We started off with the New Generation Launch Vehicle (NGLV,). Then, there was Lunar Module Launch Vehicle. Then, NGLV was named Soorya. There is confusion about whether the NGLV and LMLV are different vehicles or the same vehicle. ISRO keeps changing nomenclature. This is the latest avatar of LMLV according to Anshuman.
This is a version with 3 stages, 99.77 m height and 6.5 m diameter. This looks like a version they are developing of NGLV for lunar missions. Just like LVM3 and HLVM3 and hence interchangibly used.
It is so much fun to read accounts of how blogs which started in the 2000s grew all through the next twenty years. Especially, when they opened doors in formal institutions a decade later for many of us. Read this.
“Mariner 4 used Canopus, a bright star in the constellation Carina, as an attitude reference, its star tracker camera locking onto the star after its Sun sensor had locked onto the Sun. This was the first time a star had been used to provide second axis stabilization, its brightness (second brightest star in the sky) and its position well off the ecliptic making it an ideal referent.”
“…we’ve also just had a first in terms of autonomous navigation through the work of the New Horizons team. Without using radio tracking from Earth, the spacecraft has determined its distance and direction by examining images of star fields and the observed parallax effects. Wonderfully, the two stars that the team chose for this calculation were Wolf 359 and Proxima Centauri, two nearby red dwarfs of considerable interest.”
“That its consumers are also its customers is a huge advantage over commercial over-the-air broadcasting, which entirely serves the advertising market.”
Mukherjea suggests investing 50% in Indian stock market and 50% in the US market for the equity portion of your portfolio which I found interesting.
New songs dropped from Agam this week.
Dharmesh Shah mentions many interesting technical notes on ChatGPT.
Thinking of buying a new car. So, started listening to this on financial rules for buying a new car.
My son watches this and has caught on many Malayalam words from this one. He has also picked up counting in Malayalam from 1 to 10, saying left and right in Malayalam etc.
This is a Public Service Announcement.
If you use the Airtel Thanks app in India, it is offering free Perplexity Pro for one year. It is available for prepaid and postpaid mobile and broadband customers.
“Writing for AI agents requires a new approach. Concepts like minimalism may be insufficient, as implicit knowledge (what we assume human experts know) must be made explicit for machines to understand.”
“The technical writer’s role is expanding from pure authoring to orchestrating and curating knowledge from many different sources for ingestion into a central system.”
“The mindset is shifting from simply writing documentation to engineering a knowledge base that can be reliably used by both humans and intelligent machines.”
“We hesitate to take a strong stance because we fear the data might reveal we were wrong, rendering us guilty of a humiliating sin in technocratic totalitarianism, letting the messiness of individual human emotion derail us from the optimal operating procedure. We’re desperate to do the right – read: most acceptable to our social/tribal community – thing, and need a chattering class of experts to assure us that we are.”
“When it comes to children, however, we cannot and should not abdicate our moral intuition.”
“Data can be informative, but a lot of parenting comes from the gut.”
“When I went to college, I had the internet again. It was scary how easy it was to substitute reading for social media – especially something like Reddit, which is mostly text based and allows for rabbit holes that felt exactly like reading a less rigorous Mary Roach book. I stopped reading long form almost entirely in those 4 years.”
“Like most of us, I’ve been struggling with some form of dependence on social media for the better part of a decade. But when I make the effort to remove myself from them, my life doesn’t get better. It isn’t the social media that is the problem, it is my desire to consume narrative. Stories are fundamental to who we are as humans2, and I am old enough that I know how to substitute for the internet. The exercise, then, is not to merely stop doing the thing that is hurting me. It is to answer a few fundamental questions for myself:
What does rest look like for me, to actually feel restored?
What activity do I fill my time with, to actually allow for thought?”
“All expectations that everyone had have shattered into a thousand pieces. The design is bland and outdated in every sense of the word. It renders the buses invisible on the road. In these modern times of AI-driven design where everything pops and sizzles, these are just… lifeless. Sad. (More photos here). These are no Aanavandis. These are plain terrible!”
“Malayalees love to hate KSRTC, but it is also very closely intertwined with the Malayalee pop culture ethos and identity. It is an integral entry in the lineup of icons that reminds them of home, an emotional connect that is manifested by the brand.”
“Most KSRTC well wishers would implore KSRTC and the honorable transport minister to please, please reinstate the existing KSRTC livery for Fast Passenger and Super Fast buses. Well changing the livery was tried once, two decades ago, and it didn’t work out. Please let it be your legacy that you rebuilt the brand value of the organisation rather than having changed it for the worse. Or even better, please restart body-building at KSRTC workshops.”
What I’m writing?
I am back on X and Mastodon again. I am also back on Tumblr. All of these are linked above if you visit the blog.
What I’m Watching?
These are interesting insights into how GenZ is thinking. I am also reading more about Gen Alpha and Beta, as these are the generations my children belong to. Gen Z is an important bunch, though.
One of the things I like to do is to try other publishing methods. I learnt of Leaflet from Jaymo a week ago. It languishes in one of my open Chrome tabs.
I realized I was not listening to podcasts that I usually would. I have downloaded PocketCasts to fix that. I have also downloaded the X and Tusky app for Android to access X and Mastodon. Thus ends my social media detox.
Matt D’Avella is someone I started following when I was into minimalism. Good to see that he is still trying to hang in there.
I have been trying to explore solarpunk and lunarpunk themes in my story writing. I haven’t written much this year. That’s something I hope to fix at this year’s NaNoWriMo.
I’m seeing many finance YouTubers and podcast hosts talk about cryptocurrency again in India. Most of the stuff that I have watched had been sponsored by the cryptocurrency exchange, CoinDCX. Another cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, which had decided to not comply with India’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) guidelines for cryptocurrency exchanges and had left India is also returning with a India Blockchain Yatra.
Mukesh Bansal’s solocast on fasting.
Madhu Kela, knowingly or unknowingly says in this podcast, “China is an autocracy, India is a bureaucracy”, although he corrects it to democracy before he completes.
However, even now, we don’t receive the connections we seek and the answers we want. We get what they want to sell. Look at the book recommendations you’re served, even after years of ‘learning’ who you are. Then remember the person at the old neighbourhood bookstore who could glance at you and hand you something that changed your life. Rare now, but unforgettable.
The post also provides a section of geology-inspired vocabulary to use.
When I was little I used to listen to Malayalam folktales from my grandmother. I was wondering who would provide a similar experience for my children. I am happy to see storytelling creators emerge who bring forth such storytelling on a public platform.
Parallel Spirals 