This week: IVF treatment failed, taking a break. Watched Ulluozhukku and Champion. Explored VS Code customization. Considering chorded keyboard shortcuts and Sonos Port for vinyl turntables.

For folks not in the know, this is a weekly stream of consciousness zero-agenda “here’s what’s happening” or “here’s what’s interesting” post.

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What’s been happening

• Our IVF treatment has failed, again. We’re currently thinking about what to do next, but the first step is to take a break from the process and rest a bit. For Ammu, this is especially draining, as this means cutting off a lot of medication all at once, so I took a couple of days off this week and just spent some time with her. Even with a couple of divorces between us, and a bunch more hardship in our life, this week has been one of the most challenging of our lives. There is just one thought now: this too shall pass.
• I was traveling in an autorickshaw a couple of days back, and realized that a mobile phone holder in an auto can serve as a good substitute for a vibration reliability test.

• Ammu asked me to book a bunch of vazhipadu (offerings) online, and here’s a combo of old and new that I found pretty funny:

• Watched Ulluozhukku (inner currents) in theatres this week and really loved Urvashi’s and Parvathy’s acting. It’s one of those female-centric movies that is coming out of Kerala where the male lead is completely inconsequential. Perhaps the rains play an equal part though: after 2018, Kerala rains have been depicted to perfection again on the big screen.

• Watched Champion, a Spanish movie on Netflix. In some ways, it’s a typical inspirational sports movie, but I liked the portrayal of a dyslexic genius and his equally flawed tutor.

• I stayed up last night watching Gods Must Be Crazy with Ammu, and she laughed a lot. That was nice to see. N!xau is also the real star of these movies, and he is genuinely so charismatic on screen.

• I spoke last week about customizing VS Code, and here’s a short video of all the things I’ve done with it now, mostly inspired from Neovim setups. It’s got a heavily themed VS Code, a customized fzf+rg+bat for instant search, and LazyGit for command-line git operations. Besides the stuff in the video, I also have a bookmarks extension that is super useful to jump between far-flung pieces of code, and some nice customized command-line shortcuts.

Links of the Week

• Thinking of trying chorded keyboard shortcuts similar to the one in this article to optimize home row movement a bit more. Jus that I’m so used to the Mac shortcuts now (including Emacs-like Ctrl+A Ctrl+E to move to the beginning/end of line) that I’m not sure I can make this work.
• The Sonos Port seems like a nice way to connect Vinyl turntables to a Sonos setup. I was looking at 7.1.4 setups via Sonos, and that seems to be the future of Dolby Atmos setups. Not necessarily from Sonos as the Bravia Quads also look super impressive.
• Found another really cool keyboard called the Glove80.

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