Weekly Notes 21/2026

I was in Chennai for the first half of the week. I couldn’t get a confirmed 1st or 2nd class train ticket. So I had to fly from Kochi. It’s such a waste of time and money. Chennai is hot, hotter than Thrissur. But I mostly worked from Indoors, so it was okay. It seems like it’s been raining a lot in Bangalore, and temperatures are down. I miss it.

• I continued my exploration of Extism and wrote an initial blog post. I am using it in an actual implementation. I will write the details later.
• Except for three transfers, all the NMG/2026 transfers are complete. I am guessing we should close this by the end of this month. I am also planning to do a BoF session on microfunds at IndiaFOSS/2026 in Bangalore. Ping me if you are interested.
• Updated the Exploring Digital Technology course page with all the slides I used in class as reference. There were quite a few lab classes on Linux Basics, Bash, Git, etc, which are not fully covered by these slides but should be good enough to get a taste. I also finalized the class’s grades. They have done well.
• The special anniversary event for IndieWebBlr is on the 30th of this month. I am not able to attend, but you should if possible.
• One of my favorite web apps, Arena, has introduced metadata at various levels (blocks, channels, and connections). You can have multiple key/value pairs. This is a great addition to the data model, allowing one to extend and build on Arena. I also updated my sync code to CouchDB. It’s working well now. At some point, I will make it open. My apps use CouchDB as the source of truth. But the data editing happens on Arena. I have a Flipper One (reminder to blog more about it). It’s a versatile, hacker-friendly device. And this new plan makes it much more interesting. Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a satirical political movement, seems to have grown so fast that the IB of India considers it a national threat and censors it online, inadvertently triggering the Streisand effect.