Reading/Listening
I am currently reading/listening to:
- The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams (Audible)
- The Bullet Journal Method – Ryder Carroll (Kindle)
I finished listening to Pacific Edge by Kim Stanley Robinson and reading Trackside by Bharath Moro. I have updated the books list on the blog, accordingly. I was stuck in a reading rut for a long time. Trackside helped me break out of it.
I have also started reading The Hindu e-paper and Frontline magazine again. I am sharing articles that I like on my Twitter and Mastodon feeds. I might add them here in future editions of the Weekly Notes.
OTT
I watched:
- Fubar (English)
- High Crime (English)
- Kathal (Hindi)
- The Mother (English)
- Mother’s Day (English)
- Ponniyin Selvan 2 (Tamil)
- Pachuvum Athbhutha Vilakkum (Malayalam)
- Neelavelicham (Malayalam)
- Enthadaa Saji (Malayalam)
- Pakalum Paathiravum (Malayalam)
- Pookkaalam (Malayalam)
Spirals
Spirals are what you would call rabbit holes today. Perhaps they are much more deeper? I hope this section clarifies what I meant by the title of this blog, Parallel Spirals?
Commonplace Books
I have mentioned Megan Rhiannon’s videos in the YouTube section of my previous post. She integrates her planner, commonplace book, etc. into one document. She includes stickers and cut-outs in her commonplace book. This got me interested into commonplace books. I watched many videos on this, but these made sense:
I discovered another person who used a notebook instead of a phone for a period of time, while searching about commonplace books. The last time this came up on my radar was on Weekly Notes 02/2023.
Religion
I had gone through some reading on Indian philosophical traditions last year. The YouTube algorithm suggested a video about the Kashmir Shaivism’s poet Lal Ded. I enjoyed the videos from the Let’s Talk Religion YouTube channel. Watching Acharya Prashant’s interview had diverted my focus towards Vedanta. Three specific videos on the Let’s Talk Religion spends time on the three schools under Vedanta that caught my attention.
Nikhil Kamat
I enjoyed watching all episodes of the podcast hosted by Nikhil Kamat. But, I liked this episode the most.
I think Varun Mayya’s explanation (of which there is a clip) of how ChatGPT works may be better than Cal Newport’s explanation.
Antinet/Analog Zettelkasten
I found Scott P. Scheper’s YouTube channel through watching Morgan’s YouTube channel. She has been explaining how to setup a physical Zettelkasten to her mother and mentioned Scott’s YouTube channel as an inspiration.
I found Scott’s method more thorough. But, before I got there I went through videos by Nicole van der Hooven for more ideas on digital Zettelkastens. Her video on why she personally used Obsidian over Roam, has had me open Obsidian after a very long time:
I even sampled Tiago Forte’s video on visual note-taking and signed up for Milanote. I might use it to write my first sci-fi novel.
This brings us back to Scott:
Graphene
An editorial written by a former Defence Secretary Ajay Kumar in The Hindu sent me down the materials spiral. I was once (around 2007-08) interested in material sciences. I watched a few videos on NPTEL on material sciences and specifically on graphene and Carbon nanotubes.
WordPress
I attended the 20th anniversary celebrations of WordPress in Pune. I had thought that I joined WordPress in November 2006, but it seems that I had actually joined WordPress in June 2006.

I was on Blogger before I was here. I had started blogging around 2005, if memory serves me correctly. But, as you can see above, I could be wrong.