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Excursions

Thoughts

Yahoo, the destroyer →

After almost 30 years in business, Yahoo has come to be known as a straight-up villain. [T]he company’s most notable characteristic at this point is “the sheer amount of destruction they’ve done to the historical record.”

Another dimension in games →

Ever notice the view is wrong in all first person games that exist today? In reality when we look around our eyes don’t just rotate but actually swing side to side and even up and down. As an example this video shows Skyrim configured for our real vision.

I am happy with the format that I’ve settled on for my newsletter Slanting Nib. A regular personal update followed by the recommended reads. Plus a colorful artwork from India. It’s simple enough for me to curate and I feel should be clean enough for the readers to follow.

I finished reading Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day today. I cannot apply all the suggestions that the authors have to offer. But it’s a fascinating list of a few easy to follow tactics, presented in a no-nonsense manner. The authors stay to the point; they don’t ramble along as many authors of the self-help books tend to do.

I did find a few of the suggestions pretty useful and have already incorporated a couple. I can clearly see the benefit. What helped is that the authors worked in an industry and in roles that I can closely associate with. So, I could relate to many of the problems they talked about and was keen to hear what changes worked for them.

If you are at a full-time job and are struggling to get the right balance between work and life, this book would have a few strategies that you might find useful. 📚

“The happiness of loneliness” - such a curious phrase from my yesterday’s post. I really enjoyed reading this one a day after. I like to reflect on my posts from past. There’s on this day for the yearly reflection; for the daily one, I’ve setup an email digest. Tinkering time.

Music is the only time machine out there. You come across a song or an album, and a flood of memories and emotions come rushing at you. You almost relive those priceless moments. Exaggeration? I think not.

You get transported back to the time when you listened to that song the first time. Or when you spent hours and days crooning along, the album on repeat mode. You vividly feel your surrounding from that time. The place you were at. The mental state you were in. The happiness of loneliness. Or the craziness with those few, old friends. You remember the moments that matter, the moments that are tucked deep within your heart.

I am not saying anything groundbreaking here. Each one of us has experienced this ability of music. Many have worded it a lot more beautifully even.

I consider this a superpower and am reminded of this every few months. Most often, the time I hop back to is the early 2000s, the time that I cherish the most. It was a new phase of my student life. A period with a lot more independence. A period when my thoughts were moulded. Today was one such day.

A lesser-known A.R. Rahman album. It's not even among one of his best. But it's close to me, though. I can't explain why; maybe the feeling of the songs resonated with what I was going through in my life. I didn't understand a word of those lyrics; it was the first non-Hindi, non-English album I listened to. But as they say, music has no language. And good music doesn't need words to convey an emotion.

Sure, the album doesn't evoke the same feelings in me today. But I momentarily relive that unfamiliar phase of freedom every time. Just as I did today.