Moderation is Hard. Moderation is Very Important.
Wed, Apr 10 '24
Moderation, CoC, etc are very important. But they’re also very hard. To be a moderator is as difficult a job as it is to be a leader ...
Judah's Curation of OCW courses
Thu, Mar 28 '24
Judah spammed me with a list of courses from OCW (probably related to technology, yes, I asked for it). So I decided to review them. ...
FOSSMeet 2023
Sat, Feb 03 '24
My talk at FOSSMeet 2023 of NIT Calicut ...
Caddy Statistics with GoAccess
Sat, Feb 03 '24
Setting up Caddy logging and GoAccess analysis ...
The magics of scrcpy
Sun, Jan 28 '24
When you already have a super powerful camera and microphone in your phone, why should you struggle with video on your computer? ...
Districts without Domino's
Wed, Jan 24 '24
Which districts of India do not have a Domino’s Pizza Store in it? ...
Hardening Mailu
Wed, Jan 03 '24
I ran an open relay with Mailu for a few weeks. Here is how I fixed it. ...
Subtitling Experiments 2023
Thu, Dec 07 '23
Is it the best time to be alive as a subtitle-r? ...
50 Shades of Open
Mon, Nov 20 '23
Open this, open that, open everything. Is anything ever open? ...
Downloading Ward Maps from OpenStreetMap using Overpass
Mon, Sep 11 '23
You can download ward maps from OSM by following this ...
Understand Social Media's Role in Democratic Backslide
Sat, Sep 09 '23
It is one thing to say social media is bad, it is another thing to understand how social media is affecting our democracy and respond to it ...
Discovering Social Coop
Mon, Sep 04 '23
I just came to know about Social.Coop and got some useful insights into organizing commons/cooperatives/anarchic/decentralized groups ...
Nextcloud instance on local network
Wed, Aug 23 '23
How to get nextcloud kinda working on the local network (on Windows) ...
Android Web Hosting Setup
Sun, Aug 13 '23
You can theoretically (if all stars align) host a website on your android phone ...
How reading fast helps me stay on top of things
Thu, May 11 '23
What if you could read twice the books in half the time? Would you practise a new skill? ...
Two Experiments for Productivity and Efficiency
Thu, May 11 '23
This blog post explores the benefits of new habits and experimentation for increased productivity and efficiency. ...
Browsing through Omeka S source code
Fri, Apr 21 '23
I like to learn things by looking at the source code. ...
Every Developer Should Have a Blog
Tue, Apr 04 '23
Why should every developer have a blog? ...
Intention To leave Twitter
Tue, Mar 28 '23
I am beginning to feel it is time to leave Twitter. Why? ...
Rules for Software Engineers
Tue, Jan 17 '23
If your job title includes “software engineer”, here’re some rules you should follow ...
Religion and Law in India - Questions
Wed, Jan 04 '23
What are some things I want to read from an essay about religion and law in India ...
My 2023 mobile blogging workflow
Wed, Jan 04 '23
This is how I update this site in 2023 ...
ChatGPT vs Programmer
Fri, Dec 16 '22
Is there any difference between ChatGPT and programmers if ChatGPT can write React components just the way programmers do? Will programming jobs be snatched by the model? ...
Merge My PR, I Will Pay You
Sat, Dec 03 '22
If FOSS is collaboratively built, how can FOSS developers reject contributions? ...
Things to do on a boring day in software development
Tue, Nov 15 '22
If you’re not coding, what else could you be doing? ...
Give up the Free Software vs Open Source Debate
Tue, Jul 26 '22
If you really care about humanity, then you cannot waste all your time arguing about free software ...
Remaking Capitalism
Sun, Jul 24 '22
How do we make capitalism more human? What can free software and open source learn from each other? ...
Installing Apache Superset on Ubuntu 22.04 in July 2022
Wed, Jul 13 '22
Apache superset has some fragile libraries. It took a while for me to install it on my computer. This is the documentation ...
Exploring Frappe
Tue, Jul 05 '22
I wanted to understand how Frappe/ERPNext works. So I went through the codebase. ...
Tips for autopkgtest in Debian
Sat, May 28 '22
You know how to run autopkgtest, but how to run it better? ...
Some Interesting FizzBuzz Solutions
Wed, May 18 '22
FizzBuzz is fairly easy. But that’s where you can put constraints on it. Spoiler alert: Don’t read this if you want to figure some of these out yourself. ...
Prav Project
Mon, May 02 '22
Do you want to fight a losing battle against capitalism and concentration of power? Prav Project might be for you. ...
Some Tiny Personal Programs I've Written
Fri, Mar 11 '22
Tiny personal programs are tiny programs that you build for yourself for various reasons. This is a list of my tiny personal programs ...
Working on Freedom Respecting Software With Android
Wed, Oct 20 '21
If I do not have a laptop, but I do have an Android phone, can I still work on freedom respecting software? ...
Why Anti-Feminists are Anti-Feminists
Mon, Sep 06 '21
I spent a significant amount of time interacting with people in a telegram group named “Egalitarian Club” over the past couple of days. ...
Copy of Letter to Wellcome "Open" Research's Editor about Comments Policy
Fri, Aug 27 '21
Wellcome “Open” Research has a peculiar commenting policy. I wrote to their editor about how it is exclusionary. This is a copy of that email. ...
Cataract Surgery on LC230
Sun, Aug 15 '21
My laptop’s webcam had grainy images due to scratches on its webcam cover. This is how I did a surgery on it. ...
pegasus
Tue, Jul 20 '21
Pegasus Notes ...
IEEE APSIT Podcast
Sat, Jul 10 '21
An interview of mine ...
It is Natural to Feel Responsible for your Project
Thu, Jun 17 '21
Just because you don’t make money from the software you write, you don’t have to disclaim all responsibility of it ...
Book Review: Phantoms in the Brain
Wed, Jun 09 '21
A revolutionary new way of looking at how we think. ...
Hash Constants Break Encryption
Wed, Jun 02 '21
Government of India says that message hashes can be used to trace originator of messages without breaking encryption. This is a sincere lie. ...
Hourly Chime With Timers and TTS
Sat, May 29 '21
In an online session today a participant had a chime every hour that said the time “It is 4”, “It is 5”, etc. I wanted it on my computer. ...
It Was Working In Previous Release, But Not In The Present - Debugging Bugs Introduced By Dependency Upgrades
Sun, May 23 '21
Errors introduced by dependency upgrades are sometimes difficult to track down, especially if you are not clear about how dependency resolution works in node ...
Concepts in Linux
Thu, Apr 29 '21
There are a few fundamental concpets in Linux family of operating systems that one needs to be aware of before one can be proficient in using Linux ...
Seasons of Code: Methods of Encouraging FOSS Contributions
Sat, Apr 17 '21
Various methods of encouraging FOSS contributions that have been tried. Their apparent merits and demerits. ...
PostgreSQL Gotchas
Wed, Apr 14 '21
These are some interesting things I learnt about postgres from reading Learn PostgreSQL by Luca Ferrari, Enrico Pirozzi ...
Free Software is a Religion
Thu, Apr 08 '21
Is free software a movement or a religion? ...
On Hacker Culture
Thu, Apr 01 '21
What is hacker culture? What should it be? Is there a problem with hacker culture? ...
Rethinking Free Software
Thu, Mar 25 '21
Once I freed my mind from the clutch of a particular imposing presence on how to think about free software, I have been questioning some of the choices I have made in the past. This is a list. ...
What to Learn from the Downfall of RMS
Wed, Mar 24 '21
Where did RMS go wrong? What can we learn from it? ...
GSoC 2021 Organizations
Wed, Mar 10 '21
Since SMC didn’t get selected for GSoC I decided to look through the organization list in GSoC and see how many I knew. Turns out there are some nice new ones. ...
Liberated Computer
Tue, Mar 09 '21
I bought a Liberated Computer from Libre Tech Shop last week. I love it! ...
Groking Varnam - Part 2
Tue, Feb 16 '21
In part 2 of this series, we look at how varnam “learns” patterns before doing transliteration ...
Groking Varnam - Part 1
Sat, Feb 13 '21
I wanted to figure out how varnam works (and even possibly rewrite it in a modern language, for fun). So here are the notes ...
Use a Framework
Wed, Feb 10 '21
Ever so often there is a blog post or a comment that talks about how “needlessly complicated” development in <language> is. If you don’t want to handle all those complications, you have a way forward which doesn’t involve using a less powerful language - use a framework that deals with the complications. ...
MiniDebConf India 2021 Online
Tue, Jan 26 '21
MiniDebConf India 2021 Online happened past weekend. It was fun! ...
Packaging One Line Packages
Wed, Jan 13 '21
Debian project is constantly troubled by javascript (and maybe go, ruby, etc) ecosystem where projects would have too many dependencies, some of them too small. How should Debian deal with it? ...
Following Up on a Debian Bug
Tue, Dec 22 '20
What happens when you make one contribution to Debian? You get that irresistible urge to follow up. Human beings are so predictable in doing things that are rewarding. ...
My first (real) Debian Contribution
Fri, Dec 18 '20
Debian is the flagship free operating system. Over the last week I made a small, but useful contribution to Debian. It made me so happy! ...
My Gnome Shell Setup
Sat, Nov 07 '20
There was a DE show-off in Free Software Camp today. This is an expanded version of what I presented ...
WTF is economics?
Wed, Nov 04 '20
Economics is a subject I have no clue about. Therefore, I sat down to read some fundamentals today. ...
White Hat Jr seems to be in Byju's business. But what business are Indian parents in?
Fri, Oct 23 '20
India’s education system is broken at all levels - even in tech platforms ...
Free Software Camp Opening
Wed, Oct 21 '20
Free Software Camp 2020 opened last week and it has been a pretty nice experience till now ...
Book Review: How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism by Cory Doctorow
Mon, Oct 05 '20
The book might look like it is about big tech, but it is actually about capitalism and monopoly. And the how-to part of it is about policy reforms which might be a put off for some. ...
Debugging Without Logs? Use strace
Fri, Sep 25 '20
You have a process/service running in what seems to be an infinite loop. The log is turned off or is empty. How do you debug this? ...
How Not to Update Ubuntu
Sun, Sep 20 '20
tl;dr - backups matter ...
Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software And Ruins the Moral Fabric of the Tech Community
Mon, Sep 14 '20
Using “open source” and ignoring the philosophy of free software is convenient for corporate entities, but not beneficial to the society. ...
Care For Mozilla's Mission, Not Mozilla
Sat, Aug 15 '20
Mozilla might fail as a company or an organization. But Mozilla’s mission is too important to fail ...
Gotchas in setting up pom.xml (Maven)
Fri, Jul 31 '20
These are certain things that maven does which confuses new Java programmers ...
Remove MySQL/MariaDB binary logs when binary logging not enabled
Wed, Jul 29 '20
What happens when you get a “You are not using binary logging” error when you try to delete the binary logs that are taking up too much space in /var/lib/mysql ...
Modern Web Development in Java - The (Never) Complete Guide
Thu, Jul 09 '20
Coming to Java from nodejs, web development seemed extremely and unnecessarily complicated to me. After navigating the standards and specs and implementations and javadocs (and countless stackoverflow posts) here is what I know. ...
Privilege to Innovate
Wed, Jul 01 '20
They say Indians aren’t innovative in the tech space. Ever wondered why? ...
The Big Brother Will Now Tell You Which Apps You Can and Can't use On Your Phone
Mon, Jun 29 '20
India government “banned” some 59 apps today because they are “they are engaged in activities which is prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order.” This is dangerous. ...
Choosing Between Home Server and Cloud Server
Tue, Jun 23 '20
Running a server and accessing it from a different computer on a different network is one of the happiest things in learning to be a web developer. Here is how to go about it ...
List of Times Vegetarian was Used as a Word on the Internet
Tue, Jun 23 '20
Some people think that using the word “vegetarian” and “non-vegetarian” is sensationalistic. So I compiled a list of either word being used in language. ...
Where does a program start at?
Sat, Jun 20 '20
This is live notes from a talk about how programs are executed ...
My Idea Of an Ideal Decentralized Social Network built with blogs, RSS feeds (and some existing messaging system)
Fri, Jun 19 '20
RSS and static sites can act just as good as a centralized social network (or even better, considering how the latter are turning out to be universally bad) when combined with a messaging system for comments. ...
Does GPL apply to the output of an API that is released under the GPL license?
Fri, Jun 19 '20
Imagine an API software is written in GPL. Would the data that comes out of the API be under GPL? ...
Why I Won't Write Tweets Any More
Tue, Jun 16 '20
Twitter forces users to cut words, sometimes at the expense of losing meaning. This creates confusion and polarization. This is bad. ...
Converting PDF with transparency to PNG
Mon, Jun 15 '20
I keep forgetting how to convert a PDF with transparency to PNG and keep a white background ...
Checking if Aarogya Setu's Source Code Produces the App from Play Store
Mon, Jun 01 '20
Aarogya Setu’s Android source code is supposedly on github. How do we know if it is the real app? ...
Going Dark Theme in Gnome Shell, Firefox, and all sites that support it
Tue, Apr 28 '20
Did you know there is a CSS media query called prefers-color-scheme that websites can use to switch to dark mode automatically? How about going fully dark in Gnome Shell and Firefox? ...
Java lessons I learned from GBIF's github repository
Thu, Apr 23 '20
A well-written software is a textbook in itself. This is a list of java language related stuff I figured out when I went through GBIF’s repositories on github ...
Zettlr - the markdown editor I didn't know I was missing from my life
Thu, Apr 16 '20
Zettlr is a beautiful markdown editor that I discovered just today (and I’m already writing about it) ...
Verifying Telegram Reproducible Build Diff Tool
Sun, Mar 29 '20
A failed attempt at proving that Telegram’s apkdiff.py is broken ...
Moving Abroad: Worth It?
Sun, Feb 09 '20
Is it worth going to a different country for a “better” life? Or are there costs that are hidden till when one looks back? ...
Why I Stopped Caring About Mozilla
Tue, Jan 21 '20
I had been a mozilla fan-boy for years. But last year, I gave up. This is an explanation post. It is also a semi-rant. So, please apply discretion. ...
IndiaOS (the first edition)
Sat, Jan 18 '20
IndiaOS is an open-source conference organized by ERPNext and Zerodha. This is my report from attending it (as much as I recall from memory)1 There are probably many many errors in this post. (I’ve already corrected two after publishing. Please let me know if you find one.) ↩ ...
[Newsletter] Deep Work
Sun, Jan 05 '20
As is usual, new year is an opportunity to restart things and start fresh things. Here are some fresh things from my life. ...
Bad, Java! Builder Pattern, Fluent Programming
Fri, Jan 03 '20
In this post on learning Java (and OOP) as a functional programming person, I look at the builder pattern, what problem it solves, and why it may be that way ...
[SOLVED] Netbeans won't start in ArchLinux | Fix xdm-archlinux from messing up path
Thu, Dec 19 '19
Netbeans won’t start in ArchLinux if you are using xdm or xdm-archlinux because of xdm messing up with the PATH variable. Here is a fix ...
InGenius and girlGeeks hack, 2019
Tue, Nov 26 '19
inGenius is a hackathon by PES Engineering College in Bangalore. I had attended it as a mentor from Mozilla community and this is an event log ...
Why Will Devices Accept ARP Broadcast Messages when the destination MAC doesn't match theirs?
Tue, Nov 26 '19
In ARP, broadcast messages are sent to the destination mac of FF:FF……FF, why will devices accept that packet then? ...
Traceability as a Mandatory Requirement (Intermediary Liability)
Fri, Nov 22 '19
The government of India is going to make traceability mandatory in social media in order to combat the various harms various social media bring on in real world. Is it really the right way? ...
What is GirlScript?
Wed, Nov 13 '19
I had a short call with the founder of GirlScript today. This is when I first heard about the organization. ...
Building an Open Health Dashboard for the Country
Wed, Oct 30 '19
Imagine if you had granular data about health at your fingerprints the way you can look up a movie info on IMDB or a fact on wikipedia. Imagine being able to engage with and contribute to that dataset. Imagine how powerful our public health professionals would be with that kind of a tool. ...
Programmer Skills: Syntax vs Concepts
Tue, Oct 29 '19
What should a programming interview test? Whether the programmer can write correct syntax or whether they have the concepts right? ...
Intermediary Liability and the Duty of Care Approach in Software
Sun, Oct 27 '19
Should online services like Facebook be held responsible for the content that is distributed through them? What about free speech? ...
Fake Liberal/Progressive Twitter Accounts (IT Cell Caught in Action)
Fri, Oct 25 '19
On the internet you could be talking to a dog and not know the difference. This post is the story of one such incident that I personally faced. ...
Migrating Wordpress to Jekyll
Fri, Oct 11 '19
Mozilla India blog has been on wordpress for almost 9 years. The community felt that it had to be migrated to a modern framework. As a dutiful admin, I did it. This is how. ...
Addon Distributor (for self-hosted web extensions) in Rust
Sun, Oct 06 '19
How Mozilla’s decision to ban my add-on made me build a simple tool to maintain an update_link for keeping my extensions self-hosted and updateable, and using rust ...
Simple Self-hosted Newsletter
Sat, Aug 17 '19
I have been trying really hard to get a simple, small, non-scalable, flat-file based mailing list going on for a long time now. This is a note of what I am building ...
Reverse Sexism - Possible?
Wed, Aug 14 '19
What is reverse sexism? Can it exist? Can it not exist? ...
Collaborative data exploration (in R)
Mon, Jul 08 '19
You have collected a lot of data (whatever be your field). You have done your own exploratory analyses on this and perhaps even published a few papers. What next? ...
Anarchic Conferences
Sat, May 11 '19
Are there limits to what anarchic systems can do? Can an anarchic system organize an offline conference? ...
Understanding Certbot
Mon, Mar 25 '19
Ever wished you did not have to struggle with certbot and could just understand how it works? This guide is for you. ...
bspwm
Mon, Mar 25 '19
I have been a fan of i3 for a couple of years now. But today I heard about bspwm, took the plunge and has been extremely happy about the switch ...
Intro to Live Coding
Fri, Mar 22 '19
Report on a live coding workshop I attended today ...
Inserting ZWJ in LyX
Mon, Mar 18 '19
Zero-Width Joiner is a character used in languages like Malayalam and Persian to connect characters and form a complex character. LyX was giving me trouble in inserting those characters. This is how deep the rabbit hole goes ...
Spreadhseet pro-tip: Using countifs over multiple columns
Wed, Mar 13 '19
Countifs is a extremely versatile formula that can be used in Google Sheets to generate frequency tables and proportions of complex interrelated data. This is a short introduction to the formula and the autofill properties that are required to make it work magic ...
Getting Malayalam Support in LyX (XeTeX/LaTeX)
Mon, Mar 11 '19
How to type Malayalam in LaTeX using LyX ...
i3 multi-monitor and xrandr
Fri, Feb 22 '19
i3 is my favourite window manager (and desktop environment). When I connect an external monitor or projector to my laptop, though, xrandr comes to the rescue on how they should work with each other ...
Adding Malayalam language to Lyx
Tue, Feb 19 '19
Adding Malayalam language support to Lyx. Adding any language to lyx. ...
What is Leadership?
Sun, Feb 17 '19
What is leadership? ...
Open Peer Review
Wed, Feb 13 '19
What is peer review? What is open peer review? What is a good format for peer reviewing? ...
Setting up Home Server
Sat, Feb 09 '19
How I set up a home server ...
How does one learn how to build things?
Sat, Feb 02 '19
How does one learn how to build things? ...
Mission 2019
Tue, Jan 22 '19
If you are someone who likes many things, there is a good chance that you get distracted and end up doing nothing that you like. Deciding to focus on a few things at a time can be useful ...
Mozilla India Laundry List
Thu, Jan 03 '19
What are the things I want to see happening in Mozilla (India) ...
Response to "The Plastic Straw Dilemma" by NAS Daily
Thu, Jan 03 '19
Textual response to a YouTube video about selective empathy ...
December 2018 - What extensions do I use in my Firefox
Wed, Dec 26 '18
Firefox extensions add useful functionality that saves time ...
Porting a Legacy Firefox Extension to the Latest Format
Wed, Dec 19 '18
Back when the war for net neutrality was on in India, when Jio hadn’t yet come in lowering data prices (for the entire internet) for all, when Fa(r)cebook was promoting their walled garden of internet calling it “free basics” in India, I had created a Firefox add-on called Zero Internet to shout for protecting net neutrality. ...
Can Screenshots be Freely Used in Presentations?
Fri, Dec 07 '18
If you use screenshots of various web pages or apps to make a presentation, can you license the presentation freely? ...
Deciphering the Aadhaar Verdict
Sat, Nov 24 '18
Roundtable discussion on the analysis of the #Aadhaar verdict, its impact on the ground, and next steps ...
Leaflet.js and geojson with wrong order of latitude and longitude
Fri, Nov 23 '18
Leaflet and geojson might sometimes have issues because of a standards confusion. This is how to fix it ...
Why Open Science
Tue, Nov 20 '18
A Classic Example of Why Open Science is the Best for Humankind ...
Setting up a Newsletter
Mon, Nov 12 '18
After struggling for weeks I have been able to set up mailman and create lists for self-hosted newsletter ...
Mixcloud
Mon, Nov 12 '18
Mixcloud is a good online radio service with lots of music ...
Cost of Dengue Treatment
Tue, Oct 16 '18
This is a response to an article on health systems research calling the cost of dengue treatment in India too high ...
An Instance of Chinese Whispers in Academic Writing
Tue, Oct 16 '18
Academic papers must be written with due regard to authenticity. When done in a hurry, there usually are errors that creep in. Like this one. ...
Wake Up Scientists
Mon, Oct 15 '18
Professor K VijayRaghavan, principal scientific advisor to the government of India, gave an inspiring talk yesterday called “Science, the fulcrum for social and economic change” as part of the ongoing series of kaapi with kuriosity organized by the wonderful International Centre for Theoretical Sciences ...
Netlify CMS!
Fri, Oct 12 '18
For the past few weeks I had been searching, searching, searching for adding a backend to my site. I had used Netlify CMS in the past but I did not want to use it because I thought it was tied up with netlify. But, boy, was I wrong? ...
Automatic Dynamic DNS Updates Using Nsupdate (for IPv6)
Tue, Oct 02 '18
IPV6 opens up the internet to any internet connected device and vice versa. How to make use of it, though? ...
One Month in Bangalore
Sat, Sep 29 '18
It has been one month since I moved to Bangalore. This is a quick life update on what I have been doing and will be doing ...
Functional Javascript
Wed, Aug 22 '18
Are stateless functions the sexiest? ...
Hello Julia!
Mon, Aug 20 '18
Solving the eight queens chess puzzle as a hello world program in julia ...
Newsletter: How do you know what to do with your life?
Wed, Aug 15 '18
First, the good news. I am now a Fellow in HIV Medicine. I finished this one year RGUHS course last week and now am taking rest at my home in flood-stricken Kerala. No, there is no danger where my home is, and yes, the food is yummy. ...
Automatic Wildcard Certificate from Let's Encrypt
Sun, Aug 05 '18
How to get around the DNS challenge automatically ...
Self hosting DNS server
Sun, Aug 05 '18
What if we set up our own DNS service? I had netlify putting me in a difficult position wherein it was not allowing me to delete the A record for my apex domain. ...
Installing postfixadmin on archlinux with nginx
Sun, Aug 05 '18
Archlinux can make anything possible, even postfixadmin and nginx ...
Certbot command for wildcard certificate
Sun, Aug 05 '18
Forgot certbot parameters again? ...
Running Arch Linux on AWS EC2
Sun, Aug 05 '18
You can run your favourite OS on EC2 as well ...
Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) with Android IP Webcam
Sat, Aug 04 '18
How to use your android phone as video source for OBS ...
How a tiny temporary file made me waste hours
Sat, Aug 04 '18
Sometimes the bugs are because your working directory is not clean ...
Discovering Debops
Sat, Aug 04 '18
Who wants to manage servers logging in via ssh? ...
An Infectious Diseases Fellowship [Draft]
Fri, Aug 03 '18
What would it be like if I designed an ID fellowship? ...
BSNL injects ads into internet traffic
Fri, Aug 03 '18
What is undoubtedly the worst internet service provider in India? ...
Test Driven Development
Wed, Aug 01 '18
What is test driven development and why do it ...
Documentation Driven Learning
Wed, Aug 01 '18
Documentation Driven Learning is the counterpart of Test Driven Development in learning ...
Be Like Sun
Sat, Jun 09 '18
Be like Sun. Keep shining ...
Two Research Ideas
Fri, Jun 08 '18
Dr MRS called me one evening to share two research ideas ...
Data in Healthcare Hacknight - Ideas
Fri, Jun 08 '18
What use can data be of in healthcare? ...
Installing FreeBSD
Sun, May 13 '18
The hard but fruitful path to installing freeBSD ...
How I roll out my websites - gitlab, netlify, and others
Sun, Mar 04 '18
Static sites are the present day standard for web building. I publish this blog and my website using different static site generators and powered by git, gitlab, netlify, and other useful tools. Here’s how the whole thing works ...
"Indian" by Balachandran Chullikkad (my English translation)
Wed, Dec 20 '17
This is the English translation of the poem “Indian” by Balachandran Chullikkad which appeared in Malayalam in Mathrubhumi weekly (Issue 41) ...
Mind Bends
Sat, Sep 30 '17
This is a post that demonstrates that it is possible to make your mind serve you rather than be a slave to your mind. ...
Mozilla India is Dead - Long Live Mozilla India
Mon, Sep 18 '17
Mozilla India underwent a restructure in Mozilla India Meetup 2016. This failed horribly and Mozilla India is still struggling in dark. Here’s a formal eulogy and possible hopes for future. ...
Anonymous Feedback
Sun, Aug 20 '17
Riding on the Sarahah wave, the author invites constructive feedback from readers and acquaintances for personal improvement. ...
Jekyll Post Not Reflecting On Gitlab Pages [solved]
Wed, Aug 16 '17
The short story of a cute little problem between Jekyll, Gitlab Pages, and me ...
Independent Resolutions
Tue, Aug 15 '17
Like all independence days, today has been about resolutions for me. ...
What is the Cost of Free Speech?
Sun, Aug 13 '17
Freedom of speech and expression is a right that tend to be taken for granted. Until it no longer is a reality. ...
High Tech Post-Op Follow Up
Sun, Jun 11 '17
Is it possible to follow up post-op patients via smartphones? What about regular patients? ...
Instant Wisdom
Mon, Jun 05 '17
Instant wisdom is a rule or axiom created on the fly, especially by people of authority, which has no real basis in reason or cause ...
Book Review: How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams
Mon, Apr 10 '17
Cartoonist Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert comic strip tells his life story in How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life. A cartoonists life is not necessarily filled with humor as we learn. ...
(Serious) Series Review: Black Mirror
Sun, Apr 09 '17
Apply Murphy’s law to everything that you use today or are going to use in a few years from now. Imagine the worst consequences. And imagine being helpless in the face of those. That’s Black Mirror for you. ...
I am a Doctor Now
Fri, Apr 07 '17
What happens to you when you go to medical school for 5.5 years ...
Google Direct
Wed, Apr 05 '17
Google Direct is a search generator which will help you search Google ...
Daya Bai - An Inspiring Person Who Shatters Stereotypes
Sun, Apr 02 '17
Clothes differentiate humans, fortunately or unfortunately. Imagine a lady dressed like a tribal woman in an old sari, ornaments, and wrinkled face. Our brain makes a “natural” association between this woman and an illiterate woman. Now she starts talking in English about her experience or experiments in uplifting society. Your mind is blown, and that is Daya Bai ...
GSoC Beginner's Handbook to Free Software
Fri, Feb 17 '17
Essential things about free software projects and communities that GSoC first timers should know ...
Keto Diet - First Attempt
Sat, Jan 28 '17
7 invaluable lessons from my first attempt at keto diet ...
Cleaning up Spam on MediaWiki
Thu, Jan 26 '17
How I cleaned up about two thousand spam users and their thousands of spam pages and edits from a mediawiki instance ...
How is Machine Learning Different from Human Learning
Wed, Jan 25 '17
Machines can never think like humans, or can they? ...
Thinking in The Open
Thu, Jan 19 '17
Why every thought must have a permanent URL ...
Contemplating Diet Change
Thu, Jan 19 '17
Diet, like religion, is forced upon you by your immediate surroundings. What if you were eating the wrong things all your life? ...
Comments
Thu, Jan 19 '17
A thoughtful comment is one of the greatest rewards a blogger can get ...
Dear Zindagi
Mon, Nov 28 '16
When I went in for Dear Zindagi, I didn’t know it was a Shah Rukh Khan movie. But my unsettled mind became alright when I saw Alia Bhatt on the screen. ...
Career Advice
Sun, Nov 27 '16
This is what they say. ...
Why would Kashmir want to stay with India when they don’t even get access to internet like the rest of Indians?
Fri, Oct 14 '16
Is Internet being blocked in Kashmir by idiots who don’t understand what Internet is? ...
Mozilla India Restructure 2016
Fri, Sep 09 '16
Mozilla India underwent a restructure in Mozilla India Meetup 2016. What’s the new structure? Will it be any good? What are the new challenges that face Mozilla India in this regard? ...
Mozilla India Restructure Proposal
Sat, Jul 30 '16
Can Mozilla India become a guardian of the open Web in India? ...
Mapping Kindergartens While Doing My Fieldwork Using Maps.me
Fri, Jul 15 '16
This is the first diary entry I make on openstreetmap. ...
What you read is what you become
Sat, May 28 '16
All that noise in the digital world is what fills your mind. Do you trust the world to keep it neat? ...
FOSSMeet 2016 @ NIT Calicut - Getting Started Contributing to Mozilla
Sat, Feb 27 '16
FOSSMeet is an annual event at National Institute of Technology, Calicut for promoting Free and Open Source Software. ...
On differential pricing and net neutrality (and a bit about broadband also)
Sun, Jan 24 '16
This is a copy of the submission I sent to TRAI on its consultation paper on differential pricing for data packs ...
Make Impactful Contributions to Mozilla
Thu, Jan 14 '16
Mozilla has a lot of projects and activities. Getting involved with Mozilla has always been easy for people of any background. ...
Communication Tools in FOSS Communities
Thu, Jan 14 '16
Chat apps are probably used as the hello world project for learning server-client programming. I think so because there are so many messaging apps out there and rarely do they inter-operate. The shift to mobile phones and rich text messaging just speeds up the process of fragmented communication channels. ...
Why Document Everything You Can?
Wed, Jan 13 '16
When I take part in conference calls, or attend an event, or even just have an interesting conversation, I try to take down notes. ...
Fear of Incompleteness
Wed, Jan 13 '16
I believe I have self-diagnosed an illness that perfectionist autodidacts are prone for. It is the thought that “you aren’t ready”, or “your knowledge is incomplete”. ...
Using Blogs to Chat
Wed, Jan 13 '16
I often find myself talking about the same things again and again with different people. And I sometimes have ideas that I feel proud of. Very often, I feel like what I just told someone in a private chat needs to be heard by the whole world. ...
Rethinking Conversations I Have
Tue, Jan 12 '16
For the past 10 days I was home, tending my parents’ kitchen garden and doing other chores. I was so consumed and the days would fly so fast that I skipped many conversations on Telegram, Slack, Email, etc. ...
My Application for Mozilla Participation Leadership Cohort
Thu, Dec 31 '15
I had applied for being a part of participation leadership cohort and attending various global gatherings in September 2015. It was an involved application process. I should thank Jafar, Abhiram, and Sagar for giving me a shoulder tap each. ...
Realigning with AI
Sun, Dec 27 '15
I was going through Kaustav’s website when I saw this post where he was realigning himself with AI and that’s when I realized I should also realign. We were talking yesterday and that had led to the textbooks in this MIT course getting added to my reading list. ...
How I Got Comfortable With Emacs
Sun, Dec 27 '15
Emacs was very uncomfortable for me for a long time. No, I wasn’t a pro in vim. I had found the need to configure everything in Emacs daunting. ...
Is Free Basics Worth it?
Thu, Dec 24 '15
Free Basics gives poor people access to health-care info. Why are Indians opposing it then? Asks @MikeatFacebook who’s apparently a VP at Facebook. ...
Working on Mammoth-sized Repositories and 2G speed Internet
Thu, Nov 26 '15
Firefox OS simulators are becoming old. They haven’t been updated in quite some time. The current way to simulate gaia on desktop is to use mulet. ...
Quitting Facebook
Sat, Nov 21 '15
I permanently deleted my Facebook account like a few days back. It’s scheduled to be deleted from their server on 23rd, but I’m not sure they’ll delete my data. ...
Creating a Decentralized Social Feed
Wed, Nov 18 '15
This website is my social timeline. You can follow me by subscribing to my ATOM feed. You can send comments by emailing me. You can see through all my posts and easily switch through them with shortcuts (j, k). Open posts with ‘o’. ...
Moving Blissful Life to a Domain Name I Control
Wed, Nov 18 '15
I’ve owned a domain name (learnlearn.in) for a long time now. Yet, my blog Blissful Life hosted on blogspot at asdofindia.blogspot.com was my primary means of writing till today. ...
Tuxedo '15 SJCE - Firefox OS App days
Sun, Nov 15 '15
I was studying for what will probably be my last internal when Abhiram pinged me saying he’s in SJCE and I saw this tweet from him as proof. ...
Fish function for creating a new Jekyll post with front matter
Tue, Nov 03 '15
I started using jekyll for this feed aggregation and I couldn’t make myself write the weird date format in jekyll front matter. That’s how I came up with this simple snippet that creates a file automatically with the YAML front matter for jekyll. ...
Grambot
Fri, Oct 30 '15
Grambot (@gram_bot) is the Telegram <=> IRC integration bot that I made for Mozilla India policy and advocacy task force. It was later used for various other groups too. ...
My (Remote) Mozfest Experience
Tue, Oct 27 '15
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Welcome to this place
Sun, Apr 27 '14
This quasi-blog, quasi-website, quasi-gist, quasi-pastebin will serve as my bin to put things that do not really belong to my blog or my website ...