Egg Colouring & Decorating

Eggs to be coloured and decorated can be raw, blown hollow or hard-cooked. You can make coloured eggs, funny faces, animals, or Christmas ornaments using eggs. Decorated eggs used as ornaments should have the contents blown out.

Food Safety Note: If coloured hard-cooked eggs are to be eaten, be sure to use only non-toxic colouring dyes on the shells (e.g. food colouring) and do not leave the eggs unrefrigerated for more than two hours.

Egg Blow Out

1. Wash and dry the egg. Puncture a small hole at the small end of egg with a big needle.
2. Puncture a bigger hole at the large end, making sure you puncture the egg yolk.
3. Place egg over a bowl and blow through the small hole until all of the inside is removed. Rinse the shell with cold water and allow to dry thoroughly. (Use the raw egg for an omelette, quiche or scrambled eggs.)
   

Egg Yolk Paints (egg tempera)

• Carefully crack open an egg. Separate the yolk from the white. Mix 2 mL (1/2 tsp) water with the yolk.
• Pour a little of the yolk mixture into several small cups. Add food colouring, using a different colour for each cup.
• Use a brush to paint your egg. If the paint gets too thick, add a few drops of water.
  

Egg Painting

Hold the egg in one hand. With brush and acrylic, paint the upper half of the egg. Place egg in egg carton and let paint dry, at least 1 minute. Holding the egg again, paint the other half. Let dry in egg carton.

Colouring Eggs

Food colouring, natural colours, commercial egg dyes, and water-based felt pens can be used for colouring eggs. If using food colouring, for each colour, mix 175 mL (3/4 cup) of water and 5 mL (1 tsp) vinegar and 1 mL (1/4 tsp) food colouring. Add food colouring one drop at a time until you obtain the brightness that you desire. Completely submerge the eggs until tinted the colour you want, from 2-5 minutes. Remove the eggs from the water and allow to dry before adding another colour or continuing to decorate.

Tongs are a handy tool to use for dipping raw or hard-cooked eggs in and out of the water. An easy way to colour a blown egg is to thread a thin piece of wire through a hole made at both ends of the egg. Bend the wire at one end so the egg won't slip off. This makes a handy tool for dipping the egg in the dye and hanging it to dry. A cake rack is also useful for drying eggs.

Egg Decorating Tips

How to decorate an egg

First, using an acrylic paint, cover the egg with a uniform or patterned layer of colour and allow to dry. To paste on a design, use regular woodworking glue to add a small amount of pasta, rice, or beans in the shape of a butterfly, star or letter of the alphabet. Allow to dry for 30 minutes before painting the design.

Use wax crayons, magic markers or paints (acrylics, tempera, enamel or poster paints) on your eggshell. Then coat it with clear nail polish to prevent smearing. To make the eggshell glisten, use pearl-coloured nail polish. For a porcelain finish apply many coats of Elmers glue diluted with a bit of water, over the egg and any designs. Allow to dry between coats and before finishing with a fixitive spray or lacquer. Any eggs you wish to keep can be coated with spray lacquer or acrylic sealer.

For egghead faces, use felt pens and paints or dye eggs flesh colours of brown, pink or yellow. Glue on ribbons, lace, buttons, cotton balls, wool, sequins, macaroni, feathers, glitter, pencil shavings, fabric, yarn, dried plants, buttons, or jewellery.

To make stands for decorated eggs, glue on small plastic curtain rings, buttons, spools, stones, pieces of wood or bottle caps. Strips of coloured heavy paper can be rolled up until small enough to hold an egg and secured with tape.

Egg Shell Mosaic

Recycle broken eggshells to create pretty mosaics. Prepare a variety of dye colours in plastic containers. To dye eggshells, simply immerse them in a little amount of hot water with a few drops of food colouring. A drop of vinegar added to the water will help set the colour. (Leaving the shells in for varied lengths of time will create different shades of colour to work with). Remove shells from dyes and spread them out on paper towels to dry. When the shells are dry, gather the different colours in separate containers. The shell pieces should be arranged in the basic mosaic design before beginning to glue. When satisfied with the mosaic placement, the shell pieces can be glued into place with white glue. If you prefer a shiny glaze on the completed project, use a clear spray lacquer to coat the entire mosaic.

Egg Carton Art

Use the same materials as for egghead faces, plus popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners and toothpicks and make an entire zoo of animals come to life.

Online Degrees

As you probably know, you can now earn college degrees online. Many of the very best online universities, online colleges, and online degree programs are listed below. This one of example online colleges and universities will be happy to send you information on their degree programs.

American InterContinental University - American InterContinental University is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. This 35 year old online college offers associate degrees in business administration, human resources, healthcare administration, information systems, visual communications, and criminal justice administration. Bachelors degrees may be earned in business administration, accounting and finance, human resource management, international business, management, project management, organizational psychology, healthcare management, marketing, information technology, computer systems, network administration, programming, internet security, visual communications, and criminal justice.

Online masters degrees include a master of education (with several specialty options) and an MBA (with concentrations in areas including accounting and finance, human resource management, international business, management, project management, operations management, organizational psychology and development, marketing, and healthcare management). AIU also offers an online masters in the field of information technology.

Data Management

AutoCAD, Business Intelligence, Business Objects, CA View, CMS, Content management applications, Corporate Financial Applications, Crystal Reports, Crystal Reports 10, Crystal Reports 11, Crystal Reports 2008, Crystal Reports 8, Crystal Reports 8.5, Crystal Reports 9, Crystal Reports Errors, Crystal Reports formulas, Crystal Reports printing, Crystal Reports Subreport, Crystal Reports XI, Data analysis, Data management and storage, Data migration, Data mining/analysis, Data Replication, Data transfer, Data warehouse, Data warehousing applications, Data warehousing/Business intelligence, Data/Application Integration, Database Management Systems, DBMS, Documentum, Duplicate records, EDI, Export, File transfers, Financial services applications, iDoc, Informatica, Integration with other platforms, Integration/Connectivity, JasperServer, Knowledge management applications, Livelink, Microsoft Dynamics, NetApp, ODS (Operational Data Store), Reports, SPSS

QA - Quality Assurance and Software Testing

What is Software Quality Assurance?

Quality Assurance makes sure the project will be completed based on the previously agreed specifications, standards and functionality required without defects and possible problems. It monitors and tries to improve the development process from the beginning of the project to ensure this. It is oriented to "prevention".

What are the Test Types of Software ?

· Black box testing - You don't need to know the internal design or have deep knowledge about the code to conduct this test. It's mainly based on functionality and specifications, requirements.

· White box testing - This test is based on knowledge of the internal design and code. Tests are based on code statements, coding styles, etc.

· unit testing - the most 'micro' scale of testing; to test particular functions or code modules. Typically done by the programmer and not by testers, as it requires detailed knowledge of the internal program design and code. Not always easily done unless the application has a well-designed architecture with tight code, may require developing test driver modules or test harnesses.

· incremental integration testing - continuous testing of an application as new functionality is added; requires that various aspects of an application's functionality be independent enough to work separately before all parts of the program are completed, or that test drivers be developed as needed; done by programmers or by testers.

· integration testing - testing of combined parts of an application to determine if they function together correctly. The 'parts' can be code modules, individual applications, client and server applications on a network, etc. This type of testing is especially relevant to client/server and distributed systems.

· functional testing - black-box type testing geared to functional requirements of an application; this type of testing should be done by testers. This doesn't mean that the programmers shouldn't check that their code works before releasing it (which of course applies to any stage of testing.)

· system testing - black-box type testing that is based on overall requirements specifications; covers all combined parts of a system.

· end-to-end testing - similar to system testing; the 'macro' end of the test scale; involves testing of a complete application environment in a situation that mimics real-world use, such as interacting with a database, using network communications, or interacting with other hardware, applications, or systems if appropriate.

· sanity testing or smoke testing - typically an initial testing effort to determine if a new software version is performing well enough to accept it for a major testing effort. For example, if the new software is crashing systems every 5 minutes, bogging down systems to a crawl, or corrupting databases, the software may not be in a 'sane' enough condition to warrant further testing in its current state.

· regression testing - re-testing after fixes or modifications of the software or its environment. It can be difficult to determine how much re-testing is needed, especially near the end of the development cycle. Automated testing tools can be especially useful for this type of testing.

· acceptance testing - final testing based on specifications of the end-user or customer, or based on use by end-users/customers over some limited period of time.

· load testing - testing an application under heavy loads, such as testing of a web site under a range of loads to determine at what point the system's response time degrades or fails.

· stress testing - term often used interchangeably with 'load' and 'performance' testing. Also used to describe such tests as system functional testing while under unusually heavy loads, heavy repetition of certain actions or inputs, input of large numerical values, large complex queries to a database system, etc.

· performance testing - term often used interchangeably with 'stress' and 'load' testing. Ideally 'performance' testing (and any other 'type' of testing) is defined in requirements documentation or QA or Test Plans.

· usability testing - testing for 'user-friendliness'. Clearly this is subjective, and will depend on the targeted end-user or customer. User interviews, surveys, video recording of user sessions, and other techniques can be used. Programmers and testers are usually not appropriate as usability testers.

· install/uninstall testing - testing of full, partial, or upgrade install/uninstall processes.

· recovery testing - testing how well a system recovers from crashes, hardware failures, or other catastrophic problems.

· failover testing - typically used interchangeably with 'recovery testing'

· security testing - testing how well the system protects against unauthorized internal or external access, willful damage, etc; may require sophisticated testing techniques.

· compatability testing - testing how well software performs in a particular hardware/software/operating system/network/etc. environment.

· exploratory testing - often taken to mean a creative, informal software test that is not based on formal test plans or test cases; testers may be learning the software as they test it.

· ad-hoc testing - similar to exploratory testing, but often taken to mean that the testers have significant understanding of the software before testing it.

· context-driven testing - testing driven by an understanding of the environment, culture, and intended use of software. For example, the testing approach for life-critical medical equipment software would be completely different than that for a low-cost computer game.

· user acceptance testing - determining if software is satisfactory to an end-user or customer.

· comparison testing - comparing software weaknesses and strengths to competing products.

· alpha testing - testing of an application when development is nearing completion; minor design changes may still be made as a result of such testing. Typically done by end-users or others, not by programmers or testers.

· beta testing - testing when development and testing are essentially completed and final bugs and problems need to be found before final release. Typically done by end-users or others, not by programmers or testers.

· mutation testing - a method for determining if a set of test data or test cases is useful, by deliberately introducing various code changes ('bugs') and retesting with the original test data/cases to determine if the 'bugs' are detected. Proper implementation requires large computational resources.