Weekly Notes 20/2025

It’s been a good week. The pain did flare up midweek, but regular exercise has helped bring it down. I can correlate the reduction to neck exercises. I’m starting physiotherapy at Stairs Physiotherapy again.

Interestingly, I’ve received a few messages and emails about this. It turns out that I’m not alone; others in my industry have gone through this and have recovered. These weekly notes have sparked some helpful conversations and suggestions. That’s reason enough to keep writing about my recovery.

• All the introduction emails and most of the payments related to NMG/2025 are complete. I updated the project page. The kind from the neighborhood is in their final year (same kid from the last two years), their grant will happen, but it is not counted as part of regular NMG.
• The niblings spent some time with us during their busy holidays. It’s always fun having them around—and this was their first school break with Uma. I wanted to watch Flow in the theater, but couldn’t. But I used this opportunity to watch it on Prime with them. We all loved it.
• Uma will start pre-school at Earth School this July. Until now, she was going to play school.
• I wrote a blog post about FOSS apps that I use to share files between devices. It’s part of my Linked List, an ongoing series where I share a curated list of exciting or useful things — books, apps, hardware tools, and more.
• I have been using premix coffee sachets we picked up in Langkawi this week. They are popular all over Southeast Asia, but I am not sure why they aren’t available in India. They are cheap, easy to carry, and it takes a minute to make a decent coffee. There are sugarless versions, too. Sure, it’s not an Espresso, but it’s close to what South Indian’s call black coffee (A diluted drink made from chicory-coffee decoction, sometimes sweetened with jaggery or sugar, and occasionally spiced with pepper). I first tried them in Jakarta, where a street vendor used them to make coffee for us. Since then, every time I visit that part of the world, I buy and bring a ton of them.
• I have moved entirely to Flatpak as the format and Flathub as the application source. For some applications, I have gone outside Flathub to install a Flatpak. I know Flatpak has limitations, but I had to get behind something, and Flatpak seemed the best for me. If something is unavailable as Flatpak, I will look for AppImage format. Finally, I go for the Debian package.
• A few friends from the Open Data and DataMeet communities and I are putting together the Open Data Devroom at this year’s IndiaFOSS on 20/21 Sept @ Bengaluru. The call for proposals is open now. Please do submit if you have anything interesting to share with the community.
• Anju and I watched Adolescence last week. It was a bit shocking, but felt very real, especially in India, where boys and men often try to be “macho” through misogyny. You see it everywhere now—on social media and in WhatsApp groups. This attitude isn’t new ¹, but social media has amplified and spread it to every corner, and is trying to make it cool. Now back to the series – I loved the last episode where parents reflect upon their upbringing, parenthood, their influence on kids vs the society has on them, etc. It’s raw and leaves you sad.
• I have a channel for Kannada movies on Are.na, available for free on YouTube (for now)—the ones I like. You might want to watch a few, especially if you have an ad-free version of YouTube.