Category: Personal

  • Weekly Notes 40/2026

    Monday, 28 September

    As a country, India is thinking about manufacturing a lot recently. Manufacturing prowess does not start with large giga factories like the one Elon Musk builds. It starts with Medium, Small, Micro Enterprises (MSME). I saw this nice interview with Asish Mohapatra on solving the issues that MSMEs face.

    I liked the insights he had on company culture that he thinks of in terms of ABCs (Apprenticeship, Brotherhood, and Camaraderie) and what he thinks Town Halls should be about – Shout, Clap, Laugh, and Drink.

    It rained really heavily in the evening.

    Just before that I was rushing home to make sure that I am home by the time it rains. The car I use to go to work broke down after it entered our building premises.

    I called the garage for assistance. They tried the fuel pump, batteries, and other major connections. They played around with the relays with the intention of fixing any electric problems. The vehicle started and as I got into my parking, the skies opened up.

    Tuesday, 29 September

    I listened to an episode of the Art of Manliness podcast #1135.

    The episode is with the author of the book Against Convenience, Gabe Bullard. The podcast asks some really interesting questions.

    • Do what is good for humans. Not what is good for business.
    • Are streaming apps paying for the content or to find ways to hold paying subscribers?
    • Is the focus on getting people on food delivery apps or getting things like better packaging that delivers food fresh to the customer?
    • He suggested referring to the lists by Wendell Berry and Dieder Rams before adding convenience into your life.

    After the rains yesterday evening the weather started becoming balmy again as October was at our doorsteps.

    Wednesday, 30 September

    This was a really long day.

    I did not feel like working as we were going out for a late team lunch. We took my Logan as I was under the impression that the car was fixed. After a warm and relaxed team lunch, I left for home.

    The car broke down a net three times. I called another person from the garage. This person was sure that the problem was electric. Hence, he played only with the relays and got the car started. The third time it broke down, it was in the middle of a busy road. A few good Samaritans helped to take the car to the side.

    I tried to get road side assistance from my insurance company. I was totally sure that the car would never start again. I sat in the seat and was talking to a few people. During one of those conversations, the car started on its own.

    I decided to push my luck and go as far as possible. I was able to drive it all the way to the garage from where the folks on Monday had come. I left the car outside the garage and my wife picked me up and took me home.

    Thursday, 1 October

    One full day at the garage where I had left the car the previous day yielded no results. The folks at the garage seemed to not want to meddle with the car at all. They wanted to get it out asap. I did that in the evening. I took it to another garage where the mechanic seemed curious to find the fault.

    I got to try Instinct. I just dumped all the worries to it. It put various things into my Google Calendar and Google Tasks. I felt better already.

    Friday, 2 October

    The car’s travails continued. I visited the garage in the evening. It had broken down once but started again after they left it alone for a while.

    We went for a longish walk around the block. We found that a housing complex notorious for keeping people out or making it difficult to enter had relaxed their security so much that it could be treated as a thoroughfare at least for walking. Walking on Pune roads is a heart-attack-inducing experience.

    Saturday, 3 October

    I am doing a capstone project for a AI for Technical Writers course I am attending. I worked on the project in bits during the day.

    The car’s issues remained unsolved. The mechanic had ruled out issues related to the fuel line ending up to the fuel pump. He was now working his way through the electric issues.

    My relatives visited us from Friday to Sunday. I got to spend some time with them as well.

  • Weekly Notes 38/2026

    13 September 2026

    I used to write in paragraphs in my Bullet Journal. An important change on this day was really writing in bullets. Not in paragraphs. So, I returned to writing on Roam Research again.

    I attended the Bookbak of the Pineapple Elaichi Book Club. This is a once in a month discussion on books one is reading. I got to share what I was reading that week.

    14 September 2026

    I stopped my subscription for Audible and moved to Storytel. I started listening to the Malayalam novel Parinamam by M P Narayanan Pillai.

    I read the book, The Blue Jackal to my son. I think he liked my narration because he bought me the same book to read for the rest of the week. I had to refuse vehemently to change to another book.

    I re-watched the Bourne Trilogy again over the weekend.

    15 September 2026

    I visited Thrustworks Dynetics. It was wonderful to visit a space fab unit in Pune and so close to home.

    18 September 2026

    I completed watching the series Neagley, a spin-off from the Jack Reacher series.

  • Ganesh Chaturthi 2026

    We celebrated Ganesh Chaturthi in a small way.

    Ganesh Chaturthi

    My son’s top hairline (bottom of the image) photobombed the pic. The daughter made the Ganapati with clay that you can see off to the left of our temple at home.

    My wife left offerings of banana and apple for the Gods. Not to be left behind, our son left the Gods an offering of potatoes and tomatoes.

  • Weekly Notes 32/2026

    Home

    We are heading towards Onam next week. It will be our first Onam in our new home. My wife, Dhanya may not be able to celebrate because someone from her family passed away. Celebrations will be muted.

    Work

    Work was slow this week. I returned to office physically. I realised the importance of the core muscles was necessary in serving myself tea. I also found some trouble sitting on swivel chairs.

    Reading

    I continued reading towards the Second Interlude of The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson.

    I caught up with a lot of newsletters on Substack, many email subscription newsletters, blogs I was following on my feed readers.

    Writing

    I setup Zo Computer to send me a lot of prompts. I thought a lot about those but did not get around to writing any of them.

    Hiran told me last week that he was re-structuring the notes page on his website around bound notebooks (styled after Twone notebook cover). While you’re there, you can also enjoy browsing his website (like the good old days).

    I started writing in Obsidian about how I was thinking about finances.

    I wrote a few more blog posts on this blog with WordLand Social made by Dave Winer.

    From Debian to Windows 11

    I put Neelathamara back in storage. I am using Karuthamuthu again. This is a laptop that came pre-installed with Windows 11 that we purchased for my daughter during the Pandemic. I am back on a Windows PC.

    I’ve posted many of the things that I watched and wanted to share with you on a link blog on Tumblr.

  • Web Travel

    I was reading this Walknotes piece.

    The Richard Siken book is prose poetry. I know nothing about poetry, to me it reads as prose, which I don’t think matters? Anyway, the point is, I bought it on recommendation from Azeem in Exponential View, of all places.

    The link to Exponential View above led me to their Substack. That led me to this piece that gave me one more reason to consider moving away from the Google ecosystem.

    Who is Azeem? The Substack about page led me to his X page. This led me to the about page on his website.

    And I still didn't know much about who Azeem was.

    Fortunately, he has a Wikipedia page, that does a much better job at telling me who he is.

    I found an interesting Fellowship opportunity that he had written about on Substack. I posted about it on X, BlueSky, Mastodon and on a couple of WhatsApp groups I am a member of.

    I was directed first to Exponential Views primarily because of a book he suggested. So, I began looking for the recommendation. I found it. Unfortunately, it's behind a paywall.

  • I am writing this post using WordLand. It was made by Dave Winer who writes Scripting News. I usually visit Scripting News on the browser because it makes more sense on the web than as a feed.

    I have been reading a few posts about the refactoring Frontier project today. I found it via a link on the News tab on Scripting News.

  • Zo Computer

    Srikanth L introduced me to Zo Computer.

    He had used Zo Computer to augment his investigations into the bank.in breach and the Bank of Baroda breach. You can now contribute tokens that could run Zo Computer for investigations.

    Zo computer is like a cloud and AI rolled into one. It uses different LLMs to do the task. It also gives you some online hosting space. You can use this to build an app or a website.

    I have started using Zo Computer to send me two emails – one at the start of my day and another at the end of my day. The one at the start of the day gives me highlights of news from space, energy, and technical writing. It doesn’t do the best job at this. The one at the end gives me three to five thoughts to consider during the night and prepare for the next day. I like the questions it asks here.

    One of the blog posts Zo suggested was Yuki Watanbe’s blog post in Japanese. It talks about his year-long parental leave where he changed how he learned before and after this leave period.

  • Elizabeth Tai, a technical writer (similar to me), has written two blog posts that I have enjoyed reading:

    1. My honest take about life as a techwriter in the AI age

    She gives nice tips about how to think about life as a technical writer in the AI age. She is a software technical writer unlike me who is a mechanical and electronics technical writer.

    2. Substack writers, you need a website!

    She writes about the IndieWeb here.

  • Reading blogs

    I have often written about wanting to browse the web the old way. While I visit a few web sites by entering the url in the browser window, I like to read blogs on a feed reader.

    So, one of the things that I looked for after I installed Debian 13 was for a feed reader that I can use for it. I found a feed reader for Gnome called Feeds.

    It is written by Gabriele Musco.

    It is just a river of feed and has three modes you can read a piece that you follow – web view, reader mode, and feed content.

    Web view shows how the post would look like if you visited the website.

    Reader mode showed you only the content of the post without any distractions.

    Feed content mode shows you how the content is seen from the RSS feed point of view.

    I loved the simplicity of reading here. It is as good as reading on the web while reading on a RSS feed reader.

  • Bullet Journal Day

    8 August is celebrated as Bullet Journal Day. I went into the day questioning if I should continue using the Bullet Journal.

    I have been using a Bullet Journal since September 2015. This does not mean that I have a neat pile of notebooks from September 2015 till today. I have written and then abandoned Bullet Journals. I have not been consistent in the last two years.

    Since then, I have added a pocket 3.5″ x 5.5″ notebook to the writing practice. Both practices have evolved.

    I have been using a pocket notebook to write most things that I was earlier using the Bullet Journal for. The pocket notebook was less of a strain for me to write.

    It was similar to using Keep compared to using Obsidian or OneNote.

    I had borrowed Hiran’s notebook system as a basis for my own. I asked Hiran if he had changed anything in his notebook system, which I had borrowed. He had made a few changes but none that affected me.

    I could not think of anyone else who used the Bullet Journal. This only added the sense of not wanting to continue to use Bullet Journal.

    I have found that the Bullet Journal community is now a two-tiered one. One that uses the basic system and adapts it for their own personal use. Another that wants to be part of an official community and are ready to pay for this.

    The Bullet Journal website offers two plans for being a part of the community – a Foundation Plan and an Advanced Plan. But, both of these are quite expensive.

    I attended Ryder Carroll’s One Hour to Get Unstuck webinar. He shared the practice of Life Inventory which is the first exercise of the Advanced Plan.

    In the webinar, he suggested taking a life inventory under 8 categories today – Environment, Work, Relationships, Finances, Personal Growth, Physical Health, Mental Health and Play/Leisure. He then asked us to rate it on a scale of 1 to 10. He then asked us to journal why we gave the rating we did.

    He then suggested that we imagine we have gone ahead by 12 months. He asked that we use the same 8 categories so that the improvement would have been good enough of a change a year later. Rate. Journal.

    The Advanced Plan then says that the journey from now to 12 months from now is a story. We can choose the story and plan it – which is what the Advanced Plan covers, but with a community.

    After attending the webinar, I think I will give the Bullet Journal practice one more year. I will give this practice of Life Inventory a chance. I will not be joining any of these plans, though. I would rather co-opt my wife as a partner in crime.

    Ryder has updated many aspects of the Bullet Journal which are not in the book of the same name. People in the plans mentioned above supposedly get these updates as well, earlier than they are shared elsewhere. Ryder is a practitioner still using the Bullet Journal and hence, this is understandable.