Whatever flavor of Windows, it used to still be Windows XP that was supported. All of the different ones that have come out ever since you could have any of them in your computer. And that was the environment we were building for. So I started looking for others who had done things like this. I wasn't actually able to find many, but I found many that had done similar steps in some scale at least. So I was sure that there is nothing that would completely block it. So we just needed to kind of like invent and figure out what the practice is here would look like. And the other thing here, what people would say is that, well, since this is a corporate thing for businesses, no user, no company, no admin would allow us to deliver frequently. So again, all of the interruptions, like maybe you need a reboot. That's kind of a bad thing. Every time you deliver Windows software, you know from your own Windows machines probably by heart that it's super annoying that you have to be rebooting all the time. So we had all these considerations of like we don't want to cause so much trouble. Like what if we would do this even once a week? Like they would just remember us as the reboot engine that makes everyone reboot regularly. So that's not really a perception that you want to have. And the first thing that we actually could come up with on this one is that in the recent years, we've actually been implementing a completely reboot-less way of introducing new updates to that. And it's not that special in that sense, but we were just so used to the idea that there would be a reboot here and there and there's nothing that we can do until we learned that, of course, there's something that you can do. The reboots are always caused by locked files. If you don't have a locked file, then you don't need a reboot. So if you figure out a way of going around that, it's just a technical problem. Then it's all possible. And the third thing that everyone kept telling me on why this would never work is that, well, to build a set of installers so that we could make a release, it took us five days, usually by at least one person fully working on it, but usually by another person, at least occasionally supporting. So it's probably more like seven-man days that it was taking. And there were some aspects of testing in it. So not only the building, but some aspects of testing that needed to be done manually.  But the big part was all the different things on getting the right executables together into the right kind of package, having them sign so that there's different people signing. They have to be actual people involved in that signing process. Because if we end up releasing software that somehow gets compromised and someone can fake being our software, that's kind of a serious thing for a security company. We do not want that. So all of the signing mechanisms related to Windows, we had to have those in place. And that was a really, really slow process. And even though we have made it a lot faster, it's still the process that makes us from, keeps us from having continuously deploying things automatically because there will always be that manual step. Unless I managed to complete my so far two-year project of trying to get the practicalities together so that we could have automatic signing and the proper trust relationships, technical trust relationships in place. So the people's stuff is now okay, but the technical implementation is still kind of on the way. But this was really the case where I went. And a lot of the discussions that I needed to have were kind of like, funny that you should say that. It seems that other people are able to do it. And even other people inside this company are able to do it. Like why are we not looking around at all? So first of all, in an antivirus software, it's not just that it's one layer or one component. It's actually a lot of components. It's 54 components that we are building within my team and the teams who build into that system.  Because otherwise, if someone comes up with a new virus, we don't have a detection for it. We don't have a removal for it. We need to actually be moving just as fast as any of the bad guys in this area. So we had actually been doing this, this kind of continuous delivery, even continuous deployment on that area for quite many years. I didn't even realize that we were doing this already before the whole continuous delivery, continuous deployment became a big thing because it was so kind of like separated from what I was doing on the higher levels of the product that I wasn't or many other people weren't paying proper attention to it. We also, during the first year of my return in FCQ, we completed a long, long project that had been going on for quite some time, which was basically introducing a kind of, there's the databases part, which is on the bottom, then there's an engine kind of framework somewhere in the middle, and then there's whatever I'm building with my teams on the top. So the middle layer, they had decided at some point that they wanna go versionless, basically, so that they don't have to care about which version it is there, so all the APIs need to be compatible to different directions and all the stuff that we talk around how to make these fast deliveries possible. So we were just about to do that, and I was there for the first year to complete a delivery of the clients that included the change into the versionless. Versionless engine framework, and it didn't really feel like we would get the full benefit out of it if we didn't really follow with the whole product into the same mindset. And also, we had figured out with some of the newer technologies, I don't know how many generation of technologies we're right now in, it's still the same product, we've been building it for 30 years now, but it has completely been rewritten so many times that I think nothing of the original is there anymore. But in the current version, there's this possibility and we have figured out how to do rebootless upgrades, which was a big, big blocker. So having these kind of discussions, and like, you know, we could actually do this, we maybe could try what if, you know, in some scale we would start doing this. Maybe we can figure it out, maybe we can delay the actual decision and we can try it out first. That's how we kind of got together. And really, why would the product facing part be so different? It's not actually that different. So again, as a security company, we realize that, you know, since we are working in defense against so-called bad guys, we really cannot be moving so slow and different threats around how people are trying to get on the computers and how we are even detecting if something bad is happening. They've been changing so much that we can't really wait three months to have a fix available. We need to somehow figure out on how to be just as fast as the other side, so to speak. So we didn't really put together any project. It was just something where in the development team that I worked in, back then in the lead quality engineer role, we talked, I talked in particular to my manager and I got the manager convinced that he needs to put one goal into everyone's annual goals. And the one goal said, you need to be able to release in two hours. That was a one year's goal. And everyone was a little bit grumpy first of that.  Like it's, you know, so much work. Like if we start practicing these five days every time, we don't do anything other than releasing. And after the, about the week of grumpiness, it's like, okay, fine, we have to do it. Let's just take care of it right now.  When I got over the team, got over the idea of not wanting to do this, it didn't seem like it was such a big deal after all. It wasn't super expensive. It was just that we needed to be very structural and think through what are the phases in our releasing and have everyone in the team implement bits and pieces that would help the flow. So that we would have test automation that we can easily run on different environments, different combinations, different products. And we would have all the different tools on building a package in a reliable way out of the trunk. And it wasn't that big of a thing, but we got to not two hours, but actually three hours in that timeframe. Another thing that is kind of good to understand around in these, what we were doing and what kind of things we were practicing is around the way we're building things. So a lot of the practices, kind of the originating point even for us to do things is we think of as in like, we're not doing XP, extreme programming, even though we're an agile house, the technical practices are not in that side, but our technical practices are more of once like an internal open source community. So all the code is available for everyone. Anyone, in any role, has access to the code and can make pull requests. Pull requests are usually out of a branch that lives less than a day. So it's a very short lived time. There's a rule, well a rule of saying that I keep on quoting to people who have trouble getting their things merged in is that you should be the burden of the statue. When you do smaller things, you usually suffer less. So if you're staying in a place, you usually get it stuffed by the passing birds. And that's really a lot of the experience in the version control. But we're basically, for the Windows clients, for the 54 components that we're building, we are sharing them with teams in Helsinki. There's several teams in Helsinki. So mine is just one, mine is 12 people, but there's other teams as well. Then we have teams in St. Petersburg working on that. And we also have an office in Poland. And now, this year, we are moving also to have some of that development into the same code base from South Africa. So our practices have to scale to the idea that we don't get to meet everyone every single day. But we're putting things into the same code base and out of that code base, we are making a release basically by taking out whatever is in the trunk right now and making it available for our clients. So my side is that's the little sauce for businesses thing, the orange one. And all the numbers are only from that perspective. But since every other direction into this kind of bubble that we have is also committing code into the exact same code base, we need to have common rules on how to do that. And basically, it is to never break the trunk always have test automation, unit testing and the higher level test automation and make sure that it stays blue, blue all the time. And I don't even consider that a release practice. That's just a way of how we work together so that we have any chances of knowing where we are in all of that. But I just checked that we had 42 people contributing lines of code into the code basis last year for the components that my team is responsible for releasing. And one component had 19 contributors. So mostly we're actually being quite successful with the idea that anyone from any team can go and make the necessary changes in whatever component. There's just a guardian available in the other teams. So for us, this all meant that we needed to find a new way of delivering. So that we would have not just a cadence, like not every two weeks on or Friday, we would make a release. We didn't want that. We wanted that whenever something valuable was available, something that the users could benefit from or where we would want to see that it's not risking the users. We would want to deliver that, throttle the release a little bit so that we could see that the first computers, the telemetry shows that they are getting it nicely and then only open the channel completely so that all of the millions get updated. And the releases when they were tiny, the testing effort, even the manual thinking testing effort around that is much more manageable than if you have this huge, huge thing that you need to work on. And we kind of focused all of our energies into making something valuable and estimates is not something we consider valuable. And that's something we kind of got rid of as we were starting to do this faster releasing as well. So I find from my experience, having gone through this now with two different organizations where I have worked in, that this whole getting to less than a week, preferably daily releases, it's a complete game changer. And sometimes when I have then discussions with people around like, why would I think of it as a game changer? We're still testing, we're still developing, we're still releasing, we're still managing, we're still doing the same things in many ways. There is nothing new in the world in the last 20 years. I need to kind of go back and say like, why do I then feel like I'm living in a whole different world right now than the world I lived in 25 years ago when I started in this industry. Like if it's nothing new, why is it that it feels so different? So this whole continuous integration, continuous delivery and the fast feedback cycle, it has clearly changed at least my profession, the testing profession completely. And talking to my fellow developers, I find that it has changed their life quite relevantly as well. So what I didn't try to kind of explain to people and try to figure out on how to kind of say this is I find that metaphors are maybe the best way that I can try to approach it. I find that if you think of two things that look kind of the same. You have a pool, swimming pool, or you have a bathtub. Both of them are containers of water. Well, one of them has a little bit more water, but it's still water. Just like it's still testing, it's still developing. It's still water. Why are these different? And it's really easy sort of for us to see that of course a bathtub and a pool, they are a completely different thing. There are things you can do in a bathtub and there are things you can do in a pool. So I don't know, looking at the bathtub we have in the hotel yesterday and my daughter here in the first row, using that bathtub and drinking some soda in that bath next to that bathtub and seeing all the cans dispense. I was thinking maybe she was having a party at the bathtub, but usually normally we would think of a proper party to happen rather on a pool side than a bathtub side. So that's really not a thing. We have things like lifeguards. We need lifeguards when we have multiple people in the same container of water. But we didn't need them when we had the bathtub and we were just using that as the container of water. So there are things you do in a bathtub and there are things you do in a pool and they allow you to do very different things. And this is how the continuous releasing, the fast small slices of delivery changes our world. That it enables us to do things that work. So one of the materials that I really, really enjoy on kind of using as a frame of reference on where we are is, well I have to read from here because I can see from there, by Paul Hammond. So I'm definitely just a practitioner and these kind of like great thinking pieces are really, really helpful in understanding kind of where we are going. So when I say that things change when the rapid releasing starts to happen, practices have to look different. We can do different kind of purposes. It gives us a very different environment. So you would branch differently. You would probably test differently. You can't test in the old way anymore where you would have a release every three months. You can't test in that way when you're doing a release more frequently. Your architecture needs to change. Your releases cannot be scheduled and planned and kind of like taken as a plan and being made to sit in a release train which is a safe version. But they're kind of organically flowing through the whole system. Probably also the practices around infrastructure and databases are gonna be changing. So some of these words here are much more relevant for the web-based services type of world that I don't live in. So I find that when I'm trying to kind of place us on that map, we're somewhere more on the right side but in many ways we're somewhere in the middle because we haven't yet figured out all the ways to get all the way to the right or how it would actually be different in this kind of environment. But again, if we have this, we need to make a release right now. We take the trunk and in three hours it can be out. It's not a bad solution that we have in place. So it's definitely something kind of nice that we've done. So all of this kind of leads me to this idea that even within the same organization, we are not all safe. So I mentioned 42 people. My team is 12 people. Not all the people in my team has actually committed anything last year because some of them identify still as testers who don't do automation. So they might not have any commits as such but they're more like, you know, preparations, participating in discussions, bringing in certain perspectives. So I find that I really, really love to be in my team. I really enjoy it there. I like the fact that we can work without a product owner and we get to make decisions about the health of the product. We get to do all the operations stuff. We can look at the telemetry. We know more about our customers from what they actually do than the theoretical part of what they say they would do. So I find that kind of like right now, my team, that's my good place. But I don't always get to just work within that one corner. We sometimes having that common code base, I need to go and work with some of the other teams and then I've given them these really loving nicknames. I call one of them a soul sucking place which basically means that they have very, by the book, agile practices where they stand up every day and have discussions around things and very like team inclusion in everything, sharing everything, almost feels like they talk about what they eat today, that you need to share that in the team. And it's a little bit different place and I feel like it's using a lot of my energy, not of the value that we want to deliver, but more on certain kind of like risk aversion practices. That's what I would call it. So risk aversion practices nowadays, they seem to be sucking my soul out. So that's why I call it this name. And then we still have, sometimes, someone comes up with all we need to build a new product completely and we set up a project and we give it a date, it's gonna be out in September, that's when it needs to be out there. And we might not have even recruited the people to do that project when we say today that it's gonna be out in September. And that's the style of projects or delivering that I call the insane asylum and it is kind of targeted towards this idea that we would only release once in the end. So in my good place, we release either daily or weekly. So any day of the week could be that release day, but our idea is that since it is a relevant size of a package that we will be updating with the changes from the 42 teams, we still do not want to deliver that. We're figuring out a way of still splitting it in smaller pieces, but we don't want to do that more than once a week. Once a week, but we wanna be able to do it on any day of the week, not just on a particular day. Then with my soul sucking place, we usually work with two week cadence. So the day when we are doing a release, like everyone knows that it is really well scheduled, like it's gonna be every Thursday. So there's a planning and then all of the moves towards releasing. And there's this kind of like joy, boredom, boredom, boredom, but little bit of joy, pain, pain, pain. And that's kind of like a profile with the two weeks. So again, the pain isn't as high because it's only two weeks, but the pain, you can feel the peak of pain there always. And in the insane asylum, I really wish these wouldn't anymore exist, but even with what I do, I still live through this. In the end of the project, we're supposed to have it all available. And we are sometimes still struggling with having 20, 30 teams working in this project. Get them to the idea that we should, at least for ourselves, be delivering continuously, even if we didn't give it to the customers. You don't have to share the link, that's fine, but make it available. Don't keep it on your development machine only in the CI environment. The attitude to quality is often very different in these three places. In the good place, we usually talk about like these kind of concepts, and like I really care about production. What's going on in production? How can we make production a little bit better? And for example, right now, my team has less than 20 tickets in Jira. Out of those millions of customers, we have only 20 tickets because when a new ticket comes in, we try to take care of it, fix and forget. That's the basic idea. So we care about the production and how the feedback and things in production are a lot in that type of a model. In the middle ground place, where we still work on an agile cadence, it sometimes feel like we need to get together and plan and move a little slowly and think of things, and let's make one more plan and the kind of rapid whiteboarding and the production orientation isn't quite as much, but it's kind of like a risk aversion, it's a little bit more there. And in the insane asylum, when they're trying to get control over it, I find that the motto we use mostly in the organization is, I care about my feature up to production. And we need to repeat this a lot of times for every single developer, care about your feature all the way to production. But it's not enough. You need to care about the feature beyond, well, in production, actually, that's where you go into. So these are easy to see when they're serving different kinds of projects. The way we deliver in the good place is that we start together, we finish together, and it's a very organic discussion-oriented way of doing things.  You call and do a remote whiteboarding session if you wanna have a remote discussion. And when you are about to be done, you're never delivering anything all by yourself. You're never alone. So there's always the safety net of other team members. So you can pull whoever you want and make sure everyone is always available for others. But there's no strict process saying that this person is approving your work. It's just you need a second person because we don't want you to be alone.  So it's in this state, these people take it. I really think that Jira stuff is one of the things that mostly suck out my soul. And the insane asylum is anything that you can think of, you create a new ticket in Jira and then someone is trying to make sense out of those tickets on how they are, like how many of there are, like is there any progress on where we are? And then at some point of the project when someone is worried about the schedule, then comes the managers, usually the high level managers, who force everyone to sit hours and hours in the meetings scheduling all the tickets so that we know if we're gonna make any schedule or what the schedule is gonna look like. And I just look at that kind of like, why are we still doing this? Like we have managed to not do this in so many projects. Why some still end up like this? So it's a long path for us to grow in our organizations. Maintenance, also very different in the good place. It's a fix and forget and when things go wrong, things break in production. Like you can revert it, but a lot of times it's actually faster to fail forward. So you can stop, in my world, I can stop the impact being any wider, but I often cannot revert an individual person's computer. But I can make sure all of their hundreds of colleagues or thousands of colleagues don't get to experience the same problem that the first one saw. So failing forward and fixing that one computer and fixing the overall deliverable is much more of the way. In the soul-sucking place, usually we spend so much time with estimates that we don't have to deliver as much. And in sale and asylum, it is really building these maintenance projects. There are about half of the effort that we generally use. So there's always the cycle of new features and then maintenance, so going through that cycle. And we're so used to it that sometimes it's hard to avoid it. Uncertainty in the good place. You know, I feel quite tolerant with the level of uncertainty. I get the colleagues together and we have discussions. Even when I'm here, I can have a discussion online with them. Also, well, I'm lucky enough to be here and not having to be there at the same time. That's part of the way we are trying to work so that there's no dependency on an individual person. I kind of enjoy being at the conferences. The soul-sucking place, well, uncertainty is managed, but sometimes I say that we use about 70% of our time into the uncertainty and 30% only into the value. So there can be a lot of practices around that.  Like you just have to take whatever comes because the risk is so large that it's hard to manage anymore so you haven't split it up. So all these different places, different projects, none of them are hopeless. They're just on a different place in the path. And we need to keep telling the stories within our organizations to get us, get the other teams, get everyone onto the path of having the lesser pain. The practices do change, the development practices, testing practices, product management and management practices. Jeff talked about all of these different categories actually in the morning keynote. And it feels really like you're in a completely different place. So the good place is one where you somehow end up with a reputation of flaw.  You know, they tell you of things of importance and you will say like, oh, I acknowledge this is important. They just assume it comes out. They don't ask how long it's gonna take you. They know that you will do it as quickly, you know, in small pieces as possible. And that's what I get to experience. So it's a completely different relationship with the business people when they don't, you know, ask you how much is this gonna cost us at first. And they don't really care about that answer. That's only for them to say that they can't get trust your delivery ability. So they don't want to pay for the estimate. It's a comforter for them. There's a lot more effort available to put into the impact and the value that goes out of the whatever engine we have that is delivering this and less into the all kinds of padding risky oriented management practices and change control boards.  And then there's things where, you know, time takes care of them. Like some of the things just aren't as important as others. And you start seeing these patterns a lot more when you have the continuous feedback cycle on what is pressing in the production right now. What would be the thing that you would look at right now? The code base is your ultimate truth instead of all of the documentation that you try to wishfully think that you would have. So that's a nice thing. And testing really kind of flows together with all the rest of the team. So it's a very nice and collaborative and close relationship. It's not only automation, but it is only the, you know, thinking through all the things that might break because of this that we're doing together. And finally, when you have this continuous feedback loop, it is like you listen to that feedback and you get a little bit better. If you keep on being the same, you're same in a year.  So learning, listening to feedback that is absolutely the winning way of working. So we talked about this idea that a bathtub and a pool are two different things. They're both containers of water, but they serve completely different purposes. And in the sense of continuous delivery and continuous deployment, delivering all the time, it enables you completely different practice. Thank you. I have time for a question. Anyone feel like asking a question? There's a couple on that side. I can repeat the question if I can hear it to here. So you had as well, okay? I can hear you and I can repeat your question. Hello. Actually, just wanted to understand, like you just mentioned that in your team, there is no PO, right? So I just wanted to understand how the user stories are coming in and if there is a change or manipulation in the user story, how as a team you're taking care of all those activities. So can you brief me something in that sense? The question is, since we have no PO, how does that work? I spent 45 minutes explaining that yesterday. So there will be a video with a long version of that answer. But it's really the same way as business people would get those. They fish them around and they put them in some kind of a list. They have some idea of what's most important. We do that, but we also know that technology impacts of whatever we decide on doing that. So it's very similar. It's just that the belief system is that serving the customer's right is the most important thing that we should do. And the most important thing should not be left for one brain. It should be every brain's problem. So that's basically the summary of the no PO. Also I have one more question. Like it's related to continuous delivery.  So for example, if I want to implement the same thing which you are implementing in your team and how to make sure like nothing is breaking when it is going into production. Like we should take care of test automation or continuous testing. How you're making sure of all these activities. So this is again, I find it difficult to answer some of these. So having test automation is a good thing. My first project in my before this company when I went to continuous delivery we did it completely without test automation. So there are other practices that you could apply as well. So I think we should have a longer discussion about this after that. Yeah, I have a question. Oh, that way. So basically you spoke about variable frequency time boxing. Yes. But will that not break the cadence if there are multiple applications going into release at the same time. So there are variable frequency time boxes. Time boxes. So it's again, what I mean by that is is like if we want to do one release on this week it might be any day of the week instead of having a particular day when you're scheduling doing a release. And I do work still towards figuring out ways of changing the product so that this could happen different times of the day so that whenever it is ready it is not, you know, you could deliver that application right away. My question is, as you went through this transformation journey what was your project management strategy? Like. Project management strategy. Yeah, because how do you convince those people who are with this 1980s mindset to accept this? And what are the new matrices that you came up with instead of the old ones? I'm not sure if I have an easy answer for that. So we usually don't have project managers for most of the things. Like we are very team oriented and the teams kind of work in a network manner. So that's kind of, we've organized this like a network way of co-managing whatever we are delivering. But yeah, the lean practices are very heavily there definitely in many of the things. We can have a longer discussion about this so that I can understand the question better. Yeah. Thank you. So thanks everyone. I think it's time to take a break. And I'm gonna be around all day today so I would be happy to have more discussions on any of the topics that, you know, pique your interest. Thanks.


And now to Iqiti State, where there is a row of aware-to-located headquarters of official local council development authority. The people of Ayedeh Iqiti won't eat in their own town, rather than that of governor of Ayame Iqiti, and that they are ready to make sure that that happens. The details in this report. The leaders of Ayedeh Iqiti are here to address a press conference. Their complaint is with the decision to cite the headquarters of Ifesawapo Local Council Development Authority, Iqiti, the hometown of Governor Kayode Ayame. They say their own town is better suited to host the council headquarters. All we are saying is that we, Ayedeh Iqiti citizens, deserve to be the headquarters of an SEDA. If the government decides to create one with Ayedeh as the SEDA we are asking for, so be it. We have all it takes to handle an SEDA. One of the local leaders points to the population of Ayedeh, which is more than double that of Issan, as a major reason why Ayedeh is the ideal place for the council office. We want them to reverse the case. If you don't reverse it, to do something for Ayedeh as a municipal, to have a local government of Issan, either Ayedeh Town Council, that one is okay. Our people are there to finance everything. And presently now, as of today, throughout Ayedeh's government, Ayedeh is the first town in the IGR, the first position, for almost seven years ago. We can't go down to Issan. It's a trap on us. We are going down to Issan or Ifesawapo SEDA. No, no, no. It's the same of that. We will remain in Ayedeh Municipal SEDA instead of going to Issan. On Wednesday, the LCDA Implementation Committee had released a statement approved by the state government, announcing the appointment of heads of all 19 newly created LCDA secretariats.


What's up everybody, it's Jason here for jaspyscasebreak.com, 2022 tops chrome black baseball just sold out, this is a 12 box case break picker jeans number 23.  I just stole it from Instagram for you guys though.  Alright, here we go. This one is not missing the sponge. I think pictures and captures are like on the 15th, no? Or soon? I'm gonna go. I'll be there with a pistol on the 25th through the 28th. Ba na na na na na na. And actually, Dodgers play the Cubs actually, first game on Sunday. That's the game I'm going to. Ohio Tony Gold, Angel's going to Brian. 28 out of 50. Jazz Chisholm Blue, number to 75 for Miami, going to Austin. Two so, then Seth Beer, Kev. Miguel Cabrera, little purple mini diamonds to 150. And we got a Joey Bartz for the Giants to 199. Jazz Chisholm, purple mini diamonds to 150. You know, Cruz Rookie and Jake Berger, purple mini diamonds. Rookie to 150 for the White Sox, going to Howard. And we got a Ryan Mountcastle, number to 99. And a Marcus Simeon, Texas Rangers to 99. Suzuki, Peña, Refractor to 199. We got De La Cruz, Tork, Bogarts, Green, and Lars Newtvar. Yo, there's all your colors there. Now let's go with the autos. First one, Tony Perez for the Cincinnati Reds, going to Howard. Ted Simmons to 99 Green, St. Louis Cardinals, going to Howard. Another one for the Cardinals, Albert Pujols. Very nice, another one there for Howard and the Cardinals. We have a Colton Welker for Colorado. Colorado Rockies that is going to Jared. Dylan Carlson, St. Louis Cardinals. Another one there for the Cardinals and Howard. Joe Carter to the Blue Jays, Toronto Blue Jays that's going to Kyle C. Randy Rosarana to 150, two out of 150 there for the Tampa Bay Rays. Going to Rob Bansini. Yasmani Grendel for the Chicago White Sox, White Sox that is Howard. Super Futures to 99 for the White Sox, Gavin Sheets, Howard having a damn break, man. Rockies, Volati, another one there for Jared to 150. Jesus, got a gold. Bill Mazurowski to 50, 7 of 50 for the Pirates going to Ariano. What a weird case. A lot of veterans here. Last one is a Dave Winfield, 43 out of 50 for the Yankees going to Ed. Again, this was a veteran case. A lot of vets. But some nice colors though, guys. Tanned it off there. Appreciate it, guys. That was case number 23. Like I said, I did see one more, so I'm going to snag it. I'll post it up. 24 will be the last one, guys. CaspesCaseBrace.com


Hi, I'm Siobhan, I'm one of the crowd in crowd sourcing, one of the citizens in citizen science. Your institution may be thinking of setting up a crowd sourcing project. If so, be really sure before you commit. It takes time and effort to properly design, to launch, and most importantly to maintain a successful project.  You want your results to improve your organisation, to enrich your content, and in some way, better your volunteers' lives. If you do decide to do a crowd sourcing project, I've got three suggestions on how to encourage people like me to participate. Firstly, be generous with content. If you're generous with content, I'll be generous with my time. Allow me to reuse what I helped to create. So if I'm transcribing, I'll want to be able to download that transcription. If I'm tagging, I'll want to be able to reuse those images in Wikipedia or in a blog. Licence copyright is freely as you can. For me, the more generous you are, the better. If you're lucky, your volunteers will reuse your data in ways you haven't even thought of. Also, I consider this generosity when I'm deciding whether to donate my time. It's a competitive market out there for volunteers. If you're generous with your content, I'm much more likely to volunteer for you. I get very frustrated if content is licensed restrictively, and if I get frustrated, I go on to another project. I want you to let me have fun, to play with the data, and ideally to reuse it however I like. My favourite museum in New Zealand gives a great example of this mindset. The Auckland War Memorial Museum have licensed their specimen images under the CC by 4.0 licence. Their generosity with their content has resulted in me engaging with, reusing and in turn improving their data. I've tagged their images on their website. I've uploaded them into Wiki Commons for use on Wikipedia, and in doing this, I've discovered errors and omissions on their database. So I've emailed them, helping them to improve. What you call engagement, I regard as playing. And if I play, I hopefully will enrich things. I play because their content is generously licensed and easy to reuse. My second tip is to be generous with trust. Trust your volunteers. Most of us want to start immediately and learn by doing. We will not read the instructions until we hit a problem. So design for this. We mean well, but we will make mistakes. Don't confuse this with malice. Also, have easy tasks for beginners. I'll become more expert the more I do for you. Have ways for me to level up. Once I've mastered a skill, I'll want to have a new challenge. Try and give me a way to learn and progress. Do this, and you can create your own enthusiastic experts. Also, these different levels of difficulty are useful in another way. They'll encourage me to do more. Easy tasks I'll do while sitting in front of the TV. More creative tasks I'll do with nothing else to distract me. If a project can't provide this level up experience, talk to your volunteers. Encourage them to create it for themselves by giving them the ability to reuse the data and content. The Biodiversity Heritage Library provides a great example of this level up concept. They've got a large set of images in Flickr. They want the crowd to tag those images with the scientific names. The instructions explain how to start at a very basic level, basically tagging the name on the actual image. But they also go on to explain how to level up, how to do research into the current species name in order to tag the more challenging images. The Biodiversity Heritage Library also encourages their volunteers to participate in other crowdsourcing activities. So they provide links to their Zooniverse project, Science Gossip, and also their text and OCR correction games. They point volunteers to the Smithsonian Transcription Centre. All these activities not only provide different levels of difficulty, but also a variety of tasks. And variety really is the spice of volunteering life. My last tip is to be generous with time. Spend time and effort creating a volunteer community. The most successful crowdsourcing projects engage with their volunteers. Volunteer communities don't appear spontaneously. You have to design for it in your project and then spend time cultivating it. So talk to your volunteers. Encourage the efforts. Think about what you can do for the crowd, rather than what the crowd can do for you. Crowdsourcing isn't about getting free labour. It's about being open to your volunteers' ideas and contributions. It's about collaboration, and collaboration requires communication. So give me a point of contact if I've got questions. Listen to your volunteers. We can help you improve your project. If I love a project, I want to discuss it. I want to share the things I learn, both with other volunteers and the people behind the project. Have a way to make this happen. The biggest simple is setting up a Twitter account. Give feedback about progress. Explain how the data generated is being used. Communication will reward me for my time and motivate me to do more. The Smithsonian Transcription Centre is a great example of this ethos in action. They're very engaged and supportive of their volunteers on Twitter and Facebook. They have a website with a feedback button allowing volunteers to help improve their centre. They have a round-up of recent news reporting on progress of projects and any relevant research using the data created. They reward volunteers by frequently holding either Facebook Live or Google Plus Hangouts. These museum curators or scientists, this allows museum curators or scientists involved in the various transcription projects to have contact with volunteers. So in conclusion, design your crowd-sourcing project so I and others like me can enjoy your content, trust your volunteers to help them, help you, build a social network containing volunteers and the people behind the project. If a crowd-sourcing project is designed correctly, it can enrich and volunteer's lives, the institution that runs the project and the content we are all engaged with. Thank you.


We're going to write a program that takes an array of integers, prints it, calculates the cubes of the values, and prints those. Here's the partially written program, with comments as pseudocode. Since we're displaying the array values twice, we might as well make that a function. This function doesn't return any value. It's a void function, we'll call it display array, and in the parentheses we're going to give the parameter. The parameter begins with the data type, the name of our array that we're passing to it, and then in square brackets the length of the array that the function should expect. Now the body of the function, which is a for loop to print each item, followed by a new line. When you call the function, you give the name of the function, and then as the argument, you give the name of the array that you want to pass in. Only the name of the array, no square brackets at all. Let's build, and run, and so far so good. Let's put a for loop inside of main to calculate the cubes of the elements of the array. We'll set each element to the cube of whatever was there before. Then we'll make another call to display array, and put the name of the array as our argument, build, and run, and it works fine. There's room for improvement here. This code is tied down to an array with five elements. What if I were to add two more elements, then I'd have to change this five to a seven, and this one, and here, and here as well. Instead, what I'm going to do is I'm going to create a constant integer named n items, and set it to seven. I can't put a variable in here in the square brackets, so I'll get rid of the seven altogether, and let's see do the counting for me. This seven now becomes n items. Now when I call display array, in addition to giving the name of the array, I'm going to tell the function how many items it needs to process, and I do the same here. Since I now have two arguments, I need to change my function definition. Here I'm going to get rid of the number in the square brackets, and I'll put another parameter, constant int, and I'll give it the same name just for consistency. This seven now becomes n items. Let's build this, and run it, and everything still works great. Now, if I add more items to the array, I need to change only these two lines. Everything else will work fine because I'm passing the number of items to my function. In the next video, I'm going to show you what happens behind the scenes when C passes a raise to functions.


Hi, I'm Matthew coast head dating coach and founder at commitment connection calm and today We're gonna talk about signs that your boyfriend is cheating now Just keep in mind here that these are just signs and they it isn't proof It isn't you know There's no way to know for certain that your boyfriend is cheating on you without actually either catching him or You know him admitting to it Or something like that so just remember these are signs and It's always important to have a Transparent and open relationship where you can talk about anything with each other and that's something that You need to learn how to create So here are some of the signs that your boyfriend might be cheating on you The first one is that he goes to mysterious places and he avoids talking about it. So Whenever somebody's trying to hide something and they go to weird places and they don't want to talk about it That's always a good sign that they're you know, they're hiding something and and it might be Pretty important for you to find out what it is that they're hiding, you know hiding things in Relationships is never never good and if you're hiding things and he's hiding things, you know The best thing is to be as open and transparent as you can be In order to inspire him to be as open and transparent as he can be So the second thing the second sign is that he uses his phone And he tries to prevent you from seeing what he's doing now This is a pretty good indication that he's talking to somebody that he doesn't want you to know about Or he's saying something that he he doesn't want you to see and so Again, that's that's a another one of those things where it's like Man You know, I can't tell you how many different Relationships that I've seen that have people doing this and almost every single time It had to do with somebody that that person was attracted to or trying to see or You know was cheating on that other person with so The third one is he loses interest in having sex with you and you start notice him looking at other women. So This isn't necessarily a sign that he's definitely cheating on you But this is definitely a sign that he's lost attraction with you if he stops Wanting to have sex with you if he stops Looking at you as much if he he starts noticing other women it's because you've lost a lot of power and the relationship and He's losing his feelings of being attracted to you And so there's actually a lot that you can do about that But that's a topic for another time And so the last one is that he starts lying to you or being incredibly vague about what he's doing and who He's doing it with again, you know, there's never it's never a good time to be You know, the the only other time he might do something like this is if he knows that He's doing something that you don't approve of like if he's hanging out with friends of his that you don't like or You know, he's going out and drinking and you've you know, punished him or or you know Condemned him or shamed him for drinking or something like that and he still goes out and drinks And he doesn't want to tell you about it. That's the only other time that this might happen But that's a pretty good indication that he could be cheating on you as well so if you wanted more information on How to attract a quality man into a committed lasting relationship Make sure you go to my website at commitment connection calm and take my quiz there. That's it for today I'm Matthew coast and I'll speak with you again soon