Weekly #32 (2026)

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 12:15:00 +0530

DONE Voice input for capture

I tried using the FUTO keyboard for a while, but it’s not working as well as I would like it. And opening Orgzly and typing in a heading, and content seems like too much work.

I created (using Claude Code) a script now that creates a voice note for me, which is pushed to my server and can be transcribed on my laptop using a local Whisper model. It doesn’t work as well as I would like it because the recording doesn’t work until Termux is in the foreground, but it seems better than what I had before.

Notes on the AI Coding Transition

I’ve been trying to read through this lovely compilation of articles written by people about how Software Development is changing with AI. I’ve already read some of the articles when they were originally published, but reading them as a part of this collection seems useful.

Pandoc - twenty-years-of-pandoc

A colleague and another friend brought to my notice that I got a shoutout in the 20 years of Pandoc post for contributing an org mode writer.

I think this was my first “open source” code contribution to a large-ish project. I may have contributed small documentation fixes to Org mode before this, but I really wanted to convert some ReST documents to Org mode, IIRC. I did write a tiny blog post about it, back then! (which seems to have lost links over years of transitioning between different blogging systems).

the Hebbal Short Tunnel project

Rishi made a couple of videos (Instagram & YouTube) about how Bengaluru’s Hebbal Short tunnel project has already started without due process! And it looks like the gains from it are questionable. If you care about this Bangalore’s landscape, see the petitioni here.

Fun evening with Sid

I had a lot of fun jumping around with Sid and drawing some mazes for him to solve. Harsha and I were thinking that it would be fun to write a generator for mazes like these.

Friction is the answer to the human desire for meaning

I read this interesting article by Utsav on how “Friction is the answer to the human desire for meaning”. I loved the format and the pictures in the article and also agree with the hypothesis. I have always believed that learning is effortful. And I see how some of the meaning I would derive from my work seems to be disappearing with the use of LLMs to get things done “quickly”.

But, also there are some kinds of friction which isn’t useful. Some friction could just prevent you from getting started or continuing with something and I think it’s worth sharpening your tools to smoothen out that friction is something I will continue to do.

Artificial-Intelligence on Noetic Nought