Category: Personal

  • Met Thejesh

    I sent an email to Thejesh when I realised that both of us would be in Kerala at the same time, though in different nearby districts.

    We decided to meet at the Palakkad Fort and have breakfast at the restaurant of the Indraprastha Hotel thereafter. He said he would come with family. I only got my wife along.

    I think I first read Thejesh’s blog when he was writing his many Open Source projects and writings. My Weekly Notes were inspired by his Weekly Notes.

    I thought our conversation would be around this. But, our conversation centered around family, travel, work, micro-grants, and history.

    He spoke of how the Weekly Notes helped in conversations with family and friends. They got updates from his Weekly Notes. But, his wife was frustrated because when she would give an update, their family and friends would have read about it already on the blog.

    We could not go inside the Fort as it was a little too early. We walked to the circular coffee shop outside Hotel Indraprastha and had breakfast.

    Both my wife and I enjoyed the company and the conversation. We also got a mention in one of the aforementioned Weekly Notes.

  • Weekly Notes 23/2026

    My weekly notes have been very weak. I have not been able to keep up with the practice in the last few weeks. My last weekly note was Week 15.

    Sunday 31 May

    We drove back from Palakkad. We started from Palakkad at 5:40 AM in the morning and reached our hotel room in Hubballi in time for dinner. We enjoyed the evening in Chitradurga – it was windy, overcast, and there were windmills. I learnt that hotels makes the kids stay free but does not provide them with a bed for them.

    Tea-break at Chitradurga. Image: Pradeep Mohandas

    Monday 01 June

    We continued our drive from Hubbali and into Maharashtra. We reached home in the evening for a late tea. My arms and legs were paining and hence, we only ate food and went to sleep.

    Tuesday 02 June

    I returned to work. It was nice to catch up with colleagues. Some colleagues were still away on their own summer vacations. In the evening, we realised that we still had to put in new practices for us in the new home.

    Wednesday 03 June

    Saurabh and friends had come over to Pune to meet Aarya and me. His PoV of the visit is here. I had very interesting conversations here .

    Friday 05 June

    The kids got the first chance to decorate the walls with their own colour. We had expected this would happen but not so early after their return.

    Saturday 06 June

    Rakesh ettan and I went for the STC India’s celebrations of World TechComm Day. We were in the team that won the first prize in a quiz competition. Our wives and kids got to spend this time together.

    I got the scooter back from its pre-Monsoon checks. I changed out the wipers on the car and had it ready for the Monsoon as well.

  • David Epstein on Constraints 

    Brett McKay does a good interview that gives you a clear idea of you want to decide if you want to buy a book or not. 

    David Epstein was on The Art of Manliness Podcast on the 1117th episode of the podcast.

    He talks of the power of constraints by contrasting two companies – General Magic Company, where there were no constraints and Pixar, where there were many.

  • WordLand again?

    WordLand has improved a lot since I posted here earlier.

    I am on vacation in Kerala and that is the reason for my pin-drop silence here. 

    I hope WordLand helps me post again.

  • Weekly Notes 15/2026

    If you create a Wikipedia page, you’ll see many red links. Red links represent topics that should have pages but are not created yet. Nowadays, Wikipedia mainly links to existing pages, and there are not many red links.

    This week’s Weekly Notes will have a lot of red links today but will get filled in as the week goes by.

    We completed three Ashtavinayaks in the circuit after Siddhivinayak, that I had written about last here. These were Ballaleshwar, Varadavinayak, and Chintamani. We have now completed 5 out of the 8 temples that makeup the Ashtavinayak circuit.

    Cover of the book, India and the Second Space Age. Courtesy: The Hindu

    I contributed one chapter to an ebook that was put together by The Hindu, called India and the Second Space Age. If you are a digital subscriber to The Hindu, you get this and many such wonderful ebooks for free. You can also buy it from them here or from Amazon.

    I donated a bunch of books to the public library in Pune. These were fiction and non-fiction books that were read by my family members including my son.

    Major news from this week include NASA’s Artemis II mission around the Moon generated some interest and not a lot. People were definitely worried about the war in West Asia. ISRO also did the Integrated Air Drop Test. India achieved an important milestone with the criticality of the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR).

    I asked, “How often can I write blog posts?” on social media. No one answered. So, I asked Gemini. Gemini said a post a week was professional and a post a day may make it look like you’re desperate for attention.

    Most blogs I follow have a lumpy posting schedule. Many posts around the time when they travel or when things happen and then several days of silence.

    As time has passed, I also notice this silence in their social media presence. I guess life happens during these periods of social media silence.

    I hope to write about these in the upcoming week while also celebrating Vishu, our New Year’s.

  • Weekly Notes 14/2026

    Many, many drafts have been sent to thrash before this one got published. Many incomplete unsent drafts of Weekly Notes of previous weeks. I do hope this one gets published.

    At work, I was completing a work project that turned out to be not so urgent. I kept the pace through this week so that my part of the work is complete.

    My 3.5 y.o. son started going to school for Nursery in a school bus. Like anxious parents, we went behind the school bus in a two-wheeler. He cried when he got into the bus but settled down after a while. We went on the second day as well.

    My daughter’s final exams are on. After this, she will move to the same school as my son.

    I did consume a lot of media, but I’ve put all of those on my link blog at pradeep.space.

  • Weekly Notes 08/2026

    The week started at a low. I read this blog post by Arun which picked me up. This is the second in a four-part blog post about his family trip to Kanazawa in Japan. I would call it a photoblog. The descriptions below the image are not about the image but the camera sittings he used to take the picture.

    I was trying to do a project at work but did not get around to doing it till the end of this week. I got a lot of work done, though.

    Rest of the week was consumed by recovering from the cold and cough last week and the intrigues surrounding my daughter and her friends.

  • Weekly Notes 6/2026

    This was a really weird week. I had a really bad case of bronchitis which the first line of medicines did not work well against. It required a second round of medicines to bring the issue under control including nebulisation.

    Cough medications made me really sleepy whereas the resultant cough did not let me sleep for a few nights this week.

    In this weird state, I read and shared a lot on my link blog. I now have some place public to share but the question is why not share this here? I don’t know.

    I have been sharing loads on Instagram stories and in WhatsApp status. This has seen more engagement than anything on my socials and on this blog.

    So, all I remember from this week is – coughing and not being able to sleep.

  • Weekly Notes 5/2026

    There is only a short introduction today. After our son had a Sports Day, I slept off most of the day today after having cold syrups. This Weekly Notes is a quickly put-together production to make sure that I don’t miss two Weekly Notes on a trot.

    My reading and watching has become slower and deeper. I am no longer trying to cover everything. I tried to go down many lists-inspired reading and ended up reading very little overall. I am now focussing and sharing stories with family.

    Reading

    Watching

    Ep 436 of the Seen and the Unseen podcast with Rukmini S.

    A part of this video blew up on X as a result of Elon Musk sharing it.

    I enjoyed listening to this episode.

    Three part series on pilgrimage tourism. I watched to try and get more insights there but ended up being more personal experiences.

    We definitely need more types of punk.

    This came out in December 2025 when I was in the hospital. I missed out because of that.

    This video starts quite innocently and gets dark very fast. Video is in Malayalam.

  • Weekly Notes 3/2026

    We’re well past half of January. We’re past Makar Sankranti. The days are getting warmer in Pune. Dhanya is loving her Neorah Accomplish Weekly Planner which I gave her in the start of the year.

    I got a lot of work on the scooter done this week. It was difficult to find space to get it serviced. I got the scooter serviced, the annual maintenance contract renewed, and refuelled it. It’s a much more better driving experience now.

    The week started with the disappointing news about the failure of the PSLV-C62 mission. I want to write about this but I want to be careful as the speculation around this mission has become crazy.

    I did not write the space newsletter for the second consecutive week. I might drop the idea of writing a newsletter altogether and write here instead. I am still thinking about it.

    Reading

    • On the banks of the Mayyazhi – M Mukundan (Transl. Gita Krishnankutty), I’ve just started with reading this.
    • The Artist’s Way – Julia Cameron, I’m reading this but do not yet have much to say. I am reading this while writing the Morning Pages, an exercise that the book recommends. This is based on the recommendation of Tim Ferriss and the presence of an accountability WhatsApp group around this practice.
    • Be Wary of Digital Deskilling – Cal Newport.
      • “In his 1974 book, ​Labor and Monopoly Capital​, the influential Marxist political economist Harry Braverman argued that the expanding “science-technical revolution” was being exploited by companies to increasingly “deskill” workers; to leave them in “ignorance, incapacity, and thus in fitness for machine servitude.” The more employees outsource skilled activity to machines, the more controllable they become.”
      • “The only group that would unambiguously benefit from deskilling developers would be the technology companies themselves, which could minimize one of their biggest expenses: their employees.”
    • Our Algorithmic Grey-Beige World – Om Malik
      • “Today, open YouTube and every single thumbnail looks the same. Shocked faces, specific color contrasts, carefully positioned text overlays. Same voice. Same cadence and energy level. And videos have roughly the same lengths. The algorithm rewards these patterns with distribution and punishes deviation with obscurity.”
      • “My carefully curated list of creators has devolved into sameness. Whether pen reviewers, photographers, music bloggers, history tellers, or science bloggers—it is clear they are praying at the feet of the gods of algorithms.”
    • How to fix your entire life in 1 day – Dan Koe
      • Dan presents the theory on how to change your life and then presents practical way to do it by asking yourselves a few questions. A great insight into how asking good questions makes your life better even if does not change it.
      • An X user converted the questions into prompts that you can use to have a conversation about this with your AI agent of choice.
    • The X algorithm now promotes more longer content that it calls Articles. I noticed more people that I follow posting longer form content.

    Watching

    This Malayalam video starts with how Nizar Iltutmish started his journey running away from his Class XII board exams for 108 days. Some of the things he witnesses shapes his interests. He has written 4 books and talks about 2 of them in this video. What he describes are two terrifying practices practiced till this day in Tamil Nadu. This is his talk given at the recently held Kerala Legislature International Book Festival 2026.

    The game of your financial life is a lot like Monopoly. Alok Jain of Weekend Investing explains well drawing on the parallels between the board game and your financial life. I really liked this video and gave me a new framework to think about my financial life.

    If you don’t watch the full video, watch the parts about his morning and evening routine. He discusses how his morning routine is personal and designed to maximize creativity.

    Matt D’Avella convinces you with his cinematic video to ask you to take responsibility for things that are in your control.

    Writing

    I wrote one blog post about our visit to Katraj Zoo. I have to write about the PSLV-C62 mission failure and about our visit to the Siddhivinayak Temple at Siddhatek this Saturday.