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Eye cancer treatment is an important gateway to proper and complete elimination of tumors or cancer cells that develop in eye region. Treatment is helpful to avoid further growth of cancer cells in eye region and also prevents other forms of cancerous or non-cancerous disorders related to eye or other adjacent organs. Thorough eye cancer diagnosis is very important to undergo apt form of treatment pattern and get maximum benefit from the same.
Importance and Types of Eye Cancer Treatment
Eye is an important organ of human body. Cancerous development in eyes can lead to partial or complete loss of vision in long-run and can also cause other forms of cancers in nearby areas. Eye cancer can be of primary or secondary form and has a high tendency to spread at a rapid pace. Also, the chances of elimination of tumors decrease with increase in cancer stages and intensity of therapy also increases with increase in severity of tumor-growth. It is easy to tackle tumors restricted to local areas but, complete elimination of tumors becomes difficult in higher stages and the chances of cancer recurrence increase considerably.
Cancer treatment is important to ensure proper cell development in eye region and get rid of abnormal cells in time. Abnormal cells that lead to cancerous growth divide and grow at a very high rate and also compel adjacent healthy cells to behave unnaturally and function inefficiently. Abnormal cell growth also affects functioning of tissues and causes shortage of generation and supply of necessary resources to normal cells in the area. Thus, presence of cancer cells affects overall health of eyes.
Primary cancer of eyes is easy to treat as compared to secondary one. Also, eye cancer causes and symptoms can be traced and monitored easily in primary type of the disorder. Major regions affected due to primary form of tumor-growth are iris, cornea, eye lens, retina, orbit, ciliary body, and optic nerves. Tumors formed in primary cancer of eye metastasize only in late stages. Secondary cancer of eye is more common as compared to primary one and the tumors form mostly in lungs or breasts before reaching eye region. Thus people suffering from breast or lung cancer have high chances of suffering from cancerous infection in eyes if tumors are not treated well.
Cancer cure is also important because cancerous growth in eyes can instigate cell abnormality in other regions like head and neck areas, blood cells, lymph nodes etc. Cancer treatments are of various types and one must consult a physician before opting for one.
Prime Eye Cancer Cure
Surgery is the most widely adopted treatment for cancer. It can be of various forms as enucleation of eye (removal of eye without removing eyelids and eye muscles), evisceration (removing all eye contents except sclera), iridectomy (removing infected portion of iris), choroidectomy (removing choroid later), iridocyclectomy (removing ciliary muscle and iris), and eye wall resection.
Laser treatment is also useful to treat cancer of eye. One can also be recommended chemotherapy (treating tumors by chemicals or by intake of medically recommended chemical drugs), radiotherapy (exposing tumors to strong radiations), cryosurgery (passing liquid nitrogen to kill cancerous tumors by freezing them) and transpupillary thermotherapy (killing tumors by heating them with use of laser beams).
Treatment can give maximum output if done in early stages. Efficiency and reliability of eye cancer cure decreases if taken in late stages and one may have to undergo same or different forms of treatment repeatedly to keep cancerous growth under control or avoid eye cancer recurrence in later period.
by Alina Kapur


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New partnerships for torture prevention in Europe (2009)
On the occasion of its 20th anniversary, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT), together with the Association for the Prevention of Torture (APT), brought together all of the key and emerging actors in torture prevention in Europe to discuss possible "New Partnerships". This conference, which took place in Strasbourg, France, on 6 November 2009, was an opportunity to take stock of the progress made over the previous two decades and to focus attention on the challenges ahead. It represented the first significant step towards a coordinated approach to the question of torture prevention by the various bodies working in the field.

subset: commoncrawl


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California continues death penalty trials despite moratorium
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California's Supreme Court has refused to block death penalty cases from continuing during Gov. Gavin Newsom's moratorium on executions.
The justices on Wednesday rejected defense attorneys' arguments that jurors can't realistically gauge the seriousness of imposing a death sentence if they think it's never actually going to be carried out.
Newsom halted executions in March for as long as he remains governor. But the death penalty remains on the books and courts have been proceeding on the assumption that executions may one day resume.
Attorneys for two men separately facing trials in multiple slayings argued that it would be unfair to expect jurors to consider what for now are merely hypothetical sentences.
Prosecutors say defense attorneys in essence asked the state's high court to abolish the death penalty.


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December 2015
Berg, M. van den. 2015. Implementing sustainable business through EU aid and trade policies. GREAT Insights Magazine, Volume 4, Issue 6. December 2015/January 2016.
During its EU Presidency over the first half of 2016, The Netherlands will seek to enhance the coherence of EU trade and development policies and their contribution to sustainable development, in particular by enhancing the sustainability of global value chains.
Sustainable development is a cornerstone of the European Union's (EU) internal and external policies. And the private sector is a driving force behind it. Stimulating sustainability in global value chains (GVCs) should therefore be central to the EU's external policies and in particular, to its trade and development agenda. During its EU Presidency over the first half of 2016, The Netherlands will seek to enhance the coherence of EU trade and development policies and their contribution to sustainable development. The EU needs to stimulate EU-wide, multi-stakeholder sectoral cooperation, providing leverage and a level playing field for businesses in global value chains that respect the principles of corporate social responsibility.
The EU has a wide array of instruments and policies at its disposal for external action, particularly on trade and development. This is a sphere in which we are particularly keen to increase EU policies' impact on sustainable development by enhancing the sustainability of global value chains.
Global value chains – where the different stages of the production process are located across different countries – have come to be a dominant feature of world trade. More than 70% of world trade consists of intermediate goods, services and capital.
The increased significance of global value chains, and the fact that the most serious environmental and human rights violations generally occur in producer countries in these chains, necessitate corporate social responsibility (CSR) and private sector engagement for sustainable development figuring more prominently in aid and trade policy. With the advent of global value chains, abuses come to light much more quickly, so that companies have an incentive to prevent them. They pursue a sustainability strategy not only to prevent their reputation from being harmed, but also because it offers them new opportunities and reduces their dependence on scarce resources. If they ensure that everything is in order at each location involved in making their products, they generate not only value but also good publicity.
By promoting corporate social responsibility, or responsible business conduct, governments encourage companies to take responsibility for the impact that activities in their value chains have on society and the environment. According to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, it is the responsibility of companies to map the risks of adverse social and environmental impacts in their international supply chains and to take appropriate measures to prevent or mitigate them (due diligence). Creating value for people, planet and profit is not only a responsibility of business, but also an opportunity for business. The necessity of tackling these societal and environmental challenges and anticipating opportunities for collaboration between business, governments and civil society organisations is increasingly accepted. This often entails a sector-wide change in business behaviour.
The G7 Leaders' Declaration of June 2015 highlights the importance of responsible supply chains and the need for better application of internationally recognised labour, social and environmental standards, principles and commitments (in particular UN, OECD, ILO and applicable environmental agreements) in global supply chains. The EU is well positioned to act now on this declaration.
The EU, together with business and civil society, can lead the way on sustainability in global value chains, provided that it devises a clear agenda that contributes to this. The new EU trade strategy Trade for All and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, centred on the Global Goals, set the stage to do so. Like other EU member states, The Netherlands actively and successfully promotes sustainable value chains. However, if we are to increase our effectiveness and ensure a level playing field, we will need to achieve policy coherence and implementation at EU level to back up our national solutions. By working together, EU institutions, EU Member States, business and civil society can collectively leverage the necessary transformation to enhance the sustainability of global value chains. We just need to start with a collective commitment to do so. In the end we need, and this will help, a global level playing field, as the G7 statement envisages.
A multi-stakeholder approach to stimulating the sustainability of GVCs also contributes to bring the EU closer to citizens' concerns, to produce and buy in a more responsible manner. No consumer wants to buy products that are made by children or have caused environmental damage. We all have the right to fair goods, produced respecting broad human rights and the environment. We look to our governments to regulate and implement these issues – even if they occur outside their territories – and we increasingly expect companies to ensure decent and respectful production processes everywhere they operate.
The EU is already taking steps to promote sustainable global value chains and encourage businesses to invest more responsibly by enhancing market rewards for corporate social and environmental responsibility, disseminating good practices and improving company disclosure of social and environmental information. Through development cooperation, the EU aims to promote
business engagement in sectors including agriculture, infrastructure and energy. The EU also promotes sustainability guidelines on corporate social responsibility, including the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, notably via its free trade agreements (FTAs).
The Netherlands welcomes and supports the following actions and next steps by the EU on sustainable economic growth:
more coherence between development and trade policy…
… with an important role for responsible business conduct
Individual EU companies operating in global value chains prone to social and environmental risks cannot effectively meet these challenges alone. EU leadership will mean stronger leverage for sustainability in global value chains and will help achieve a level playing field for businesses. When looking at how to stimulate sustainable global value chains, we need to focus on how the EU can facilitate and enhance EU multi-stakeholder, sector-wide voluntary collaboration, and look at specific steps that can be taken to improve policy coherence for sustainable development. There are no easy answers to the questions we face. The EU needs to respond to them collectively.
Building on the high-level conference The Netherlands is organising in the run-up to its EU Presidency on 'the EU and Global Value Chains' (www.euandgvc.nl), the Dutch EU Presidency, together with the EEAS, the Commission and all EU Member States, will set an agenda on how to strengthen EU trade and development policies and enhance their coherence in order to increase sustainability in global value chains. It will also focus on the promotion and discussion of the new EU Responsible Business Conduct Action Plan in Trade, Development and regional Council configurations.
The Netherlands will also build on its CSR Sector Risk Assessment (SRA) endeavour to strengthen the due diligence process of Dutch, and preferably EU, companies, in close collaboration with business and civil society.
To conclude, the growing significance of global value chains is forcing EU policymakers to tackle more complex sustainability challenges than ever before. Given the contribution that sustainable global value chains make to many countries' prosperity, the EU's external policies need to reflect the crucial importance of global value chains and responsible business conduct. This will be a priority of the Dutch EU Presidency.
About the author
Marten C. van den Berg is Director-General Foreign Economic Relations, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Netherlands
Photo: Port of Rotterdam. Credits: Frans Berkelaar/flickr/CC.
This article was published in GREAT Insights Volume 4, Issue 6 (December 2015/January 2016).
Marten van den Berg


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Mary Mary Quite Contrary is a polish that Jo and I have used on many occasions (like here and here). I wore it on my nails today and thought that it really deserved to be shown to our lovely readers in all its glory as it really is one of the most beautiful shades.
Mary Mary is a pretty combination of girly and classy which makes it a great base for all kinds of nail art. I'd call it a lilacy-grey, a bit similar to Utopia by Models Own in that it's a bit of a hard shade to describe. It is a sheer polish that takes a good few coats to get opaque. Like most Rimmel polishes this one applies like a dream. The brush shape really helps to get good coverage and the formula is thin yet not overly watery so you get good colour.
I decided on a simple leopard print to go over this base to let the lovely colour show through. I used my black Barry M nail art pen to draw on the shapes and topped everything off with a coat of Seche.
I'm sure you'll be seeing this shade again on the blog as we can't get enough of it.
Do you have any go-to shades that you think we should try?


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"…The plain language of the Pension Protection Clause, the stated intentions of its drafters, and this Court's precedent all compel the conclusion that the Act [SB 1] exceeds the constitutional limits of legislative power. The Pension Protection Clause unambiguously prohibits the diminishment of public pension benefits. Notwithstanding the defendants' insistence that the Clause incorporates unstated exceptions to that absolute bar, the Clause cannot be read to include the defendants' implied terms. It contains no exception for exercises of the General Assembly's police powers or reserved sovereign powers.
"In fact, the Pension Protection Clause was intended specifically to foreclose the type of justifications offered by the defendants in support of the Act. Equally flawed is the defendants' argument that the Pension Protection Clause itself is an unconstitutional relinquishment of the State's sovereign powers. Because the Pension Protection Clause is a constitutional restriction on the legislature's authority, it is not on par with contractual or statutory commitments that conceivably may yield to the General Assembly's sovereign powers. Given the drafters' intent to protect pension benefits in times of fiscal distress, the defendants' novel approach to constitutional interpretation is particularly unfounded.
"In short, the circuit court correctly upheld the plain language and purpose of the Pension Protection Clause, faithfully adhered to this Court's precedent, and appropriately enforced a constitutional limitation on legislative power. Further, the circuit court correctly determined that the Act is not severable. Accordingly, the judgment of the circuit court should be affirmed.
"The standard of review is de novo. Best v. Taylor Mach. Works, 179 Ill. 2d 367, 389 (1997). Where, as here, the parties have filed cross-motions for summary judgment, they 'agree that only a question of law is involved, and they invite the court to decide the issues based on the record.' Martin v. Keeley & Sons, Inc., 2012 IL 113270, 1125.
"The language used in a constitutional provision 'should be given its plain and commonly understood meaning unless it is clearly evident that a contrary meaning was intended,' and someone who argues that the language 'should not be given its natural meaning understandably has the burden of showing why it should not.' Coalition for Political Honesty v. State Bd. of Elections, 65 Ill. 2d 453, 464-65 (1976)
(also observing that this is a
'difficult burden').
"If a statute is unconstitutional, 'courts are obligated to declare it invalid,' and this duty 'cannot be evaded or neglected, no matter how desirable or beneficial the legislation may appear to be.' Madclux v. Blagojevich, 233 Ill. 2d 508, 528 (2009).
"Finally, 'to the extent that there may be any remaining doubt regarding the meaning or effect' of the 'pension protection provisions' in the Pension Protection Clause, 'we are obliged to resolve that doubt in favor of the members of the State's public retirement systems.' Kanerva, 2014 IL 115811, 1155.
"A. The Plain Language of the Pension Protection Clause Defeats
Any Defense of the Act.
"On its face, the Pension Protection Clause is absolute and contains no exceptions:
"'Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.'
"See Ill. Constitution, Art. XIII, § 5. The Pension Protection Clause does two distinct things. First, it deems membership in State and certain other public pension systems to be a contractual relationship with the employee that is 'enforceable' by the courts. Id. Second, it restricts legislative power to modify the benefits of that contractual relationship by mandating that such benefits 'shall not be diminished or impaired.' Id. That second provision has independent significance and must be given effect.
"The defendants do not contend that the plain language of the Pension Protection Clause includes an express reference to police powers. Instead, they insist that the Contract Clause (Art. I, § 16) and its particular limitations are implicitly 'incorporate[d]' into the Pension Protection Clause. (Def. Br. at 19.) That argument is fundamentally flawed for several reasons.
"The defendants' argument turns the plain text of the Pension Protection Clause on its head. In the defendants' view, the absence of an explicit disavowal of an implied exception for the exercise of police powers in the Pension Protection Clause means that there is an implied exception in the Clause. (Def. Br. at 44-45.)
"In essence, they would require an explicit statement in the Pension Protection Clause that it has no implied exceptions. That, however, is precisely the opposite of this Court's approach to constitutional and statutory interpretation. See Kanerva, 2014 IL 115811, Ill 41 (refusing to read restrictions and limitations into the Pension Protection Clause 'that the drafters did not express and the citizens of Illinois did not approve'); Prazen v. Shoop, 2013 IL 115035, ¶ 38 (this Court 'can neither restrict nor enlarge the meaning of an unambiguous statute'); Henrich v. Libertyville High Sch., 186 Ill. 2d 381, 394-95 (1998) (same).
"Moreover, when the drafters of the Constitution intended to create exceptions for exercises of police power, they knew how to do so explicitly. See Ill. Constitution, Art. I, § 22 ('Subject only to the police power, the right of the individual citizen to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed') (emphasis added). The drafters chose not to include such an exception in the clear and unambiguous terms of the Pension Protection Clause.
"Contrary to the defendants' argument, the Pension Protection Clause's guarantee that pension benefits 'shall not be diminished or impaired' does not mirror the language of the Contract Clause. In addition to prohibiting the impairment of pension benefits, the Pension Protection Clause guarantees that such benefits shall not be 'diminished.' See Ill. Constitution, Art. XIII, § 5. The word 'diminished' appears nowhere in the Contract
"When the word 'diminished' is used elsewhere in the Constitution, it is given absolute effect. See Ill. Constitution, Art. VI, § 14 (judicial salaries 'shall not be diminished to take effect during their terms of office'); see also Jorgensen v. Blagojevich, 211 111. 2d 286, 316 (2004) (giving absolute effect to section 14 of Article VI).
"Because it defeats their preferred interpretation, the defendants attempt to read the word 'diminished' out of the Pension Protection Clause. The defendants argue that the word 'diminished' is synonymous with 'impaired' and is a mere redundancy. (Def. Br. at 29-30.) Their attempt to reduce "diminished' to a redundancy runs afoul of a fundamental principle of constitutional interpretation: '[E]ach word, clause or sentence must, if possible, be given some reasonable meaning.' Hirschfield v. Barrett, 40 Ill. 2d 224, 230 (1968); see also Oak Park Fed. Say. & Loan Ass 'n v. Village of Oak Park, 54 III. 2d 200, 203 (1973) (same)…"
from Brief of ISEA RSEA Heaton and Harrison Plaintiffs-Appellees


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Camp Gunnison—The Way Household Ranch hosted A Holiday in the High Country! from December 22 to 27, 2018. It was a unique event for family and friends to be together and to relax and enjoy the holidays at our beautifully decorated camp. Enjoy some inviting pictures of the activities and warm quotes from satisfied participants.
"We enjoyed an amazing trip as a fellowship in the high country this holiday season. We got to rest much, and we were refreshed as we fellowshipped with other campers and the Staff at Camp Gunnison. The heart sharings, the Word taught, the food, and all the fun made a perfect combination for a vacation. We are already planning our next trip!"
"This trip has caused my heart to love and believe God bigger."
"This camp is a beautiful spiritual environment, and it was our joy and privilege to travel here for A Holiday in the High Country!"
"Time at Camp Gunnison was exactly what I needed to feel refreshed and ready for the new year. Every part of the camp was a blessing, from the peaceful environment to the loving Staff to the fun winter activities. I loved being able to study in the library and fellowship in the prayer room. I'm already looking forward to a return trip!"
"I was trying to find a word that fits everything I experienced at Camp Gunnison, but I couldn't, except thank you, thank you, thank you!"
Whether you've never been to Camp Gunnison or you are a frequent visitor, you can experience a peaceful and refreshing time at this great Christian camp by planning a trip today. Visit our Camp Gunnison page to learn more about what is available.
For more photos of this event, visit our Flickr page.


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Nomade Orquestra – Estremundos [FARO198]
Nomade Orquestra return from the stratosphere via Brazil with their second offering: Entremundos (Between Worlds). Gazing outward through a kaleidoscope from the heart of Sao Paulo's jazz scene, the collective consciousness of the ten-man orquestra has dreamt up an adventurous amalgam of earth's most far reaching musical cultures. Recorded at Red Bull Studios, Sao Paulo, Entremundos is like a cosmic musical playground where Ethio-jazz, Indian classical and Oriental sounds dance around Afro-Brazilian roots rhythms and Northern hemisphere jazz, funk, soul, library music and hip-hop influences. The sheer vastness of the album is astounding, Nomade Orquestra have quite literally conquered the world in sound. vinyl / CD


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I did a quick mind map of the various ways in which a middle-aged man could respond to the news that his wife is having an affair. I then popped it onto my blog and asked for comments as to which scenario would be the most compelling to a reader if it were made into a story (see Plotting).
I thought that people would go for the option with the most decision points because I considered that this would make the most interesting plot. So, my choice was something like:
He finds out that his wife is having an affair, he confronts her with it and they get divorced. He keeps the house but because he still loves and misses her, he turns to destructive habits. He buries his sorrows with drugs, takes an overdose and after a touch-and-go period, he recovers. As he does so, he has some sort of deep realisation about life and is transformed. Maybe he even falls in love with the nurse.
I thought that this would be fine because there is plenty of scope for the ups and downs of life and he has a shot at personal redemption. So – did the readers on my blog agree? No, they did not!
The people overwhelmingly voted that our middle-aged man should kill his wife! There were various suggestions for what came next, and some were marvellously inventive. Twists and turns of plot abounded – he got away with it, he wrote a novel about it, he got caught by some clever piece of detective work, someone else did the killing for him and he got away scot free – a marvellous set of ideas. Only one person disagreed with the 'killing' scenario and she was in favour of our man having a revenge affair.
It seems to me that the conventional plots have been done to death and people are hankering for something different – in this case, a combination of killing, a revenge affair and novel writing. Lo, mine eyes have been opened!
We are then asked to consider how the following would change our man's behaviour: "his daughter confides that she has lost her job after stealing from her employer. The employer has not yet decided whether or not to go to the police." I was struggling with this at first. I guess that's because I am rather cold hearted about these things. The only thing I could think of is that the employer could turn out to be the person his wife is having an affair with. That could shake things up!
Ultimately it could go one of two ways, depending on what sort of a person our man is.
Scenario one would be that he is caring and considerate. He could hold off from killing his daughter's mother because he recognises that the daughter needs her mother's support. That could set up a nice little conflict in him – he wants to kill his wife but also wants his daughter to have support.
Scenario two has him being more heartless. He would look at the women in his life and see that they are all corrupt, lawless and amoral. This would lead to him deciding that killing would be the best thing for his wife, and perhaps even for his daughter too. His wife's affair has pushed him over the edge after an abused childhood, a marriage in which he was browbeaten daily by his mother, wife and daughter and a demeaning job in which his bosses and co-workers bullied him constantly.
Which would I go for? Hmm – each has its merits, but I think that at this point there is too little information to decide. If I were intent on writing this story I would start by working up a robust character sketch to determine what kind of man he is. The plot would then follow on rather automatically from this information. With a character outline in hand, it would be pretty obvious which path he would take at each decision node.
So, in conclusion, a mind map containing all the options available to our man, combined with a good character sketch, would ultimately be the best tools to find a compelling way forward.


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CBD Edibles: The Ultimate Guide (September 2021 Review)
Edibles have always been a favorite in the cannabis industry – and it's no different in the CBD scene. Most brands dabble with non-psychoactive CBD edibles, which come in a variety of forms, including gummies, cakes, honey sticks, lollipops, hard candies and chocolate bars.
In this post, we'll explore the different types of CBD edibles on the market, and look at the general effects of these products. We'll outline how to use them, go through some much-loved CBD edibles recipes, and round up by answering a few frequently asked questions (FAQs).
This comprehensive guide is great for experienced CBD users who want to learn something new. It's also easy-to-digest for newcomers to CBD who are looking to find out more about hemp's benefits and the advantages of edible products.
What is CBD?
Cannabidiol (CBD) is a non-psychotropic cannabinoid, and the main therapeutic component in hemp, a legal strain of cannabis sativa, which has very low amounts of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).
CBD has been popularized as a substance offering the health benefits of cannabis, without the 'high'. This is a slight oversimplification. CBD and THC have different sets of beneficial properties, and in a few cases work oppositely to each other.
However, broadly, CBD is useful for many of the reasons that people take marijuana, according to early research. We're still awaiting important clinical studies on CBD's mental and physical qualities. But scientists have made great leaps in our understanding of CBD in the past couple of decades.
Essential to these discoveries was bringing the endocannabinoid system (ECS) out of the biological dark. This long-hidden system was finally found in the early 1990s, and has helped to explain many of the mechanisms that CBD operates in. Having a better idea of CBD's actions in the body means it's easier to refine research and make more breakthroughs.
Popular CBD edibles at CBDVapeJuice.net
CBDVapeJuice.net stocks a broad selection of CBD-infused edible and gummy products. Check out our full range by heading over to the store. We've selected four top quality edibles to review in this post.
CBD Genesis Gummies
Our very own CBD Genesis Gummies contain pure CBD-isolate with no THC whatsoever. This is an organic, pesticide-free and third-party lab-tested product, so you know exactly what you're getting. These gummies are crafted just like any other candies, and really do taste delicious. We have a few different gummies in our collection, with different dosages of CBD.
The 500mg pack consists of 20 gummies, with 25mg of CBD-isolate in each. This mid-range CBD dose is good for beginners who are seeking relaxing effects from their CBD, and also for those looking to supplement their endocannabinoid system. We also have 1000mg packs of regular and sour gummy worms, which delivers 50mg of CBD per serving. The higher dosage is recommended for experienced CBD users who are familiar with the compound's sedative effects.
CBD Genesis Gummies are the perfect way to dose up on CBD wherever you are. They don't have any hemp or weed-like aroma, and look just like the gummies you'd find at the candy store.
Jolly Green Oil Party Pack
For a cost-effective, high-dose CBD option, look no further than the 1000mg Party Pack from Jolly Green Oil. Each one of these lab-tested, organic gummies has a hefty 50mg of CBD-isolate, and every pack comes with an assortment of CBD-infused treats.
A 50mg dose is fairly high for first-time CBD users. However, because of the even distribution of CBD throughout the edible, you can easily split it in half and enjoy 25mg at a time. Indeed, a 25mg dose may be better in the daytime, when you can't risk getting too relaxed from CBD! However, the full 50mg or even a double dose should work a treat for those who desire stronger relief.
This product is called a 'Party Pack', and there is good reason to share! CBD has garnered attention for having anti-anxiety effects, which makes these edibles a potential social lubricant. Put these out a party and you'll be offering your guests a non-psychoactive and non-addictive way to manage their anxiety and stress levels.
Heady Harvest CBD Gummies
CBD Gummies from Heady Harvest are really popular with CBDVapeJuice.net customers, perhaps because of the wide variety. All of their gummies contain a THC-free, CBD-isolate hemp extract, and are completely organic. The Regular and Sour Gummy Bears are available in packs of 20, at strengths of 10, 25 and 50mg per serving.
What's more, Heady Harvest Gummies are more potent and bioavailable than many other CBD treats. That's thanks to the inclusion of MCT-rich fractionated coconut oil. Medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) help the body to metabolize CBD, so that a higher percentage of your dose becomes activated in the bloodstream. The more bioavailable a product is, the greater the effects of any individual dosage.
Heady Harvest CBD Gummies are dependable, and an excellent starter product if you are yet to experience CBD edible effects. If you love CBD and gummy bears, then you'll definitely love these!
Pinnacle CBD Honey Sticks
Pinnacle uses a full-spectrum hemp extract in its tasty honey sticks, bringing together the benefits of CBD, CBG, CBN, CBC and an array of flavonoids and terpenes. These 10mg CBD honey sticks do have trace levels of THC (less than 0.3%), as is standard with full-spectrum CBD products. With five honey sticks per pack, this works out to 50mg of CBD.
CBD honey sticks can be eaten as they are, or melted into hot drinks. Either way, the cannabinoids are taken orally, and are therefore gradually absorbed into the bloodstream. These low-dose honey sticks produce stimulating effects, especially for focus and concentration. If you suffer from brain fog in the workplace or elsewhere, Pinnacle honey sticks are ideal for decluttering the mind and promoting mental clarity.
CBD-isolate vs. full-spectrum edibles
Like all CBD products, edibles are infused with either a CBD-isolate or full-spectrum hemp extract. Both have upsides and downsides, depending on user preferences.
The extraction process splits CBD compounds away from the rest of the hemp plant, creating a pure extract. CBD-isolate extracts are the base for THC-free products. These attract people who want guaranteed protection from drug tests.
Some consider CBD-isolate more reliable against certain symptoms, as there are no external compounds interfering with the effects. A few CBD-isolate products also contain natural terpenes. These keep products THC-free, while topping up the overall benefits.
Full-spectrum hemp
These CBD oil edibles feature whole-plant extracts. Full-spectrum products are CBD-rich, but also have a nice helping of secondary cannabinoids, like cannabinol (CBN), cannabigerol (CBG) and cannabidivarin (CBDV). Terpenes, flavonoids, amino acids, omega-3, 6 and 9, vitamins and minerals are also present.
Full-spectrum edibles highlight that hemp is more than just CBD. This complete blend of helpful compounds makes these edibles more effective than CBD-isolate products. The benefits may be enhanced further still by the 'entourage effect'. This is a proposed synergistic reaction that goes on in hemp and cannabis, when the plant is enjoyed as one.
So, if full-spectrum is better, why doesn't everybody use it? These products do have a small concentration of THC, keeping with the theme of an entire hemp extract. By federal law, this THC content must be kept below 0.3% of the total product weight. Moreover, full-spectrum CBD is a little more expensive than CBD-isolate. However, this often pays for itself with all the extra compounds that embellish CBD edible effects.
General CBD edibles effects
How do CBD edibles compare with vape juices, tincture oils, cigarettes and joints? Firstly, edibles – like all orally-taken products – provide more measured relief, rather than a blast all at once. This comes down to how the CBD is metabolized and absorbed into the bloodstream.
CBD from edibles doesn't get the direct entry that inhaled or sublingually absorbed CBD does. Instead, the compounds must go through the first-pass metabolism. The first-pass effect slows down CBD's activation time and also reduces bioavailability.
Before cannabinoids are delivered into the bloodstream, they must go through the digestive system and liver. Many drugs, including CBD, are metabolized in the liver, and the organ reduces how much of the drug becomes active.
That said, the first-pass effect transforms cannabinoids into slightly different compounds – in the case of THC, this enhances potency. Therefore, oral administration does not necessarily reduce the effectiveness, but the first-pass effect does mean ingested CBD has a slower response time than sublingually absorbed or inhaled CBD.
In reality, this means users may be waiting for an hour or two before their edible dose is having the desired effect. Everyone experiences the benefits of edibles uniquely, with metabolism speed, size, weight and other variables having an impact. This can make dosing more difficult, as we'll explain later.
The slow onset of effects may be frustrating, but edibles more than make up for this as the CBD lasts for a lot longer. These extended effects are an economical way of combating chronic symptoms. They also offer CBD coverage throughout the night, which is great for easing ailments that affect sleep duration and quality (e.g. sleep apnea, chronic pain, anxiety).
CBD edibles for pain
Check any survey on CBD use in the United States, and chronic pain always heads the list of reasons for taking CBD. This is perhaps partially because the term is ambiguous, and covers a range of conditions. But there's a more simple truth to be had: lots of people are using CBD for pain, and finding it helps!
Research on CBD's effectiveness for pain – and it's viability as a treatment option – is inconclusive. The studies we have suggest the ECS controls pain perception somewhat. CBD, and the endocannabinoid anandamide, also engage with vanilloid receptors that regulate how we feel pain.
There are also many types of pain (e.g. chronic, neuropathic and inflammatory). Edibles are more useful for chronic and lasting inflammatory symptoms. The slow CBD delivery effectively rules CBD out as an acute pain treatment.
However, for relieving pain during the day, so it's possible to focus on mental and physical tasks, edibles are ideal. With up to eight hours of relief from one dose, there's no need to top up four or five times a day. And as we've already explored, if nighttime relief is a priority, the longer relief produced by edibles (and also capsules and syrups) is the only relief that's worth having!
Hopefully we'll get more high-quality studies soon to confirm the analgesic value of CBD, especially in regard to CBD edibles for pain.
Edibles for sleep
A good night's sleep is key for a number of reasons. Obviously, it stops us feeling fatigued and being mentally and physically below par. But a healthy sleep pattern with a minimum of seven hours of sleep per night is also important for the brain. Studies show that during deep sleep, the brain removes harmful toxins and plaques which accelerate the progression of neurodegenerative illnesses.
There is optimism around CBD as a sleep remedy. For one, the non-addictive, sedative effects are just what's required to promote better sleep. And two, CBD is arguably better than other sleeping tablets that can cause dependence and are riddled with side effects.
Taking CBD edibles for sleep makes sense, and particularly if an ailment is causing you to wake up in the middle of the night. The lasting relief from insomnia, and sleep-disrupting factors like pain and anxiety is ideal. Most find edibles better than other CBD products for sleep.
CBD edibles for anxiety
CBD products with a rapid speed of delivery are generally seen as best for anxiety. However, gradual effects of edibles may also have benefits for some users. Perhaps the most significant research on CBD and anxiety to date was conducted with capsules, an orally-taken treatment that works in the same way to edibles.
Participants received either a 600mg CBD dose or a placebo treatment, with the CBD group performing better in all areas on a simulated public speaking experiment. This intriguing study highlighted the real-life potential of CBD for anxiety, and showed how the cannabinoid may reduce social anxiety symptoms.
The gradual onset of CBD edible effects means you'll have to be savvy if using these products for anxiety. For example, if you have an anxiety-triggering social event coming up, take a dose about an hour or so beforehand. This will help prevent anxiety from arising in the first place, rather than simply suppress symptoms.
It's not always possible to predict which situations will cause anxiety. However, with a discreet product like edibles, you can have CBD on hand for whenever you need it – you can even take edibles on a plane to aid with anxiety!
Edibles for arthritis
CBD has interesting anti-inflammatory properties that may help bring forth a new era of arthritis medication. Research suggests the compound may assist with rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease, and osteoarthritis, a form of arthritis caused by wear and tear to the bones and joints, and severe levels of inflammation.
It all comes down to how endocannabinoids and cannabinoids influence the body's immune system, courtesy of interactions within the endocannabinoid system (ECS). Discovering the ECS has introduced researchers to a novel way of accessing the immune system. In the long run, we may see the emergence of cannabinoid-based anti-inflammatory drugs to replace existing non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs). Both CBD and THC, along with numerous other secondary cannabinoids, have exhibited anti-inflammatory effects in tests.
This emphasizes the benefits of taking full-spectrum edibles to manage arthritis. And with symptoms often chronic and ever-present, edibles could be the best way of dealing with the condition. Some find value in combining edibles with CBD-infused topicals. Applying creams to the affected area engages CB2 receptors in the part of the body where its most crucial to regulate inflammation, in order to reduce symptoms.
CBD edibles for headaches and migraines
Look back through the history books, and specifically Western pharmacopoeias of the mid-19th century, and you'll see cannabis proposed and even recommended as a remedy for migraines. At this time, psychoactive cannabis was a curious drug to the West, having been brought back by merchants from South Asia.
Nearly 200 years on, and those early medical experts may have hit the nail on the head! The latest research on the ECS indicates that dysfunction in the system could be the underlying cause of migraines. As such, a regulating compound like CBD is a possible treatment option.
We know that CBD likely has an analgesic effect, which may alleviate the pain of headaches and migraines. It's also mooted that regulating CB1 receptors in the ECS helps tackle photophobia and phonophobia (increased light and sound sensitivity). These are the 'aura' symptoms many migraine patients suffer from.
Headaches and migraines can rear their ugly head at any time. The discretion provided by edibles means you don't need to sit and suffer with symptoms. Moreover, the longer effects of CBD oil edibles may prevent a migraine from coming back once it has subsided.
Edibles for low mood
Low mood and motivation adversely affects all aspects of life. If your head isn't the right place, reaching your full potential becomes impossible. Thankfully, if you are in a slump, there are safe and natural ways to help break out of it!
CBD edibles have two positive effects that may reduce low mood and depression. Firstly, CBD is an anandamide reuptake inhibitor. Increasing availability of this antidepressant endocannabinoid in the brain theoretically boosts mood.
Secondly, CBD also combats neuroinflammation (or inflammation of the brain). Of late, depression experts are realizing the disorder is not merely a result of chemical imbalance – indeed, that may not even be the key factor. Instead, the physical damage caused to various brain regions by inflammation could be what's causing prolonged periods of low mood and depression. CBD works to heal these affected brain regions, restoring damaged circuitry and supporting neurogenesis (brain growth) in areas where atrophy (shrinkage) has occurred, such as the hippocampus.
Neuroscience is complex stuff. But the key takeaway is that CBD has unique antidepressant qualities, compared to existing drugs. Edibles are perfect as the lasting effects will help keep your mood up all day long!
Edibles as supplements
Looking for a new supplement to add to your stack? CBD is not like any vitamin or mineral you may already be using. Very few compounds are known to interact with the ECS, and CBD is especially beneficial for this system, which has such a critical role in promoting good overall well-being.
CBD edibles have a range of benefits, from reducing pain perception, to improving cognition, regulating sleep and even enhancing reproductive health. Supplementing the body with CBD ensures the ECS has enough endocannabinoids to regulate both CB1 and CB2 receptors. CBD perhaps has numerous other health benefits that researchers are yet to come across.
All in all, CBD is a safe, non-addictive and non-psychotropic supplement with subtle, but seriously good effects.
How to use CBD edibles
Dosing with CBD edible products is really, really simple – you simply decide what dosage you want, and eat it! However, it can take some time to get used to edibles, if you aren't currently a CBD user, or have previously only taken fast-acting products, such as flower, e-liquids and sublingual oils. Taking the wrong amount of CBD doesn't pose any negative health risks, as cannabis edibles may do. But regularly consuming higher doses than needed makes taking CBD more expensive than it should be.
Whether you have or haven't taken CBD edibles before, we recommend starting at a low dose. This is not just for precautionary measures, but because of the different way CBD is absorbed into the body with edibles. A 20mg vaporized dose will affect you differently than a 20mg edible dose. Furthermore, edibles hit more slowly, because absorption takes longer. Inhaled or sublingually absorbed CBD kicks in after just a few minutes, but the initial effects from edibles can take an hour or more to show.
Hence why starting small is the best course of action. If after two hours or so you find that the first dose wasn't strong enough, then feel free to top it up. You can always add to your dose, but you can never take from it! Again, there are no significant side effects to be had from taking too much CBD, but it could make you feel very sedated and sleepy.
Keep a journal of your edible experiences
It may sound a little cheesy, but keeping a written record of your experiences every time you take CBD edibles provides you with valuable, personalized information about how these products impact you. To say is to forget, to write is to remember, according to a famous Chinese proverb!
Knowing to the letter how your body responds to varying CBD dosages helps a great deal when it comes to fine-tuning. After a few edible sessions, you'll have a good understanding of what dosages you need for certain ailments. And this will make your CBD edible use more economical and efficient. No longer will you be taking too much, and rarely will you have to top up your dose!
CBD edibles recipe
Ready to make your own CBD edibles? It's much easier than you'd think, and there are a couple of ways to go about it. There's nothing stopping you from adding CBD-isolate crystals or CBD oil to your recipes, although many edible lovers prefer starting from scratch. For this, you'll need some CBD flower buds. Decide whether you want an energizing, relaxing or balanced experience, and choose a sativa, indica or hybrid strain accordingly.
Decarboxylation is the first step – heating the flower is necessary to turn cannabidiolic acid (CBDa) into CBD. Simply break up your CBD-rich flower buds into small chunks and heat in the oven for 45 minutes at 250F. On average just under 90% of the CBDa is successfully turned into CBD.
Step-by-step guide
Now it's time to make the extract which can then be infused into oil or butter, and used in recipes. For every cup of butter, you'll need between 7 and 10 grams of CBD flower.
After decarboxylating the CBD herb, grind it up finely. Melt a cup of butter with a cup of water into a saucepan, and simmer. The water is necessary to stop the butter from burning, and to provide control over the temperature. As the butter starts to melt in the pan, mix in the ground-up decarboxylated flower.
Continue to simmer (at around 200F) for at least two and a half hours. Stir every 15 to 20 minutes. Ensure that the mixture never boils over, as very high temperatures will burn off the cannabinoids, making the extract useless.
After allowing the butter and flower to simmer for a few hours, it's time to strain the mixture. By now, the cannabinoids should be infused into the butter. Get a jar or container, position a funnel over it and line the funnel with cheesecloth. Gradually pour the butter into the funnel, allowing it to strain into the jar. Let this process happen naturally, as forcing the butter through the cheesecloth could give the butter a foul taste.
After straining the butter, refrigerate it for at least one hour before draining out any excess water. The strength of your butter will depend on how much butter and flower you have used. Keep this in mind when deciding how much to use in your recipes. When cooking with CBD-infused butter, always keep temperatures below 250F to avoid burning off the cannabinoids.
Are CBD edibles legal?
Yes, CBD edibles are legal in the United States, providing they conform to regulations surrounding industrial hemp. All industrial hemp products must have less than 0.3% THC, as per the 2018 Farm Bill. It is this strict ruling which prevents CBD products from having a psychoactive and intoxicating effect.
Are CBD edibles safe?
Overwhelmingly, the evidence shows that CBD is a safe substance. Research into the compound has picked up a lot over recent years, and now even the World Health Organization is paying attention. The WHO states that CBD has "no abuse potential" in its pure form. Further to this, studies have shown that the body can handle very high dosages – much more than anyone would need to consume – without any health problems.
A high CBD edible dosage may leave you feeling very sleepy for several hours. If you are experiencing strong sedation, you should avoid driving and using heavy machinery. However, this advice is applicable when it comes to taking any supplement.
CBD may interfere with certain prescription drugs, as molecules appear to deactivate enzymes in the cytochrome P450 system. Slowing down activity in this system reduces the body's ability to break down various substances, essentially subjecting the user to an increased dosage of the drug in question. This could be problematic in certain cases.
If you are currently on medication and are worried about taking CBD alongside it, speak with your doctor first. Getting legitimate advice from a medical professional who knows your health situation carries much more weight than any generalized advice you may read online.
Is it safe to mix CBD edibles with alcohol?
There is nothing obviously risky about mixing alcohol with CBD edibles, or any other CBD products. There are no known adverse effects from combining the two, which is logical since CBD doesn't have any intoxicating effects. This is in contrast to mixing alcohol with psychoactive cannabis, which could cause negative and unforeseen effects.
However, just because it seems safe to mix CBD edibles with alcohol doesn't necessarily mean you should do it. A strong edible dose combined with multiple alcoholic beverages could leave you feeling rather sleepy after a few hours. This may or may not be a problem depending where you are. And, of course, you should never drive after drinking alcohol.
Mixing CBD edibles with alcohol isn't something we'd recommend, but nor is it something we would warn against. Use your discretion and assess how your body reacts to having both in your system at the same time. If you are intent on taking the two together, just be sensible!
Can CBD edibles cause nausea?
CBD is not linked to nausea, and if anything, research suggests the cannabinoid actually helps with nauseous symptoms. That said, there may be anomalies and scientists still have more to learn about CBD. It's possible that CBD edibles won't work for you, which is why you should always start with a low dose. Minimize your chances of having a bad experience with CBD edibles by purchasing only from trusted vendors that comply with third-party testing practices.
Can I travel with CBD edibles?
Travelling with CBD edibles is legal! Unlike marijuana, industrial hemp-based CBD products are legal according to federal law. Therefore, it's perfectly fine to take CBD into airports and cross state boundaries with products. Taking CBD edibles to another country could be an issue, depending on where it is you're travelling. Always confirm that CBD is legal at your final destination – and any locations you may be passing through – before attempting to fly with products.
While we're discussing travelling, CBD edibles are the ideal form of CBD to take on a flight. Flying can be troublesome for many reasons. Perhaps the lack of legroom exacerbates the pain in your dodgy knee, or maybe the flying itself leaves you drowning in anxiety. With CBD edibles, you can get the relief you need without being bothered by anybody else. There's no aroma to get concerned about, and most edibles look exactly the same as standard candies and gummies. And if you're fretting about somebody seeing the CBD packaging and asking unwanted questions, just mix the edibles in with your regular sweets!
Final thoughts
Historically, edibles have always been the second-most popular cannabis and hemp product, coming in just behind flower. That may have changed somewhat with so many new products hitting the market in recent times, but edibles are still special, and offer a unique CBD experience. And for many symptoms, the drawn-out effects are much preferable to the shorter relief provided by other CBD products.
We hope this detailed guide to CBD edibles has helped you become more familiar with the various types of products on sale and what they may help with, and also given you food for thought on making edibles from scratch! We also hope we've addressed any pressing questions and concerns about edibles and CBD in general.
If you are confused about anything or have something to add about CBD edibles, please leave a comment – we would love to hear your thoughts!


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I've found myself at the computer in the short period before my first class of my third year, and I'm wondering what would be the best use of my time.
As I look back over my previous blog posts this year, I've had the opportunity to reflect on what went well, and what didn't go so well.
The second year psychology syllabus is considered the hardest year of the three, because it contains a lot of content which is required to meet the British Psychological Society specifications. And I struggled with a lot of parts of it. Since in my own dissertation project group our paradigm assumed that large amounts of memorisation does not constitute proper learning. I think a few of the things I have written my have carried that frustration.
But now we have a fresh start, and I'm looking forward to studying some specialised modules this year which utilise new teaching methods. We're also excited to see our social media in learning research take off. My goal this year is to score a first class degree, something I believe is attainable. I'm intending to achieve this through putting in the time to study, but also ensuring that the work I do is not wasted effort. I believe part of this will be worked through introduction of Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) (Jarche, 2013). I will be using twitter, wordpress and evernote to channel, record and index my thoughts, and to engage in the online discussion. Surely I also need to be wise in how I work to the grading criteria that has been set, but all this I hope will be quickened though reflective and synthesising pieces contained on my blog.


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Summary of today's show: The YouCat was a new catechism specifically formulated for young people from the Catechism of the Catholic Church and first produced for World Youth Day Madrid in 2011, but it's such an accessible and contemporary expression of the faith that all ages can use and appreciate it. Scot Landry, Fr. Mark O'Connell and Dom Bettinelli dip into the YouCat's questions and answers on prayer to approach some basic understandings of how and why we pray and what the various phrases of a prayer like the Our Father really mean.
Listen to the show:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Watch the show via live video streaming or a recording later: BostonCatholicLive.com
Today's host(s): Scot Landry and Fr. Mark O'Connell
Today's guest(s): Domenico Bettinelli
Today's topics:The YouCat on Prayer
Our usual transcriptionist, Dom Bettinelli, was a guest on today's show and thus we don't have our usual show notes. Please find below a link to the purchase the YouCat through our Amazon.com affiliate store, which provides a small percentage back to support the ministry of The Good Catholic Life. We also have the text of this Sunday's Mass readings, which were discussed today as well.*
- First Reading for the 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 20, 2013 (Isaiah 62:1-5)
For Zion's sake I will not be silent,
for Jerusalem's sake I will not be quiet,
until her vindication shines forth like the dawn
and her victory like a burning torch.
Nations shall behold your vindication,
and all the kings your glory;
you shall be called by a new name
pronounced by the mouth of the LORD.
You shall be a glorious crown in the hand of the LORD,
a royal diadem held by your God.
No more shall people call you "Forsaken, "
or your land "Desolate, "
but you shall be called "My Delight, "
and your land "Espoused.â€
For the LORD delights in you
and makes your land his spouse.
As a young man marries a virgin,
your Builder shall marry you;
and as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride
so shall your God rejoice in you.
- Second Reading for the 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 20, 2013 (1 Corinthians 12:4-11)
Brothers and sisters:
There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit;
there are different forms of service but the same Lord;
there are different workings but the same God
who produces all of them in everyone.
To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit
is given for some benefit.
To one is given through the Spirit the expression of wisdom;
to another, the expression of knowledge according to the
same Spirit;
to another, faith by the same Spirit;
to another, gifts of healing by the one Spirit;
to another, mighty deeds;
to another, prophecy;
to another, discernment of spirits;
to another, varieties of tongues;
to another, interpretation of tongues.
But one and the same Spirit produces all of these,
distributing them individually to each person as he wishes.
- Gospel for the 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 20, 2013 (John 2:1-11)
There was a wedding at Cana in Galilee,
and the mother of Jesus was there.
Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the wedding.
When the wine ran short,
the mother of Jesus said to him,
"They have no wine.â€
And Jesus said to her,
"Woman, how does your concern affect me?
My hour has not yet come.â€
His mother said to the servers,
"Do whatever he tells you.â€
Now there were six stone water jars there for Jewish ceremonial washings,
each holding twenty to thirty gallons.
Jesus told the them,
"Fill the jars with water.â€
So they filled them to the brim.
Then he told them,
"Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter.â€
So they took it.
And when the headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine,
without knowing where it came from
— although the servers who had drawn the water knew —,
the headwaiter called the bridegroom and said to him,
"Everyone serves good wine first,
and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one;
but you have kept the good wine until now.â€
Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs at Cana in Galilee
and so revealed his glory,
and his disciples began to believe in him.


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When designing a home, lighting is one of those projects that appears to be forgotten about. If you're wanting towards retaining your own home clean and tidy, then you need to look in direction of cleansing merchandise. At the present time, these types of merchandise make sure that the streets that you walk on, the plate that you just eat off of, and every thing else is clean and tidy. Therefore, if you want to make your own home to look actually lovely and clear, then you must definitely get your hands on some top quality cleaning related merchandise. This text will act as a detailed guide to cleaning products.
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Interior design services has grow to be widespread since the last decade. That is mainly because of the easy and clean designs which permit maintenance to be loads easier than the opposite kinds of designs. Create your dream residence, becoming your way of life, with the assistance of our high designers. Iantha Carley, the proprietor of Iantha Carley Interiors , informed Insider that the chair rail is a "puny strip of wood" that doesn't do a lot past awkwardly splitting a room in half, thus making the complete house look smaller.
There isn't a doubt that a well designed and nicely made chandelier is totally timeless. It's going to never exit of vogue because the standard designs are barely unchanged from once they first started being displayed tons of of years in the past. The identical declare can't be made for different lamps and lighting. Like clothes, furniture, interior design and lighting exit of style in the blink of a watch. It's a lot better to fill your house with traditional pieces that this may not occur to.


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One of the long-term projects we are working on is a Learning Management System (LMS) that helps to organise, track and distribute online courses. The LMS provides a rich variety of online tools that are vital for all aspects of the educational process, including general user management, course management and planning tools, attendance tracking, assessments, and academic reports. The system we are working on is one of the leading platforms across Europe and the USA. The platform is available 24/7, and the number of active users exceeds seven million per day.
This article illustrates how the release process of the high-load platform was transformed from occasional and costly releases to more frequent and predictable ones.
Before transformation: Release highlights
Several years ago, the project began rapidly gaining market share. Not only did this result in team growth, but it also revealed a scaling issue. Even though the LMS users were eager to pay for the service and custom development, market expansion was slowed down by infrequent releases because some organisations could not wait that long for new features.
At that time, there were 3–4 releases a year, each of which was preceded by a full regression testing, which lasted 2–3 weeks and stopped new development completely. Developers and testers had to manually pass hundreds of complex and detailed test cases to ensure the quality of the product. Apart from resource costs, the regression was quite tedious for everyone involved.
Unfortunately, there was no immediate way to start more frequent releases due to the monolithic architecture and the requirements imposed on the platform.
Monolithic architecture
Initially a student project, the system was originally developed in C++ and then flowed into a long phase of development in ASP.NET. Many patterns and best practices that are well-known today were in their infancy at that time, and .NET 2.0 did not have even half of the features that exist in modern .NET Core. What some may call a smelly code today was not considered to be bad back then. Therefore, the monolithic system architecture (composed as one piece) actually suited everyone until a certain point.
In terms of releases, the architecture was inflexible because releasing components simultaneously was the only possible option. Such releases were followed by increased time costs and higher risks of having deployment issues in production. Addressing the risks became the main reason for having mandatory regression testing before the release roll-out.
Strict requirements
The LMS is the core of education in many European universities and colleges. All data related to students, teachers, parents, user interactions, grades, presence, learning resources and homework, among other features, are stored by the platform without hard copies. The system has always been subject to extremely strict security, performance and, importantly, availability requirements. Now imagine that the system that acts as your central working resource and wholly covers your daily workflow is suddenly broken. Five minutes of unavailability will cause you slight discomfort, while one hour of downtime will completely block you from performing any work-related tasks. That said, uptime—a period when the system performs normally—is one of the key metrics and is also a legal obligation. Failure to comply with uptime regulations can bring big fines. The target uptime for this LMS is normally 99.9% or above.
Simultaneously, release is a threat to production stability because of potential code and deployment issues. The system aggregates dozens of components, including web applications, async services and APIs. Considering the complexity, potential deployment issues are very real and can cause significant downtime.
Thus, the paradox of the situation is that from the user point of view, more frequent releases are crucial; meanwhile, IT operations engineers who are responsible for production stability and maintenance (hereafter 'Operations') would prefer as few releases as possible.
Underperforming routines
One of the most important reasons for rare releases was the release management process. There is a separate chapter in this article describing then-existing process, its weak points and transformation.
With an awareness of global issues and a clearer understanding of what we would like to have in the end, the company began to gradually change.
In this article, I will focus on the changes in the development and release process, but it is worth noting that a lot of changes have occurred in the work of Operations as well.
Infrastructure issues resolution
In the beginning, we had to overcome some infrastructure issues.
First, it was difficult for many teams to work on isolated features because we were using TFS as a source control. It turned out that Git meets all our criteria, and it is much easier to maintain the new branching model based on Git. Thus, we moved from TFS to Git and changed the branching workflow along the way.
Second, the deployment procedure consisted of an indefinite set of PowerShell scripts that had been written by different people for different purposes, and they were sometimes difficult for the majority to understand. Even though they served their purpose, maintaining them required increasing effort as the number of new components started to grow. To resolve this issue, we developed an internal deployment tool that automates the execution of deployment steps and organises them in execution sequences. It also creates deployment logs.
As a part of the development of a new component, developers and Operations discuss the requirements for the new application and how it will be deployed. Developers are responsible for creating a script that automates the deployment of the tool. The script is an environment-independent parametrised sequence of steps, whereas script variables such as paths, URLs, and server names are configured for a certain environment. Using the same deployment tool in both test environments and production allows deployment issues to be found and fixed at an early stage.
Although the solutions to both problems have been described here briefly, they require much effort, coordination and time.
Timeline shortening
We adopted the concept of 'release trains' that 'depart' according to the schedule published in advance. The dates of several upcoming releases are now announced beforehand. In the event that some teams cannot make it on time for a certain release, they will have to miss it and should therefore aim for the following release. This rule allows for the planning of feature delivery and is more accurate in customer commitments.
We started with a few timid attempts at monthly releases of the main application and then gradually moved on to releases every second week. Short release cycles had a beneficial effect on the quality. Less code means fewer risks and a higher probability of catching all bugs before the release.
Nevertheless, after a couple of years of biweekly releases, we decided to jump back to monthly releases due to the amount of manual work needed for the release preparation. In addition, frequent releases were exhausting for a handful of QAs because they had to consistently split their time between their regular teamwork and the release tasks. Monthly releases became a compromise between fast feature delivery, a smaller scope of changes and employee comfort.
Timeline example
Let us examine a standard release iteration using the reverse planning method and see why it takes five weeks for a release. Given that the release date is scheduled and the stabilisation testing together with staging takes two weeks, we arrange the code freeze two weeks before the planned release date. A code freeze implies that it is no longer possible to merge new features with the release. All new features aiming for the release must be merged by the code freeze. Features that were not merged before the code freeze except some important ones negotiated in advance are re-targeted to the next release.
Also, we know that translation testing is one of the acceptance criteria, and this step is dependent on the translation agency. It takes around a week to receive the translations from them and another week to verify the translations. Therefore, two weeks before the code freeze, we have the language freeze, which is the day when we send new strings for translations. After the translations have been received from the translation agency, teams finalise the testing and merge the feature.
Regarding post-release activities, we monitor production logs for one week starting from the release day. Within this week, it is important to ensure that the release did not introduce new issues. If it did, we must decide whether to fix them before the next scheduled release.
See an example timeline below:
When releases happen every second week, three release iterations can overlap at a certain time. Monitoring of the previous release, stabilisation testing of the upcoming release and translation of the next release can be run in parallel.
With monthly releases, we reserve two-week windows without release work between release stabilisation tests.
New branching strategy
Previously, we did not really care about the branching strategy because the development was put on halt when the regression testing started.
The branching scheme we came up with was not invented by us, but it completely meets our needs:
We have two long-living branches: develop and master. The code in the master branch must match the version in production at any given time. Branches for patches and hotfixes are created from the master branch and merged to it immediately after release. Accepted features without bugs are merged to the develop branch. When the stabilisation testing of the new release starts, a release branch is created from the develop one, after which they live apart. New bugs found in the release are fixed in the release branch and continuously merged to the develop branch. New features are collected for the next release in the develop branch again. When the stabilisation is finished and the release package hits production, the release branch is merged to the master branch.
Release candidate testing changes
As the new paradigm left no time for long testing, we decided to abandon the full regression testing in favour of critical area testing. We composed a list of core features that must be checked before a release. These features only include the most used functionalities. We continuously reduce the amount of manual testing by covering the critical areas with Selenium tests.
Previously, we could find dozens of bugs during the regression testing and then spend time fixing or rolling them back. Sometimes, this would result in postponing the release day. According to the new definition of 'done', only functionalities that have been verified by a QA and PO can be merged to the develop branch. With this in mind, we only kept a brief testing stage for the new functionalities on the release candidate to cut off integration issues.
Abandoning the pre-release regression was not easy. It scared us in the beginning, but fortunately there was no noticeable degradation of quality after all.
Architecture changes
Releasing a monolithic system was difficult, risky and time consuming. Moving on to frequent releases forced us to break the system into single deployables, which are smaller components that can be stored and released separately from each other. Although we have already extracted many components, there are still candidates that can be moved to a separate repository on the list. For greenfield development, new components must always be built as single deployables.
Release management transformation
In such a big project, it is vital to have a person who coordinates all participants and is always on top of everything during the release. This person always knows the current status and communicates with stakeholders and teams about found issues or timeline deviations.
The release manager role has existed since the beginning, but historically, it was a more senior title that could only be awarded to 2–3 chosen senior developers. On the one hand, it guaranteed some stability. On the other hand, it had obvious drawbacks.
First, given the level of responsibility and the length of the release cycles, this was a very exhausting job, so no one wanted to have it on a regular basis. The job needed to be delegated to a wider range of capable people.
Second, every new release was somewhat different from the previous one because release management was a sort of creative task rather than a well-defined routine.
The initial goal was to clarify the duties and scope of responsibilities of the release manager. This was not a low hanging fruit, but not only did we figure them out, but we also documented them in a very detailed way, which guarantees that every experienced developer can take on the release manager duties without a fear of failure by missing important details. We also documented the components and the dependencies between them, the deployment sequence, the release timeline and other related areas. The more detailed the description of the complex process, the easier it is to find a solution to any issues that may arise. When release management tasks that must be solved individually become part of a regular routine, the release manager can focus on more important things. One could say that we introduced unnecessary bureaucracy, but in this case, it proves to be justified.
The solution above serves many purposes. Among the obvious advantages are that the release manager is now a non-person-specific role, we now have a bigger pool of release managers in the rotation plan, the pressure on key people has eased, and an accurate idea of the amount of release manager work has emerged.
Below is an incomplete list of release manager responsibilities:
- Taking care of translations for the new functionality;
- Defining the timeline of the release;
- Figuring out the scope of changes and potential dependencies and estimating the risks;
- Creating the release branch and deploying it to the test environment;
- Maintaining the test environment during stabilisation testing;
- Monitoring logs on test environments, investigating new issues, and assigning found bugs;
- Keeping in touch with the QA coordinator (a person who manages the stabilisation testing) and helping to resolve all their issues regarding the ongoing release;
- Communicating with the release team, PO, Operations, etc.;
- Reviewing all merge requests sent to the release branch;
- Handing over the release candidate package to Operations for staging;
- Monitoring logs in production for one week starting from the release day;
- Coordinating hotfixes and patches if needed;
- Participating in a release retrospective.
What is NOT included in the release manager's responsibilities?
- Deploying the release package to production (Operations' responsibility)
- Fixing found issues (development teams' responsibility).
Does it sound too ideal?
As with our many other projects, we have sought a balance between developing new features and technical improvements that do not add value for end users. Therefore, automation of the regression testing is not 100% complete yet.
In reality, sometimes new issues are squeezed into the release candidate, and we need to follow up on them quickly. Also, releases can be cancelled or postponed for various reasons, such as critical last-minute findings, ongoing Operations routines (e.g., data migration or the installation of new hardware or software updates), and even long holidays. Lastly, bad releases that require urgent patches can arise as well.
During the COVID-19 lockdown period, the load on the platform increased dramatically. The growth of the number of concurrent sessions and user actions revealed some bottlenecks that had been hidden, so all planned releases were postponed, and patches and hotfixes became the highest priority. When this high-pressure period was over, it turned out that we had an unexpectedly huge number of new features awaiting the release; stabilisation testing took a long time, and the number of new bugs in the package had doubled. However, the release was still less risky and less costly than before the transformation.
The progress is irreversible. After every new release, we set aside some time for introspection to define the pain points and work on our mistakes.
However, the destination we are moving towards is crystal clear. We aim to:
- Extend the automation testing so it covers all critical areas;
- Have release cycles that meet our needs. They may get shorter again, but most importantly, they should be as smooth and imperceptible as possible for both the users and engineers;
- Extract as many components as we can that can be released separately.
Releasing a new version of a complex web application is a challenging task. In several years, we have managed to step away from quarterly releases towards biweekly ones, but we eventually settled on monthly releases. This transformation required comprehensive changes affecting Engineering, Operations and Management. In the end, the scope of the releases decreased considerably, and they became less risky and more predictable from the planning point of view. The era of tedious, resource-consuming releases is now over.


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It's important to understand the difference between brands and logos to live this process. When we talk about brands, from the Cyclical Branding® perspective we consider them a business concept or an idea; it's the combination of the spatial, human, technological and communication dimension that gives live, visibility and strategy to the commercial structure, and it's also what really allows us to design a powerful and efficient business.
Settled in the age of knowledge where the concept of the linear evolution of things becomes obsolete, we find ourselves in a moment in which it is essential to understand that in the cyclical mentality of feedback we will find the learning to face new challenges in relation to any aspect of life. This idea of feedback is closely linked to the concept of circular economy and should be extrapolated to the world of brands and their universe, and therefore branding is no longer linear.
This cyclical system consists on 8 fundamental strategic areas, from which a brand is created, developed and implemented, bearing in mind and taking into account every aspect that takes part in the development and growth of a brand with solid values and foundations.
Every module is presented as a solution to some strategic matters that have to be taken into account in order to generate a successful business for the 21st century. By adding more than 500 actions we speed up the path for evolution, to inspire your vision.
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Bamboo Bike workshop are more than the most recent contrivance. When you stop to consider the exceptional characteristics of bamboo, utilizing it as a bike material bodes well then it sounds. Bamboo is more grounded than steel yet lighter than generally woods. In the mission to locate the most grounded, lightest bike conceivable, bamboo makes a characteristic option. It sounds like an advertising dream, yet really the bamboo bike bodes well. As more individuals think about the potential outcomes of bamboo, bamboo bikes will probably turn out to be more well known in 2010.
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Bamboo is solid, yet it's inconceivably springy. There's give and take, so it can more readily ingest the stun of the street and also the maltreatment a rider normally gives it. Bamboo can take a licking, yet reacts generous. Bamboo bikes include a smooth ride that retains the characteristic stuns of the street. They make a solid biking material that has the ideal measure of providing for handling the stun.
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A Glide that Rides Remember accepting a bit of bamboo as a child and putting on a show to wash the air like a sword? The bamboo just appeared to float through the air. Bamboo bikes work a similar route, skimming through the air with the smoothest of vitality. They are lightweight yet solid, with the ideal adaptability to make a smooth ride. A bamboo bike rides like a fantasy. Take one for a skim and perceive how it performs.
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Steel bikes cost around one hundred dollars in the market. In any case, when bamboo bikes are created in vast masses and made locally, it will cost around fifty-five dollars. This is one of the objectives of the Bamboo Bike Studio organization. After the sum total of what bamboo has been made and utilized in various ways – furniture, spa candles, and beeswax candles with bamboo light holders, floors, and so on. Bamboo is really a flexible plant.


text: New Delhi: Now, Indian Citizenship law will be modified to treat religious minority from Pakistan and Bangladesh, who came to India out of fear of religious prosecution, as not "illegal migrants". The move will be taken by the Home Ministry which is set to draft amending law in connection with the Citizenship Act of 1955 in India. The so called changes will be giving a legal path for the refugees so that they can remain in India and even they would be allowed to claim Indian Citizenship. Moreover, this move…Read More


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My tomato sauce is very multi-purpose. It's our almost weekly staple for our homemade pizza. You can click here to see my pizza dough recipe. I like to can the tomato sauce in advance as it's great to use in spaghetti, casseroles and other recipes. I generally spend two weekends canning a year working on making tomato paste, tomato sauce, and enchilada sauce for use for the rest of the year. I'll include links to the recipes at the end of the post.
This tomato sauce recipe should make 10 quart size jars. I recommend canning these and sealing them instead of freezing just because they stay fresh longer. Special note, if you are not including the tomato paste in your sauce, make sure to include a 1/4 teaspoon of lemon juice in each of your quart jars. This makes sure that your sauce remains flavorful and fresh.
Flavorful Tomato Sauce Recipe
60 peeled, blanched and cored tomatoes
3 celery stalks chopped
1 1/2 cups of carrot juice (This makes your sauce sweet.)
4 medium sized yellow onions chopped
12 garlic cloves
2 cups of red wine (I prefer pinot noir or merlot.)
3 tablespoons oregano
3 tablespoons salt
3 tablespoons cracked pepper
1 1/2 cups of basil
3 cups of tomato paste
3 bay leaves
The tomato sauce will have a bright red color from using the tomato paste. Add all your ingredients with the exception of the bay leaves. Using your immersion blender, blend everything together. Add your bay leaves and bring your sauce to a boil. Stir frequently. Let it reduce on medium high for 2-3 hours until it reaches the right think consistency and red color. Add additional spices and flavors to suite your taste and customizations.
Follow the basic canning rules sanitizing your jars, lids and rings. Add your sauce and then seal them. Make sure they are cooled before storing them in a cool and dry location.


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Exchange Server Loading Balancing and Mysterious MAPI Behavior, Part 2
MAPI Applications and Port Connectivity
Most application developer probably would not even be aware of load balancers. If they are, it is less likely they would be aware of potential impacts to their application. It is safe to say that the last thing on their burn down list is some obscure error handler to dealwith a load balancer that slams their MAPI connection. In fact, the app may work perfectly during debug and QA, but randomly fail in production. For example, the app may experience rare sporadic issues that you have no rational explanation for. Unless of course you know what to look for -- you app may just get stuck in the mud.
Custom MAPI DevelopmentIf you are writing custom code for one specific environment and you know that there will be no load balancer involved, read no further. However, if their ever a chance your application will need to be used in front of a load balancer, you may want to familiarize yourself with ways to diagnose and resolve possible issues that would come to be.
Even with a Load Balancer, the application can still work reliably. For example, if the sequence of MAPI calls are simple enough, it may be fairly easy to retry operations with a new session.a) change app code
b) hosts file
c) Note that this probably does not apply to applications built on top of Outlook.
For more complex and multi hour updates, this is not as easy to code around. First you need to be able to detect that failure and re-initialize the session to the user mailbox, then start over. The failure condition can have ambiguous error codes and if you have simultaneous sessions to multiple exchange servers, your code doesn't even know where to start. Then there is also the synchronous calls made to the MAPI subsystem that are never returned at all. Yes, you can code defensively.The question is, should you drive your car directly through the minefield, or should you drive around it ?
To further complicate things, we have another enemy; latency. When the CAS role is on the mailbox server, the connection is a simple client / server communication. Latency is in the single digits (of milliseconds). Now add a load balancer which talks to a CAS, which talks to a mailbox server. Even if the load balancer is really fast, (probably isn't when it has 10,000 users connected) what was was single digit latency for the application has now become 50 or 60 ms latency. While the application could previously update 15 contacts in a one second interval, it can now only make five contacts updates. Of course, Outlook users are completely oblivious to any of this latency. When you double click to open a message, it doesn't matter if an extra 50 ms was injected into the equation.
Looking for Evidence
When we see lost MAPI connections and poor performance, the first step is to see if there is a load balancer in the picture. Using the windows Netstat command, we scan for any connections to the DNS name of the load balancer. If we see the load balancer in the list of active connections, we are ready to re mediate. The first step is to convince the customer that in this case, the load balancer is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
To provide some context on our application, there is a primary mailbox for the itrezzoAgent which is always kept open. When a target user need to be updated, a secondary session is created. Because we support servers in geographically diverse locations, the first step is to lookup determine which Exchange database each user resides on. After that, we can find the active server for that database.
Each itrezzoAgent server is configured a server wildcard that describes all of the local mailbox servers and in turn all of the elements of the local CAS array.
When customers started deploying Exchange 2010 with an array of client access servers, we adapted our
Explicit list of client access servers
Each app server uses different CAS
- Dynamic profile
- Profiles may get redirected to the load balancer
- Host file for redirect load balancer
- Much faster performance
- Higher reliability, no hung Mapi sessions
- Spreading the load is achieved
- Possible trade off for application as specific CAS may go offline