LinaroLife Jan 2020

Issue 6 | January2020

LinaroLife

Cover image: Name and title

CONNECT BUD20 THE REGIONS

SPOTLIGHT Interview with Andrea Gallo, VP Membership Dev.

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Latest update on the next Connect event in Budapest

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What's been happening in the global regions

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Editors Words

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always used to dislike New Year's Eve. Something about the countdown to midnight made me feel a sense of panic. What did I have to show for the year just gone? What had I achieved?

Or perhaps more accurately, why hadn’t I done all the things I set out to do?

To-do lists were to blame I think. I was always making them. And they weren't sensible, realistic lists. They were long lists of what I wanted to achieve - that day, that week, that year. Nowhere near achievable, they only resulted in that unpleasant end of year sense of failure.

Becoming a mum has definitely forced me to accept that I can’t do everything all the time - and that’s ok! Big life events in general can have that effect - you suddenly find yourself rethinking priorities and questioning what really matters. In an ideal world I wish my daughter had never discovered Peppa Pig, but does it really matter? Of course not. I can live with finding Peppa intensely irritating.

The important thing is that my daughter’s happy.

New year's resolutions can be great for reflection and helping us set goals but let's cut ourselves some slack and pick one objective which is achievable.

That is why this year I'm avoiding the long to-do lists, the multiple resolutions to address my every flaw. I just have one resolution this year - to read more, especially in Swedish. It's easy to fall out of the habit when living abroad. But if I'm going to teach my daughter the language, it would be nice not to regularly find myself searching for words in what should be my mother tongue..!

On a sadder note, this will be the last edition of Linaro Life for the foreseeable future, as we do not currently have the resources to continue. Thank you to everyone who has contributed, it has been a blast!

Wishing you all a very happy 2020 whatever your resolution may be.

Ebba

Happy New Year!

Issue 6 | January 2020

Contents 4 Spotlight – Interview with Andrea Gallo

VP, Membership Development

6 Regional Updates 8

Connect update

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Highlights from SAN19

9 Up Next - Connect BUD20 10 Pets Corner 12 Dog training 14 Sankta Lucia

World Cuisine

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15 World Cuisine 16 Employee page 17 Staff Pictures 18 Family History 19 A Short Story - Part 2

LARP, Fun and Magic

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23 LARP, Fun and Magic 24 Pictures from Space

LinaroLife magazine strives to inspire, engage and entertain, and to make us all proud of Linaro and its people. Through the words and photography of talented local contributors, you the people of Linaro continue to teach us all that Life at Linaro has so much to offer!

We publish just two issues of LinaroLife each year, summer and winter. This is the 6th issue of the magazine and we hope you get pleasure from reading it. Sadly this will be the last LinaroLife magazine we do, thank you to all those who have contributed articles over the past issues - we have loved reading them!

LinaroLife is the official journal for Linaro staff. LinaroLife is published twice a year providing news and information for Linaro employees. Material published in LinaroLife may not be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form without prior permission from Ebba Simpson, Magazine Editor.

All correspondence should be addressed to: LinaroLife, Harston Mill, Royston Road, Harston, Cambridge CB22 7GG. Tel: +44 (0) 1223 400060 Email: life@linaro.org | www.linaro.org/linarolife

LinaroLife

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Spotlight

Interview with Andrea Gallo VP of Membership Development

Andrea joined the Linaro Technical Steering Committee in 2010 as an ST-Ericsson Fellow before becoming a Linaro employee in 2012 as the Director of the Linaro Enterprise Group (now known as the Linaro Data Center and Cloud Group). He then went on to work as the VP of Segment Groups and Strategic Initiatives before taking on his current VP of Membership Development role. Andrea holds a University Degree in Telecommunication and speaks fluent French and English, in addition to his native Italian. I have found Andrea to be one of the hardest working and most reliable people I have ever worked with. Meticulous and extremely dedicated - always juggling multiple tasks and somehow finding a way to get everything done. So how does he do it? How does he manage the workload and travelling alongside having a family? And what does he do when he isn’t beating Linaro’s drum?

Ebba Simpson (ES): Where were you born?

Andrea Gallo (AG): I was born in Rome, Italy.

ES: How would you describe yourself in three words?

AG: I would describe myself as thorough and demanding, yet hard- working, committed and dedicated.

ES: I know you are married and have children, can you tell me a bit about your family?

AG: My wife and I have two daughters and two dogs. My oldest daughter Sabina is 15 and likes classic and modern dance. I often refer to her as a “girl on a mission”! When I was in San Francisco she requested I go to Bernal Heights to take a picture of the same spot she had seen on Instagram. At

the members meeting in Boston she sent me on another mission to get a picture with a well known family that do video blogging. My youngest daughter Lavinia is 13 and loves singing - she is also a star on social networks which is a bit of a concern for my wife and I.. Normally when I travel

to the US, she makes me buy stuff on Amazon, which gets delivered to my hotel room. Once I got an American Girl Truly Me doll delivered! As for our dogs, we have Casper who is 5 - a beagle from an official breeder. We then have Daisy who we adopted from a rescue centre last April. She is a beagle from the South of Italy who was being used for illegal breeding. She was left in the street after becoming ill. We believe she is about 2,5 years old.

ES: Can you tell me a bit about your favourite vacation?

AG: The first one that comes to mind was a week my wife and I spent in the Maldives scuba diving - I got to see sharks and stingrays. This was before kids so very relaxing! Also enjoyed going to northern France, Amsterdam and Luxembourg last year. As for the best places I have been with

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help. If they agree and we are on track, it is very rewarding. Something I learnt at ST which I have found very effective is asking questions until your customer or prospect realises they have a need.

ES: If you could switch jobs with someone, who would it be?

my family, I would say La Jolla (San Diego) and Torrey Pines national park - we went there in 2016 and then drove through the Anza Borrego desert. My dream vacation would be to feed wild dolphins in Monkey Mia in Western Australia. I have been dreaming about this for the last 10-15 years since I read the book by Rachel Smolker “To touch a wild dolphin”.

ES: What hobbies and interests do you have outside work?

AG: Photography and video editing, skiing and all things Spider-Man related! I have been a Spider-Man fan since childhood and have comics from the age of 9. It was even a dream of mine to become a professional artist growing up. In 1999 I bought original Spider-Man art at the San Diego Comic Convention which I now have in my office.

I enjoy photography a lot and tend to go on photo tours with David Rusling at Linaro Connects - David inspires me. I also happen to be a big Queen fan, having seen them perform three times in the past three years and having read several books about them.

ES: What do you owe your success to?

AG: Cracking code and wanting to write videogames motivated me growing up - as well as the dream of drawing Spider-Man in future. I started writing software at the age of 13 and had software published then.

Studying listings and code from others is really what helped me learn to write my own software. In 1987-88, I was an intern at Acorn (the company that created Arm) where I worked on the Arm2 processor used in the Archimedes computer and met Sophie Wilson. Wanting to learn and improve I believe has been a driver to my success.

AG: Someone who writes nice Linux patches because I have never written one. I would like to be knowledgeable and proficient enough in Linux coding to submit patches the way maintainers do. I really value the work done by all of Linaro’s maintainers. Coding at low level is what I loved when I was a kid! If I were to go for a completely different job, it would be John Romita, the comic book artist who worked on Spider-Man (or his son John Romita Jr).

ES: Silly question which I can probably guess the answer to but if you could be a superhero, who would you be?

AG: Easy - Spider-Man!

ES: What has inspired you and motivated you to achieve?

AG: Enjoying the work. In my new role, I enjoy interacting with potential customersdiscussing their needs and how Linaro can

ES: How do you manage your schedule with work and personal time AG: It can be tricky as I often end up travelling 2-3 times per month. But when I’m not travelling, I drive my daughters to school every morning. I lived in France 1995-1999 working for ST so now I try and teach the girls French when in the car. We practise reading French and use audio files.

I also try and go to the gym twice a week when at home.

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CHINA

Regional Updates A

t the beginning of September, the Linaro China team had an event at Ningbo and Zhoushan near Shanghai. This was the first time we organized such an event, and everybody enjoyed the trip, the beautiful places, the delicious food, and most importantly being together :-)

EUROPE

On October 25th, we attended the Arm Tech Symposia at Shanghai with a successful booth. We prepared two demos, one was remote LKFT lab, and the other was TF-M remote secure services with Zephyr ( a joint effort with Karl Zhang, who is the LITE assignee from Arm Shanghai).

The booth attracted many attendees from local vendors in the Arm ecosystem (mainly chip vendors and OEM vendors), and they asked a lot of questions about LAVA and

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n September, Bill attended a workshop run by ST for their new STM32MP1 Cortex-A equipped microcontroller. It was an opportunity to help the ST folks field questions about Linaro, OP-TEE and TF. Upstream support is a big selling point for the MP1 and ST are referencing Linaro in their marketing materials for the device.

There was also a ‘secret shopper’ aspect to attending and we gave feedback on the material and the presentation.

TF-M. People were happy to see Linaro’s attendance as an important part of the Arm ecosystem.

On November. 4th~6th, Kevin Zhao and Jammy Zhou attended the Open Infrastructure Summit in Shanghai, and around 2000 people in the OpenStack community gathered together from different countries. Kevin did one presentation on “OpenStack Provider for Virtual Kubelet: A Nodeless Approach for Kubernetes” and organized a forum “Running Open Infrastructure on Arm64” together with EasyStack (an IaaS provider in China). We received very good feedback from the attendees, and were glad that Linaro sponsored ELC-E in Lyon in October.

We had a small booth but it was packed with great Linaro tech. Many thanks to Daniel Thompson and Loic Poulain for staffing the booth. We had lots of good conversations on the booth and had around half-a-dozen follow-ups in the following week, particularly on testing.

Again interactions with ST on the MP1 were featured and we had an “ST Authorized Partner” sticker on our booth.

Linaro Community Projects supported the

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more and more developers from the community are looking at Arm64 servers.

We also had some offline discussions with attendees from local vendors at the event about how we can promote the Arm server ecosystem together in the China market.

For AI/ML, Jammy attended the TVM meetup in Shanghai organized

by Alibaba on November 16th, where he also did some lightning talks about TVM @Linaro. Jammy also submitted one proposal “ArmNN and ONNX” to the ONNX Workshop at Shanghai organized

by Microsoft on November 18th, and the proposal was accepted. AI/ML can become an important area for collaborations with local vendors in China moving forward.

Trusted Firmware project TF-M workshop also in Lyon. It was fully booked with more than 35 attendees over two days of technical sessions; attendees included Arm, ST, NXP and Renesas.

he Tokyo Motor Show is a biennial auto show held in Japan. It used to be ranked alongside similar shows in Detroit, Frankfurt, but surpassed by China recently.

This year, thanks to Toyota’s leadership, the event has successfully transferred itself from car show to new technologies theme park, and attracted 1.3 million visitors, jumping from to 0.77 million last time.

Toyota cooperated with NTT, Panasonic, NEC, and Fujitsu opened “FUTURE EXPO” in Toyota’s showroom. Besides cars, there are flying bikes, rockets, space shuttles.

The future automotive industry is not just cars anymore. It will be the mobility industry for human beings to move around the university.

he biggest news over the last six months in the US is two-fold. First, Qualcomm got budgetary approval to remain at Core membership level. Due to some new legal requirements, they extended for six months under the current renewal agreement. We are working hard to get the paperwork updated so that the long-term renewal can be put into place.

And next, NXP has joined as the newest Club Member to Linaro! This is great news and they are already active in LITE, MMWG, LEDGE with interest in the new Automotive initiatives as well.

have brought back Randy Linnell. He is a previous Linaro employee that many may recognize, so please drop him a note welcoming him back!

We have participated in several events over the last six months including the GE Symposium, ELC, Arm TechCon and of course SAN19.

US

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On the staffing front, to help with managing the Google and NXP accounts along with other Group accounts we

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JAPAN

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Highlights from SAN19 Linaro Connect San Deigo Linaro Connect San Diego took place from September 23-27, 2019 at the sunny Paradise Point Resort and Spa.

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the recent history of Supercomputers and how the Fugaku Supercomputer will fit into that lineage.

inaro CEO Li Gong kicked off the week with an update on US Export Administration Regulations (EAR).

He also announced NXP’s upgrade to Club Member with NXP’s Rob Oshana. He then shared the news of the relaunch of the OpenAMP project under the Linaro Community Project Division with Tomas Evensen from Xilinx.

Qualcomm’s Bryan Huntsman (4) followed to share his experience with the “Upstream Bubble” on the SoC vendor’s perspective on downstream versus upstream development.

On Tuesday, Dipesh Patel,president, IoT Services Group at Arm, discussed “Challenges and Solutions to Scale IoT”. (1) He was followed by Ed Nightingale, Product Architect for Microsoft Azure Sphere who spoke on “Securing the Billions of Devices Around Us”. (2) As per custom, Wednesday was focused on team time in developer rooms, product focused sessions and themed discussions. The first keynote featured “A64fx and Fugaku - A Game Changing, HPC / AI Optimized Arm CPU to enable Exascale Performance” given by Dr. Satoshi Matsuoka, RIKEN Center for Computational Science (3) who traced

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KEYNOTES

Linaro through the 96Boards program hosted a UCSD Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Computer Science students day. Robert Wolff created a program for students to attend sessions and a private seminar exploring Open Source Collaboration and a Hackathon.

On Thursday, Brent Gorda, head of the Arm HPC business (5) brought his broad experience to review what aspects of the Arm architecture is attractive to the HPC community and how to accelerate development in this area. Brent was followed by Jeremy Hallum, Research Computing Manager at the University of Michigan, (6) who spoke on “Big Data on ARM in practice with ThunderX”

19 DEMOS

175 SESSIONS

418 ATTENDEES

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Researcher at Inria/LIP6/Sorbonne MEETINGS University (7) who spoke on “Coccinelle: 10 Years of Automated Evolution in the Linux Kernel”, on a tool that helps developers more easily use new functions and enforce standards. Then Elsie Whalig, moderated a panel on “Convergence of Data Center Workloads on Supercomputers” with Brent Gorda, Andrew Younge, Sandia National Laboratories, Computer Scientist and Aleksandr Drozd, RIKEN, Research Scientist. (8)

Demo Friday concluded the event with nearly 30 demos. We also recognised those who have been with Linaro as either an employee and/or assignee for 5 years.

We wrapped up Friday with a special community keynote by Julia Lawall, Senior

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Up next: Linaro Connect Budapest 2020 - BUD20 March 23-27, 2020 we will be returning to Budapest for Linaro Connect.

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any of you were at Linaro Connect Budapest 2017 and will remember the Corinthia Hotel.

The Corinthia Hotel Budapest at the Elizabeth Boulevard in Budapest, is a historic

luxury hotel. Opened in 1896 as the Grand Hotel Royal, a hub for the elite of 19th century society, the hotel has undergone extensive modification throughout the 20th century, and has in the 21st century been

restored and reopened as the Corinthia.

The hotel is within walking distance of many historical sites and restaurants.

Connect articles by Kristine Dill

There are some amazing sites in Budapest, here are just a few...

Fisherman's Bastion

St Stephen's Basilica

Buda Castle

Szimpla Kert LinaroLife

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Pets Corner

So, in height order on the photo, it’s Toby (Carol’s puppy), Marlo & Louie.

Marlo & Louie are brother and are pedigree Shih Tsu’s. Toby is a Shih Tsu cross.

Toby is the baby of the family & is the biggest! He is the most adorably cuddly dog.... amazing temperament!

- Mandy Weedon

Tom (white) and Luna (black) were adopted from Cats Protection about 3 years ago. This was taken when they were kittens and were inseparable.

These days, they just about tolerate each other!

- Stuart Waldron

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Finn is a 4 year old dog living in Charleston, South Carolina. Finn was adopted in November 2016 when he was 7 months old from an animal shelter in Raleigh, NC. - Kristine Dill

We have 11 rabbits (!), mostly rescued through the RSPCA. Our latest two rabbits (Bertie & Bobbins) like sitting on the window sill and staring out of the window.

They are soon to be moved outside once I've built their new hutch and run - Stuart Waldron

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Dog Training

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few years after graduating college and entering the adult world, my partner and I welcomed our first dog into our home - an 8 week old German Shepherd puppy who would be the start of a life “gone to the dogs�. Bronte taught us how to be proper dog owners. Fortunately he quickly figured out how to communicate with humans and inform us what was right and proper. We dove into the dog training world with classes and clubs, experienced the delights of hiking in nature with a creature with an expert nose and the soul enriching experience of being greeted with happiness when we came home. We had

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to figure out how to balance training and trialing with full time careers. Sometimes training had to take a backseat but we always had their company at home. We are on our 3rd generation after Bronte.

We have experienced the highs and the lows of living with a creature from puppyhood to old age. Several have visited the Nashua office over the years and you may have met Maddy (a grey Pomeranian) and Peter (black and tan Pomeranian) over conference calls. Today I compete in a variety of dog sports. I have shown in a few conformation or breed shows like Westminster or Crufts which are televised.

Dog sports is much more interesting to me because sports emphasize teamwork and your skill at

training. Activities I have explored with my dogs over the years include obedience trials, tracking trials, herding, agility and nosework.

Harri (nickname for Harriet) and I are active now in a German founded sport called Internationale Gebrauchshunde PrĂźfung (IGP) or International Working Dog Test.

The test is divided into 3 phases to be completed in 1 trial, usually 1 day. Being part of an international sport, I have met people from different European countries as trainers and judges. Sound familiar? The first phase of IGP is tracking where the dog follows the footsteps and finddropped articles on grass or a farm field.

The second phase is obedience where the team performs several exercises where the dog heels next to the handler in patterns, retrieves a dumbbells, jumps and completes a long down stay. The final

training outside of the exercises to keep her healthy and happy. This past month, Harri, who is now 5, and I competed in a tracking trial in sub 30 degree weather with a successful result.

In 2020, I plan to compete at the 2 and 3 (top) levels in IGP and put more focus on agility training which includes jumping, running through tunnels and other obstacles. If all goes well, we will continue

to train and trial at least another 5 years in various sports. More importantly, training builds a strong bond and understanding that flows into all aspects of our life together whether it is hiking in the nearby woods, searching for shells on a beach or waiting for me to end a conference call.

Article by Vicky Janicki

phase is protection where the dog and handler perform exercises to show the dog properly identifies threat and non-threat and to control itself in obedience to the handler. We have passed the first level test and are working on the 2nd level test.

Training for any competition has highs and lows and my time with Harri included time off for surgery earlier in her career.

She had CCL knee surgery and months of rehabilitation before we could work together again. I am now more aware of the impact of conditioning and strength

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Sankta Lucia

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n December 13th every year, Swedes celebrate Sankta Lucia. Girls and boys dressed in white carry gingerbread cookies and saffron buns in procession while singing Christmas songs. At the front of the procession there is usually a girl with candles in her hair (Sankta Lucia), followed by girls and boys holding candles.

It is a tradition that is widely celebrated more formally through church services, and more informally at nursery school for instance, where you usually find a few gingerbread men and Santas thrown into the procession as well! You’ll be relieved to know the kids are given electric candles to hold (same principle applies to Sankta Lucia and her crown), not real ones… Most Swedes celebrate this tradition without really knowing why, myself included. So

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when organizing Sankta Lucia festivities at my daughter’s daycare this year, I took the opportunity to find out more.

Apparently it all harks back to Saint Lucy who was born in Sicily in the year 283. She dedicated her life to Christianity and helping the poor. Because of her religion she was persecuted and eventually burned alive - something she miraculously survived. Legend has it that while she was awaiting her punishment in jail, she would bring bread to the other prisoners with candles in her hair (sound familiar?)

by Ebba Simpson

But why is an Italian saint celebrated so far away in Sweden? In some ways it is a coincidence.

Swedes have been celebrating the festival of light since the dark ages. Back then, the shortest day of the year was the 13th December which also happens to be the day Saint Lucy died.

So over time the two celebrations merged. Sankta Lucia in its current format has only been celebrated really since 1927, when a newspaper in Stockholm elected an official Sankta Lucia for the city that year. Other local press soon followed suite and today most cities in Sweden appoint a Sankta Lucia each year. This December, I celebrated Sankta Lucia at my daughter’s daycare. We dressed the children in white with red ribbons around their waists and they all got to wear crowns. Once dressed up, they got to walk up and down the corridor in procession while I played Sankta Lucia on spotify so I could get a video! Having done such a great job they were then rewarded with a disco where they got to dance around with their lights in a dark room to Christmas music.

You’d be surprised how much they enjoyed all of this..!

World Cuisine Aloo Paratha Popular Indian Breakfast Dish Aloo means Potato in Hindi, Aloo paratha is an Indian bread stuffed with mashed potatoes. It's one of the favourite dishes for breakfast.

Ingredients ( for 5 to 6 parathas) 1. Potatoes - 4 Nos medium size.

2. Turmeric Powder - 2 pinches 3. Coriander Leaves - few leaves 4. Red Chilly powder - 2 teaspoons 5. Vegetable Oil - 3 tablespoon 6. Salt to taste - 4 pinches 7. Wheat Flour - 300 grams 8. Butter - Five small cubes Method : Step 1: Make soft dough of wheat flour using water.

Step 2: Separately boil the potatoes with pinch of salt for 15 minutes, when its boiled, strain the remaining water and mash it with spatula or masher.

Step 3: Add turmeric powder, chilly powder, coriander leaves, 2 pinches of salt, 2 teaspoons of vegetable oil into mashed potatoes.

Step 4: Make five small medium sized rounds of dough and roll them into 3 to 4 inch circles, add 2 tablespoons of mashed potato mixture into this and fold the filling.

Continue to roll by applying pressure evenly and ensure the mixture isn't coming out of the fold.

Step 5: On a pre heated griddle or pan, roast the parathas on both sides on low flame and when they are slightly crispy apply butter.

Contributed by: Sabeha Sultana (Khasim Mohammed's Wife)

Step 6: Serve hot with yoghurt or tomato ketchup.

Barefoot Blockbuster vintage cocktail • • • • • •

¾ oz Peach Schnapps ¾ oz melon liqueur ½ oz Myers Dark Rum 1 oz banana purée 3 oz pineapple juice Garnished with fresh pineapple and maraschino cherry

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Employee Page 1

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Niklas Cassel

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Scott Bambrough

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Elsie Wahlig

Sumit Semwal

Who am I now?

Here are the answers from last edition's 'Who am I now?'

Did you manage to guess anyone correctly?

Who spotted Developer Dave?

Found him hidden in the Thai Market. ;) Servando Thanks to Milosz for his continuous valuable contribution to the Lava/CI Box demo.

Loic Poulain

Congratulations Congratulations Congratulations To Stevan and his wife on the arrival of their bundle of joy.

To Yang and his wife on the birth of Enya

To Paul and Kirsten on the birth

Born on Tuesday 25th June 2019, Kristina, weighed in at 3450g

Wednesday 19th June 2019, Enya was born 7:20pm weighing in at 3.47kg

Born on Thursday 19th December 2019, weighing in at 2580g

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of Harriet

Staff Pictures

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Members meeting on the Duckboats in Boston

Comic fun in Tokyo!

Keeping warm on the beach at SAN19

Xmas secret Santa in Cambridge

ri-yays are obviously terrific for making a weekend summer break easier to organise but what about stay-at-home Fri-yays? I didn't want to "waste" mine by spending the summer indoors so whenever I had the chance I drove down to a car park in Portishead that overlooks the Severn estuary downstream

of the Avonmouth docks. There I could do my normal mornings work in the comfort of my campervan combined with the occasional glance up to watch the shipping go past. Alright... I admit that, very occasionally, I did also let the shipping distract me enough to lookup the ship online to discover what is was designed to

transport (in my defence roll on/roll off car carrier ships look pretty weird). Once the afternoon rolled around I could enjoy a picnic and a stroll round the coastal paths and stony beaches before heading home to enjoy the long evenings that the UK gets during the summer months.

- Daniel Thompson

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Family History

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didn’t have any interest in family history, or genealogy, until my father’s death. After his funeral, his brother (my uncle) was telling me about my great grandfather’s involvement in the creation of Arsenal football club. I won’t go into the details here – you can read the Wikipedia page! https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Beardsley Hearing about Fred, though, made me realise that there is much more to family history than birth, marriage and death dates.

They are certainly a good starting point but people’s lives are not just when they were born, who they married and when they died.

Family stories are very important to paint a more complete picture of who a person is – what they experienced during their lives.

Stories were a central theme of the recent RootsTech genealogy conference held at the ExCeL Centre in London. This was the first time that the conference was held outside of Salt Lake City in Utah, USA – the home of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, the organization behind RootsTech and the FamilySearch website.

Each day had eleven choices of session in each of the five timeslots, with a keynote after the first timeslot. The sessions covered a wide variety of topics, including geography-specific research advice (Wales, Ireland, Spain, Germany), advice on finding information about those who served in World War I and II, and a lot of sessions about using DNA to assist with family research.

In addition to the sessions, there was an exhibition hall which was open for most of the day. There was a wide variety of exhibitors – large and small companies and groups. The main web-based genealogy companies were there – Ancestry, FindMyPast, FamilySearch – along with smaller interest groups like the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain and the Guild of One-Name Studies.

Picking up on the DNA theme within the sessions, there were quite a few stands selling DNA packs. There were different types on sale, each with their own pros and cons in terms of what information you get back from them. One of the biggest challenges, I

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think, with using DNA tests to find relatives is that you are dependent on those relatives also carrying out a DNA test and sharing the results on the same service you are using.

I think this is one of the reasons why the advice was to share your DNA data on as many of the genealogy platforms as possible.

Carrying out genealogy research has changed and advanced so much since my father died in 2002. Even in just 17 years, the wealth of content that has been digitized and indexed is amazing, but it isn’t fool proof, unfortunately. Most of the indexing is done by using optical character recognition (OCR) in order to turn the original page into text that the computer can then index. This can be very challenging, particularly when it is realised that handwriting didn’t always look the way it does today. How much of this extract of a letter from Princess Elizabeth to her sister Queen Mary I, written in 1554, can you read?

Despite those challenges, the advances have helped my wife and I find missing relatives and uncover their stories. Unfortunately, they haven’t always been happy stories and they definitely weren’t talked about. I knew my great grandfather, Percy, briefly. He died when I was twelve. What we’ve only recently learnt though is that both of his parents died within a year of each other, leaving Percy and his four siblings orphans. Some went into the workhouse, some moved to stay with other family relatives. My grandmother, Percy’s daughter, never talked about any of this although we know from old family photos that she had spent time with one of her aunts.

On my father’s side, I’ve recently learnt my grandfather served briefly in the Royal Air Force at the end of World War I, while one of his brothers served in the Navy and

by Philip Colmer continued to serve well after the war ended.

For both of them, I have been able to get their service history and learn more about them as a result.

All of my grandparents are dead which means I cannot ask them what they remember of their experiences. I cannot ask them to tell me their stories.

Passing on history orally is a long-standing tradition and very easy to do. Again, technology makes things so easy. Story telling doesn’t have to be just oral – you can video the person telling the story and then you have a visual reminder of what they looked and sounded like, as well as the story itself.

As I mentioned earlier, stories were a recurring theme of the RootsTech conference so I’m going to share some tips from the conference:

• Most of us read stories of our ancestors to be inspired, to feel “If they can do it, so can I”. What stories from your life would be most likely to affect your reader in this way?

• Look for turning points in your life. What pivotal events or small epiphanies changed your life or changed your mind?

• Don’t feel that it must be in chronological order, that everything has to be there.

If you are telling the story, something around 5-10 minutes for each story is probably ideal.

Finally, as Donny Osmond, the Saturday keynote speaker, said: “Your personal history is vitally important to your posterity. They deserve to know who you are.“

A short story by, Dave Pigott Part 2

Act 3 - The Model Santa Clara, CA, USA Wednesday, 5th October – 14:30 UTC (6:30 am PCT)

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s the car pulled through the security gates and parked near the main entrance to the observatory, James Gascoigne thanked Jake, his driver, opened the door and headed in, flashing his security pass at the guard who smiled and said, “Morning, Professor.”

He almost ran down the corridor and burst into the lab. There was Brent at his desk with two other colleagues crouching on either side of him gazing at the large display and pointing.

Brent looked up, “Jim. Great. You made it. Come here buddy and get a load of this.

You are not going to believe this thing. We managed to snatch some time on a couple of ‘scopes and now we’ve got ourselves a model.”

Gascoigne walked around and looked at the screen. There was a 3D image of a cylinder rotating on the screen. It appeared to be made from some dark brown material.

He studied it for a moment and finally cleared his throat, asking, “What the…?”

Brent chuckled ruefully, “That, my friend, is our baby. Just over twelve kilometres long and about two kilometres in diameter.”

Gascoigne’s thoughts were racing around, trying to comprehend what he was seeing. “And… it’s artificial? You’re sure?”

“As sure as eggs is eggs. We tracked it into L1 where it decelerated and stopped. That’s

I got such positive feedback from publishing part one of Raven’s Return in June’s Linaro Life that I have decided (read, been persuaded) to publish part two this month.

I hope you enjoy it!

- Dave Pigott where it is right now.”

“Don’t suppose you have any idea how it’s powered?”

Brent laughed, “Not a clue. It seems to move without any sign of exhaust. This aint no rocket.”

Gascoigne’s brow furrowed, “I wonder what they want? Are we about to be invaded?”

Act 4 - A Beginning Raven’s Council 9,262 years BCE

T

he senior members of the Advisory Board gathered in the Chamber of Light along with representatives from all the civilisation centres. The majority of the rest of the human race, some three hundred million people, was mind linked to witness the declaration of their findings and the Board’s proposals.

Raven stood, preparing herself. Reviewing in her mind what had to be presented and wondering how the news would be received. The Board had gathered their evidence in closed session, careful never to link to the common mind in case it created false narratives. There were murmured discussions all around the great, marble hall.

She opened her mind and called for quiet. In a matter of moments, all present fell silent.

“People of the world. As you know, we have been troubled recently by events in our solar system. Our great powerhouse, our mighty star, is showing troubling signs.

Our deep space sensors have detected anomalies and we have been investigating and planning. This is our report and our recommendations.”

Raven felt the full attention across the mind link and composed herself.

“We now know that, within the next one hundred years, almost certainly no earlier than forty years, there will be a massively disrupting event flowing out from our star.

This will have a catastrophic effect on our planet, our technology, our civilisation and our people.”

She opened her mind to show the projections. There was an audible gasp from the auditorium from those who were not part of the Board.

She showed that their delicate technology would become effectively useless overnight. The very high probability that there would be significant, unpredictable genetic effects that could be catastrophic.

“We have planned our contingencies and lay them before you now. Over the next four years we will construct one hundred Ark ships each of which will be capable of sustaining ten thousand people.

We will then begin the diaspora. We have chosen a planet, the one known as Liras, an extragalactic location that we can reach in just under one year. Obviously this means we can only take a total of one million of us.”

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Short story continued...

One of the representatives sent a polite, private request for audience into Raven’s mind. She turned and looked at her, recognising the elegant Panther Menadali from the eastern regions. She nodded her head in assent.

Menadali voiced and sent through the mind link her question, “Why there? Why not Pana Galeia?”

The board had been expecting this question, and so Raven was ready when she replied, “Because, as all will be aware, we only know of two planets which can sustain human life without having to perform long and unreliable terra forming, and Pana Galeia, while closer is already inhabited. We do not want to be seen as a conquering force. Liras also has an active biosphere which is complimentary to our own biology.”

Menadali thought for a moment, “But we already have a colony on Galeia. It would be so much…”

Raven broke in, “We considered all possibilities. Our colony on Galeia is only two thousand people and we have good relations with the Galeians. Adding a million people to the colony would seem like an invasion.”

Menadali’s face creased in displeasure and Raven understood why. Two of her children lived on Pana Galeia and she made frequent visits. This would separate them by a much greater distance and although mind link was always available it was not quite the same.

Raven decided now was the time to talk about those who would be left behind, “For those who stay here on our dear home planet, the Arks will try to maintain mind link with you for as long as possible. We are not clear what the effects of the solar disruption will be but there is a real possibility that we will lose that link for a considerable period of time.”

She felt and heard the reaction. To lose the binding hive mind was unthinkable. They would live isolated lives.

They would be truly alone for the first time since the Coalescence hundreds of millennia past.

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Act 5 - Breach Restricted area Twenty Eight, Michigan, USA Saturday, 1st October - 09:21 UTC (4:21 am EDT)

L

ieutenant Paul Helier had been on security detail for the past four hours and was sitting reading a book, occasionally looking at the array of situational awareness feedback monitors. As usual, the night was quiet and nothing untoward had happened.

He leaned forward to pick up his third coffee of his shift when an alert came up on the Central Command monitor showing a potential breech in the perimeter. He pulled up the video windows for that area and could see nothing. No movement, no heat signatures. Protocol dictated that he should ensure an armed guard was dispatched to investigate.

He picked up his radio and pressed, “Perimeter Security, respond.”

A short click and the voice of Sergeant Lanny Kelly came back, “Kelly. What’s up?”

“Security shows a breach in West One. Can you get a detail over there?”

“Sure. We’ll be there in a few.”

“Copy that.”

Helier put the handset down and leaned back. Ion chose that moment to walk in.

Helier looked up with suspicion. He was always wary of their guests and Ion in particular. There was something not quite right about him. His perfect suit, perfect hair and those night black eyes.

He stared blankly at Helier, “Is there a problem Lieutenant?”

“Don’t think so. Monitors say there’s a breach but there’s nothing visible. Probably a false alarm.”

Ion leaned over, uninvited, and looked at the video feeds. His face showed no emotion as he said, “Well, you can never be too careful,” and with that the air shimmered and he was gone. Helier hated when they did that. It spooked him out.

The next thing he heard was the radio squawk.

“Kelly here. Come in control.”

He picked up the handset, pressed the button and said, “Helier. Anything to report?”

“Nah. Looks like a fake signal… wait.

What? Tailor? Where’s Tailor?”

The radio cut off.

Act 6 - The Enemy Washington, DC, USA Friday, 7th October - 17:01 UTC (14:01 EST)

T

he bulletproofed government issue Cadillac drove around the Beltway, the soundproof screen separating any passengers in the back and the driver ensured a private conversation.

General Ronald McKeith was on his own, heading to the Pentagon for a briefing from the Science Advisory Committee. Apparently there was something that needed urgent attention from the US Military.

The General startled as, next to him, the air simmered briefly and there was Chalk. After many years of acquaintance he should have got used to the way he always appeared without warning but it still made him feel a little uncomfortable.

Chalk was, as usual, dressed in his tailored dark silk suit, his short, dark hair moulded to his scalp but with no signs of greying or receding. His appearance in the car, as always, took McKeith by surprise.

McKeith turned to him, “What now, Chalk? Someone break into twenty eight again?”

This was a reference to one of the many sites across the world where the governments’ friends were based. There had been a security breech on the previous weekend and one of the station security had gone missing. Chalk’s people claimed to know nothing about it, but McKeith wasn’t convinced.

Chalk stared straight at McKeith, a look that was always somewhat unnerving. His eyes were dark with no apparent pupils.

“No General. We have what I believe you call a ‘situation’. The enemies, the ones we’ve been warning you about for the last hundred years? They’re back. I need to brief you

before you get to the Pentagon. You need to have all the facts at your disposal.”

Act 7 - Departure Suffolk, United Kingdom Friday, 7th October – 17:06 UTC (18:06 BST)

J

enny stared at Raven and asked, “Why? Why do I name you? Why are you here?”

Raven’s mouth curved upward in a gentle smile, “You name me because that tells me my role and you honour me with the name Raven.”

Jenny suddenly felt a link in her mind. Her eyes flew wide open as a clear understanding of who Raven was, who her people were and why they were here. She had never experienced such a revelatory moment in her life. It was simultaneously wonderful and terrifying.

Raven spoke once more. “We are here because you need us. You are in danger and we are here to help.”

Jenny swallowed, “Danger? From what? Is someone trying to kill me?”

“Not just you. All of you. We need to leave soon so we can explain. Show you.”

Jenny noticed Raven’s voice for the first time. It was calm and had a familiar accent but had little intonation.

“Leave? Where are we going?”

“The city.”

“What? London?”

A small smile played on Raven’s oxbow lips once more. “No. My city. We call it Ark Home Options in your language. It is nearly two million kilometres from here.”

Jenny wasn’t familiar with distances in space so asked, “We have to go to another star?”

Raven smiled that enigmatic smile once more, “No, Jenny,” Jenny realised this was the first time Raven had addressed her by name, “It is in this solar system. Quite close really,” she approached Jenny, “Will you come? Please? I will not coerce you, but as you now understand we have travelled far and we wish you to meet with the Council so we can show you.”

Jenny swallowed once more. Her mouth

felt dry and she was nervous but, somehow, she implicitly trusted Raven.

She looked into those black eyes and nodded, “Yes. Yes. I will come. How do we get there? Do you have a rocket or…”

Raven interrupted, “No. We have better ways of travelling short distances. First we need to be in contact. Hold my hand,” and here she extended her hand out which Jenny gingerly took in hers, and was surprised at the soft warmth of the touch.

“Now this will feel strange, and you will probably lose your balance a little when we arrive. We can adjust for most of the vector and energy changes, but there will be a little disorientation.”

Raven might as well have been talking a mixture of English and Mandarin Chinese as far as Jenny was concerned but she got the message: She was going to feel a little dizzy or something like that.

Raven looked into her eyes, “Are you ready?”

Jenny had a moment’s pang of guilt.

Geoff and her hadn’t parted on good terms.

She wondered what he’d think when he found out she wasn’t home.

“Will we be away for long? There are people…”

“We will return but if there are people you need to talk to we can help with that once we are there.”

A little pacified, she felt her heart race with a mixture of excitement and fear as she said, “Okay. Yes. I’m ready.”

There was a weird feeling, like she was on a Big Dipper dropping out of the sky. Falling.

And then they weren’t in Suffolk anymore.

metres high. The walls were a soft, pale yellow. There was an opening in one wall, a doorway with no actual door in it. The air was warm.

Raven, satisfied that Jenny was acclimatised, released her hand and said, “Welcome to Ark Home Options, Jenny.

Follow me. I will take you to the Council.”

They walked through the doorway and Jenny gasped as she took in the view. She seemed to be in a city park, surrounded by buildings of stunning architectural beauty, but there the similarity to any city on earth ended. Looking straight ahead she saw a long street. Curving up. And up. All the way into the distance. There were people walking, all dressed in foreign looking outfits. Some in the far distance seemed to be walking up this slope of the road at an angle. An extreme angle. The buildings in the distance were likewise leaning at dangerous looking angles. There seemed to be a curved roof that glowed, providing what felt like daylight, hundreds of metres above their heads.

When she looked to her right, however, she saw a normal street. Straight and flat.

She had the sense that she was inside some giant tube.

Jenny suddenly had a dizzying feeling.

She could sense every person around her.

She could feel their emotions, sense them.

She felt them reaching out to her.

And she thought to herself, Why me?

And the linked minds replied, Because you are the inheritor of the line of the first Raven. Welcome home, daughter of the world.

Act 8 - Homecoming Lagrange Point L1, Solar System Friday, 7th October - 19:34 UTC

J

enny stumbled. She didn’t feel dizzy as she had expected, but it felt like the ground under her feet was moving.

She righted herself and took in her new surroundings. She was in a large room, maybe ten metres on each side and three

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LARP, Fun & Magic

L

ARP, or Live Action Role Playing, is an excellent hobby as it includes a little bit of everything and can happily be enjoyed by anyone from infants to grandparents and everyone involved will likely have a different favourite part of it.

What is it?

LARP comes in many forms, there's anything from grand battles with orcs and goblins against humans, elves and dwarves (the Lord of The Rings type) or playing a laid back hobbit in the shire to playing a suffragette planning some picketing or taking charge of a spaceship fleeing a dying world, or surviving a post nuclear wasteland. The common factor in all of it is that the world is set, with backgrounds of people, terrain, cultures, important historical points and so on, as well as some rules about battle and magic, when applicable. The rest of the story, the future of the world and the characters, is all up to the players.

At the moment the LARP I have chosen to join is the Lorien Trust (LT) fest LARP system. The fest LARPs are large systems with about two to three thousand people on the mainline events and various smaller events of about a hundred people, give or take forty, in the off season. The player base in LT is divided into factions, with each

person choosing which faction suits them and their character at any point. The factions in turn usually consists of a bunch of different groups working together for the faction but with internal politics and antics to play on.

There are plenty of rivalry, official posts to fight for, quests to make and information to gather to satisfy most players needs, but in case the factions are not enough to play with there are also guilds of various flavours to engage to develop ones character in.

Separate from this are the rituals, where people and items can be imbued with strong magic and become faster, harder, better and more special in every way as long as a team of people, led by a ritualist, holds an interesting and magically relevant 12 minute performance telling the magic where to go and why. Failure is often fatal. It's more fun that way.

The character I play is a part of the Wolves, a faction heavily influenced by Vikings and Norse mythology. She is called Idun Bjรถrnsdottir and is a priestess of Thor, a bard and a slightly terrified ritualist who have just used the ritual circle to power up an undead goose to send at some very big bad enemies.

How do you LARP?

Look at a system that suits you, preferably where you know someone (but it's perfectly fine to come and get to know people), choose a character and a race that seems interesting and try it out. Weapons, and kit, can be bought at the traders in the field for those who don't have time or interest to make it themselves.

There are often wiki pages and Facebook groups with helpful people about to start planning character, kit and other things before events. Most Tent Reznor, frame version 3, large systems have new dog for scale. player introductions,

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by Maria Hรถgberg

battle training, guild workshops and useful information for beginners collected in an easily accessible place while on site. People who have been playing for years, or decades, are very often willing to mentor, share anecdotes and generally make the life of newcomers easier. A lot of new players end up doing something completely different to what they originally planned as they find out things to do in play that seem interesting to pursue and people they like to interact with.

It is equally possible to play a fierce warrior who chops their way ahead with two axes and can take a lot of damage before they fall as it is to play a very squishy magic user or merchant who preferably avoids battle but finds themselves useful in other situations.

Any character has the possibility to change the world and the play around them.

It's good to find a group to play with, if nothing else to know that someone will have your back in battle, or raise a horn with and gather around the campfire for storytelling and singing with. In short, LARPing is what the player makes it to be. If the player goes out and finds opportunities to play and learn, they will very likely find a lot of people who are willing to teach and help in any of the areas of interest.

Why LARP? LARPing gives the theatre kids with a love for tabletop roleplaying an excellent excuse to go out in the fields and hit each other with snarky retorts, while the martial art kids hit back with rubber weapons. As a martial arts theatre kid with a love for tabletop roleplaying and fantasy books, LARP was the obvious hobby to start with, so I did in 1994.

Unfortunately the cost of kit can be a bit high unless it is home made, so a lot of crafting hobbies were started at the same time. It's a great gateway hobby to a lot of different crafting. One of the LARP friends I had in the 90's became a latex modeller and made orcs, goblins and other masks for the Lord of the Rings movies.

Nowadays it's mostly for the social parts of the game. The campfire stories and singing, the knowledge seeking, the herding of ritual contributors (far worse than cats) and the occasional feeling of being helpful in a fight.

Playing a viking restarted a lot of different crafting hobbies, so far I've made two A-frame tent frames, six dresses, a few fimo clay amulets and a bunch of different ritual props. It keeps the hobby alive during the off season, as mainline events are only in May and August.

I came back to LARPing after a 12 year hiatus in 2017, trying out LT for the first time. Knew

Two very different groups of people in the same system, both lovely, both silly and fantastic.

only two people in the field of thousands and not much about the system in general.

accents in game, and let me yeet a goose at the baddies.

Three years later it's given me bunches of friends all over the British Isles, a fantastic group to play with who all use fake Swedish

That is my why, and if that seems fun and interesting, have a go and try yourselves!

Kit comes in various degrees of completeness. The axes were made by one of the traders, the Thors' hammer was bought online, the beads at a market but then assembled by me. The pieces of fabric are well on their way to become two dresses, a front panel and a cloak.

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Pictures from Space

H

ere is an update to the Dec 2017 "Mark's Space" article. I have completed automation of my home observatory. I can now do long exposure astro photography while I sleep or even when I am away from home.

Above is one of my latest astronomy photos. It is an image of the Cave Nebula (Caldwell 9, Sharpless 2-155, LBN 529) in the Constellation of Cepheus. The image field of view is 2.8 by 2.2 degrees of the sky. The Cave Nebula is a faint region of Hydrogenalpha emission and surrounding interstellar dust. The Cave Nebula is estimated to be about 2400 light-years from Earth (a light year is 9 trillion kilometers) which is relatively close by astronomical standards.

Here are some more photos: Rosette Nebula

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Orion Nebula

Cone Nebula

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Pictures of space provided by Mark Orvek Front cover - Orion Nebula Back cover - Andromeda Galaxy