Excursions

I always wanted a better web client for writing my posts. I may finally have one, I believe. This is just a test 🤞🏽

“Use what you have” - a reminder to self. The tools that I own are the best tools I can use. Don’t break what ain’t broke.

Success at an extreme level is usually the overlap of many competing factors, only some of which are in your control. If your personal definition of success or happiness depends on being in a rarefied elite, this analysis should chasten you to the reality of that goal.

Why I’m Not More Popular →

I am really enjoying my experience using Bard- I have long stopped using search engines as the first stop. Only after I have asked Bard, my query do I return to a regular search engine. And even such instances are getting rarer.

For example, I was today wondering what movie a particular scene was from. Bard got the answer bang on. A search engine never got this right for me.

Unfortunately, ChatGPT has long fallen behind in the race. This is what it came back with. As much as I would have liked otherwise, Google is quickly gaining back the lost ground.

My daughter loves her music and is always crooning songs. Humming tunes. On a fine day recently, she surprised me and her mom with a tune of hers. One she had composed. She sang it so brilliantly, with a few lyrics and all 🥹 So, that’s what we recorded today - a new video is out.

A moment when I paused my usual hectic morning routine today. A moment that reminded me of why I still love the early morning vibe. And a few memories came rushing back.

I haven’t read a more frustrating book than The Eighth Detective by Alex Pavesi. It has a smart premise. Pavesi was aiming to attempt something pretty unique. But then I feel he got distracted by the lure of surprising readers. The twists and turns were too many to keep the book coherent. There are no characters to connect with. No story that captures your attention. The seven stories narrated by the lead character are silly. The twists are sillier. And are one too many. It was frustrating to see a clever premise wasted through controlled writing.

At the same time, I haven’t heard many better narration performances than by Emilia Fox. She is extremely natural while voice acting in both stories and dialogues. I could visualize every character distinctly just through her voice.

The last time I was this impressed by someone’s narration was when I listened to Ray Porter narrate Project Hail Mary. Absolutely fantastic!

Early mornings always play a significant role in my routine. I love the vibe all around during the dawn. The calmness. The silence. The hustle and bustle of morning service boys with their newspapers and milk packets.

The surroundings wake up around me, and I love to be the spectator.

Nature looks to be shrugging off the dormancy from the night before. Birds get busy early. Chirping. Waking each other up. Or already playing? Who can say? Trees sway lethargically with a smile, like a sane grandmother in a busy home. The breeze caresses me like a loving mother – I can almost fall asleep again.

Never a night owl, I couldn’t stay awake beyond a reasonable time, even during my hostel days. Those were the days when staying up all night was normal. A sign of a happy student even. While my friends used to blast off into the night with their choice of rock music, I lay on my bed in deep slumber. Frequently, my friends and I had breakfast together – the only difference was that they were depleted on their way to bed, and I was chirpy post my deep sleep.

In the recent past, my morning routine has been hectic, not allowing me to live the calmness I so adore. Today I paused for a moment and stood looking out at the wakening surrounding.

A moment of life around. Of nothingness within. Of memories galore.

My phone works way better in Power Saving mode. Battery is brilliant. Services aren’t unnecessarily hogging me memory. I may always stay in this mode.

For quite some time now, I have disabled the replies from my Micro.blog timeline. I liked the quietness initially, but the silence is tiring now. I want to discover new conversations and people again – so I’m enabling replies in the timeline again. I love this control!

Yesterday, I intentionally wrote a post on simple writing in a lot straight forward manner than I usually do. A dull manner, I would say. It didn’t matter as it served its purpose for me.

I keep my writing simple while conveying my thoughts. It is the most effective way that I know. I learnt this from all the people I enjoy reading online. But Derek Sivers has been the most significant influence.

There was a time when I liked to ornament my writing with unnecessary words. A lot of context. Too many adjectives. Metaphors.

I don’t do that anymore as it is unwarranted for my kind of #writing. I don’t want to pen the most beautiful piece of prose. Or be creative with the use and selection of words. I write to convey my ideas and that needs just clarity. Manu says this while sharing why he feels he is not a writer.

What matters here is not the writing, is the communication. Is the exchange of ideas, and the sharing of experiences.

I relate to this thought. As long as what I want to say is unambiguous, and is understood without trouble by the reader, my goal behind why I write is met. The length of the post or my vernacular does not matter.

I want my writing to sound as I do while I speak. And I don’t articulate. I talk.

Threads reminded me of why I eventually fell off the Twitter timeline. It’s the same people talking about the same stuff they always do. The early adopters, the famous bloggers, and podcasters. The social media celebrities. They have a bubble of their own. They talk amongst themselves as you listen. You are not part of any community – you are watching a show.

Then there are the posts that are written mainly to go viral. The memes. The questions. The jokes. And the jokers. The social media diarrhoea.

These threads (pun unintended) garner the most engagement, which makes the algorithmic timeline bubble them to the top. Now, these are all I see. And I don’t enjoy either of them.

The diversity of both the posts and the people is also why I love the timeline on Micro.blog. It’s never the same people or the same type of posts that crowd the place. And if they do, I know how to correct that.

I am on Threads. Talking about Threads. Might manually cross post as I usually do on Mastadon.

Threads is closest to Twitter and that’s exactly why it may work. Twitter left a big hole and this (without any shame of copying) fits that perfectly.

Also, Meta understands you can’t launch a social network available for iOS only and expect it to grow. Welcome to see Android app on launch.

Recently, I have seen many people get nostalgic about Google Reader. The argument is that if Google Reader hadn’t died, the internet wouldn’t have been in the dire state it is today. As if the demise of Google Reader caused the rise of proprietary timelines of Twitter and Facebook. Unfortunately, it was the other way around.

Plus, Google Reader was a flawed, terribly designed, niche product only used by a handful of tech-savvy people. I say this even though I was a big fan of the product. It could never have survived in the form it was in.

Sure, web browsing does feel horrible today, as Tim Sweeney of Epic tweeted.

The internet feels increasingly broken. News sites are paywalled or account walled, Reddit is nag walled, Google search spams ads and SEO to the point of uselessness, and now Twitter is account walled.

I agree with all of it. But I don’t think Google Reader could have addressed any of it. RSS, for sure, cannot. It’s just a standard to simplify consumption. The problem lies at the source.

What if I pressed reset on all that I have published till date? Get rid of all of it. Archive it, maybe. And start afresh. What if I do it every year? Or every month?

I have forgotten how to write.

I am frustrated with my recent tendency to choose the easy option whenever an opportunity arrives. Watch rather than read. Read rather than write. Get tired doing both. And then sleep. I am doing this way too often these days. I have made this my routine. I am aware this behaviour isn’t good. But I still do this.

Passively scroll through the news. Or YouTube shorts. And when I feel bad about my choice, I skim through my RSS feeds. Or newsletters. I attempt to fool my mind that I am reading the good stuff, following a good routine. I very well know that I am fooling no one. Especially not my mind. It continues to feel shit.

There was a time when I would take steps to correct the habits of bad choices. Move away from my smartphone. Uninstall apps. Or disable notifications. Track. Measure. Force me towards, or give me more opportunities to make better choices.

What pains me is I have stopped doing any of that, either. Every wasted day ends with a promise that I will start following a good routine from tomorrow. For that matter, routine of some sort, as I lack any at this point.

Weeks have gone by, but that tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I am afraid it never will if I don’t take measures promptly. Being aware is useless if I don’t act.

I haven’t been able to write for the last few days. Or has it been months? I have no idea any more. I did quip now and then. But to me, that does not count. Life kept me busy, and my inclination to think dries up whenever that happens. If I ain’t thinking, writing I am not.

I hate this behaviour of mine. Why must I be in a routine to find time or energy to write? It isn’t as if the words dry out. I just can’t put them out.

A possible answer is that I love my comfort zone. Anything out of the ordinary and I shut my brain down. I can’t think. I can’t do anything that I routinely do. Or so I convince myself. I enter a shell waiting for things to get back to normal. Waiting for me to find my comfort zone again. And then, and only then, do I begin living again.

Until then, I find cheap getaways. Scroll through YouTube. Or news. Rewatching already watched shows. Feel tired. Sleep a lot.

Such a menacing beast this comfort zone is. It makes me feel comfortable with and in control of my life. Yet soon, the same control shackles me down to the routine. The lack of stress the routine brings suffocates me. Stagnates me. Am I then even alive any more?

I’ve been watching Seinfeld’s reruns recently, and one device has always puzzled me. The phone machine. It is a critical element in almost every episode and plays a central part in a few. And yet I have never owned such a device.

A landline was itself a luxury while I was growing up. Very few homes in the neighbourhood had them. Even we got it pretty late. I remember when we eventually did, our house became a switchboard, and we were the telephone operators—connecting folks all over to ones in our neighbourhood.

We received calls at home and took the messages. Sometimes, my parents held the line while I, being the only kid in the house, ran to the neighbour’s home to invite them to receive the phone call.

It was all fun, to be frank. It felt good to hear the stories after the phone call. No one left away without sharing what the call was all about. A few wanted to add more context to what we unintentionally heard on one heard by narrating what was said on the other. It all felt customary.

We never had an answering machine. There was no way to leave a message for us while we were away. So instead, I was the answering machine for others while they were away.

Also, I am not sure I would be comfortable using such machines. I could never convey the message on the spot in short. All I would say is, “Call me back”. What else can one say without rambling on and on?

So when I see these machines screw up the main characters' lives in the shows like Seinfeld and Friends, I only chuckle. You know, I have been an answering machine, and we tend to screw up.

Writing should not be boring. If that happens to me, it means that I am doing it forcefully or that I do it out of habit. Yet, in either case, I won’t stop writing.

I don’t write because I have to. I write because I have something to say. That’s why I cannot write on a schedule. Sure, I can sit in front of the screen and wait for the words to turn up. They generally do, which is why I have been a blogger for around 15 years. But I cannot force them to.

There are times when I write every day, multiple times a day. And then weeks go by, and I hardly publish anything.

This reminds me of a curious thought from James Clear. While talking about achieving mastery, he says.

Mastery requires practice. But the more you practice something, the more boring and routine it becomes.

It makes me wonder - can creativity be routine and boring? I hope not. Maybe that’s the reason one can never master an art form. They are always learning. The same applies to writing.

I don’t intend to master writing. All I want is to share my thoughts through words.

While working on my blog’s recent redesign, I decided not to display the date/time as part of the post. Sure, I am not the only one who does that.

Although debatable, I find that detail useless for my type of writing, and I was ridding the interface of every element that wasn’t essential. I don’t write posts which are relevant only to a particular period. I am not writing news articles that will go stale. Plus, if there’s an article that forms the context for a post, I explicitly link to that.

So why does it matter when the words are written? I stand by and am even proud of every post I have written. Short or long. On the contrary, I don’t want the age of the post to impact what it says. It’s still me saying that. Just younger. It is the same reason I don’t correct my old posts.

I have also seen people put a disclaimer on old posts saying it may not reflect one’s current views. Colin puts such a disclaimer on his older posts and writes.

Just because I may not think a certain way, however, doesn’t mean that I can’t be proud of what I have previously written — some of it is among my best writing.

I agree with Colin. But for the same reason, I don’t want to put any such disclaimer. Isn’t it obvious that one’s perspective towards things changes over time? Why call it out, then?

I accept that not showing the date is extreme. After all, I still include the date in the source and RSS feeds. But removing a detail is the best way to determine if it is essential. And currently, I am all for a reset.

Straight drives with so little fuss it felt like the fulfilment of a pact. “Just be a good ball and go for four, okay?” Back-foot punches that combined the grace of a ballet dancer with the power of a heavyweight fighter. And those flicks. If they could talk, they’d be like, “Come on, man. Don’t make it this easy.” He was geometric perfection.

Source - Sachin Tendulkar at 50 - The stranger we kept calling by his first name →

A few months back, I responded to Om Malik’s thoughts on the importance of stream of posts on one’s blog. Here’s what I proposed we bloggers should do.

Recommend stuff to the reader on our platform, our blogs. On our home pages. And around our posts. But instead of letting AI decide, let’s curate these recommendations manually.

I have since wanted to update my website, my primary home on the web, to do away with the standard design principle for a blog. Why does every home page have to look a certain way? Pages after pages of reverse chronological lists of posts.

I recently quipped that blogs have made the web boring. That every blog looks the same. All themes are more or less the same. A slight layout change here. A margin or padding there. Varied columns. But all look the same to me. You know that you are reading a blog.

I wanted to stop doing that. I want to curate the experience for the readers. Worst case, for the one reader that’s me. So, I have been working on laying out the structure for this space afresh¹.

A home page recommends a selection of posts. No page’s a reverse chronological list. Even if a reader visits one that’s supposed to be, for example, archive, they won’t see a list. Every page allows a search and an option to visit a random post. A prominent nav bar allows navigation around every post. There are a lot of other minor touches sprinkled across.

Plus there are colours. Minimal doesn’t mean black and white. Minimal can have personality. It does now.

Satisfied after playing around and iterating with the changes for a couple of days, I applied the layout to the site today. Once I did, I wondered if this space was a typical blog any more. As per Wikipedia.

A blog is an informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page.

Not a diary. No reverse chronological order. And yet I don’t care. To me, a blog is what a blogger wants it to be. And I am done with the stream of posts. So here’s to a bold new start.