Weeknotes - 2025-W18
Cover image for 2025-W18
This week zipped by. Maybe its because May 1, a Thursday, was a holiday and so it was only a 4 day work week.
A dear friend pointed out that Iām perhaps burnt out from the intensity of the GCPP course. I think heās right and maybe Iām realizing it now after pushing for so many weeks together. Thereās a lot of blogs and analysis that I want to write but Iām just putting it off because Iām not feeling that āØjoyāØ when I sit down to write. So I want to give myself some time. It was a wonderful course, and taking a few weeks just for myself wonāt throw me off the path.
We met some friends for dinner at Lazy Leopard this week, followed by some gelato at Gelarto. It was a nice evening with a lot of stories shared. We were 8 of us, and because of the layout of the table (rectangle), the folks at the ends couldnāt hear each other and the group ended up getting split into 4-4. Maybe the restaurants should figure out a better way to seat 6+ people. š¤
Circular tables probably work better, but they occupy a LOT more space than rectangular tables.
Iāve been wanting to work on a side project for a while - the idea is to build a system to track experiments that I want to do. These arenāt the āscienceā experiments that it sounds like, but experiments to track various things in my life. So something like:
- If I take route X > Y > Z to office, do I save time than going X > A > B?
- How long has it been since
the last kaiju attackit was DNS? - How many times have I worked out this week?
To do this, I wanted to start by writing a high level spec and I used Gemini for this. I was totally and utterly floored by what 1h of time and a well phrased prompt can get us - A clean crisp spec. Iām think Iām going to be using this more even at $work for spec stuff.
On to the next step now .. setting up the project and actually doing the work. I want to use this as an opportunity to try out Aider with Django/Rails. Iām still undecided on the language for the app. I will use SQLite as the persistence layer.
We watched the Oscar winning movie - Flow (Amazon Prime) and it was amazing. Such a simple premise made with so much emotion. The characters are so relatable and the colours - vibrant. It has now become the most-viewed film in Latvian theaters in history - much deserved.
Also Sam joined us for the movie and was super curious and interested to watch it along with us.
Sam is watching the TV, while Minnal is watching Sam
I have been absolutely enjoying the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. It is set in a future world where there are bots, humans and augmented humans. One bot, manages to hack its governor module and can choose to ignore instructions that are sent to it. This bot has a passion - to kill to consume entertainment of all kinds. The story follows this bot, and the choices it makes - and how it deals with the outcome of those choices.
It is gripping, fast paced and short. Each book is a Novella which is a format that I knew of only through this series. Iāve been consuming this via audible and this is the first time Iām trying their ādramatized adaptationsā (courtesy Graphic Audio) and Iām actually enjoying it. It is very tastefully done. Recommended.
Iām already on book 4 of 7 in the series. So if youāre looking for something sci-fi that you can finish in 1/2 sittings, then pick up All systems red.
We watched Thunderbolts* over the weekend and it was the first MCU movie in a long while that both Prasanna and I enjoyed. Good premise, OK execution, tight movie. I hope they continue this and build the next phase very well. I am quite excited for Fantastic 4 already - looks really nice.
Links
If you havenāt already heard this quick bit from Neil deGrasse Tyson about our existence in accordance with the universe around us, then I implore you to hear it.