Last week: an extended trip to Europe, highlights from Stockholm, including the Vasa museum, and updates on movies and the job search.

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

• We’re back after a ~20 day trip to Europe. It was initially planned to be around 10 days so it’s safe to say that we blew past our budget in both time and money. But both of us definitely felt that this was a great trip, one for the memory banks.

• We stopped by Stockholm on the way back. We didn’t visit a lot of places, but the highlight of the trip was definitely the Vasa museum. That is definitely one of those places where pictures simply don’t do it justice. The Vasa is a 4 story tall amphibian, and just getting the first glimpse of it after walking through airlocks designed to keep it dry is amazing.

• We also really enjoyed Djurgarden with its very lovely fall colours.

• And of course, we spent time with Anoop, Sruthy and Diya. Diya is an absolute cutie-pie, and it was also nice to see how children are brought up in Sweden (kids on bikes!). I also caught up with an old friend Nakul who now leads iOS at Truecaller.

• No workouts this week too. I was too tired over the weekend, but I’ll catch up on some this week.

• The new games from Duolingo that make you move a character around and complete actions to finish a lesson is just excellent. It teaches language skills in a more functional context, and that’s amazing. I just had one of these for German, but Ammu (who is learning French) says she’s completed more than a few.

• I also used ChatGPT this week to figure out Anoop’s coffee machine. New appliances often stump me, and I’m now imagining a world where this is somehow built into augmented reality glasses. Or perhaps visual intelligence to start.

• I watched a couple of movies on the flight back. I usually gravitate towards Asian movies because it’s harder to watch them in India, so I picked All the Long Nights, which was a lovely flick about pain and trauma, and April, come she will, which was less good but still had some evocative scenes and great acting.

• Also watched Meiyazhagan, which is definitely a must-see. It’s a very accessible movie that pulls you in, and while the ending is a bit of a let-down, I think the plot and the acting are first class. Karthi definitely is one of the best Tamil actors today.

• After leaving Automattic, I’m looking out for a new role, so if you think there’s something that I can contribute to, do feel free to ping. I’ve been working as a web engineer for more than 20 years now, and I have an updated resume here.

Links of the Week

• Interesting single-person product from Kerala: Super SaaS.

• Perplexity also has a native Mac app now.

• Was reading a bit about Oblivious HTTP and Privacy Pass this week. It’s interesting how privacy-preserving solutions have evolved over the last few years.

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