Weekly Notes 11/2025

The first half of the week was busy, with most of the time, including some weekend hours, spent closing work TODOs. But now that we're in Langkawi, it's all good :)

• I got to speak to another open data community in India, the India Open LandCover Initiative. It was a quick talk about my view on building communities as a DataMeet organizer.
• One reason I hate multiple communication channels between the same folks is confusion. I recently received something on WhatsApp; a few days later, I searched my email inbox for 20 minutes to no avail. Then I found it on WhatsApp. Ideally, I think all business should be done by Email, which is searchable!
• I finally watched Vaazhai by Mari Selvaraj. It's a slow and simple movie where the story is told through the eyes of the main character, Sivanaindhan, a school-going boy who works at a banana plantation during the weekends. Anything more will be a spoiler. I liked it, go watch it; you will like it too.
• We reached Langkawi on Wednesday morning. First impressions - a small, clean island with friendly people. Lots of lovely beaches, the best place to do nothing. We will be here for a week; I will write more later.
• I miss Pathu; she is with Stay Benaglore and Echo, and he is with his grandparents.
• I have been contributing to BeaconDB, a public-domain wireless beacon location database. I used to be a serious contributor to Mozilla Location Service, which, of course, was shut down in 2024. Mozilla used to have a leader-board that made the contribution fun. BeaconDB does not have any such feature to keep contributors' details private. But to keep my competitive mind going, I have promised myself that I would contribute one Lakh unique beacons (wifi+cell+ble). I am far away from it with a unique count of wifi=5257, cell=1141, and ble=34 beacons. Traveling helps.
• Nagarathna Memorial Grant – 2025 - Application closes tomorrow, March 15 anywhere on earth (AOE) time.