I wasn’t planning to do the year-end collection of writings thread, but I would like to bury all the rather unpleasant notifications coming in from my critique of Stock, so...

I did not *write* much this year, but I was lucky to have a few things published anyway:

🎉🎉 PHP 7.3 is here!

Here are the things I'm excited about.

🚂 Trailing commas in function/method calls!

This will certainly be a required styling choice for me. Same delightful benefits of trailing comma in multi-line PHP arrays, and JavaScript objects.

🧵 Less disgusting heredoc syntax!

Inlining heredoc strings in any way right now is grrrosssss. Now we get sensible capabilities. Everything that was wrong with it is now fixed!

(Ignore the bad syntax highlighting)

☠️ Finally, not-so-silent json_decode error detection!

This really sucked before, now it just sucks a bit less (who wants to pass a 4th param and pass 2 default params first? (helper function anybody?)

📜 Not horrible functions for getting the first and last item (or key) from an array!

Before you either strung a bunch of functions together or messed with internal array pointers. This is a much-needed improvement.

Srikanteshwara Temple,
#Nanjangud  #Karnatakatemples 🚩

Srikanteshwara Temple or
Nanjundeshwara Temple is a famous Shiva Temple located in Karnataka at the bank of river  Kapila. Temple is also called Varanasi of South. Nanjunda means one who has consumed poison.

Story is  related to the Samudra Mathanam when Paramashiva had to consume halahala.

Parashurama worshipped Mahadeva here to relieve himself from the curse of Mathru Hatya. While clearing the place to do poojas Parashurama's  axe hit the Shivalingam and it began bleeding, that

mark is still visible even today. Thus
it is also believed that Parashurama did Shiva Prathishta here

Sthala Puranam says that, once there was a demon named Keshi who disturbed the people in the area, after  getting blessing from Brahma Deva  and Mahavishnu. Mahadeva appeared

here and killed demon Keshi and blessed this place as Papa Vinashini. Whoever praying to Srikanteshwara or Nanjundeshwara, after bathing in the  Kabini River will be relieved from all sins.

Nanjundeshwaraya Namah
🙏🕉🙏

MAHARAANI TARARANI: THE QUEEN OF MARATHAS

Rani Tarabai was the brave daughter-in-law of Chhatrapati Shivaji and one of the greatest medieval Monarchs India ever had.
She was born in 1675 to one of the bravest commander-in-chiefs of Shivaji's Army named Hambir Rao Mohite.

Tarabai was just 8yrs old when she was married to Shivaji's younger son, Rajaram. Mughals and Marathas were constantly at war with each other. Shivaji was crowned the ruler of the Independent Maratha Swarajya in 1674 which was established by him.

However,the great leader died in 1680&the Maratha Samrajya went into a complete&total chaos.Marathas saw some very tough times ahead. In 1689,when Raigad Fort fell to the Mughal Army of over 15000,Shivaji's first wife Saibai and his elder son Sambhaji were captured&put to death.

Sambhaji's wife and son Shahu were taken prisoners to the Mughal court. During the same battle, Shivaji's second son Rajaram(Tarabai's husband) , who was the heir to the throne now, managed to escape using a disguise. He made his way to the Gingee Fort in Tamil Nadu.

Mughal General Zulfikar Khan, however, followed them to Gingee laying siege to the Gingee Fort. From 1690-1698,This was the longest siege by a Mughal Army of any Fort which stands testimony to the military and diplomatic credentials of Rani Tarabai.

Thuravoor Narasimha Swamy Temple
Alappuzha, Kerala
#KeralaTemples 🚩

Thuravoor Narasimha Swamy or Thuravoor Mahakshetram is situated in Alappuzha with Narasimha Swamy and Sudharshana Moorthy as main Prathishta.
Temple has separate Sannidhi for Vadakkanappan ( Narasimha) and 👇

Tekkanappan ( Sudarshana).

Sthala puranam says that Vigraham of Narasimha was brought from Varanasi. Swami Padmapadar, shishya of Adi Sankaracharya, had worshipped the same Vigraham at Kashi.
A Namboodiri, on his way to Kashi saw a powerful light which disappeared here 👇

Namboodiri dug the place and he found a beautiful beautiful Vigraham made of Anjanasila. It is said that the vigraham occupied a site, which was the place of Durga Devi
Sudarshana Moorthy is about 6 Ft, Chaturbahu. Deepavali is famous festival here.
Om Narasimha Swamine Namah
🕉