Life Events

  • Attended Generalist meetup and met Syam who recently became an author of the book. I purchased one.
  • Attended a maps workshop conducted by Nikhil and gang, along with Yash & Suneela. It turned out to be a lot more fun.
More on the event..

The task was just to observe the regions around us as we walked around the lake near Bannergetta road and notice things. Later Nikhil had us park ourselves in a small temple nearby where he got us tea and we settled into a session where we tried to capture what we'd observed using just a pencil and paper. It was interesting to see how differently each of us chose to represent the same surroundings.

Later, he showed us a few maps from 15th-century temples and walked us through how kingdoms were represented back then, including how rivers, beds, and borders were drawn. These maps were made on huge pieces of fabric, sometimes the size of an entire room, and have been preserved by photographing them. It made me realize how flat and purpose-driven our modern maps are. They're really just one way of looking at the world. A map could honestly be anything.

On an interesting note, I was also recommended a book called 'This Way Up' by the Map Men, which questions why we represent the globe the way we do when space itself has no direction. For instance, why is Australia always shown at the bottom?

  • Visited Coorg and wrote a post on that. Much needed break.
  • Attended indiewebclub meet-up. Met Jatan, who does space journalism. It was an interesting catch up.
  • I'm learning more now than I have in the past few years, so I'm making it a point to use this time to teach and share whatever I pick up. Keeping a notebook so it stays. I've started with a few of my friends for now, and should have more bandwidth to do this for many more after May.
  • I learnt to solve Rubix's Cube and wrote a post on the same.
  • Tars turned two. We did a mini celebration at home and he had his feast.

Work

  • I am a keyboard person. I can't handle mouse and its movements which is one of the few reasons why I don't excel in UI/UX. Over time terminals have also become a cognitive load esp when I am working on multiple projects. So, I have set up a custom voice mode in my Claude sessions that helps me with less screen-time. I added few more features to my blog, my favourite is keyboard shortcuts that you can now use without having to mouse-around much :)

Others

  • I push back against the idea of living on subscriptions, but I realised its not something that is introduced in the recent years. We have always lived this way. For good or bad. Rent, electricity, water, internet, mobile recharges, maintenance and insurance all run on recurring payments. Almost nothing in modern life is truly paid for just once. A house can eventually become yours, a vehicle can be paid off, and books or devices can sit with you for years. But access-based services exist for us only as long as we keep paying. The moment the payment stops, so does the access. Subscriptions were never really new. Digital life just made the model more visible. The realisation only struck recently.
  • Current TN political scenario is interesting and scary at the same time.
    • There's no doubt that the masses want a change from usual politics. Interestingly, we now have a ruling party where the foot soldiers are highly educated, but the face leading them is still figuring out the basics of governance and political language. Just reads scripted cinematic lines in high pitched tones. It raises a real question about how much of this mandate is about ideology or capability, and how much is purely about mass appeal carrying a team forward.
    • I hope people now question the authorities then and there, and not just accept whatever justification is offered like how it has always been. A fresh mandate is only meaningful if the public continues to hold it accountable, regardless of who they voted for.