Category: Personal

  • 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.

  • Weekly Notes 3/2025

    2173 weekly left. 5 Weekly Notes shipped including this. Yay, etc.

    AI generated image to try and represent this week. I wasn’t this relaxed, though!

    Space Heavy

    This was a very space-heavy week. Most of the week was spent on X and LinkedIn, where these updates are mostly available. I wish it were not so.

    India docked two satellites in orbit, 3 Indian space startups flew to orbit onboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin reached orbit, SpaceX’s Starship had a wonderful booster catch and the blow-up of the Ship on the way to orbit.

    I summarize most of the Indian activities in the 65th edition of Pradeep’s Space Newsletter.

    Personal

    This was also a week of doctor visits – for my son and for my wife.

    I missed going to either the Indian Science Festival and the Pune Public Policy Festival. I am planning to go for the Pen Festival.

    I got my driving license renewed after holding it for 20 years. Renewed for 10 more years now.

    Reading

    I am continuing to read these books:

    • Moustache, S Hareesh, Trans. from Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil (77% completed)
    • The Notebook, A History of Thinking on Paper, Rolland Allen (37% completed)

    I also enjoyed reading these links:

    Watching

    I only watched Asura this week on Netflix. I need to write about it here on the blog. This line from the trailer made me choose to watch this, “Girls are like Asura … Asuras are Indian gods. Outwardly, they have virtues like justice, wisdom, and courtesy. Though, they love to slander.” It made me think again about what Asuras really are.

    You may also enjoy watching:

    Writing

    I am so happy with a lot more personal blogging that I did this week.

    Blog posts

    Newsletters

    I got back to writing on Roam Research again.

  • Hold-it-all

    My wife gifted me this hold-it-all for New Year’s.

    I had been browsing Amazon, Flipkart, and Instagram for a hold-it-all from Indian artisans. My wife saw me frustrated with the search and decided to make one herself.

    On the very next day, she stitched the hold-it-all from left over clothes from her various tailoring experiments. If you notice the picture carefully, you can see an orbit close to the bottom of my heart with a P in it. With just this logo, she captured my current interest in healthtech and space!

    She had missed one of the end bits of stitching. She has since been delaying stitching that bit till today when it was finally ready to show the world.

  • The Dhuradhurapatradi Scale

    This morning was strangely cold. My upper body felt warm while my lower body felt chilly. I thought about why that might be but could eliminate several reasons. Then I remembered my bottle of Dhuradhurapatradi.

    The bottle of Dhuradhurapatradi tells me how seriously I should take the cold I feel in my bones.

    My Dhuradhurapatradi Scale
    State of oilHow I should feel?
    FluidNot Cold
    Semi-solidSomewhat Cold
    Frozen OverVery cold

    The above table illustrates how I use the scale. Dhuradhurapatradi is a brand of coconut oil manufactured by Kottakkal Arya Vaidya Sala in Kerala.

    I have used the oil since my childhood. I developed the scale when I felt that people’s (ahem, my wife’s) experience of temperature was different than my own. I needed a neutral way to tell me how I experienced temperature.

    The weird weather this morning was a good example of my use of this scale. Today morning, the oil was semi-solid. So, I knew it was somewhat cold. This allowed me to fearlessly express my opinion about the weather to people who asked me about it.

    I thought of expressing this opinion on social media – where this post would not have been this long. However, reading Jatan’s post yesterday made me yearn for those days of the long blog posts. Hence, I wrote a long blog post instead of a short social media post.

    Also, a look at my Dhuradhurapatradi scale this winter, also makes me confident to opine that the number of days we experienced cold weather in Pune this winter were lesser than the number of days we experienced cold weather last winter.

  • The Morning Tea Incident

    This is the only remnant of the event that happened this morning. Interspersed with his scribbles.

    Tea stains among the scribbles

    My son was trying to get my attention. I was discussing something that was then important with my wife. So, despite shouting my name three times, he did not get my attention.

    I would like to think he considered the options before picking up my Portronics power bank and threw it at me.

    Weapon used to perpetrate the event

    My wife and I were looking forward to drinking a cup of tea after doing work in the morning. I was especially excited because I was going to drink tea in the new A47 The Explorer mug.

    The unfortunate target

    At this moment, I was looking at the updates on ISRO’s SpaDeX mission in  one hand and holding the Explorer mug in the other hand.

    The power bank grazed the cup and fell on the floor near the bed. The cup tilted enough to drop scalding hot tea on my waist and thighs.

    I managed to remove the Jockey athleisure pants that offered no protection and my new Wellbi bamboo t-shirt that did a good job of protecting my top.

    My wife applied the gel from the aloe vera plant from her garden to soothe the burned regions of my waist and thighs.

    My son looked at me as if to say, if only you had listened.

  • Weekly Notes 2/2025

    2174 weeks left.

    This week has been a blur. But, I loved the content that I consumed.

    Watching

    I am currently watching The Playlist about the Spotify story. I have reached the episode on The Coder. An important thing I learnt from watching this is the inevitability of compromise.

    • The Breakthrough – I liked the whole story but did not understand the ending and a few plot points in the middle.
    • The Grey Man – Surprised to see Dhanush in this one. Otherwise, quite an ordinary spy story.
    • Missing You – This was a layered story. I did not what this story was really about. The title applied to the core story as well as all of the side stories. Great storytelling.

    Reading

    I am still reading Moustache and The Notebook I mentioned in the last Weekly Notes.

    Writing

    I wrote two X threads, with the help of Grok.

  • Weekly Notes 1/2025

    2175 weeks left.

    I spent the New Year’s with my wife and kids.

    I had met up with Jatan in Pune during the science journalist’s conference. We had discussed about social media there. He’s written himself about some of the weirdness of social media here. People build an audience on a social media platform, the social media platform attracts more people who want to build an audience, and the social media platform wins while the people don’t. Yet people continue to flock to the different social media platforms.

    Writing or building your blog or website slows down the discovery process (like this, for example or on people’s blogrolls) but the people who discover things this way have a way of remembering you that is much better. I remember the people I found on blogs much more than the people I engage with on social media platforms. At the conference, I realized it is true the other way as well.

    I picked up writing on the blog from the next week onwards.

    Reading

    1. The City and It’s Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami – I wrote a review here.
    2. The Notebook – A History of Thinking on Paper – Roland Allen – I made slow progress reading this week.
    3. Moustache – S Hareesh, Translated by Jayasree Kalathil – I started listening to this today.

    Writing

    1. I wrote the seventh edition of the healthtech newsletter, Towards Eternity.
    2. I got back to writing my space newsletter this week. You can read the sixty third edition of the newsletter here.

  • Weekly Notes 52/2024

    This is the last Weekly Notes for 2024. So, this may be a bit lengthy.

    I spent most of this year trying to do a lot of experiments. I think there was more experiments done than I had expected. I have not much in terms of results to show for it, save for very few. But, important lessons have been learnt which I hope to share below:

    1. I need more measurement in my life. I tried measurement at a bigger scale than I needed. For eg. I measured in weeks, what I should have measured in days, and so on.
    2. I need to capture the measurement in a plain notebook or tracker – and on Excel or Sheets at the very worst. Capturing data in apps locks it up in apps.
    3. I have heard multiple people talk about squeezing timelines. I tried it and liked it. For eg. Do in a year what you may think takes 5 years. But, take adequate care before you squeeze the timelines.
    4. I moved to a pocket notebook on Hiran’s suggestion. I moved to a declutteredcat planner for 2025 on Jyotsna’s suggestion. I am not using my Bullet Journal for a year. I need to learn to learn using a planner again.
    5. I moved back to setting goals this year. We set the goals for the family today.

    Reading

    With the multiple resets I mentioned above, I also moved back to tracking my reading with Goodreads. I had briefly tried tracking it with a page on this blog in 2023 as well as not tracking it at all this year.

    • The City and its Uncertain Walls – Haruki Murakami – I am listening to this on Audible on my transit to work as well at other times I feel like I need a slow narration where I don’t need to think to much or I need to stop thinking.
    • The Notebook – A History of Thinking on Paper – Roland Allen – I am reading this on the Kindle app on my phone. I do this when I want to try and spend the early mornings and late nights on the phone but want to stay away from the social media apps.

    Writing

    I moved back my writing on a blog to this one from other things I tried this year – blot.im and Ghost. I am still considering thinkdeli for my fiction writing instead of Medium.

    • I wrote the sixth edition of the Towards Eternity newsletter. A lot of my writing for space and reading on X has helped me to get to trends in a new field faster than I otherwise would.

    For claiming to be a writer, I am not getting a lot of online writing done these days. I am doing a lot more personal writing related to the end of the year and the beginning of the new year. I should be back with more public posts in the New Year.

    Here’s wishing all the readers a Happy New Year!