Vishnu Gopal

Weekly Notes 17/2025

Last week: two movies, editing Indian skin tones, Nordic design, and an old game made new.

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

  • Saw Thudarum today. Both Ammu & I felt that Mohanlal’s acting has improved a lot compared to his last few years. It’s not up to his heydays yet, but perhaps there is still hope. The movie is typical dishoom-dishoom fare after the first half, but it’s nicely produced, and the choreography is well done. Also: the villain (Prakash Varma) is just amazing. Can’t believe he hasn’t gotten more roles previously.
A scene from the Malayalam movie 'Thudaram' featuring a man and a woman interacting while serving tea, with the man stirring something into the cup.
  • I’ve been trying to find presets that look good with Indian skin tones, and it’s been pretty difficult to find many, or frankly any that is good. This Vivah preset comes closest, but I don’t like how it makes skin tones lighter. Indians are brown, and we should celebrate that in our photos, not make everybody fair and lovely. If anybody has any pointers, do share. I’m looking for Lightroom presets or RAW-file editing workflows to make Indian skin tones look great.
  • Chanced across this Github repo that collects system prompts from a bunch of popular AI tools. One: it’s interesting to see the hacks that folks use: prompt engineering still very real, and two: this seems to be another kind of IP that needs to be secured by startups.
  • Also watched a very nice Italian movie called Il Treno De Bambini (The Children’s Train). Superb acting from a bunch of movie stars I don’t recognize, and a nice, moving plot. Ammu found this movie on Netflix, and we ended up watching it over two nights. It’s also how I found out that Italy had a very strong communist party that dissolved & rebranded itself once communism fell out of fashion.
A scene from the movie 'The Children's Train' featuring a woman holding a boy closely, conveying a sense of emotion and connection, with the Netflix logo displayed in the top left corner.
  • Our last week’s host Pirkko introduced us to Marimekko, and it’s yet another cool nordic design shop. I have this book on my wishlist now. There’s something about nordic minimalistic design that appeals to me a lot, and there’s something common between it and Asian minimalistic stores (like Muji and the like). I do wish we had a store like this with Indian subtones: our geometric art is also amazing, and a lot of our old temples are decidedly calm and peaceful: something to bring that ethos into the modern world would be super cool.
  • Played around with p5 a bit over the weekend, and I can’t believe I just discovered it. As an added bonus: ChatGPT is pretty good at p5: you just have to describe what you want, and you get pretty close.
  • At work, Ryan told me about the new Oblivion remaster and I just had to play a bit over the weekend. This brings back so many memories. I can’t believe I still remember words from the opening: it was 20 years ago that I actively played this last. It looks so much better, and I’ll try this week to squeeze in more playtime after work.
A character in armor holding a sword stands on a hillside overlooking a vast landscape with mountains, a river, and a castle in the distance, under a clear blue sky.
  • Ammu’s relatives came over this weekend, and here’s a nice shot I managed to take of a cutie pie:
A smiling woman wearing a pink traditional outfit and glasses is sitting at a dining table with a young boy, who is playfully raising his hand. The table is adorned with cups and plates of food, creating a cozy family atmosphere.

Links of the Week

  • In the vein of absolutely cool UI stuff built with JS, here’s a vestaboard build.
  • Panic seems to have a new game on Steam called despelote. I absolutely loved Firewatch, and this one looks equally interesting.
  • React’s new compiler is not really a compiler, but something to solve performance bottlenecks at compile-time. It’s almost like static analysis supercharged. It’ll be interesting to try this out on a non-trivial project.

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