Man from high castle
Completed: Man from high castle, the last 20 pages gives you an “inception+matrix” level mind bending.
Running:Goals and tracking
This year’s goal for running is 1200 Kms in total. Tracking it on Beeminder via Smashrun via Garmin
I run with a 7 year old Garmin Forerunner 15 with a Garmin heart rate monitor strapped on to my chest.
My shoes are Adidas, Nike, Reebok, Artengo Badminton shoes. I accidentally, out of no choice, wore these for a run and surprisingly I found it more comfortable. I’ve run more than 1200Kms with them. Looks like the old adage, “The shoes will find the runner” has caught up with me.
Garmin Forerunner 15
Garmin Heart Rate Monitor with electrodes
Artengo badminton shoes bought at Decathlon.
Analysis on runs: Smashrun
I’ve been using Smashrun for the last 4 years. Unlike other running apps which gives you metrics that helps understand your past runs(ex post-facto), Smashrun helps you understand where can you go from here based on your past runs. For instance, the app lets you know what PRs(personal records) you can beat across various distances.(refer screenshots below)
It’s a paid app(1900 INR per year). The app is run by a two member team, it is a nice way to support them for continuously working on the new features and future updates.
They also have a free plan that gives you all the basic run metrics.
Dashboard: A general overview of all your runs.
Tracking annual run goal: 1200Kms
This reports tells you the percentage of your runs across different pace(speeds). One could clearly see I’ve been running at faster speeds for longer sessions over the past four months.
Prediction of personal records(PRs) one can break across various distances. This example shows that I could now try running a 10K and can expect a finish that is 3 minutes lesser than my current record.
Pace trends(increase or decrease) over a period of time.
Need to Fix my Sleep
Less than 6 hours of sleep is totally not acceptable. Need to rethink and adjust daily routines.
Started using IRCCloud
Started using IRCCloud for keeping up with IRC channels.
IRCCloud helps keep a persistent connection with freenode, meaning, you are always connected and hence you don’t miss out on conversations. When it comes to other apps like Hexchat and Kiwiirc, which I was using previously, the connection is terminated once you close the browser.
It is a paid app at $5/month
Uses This
List to software tools that I use to get things done at work and in life.
Core Work:
Adobe Suite
Figma
Sketch
Final cut pro
Webflow
Would love to use more:
Productivity:
Vim — a tool for all occasions, everything goes into Vim first, for thoughts, notes, and code. Also the smartest tool I’ve ever used.
Apple Mail — managing two email accounts, personal and work (Connects Proton Mail and Google Gsuite email)
Business Email — Google G-suite (Google, easily the worst offenders of privacy, I’ll never use their mail app and will avoid using their search engine, don’t even ask me about Youtube)
Proton Mail — Personal email, accessed via Apple Mail. (You also get calendar and storage space all encrypted)
Google Docs (Again, I loathe everything Google, used only when collaboration is needed)
MS office — By far the best productivity suite. You already know it’ll work. The only suite the allows for web, desktop, and mobile. After exploring the world of writing apps, everyone comes back to MS office.
Github — Git(version control) must be a common man’s tool(not just for devs). It just solves lots of problem, just like that.
Box — For sharing and storage, way better than Dropbox.
Amazon Drive — Project photos backup and for files. (cheapest of all).
Tmux - Terminal.
Lyx - GUI for LaTex
Other Work Related Apps:
Monodraw – For planning, workflow, flowchart, wireframes and mind mapping
Filezilla – FTP
Handbrake – Video converter
VLC - video and audio player
Clipy – clipboard manager
Pixel Snap 2 - Measure distance and dimensions of anything on the screen. I don’t have the experience nor the eyeballing skill to align objects while designing.
Communication
Telegram
Zoom
Google Hangouts
Work and Goal Tracking
Beeminder
(in that order)Be Focussed Pro(Pomodoro)
Apple Music(Already spent a lot of time with playlists, can’t move to Spotify)
Health
Knowledge Management(what ever that means..)
Roam Research – I don’t even know what the app does and what it helps to achieve. It is so buggy. So unreliable, some times you can’t even do the basic CRUD functions.
If any one wants to try Roam wait for two years at least, you won’t miss anything, right now they don’t even have a mobile app and 2FA. Please at all cost avoid following #RoamCult. (pure BS)
Security and Privacy
Proton VPN - Always connected to it (They don’t log data and are under Swiss jurisdiction, comparatively safe than other providers)
GPG Tools – GUI interface for GPG encryption . Encrypt email, text, files, folders, and hard disks. Signing photographs and files for verifying authenticity. (no one does it or no one cares)
Heuristics for laying out problems.
Just picked up The Algorithm Design Manual, by Steven S. Skiena.
The first chapter talks about the different kinds of heuristics to solve a problem.
Just picked up The Algorithm Design Manual, by Steven S. Skiena.
The first chapter talks about the different kinds of heuristics one can use to solve a problem.
I thought these techniques could be used anywhere, not just for algorithms.
Search engines doesn't work
For design(and dev): Sometimes default search engines(google/DDG) doesn't work at all.
For design(and dev) related queries, sometimes default search engines(google/DDG) doesn't work at all.
Now a days I directly go to:
* Hacker News search
* Orielly book search
* Internet archive book/documents search
* Stackexchange(of course)
Better, search what you want on Google;
Tools > select custom time range > Select any time before 2008
* No SEO manipulated pages
* Plain html/text pages
* More often takes you in the right path.
* This won't work in YouTube.(new content creators can't monetise then)
Faster way to do emails
Want to try new way of doing emails, have some time to burn, want to have fun:
Why not try Mutt? It’s been there since 1995
Every one wants to do faster emails now! — but why? that is an altogether different question, as in, why would any one want a lite-help-desk-software for managing emails?
But hey Hey.com[1]
To every one who is eagerly waiting to get an invite from Hey.com
If your question is: How is this problem being solved now? How are power email users managing emails?
Want to try new way of doing emails, have some time to burn, want to have fun:
Why not try Mutt? [2]
It is free under General Public License, been there since 1995.Refer [5][6]
Typical Mutt setup:
Your fav terminal > Mutt > Vim[3] > GnuPG[4]
In a way, it is a faster way to do emails:
* Entirely command line.
* Plain text only
* Key bindings that you can learn and master
* Configure your favourite editor to compose(a good opportunity to learn Vim)
* GPG end-to-end encryption support
Caveats
* Take just minutes to get it up and running, but configuring perfectly will a be work in progress.[4]
* High learning curve, but hey any thing worth doing is.
[1] https://hey.com/
[2] http://www.mutt.org/
[3] https://www.vim.org/
[4] https://gnupg.org/
[5] https://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/10/the-homely-mutt/
[6] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mutt
[7] Mutt in action: Video
After thoughts:
Quoting Hey.com from this link:
Either they rely on everyone using the same service/app (good luck converting everyone you email with to use the same setup as you!). Or the emails aren’t really emails, but links to a website where the encryption is then applied. Or you use a clunky external tool to encrypt and decrypt the messages (like PGP). This really only works if you’re willing to give up on email as we commonly understand it. If you absolutely must have end-to-end encrypted email, checkout something like ProtonMail.
This posturing, I don’t understand, Hey.com’s narrative is don’t believe in Google, but believe us, why should anyone? — without end-to-end encryption.
Users must control the encryption. That is why end-to-end encryption(PGP) works and has been around for more than 25 years.
PGP is a difficult concept to grasp at first, but once you wrap your head around it, you’ll feel more liberated and safe.
It is not clunky? Is terminal window clunky?
For anyone who wants to try PGP on a mac try GPGtools.
They have made a commendable job of making encryption and decryption of emails, and files easy.
This is how GPG integrated email looks on the native Apple mail client.
All emails are encrypted and signed using GPG. You own the encryption keys.
Encrypt and decrypt files, folders and disks with a click
2020 | Reading | Watching | Listening | List
What I’m reading, watching and listening this year(2020)
Books
Fiction:
Lincoln in the Bardo — George Saunders
The Book of Disquiet — Fernando Pessoa 👌
பூனாச்சி(Poonachi) அல்லது ஒரு வெள்ளாட்டின் கதை — பெருமாள் முருகன்(Perumal Murugan) 👌
கோபல்ல கிராமம் (Gopalla Gramam) — Ki. Rajanarayanan 👌
தலைகீழ் விகிதங்கள்(Thalaikeezh Vikithankal) - நாஞ்சில் நாடன்(Nanjil Nadan)
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen — Paul Torday
Vivisector — Patrick White
Killing Commendatore — Haruki Murakami 👌
Crime and Punishment — Fyodor Dostoevsky — Pevear & Volokhonsky(translation)
Crime and Punishment — Fyodor Dostoevsky — Constance Garnett(translation) 👌
The Plague — Albert Camus 👌
Death in Venice — Thomas Mann
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion — Yukio Mishima
The Secret History — Donna Tartt 👌
The Ghost —- Robert Harris
The Second Sleep — Robert Harris
Drive — James Sallis
Non-Fiction
The Peregrine — J.A. Baker 👌
Packing My Library: An Elegy and Ten Digressions — Alberto Manguel
Walden — Henry Thoreau
Working — Robert Caro 👌
Unix — A History and a Memoir — Brian Kernighan 👌
I Am a Strange Loop — Douglas Hofstadter
Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language — Douglas Hofstadter 👌
Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies — Douglas Hofstadter
Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking — Douglas Hofstadter
Musicophilia — Oliver Sacks
The Leonard Bernstein Letters — Leonard Bernstein, Nigel Simeone
Selected Letters of Norman Mailer — Norman Mailer J. Michael Lennon
The Naive and Sentimental Novelist — Orhan Pamuk
Reporting at Wit's End: Tales from the New Yorker — St. Clair McKelway 👌
Films:
All these films were watched before the COVID lockdown(jan & feb). Never got to watch one after that.
The Light House | English | Supernatural Thriller
Climates (İklimler) | Turkish | Drama
The Wild Pear Tree | Turkish | Drama
Winter Sleep | Turkish | Drama
Burning (2018) | Korean | Thriller
Parasite | Korean
Koudelka: Shooting Holy Land | English | Documentary
Before My Eyes (1988) | Mani Kaul | Documentary
Ford v Ferrari | English | Sports Drama
Knives Out | English | Crime Drama
Hello World from LINUX
My linux system is so humble and simple in its config.
I got a refurbished DELL Optiplex 9010, stripped all its fancy parts, loaded a 2010, Intel Pentium G2010 Dual Core processors with 128 GB SSD and runs on Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS.
My current Macbook pro(2017) is taking a heavy pounding. Keyboard issues, slow processing speed, strange reboots with scary kernal warning messages.
May be I'm like too much of a task master.
So decided to shift the load.
- Personal and coding related work to linux.
- Professional work - Photography, design and video editing on the MacBook. I can't live without the Adobe Suite and FCPX
My linux system is so humble and simple in its config. I got a refurbished DELL Optiplex 9010, stripped all its fancy parts, loaded a 2010, Intel Pentium G2010 Dual Core processors with 128 GB SSD and runs on Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS.
My desktop and some of the apps i’m getting used to.
Running: The book, the beginning and the life it changed.
Most of what I learnt and found about running comes from one source: A book by Haruki Murakami. His first non-fiction work. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
I started running 6 years ago; that would be 2014. I've completed 3 full marathons and more than 25 half marathons.
I want to write some of my thoughts about running and its meaning. I hope this will help anyone who is just starting out.
For a beginner, running is always about performance. More interested in the physics of it: Speed, distance, time, and after finishing the first marathon it is PR(personal record) The attitude of competition sort of stresses you out both mentally and physically(not to mention the injuries) The attrtion rate of running is so high after 3 years. By attrition rate I mean runners droping off from running all together.
Competition helps, competition drives, but there is more to the running equation.
Running could be a way where you find your "self".
Listen to your body and respect it. Don't push too much(based on performance metrics). Start small, observe how you feel, push a little next day, a little the next day, and one day you'll know that you are running at the perfromace level you wanted to achieve. So listen, respect, push incrementally.
I don't know how to remove the irony for what comes next.
Don't think about running while running. I know this is difficult to put it words, difficult to grasp, and difficult to undestand and internalize. But lets see if reiterating it helps: Don't think about running while running.
This doesn't mean listen to music or podcasts during the excercise.
What I mean is, Meditate, OK, don't want to loose you there, lets say: Think deeply about what ever you want to think.
Your to-do list for the day. Solving a problem. Your work, family, politics, economics.
What ever, doesn't matter.
Personally — and my secondary motivation for running is – in the midst of the busy day, running is the only time when I could think and focus on one thought and most of the time I end up getting clarity or find a solution to a problem. It just helps.
Most of what I learnt and found about running comes from one source: A book by Haruki Murakami. His first non-fiction work. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
It is a small book, like the one you can finsih it on a train journey. I make it a point to read it every year. Like an annual ritual. Helps me to be on track.
I've noted down some of the parts that I really loved. Some deep thoughts that any one who is starting to run must ponder.
From a conversation with a friend about running.
Reason to visiting a book shop
[Observation] Now a days every time I visit a book shop, I end up picking records than books.
[Observation] Now a days every time I visit a book shop, I end up picking records than books.
Why not? I wonder; They sound too good.
Tools of the Trade
The following are the tools and applications that helps me get the job done; both personally and professionally(photography, video and design)
The following are the tools and applications that helps me get the job done; both personally and professionally(photography, video and design)
Hardware
Workstation
- MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, Two Thunderbolt 3 ports)
- Dell 21.5 inch (54.6 cm) Ultra Thin Bezel LED Monitor
- Bose QuietControl 30, Noise cancellation headphones
Photography
- Nikon D750 FX
- Nikon D3100 DX
- Canonet 35mm film
- Nikon F65 35mm film
- Yashica FX3 super 35mm film
- iPhone SE
- Godox AD600B(studio light)
- Godox V860 N(camera flash) * 2
- Zhiyun crane 2
- DJI Osmo Mobile 2
- iPad mini 2 - 20% of my reading happens here with iBooks & Kindle app for iPad.
Software:
Creative Suite:
- Photoshop CC
- Lightroom CC
- GIMP - for quick, lightweight photo edits.
- Inkscape - vector design
- Sketch - design
- Final cut pro
- Handbrake video transcoder
- Apple Keynote
Writing & Research
- Ulysses - Notemaking
- LaTeX - for documentation
- Brother 220 manual typewriter
- Ember(now discontinued) - Capture screenshots, videos, and organize them under tags(visual research)
- The Wayback machine lets you capture web pages and store it as an archive for reference and sharing.
- Both Ember and The Wayback Machine are my humble attempt to try Zettelkasten.
Tasks
- ProtonMail
- Omnifocus - To-do list
- Rescuetime - Productivity tracker
- Freedom - distraction(social media) blocker.
- Keychain - password management
- A private phpBB forum for internal communication, project management, and knowledge wiki.— One place for discussions & decisions.
Storage:
- Amazon drive - Backup for: personal projects, and photos on the iPhone
- AWS S3 - Backup for professional projects
- Squarespace CMS. This website and fridaymatinee studio are hosted there.
Fitness:
- Garmin Forerunner 15 GPS watch.
- Smashrun - Training and running intelligence integrated with Garmin Connect.
Music:
- Apple Music
- Panasonic Bahadur AM | FM radio - I live alone and gets too lonely in the mornings. Most of the time it is for just the white noise.
- GPO vinyl record player
Communication:
- Panasonic KX-TG1612 Cordless Phone - Landline for work-related communications.
Browsers:
- Google Chrome
- Tor - with duckduckgo; for ads-blocked privacy conscious browsing. Mostly used during focused research.
Unbrand yourself
Was there a turning point?
The turning point after two years of anonymity, I think, was Killer Joe. I didn’t rebrand, I unbranded. I stepped off into the shadows, went back and started a family down in Texas. Mind you, I got nervous during that time. I got anxious.
There was this Maxim interview on Matthew McConaughey on being a "McConnaissance" phenomenon. Half way down the interview there is a question about his bouncing back to super stardom after a 2 year hiatus/becoming nobody/shelved off.
Was there a turning point?
The turning point after two years of anonymity, I think, was Killer Joe. I didn’t rebrand, I unbranded. I stepped off into the shadows, went back and started a family down in Texas. Mind you, I got nervous during that time. I got anxious. I had some sleepless nights, wondering when the levee was going to break, or if it was even going to break at all. And then I started getting calls from directors. It was like a two-year boomerang that finally came back. All of a sudden William Friedkin calls, Steven Soderbergh calls, Lee Daniels calls, Rick [Richard Linklater] calls.
The thought of Unbranding oneself is so powerful. This conscious attitude,
Helps you to take a break, amass ample time and think about what you are so passionate about.
The very act of coming out of the comfort zone and thereby violating the established social norm creates a sense of fear and embarrassment that induces you to both intro and retrospect. I think therefore I am.
Unbranding must not be compared with setting up of short and long term goals in life or even your daily meditation schedule, Unbranding is much deeper than that, it's like chiseling yourself (both mind and action) off the unwanted for betterment. It is deeply ingrained and there is no relapse.
Read the whole interview here.