Blog
2024: The Year I Got The Watch Bug
Trust me when I say this: I did not think of myself as someone who would get infected by a bug for timepieces. But here we are. 2024 is the year that will go down in my personal history as the year I got the Watch Bug. Now, let me explain how it all started: It was the first month of the year, and I found myself searching for the perfect timepiece — something I could wear every day. I wanted it to be sporty, casual, and above all, cool. Something that would effortlessly blend with my style while adding a touch of sophistication.
December 28, 2024
2024 Updates & Goals for 2025
It feels like only yesterday I was setting my goals, and now here we are, wrapping up 2024! Phew, can you beleive how fast time has flown by? As the year draws to a close, it’s the perfect moment to pause, reflect on the progress I’ve made, but it’s not just about looking back — this is also the time to set my sights on 2025 and all the exciting possibilities it holds. 🥂
December 16, 2024
Book Collecting
I’ve collected several books over the years — ones I’ve read and cherished, and others I’ve gathered for this atrocious bibliophilic hobby. But lately, my eyes have open wide and long to witness the frame of a cluttered life. Picture this: a minimalist having a collection of books that offer no fun. Something that reaps no value, no joy, no excitement. Rather, it is silently accumulating space, or worse, gathering dust on the shelf. Books are meant to be read. And if it is read, it has fulfilled its purpose. If they’re worth revisiting, so be it — but how often does that really happen?
December 7, 2024
The Ray of Bengal
When my brother visited Kolkata, he asked me what he could bring back for me from the city. Unaware of the local specialties, I asked him to get me some books. You see, I have always been intrigued by Satyajit Ray’s cinema, with masterpieces like The Apu Trilogy and Devi standing out as notable classics. However, I had not explored his written works until recently. So, I asked him to bring me a souvenir in the form of The Curse of the Goddess. (Feluda #16), amongst other couple books.
July 28, 2024
Classy Windows Way to Go Down
Well, Well, Well! Looks like the Windows experience today, July 19th 2024 was unprecedented. In a truly Windows fashion, several systems running the operating system encountered the dreaded Blue Screen Of Death, causing disruptions in banking, airlines, supermarkets, broadcasters, and corporate, to name a few. It is funny to me, because I have dealt with so many BSODs in the past, that my last resort used to be a fresh install. I can only imagine the losses companies and other entities must have endured due to this, and the frustration of dealing with such an issue must be unmatched. I can also imagine people using linux systems having a good giggle on the side.
July 19, 2024
Django: Essentials
Django: a beautiful Python web framework. Each time I explore it, I uncover fascinating functionalities. I believe the beauty lies in the M-V-T software design pattern that facilitates the development of creating complex, database-driven sites. Though the framework is vast, and my knowledge limited, I will share essentials of Django in this blog. Features Fast and Reliable Built for Python 3.x Customizable & Extensible Secure and Scalable Modular structure Batteries included - offers built-in solutions and features for basically all problems. Production-ready for building websites. Set up & Run Install the package pip install django Creating the project django-admin startproject <project-name> To understand the structure of a Django Project, you can read this blog post
July 10, 2024
Keeping Pictures
For as long as I can remember, I hated the idea of keeping old pictures. I have always found myself deleting them like bad memories. In a world where marketing and physical appearance reign supreme, I shied away from keeping pictures in my adolescent years. My insecurities often kept me from embracing moments, making me uncomfortable whenever someone wanted to take a picture with me. I believe this worsened from the profound impact of social media in my life. With great severity, big tech companies were aggressively pushing their apps on our faces during that period. It was truly overwhelming. Falling victim to such a phenomenon feels more or less being enslaved. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter: these are apps which you do not really need in your day-to-day life. I have come to realize they thrive on your insecurities. Nonetheless, I digress.
June 29, 2024
Best Films So Far in 2024
Finding a standout film, especially in the first half of the year has been quite a challenge. Thankfully, there were a few gems that truly captivated me. My top pick is a sci-fi marvel: Dune. To miss Dune is like denying oneself peak cinema. Following closely is Guadagnino’s Challengers. Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross’ beautiful score, paired with the impeccable fashion choices by the leads sets the standard for ultimate fashion goals.
June 24, 2024
Zero1 Fest 2024
Last weekend I attended the Zero1 Fest – the world’s first festival around finance and money. It was exhilarating to be in the presence of people whose content I deeply admire; whose profound knowledge especially in finance has influenced and “de-influenced” me. I had the opportunity to see the Kamath brothers up close, whose startup serves as a powerful reminder that a business can thrive without backing of venture capital. I had a chat with Karthik Rangappa, curator of Varsity and expressed deep appreciation for his captivating content. I was nostalgic to see Rob from “M.A.D” fame, whose show was a beloved staple for 90s and early 2000s kids. I had a brief moment with Prateek Singh, Founder & CEO of LearnApp and Zero1 Media, whose talk with Radhika Gupta (Edelweiss CEO) left a lasting impression. Although I missed out on meeting many other familiar faces like Abid Hassan, Rahul Subramanian, Nas, among others, I still had a wonderful time!
May 1, 2024
The Crooked Timber Of New India
I stumbled upon a YouTube video featuring Mr. Parakala Prabhakar, interviewed by few of the last esteemed journalists left in our country today: Mr. Karan Thapar. The discussion delved into the current state of politics, economy and social fabric of our country. Mr. Parakala Prabhakar is a political activist, economist, scholar, and author. Parakala, if you are unaware, is also the husband of the current Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman. This adds an intriguing level to this discussion.
April 24, 2024
Letters From A Stoic
This post contains letters from Seneca, a Stoic philosopher of Ancient Rome, and my thoughts on his philosophy. What is Stoicism? Stoics identified the path to achieving it [ good spirit ] with a life spent practicing the four virtues in everyday life: wisdom, courage, temperance or moderation, and justice, and living in accordance with nature. 1 Letter II Seneca’s second letter is addressed to Lucilius, emphasising significance of settling one’s self and deriving joy from solitude. He advises against consuming books from different authors, instead “focusing on authors whose genius is unquestionable”.
April 19, 2024
Coffee Can Investing - A Review
‘The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago; the second best time is now.’ I strongly beleive in the eight wonder of the world. It may be common sensical for someone with good discipline, patience, and consistency that the secret lies in waiting for the magic to unfold. The only way, my friend is paying the price: Time This magical reminder comes in a form of a book: Coffee Can Investing by Saurab Mukherjea and his team, that have created a roadmap that captures the common pitfalls of a common retail investor. A guide to make wise financial decisions without compromising on your wants and desires.
April 6, 2024
Integrate Umami on your Hugo Site
I always sought after an open-source solution for web analytics primarily to track visitor counts on my site. While I used Google Analytics for a few months due to its seamless integration with Hugo, it was without a doubt contradicting to my ethical principles. So starting today, this site will be using umami1 for web analytics. I opted umami because it is open-source, privacy-focused and the setup takes less than 10 minutes! Here’s how you can integrate it in your website –
April 4, 2024
Bangalore Weather is Changing
Bengaluru is like a dear friend who gets along really well with anyone. She’s known for her pleasant nature, creative mind, love for greens and hanging out with people of diverse backgrounds. As someone who has lived with Bengaluru, like many of us, who deeply value the essence of her character, I would reject the idea if someone told me our beloved city could a face water crisis or reach a scorching high temperature of 37 degrees this summer. (again)
April 3, 2024
Dune: Part Two - A Review
🚫 Spoiler Alert: reader discretion is advised for those who haven’t seen the film. SILENCE. * The Lisan al Gaib speaks * There is so much to say about Dune: a sci-fi marvel that exceeds expectations. On my first viewing of Dune Part One, it lacked the spice. But months later after revisiting the film, I found myself pleasantly surprised by the depth of the story. This led me to watch Dune: Part Two on the big screen.
April 2, 2024
xz has a secret backdoor
I already made a blog post on archiving files using tar that covered gzip, a utility tool to archive files with compression. In the same way, xz utils is an open-source lossless data compression tool primarily focused on the .xz file format, suitable for archiving large amount of data. Lately xz has been a victim to a highly sophisticated attack aimed at injecting a secret backdoor, that resulted in compromise of numerous distributions such as Debian, Kali, and openSUSE. This attack gave malicious actors Remote Code Execution (RCE) privileges.
April 2, 2024
Facebook Intercepts Web Traffic
In a newly disclosed court document,1 it was revealed that Facebook launched a secretive initiative called GhostBusters in the late 2010s, which could intercept and decrypt the network traffic between people using Snapchat’s app and its servers. This enabled them to maintain a competitive advantage over other platforms, primarily Snapchat, later followed with Youtube and Amazon. How did they do this? In early 2010s, Facebook acquired Onavo, an Israeli-based VPN service and mobile data analytics company known for data compression technology. This innovative technology was used to mitigate high bandwidth usage due to the high mobile data costs at the time.
March 28, 2024
Parsing Configuration files in Python
Introduction configparser 1 is a module that provides functionality for working with config files in a standardized format. Although storing configurations in formats like JSON, Yaml/Toml, environment variables or a database exists, configparser stands out to me as a pythonic approach, as it promotes simplicity and reduces dependencies. Quick Start Let’s take a very basic configuration file: [DEFAULT] ; this is a comment user_name = super-user passwd = secure-pass [DATABASE] host = localhost port = 5432 database = mydb [Logging] ; Logging configuration log_level = INFO log_file = /var/log/my_python_app.log creating the same file programatically # importing module import configparser config = configparser.ConfigParser() config['DEFAULT'] = { 'user_name' : 'super_user', 'passwd': 'secure-pass' } config['DATABASE'] = {} config['DATABASE']['host'] = 'localhost' config['DATABASE']['port'] = '5432' config['DATABASE']['database'] = 'mydb' config['LOGGING'] = { 'log_level': 'INFO', 'log_file': '/var/log/my_python_app.log' } with open('config.ini', 'w') as configfile: config.write(configfile) ℹ️ If you want to include a default section, you would typically add it to your configuration file explicitly. Accessing data Fetches sections, values. Note also that keys in sections are case-insensitive and stored in lowercase. import configparser config = configparser.ConfigParser() config.sections() config.read('config.ini') sections = config.sections() # ['DATABASE', LOGGING'] user_name = config.get('DEFAULT', 'user_name' ) # super-user password = config.get('DEFAULT', 'passwd' ) # secure-pass db_name = config['DATABASE']['database'] # mydb Config parsers do not guess datatypes of values in configuration files, always storing them internally as strings. This means that if you need other datatypes, you should convert on your own. port_number = config['DATABASE']['port'] # <class 'str'> PORT = int(port_number) # 5432 print(type(PORT)) # <class 'int'> https://docs.python.org/3/library/configparser.html ↩︎
March 27, 2024
An Empire of Hell
All the world’s a digital stage, and all the men and women merely scrollin’ – with no exits, their entrance is a screen – a portal to their unseen dreams. broken and broke. impulse and hope-less. a double-edged sword. swallow whole pleasure and pain. one man at their time plays many parts of ruin. His acts being seven gigs of your intimate data. first phase of his playbook – lure you in. Then gather and sell, finally build networth and tell the world, “I created an empire of hell.”
March 22, 2024
Indus App Store
Phonepe launched Indus App Store as an alternative to the Google Play Store. I wouldn’t call it a revolutionary product per se, as phone manufacturers already bundle their own app stores on their phones. It is good news for developers though, as there is 0% commission on in-app subscriptions and low fees in comparison to the Google Play Store. As a consumer, to use Indus App Store since it is a “Make in India” product does not cut it for me. I avoid Samsung Galaxy Store, and God Forbid if I use Xiaomi GetApps out of despair; Similarly Indus lacks a compelling reason for anyone to go through the installing process.
March 3, 2024
Sphinx Setup Guide
Sphinx is a powerful tool to create beautiful documentation by converting plain text source files into various output formats, like HTML, PDFs, LateX. Sphinx uses the reStructuredText markup language by default, and can read MyST markdown via third-party extensions. Both of these are powerful and straightforward to use, and have functionality for complex documentation and publishing workflows. They both build upon Docutils to parse and write documents. Prerequisites Python 3.8 or later. Installation Create a virtual environment. $ python -m venv venv Install Sphinx pip install sphinx Activate Environment in powershell/terminal Windows .\venv\Scripts\activate Linux source env/Scripts/activate Setup Create Docs Layout With this command, all the documentation will be in the docs folder. sphinx-quickstart docs Inputs These inputs are required when you enter the command from step 1. Separate source and build directories (y/n) [n]: y [Default is **y**] project name: <enter your project name> Author name(s): <your name> Project release []: <release version> Project language [en]: en Build the project sphinx-build -M html docs/source/ docs/build/ To check the generated html, open the index.html file in the build/html folder. Adding extensions go to docs/source/conf.py # Add any Sphinx extension module names here, as strings. They can be # extensions coming with Sphinx (named 'sphinx.ext.*') or your custom # ones. extensions = [ 'sphinx.ext.duration', ] Customize your Sphinx documentation effortlessly with these steps!
March 1, 2024
Apple Vision Pro is Trash
Have you ever had of something called a Bad Apple? Well you might be amazed to hear that all the normies have assembled together again to admire a new addition to their walled-garden, The all new VR Headset, or as apple likes to call it their first “spatial computer” This device is supposed to be put on your head so that you seamlessly switch between the physical and digital world. The best part about it is you can take it out after two minutes, because it is such a headache to have it on. If you don’t believe me, try putting a 500 gram object on your head - which will be lighter than this headset. it is just too unnecessary. they really expect people to keep wearing this like a bunch of zombies; And whenever they feel like activating their digital world, it is a button away, all of which is controlled by (you guessed it) apple!
February 5, 2024
12th Fail
It is not your typical underdog story where the protagonist goes from poverty to prosperity. 12th fail is an inspiring take on hope, determination, honesty and failure. Contrary to many other bollywood biographies, lack of a traditional villain in this story is a bold move. This made it all the more intriguing. Moreover VVC captures the universal struggle of truth and empathy, creating a narrative that resonates deeply with the audience and effortlessly brings tears to the surface.
January 14, 2024
Ram's Wise Mind
Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s short story “Ram’s Wise Mind” (or Ramer Shumoti) is a poignant story of a seventeen year old boy, Ramlaal and his sister-in-law Narayani. Though Ram is troublesome and mischievous in the eyes of many, he is not to Narayani. She assumes the role of a mother-figure to him, adding a layer of complexity and tenderness to their relationship. Chattopadhyay’s storytelling shines as he paints a vivid picture of the emotional landscape between Ram and Narayani. Their bond becomes a testament to the enduring power of human connection, defying societal norms and expectations.
January 9, 2024
Goals for 2024
Looking back at 2023, it makes me realize how quickly time slips through our fingers. It was a wonderful (yet hectic) year for me. I discovered wealth of information and shared eventful experiences with people. As I stand at the threshold of this new year, I anticipate more promising events and learnings. I dislike making new year resolutions due to the psychological inclination of undertaking drastic changes, so I have committed myself to implement small changes for a lasting impact, some of which are follows:
January 4, 2024
Best Films - 2023
these are my favorite films of 2023. of course, there are better films i have missed. do let me know if any. English/Foreign Barbenheimer Two films that are a phenomenon in itself - Greta Gerwig’s hysterical comedy and Nolan’s Atomic Bomb. My favorites this year. Killers Of The Flower Moon An epic about Osage killings. Killers Of The Flower Moon is a good Western with fine storytelling; the kind you expect from a Scorcese film.
December 21, 2023
Django Project Structure
I love the Python Programming Language, and its most popular Web Framework - Django. In fact I love it so much that it is reflected in my pseudonym. I am no expert django dev, however I understand the design. this blog post unravels the intricacies of Django’s structural design. Design Django follows a Model-View-Template (MVT) architectural design pattern. Model: Defines the data structure of the application. Models are used to interact with the database.
December 16, 2023
Archiving Files Using Tar
I like archiving files and directories, mostly due to local storage constraints. Creating backups of files and saving them in tarballs or 7zips has become second nature to me. However I have realized I have been doing it wrong all along. I’ve predominantly relied on GUI methods, only to discover that the command line method is so straightforward that even a caveman could do it. This is a short note for me, and for you in case you would want to compress or extract archived files using the command line.
November 9, 2023
70 Hours per Week
Infosys founder Narayana Murthy recently said that, young Indians must work 70 hours a week. – a phenomenal recommendation from a prominent capitalist. I respect his achievements but a statement like this makes me want to question his intelligence or, take any of these wise old men seriously. His idea is if you want India to realize its economic potential every young Indian must say: “This is my country. I want to work 70 hours a week.” 1
November 1, 2023
In Support for Palestine
All the big news organizations are known for manipulating facts and having biased opinions. If you think there are not taking a side, you are overly optimistic. Moreover, relying on a for-profit major news organizations is akin to burying one’s head in the sand and trusting whatever information comes along. It is a no-brainer. Their support for Israel makes it even more clear of their ignorance. More civilians are killed by Israel and they will never show you that.
October 20, 2023
The Story Of My Experiments With Truth
In hindsight it might seem like we are not affected by history, however, for the most part we are. Take a currency note for instance. Did you ever reflect on the man behind the note? His truths, legacy, philosophy, or principles for that matter, that left an indelible mark on our history. Today, I want to share my review on Gandhi’s biography, “The Story Of My Experiments With Truth”. There are 5 parts in his book, and I will go over all the key learnings from the Mahatma himself.
October 1, 2023
custom domain for github pages
There are far more problems in the world than setting up a custom domain. it’s ridiculous how a simple thing is made so complicated that any new user would break their head trying to make it work. in this blog, i will share how to set up a custom domain using github pages. i already had github pages1 set up, and i bought a domain from hostinger. if you haven’t purchased a domain, you can get it here, and if you are lazy to create a static page on your own, you can use one of these templates.
September 26, 2023
mpv scripts
in this blog, i will share a list of no-nonense scripts for mpv. if you are not using mpv, and using something else – here are few reasons why you must consider it: lightweight customizable with scripting support relatively easy to setup and use faster than vlc Scripts1. mpv chapters1 Display chapters and allow you to jump to them with a mouse click. as easy as saving the file in your scripts/ folder. press TAB to display the chapters. https://github.com/zxhzxhz/mpv-chapters
September 18, 2023
jawan - a review
last thursday, i went to watch the socio-political action thriller, “Jawan”. there were two compelling reasons i couldn’t afford to miss this film: first, my unwavering admiration for the superstar Shah Rukh Khan, and second, my curiosity about the unique mummified look that had been teased. apart from this, there was the film’s antagonist played by our very own Makkal Selvan, whose outstanding portrayal of “Michael Vedanayagam” in the web series Farzi had left a lasting impression on me. his performance was a delightful blend of ruthlessness, humor, and sheer entertainment in the show. it was evident that he brought the same brutality in jawan. lastly, of course, Nayanthara and Deepika, whose brief appearance had a significant impact in the story.
September 14, 2023
solving captchas
solving captcha programatically is a pain. me and this other dude at work took about two weeks to solve version 2 of google recaptcha which we learned later, was an enterprise versioned captcha. i did not understand what that meant, until i read between the lines of the docs. this blog is a simple sidenote on how to solve recaptcha (v2) with 2captcha API. you can read the docs, which btw, is amazing.
September 10, 2023
first blog
in the vast expanse of the internet, i have constructed a small place of my own – a webpage, with a philosophy of its own. so if you don’t know me, let me tell you, i like simple stuff. and strangely enough i chose not to make this site super responsive with a shit-load of javascript. oh yes, if you have not guessed it already, i used a static site generator for this page. to be precise, hugo. with a minimal theme under the hood and an elegant design, i am sure you might be really impressed by the responsiveness and the speed of my page.
September 4, 2023