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Kim de Stella presents "A place to belong", a set of her own songs, inspired by memories, feelings and landscapes, circling around the search of that comfort zone called "home".
Joining intimate texts and touching music, the album reveals the vulnerability of love and friendship, the nostalgia of childhood and the extremes of joy and loss,
proposing a subtle but sharp reflection about modern society's vices, virtues and quests.
Mostly composed of Kim's original material, "A place to belong" also includes songs from Randy Newman and Bon Iver.
The album is edited by SIlvox Studios and will be released December 7 in Amsterdam.
Copyright KIM DE STELLA © 2017


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This coat used to be full-length. I bought it several years ago for a winter NYC visit. It served its purpose really well – keeping the majority of my body warm. However, living in Los Angeles, I knew I wouldn't wear it much, unless I shortened it. And I'm glad I did. I would hate for this beautiful coat to just hang in my closet.
DETAILS: coat: Banana Republic (splurge here, affordable here); dress: Calvin Klein (old, but cool one here); shoes: Calvin Klein (same here); gloves: Lauren by Ralph Lauren (similar here)

subset: commoncrawl


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We're powering through the top 25 as the college football season looms closer and closer. We'll finish off with Georgia on Thursday just before kickoff later that night. First up today is Missouri, brought to you by blogger Big Head of Mizzourah.net . Being a Mizzou fan gives us a specific right; the right to be confident, yet afraid that the sky will fall on us at any moment, and more than likely it will come in a shitty city like Ames or Waco. Like the first time I went in to a strip club and it was Asian pregnancy night, it's embedded in the mind. It's a Missouri thing- Don Denkinger screwing the Cardinals (although it benefited the Royals), Adam Vinatieri booting a forever long field goal to win the Super Bowl against the Rams, Carl Peterson being 18 seasons into his own 5-year plan to take the Chiefs to the Super Bowl, George Brett going apeshit about a bat that was stickier than Jules' afro in Pulp Fiction...it's just a Missouri thing. We have come to acknowledge it. We saw it last year when we shit the bed in Norman on a fumble, and then got routed in the Big 12 Title game. Then again, Oklahoma is a good team. It more than likely happens when we play less than stellar teams. It's what we do.
This year is no different. Even though we are ranked in the top ten of all publications (6th AP/7th USA Today/4th SI/6th Phil Steele), we're still waiting for this team to turn into a pumpkin. Does the SI jinx kill us? We are confident that it won't...but yet as a Mizzou fan, we expect something to go awry at some point. We know a 12-0 or 11-1 season is a decent possibility, but wouldn't be surprised with 8-4 or 7-5. It's what we do. The rug gets pulled out from underneath our Missouri sports fandom every year, unless you're a Cardinals fan (we sold our souls to the devil a long time ago. See Leitch for a deeper explanation). The 2008 team has been expected to be the Mizzou team that had the best shot at winning the Big 12 for awhile. All the pieces have been in place for a run in 2008 since about 2006. Last year was great and all, but Mizzou is even better this year. We lost a few of the pieces of the puzzle, but Gary Pinkel has been able to fit some new players in that gained a lot of experience last year. The defense is the best in the Pinkel era, but lets be honest; it all starts with quarterback Chase Daniel.
Chase is a great representative of the people of the Show Me State; chip on the shoulder, a little chubby, and can grow kick ass facial hair in his free time. Sure, he's not actually from Missouri, but nobody gives a shit...he's a Missourian. Jeremy Maclin and Daniel are a dynamic duo, and are so good, they could kill each other's Heisman votes. Being a Mizzou fan, we expect the greatness of two of our stars to kill the hype on each other's greatness. It's what we do.
As far as our rivalries go, we really only have two; Nebraska and kansas. Some may argue that we have four by adding Oklahoma and Illannoy in the mix, but for it to be considered a 'rivalry', you need two things; back-and-forth balance of competitive games, which we don't have by getting dominated by Oklahoma for years, and the mere fact of actually giving a shit about the other team, which we don't against the Illini. Illannoy, as you may get from the nickname, has basically been a little brother kind of pest to Mizzou. They are a team without a true rival, and they decided that they would become our rival. Basically a bullshit, made up rivalry to appease their fan base. Tiger fans have always considered Nebraska and kU the teams of mass hatred. Nebraska for all the ass beatings that we incurred and Nubs fans claiming they did it with class, followed by many years of close games until we finally started to pull through. The hatred reached a boiling point with the whole Flea Kicker thing in 1997. kU is hated because they are kansas. It all goes back to William Quantrill and Bleeding Kansas, but Deadspin isn't a place to drop hints to the repeats of Win Ben Stein's Money. We hate kU enough to never acknowledge them with a capital-'k' when referring to them. Of course, last season threw a Phillips 66 station worth of gas on the fire with the game at Camerohead and the birth of Sodd Reesing (see picture above), but this year has already been turned up to an 11 with the release of kU's "Big 12 North Co-Champion Trophy". The trophy has caused a little bit of an uproar among Mizzou fans because of the 36-28 win in the Armageddon game last year, and the fact that we went on to the Big 12 Title game, not the Squawks. For once in my tired, pathetic, college football loving life, my team has expectations to do well. Everywhere I've turned all off-season, everyone has pimped the Tigers. Do we 'Eight Belles it', and go down in the backstretch of the season? Or instead, does our six-foot, chubby hero wearing the #10 save the day? Speaking for all Tiger fans, we are banking on the second option. Expect the worst, but going all-in for the best. It's what we Mizzou fans do.


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Most people prefer Vijayanagar area as it connects to a lot of important areas of Bangalore such as The West of Chord Road, Magadi Road, Mysore Road, Rajajinagar, Malleshwaram, Basaveshwara Nagar etc. It is also one of the busiest areas of Bangalore as there a number of important industries and other companies located in Vijayanagar. It is also a porsche area with good infrastructure and economical facilities. It is a major urbanization centre of Bangalore with different kinds and cultured people residing in it.
Vijayanagar is one of the fast developing areas of Bangalore as it is one of the commercial areas of Bangalore. It consists of well developed roads, major industries and corporate offices, beautiful parks, and ancient temples, well developed areas, good hospitals, high class Hotels and restaurants and well equipped transport facility for the people of Vijayanagar to travel. In its recent times, it is also being provided with metro rail facilities.
Vijayanagar also contains a lot of public sector places that are required for the people residing in this area. It consists of many good schools, colleges, commercial banks, general hospitals, many parks, general libraries, a post office and a police station, bus stands, garages and even a bus depot. It is also very close to the city railway station and the outer ring road.
Vijayanagar is also a centre of attraction to many people in Bangalore as there is complete package of all the required facilities in order to stay secured unlike a few other areas of Bangalore. Day- by-day also it is entering the sights of the real estate agents located in Bangalore. It is gaining the name "king of the western area†in Bangalore. Many known personalities of Bangalore reside in this beautiful area named Vijayanagar, and due to this, the property rates in Vijayanagar area are touching the sky.
Many houses and apartments are being built in Vijayanagar during the recent times as it has a lot of commercial value. People have started enjoying the lifestyle that this area provides and are eager on buying a property in Vijayanagar.
To conclude, Vijayanagar area is liked and loved by every person of Bangalore and even today many are fighting to find a place to stay in this area due to its high lifestyles and its infrastructure facility.


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We were camping in the Loire Valley last week and caught the tail end of Hurricane Bertha – torrential rain that meant everything was damp and nothing was drying out. We were listening to the iPod on shuffle (it was linked to a Bluetooth speaker) inside the tent on a particularly bad night when "And the Rain" by Freschard came on…..a very French sounding woman singing "and the rain came spattering down again"….how ironic! It rained so much that we abandoned the camp and went to my sister-in-laws in Paris for the second half of the week – Tres Chic.
On returning to the UK I got a Facebook message from those lovely people at the Brudenell to say that Stanley Brinks and Freschard were playing the next day! Both of them with the Wave Pictures as their backing band!! And for free!!! Wow!!!!
Sledge, Martin and Gail came down and Mark and Johnny were in attendance for what turned into quite a night. Stanley Brinks (he plays a lot of the stuff on her LP) played with the Wave Pictures for Clemence Freschard's set – her singing accent was just as French as it sounds on record and any doubts that she was 'putting it on' were dispelled when she had a glass of red wine on stage – you can't get more French than that…..
The set came to a close and she hadn't done 'And the rain' so as they were going off I asked for it – and they obliged……such a lovely tune, such lovely people.
Stanley Brinks you may know from 'Herman Dune'. His single 'Orange Juice' with the Wave Pictures is a big favourite in our house – Uplifting and catchy as hell, it just hits the spot – and the orange vinyl looks great on the turntable (as does Freschard's 'Boom Biddy Boom' – also in Orange vinyl). He's done one LP with the Wave Pictures and has another with Clemence about to be released (she's also in his other project 'Stanley Brinks and the Kaniks'). They did a great set full of poignant lyrics and fab tunes. As well as guitar, Mr Brinks also plays a ?clarinet in what sounds like a Moroccan style.
'Orange Juice' was the encore and as we left I saw top pop promoter Mr Strangeways having a pint outside – "Johnny!" "Yeah?" says the Wave Pictures drummer who he was talking to – "Oh, sorry Johnny, I meant that Johnny…" Had a nice chat with both before heading for home. A thoroughly enjoyable evening – Merci Beaucoup!
Bob the Chiropodist


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The Mets and Former OF Jay Bruce locked down a 3yr/$39M contract on Wednesday night. The Former Mets player was traded at the deadline to the Indians for Ryder Ryan. The original deal was more about shedding future payroll than getting any substantial prospects in return.
According to Ken Rosenthal, the contract is back-loaded, with Bruce owed only $10M in this approaching season, and then 14.5$ in '19 and '20. Between the Indians and Mets, Bruce had his best season since 2013 with the Reds. Bruce finished the season with 36 HR, 101 RBI while slashing .254/.324/.508. He was worth 2.7 fWAR over his 146 games played, after being only worth 0.1 fWAR over the previous 3 seasons combined.
Mets fans are still trying to figure out where Bruce will fit in the Mets lineup. Bruce has shown the ability to play a "passable" first base and looks poised to split time with young Dom Smith. Smith looked overwhelmed by his first taste of the majors and will have a shot to lock down first base full time in the spring. But what about Jay Bruce's natural position in the outfield? The Mets have a logjam in the outfield and various degrees of question marks. First things first, Yoenis Cespedes is the Mets every-day left fielder without question. That leaves CF, and RF open. When healthy, Michael Conforto should get everyday at-bats. With his current shoulder injury, we have heard reports he should be back in April, but nothing is definite yet. Should he be sidelined for an extent that would leave Bruce in right field and Gold Glover Juan Lagares in center.
But the real question that all Mets fans are asking, was this the correct move?
When I learned about Bruce being back with the Mets, my initial thoughts were: How long? How Much? He had reportedly been looking for a deal in the 5/$70-80M range, which is aggressive. So when the reports trickled in at 3/$39M it eased my nerves. Bruce is still only 30 (Shocking, I know) and is coming after his best offensive and defensive season in years.
Kevin Long has preached fly balls to the Mets hitters and hitting fly balls is one of Bruce's staples. He had a career-high 46.7% fly ball rate in 2017 and he posted his highest Hard% in his career at 40.3%. This isn't the first time the Mets have had a hitter reinvent themselves under Long; look at Justin Turner and Daniel Murphy as examples. At $39M, the Mets need Bruce to produce 5 fWAR over his three-year contract to produce enough value for the contract to be worth it. The Mets seem to hope that the new and improved 2017 Jay Bruce will be the new normal, and his struggles in the past season are in the past. Only time will tell whether this contract was worth it for the Mets.


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High Availability Configuration¶
Morpheus provides a wide array of options when it comes to deployment architectures. It can start as a simple one machine instance where all services run on the same machine, or it can be split off into individual services per machine and configured in a high availability configuration, either in the same region or cross-region. Naturally, high availability can grow more complicated, depending on the configuration you want to do and this article will cover the basic concepts of the Morpheus HA architecture that can be used in a wide array of configurations.
There are four primary tiers of services represented within the Morpheus appliance. They are the App Tier, Transactional Database Tier, Non-Transactional Database Tier, and Message Tier. Each of these tiers have their own recommendations for High availability deployments that we need to cover.
This is a sample configuration only. Customer configurations and requirements will vary.
Transactional Database Tier¶
The Transactional database tier usually consists of a MySQL compatible database. It is recommended that a lockable clustered configuration be used (Currently Percona XtraDB Cluster is the most recommended in Permissive Mode). There are several documents online related to configuring and setting up an XtraDB Cluster but it most simply can be laid out in a many master configuration. There can be some nodes setup with replication delay as well as some with no replication delay. It is common practice to have no replication delay within the same region and allow some replication delay cross region. This does increase the risk of job run overlap between the 2 regions however, the concurrent operations typically self-correct and this is a non-issue.
Non-Transactional Database Tier¶
The Non-Transactional tier consists of an ElasticSearch (version 5.6.10) cluster. Elastic Search is used for log aggregation data and temporal aggregation data (essentially stats, metrics, and logs). This enables for a high write throughput at scale. ElasticSearch is a Clustered database meaning all nodes no matter the region need to be connected to each other over what they call a "Transport" protocol. It is fairly simple to get setup as all nodes are identical. It is also a java based system and does require a sizable chunk of memory for larger data sets. (8gb) is recommended and more nodes can be added to scale either horizontally or vertically.
Messaging Tier¶
The Messaging tier is an AMQP based tier along with STOMP Protocol (used for agent communication). The primary model recommended is to use RabbitMQ for queue services. RabbitMQ is also a clustered based queuing system and needs at least 3 instances for HA configurations. This is due to elections in the failover scenarios rabbitmq can manage. If doing a cross-region HA rabbitmq cluster it is recommended to have at least 3 rabbit queue clusters per region. Typically to handle HA a RabbitMQ cluster should be placed between a load balancer and the front-end application server to handle cross host connections. The ports necessary to forward in a Rabbit MQ cluster are (5672, and 61613). A rabbitmq cluster can run on smaller memory machines depending on how frequent large requests bursts occur. 4–8gb of Memory is recommended to start.
Application Tier¶
The application tier is easily installed with the same debian or yum repository package that Morpheus is normally distributed with. Advanced configuration allows for the additional tiers to be skipped and leave only the "stateless" services that need run. These stateless services include Nginx, Tomcat, and Redis (to be phased out at a later date). These machines should also have at least 8gb of Memory. They can be configured across all regions and placed behind a central load-balancer or Geo based load-balancer. They typically connect to all other tiers as none of the other tiers talk to each other besides through the central application tier. One final piece when it comes to setting up the Application tier is a shared storage means is necessary when it comes to maintaining things like deployment archives, virtual image catalogs, backups, etc. These can be externalized to an object storage service such as amazon S3 or Openstack Swiftstack as well. If not using those options a simple NFS cluster can also be used to handle the shared storage structure.
Database Tier¶
Out of the box Morpheus uses MySQL but Morpheus supports any mySQL compliant database. There are many ways to set up a highly available, MySQL dialect based database. One which has found favor with many of our customers is Percona's XtraDB Cluster. Percona's product is based off of Galera's WSREP Clustering, which is also supported.
If you're not as familiar with WSREP and prefer replication, some of our customers prefer to configure a failover connection to a MariaDB or MySQL based Master/Master Replication cluster. Less often used, though still a viable option, is MySQL based NDB Clustering. Wonderful guides for each of these HA and DR based database management strategies can be found here: https://www.percona.com/doc/percona-xtradb-cluster/LATEST/index.html
Morpheus idiomatically connects to database nodes over 3306
Once you have your database installed and configured:
Create the Database you will be using with morpheus.
mysql> CREATE DATABASE morpheusdb; mysql> show databases;
Next create your morpheus database user. The user needs to be either at the IP address of the morpheus application server or use
@'%'within the user name to allow the user to login from anywhere.
mysql> CREATE USER '$morpheus_db_user_name'@'$source_ip' IDENTIFIED BY '$morpheus_db_user_pw';
Next Grant your new morpheus user permissions to the database.
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON morpheus_db_name.* TO 'morpheus_db_user'@'$source_ip' IDENTIFIED BY 'morpheus_db_user_pw' with grant option; mysql> GRANT SELECT, PROCESS, SHOW DATABASES, SUPER ON *.* TO 'morpheus_db_user'@'$source_ip' IDENTIFIED BY 'morpheus_db_user_pw'; mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Checking Permissions for your user.
SHOW GRANTS FOR '$morpheus_db_user_name'@'$source_ip';
RabbitMQ Cluster¶
An HA deployment will also include a Highly Available RabbitMQ. This can be achieved through RabbitMQ's HA-Mirrored Queues on at least 3, independent nodes. To accomplish this we recommend following Pivotal's documentation on RabbitMQ here: https://www.rabbitmq.com/ha.html and https://www.rabbitmq.com/clustering.html
Install RabbitMQ on the 3 nodes and create a cluster.
For the most up to date RPM package we recommend using this link: https://www.rabbitmq.com/install-rpm.html#downloads
Morpheus connects to AMQP over 5672 or 5671(SSL) and 61613 or 61614(SSL)
rabbitmq-plugins enable rabbitmq_stomp
rabbitmqctl set_policy -p morpheus --apply-to queues --priority 2 statCommands "statCommands.*" '{"expires":1800000, "ha-mode":"all"}'
rabbitmqctl set_policy -p morpheus --apply-to queues --priority 2 morpheusAgentActions "morpheusAgentActions.*" '{"expires":1800000, "ha-mode":"all"}'
rabbitmqctl set_policy -p morpheus --apply-to all --priority 1 ha ".*" '{"ha-mode":"all"}'
Install 3 node Elasticsearch Cluster on Centos 7
This is a sample configuration only. Customer configurations and requirements will vary.
Three Existing CentOS 7+ nodes accessible to the Morpheus Appliance
Install Java on each node
You can install the latest OpenJDK with the command:
sudo yum install java-1.8.0-openjdk.x86_64
To verify your JRE is installed and can be used, run the command:
java -version
The result should look like this:
Output of java -version openjdk version "1.8.0_65" OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_65-b17) OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.65-b01, mixed mode)
To install Elasticsearch please use the following instructions
Once installed, to make sure Elasticsearch starts and stops automatically, add its init script to the default runlevels with the command:
sudo systemctl enable elasticsearch.service
Configuring Elastic¶
Now that Elasticsearch and its Java dependencies have been installed, it is time to configure Elasticsearch.
The Elasticsearch configuration files are in the
/etc/elasticsearchdirectory. There are two files:sudo vi /etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yml
- elasticsearch.yml
- Configures the Elasticsearch server settings. This is where all options, except those for logging, are stored, which is why we are mostly interested in this file.
- logging.yml
- Provides configuration for logging. In the beginning, you don't have to edit this file. You can leave all default logging options. You can find the resulting logs in
/var/log/elasticsearchby default.
The first variables to customize on any Elasticsearch server are
elasticsearch.yml. As their names suggest, node.name specifies the name of the server (node) and the cluster to which the latter is associated.
Make sure to uncomment each of the following listed below in /etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yml
Node 1cluster.name: morpheusha1 node.name: "morpheuses1" network.host: enter the IP of the node ex: 10.30.22.130 http.port: 9200 discovery.zen.ping.unicast.hosts: ["10.30.20.91","10.30.20.149","10.30.20.165"]
Node 2cluster.name: morpheusha1 node.name: "morpheuses2" network.host: enter the IP of the node ex: 10.30.22.130 http.port: 9200 discovery.zen.ping.unicast.hosts: ["10.30.20.91","10.30.20.149","10.30.20.165"]
Node 3cluster.name: morpheusha1 node.name: "morpheuses3" network.host: enter the IP of the node ex: 10.30.22.130 http.port: 9200 discovery.zen.ping.unicast.hosts: ["10.30.20.91","10.30.20.149","10.30.20.165"]
For the above changes to take effect, you will have to restart Elasticsearch with the command:sudo service elasticsearch restart
Next restart the network with the command:sudo service network restart
To make sure Elasticsearch is running use the following commands
Application Tier¶
Morpheus configuration is controlled by a configuration file located
/etc/morpheus/morpheus.rb. This file is read when you run
morpheus-ctl reconfigure after installing the appliance package. Each
section is tied to a deployment tier: database is mysql, message queue
is rabbitmq, search index is elasticsearch. There are no entries for the
web and application tiers since those are part of the core application
server where the configuration file resides.
Download and install the Morpheus Appliance Package
Next we must install the package onto the machine and configure the morpheus services:
sudo sudo rpm -i morpheus-appliance-x.x.x-1.x86_64.rpm
After installing and prior to reconfiguring, edit the
sudo vi /etc/morpheus/morpheus.rb
Change the values to match your configured services:
The values below are examples. Update hosts, ports, usernames and password with your specifications. Only include entries for services you wish to externalize.
mysql['enable'] = false
mysql['host'] = '10.30.20.139:3306,10.30.20.153:3306,10.30.20.196'
mysql['morpheus_db'] = 'morpheusdb'
mysql['morpheus_db_user'] = 'dbuser'
mysql['morpheus_password'] = 'dbuserpassword'
rabbitmq['enable'] = false
rabbitmq['vhost'] = 'morpheus'
rabbitmq['queue_user'] = 'lbuser'
rabbitmq['queue_user_password'] = 'lbuserpassword'
rabbitmq['host'] = 'rabbitvip'
rabbitmq['port'] = '5672'
rabbitmq['stomp_port'] = '61613'
rabbitmq['heartbeat'] = 50
elasticsearch['enable'] = false
elasticsearch['cluster'] = 'esclustername'
elasticsearch['es_hosts'] = {'10.30.20.91' => 9200, '10.30.20.149' => 9200, '10.30.20.165' => 9200}
- Reconfigure Morpheus
sudo morpheus-ctl reconfigure
When Morpheus is in a High Availability configuration the required Local Storage File Shares will need to be copied to a shared file system so that all nodes within the Morpheus cluster is able to connect to assets.
- White label images
- Uploaded virtual images
- Deploy uploads
- Ansible Plays
- Terraform
- Morpheus backups.
Backups, deployments and virtual images can be overridden within the Morpheus-UI. You can find more information on storage here: Storage
To copy the
`morpheus-ui` directory to the shared storage follow the below steps:
- SSH into the Appliance
- sudo su (or login as root)
- cd into
- Backup morpheus-ui directory by running the command below. This will create a new directory in
`/var/opt/morpheus/`called morpheus-ui-bkp and copy the contents of morpheus-ui into the new directory
cp -r morpheus-ui morpheus-ui-bkp
- Move morpheus-ui to your shared storage. Example below:
mv morpheus-ui /nfs/appliance-files/
- Mount your shared storage volume to
`/var/opt/morpheus/morpheus-ui`. How you mount it is dependent on what kind of storage it is. If you mount the volume after the package install, but before the reconfigure then you don't need to copy anything to a backup.
- SSH into the second Appliance and then Backup morpheus-ui directory by running
cp -r morpheus-ui morpheus-ui-bkp
when adding additional nodes you will only need to run step 6 and 7
3 Node with Externalized DB Configuration¶
This guide assumes the following:
- There is an externalized database running for Morpheus to access.
- The database service is a MySQL dialect (MySQL, MariaDB, Galera, etc…)
- A database has been created for Morpheus as well as a user and proper grants have been run for the user. Morpheus will create the schema.
- The Baremetal nodes cannot access the public internet
- The base OS is RHEL 7.x
- Shortname versions of hostnames will be resolvable
- All nodes have access to a shared volume for
/var/opt/morpheus/morpheus-ui. This can be done as a post startup step.
- This configuration will support the complete loss of a single node, but no more. Specifically the Elasticsearch tier requires at least two nodes to always be clustered..
First begin by downloading the requisite Morpheus packages either to the nodes or to your workstation for transfer. These packages need to be made available on the nodes you wish to install Morpheus on.
[root@app-server-1 ~]# wget https://example/path/morpheus-appliance-ver-1.el7.x86_64.rpm [root@app-server-1 ~]# wget https://example/path/morpheus-appliance-offline-ver-1.noarch.rpm
Once the packages are available on the nodes they can be installed. Make sure that no steps beyond the rpm install are run.
[root@app-server-1 ~] rpm -i morpheus-appliance-ver-1.el7.x86_64.rpm [root@app-server-1 ~] rpm -i morpheus-appliance-offline-ver-1.noarch.rpm
Next you will need to edit the Morpheus configuration file
/etc/morpheus/morpheus.rbon each node.
Node 1
appliance_url 'https://morpheus1.localdomain' elasticsearch['es_hosts'] = {'10.100.10.121' => 9200, '10.100.10.122' => 9200, '10.100.10.123' => 9200} elasticsearch['node_name'] = 'morpheus1' elasticsearch['host'] = '0.0.0.0' rabbitmq['host'] = '0.0.0.0' rabbitmq['nodename'] = 'rabbit@node01' mysql['enable'] = false mysql['host'] = '10.100.10.111' mysql['morpheus_db'] = 'morpheusdb' mysql['morpheus_db_user'] = 'morpheus' mysql['morpheus_password'] = 'password'
Node 2
appliance_url 'https://morpheus2.localdomain' elasticsearch['es_hosts'] = {'10.100.10.121' => 9200, '10.100.10.122' => 9200, '10.100.10.123' => 9200} elasticsearch['node_name'] = 'morpheus2' elasticsearch['host'] = '0.0.0.0' rabbitmq['host'] = '0.0.0.0' rabbitmq['nodename'] = 'rabbit@node02' mysql['enable'] = false mysql['host'] = '10.100.10.112' mysql['morpheus_db'] = 'morpheusdb' mysql['morpheus_db_user'] = 'morpheus' mysql['morpheus_password'] = 'password'
Node 3
appliance_url 'https://morpheus3.localdomain' elasticsearch['es_hosts'] = {'10.100.10.121' => 9200, '10.100.10.122' => 9200, '10.100.10.123' => 9200} elasticsearch['node_name'] = 'morpheus3' elasticsearch['host'] = '0.0.0.0' rabbitmq['host'] = '0.0.0.0' rabbitmq['nodename'] = 'rabbit@node03' mysql['enable'] = false mysql['host'] = '10.100.10.113' mysql['morpheus_db'] = 'morpheusdb' mysql['morpheus_db_user'] = 'morpheus' mysql['morpheus_password'] = 'password'
If you are running MySQL in a Master/Master configuration we will need to slightly alter the mysql['host'] line in the
morpheus.rbto account for both masters in a failover configuration. As an example:
mysql['host'] = '10.100.10.111:3306,10.100.10.112'. Morpheus will append the '3306' port to the end of the final IP in the string, which is why we leave it off but explicitly type it for the first IP in the string. The order of IPs matters in that it should be the same across all three Morpheus Application Servers. As mentioned, this will be a failover configuration for MySQL in that the application will only read/write from the second master if the first master becomes unavailable. This way we can avoid commit lock issues that might arise from a load balanced Master/Master.
Run the reconfigure on all nodes
[root@app-server-1 ~] morpheus-ctl reconfigure
Morpheus will come up on all nodes and Elasticsearch will auto-cluster. The only item left is the manual clustering of RabbitMQ.
Select one of the nodes to be your Source Of Truth (SOT) for RabbitMQ clustering. We need to copy the secrets for RabbitMQ, copy the erlang cookie and join the other nodes to the SOT node.
Begin by copying secrets from the SOT node to the other nodes.
[root@app-server-1 ~] cat /etc/morpheus/morpheus-secrets.json "rabbitmq": { "morpheus_password": "***REDACTED***", "queue_user_password": "***REDACTED***", "cookie": "***REDACTED***" },
Then copy the erlang.cookie from the SOT node to the other nodes
[root@app-server-1 ~]# cat /opt/morpheus/embedded/rabbitmq/.erlang.cookie # 754363AD864649RD63D28
Once this is done run a reconfigure on the two nodes that are NOT the SOT nodes.
[root@app-server-2 ~] morpheus-ctl reconfigure
This step will fail. This is ok, and expected. If the reconfigure hangs then use Ctrl+C to quit the reconfigure run and force a failure.
Subsequently we need to stop and start Rabbit on the NOT SOT nodes.
The commands below must be run at root
If you receive an error
unable to connect to epmd (port 4369) on app-server-1: nxdomain (non-existing domain)make sure to add all IPs and hostnames to the
etc/hostsfile like so:
127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4 ::1 localhost localhost.localdomain localhost6 localhost6.localdomain6 127.0.0.1 app-server-1.localdomain app-server-2 localhost 127.0.0.1 container16 10.100.10.113 app-server-1 10.100.10.114 app-server-2 10.100.10.115 app-server-3
[root@app-server-2 ~]# morpheus-ctl stop rabbitmq [root@app-server-2 ~]# morpheus-ctl start rabbitmq [root@app-server-2 ~]# PATH=/opt/morpheus/sbin:/opt/morpheus/sbin:/opt/morpheus/embedded/sbin:/opt/morpheus/embedded/bin:$PATH [root@app-server-2 ~]# rabbitmqctl stop_app Stopping node 'rabbit@app-server-2' ... [root@app-server-2 ~]# rabbitmqctl join_cluster rabbit@app-server-1 Clustering node 'rabbit@app-server-2' with 'rabbit@app-server-1' ... [root@app-server-2 ~]# rabbitmqctl start_app Starting node 'rabbit@app-server-2' ...
Now make sure to reconfigure
[root@app-server-2 ~] morpheus-ctl reconfigure
Once the Rabbit services are up and clustered on all nodes they need to be set to HA/Mirrored Queues:
[root@app-server-2 ~]# rabbitmqctl set_policy -p morpheus --priority 1 --apply-to all ha ".*" '{"ha-mode": "all"}'
The last thing to do is restart the Morpheus UI on the two nodes that are NOT the SOT node.
[root@app-server-2 ~]# morpheus-ctl restart morpheus-ui
If this command times out then run:
[root@app-server-2 ~]# morpheus-ctl kill morpheus-ui [root@app-server-2 ~]# morpheus-ctl start morpheus-ui
You will be able to verify that the UI services have restarted properly by inspecting the logfiles. A standard practice after running a restart is to tail the UI log file.
root@app-server-2 ~]# morpheus-ctl tail morpheus-ui
Lastly, we need to ensure that Elasticsearch is configured in such a way as to support a quorum of 2. We need to do this step on EVERY NODE.
[root@app-server-2 ~]# echo "discovery.zen.minimum_master_nodes: 2" >> /opt/morpheus/embedded/elasticsearch/config/elasticsearch.yml [root@app-server-2 ~]# morpheus-ctl restart elasticsearch
For moving
/var/opt/morpheus/morpheus-uifiles into a shared volume make sure ALL Morpheus services on ALL three nodes are down before you begin.
[root@app-server-1 ~]# morpheus-ctl stop
Permissions are as important as is content, so make sure to preserve directory contents to the shared volume.
Subsequently you can start all Morpheus services on all three nodes and tail the Morpheus UI log file to inspect errors.
Database Migration¶
If your new installation is part of a migration then you need to move the data from your original Morpheus database to your new one. This is easily accomplished by using a stateful dump.
To begin this, stop the Morpheus UI on your original Morpheus server:
[root@app-server-old ~]# morpheus-ctl stop morpheus-ui
Once this is done you can safely export. To access the MySQL shell we will need the password for the Morpheus DB user. We can find this in the morpheus-secrets file:
[root@app-server-old ~]# cat /etc/morpheus/morpheus-secrets.json
{ "mysql": { "root_password": "***REDACTED***", "morpheus_password": "***REDACTED***", "ops_password": "***REDACTED***" }, "rabbitmq": { "morpheus_password": "***REDACTED***", "queue_user_password": "***REDACTED***", "cookie": "***REDACTED***" }, "vm-images": { "s3": { "aws_access_id": "***REDACTED***", "aws_secret_key": "***REDACTED***" } } }
Take note of this password as it will be used to invoke a dump. Morpheus provides embedded binaries for this task. Invoke it via the embedded path and specify the host. In this example we are using the Morpheus database on the MySQL listening on localhost. Enter the password copied from the previous step when prompted:
[root@app-server-old ~]# /opt/morpheus/embedded/mysql/bin/mysqldump -u morpheus -h 127.0.0.1 morpheus -p > /tmp/morpheus_backup.sql Enter password:
This file needs to be pushed to the new Morpheus Installation's backend. Depending on the GRANTS in the new MySQL backend, this will likely require moving this file to one of the new Morpheus frontend servers.
Once the file is in place it can be imported into the backend. Begin by ensuring the Morpheus UI service is stopped on all of the application servers:
[root@app-server-1 ~]# morpheus-ctl stop morpheus-ui [root@app-server-2 ~]# morpheus-ctl stop morpheus-ui [root@app-server-3 ~]# morpheus-ctl stop morpheus-ui
Then you can import the MySQL dump into the target database using the embedded MySQL binaries, specifying the database host, and entering the password for the Morpheus user when prompted:
[root@app-server-1 ~]# /opt/morpheus/embedded/mysql/bin/mysql -u morpheus -h 10.130.2.38 morpheus -p < /tmp/morpheus_backup.sql Enter password:
If a node happens to crash most of the time Morpheus will start upon boot of the server and the services will self-recover. However, there can be cases where RabbitMQ and Elasticsearch are unable to recover in a clean fashion and it require minor manual intervention. Regardless, it is considered best practice when recovering a restart to perform some manual health checks.
[root@app-server-1 ~]# morpheus-ctl status
run: check-server: (pid 17808) 7714s;
run: log: (pid 549) 8401s
run: elasticsearch: (pid 19207) 5326s;
run: log: (pid 565) 8401s
run: guacd: (pid 601) 8401s;
run: log: (pid 573) 8401s
run: morpheus-ui: (pid 17976) 7633s;
run: log: (pid 555) 8401s
run: nginx: (pid 581) 8401s;
run: log: (pid 544) 8401s
run: rabbitmq: (pid 17850) 7708s;
run: log: (pid 542) 8401s
run: redis: (pid 572) 8401s;
run: log: (pid 548) 8401s
But, a status can report false positives if, say, RabbitMQ is in a boot loop or Elasticsearch is up, but not able to join the cluster. It is always advisable to tail the logs of the services to investigate their health.
[root@app-server-1 ~]# morpheus-ctl tail rabbitmq
[root@app-server-1 ~]# morpheus-ctl tail elasticsearch
To minimize disruption to the user interface, it is advisable to remedy Elasticsearch clustering first. Due to write locking in Elasticsearch it can be required to restart other nodes in the cluster to allow the recovering node to join. Begin by determining which Elasticsearch node became the master during the outage. On one of the two other nodes (not the recovered node):
[root@app-server-2 ~]# curl localhost:9200/_cat/nodes
app-server-1 10.100.10.121 7 47 0.21 d * morpheus1
localhost 127.0.0.1 4 30 0.32 d m morpheus2
The master is determined by identifying the row with the
'*' in it.
SSH to this node (if different) and restart Elasticsearch.
[root@app-server-1 ~]# morpheus-ctl restart elasticsearch
Go to the other of the two 'up' nodes and run the curl command again. If the output contains three nodes then Elasticsearch has been recovered and you can move on to re-clustering RabbitMQ. Otherwise you will see output that contains only the node itself:
[root@app-server-2 ~]# curl localhost:9200/_cat/nodes
localhost 127.0.0.1 4 30 0.32 d * morpheus2
If this is the case then restart Elasticsearch on this node as well:
[root@app-server-2 ~]# morpheus-ctl restart elasticsearch
After this you should be able to run the curl command and see all three nodes have rejoined the cluster:
[root@app-server-2 ~]# curl localhost:9200/_cat/nodes
app-server-1 10.100.10.121 9 53 0.31 d * morpheus1
localhost 127.0.0.1 7 32 0.22 d m morpheus2
app-server-3 10.100.10.123 3 28 0.02 d m morpheus3
The most frequent case of restart errors for RabbitMQ is with epmd failing to restart. Morpheus's recommendation is to ensure the epmd process is running and daemonized by starting it:
[root@app-server-1 ~]# /opt/morpheus/embedded/lib/erlang/erts-5.10.4/bin/epmd -daemon
And then restarting RabbitMQ:
[root@app-server-1 ~]# morpheus-ctl restart rabbitmq
And then restarting the Morpheus UI service:
[root@app-server-1 ~]# morpheus-ctl restart morpheus-ui
Again, it is always advisable to monitor the startup to ensure the Morpheus Application is starting without error:
[root@app-server-1 ~]# morpheus-ctl tail morpheus-ui
Recovery Thoughts/Further Discussion: If Morpheus UI cannot connect to RabbitMQ, Elasticsearch or the database tier it will fail to start. The Morpheus UI logs can indicate if this is the case.
Aside from RabbitMQ, there can be issues with false positives concerning Elasticsearch's running status. The biggest challenge with Elasticsearch, for instance, is that a restarted node has trouble joining the ES cluster. This is fine in the case of ES, though, because the minimum_master_nodes setting will not allow the un-joined singleton to be consumed until it joins. Morpheus will still start if it can reach the other two ES hosts, which are still clustered.
The challenge with RabbitMQ is that it is load balanced behind Morpheus for requests, but each Morpheus application server needs to boostrap the RabbitMQ tied into it. Thus, if it cannot reach its own RabbitMQ startup for it will fail.
Similarly, if a Morpheus UI service cannot reach the database, startup will fail. However, if the database is externalized and failover is configured for Master/Master, then there should be ample opportunity for Morpheus to connect to the database tier.
Because Morpheus can start even though the Elasticsearch node on the same host fails to join the cluster, it is advisable to investigate the health of ES on the restarted node after the services are up. This can be done by accessing the endpoint with curl and inspecting the output. The status should be "green" and number of nodes should be "3":
[root@app-server-1 ~]# curl localhost:9200/_cluster/health?pretty=true
"cluster_name" : "morpheus",
"status" : "green",
"timed_out" : false,
"number_of_nodes" : 3,
"number_of_data_nodes" : 3,
"active_primary_shards" : 110,
"active_shards" : 220,
"relocating_shards" : 0,
"initializing_shards" : 0,
"unassigned_shards" : 0,
"number_of_pending_tasks" : 0,
"number_of_in_flight_fetch" : 0
If this is not the case it is worth investigating the Elasticsearch logs to understand why the singleton node is having trouble joining the cluster. These can be found at:
Outside of these stateful tiers, the "morpheus-ctl status" command will not output a "run" status unless the service is successfully running. If a stateless service reports a failure to run, the logs should be investigated and/or sent to Morpheus for additional support. Logs for all Morpheus embedded services are found in


text:
Since I am taking Endometrin, I'm used to a certain amount of discharge but it is always consistent and not at all like regular cervical mucous. Until yesterday. I had a significant amount, but given the color, again, really didn't think that much of it (I googled pictures (which I do NOT recommend doing)) and it did seem to match some but I wondered if they were really their mucous plugs.
Well, this morning, I had my answer. I won't get into the graphic details, but I am absolutely certain that is what it was. I also had some clear fluid leakage yesterday, again that I attributed to the Endometrin, but now I am not so sure. However, there hasn't been any more and my urine is clear.
At any rate, I know that one can lose their mucous plug at any time and that it even regenerates. However, I am wondering if its loss was caused by continued shortening (and perhaps even dilation) of my cervix.
I emailed both my OB and MFM and while I know others would high-tail it to L&D, if it was just the plug and there is no amniotic fluid leak or contractions, then there is no reason to go (and, while I never discussed with either doctor what to do if this happened, on-line recommendation is to mention it at my next appointment which is two weeks from today (which is longer than I would usually go)).
Now I wait to see who I hear from first and what she wants me to do.
(I just heard from the MFM nurse that I should go to L&D for evaluation but she sent the standard "Pre-term labor checklist" and I'm not having any of the symptoms on the list. Going to wait it out until I hear from a doctor).


text:
For all enquiries please contact email@example.com
The Interiors Group completed a fit out with a high-end finish for the office of Onex, located in Duke of York Street, London. The brief was to provide a spacious and luxurious fit out, including a welcoming reception area, executive offices and open-plan seating areas. Visitors are welcomed by Quarter cut Teak feature walls throughout the reception area, Basaltina honed stone floor and a black back-painted reception desk, leading into the open-plan area giving a spacious yet plush feel.


text:
I have not posted in a while, mainly because things have been busy and I haven't made anything "blog worthy".
Recently I caved in and tried Plated, not something I would usually do, but the "only pay for shipping" was too good of a deal to pass up. I ordered 2 meals, Mushroom Lettuce Cups and Pan Fried Redfish . It came neatly packaged (Saturday delivery) with step by step instructions. All of the ingredients were packaged and measured out, just needing salt, pepper and oil.
Sunday night I decided to cook the red fish with green beans and potatoes. Simple instructions that included a white wine caper sauce. It was very good, not to complicated (even if you don't consider yourself a great "cook).
Last night, I made the Mushroom Lettuce Cups. This recipes was marked a little more difficult, which I agree if you are not someone who cooks often, but I felt it was really time consuming and the fava beans made the pancake dough wet and sticky. I ended up using extra flour to compensate. I also felt the tofu needed to be pressed (I am used to Twin Oaks, which does not require pressing and is MUCH firmer). This meal was not as big of a hit as the first meal.
Plated is a great idea, it gets you in the kitchen and has great selection of recipes. I am not sure I would use it weekly, but I really like the idea.
If you are interested in trying it out there are always promo's on Facebook or you can use my link to receive a special, https://www.plated.com/invites/fc5648.
This is not a sponsored post, all opinions are my own.


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Frontier Centre: New Zealand's seminal reforms to government began almost twenty years ago and you occupied an important seat at the decision-making table. Although birthed of crisis, those changes contained and were inspired by timeless principles of good government. Can you summarize those basic concepts?
Richard Prebble: Let me just give you one bright principle of good policy. You can tell whether you have a good policy when all of the incentives in that policy work towards the outcome that you want. If the incentives for those who are making the change, those who are involved, don't actually work towards the outcome you want, I can guarantee you that regardless of how laudatory the aims of the policy are, they will fail. If they do line-up they'll succeed. This is the first message I give, what are the incentives behind this policy?
FC: How do you determine what activities represent the core business of government and which are better delivered in a non-government framework?
RP: There are very few things that actually need to be run by the government. Education is something I think the government should be involved in. I am keen that everyone have a good education, but that doesn't mean that the government has to own the schools, own the institutions. All it requires is that the government does the intervention that is required so that those who otherwise wouldn't have the means to access education can have it. My view is that what the government should do is acknowledge that the private sector and the private enterprise system, for all its faults, is still the best way of producing goods and services, and what we should do is try to use that to the maximum possible.
FC: You oversaw the divestiture of many state assets and Crown corporations. How did the commercialization affect their performance? Are there any choices you made then that you would in hindsight done differently?
RP: Transforming from a government department to what we call a state-owned enterprise with a private sector board using the company act resulted, in all state enterprises, in the immediate improvement in their performances. But when we compare the performance of the privatized government businesses with those that are still state-owned enterprises, the privatized enterprises have gone on making productivity improvements and the reason for that, again, is because of incentives. The incentives that exist in the private sector to make assets work are considerable, whereas in the state sector, over time, the incentive isn't there.
What change would I have made? When I made those reforms, I was partly looking for the actual asset money to repay debt, which we did. We halved our debt. But, in retrospect, the real improvement actually came from the productivity gains. To give an example, the telephone company in New Zealand, the productivity improvement of being privatized to the general economy has been estimated to be worth one-half billion dollars a year, every year. Now that's worth more than the $4 billion that we got from selling it. The second one is that we went for the highest price, so we went for an open tender price. In retrospect, I think my professor was right, I should have gone for popular capitalism so I would have got what would have been a lower asset price but a bigger buy-in by the public. There are real benefits to the community of having a property-owing democracy, and I don't think I emphasized that enough.
FC: You were originally a member of the Labour Party. Why is today's Labour Party in New Zealand so different from the one you were in during the 1980s?
RP: A variety of reasons. One of the things that the present Labour government in New Zealand doesn't like to acknowledge is how much of the reforms that I was part of have been retained. We still have an independent Reserve Bank, we still have a deregulated financial system, a floating dollar, we don't have any subsidies for business or agriculture, we still have a Fiscal Responsibility Act, the government is running a surplus. In that sense, what we have done in New Zealand is permanently move the centre of politics more towards individual responsibility. The reason they have changed is political power. The government doesn't actually believe in Crown-run enterprises, it doesn't believe in the rhetoric of socialism at all, but it does believe in power. In New Zealand, the government at the moment looks at certain interest groups and it transfers money away from the productive sector to the interest groups in return for votes. Does it work? Unfortunately, yes.
FC: They still kept most of the core public sector reforms? For example, the impressive core public sector reforms which decentralized department activities and brought in private sector accounting and performance contracts for managers?
RP: They most certainly have. In fact, the present government is, if anything, going to take some of those things even further. The politicians like being able to put the civil service on contract, yes they do.
FC: How would they take it even further?
RP: They are looking at exceeding that and putting more of the public service jobs up for contract and making people accountable. There is a lot of support within Parliament, too, for holding the civil service accountable for its performance. New Zealand has things like double-entry accounting. Will we go back to single-entry accounting again? No, we would not.
FC: Was the ACT Party born out of the reform labour element that drove the Labour Party in the 1980s?
RP: Partly, but in fact their membership comes half from the conservative National Party as well. ACT itself came out of a think-tank called the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers, which was formed by former National and Labour finance ministers when the country moved to a voting model based on proportional representation. It was realized that a classic liberal party in the European sense of the word liberal might just be able to get elected, so the ACT Party was formed and I was asked to lead it.
FC: Our labour parties here are heavily dominated by the unions. Why did the NZ unions not stop the dramatic reforms of the 1980's?
RP: Partly because the parliamentary party realized they had a crisis and it couldn't not do the reforms that we need to make. But the other reason was that those reforms were at the time very popular. The trade union movement may have been opposed to it, but the Labour government at the time of the height of its reforms in its first four years was one of the most popular governments in the history of New Zealand.
FC: For making sweeping change?
RP: The electorate is not stupid. The electorate in New Zealand could see that the country was being run like a Polish shipyard and that we had basically gone bankrupt and that we had to move in a new direction. Some of the policies were almost instantaneously successful. To give you and idea of how bad things were, when I first took over the telephone system it took you six months to get a new phone. Within a couple of years of the reforms, we were providing a new telephone within 24 hours.
FC: Or else what would happen?
RP: The telephone companies make an offer. They say that, if you become a subscriber, they will provide you with a new telephone and, if they can't do it in the first 24 hours, the first month's subscription is free.
FC: What was the greatest accomplishment of your government in the 1980s?
RP: I think without a doubt switching away from government control to a more free enterprise sector. I know this sounds overly dramatic, but New Zealand is a country that could have become a failed state. We were right on the border of really going bankrupt. Can countries do that? Yes, look at Argentina. We were on the verge of a collapse of that magnitude and now last year New Zealand's economic growth was the highest in the OECD. Was that the result of anything the present government has done? No, it isn't. It's the result of reforms done by the Labour government and, I have to say, by the National government when they came into office and, in particular, a Finance Minister named Ruth Richardson.
FC: The ACT Party's literature clearly lays out the tax gap between New Zealand and Australia, a signal to investors and entrepreneurs that they are better off elsewhere. Indeed, since your taxes were raised there have there been increased levels of outmigration. Why is the government unable to connect those dots?
RP: Well, they can. Our higher tax rates are not motivated by any economic force but the politics of envy. Basically the government is saying to 90% of New Zealand, vote for us and we will sock it to the remaining 10%. Does that make sense? No, it doesn't. Out of our ten most successful entrepreneurs, seven have left the country. It not just the capital they have taken, they have taken their entrepreneurial flair and skill and they are providing it to countries like Britain, Australia, Switzerland and Spain instead of providing it in New Zealand. What I think is happening to the global economy is that we are going to see competitions between tax rights. Why should that be? Well, if you have capital, why would you want to give it to the New Zealand government? You are going to invest it in a place where you are able to get your best return. It is your "after tax" return that people are looking at, and that could be the reason that, even though the New Zealand economy grew rapidly last year, the amount of overseas investment we were able to attract contracted considerably.
FC: Your party wants a flat or flatter tax rate. Can you state the case for the flat tax?
RP: I certainly can. But let me make clear what my party really believes. We actually don't like income tax. We believe it is a dumb tax, we are taxing what we want more of. Income is from work and we want more work, we want more enterprise. Why would you tax that? It would be far better to have just consumption taxes. We have produced a budget to show that we don't need income tax at all. That's my number one preference. My number two preference, if I have to have an income tax, is to have it at a low, flat rate. That's fairer. It means that everyone is paying the same amount and, secondly, it is going to encourage people to invest, create jobs and make New Zealand a wealthier country. The evidence in favour of flat tax is overwhelming. What's interesting is that, even though those ideas have come out of North America, it has actually been adopted in Russia. Since the Russians went to a flat tax, their economy has grown, their tax revenues have gone up. Slovenia has just adopted it. Ireland, of course the best-known example, has low corporate taxes and a wonderful economic success story. I would want New Zealand to be a wonderful economic success story, too.
FC: You must have been appalled by the legislation which returned significant powers to labour unions under the new Labour government. Why was it passed and what have been its effects?
RP: It was passed because the government had made certain promises to the trade union movement which underwrote their election campaign. My party actually put up a vigorous defense against the legislation and used the Internet for the first time to do so. We produced a huge number of submissions and managed to get very significant amendments to the Bill. The final law that was passed, even though I don't like it, is nothing as Draconian as what they first recommended. The trade union movement is now trying to get a new trade union law. To give you an idea of their idea of heaven – New Zealand used to have compulsory trade unionism – if you wanted to work, you had to belong to the union. The government is doing measures which are making that sort of thing happen. For example, in regard to its own employees, you get paid more in your contract if you join the union, so civil servants have been joining the union movement at a great rate.
What's wrong with that? A lot of things. In a free society, people should be able to join a union if they want to, but they shouldn't be paid taxpayers' money to do so. Another wrong thing, in fact people are better able to make their own contracts with their employers and the freer they are the better the contracts tend to be. Our biggest restriction on employers employing a new staff is the fear that they are going to be unable to part company with the person, should their economic circumstances change or should they turn out to be unsatisfactory. The ACT Party believes that we should have a freedom to employ law, and you shouldn't have any government interference in such contracts at all.
FC: So you are for voluntary unions?
RP: Not only voluntary unions but I am in favour of everything being voluntary. If you and I wanted to make a voluntary agreement to employ each other, we should be able to do that. What business is it of the government's?
FC: New Zealand's healthcare system, like Britain's and Canada's is rationing service through waiting lists. We see higher inputs into the system without corresponding increases in outputs. How would you reform healthcare?
RP: First, I will confirm that. The World Health Organization classes New Zealand's healthcare as 41st in the world and that's despite the fact that we pour much more money in than many of the countries that have better health outcomes. The lessons are the same as anywhere else. Health is still an industry and if you allow competition you will have a market. You will get new innovative answers, you are going to get cheaper outcomes and you start to bring price pressure to bear, none of which, of course, exist inside a monopoly. Monopolies over time do exactly what the textbook says, they create monopoly profits. In this case, it is for the employees.
FC: You also emphasize choice and competition to improve the education system. Why is that?
RP: For very similar reasons. But first, let me say that the New Zealand public education system in middle-class suburbs tends to be pretty good. The problem is that in our working class suburbs our education system is appalling. How bad? Well, 40% of the children leaving New Zealand schools, according to the government's own figures, are unable to read a bus timetable after 14,000 hours of instruction. That's not something that we ought to put up with. Can the private sector do the job? Of course it can. There have been private schools for 3,000 years and, again, if you allow choice what happens is that you get alternative ideas, competition and, I think, we will see the quality improve. The people who would benefit the most will be those people who are going to those failing state schools.
FC: In New Zealand's welfare system, able bodied workers receive higher benefits than they could if they went to work. A lot of research in North America shows that when you force the people off the dole, they end up being better off even if they receive fewer rewards. Why have New Zealand governments retained these unproductive policies?
RP: That's a very good question and it is one of those things, as a former Labour politician, that I am most disappointed about with this Labour government. It has been Labour governments that have tackled welfare reform, like Clinton's and Tony Blair's. In New Zealand, we haven't and we are paying a huge price. We have over 200,000 able-bodied working-age adults on welfare. Is that good for them? No, it is not and it shows up in a whole variety of social statistics. What should we do? Well, in my case, I say we shouldn't reinvent the wheel, we should actually pick up the Wisconsin model and others that have worked. We ought to be saying we are having time limits and work requirements. In New Zealand you can go on a benefit as long as you go on drinking the whisky required. If you turn up and say that you are an alcoholic, that's terrible, here's a sickness benefit. Providing you go on drinking your bottle of whiskey a day, you can have it. Well, I don't think we should be spending taxpayers' money to subsidize addictions. We should be saying to that person, if you want to get off your addiction we will help, but if you don't want to, then you will have to drink yourself to death with your own money.
FC: Your experiments with electoral reform have had both positives and negative. Was the shift from "first past the post" to a proportional voting system an over-reaction to the rapid reforms of the 80s Labour government?
RP: I think so, but it's probably too early to say. We are still looking at the results and coming to terms with how MMP works. In some ways, you can say it is a success. We have a much more representative Parliament, we have far more women, we have far more Maori, we have far more Asians, and if you want to have a representative democracy, that's true. We also have a wider range of debate, ranging from the far left which in New Zealand is the Green Party, through to the ACT Party, which favours free enterprise. When we have debates, they are more robust. On the other hand, every government has been a minority government, it has been weak and it has had real difficulty putting together its program. I guess the real question is, is strong government a good thing? Having been in government a long time, I am not sure I think so.
FC: New Zealand's first MMP government was essentially captured by a small fringe party called New Zealand First. Its leader, Winston Peters, was able to reverse tax policy and do all sorts of things, yet most people would say that he was very unrepresentative of the average New Zealander. Does MMP not empower smaller, fringe parties?
RP: It most certainly seems like that's the case. New Zealand First is an anti-immigration party — anti-everything actually — so we have a "know-nothing" party exercising disproportionate power. Having said that, in the "first past the post" system, I have seen relatively small groups of MPs capture a large party. Some people would make that criticism against myself and Roger Douglas in the Labour Party and I say to you that electoral reform is not the answer to anything. No matter what electoral system you set out, in the end politicians will still get elected and in the end countries have to make these choices. The people of New Zealand or Canada have to decide what they want and their electoral system by itself isn't going to make a great deal of difference.
FC: You made a comment today about the Tony Blair government. Could you elaborate?
RP: I have made a number of comments about where politics is in the whole world. Look, socialism is in retreat. People often look at the rise of the Left and they look at Tony Blair. Tony Blair is nothing like the previous Labour government. Margaret Thatcher was asked how would she would be able to judge the success of the reforms that she made, and she said that the ultimate test would be when she was able to change the Labour Party. I don't think there is any doubt at all that she succeeded. Blair is now privatizing hospitals and schools. She has reformed the British Labour Party and, in that sense, even the New Zealand Labour Party is far reformed from what is was before.
FC: You stated that your party may be more of a think tank than a political party. Why are think tanks, particular the independent ones unconnected to government funding, so important?
RP: I think independent think tanks are one of the most important reforms which have appeared in my twenty-five years in politics. When I started, public policy was something that the civil service and the politicians did. Public policy debates have tended to be dominated by the universities which tend to be paid for by the taxpayer. Are they going to criticize the master? No, they are not. Then you get the independent think-tank. Why they are devastating is because they are looking at old issues and producing new ideas and new policy. In a democracy we are really having a contest of ideas. During the last twenty-five years the liberals go on winning their contest of ideas hands down everywhere, all around the world. One reason I am making this trip to North America is because some of the world's great think tanks are here. I like to visit them and talk to them about the latest ideas, the latest thinking, to renew my intellectual batteries and go back with these ideas. We talk about a global economy but we also have a global market for ideas as well. Ideas that come out of a North American think tank that may not be adopted here may end up being adopted in New Zealand.
I will give you a small example to do with fisheries. We all know the world's fisheries are at risk. New Zealand has the fourth largest coastal fishery in the world. Our fishery was at risk. We looked for new ideas and saw this idea that is called ITQs, which is the idea of giving fisherman a quota of fish so that own it. They own the right to have a 1,000 tons of snapper a year. That changed the whole incentive. Instead of going out there and raping and pillaging the sea and trying to grab as much as they could, they wanted to preserve the fishing stock because they had a right to 1,000 tons of snapper forever. Did they report poaching? They most certainly did. Did they stop taking undersized fish? Of course, they did. The incentives were there to preserve, and our fisheries have not only recovered but our fishing industry has boomed. That's not an idea we thought of. North Americans thought of it and it came out of a think tank. There are similar ideas of that sort, other ways of handling tough issues. Have the politicians ever come up with a good way of preserving anything? No, they haven't.
FC: Are we going to see more think tanks in New Zealand?
RP: I hope so. We already have a very good think tank called the Roundtable, but the same idea that I mentioned earlier applies. You actually need more of them, you need them of different sorts. It's the competition of ideas, producing different thoughts. New Zealand would be a better country if we had a Frontier Centre for Public Policy. You need some think tanks that "mix it," take the ideas that other think tanks have got and translate them into more popular language. It is like getting a report on the local media on the radio stations and on TV. There are certain principles about think tanks. Why think tanks work better than politicians is because political parties have less credibility. A political party wants something. It wants your vote and tends to say what you want to hear. The think tank is not looking for your vote, so think tanks can raise issues that political parties tend to run away from.
If I can leave you one thought about my own party which I understand, according to think tanks, makes us unique. Because we came out of a think tank, we still have a policy focus and as a political party, we set out to win influence, not power. That is revolutionary. Old politicians think they have to get power, they have to get one more seat than the opposition so they can be the government. We set out to get enough seats to get in the threshold, but we then said we didn't want to compromise any of our principles. We are quite happy to get 7% of the vote, which gives us 9 MP's, which gives us a word in Parliament. What we have discovered is, because we were prepared to talk about issues and produce solutions to problems that all of the other political parties wanted to run away from, we ended up with disproportionate influence. Indeed, I think we are dominating the agenda. In 1996, ACT's agenda was regarded as "way out". None of the other political parties were even prepared to look at it. We introduced a number of bills into the House that every other political party voted against. But in a recent discussion of our policies, every party said they are in favour of the principles involved. We made a turn around in only six years from total opposition to all being in favour. I think that is because of the sheer power of an idea. If there is a problem and you have a solution, in the world of the blind the sighted man is king.
FC: You like the name of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. It has been a controversial name for some people, a little radical. Why do you like it?
RP: The idea of the "frontier" has appeal right across the world. Here are new, fresh, "get out and conquer the open prairie" ideas. The frontier is where all of us want to be. I think it is a great name. If you folks don't want it, can we borrow it?


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State, federal lease sales draw $8.5 million
The sales were dominated by NordAq Energy, a local independent, with combined bids in two sales of $4.3 million for 269,461 acres.
The state had three areawide sales scheduled: Beaufort Sea, North Slope and North Slope Foothills, but no bids were received for the Foothills sale.
The Beaufort Sea sale drew one bidder, 70 &148 LLC of Denver, which bid on two tracts for a total of $104,806.40.
The North Slope sale drew eight bidders, 90 bids on 89 tracts, with an apparent high-bid total of $5,513,208.84 on 162,163 acres.
Major bidders included NordAq Energy which took 52 tracts, paying $2,309,054.40 for 74,880 acres; AVCG LLC which took three tracts for $1,117,644.80; ConocoPhillips Alaska which took 14 tracts, 35,840 acres for $947,916.80; Great Bear Petroleum Ventures II LLC which took 12 tracts, 30,720 acres, for $774,553.60; and 70 & 148 LLC which took five tracts, a total of $231,622.40 for 8,320 acres.
NordAq Energy was also the major bidder in BLMs National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska oil and gas lease sale, which saw three bidders or bidding groups place 22 bids on 22 tracts, a total of $2,885,153 for 245,293 acres.
In addition to NordAq which bid $2,026,368 on 17 tracts, almost 195,000 acres, ConocoPhillips which took two tracts, bidding $586,736 for a total of 15,289 acres.
See story and map in Nov. 10 issue, available online at 11 a.m., Friday, Nov. 8, at www.PetroleumNews.com


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This is the very same diary but a more compact size with normal sized text. It is easier to carry around to prayer meetings or on special occasions when you want it with you. It contains the very same message and pictures that the larger version has. The Diary of any size is one of the most important Catholic books to read today.
Saint Faustina was canonised on 30th April 2000 and in so doing the Church acknowledged the revelations and a message from God to humanity in our time. The Diary of St. Faustina contains that message, which must make it one of the most important Catholic books in the world today. This version has large print.
Unfailing Novena to Our Lady Untier (Undoer) of Knots, a wonderful nine-day prayer to Our Lady. This is Pope Francis' favourite Novena. One of the fastest growing Marian Devotions in the world.
Click this link to view: Our Lady Untier of Knots Prayer Book


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Abelian Calabi–Yau threefolds: Néron models and rational points
We study Calabi-Yau threefolds fibered by abelian surfaces, in particular, their arithmetic properties, e.g., Neron models and Zariski density.
We prove a formula expressing the motivic integral (Loeser and Sebag, 2003) [34] of a K3 surface over C((t))C((t)) with semi-stable reduction in terms of the associated limit mixed Hodge structure. Secondly, for every smooth variety over a complete discrete valuation field we define an analogue of the monodromy pairing, constructed by Grothendieck in the case of abelian varieties, and prove that our monodromy pairing is a birational invariant of the variety. Finally, we propose a conjectural formula for the motivic integral of maximally degenerate K3 surfaces over an arbitrary complete discrete valuation field and prove this conjecture for Kummer K3 surfaces.
Let k be a field of characteristic zero, let G be a connected reductive algebraic group over k and let g be its Lie algebra. Let k(G), respectively, k(g), be the field of k- rational functions on G, respectively, g. The conjugation action of G on itself induces the adjoint action of G on g. We investigate the question whether or not the field extensions k(G)/k(G)^G and k(g)/k(g)^G are purely transcendental. We show that the answer is the same for k(G)/k(G)^G and k(g)/k(g)^G, and reduce the problem to the case where G is simple. For simple groups we show that the answer is positive if G is split of type A_n or C_n, and negative for groups of other types, except possibly G_2. A key ingredient in the proof of the negative result is a recent formula for the unramified Brauer group of a homogeneous space with connected stabilizers. As a byproduct of our investigation we give an affirmative answer to a question of Grothendieck about the existence of a rational section of the categorical quotient morphism for the conjugating action of G on itself.
Let G be a connected semisimple algebraic group over an algebraically closed field k. In 1965 Steinberg proved that if G is simply connected, then in G there exists a closed irreducible cross-section of the set of closures of regular conjugacy classes. We prove that in arbitrary G such a cross-section exists if and only if the universal covering isogeny Ĝ → G is bijective; this answers Grothendieck's question cited in the epigraph. In particular, for char k = 0, the converse to Steinberg's theorem holds. The existence of a cross-section in G implies, at least for char k = 0, that the algebra k[G]G of class functions on G is generated by rk G elements. We describe, for arbitrary G, a minimal generating set of k[G]G and that of the representation ring of G and answer two Grothendieck's questions on constructing generating sets of k[G]G. We prove the existence of a rational (i.e., local) section of the quotient morphism for arbitrary G and the existence of a rational cross-section in G (for char k = 0, this has been proved earlier); this answers the other question cited in the epigraph. We also prove that the existence of a rational section is equivalent to the existence of a rational W-equivariant map T- - - >G/T where T is a maximal torus of G and W the Weyl group.
This proceedings publication is a compilation of selected contributions from the "Third International Conference on the Dynamics of Information Systems" which took place at the University of Florida, Gainesville, February 16–18, 2011. The purpose of this conference was to bring together scientists and engineers from industry, government, and academia in order to exchange new discoveries and results in a broad range of topics relevant to the theory and practice of dynamics of information systems. Dynamics of Information Systems: Mathematical Foundation presents state-of-the art research and is intended for graduate students and researchers interested in some of the most recent discoveries in information theory and dynamical systems. Scientists in other disciplines may also benefit from the applications of new developments to their own area of study.


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The heel spur (or calcaneal spur) is a nail-like growth of calcium around the ligaments and tendons of the foot where they attach to the heel bone. The spur grows from the bone and into the flesh of the foot. A heel spur results from an anatomical change of the calcaneus (heel bone). This involves the area of the heel and occasionally, another disability, such as arthritis. The heel bone forms one end of the two longitudinal arches of the foot. These arches are held together by ligaments and are activated by the muscles of the foot (some of which are attached beneath the arches and run from the front to the back of the foot). These muscles and ligaments, like the other supporting tissues of the body, are attached in two places. Many are attached at the heel bone. The body reacts to the stress at the heel bone by calcifying the soft tissue attachments and creating a spur.
Common causes of this bone spur in the heel are repetitive trauma to the base of the heel, obesity, poor walking/running technique, poorly fitting shoes, or hereditary conditions.
An individual with the lower legs turning inward, a condition called genu valgus or "knock knees," can have a tendency toward excessive pronation. This can lead to a fallen arch and problems with the plantar fascia and heel spurs. Women tend to suffer from this condition more than men. Heel spurs can also result from an abnormally high arch. Other factors leading to heel spurs include a sudden increase in daily activities, an increase in weight, or a thinner cushion on the bottom of the heel due to old age. A significant increase in training intensity or duration may cause inflammation of the plantar fascia. High-heeled shoes, improperly fitted shoes, and shoes that are too flexible in the middle of the arch or bend before the toe joints will cause problems with the plantar fascia and possibly lead to heel spurs.
Heel spurs and plantar fasciitis are diagnosed based on the history of pain and tenderness localized to these areas. They are specifically identified when there is point tenderness at the bottom of the heel, which makes it difficult to walk barefoot on tile or wood floors. X-ray examination of the foot is used to identify the bony prominence (spur) of the heel bone (calcaneus).
Non Surgical Treatment
Exercise. If you think your pain is exercise-related, change your exercise routine, environment, or foot-ware, and emphasize movements and/or body parts that do not cause pain. Mind/Body. Occasionally foot pain can be related to stress. The body may respond with generalized tension that contributes to pain in many areas, including the feet. Hypnosis and guided imagery are worth exploring if an anatomical problem is not apparent. Supplements. Natural anti-inflammatories can be just as effective as ibuprofen or other over-the-counter pain relievers with fewer side effects. Try one of the following. Ginger (Zingiber officinale) standardized to 5-6% gingerols and 6% shogoals, take one to two 500 mg tablets three to four times daily. Turmeric (Curcuma longa) standardized to 95% curcuminoids, take 400-600 mg three times daily. Also, be sure that you're wearing well-fitting shoes, the proper shoes for each activity, and that you buy new foot-ware as soon as you notice signs of wear. You can also take the pressure off your heel with a donut-shaped heel cushion or a heel-raising pad placed in your shoe. Acupuncture can also relieve the pain, as can for some sufferers, magnetic shoe inserts, although the evidence behind their effectiveness is not conclusive. Osteopathic or chiropractic manipulation can help with soft tissue pain in and around the feet.
Surgical Treatment
Heel spur surgery should only be considered after less invasive treatment methods have been explored and ruled insufficient. The traditional surgical approach to treating heel spurs requires a scalpel cut to the bottom of the food which allows the surgeon to access the bone spur. Endoscopic plantar fasciotomies (EPF) involve one or two small incisions in the foot which allow the surgeon to access and operate on the bone spur endoscopically. Taking a surgical approach to heel spur treatment is a topic to explore with a foot and ankle specialist.


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College officials have granted rent rebates ranging up to $7 to students temporarily quartered this fall in the Indoor Athletic Building.
The move was taken Friday evening at a meeting among Housemasters, Provost Buck, vice-President Reynolds and Deans Bender, Watson, Leighton and Fenn.
Rebates, which will be granted upon application to the Housing Office at Weld Hall, go to men who spant seven nights or more in the improvised dormitory on the gymnasium floor of the Blockhouse.
Rate of reduction will be fifty cents a night, calculated on the period from September 27 until the date the individual student is moved into permanent quarters.
Petition Asks Cut
Associate Dean Watson, who announced approval of the rabate system, presented to the meeting of University officials and Housemasters a petition signed by 79 gymdwellers requesting that some reduction be made in their rent for the time they spent in the Indoor Athletic Building.
The Petition, presented to Dean Watson Friday afternoon at his office, declared it is "unfair to charge full room rental for a bed, a chair and a locker . . ." The students further declared that they had been unable to unpack and their trunks were stored in Straus Hall basement.
Protests Last Week
Gymdwellers complaints with living conditions culminated last Tuesday in a series of protests presented to Fenn at an orientation meeting at the Union.
Closely following the meeting, the College took steps to clean the Indoor Athletic Building living quarters, and University employees began to move trunks for students transferred to permanent rooms.
Read more in NewsPrinciple Over Party


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Laura Rachel is an artistic photographer who specialises in Wedding and Portrait Photography. She is a storyteller and can create stunning images from weddings and portrait photo shoots. Whether you're saying your vows, partying on the dance floor on your big day or just want to be pampered with a make over photo shoot, Laura will be there to capture every moment, big or small. You will be guided through the posed images to create the perfect picture and there will be many more natural candid images in between.
You can view wedding a portraiture galleries and the price list online, so you can decide if Laura is the right photographer for you.
Laura travels worldwide for her clients but is based in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire. Have a look at why Laura is one of the most popular photographers in her area.
Wedding Photography
A Wedding with Laura Rachel is like no other. It's an experience. With Laura's extensive knowledge on wedding photography, she will be there guiding you through posing while using the light to create the perfect image while giving you the best service. You don't need to worry or stress, you can relax and trust Laura to capture everything you imagined and more.
The level of service isn't just on the day, it starts with the meeting in her studio in near Milton Keynes. Then continues throughout various contact points during the planning stage of the wedding to ensure every detail is covered. Finally the experience concludes with a luxury USB of your perfect hand edited images, a monumental keepsake from the day you will remember for the rest of your lives.
As well as weddings, Laura captures memories in the studio. From modern women's portraiture to newborn photography, Laura is an artist and captures the personality of every family.
It's important to capture your family in stunning images, not just for you, but for future generations. You can book Laura by emailing or calling and you can even purchase gift vouchers online.
Laura uses a large studio in Milton Keynes so there's plenty of room for large groups and a small intimate studio for newborn sessions. Laura is an excellent professional photographer for portraiture photo shoots.
See why more and more women are putting themselves in front of the camera now more than ever.
Please click images for higher quality versions. When viewing the gallery, you can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to scroll through the photos.
What People have said
"From the first meeting right the way through to the delivery of our wonderful pictures, we were thrilled with the moments captured and delighted to be able to look back on our day with such vivid images."
Mr & Mrs Jackson, Hatfield House
"Laura is very professional at what she does. She new exactly what we wanted, we had no stress on the day and everything just fell into place perfectly. "
Mr & Mrs Weston, Margate
"Our Wedding Day was made all that much more amazing thanks to Laura."
Mr & Mrs Fox, Maidenhead
"Laura was so professional with our 10 day old daughter she was gentle and patient and captured lovely natural photos which I couldn't see in other newborn photo shoots. I was pleased she got the natural baby style I didn't want props or dress up style photography for my new baby."
Mr & Mrs Elliot, Milton Keynes
Choosing Laura as our photographer was probably the easiest wedding decision we made. On meeting Laura we were both really impressed with her portfolio, attention to detail and passion for photography - it really does show. Leading up to our wedding Laura was really easy to work with and made the whole process really simple, offering lots of advice along the way. We love the variety of photos that Laura managed to take throughout the day and the results really did exceed our expectations. I would have no hesitation at all in recommending Laura Rachel photography and cannot thank her enough for capturing our day perfectly
Ash & Vicky, The Great Barn


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At this year's Digital Content NewFronts, the digital media's annual presentation to advertisers, the leaders of BuzzFeed, a trendsetter in digital publishing, played up their role as matchmakers — not only between brands and audiences, but between content creators and marketers willing to sponsor them.
There is a shift happening in media today, said CMO Frank Cooper: "In the social, mobile, cross-platform world we live in, there is no center," he said. Outliers can become agenda-setters in this world, he said.
The rise of bloggers as social media influencers is being tapped by brands, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. The gold standard is the story of Michelle Phan, who in under 10 years went from a waitress posting makeup tutorials on YouTube to a million-dollar business with endorsement deals and her own makeup company.
But even ordinary fans with more limited followings can be powerful amplifiers for marketers' messages. A number of studies recently have shown the power of everyday advocates in building brands, and digital media have given every consumer a potential megaphone — for better or worse.
Several studies have shown reviews and recommendations are the most powerful factor in buying decisions. Research by Dr. Jonah Berger of the Wharton School of Business found influencers have more conversations about product recommendations than the average person, 22 times more. And what's more important to brands: they are perceived as more knowledgeable, more credible and better at explaining how a product works.
"Of course, authenticity is critical," said Christine Villanueva SVP and head of strategy at agency Walton Isaacson. "When you have the right match between what the brand stands for and how the influencer actually lives life and behaves, that's the ideal situation."
That effectiveness has given rise to much debate about how to harness brand fandom and how to incentivize influencers — or even if they should be paid to voice their opinions. Most experts agree that influencers must receive some incentive and that it should be disclosed to the public, who are likely to spot the fakery, anyway.
"Readers can—and will!—sniff out inauthenticity miles away," said Stefania Pomponi, president of influencer marketing agency Clever Girls. Marketers are not paying for the endorsement, but for the influencer's work on their behalf, noted Pomponi.
Consumers have reached the point where they understand some influencers will be paid, but they appreciate the transparency, said Matt Lang, senior digital strategist at digital agency Rain. And the fit between the influencer and the brand has to be right, so the first step is to engage in due diligence to identify the right kind of influencers and surface the right kind of talent for the effort, he said.
"It's not going to rub (consumers) the wrong way that they're working with brands. It's accepted today," said Lang. But he added: "Someone who's posting fashion content all day and now is posting for McDonald's is going to rub people the wrong way."
Once the right influencers are targeted, marketers must tread lightly, said experts. Influencers, even paid ones, are not always easy to control, if they are to remain authentic to their audience. Brand guidelines could help them stay on message, but too much control can be "obvious and ineffective," said Pomponi.
It is best to give them the freedom to do what they do best, said Lang. Marketers need to think of influencers more broadly, encourage more organic tactics to reach them, such as engaging with user-generated content, and see how fans react to each post.
"The more we try to constrain and the more guidelines we give them, the more low-performing the content is," said Lang.
"A focus on identifying the right people and staying authentic is key."
And taking the influencer relationship from a one-to-one communication to a larger-scale effort has risks too. "Working with human beings is challenging. You can't treat them like ad units, but you can't treat them like freelance copywriters/photographers, either," said Pomponi.
Soliciting reviews from users is one simple way to get authentic endorsements and feedback, say experts, but curation may be necessary. Authenticity is important and any sign of tampering with reviews can cause irreparable damage to consumers' trust in the brand, said Sara Spivey, CMO of BazaarVoice, a consumer-generated content platform.
"You can't force or cherry-pick the content, but you can choose to curate reviews from groups of influencers who are more likely to utilize products similar to your brand's," said Spivey. "If you activate consumers already passionate about your brand, such as social fans or previous reviewers, you're more likely to get on-brand content."
Lang noted the practice of influencer marketing has pivoted recently to more strategic engagement with influencers who have smaller, more targeted audiences. The bottom line: Building a relationship is key, said Jeremy Simon, director of influencer & partnership marketing at Attention, the social arm of agency KBS.
"True collaborations are received more positively than one-off posts promoting a product," he said.