Weekly Notes 50/2025

It’s been a good week. I got lots of work done. I am still lagging on some tasks due to dependencies, but I am almost there. I should be on track before Christmas. Also, I have been able to do two workouts at Stairs (P.T.), one generic session at Gold’s, and one pickleball session this week. Not bad, no?

I think this is the ideal amount of physical things I want to do. I wish I knew proper swimming. So I could alternate between playing pickleball and swimming. It is on my list for Summer/2026.

• It’s been two years (WN-48/2023) since I uninstalled Instagram. I don’t miss it a bit. It’s been one of my best moves, right up there with uninstalling Twitter.
• We will be in Thrissur in the last week of this year and the first week of January. We might also go to Kochi for a day for the Biennale.
• We were in Magadi for one of Uma’s cousin’s wedding. Uma loved the simple yet tasty food served at the wedding. I loved it too. I got to have ragi mudde at a wedding for the first time in a really long time, so I had two.
• I am watching some old Kannada films. This week I watched Keralida Simha / ಕೆರಳಿದ ಸಿಂಹ, Premada Kanike / ಪ್ರೇಮದ ಕಾಣಿಕೆ. I want to rewatch as many of Dr. Raj Kumar’s films as possible.
• I mapped the music I listened to along the road using a simple script. I want to visualize it better. If you have ideas, send them to me. I am also adding data to MusicBrainz as I make my playlists on ListenBrainz, especially Kannada music.
• I renewed my omg.lol subscription for five years at once. It has become excruciating to use an Indian credit card to pay subscriptions online, and omg.lol is an excellent service. I would suggest it to anyone who wants to try building small websites or blogs, trying Mastodon or XMPP, etc. They have been really stable in terms of uptime and their commitment to the open web.
• Software is not FOSS if it doesn’t grant users the four fundamental freedoms. I think people can and should call their software whatever they want, but that won’t make the software FOSS. Ideally, the software should be under a GPL-compatible free license or at least an OSI-approved one. But I prefer Free Software, which focuses on users’ freedom, unlike Open Source, which focuses on developers.  
• I have an A6 pocket sketch notebook from Factor Notes, which I love. It’s small enough to fit in my small bag, 120gsm is thick enough, and it lies flat for easy writing or drawing. It’s only 128 pages, but it’s big enough for me. I also love B7 (aka passport) size pocket books. I do have them.
• Databases in CouchDB are cheap. So I have many, many databases inside my CouchDB. I do have an offline backup using the couchdb-dump script. But this week, I created a new server on fly.io and set up one-way continuous replication. If required, I can switch at any point.
• BLRHUBBA is from January 16th to 25th. There are some amazing events, and most of them are free. Book yours. There are also affordable paid donor passes.
• If something is working in this country, it’s sheer magic. I don’t say that lightly; it comes with a lot of sadness.