A recent podcast from 99% invisible nudged me to get Nate DiMeo’s book - The Memory Palace. I’ve always loved the Memory Palace podcast. Super intrigued to see how Nate carries over the suspense in written form. 🔗

Nothing to beat sunning on a calm and quite weekend morning with some steaming hot coffee.

Built a Rewind page to nudge me to read my older posts. Interesting to see how my thought processes and writing has shifted over the years. This might also serve as a tool to fix any issues that might have crept in when I migrated over to Hugo. While at it, I also tweaked the archives page a bit to make it less dense.🔗

Absolutely loving the flexibility of fast-tweaking markdown files in GO. I’m far from being a programmer/developer, but with a dash of AI and some bare minimum logic sense, I’ve been able to build scripts to do a bunch of modifications on this site on the go. 🔗

M just received an invite for the CA-AEFM March'25 cohort. Long overdue! Adds a small wrench to our planning for the PCS next year but as Pappaji says - it’s a Happy problem! Super excited! 🔗

Not quite sure when or where I came across this open book - Maintenance: of everything. Fascinating read so far and I’m so glad I did save it in my quick notes whenever I did! 🔗

Got some decent progress on tweaking this portal. All hugo’d out for now though and a short break is overdue. Super slow weekend otherwise. Watched Moana 2. Meh. Not much story but decent visuals. Tragedy of sequels, maybe?

Moved over the syndication links in my posts to post-meta. The syndication icon only shows up if a valid link is present in the FrontMatter of a post. Once micro.blog picks up the feed, it’s currently set to auto publish to the fediverse on my GoToSocial (GTS) instance. On the backend, a GO script fetches the RSS feed from my GTS instance and saves the RSS feed item link and the corresponding link to my post in a JSON file. Another script quickly looks up which post’s FrontMatter needs to be updated for the syndication links in each post and updates the files as needed. A bit windy but seems to do the job for now. I might end up consolidating these into just one script later and/or directly use the masto API to publish to the fediverse and grab the syndication link from there. For now, I’m pretty psyched this is all working.

Just struck me that most of my disk drives are quite old. Almost all of them were salvaged from old laptops. Age does not necessarily equate to performance and I do have decent backups, but only a question of time before I see them going kaput. Living vicariously on the edge when it comes to self-hosting!

Spent a good few hours yesterday and ported my garmin data over to this site here. It’s turned out better than my wordpress plugin and is way simpler to manage. I’ve still got quite a few tweaks to do but I’m super happy with how this has turned out!

This is such a neat idea. Love a good purposeful e-ink display! Adding his book to my read-list.

That didn’t last long. Moved over to Hugo from WriteFreely for a bit more flexibility. This site is going through some major overhaul. Slowly and recklessly.

The pains and joys of self-hosting and tinkering. There’s always something that is broken, ready to be fixed, to be upgraded, can be built upon or changed. It is like a puzzle that constantly evolves depending on the time you invest in it. And every once in a while it exposes the silver lining that keeps you hooked to it.

M and I tend to share photos with family and friends on various chat groups. While straightforward, It felt redundant to share copies of the same pictures in multiple places. I’ve been looking for options to share album links instead that would give us a bit more control. All our photos are primarily saved in a Nextcloud self-hosted instance. I explored a few options of album shares there but wasn’t quite happy. Pixelfed was another option I explored. It did check most of the requirements but I wasn’t quite comfortable relying on a software that’s mostly dependent on just one developer. Also the unlisted feature on their albums seemed half-baked and not yet ready for prime-time. Finally played a bit with PhotoPrism and so far it seems to be something that checks all the boxes. With private links, a PWA app and great thumbnails this might be the closest solution for my photo needs.

Been looking for a Google voice number replacement for sometime now and looks like I might have found one that meets most of my needs. Just got a JMP number and ordered a sim with a data plan. The cheogram app so far has been great and once I get the SIM I might slowly transition things out of GV.

Brought the Grand Vitara home today. We’d been on the lookout for a decent car ever since we knew about our next posting. We don’t need one here in CDMX but would definitely need one in Yaounde. All I wanted was a reliable bare minimum car with no gadgetry shabangs. Over the last few months folks on their PCS did post a few decent cars but these are barely in the market for a few hours. With this one though, the stars seemed to align all well one day and we were able to seal the deal in a few hours.

Given the mileage, the GV might need some maintenance over the next few years. It rides like butter now though and reminds me of the Grand Cherokee we had in NYC/BOS.

Went to a Blue Man Group performance last Friday. Our first and most likely last. The drums were great but the theatrics left a lot to be desired. Also didn’t help that S was in one of her super emotional moods…

Used the spare RPI3 I salvaged from the NCP migration and made a decent digital photo frame. Ever since I consolidated all my photos, I’ve been wanting to setup a digital frame that would take us back in time on command. Some version of ‘On this day’ – but for photos. I think I have a solution that is close to what I had in mind. The photos are currently on a USB drive synced from my Nextcloud server via a cron job. I still need to work out how I choose what photos get displayed when. But so far, I am pretty happy with how this has turned out.

Last weekend I got a bit cocky and decided to upgrade the distro on the NextcloudPi. The upgrade seemed to go well until it threw a PHP error which got me going in circles. In hindsight, I’d setup automatic upgrades on NextcloudPi and Nextcloud, which seems to have conflicted with the actual distribution’s update. Now I did take a backup, but that didn’t quite sit well with the now upgraded system and the myriad PHP issues.

Had enough of the band-aid fixes and decided to migrate the nextcloud server to a laptop that was just lying around unused. Decided to stick with the NexcloudPi OS since it has served me super awesome over the last seven years. I did make sure the auto upgrades were disabled though! Also RSync is awesome!

An added  bonus is that I now have a spare RPi3 to tinker with! Not quite dumbing down, am I?

S was having a rough day on Saturday and was scrunched up against me all day. Around 1900 I checked my work phone and saw that Mo had texted earlier that morning asking if I would be interested in hiking Pico de Aguilar the next day. I wanted to confirm immediately but given S’s health I wasn’t quite sure. Decided to take a call the next morning and hit the bed. Thankfully, on Sunday morning, S seemed to have almost recovered and I decide to head out to meet Mo at his place. With some starting troubles (literally!) we finally leave for Ajusco around 0830.

The drive up is super straightforward and we park at the trailhead around 1000. We decide to take on the steeper parts of the climb first going clockwise. Around 1200 we reach Pico de Águila (12596’) and in another 30 minutes we summit Cerro La Cruz del Marquez (12871’). The way down from the Cerro was super steep at an 82° gradient. So glad we decided not to climb up from here and note to self to bring a knee brace for these downhills next time I hike here in CDMX. The loose volcanic soil and incessant pebbles make for dicey path downhill. We finish the hike at around 1400 and relish some hot cakes at one of the shacks at the base.

More than anything, this hike was a major morale booster after last weeks Izta attempt.

2024-04-14 09:43:52 - Pico de Águila et Cerro La Cruz del Marquez 🥾 Hiked 4.69 miles in 04:50:29 Pace : 61.94 min/mile. Elevation Gain : 2405 ft. Elevation Loss : 2384 ft. Calories : 1810 Location : La Magdalena Contreras 💓 : 152

Setup a basic gallery page on my website that automatically updates and displays thumbnails from all my posts. Turned out to be a fun mini project and I’ve now scratched a long time itch!

Some good time up in the air above the Teotihuacán pyramids. Flight was super smooth and with us landing right over a cactus field, the ending was even better!

Working with S on her first ever Junior ranger activity sitting right above the clouds. The park ranger sneaked in an ’eating vegetables’ pact in her oath and handed over a pretty cool wooden badge.

Super short hike up to the overlook. Absolutely mesmerized to see the Tradewinds holding down the sea of clouds!

That’s approximately 6 months of particulate we didn’t breathe in thanks to the air purifier! From just one room…ugh!

A friend led a whisky tasting session last night. The Mexican Prieto Y Prieta was terrific. Even better though was spending some great time with a group of guys with such different backgrounds!

Setup a Linkding instance on the Moose for better managing my bookmarks. Not a huge fan of the name but it’s a great lightweight app doing just what it’s built for.

The HTTP Shortcuts app on FDroid is a decent partner app to share bookmarks from the phone.

Infyblogs and the internal BB were a great place to hang out! Over the last couple decades, haven’t quite  found a thriving network that is anywhere similar to those channels. Thinking of it, my foray into Linux was solely due to InfyLUG! Wonder if they still have those running!

After last weekends’ hike, I threw my back out doing something super mundane. Had to take a day off work just to let it heal out. Tiny muscles I didn’t know existed were screaming out. If anything, it made me realise how incredibly complex our bodies are and a subtle reminder to strengthen the core.

Focusing on the ‘Why’ rather than the ‘Who’ when doing a postmortem of an incident - Such a nuanced yet pivotal shift!

Super interesting how so many things unrelated connect in weird ways!

Terrific night at Pinche Bar. M would have had a great time had she come.

Ouch! You probably need to get their Expedition edition for 2024.

Bought a desk organizer a few weeks ago to arrange all my micro systems. The NUC, RPi NCP, Odroid and routers all now sit neatly in one space. The sliding shelves are an added bonus and the open back and sides give a lot of space for air circulation and cable management.

A got some green beans when she came over on a flying visit. Roasted these the other day. Super aromatic and flavorful.

S & I watched The Christmas Chronicles as M & JP head out this evening to watch the Ballet Forklorico in Castillo de Chapultapec. She enjoyed it and it was a great wrap up to Christmas 2023!

S had a seemingly sudden meltdown on the way back from her roller skating class asking for a ‘Hello Kitty Donut’. She hopped off her bike and said she won’t ride it until we got her one that very instant. M told her we could talk about it once we’re home. The looming thunder clouds didn’t seem to budge her too. M seemed to have had a word with her and that somehow changed her mind - a bit. Finally she did succumb, however vehemently showing her immense dissatisfaction by bawling and walking her bike home.

M brings me up to speed once we’re home. A couple months ago, M apparently had promised her a donut the day she wore all her protección while skating. Today happens to be that day and in her mind S had all right to protest when we didn’t close our end of the deal.

This kids got an elephant’s memory just like her Mom! While that’s a terrific thing, I’ve got work cut out for me!

Every kid should be taught the surgeon’s knot. Ever since I started using it to tie my shoe laces, not once has it failed!

Appa’s been mentioning Luray Caverns for a while now, so we decided to head there this weekend. He did pretty well despite his knees giving him a tough time. ‘Oh so worth it. Simbly beautiful’ - his words!

While at it, we got our annual national parks pass and decided to do the scenic drive in Shenandoah. S had a terrific time hopping on top of the car and addressing the wilderness at almost every pull-over area.

This labor day weekend, the fam VRBOd a pretty nice woodsy property in the Poconos. It’s been years since some of us have met! The adults had some great time together just winding down while the kids literally brought the place down. The property had direct access to the Beltzville lake and almost everyone took to the water. A first of kinds…The kayaks weren’t the best maintained and a couple of us did take some falls in the water. Life jackets came in super handy! So thankful I learnt swimming early on. This weekend did bring out the outdoorsy flair from everyone.

As I walked up from the basement this early morning, I got to capture this beautiful picture of the light from the laundry room ’lighting’ up the lamp from the Kolam. We performed Appa’s Satabhishekam today. His sisters could attend the ceremony in person and a good bunch of family zoomed in. Until yesterday, we weren’t even sure we’d make it in time for the event. Phew!

He’s turning 86 this year! Several circumstances pushed this celebration until now and we’re so glad we could make it happen today. Highlight of the event was undoubtedly the veda recital at the end of the ceremony. Wish we recorded it!

[caption id=“attachment_37938” align=“aligncenter” width=“1200”] Sinhagad at a distance. This picture is from on of my previous hikes.[/caption]

Sharp at 0600 as we finally reach the road that winds up to Sinhagad, Ankur and I take a moment to savor the twilight chill. The last 7.5 hours has been nothing short of mesmerizing and rewarding. Just as it was twelve years ago when I did this hike with a much larger group.

Part of me wanted to just camp right on the first hill. To think of it, this has been something I’ve wanted to do for a while. Next time around, I should probably start a bit early and set camp on the hill just before Sinhagad so I can catch sunrise there.

Yesterday, something which had been up in the air for more than a year and half, finally fell in place. So this hike is also a celebration of sorts.

‘Urbanization’ peeking in quite adjacent to the Hauz Khas fort. This beautiful reservoir and the surrounding wooded area sealed the deal! Spent quite some time exploring around here this evening. Can’t wait to introduce M&S to this place.

Over the last few months, I have been able to drastically reduce the digital clutter with two key tools - Anonaddy and KTN. Anonaddy lets you spin up email aliases on-the-go and sever them as needed.  KTN let’s you subscribe to newsletters in your feed reader via RSS. Pretty cool concept and I love how easy it is to use! Highly recommend!

That’s one neat, much-needed reminder!

Of late, the NUC has been getting really hot. Core CPU temperatures were hitting the 80s despite the system being on literally no load. When I first bought it in mid-2020, I was aware that this lineage of tiny monsters were known for their ‘hot’ness and the fan being a bit loud.  Only over the last few months have I really seen this sudden spike in temperatures though.

The first obvious step was to get rid of the plastic lid and get those aluminum heat-sinks. That helped a bit until yesterday when the temps shot to the 90s for no reason. A quick htop run didn’t seem to show any processes that were hogging resources. Troubleshooting this a bit further, I figured I did run some apt updates a few days back that triggered Kernel updates. I might now have to get into the BIOS and see if any firmware updates are pending. As luck might have it though, the current keyboard that I have functions via Bluetooth only and I can’t quite use it to get into the BIOS. I do have an alternate keyboard, again Bluetooth but this one comes with a USB receiver - which I conveniently left in my tech black-box in MD! 🤦 Really hope M doesn’t forget bringing it!

For now, I installed the cpupower-gui tool and set the Governor to ‘powersave’ mode. Does seem to have done the trick for now. I might have to open up the unit and see if it needs some deep cleaning with some compressed air. Sometime soon I guess!

Also I guess to subconsciously coax more people to do it? This is a fascinating concept and I wish something that was replicated widely.

Yet another terrific early AM outing to the beach. S and V joined Coach R’s group for an athletics workout session. As one of his junior coaches guided the kids on the beach sand drills, I took this opportunity to chat up with this cheerful 75+(?) year old gentleman. Quite a humbling personality and a treasure trove of information. A couple hours swiftly breezed by. I could tell his memory was slowly failing him and only wish someone documents his wisdom. Some people leave that impeccable impression on you…

#TIL When infected with measles, the immune system takes a reboot and abruptly erases every memory of pathogen it’s had before, essentially making your body vulnerable to infections. Rebuilding immunity takes years…

in 2002, a group of Japanese scientists discovered that the receptor the measles virus binds to – a kind of molecular lock that allows it to enter the body – isn’t in the lungs, as you would expect for a respiratory virus. Instead, it’s on cells from the immune system.

“Measles suppresses the immune system, and activates it at the same time,” says Swart. Though measles deletes immune memories, there is one exception to these losses. Oddly, the only virus you’ll definitely be able to recognise after falling sick with measles is measles itself. The measles paradox

This was a fascinating read!

Coach R didn’t quite turn up today. Super slow run-walk giving Miss V company. Tad bit far but this beach stretch is pretty nice.

2022-02-12 06:02:48 - VGP Morning run 🏃 Ran 1.13 miles in 00:18:54 Pace : 16.73 min/mile. Elevation Gain : 42 ft. Elevation Loss : 42 ft. Calories : 196 Location : Chennai 💓 : 152

Spent some time today quasi-automating the gpx fetch and mapping from garmin. A modified python script fetches the gpx from garmin-connect and builds the map-tiles that I can now embed in my workout posts. I simultaneously back these up in my nextcloud instance for redundancy and am otally thrilled how this is all come together!

Back at MC for a few more loops.

2022-02-08 16:50:49 - MC loops R-W-R 🏃 Ran 2.4 miles in 00:38:43 Pace : 16.14 min/mile. Elevation Gain : 112 ft. Elevation Loss : 870 ft. Calories : 414 Location : Chennai 💓 : 161

@Alligator Blender should be able to handle something like this.

A few laps at MC with S and V. Went in closer to noon and the temps were just right! Nasal only with the mask on. Right after the first lap, I had this tightness in the upper chest which eased out over the next few loops and I definitely could have picked up my pace if I really wanted.  The calves were ’talking’ right after the run and the fresh OJ which I gulped down was just what the body needed…Great consecutive run after yesterday. I’m kinda liking getting back to this.

2022-02-06 11:11:22 - MC loops 🏃 Ran 1.68 miles in 00:26:05 Pace : 15.53 min/mile. Elevation Gain : 82 ft. Elevation Loss : 70 ft. Calories : 292 Location : Chennai 💓 : 163

With the lock-down being lifted, S & I head to the beach. Some slow barefoot running in the sand. Been several (8?) months that I’ve really run and today it was good just being out there.

2022-02-05 06:39:02 - Marina Barefoot 🏃 Ran 1 miles in 00:18:42 Pace : 18.7 min/mile. Elevation Loss : 2 ft. Calories : 189 Location : Chennai 💓 : 152

Last evening we were at MC. The plan was to get a swim in and head back home. Been a while that we hung out here. 8 years? Nothing much has changed. Which is great, because it did bring back some great memories. I wish I chronicled these better then. The first time I was here, was to see if we wanted it to be a venue for the wedding. Thinking of which, wow it’s going to be 10 years soon! Time flies!

P and I decided to order some Orange Juice for ourselves. S joined and we got some snacks. In about twenty minutes rest of the family joined and we decided to go all in and have dinner here. Overlooking the greens and the river, this is one beautiful serene place. Nothing to beat an unplanned dinner together with the family. Should do this more often.

@Morganhousel wrote a fantastic post yesterday outlining how each person’s trajectory is riddled with ‘flukes’. Humanity constantly evolves from a quagmire of possibilities and there’s very little merit in looking in retrospect. I think the likelihood of a successful forecast can only be enhanced if we work with the factors in the present - not the past, not the future. The past is barely helpful and you’d rather not rely on those from the future. (Odd I say that after all those years I spent churning numbers as an actuarial analyst.) Ultimately what trumps is that humans find it really hard to delineate emotions from decision making. As much as you’d like to disagree, you see it in every realm - Medicine, Finance, Sports, Academics, Health just to name a few.

In 2016, we had a fascinating close call on I-15 S while heading towards New Haven. (Fascinating because, I learnt it the hard way and everyone who drives a car and has a floor-mat should be aware of this.) Accidents tend to give you that moment for retrospect and back then I jotted something similar to the thoughts I have today:

The proverbial – ‘Everything happens for a reason’ is just not true. I believe the human brain does a wonderful job in assigning a reason to the cause and quite conveniently this is always subtly and retrospectively done. In its quest to find reason, it ends up triggering neural connections that emotionally and logically seem reasonable. So when and how do we draw the line while making choices and how do you substantiate the choices you’ve made? Or is the whole premise that as a logical and emotional machine you’re feeding good and bad data (choices) as a stimulus to train the body to better react to unforeseeable situations in the future?

I’ve taken quite some risky shifts in my career over the last decade. Most driven by what I felt at that very moment - Gut instinct. Absolutely none that I regret. And most have been very rewarding. So when it comes to making a choice at that critical moment, I try and keep retrospectives at bay. Every once in a while, I do catch myself careening from this golden rule. That’s when I take a good pause, stop connecting the dots and look at just that isolated dot at that moment. It’s worked wonders before and I trust that streak to continue. Irony being, my previous statement moots everything I said before! What can I say, we’re a good bunch of optimistic morons.

The more that I read and the more that I build, with every additional service that I self-host, I realize there are so many points of failure - each becoming more evident as time passes and experience grows. The blaring one’s get attended to sooner or later, and the not-so-urgent one’s remain there - slowly tended to on the whims and fancies of time and interest. Until, from a different perspective, what you judged to be urgent or frivolous flips and then you are just not sure what you are dealing with.

This must be why it’s so addictive. There are more questions than straightforward solutions. There’s so much uncertainty veiled with the promise of freedom, curiosity and learning. There’s the thrill in making things work despite it being a non-standard approach. And ultimately it’s all yours - the wins and the losses. Well, mostly the losses. But hey, even before you stop to assess, there’s something new round the corner that someone’s built - Intricate yet imperfect. Just what you need to spin-off in that direction…

This. is. why? What’s your reason?

@ajaymreddy Front Redmine/AppFlowy/Taiga/focalboard with authelia and that should do it. Or you could go old school with WP+plugins.

@Alligator I’m glad I got most of my family off apple a few years ago.The ecosystem and apps are great but there’s so little room for fun tweaking. I’ve had my eyes on Dex and Ubuntu’s convergence for a while too. For now though, I’m happy with my modular workstation setup. Another stream of thought is to port the fam to a Snikket/XMPP/matrix ecosystem so we’re lesser dependent on external networks. That’s going to take a bit of planning and coaxing though untill the matrix bridges are a bit more robust :).

Over the last month, I seem to have switched into a better reading rhythm. I’d probably attribute it to having a bit more time and mind-space for myself. Also, I figured I needed a better system to keep track of the books I had in queue.  While Wallabag has been a terrific tool to assimilate, read and archive articles that I’ve come across online; I badly needed one for books too. Last month, I set a bare-bones system in my note-taking tool and this seems to do the trick for now!

I don’t have a goal as such for this year. I do however want to get to these books that I have in my reading queue.

Built this robust scooter for little S last evening. Absolutely love how intricate these infento kits can get. Kept both of us engaged for more than four hours. The scooter should keep her occupied for a few days…or not…

As we inch towards working on premises, I’m super excited about the travel, move up north and the perceived freedom it brings along. The mountains are truly calling!

Hopped in a cab at 04:30 am and head to Animeshs’ to catch-up over a shortish bike ride. Some great off-road mountain biking through the Mrigavani WIldlife Park led us to a lesser known beautiful spot overlooking the Osman Sagar lake. Been a while that I’ve done some good mountain biking and looks like I badly needed this get-away!

2021-10-10 06:20:03 - Hyderabad Cycling 🚴 Biked 16.25 miles in 02:58:15 Pace : 10.97 min/mile. Elevation Gain : 627 ft. Elevation Loss : 611 ft. Calories : 1721 Location : Hyderabad 💓 : 163

Hopped into an auto-rikshaw and bypassed the crowded section of the road from Injambakam to Thiruvanmayur. And looks like I did hit the 4hr mark :)

2021-08-28 08:02:59 - ECR closeout 🤸 Other 3.58 miles in 01:00:06 Pace : 16.79 min/mile. Elevation Gain : 147 ft. Elevation Loss : 139 ft. Calories : 405 Location : Chennai 💓 : 143

Great weather! Plan was to head towards Kovalam, spend about 4 hours outdoors and see what my endurance baseline was. Turned around at Sholinganallur since I had to use the restroom. This is something I need to plan for while in India. The lack of good public restrooms / porta porties is a huge detriment.

So glad I decided to head via OMR. The wider road along with the service road definitely made it feel safer.

2021-08-28 04:31:48 - Towards Kovalam 🤸 Other 11.97 miles in 03:10:28 Pace : 15.91 min/mile. Elevation Gain : 238 ft. Elevation Loss : 247 ft. Calories : 2285 Location : Chennai 💓 : 176

The Bluetooth on my NUC stopped working after an apt upgrade last evening. A good chunk of troubleshooting did no help. My initial hunch was that this was caused by the kernel upgrade. Reverting didn’t help though. I finally caved in and ordered a USB<>Audio adapter. This morning, It struck me that this could be due to the BIOS which I haven’t updated in a while. And I was spot on! Now I have a pretty functional Bluetooth system, an up-to-date machine and yet another adapter which goes into my mystery black-box.

Marina was closed! Possibly to reduce footfall during the local holiday? Wrapped this up with breakfast at Murugan Idli.

2021-08-21 05:54:04 - No 4 🤸 Other 3.37 miles in 00:52:26 Pace : 15.56 min/mile. Elevation Gain : 150 ft. Elevation Loss : 132 ft. Calories : 549 Location : Chennai 💓 : 160

Did want to head till N4 beach. Decided to turn around a bit earlier and grab a cup of tea at Santhome Sangeetha instead. Need to head out much earlier to beat the traffic and the smoke!

2021-08-15 06:05:17 - Independence N4 🤸 Other 5.86 miles in 01:28:47 Pace : 15.15 min/mile. Elevation Gain : 299 ft. Elevation Loss : 275 ft. Calories : 1027 Location : Chennai 💓 : 171

Celebrations at the farmhouse.

2021-08-08 16:21:17 - Adyar River Trail - Thiru Vi Ka Bridge 🤸 Other 5.57 miles in 01:28:04 Pace : 15.81 min/mile. Elevation Gain : 328 ft. Elevation Loss : 318 ft. Calories : 886 Location : Chennai 💓 : 165

A really inquisitive young monkey made its way to the pool area this evening. It had its fair share of fun skirting along the pool circumference and jumping in on the shallow end to ‘play’ with the water toys and held us ‘hostage’ for a good 20 minutes. On our way out, Shasta had a close encounter with him/her and she was supremely amazed by his eye color! One terrific evening.

Not sure how I came across this, but I’m so glad I did bookmark it to watch-later. A beautiful film with terrific snow mountain videography and kids!

Having Shasta probably makes me appreciate this a lot more. Meena and I started taking Shasta out on hikes since she was about 3 weeks old. We expose her to sharp tools and fire under close supervision. I still think there’s so much more we could do with her once we overcome our fear of exposing her to the elements. And this video was a much needed terrific reminder of how short we were falling on that metric!

https://vimeo.com/574547591

Meena video interviewed my dad this weekend. The intent was to document his thoughts and perspectives of the years gone by and to get glimpses of his generation. We learnt so many interesting things about our family that we wouldn’t have known if we hadn’t done this. An oral history of sorts! This has been on the back burner for a while now and I’m so glad we got this rolling! This along with the family tree project has sent me down the rabbit hole of documenting our ancestral history.

#TIL you don’t quite have to give your email address (or it’s alias) to subscribe to substack newsletters. Just append ‘/feed’ to the publication link to fetch its RSS feed.

Warmup { 30 sec plank 10 sec rest 30 sec BW squat 10 sec rest 30 sec bounding } x 6 4 min rest { 10 sec slow high knees 10 sec medium high knees 10 sec fast high knees 30 sec rest } x 8 Cool-down

2021-06-28 15:49:40 - The Quad 16/30 🤸 Cardio for 00:40:38 Calories : 328 💓 : 135

Warmup, { 30 sec Squat parallel hold 10 sec switch 30 sec elbow plank 10 sec switch 30 sec hollow hold 10 sec switch 30 sec burpees 30 sec rest } x 10 Cool-down

2021-06-26 15:47:30 - The Quad 15/30 🤸 Cardio for 00:44:05 Calories : 298 💓 : 122

Warmup, { 30 sec Burpees 30 sec rest } x 10 2 min rest { 50 Dynamic Hollow holds 5 Reverse lunges - each side 10 mts crawl 100 mts run } x AMRAP in 18 min Cool-down

2021-06-24 06:49:57 - The Quad 14/30 🤸 Cardio for 00:48:18 Calories : 303 💓 : 119

Warmup Every minute on the minute: { 10 sec Quick feet 15 sec Plank 15 sec Burpees 20 sec Rest } x 25 Cool-down

2021-06-22 15:46:07 - The Quad 13/30 🤸 Cardio for 00:40:58 Calories : 341 💓 : 138

Just published Appa’s first book - ‘Smell of the Soil’ in print format. This has been on his (and my) ’to-do’ list for a while now. We did publish the digital version in December 2017 and looking back makes me wonder why we didn’t publish the print version earlier!

It’s been a few years that he’s been wanting to do this and we’ve had quite some discussion on what’s the best way to publish/market and never quite came to a consensus. Today, on an impulse, I hit the publish button with a small publishing firm in India and ordered the first copy for myself. Can’t wait to get my hands on it and send him a copy!

Grab a copy here [Print - India] | [Digital]

While walking someone through a few features of Trilium notes, I realized the Trilium notes electron app is really good! Besides the offline-first feature it provides, it also lets me have an additional backup of the notes. And then I also figured, I did have to tweak the volume configuration in my yaml a bit for the data to be persistent!

Warmup 100 Squats 100 Ab-cycles 100 Burpees 100 Steps Crawl Cool-down

2021-06-20 07:49:42 - The Quad 12/30 🤸 Cardio for 00:52:53 Calories : 310 💓 : 116

Warmup, { 20 Plank Jacks + 15 BW Squats + 6 Lying-down-Stand-ups + 30 Jumping Jacks } -> As many as possible in 30 Min, Cool-down 2021-06-18 07:10:38 - The Quad 11/30 🤸 Cardio for 00:49:32 Calories : 347 💓 : 125

Warmup { 05sec Quick feet 10sec Pushups/Cross-touches 10sec Burpees 20sec Jumping Jacks 15sec rest } x 25 Cool-down

2021-06-16 15:04:55 - The Quad 10/30 🤸 Cardio for 00:44:30 Calories : 268 💓 : 119

Partner workout day! Warmup, {Set 01: 3 Squat Jumps + 1 Broad Jump + 3 Cross-touches Rest while partner finishes the set Set 02: 3 Push-ups + 1 Burpee-up + 3 Broad Jumps + 3 Squat Jumps Rest while partner finishes the set } - As many reps as possible in 25 mins Cool-down

2021-06-14 15:50:12 - The Quad 09/30 🤸 Cardio for 00:34:50 Calories : 265 💓 : 129

@ndanes@smallcamp.art I’ve had absolutely zero issues using [nextcloudpi](https://ownyourbits.com/nextcloudpi/#supported_systems). Silently been chugging along for a few years now with auto-updates and close to zero manual intervention. For the maps alternative, I’ve had my eyes on [Magic earth](https://www.magicearth.com/)

An odd and forced hiatus to the workout program that I had going with Meena. What started off as a discomfort in the tummy on Thursday afternoon led to mild fever and chills over the night. Likely the handful of saunf tipped me over? Took a few hours off from work and was back to normal this evening. Will get back to the regimen on Monday!

Partner workout day! Let’s call this a loop within loop workout!

Warmup,

For ($x = 1,  $x<=7, $x++) {

• $x Burpee(s) + Within each Burpee [For ($y = 1,  $y<=$x,  $y++) { $y Knee-to-elbow(s) }]
• $x lying-down-standing-up(s) + Right after lying down [For ($z = 1,  $z<=$x,  $z++) { $z Ab-cycle(s) }]
• Wait for partner to finish similar workout

} x As quickly as possible

Cool-down

2021-06-08 16:38:32 - The Quad 08/30 🤸 Cardio for 00:53:57 Calories : 415 💓 : 133

Partner workout day!

Warmup,

{

• 5 Squats
• 2 Burpees + Jump over partner
• 5 Crawl plank cross touches
• [Rest while partner finishes]

} x As many reps as possible within 25 minutes

Cool-down

2021-06-06 08:06:48 - The Quad 07/30 🤸 Cardio for 00:35:24 Calories : 251 💓 : 124

Warmup,

8 rounds in 32 minutes:{

• Set 01: 15s Squat holds, 15s Squats, 30s rest
• Set 02: 15s Plank, 15s Burpees, 30s rest
• Set 03: 15s Hollow Hold, 15s Lying down-Standing up, 30s rest
• Set 04: 15s Bounding, 15s Jumping Jacks, 30s rest

} x 8

Cool-down

2021-06-04 14:19:42 - The Quad 06/30 🤸 Cardio for 00:45:17 Calories : 361 💓 : 128

Warmup,

8 rounds in 24 minutes:

{

Set 01: 10s Plank, 10s Cross-touches, 15s Burpees, rest

Set 02: 10s Hollow Hold, 10s Flutter kicks, 15s Laying down+Stand up, rest

Set 03: 10s Squat Parallel, 10s Partial Squats, 15s Squat jumps, rest

} x 8

Cool-down

2021-06-02 16:30:55 - The Quad 05/30 🤸 Cardio for 00:35:58 Calories : 302 💓 : 135

“You know, sometimes all you need is 20 seconds of insane courage, just literally 20 seconds of embarrassing bravery, and I promise you something great will come of it.”

– Benjamin Mee, (We Bought a Zoo, 2011)

Warmup, {100 squats, 100 Knee-to-elbow, 50 Lying down-Standing up, 50 Burpees}, Cool-down

Burpees at the end end were …brutal!

2021-05-31 15:36:49 - The Quad  04/30 🤸 Cardio for 00:47:33 Calories : 336 💓 : 130

Warmup, {30 seconds each, 30 seconds break - Planks, Hollow hold, Burpees, Plank touches, Squat jumps, Flutter kicks, Knee-to-elbow, Ab cycles, Lying down-standing up} x 3, Cool-down

2021-05-29 15:41:03 - The Quad 03/30 🤸 Cardio for 00:45:02 Calories : 246 💓 : 113

2021-05-30 04:58:28 - Ashtanga 🧘 Ashtanga Primary Standing Poses for 00:28:31 Calories : 145 💓 : 108

It just struck me today how much I love writing crude, rewarding code. The type that is just sufficient to get the job done and that which ‘scratches your itch’ and might probably be useful for someone else too.

I am not a software developer. Never been one. My day job is far, far from it. It’s been more than a decade that I’ve worked in a software firm. And even when I did, a good bunch of my time then was spent of mainframe code [Rexx / JCL] and Change Management.

All code that I write today is self-taught. Which is probably why it’s crude? But beautiful it is, because it challenges me to think of logic first and semantics next. It pushes me to find the quickest way possible because I know exactly what I want it to do. And most importantly it keeps my mind fired and active!

Warmup, {3 Squat jumps 3 cross touches (each side), 3 laying down+standups, 15 Jumping Jacks} x AMRAP (As many rounds as possible) in 25 mins, Cool-down

2021-05-27 17:08:51 - The Quad 02/30 🤸 Cardio for 00:42:22 Calories : 294 💓 : 125

Meena won a 30-Day workout program from one of her many escapades on the internet. Thanks The Quad! We did a bootcamp a decade back while in Pune. That was fun and hoping this would be too!

Warmup, {15s Plank/Shoulder Cross-touch, 15s Squats, 10s Burpees, 20s Rest} x 25, Cool-down

Quad 30 Day : 🤸 Cardio for 00:25:00 Calories : 205

30 Minutes of great breath work and standing ashtanga sequence.

Ashtanga Standing : 🧘 Ashtanga for 00:30:00 Calories : 103

This is fascinating @petervangeit ! Wasn’t aware of SOI Maps. Thanks for sharing

Tweaked this setup further to make it a bit more seamless. I used a different but more reliable script to fetch the activity json files and setup a cron job to run twice every week. Next-up: 01. Make the parsing and data display theme agnostic. 02. Add a quick link to publish individual activities as posts if required 03. Build some cool charts :)

I’ve been struggling over the last year and a half to get back to a proper workout regimen that I like. Wanted ashtanga to be a part of it since that’s the only yoga practice I find exciting. Good to be back in the zone today. Did just the standing poses.

Ashtanga Standing : 🧘 Ashtanga for 00:35:00 Calories : 120

Also testing out my garmin plugin! :)

Earlier this week, I came across this nifty python tool that lets you backup all your garmin data from the Garmin-Connect platform. I wrote a crude WordPress plugin to parse the json files over and display the data on my website here. The tool is kind of unstable because it essentially ‘mimics’ a regular Garmin-connect login and download. Also probably the reason why there aren’t many functional plugins for Garmin on wordpress.

Should be reasonably straightforward to automate this with a cron job once I sort out the connection issues with Garmin. Also for now, I’m just posting all the activities to a single page. Might be interesting to create short posts for new activities and obviously filter them out from the RSS Feeds. Love these teeny tiny coding projects!

Your post did show up on my site as a mention though! Some day I need to sit and sort this out!

Switched over to consuming Twitter via RSS feeds. For now I am using Yarns on WP to collect the feeds and the Indigenous app / Monocle-web social reader to read/interact with tweets. With this setup, I get to stay clear of the tracking and ads [Last time I checked uBlock Origin blocked 90 trackers/ads in 3 minutes!] and more importantly use my website as the primary place where I post. While I am not quite active on twitter, this should be a great go-between to reconnect with folks who use it for their primary digital presence.

Meena’s been interested in building our family tree for a while now. Installed Gramps on her machine and she’s feeding this nifty application with all the family data. This is going to be an extended project and can’t wait to see what comes out of it. Haven’t researched much but looks like Gramps does not have a shared/collaborative edit features. It does have good export features, so should be easy to move data around to other applications if needed.

Whoa..using Matrix as a commenting system! Quite an intriguing implementation.

Overheard at NatGeo recently produced a great podcast on Orcas and I learnt about Tonic Immobility.

Shasta was watching Octonauts and guess which episode she ends up watching? - The one in which they talk about TI. Now that’s some coincidence!

Watched My Octopus Teacher earlier this week. Some stunning underwater visuals and quite a fascinating documentary. Also reminded me of the terrific Octomom podcast from Radiolab last year.

I continue to be amazed at how hassle-free my Nextcloud setup on the RPi3 is! With automated upgrades on the NextxloudPi, I’ve barely had to login to the backend for maintenance. This has been my only file server since 2017 and the best ’tech’ investment so far! There’s absolutely no reason why anyone should be saving their photos/data on someone else’s machine these days!

Miss V and I headed over to the Thiruvanmayur coast early this morning. This was her first longish bike ride (~10 mi) and she thoroughly enjoyed it. Riding on the roads here in India calls for a totally different skill-set. If living in a city, you need to ride through traffic to get to the trail/viewpoint and more often than not other vehicles drive totally oblivious of your existence. Miss V weaved in and out while navigating the traffic signals and it was a pleasure seeing her learn the ropes from the corner of my eye. We’re also using bikes that are 20+ years old! So she had to deal with skipping crank-sets and loose chains! I got them to a ride-able condition a few weeks back. However, bike maintenance is overdue and now’s probably the best time to get her into that too.

Whoa..That’s awesome! Bookmarking this for a visit when I’m in DC next!

I reworked how posts are displayed on my site - essentially moving over the micro-posts to a page of it’s own. Over time with different publishing workflows and experimentations, the site’s taken the brunt. Over the next few weeks, I plan on tweaking things further to make publishing posts quick and seamless.

Shumee evenings.

I see you!

Chasing crows

Coastal fatigue!

Crow-ette. Sunsets in Kotturpuram.

Yeah right MS! Back to installing windows after a while. Insane how many data and privacy options you need to un-selected to have a reasonably closed system…

Missing those walks around the lake!

Her newly found Bleppa’s!

Maryland Heights @ Harpers Ferry, WV.

Masked

Helmet, gloves, multiple layers of clothing and probably time to upgrade the #Infento!

Potomac tales

A pleasant surprise got mailed in today from France. #traefik

Annapolis rock on the AT. 6mi loop with terrific weather!

BWI loop ride. High 80s and windy. Totally coming back here!

Oh Oh Akam..dab dab dry..more.

Morning sightings by the arm-chair. Hawk, Kite, Vulture or just a Raven?

Run at the Oregon Ridge park. Not one single soul all through the 4 mile loop. Nasal only, all through the loop. Humid weather, nasal breathing and oh, those uphills…one good tiring run!

WB&A Trail. Clocking just shy of 12miles, Sharath’s longest ride so far! Was an out and back route and absolutely loved the last 2 miles downhill. Climb back up was not as bad as we thought it might have been!

STS celebration! Nothing to match an unexpected surprise. It’s time now to put this on the back-burner and wait for the clearances to happen.

Right by the doorstep

Aint getting off the bleachers

Looming thunder showers. Tall Poplar trail, McKeldin, Patapsco






Wondering if the froggie can work its magic #indieweb









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