A glimpse of the past week and the few things that captivated my attention:

With the kids at home, weather mostly good and the lock-down lifted we did venture out a bit and got a lot of hikes in this week. We obviously had all masks on and avoided crowded spaces. Also had this sudden realization that most of the hikes I was doing over the past few years in Baltimore were on the banks of the Patapsco river. Would be wonderful to plan a good long 15-20 miler one of these days. Should be a good recce for the half-marathon that I said I would organize for Meena, Nancy and Sharath next month!

Wonderful talk with Atchuth last night on servers and hosting content! On my end, I installed a small switch for my devices. Also ordered a 2TB external drive since the laptop that I backup my files on is slowly reaching full capacity.

Took appa out for a drive yesterday. His first outing in over three months now. I think it’s reasonably safe for him to head outdoors now. I do really want to take him to the Number nine trolley hike we did today.

I’m absolutely loving the share article feature on Wallabag (And also Selfoss). It helps me share articles with family and friends without the annoying ads while providing a link to the source. I totally understand that certain publishers need ads to produce quality journalism. What I am not comfortable with is, them using that to track me. In the links that I share below, most are linked to my wallabag instance’s public share. If I refer to an individual’s blog post however, I’ll link directly to the source. The only downside to that is, people tend to move across CMS or blogging software and links get orphaned…

Interesting tools this week:

The /e/ Foundation: My next phone is most likely going to be running this OS.

Jpegoptim: Linux tools to compress images on a whim

Interesting podcasts this week:

Octomom: The octopus species that broods its eggs for close to five years!

Interesting reads this week:

What does your gaze reveal about you?: A ridiculous whole lot! Will have to get back to this later to explore more of the links. The amount of information that can be gleaned and analyzed is pretty intriguing. The age-old saying goes - ‘Eyes are the windows to a person’s soul’. Looks like we humans took a good note of that!

Go squat!: Something that’s so common-place in India (And several other countries)…It’s like coming back a full circle.

Would you want your tax dollars to be invested in Public-Private partnerships?: When it comes to a choice between investing in humans and investing in technology, I’d rather invest in humans. I understand why it’s a hard sell though…

Converting type A blood to type O: Applications for this are huge! Imagine not having to wait to find donors for a specific blood type.

Swiper, no swiping! Privacy.com relies on plaid, which was bought by Visa recently…The good old days of relying on cash ought to be back.