Tag: 2023

  • My Internet Reading Daily Diet

    Pranay Kotasthane asked in OpenTakshashila’s WaterCooler the following question:

    What does your internet reading daily diet look like? Do you use specific websites, workflows, or tools? Please share…

    Pranay Kotasthane

    This blog post is a more extensive answer to that question. In my Weekly Notes 27/2023 blog post, I shared how I had changed my information consumption. In my On following people’s work, I lamented about the difficulty of following people in a fractured social media landscape. But, this is my current internet reading daily diet.

    I follow quite a few newsletters that I have subscribed to using Yahoo! Mail. I follow many blogs using RSS feeds on Feedly. I now use Mozilla Thunderbird while reading these on my laptop. I use the respective apps when reading them on mobile.

    I have subscribed to the Times of India and the Indian Express for news. I read The News Minute for news related to Kerala. I read Scroll for their books and niche national news coverage. This has changed since Week 27/2023.

    For my varied interests, I follow people on Twitter/X and Mastodon. I try to spend time on these once in the morning and once in the evening.

    I listen to a few podcasts on Spotify and watch videos on YouTube. I do these on mobile only.

    For anything that interests me, I take notes by hand in my bullet journal. For anything that I want to add as a reference for the future, I add it to Roam Research.

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  • Running Ubuntu

    I always wanted to run Ubuntu only on my machine. We had two laptops at home. One laptop is the blue-coloured HP Pavilion that we purchased in 2016. The other was a black Dell laptop that we bought in 2021.

    We named the blue HP, Neelathamara, and the black Dell, Karuthamuthu.

    I had a dual-boot, Ubuntu and Windows installation on Neelathamara after we purchased Karuthamuthu. Some issues and some shoddy computer repair during the pandemic meant that I had to switch it to Windows only for a while.

    I had purchased a MH-USB from the LibreTech store earlier this year. The issues in 2022 made me worry about going to dual boot again. So, today, I moved Neelathamara to a full Ubuntu install.

    The install experience was awesome as I did it during my lunch break at work!

    I do not know why it took me so long to pull the trigger. I have also moved my blog reading from Feedly to Thunderbird. I am still using Feedly to read blogs on my mobile.

  • Pune Pen Festival 2023

    I went for the 7th International Pen Festival Pune 2023 held at Erandwane in Pune on 21 October 2023. Vishwesh had shared the presence of the festival in the Chalchitra community a day before.

    We had briefly discussed the revival of fountain pens in the Clear Writing Cohort meetup in Pune on 15 October 2023. Hence, shared this invite to this community as well.

    Invitation received for the 7th International Pune Festival

    There was a Comet EV four wheeler to test drive and buy. But, more interesting to me, were the group of Urban Sketchers who were present at the entrance, using various types of pens to sketch at the venue. You can see the work of the urban sketchers by following this tag on Instagram.


    The exhibition had ink pens from internationally renowned brands like Lamy, Pilot, Staedler, Pelikan, etc. There were a few Indian brands like Beena v’sign as well. There were a few niche brands as well.

    I purchased a few things:

    Two of the three Beena V’Sign Stride ink pens, one pocket notebook from Patto, two A5 size letter pads from Midori, and a A5 size notepad from Midori. Image credit: Pradeep Mohandas.
    An artisanal leather carry case for a A6 size notebook from Dvadaria Brands, a Kanwrite Relik ink pen and a Parker Vector roller ball pen in the pen slots. Image Credit: Pradeep Mohandas

    I purchased three Beena V’sign Stride ink pens. I bought a lot of Japanese Midori stationery from an online store called Faces and Places. I purchased an artisanal leather pouch for a pocket book and my pens from Dvadaria Brands.

    Venus Traders who co-hosted this event have a “super stationery store” on FC Road where many of these ink pens are available.

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  • Weekly Notes 41/2023

    A lot of outing happened this week after the monsoon pause. We went to the mall on Thursday. I met up with Saurabh in Pune.

    Writing

    I have not written my fortnightly space newsletter for three fortnights now. This is a streak I would like to break.

    I completed a couple of long-uncompleted work items. Feels like a load off my shoulders.

    I wrote one blog post here.

    I finished writing about the zettelkasten, in my zettelkasten. I am following it up with Andy Matuschak’s Evergreen Notes.

    Reading

    I am presently listening on Audible:

    • Novelist as a Vocation – Haruki Murakami

    I am presently reading:

    • Latitudes of Longing – Shubhangi Swarup

    I am reading the following articles/essays/stories –

    YouTube

    Cycling

    Cycling is a practice I want to continue. I went cycling last Sunday and Monday before taking the cycle to work on Tuesday. I haven’t cycled the rest of the week.

  • Weekly Notes 40/2023

    Writing

    I wrote a lot this week. Most of them have been work but I have managed to pull aside some time to write about Scott P Scheper’s version of the Zettelkasten, that he calls Antinet this week. I am exploring Andy Matuschak’s Evergreen Notes this week.

    I also wrote the broad contours of the novel that I will write for NaNoWriMo 2023. Title is TBD.

    I have not written my fortnightly space newsletter in two fortnights.

    I am writing but things are not in kilter yet.

    Reading

    YouTube

    OTT

    • The Irregulars (English)
    • Rocky aur Rani ki Prem Kahani (Hindi)
    • Biohackers (German)
    • Reptile (English)
    • Miss Sloane (English)
    • The Pale Blue Eye (English)
    • Wheel of Time (Season 2, English)

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  • Weekly Notes 39/2023

    I missed writing the Weekly Notes for the thirty eighth week and the fifty eighth edition of Pradeep’s Space Newsletter. I caught up with a lot of writing work-wise but not much otherwise.

    It was a fantastic week for reading. I got a lot of reading done and listened to a lot of podcast episodes. This post is just to make sure that I don’t miss more than two in a stride.

  • Weekly Notes 37/2023

    I started reading, physical exercise, and a few routines.

    OTT

    • Luther: The Fallen Sun (English)
    • The Gift (Turkish, English)

    Reading

    Books I listened to (on Audible):

    • The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck – Mark Manson

    I read more articles than books to get back in touch with reading:

    YouTube

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  • Weekly Notes 36/2023

    I missed writing the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth edition of these Weekly Notes. These defined my steady decline into procrastination mode. Everything suffered – writing (at work and at home), reading, time spent with family, and many house chores.

    I am trying to get a handle on things again but they are slipping. The flow is very viscous.

    OTT

    • Kleo (German)
    • Those Who Wish Me Dead (English)
    • Collateral (web series, English)
    • Who is Erin Carter? (English)
    • God’s Crooked Lines (English)
    • Late Night (English)
    • Nalla Nilavulla Rathri (Malayalam)
    • Satyaprem ki Katha (Hindi)
    • Kohrra (Hindi)
    • Neeyat (Hindi)
    • In from the Cold (English)
    • Jailer (Tamil)
    • Nobody (English)
    • Rough Diamonds (Flemish)
    • AKA (French)

    I managed to Netflix and chill, though a few hours everyday. The above is from the past three weeks and not just the effort of the last week.

    Writing

    Reading

    I am listening to Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck on Audible.

  • Chandrayaan 3 landed successfully

    I watched the landing of Chandrayaan 3 at home with my wife and children. I also celebrated with them.

    Once completed, we had a Zoom call with members of Chalchitra Talks where we spoke for half an hour about the landing and I answered questions regarding the mission to the best of my ability.

    The lack of images since the landing has been frustrating. There were many conspiracy theories to try and explain the lack of images. There was speculation that the images were kept on hold for the Prime Minister to release them. This turned out to be unfounded. The images have still not been released!

    During an interaction with the Malayalam media (translated by me from Malayalam on Twitter and Mastodon), it became clear that this is simply because of poor camera angles and direction of sunlight at the landing site!

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  • Weekly Notes 33/2023

    Writing

    I got a lot of writing done this week. I was happy with the progress made in the space and philosophy spirals. A lot of work writing also got done. This is a good foundation for the upcoming week.

    Space

    Philosophy

    Reading

    Reading took a back seat again. But, I bought a bunch of books from the Pune independent book store, Pagdandi. This mostly adds to my TBR book stack. Need to dynamite this stack to get going.

    OTT

    I watched the Malayalam movie Padmini, and a horror-thriller-young adult series Lockwood & Co. I would recommend both.

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