This week: catching up with friends, adapting to work, fitness progress, spice shopping, social gatherings, and exploring new tech tools.
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.
What’s been happening
- I met DP after a long while this week. It was nice updating her about everything, and generally catching up. She calls me mostly for technical support (every software engineer is a technical support guy first and foremost to friends & close family) and this time around it was because she had connected a second monitor but not switched it on, and “my Firefox window is not coming up at all”. It’s at these times that I realize how arcane everything related to technology really is, and how much we can use a conversational interface that understands plain English. I tried introducing her to ChatGPT but I’m not sure she fully understood the potential of the technology.
- Work was good this week, and I managed to get a solid week in. I’m getting used to the new Woo product, and it’s been interesting working on a product that has a packaged release cycle, and all the backwards and forwards-compatibility issues that come with it.
- I completed all assigned workouts this week. My weight has pretty much stayed the same though as I haven’t really been focusing on eating well (one routine at a time!), but my body feels better. The volume went up by almost a set this week, but I’ve mostly been able to keep up.
- We went to The Miller, a nice shop in Thiruvananthapuram that crushes fresh spices into powder. Ammu bought chilly and cumin powder and I bought some snacks. The smell once you enter is just really amazing 🙂
- Pappu asked me to hangout, and we ended up spending some time at a LOBA meetup. I met a few of my chetanmars (brothers, seniors) and had a drink with them. It’s amazing how almost 3 generations of Loyolites are working together in that organization, and I really love how Pappu is driving those efforts for our batch.
- Youtube suggested a few US election videos this week, and I ended up watching Obama’s speech. It’s amazing how much swagger that guy still has. Watch this interview with Hasan Minhaj if you haven’t already:
- I’m trying out kanata keybindings this week, but I’m not a fan of the delay it introduces into keypresses. I may have to switch to a custom keyboard with more thumb keys to get more layers. I do like the configuration though: a LISP-like language really tailors itself to readable configuration.
Links of the Week
- Really want to give Cursor a try in earnest this week. I’ve used it a few times before, but it didn’t stick. I’ve been hearing more and more folks say awesome things about it. See also this video of an 8 year old building an app. Some bits are obviously staged, but even then:
- Writing tests seems to be the first thing that can be automated with AI, and meticulous seems cool!
- DP recommended I read The Marginalian, so I added it to NetNewsWire this week.
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