Excursions

I have come across many guess-the-word games recently, mostly after Wordle. Semantle is another one, but is different in many ways. It’s not limited in number of attempts. The help page says, “You will need more than six guesses. You will probably need dozens of guesses”. Sounds about right. Plus it has hints. Yet it feels difficult and exciting. Do give it a try when you have some time.

PS: It took me 21 guesses, 3 hints to get today’s word.

I have seen this bit of genius so many times, in many languages. I have no idea who did it first, but it still has me loling. When 7 times 13 is 28 😆

I said I will participate in the May Photoblogging challenge and missed to post on the first day itself. I just couldn’t find the right switch 🙃

I watched Spiderman: No Way Home today and, oh boy, it’s such a fun movie. It had me giggling at many moments, and yet equally moved at a couple others. Tom Holland is the best Spiderman and he finally got an origin story that he so well deserved. I might watch it again soon 🎬

I have released an upgrade (v1.1) to Paper theme for Micro.blog today that allows modifying the default behaviour of the homepage. It includes a setting now to display full post content on the homepage of the blog. Here’s how the homepage with this setting on will look like. You can also check the same on my test blog.

This is one of the most asked for features since the first release. I could never get the look right without ruining the spirit of the theme. Or so I like to believe because the change isn’t too significant in itself. So, irrespective of which option you decide to go with, the homepage should feel as part of the original simple and clean theme.

If you are using the Paper theme, look out for the upgrade option in Plugins. It should be enabled soon. As always, if you find any bug or want any improvements, kindly let me know either as GitHub issue or connect with me on Micro.blog / via email.

I don’t think I can use the Magic Mouse anymore. It is terrible ergonomically. My wrist pain after a long session on my desktop which had stopped happening to me since long. Pathetic!

I was very lucky with today’s Wordle. My attempt to figure out the characters got me the right result. Was it easy? Well it always is subjective with this game.

Wordle 314 2/6

🟨⬛⬛🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

I got lazy, wasn’t reading much books. Just listening to audiobooks. Agatha Christie to the rescue again – she has pulled me out of the lull so many times before. She is doing it again.

I read a lot many long-form posts that are published with Substack these days. I know that’s anecdotal, but I wonder if Substack is becoming a blogging platform of choice for folks now. Or newsletters are newsletters no more? Well, what is a newsletter?

I like when a newsletter is more than just a list of links. Or a bowl of jumbled, unrelated recommendations. Not that I don’t enjoy them — I appreciate the effort that goes in curating these best-of reads. I have found them useful many a time. But deep down, I love reading letters. It reminds me of the days when I used to post handwritten physical mails to my family and close friends. Those words had an innate charm and closeness. I enjoy a newsletter that’s a letter first.

That tangential thought aside, I believe Substack is a publishing platform for newsletters first. But given the way it is set up, it is also a publishing platform for the long-form posts. If you don’t subscribe to a publication, most probably you are going to read it as a blog post. That’s what seems to be happening to me.

I wrote a long post yesterday which, as I read again now, am glad that I did not publish. I had made so many foolish assumptions, ideas half-baked. Thoughts not really thought through. I don’t want my long posts to be any of that.

Holding back on completed posts for a day or two, even after I have taken time to write it, has helped me.

Did you know you can import data directly from a webpage with MS Excel, as table? I didn’t. Just go to Data -> Get Data From Web -> Enter URL with table and boom! I used to copy the table and paste it in when I needed to. Just like they did in.. uhmm.. stone-age, I guess? 🤯

Over the years, I have had many wrong perceptions and I have realised that the assumption that how I experience something is precisely how everyone all over the world experiences it is the root for many. Now I pause, think, and only then make up my mind.

Twitter’s most committed users often love the service and hate it with equal passion, two feelings that can coexist without much cognitive dissonance. The platform is awful—but its delivery of instantaneous feedback to every passing thought is also addictive. It’s exploitative—but its ability to amplify any message is unavoidably powerful.

Source: Why Would Elon Musk Want to Buy Twitter? →

With many avenues of tracking and improving my well-being already around me, I have decided to make the best use of them. I know I am not good at maintaining a healthy routine for any meaningful duration. Yet, I want to give myself another chance to succeed at forming one by constant nudges and tickles.

A reference to Whole Life Challenge (h/t Halsted Bernard) with its pointed question “What is healthy to you?” front and centre came in handy. The tagline, “don’t try to fit health and wellness into your life. Fit your life into the context of health and wellness” resonated with me. I always had the tools that allow me to track my progress towards a healthy lifestyle; with the recommendations from this challenge, I know what I need to track. I am not undertaking any challenge, but I am going to follow along.

So, I am tracking the seven habits – nutrition, hydrate, exercise, mobilise, sleep, well-being and reflect. With health apps from Samsung and Google, I make note of everything I eat, being cognisant of my diet. I don’t want to cut down on anything yet, but just understand what goes in. Keeping myself hydrated is not a problem I face, I drink enough water regularly.

Though I already do the running and stretching pretty regularly, I am now consciously walking while carrying out the daily chores instead of riding my motor scooter. Though I can’t sleep with a watch on, I now manually enter my hours of sleep. Sure, I miss out on the detailed reports of my sleep pattern, but this is better than nothing. With the bedtime mode scheduled on my smartphone, the screen goes greyscale, reminding me to rid myself of the clingy device. It helps!

Building a habit for well-being has been difficult for me. Meditation, the only well-being activity that I know of, never stuck. I can meditate, but I don’t do this with the right spirit. A constant thought of “am I doing this right” keeps pestering me throughout, and I know I’m not doing it right. Well, who knew there are other well-being practises too – picking up a book, reaching out to a friend or organising a disheveled space. Ah, now that I can do. And do well.

All said, these are early days. I am just a week into tracking these habits and I have already missed out on a couple each day. (I am using a wonderfully simple app, Loop Habit Tracker, to track these). But I am allowing myself the leniency.

This post was sent as an introduction for this week’s issue of my weekly newsletter. I have realized the updates I begin my newsletter with every week get lost once it is out. So I intend to publish these as individual posts also.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera to shoot video of Phobos, one of Mars’ two moons, eclipsing the Sun.

Source: Perseverance Rover Sees Solar Eclipse on Mars​ →

The name ‘East Timor’ is a tautological toponym, meaning ‘timor’ is Malay for ‘east’ and ‘east’ means, well, ‘east’. So, East Timor actually means East East.

There is so much I didn’t know about from the above fact about East Timor from this week’s issue of whlw. A country with average of just 17.5? Oh boy!

Mumbai Indians (MI) lost another match yesterday — this year’s IPL has been boring. The two statements are independent, mutually exclusive. Or so I like to believe. Since the core of the team was broken, players distributed across the teams, I just can’t connect with the team anymore.

We just had the last IPL some 5 months back, didn’t we? And here we go again already. The lust to milk the most out of the hottest property on Indian television had to come back to bite them in the bums. They are killing the sport for generations, old and young. 🏏

With many avenues of tracking and improving my well-being already around me, I have decided to make the best use of them. I know I am not good at maintaining a healthy routine for any meaningful duration. Yet, I want to give myself another chance to succeed at forming one by constant nudges and tickles.

A reference to Whole Life Challenge with its pointed question “What is healthy to you?” front and centre came in handy. The tagline, “don’t try to fit health and wellness into your life. Fit your life into the context of health and wellness” resonated with me. I always had the tools that allow me to track my progress towards a healthy lifestyle; with the recommendations from this challenge, I know what I need to track. I am not undertaking any challenge, but I am going to follow along.

So, I am tracking the seven habits – nutrition, hydrate, exercise, mobilise, sleep, well-being and reflect. With health apps from Samsung and Google, I make note of everything I eat, being cognisant of my diet. I don’t want to cut down on anything yet, but just understand what goes in. Keeping myself hydrated is not a problem I face, I drink enough water regularly.

Though I already do the running and stretching pretty regularly, I am now consciously walking while carrying out the daily chores instead of riding my motor scooter. Though I can’t sleep with a watch on, I now manually enter my hours of sleep. Sure, I miss out on the detailed reports of my sleep pattern, but this is better than nothing. With the bedtime mode scheduled on my smartphone, the screen goes greyscale, reminding me to rid myself of the clingy device. It helps!

Building a habit for well-being has been difficult for me. Meditation, the only well-being activity that I know of, never stuck. I can meditate, but I don’t do this with the right spirit. The constant thought of “am I doing this right” keeps pestering me throughout, and I know I’m not doing it right. Well, who knew there are other well-being practises too – picking up a book, reaching out to a friend or organising a dishevelled space. Ah, now that I can do. And do well.

All said these are early days. I am just a week into tracking these habits and I have already missed out on a couple each day. (I am using a wonderfully simple app, Loop Habit Tracker, to track these). But I am allowing myself the leniency.

I can never wear my watch while sleeping. I want my sleep to be comfortable – one with a watch hugging my wrist isn’t. However, I am interested in recording my sleep pattern. It was possible with fitness bands, no longer is with a smartwatch.

I wanted to watch Dune recently and I thought it had to be a Netflix original. No idea why I thought so, but I somehow assume everything that is streaming first is brought to us by Netflix. Funny that’s often not the case.

I have been pretty happy with Galaxy S22 that I recently purchased, and yet, I find it surprising that my friend’s circle chose it over iPhones everytime to click pictures. This choice is driven by Samsung’s preference to make the pictures look better, clearer over Apple’s to make them look close to real. People who understand photography will always prefer the latter, the most of the mainstream will prefer the former. No surprise, some unknown Android devices keep winning the blind smartphone camera challenges that tech reviewers carry out, like one Marques Brownlee does.

A tangential thought, what do you call the folks that are not experts? The non-reviewers. The enthusiasts. Or the nerds? These are the folks that form the majority market, ones that most companies target. I always struggle to find a term that isn’t derogatory to either side. I at times call them common folks, but it doesn’t sound right to me. Neither does “normal” — that makes the tech enthusiasts, the group I belong to, non-normal? Again, doesn’t sound right. I recently heard someone call this section “muggles”. Yuck! Have people even read the books?

Anyway, back to my device selection. I have been part of the Apple ecosystem for a long time. When I recently switched to Android with a OnePlus device, I was worried that I may miss the benefits of the ecosystem. Well, I did. But not enough to make me go back to the Apple devices. With a Galaxy smartphone now, I had a chance to get back to an ecosystem of sorts again. Samsung has over the years build a viable alternative for each Apple device. A shameless copy initially, now all of them have an identity of their own. One such device is Galaxy Watch 4 which is different from Apple Watch, yet equally powerful when paired with a Galaxy smartphone. For the past week, I have been enjoying how both these devices work together. Samsung’s strategy looks to be working.

This post was sent as an introduction for this week’s issue of my weekly newsletter. I have realized the updates I begin my newsletter with every week get lost once it is out. So I intend to publish these as individual posts also.

Intel has a new AI that can detect if a student is bored or distracted - their claim is it helps to improve student engagement. Sigh! Let students learn in natural way. If they want to get bored, let them get bored 🤦🏽‍♂️

I had no idea Pebble (or at least part of it) was purchased by Fitbit. Almost 6 years back. So unfortunate we didn’t see any launches of inspired products from Fitbit. One with an e-paper display and good battery life. I would have loved such a device.

HT: I was reminded of this fact by this wonderful essay by Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky on the importance of learning from failures. Mainly why Pebble failed.

I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed listening to a book as much as I did Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Of course, Weir deserves a lot of credit for writing such a smart book. But I am equally impressed by the performance, the voice acting by Ray Porter. I have rarely listened to an audiobook where I can’t separate the narrator and the central character in the book. Most of the folks read the book, performing the dialogs by characters differently every now and then. That wasn’t the case with Porter — he became the character Ryland Grace. The experience it leaves the listener with is absolutely brilliant. I could ignore many of the faults of the book, the plot because I was completely engrossed by the performance.

Sure, even the book is good. I can’t say the same for the writing. But who cares. There’s an innate charm with the way Weir writes his books. Or the way he structures his plot. There’s a lot of science that’s hard to swallow, at times almost at the verge of being stupid. Yet, it doesn’t come out as lazy to me. And I am not alone to feel so; Brandon Sanderson writes this in his review.

Well, what I love that Andy does is he shows that optimism can be compelling as a narrative. I don’t mind the grimdark movement. I think there’s lots of great books that have come out of it. And I like dystopian science fiction quite a bit. Some of my favorite stories are very depressing dystopian stories, such as Harrison Bergeron. But there is a certain electric-fun to optimism. And Andy Weir writes optimistic science fiction, optimistic hard science fiction, even when terrible things are happening.

I don’t think I can word the way I feel about Weir’s writing any better. He did that successfully with Martian. And he outdoes himself by being even more audacious with Project Hail Mary.

The book gets four star from me. And an added star just for Roy. No surprise, it’s rated (almost) five star on Audible. Absolutely brilliant!

Finished reading: Project Hail Mary: A Novel by Andy Weir 📚

Japanese mechanical pencils are a cut above the rest, boasting innovative features. But are they overengineered?

Source: Why You NEED an Overengineered Japanese Mechanical Pencil! →

I find using mechanical pencils painful – so these innovations looks… useful.