Every time I find a book enjoyable to listen to, the number of steps I walk increases. Or the time I do house chores for. I love putting the headphones on and listening to the story progress. My current listen, The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz, narrated by Derek Jacobi, is one such book. With a good intriguing plot and wonderfully involved narration, I am having so much fun listening.
As a result, I am walking a lot more and keeping my home absolutely clean. A welcome side-effect.
I finished reading: The Obstacle is the Way: The Ancient Art of Turning Adversity to Advantage by Holiday Ryan today 📚
Laced with real-life examples and a corresponding lesson in each chapter, Ryan Holiday presents valuable insight into handling obstacles. Nicely structured in three sensible parts – perception, action and will – this is a good, practical guide to staying balanced without getting bogged down by roadblocks and failures in life. Ryan doesn’t want to make this a guide for stoic philosophy. Instead, he sprinkles the best of the lessons throughout the book. That helps keep things simple, which most books on Stoicism fail to do.
As he mentions towards the end, many people he tells the tale of “embodied the best practices of Stoicism without even knowing it”. Ryan recommends that just doing matters more. For his intention to not complicate the philosophy, he deserves credit.
I was so giddy watching the trailer for A Man Called Otto. I loved the original character Ove created by Fredrick Backman and am so excited to see Tom Hanks play him. Love it! And I can’t wait. Yay!
I loved Ove so much that I created my own character based on him in one of my short stories, Marvelling at Life. I wrote a few more after this one with Oas, my character. I always loved writing them. I am looking forward to this movie.
One of the problems with Twitter is that it became a lot bigger and important than just a fun social network. Like someone built a fun clicker to play with and others made it a switch that can trigger wars.
A lot of dev projects. Currently, cultivating my digital garden. I am moving my notes from all the places into a single location. Both at work and off work. The small wins help.
After I wrote about my changing music habits, I’ve tweaked my habits slightly. Earlier I asked my digital assistant to “play some music”. I now say “play my favorite music” or ask it play a specific playlist. This has helped.
Often my daughter asks me the meaning of a word unknown to her. Which is fine, but she doesn’t stop at that. She wants me to enact the meaning too. Like today she wanted me to enact what a character “squealing” would sound like. Unfortunately, I’m neither that good at English nor at acting. Sigh!
I figure, at the midway stage, India still isn’t in any position to be a contender to win the T20 World Cup. Or even to reach the finals, for that matter. They weren’t the favourites going in. They haven’t improved their chances much 🏏
The Curious Bee and her friends celebrated Halloween yesterday — she dressed up as a witch. She wanted herself to look scary, but I don’t think she can be. To my eyes, she looked so cute! Anyway, happy Halloween folks! 🧙🎃
Build my productivity system. As much as the p-word is hated, I need a process to manage the sheer amount of tasks vying for my attention.
I just got an external display in my workspace at home. I should have done this earlier, but I was afraid the large display will crowd the desk. On the contrary, I love this setup! It has instead freed up with so much space. Curious how something larger can occupy lesser.
“Even if you ideologically agree with him, unless you love being a replaceable cog who has to dance on command, this is not a workplace to be in."
A comment that says so much about the anxiety among Twitter employees.
Source: Elon Musk’s Disastrous Weekend on Twitter - The Atlantic →
I disabled all cross-posting today. I will manually syndicate the posts I want. Basically, I consider all platforms independent and will use them in their native forms.
Here’s what AI thinks I can write based on what I have written on Twitter. Interesting!
My daughter just shushed me because I talked to her while she was engrossed in her adventure novel. Now even I want to read the book.
In the past 30 years, the British economy chose finance over industry, Britain’s government chose austerity over investment, and British voters chose a closed and poorer economy over an open and richer one.
Source: How the U.K. Became One of the Poorest Countries in Western Europe - The Atlantic →
I have always built web apps with Node.js and Express for all my side projects till now. However, I wonder if that duo is still the best choice for a new one that I am working on. What are the other options? I am ok to learn. Rather, I would love to learn – pick up something faster that’s also easy to maintain. Node.js projects are clearly neither. Time to explore.
The games the shadows play.
Can I read any big publication anymore? Everything’s behind pay wall - and I can’t subscribe to all.
I don’t think Twitter users will mass exit the platform. Do people on Twitter care who heads the company? The exits that happen today won’t be of the users. And that has already begun.
Loved this line from The Obstacle is the Way by Holiday Ryan 📚
Stop looking for angels and start looking for angles.
This in context of persisting with your efforts when faced with failures.
My aversion for the concept of timezone is not hidden - I probably have an yearly post begrudgingly accepting the fallout of this weird phenomenon.
What makes it worse though is how each region is allowed to select their own timezones. This makes the situation messier than anything to do with time should be. Just search YouTube for weird timezones. There are ample examples of how we have screwed this up.
I read about another such weird little timezone from Australia - given the size and nature of the region involved, this has to be amongst the craziest.
I love taking portrait shots of my daughter. Her expressions are the focus, and everything blurs away in the background. Anyway, what matters to me is my daughter’s smile or the lack of any. Each expression more priceless.
I hope to live my life in the same manner, in portrait mode. Put things that matter to me in focus. Blur the sidelines into the background. It might be messy around me. It always is. But to let it impact my perspective towards the moment or not is my choice.
So a friendly reminder for myself - put what matters in focus. Make the ugliness that surrounds me the blurred background. It may only heighten the charm of the moment.
And as with photography, not all perspectives can be portraits. But some certainly should.
I loved the recent article from Dan Lewis about the history of the word “curfew” and how it took the meaning that it has today. It’s fascinating how words change meaning over time as the world changes. This story is no different.
With a lack of any options for a minimalist phone in India, I am glad that Android allows custom launchers. I have stripped most distractions off my phone with one such option. I’ve managed to kill the subconscious “swipe-tap-launch” cycle for sure.