Excursions

I remember there was a discussion sometime back about using Shortcuts to make Micropub requests - mainly to create different posts. Especially replies and likes. I’m unable to find any references to such discussion, nor finding any online. Would be nice if I can get this.

Long time back, I had added The 15:17 to Paris in my watchlist, for one simple reason. Clint Eastwood. I finally managed to catch up on the movie. And boy was I disappointed. It was a terrible terrible movie. No doubt, it is so poorly rated across. How could you, Clint?

I am stunned at how often someone calls somebody else “normal”, with a hope that it would belittle him or her. Why is being “normal” not ok? Normal of anything is absolutely fine.

Sure, your goals and aims from your life can be extremely high. But normalcy is not something to be mocked.

There are so many people around the world who would consider being normal a privilege. Earning normal wages. Owning a normal house. Looking, sounding or behaving like a normal person. Leading a normal life.

Yes, these are all privileges that the normal people enjoy. So next time someone says I am normal, am going to spread a nice, wide smile across my face and say “thank you”!

How can Google continue to deliver the GMail app on iOS with the attachment functionality that is so limited. And still get it through Apple. There’s just no way to attach any files from Dropbox or Files. And even files from Google Drive are only attached as link. Terrible!

Notes, Messages, Phone and Photos. These are the apps from Apple that I use on my iPhone. All others are developed by the third-party developers. I believe this pattern must be very similar for all the iOS users — underlines the privilege and the responsibility that Apple has.

I am fed up of reading the long posts from men that list down all the household tasks that, as per them, women do - as if they are the only tasks women can do. Funnily, they end it with “RespectWomen” hashtags.

Sorry, there’s no respect in your regressive thought. Sigh!

“BBQ is happiness!”

Nature paints in so many colours - but it pays special attention when it paints in white. It is gorgeous, it is healing.

What is silence? Is it the lack of any sound or is it the lack of any discernible sound? What do you need to attain calmness?

Today, I sat alone, reading for around an hour - time that I was the most focused in a very long time. I felt I was alone, I physically wasn’t. I realised this only once I was out of my trance.

I was surrounded by a persistent hustle-bustle of the regularities of a working day. People chattering over a cup of coffee. Muffled, at the same time distinctly recognisable, voices of the labourers working outside the window. Rambles of the passing trains every now and then.

There was a lot of sound, a lot of noise around me. But there was silence within - I have come to realise it works way better to calm one down than the silence outside.

How ergonomical are the ergonomic mouse in reality - especially the vertical ones? I am seriously considering buying just to see if it helps. I am worried the frequent pains in the wrist are only to increase further. Not something I can live with given my profession.

I have decided that I will skip the iOS public betas this year. iOS 13 betas just haven’t been stable enough right from WWDC time. And the dark mode can wait. Sure, would have loved to get used to iPadOS early - but am not ready to pay the price for my impatience.

The concept of dreams always fascinate me. There are dreams that jerk you out of the sleep. And there are those that make you put yourself back to sleep, if you leave them unfinished.

There are dreams that can give you sleepless nights. And there are those that can make your sleep the happiest phase of your day.

You follow some dreams with a wish that someday you will fulfil them and they become fact.

You run away from some facts, some realities of your life, hoping that they were, well, mere a dream.

Even with all the scientific advances we have made, we can’t make up our minds about whether the sleep session full of dreams is better or one without any.

Some say dreams are mysterious. Some say mysteries are dreamy.

Dreamy - do they mean “dreamy” as in marvellous or dim, vague?

Whatever, dreams always fascinate me.

Apparently, less than half of Google searches now result in a click — that percentage is even lesser on mobile devices. Google’s push to provide direct answers via feature snippets is working well for them. But it isn’t for the websites that the content was scrapped from.

It is tiring to make decisions. Because the judgement that follows after every decision invariably forces one to question whether it was worth the enforced change. I published some quick thoughts recently on making decisions.

It is very tiring to make decisions. There appears to exist a popular perception that decision, once made, leads to some irreversible change to the currently “working state”. What, then, one has to decide is whether the change was good or bad, and so whether the decision made was right or wrong.

This judgement that follows after every decision invariably forces one to question whether it was worth the enforced change. The fear of making the wrong decision is the reason, more often than not, behind the lack inclination to change.

You can be deciding what gift to buy for someone or who to choose to be your life partner. It does not matter whether the decision to be made is critical or trivial. Our subconscious is always at work, judging our every decision.

However, it is up to you to not let this fear of judgement drive how you lead your life. It is easier to overcome the wrong decisions you make than to lead a life being too indecisive.

Natural beauty always trumps everything artificial - allows me stay connected to our roots.

There is no point ignoring sleep - you can’t steal hours from what the sleep deserves. You can be happy for a day because you got some extra hours in your day to work on things you enjoy. Or to “relax” by watching some mindless videos that YouTube’s recommendation engines serve you. Or to read those articles you have been adding to your Instapaper queue. Or to binge watch and complete that one season of the show you enjoy on Netflix.

Sure, you can do all this on a late night by stealing some hours from sleep. But it vehemently gets back at you. If not on the very next day, you have to pay back in the week that follows. For days in a row. It is better to let sleep carry on with its routine.

I went very conservative while setting the reading challenge for myself this year - I have been very poor recently in completing any books. Was pleasing to find am 3 books ahead of schedule already. A routine with less podcasts and a lot more Audible gets the credit.

This is the snapshot of my daily habit tracker for August. I have started with a smaller list — but I want to make sure the task itself doesn’t become a burden.

• Morning walk/run
• 100 words published
• Measure weight
• Three meals a day
• Regular sleep routine

Black coffee or a green tea - what would sit next to me as I get started on my next project? Uhmm … nah. Got to be the good old regular chai! ✍🏽

I’m seriously considering buying an instant camera — thought of having an analog note of a memory is genuinely appealing. However, I do wonder what am I signing up for? Would it stay locked in a drawer somewhere? What should I even look out for if I do decide to take the leap?

Written languages based on alphabets are one of the great human accomplishments. (…) when I write the word “human” you can fill in what you imagine a human to look like. The word itself carries some fundamental attributes of being a human but the rest is intentionally underspecified. This allows us to use a single word that applies independent of gender, nationality, race, clothing, etc. That is the power of language based on alphabets, because the letters themselves carry no meaning. Even the meaning of a word can evolve over time. For example, the word “couple” at one point might have meant a male-female couple but is now used to describe any two people who are paired.

A thoughtful essay, but I completely disagree. There is an innate assumption here that everyone can read and write English alphabet. It is, in reality, not the case. There are tons of alphabets across nations and regions. In India itself, there are 11 alphabets. My mom can fluently read and write Devanagari, but that is not the case with English alphabets.

Emoji cross the confines of regions - primarily because it is visual. Is it perfect? Of course, not — we have managed to mess up the standards in implementation across platforms.

However, at least, I can send my mom a “smile” emoji without spelling it out in Devanagari. It was the first thing that lent her confidence to start using smartphones, way before Devanagari support was even introduced.

A couple of my colleagues have been debating on since how long the dinosaurs have been extinct — one claims it was 200 years. Another says 2000 years. And am wondering who should I correct first? Or should I even correct anyone? Because I think it is completely meaningless.

Given a choice, would you prefer a prepaid unlimited plan for something or pay as you use? More things I review recently — mobile data plans, cable, broadband — I realize pay-as-you-use end up being costlier. I do not understand the business sense behind this.

I came across an interesting project - rwtxt - which is now serving the ideas subdomain of my website. I was, since long, in search of a simple writing pad to capture quick thoughts - light enough to be accessible from mobile. This fits the bill, so in trial mode now. (h/t @eli)