The city government of Barcelona is switching to open source and Ubuntu!

I think they have a good plan and have an excellent chance of success. Several years ago Munich tried to switch to Linux, and last year they switched back to Windows. They tried an everything in one shot approach, which I think is doomed from the get go. Barcelona is starting with replacing their Exchange servers with Open-XChange, Internet Explorer with Firefox, and Office with LibreOffice. Then they'll continue from there, eventually replacing the underlying Windows OS with Ubuntu after all of the apps are open source. I'm not sure when they'll be replacing their data center servers with Linux, it's not mentioned in the Europa.eu article.

Apparently this is part of a new European campaign called Public Money, Public Code, of which Barcelona is the first country to attempt such a conversion. It certainly won't be easy being the first, but they'll be able to provide LOTS of information to other municipalities who go down this path later.

https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/public-money-public-code

https://linux.slashdot.org/story/18/01/15/0415219/city-of-barcelona-dumps-windows-for-linux-and-open-source-software

https://publiccode.eu/

There's a good comment on the Slashdot story:

"Most IT shops do not know the answer to three questions
1) How much (all up, everything) do we pay microsoft in licence fees per year
2) How much do we pay other vendors for licence fees
3) Over 3 years how much have we paid for software- all up, including lawyers, audits, and licence management packages, and administrators who add nothing to the bottom line ensuring 'compliance'"

This can be a compelling reason to go open source like this.

A Burmese Coconut Cake!

The latest issue of Milk Street Magazine arrived in the mail last week, and it contained three recipes that I wanted to try: an interesting chocolate cookie, a fascinating chocolate cake that did not use the oven -- you cooked it in a Dutch oven on the stove top and it used steam to cook! And this -- the coconut cake from Burma.




Click to embiggen, if you are so inclined.

Distinguishing features: a 14 ounce can of unsweetened coconut milk, semolina flour, and the only spice is ground cardamom!

It calls for toasting the unsweet shredded coconut, which is a new technique for me, and also for lining the 9" pan with parchment paper, also something that I haven't done before.

And naturally I screwed up.

After mixing everything together and pouring it in to the pan, (and I do mean POUR! VERY liquid batter!) you add cashews and more coconut to the top, then put it in the oven. I had substituted slivered almonds for cashews as (a) my wife doesn't like cashews, and (2) I couldn't find cashews at our three grocery stores. I realized afterwards that I should have checked the snack aisle in addition to the baking area. Anyway, I then realized that I'd forgotten to add the butter! It calls for melting half a stick of salted butter, then cooling it, and mixing it in with everything else. The cake had only been in the oven for less than five minutes, so I decided to pull it, dump it back in the mixer, and re-melt the butter for 10 seconds and mix it back in. I didn't re-top the cake with coconut and almonds, so when done correctly it will look slightly different.

I was concerned that the almonds would sink to the bottom of the mix as liquidy as it was, but it wasn't a problem. They are nicely distributed throughout. And this cake is GOOD. If I lived in the South, I might class it as Slap Yo Momma Good. Fortunately I don't live there, and my momma is 500 miles away. Super moist, very flavorful, the cardamom is a very slight flavor that you can't quite place.

The nice thing is that my wife isn't a fan of coconut, so it's possible that she won't like this cake and I'll have it all to myself!

Anyway, HIGHLY recommended! I had to buy a 9" pan, and it didn't rise too much. This is definitely going in to my proverbial recipe box. The toasting of the flour and coconut is very simple, just a bit different. And in the future, I'm not going to bother with lining the sides with parchment paper, just the bottom.


ETA: RATS. The wife really likes it, so I'm going to have to share it. :-(

;-)

Also, there's no recommended icing or frosting for this: it's fine as-is. And like I said, normally it'd be covered in coconut and cashews except for my messing up.