Excursions

This is my personal place, a destination where one can find every thought I ever post on the web, anywhere. At times it originates, and so just exists, here. There are also times when it’s published at some other places first, but is also made available here. It has been in existence since 2008 and just like every year, this time too I wanted another fresh start for this place.

I have already documented all the history behind and the context for the existence of this site and this page. Here, I intend to document all there’s to know about this site.

Before I get to the details, this is what I set to achieve when I began.

1. A website designed, in and out, to my liking, with every knob controlled by me.
2. A landing page with a brief about me and the site. One that clearly links to the key content.
3. Clean and simple experience, while reading a post or navigating the site.
4. Consistent writing experience, preferably offline, across mobile and desktop.
5. Source control for the whole place. No fallouts from brain freezes.

I do not believe what I sought out was that complex. So I was confident I could get this working.

Here’s the TL;DR version of what I have achieved.
1. This My old site was built with Hugo — it is extremely simple, highly customisable, well documented and has an active community. It’s difficult to beat all of that. ∞
2. The look and layout of this site is themed by an extremely personalised port of the original ‘ghostwriter’ theme. I intend to open-source the same soon. ∞
3. The source for the complete website along with all the posts, as markdown files, resides in GitHub. Every change to this setup is driven as it would be in a standard git project. ∞
4. Contents from Squarespace were exported into a Wordpress package first. They were converted into markdown files using ExitWP. Followed by cleanup. And deploy. ∞
5. This site is deployed by Netlify. With continuous deployment and one-click SSL for custom domains possible with minimum configuration, the choice was pretty simple. ∞

Core Engine - Hugo

I had always wanted to attempt a site creation from scratch, but I failed miserably every single time. Given I had ample time before my Squarespace subscription expired, I attempted it again this time. I believe I did not fail. This is a static site, built with Hugo. It was the ease with which I could get a site running on my dev environment via Hugo that convinced me about the viability of this whole project. If you do not believe, just head over to the Hugo docs for a quick start and begin. You will have a site running by step two. It is that easy.

You would have also realised how well document the whole framework is from your visit to the quick start guide. There is nothing that you want to achieve that isn’t documented. In addition, given that Hugo is written in GoLang, it gave me an opportunity to learn a new language. Post that, every need of mine to get the things just right was just a code snippet away.

For example, find below a snippet for fetching a list of random five articles. Yes, it is easy. And a lot powerful.

{{ $pag := where .Data.Pages "type" "post" } } {{ range (shuffle $pag | first 5) } } {{ ....custom.... } } {{ end } }

And if it does turn out that there is some tricky edge case that you just can’t get your head around (or you are being plain, simple lazy), there is a thriving community of fellow users which is extremely active and a lot helpful.

TL;DR: Hugo is simple, highly customisable, well documented and has an active community. It’s difficult to beat that.

Personalising the look & layout

Once I had the core finalised, I shifted my attention to personalising the site. And again Hugo comes with a lot of good looking themes — extremely minimalistic to fully loaded. You will always find the one for your liking there.

If you, like me, do not find one that ticks all the boxes for you, you can select any that is closest and get to personalising. All the themes come with the source code. So if it suits you, let the developer in you go wild.

I began with a theme “Ghostwriter”. It was simple and I could see how it can be extended to enable every aspect that I wanted to achieve. So I began working. After a week of customisation, I could finally see the site shaping up just the way I imagined.

I intend to soon open source the changes I have made to the original theme. I am working on cleaning up the source and committing. All the enhancements and personalisations added to the theme are available at Github. If you like the theme that you see and if you are using Hugo for building your Static website, you can download and use the theme from here.

TL;DR: The look and layout of this site is themed with an extremely personalised and open-sourced port of the original ‘ghostwriter’ theme. I intend to open-source the same soon.

Cushioning against brain freeze

Yes. Commits and port. I am not letting another of my brain freeze moments to spoil all the efforts the put in over the years. Refer the history section I mentioned in my introduction above.

So whole website is a git project. It is currently maintained as a private repository at GitHub. Every change, major or minor is committed. Every milestone is tagged as release. And every major enhancement is pull request. No, I am not taking any risk with myself this time. Here is a snapshot for the effort that has gone in to bring the v1 of this site.

Do I intend to make the source of this website public? Well, initially I wanted to do just that. However, I do want to keep my messy drafts, be it to the posts or the website, just to myself. I could not find a public way to achieve that. So as of now, the source stays private.

TL;DR: The source for the complete website along with all the posts, as markdown files, resides in GitHub. Every change to this setup is driven as it would be in a standard git project.

Migrating the content

Talking about the posts, I had to bring the old entries along from Squarespace. After all, this is also a place for my writings. I would not want to loose any of my old ones¹.

This time, though, I did not have the luxury of the out-of-box imports. I had to do it on my own. Well, I did have a couple of points playing on my side.

• I have been writing all my posts in markdown format and exporting them as required.
• Current setup with Hugo is all markdown driven, where every content exists as a .md file.

So, all I had to do was find a way to export the content from Squarespace as markdown files. I wish it was that simple; it wasn’t. The only option that Squarespace supports for export is as a Wordpress package. However, anyone who has been blogging for even a slightest of time would know Wordpress package should be fine. Because there is nothing to be done with a Wordpress package that no one else has already tried. Just getting markdown files out of that must be a cakewalk. Markdown, after all, is a geek’s solution.

And as I thought, it already is handled. ExitWP is a great tool to migrate a Wordpress blog to a static site. It is introduced as a tool to convert to “the jekyll blog engine”. But that should be fine. Both Jekyll and Hugo use markdown files as content.

After going through the steps as documented at the git repo for ExitWP, I had all the content available as markdown files². It did need the below minor cleanup.

• Images had to be handled separately. All references were to the Squarespace domain. Thankfully, I maintain a credit link with every image to the original one. So I just had to re-download, compress and deploy them.
• Front matter needed porting to the Hugo standard. I did weigh in the option to write a script to do that. But then ended up siding on doing it manually.
• Post content did need some minor fixing. ExitWP has some issue handling and regenerating the emphasis, especially around symbols (for example, quotation marks, dashes etc).

Deploy the post, test each one from the post link on dev and I had all my content back. Thanks to this effort, I believe I never have to worry about porting out my content ever. Every published copy of a post stays as a raw file with me.

TL;DR: Export contents from Squarespace to Wordpress package. Use ExitWP to convert it into markdown files. Cleanup. Deploy.

Deploying with Netlify

Once I had a site running on dev and tested multiple times to bring it to my liking, I had to start thinking on a place to deploy it. And of course, Hugo has all the possible options well documented.

As my code was in GitHub, the first option I tried was to deploy it on GitHub Pages. I configured Hugo to generate the static pages in a defined directory (configured as submodule for the GitHub pages repository). I built my site, pushed the changes and deployed, and it all looked fine. However, there was just one problem — the deployment workflow was a bit messy. In addition there were few more niggles³.

• There is no provision for SSL with custom domains. So they cannot yet be delivered over secure http.
• Auto-triggering for build and deploy had to be configured as web hooks.
• Given the deployment workflow, publishing from mobile was just out of question.

On reading some more, I found a far simpler option in Netlify. Again I will let the official document explain itself.

Netlify builds, deploys and hosts your front end. It provides continuous deployment services, global CDN, ultra-fast DNS, atomic deploys, instant cache invalidation, one-click SSL, a browser-based interface, a CLI, and many other features for managing your Hugo website.

One might say jargon, but there are key needs I had which GitHub pages just didn’t handle — a couple being continuous deployment and one-click SSL. So I did another deployment with Netlify and again fell for the simplicity of the things involved. No configuration head-ache. No custom workflow to handle the built site separately.

Write Frontend Code. Push it. We handle the rest.

Yes it, indeed, is that easy. It doesn’t matter then where you push to the repository from, mobile or desktop.

There is one issue with the Hugo documentation though. One does not need to trigger a build command with Hugo version number appended in it. Just configure a parameter in the build for the version of your Hugo environment.

Once the Netlify account was created and the continuous deployment for the site setup, I just followed the documentation for using custom domain and setting up SSL. The site was live.

TL;DR: The deployment of this site is handled by Netlify. With continuous deployment and one-click SSL for custom domains possible with minimum configuration, the choice was pretty simple.

Change log

So to summarise, I have first releasable version of this website ready. Built with Hugo. Themed with Ghostwriter. Run with Netlify. And of course, it is just v1.

Musings Et Al. v1: First version of the website with all the clogs designed and working as planned. It hosts below custom features.

• Support for write-up section on homepage driven by config.toml
• Support for headshot on the homepage
• Support for displaying the latest featured post on homepage
• Support for link posts (via refs param in front matter)
• Support for related post along below the content of a post
• Link to the image credit (via imgsrc param in front matter)

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1. As a side note, all my old posts still exist on Wordpress. You can read them here.↩

2. I did face some difficulties while installing the dependencies. In case you hit them too, just download them from the official sites and have them available in the classpath. It doesn’t matter the approach is crude, it should get the work done.↩

3. In case you do want to go a
   head with GitHub Pages, I would suggest you go ahead with the option of deploying from the master branch itself. Hugo documents this as the last option. But I feel this is simpler and a viable option.↩

As I read this, I sat there with a chill down my spine. “Terror is not an unjustified reaction to knowing this virus exists. We have no room to be wrong about this. None. We can be wrong about other things. If smallpox got out, it would be unfortunate, but it has a fourteen-day incubation period, it’s easy to recognize, and we would stop it. Much the same is true with sars. But with flu you are infectious before you even know you are sick. And when it gets out it is gone.” https://twitter.com/statuses/896659144819695617

I was writing the setup page of this site when this thought triggered in my mind. iPad is just a consumption device till you try. Once you do, you will start loving producing content on it.

https://twitter.com/statuses/896654686891016192

I don’t know what the argument is against showing favicons in Safari’s tabs, but I can only presume that it’s because some contingent within Apple thinks it would spoil the monochromatic aesthetic of Safari’s toolbar area. I really can’t imagine what else it could be. I’m personally sympathetic to placing a high value on aesthetics even when it might come at a small cost to usability. But in this case, I think Safari’s tab design — even if you do think it’s aesthetically more appealing — comes at a large cost in usability and clarity. The balance between what looks best and what works best is way out of whack with Safari’s tabs.

If that is the reason why there are no favicons in Safari tabs, I believe Apple is taking there quest for design too far. Apple gets blamed for always leaning towards form-over-function. I could see every time why some groups might support the said decision. But this time, I just cannot fathom how someone can find this to be a releasable solution. This is senseless.

The Google Memo debate

I had a lot of thoughts on the whole Google is handling the diversity wrong” memo kerfuffle. Here are some of them.
- The memo had the leadership in tricky position. Unfortunately, what played out looks driven from external pressure than “corporate values”.
- “No matter how often this all happened, it still hurt” The debate, & the sick views it brings to the fore are damning to all involved.
- Why’s this always forgotten — “people may have a right to express their beliefs in public, that does not mean companies can’t take action.”

At times, satire is the best mean to address and comment on a muddled topic. And this one at McSweeney’s by Ben Kronengold takes the cake.

Positions in the tech industry often require long, arduous hours that may conflict with humans’ desire to run home and see if Ozark is any good. Robots don’t have this problem, for they are pushed into coveted jobs for the status that they entail.

This writeup from John Battelle has to be one of the most clear headed, to-the-point and no-bullshit take on the whole “Google is handling the diversity wrong” kerfuffle.

.. that narrative is bullshit, and all rational humans know it. Yes, we have to pay close attention — and keep our powder dry — when a company with the power and reach of Google (or Facebook, or Amazon, or Apple…) finds itself a leader in the dominant cultural conversation of our times.

But when a legitimate and fundamentally important debate breaks out, and the company’s employees try to come together to understand its nuances, to find a path forward …..To threaten those engaged in that conversation with physical violence? That’s fucking terrorism, period. And it’s damn well time we called it that.

Another iPhone Story

A must watch short documentary from WSJ, named so aptly “Behind the Glass”. The story behind iPhone’s journey to existence will keep fascinating us, coming out every now and then, bite-sized.

Such a refreshing edit this published as part of Sunday Review at The New York Times. The contrast between people’s real lives and ones as perceived by their “friends” on social media is so succinctly articulated by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. Especially evident is the side of us exposed to Facebook as against Google (the search engine).

Alone with a screen and anonymous, people tend to tell Google things they don’t reveal to social media; they even tell Google things they don’t tell to anybody else. Google offers digital truth serum. The words we type there are more honest than the pictures we present on Facebook or Instagram.

Sometimes the contrasts in different data sources are amusing. Consider how wives speak about their husbands.

On social media, the top descriptors to complete the phrase “My husband is …” are “the best,” “my best friend,” “amazing,” “the greatest” and “so cute.” On Google, one of the top five ways to complete that phrase is also “amazing.” So that checks out. The other four: “a jerk,” “annoying,” “gay” and “mean.

I just could not have put this is in a better way. The fakeness of what streams at Facebook has always been at the crux of the platform being disliked by a vocal minority, especially the geeks. It won’t be too much of a stretch for the argument to say if it is not fake, it is not visible on the Facebook timeline.

How does one protect oneself from getting miserable at the hands of this streaming pile of curated noise?

Once you’ve looked at enough aggregate search data, it’s hard to take the curated selves we see on social media too seriously. Or, as I like to sum up what Google data has taught me: We’re all a mess.

Now, you may not be a data scientist. You may not know how to code in R or calculate a confidence interval. But you can still take advantage of big data and digital truth serum to put an end to envy — or at least take some of the bite out of it.

Any time you are feeling down about your life after lurking on Facebook, go to Google and start typing stuff into the search box. Google’s autocomplete will tell you the searches other people are making. Type in “I always …” and you may see the suggestion, based on other people’s searches, “I always feel tired” or “I always have diarrhea.” This can offer a stark contrast to social media, where everybody “always” seems to be on a Caribbean vacation.

Yep, the best lifehack I have read in a long long time. Amen.

There is a great edit on Ars Technica about “The secret lives of Google raters”. I found the section on how there always are some people, humans, behind all the AI Google, and Facebook, want to harp about. Following passage is a sheer eye-opener.

UCLA Information Studies professor Sarah Roberts has been studying the lives of raters for the past five years, traveling from California to the Philippines to interview workers. She told Ars that one constant in all their stories is that these workers feel isolated from the companies like Google and Facebook, even though most of their work benefits them. Some say that they know they work for Google, but Google doesn’t know they work there.

Roberts believes that big companies like Google want to keep raters hidden, largely because they like to boast about how many tasks they handle with AI. “Actually their AIs are people in the Philippines,” she told Ars by phone. “Are there algorithms in all these tasks? Sure. Is it 100 percent? Not even close. There’s some kind of profit motive behind these claims [about how] machines and algorithms run the show.”

The plight of these raters is real. For all the advancements in AI and automation, there is always some “dirty” work that’s deemed too unimportant, too trivial, to only be pushed “down” to humans. The trend is disquieting.

“Very few books make me root for the central character. Ove has me hooked.. am with him for a fun ride!” That was my update a third into the book. And boy, did this guy keep me hooked. I was with him as his past unfolded in front of me. I was with him as his present life was amended by some funny, some happy, some sad events. Above all, I was with him as this grumpy old sod grew into a grumpy, but caring, grandad.

Author, Fredrik Backman, allows the characters to grow and that is the biggest reason the book worked for me. There is no haste in revealing the past or bumping into Ove’s future. Every chapter, a short story in itself, unfolds more of Ove and the world around him. You see Ove as he is. You are slowly led to understand why he is the way he is, mostly via flashbacks. You are made to feel for the guy, made to root for him to not stay how he is. And when that happens, because you are already absorbed into Ove’s life, you are left contented.

Saying Ove is grumpy would be an understatement. He is on the edge always, ready to get worked up. He is disappointed in everyone around him. He feels no one is responsible enough to care for oneself - dependent on others for every little thing. He feels the world around has no respect for rules of the land, doesn’t matter they are chalked out by Ove himself. So he takes it upon himself to make sure people are constantly reminded of that. And that’s how he lives his life - a monotonous, misanthropic one . And as Ove is planning to end his troubles with his life, fate has just the opposite planned for him — to add just enough goodness in Ove’s life to thaw the bitterness.

The book maintains a wry sense of humor throughout. It made me laugh out loud at multiple instances. Especially, the way Ove’s frustrations in other people’s incompetence are worded is an absolute masterclass. The book also maintains a deep sad undertone. It does not ever let Ove’s sulkiness make you hate him.

So be it through his affection towards a young boy in love or forced, but welcome attachment from the lively new neighbor or the unspoken responsibility towards the old, and may be the only friend, Ove always shows just enough warmth to make him the most likable character in a long long time. Or in Sonja, Ove’s wife’s words, “the strangest superhero I have ever heard about”.

Go welcome this guy, and the gang, into your life. He will make you smile, guffaw, shed a tear and, above all, enlighten you towards life. A must read.

My Rating: 5 of 5 Stars

It was pitch dark across the town of Diu. The street winding down was deserted as usual. It had recently been washed off its weariness by the unseasonal rain. In a way, it was a perfect setting for one pleasant, romantic walk.

A couple silhouetted against the discontinuous bouts of illumination from the lighthouse nearby. But their walk was no way romantic, may be a tad tipsy rather.

Roy and Joel had been walking down the street for almost an hour. Yet their individual opinions were divided. Joel thought it must have been four hours. Roy, however, opined that he was off by at least 3 hours and 30 minutes.

“No way” bawled Joel, “We must be just debating this for last 2 hours.”

“Again, you are off by an hour and 30 minutes at the least” Roy countered.

“How are you so sure? It’s as if you want to stay here longer.”

“Of course, I do. Don’t you?”

“Well, not in the shape I am now” Joel hit back with his fiery eyes. “Anyway, shouldn’t we be searching for what we are supposed to search?”

“That is exactly what I am doing” replied Roy, peeking at the byroad they were passing by.

“I don’t think we are searching for the same thing, though. If that were the case, you would be peeping minutely down the manholes. Not glancing at the lanes as we pass by.”

Roy just smiled.

---

Ganu saw the two bodies tottering along. He wasn’t sure if it was their walk or his drunk vision that was unsteady.

One was looking minutely at the footpaths, and in the garbage bins, and over the plant pots. He thought he also saw him once peeping inside a manhole. He was for sure searching for something.

The other, the skinny one, was not searching for any thing, though. “He might well be searching for someone.” thought Ganu.

There was something about these two people that appeared odd to Ganu. They looked unconventionally fresh for the time of the day, the season of the year, and the condition of the city. All were in shambles.

Ganu did not like such clean people. He felt no one should be this clean when he was drowning in his sorrows.

Ganu started following them.

---

“I think that guy there is following us. Is it ok if he sees us?” asked Joel, in a worried tone.

“How would I know? I too am going through this for the first time. I, anyway, do not think anyone ever has faced this. I think even he would not know.”

“Of course, he would know. He is the one who sets the rules.”

Roy shushed Joel as he heard the muffled voices, the wailings. He walked towards the next alley — there was a gathering of saddened souls.

Roy just smiled, again.

---

Ganu walked behind them to the crowd and steered himself towards the middle. He saw the back of the skinny one now, looking down at a weeping woman. And just as he saw what lay unmoving on the ground in front of her, he collapsed with his eyes wide open.

---

“Oh, crap!” exclaimed Death. “Now this hasn’t happened ever.”

He looked at Roy, Joel, and the other souls. “Well people, the only way in now is down. Let’s go search for that key to the heavens.”