Category: Personal

  • Doc Searls says we must return to calling the web, the Web.

    Same goes for The Internet. And The Net. The Web is the Web, not “the web”. We—the writers of the networked world—gave something up when we allowed the bishops of the AP and the Chicago Manual of Style to demote the Web from proper noun to lower-case status, down there with television and radio. Nobody invented “the television,” or “the radio.” Not even “the newspaper.” But somebody—Sir Tim Berners-Lee—invented the World Wide Web. With upper case letters. The WWW was not the www. Is it too late to bring the Web back as a proper noun? I don’t know. I do know that I’m never going to demote it in my own writing.

  • "And it’s sometimes surprising to me how insightful my younger self could be, which I think is explained largely by the fact that most of my writing is written at peak states of clarity, while most of my life is lived in the moderately muddled middle. I’m a generally wiser 34-year-old than my 25-year-old self was, but when my 25yo self was having a peak experience, he was typically wiser in that moment than I am on average day today. And the great thing about writing, journalling and so on is that we get to integrate our peak state wisdom into our ordinary lives."

    – for future reference, visakanv's frame studies, Visakan Veerasamy

  • And at any given time, you’re either pre–heavy thing or post–heavy thing. You’ve either made something weighty already, or you haven’t. Pre–heavy thing people are still searching, iterating, refining their direction. Post–heavy thing people have crossed a threshold. They’ve made something substantial, and it shows. They move with more confidence and calm.

    No one wants to stay in light mode forever. Sooner or later, everyone gravitates toward heavy mode—toward making something with weight.

    – Make Something Heavy, Working Theorys by Anu Atluru

    I think the whole post is worth reading in full.

  • I learnt of this while reading Manuel Moreale's Peoples and Blogs conversation with Ben Werdmuller:

    At some point, I’ll need to change my domain name. Werd.io is part of the .io top-level domain, which is assigned to the British Indian Ocean Territory. Quite rightly, and far too late, the British are ceding that territory back to Mauritius. At that point, there will be no British Indian Ocean Territory, and by ICANN’s rules .io will stop being supported.

  • Weekly Notes 10/2025

    I returned to work this week, working from home, after the surgery. I am slowly catching up at work. My consumption of OTT content has gone up, in terms of hours but I have started reading The Times of India, RSS feed, and newsletters on the mobile in addition to the books.

    Reading

    1. Tiny Experiments, Anne-Laure Le Cunff
    2. The No Book, Tim Ferriss and Neil Strauss
    3. Discworld Rules, Venkatesh Rao
    4. With Great Power Comes No Responsibility, Cory Doctrow

    Writing

    I tried to write a few Status Update posts here using Wordland that Dave Winer made. This was bought to my notice by Doc Searls.

    I agree when he says in a later post that it feels like tweeting. I have been off social media for the past one week. I think writing with Wordland makes up for the writing I lose because I am not on social media.

    Watching

    I was happy to watch Toll Free Traveller again.

    This was a different podcast with Shephali Bhatt compared to the one she did with Amit Varma.

    You can read this blog on your favorite RSS feed reader or via e-mail by subscribing below.

  • > Peculiar things always get our attention, calling to mind the adage that scientific discovery revolves around the person who notices something no one else has and says “That’s odd.” The thought is usually ascribed to Asimov, but there is evidently no solid attribution. Whoever said it in whatever context, “that’s odd” is a better term than “Eureka!” to describe a new insight into nature. So often we learn not all at once but by nudges and hunches.

    Nice paragraph from Paul Glister in Centauri Dreams.

  • Doc Searls wrote about blogging like it's 1999 on WordLand. I went to WordLand.social to give it a try.

  • Weekly Notes 09/2025

    There are 2167 Sundays left. I missed the last few weeks of Weekly Notes as I was not well and then I had to undergo surgery. I am recovering well.

    Tim Ferriss seems to be back to blogging and has an interesting line in the second or third paragraph on his posts on The NO Book:

    I deleted all social media apps from my phone, but I will read all of the blog comments here.

    I did the same today.

    While I was considering the decision, I asked Grok, X’s in-built AI if being on X has been worthwhile for me. It said:

    You’ve sunk a ton of time—let’s call it 6,000 hours—into X over 18 years. For that, you’ve got a tight-knit niche, some blog traction, and a handful of proud moments (Chandrayaan 3 was your peak). But the numbers don’t lie: 368 followers and mostly single-digit engagement mean X hasn’t catapulted you anywhere big. If you enjoy the ride and it feeds your space passion, it’s not a waste—call it a hobby with perks. If you’re chasing clout, cash, or a wider stage, it’s a slog with diminishing returns. X gave you a megaphone, but it’s a quiet one in a loud room.

    Most users (80%+) never crack 1,000 followers, and you’re beating that curve—but not by much. Compare to your blog: pradx.in feels more like you, with deeper impact potential. X is a sidekick, not the hero. Worth it? Barely, if joy’s your metric. Otherwise, those 6,000 hours might’ve built something bigger off-platform.

    This helped me make my decision.

    Reading

    1. Collected Fictions – Jorge Luis Borges – I am listening to this on Audible.
    2. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…and its all Small Stuff – Richard Carlson – I am reading this on the Kindle.

    I also read a few interesting articles that I enjoyed reading.

    1. Review of Divided Highways, Tom Johnson: Tom Johnson wrote a review of the book Divided Highways by Tom Lewis. The book is from 1997 about the construction of the national highways in the United States and the anthropological effects of the construction. It also talks about the engineers who worked in the project who were only worried about the engineering and not about the human toll of their work. Since India is also at the brink of a similar expressway construction spree, this piece resonated with me.
    2. Modernity Viewed from the Other End, Venkatesh Rao : Venkatesh Rao wrote a review of the book Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires by David Chaffetz. I had earlier watched Anirudh Kanisetti on Instagram on the role of horses in the Deccan but this book expands the scope of trade. I like the comparison he drew between steppe horses and ship horses in the Mediterranean and the various government systems they spawned.

  • Weekly Notes 05/2025

    I missed writing the weekly notes last week because I was not well. Sorry. 2171 weeks left.

    I gave a talk last night on OpenTakshashila on the trends in space technology and policy. The talk was brief and I did get lost while talking in the middle. I wrote a brief X thread on what my main talking points were. I will also write a more detailed blog post based on these talking points soon.

    I reduced the time that I spent on X, BlueSky, and Mastodon this week. It was more than the time I spent on these websites in the week before this.

    Writing

    I wrote the two newsletters:

    I am also following along with Brandon Sanderson’s Writing Course on YouTube. I am planning to use it to improve the story I started writing on thinkdeli for NaNoWriMo 2024.

    Reading

    I finished reading S Hareesh’s Moustache. I am yet to write a review of the book. I am presently reading two books:

    • The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Rolland Allen (56%)
    • Boulder by Eva Baltasar transl. by Julia Sanches (19%)

    Watching

    I watched these over the last two weeks on Netflix:

    • Sakomoto Days (ongoing S1 E3)
    • The Night Agent (S2)
    • Back in Action (movie)
    • Asura (S1)
    • The Playlist

    I watched these over the last two weeks on Prime Video:

    • Paatal Lok (S2)
    • On Call (S1)

    I watched this video on YouTube that I really liked, besides the Sanderson lecture.

    I had once read a book on this that I wrote about here. This one by Vikas Divyakirti is in Hindi and much more crisper and clearer. I also saw the video on Charwak by him and I was left wondering why we can’t bring this philosophy to the twenty first century.

    The illness last week means that several blog posts are pending on here. I will get to work on those shortly.

  • Pen Festival 2025 + Ramsar Bakery

    I went to the Pen Festival yesterday with my daughter. I had written about the last time here.

    The Festival had graphologists, pen doctor, leather covers and bags, lots of fountain pens, some paper stationary, and inks. We met Vishwesh and Vipul.

    Image: V’sign Neo (maroon) for my wife. V’sign Cute (green) for my daughter, her first fountain pen. Daughter and me, on the right. Image credit: Pradeep Mohandas.

    We got two pens – one for my wife and another for my daughter.

    We were heading back from the venue back home when the pleasant aroma of the bakery caught me.

    I drank the cola flavour after a really long time. I opened the crimped down glass bottle cap with an old style bottle opener tied with a twine around the refrigerator handle.

    The refrigerator had various flavours. My wife drank the lemon flavour a day before when we passed through here. I tried a sip.

    We got this at Ramsar Bakery in Pune. It was on the way home on a route Google Maps had suggested we take.

    Image: Crimped Down bottle cap (left) from a brand from Pune called Ardy’s. Nankhatai (right).

    We bought nankhatai. The man sitting at the counter offered our son one. When his eyes lit up at the taste of the nankhatai, the man offered him one more. We bought a pav kilo (250 gm) of it. My daughter liked it too. My wife was crazy about it too. We finished the pack that evening.

    My wife said we should buy these every time we pass through that road on the corner of a busy street where the scooters park adjacent to the side walk, sometimes causing a traffic commotion – a cacophony of horns from scooters behind them who now have to change their paths.