IBM Security anunció los resultados de un estudio global que explora los factores y desafíos de ser una organización ciberresiliente. El estudio encontró que el 77% de los encuestados admiten no tener un plan formal de respuesta a incidentes de seguridad cibernética (CSIRP) aplicado sistemáticamente en toda su organización. Casi la mitad de los encuestados informaron que su plan de respuesta a incidentes es informal o completamente inexistente.

IBM Security anunció hoy los resultados de su informe 2018 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, en donde se muestra que la cantidad de registros infringidos cayó casi un 25% en 2017 a medida que los cibercriminales cambiaron el enfoque en el lanzamiento de ransomware y ataques destructivos que buscaban retener o destruir información a menos que la víctima pagara algún rescate.

IBM anunció la expansión de la mayor y más diversa oferta de APIs, tecnologías y herramientas cognitivas para los desarrolladores que están creando servicios, productos y aplicaciones que se integran con IBM Watson.

IBM anunció hoy que Ana Paula Assis ha sido nombrada gerente general para IBM América Latina. Ana Paula será responsable por la estrategia de negocios de la compañía y el desarrrollo de sus profesionales, y trabajará con los clientes y el mercado para ayudar a acelerar la transformación digital y la adopción de inteligencia artificial y nuevos modelos cognitivos en la región.

IBM, Peace Corps y cuatro instituciones locales dieron inicio el día de hoy al programa de consultoría Corporate Service Corps (CSC), en su edición Cd. de Querétaro; con la finalidad de apoyar el desarrollo de proyectos de alto impacto en esta localidad. IBM y Peace Corps (PC) trabajarán en conjunto con la Secretaría de Desarrollo Social del Estado de Querétaro, el Instituto Queretano de las Mujeres, el Municipio de Querétaro - Delegación Santa Rosa Jáuregui, y la Universidad Politécnica de Santa Rosa Jáuregui (UPSRJ).

La Universidad Anáhuac México e IBM México celebraron hoy la firma de la Cátedra Corporativa en beneficio de la comunidad universitaria. El acuerdo fue signado por el Dr. Cipriano Sánchez, LC, Rector de la Universidad Anáhuac México y Antonio Martins, Presidente y Gerente General de IBM México.

IBM México anunció hoy el nombramiento de Eduardo Gutiérrez como Presidente y Gerente General de la compañía en el país. El directivo mexicano sucederá a Antonio Martins, quien ha sido nombrado Presidente de IBM Brasil.

Tres proyectos que proponen mejorar la interacción y la experiencia de los jóvenes usuarios con servicios bancarios móviles, fueron reconocidos hoy por Banorte, IBM y el Tec de Monterrey como resultado del Reto Banorte en el marco de la Semana i, que la institución educativa llevó a cabo del 21 al 25 de septiembre en todo el país.

IBM y VON DER HEIDE, compañía especializada en servicios de consultoría de Recursos Humanos, informan que han firmado una importante alianza para expandir su oferta de servicios de Employee Engagement y HR Analytics en toda América Latina. Por medio de las tecnologías de IBM, esta alianza le permitirá a VON DER HEIDE brindar a sus clientes una oferta de consultoría única en el mercado, para transformar estrategias de talento en resultados de negocio.

IBM Poland and WINUEL SA (subsidiary of Sygnity Group), today announced the first Polish Smart Metering software package to enable intelligent electricity use in more than 15 million households in Poland. The solution was developed jointly with the IBM Software Laboratory in Krakow.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) et SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) annoncent aujourd’hui des projets communs pour accompagner leurs clients dans la modernisation de leurs systèmes et processus afin d’accélérer leur présence dans l’économie numérique. Les deux compagnies envisagent particulièrement d’innover ensemble pour créer de nouvelles solutions qui augmentent la valeur ajoutée du client en s’appuyant sur des extensions cognitives, des expériences client et utilisateur renforcées ainsi que des fonctionnalités sectorielles. Tout ceci doté de la SAP® Business Suite, du logiciel 4 SAP HANA® (SAP S/4HANA) et disponible sur site et dans le Cloud.

98% de la Génération Z, avec un pouvoir d'achat estimé à 44 milliards de dollars, préfère faire ses achats en magasin

IBM Security annonce le lancement de QRadar Advisor with Watson, avec de nouvelles fonctionnalités pour les plateformes sécurisées par IA : elles bénéficient désormais d'une meilleure compréhension des comportements cybercriminels et peuvent tirer des leçons des mesures de sécurité mises en place au sein d'une entreprise. IBM Security a également adopté le modèle Open Source MITRE ATT&CK, une base de données qui s'appuie sur les constats concrets de la communauté de sécurité pour soutenir les analystes dans leur compréhension de l'évolution des attaques et de leurs possibles conséquences.

L’entité Sécurité d’IBM (NYSE: IBM) a annoncé aujourd'hui les résultats de son étude annuelle sur l'impact financier des violations de données sur les organisations. Selon le rapport, le coût d'une violation de données a augmenté de 12 % au cours des cinq dernières années et coûte désormais 3,92 millions de dollars en moyenne. Ces dépenses croissantes sont représentatives de l'impact financier pluriannuel des violations, de la réglementation accrue et du processus complexe de résolution des attaques criminelles .

Dans l’objectif d’une recherche permanente d’innovation et d’anticipation, cette alliance stratégique couvre le co-développement de nouvelles offres commerciales pour l’installation et la maintenance de systèmes informatiques, monétiques et d’objets connectés. Ce domaine représente un potentiel de marché dont la croissance est estimée à 12% par an.

La nouvelle plateforme URights s’appuie sur les solutions analytiques et cloud d’IBM pour mieux valoriser les droits des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique

Reconnaissant que les entreprises mettent du temps à adopter l'intelligence artificielle, en partie à cause de la complexité croissante des données, IBM (NYSE : IBM) dévoile aujourd'hui de nouvelles innovations qui optimisent son approche Watson Anywhere pour mettre à l'échelle l'intelligence artificielle sur tous les types de cloud, et de permettre à une multitude de clients de tirer parti de la stratégie pour intégrer l'intelligence artificielle à leurs données, où qu'elles se trouvent.

Cette semaine, des chercheurs d’IBM Research et de l’Université de Yamagata au Japon ont annoncé leur collaboration pour utiliser l’IA d’IBM, couplée à des algorithmes de machine learning et des données géospatiales, afin d’en découvrir davantage à propos de ces mystérieux anciens géoglyphes. Grâce à IBM Power Systems, ce partenariat a déjà abouti à la découverte d’un nouveau géoglyphe à figure humaine avec trois éléments décoratifs sur la tête, le premier grâce à l’IA.

A l’occasion de l’anniversaire des 400 ans de la traversée du navire marchand Mayflower, le nouveau Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) partira le 16 septembre 2020 de Plymouth au Royaume-Uni, pour rejoindre Plymouth dans le Massachussetts aux Etats-Unis. Sans équipage à bord, il sera le premier navire autonome de grande taille à traverser l’Atlantique. Cette traversée unique entremêlant passé, présent et futur propulsera le monde dans l’ère du navire autonome.

IBM met à l’honneur 35 femmes exceptionnelles issues de 12 pays, alors qu'une nouvelle enquête mondiale démontre les bénéfices de la diversité pour l'IA - en notant que du travail reste à faire pour combler l'écart entre les genres.

Des avancées technologiques qui permettent d'accroître encore le leadership du mainframe et en font le système incontournable pour traiter les données critiques des entreprises

@IBM et Hardis Group signent un accord mondial pour transformer la chaîne logistique à l'heure du #client connecté #smartercommerce

lior Banque annonce aujourd’hui avoir choisi l’application IBM MobileFirst sur iOS pour apporter une transformation fondamentale à la façon dont les clients en Pologne interagissent avec leur banque. A l’aide d’un iPad, les professionnels des services bancaires pourront fournir une expérience plus dynamique et personnalisée aux clients en tirant avantage de la puissance de l’analyse prédictive, et ce de façon sécurisée, facile, rapide et disponible 24h/24.

aufeminin.com a choisi la solution de Bouygues Telecom Entreprises pour sa simplicité d’utilisation et sa sécurité

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that Queensland Sugar Limited (QSL), a global leader in raw sugar marketing that manages over 90 percent of Australia’s raw sugar exports, has selected IBM advanced storage systems to support rapidly growing data demands.

Village Roadshow Limited (ASX: VRL), a leading Australian entertainment company, has selected IBM Cloud (NYSE: IBM) to host its business infrastructure, providing scale and speed to support a premium entertainment experience for customers. The IBM Cloud provides the platform for key operations spanning the diverse needs of Village Roadshow’s four key business divisions - Cinema Exhibition, Theme Parks, Film Distribution and Marketing Solutions.

Queensland Motorways has awarded IBM a technology and services contract to introduce automated free-flow tolling across south east Queensland’s toll roads.

To learn to create evocative light with flash, it helps to better understand how we experience the continuous light we see every day.

To do that, you'll need to wean yourself from auto white balance, and even to abandon familiar waypoints like your daylight WB preset. Because our goal is to learn to exist in a more fluid way along the Kelvin scale. Read more »

dollypopinspiration:

eberfigueira

Back to the set I designed for

@herculesuniversal

early September in Brazil. Thanks

@francescosourigues

After some discussion with the applied math research groups here at UCLA (in particular the groups led by Andrea Bertozzi and Deanna Needell), one of the members of these groups, Chris Strohmeier, has produced a proposal for a Polymath project to crowdsource in a single repository (a) a collection of public data sets relating to […]

That trip to Tosche Station can wait!

Six young Jedi face their fears and themselves in an ancient rite of passage.

Download the Padmé-starring novel at no charge from May 1 - 8.

The actor behind Luke Skywalker takes StarWars.com on a journey through filming the Star Wars sequel in time for the 40th anniversary of its release.

Because I love a good story and groove on rich immersive themes, legacy games really appeal to me. The chance to be part of an unfolding narrative is wonderful. It provides a structure for friends to commit to an investment of their time together on a regular basis. It holds everyone's interest over time (when the story is well written and executed). Especially valuable for me is that it lessens the bitter taste of a loss; I get so interested in the plot that I don't care as much about winning. I'm trying to tamp down my competitiveness and narrative driven games help. Finally, I’m a huge fan of Inka and Markus Brand (we have a number of their games in our library already, including all of the Exit  games, Encore, and Raja of Ganges). For all of these reasons, I was really excited when Ravensburger sent me a copy of Inka and Markus’s newest legacy game, Rise of Queensdale, to review.

I actually received my review copy early in 2019, but our RoQ group consists of parents with busy schedules so we can only get together about once a month to play. We've made our way through 13 games so far, and with only 2 or 3 more to go before we finish the legacy series of games, I thought it was a good time to sit down and share my thoughts on the game (Especially in light of Christmas approaching).

Rise of Queensdale  is a legacy worker placement game set in Medieval times. Players take on the role of subjects to King Nepomuk II and Queen Margaret and are tasked with building a new city, Queensdale, on behalf of the royal family. Each player is given jurisdiction over one quarter of the city and is competing against the other players to build the best borough.

As the legacy series of games progresses, players continue to build different types of structures to earn favor with the royal family (fame points) in the midst of dealing with political drama, disease, and other Medieval happenings. Each game in the series sees players attempting to reach their next epoch goal (a target number of fame points). If they are successful, they will have a new, higher epoch goal during the subsequent game.  Note that multiple players can reach their epoch goals during the same game as gameplay continues through the end of the current round once one player reaches their goal. The winner of each game is the person who surpassed their epoch goal by the most points.

The artwork in the game is illustrated by Michael Menzel with graphic design provided by the Fiore GMBH studio in Germany. Michael is probably most familiar to the US based board game community as the illustrator for the Legends of Andor series of games. He brings the same fantasy style drawings he used in that game, with their romantic fonts and soft palettes of color to his work here and it’s lovely. There are a lot of components included in Rise of Queensdale   and Michael does a good job of tying them all to the theme as a cohesive set with the artwork.

Components include dozens of different types of wooden tokens (huts, meeples, player score markers, etc.); the city building board,  scoreboard (epoch tracker, fame counter, and more), action board, player boards, building tiles, and other pieces made out of cardboard; and wooden dice. Everything has held up wonderfully as the months and games have gone by. The rulebook is flipped through frequently and while it’s showing signs of wear, it’s still holding together, staples in place. The rulebook is straightforward and we haven’t had any issues understanding the nuances of the rules.

The narrative in Rise of Queensdale is well written.  It’s memorable and everything that happens makes sense in the framework of the fictional universe laid down by the designers. We’ve played a lot of narrative driven games (Pandemic Legacy, Betrayal Legacy, Middara, Aeon’s End Legacy, Legacy of Dragonholt, Charterstone,  and Seafall, just to name a few) and Rise of Queensdale ranks near the top for narrative driven games that do a good job of incorporating the game play into the storyline. Some legacy games feel more like a story was loosely slapped on top of the game mechanisms, but that isn’t the case here. At the same time, this isn’t an RPG with some board game elements thrown in. The mechanics of the board game have been adeptly planned and implemented; they’re challenging and provide a compelling experience. As the legacy series unfolds, more actions are added to the action board; no one gets complacent or bored because new options keep coming available. Our game group has agreed that there seems to be enough components and actions to allow for replayability as a standard board game even after we’ve reached the very end of our last game in the legacy series.

Rise of Queensdale is a great board game for bringing friends and family together. It’s competitive, so those who turn up their noses at cooperative games and like to win against others will find it enjoyable. Everyone is working toward their own epoch goal and multiple players can reach their goal during a game, so everyone can feel accomplished even when they don’t win. This also creates a brilliant built-in catch up mechanism as the player in last place has the nearest epoch goal to reach. The further a player gets ahead of others in the series of games, the farther their epoch goal becomes and the greater the chance that the players behind them will reach their goals before the leader does. In our games, no one has been able to run away with the scoreboard so far. That helps the game stay family friendly. The narrative turns the game into a shared adventure where everyone is an active participant. Better than going to a movie is feeling like you’re starring in one. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this review, because Rise of Queensdale  is a series of games,  right from the beginning, it fosters a commitment for players to spend time together on a regular basis. That’s the best gift to share with friends and family – our time – and anything like Rise of Queensdale that can make that happen is a wonderful Christmas present to place or find under the tree.

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Publisher: Ravensburger
Players: 2-4 (We played with 4)
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 1 hour per game
Game type: narrative driven, legacy, dice rolling, worker placement
Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

As promised, we've stopped the process that puts new data into the queue today. Data distribution will continue until the files shown on the status pages are done. We'll be accepting results and resending results that didn't validate for a while.

Most stakeholders agree that holding smaller competitions will be the best way forward post-lockdown.

Posted by: icon_uk

In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like. Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.

The EU hosted a summit where over 40 countries and global organisations promised a starting figure of over $8 billion to the development of a covid-19 vaccine.

Much of the world is starting to experiment with opening up again in a new sort-of-post-Covid19 world, with places like Germany and Spain relaxing, gradually, some of the lockdown protocols, with strong limitations and provisos.

In New Zealand, consistent reminder that competent politicians exist Jacinda Ardern has suggested that the country may not have open borders for a long time to come.

In the UK, a phone app is being developed for contact tracingM and notification of people you may have been in contact with who develop Covid19, though in true current UK style, it's going against every other countries developed app by not using the personalised data storage method (Where your information never leaves your phone), but a centralised database, which is raising some concerns about the storage and disposal (or not) of this data.

The US government is planning on borrowing around 3 TRILLION dollars in the next quarter to pay for pandemic support initiatives. That's 3,000,000,000,000 (Which I only mention because I've never had a reason to type an actual number that big in a real world context!)

The US is also starting to open up in places, though the wisdom of this is being called into question by... well, pretty much everyone else on the planet, and a goodly number of the local population of course.

The Clone Wars seventh and final season came to an end with a frankly spectacular arc which saw Ahsoka Tano facing off against Darth Maul in the sort of iconic fight scene that, truth be told, the sequel trilogy was mostly completely lacking, at least on an emotional level), and giving us a chance to see the impact of General Order 66 from the point of view of Ahsoka, as well as the actual Clone Troopers who we have got to know and care about over the years of this series. THIS is how you do it!

The long overdue, repeatedly delayed, New Mutants movie was briefly appearing as forthcoming video on demand from Amazon, though without a release date, but it has now disappeared again. This DOES seem to suggest it might go straight to digital with no cinema release.

Also a new image of a new baddies form the movie have been released in the shape of the Smiley-Men.

And I've clearly been watching waaaay too much anime, or at least listening to too many anime soundtracks when a random video from something called Argonavis (A games based anime from what I can see) popped up and I thought "Gosh that sounds like Unison Square Garden" (who did "Orion o Nazoru", the belter of an OP for Tiger and Bunny) only to discover it's not, but it was written and arranged by two of the members.

In terms of podcasts, alongside old favourites like "Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men" (pretty much what it says on the tin and currently looking at Age of Apocalypse), "The NoSleep Podcast" (Horror fiction) and "The Arkham Sessions" (An actual qualified clinical psychologist, Dr Andrea Letamendi, examined, firstly "Batman the Animated Series" and is now looking at the "Doom Patrol" TV series for their depictions of mental conditions), I've just started Mockery Manor, a horror/mystery/drama set at a gloriously awful (and thankfully fictional) British theme park in the late 1980's.

So today's extra curricular activity for the community: What podcasts are you currently listening to that you'd recommend to others?


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Posted by: cyberghostface



( Scans under the cut... )

I'm counting 16 March as day 0, being when the government actually started getting serious about reducing the rate of infection spreading.

Will cut all these entries and tag Covid, so feel free to block or ignore or filter if that's best for you.

Day -2 (Saturday): After much dithering decided I did want to enjoy my last planned excursion before cancelling everything. Travelled to London with ghoti_mhic_uait, attended a Pop-up Painting event in a fairly crowded room under a pub, and then went out for dinner in a half-empty, very nice South Bank restaurant. I suspect if that was a mistake I'll never know. Mainly I feel glad that I got three really nice dates with my three partners in the last semi-normal week. One of them involved staying in being coupley, but two of them involved trips to London probably later than was wise.

Anyway the pop-up painting was cool. They set you up with a canvas, brushes, acrylic paints, and an apron, and there's a reference image to copy. In our case it was loosely based on this Banksy, but an interpretation of it, not exactly that picture. The first hour or so, they let the participants just play around with paints, doing whatever we liked to fill in the background. I pretty much just copied the reference image's sunset sky, because I wanted to get comfortable with using the paints, mixing colours and creating textures, more than I wanted to try to exercise creativity. Then there was a break with wine, then in the last 40 minutes the facilitators talked through copying the silhouette of the girl, in a fair amount of detail, like, make a C shape here, this line should be at a 45 degree angle, etc. You were still allowed to paint something else if you wanted to, but again, I found following directions quite helpful. The audience were relatively diverse; mostly young-ish but seemed to be a good cross-section of the London public.

At the moment ghoti_mhic_uait can eat basically only protein and needs a lot of meat anyway, and I'm vegetarian and tend to get most of my calories from carbs. Ghoti miraculously managed to find a place that could feed both of us, this rather lovely Eastern European place. I had creamed mushrooms with some latke-ish things, and a sort of lentil pie with cucumber salad and a lot of capers, and Ghoti had some really impressive-looking pickled herring, and some roast duck with apples and red cabbage. It was very exciting, and goodness knows if we'd ever get a table for a normal weekend. They're also very into their vodka and cocktails, which we didn't sample but I might be interested to try a more alcohol-focused event another time.

London was quiet but not completely a ghost town. Almost everybody who booked showed up for the painting, but it was the last one the organization ran, they're cancelling going forward.

Day -1 (Sunday): The synagogue ran Sunday school as normal, on the grounds that schools are still open. But two of the teachers (who are related to each other) didn't show, so I had to take two classes. And in fact, of my expected 10 children across two classes, only three showed up, and we had only 14 of our roster of 50 overall. So most likely we're not going to bother running the last two classes before Pesach, but it's not definitely cancelled yet. In the afternoon OSOs and their children came over for roleplaying, which again had been planned for a while and didn't seem dangerous enough to cancel.

Day zero (Monday): We had known since Friday that we'd been given a week to close the whole campus where I work (bar "essential" staff, mostly those working directly on Covid responses in the lab), and send everybody to work from home for an indefinite period, probably minimum several months. My team had a meeting about how we would handle the transition, and agreed that there was really no reason for most of us to return to the site after yesterday. My lovely line manager has been handling all the disaster response for the last several weeks, basically cancelling everything we do because nearly everything we do is... run international conferences. She was somewhat hysterical by yesterday, but just about holding things together. She very kindly offered to give me a lift home so I could take my computer equipment. We're allowed to take our ergonomic chairs and even our desks, or there's budget to set up home offices, though I was fine with just my laptop and a decent sized screen. Shit is serious.

We detoured via a lost property office to retrieve my wallet which had fallen out of my bag on the coach to work; the coach company tracked me down via a dental appointment card which led to the local council who called me before I cancelled the cards and before I got trapped on the other side of a quarantine barrier from my account access tokens. On the journey she put the radio on and we heard the government announcement.

I am technically in the high risk category as I have chronic asthma. I don't think my asthma is particularly "severe" but it probably would be if I got pneumonia. I haven't really fully processed thinking of myself as one of the "vulnerable" people rather than one of the healthy people who need to act to protect others. Since I'm working from home anyway, I don't have a whole lot of reason to need to go out for the next several weeks. But realistically it's gonna be months, isn't it? I had a bit of a feeling of being sent home to die when we were packing up the office. I have about the degree of death-fear that I get when my period is late; it's not that likely that I actually have Covid-19, it's not that likely that if I do get it I will get complications, and even if I do get complications I might still survive it. I'm a little scared of social collapse, but only a little, I can't really picture, like, mass starvation or something.

Day 1 (Tuesday): I worked from home. I talked to jack a lot (he's very tolerant of my extrovert need to talk things through when it's emotionally scary). We took a car trip to his (deserted) office to pick up computer equipment for him to also work from home for the duration, and didn't interact with any other humans.

I am still undecided about whether I really will isolate myself completely, though the guidelines include me in the category of people who should. I will quit teaching Sunday school and attending services, which is likely to be academic anyway as I'm fairly certain the synagogue will close within the next few days. For now I intend to keep seeing my OSOs; they are ten minutes walk away and our lives are so intermingled that we probably all have the same infection status.

Personal status: feels like the beginning of a mild cold.
Social circle tally: one case, two acquaintances with suspicious symptoms. Nobody I've been in physical contact with within a month though.

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Day 3 (Wednesday): successful social distancing, yay. I worked from home, I came into contact with no humans except jack.

Work tried to establish ways to keep in touch, socially as well as for specific work concerns. We have just moved to a new system, Cisco Webex, for conference calls, and it's really not holding up to the volume of everybody suddenly moving to WFH. So we had a slightly hilarious team coffee chat, when half the participants had no audio and we ended up playing charades.

Mood-wise, I felt slightly manic all day. Every time I had to communicate with someone at work I used way too many words, and I got plenty done but everything felt like it was in a massive rush and slightly out of control.

I also successfully persuaded my mother, and my Stoke community, not to hold big Passover seders with crowds of vulnerable people travelling from all over to gather in a small room and share meals. It is going to be really awful to miss a big seder with my family of origin for the first time in my 41 years of life. But better than infecting my over-70 parents or my paralysed brother. And the Stoke community are breaking a streak of even more decades, and they grumped that I (along with the Chief Rabbi of their movement, the United Synagogue) am overreacting, but they're not risking the health of their various elderly and frail members, so that's good.

Today I mostly worked from home, but I had to go out for, of all things, dental surgery. I'd assumed it just wouldn't happen in the middle of a pandemic, but a tooth extraction is sufficiently urgent that it went ahead. The poor receptionist was absolutely frantically sanitizing every surface continuously.

I had never had a tooth taken out before today. Really rubbish first, I must say! The dentist was super lovely, kind without being patronizing, but I found myself very close to panic. The actual operation lasted only a couple of minutes and the local anaesthetic was the (not very bad) worst part of it, but anyway. I decided to walk home in order to calm myself down, though jack did offer me a lift. Then I met up with ghoti_mhic_uait and we went for another walk together, which did a lot for my general mood and happiness.

Town was quieter than usual, but not completely dead; there were enough walkers, cyclists and joggers out and about that it wasn't entirely easy to maintain the prescribed 2 metre separation from everybody. Also businesses, including pubs and other social gathering spots, are still open (because the government are trying to make individual businesses rather than insurers or the state assume the risk of telling individuals not to go to bars, but not telling bars to actually close), and were quiet but had some customers.

Personal status: If I had the beginning of a mild cold before, I now feel I have the end of a mild cold. Sore throat which I can't tell if it's an infection or a reaction to having my mouth poked about.
Social circle tally: One case, four with suspicious symptoms. All online acquaintances so far.

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Well, as they say, that escalated quickly.

Day 5 (Friday): Stayed home all day with jack. We ordered takeaway for our date night while we still can. The delivery guy wore a proper facemask.

Day 6 (Saturday): Woke up feeling kind of grim. Decided, on consultation with my partners, that I was fairly sure it was just a cold, so we agreed I would go ahead with my planned evening with cjwatson and the children.

In the morning I virtually 'attended' a livestreamed service, which is a really really new thing for my community who normally ban telecoms and electronics on the Sabbath. It was weird, but I felt good for praying with the community even if I wasn't actually interacting with them directly. In the afternoon I did a virtual play readthrough over Zoom, organized by the lovely wildeabandon. It was really really fun, and I got to see the faces of friends I haven't seen for ages, as well as a couple of internet acquaintances I had no mental image of previously. The play was Loves labours lost and I played a couple of small but fun roles, Lady Katharine, a slightly bitchy court woman, and Sir Nathaniel, a pompous curate.

And then I walked to my partners' house, and it was sunny and seemed basically normal. Plus I was feeling completely better by mid afternoon. I took a winding route to stay most of 2m away from any other pedestrians. We played Labyrinth and watched TV and I stayed the night.

In the morning (Sunday) there was more TV and another game, Robot turtles, a sort of cut-down, child-friendly version of Robo Rally, which the children have got much better at since we last played. And we walked part way together to metamour's house where there was mother's day planned, which I didn't join in with, I went home to jack. We went out to the local shop, I walked with him to enjoy the spring weather and he did the actual shopping, as I'm in theory more vulnerable than him.

Sunday evening I did my chevruta (traditional paired Jewish text study), which has always been online because my partner is in New York, and we had a long and pleasant video call with some old friends of jack's I don't see often enough.

Today, day 8, well, jack and I stayed home, mostly working. And anxiously watching the news of how most of the country treated the weekend as a bonus bank holiday and flocked to tourist spots and crowded into parks and gardens. It was kind of obvious the restrictions would have to get stricter, if that was how people were interpreting more gentle restrictions.

Then they cancelled the daily "briefing" (I haven't really been listening to them as it's mostly just our incompetent prime minister waffling with no substance) for a COBRA meeting. I carried out my intended plan of collecting Judith from OSOs' for a Hebrew lesson, and am I ever glad I did. Because as of an hour ago, and starting from tonight, we're no longer allowed out at all except for "essential" purposes. And we're explicitly no longer allowed to meet friends and family. So I don't know how long it will be before I get to hug my partners again.

In a way, lockdown isn't very different from how we were already behaving, with one vulnerable person in each of our three houses (me and metamour have asthma, girlfriend is pregnant). We were already going out only once a day for exercise, we were already only visiting shops to buy, like, food. But what it has taken away from us is that we can no longer bounce between the three houses, treating the polycule as a closed pod. I think our behaviour for the past week has been safe. If I walk a kilometre to my partners' house, that's no different from walking a kilometre in a random direction to get exercise. But the problem is everybody thinks they're an exception, (and multi-household poly relationships are never thought of in official rulings), so now it's forbidden.

The announcement says three weeks, but I think what's actually going to happen is that people will again not take the restrictions seriously and it will have to be extended.

Personal status: I thought I was doing ok, and the tighter restrictions are almost certainly necessary and not really a surprise. But it hurts.
Social circle tally: three cases, including one person I see face to face (though not for at least a month). 8 mostly online acquaintances with suspicious symptoms.

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Adapting to the new normal.

Day 9 (Tuesday): Worked from home. Did my daily exercise by walking past the house where OSOs are quarantined so we could wave to each other from a distance. We actually ended up having a conversation, them on their doorstep, me several metres away. Which is perhaps stretching the no gathering thing a little but I think the risk is low and the psychological benefit is enormous. I have vastly more cope knowing I can still see and talk to my partners.

Day 10: (Wednesday): Worked from home. Failed to secure online delivery for now. Called my parents who reported that they were doing fine and that my doctor cousin had completely randomly, for no reason at all, told them they need to isolate from my brother within the household. I said that sounded over the top. But then I spoke to my brother and it turned out parents left out an extremely salient fact, namely that they had been in recent contact with someone symptomatic. Called my parents again, and talked them through sensible in-house isolation precautions. Part of the reason my brother is quarantining with them is because they have a big house with multiple kitchens and bathrooms, so hopefully this is doable. But I've been kind of tearing my hear out over all this.

Day 11: (Thursday): Another exercise walk and distanced chat with OSOs. Again, felt much better for that. I noticed that the local corner shop is observing proper social distancing, with only a few people allowed in the shop at a time, and everybody else queuing outside actually at 2m separation.

Took part in a rehearsal for running Saturday's service purely over Zoom. (Unlike last week, nobody is going to the synagogue building at all, so we will need to coordinate between people in different locations.) There are lots of probably more exciting options for livestreamed shabbat services, but if you would like to virtually join ours on Saturday (and hear / see me fake-read the Torah), PM me for the Zoom link. I'm not putting it on the public internet because scumbags have been hacking Zoom-based services in order to harass Jews :-(

Day 12 (today): Pleasantly boring day. jack did some shopping in a locally owned shop, which was quieter than Tesco.

Personal status: In spite of being worried about my family of origin, I am getting used to this situation and basically feel ok. Also I still / again have mild cold symptoms. Tracking makes me paranoid, but also makes me realize just how unreasonably susceptible I am to mild respiratory stuff. I've pretty much constantly had a mild cough, with occasional chest soreness or shortness of breath ever since I started paying attention. I'm pretty sure it's chronic asthma with rhinitis and unreasonable sensitivity to normal endemic viruses, rather than acute Covid, but 'pretty sure' isn't ideal with the stakes this high.

Social circle tally: five cases. Twelve people with suspicious symptoms. Now including some people I see in person, but none recently.

Does anyone have any recommendations for decent online bridge setups? Free as in beer would be good, free as in speech is always a bonus. We can probably download software if needed, but ideally we want to work across multiple different tech eg phones, tablets, laptops with various OSes, so probably web-based is easiest. Also it needs to be at least vaguely usable by people who are not completely computer savvy, though not completely clueless either.

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Small milestones.

A couple of significant milestones just now: it's been a full week since I went within 2m of anyone other than jack. He's not been as fully isolated as I have, since he has no underlying conditions and has been doing our household shopping. Of course making an effort to avoid getting too close to people, but still.

And I've passed the magic 14 days since I last took public transport and intentionally went to venue with a crowd of people. I don't yet feel confident I definitely haven't caught the virus, particularly since I've spent most of the intervening time with very mild almost-certainly-a-cold-but-who-knows symptoms. But the feeling of impending doom is somewhat lessened, knowing that I've been in a two person almost closed pod for most of the significant infectious period.

Anyway, Day 12, Friday, was almost a normal day. I often work from home Fridays in normal life anyway, and I was very absorbed in putting the finishing touches to my online course. And then after 5 I had date night with jack, like we always do, and we cooked together and played a successful episode of Gloomhaven.

Day 13, Saturday, I did online synagogue service again. This time I had a small role in the service, reading something from Leviticus in place of a full Torah reading. And this time it was entirely on Zoom, with nobody physically in the synagogue. It went pretty well and it was nice to see people's faces all over the screen. And another lovely readthrough with wildeabandon and co, the radio play of Gaiman's Stardust, where I had the delightful role of the chief evil witch Morwanneg, and was congratulated on my evilness. And a Zoom party in the evening hosted by ptc24. Finally a phonecall with cjwatson before we both retired. So yeah, basically a very full day of virtual socializing!

Day 14, Sunday, wasn't much quieter. I virtually attended OSOs' church service, since they'd showed up to mine and it seems nice to support each other. It's much more isolated than ours: they literally just have a camera feed of their priest in an empty church, with no interaction with the rest of the congregation. I could hear the Communion wafer snap, which is a weird experience; I've been told it's basically like matzah but I didn't know that it sounds like matzah.

We just about had time for lunch between church and setting up for an online game of bridge, with my brother and parents in one location, and me and Jack in one location, and OSOs and metamour in a third location. Thank you to silveradept for recommending us a nice simple card playing site, Trickster Cards. It's not completely perfect but it's a lot less fiddly than some of the more serious sites we found. We had hoped to use Jitsi for video chat but couldn't get it to work on everybody's assorted devices, so we fell back to Zoom and just put up with redialling every 40 minutes. And I had to leave the gaming table fairly promptly for my online chevruta.

Today, day 15 since the somewhat arbitrary date I started counting, I attended communal weekday prayers, which I basically haven't done since I lived in Sweden in the mid 2000s. Broadcast Zoom service from the movement rabbinic seminary, which was delightful. Not only could I see people's faces on screen, I could see the smattering of fellow Reform Jews who, like me, lay tefillin every day. It's always been a bit lonely knowing that the very great majority of people who lay tefillin don't approve of women, and anyway with normal life commuting I can't usually get to communal prayers on weekdays.

I did some work, though mostly got very distracted by the dashboard of my new course, showing lots of people signing up from just about every corner of the globe. Look, it's an actual real thing out in the world, with 1500 people actually learning from materials I put together! And this evening I have my online Hebrew class as usual, and jack is doing some online roleplaying.

No new symptoms showing up among my immediate social circle in the last few days. However I'm starting to hear of deaths of people I'm connected to at second degree. Two people from partners' church. One of our movement rabbis. The father and grandfather of one of the cleaners at work. I am sad about these people I don't know (I think I might have met R' Kraft once or twice, may his memory be a blessing), but also afraid. Afraid that somehow, I'll run out of sadness and not be able to respond appropriately when someone I know is bereaved. Or that I won't, and I'll just drown in endless grief. Like a lot of these things there's no point buying trouble by worrying about it.

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