For some, a traditional wedding cake will not suffice for that all-important ceremony. Some want to be on the cutting edge of whatever's modern and trendy. For those wanting an "in" wedding this year, the reception's centerpiece should be an ombre styled wedding cake.
According to "The Daily Meal" blog at Yahoo Shine, the current trend in ombre fashion styles has spilled over into the world of brides and wedding planners. The fashion seems to be everywhere, from the chic patterns of designer clothes and casual t-shirts to some of the latest ways to do one's hair and fingernails. Ombre seems to be just about everywhere. Now it is the decorative style to have for wedding cakes.
But what is "ombre?" Ombre is the show of color gradient or graduation from light to dark colors. Just think hippie-like tie-dyes you've seen with the same color scheme, how each color fades into the next. That is ombre coloration.
It seems that ombre style cakes caught on about the time that Maggie Austin Cake posted a photo of an ombre cake online, a two-tiered affair with orchids on the top layer, the lower layer fading from top to bottom in gradients of purple. On the cake designer's website are a myriad designs in the portfolio section, with quite a few of the ombre cakes on display.
The ombre cakes seem to be the natural progression of a fashion trend that started in 2012 in (where else?) France, according to The Budget Fashionista. And although it might be a matter of conjecture whether or not the trend will continue through 2013 (since it branched into hair styles and nail painting), it certainly seems to be the go-to style for this year's wedding cakes.
And for those who want to put their cake designers and makers through some hoops (because they're certainly going to make you pay -- or at least the father's of the brides), you could always opt for an ombre cake in and out. Glorious Treats has a Pink Ombre Swirl Cake that fades baby pink to to hot pink with the icing, yellow-ish vanilla cake to electric purple vanilla cake from top to bottom.
So if you want your wedding to be au courant this wedding season, make certain your cake is in style. Of course, traditional is always the safe way to go. And most designer models can be a hit as well. But if you're the kind of person that likes to keep it modern and make a statement as well, ombre is the cake for your nuptials. Fade into your marriage with a cake that sets a symbolic tone for a relationship that has gradually moved from the lighter days of dating to the solid commitment of marriage.
Bramshill House, a Grade I-listed Jacobean country mansion and estate in northeast Hampshire in England, used to train the country?s top police officers has been put up for sale by the Home Office for ?25 million ($38,13 million). This one of the largest and most important Jacobean mansions in England is set in a 250-acre (100 ha) ground, including a 18-acre (7.3 ha) lake to the northeast of the house, and features sports complex, training centre and a total of 329 bedrooms, as well as deer grazing, formal gardens and woodland.
A magnificent large Renaissance mansion with Italian architectural influences which was built between 1605 and 1615, has 15 bedrooms, a long gallery, chapel, lounges, a mezzanine and a number of ?magnificent state rooms? which have now been converted into banqueting halls.
The Home Office has instructed Knight Frank to sell the Hampshire home of the Police Staff College for the past 60 years in an attempt to raise funds and reduce the running costs of its property portfolio. It costs ?5 million a year to run.
Emma Cleugh, partner with Knight Frank Institutional Consultancy department, who is handling the sale, has said that the property could be used for a variety of commercial or alternative uses.
?Bramshill?s rich history is part of its appeal but also its modern facilities bring it right into the 21st century,? she observed. ?Bramshill represents an unequalled opportunity to the market ? whether for continued institutional/training/educational uses or alternative uses and further development.?
An explosion hit the Beijing airport in China Saturday, prompting police to order people to leave a terminal. TODAY's Jenna Wolfe reports
By Ed Flanagan and Ian Johnston, NBC News
An explosion hit Beijing airport in China on Saturday, prompting police to order people to leave one terminal, a witness said.
Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, of the International Crisis Group think tank, was at the airport when the blast happened at about 6:30 p.m. local time (6:30 a.m. ET).
?Huge explosion followed by panic, smoke and dust at Terminal 3,? she said on Twitter.
?Lots of excitement, police v angry, shouted crowds back and told everyone to leave,? she added.
She posted a photograph of the scene, showing the air clouded with dust after the blast:
The official Xinhua News Agency said a man in a wheel chair swas responsible for the explosion, just outside the arrivals exit of Terminal.
The Sina Weibo microblog of state broadcaster China Central Television said the bomb consisted of black gunpowder used to make firecrackers.
A photograph posted on?China's official Xinhua news agency's English-language website showed medical staff treating someone who was lying on the ground.
Chinese state television reported that the only person taken to hospital after the blast was the suspected bomber. However local media said a police official also suffered a minor injury.
Beijing International Airport Authority later said that arrivals and departures were operating normally.
Reuters contributed to this report.
This story was originally published on Sat Jul 20, 2013 7:42 AM EDT
Today, countless websites are facing the epic amounts of online data that first hit Facebook a half decade ago. But according to Facebook engineering bigwig Jay Parikh, these sites have it so much easier.
That?s because many of the web?s largest operations ? including Facebook ? spent the last few years building massive software platforms capable of juggling online information across tens of thousands of servers. And they?ve shared much of this ?Big Data? software with anyone who wants it.
Together with Yahoo, Facebook spearheaded the creation of Hadoop, a sweeping software platform for processing and analyzing the epic amounts of data streaming across the modern web. Yahoo started the open source project as a way of constructing the index that underpinned its web search engine, but others soon plugged it into their own online operations ? and worked to enhance the code as necessary.
?It lets us move data around, wherever we want. Prineville, Oregon. Forest City, North Carolina. Sweden.?
? Jay Parikh
The result is a platform that can juggle as much as 100 petabytes of data ? aka hundreds of millions of gigabytes. ?Five years ago, when we started on these technologies, there were limitations on what we could do and how fast we could grow. What?s happened with the open source community is that a lot of those limitations, those hindrances, have been removed,? says Parikh, who oversees the vast hardware and software infrastructure that drives Facebook. ?People are now able to go through the tunnel a lot faster than we did.?
But now, Facebook is staring down an even larger avalanche of data, and there are new limitations that need fixing. This week, during a briefing with reporters at Facebook?s Menlo Park headquarters, Parikh revealed that the company has developed two new software platforms that will see Hadoop scale even further. And Facebook intends to open source them both.
The first is called Corona, and it lets you run myriad tasks across a vast collection of Hadoop servers without running the risk of crashing the entire cluster. But the second is more intriguing. It?s called Prism, and it?s a way of running a Hadoop cluster so large that it spans multiple data centers across the globe.
?It lets us move data around, wherever we want,? Parikh says. ?Prineville, Oregon. Forest City, North Carolina. Sweden.?
Hadoop is based on research papers describing two massive software platforms that Google built to run its search engine over a decade ago: GFS and MapReduce. GFS ? short for Google File System ? was a means of storing data across thousands of servers, while MapReduce let you pool the processing power in those servers and crunch all that data into something useful. Hadoop works in much the same way. You store data in the Hadoop File System ? aka HDFS ? and you process it with Hadoop MapReduce.
The two Hadoop platforms have helped run the likes of Yahoo and Facebook for years, but they?re not perfect ? and as Facebook expanded to more than 900 million users, their flaws became ever more apparent. Most notably, both were plagued by a ?single point of failure.? If a master server overseeing the cluster went down, the whole cluster went down ? at least temporarily.
In recent months, Facebook eliminated the single point of failure in the HDFS platform using a creation it calls AvatarNode, and the open source Hadoop project has followed with a similar solution known as HA NameNode, for high-availability. But that still left the single point of failure on MapReduce. Now, with Corona, Facebook has solved this as well.
Traditionally, MapReduce used a single ?job tracker? to manage tasks across a cluster of servers. But Corona creates multiple job trackers. ?It has helped us scale out the number of jobs we can do on this MapReduce infrastructure. We can get more throughput through the system, so more teams and products here at Facebook can keep moving,? Parikh says.
?In the past, if we had a problem with the job tracker, everything kinda died, and you had to restart everything. The entire business was affected if this one thing fell over. Now, there?s lots of mini-job-trackers out there, and they?re all responsible for their own tasks.?
Tomer Shiran, one of the first employees at a Silicon Valley Hadoop startup called MapR, points out that his company offers a version of Hadoop that includes a similar fix, but he says that multiple job trackers have not yet reached the open source version of Hadoop. Shiran has seen a version of Corona, and he says the platform also lets you spin up MapReduce jobs much quicker than before.
Facebook?s Jay Parikh provides few details on Corona, but apparently, it?s already used inside Facebook ? and it?s much needed. The company runs what Parikh calls the world?s largest Hadoop cluster, which spans more than 100 petabytes of data, and it analyzes about 105 terabytes every 30 minutes.
But Facebook will soon outgrow this cluster. Those 900 million members are perpetually posting new status updates, photos, videos, comments, and ? well, you get the picture. This is why Parikh and crew built Prism, which will let them run a Hadoop cluster across multiple data centers.
Traditionally, Parikh says, you couldn?t run Hadoop across geographically separate facilities because network packets couldn?t travel between the servers fast enough. ?One of the big limitations of Hadoop is that all the servers have to be net to each other,? he says. ?The system is very tightly coupled, and if you introduce tens of milliseconds of delay between these servers, the whole thing comes crashing to a halt.?
?We can move the warehouses around, depending on cost or performance or technology. We?re not bound by the maximum amount of power we wire up to a single data center.?
? Jay Parikh
But Prism will change that. In short, it automatically replicates and moves data wherever it?s needed across a vast network of computing facilities. ?It allows us to physically separate this massive warehouse of data but still maintain a single logical view of all of it,? Parikh says. ?We can move the warehouses around, depending on cost or performance or technology?. We?re not bound by the maximum amount of power we wire up to a single data center.?
Prism is reminiscent of a Google platform called Spanner. Little is known about Spanner ? Google tends to keep much of its infrastructure work on the down-low ? but in the fall of 2009, it publicly described the platform as a ?storage and computation system that spans all our data centers [and that] automatically moves and adds replicas of data and computation based on constraints and usage patterns.? This includes network constraints related to bandwidth, packet loss, power, and ?failure modes.? If a data center melts down, for instance, Spanner can automatically shift data to another facility.
Google said the platform provided ?automated allocation of resources across [the company's] entire fleet of machines? ? which spanned as many as 36 data centers across the globe.
Parikh acknowledges that Prism is analogous to Google Spanner, but he?s also careful to point out that he too knows little about Spanner or how it?s used. He says that like Spanner, Facebook Prism could be used to instantly relocate data in the event of a data center meltdown.
MapR?s Tomer Shiran says such software is not available outside of Google or Facebook, but he points out that you always run multiple clusters, and he questions how many companies need such a thing. ?Companies like Google operate at a scale no one else operates at,? he says.
Facebook has yet to actually deploy Prism, and Parikh declines to say when this will happen. But he did say that at some point, the company hopes to open source the platform. And it plans to do much the same with Corona. Yes, few companies face the avalanche of online data that now hits Google or Facebook. But they will. ?These are the next set of scaling challenges,? says Parikh.
As they join Filipinos in listening to President Benigno Aquino's State of the Nation Address on Monday, Catholic bishops particularly want to hear Aquino tackle his administration's actions on economic growth and graft.The bishops also said they want to learn what Aquino will do to curb corruption stemming from lawmakers' pork barrel funds.President Aquino has so far kept mum on ...
As Congress opens group pushes tougher flag law
GMA News - Saturday 20th July, 2013
With Congress set to open in July 22, an environmental group pushing for amendments to the Flag Law that would outlaw the use of paint with lead and other toxic chemicals in making flags and other national symbols.The EcoWaste Coalition called for such amendments after finding several flag-based souvenir items sold in Quiapo (Manila) and Cubao (Quezon City) contained lead, arsenic, cadmium, ...
PAGASA Rain over Ilocos Mimaropa Vis-Min on SONA eve
GMA News - Saturday 20th July, 2013
Rain is expected over parts of Ilocos and Mimaropa and over Visayas and Mindanao on Sunday, the eve of President Benigno Aquino III's State of the Nation Address, state weather forecasters said. In its 5 a.m. bulletin, PAGASA said the rain is partly due to the inter-tropical convergence zone across Mindanao. "Visayas and Mindanao and the regions of Ilocos and Mimaropa will experience ...
Former govt peace negotiator pushes resumption of talks with CPP-NDF
GMA News - Saturday 20th July, 2013
A former government peace negotiator over the weekend pushed for the resumption of peace talks with the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People's Army-National Democratic Front soonest. Silvestre Bello III, now a 1 Banat and Ahapo partylist congressman, also urged the government to honor 10 earlier agreements between it and the rebel group. "(The two sides) move the talks forward ...
Cecile Guidote-Alvarez breaks silence to accept and defer to SC decision on National Artist honor
GMA News - Saturday 20th July, 2013
Cecile Guidote-Alvarez, whose National Artist recognition was voided as a result of the high court's ruling last Tuesday, issued a statement Friday to state her decision to "accept and defer to the decision of the Supreme Court." The Supreme ...
Cebu Pac passengers say they got P100K each airline mum
Inquirer - Saturday 20th July, 2013
A giant crane tries to lift the grounded Cebu Pacific Airbus from the mud off the runway at Davao International Airport on Tuesday. By nightfall, workers had pulled the plane out and towed it out of the runway. FILE PHOTO DAVAO CITY, Philippines--Cebu Pacific Air would neither confirm nor deny it had entered into an out-of-court settlement with a group of passengers that was on board its plane ...
Hitmaker Dionne Warwick back for shows in Davao Smart Araneta
Inquirer Lifestyle - Saturday 20th July, 2013
DIONNE Warwick ranks third among all-time best charting female singers. Dionne Warwick, one of the best-selling pop stars of all time who made famous hit songs such as "Walk On By," "Do You Know the Way To San Jose?," "I Say a Little Prayer" and "I'll Never Fall in Love Again," is back in the Philippines for a series of concerts that kicked off ...
Filipinos helped make Malaysia what she is too
Inquirer Global Nation - Saturday 20th July, 2013
Names such as Nobleza, Corpuz, Udarbe, Pascual, Dotimas and of course, Sario, were often heard in the corridors of the Forestry Department headquarters at that time. Skilled Filipinos were also brought in by the British to work as engineers and teachers and for various other ...
PHL FDA bans orders seizure of at least 15 unauthorized cosmetic products
GMA News - Saturday 20th July, 2013
At least 15 cosmetic products, most of them from China, have been added to the list of beauty products banned in the Philippines. The Food and Drug Administration ordered the seizure of the products, which it declared "unsafe and pose imminent danger or injury to consumers." "These products may contain levels of heavy metals like lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic beyond the ...
Pangilinan buying Philippine Star
Inquirer Business - Saturday 20th July, 2013
Manuel V. Pangilinan. FILE PHOTO MANILA, Philippines--The group of businessman Manuel V. Pangilinan said it expects to close within this year a deal that would give it controlling interest in the broadsheet Philippine Star. The group is looking to increase its shares in the broadsheet to 80 percent, said Mike Toledo, head of the MVP group media bureau. "The transaction (is) to be sealed ...
UPDATE 3-Five people sentenced to jail for Costa Concordia disaster
Reuters - Saturday 20th July, 2013
Sat Jul 20, 2013 2:29pm EDT * First convictions in cruise disaster trial * Victims of accident say sentences too light * Lawyers could ask appeals court to overturn plea bargains * Captain Schettino trial still under way By Silvia Ognibene and Naomi O'Leary ROME, July 20 (Reuters) - Four Costa Concordia crew members and a company official were sentenced to jail in Italy on Saturday for their ...
Seven dead in Philippine communist attackSeven people were killed when communist insurgents attacked a rural army outpost in the southern Philippines the military said on Saturday.
Times of India - Saturday 20th July, 2013
MANILA: Seven people were killed when communist insurgents attacked a rural army outpost in the southern Philippines, the military said on Saturday. Six rebels and a pro-government militiaman were killed while another militiaman was wounded during the five-hour gunbattle on Friday, said the military, adding the attack only ended after they deployed helicopter gunships. Around 60 fighters of ...
Filipinos shifting from ?sari-sari? stores to supermarkets
Inquirer Business - Saturday 20th July, 2013
STUART Jamieson, managing director of Nielsen Philippines It may be too early to pronounce the sari-sari store industry dead, but Filipinos' shopping habits are definitely changing along with the times and the surging economy. According to the results of a survey conducted by international market research firm Nielsen, local buying habits-- especially for grocery items-- are also changing ...
NBI alarmed by abundance of illegal drugs in Cebu
Inquirer - Saturday 20th July, 2013
CEBU CITY - The Philippines is no longer just a conduit for the transport of illegal drugs but has become its final destination, according to the National Bureau of investigation. And the authorities as well as some members of Cebu City's high society are alarmed by this development. "We are no longer just a transhipment area, but have become a drop off point based on the alarming ...
Filipino filmmaker is head of Locarno film fest jury
Inquirer - Saturday 20th July, 2013
LAV DIAZ (right) at work on "Norte." The 66th Locarno International Film Festival has appointed award-winning Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz as the president of the jury of Concorso Internazionale (international competition). Diaz's films will be featured at the fest, which is set in Switzerland from Aug. 7 to 17: "Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan" and "Batang West ...
Aquinos speech at Ignatian Festival no hints about SONA
GMA News - Saturday 20th July, 2013
With just two days to go before he delivers it, President Benigno Aquino didn't give a clue on what his State of the Nation Address on July 22 will be about, even during his speech at an activity at the Ateneo de Manila University ? his alma mater.Aquino delivered a message at the ADMU's Ignatian Festival 2013 but did not even give hints of the SONA, according to a report on ...
Weather disturbance nears Hinatuan rain over Palawan Vis-Min
GMA News - Saturday 20th July, 2013
Rain may fall over parts of Palawan, Visayas and Mindanao in the next 24 hours as a potential cyclone ? a low-pressure area ? hovered near Hinatuan City Saturday afternoon, state weather forecasters said.In its 5 p.m. bulletin, PAGASA said that as of 4 p.m., the LPA was estimated at 280 km east of Hinatuan City, and was embedded along the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone affecting ...
Pangilinan group to acquire Philippine Star
Inquirer - Saturday 20th July, 2013
Manny V. Pangilinan. FILE PHOTO MANILA, Philippines - The group of businessman Manuel V. Pangilinan expects to close within this year a deal to take over a controlling interest in broadsheet Philippine Star, a spokesman said Saturday. The group is looking to acquire 80 percent of the broadsheet, said Mike Toledo, head of the MVP group media bureau. "Transaction (is) to be sealed within ...
Cebu Pacific pays passengers in Davao airport accident
Inquirer - Saturday 20th July, 2013
FILE PHOTO DAVAO CITY, Philippines--Did Cebu Pacific enter into an out-of-court settlement with a group of passengers of a plane that missed the runway on landing at Davao's Francisco Bangoy International Airport here last June 2? Members of a group demanding that Cebu Pacific pay them P1 million each in damages said they had received compensation but an official of airline would not ...
2 killed as armed men attack B?laan community in Davao del Sur
Inquirer - Saturday 20th July, 2013
DIGOS CITY, Philippines--Unidentified armed men swooped down on a B'laan tribal neighborhood in Kiblawan, Davao del Sur, early Saturday morning and shot dead two persons without any provocation, the police said. Senior Superintendent Ronaldo Llanera, Davao del Sur police director, said Santigao Marikit, 19, and Usman Labires were outside their homes in Sitio Banog in Barangay Kimlawis ...
PUP reminds students No class suspension on SONA day
GMA News - Saturday 20th July, 2013
The Polytechnic University of the Philippines on Saturday reminded its students there will be no suspension of classes on Monday, when President Benigno Aquino delivers his State of the Nation Address.In a post on its Twitter account, the PUP indicated regular classes will go on as ...
Sabah cops probe revenge letter claiming to be from Kiram camp
GMA News - Saturday 20th July, 2013
Police in Sabah are investigating a letter claiming to be from the camp of Sulu Sultan Jamalul Kiram III, and hinting at a revenge attack in August.But this early, police doubt the letter is really from Kiram's camp, according to a report posted Saturday on Malaysia's The Star Online."We have started our own investigations even though they have been no official police ...
Jeff Bezos' child-like love and wonder of space and rockets has yielded many a great thing, including Apollo 11's #5 engine. The Amazon CEO confirmed today that the rockets dredged from the Atlantic earlier this year are, in fact, those from Apollo 11.
