Wait a lot more

It is February. The doomsday came, and went. Nothing happened. The Supreme court of India reserved its judgement on the matter of tradition vs constitution. Everyone who waited this far, well, will have to continue to wait for a concrete answer.

But that has not really stopped people. It is hilarious to see all the comments people post on social media to vent their anger. Specially on twitter where people use the same hashtag to debate opposing sides. By the way, why are people on twitter so angry ? Even without the all caps, its clear they are just using the platform to shout, angry at the way things have turned up.

Saving for posterity.

All the time and energy being wasted on these platforms, all for nothing. It does not matter what these individuals think. This is one of those topics only people in power or authority can decide. The timing could not have been worse. Being an election year, political parties are trying to appeal to people's sentiments , and manipulating their own stance for prospective votes.

These are uncharted waters. And no shore in sight.

Australia’s public barbeques

 

In case you missed the signs so far, Australia loves its barbeques. Although the origin of barbequing is credited to other countries, no other country does it better than Australia. These guys love their slow cooked meat, so much that the government provides free outdoor grills for people to use. Well most are free, some are coin operated. They run on electricity, and are easy to use, and very popular with the crowd.

One of those things you don’t see in India. Or in most other countries, for that matter. There are websites to search for public barbeques, and there are lists curating the best places to bbq. Most of them are near beaches on protected forests.

There is something about cooking your own food at a public area. I guess its the earthiness of it all, cooking fresh food with good views to soak in. It is a great way to hangout with family and friends. We went BBQing again this weekend, and though we are seasone experts in the area, the experience continues to surprise me.

The earliest images of public park barbecues (as opposed to those in national parks) in the State Library are from Brush Farm in May 1976, at about the time Warringah council, among others, began investing heavily in its barbecues, creating a competitive asset with relatively little effort, says Caroline Ford, author of Sydney Beaches: A History. Like Randwick's clearing of Coogee beach in 1859, councils have always seen their public spaces as avenues to boost the local economy.

An attachment with a long history, our fondness for a meal cooked outdoors speaks of deep Australian connections between nature and culture. Nineteenth century stock workers, travelling, camping and yarning around a nightly campfire, are oft-touted as the origins of our barbecue culture, but that is a convenient, if romantic, story we like to tell ourselves, says Richard White, historian and author. Still, he says, imagined connections to a bush or even prehistoric past give us all a break from modern living - albeit in safely contained primitive experiences on regulated "fires" in places where our ancestors would never have made camp. Add the outdoor cooking-friendly climate, a fear of bush fires, an awareness of protecting the environment and a deep sense of shared ownership of beaches and their parks - not to mention a palate that has largely been shaped by the abundance of cheap, good meat - and formalised, taxpayer-funded barbecues make reasonable, if privileged, sense. But perhaps the most important factor in their popularity is the very element that makes the idea of the "Australian barbecue" hard to pin down. Post-World War II immigrants, mostly southern European, did more for normalising alfresco cooking and eating than swag men ever did.

So the next time you want to hangout, and have no place to go, head to the nearest public BBQ. Just remember to clean up properly after you are done, for the next guys in line. And thank the country for providing this extra-ordinary service. Its truly a national treasure.

 

 

Open Live Writer: Google photos issue fixed

For the last one month, Open Live Writer has had issues posting posts with images to blogger. Posts with only texts are fine, but any images inserted would cause the post/upload step to fail with this error:

Expert users where quick to point out that the issue is not in the blogger API, but in the API used by OLW to upload images. You see, OLW uploads any post images into google photos in a separate album, then use the generated URL to embed the images in the HTML code of the post being uploaded. Sometime in December 2018, google silently changed something in their API , which caused all subsequent image uploads to fail from OLW.

Well thanks to the code being open source, developers patched the current version and have released a beta version with this issue fixed. The new version is now called 0.6.3

So I tried downloading and installing this new beta version, and it is fixed now !

Download the new beta version from here :

And running the installer updates the version. There is minor glitch though. OLW opens multiple windows of the new editor, for some odd reason.

But there is an easy fix. Go down to the folder where OLW is installed, and delete the update.exe file from there. Running Live Writer after that does not open up multiple instances.

Cheerio ! Go Open source !

Politricks

 

It is an election year in India. The hype and hoopla are building up. This will be a landmark election, or it could also all go down south.

Just get it over with now.

33 Degrees at 6 AM

 

If there is still anyone asking for proof of global warming, they only need to wakeup, and wakeup here in Australia. It was 33 degrees today, at 6AM. Enough for most people to start sweating. And it only gets worse from here. The forecast maximum temperature is 42 degrees today. Yesterday Adelaide hit a max of 46 degrees,toppling a heat record from 1939 ! That's almost half boiling point.

In a way, this is expected. After all, it is summer here in this part of the equator. But these are also record temperatures, and signs of times to come. Experts warn these could be average, everyday temperatures in the next few decades. Time for climate change deniers to wake up and smell the smoke.

But despite the cloud and the heat, the air is still clean here. Nice , crystal clean pure oxygen. Mother nature is still alive and working hard here. Not many countries can say that.

So fellow Aussies, stay in ,stay covered. Drink lots of water, and go back home soon.