Tag: Weekly Notes

It is already April. One quarter of 2025 is over!

This week began with thinking about our New Year, Vishu, about returning to working in hybrid mode again after surgery, my note-making and to-do lists, writing poetry and companion blog posts, and some home reorganization projects.

I hope to return to working from office in a hybrid mode from tomorrow. In preparation, I tried to drive the car under conditions similar to me going to office. I did much better in worse road conditions than what I face when I go to office. I got the green signal from the doctor.

After I wrote here about the great progress I was making on this blog, I basically made no progress in the note making process. I made no notes. I fixed this by ordering a new Neorah A5 notebook for my Bullet Journal practice.

I read about Meishi on Arun’s blog and have shared his design to get about 100 cards printed. I want to try it out as a to-do list and note taking system.

I wrote a poem on each day for Global Poetry Writing month on thinkdeli. I, then, wrote companion blog posts on the blog here. Not, for all of them but ones that I thought I should write about – which was most of them. You can read them here.

Reading

• Interesting X thread by Conor White-Sullivan that has a provocative start in the post, “If your AI won’t help you break the law, it doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to those who make its laws“
• The Art of Manliness had a nice blog post about the four parenting style. This had me look at and become more aware about my parenting style.
• “Worrying about a task often is far worse than the task itself. Starting is the hardest part.” Good to be reminded of this sometimes.
• I did not get much reading done. But, I have added more books and articles to read in my reading list :).

Watching

• I’ve reached the last season of The Good Wife. It is a legal political drama. This may be the reason I am watching it.
• I also watched a couple of episodes of the new season of Bosch: Legacy.
• It seems I did not get much watching done.

Web browsing

I left you in the last Weekly Notes with suggestions for two websites to go and visit. I don’t mind repeating the suggestion here:

• Tracy Durnell
• Sasha Chua

I kept following that thread the rest of the week. I started selecting to View Source again. When listening to Craig Mod on The Tim Ferriss Show, I went to his website. I loved some of his in-line comments in the source code.

I guess this is what Code is Poetry meant which used to be written in the top of WordPress admin page.

This was what browsing the web was about, in my opinion. That is how I want to browse the web again.

The World of Wikipedia Userpages

There is also a hidden world of Wikipedia user pages that is not widely known. Other than to Wikipedia editors or contributors. I used to consistently contribute to Wikipedia a decade and a half back and I used to love visiting these user pages.

I used to love reading L Shyamal’s ornithological investigations on his blog, Catching Flies. I have still subscribed to his blog on RSS feeds. When I got some of his recent updates, I visited his Wikipedia userpage. I loved reading this, there, about the reason for his contributions to Wikipedia:

The Western Ghats of Karnataka. Blink and this area may have already been destroyed, with ever-widening roads, street-lighting, power-lines, dams, and habitations following well-established and misguided notions of development that are entrenched in the minds of most people. These are the wild spaces that inspire much of my contribution to Wikipedia, a land that supports life and hosts enough wonders to engage everyone, physically and mentally, now and in the future. Incidentally, within this view live floral and faunal elements that represent more than a million potential Wikipedia entries. Converted (or “developed”) into a boring human settlement, it would not produce a single notable person.

Personal Updates

My post-surgery recovery is coming along well. The guy who dresses my wounds thinks it would take another 2 weeks for the wound to heal completely. That would put it at a date around the Malayalam New Year of Vishu, around 14 April.

Many of my family members’ doctors visits were on hold because of my recovery. Those were covered in the last few days.

Reading

1. Your Content is No Good Anymore, vadakkus.com

How AI has changed the way children do homework. Even ones supported by their parents. It is getting to a place where we first get the answer from AI. There is no effort to search. But, as the blog post says, the reward is for the output and not the effort.

2. Book review of Jonathan Warner’s book More Than Words: How to think about writing in the age of AI, Tom Johnson

Tom Johnson is a technical writer. He reflects on the roles of humans in writing generally and technical writing in particular, in the age of AI.

3. When profit trumps principles, Tracy Durnell

This is what we have come to call a link blog post. It has a set of good quotes that bear repetition here.

To me, enshittification means that a person who lacks taste was put in a position of power.

Enshittification as a matter of taste, Dave Rupert

She writes:

Scale above all else is the philosophy that both buries us in endless genAI slop and locks customers in to enshittified platforms… and taste is in tension with scale.

This is something that Craig Mod talks about in his twin interviews with Tim Ferriss.

It is not just that people making AI slop are spamming the internet, it’s that the intended “audience” of AI slop is social media and search algorithms, not human beings.

AI Slop Is a Brute Force Attack on the Algorithms That Control Reality, Jason Koebler

Writing

Work related writing proceeded at a good pace this week.

I continued the effort of writing on LinkedIn every Tuesday about technical writing. I wrote about DITA.

I wrote about my incomplete thinking on note making on this blog.

I am trying to write using Emacs over the next month or so. I am not that into programming – that’s the reason I use WordPress and Blot and not hosting it on a static website (like I tried to with Hugo).

I have had a lot of time on my hands since I’ve stayed away from social media websites this week. Most of that time has been spent writing for work.

I did not do much other reading or writing. I have nothing more to report for this Weekly Notes.

Take 2: I am writing this at 2240 hrs on 24 March 2025.

I read the post I wrote above and was not very proud of it. It does a poor job of reflecting how my last week was. I only thought it prudent to fix it, for the historical record.

Goals have been demonized. They have been confused with or are replaced by resolutions, systems, processes, intentions etc. I returned to goal setting again this week. I set goals with my wife for this quarter.

Read/Listened/Watched

Some interesting ideas from this video –

• India thinks inputs based. China thinks outputs based.
• Work life balance happens when you have a sense of control over your time.
• Every January, ask yourself, if you were to be laid off this year, what will you do?
• Important to channelise your anger in the correct direction when you are laid off.
• Burnout happens when you lack control or when you are not aware of what role your contribution plays in the bigger picture.

Some of the lessons learned from this video (these are his final suggestions):

• Find a sleep schedule that fits your life. Get enough sleep.
• Move your body every week.
  • Keeps you active.
  • Increases your heart rate
• Find a productivity system that works and actually stick with it.
• Practice embracing the flinch.
• Delete social media from your phone and laptop for 30 days.
  • watch closely how your behavior changes
• Learn your Baseline caloric intake.
  • Know your macronutrient breakdown
  • He suggested using the myfitnesspal app.
• Be more intentional with how you spend your time, the things you bring into your life and people you surround yourself with.
• Stop choosing the default path. Build a life that is uniquely yours.
• Treat life as one big experiment.
  • Learn about who you are
  • Learn more about the person you want to become.

Truth be Told has a good post about the two modes of functioning of the brain and the six modes of rest.

Utsav Mamoria has a great long read about how to live an intellectual life. He uses fantasy as a great storytelling tool to illustrate his point.

I realized that I love going and visiting websites in their url. Here are two websites that I enjoyed visiting:

1. Tracy Durnell
2. Sacha Chua

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.

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 the 8th edition of the Towards Eternity newsletter on healthtech.
• I wrote the 64th edition of Pradeep’s Space Newsletter.

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

• About the 8th edition of Towards Eternity.
• About the intersection of space and technical writing.