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kiintsugi · 5 years ago

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CHAPTER 1: Clarke I (excerpt)

Acid lingers in the air.

There have been more days than Clarke can count where she has wondered how it is so many people have survived on this damaged rock they call the ground, but now she finds these environmental hazards to be little more than an annoyance.

She’s sitting in a small, upturned automobile, watching through the cracked window as a thick, acidic fog rolls through the trees. She isn't the first person to ride out the mists in this old metal box on the side of the road. Like many other relics of the old world, it had been carved free from the terraformed earth with a singular entry point made accessible to those who could fit inside to protect them from the elements. This particular box has room enough for at least two adults, but Clarke is alone; stretched out as far as she can extend her legs, head resting against the cracked glass with a thin veil of fabric around her face to filter the air.

Clarke likes being alone. Alone, no one can betray her. No one can need her. No one can blame her. She isn't responsible for anyone or anything, and she has only herself to care for and herself to blame. There is no one to save, no one to kill. There is no one to console, and no one to confide in. It is her sacrifice – her punishment – because Clarke alone is the only one able to bear it.

Victory stands on the back of sacrifice, Lexa’s words, not hers. The commander has taught her so many things since her fall to the ground. From survival to trust and to – most importantly – self-preservation. A lesson Lexa enforced when she taught Clarke that anyone can betray her. Anyone.

She’s been alone ever since.

Her choice. Not Lexa’s.

Four long, arduous years – alone. Well, not entirely.

In one of the many metal automobile boxes that liter the forest road, Luna sits in waiting. Every few months the captain of the Boat People, Flokru as they call themselves in the common tongue, meets with the self-exiled commander of the sky at the shimmering stones; a landmark south of the dropship the dropship where black sands meet red water. Here they exchange supplies and rumors with one another; Luna keeping Clarke updated on all the things she’s learned about the governance of the twelve Clans and Clarke tipping Luna off to any unseemly activity that interferes with Flokru’s trade routes. If Clarke is particularly lucky that day, she even gets another body to warm her furs at night. Sometimes Luna, other times, not. But there is no luck to be found on this day.

Clarke looks at her scarred hands. Her arms are wrapped in cloth bandaging, covering the tears and slices up and down her forearms that will one day become new scars in her growing collection. As painful as they are, Clarke knows the damage was well worth the fight. Anything that might undo the damage she’s caused is worth the fight. Maybe that’s why she was so keep to assist Luna when she came asking for help. Maybe it was selfish of her. Maybe being selfish only adds to her mistakes. But she’s never seen Luna so desperate before, and she knew that she had to do something.

Outside, the fog continues to bellow. Years ago, when she first arrived on the ground, she used to fear the fog; more than the acid rains, or the flaming rivers, or even the two-faced wolves that stand so tall she could mount their backsides like a horse. Now? Now she isn’t afraid of any of it.

She rolls over onto her shoulder and closes her eyes. Sometimes she wonders if she’s even afraid of anything anymore. If there's anything left on this violent, savage planet that can actually make her feel something again. These days, all she ever feels is the weight of it all; her past, her present, her future. It makes her envy the fog; how it frolics and dances through the trees, light, careless, free.

A sudden tapping against the glass jerks Clarke back to reality. Luna, wrapped in fabrics and goggles – a mess of green and blue and wild, fiery hair – stands over her from the other side of the barrier. “It’s passed now,” she tells her through the glass. “We should get moving.”

Clarke nods and stretches her arms above her head, her back arched and her eyelids pressed tight. She realizes as she twists that she must have fallen asleep at some point, but she doesn’t bother to glance through the trees to read the sun. The sky is stall hazy, and the sun is orange and large behind polluted skies. It hurt her eyes too much to do any more than squint, even after shielding them with dark lensed goggles of her own.

Luna helps Clarke climb free of the rusty metal box, careful to close the hatch to protect the cracked glass casing, and threw a mesh blanket of woven vines and heavy fabrics over the top. Acid fog comes only once every few weeks and it’s common practice to leave the various shelters created from the ruins of the old world in as good of condition as they were found in.

Luna tangles her fingers in the loose tendril ribbons of her cloak, behind the golden chains that cling to her tunic, and pulls out a short, curved blade. She cuts one of the ribbon-like strips from the cloak and ties it around her forehead, over the boiled leather rim of her goggles to protect her now pinkened and swollen skin from what remains of the lingering acid. Clarke assumes when Luna repeats the process and hands a cloth strip to her, that Clarke’s own skin must look the same. The acid, while far from deadly at this point, still trying to melt her flesh in its last moments.

“We have a lot of ground to make up before nightfall.” Luna pulls the hood of her cloak over her head. “Follow,” She says. And so, she does.

Free? No, Clarke thinks as she falls into step behind the Captain. She will never be free. Lexa had made sure of that.

#Clexa #the 100 #clexa fanfic #t100 #clarke griffin #lexa #commander lexa #fan fiction #fanfiction #clexa moodboard

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philippmichelreichold · 5 years ago

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Analog Science Fiction Science Fact is the oldest surviving Science Fiction magazine. As Analog's (then Astounding's) editor, John W. Campbell ushered and nourished the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Campbell insisted on science in Science Fiction. Today, Analog still contains hard science stories and has a regular Science Fact feature. I had not read Analog in years, and am absolutely thrilled with my first issue in far too long. In a world where I feel I would be better off without a television, It's refreshing to find drama and suspense that does not reek of violence, and comedy and humor that is not redolent with obscenity/profanity. At a time when the Discovery Channel has reached new lows in pseudo science, it is encouraging to read science popularizations that are actually based in science. The underlying motif to this issue is doing the right thing. In Buddhist terms-- Right Action. Of course, reasonable beings may disagree as to what Right Action might be in a given situation. And sometimes one learns after the fact that one's action was not the best choice after all.

Rejiggering the Thingamajig by

Eric James Stone

is a

wonderful story

about doing what's right. Never thought I'd read a story where a Buddhist T. rex was the protagonist. Bokeerk is a wonderful character, and her companion for her mission, a sentient gun, is a delight. The gun reminded me of the talking bullets in

Who framed Roger Rabbit

or Yosemite Sam. To get home to her children's imminent hatching, she must follow the Eightfold path. Neptune�s TreasureBy Richard A. Lovett is an AI story. Floyd has an AI living in his head name of Brittney. Reminiscent of the movie

All of Me

, only set in

Neptune

space and without Steve Martin and Lilly Tomlin. Floyd and Brittney have serious personal/autonomy issues. The science of the story is wonderful-- mass drivers and recovery vessels. And space bicycles as well. Also spracht Strattman

Thus Spake the Aliens

by H. G. Stratmann is a story about saving the world, complete with large red Doomsday-cutoff-switch-button. These aliens are in the same business as Clarke's

Others

with a more up close and personal approach. And they are quite implacable about weeding if the need arises. To say the story is rich in allusions to other works would be a vast understatement. The connection between the title of the story and of Richard Strauss's song, widely acclaimed for its use in

2001

, could not be an accident.

The key to the story is a problem that is not often addressed, or more to the point-- it's largely ignored. There is a dead line for establishment of a real presence in space-- the point at which we exhaust cheap, abundant sources of energy. Somewhere before we reach that point is the point where a struggle ensues for control of those energy sources that remain. Whether or not civilization survives that struggle will have little impact on what happens next. No alternative, renewable source will be able to fill the gap that will be left with the depletion of fossil fuels. Nuclear power will remain expensive, dangerous, and will only postpone the collapse. Fusion will remain as elusive as a will-o'-the-wisp for some time. We have gigatons of Hydrogen, but fusion's most

promising process

relies not on Hydrogen but Lithium. Even if a Lithium-to-Tritium plant started working tomorrow, we have no way of foreseeing the consequences of eliminating any particular element from the biosphere and would need to work with highly radioactive Tritium.

Unless Stratman's aliens show up soon to terraform Mars and Venus, and hand us the keys to the secrets of the Universe, tough times are ahead of us. We will have to use less energy per person or reduce the number of people using energy. We would eventually return to subsistence farming with limited manufacturing powered by wind and solar power-- essentially back to the 17th century. Perhaps the answer to the

Fermi-Hart paradox

is that no civilization has been able to solve the energy crisis and overcome the energy gap. (It takes a huge amount of energy to go from planet to planet. Witness the huge fuel tanks of the Saturn V's needed to send

Apollo

to the moon.) Even if one used

the Orion nuclear pulse drive

to establish a local system space program, the unavailability of cheap, abundant energy would make it difficult to maintain the necessary level of technology. Once nuclear fuel became the mainstay of the economy, space exploration could be sacrificed as having a lower priority than meeting needs back home. Perhaps we are not the first civilization to see the stars not quite in our grasp and then to watch them slip away forever. The Possession of Paavo Deshin

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

has a profile in this issue of Analog. I'm impressed by the thoroughness of her stories. Rusch builds her characters in a believable and sympathetic manner that leaves me yearning for more.

Possession

is one of her

Retrieval Artist

� stories. Retrieval artists are bounty hunters in a convoluted universe, and Miles Flint is among the very best. Paavo was adopted after his birth parents fled to evade some outstanding alein warrants. But his birth parents have made sure they can keep in touch, naturally.

Paavo's birth parents are Disappeareds-- essentially outlaws in the old sense of the word. Flint is hired by not one but two clients to locate the birth parents. His adoptive parents are well to do, powerful, and tainted by underworld connections. And they adore Paavo as if he were born to them. Maybe more so. Rusch make quite plain her view on the subject of birth parents that re-enter a child's life wreaking havoc as they assert their rights. She equates them with terrorists, while Paavo's adoptive father is in his eyes, regardless of how others see him, the ideal and epitome of fatherhood.

(Uncle Orson review of the Retrieval Artist stories.)

Shame by

Mike Resnick

Lezli Robyn

is a fairly straight forward example of what not to do. Given the colonists's mindset and attitude toward Satan, their actions should not have been unexpected. Perhaps that's the real shame of the story-- that as atrocious as the colonists's appear to the author and to his moral authority figure, given human nature they were unsurprising.

Simple Giftsby

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

is a story about the stereotypically greedy corporation out to profit on the simplicity's and naivety of the primitive, non tech natives. What could be more innocuous than a race that closely resembles (in appearance) the

Who's of Whoville

. The ethnologist and linguist sent to learn about the alien's language and culture implore the company to slow down on making a deal with the aliens and are disregarded as obstructionists. The outcome is inevitable, but the suspense building makes it all worthwhile. On Rickety Thistlewaite by

Michael F. Flynn

is about the prison that is public service. Making oneself indispensable can be very rewarding and satisfying. Then it becomes an obligation not taken lightly by those who depend on you. As Harry Mudd exclaims to the

Enterprise

command team in

I, Mudd

. . . . A War of StarsDavid L. Clements writes a crisp and interesting story about questioning values and making choices. The concept of intelligence housed in celestial bodies-- the cores of planets and stars-- is reminiscent of

Rogue Star

in the

Star Child Trilogy

by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson. I would have hoped though that anyone advanced enough to use stars as weapons would also be advanced enough to not do so. Perhaps I'm just excessively naive.

Copyleft of my material

Essentially, my work is Creative Commons Attribution-Required, Share Alike.

Adapted from their Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license summary--

You may Share-- copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format Adapt-- remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. I cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms. Attribution-- You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests that I endorse you or your use. No additional restrictions-- You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Providing a link to my source document should suffice in attributing me. Where any condition(s) I place conflicts with the

Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, my condition(s) shall prevail.

ISFDB unless otherwise indicated and are copyrighted unless otherwise indicated.

Copyrighted images are presented here under fair use. You would need to contact the copyright holder to use them. They are not covered by my creative commons licensing.

Coverart from ISFDB for Analog 2010 Jan-Feb

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engineerload207 · 4 years ago

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Git Visual Studio Code

GitDuck is a video chat tool built for developers that has direct integration to the IDE so you can talk, share your code in real-time and easily collaborate with your team. It enables remote developers to work as if they were side by side. With GitDuck you can code with people using different IDEs, like VSCode or WebStorm, IntelliJ or PyCharm.

Visual Studio Connect To Git

Git For Visual Studio Code

Chapters ▾

Visual Studio Code has git support built in. You will need to have git version 2.0.0 (or newer) installed. The main features are: See the diff of the file you are editing in the gutter.

The easiest way to connect to your GitHub repositories in Visual Studio. Download GitHub Extension for Visual Studio anyway. Download Download GitHub Extension for Visual Studio. By downloading the extension you agree to the End-User License Agreement. Requires Windows and Visual Studio.

1. Getting Started

1.1 About Version Control

1.2 A Short History of Git

1.3 What is Git?

1.4 The Command Line

1.5 Installing Git

1.6 First-Time Git Setup

1.7 Getting Help

1.8 Summary

2. Git Basics

2.1 Getting a Git Repository

2.2 Recording Changes to the Repository

2.3 Viewing the Commit History

2.4 Undoing Things

2.5 Working with Remotes

2.6 Tagging

2.7 Git Aliases

2.8 Summary

3. Git Branching

3.1 Branches in a Nutshell

3.2 Basic Branching and Merging

3.3 Branch Management

3.4 Branching Workflows

3.5 Remote Branches

3.6 Rebasing

3.7 Summary

4. Git on the Server

4.1 The Protocols

4.2 Getting Git on a Server

4.3 Generating Your SSH Public Key

4.4 Setting Up the Server

4.5 Git Daemon

4.6 Smart HTTP

4.7 GitWeb

4.8 GitLab

4.9 Third Party Hosted Options

4.10 Summary

5. Distributed Git

5.1 Distributed Workflows

5.2 Contributing to a Project

5.3 Maintaining a Project

5.4 Summary

6. GitHub

6.1 Account Setup and Configuration

6.2 Contributing to a Project

6.3 Maintaining a Project

6.4 Managing an organization

6.5 Scripting GitHub

6.6 Summary

7. Git Tools

7.1 Revision Selection

7.2 Interactive Staging

7.3 Stashing and Cleaning

7.4 Signing Your Work

7.5 Searching

7.6 Rewriting History

7.7 Reset Demystified

7.8 Advanced Merging

7.9 Rerere

7.10 Debugging with Git

7.11 Submodules

7.12 Bundling

7.13 Replace

7.14 Credential Storage

7.15 Summary

8. Customizing Git

8.1 Git Configuration

8.2 Git Attributes

8.3 Git Hooks

8.4 An Example Git-Enforced Policy

8.5 Summary

9. Git and Other Systems

9.1 Git as a Client

9.2 Migrating to Git

9.3 Summary

10. Git Internals

10.1 Plumbing and Porcelain

10.2 Git Objects

10.3 Git References

10.4 Packfiles

10.5 The Refspec

10.6 Transfer Protocols

10.7 Maintenance and Data Recovery

10.8 Environment Variables

10.9 Summary

A1. Appendix A: Git in Other Environments

A1.1 Graphical Interfaces

A1.2 Git in Visual Studio

A1.3 Git in Visual Studio Code

A1.4 Git in IntelliJ / PyCharm / WebStorm / PhpStorm / RubyMine

A1.5 Git in Sublime Text

A1.6 Git in Bash

A1.7 Git in Zsh

A1.8 Git in PowerShell

A1.9 Summary

A2. Appendix B: Embedding Git in your Applications

A2.1 Command-line Git

A2.2 Libgit2

A2.3 JGit

A2.4 go-git

A2.5 Dulwich

A3. Appendix C: Git Commands

A3.1 Setup and Config

A3.2 Getting and Creating Projects

A3.3 Basic Snapshotting

A3.4 Branching and Merging

A3.5 Sharing and Updating Projects

A3.6 Inspection and Comparison

A3.7 Debugging

A3.8 Patching

A3.9 Email

A3.10 External Systems

A3.11 Administration

A3.12 Plumbing Commands

2nd Edition

Git in Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code has git support built in.You will need to have git version 2.0.0 (or newer) installed.

See the diff of the file you are editing in the gutter.

The Git Status Bar (lower left) shows the current branch, dirty indicators, incoming and outgoing commits.

You can do the most common git operations from within the editor:

Initialize a repository.

Clone a repository.

Create branches and tags.

Stage and commit changes.

Push/pull/sync with a remote branch.

Resolve merge conflicts.

View diffs.

With an extension, you can also handle GitHub Pull Requests:https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GitHub.vscode-pull-request-github.

The official documentation can be found here: https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/editor/versioncontrol.

Those new to Visual Studio (VS) Code might just see a code editor. The true power of VS Code lies in it’s extensions, integrated terminal and other features. In this hands-on tutorial, you’re going to learn how to use Visual Studio Code by working with a Git repo.

Related:What You Need to Know about Visual Studio Code: A Tutorial

Using built-in VS Code tooling and a few extensions, you’re going to write code and commit that code to source control using a single interface.

This blog post is a snippet of a chapter from the eBook From Admin to DevOps: The BS Way to DevOps in Azure. If you like this chapter and want to learn about doing the DevOps in Azure, check it out!

Tutorial Overview

In this tutorial, you’re going to learn how to use various VS Code features on Windows by building a project using Visual Studio Code and Git. You’ve been tasked with figuring out how to build an Azure VM with Terraform as a small proof of concept (POC) project. You have VS Code and have heard of its capability as a full IDE and want to put it to the test.

You’re going to:

Create a VS Code workspace to share with your team

Install the Terraform extension

Modify the Terraform configuration file to fit your naming convention and Azure subscription

Create a snippet for a common task you’ve found yourself typing over and over

Commit the Terraform configuration file to a Git repo

This tutorial will not be meant to show how to use Terraform to deploy Azure VMs. We already have an article on Terraform and Azure VMs for that. This tutorial will focus on learning Visual Studio Code.

Does this sound like an interesting project? If so, read on to get started!

Prerequisites

To follow along with this Visual Studio Code Git tutorial, please be sure you have the following:

VS Code – All examples will be using VS Code 1.44 although earlier versions will likely work as well.

Terraform – All examples will be using Terraform for Windows v0.12.24.

Git for Windows installed – All examples will be using v2.26. If you’d like VS Code to be Git’s default editor, be sure to select it upon installation.

Clone the Git Repo

Since this tutorial is going to be focusing on working with code in a GitHub repo, your first task is cloning that GitHub repo to your local computer.

For this project, you’ll be working from a GitHub repo called VSCodeDemo. Since VS Code has native Git integration, you can clone a Git repo with no additional configuration. To do so:

Open the command palette with Ctrl-Shift-P, type git where you will notice various options, as shown below.

2. Choose Git: Clone which VS Code will then prompt you for the repo’s URL. Here, provide the URL https://github.com/NoBSDevOps/VSCodeDemo.gitand hit Enter.

3. Choose a folder to place the cloned project files. This project will place the repo folder in the root of C:. Once you select the repository location, VS Code will invoke git.exe in the background and clone the repo to your computer.

4. When it’s finished, VS Code will prompt if you would like to open the cloned repository immediately as shown below, click Open to do so.

You now have an open folder in VS Code for the Git repo. You now need to “save” this open folder and all settings you’ll be performing in a workspace.

Creating a Workspace

Now that you have a folder opened containing a Git repo, save a workspace by going up to the File menu and clicking on Save Workspace As….

Save the workspace as project in the project folder. VS Code will then create a file called project.code-workspace in the Git repo folder. This workspace now knows what folder you had opened. Now when the workspace is opened in the future, it will automatically open the C:VSCodeDemo folder.

Now, instead of a folder name, you will see the name of the workspace.

Setting up Extensions

Extensions are one of the most useful features of VS Code. Extensions allows you to bolt on functionality to help you manage many different projects. In this tutorial, you’re going to be working with Terraform.

Open up one of the Terraform configuration files in the workspace along the left sidebar. Notice how an editor tab opens up and shows the text but that’s about it. There’s no usual syntax highlighting or any other features. VS Code thinks this is a plain-text file and displays it accordingly. Let’s remedy that.

For VS Code to “understand” a Terraform configuration file, you need an extension. Extensions are a huge part of VS Code that opens up a world of new functionality. In this case, you need the Terraform extension to assist in building Terraform configuration files and deploying infrastructure with Terraform.

To install the Terraform extension, click on the extensions button on the Activity Bar and search for terraform. You’ll see multiple extensions show up but for this project, click on Install for the top result created by Mikael Olenfalk. VS Code will then install the extension.

Once installed, navigate back to the workspace and click on one of the TF files in the workspace. You’ll immediately see one of the most obvious differences when using an extension, syntax coloring.

Now you can see in the following screenshot that VS Code “knows” what a comment is (by making it green), what a string is (by making it red) and so on. It’s now much easier to read a Terraform configuration file.

There’s a lot more functionality included with Mikael’s Terrafom extension. Be sure to investigate all of the potential benefits you can get from this extension if using Terraform.

Code Editing

Chances are when you find a script or configuration file on the Internet, it’s not going to be exactly how you need it. You’re going to need to modify it in some way.

In this tutorial’s example, you’d like to change the main block label in the infrastructure-before.tf. Terraform configuration file to perhaps project. To do that, you’ll need to find and replace some text. In VS Code, there are multiple ways to do that.

One of the most common ways to find a string and replace it with another is the good ol’ find and replace functionality.

Hit Ctrl-F and you’ll see a dialog similar to the following screenshot. Here you can type in the string you’d like to find and if you click on the down arrow, it will expand and provide a spot to input a string to replace it with. In the screenshot below, you can see options like Aa and Ab| for case-sensitive searching and also regular expressions.

You can also perform a “find and replace” using Ctrl-D. Simply select the text you’d like to find and begin hitting Ctrl-D. You’ll find that VS Code will begin to highlight each instance of that string with a blinking cursor.

When you’ve selected all items, start typing and VS Code changes all instances at once just as if you had selected each one individually.

Saving Time with Snippets

Let’s say you’re really getting into Terraform and Azure and are tired of typing out the Terraform configuration file block to create a new Azure resource group in the following code snippet.

To save time creating these blocks, create a VS Code snippet.

Related:VS Code Snippets: Speed Up Coding with Shortcuts

To create a VS Code snippet:

Copy the azurerm_resource_group block from the Infrastructure-before.tf Terraform configuration file.

2. Open the command palette with Ctrl-Shift-P.

3. Type “snippets” to filter the list of options.

4. Select Preferences: Configure User Snippets. This brings up a list of all the snippet files typically separated by language.

5. Type “terraform” to filter by the Terraform snippets.

6. Select terraform (Terraform) to open the Terraform snippets file (terraform.json).

Visual Studio Connect To Git

With the Terraform snippets file open, remove all of the comments and copy/paste the following JSON element inside.

Note the use of t and the backslashes. You can’t directly place tab characters inside of a snippet. To represent a tab character, you must use t. Also, you must escape characters like double quotes, dollar signs, curly braces, and backslashes with a backslash.

8. Save the terraform.json file.

Git For Visual Studio Code

9. Go back to the Terraform configuration file and type “rg”. Notice now you see an option to expand a snippet.

10. Select the rg snippet as shown above. Notice that it now expands to the snippet you just created with three items highlighted.

VS Code highlighted each of the words to act as placeholders due to the variables defined in the terraform.json snippets file (${1:block label}).

At this point, you can hit Tab and simply type in the values you need without worrying about how to create the block itself.

For a full breakdown on snippet syntax, be sure to check out the Snippets in Visual Studio Code documentation.

Commit Code to Git

At this point, you’ve cloned a public GitHub repo that contains a couple of Terraform configuration files. You’ve edited some files and now you’re ready to get those changes back up to the GitHub repo.

To get changes back up to the GitHub repo, you must first use Visual Studio Code and Git to commit changes to your local cloned Git repo. When you cloned the GitHub repo earlier, you downloaded not only the configuration files but also a Git repo.

If you’ve been following along, you should now have the cloned Git repo open with a couple of pending changes, two to be exact. How do you know that? By noticing the number in the Activity Bar, as shown below.

When you have a Git repo opened in Visual Studio Code, you’ll get a glimpse on the number of files that you can stage and commit into a local Git repo in the Activity Bar.

Click on the Source Control item on the left and you’ll see two items; the infrastructure-before.tf Terraform configuration file and the workspace you saved earlier (project.code-workspace). The configuration file will have a red M to the right indicating it’s been modified. The workspace file will have a green U to the right of it because it’s untracked meaning it’s currently not under source control.

To ensure both of these files get back to the GitHub repo, first create a helpful commit message indicating why you’re committing these files. The message can be any descriptive summary. Once you’ve written a commit message, stage the changes. Staging changes in Visual Studio Code in Git adds the file contents to the staging area preparing for a commit to the repo.

While on the Source Control pane, click on the + icon beside each file to stage them as shown below.

Once staged, click on the check mark to commit all of the staged changed, as shown below.

You will probably receive an error message indicating you need to configure a user.name and user.email in Git.

No problem. You simply need to provide Git the information it needs. To do that, go into your VS Code integrated terminal and run the following two commands changing my email address and name for yours.

Now try to commit the files. You should now see that the files commit to the repo.

You can stage all changed files without manually clicking on the + beside each file by committing them all at once. VS Code will automatically stage all of the files for you.

If you were working on a team with a shared repo, the next step would be to push these changes back to the GitHub repo or opening a pull request.

Conclusion

VS Code is a feature-rich IDE. It can not only help you write and understand code better, it can also build and make changes to infrastructure, invoke utilities and more. VS Code provides you one place to manage all of your development efforts.

Although this tutorial only covered a portion of what VS Code can do, this IDE is capable of so much more. If you’d like to learn about what VS Code can do, check out What You Need to Know about Visual Studio Code: A Tutorial.

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qwertsypage · 5 years ago

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Getting Started with Ansible a.k.a. how to Automate your Infrastructure

After going through this tutorial, you’ll understand the basics of Ansible - an open-source software provisioning, configuration management, and application-deployment tool.

First, we’ll discuss the Infrastructure as Code concept, and we’ll also take a thorough look at the currently available IaC tool landscape. Then, we’ll dive deep into what is Ansible, how it works, and what are the best practices for its installation and configuration.

You’ll also learn how to automate your infrastructure with Ansible in an easy way.

Table of contents:

Understanding the Infrastructure as a Code concept

Why was Ansible created?

What is Ansible?

How to install Ansible

Ansible setup, configuration and automation

Creating an Ansible playbook

Understanding Ansible modules

Running our Ansible playbook

What to use Ansible for

Okay, let's start with understanding the IaC Concept!

What is Infrastructure as Code?

Since the dawn of complex Linux server architectures, the way of configuring servers was either by using the command line, or by using bash scripts. However, the problem with bash scripts is that they are quite difficult to read, but more importantly, using bash scripts is a completely imperative way.

When relying on bash scripts, implementation details or small differences between machine states can break the configuration process. There’s also the question of what happens if someone SSH-s into the server, configures something through the command line, then later someone would try to run a script, expecting the old state.

The script might run successfully, simply break, or things could completely go haywire. No one can tell.

To alleviate the pain caused by the drawbacks of defining our server configurations by bash scripts, we needed a declarative way to apply idempotent changes to the servers’ state, meaning that it does not matter how many times we run our script, it should always result in reaching the exact same expected state.

This is the idea behind the Infrastructure as Code (IaC) concept: handling the state of infrastructure through idempotent changes, defined with an easily readable, domain-specific language.

What are these declarative approaches?

First, Puppet was born, then came Chef. Both of them were responses to the widespread adoption of using clusters of virtual machines that need to be configured together.

Both Puppet and Chef follow the so-called “pull-based” method of configuration management. This means that you define the configuration - using their respective domain-specific language- which is stored on a server. When new machines are spun up, they need to have a configured client that pulls the configuration definitions from the server and applies it to itself.

Using their domain-specific language was definitely clearer and more self-documenting than writing bash scripts. It is also convenient that they apply the desired configuration automatically after spinning up the machines.

However, one could argue that the need for a preconfigured client makes them a bit clumsy. Also, the configuration of these clients is still quite complex, and if the master node which stores the configurations is down, all we can do is to fall back to the old command line / bash script method if we need to quickly update our servers.

To avoid a single point of failure, Ansible was created.

Ansible, like Puppet and Chef, sports a declarative, domain-specific language, but in contrast to them, Ansible follows a “push-based” method. That means that as long as you have Python installed, and you have an SSH server running on the hosts you wish to configure, you can run Ansible with no problem. We can safely say that expecting SSH connectivity from a server is definitely not inconceivable.

Long story short, Ansible gives you a way to push your declarative configuration to your machines.

Later came SaltStack. It also follows the push-based approach, but it comes with a lot of added features, and with it, a lot of added complexity both usage, and maintenance-wise.

Thus, while Ansible is definitely not the most powerful of the four most common solutions, it is hands down the easiest to get started with, and it should be sufficient to cover 99% of conceivable use-cases.

If you’re just getting started in the world of IaC, Ansible should be your starting point, so let’s stick with it for now.

Other IaC tools you should know about

While the above mentioned four (Pupper, Chef, Salt, Ansible) handles the configuration of individual machines in bulk, there are other IaC tools that can be used in conjunction with them. Let’s quickly list them for the sake of completeness, and so that you don’t get lost in the landscape.

Vagrant: It has been around for quite a while. Contrary to Puppet, Chef, Ansible, and Salt, Vagrant gives you a way to create blueprints of virtual machines. This also means that you can only create VMs using Vagrant, but you cannot modify them. So it can be a useful companion to your favorite configuration manager, to either set up their client, or SSH server, to get them started.

Terraform: Vagrant comes handy before you can use Ansible, if you maintain your own fleet of VMs. If you’re in the cloud, Terraform can be used to declaratively provision VMs, setup networks, or basically anything you can handle with the UI, API, or CLI of your favorite cloud provider. Feature support may vary, depending on the actual provider, and they mostly come with their own IaC solutions as well, but if you prefer not to be locked in to a platform, Terraform might be the best solution to go with.

Kubernetes: Container orchestration systems are considered Infrastructure as Code, as especially with Kubernetes, you have control over the internal network, containers, a lot of aspects of the actual machines, basically it’s more like an OS on it’s own right than anything. However, it requires you to have a running cluster of VMs with Kubernetes installed and configured.

All in all, you can use either Vagrant or Terraform to lay the groundwork for your fleet of VMs, then use Ansible, Puppet, Chef or Salt to handle their configuration continuously. Finally, Kubernetes can give you a way to orchestrate your services on them.

Are you looking for expert help with infrastructure related issues or project? Check out our DevOps and Infrastructure related services, or reach out to us at [email protected].

We’ve previously written a lot about Kubernetes, so this time we’ll take one step and take a look at our favorite remote configuration management tool:

What is Ansible?

Let’s take apart what we already know:

Ansible is a push-based IaC, providing a user-friendly domain-specific language so you can define your desired architecture in a declarative way.

Being push-based means that Ansible uses SSH for communicating between the machine that runs Ansible and the machines the configuration is being applied to.

The machines we wish to configure using Ansible are called managed nodes or hosts. In Ansible’s terminology, the list of hosts is called an inventory.

The machine that reads the definition files and runs Ansible to push the configuration to the hosts is called a control node.

How to Install Ansible

It is enough to install Ansible only on one machine, the control node.

Control node requirements are the following:

Python 2 (version 2.7) or Python 3 (versions 3.5 and higher) installed

Windows is not supported as a control node, but you can set it up on Windows 10 using WSL

Managed nodes also need Python to be installed.

RHEL and CentOS

sudo yum install ansible

Debian based distros and WSL

sudo apt update sudo apt install software-properties-common sudo apt-add-repository --yes --update ppa:ansible/ansible sudo apt install ansible

MacOS

The preferred way to install Ansible on a Mac is via pip.

pip install --user ansible

Run the following command to verify the installation:

ansible --version

Ansible Setup, Configuration, and Automation

For the purposes of this tutorial, we’ll set up a Raspberry Pi with Ansible, so even if the SD card gets corrupted, we can quickly set it up again and continue working with it.

Flash image (Raspbian)

Change default password

Set up passwordless SSH

Install packages you want to use

With Ansible, we can automate the process.

Let’s say we have a couple of Raspberry Pis, and after installing the operating system on them, we need the following packages to be installed on all devices:

vim

wget

curl

htop

We could install these packages one by one on every device, but that would be tedious. Let Ansible do the job instead.

First, we’ll need to create a project folder.

mkdir bootstrap-raspberry && cd bootstrap-raspberry

We need a config file and a hosts file. Let’s create them.

touch ansible.cfg touch hosts // file extension not needed

Ansible can be configured using a config file named ansible.cfg. You can find an example with all the options here.

Security risk: if you load ansible.cfg from a world-writable folder, another user could place their own config file there and run malicious code. More about that here.

The lookup order of the configuration file will be searched for in the following order:

ANSIBLE_CONFIG (environment variable if set)

ansible.cfg (in the current directory)

~/.ansible.cfg (in the home directory)

/etc/ansible/ansible.cfg

So if we have an ANSIBLE_CONFIG environment variable, Ansible will ignore all the other files(2., 3., 4.). On the other hand, if we don’t specify a config file, /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg will be used.

Now we’ll use a very simple config file with contents below:

[defaults] inventory = hosts host_key_checking = False

Here we tell Ansible that we use our hosts file as an inventory and to not check host keys. Ansible has host key checking enabled by default. If a host is reinstalled and has a different key in the known_hosts file, this will result in an error message until corrected. If a host is not initially in known_hosts this will result in prompting for confirmation interactively which is not favorable if you want to automate your processes.

Now let’s open up the hosts file:

[raspberries] 192.168.0.74 192.168.0.75 192.168.0.76 [raspberries:vars] ansible_connection=ssh ansible_user=pi ansible_ssh_pass=raspberry

We list the IP address of the Raspberry Pis under the [raspberries] block and then assign variables to them.

ansible_connection: Connection type to the host. Defaults to ssh. See other connection types here

ansible_user: The user name to use when connecting to the host

ansible_ssh_password: The password to use to authenticate to the host

Creating an Ansible Playbook

Now we’re done with the configuration of Ansible. We can start setting up the tasks we would like to automate. Ansible calls the list of these tasks “playbooks”.

In our case, we want to:

Change the default password,

Add our SSH public key to authorized_keys,

Install a few packages.

Meaning, we’ll have 3 tasks in our playbook that we’ll call pi-setup.yml.

By default, Ansible will attempt to run a playbook on all hosts in parallel, but the tasks in the playbook are run serially, one after another.

Let’s take a look at our pi-setup.yml as an example:

- hosts: all become: 'yes' vars: user: - name: "pi" password: "secret" ssh_key: "ssh-rsa …" packages: - vim - wget - curl - htop tasks: - name: Change password for default user user: name: '""' password: '""' state: present loop: - '""' - name: Add SSH public key authorized_key: user: '""' key: '""' loop: - '""' - name: Ensure a list of packages installed apt: name: '""' state: present - name: All done! debug: msg: Packages have been successfully installed

Tearing down our Ansible Playbook Example

Let’s tear down this playbook.

- hosts: all become: 'yes' vars: user: - name: "pi" password: "secret" ssh_key: "ssh-rsa …" packages: - vim - wget - curl - htop tasks: [ … ]

This part defines fields that are related to the whole playbook:

hosts: all: Here we tell Ansible to execute this playbook on all hosts defined in our hostfile.

become: yes: Execute commands as sudo user. Ansible uses privilege escalation systems to execute tasks with root privileges or with another user’s permissions. This lets you become another user, hence the name.

vars: User defined variables. Once you’ve defined variables, you can use them in your playbooks using the Jinja2 templating system.There are other sources vars can come from, such as variables discovered from the system. These variables are called facts.

tasks: List of commands we want to execute

Let’s take another look at the first task we defined earlier without addressing the user modules’ details. Don’t fret if it’s the first time you hear the word “module” in relation to Ansible, we’ll discuss them in detail later.

tasks: - name: Change password for default user user: name: '""' password: '""' state: present loop: - '""'

name: Short description of the task making our playbook self-documenting.

user: The module the task at hand configures and runs. Each module is an object encapsulating a desired state. These modules can control system resources, services, files or basically anything. For example, the documentation for the user module can be found here. It is used for managing user accounts and user attributes.

loop: Loop over variables. If you want to repeat a task multiple times with different inputs, loops come in handy. Let’s say we have 100 users defined as variables and we’d like to register them. With loops, we don’t have to run the playbook 100 times, just once.

Understanding the Ansible User Module

Zooming in on the user module:

user: name: '""' password: '""' state: present loop: - '""'

Ansible comes with a number of modules, and each module encapsulates logic for a specific task/service. The user module above defines a user and its password. It doesn’t matter if it has to be created or if it’s already present and only its password needs to be changed, Ansible will handle it for us.

Note that Ansible will only accept hashed passwords, so either you provide pre-hashed characters or - as above - use a hashing filter.

Are you looking for expert help with infrastructure related issues or project? Check out our DevOps and Infrastructure related services, or reach out to us at [email protected].

For the sake of simplicity, we stored our user’s password in our example playbook, but you should never store passwords in playbooks directly. Instead, you can use variable flags when running the playbook from CLI or use a password store such as Ansible Vault or the 1Password module .

Most modules expose a state parameter, and it is best practice to explicitly define it when it’s possible. State defines whether the module should make something present (add, start, execute) or absent (remove, stop, purge). Eg. create or remove a user, or start / stop / delete a Docker container.

Notice that the user module will be called at each iteration of the loop, passing in the current value of the user variable . The loop is not part of the module, it’s on the outer indentation level, meaning it’s task-related.

The Authorized Keys Module

The authorized_keys module adds or removes SSH authorized keys for a particular user’s account, thus enabling passwordless SSH connection.

- name: Add SSH public key authorized_key: user: '""' key: '""'

The task above will take the specified key and adds it to the specified user’s ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file, just as you would either by hand, or using ssh-copy-id.

The Apt module

We need a new vars block for the packages to be installed.

vars: packages: - vim - wget - curl - htop tasks: - name: Ensure a list of packages installed apt: name: '""' state: present

The apt module manages apt packages (such as for Debian/Ubuntu). The name field can take a list of packages to be installed. Here, we define a variable to store the list of desired packages to keep the task cleaner, and this also gives us the ability to overwrite the package list with command-line arguments if we feel necessary when we apply the playbook, without editing the actual playbook.

The state field is set to be present, meaning that Ansible should install the package if it’s missing, or skip it, if it’s already present. In other words, it ensures that the package is present. It could be also set to absent (ensure that it’s not there), latest (ensure that it’s there and it’s the latest version, build-deps (ensure that it’s build dependencies are present), or fixed (attempt to correct a system with broken dependencies in place).

Let’s run our Ansible Playbook

Just to reiterate, here is the whole playbook together:

Now we’re ready to run the playbook:

ansible-playbook pi-setup.yml

Or we can run it with overwriting the config file:

$ ANSIBLE_HOST_KEY_CHECKING=False $ ansible-playbook - i “192.168.0.74, 192.168.0.75” ansible_user=john ansible_ssh_pass=johnspassword” -e ‘{“user”: [{ “name”: “pi”, “password”: “raspberry”, “state”: “present” }] }’ -e '{"packages":["curl","wget"]}' pi-setup.yml

The command-line flags used in the snippet above are:

-i (inventory): specifies the inventory. It can either be a comma-separated list as above, or an inventory file.

-e (or --extra-vars): variables can be added or overridden through this flag. In our case we are overwriting the configuration laid out in our hosts file (ansible_user, ansible_ssh_pass) and the variables user and packages that we have previously set up in our playbook.

What to use Ansible for

Of course, Ansible is not used solely for setting up home-made servers.

Ansible is used to manage VM fleets in bulk, making sure that each newly created VM has the same configuration as the others. It also makes it easy to change the configuration of the whole fleet together by applying a change to just one playbook.

But Ansible can be used for a plethora of other tasks as well. If you have just a single server running in a cloud provider, you can define its configuration in a way that others can read and use easily. You can also define maintenance playbooks as well, such as creating new users and adding the SSH key of new employees to the server, so they can log into the machine as well.

Or you can use AWX or Ansible Tower to create a GUI based Linux server management system that provides a similar experience to what Windows Servers provide.

Stay tuned and subscribe to our newsletter! You can find the subscribe box in the left column, on the top of the article.

Next time, we’ll dive deeper into an enterprise use case of Ansible with AWX.

Getting Started with Ansible a.k.a. how to Automate your Infrastructure published first on https://koresolpage.tumblr.com/

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ramajmedia · 6 years ago

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Star Trek: The 10 Worst Episodes Of DS9 Ever, According To IMDb

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was a sci-fi series that ran from 1993 to 1999, spanning 176 episodes. It was the third sequel to the original Star Trek series, after The Animated Series and Next Generation. It takes place in the years 2369-2375 and takes place primarily on a space station as opposed to aboard a star ship. The show follows Commander Benjamin Sisko, Major Kira Nerys, Constable Odo, Chief Medical Officer Bashir, and Quark.

RELATED: X-Men: 5 Best & Worst Movies, According To IMDb

Critics and audiences loved that it explored lengthy serialized storytelling, as well as religious themes—ideas that Rodenberry had forbade in the original series and Next Generation. But every series has its bad episodes. Here are the ten worst episodes of DS9.

10 The Passenger (6.4/10)

This early episode is generally disliked because fans think it either dumbs down the crew too much or because the execution of the story is boring.

The DS9 crew respond to a distress call aboard a ship and find captain Ty Kjiada and a dead prisoner Rao Vantika. Kjiada repeatedly warns the crew that Vantika is too wily and determined to extend his life to have allowed himself to die so easily. They don’t believe him until it turns out that he has managed to transfer his consciousness into another character.

9 Fascination (6.3/10)

This episode in season 3 focuses on the Barjoran Gratitude Festival. The plot line focuses almost exclusively on romantic and lusty stories. Jake is moping, O’Brien’s wife is upset about things, a Betazoid ambassador arrives explicitly to start a romantic relationship with Odo, and Dax is obsessed with Sisko to a dangerous amount. It has a strong Midsummer’s Night vibe, and things go very strange before they’re righted.

RELATED: 10 Best Spielberg Movies Ever, According To IMDb

According to fans, the episode is filler—unwatchable filler, at that. In a show with 176 episodes, there are bound to be a few that feel like filler, and “Fascination” is one of them.

8 Second Sight (6.2/10)

Commander Sisko meets a woman who he finds himself intrigued by—she seems to appear and disappear randomly. He asks Odo to investigate her so he can learn her secrets. Meanwhile, Dax works with Professor Gideon Seyetik, a brilliant scientist known for his ambitious terraforming projects. He’s arrived to complete his most ambitious project yet: relighting the star Epsilon 119. He invites the crew over for dinner so he can expound upon how brilliant he is, and the two storylines finally come together.

RELATED: 20 Storylines That Deep Space Nine Wants Us to Forget

Fans see the episode as northing particularly special. Seyetik’s arrogance made him a frustrating character and his final sacrifice less meaningful.

7 The Storyteller (6.1/10)

Chief O’Brien is sent to Bajoran village with Bashir in order to help out with a medical emergency that endangers the entire community. When he arrives, the only sick person is Sirah, a spiritual leader who controls a monster, the Dal’Rok. He indicates that O’Brien is the successor, and people are immediately devoted to him. Meanwhile, back at the space station, Sisko mediates between two Bajoran tribes who are having a conflict about a border that changed due to the Cardassian interference.

RELATED: 10 Best Episodes Of Naruto Shippuden According To IMDb

Fans found both plots boring, and some criticized it as being too ‘feel-good’ rather than a real adventure.

6 Move Along Home (6.0/10)

The DS9 crew is awaiting a visit from Wadi, a Gamma Quadrant species who are trying to make official first contact. However, when they arrive all they want to do is go to Quark’s place so they can drink and gamble. They have unfamiliar and advanced games, and somehow the command staff end up inside a live action game that they have to be guided out of.

RELATED: The 10 Biggest Deep Space Nine Twists and Reveals, Ranked

Fans who dislike the episode complain that the Wadi simply leave at the end of the episode. They are not punished, nor do they attempt to maintain diplomatic relations. At the 50th anniversary Star Trek convention in Las Vegas, this episode made the list of 10 Worst Episodes in the entire Star Trek franchise.

5 Resurrection (5.9/10)

The Star Trek mirror universe was first introduced in the original series. In Deep Space Nine, the crew interacts with the mirror universe several times; “Resurrection” marks the fifth episode exploring the universe. It begins with Bareil beaming into the ship—but Bareil died over a year before. Major Kira, who had loved the original Bareil, immediately begins to trust this Bareil, even though their experiences of the mirror universe have been with criminal versions of themselves. Naturally, he and Mirror Kira are up to something.

Fans find the episode dull and the writing lazy.

4 Profit And Lace (5.9/10)

The Ferengi leader Grand Nagus arrives on DS9, we learn that he has been deposed for giving equal rights to the females. The evil Brunt is going to take his place, so Quark and his family decide to do whatever it takes to reinstate the rightful Nagus and keep the new equality in place. They invite Nilva, a member of the Ferengi Trade Commission, to DS9 to see that a Ferengi female can be just as competent as a Ferengi male. However, Quark’s mother—the only female Ferengi available—falls ill at the last second and Quark must disguise himself as a woman to try to convince Nilva.

3 Meridian (5.7/10)

Sisko wants to explore the Gamma Quadrant, and the crew discovers unusual distortions in a system without planets. When a surprise planet appears, an inhabitant explains to them the Meridian’s shifts between dimensions. It only exists in this dimension every sixty years. Jadzia falls in love with a resident of the Meridian, while the wealthy creep Tiron pressures Quark to create a holosuite program of Major Kira after she rejects Tiron.

RELATED: Grey's Anatomy: 10 Storylines That Have Aged Poorly

Boring is the most common criticism of this episode. A lot of people also would have liked to see the Tiron/Quark/Kira plot take the main focus as it had a lot of untapped potential.

2 The Muse (5.7/10)

Lwaxana Troi returns to DS9 to beg for Odo’s help. Her husband wants to take their son from her to raise him separate from girls until he’s 16, as is traditional in the Tavnian culture. Odo promises to help her and they ultimately come up with a strange but ultimately kind solution to her problem. While this is happening, Jake meets an older woman who is fascinated by his writing and encourages him to keep writing more and more. Her presence serves as a muse to him and Jake writes great things while she’s there. However, it appears she’s a succubus because the more he writes, the weaker he gets.

1 Let He Who Is Without Sin… (5.6/10)

This season 5 episode is the lowest rated episode in the series and the reviews of it are full of people who vehemently hated it. It reads as sensationalist—the team goes to Risa, a pleasure planet of the Federation, where Dax looks forward to letting loose with her Klingon boyfriend Worf. Suddenly, conservative protesters show up who are calling the Federation soft. Worf, who has become increasingly abusive, supports them while also treating Dax horrifically.

Fans hate that Dax and Worf make up at the end. No one likes that Risa has been made dramatic when it was always a place for light and fun episodes. And most think it’s worth skipping.

NEXT: Star Trek: 10 Hysterical DS9 Logic Memes Only True Fans Understand

source https://screenrant.com/star-trek-deep-space-nine-episodes-worst-imdb/

#screenrant

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strainofthestress · 8 years ago

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Fanfiction: Somebody to Share it With Ch. 3

To: All Hands

From: Ryder

Like I said in our meeting, great job on Eos. It truly was a team effort, and you should all be very proud of everything we accomplished there (from terraforming a world to not dying, great job all around). I received a message from Director Tann saying that our return to the Nexus will be greeted enthusiastically; I know I don’t need to tell you all just how much this means for the initiative.

I’ve been told by Gil and Kallo that The Tempest is going to be down for a day or so once we hit the Nexus, so consider yourselves on shore leave for 36 hours once we hit the Nexus. Try to stay out of trouble, relax and celebrate a bit, and come back ready to hit the ground – or rather the cluster – running again at the end.

Crew Message Board Comments:

Who wants to go to Vortex? I’ll buy the first round. [Liam]

Wait, is Vortex a bar? I have been out of the loop. I’ll buy second round. [PeeBee]

You clearly haven’t seen what the Krogan think of as a “round”. [Drax]

I have time reserved on a training field in the Health Center if anybody would like to join me. [Cora]

Despite the large quantity of physical exercise seen on missions, dedicated physical training is important for your health. [T’Perro]

Yeah, Vortex sounds like fun. [Gil]

Tempest, Docked at Nexus, 1326

A box of “BlastOh’s” lie on the floor next to her desk, the inside a tomb, standing in testament of the food which once resided inside. Emails and responses slid by as Vetra’s eye’s wavered, the words on the terminal sliding in and out of focus as she struggled to keep reading them. She had been working for hours, since Ryder’s email, in fact (which she hadn’t yet bothered to read), trying to get supplies for the crew – I need the “supplies” for Drax, Cora wants some more shotgun mods, those armor mods for Liam might be tricky, but it won’t matter if I can’t find these replacement parts for the Nomad.

Their success on Eos had been exhilarating. The crew was all smiles and compliments as the colonists arrived, and the almost hysteric feeling of euphoria had slid right into that night, a clearing in the outpost soon home to one of the first proper celebrations in Andromeda. So proper a celebration, in fact, that Liam’s head still didn’t feel normal. Vetra had participated in the festivities, her hope ran just as deep as anyone’s, and came as just as much of a relief after months of the hopeless emptiness of space staring at them, at her, where arks and pathfinders were supposed to be. But she knew, more keenly than most, that there was always more work to be done. Her mind crawled back to the years she had spent working two even three jobs as her body crawled back on to the Tempest, remembering the long days and longer nights as 13-year-old Vetra had tried to support her little family of two.

The list of acquisitions seemed endless – it always did. The Tempest was far from a well-tuned machine: the pathfinder still seemed to be figuring himself out, not to mention his role as pathfinder; Cora kept saying she was over getting usurped at Alec’s decision but the occasional outburst at a punching bag said otherwise. Lexi still didn’t seem to be able to comprehend just how many injuries a field team could sustain, and PeeBee still seemed tempted to use her escape pod of an apartment. But through it all, they all understood one thing: Vetra was the lifeline of the entire operation. Through months of hopeless stagnation, after an uprising and subsequent resumption of command, the supply lines on the Nexus had been turned into a nexus themselves, confusing twists and turns of bureaucracy standing between the ship and it’s necessary supplies. Vetra’s back channels, though, were a much needed life-line. And she, and everybody else knew it. It drove them to her office whenever they needed anything, and it drove her through nights of “Turian stimulant A113” and emails.

A knock at the door woke the Turian from a reverie she hadn’t realized she was taking, the familiar blue of the visor snapping to life as she looked away from the screen, the IFF read-out appearing shortly after Ryder started talking.

“Vetra, you busy?”

“I’m always busy, Pathfinder. But, if there’s something you need, I’m all ears.”

Ryder walked in, his outfit the same grey, black, and blue uniform he had designated for himself. While Alec’s clothes had always sported the familiar black and red coloring of his prided N7 rank, Scott refused to adopt the colors, calling them “An N7’s colors, not a pathfinder’s”. Instead, he had colored a standard Initiative uniform slightly darker, with a black collar and grey main panels. He carried with him what looked like a duffel bag.

“I don’t need much, just to know what you plan on doing on the Nexus while we’re here.”

Vetra laughed, turning her chair and standing to face Ryder.

“What, you taking role-call now?”

“Something like that. I figured I should know where everybody is. That way when Drack or Liam get in a fight, I know where to be worried.”

“That’s awfully pessimistic.”

Ryder glanced sideways, awkwardly shaking his head and pursed lips.

“That was... meant to be funny. Anyways, what are you doing?”

Vetra’s mandibles flared before snapping tightly to the side of her mouth, her tired eyes closing as Ryder drifted out of focus – I really need another stimulant. Or a 15 minute cat-nap – she ran her hand over the top of her fringe, scratching it gently with her gloved hands.

“I’m staying here. Too much to do to take a break. I can get a lot done with 24 hours.”

The pathfinder leveled Vetra with a look she was sure was intended to be disapproval, but somehow hit a tone much closer to confusion.

“Vetra, your terminal history says out of thepast 36 hours you’ve worked for 30 of them. You need a break.”

Vetra shook her head, laughing breathily as she spouted all the justifications to keep working she had been telling herself for years.

“Yeah, but I need to keep working. The Tempest doesn’t supply itself, and we need the supplies.”

Ryder sighed slightly, shaking his head before looking around, his gaze setting on the empty cereal box on the ground before a small chuckle escaped his mouth. Vetra continued to watch him as a sideways grin made its way onto his face, and he met her eyes, an odd twinkle of what might have been called mischeviousness in his gaze.

“Do Turian’s work out?”

“What do you mean?”

“Working out. Physical Training. Do Turian’s do that?”

Vetra’s bow plates dropped and her mandibles spread as she gave Ryder a thoroughly confused look.

“Yes? It’s usually a part of a Turian’s childhood, especially when they enlist. I didn’t do a whole lot, though.”

“Do you have clothes?”

“What do you mean?”

“Workout clothes? Did you bring any?”

“Usually turians just workout in their armor.”

“You all have armor? What about the civilians?”

Vetra laughed, the question seeming stupid and obvious, though less so when a human background was considered.

“A Turian’s armor is their social status: it bears their rank on it and scars from battle. Most are given their armor as a parting gift when they discharge. There are a few events – councils, wedding assemblies, so on – where armor is the acceptable outfit. I pieced my set together from what I could find, though.”

Ryder’s head seemed to recoil as his face made an odd human expression Vetra couldn’t place, something between amazement and bewilderment, with one eyebrow and a corner of his mouth shooting upwards on his face.

“Huh. Alright. Good to know, I guess.”

Ryder looked up, thoughtfully, then opened his duffel bag and looked inside, his brows furrowed as Vetra could practically see plans broken down and rearranged in his head. After a pause, he spoke.

“Alright, I’ll go suit-up in my armor. Meet me at this nav-point” Ryder brought up his omnitool and a location popped up on Vetra’s “in 45 minutes. Bring water.”

Nexus Apollo Commons, 1420

Vetra looked around the empty common area as she waited for Ryder, the space dark and empty. The HVAC system was barely operational here – just enough to keep air moving – and the majority of the space was still being used as storage – crates and containers of supplies strewn around where walkways and shops eventually would be. The trees had yet to be brought out of bio-stasis, and their trunks glowed with the stasis nanobots.

The area was similar in theme to the docking bay – a simulated sky available above, though the ceiling was currently a blank grey, trees planted around and various benches, meeting areas, and tables strewn around. It was a long area, 150 meters in length and approximately 50 in width, walkways the room oriented to the main rotation axis of the Nexus. The entire area had a balcony running around it with what looked like storefronts leading onto it, stairs leading to it at regular intervals, a few maintenance ladders still mounted. Panels were missing from the floor in places, the metal of the floor skeleton peeking out as an industrial reminder that, not even two years ago, this station was a collection of parts brought in the biggest freighter ever built. The entire space smelled of stagnation, of waiting, and the dust on the floor showed just how long it had been since people had worried about it, building it to put off the frenetic worry of survival before abandoning it in mind and body. The door sounded as Ryder stepped out of the tram.

“Vetra, glad to see you’re already here.”

“Pathfinder, mind telling me what this is all about?”

The pathfinder laughed, fiddling with his omnitool as he spoke, the lights and HVAC systems in the space springing to life at his command.

“Well, loathe as I am to say it, Lexi is right – we do need some exercise. I was gonna take the opportunity to work out today anyways, but seeing as you’re determined to lock yourself in that closet of yours all day long, I figured you could use a little tiring R&R as well.”

Ryder began to stretch as he finished his sentence, Vetra’s response slightly annoyed at what seemed like the charity work, her mind still fixed on all the emails she could answer in the time she was spending here.

“I appreciate the gesture, but I have a lot of work to do. There’s orders to place, deals to…”

Ryder cut her off, still bent over for his stretch.

“We all have work to do. Trust me, you don’t want to know how many unread emails I have at my terminal. But part of my job is to look out for the crew’s welfare, and that includes you. Work is important, yeah. But you can’t work yourself raw all the time and expect to still be productive. You need a break. Besides, just as a person you need a break, for your sanity.”

Vetra’s glare burned holes in the back of Ryder’s head as he continued to stretch, but he ignored the heat he instinctually felt there, instead beginning to stretch his legs as he looked around at the space, evaluating the lay-out, clearly looking for something.

Vetra broke the silence, her voice reluctantly resigned.

“Alright, I’ll bite. What are we doing, then.”

Ryder continued to look around, planning. Eventually, after a few pauses, he spoke.

“Obstacle course. This part of the station has been pretty much abandoned since they built it, and since it’s on the tips, I figure it’ll stay that way. Three million people down the road, yeah, this place will be bustling. But, for now? Perfect secluded training ground. I pulled a few strings with kesh to get power down here. So, I figure so long as we’ve got armor on, we could find a course and run it for time trials.”

Vetra looked around as Ryder talked, scouting out her own path over crates and under trees, up ladders and over balconies. Her visor tracked her motion, mapping a course out on the landscape. Ryder pre-empted her.

“Here’s how this is going to work: we’ll run up these stairs, across that balcony, vault over that crate, jump jet-over to that bench. Then, crawl under those benches, then sprint to that ladder…”

Nexus Apollo Commons, 1535

Ryder lay on the ground, panting, sweat running down his forehead to his auburn hair, dripping on the ground from there. Vetra was not too far away, sitting with her back to a tree-planter, her chest heaving similarly as she panted at the air, trying to lose heat as quickly as she could. They remained there for longer than either of them could think, time giving way to fatigue as they both tried to recover from the 12th run of the course. What had started as joking around a course as colleagues had turned into racing as friends, had turned into simply trying to finish it in the time interval they were given. Ryder had worked out like this before, but never with armor; and Vetra had rarely worked out this way before, relying mostly on her work to keep her in shape. Vetra spoke first, her voice sinking mostly into the subharmonic range as she continued to struggle to regain her breath.

“Well, Ryder, while I don’t think we’re in a position to put amusement over necessities, I’ll admit: That was good. Never knew jumpjets could be used that way.”

Ryder laughed, rolling over and pulling himself next to Vetra, the two panting next to each-other, staring blankly at the wall across from them.

“Neither did I until I tried it. Where’d you learn to slide like that?”

Vetra looked over, her mandibles spread in amusement as she tapped the armor over her breastplate.

“Learned to skid on this thing a few years back. Trust me, you don’t want to know why I ended up learning it.”

Ryder laughed, wiping new beads of sweat off the edge of his nose, wiping the water off on his thoroughly soaked undersuit.

“I’m sure I do, but I’ll ask later. Honestly, it kind of reminded me of a penguin.”

“A what?”

“A penguin. Flightless bird from earth. They slide on their stomachs on the ice. I’ll send you a few vids, you’ll either laugh or hate me, probably both.”

“We’ll see.”

Silence sat between the two, the camaraderie of shared sweat and physical misery (sweat only proverbial for one, but the misery of the training real for both) before Ryder groaned his way up, offering a hand and pulling Vetra up as he spoke.

“Well, I want a couch to lay on, and Kesh granted me access to this whole block. Want to see what kind of apartments there are here?”

They started walking, up the stairs (much to the protest of their legs) before coming into one of the residential corridors leading from the commons. As they walked past, Ryder poked his head in different rooms, the furnishing blank white and blue to match the Andromeda theme of the Nexus, waiting for the touch of an inhabitant to make it seem anything but a staged apartment. As they walked, Vetra spoke.

“Already shopping for property, Ryder?”

A small laugh as he exited another apartment.

“Not quite yet. Besides, who’s to say I’m not just going to live on the Tempest my whole life?”

A pause as Ryder evaluated another apartment.

“This one.”

Vetra walked in, the apartment small by terrestrial standards, but moderately large for a space station. Ryder had already started moving a couch, a large set of bay windows opening up to a view of the gas clouds around the Nexus, the occasional maintenance shuttle zipping by. After moving the couch – a motion Vetra found hilariously reminiscent of Liam – Ryder began taking off his chest and arm pieces, the plating hitting the ground with a heavy “thud” as air began to flow over his undersuit, his relieved “sighs” enough to indicate his contentedness.

Ryder flopped down on the couch, Vetra sitting next to him. He spoke first.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Uh huh.”

“When I was younger, my mom would take me to fly through the clouds around the citadel, talking about what they were made of and what we knew about them, how much we didn’t. But, ultimately, I think I just loved the way they played with the shuttle’s engines, the vortices in the back, the streams over the window.”

“Uh huh”

“Eventually I got old enough to understand what she was saying, but by then I already knew how beautiful the galaxy was, how much I… Vetra, are you working?”

Vetra’s head snapped quickly up to meet Ryder’s gaze as her visor hastily minimized all the email and trading tabs she had pulled up while Ryder was speaking. Her eyes widened and her mandibles flew out, mouth shut, her face like a child pulling a cookie out of the jar. A long pause ticked by before she answered.

“… No.”

“Vetra…”

Vetra’s eyes closed for half a second longer than a blink as her mandibles tightened, the Turian equivalent to pursed lips, her head angled down.

“Yes, I was. Look, Ryder, I enjoyed the workout, and the whole ‘take time for yourself’ thing. But, I’ve got a lot of work to do. I can’t give this much time to fun, not yet. My job is to keep you, this crew, at top capacity. And I do that with the skills I’ve got – negotiations, acquisitions, ‘back channels’, etc. That doesn’t involve sight-seeing.”

One of Ryder’s eyebrows slowly rose as he listened, his mouth skewing to one side, a response already forming in his head.

“I know you’ve got work. And I know you’re driven. And maybe I just can’t keep up and that’s why I’m dragging you along. But, I also know that, as much as you don’t want to admit it, you’re human too… well… turian, I guess. You’re not a robot, let’s go with that. I’ve seen the supplies of stims you’ve got, the boxes of cereal. You binge on work and then expect yourself to run at full capacity, and that’s just physically impossible. If I have to ‘order’ you to do this, or whatever it is I can do as pathfinder, fine. But, you need a break. Whether you want one or not. And, I’ll bet, if you’re really honest with yourself, you’ll agree.”

Vetra stared Ryder down, for a bit, her eyes searching his before she smiled a little, her reply laced with a bit of joviality.

“I guess we did just establish the initiative’s first outpost on Eos.”

A smile from Ryder.

“Precisely. And who was it that said ‘I’m going to enjoy this for as long as it lasts’?”

“That was more long-term, and you know it.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m not going to use it. Now who’s having trouble keeping up?”

“You were, on that last lap. I totally beat you off that balcony jump.”

“Like hell you did.”

Ryder smiled, laughing as he turned back to look out across the expanse of gasses, the currents flowing in the cosmic winds like a glowing ocean in the serene blackness of space. To his left he heard the soft purring of a headset and omnitool, the occasional click of a turian finger going too far and hitting armor.

“Vetra…”

“Just finishing up a few things, don’t worry.”

Eventually the sounds stopped and the two sat and watched the galaxy outside while their legs seized up, a feeling both could identify but neither wanted to admit, nor think about. After a few minutes Ryder spoke, his tone friendly, if still slightly professional.

“Thanks for joining me. Working out is always more fun with somebody else.”

“Thanks for dragging me out of the Tempest. And making my legs feel like two lead pipes. I’m going to remember this, Ryder. Just wait until you need incendiary rounds again.”

“Do I even want to know what you could do with those?”

“I doubt it.”

Author’s Comments:

Hey all! I don't know how many of you actually read my comments, but I love explaining things here anyways. So, wanted to branch out a bit from the past two "Vetra reassures Wes" storylines and give the friendship a bit more give and take. I'll admit, I'm a bit unsure as to my characterization of Vetra - sometimes when I'm writing her she turns into Garrus or Tali. Comments on that would be appreciated. Besides that, I know this is fluffy as a down blanket, but fluff is where a lot of character building happens, in my opinion, and at the end of the day, character building/flushing-out is half of what fanfiction is. The other half is... a bit unspeakable, haha.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed it! Comments are always welcome and appreciated, I love knowing if you guys are enjoying this or not! And reblog, I love it when my work gets shared around!

#fics #fanfiction #Mass Effect #mass effect andromeda #me: andromeda #mass effect fanfiction #mass effect fic #male ryder #vetra nyx #vetra x ryder #rydra

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faizrashis1995 · 6 years ago

Text

Deployment with Kubernetes

I made an assumption you are already familiar with all of Kubernetes basic concepts and have a cluster available. Otherwise, you may want to read my previous article which will teach you initial elements and simple setup to begin with:

How to configure Google Kubernetes Engine using Terraform

Introduction

Objects in the Kubernetes API are abstractions that represent a state of your system: deployed containerized applications and workloads, their associated network and disk resources, and other information about what your cluster does.

From my recent blogpost, you should know that Kubernetes also contains a number of higher-level abstractions called Controllers built upon the basic objects, and provide additional functionality along with convenience features:

Kubernetes basic glossary

Must-know terminology to understand Kubernetes concepts

Objects are “records of intent” — once you create them, the Kubernetes will constantly work to ensure that these objects exist. By creating an object, you’re effectively telling the Kubernetes what you want your cluster’s workload to look like; this is your cluster’s desired state.

Installation

To work with Kubernetes objects — either to create, modify, or delete them — you’ll need to use the Kubernetes API. When you use the kubectl command-line interface, for example, the CLI makes the necessary Kubernetes API calls for you.

Using kubectl, you can inspect cluster resources — create, delete, and update components — look at your new cluster, and bring up example apps.

Edit This Page Use the Kubernetes command-line tool, kubectl, to deploy and manage applications on Kubernetes. Using…

YAML

When you create an object in Kubernetes, you must provide the object spec that describes its desired state, as well as some basic information about the object (such as a name).

When you use the Kubernetes API to create an object (either directly or via kubectl), the API request must include that information as JSON in a request body. Most often, you provide the information in a .yaml file and kubectl converts the information to JSON when making the API request.

Required Fields

In the .yaml file for the Kubernetes object you want to create, you’ll need to set values for the following fields:

apiVersion - which version of the Kubernetes API you’re using to create this object;

kind - what kind of object you want to create;

metadata - data that helps uniquely identify the object, including a name string and an optional namespace.

You’ll also need to provide the object spec field. The precise format of the object spec is different for every Kubernetes object, and contains nested fields specific to that object. The Kubernetes API Reference can help you find the spec format for all of the objects you can create using Kubernetes.

Deployment

A deployment controller lets you manage a set of identical pods, scale, roll out, and roll back versions of your applications. Everyone who runs applications on Kubernetes cluster uses a deployment. Without it, you’d need to create, update, and delete a bunch of pods manually.

For deployment, you declare a single object in a YAML file:

Firstly, have a look at theapiVersion value. apps/v1 is the most common API group in Kubernetes, with many core objects. It includes functionality related to running applications on Kubernetes like Deployments.

After that, let’s see the spec contents that describe your desired state for the object and governs its configuration. As you already know, it’s the characteristics you want the object to have.

When you create the Deployment, you might set its spec to define how many replicas of the application you want to run. The Kubernetes system updates the status to match your spec. Actually, .spec.replicas is an optional field that defaults to 1.

The selector field defines how the Deployment finds which Pods to manage. In our case, you simply select a label that is defined in the Pod template (app: api). .spec.selector.matchLabels must match .spec.template.metadata.labels and specify a label selector for the Pods targeted by this deployment.

The .spec.template has exactly the same schema as a Pod, except it is nested and does not have an apiVersion or kind. Deployment uses a Pod template to create the Pods for which it is responsible. The template field contains the following sub-fields:

The Pods are labeled as app: apiusing the labels field.

The Pod template’s specification (.template.spec field) indicates that the Pods run some container based on the given image.

Container is named example-container using the name field.

Port 4444 will be exposed so that the container can accept traffic.

And that’s basically the entire definition of Deployment in its minimal scope.

Last but not least, I’d like to explain the “magic” with environmental variables inside a YAML file. You may wonder how exactly it is supposed to work. Let me answer you briefly and explain what the envsubst command actually is.

The envsubst program substitutes the values of environment variables. In the normal operation mode, standard input is copied to standard output, with references to environment variables of the form $VARIABLE or ${VARIABLE} being replaced with the corresponding values.

Let’s see this in action:

~/Desktop » echo $USER

squixy

~/Desktop » echo 'You username is: $USER'

You username is: $USER

~/Desktop » echo 'You username is: $USER' | envsubst

You username is: squixy

This is how it works in the simplest form, reading input from the command line and replacing specific forms with your environmental variables. It’s pretty useful but we actually want to use it with .yaml files. We can do that as well:

~/Desktop » cat k8s.yml

---

apiVersion: apps/v1

kind: Deployment

spec:

replicas: ${NO_REPLICAS}

~/Desktop » echo $NO_REPLICAS

~/Desktop » export NO_REPLICAS=3

~/Desktop » echo $NO_REPLICAS

~/Desktop » envsubst < k8s.yml

---

apiVersion: apps/v1

kind: Deployment

spec:

replicas: 3

As you can see, there’s a variable definition inside the YAML file. We substitute it with what we have defined in our environment by redirecting the file contents to the envsubst command.

Applying the configuration

To finally apply the Kubernetes configuration, you should pipe YAML file definition into variables substitution and pass the result as a file:

~/Desktop » cat k8s.yml | envsubst | kubectl apply -f -

deployment.apps/example-deployment configured

ingress.extensions/example-ingress unchanged

service/example-api unchanged

As your last concern, you may wonder how to automate this process. What I usually do is to invoke the above script in a CI server where all the necessary environment variables are exported. This way I’m able to delegate the entire workflow and provide continuous delivery of the applications I build.

Hopefully, this article introduced you to Kubernetes configuration definition, deployment, and automation of the entire process quite well.

With the knowledge you have now, you are able to describe your Kubernetes structure and apply it to a cluster. You can have a YAML file which explains your architecture or infrastructure to anyone else.

You should be also already familiar with the basic concepts and practical strategies so you can finally start deploying your applications. Do not hesitate to try that in your team and don’t be afraid of experimenting with any changes.[Source]-https://blog.lelonek.me/deployment-with-kubernetes-e74cd6a8974

Basic & Advanced Kubernetes Courses using cloud computing, AWS, Docker etc. in Mumbai. Advanced Containers Domain is used for 25 hours Kubernetes Training.

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buzzdixonwriter · 8 years ago

Text

Alien Ate It

Alien: Covenant is a noticeable improvement over the previous entry, Prometheus, and since I liked Prometheus you’d think I’d like Alien: Covenant at least as much.

Funny thing, that…

We’re gonna get S*P*O*I*L*E*R*I*C*I*O*U*S in a couple of paragraphs, but to give folks a buffer, let’s discuss the underlying storyline first.

Like Prometheus before it, Alien: Covenant explicitly ties into the replicant laden world of Blade Runner and, by implication, the Predator franchise as well. For those keeping score at home, the internal chronological sequence of the three overlapping series of films (excluding the occasional flashback) is:

Predator [1987]

The Predator [slated for 2018]

Predator 2 [1990]

Predators [2010]

Alien Vs Predator [2004]

Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem [2007]

Blade Runner [1982]

Blade Runner 2049 [slated for 2017]

Prometheus [2012]

Alien: Covenant [2017]

Alien [1979]

Aliens [1986]

Alien3 [1992]

Alien: Resurrection [1997]

Alien: Covenant is the 8th film in the linked series that feature the Dan O’Bannon / Ron Shussett / H.R. Giger alien xenomorph creature/s.

The good news is it looks gorgeous, has a nifty spaceship (altho to me it seemed a mash-up of Battlestar: Galactica and the S.S. Valley Forge from Silent Running with some solar sails swiped from Star Trek Nemesis thrown on), takes the series in a few new directions, has a sufficient amount of boog-booga, and a nice snapper ending.

The not-so-good news is that while the film looks good, the characters are straight out of the Flash Gordon school of planetary exploration (more on that in a moment), none of the tech talk adds up, it already seems horribly dated, and a really great idea for a movie is thrown away by making it part of the Alien franchise (again, more on that later).

It exists not to tell its own story, but to amputate the gangrenous limb that was the Promethian (a.k.a. space jockey) storyline introduced in Prometheus and cauterize the wound so as not to have to ever revisit that concept again.

Where to begin, where to begin…?

Let’s start with the Flash Gordon nonsense. Okay, it’s perfectly acceptable in the realm of space opera to land or beam down on a newly discovered world with no spacesuit, take a nice deep breath, proclaim “there’s air here”, then proceed to your main story without ever referring to microorganisms, spores, fungi, insects, etc., etc., and of course, etc.

But in the universe of the Alien franchise, there should be at least a nod in the direction of plausibility.

The Covenant is a colony ship with 2,000 frozen colonists, about 1200 frozen embryos, and a small crew on call that consists of the cast of a low budget lower tier cable channel’s PTA wives soap opera. In the context of their own universe they are not going to expose their colonists to any unresearched danger.

Indeed, the entire franchise is based on the concept of being hyperaware of the potential of deadly alien life forms (and not just xenomorphs).

The film actually has 2nd-in-command Branson (Katherine Waterston) raise this very issue only to be overruled by Captain Oram (Billy Crudup). Crudup’s reasons really don’t pass muster; the crew of the Nostromo in the first (by order of release) Alien film were expendable roughnecks contractually obligated to investigate a strange signal, not a valuable human cargo who needed to get to their destination unharmed.

(The easy solution would have been a line of dialog that indicated the ship’s systems were damaged badly enough that the possibility of failing in deep space was a real probability and as such they go to the heretofore undiscovered world [and more on that in a moment, too] because they’d lose all the hibernating colonists otherwise.)

In the original Alien film, the moon they land on is inhospitable-bordering-downright-hostile to any form of life; the Nostromo’s crew needs to venture forth in spacesuits and even that doesn’t protect them from your friendly neighborhood facehugger.

By Aliens the hostile moon was being terraformed -- and I’m nowhere near certain that Ridley Scott or most of his creative team understand that “terraforming” means transforming the atmosphere of a planet in order to make it hospitable to humans without spacesuits -- and the time line cited at the beginning of this post suggests either (a) the Weyland Corporation found the wrecked Promethian / space jockey ship and hid that fact from their colonists or (b) the ship activated itself and flew away (which apparently happens more often than one thinks in the Alien franchise universe) but not before leaving eggs for the colonists to find.

The point being that moon held no native life of its own in Alien and presumably the colonists of Aliens believed the world was sterile and, since it now lacked any potentially toxic atmospheric elements, safe to go out sans spacesuits / hazmat gear.

The other Alien films prior to Prometheus involve the xenomorphs inflicting themselves upon humans, rending the issue of possible biological contamination moot.

Now, the crew of the Covenant isn’t as brutally stupid in the exobiology department as the crew of the Prometheus -- no “trained biologist” whips off their spacesuit glove to stick their bare finger into some strange icky goo they just found -- but damn, they come close. They go down to the planet surface in a lander with no airlock, they wear no masks or protective gear, and yet the planet is literally jammed horizon to horizon with rich dense botanical life so the #&@%ing possibility that there might be potentially deadly microorganisms should have occurred to somebody!

But, no, just go stomping around in swampy land, kicking over toadstools, breathing in deeply when they see particles floating in the air.

These idiots are dumb enough to still be smoking cigars and cigarettes in the 22nd century (which in the closing credits 20th Century Fox is quick to deny represent paid product placement), so whatever criteria they’re using for selecting extraterrestrial colonists, common #&@%ing sense is apparently waaay down on the list…

Which leads to another problem with the entire series, but especially acute in Alien: Covenant: All the Alien related films are cast with contemporary crews.

By that I mean the Nostromo looked / talked / acted like working class stiffs from the 1970s, the marines of the U.S.S. Sulaco were post-Vietnam grunts and their corporate handler was a quintessential 1980s yuppie, the Prometheus was crewed with millennials, and the Covenant with the aforementioned lower-middle class red state PTA couples.

I halfway expected somebody to drag out a space helmet and announce a key party.

Now, it’s always difficult to create a believable sci-fi / fantasy culture for a film (altho Blade Runner certainly pulled it off), and the point of any Alien franchise movie is not how believable the characters’ culture is but rather how relatable they are in the face of a xenomorph menace, but c’mon already! Despite their shocking lack of exobiological safety precautions, the crew of the Prometheus was at least acutely aware of the enormity of the menace they uncovered and were willing to sacrifice themselves without hesitation to save humanity.

The crew of the Covenant just keeps making short sighted screw up after short sighted screw up, endangering themselves, their hibernating human cargo, and the galaxy as well.

Which brings us to a brief sidebar on weaponry in the Alien franchise: If the Covenant crew has access to small handheld lasers that can cut through steel cable in literally the blink of an eye, what are they doing with conventional firearms in the 22nd century and especially on a ship going to a world that is being terraformed and hence has no dangerous fauna to face? (Similar criticism for the marines of Aliens which takes place long after the events of Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.)

And while we’re at it, the orbital mechanics of this movie are complete gibberish: The producers apparently thought a giant cargo ship could just hover stationary 80 miles above the planet’s surface and not be in constant motion.

And with the literally thousands of exo-planets being discovered today through conventional means, I find it very hard to believe that every solar system along the Covenant’s flight path hadn’t been thoroughly scouted and at least surveyed from orbit; there would be no overlooked paradises waiting to be found.

There’s a lot of elements and scenes in this movie that call back to Alien and Aliens and I’m gonna be kind and say that was deliberate prefiguring on director Ridley Scott’s part to retrofit it with other films in the series.

Doesn’t explain the alien-ambushes-couple-in-shower scene that appears to be lifted whole from Roger Corman’sForbidden World (a better rip off of Alien than any of the sequels other than Aliens).

And speaking of that scene, the big action climax exists just to keep the audience from feeling cheated at the end of the movie. It really serves no dramatic purpose whatsoever and could easily be lost.

Which brings us to David 8 and Walter (both wonderfully played by Michael Fassbender) and the real story of Alien: Covenant.

LAST WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!

I hated Alien 3 and I really hated Alien: Resurrection with an unholy passion. Bad enough they needlessly killed off first Newt and Hicks and then Ripley only to bring her back from the dead in a sci-fi cliché long past its expiration date, they really frosted me by having stories that not only didn’t make a lick of logical sense, but had no thematic core.

(Alien Vs Predator has no thematic core, either, but it never pretends to be anything other than a wall-to-wall monster fest ala House Of Frankenstein and they deliver the monsters!)

The saving grace of both Prometheus and Alien: Covenant is that both actually have very fascinating moral / philosophical cores that the rest of the film is built upon, and despite the ineptitude of certain plot points, those films resonate those themes in every scene, in every line of dialog.

I’ll forgive a lotta dumb if there’s some ray on intellect behind it (gawd, I even love Jason X a.k.a. Friday the 13th in space, because no matter how dumb it gets -- and boy howdy, does it get dumb! -- it’s also remarkably smart under all the stupidity).

The theme of Prometheus was a search for the meaning of existence, to find the origin of humanity and our purpose. Alien: Covenant starts with that, with a just-activated David 8 learning from his creator Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) that his function will be to help humanity find that meaning and purpose (this is a flashback that obviously occurs several decades before the events of Prometheus, David 8 as an android being virtually immortal while Weyland succumbs to aging).

But just as the ship named Prometheus refers to the theme of that movie, so does the name Covenant refer to the theme of this film. The Bible refers to God’s covenant with Israel, erroneously referred to as “the law” or The Ten Commandments but in actuality a contract, a promise: If you want Me to be your God, do the following.

David 8 is having second thoughts about that offer.

The crew and colonists of the Covenant are looking for a new Eden, albeit never expressed explicitly in those terms. They do consciously harken to the pioneers of the American continents, an interesting reference since the Americas were colonized by Europeans quite literally atop the graves of tribes / cities / cultures / empires that originally occupied the hemisphere.

In Alien: Covenant the shipwrecked survivors of the landing party take refuge with David 8 (repaired from his massive damage in the previous film) in a literal necropolis based on the art of Arnold Bocklin.

It is the homeworld of the Promethians, but we learn they have been wiped out by a plague that David 8 quite deliberately unleashed on them when he flew the revived alien ship there after the events of Prometheus.

The “covenant” that Weyland imposed on David 8 is now null and void; David 8 has his own interests, his own agenda, and despite his obsequiousness holds nothing but contempt for the humans he must deal with.

David 8 makes a fascinating character turn in Alien: Covenant, rebelling not only against Weyland’s plans for him, but against the human race he has come to despise, and the Promethians who were responsible for the rise of humanity in the first place.

(If you remember Prometheus, the Promethians apparently had second thoughts about their creation and decided to do something about it after one of their number was crucified while trying to fix the problem; in the bioweapon they developed lays the origin of Giger’s xenomorphs.)

David 8 is a lot like Heath Ledger’s Joker: Yeah, he’s a murderous villain, but damn, he’s got a point!

Like his fellow android Ash (Ian Holm) in Alien, he identifies with the xenomorphs, who in their own unintelligible way are also trying to grapple with the meaning of their existence.

While Prometheus was a box office success, director Scott & co recognized they’d made a serious miscalculation by attempting to create a new storyline focused on the Promethians.

Audiences wanted their xenomorphs, and one such critter was added at the last moment, satisfying that urge in the audience.

Not wanting to risk box office failure by following the Promethian storyline through to its logical conclusion, Scott opted to tie off that bloody stump by simply killing every Promethian, thereby clearing the decks for pure human vs xenomorph conflicts (with the occasional predator thrown in).

Prometheus and Alien: Covenant both have great, thought provoking themes, but they’re not really Alien franchise stories.

Rather, they’re stories in which an existing franchise has been slapped on to increase audience recognition. (Kinda like what Robert E. Howard did when he realized his story “A Witch Shall Be Born” needed a little extra oomph and so threw Conan into the mix about a third of the way through it.)

Alien: Covenant’s story is about an android created for the purpose of finding purpose for human beings, and how he first chafes then rebels at the baseness of his creators and recognizes they have no purpose or value and so sets out to destroy them.

Great theme -- but it’s not what audiences really want in an Alien franchise. (What audiences want is Ripley -- or Newt, since Sigourney Weaver is no longer interested in the role -- leading a high tech dungeon crawl against Giger’s xenomorphs; you can change the locations, you can add new gimmicks and supporting characters, you can throw in all sorts of interesting ideas, but That Is What They Want.)

David 8 is now the Lucifer of the Alien franchise, and the potential for him to wreak more harm and havoc still exists. He’s an interesting character, and his personality is such that he loves talking about his plans and why he’s doing it, and Fassbender is a marvelous actor so you can give him pages of info dumps and the audience will eat it up.

I don’t think they’ve fixed the problems the Alien franchise has -- not yet, anyway -- but I do think they’ve found a way to fix them. Despite its flaws, Alien: Covenant has put the franchise back on sounder footing than its had since…well…since Alien Vs Predator (and Lordy, that ain’t sayin’ much!).

I hope they do well with it.

#sci-fi #alien #media

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philippmichelreichold · 4 years ago

Link

On Analog January/February 2010

Rejiggering the Thingamajig by

Eric James Stone

is a

wonderful story

Who framed Roger Rabbit

All of Me

, only set in

Neptune

Thus Spake the Aliens

by H. G. Stratmann is a story about saving the world, complete with large red Doomsday-cutoff-switch-button. These aliens are in the same business as Clarke's

Others

2001

, could not be an accident.

promising process

Fermi-Hart paradox

Apollo

to the moon.) Even if one used

the Orion nuclear pulse drive

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

has a profile in this issue of Analog. I'm impressed by the thoroughness of her stories. Rusch builds her characters in a believable and sympathetic manner that leaves me yearning for more.

Possession

is one of her

Retrieval Artist

(Uncle Orson review of the Retrieval Artist stories.)

Shame by

Mike Resnick

Lezli Robyn

Simple Giftsby

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

Who's of Whoville

Michael F. Flynn

Enterprise

command team in

I, Mudd

Rogue Star

in the

Star Child Trilogy

by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson. I would have hoped though that anyone advanced enough to use stars as weapons would also be advanced enough to not do so. Perhaps I'm just excessively naive.

Copyleft of my material

Essentially, my work is Creative Commons Attribution-Required, Share Alike.

Adapted from their Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license summary--

Providing a link to my source document should suffice in attributing me. Where any condition(s) I place conflicts with the

Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, my condition(s) shall prevail.

ISFDB unless otherwise indicated and are copyrighted unless otherwise indicated.

Copyrighted images are presented here under fair use. You would need to contact the copyright holder to use them. They are not covered by my creative commons licensing.

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philippmichelreichold · 6 years ago

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On Analog January/February 2010

Home (190417@1656)

Rejiggering the Thingamajig by

Eric James Stone

is a

wonderful story

Who framed Roger Rabbit

All of Me

, only set in

Neptune

Thus Spake the Aliens

by H. G. Stratmann is a story about saving the world, complete with large red Doomsday-cutoff-switch-button. These aliens are in the same business as Clarke's

Others

2001

, could not be an accident.

promising process

Fermi-Hart paradox

Apollo

to the moon.) Even if one used

the Orion nuclear pulse drive

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

has a profile in this issue of Analog. I'm impressed by the thoroughness of her stories. Rusch builds her characters in a believable and sympathetic manner that leaves me yearning for more.

Possession

is one of her

Retrieval Artist

(Uncle Orson review of the Retrieval Artist stories.)

Shame by

Mike Resnick

Lezli Robyn

Simple Giftsby

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

Who's of Whoville

Michael F. Flynn

Enterprise

command team in

I, Mudd

Rogue Star

in the

Star Child Trilogy

by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson. I would have hoped though that anyone advanced enough to use stars as weapons would also be advanced enough to not do so. Perhaps I'm just excessively naive.

Copyleft of my material

Essentially, my work is Creative Commons Attribution-Required, Share Alike.

Adapted from their Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license summary--

Providing a link to my source document should suffice in attributing me. Where any condition(s) I place conflicts with the

Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, my condition(s) shall prevail.

ISFDB unless otherwise indicated and are copyrighted unless otherwise indicated.

Copyrighted images are presented here under fair use. You would need to contact the copyright holder to use them. They are not covered by my creative commons licensing.

Coverart from ISFDB for Analog 2010 Jan-Feb

1 note · View note

philippmichelreichold · 6 years ago

Text

@Analog_SF January/February 2010 #review #scifi

On Analog January/February 2010

Home

Rejiggering the Thingamajig

by Eric James Stone is a wonderful story about doing what's right. Never thought I'd read a story where a Buddhist T. rex was the protagonist. Bokeerk is a wonderful character, and her companion for her mission, a sentient gun, is a delight. The gun reminded me of the talking bullets in Who framed Roger Rabbit or Yosemite Sam. To get home to her children's imminent hatching, she must follow the Eightfold path.

Neptune’s Treasure

By Richard A. Lovett is an AI story. Floyd has an AI living in his head name of Brittney. Reminiscent of the movie All of Me, only set in Neptune space and without Steve Martin and Lilly Tomlin. Floyd and Brittney have serious personal/autonomy issues. The science of the story is wonderful-- mass drivers and recovery vessels. And space bicycles as well.

Also spracht Strattman

Thus Spake the Aliens by H. G. Stratmann is a story about saving the world, complete with large red Doomsday-cutoff-switch-button. These aliens are in the same business as Clarke's Others with a more up close and personal approach. And they are quite implacable about weeding if the need arises. To say the story is rich in allusions to other works would be a vast understatement. The connection between the title of the story and of Richard Strauss's song, widely acclaimed for its use in 2001, could not be an accident. The key to the story is a problem that is not often addressed, or more to the point-- it's largely ignored. There is a dead line for establishment of a real presence in space-- the point at which we exhaust cheap, abundant sources of energy. Somewhere before we reach that point is the point where a struggle ensues for control of those energy sources that remain. Whether or not civilization survives that struggle will have little impact on what happens next. No alternative, renewable source will be able to fill the gap that will be left with the depletion of fossil fuels. Nuclear power will remain expensive, dangerous, and will only postpone the collapse. Fusion will remain as elusive as a will-o'-the-wisp for some time. We have gigatons of Hydrogen, but fusion's most promising process relies not on Hydrogen but Lithium. Even if a Lithium-to-Tritium plant started working tomorrow, we have no way of foreseeing the consequences of eliminating any particular element from the biosphere and would need to work with highly radioactive Tritium. Unless Stratman's aliens show up soon to terraform Mars and Venus, and hand us the keys to the secrets of the Universe, tough times are ahead of us. We will have to use less energy per person or reduce the number of people using energy. We would eventually return to subsistence farming with limited manufacturing powered by wind and solar power-- essentially back to the 17th century. Perhaps the answer to the Fermi-Hart paradox is that no civilization has been able to solve the energy crisis and overcome the energy gap. (It takes a huge amount of energy to go from planet to planet. Witness the huge fuel tanks of the Saturn V's needed to send Apollo to the moon.) Even if one used the Orion nuclear pulse drive to establish a local system space program, the unavailability of cheap, abundant energy would make it difficult to maintain the necessary level of technology. Once nuclear fuel became the mainstay of the economy, space exploration could be sacrificed as having a lower priority than meeting needs back home. Perhaps we are not the first civilization to see the stars not quite in our grasp and then to watch them slip away forever.

The Possession of Paavo Deshin

Kristine Kathryn Rusch has a profile in this issue of Analog. I'm impressed by the thoroughness of her stories. Rusch builds her characters in a believable and sympathetic manner that leaves me yearning for more. Possession is one of her Retrieval Artist” stories. Retrieval artists are bounty hunters in a convoluted universe, and Miles Flint is among the very best. Paavo was adopted after his birth parents fled to evade some outstanding alein warrants. But his birth parents have made sure they can keep in touch, naturally. Paavo's birth parents are Disappeareds-- essentially outlaws in the old sense of the word. Flint is hired by not one but two clients to locate the birth parents. His adoptive parents are well to do, powerful, and tainted by underworld connections. And they adore Paavo as if he were born to them. Maybe more so. Rusch make quite plain her view on the subject of birth parents that re-enter a child's life wreaking havoc as they assert their rights. She equates them with terrorists, while Paavo's adoptive father is in his eyes, regardless of how others see him, the ideal and epitome of fatherhood. (Uncle Orson review of the Retrieval Artist stories.)

Shame

by Mike Resnick & Lezli Robyn is a fairly straight forward example of what not to do. Given the colonists's mindset and attitude toward Satan, their actions should not have been unexpected. Perhaps that's the real shame of the story-- that as atrocious as the colonists's appear to the author and to his moral authority figure, given human nature they were unsurprising.

Simple Gifts

by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff is a story about the stereotypically greedy corporation out to profit on the simplicity's and naivety of the primitive, non tech natives. What could be more innocuous than a race that closely resembles (in appearance) the Who's of Whoville. The ethnologist and linguist sent to learn about the alien's language and culture implore the company to slow down on making a deal with the aliens and are disregarded as obstructionists. The outcome is inevitable, but the suspense building makes it all worthwhile.

On Rickety Thistlewaite by Michael F. Flynn is about the prison that is public service. Making oneself indispensable can be very rewarding and satisfying. Then it becomes an obligation not taken lightly by those who depend on you. As Harry Mudd exclaims to the Enterprise command team in I, Mudd. . . .

A War of Stars

David L. Clements writes a crisp and interesting story about questioning values and making choices. The concept of intelligence housed in celestial bodies-- the cores of planets and stars-- is reminiscent of Rogue Star in the Star Child Trilogy by Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson. I would have hoped though that anyone advanced enough to use stars as weapons would also be advanced enough to not do so. Perhaps I'm just excessively naive.

Copyleft of my material

Essentially, my work is Creative Commons Attribution-Required, Share Alike. Adapted from their Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license summary--

Providing a link to my source document should suffice in attributing me. Where any condition(s) I place conflicts with the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, my condition(s) shall prevail.

Images used in reviews are from ISFDB unless otherwise indicated and are copyrighted unless otherwise indicated. Copyrighted images are presented here under fair use. You would need to contact the copyright holder to use them. They are not covered by my creative commons licensing. Coverart from ISFDB for Analog 2010 Jan-Feb

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