Month: July 2019

Late night + name confusion = a very different book

I read Jon Krakauer‘s ‘Into thin air‘ earlier this year. It’s about an Everest expedition gone wrong. I’d seen the movie based on it years ago so knew the story line. I still enjoyed the book. Mark of a well written book.

Late one night last week, I was looking for another book to start. I spotted Jack Kerouac‘s ‘On the road‘ on the book shelves.

The book name seemed similar to Jon’s ‘Into thin air‘ and ‘Into the wild‘.
Author name sounded similar too—Jack Ker… vs Jon Kr…
The introduction on back cover sounded interesting, though a bit unlike the outdoorsy vibe of Jon’s other books.

I took a chance—took it upstairs and started reading.

It was different.

I was about 70 pages into the book before I decided to double check and realised my mistake. This was a story about young men in the 50s discovering booze, drugs, music, themselves, women, and America. Far from the gen-x characters in Jon’s books.

Not a book I would’ve picked up knowingly. But a book I’m enjoying nonetheless.

Me, here, now.

Gardening

After neglecting the garden for 5+ years, I finally started getting my hands dirty this year. It’s been a surprising delight. The flowers are blooming. No plants have died yet. And the weeds are more under control than any time last year. All this for a couple of weekends’ work, and 5-10 mins every morning or evening. My highlight achievement must be saving a few plants from near death—the purple petunias, the value pack bogonias and the medium-sized marigold—and seeing them flourish.

I am really enjoying the work in the garden—probably too much according to R. There must be some truth in what Cal Newport said—the joy of creating physical things with our own hands.

Running

I’ve been running well. I like my current running form, and the times have been reflecting the improvement. I ran my Park Run PB earlier at Woking—22:42. I ran the London marathon earlier in just under 4 hours—3:58:44. This is the first year where I have run at least 100 km every month. It’s also the first year when I’ve run at least once every week. I plan to keep the momentum going through rest of the year.

Reading

Reading has been a continuing theme from last few years. I haven’t read as many fiction books this year as non-fiction. Just haven’t found too many of ones I really want to read. Amitava Ghosh released his new book, Gun Island, so I polished that off in less than a day. But nothing much else.

I’ve read a lot of non-fiction though. Quite a few are based around self-improvement and productivity— Make time, GTD for teens, Digital minimalism, Messy, Range, Sprint, Turn the ship around …

I’ve read some books from the running, swimming, cycling, hiking world, but again not as many as I would’ve liked. Goater’s Art of running faster gave some good tips, and Scott Jurek’s North was full of inspiration.

I’ve started listing the books, and notes from some of them on this site.

Head & heart

Parents were planning to visit UK this year. They’ve cancelled. I’m sad.

I stopped meditating regularly months ago. I still meditate occasionally, but without the app there isn’t much to guide me through session after session. Most of the time it is just noticing a breath (tip from Make Time).

The year, mentally, has been a roller coaster. I haven’t really touched the depths of depression like I did around October last year, but I haven’t had many periods of consistent happiness either. I have a feeling it’s all very fragile. Or is it brittle?

Finished Todo.txt for Android

I’m ending the second phase of active development for Todo.txt for Android. All core functionality works sufficiently well for my own use. Dark mode is half baked, so have moved it to the backlog for the next phase, whenever that happens.

Not doing much active development on extensions at the moment.

Next up

Next up is starting a new project, or finding a new role. Either way, it’ll be a time of flux and vulnerability. Tread kindly, por favor!

Continue reading Me, here, now.

RSS & site updates

New combined RSS feed

Added new combined RSS feed comprising posts from all the blogs hosted on this domain. The combined feed is available here: Adi's combined feed.

The combined feed includes:

  • Speak Easy—feed
  • Converge—site, feed
  • Middlering—site, feed
  • Paws N Pedals (never updated)—site, feed
  • Photos (new)—site, feed
  • The winter blog (rarely updated dev notes blog)—site, feed
  • Use my marker (highlights from Instapaper and kindle)—site, feed
  • App Updates (update notes for my apps and extensions)—site, feed

Photos & Books pages

The new photos blog, and the experimental books page are now linked from the home page.

TIL: Line breaks in markdown

I’ve been using markdown for writing for years, yet this one bit bugged me—I couldn’t get a line break (as against a paragraph break) in text.

Finally figured this out yesterday, and it is so so simple:

Place two spaces at the end of a line, and markdown will insert a line break.

This works in normal text as well as inside blockquotes. So simple, so good. No more inserting <br/> tags at end of many lines.

Now, what took me so many years to find this?!

Eating rules

1. No screens

No TV, no phone, no laptop, no kindle. No, not even a book. When eating, eat. Listening is allowed, as long as it is to other people in person, not a podcast, radio, etc.

While eating, stay with eating. Taste and enjoy the food, not what’s happening on the screen while absentmindedly dumping the food down the throat.

This rule also helps with the next one. If the screens are off, the mind has more space to think about food and eating. Which allows us correct ourselves when we slip into the assembly line mode of eating.

2. Idle hands till the bite has been swallowed

Once a bite is in the mouth, keep the hands idle till it’s been chewed and swallowed. Keep the fork and the knife down. Keep the sandwich down. Don’t break the next bite of the roti.

Keep hands idle till the previous bite has been swallowed (repeating). Then prepare the next bite, put it in the mouth, and make the hands idle again.

Eating is not an assembly line job. There’s no need to maximise throughput. There is a need to taste, enjoy, chew and digest all that is going in. Rushing a bite because the next is ready in the hands makes a fast eater, doesn’t make a good, happy, healthy one.

This rule also helps stay on course with Michael Pollan’s advice on not eating too much. Keeping hands idle while chewing slows down the eating rate. This means that the food hits the tummy while we are still eating, making us feel full earlier.

On the other hand, the assembly line mode of eating is an invitation to overeat. The high turnover of bites means we can eat a lot more before the first morsels hit the tummy. Result: we’ve already overeaten before the tummy can tell us its full.

3. More greens and fresh vegetables than the rest

Greens + fresh vegetables on the plate >= everything else (bread, cheese, meat)

Remember Michael Pollan’s advice:

Eat food.
Not too much.
Mostly plants.

This rule helps stay on course with the third statement.

Just the fresh vegetables ought to be more than the carbs on the plate (bread, roti, dosa, rice…).
Fresh vegetables + greens + cooked vegetables ought to be more than everything else combined (meats, cheeses, fat, beans, dals, et al).

That’s all for now. Might update these rules in the future as I learn/discover more.

Continue reading Eating rules

Yesterday’s wormhole: Lakshadweep

The path in:

While updating books on Goodreads (step #1), I saw someone had read and rated a new Amitava Ghosh book. The book’s name is Gun Island (#2).

The book’s description began with the definition of the word बन्दूक (bundook) which is the Hindi1(#3) word for gun.

That made me try and remember the Hindi word for Island (#4).

I couldn’t. So, I tried remembering names of some islands in India (#5). The only two that came up were the Andaman & Nicobar islands (named in English, by the British), and Lakshadweep.

Lakshdweep = Laksha[^2] + dweep. This reminded me that dweep (द्वीप) is the hindi word for island(#5).

I thought (wrongly, I later realised) that Laksha was just a short form of the hindi word Lakshya, which means target. This meant that the name of the islands would mean ‘Target island’ in English.

This piqued my interest in them, wondering what gave them that name. What also bothered me was that despite knowing about the islands most of my life, I had no clue about the people, language, culture, etc on the islands. The Andaman & Nicobar islands get a far larger share of public mind space in India. No one bothers much about the Lakshadweep. Off I went to Wikipedia…

And the very first thing I learnt was that I had got the etymology of the name wrong. Dweep was correct – stands for island. Laksha wasn’t a shortened form of Lakshya (target), but a form of the Hindi word for hundred thousand—Lakh (लाख). So, the name didn’t mean target island, but a hundred thousand islands. It is, after all an archipelago of islands, not a single island.

About the culture, language, etc… well, go read the article and do some Wikipedia wormholing yourself :)

Continue reading Yesterday’s wormhole: Lakshadweep

I’m happy

It’s been a terrible week. I didn’t run. I really struggled with work, faced multiple setbacks. I had to abandon a feature with TTS. Got even more disappointed with Axc—another week of abysmal communication. Even the sleep was erratic. Hadn’t seen/spoken to parents for nearly 3 weeks and I was missing them.

The only good thing was the dogs. Dudley gave us company on Monday and Wednesday, and Barnaby was here for half a day on Thursday. Above all, Chewie gave me loads of extra love. Perhaps he could sense the sadness in me, and decided to do his bit to help.

Today’s been better.

I ran.
Body and head didn’t want to get out of bed. But I got dressed and went.
Legs were stiff and heavy on the warmup but I managed the full 10 min warmup jog. , Tummy was unsettled and legs stiff, so ran the Parkrun at an easy pace. Didn’t have the the heart to go with the pacers today.
Finished in 24:35. Took a quick toilet break to give the tummy some relief, and finished with another easy 20 min jog.

It wasn’t a pleasant run. I definitely didn’t enjoy it. It hurt way more than such an easy jog should have. But I ran, and that makes me happy.

The stretching afterwards felt really good, coming after a week of no running, no stretching, and sitting on a chair for hours.

Meeting Jasper, twice, was an additional bonus. Also met Rich after a few weeks. Saw Andy, Keith, Maddie, Prab, and others as well.

Returned home, stretched a bit more, topped up with a peanut butter toast, and took the boys out for a walk. Met lots of friendly dogs and a few familiar faces.

On the return section, we met a big group of students out for a country walk. Based on dress and behaviour, they didn’t seem from around here. They were definitely not comfortable with dogs. Dudley, ever friendly, decided to go say hello to all of them! And everywhere he went, the students shrieked and jumped away (or froze and stopped breathing)! That shouting triggered Chewie off, and he went barking to everyone. It was a mess. Took me a bit to get them both under control. The students were shaken, but good natured, and hurried off with hearts racing but smiles on their faces.

On return, took a long shower, shaved (after nearly two weeks), and been watching a big stage of Le Tour.

After lunch, called home. Mom picked up quickly today, after no response for two weeks. Turns out they’ve been missing me just as much as I’ve been missing them. It was satisfying to see and speak to her. Dad was taking a nap so didn’t get to see her. But it was good to have at least spoken to ma.

It’s been a tough week, but today has made it a bit better. I’m happy.

Continue reading I’m happy

Barna-baby

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Chewie posing, Barnaby learning

Had this handsome nutter over for half a day yesterday. His behaviour traits all remind me of Chewie when he was that age—restless, cute, ball addict (still is), bark at doorbells (still does), lay down to meet dogs, always wanting to touch some part of me…

It was fun revisiting those crazy, lovely, hyper, cute early days with Chewie, just for a brief morning.

Today

I completed two weeks of eating without screens1. It’s become much easier now. The hand doesn’t automatically go to the remote or the phone the moment I sit down to eat. The anxiety has disappeared too. I’m definitely lovin’ it.

I started on level two of wobble board balancing today. I achieved a level 1 PB of 6 mins 20 seconds on Saturday after the Parkrun. Also, balancing for a minute or two has become fairly easy now. So, decided to take it to level two today.

I found an old, barely used volleyball that R and li’l R had bought a while ago. They never used it, and it’s only lightly inflated now—perfect for bouncing off the ball while balancing on the board. A small, heavy medicine ball would’ve been ideal, but this volleyball is good enough for me.

There’s just one small (32kg black with 4 legs) hitch. Chewie gets agitated when I bounce the ball off the wall. He thinks all balls were made for him to play. Also, we often play where I bounce balls off the wall and he catches them. He protested that it was unfair that I bounce the balls from such a height at close quarters, and then catch it without giving him a chance. I have a few scratches on my waist from his attempts to topple me off the board and get at the ball!

Today is the first day in three weeks that I’m skipping the scheduled running workout. Between the hot day, and taking care of Chewie in the evening, I just ran out of energy and viable time slots to go for a run. I’m telling myself I’ll do it tomorrow. But tomorrow is just the same—late morning will be too warm to run, specially after walking Chewie, and evening will again be busy catering to him. The only viable spot is early morning, but those are my favourite work hours :(

Other stuff happened too, but nothing important or interesting enough to note.

Continue reading Today

The dog perspective..

These humans are so dumb. If only they understood doglish, we wouldn’t have to communicate with them in sign language using head, tails, ears and eyes.

I often wonder if we’ve got it all wrong—because we can’t figure out their communication, we believe they don’t have a ‘language’. And they think the same of us.

Just a thought.

Continue reading The dog perspective..