Category: Status Updates

  • Om Malik writes on his blog, On my Om:

    When I went to see the Manila Pen Show’s website, every single one of the exhibitors was linked not to their website but to Instagram. These included some of the more traditional and sedate pen-makers from Japan. Earlier this morning, when reading Die Workwear’s piece about shirts, I realized that almost all the bespoke shirt makers, shoemakers, and others announce their trunk shows and new products on Instagram. And so do others who have something to say, sell, or shill.

    That is when it hit me — Instagram has gone from being “a photography community” to being a “visual information network.”

  • 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.

  • > 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.

  • 2022 – Write and Read

    I had a lot of plans for 2022. Like everyone else. One thing that 2021 illustrated was not to say yes to too many things. You end up disappointing others and yourself.

    Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com

    This informed me when I was filling up the YearCompass and I chose to select two things to focus on for 2022. Writing and reading.

    I write for a living. I write field documentation and manuals for a living. I want to practice writing more type of documents to expand my horizons. I also want to write fiction. I want to contribute by writing documentation for open source software.

    But, as I shared above, I want to focus on two things at a time. I want to first improve my skills in writing field documentation and fiction.

    The other thing I want to focus on, is reading. Through 2021, I had stopped reading. I could not read anything long. I wanted to get back to reading. I started by listening to the audiobook version of Dune. I followed that up by listening to the audiobook version of the Neuromancer.

    Towards the end of 2021, I started reading Indian Philosophy, inspired in part by the work that Ryan Holiday does with Stoicism. So, one branch of my reading will be spent reading/listening to fiction and another reading Indian Philosophy.

  • 2021 Status Update

    My friend Saurabh introduced me to the wonders of a year-planning tool called YearCompass. I spent today filling it out with the new Kanwrite fountain pen that I got from Amazon today.

    It has helped me clear many things that I want from me in the new year ahead.

    I know I have not been hanging around here a lot but thanks for sticking around. I hope to see more of myself here in 2022. Wishing you all a Happy New Year.

    Photo by Damir Mijailovic on Pexels.com

  • Bookend November 2021

    This is a post after a long time of no writing and no reading. This post is just to bookend things.

    We drove back from Kerala in the first week of October. We moved rental houses within Pune in the last week of October. The strain of moving houses has been more mental than physical. For quite some time, I have not been able to read or write anything much. I have been much more active posting on Instagram.

    I had intended to use the blog and write more seriously after putting out Pradeep’s Space Newsletter #28 on October 7. VM at The Wire Science re-published it on their website.