Tag: Writing

  • Weekly Notes 31/2026

    I came across a post about Blaugust 2026 (via Zachary Kai)just before I started writing this post. Belghast, who wrote the Tales of the Aggronaut, started Blaugust in 2014. He passed away this year in July.

    A Discord community that runs Blaugust has decided to still go ahead with Blaugust this year despite his passing. Since I wrote a post yesterday, I thought I could keep going through August.

    26 July 2026

    This was a day after a week of Jantar Mantar protests, India’s Minister of Education, Dharmendra Pradhan had resigned. Gen Z which had been vilified had led protests in their own way and had got the kudos of many people. It had also made Instagram the platform for protests and for the place to consume news.

    I always feel queasy about hosting content on these social media apps and building your business around this. But, it seems to be working for a few of these folks.

    I ended the day watching two wonderful episodes of Shut Up Ya Kunal where he interviews Ramchandra Guha and Jerry Pinto.

    I also got a call from the Hospital saying that my follow-up appointment had been postponed to Wednesday. This would continue for two more days.

    27 July 2026

    Former ISRO Chairman Madhavan Nair spoke to Chethan Kumar of Times of India about scientists working in important scientific projects at ISRO leaving to work in the private sector.

    This old interview reminded me of my old web surfing days. D V Sridharan used to write on a website called Good News India before working on this project called pointReturn which he talks about in the video. I remembered this after reading a Weekly Note by Abhinav Sarkar. He had a photo of a windmill atop the note that reminded me of the windmill Sridharan had put up at pointReturn.

    I was so surprised that I could connect a blog post I saw on this day to a post that I read in 2007 or 2008. I used to type in the url manually and visit the website.

    I went through the websites of Cory Doctrow, Derek Sivers, Dave Winer, Doc Searls, and many others over the next few days. Google Reader broke that habit and ever since I have depended on some form of a RSS reader to read blogs.

    28 July 2026

    I got another call from the Hospital postponing my surgeon’s appointment to Thursday.

    I loved watching all the psychological tricks in customer service and advertising discussed in this episode with Rory Sutherland.

    One of the videos that resonated a lot and that the YouTube algorithm surfaced this video was made after the CAA-NRC protests six years ago.

    I watched this video of William Darlymple at Kerala Literature Festival 2026 where he released the Malayalam version of his book, The Golden Road and also presented many of his points that are expanded on in the book.

    29 July 2026

    I discovered the work of Dominic Hart, an Australian YouTuber from his videos on using a pocket notebook. But, two videos I loved watching are on his building a shed in his parents’ backyard and his moving into an office space in the city.

    We watched the Malayalam movie Chinna Chinna Aasai.

    I watched a nice interview with Kunal Kamra, which talked about how his family members reacted to his various controversies and run-ins with the police.

    This video is a nice introduction to the concept of social arbitrage investing. They use only social media signals (mostly TikTok and Instagram) to make investment decisions. I think it works in American markets because they depend on the efficiency of stock markets to weed out fundamental and technical issues. He says he is bullish about future investment in Amazon.

    30 July 2026

    The discourse around the 20 July 2026 protests at Jantar Mantar began to turn with people blaming Gen Z for using unparliamentary language against the Prime Minister and various organs of the ruling dispensation finding protestors who had used such language and getting them to apologise on camera. Nothing much has changed for the apologisers despite the apology.

    Two of my favourite YouTubers, Ali Abdaal and Matt D’Avella did a mutual interview podcast. They spoke about their respective YouTube journeys, parenthood, and the differing paths they both took after launching YouTube courses.

    31 July 2026

    I went to the Hospital despite the Doctor not planning to turn up and got my stitches removed. I have to follow-up with the Surgeon on Tuesday (4 August) for care instructions.

    In the evening I had almost reached Part Two of the Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. The long waiting time at the Hospital was great to catch up on a lot of this reading. I signed up for Brandon Sanderson’s newsletter. I was impressed about how he transparently talks about the books he is writing and the progress he has made in each book.

    Cory Doctrow also does this. I had picked up his book to read as well.

    I have listened to Arz Kiya Hai as a background music for different Instagram and YouTube short videos but watched the original video for the first time on this day.

    Bridges in Pune were going underwater as water was released from Khadakwasla Dam. As I said on X and on Mastodon, Pune must build bridges that raise themselves up when the flood waters in the Mutha rise.

    I spent the rest of the day asleep and did not work.

    01 August 2026

    I was considering how I write my posts here.

    I would usually write posts like this on my link blog that I keep on Tumblr. I usually just post links on Tumblr and then give context for myself using the tags. In the post that I wrote on this blog, I ended up giving context. Tumblr is great for this. It is also a great place to expand on text, if you think that is necessary.

    Tumblr is owned by Automattic, the company that runs WordPress.com. I wanted to reduce the points of failure and try another blogging service, like micro.blog.

    I have not decided yet but it is something on my mind this week.

  • A challenge of blog questions

    Thejesh tagged me in a challenge of blog questions. I enjoyed reading his replies and I have never been tagged in such a challenge.

    Why did you start blogging in the first place?

    I started blogging because I was tired of crafting websites from HTML and I was not good with CSS. I loved the fact that I could choose a background and start writing. The focus moved from making to writing.

    There were times that I missed the making and tried to go back to it. There were times when the ghost of designing got into me and I would spend hours crafting my website. But, I felt that writing is where I should focus my energies on writing.

    What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it? Have you blogged on other platforms before?

    The blog is presently hosted on WordPress. I think the reason is the same as the one above. I loved twiddling the controls behind the scenes of various blogging platforms. I realized, like above, that I should focus my energies on writing. So, I decided to stick to WordPress.

    I have hosted my blog posts on Blogger, LiveJournal, Tumblr, Posterous, Vox, Roller, Ghost, Blot, and finally on WordPress.

    How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?

    I write my posts on two platforms. Most of the posts that you read here are on WordPress’ native Gutenberg editor or Visual editor.

    I write some of my posts using WordLand. I am using this tool to write the posts in my Status Updates category.

    When do you feel most inspired to write?

    Whenever I am not sleeping. I don’t think I can survive without writing.

    Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?

    I usually only read once more after I complete writing. I let my thoughts simmer before I write the draft.

    What’s your favorite post on your blog?

    Some of my posts that I love are about things I do with my daughter (1,2) or ones about note making or Indian Philosophy.

    Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

    I am twiddling with the controls in the WordPress admin panel all the time. This is based on curiosity and not on anything as sophisticated as a plan. Making a blogroll is an area of interest.

    Who’s next?

    I want to tag these people not because they would take part in a challenge like this but because I would love to hear about how they write and think about the art of blogging.

  • Weekly Notes 11/2025

    I have slowed down the rate at which I am consuming content this week. I have also reduced the sources from which I am consuming my content to feeds I have subscribed to.

    I fell into a spirituality rabbit hole with questions about Narasimha, kula devatas, and various practices performed in Kerala in the past. I fell into another rabbit hole about blogrolls and libraries.

    I also wrote the first in what I hope to be a weekly post on LinkedIn about technical writing.

    All this writing means I have not got any reading done other than my RSS feeds and a few Substack posts. I have not been able to follow space news since almost the beginning of February now.

    The recoverey after surgery seems to be going alright.

  • Weekly Notes 10/2025

    I returned to work this week, working from home, after the surgery. I am slowly catching up at work. My consumption of OTT content has gone up, in terms of hours but I have started reading The Times of India, RSS feed, and newsletters on the mobile in addition to the books.

    Reading

    1. Tiny Experiments, Anne-Laure Le Cunff
    2. The No Book, Tim Ferriss and Neil Strauss
    3. Discworld Rules, Venkatesh Rao
    4. With Great Power Comes No Responsibility, Cory Doctrow

    Writing

    I tried to write a few Status Update posts here using Wordland that Dave Winer made. This was bought to my notice by Doc Searls.

    I agree when he says in a later post that it feels like tweeting. I have been off social media for the past one week. I think writing with Wordland makes up for the writing I lose because I am not on social media.

    Watching

    I was happy to watch Toll Free Traveller again.

    This was a different podcast with Shephali Bhatt compared to the one she did with Amit Varma.

    You can read this blog on your favorite RSS feed reader or via e-mail by subscribing below.

  • 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.

  • 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!

  • Weekly Notes 45/2024

    I felt like this was a rich week for me. I got a lot done at work and it has reached a steady cadence. Below, you will find what I did when I was off work. Summarizing it here leaves me with a good feeling about going into the weekend.

    Health

    In the beginning of the week, I was interested in learning about health supplements. I asked the question whether I needed it or not. The answer came out to be – only a few simple ones – Vitamin D3, Seacod, and Calcimax-P. I buy these for the kids anyway, so not too much of an additional cost.

    Newsletter Nerd

    I have been interested in building a newsletter on the side. I am working with Saurabh at C4E to build a health and health-tech newsletter. While my space newsletter will remain free, I am spending the next six months or so writing for a business. I want to be able to help you to build your own newsletter at the end of this.

    Community

    In the late 2000s, you could get on X and find a person who was interested in something that you were and work together. I was wondering how this happened now. The answer seems to be on the cozy web on WhatsApp and Telegram.

    I am part of a few such communities but discovering these communities is hard.

    Shephali Bhatt wrote about how the community is the conduit for creators in The Economic Times. A week ago Kommune had also put out their report, Consumed, that spoke of these trends, among others.

    Pranay Kotasthane of The Takshashila Institution wrote an X thread on what makes a great digital community that is worth reading.

    One of the communities that I looked at again was the IndieWeb community. I like reading Manuel Moreale’s People & Blogs series. I hear Jeff Triplett’s appeal to publish and write more on blogs:

    PS: Write and publish before you write your own static site generator or perfect blogging platform. We have lost billions of good writers to this side quest because they spend all their time working on the platform instead of writing.

    I have been fortunate to join the community at thinkdeli where I have been writing the first draft of my novel publicly. More on this below.

    I tried to read two of David Deutsch’s book and did not get it. If you have a book circle that is interested in reading his work, I would love to join in. Please leave a comment on this blog or reach out to me on X or Mastodon.

    Reading

    There is some issue with the Audible billing that I have not been able to fix. I re-listened to Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman again.

    I have been reading two books on writing, as I write:

    • On Writing by Stephen King
    • Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

    I have been reading Finding the Oasis by Sandeep Mall as a way to look at health, wealth, and relationships in an integrated way.

    I read Spacecraft Navigation – A Mini Guidebook by Sumana Mukherjee. This helped me revise some of the concepts regarding satellite and spacecraft navigation. I discovered this via her LinkedIn post. I enjoyed reading about how interstellar spacecrafts navigate.

    Writing

    I went back to Zettelkasten again. I still have the stacks of notecards at home which my daughter borrows from me sometimes for her own creative endeavor.

    I had gone through several rabbit holes in the past – starting from the book by Sonke Ahrens. I then went on to watching YouTube videos of Scott P Scheper. He held my attention for a while.

    The latest writer who has captured my attention is Bob Doto. I am still reading through his writings on the Zettelkasten. Doto’s book A System for Writing is very expensive.

    These are the links to the novel that is titled, Green Earth, Grey Moon, and Red Mars.

    Tumblr tells me that I have posted 1000 notes there.

    I want to return to writing the space newsletter with a refreshed format.

  • Weekly Notes 23/2024

    Writing

    I heard about the #1000daysofsummer from a member of Amit Varma’s Clear Writing Community (CWC). I shared the idea with another writing community I am a member of – The Purple Pencil Project. I shared my writing progress with both groups.

    I wrote many posts under the aegis of #1000daysofsummer:

    1. I visited Tamhini Ghat in May but wrote about it on the first day.
    2. My father visited us and we went to Panshet Dam together. I wrote about that visit for the second day.
    3. I wrote a piece of fiction for the third day. This was an attempt to write linear fiction and try world-building there. I was not very happy with this attempt.
    4. I wrote fiction again on the fourth day. This was an attempt to write recursive fiction. I enjoyed writing this.
    5. I got back to writing my space newsletter. This was written on the fifth day but published on June 6 on Substack. 
    6. I don’t remember when was the last time I enjoyed watching a launch before. I wrote about the excitement of watching SpaceX’s Starship’s IFT-4.
    7. I wrote a private note trying to build on characters based on the characters created by Prateek Arora for his MahaMachinist Politica. I did not publish this.
    8. Did not write.

    Some of the other things that I wrote that found some traction:

    1. I wondered why there was a lack of writing for people in their 30s and 40s, compared to writing for people in their 20s.
    2. Post on X and Mastodon about how a daughter attending school brings discipline to our life. 
    3. Post on X and Mastodon about my daughter’s efforts to switch on a feature phone.  

    Reading

    I did not read much as my father was visiting. The little available time was spent writing. I did read a wonderful piece by Venkatesh Rao on how solar punk as an idea worked better for temperate climates than tropical and equatorial climates.

    I made a little progress on reading Cory Doctorow’s Red Team Blues. I gave up on reading Book 1 of The Hidden Hindu by Akshat Gupta for now. I also gave up on reading Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert.

    I have got the book, Saboteur by R V Raman from the Pune Public Library in Vishrantwadi. It is a look at the world of e-commerce.

    OTT

    I watched:

    1. New Amsterdam – Season 4 – English
    2. Game Over – Hindi
    3. Dhak Dhak – Hindi
    4. Scoop – Hindi
    5. Atlas – English
    6. Sisyphus – Korean (English dub).

    YouTube

    David Perell talks to Ted Gioia for his podcast, How I Write Podcast. I think Ted Gioia is talking about Asia in the 90s when he speaks about The Honest Broker. He was given this advice by a drunk Australian in a bar, whose name he does not know but who had worked in Asia for a long time. The drunk Australian told him that the only way to get things done in Asia was to find an honest broker where he wanted to setup a factory or a business. An honest broker was a person respected by the community and who knew how to get things done with the help of the community. The drunk Australian warned him that he would do it for free now but expect things in return at a later time.

    This is a video by a YouTuber named Alice Cappelle. She introduces a philosopher from Korea who lives in Germany named Byung Chul Han. An idea of his that he shares here is that we have moved from a discipline society to an achievement society. I have bookmarked him here to read the book itself.

    This is a video by a YouTuber named Dami Lee. She is worried by the fact that the best representation of solar punk that we have in the world today is an ad by a consumer brand. She looks at the various architectures possible and those tried out in the real world (most are in the Netherlands).

    I agree with Venkatesh Rao (see section on Reading) that solar punk is a misnomer.

    Elections

    The elections for the National Elections in India were declared on 4 June 2024. Maharashtra’s politics has been a confusing ride. I wish that at least at the state level, the two political parties, the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party get merged again and return to their formal alliances with the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Indian National Congress respectively. Given the news reports circulating, it may be happening.

    I went from Pune to Mumbai to cast my vote after a request for a change of address I tried last year did not work out.

    Miscellaneous

    I was reading way too many self-help books in my 30s. A few years ago it was my wife who asked me how reading books had improved or changed my life. I had not stopped to consider this. I was reading books and adding them to the tally of the books I had read. I also found that most of the books that I was reading assumed I was somewhere between 25 and 35. I was two years past the age for which books were written for people.

    I don’t remember a thing about what I read, what systems to implement, or what to learn to change my life now. Everyone’s situation is unique. So everyone must implement the system that works for them. Then with gradual improvement in the system over the years, you will have a system that works for you. This is what Cal Newport suggests in his new book, Slow Productivity.

    The above insight helps me to do something, improve, and iterate.

    I had read in Dan Koe’s book, The Art of Focus that when you share what helps you and then can charge for it, it may help you become a single-person entrepreneur. By the time I do this, this would be old advice.

  • Inner Mess, Outer Mess

    It’s been a really long time since I wrote consistently anywhere – in my analog bullet journal, in my newsletter, at work, or on social media. At work, I have been involved in a transitioning process that does not involve a lot of writing.

    This has been compounding “a mess” at a very high rate. In days, not in months. This inner mess has led to an outer mess. It is in observing this outer mess that I realised that there was an inner mess as well. Once I realised this, the rate of compounding of both the inner and outer mess has increased. Writing here is the only way to stop this process that feeds off each other.

    I think the blog posts that I have posted here so far are a good representative of the outer mess. I have written four posts so far. The first one is an introduction. The second one is incoherent because I did not put the effort into the post that it needs. The third one is incomplete on the PSLV-C58 mission. The fourth one is a policy piece where I’m trying to argue for a status quo. I’m not sure that’s how these blog posts sounded like. This stems from an inner mess of thoughts not really ordered enough so that I can write something coherently.

  • 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.