Dream Passages is proud to announce our “Christmas in Ethiopia” trip in 2011!  In January 2011, we will be spending 8 days in Addis Ababa, Gondar and  Lalibela/Axum.

On this voyage we will explore the fascinating but largely unknown mountain country of Ethiopia, a place packed full of astounding and ancient history, attend the most colorful Ethiopian religious festival, Genna, as well as some of the best scenery in Africa.

We are extremely excited about this opportunity and would love to share this experience with others.  We are in the planning stage, itinerary and pricing details will be released as they become available.

I took a 4×4 trip from Gonder to Axum on the dirt track.  The whole trip was just incredibly dusty and dust got into everything including through the bag zippers!  If I had known this would be the case, I would have asked my luggage to be wrapped or covered so they would have stayed clean. Perhaps it is worth adding another tip to the section on dust on page 130, to also consider wrapping or covering the luggage on dusty roads.

Axum was a big disappointment and low light of the whole trip.  My impression is that besides the stelaes and the adjacent museum there is nothing else worth visiting there.  And the hotels in Axum are the worst.  Only dial-up internet everywhere.  Both days I was there, the mobile network and the internet were just clogged up.  From reading the guide book, I dropped Bahir Dar and went to Axum instead as I did not have time to do both.  After talking to several other tourists who visited Bahir Dar, and my own visit to Axum, I regret this decision.  If I were to do it all over again, I would skip Axum. Also, I could not find references to laundry nor ATM in the guide book under Axum.  The Remhai hotel I stayed at (with discoloured sheets, towels and bed bugs / mosquitoes) could not do my laundry.  Luckily my guide took my laundry to another place in Axum and got it done. (Note from PB – there is still no ATM in Axum)

I booked all my domestic flights over the internet on Ethiopia airline website from London.  It just happened to coincide with a promotion and I bought all the tickets so much cheaper without any hassle compared to buying them inside Ethipia.  For any change of date, they were charging 100Birr with out exemption.

Babu Banguru

Tickets for Stelae field. No longer obtained from Tourist Info’ kiosk. You now (Easter 09) go to gate at left hand end of main Stelae  compound. Ticket there for Stelae and Museum is 50 br for tourists. Community organized guide, if required, also available at that point for 150br.

St Mary Tsion cathedral compound – free to walk round – but if you want to go in the ”Monastery” ie the old cathedral, which is still men only, and museum, payment needed.

Africa Hotel  (stayed there Easter 09)   helpful owner and free airport transfer yes, but green courtyard now a car park, and room not too clean….

Frank Rispin

Antes do sol nascer ja estavamos chegando no caminhao. Fora o ajudante, tinha outro figura. Reclamamos, pois nao era o combinado. Falaram que ia so ate ali na frente, mas acabou indo a viagem toda. Pouco depois de Gonder comecou o sobe e desce. Curvas passando por precipícios. Vista impressionande das montanhas. Logo deu para avistar as Simien Montains, longa cadeia de montanhas que se estende por toda esta regiao. Muitas destas montanhas parecem com dedos apontando para cima.

Precipicio

Siemen Mountains

Paramos em algumas vilas para tomar cafe, almoçar. Uma delas, muito pequena, chamava a atencao pela quantidade de mesas de pebolim espalhadas pela rua. Pessoal gente boa, vista maravilhosa, cabine apertada, e viagem longa, pois o caminhao ia muito devagar com tanta curva. Final de tarde chegamos a Shire, e falaram que era o ponto final, que ficariam ali. Peraí, nao era o combinado. Ja falamos que iamos na delegacia, que queríamos que alguem nos acompanhasse, fizemos pressao. No final das contas pagaram a passagem de uma van que estava saindo para Axum. Bastante correria, mas chegamos em Axum no mesmo dia. No caminho passamos por carcaças de tanques, resultado das guerras que ocorreram por aqui.

Axum foi um dos maiores imperios do mundo. Muito respeitado pelo imperio romano. Dizem que foi criado pelo Tataraneto do Noe, ou algo assim. A Etiopia tem muitas, mas muitas citacoes no velho testamento. A Biblica Rainha Sheba saiu desta regiao para visitar o Rei Salomao em Jerusalem e voltou gravida. O filho foi chamado de Davi e posteriormente de Menelik, e voltou para Jerusalem para aprender as leis de Moises. Ele teria voltado com a Arca que contem os dez mandamentos.

O imperio de Axum durou centenas de anos, e deve ter terminado devido a duas razoes. A perda do controle do Mar vermelho para os Arabes e por terem cortados muitas arvores. Parece que nao aprendemos, a historia se repete…

Axum, mesmo sendo cristao, ofereceu protecao aos muculmanos, que estavam sendo perseguidos na epoca. Muitos se refugiaram nesta regiao, inclusive uma das esposas de Maome. Ele inclusive cita Axum como um lugar de paz. Ja houveram sangrentos conflitos entre os cristaos ortodoxos e muculmanos, mas em geral sempre conviveram pacificamente. Ate hoje se dao super bem, e se respeitam bastante, desde que levem a religiao a serio, independente de qual seja.

Axum é hoje uma pequena cidade, dificil acreditar que foi um dos maiores imperios do mundo. Conhecemos um americano, Michael, que passou a viajar com a gente. Ele voou para Jerusalem, rodou ate o Egito e voou ate aqui. Tentamos ver o que dava andando, mas algumas coisas tivemos que pegar tuk-tuk. Existem gigantescos obeliscos de pedra, todos tralhados, desenhados. Muito bacana. Junto existe um bom museu, que passa bastante informacao da regiao. Lembram que um dos reis magos era negro? De onde voces acham que ele era? Sim, Baltasar era o Rei de Axum, e foi visitar Cristo no seu nascimento.

Axum, pequena cidade hoje, grande imperio no passado

Logo na frente dos obeliscos esta a Igreja St Mary Zion. Na verdade tem uma nova construcao da igreja e as ruinas da antica. Tem um local onde juram que está a Arca com os Dez mandamentos. Esta historia é mais dificil de acreditar, mas ja houve ate guerra com os judeus por causa desta historia. Se pensarmos que a Igreja Catolica afirma que possue tantas reliquias como pedacos da Cruz, o manto que cobriu Jesus apos ter sido retirado da cruz, por que a Igreja Ortodoxa etiope nao pode ter a sua?

Obelisco

Igreja St Mary Zion

Mais obeliscos

Seguimos estrada sentido Wukro. Voltou a ter asfalto (entre Gonder e Axum foi estrada de terrra), mas muito sobe e desce e curvas, portanto viagem demorada. Ou o pessoal nao ta acostumado a viajar, ou o cafe da manha foi reforçado, pois todo mundo passou mal. Foi um tal de vomitar e distribuir sacolas de supermercado. Uma mulher sentou com uma crianca do meu lado, e quando percebi que a coisa tava feia dei um pulo e me safei por pouco. Nojento. Nesta regiao do Tigre, existem mais de 100 igrejas de pedra, mas ja descobri faz tempo que nao da para ver tudo. Ficam muito longe, e o ideal e ter um transporte particular. Como o Guru e o Michael nao tavam nem um pouco dispostos a alugar um carro, visitamos 2 igrejas. Uma bem perto da cidade e outra que foi um empenho.

Igreja de pedra em Wukro

Ficamos esperando transporte publico por um tempo e nada. Daí acabou passando uma caminhonete e pegamos carona. Rodamos varios KM ate uma pequena vila onde ficava a outra igreja. Visitamos e tal, mas é para voltar. Nem sinal de transporte ou carros. Ficamos um bom tempo la, ate que apareceu um onibus empanturrado de gente. Entramos e voltamos para Wukro. No onibus passaram uma bandeja com Ingera, tipo comunitaria, e deu para matar a fome.

Igreja na regiao de Tigre

Em Wukro conseguimos pegar transporte ate Mekele, capital da regiao. La tentamos achar uma forma de ir para  Danakil, regiao que fica abaixo do nivel do mar cheia de vulcoes, com lagos de larva permanentes. A temperatura chega a 50 graus. Sabiamos que seria caro, pois preciasa de um carro de apoio para garantir a seguranca, mas mao conseguimos pois nao é a epoca. Bem, negocio era ir para Lalibela entao.

Bem cedo pegamos um onibus ate Woldia. Todos falavam que teriamos que dormir la, e ir para Lalibela no dia seguinte, mas conseguimos uma van ate Gashema e pegamos carona ate Lalibela. Lalibela fica nas montanhas, uma pequena vila, onde tudo acontece bem devagar. La estao as principais igrejas de pedra. Algumas das igrejas foram totalmente esculpidas, nao sobrando rocha, so a construcao. E fantastico. Existem 11 principais, separadas em 3 grupos. Algumas delas sao interligadas por tuneis, o que da um charme ainda maior.

Igrejas de pedra de Lalibela

Mais Lalibela

Igreja de Sao Jorge

Outro angulo

Na nossa estadia pela regiao reencontramos o Servio e o Polones rastafaris. Conheci um Brasileiro/Holandes que ta trabalhando na Etiopia. Ha, tambem conheci um figura que esta viajando a 22 anos, e ja visitou 170 paises. Depois falam que eu que sou maluco…hhehe

Para voltar para Addis, novamente tivemos que madrugar. Nao era nem 4:30h e ja estavamos indo para a rodoviaria. Chegamos la e tava fechada ainda, mas estavam vendendo as passagens. Compramos, guardei o troco no “money belt” e a passagem no bolso. Ficamos esperando para entrar no portao quando me empurraram. Me empurraram de novo e eu ate peguei a mochila e passei para a frente (to viajando com a mochila pequena, a grande ficou e Addis) pois podiam ta querendo pegar alguma coisa. Quando vi,tinham levado a minha passagem. Estatistica, um dia ia acontecer. Pelo menos o cara lembrava de mim e pude viajar. Ele tentou cobrar mais (uma senhora apareceu com minha passagem), mas acabou dando tudo certo. So a raiva de ter sido roubado. Eles sao muito rapidos.

Chegamos em Desie onde tambem falavam que tinhamos que passar a noite. uma cidade super sem graca, com a avenida principal toda esburacada. Solucao? Depois da almoçarmos fomos procurar um caminhao. Nao demoramos muito para achar um que ja estava saindo.

Veerde!!

O motorista era super divertido, cantava e dancava enquanto mascava Qat. O ajudante nao cabia na cabine, pois agora eramos 3, e foi na cacamba, junto com os sacos de feijao, embaixo da lona. Nao demorou muito e o caminhao quebrou. Ficamos um tempo na estrada e depois conseguimos ir ate uma cidade para terminar de arrumar. Demorou mais um bom tempo. Finalmente seguimos estrada. Era para chegarmos as 11 da noite, mas ja estavamos madrugada a dentro devido aos contratempos. O motorista passou a falar menos e andar mais devagar. Percebi que ele tava com sono, mesmo depois de mascar tanto Qat. Como tava do lado dele, primeiro puxei papo, depois passei a dar uns ” pedela” e uns “se liga” nele. Falei que se tivesse cansado era para parar. Ele parou diversas vezes para tirar uma soneca. Resultado, chegamos so de manha, e eu nao dormi nada para ficar cuidando para o infeliz nao dormir. Pelo menos chegamos saos e salvos em Addis.

• There are 26 letters in the Ge’ez alphabet, but none of them have vowel sounds

________________________________

• Today, Ethiopia uses the Ge’ez calendar, which is between 7 and 8 years behind the Gregorian calendar used in most of the rest of the world

_________________________________

• In Ethiopia, Christianity was originally looked at by the Aksumite emperor as a way to unify the region’s diverse peoples

_____________________________

• The first Aksumite churches had circular designs, but later were built in the style of King Solomon’s temple, as recorded in the Old Testament. There are hundreds of carved rock churches in Ethiopia

____________________________

• In Ethiopia, Christianity was originally looked at by the Aksumite emperor as a way to unify the region’s diverse peoples

__________________________________

I like this picture!

Female parishioners and a nun wrapped in gold huddle in prayer outside St. Mary of Zion, Axum’s Ethiopian Orthodox cathedral. The church, whose foundations date back to Axum’s conversion to Christianity in the fourth century, is open only to men. The small Byzantine-style chapel next door is the domain of one man—Abba Mekonen, the Keeper of the Ark of the Covenant. Emperor Haile Selassie built the chapel in 1964 to house what many Ethiopian Christians believe is the fabled Ark, the chest that holds the Ten Commandments.

_________________________________________

Limba Ge’ez (se pronunta Ghiiz) este limba vorbita si scrisa cu ajutorul unei forme primare a alfabetului actual de pe la inceputul secolului al V-lea i.Hr, pe toata suprafata Imperiul Axumit, devenind lingua franca a imperiului. Inainte de secolul al V-lea i.Hr, limba a fost scrisa cu ajutorul unor glife, asemanatoare cu cele Kusite. Scrisul Ge’ez s-a cristalizat prin secolul al IV-lea d.Hr, ajungand la forma pe care o regasim astazi in scrierile canonice ale religiilor mentionate mai sus.   Astazi limba Ge’ez a ramas limba liturgica a Bisericii Ortodoxe Etiopiene. Toate scrierile sacre ale crestinismului etiopian, ortodox si catolic si ale evreilor etiopieni sunt scrise in aceasta limba considerata sfanta. Cam prin secolul al XVII-lea este inlocuita cu limba Amharit, care devine limba oficiala a Etiopiei pana in zilele noastre.

Limba Ge’ez este o limba semitica caracteristica grupului sud-semit (vezi paginile tehnice, Despre Migratia Limbilor ). Trebuie  mentionat ca scrisul Ge’ez este unul din cele mai complicate existente si concureaza cu succes cu glifele Orientului Extrem.

Scrisul Ge’ez este un scris de tip “abugida,” adica fiecare simbol reprezinta o combinatie intre o consoana plus o vocala, fiind organizate in grupuri de simboluri reprezentative (vezi imaginile). Numerele sunt reprezentate in forma alfabetica similar la limbile “abjad” (ebraica si araba). Limba contine si variante pentru pronuntarea labiovelara. Asa cum am spus daca scrisul este complicat, nimic nu se compara insa cu pronuntia corecta. 

Această operă este pusă la dispoziţie sub Licenţa Atribuire-Necomercial-Distribuire în condiţii identice 3.0 Statele Unite ale Americii Creative Commons.

Microsoft acaba de publicar la versión 1.0 de Axum, el lenguaje de programación .NET concurrente orientado al paradigma de la computación paralela.

Axum es un proyecto de incubación de la plataforma de computación paralela de Microsoft que pretende validar un seguro y productivo modelo de programación paralela para el .NET framework.

Este es lenguaje que se basa en la arquitectura de la web y los principios de aislamiento, actors y message-passing para incrementar la seguridad de las aplicaciones, capacidad de respuesta, escalabilidad y la productividad.

Otros conceptos avanzados que está desarrollando son de la redes de flujo de datos, métodos asíncronos y tipo de anotaciones para controlarlo efectos secundarios.

La sintaxis de Axum es simular a la familia del lenguaje C , más ligado a C# y se ha inspirado en ADA y SR.

La computación paralela es una técnica de programación en la que muchas instrucciones se ejecutan simultáneamente. Se basa en el principio de que los problemas grandes se pueden dividir en partes más pequeñas que pueden resolverse de forma concurrente (”en paralelo”). Existen varios tipos de computación paralela: paralelismo a nivel de bit, paralelismo a nivel de instrucción, paralelismo de datos y paralelismo de tareas. Durante muchos años, la computación paralela se ha aplicado en la computación de altas prestaciones, pero el interés en ella ha aumentado en los últimos años debido a las restricciones físicas que impiden el escalado en frecuencia. La computación paralela se ha convertido en el paradigma dominante en la arquitectura de computadores, principalmente en los procesadores multinúcleo.

‘Ark’ revelation: Can they dig it?
Bible buzz begins as hunters wait to view Ten Commandments box

Posted: June 25, 2009
9:20 pm Eastern

By Chelsea Schilling
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

Ark of the Covenant as depicted in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ (Paramount Pictures)

Ark hunters and Bible enthusiasts are buzzing about a report that the Ark of the Covenant, the ancient container that holds the Ten Commandments, is expected to be unveiled in Rome today.

As WND reported, the patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia says he will announce to the world the unveiling of the Ark, which he says has been hidden away in a church in his country for millennia, according to the Italian news agency Adnkronos.

Abuna Pauolos, in Italy for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI this week, told the news agency, “Soon the world will be able to admire the Ark of the Covenant described in the Bible as the container of the tablets of the law that God delivered to Moses and the center of searches and studies for centuries.”

Abuna Pauolos, patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia

According to the Italian news agency, the announcement is expected to be made at 2 p.m. Italian time (8 a.m. Eastern) from the Hotel Aldrovandi in Rome. Pauolos will reportedly be accompanied by Prince Aklile Berhan Makonnen Haile Sellassie and Duke Amedeo D’Acosta.

“The Ark of the Covenant is in Ethiopia for many centuries,” said Pauolos. “As a patriarch I have seen it with my own eyes and only few highly qualified persons could do the same, until now.”

(Story continues below)

Bob Cornuke

Bob Cornuke, biblical investigator, international explorer and best-selling author, has participated in more than 27 expeditions around the world searching for lost locations described in the Bible. A man some consider a real-life Indiana Jones, he has written a book titled “Relic Quest” about the Ark of the Covenant and participated in History Channel production called “Digging for Truth.”

Next week, Cornuke will travel to Ethiopia for the 13th time since he began his search for the Ark. He told WND he believes it is possible Ethiopia could have the real artifact.

“They either have the Ark of the Covenant or they have a replica that they have believed to be the Ark of the Covenant for 2,000 years,” he said.

Cornuke said, if it is genuine, there’s a plausible explanation of how the Ark may have come to the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in Ethiopia.

“The Ark could have been taken out of the temple during the time of the atrocities of Manasseh,” he said. “We have kind of a bread crumb trail that appears to go to Egypt, and it stayed on an island there for a couple hundred years called Elephantine Island. The Ark then was transferred over to Lake Tana in Ethiopia where it stayed on Tana Qirqos Island for 800 years. Then it was taken to Axum, where it is enshrined in a temple today where they don’t let anybody see it.”

Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in Ethiopia

Cornuke said he traveled to Tana Qirqos Island and lived with monks who remain there even today.

“They unlocked this big, four-inch thick wood door,” he said. “It opened up to a treasure room, and they showed me meat forks and bowls and things that they say are from Solomon’s temple. When the History Channel did this show, they said it was one of the largest viewed shows. People were fascinated.”

He said Ethiopians consider the Ark to be the ultimate holy object, and the church guards the suspected artifact from the “eyes and pollution of man.”

“In Ethiopia, their whole culture is centered around worshipping this object,” Cornuke said. “Could they have the actual Ark? I think I could make a case that they actually could.”

Want to know more about the ancient box holding the Ten Commandments? Get “Exploring the Ark of the Covenant” – a two-DVD set!

However, he said reports about Friday’s unveiling are somewhat perplexing because Ethiopia has traditionally shielded it from public view.

“That’s the surprise for me,” Cornuke said. “I have always thought that they would keep it under wraps.”

Sketch of Ark of the Covenant based on a description by the late explorer Ron Wyatt (wyattmuseum.com)

He explained that a special guardian lives inside the church and never leaves. Once a guardian is appointed, he stays until he dies and another man replaces him.

“We know for a fact that there have been 30 guardians in history who have never left that enclosure,” Cornuke said. “I know the guardian. When CNN and BBC went over there, he wouldn’t see anybody but me. So I went and talked to him, and he’s getting very aged. He told me they have the real Ark and he worships 13 hours a day in front of it. When he gets through, he is covered in sweat and he’s exhausted.”

He said he met a 105-year-old man who claimed to have seen the Ark 50 years ago when he was training a replacement guardian.

“It frightened him to death when he got a glimpse of it.”

Cornuke said he also met with the president of Ethiopia nearly nine years ago and had a one-on-one conversation with him in his palace. He asked if Ethiopia had the Ark of the Covenant.

According to Cornuke, the president responded: “Yes, we do. I am the president, and I know. It’s not a copy. It’s the real thing.”

Well-known author Grant Jeffrey

However, Grant Jeffrey, host of TBN’s Bible Prophecy Revealed and well-known author of “Armageddon: Appointment With Destiny,” does not believe claims that the Ark is in Ethiopia. He told WND he spoke extensively with Robert Thompson, former adviser to former Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie.

Jeffrey said Thompson told him the Ark of the Covenant had been taken to Ethiopia by Menelik, purported son of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. When Menelik became emperor, he claims royal priests entrusted him with the Ark of the Covenant because King Solomon was slipping into apostasy. A replica was then left behind in Israel.

“The Ethiopian royal chronicles suggest that for 3,000 years, they had been guarding the ark, knowing that it had to go back to Israel eventually,” Jeffrey said.

He claims that after the Ethiopian civil war, Israel sent in a group of commandos from the tribe of Levi and the carried the Ark onto a plane and back to Israel in 1991.

“It is being held there secretly, waiting in the eyes of the religious leaders of Israel, for a supernatural signal from God to rebuild the temple,” he said. “They are not going to do it before that. When that happens, they will bring the Ark into that temple.”

Chuck Missler

But author and Bible teacher Chuck Missler, founder of Koinonia House, told WND the theory of Menelik obtaining the Ark is not biblical, though he believes there is a possibility that the Ethiopians may have the real deal.

“The fact that the Ethiopians may have been guarding the Ark of the Bible is very possible,” he said. “They cling to a belief that is clearly not biblical in terms of how the Ark got down there. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have it.”

Missler said there is no biblical basis for the Menelik account, and he believes there was a reason for that version of events.

“What everybody overlooks is that there’s a reason that particular story was cooked up in early times,” he said. “It was to give their kings Solomonic descent. There’s reason why they would try to sell that. But just because the official belief in how it got down there is not biblical, doesn’t mean they don’t have it.”

Tennessee historian and “Time is the Ally of Deceit” author Richard Rives, searched for the Ark and participated in excavations beneath Mount Moriah outside the walls of ancient Jerusalem. His group was trying to verify claims by relic hunter Ron Wyatt that he actually saw the Ark there several decades ago after tunneling through a small passageway.

David and Richard Rives at man-made wall that could conceal passageway to Ark (wyattmuseum.com).

While they found Roman ruins from the first century, Rives told WND they were unsuccessful in confirming Wyatt’s account. Nonetheless, Rives does not believe the story of Menelik obtaining the artifact or that Ethiopia ever had the real Ark.

“God’s presence was on the mercy seat. That was the throne of God,” he said.

If the account were accurate, Rives said God would have been dwelling on an Ark replica in Jerusalem.

“I just don’t believe they could have persuaded him to sit on a fake Ark of the Covenant,” he said.

Many theories exist about the ultimate fate of the Ark, including that it has been hidden in a still unknown location, it was destroyed by enemies of the Israelites, taken by Egyptian invaders to Egypt or removed by divine intervention.

The quest for the artifact received additional publicity in 1981 when actor Harrison Ford searched for it in Steven Spielberg’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

Cornuke said Ethiopians claim their purported Ark is kept in a large stone sarcophagus lined in ornately hammered silver. The Ark itself is made of acacia wood and laminated with a thin veneer of gold. The mercy seat sits atop the Ark and is made of pure, hammered gold and includes two cherubim facing one another.

Whether the artifact is real or simply a copy, Cornuke said an unveiling might leave the world with more questions than answers.

“We have only typology to go on,” he said. “We could probably have some people analyze the wood samples and come up with some kind of dating protocol on it because it is acacia wood to see if that is it.”

Rives said a close inspection of the Ten Commandments would be necessary to ensure they are in accordance with true text and not later versions of the Ten Commandments.

Cornuke said experts would also need to determine whether the artifact itself fits biblical description and trace its path to Ethiopia.

“We are peeking behind the veil of history,” he said. “We’re taking a glimpse of an artifact that could be a very holy object.”

So, I’ve just started looking at a new .NET language from Microsoft called Axum (available here). At this point you might be tempted, as I originally was, to complain that there’s no need for Microsoft to produce yet another language. After all, we have perfectly servicable languages in C#, VB.NET and (for the linguistically adventurous) F#. Why on earth is Microsoft wasting its time on another language?

Well, it turns out that there’s a very good reason for them to be looking into creating a new one. Axum fits a niche that, while other languages could do what it does, these other languages weren’t originally designed for. Axum is designed for applications that require parallel task exection. As it is designed to create parallel applications, the language offers first class constructs for achieving parallelisation.

The Axum documentation, sparse as it is at the moment, identifies that some tasks are easily amenable to parallelisation because the tasks are independent of each other, and require little synchronisation; other applications have dependencies that require coordination. Axum, as a language, allows us to arrange the coordination between these components in a way that closely matches the way we would conceive of the solutions.

I said, before, that other languages offer us the ability to parallize tasks, so it’s hard to see what Axum brings to the ball, so to speak. Well Axum removes one feature that normally causes problems for developers creating parallel applications if they aren’t careful. It removes the ability for components to share or mutate state from other threads. It provides an isolation model that promotes a disciplined access to shared state, and encourages its use from the start rather than being added as an afterthought.

At this stage, I must stress that Axum is an experimental language, similar enough to C# not to be daunting. This similarity, though, could also cause problems at first glance because it’s so easy to try and do things the C# way, which is not always the Axum way.

Without further ado we’re going to write our first Axum application. It’s a variation of the Hello World described in the Axum Programmers Guide. Assuming you’ve downloaded and installed Axum in either Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Studio 2010, select File > New > Project > Axum > Windows > Console Application. Call the application HelloAxum and click OK. You’ll now get some boilerplate code which you’re going to replace with:

using System;
agent HelloAxum : Microsoft.Axum.ConsoleApplication
{
  override int Run(string[] args)
  {
    Console.WriteLine("Hello Axum");
  }
}

The first thing to note about this application is that it has full access to .NET features, such as the BCL or Console.WriteLine.

Second, we’ve defined our unit of work as an agent rather than a class. An agent is conceptually similar to an actor (in fact Axum is well suited to being mapped out with UML). Agents represent autonomous elements that communicate using messages and so on. Here’s my first problem with Axum; why not call it an actor? Why define a new term here? It just feels a natural fit, for me, to use actor here rather than agent.

Anyway, terminology quibbles aside, agents are very different to developing using OOP. These differences are by design and are there for very good reasons. Agents don’t provide public methods or exhibit state, so you can’t modify fields externally. This means that you can’t call an agent method directly, so you might be tempted to think that methods are useless here. What you can do and what you do, in fact, do, is send a message to the agent and arrange for the agent to get back to you with a response when it is apropriate.

In our sample application we derive from a ConsoleApplication agent which provides the basis for working with console applications.

At this stage, you may be feeling distinctly underwhelmed. After all, we’ve not really done any parallel processing. It’s time to mix things up a bit and do some parallel work. Let’s actually create a couple of agents and pass messages between them. Along the way, we’re going to learn some of the terminology in Axum starting with channels and ports.

Remember that we said that we couldn’t reach into agents? Well, how do we set or get this data? The ability to do this lies in channels – which (in OO terms) defines the interface that our decoupled agents will communicate through. The ports, on a channel, define the inputs and outputs.
In order to define a channel, we use the channel keyword. Here’s a simple channel:

channel HelloAxumChannel
{
  input string Name;
  output string Text;
}

When you use a channel data goes in, cunningly enough, into the inputs and is returned via the outputs. Notice that the channel doesn’t actually tell you how it does it – it only tells you what it does. Now let’s add the implementation.

agent HelloAgent : channel HelloAxumChannel
{
  public HelloAgent()
  {
    string item = receive(PrimaryChannel::Name);

    PrimaryChannel::Text <-- string.Format("Hello {0}", item);
  }
}

This agent waits for a message to arrive on the Name port (the receive statement). Once this is received, it sends a message to the Text port on the PrimaryChannel (the PrimaryChannel is a public property on the channel that gives access to the channel being implemented). It then sends a message to the Created port. Now, received is a blocking operation, meaning that it waits until a message arrives on that port. Now, let’s do something with this – let’s actually “instantiate” this agent and pass a message to it.

public domain Program
{
    agent HelloAxum : Microsoft.Axum.ConsoleApplication
    {
        override int Run(string[] args)
        {
            var proc = HelloAgent.CreateInNewDomain();

            Console.Write("Enter your name:");
            string value = Console.ReadLine();
            proc::Name <-- value;
           
            string outputText = receive(proc::Text);
            Console.WriteLine(outputText);
            Console.ReadKey();
        }

    }
}

In order to instantiate our agent, we use CreateInNewDomain. Once it’s been created we pass messages into it using <–. Again, this process waits for a message from our agent in proc::Text. That’s it – we’ve got a parallel application. (Here it is in all it’s glory):

using System;
using Microsoft.Axum;
using System.Concurrency.Messaging;

namespace AxumApplication1
{
    public domain Program
    {
        agent HelloAxum : Microsoft.Axum.ConsoleApplication
        {
            override int Run(string[] args)
            {
                var proc = HelloAgent.CreateInNewDomain();

                Console.Write("Enter your name:");
                string value = Console.ReadLine();
                proc::Name <-- value;
               
                string outputText = receive(proc::Text);
                Console.WriteLine(outputText);
                Console.ReadKey();
            }

        }
    }
   
    channel HelloAxumChannel
    {
        input string Name;
        output string Text;
    }
   
    agent HelloAgent : channel HelloAxumChannel
    {
        public HelloAgent()
        {
            string item = receive(PrimaryChannel::Name);
           
            PrimaryChannel::Text <-- string.Format("Hello {0}", item);
        }
    }
}

So, do I like Axum? Well, yes I do – I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of what it can do here; look for more from me in future blogs. I only hope that it actually goes somewhere – I’d hate to see the project die for lack of interest. Obviously, you know my love of WPF, so I’d also like Axum to provide first class WPF integration. I’m watching Axum with interest.

Axum is an incubation project from Microsoft’s Parallel Computing Platform that aims to validate a safe and productive parallel programming model for the .NET framework.

It’s a language that builds upon the architecture of the web and the principles of isolation, actors, and message-passing to increase application safety, responsiveness, scalability and developer productivity. Other advanced concepts we are exploring are data flow networks, asynchronous methods, and type annotations for taming side-effects. 

You can get Microsoft Axum from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=CFE70D5D-37AA-4C4C-8EEB-D4576C41BAA2&displaylang=en

Waqas Ahmed

Axum, a hip hop/dancehall duo from Israel, brings us a new Dancehall track called “Bo Be Easy” featuring the female MC C Le! Good one.

Axum feat C Le

On 14.May there is free webinar about JSF 2.0 by Ed Burns.

Pearl provides with Tape2PC a hardware solution for copying from MC (music cassetes) to your PC (mp3).

With CamSpace you could control games, windows an applications via webcam. There is foto galery by chip.de.

Saros is a free available Eclipse plugin for pair programming. A demo online.

With Axum Microsoft releases a new programming language for parallel programming.

Axum is a Microsoft DevLab project that Microsoft hopes will “validate a safe and productive parallel programming model for .NET”.  Axum is an incubation project, and as such, the syntax, features or runtime itself may change.  Microsoft has no product commitments related to Axum at this time.  The Axum team wants to solicit customer feedback, likely in the hope that Axum itself will become a first class programming language for .NET, or will influence a follow-on language.

Does this sound like a great candidate for an open source project?  It does to me.  Especially since Axum is up against Erlang and Scala, two leading languages that address concurrency, are developed through open source projects.

Surely Microsoft could have kept control of the Axum language and related intellectual property through a contributor agreement.  Microsoft could use the LGPL, for example, to “protect” against competitor actions, and yet have the ability to re-license Axum under a commercial license. Even if Savio Inc were to fork Axum, the strong likelihood is that Windows customers would use Axum over Savio Inc’s fork.

Of course, Axum requires a .NET runtime.  I’m sure the smart folks at Microsoft could have figured out a way to enable community contributions without having to open up .NET to wholesale community edits.  Maybe Project mono could have played a role?

Follow me on twitter at: SavioRodrigues

I had wanted to travel to Ethiopia ever since my earliest childhood.  A friend of our family was one of the financial advisors of Emperor Haile Selassie and, every time he came back from Ethiopia, he would tell all these wonderful stories which only increased my curiosity about this exotic country. I vowed I would one day travel there myself. This proved to be a difficult proposition. Decades passed and despite my husband’s and my travels all over the world, visiting Ethiopia continued to be as elusive as ever. It seemed that I might never get to see the country that has held such fascination for me for so many years — until last month!

The Pacific Science Center in Seattle had for some time featured an exhibit entitled  “Lucy’s Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia”. As a grand finale to the exhibit, PSC offered a trip to Ethiopia in order to explore Lucy’s ancestral home and cultural heritage firsthand.  A small intrepid group of travelers thus embarked on a two-week tour of the country. I had the pleasure of traveling with them as tour manager.

Ethiopia was everything I expected and more. It is an extraordinary, mysterious and beautiful country with lovely hospitable people. We were able to see its diverse landscape, fauna and flora many of which are endemic. For example, one thing that surprised us all was the abundance and richness of bird life. Ethiopia boasts 862 species of birds (of which 17 are endemic to the country and another 13 semi endemic) and we were lucky enough to see 38 of them during the course of this trip and without really trying! Bird watchers take note!

One of our first excursions was to Melka Kunture, an important Stone Age archeological site in Ethiopia. Here we saw many examples of beautiful two-edged hand axes, obsidian scrapers (obsidian is still laying around everywhere) and sets of round stones used in nets to throw at animals in order to catch them.  We also visited the rock-hewn church of Adadi Mariam. Dating back to the 12^th century, it has beautiful murals.  But what made this day even more special and unusual was the lunch prepared for us at the site of Melka Kunture.  Our Ethiopian partner had arranged for a cook – the best in Ethiopia we were told – to bring his staff  and prepare lunch for us. When we arrived, a festive table was set up under acacia trees and a blue awning.  On another table, a buffet with injera and a delicious looking array of dishes was beckoning to us. To add to the festive atmosphere a traditionally dressed lady was seated on one side ready to host the traditional Ethiopian Coffee Ceremony for us. The Coffee Ceremony — central to the Ethiopian lifestyle — is accompanied by an elaborate ritual. The hostess was seated on a low wooden stool before a tiny charcoal stove. First, she spread fresh grass and flowers on the ground around the brazier where the beans were going to be roasted. After lighting some incense in order to perfume the air, she first washed the beans, then roasted them in a pan. The beans were then ground manually with a pestle and mortar; then brewed with water in a pot until it started to bubble. The aroma of the roasting beans and warming coffee filled the air and we all anxiously waited for the coffee to be ready.  When it was, we were served in tiny ceramic handle-less cups.  It was so good that we lingered for a long while and many of us went for second and third cups!

The next day we left Addis Ababa and set forth on the northern historical and cultural route. During our journey we saw five out of eight UNESCO Heritage Sites. Our program was varied and full and yet flexible enough to fit in an extra stop at a village for a demonstration of how injera was made or see a weaver at work or take in a colorful local market.

Our first stop was at Bahir Dar on Lake Tana which is dotted with island monasteries and churches. Upon arrival we were whisked off by boat to visit two of them featuring beautiful murals and 12^th century manuscripts. In the afternoon we explored the Blue Nile Falls. They are perhaps not as spectacular as they once were — water has been diverted upstream for a dam – but many of our members enjoyed the excursion anyway.

We flew to Gondar and visited the royal enclosure with its six castles. One of the group’s favorite stops was the village of AwraAmba where the founder has a philosophy that men and women are equal and therefore everyone has to perform the daily tasks. There are no set tasks that are just for women or just for men. Here the residents support each other from birth to death.  We met with the founder who has dedicated his whole life to this philosophy of moving people beyond society’s accepted roles and thus making life better for everyone. It was an inspirational experience.

The next day we drove through dramatic mountain scenery to the Simien National Park. The park is known for its distinct ecology, animals and vegetation. We were lucky to get a glimpse of the bleeding heart baboon – endemic to this region.

Our next stop was in Axum where, the Ethiopians believe, the original Ark of the Covenant was brought from Jerusalem by Emperor Menelik 1, the son of Queen of Sheba and King Solomon of Israel. Axum is also known for its huge monolithic stelae made of granite with identical decorations.  The biggest of them, now fallen, was 33 meters high and weighs 500 tons, making it the largest monolith in the world.

No trip would be complete without a visit to the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela. There we spent two nights and visited all 13 churches in the two complexes. The churches are attributed to King Lalibela – around 1200 AD. Built underground, with a network of interconnected subterranean passageways, lighting systems and water works, they are generally considered to be very sophisticated architectural and engineering feats. These churches have remained of outmost importance to the Orthodox Christian religion to this day.

All this combined with frequent interactions with local population at markets and in villages made this a trip of a lifetime.  And, to seal the experience for me personally, our daughter is adopting an Ethiopian a baby girl whom I was able to visit at the orphanage.  It just does not get any better than that.

Izabella Van Raalte
Tour Manager

Academic Travel Abroad website

Pacific Science Center website 

ASP.NET MVC

Keyvan continues the posts about ASP.NET MVC showing how to implement your own CustomControllerFactory taking in consideration the client regional settings.

Debugging

Tess points out StackViewer – a cool tool for viewing the stack trace of a running applications in .NET 2.0. As it only attaches, takes a snap of the stack and then detaches, it makes a perfect candidate for debugging performance/hangs in various applications.

Parallel Programming

Soma announces the release of Axum – a language designed for building parallel applications. Matthew Podwysocki also has some details about Axum. For more information, go to the Axum Team Blog.

WCF

Christian Weyer has some excellent posts on what’s new in .NET for WCF:

• Activation
• Dynamic service and endpoint discovery
• Standard endpoints
• Discovery announcements
• Routing service
• Protocol bridging and fault tolerance with the routing service

ASP.NET

Scott Galloway has a very interesting post about removing the CSS inline style GridView comes with.

NHibernate

Ayende continues his series of inspiring posts with a couple more:

• NHibernate IPreUpdateEventListener & IPreInsertEventListener
• NHibernate – The difference between Get, Load and querying by id
• NHibernate Validator
• NHibernate, the database query cache and parameter sizes
• NHibernate Search
• NHibernate Filters

Sharp

Luis continues talking about Sharp :

• The SharpArch.Web assembly – part II
• Adding support for JSON.NET
• Wrapping up the SharpArch.Web assembly
• Validation support in SharpArch.Web assembly
• SharpModelBinder
• WCF integration with S#arp

Multithreading

Luis has also started a series of posts about multithreading:

• Multithreading: state, atomicity, serializability and linearizability
• Multithreading: understanding threads
• Multithreading: creating threads
• Multithreading: what’s the stack for?
• Multithreading: using the stack as storage
• Multithreading: immutability

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/ark-covenant-200712.html

Before leaving Addis Ababa for Aksum, I went to the offices of His Holiness Abuna Paulos, patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which has some 40 million adherents worldwide, to ask about Ethiopia’s claim to have the ark of the covenant. Paulos holds a PhD in theology from Princeton University, and before he was installed as patriarch, in 1992, he was a parish priest in Manhattan. Gripping a golden staff, wearing a golden icon depicting the Madonna cradling an infant Jesus, and seated on what looked like a golden throne, he oozed power and patronage.

“We’ve had 1,000 years of Judaism, followed by 2,000 years of Christianity, and that’s why our religion is rooted in the Old Testament,” he told me. “We follow the same dietary laws as Judaism, as set out in Leviticus,” meaning that his followers keep kosher, even though they are Christians. “Parents circumcise their baby boys as a religious duty, we often give Old Testament names to our boys and many villagers in the countryside still hold Saturday sacred as the Sabbath.”

Is this tradition linked to the church’s claim to hold the ark, which Ethiopians call Tabota Seyen, or the Ark of Zion? “It’s no claim, it’s the truth,” Paulos answered. “Queen Sheba visited King Solomon in Jerusalem three thousand years ago, and the son she bore him, Menelik, at age 20 visited Jerusalem, from where he brought the ark of the covenant back to Aksum. It’s been in Ethiopia ever since.”

I asked if the ark in Ethiopia resembles the one described in the Bible: almost four feet long, just over two feet high and wide, surmounted by two winged cherubs facing each other across its heavy lid, forming the “mercy seat,” or footstool for the throne of God. Paulos shrugged. “Can you believe that even though I’m head of the Ethiopian church, I’m still forbidden from seeing it?” he said. “The guardian of the ark is the only person on earth who has that peerless honor.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Our_Lady_Mary_of_Zion

Ark of the Covenant

St. Mary of Zion claims to contain the original Ark of the Covenant. According to tradition, the Ark came to Ethiopia with Menelik I after visiting his father King Solomon. Only the guardian monk may view the Ark^[1], in accordance with the Bible accounts of the dangers of doing so for non-Kohanim. This lack of accessibility, and questions about the account as a whole, has led foreign scholars to express doubt about the veracity of the claim. The guardian monk is appointed for life by his predecessor before the predecessor dies. If the incumbent guardian dies without naming a successor, then the monks of the monastery hold an election to select the new guardian. The guardian then is confined to the chapel of the Ark of the Covenant for the rest of his life, praying before it and offering incense. Agreeing with ancient sources about a magnificent light emitted from the Ark, the History Channel in a 2008 special claimed that many of the guardian monks have died in short time, mostly with cataracts having formed in their eyes.

http://www.sacred-destinations.com/ethiopia/axum-ark-of-covenant.htm

What to See

The Ark of the Covenant at Axum cannot be seen by anyone but the High Priest of Axum, an elderly and especially holy monk who is charged with its care and preservation for life. He cannot leave the small yard that surrounds the chapel, and he is expected to name his successor on his deathbed. The present custodian with this privilege and burden is named Abba Tesfa Mariam.

The authors of the abovementioned books on the Lost Ark were unsuccessful in their attempts to gain access to the relic. In fact, not even the Ethiopian president is allowed to see it. The Ark used to be taken out on a procession once a year, but due to the recent war and tensions in the area, it remains locked in its shrine full-time.

One recent British explorer was told that these restrictions are for his own safety, for “if I approached the Ark I would be punished – the theory is that would become invisible and unleash upon me its terrible power – I would be killed outright, probably incinerated.” He was told that even seeing one of the blessed replicas placed in all Ethiopian churches could have this effect. [1]

What visitors can see is the building in which the Ark is kept. Referred to as a relic chapel or the Treasury, it also contains the cathedral’s treasures such as the crowns of Ethiopian kings and silver processional crosses. The other treasures are regularly brought out and displayed for visitors, but no one is allowed inside the building.