Weeknotes - 2025-W21
This boy is getting cuter by the day!
This week was a hard one in the household. My in-laws’ anniversary and my MIL’s birthday are next to each other. It was always a “celebrate both together” kind of a week for us. Maybe a small story would be nice here so I will tell it. FIL was such a person that for his 60th birthday, he just invited a bunch of his close people to a restaurant and we all had some good food — that’s it. However for MIL’s 60th, he made a big fuss out of it and we organized something huge with a hall, everyone close to MIL and it being a surprise for her. It always baffled me, that for a man of that generation, his wife’s 60 was more important to him than his own — which is usually a call for “celebration” in the culture.
This was the first anniversary and birthday for MIL without him, after celebrating 36 of them together. This was the first anniversary & birthday for Prasanna that didn’t have her father in it for the first time in her 35 years. They both did their best in navigating both the days despite the blinding pain inside.
Last week, we started watching Murderbot on Apple TV. Since I have read the series (on book 7 now), I was curious to see the adaptation. After the really horrid adaptation of Lessons in Chemistry (one of my all time favourite books), I was very sceptical.
However, in the 2 episodes, I am pleasantly surprised by it. It captures the tone of the book very well and Alexander SkarsgĂĄrd has played the character really well. Excited to see the rest of the episodes as they drop.
The 1.5h of badminton this week … was done, but the court was bad. They said it was “air cooled” (not “air conditioned”). The only thing we felt was that it was “not cooled” 🤦🏾
Definitely not going back to Guts, Egmore again during the summer.
I’ve been thinking about buying a tablet for my reading. There’s a lot for me to study to improve my knowledge of public policy and the laptop is too much of a distraction for me.
I was looking at the Boox e-ink tablets but they are ridiculously expensive. The most affordable tablet there, does not have backlight 🤷🏾. Can’t wait for market dynamics to kick in there and make them affordable to the masses. The kindle is there already, but the walls around the kindle garden are just too high at the moment.
At this time, the OnePlus Pad Go is the leading contender.
Attended the Chennaipy meetup this month after GCPP. If you’re a techie in Chennai, I urge you to join us. It doesn’t matter if you use Python or not - language is just a tool. I’ve been a part of this community since 2014 and its been one of the best investment I’ve made for myself. I don’t write any python on a day to day basis - but I go back just for the people.
Its a place where I go every month, to get out of my bubble, and meet folks who are much more intelligent than I am. Some folks in the meetup are dear friends and I ended up working with one of them and running conferences with a few others.
So come, join us in June and experience this for yourself.
I submitted 2 talk proposals for PyCon India and India Foss. One of them is an extended version of a short talk I gave in Chennaipy a few months ago. The other one is a “back to the basics” kind of talk with a friend from Chennaipy - he is an expert in networking and I think there is real value in going back to the basics to understand things more clearly.
Here are the proposals, if you’re a techie reading this, please read them and feel free to share your feedback.
- Embrace the Grind: Why your next project should be deployed like you are in 1999
- Know thy packets: Demystifying network fundamentals with Scapy
I hope the reviewers see enough value in them. Now we wait 🤞🏾
We bought a nice nightlamp for the bedside and I hope that I can do more reading before going to bed now!
Reading
I’ve finished reading book 6 of the Murderbot series. Only the 7th remains. Will pick it up this week perhaps. I think this isn’t a finished series, so I am looking forward to the next books too.
I bought “Economics in one lesson” by Henry Hazlitt. It was a book I’ve wanted to buy for long and a friend that I met at Rootconf recommended it, so I picked it up.
Writing
- Summer is here and the flowers are blooming - Prasanna wrote this. If you like her writing, please do follow her on Substack.
Listening
- Tool - Invincible. The drums/guitar section in the middle is drool worthy.