Excursions

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.

Until digital video arrived in the late 1990s, 16-millimeter film was the mainstay of the amateur or independent filmmaker, requiring neither the investment nor the know-how of commercial cinema.

Source: Happy 100th Birthday, 16-Millimeter Film →

Fascinating. I had no idea about this history.

The winner of a major photography prize has rejected the award after revealing that the winning image was generated by AI.

Source - Major Photography Prize Winner Reveals Image Is AI-Generated, Rejects Award →

Had to happen sooner or later. This is just a start.

While (Apple’s) market share in India is sub-10% today, we believe Apple through its unmatched marketing and brand presence will be able to turn India into an incremental growth catalyst

Source: Apple Bets On Growth In India With Retail, Manufacturing Expansion →

Wish they did more and looked at India as a very different market. Strategies from first world won’t work here unfortunately.

I have a fascinating relationship with Mondays. There’s some charm to the first day of the week as if it dawns with a responsibility to set things right. With a new zeal not to carry the mistakes from the week gone by.

To follow the routine. To focus on the work. To get back to life.

With responsibility comes pressure. The pressure of all the things undone in the last week and pushed to the next. Pushed out with the hope that the first day of the following week would be different. Better. It never is.

I usually want to get back to all the right habits on Mondays. Why do so on any other day? In the middle of a week? Right? I remember we, friends, once had a running joke where we would answer any suggestion of starting something healthy with “let’s start on Monday”.

Gym? Let’s start on Monday. Stop eating junk food? Let’s start on Monday. Read more? “Let’s start …”

This habit of waiting for Monday to start something different, something good, has stuck with me. Funny how bad habits die hard.

Lawmakers have begun to contemplate new rules around authorship and ownership in connection with creative machines, and the stakes are huge for both the businesses that depend on creative work and the investors who poured billions into new AI tools.

Source - Who Owns a Song Created by AI? →

This is an important debate that needs addressed before it becomes a legal mess.

I generally find it easy to write about meta topics around my writing process. Or platforms. Among the people I read online, the behaviour is common. At the same time, I’m not too fond of these meta posts. All I am doing is convincing myself why the choice of a platform is the right one. No one cares about them.

Will I ever run out of places where I can write at? I won’t. Can I ever have enough of them? Never. Should I write about all of them? Absolutely not.

Holding oneself back from writing about a particular topic is antithetical to the spirit of blogging, where no topic is beyond the bounds.

But writing about every experiment lends me a false sense of achievement. I write because I want to think better. I write because I want to improve my writing skill. Writing mindlessly about my experiments doesn’t help me with either of those. Hence I don’t write meta posts any longer.

Or so I think. Ironically, this itself is a meta post.

Substack Notes experience, especially with signup, is horrible. I provided an email address to login. Finding things very similar to Twitter, I followed a bunch of people and soon I was bombarded with newsletter issues. When did I agree to sign up for the newsletters? Terrible!

The researchers input one paragraph per character into ChatGPT, describing their occupation, relationship with other agents, and memories they have

Source: Google Tells AI Agents to Behave Like ‘Believable Humans’ to Create ‘Artificial Society’ →

This is fascinating direction of research. This should start the debate on who says we aren’t the agents in some other worldly simulation.

I’ve learned through experience that skipping the rest your body is telling you it needs will only make it worse

Source - Women taking time for themselves →

Substack wants to be Buttondown. Substack wants to be Medium. Now, Substack wants to be Twitter. And it wants to do all of that in a single app. All those experiences do not align.

There’s a funny conflict to the idea of user interfaces: a good one tends to go unnoticed, the thoughtful design decisions too subtle to notice; a bad UX or UI is one that makes you want to scream

Source - You, Me and UI: a special series from The Verge →

The reason AI is making such a difference in password cracking is that instead of having to run manual password analysis on leaked password databases, PassGAN is able to “autonomously learn the distribution of real passwords from actual password leaks.”

That’s scary. I knew the day was close when even our strong passwords were no longer were safe. I didn’t know it was this close.

It is the phase when I reevaluate my use of all the services I am subscribed to. Of course, my email client is one of the key ones on the list. I was an early Gmail account holder and have been an ardent user since then. But when Gmail got old, I never loved email. It got boring and tiring.

Recently, I realised that I love sending and receiving emails. But I wouldn’t say I like Gmail.

iCloud was handling my custom email domain. But as I am not all in on the Apple ecosystem – with my Android and Linux – the experience with iCloud Mail is terrible. In short, I had to find a new solution for my personal and custom email domains.

I started with a trial of Fastmail, and I was unimpressed. No doubt, the email service is brilliant. It’s no-nonsense and has everything that an email power user would want. Nothing more and just the way an email service should work. I, however, am not a power user. Nor do I love the experience that the typical email services provide. I needed something different to rekindle my love for email.

That’s when I was reminded of HEY. The last time I tried it, I loved the service but didn’t need it. Here’s what I wrote while ending the trial.

All in all, HEY is a brilliant service with a fresh perspective towards the way we use our emails. It can potentially enliven the email offerings from all the players, just the away Gmail did back in 2004. But I don’t face the problem it is trying to solve; I have no use for all its groundbreaking features.

Why do I think I need it now? Well, to be frank. I still don’t. But I am falling in love with email again, and HEY’s unique take on how email should be done should help me stay en route. So, here’s to a new start for emails.

I enjoyed Tetris movie (funny I need to call it out - wish it was named better). I didn’t know the game had such a fascinating origin story. And I also didn’t know license negotiations can be made so intense. And fun. I was giggling at so many moments.

It’s a brilliant story wonderfully told.

I have finally setup my Trakt profile with history from all the shows that I could remember. Thought the list is not complete yet, but it’s a start at least.

I enjoy my evening walks with Snoopy. This guy continues to get all the attention from folks I have never met. I often hear someone call out his name, run to him, play with him and walk away with a smile. Completely ignoring my presence. As if I don’t exist. Such is the charm of cuteness, I believe.

He has also made new friends. He knows where he will find them. He walks to the place and waits for them to come to him. These are the regulars.

There’s a corner towards the end of our walk that both of us adore. It’s usually quiet. A cold breeze always flows through. It’s neither too light to expose us nor too dark to hide us. I make sure we halt there and sit next to each other. Nothing in my hand. Nothing on my mind. Nothingness. A bare moment of a void. Amidst the bustling #life.

And I like to believe Snoopy feels the same. Unperturbed. Many people walk by, but no one disturbs us. Maybe they acknowledge the tranquillity we feel.

Today’s walk was no different. And yet was slightly different. After sitting through the quiet moments, I realized it was a full moon in the sky. Pink moon. It looked big, majestic. My hand went to my pocket to pull my smartphone out as it often does. I wanted to take a picture of the magnificence I was looking at. I wanted to capture the moment.

How futile was the thought? The day there exists a technology that can capture such moments of calmness, their significance will dwindle. Such moments are rare; they need to be lived and felt. And in that feeling, in that rarity, lies their essence.

Wonder how people use Drafts. I keep hearing about the app without knowing how to use it. Is there some guide? Has someone written about it? Shall I ask ChatGPT?

A key concept to understand in the “Why are modern movies so dark?” debate is “motivated” light

Source - Why movies today look so dark today, in theaters and at home - Polygon →

Sometimes, all that matters is to hit that publish button. Do not worry about whether the subject makes sense. Or whether the way it is written does.

Whether there are too many adverbs. Or whether there is too little to say.

When words not published burden my mind, it is worthwhile to make way for them. To make them public. To not let them sit idle as a draft. I won’t return to them anyway. After all, writer’s block boldens itself in the drafts section.

So to unshackle my mind, I pick some draft and publish it in its form. What’s the worse that can happen? It would just be another terrible post in the ocean of terrible posts on the internet.

The good? It would be one post that I publish on the internet. For at least myself to read.