Excursions

A photo of a darkroom photo enlarger. Though very different from what’s on display, it’s fascinating nonetheless. #mbmay

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

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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.