Happy on Noetic Nought

What I liked 2016-09-04

Mon, 12 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0530

This week was a busy one, and I didn’t really consume too much web content.

A colleague mentioned that he was reading the book – The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps and it seemed to have some interesting ideas that I’ve never come across before.

The Berklee Indian Ensemble performed at the Bengaluru Ganesh Utsava and I went along with Sunil to their performance, which we thoroughly loved.

I liked some of Chet Baker instrumentals that I listened to this week.

What I liked 2016-08-28

Mon, 05 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0530

I liked this article advising developers on having healthy relationships. Most of it is common sense stuff – “Whether it be a side project or main project, understand that sacrificing relationships isn’t worth it.”

I really enjoyed this article by Priyanka on how she started talking to Auto Drivers. She shares a bunch of stories of drivers she talked to, that makes me wonder how many more such stories just go unheard, because I don’t talk.

@scopatz wrote up a nice argument explaining why @github should add back BSD to the list of licenses shown on the site. It taught me a thing or two about BSD and MIT.

I enjoyed spending the weekend at @_mavin’s place, discussing continuous improvement in life, among other things. Also, had a lot of fun playing Psyche. The game is so addictive, but the app is not all that great. Someone should make a more robust app for this, or something that piggybacks on an existing network service like Telegram or Facebook chat or Google hangouts.

Falling In Love At A Coffee Shop by Landon Pigg is a lovely song, that I discovered this week.

What I liked 2016-08-21

Mon, 29 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0530

Vox has a nice short video on shutting up about the y-axis – It’s long past time to say no to y-axis fundamentalism, they say.

The New York Times has a great visual history of which countries have dominated the Summer Olympics.

This story of Dipa by ESPN is an inspirational read.

An old post on a Frameless Geodesic Dome that Bruce Hauman (of Figwheel fame) built himself is very cool!

This article on India’s Gozoomo shutting down shop and returning VC money is heartening and gives me some hope about startups in India.

What I liked 2016-08-14

Mon, 22 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0530

NYTimes has been doing some amazing visualizations for the Olympics and this time lapse visualization of Bolt’s 100m Gold is great!

The History Project produced a book called Partitioned Histories that tries to contrast the narratives of India and Pakistan on their histories using school history text books. What a great idea!

This video about the Sunshine Orchestra being trained and tutored by Rahman and his KM Music Conservatory is touching.

Julia Evans’ posts on how to decide and think about what to work on are great. “Even reliably recognizing good ideas is hard!”, she says, and this resonates with me. Writing a release email as a way to think about why you are doing something is great!

Jasdev wrote about his monthly check-ins with friends. I thought they were such a great idea - simple, yet, powerful. “The only regret I have about these checkins is not starting sooner.”, he writes.

This Vox article on America’s increasing wealth gap along racial lines is really well done and thought provoking.

What I liked 2016-08-07

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0530

Great visualizations about how global temperatures have been changing in the last ~165 years. If you are still a global warming skeptic, you definitely must see them.

These visualizations of Michael Phelps’ performances at Olympics over the years by NYTimes are great, too!

I came across these delightful videos (1, 2) of girls and boys playing cricket at Haji Public School. Look ma, no sexism in coverage of sports.

This (Telugu) interview of Dr Jayaprakash Narayan is truly inspiring. Also, YouTube recommended his conversation with Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, which was unexpectedly insightful, and covers a wide variety of topics – spirituality, religion, social organizations, politics, socialism vs. capitalism.

What I liked 2016-07-31

Mon, 08 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0530

Lots of Olympics stuff this week!

I really liked this ad - Rukna Nahi Hai - wishing all the Olympians a wonderfully spirited competition, at Rio. Go!

Brazilian marathoner Vanderlei Cordeiro de Lima, the man who lit the Olympic flame, inspires me with his spirit.

This story of Mohan Kumar from Ambattur, a Chennai suburb is inspiring. “Now I am on the relay team. But in the next Olympics, I want to qualify for the individual event. That’s my aim.”, he says.

@vandith recommended the Nike+ Training App to me and I really like it. They have some amazing workouts and pretty neat personalized workout plans.

Coke Studio Pakistan is trying a delightful experiment with their show this time – they are trying to use lights and vibrations to let the hearing-impaired experience the music on their show better!

Sainath’s keynote at Film Writers Association conference was yet another of his thought-provoking speeches. He sends you down a spiral of thought, when he says, “How agonised we are when people die, and how untroubled we are by how they live”. I also enjoyed watching his (long) casual chat from an year ago, talking about his life and influences on him.

David Sassoon the founder of InsideClimate News writes about Non-Profit journalism, the need for it, and how to have more of it. He writes about it in the American context, but India has its own share of troubles. I consume quite a bit of news from independent sources, but don’t really contribute to keep them going. I should turn this around.

A bunch of residents of Urur Olcott Kuppam in Chennai responded to media’s broken coverage of TM Krishna’s Magsaysay award. I really liked how assertive they were about their role in the music festival, its role in their lives, and in clarifying how they see their fishing village as opposed to how the media portrayed it. They don’t mince any words.

You can find my older weekly posts like this here.

What I liked 2016-07-24

Sun, 31 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0530

This week was relatively quiet for me. But, here’s what I liked, mostly from my twitter timeline. If you follow me on twitter, there may not be anything new for you.

This short video on how Nima made it to Ultimate’s most prestigious tournament made me cry each time I watched it. And movies/videos rarely make me cry.

Sacha Chua writes about her baby’s Microphthalmia and says this – “She’ll make an awesome pirate. Or cyborg. Or cyborg pirate. If she wants.” Woah!

I discovered Rains Of Castamere by Krish Ashok and loved it. Some looping happened!

@varungrover wrote argued for using better insults than ‘Presstitue’ and I agree. I have had similar thoughts on the other insults he talks about.

This tweet thread got me thinking about speaking up, and standing up, and how people fail to do it, and what could help prevent these failures.

This picture of kids praying at Haji Public School gave me hope.

What I liked 2016-07-03

Wed, 27 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0530

I really enjoyed reading the full judgement given by the Madras High Court in the Perumal Murugan case. The court said something on the lines of: not all art may be for everyone, and if you don’t like a book, throw it away. The judgement also made it clear that it is the responsibility of the state to ensure that things don’t go haywire using appropriate measures, and banning things left, right and center is not the way to deal with it.

This letter that a Law professor wrote in response to a student’s complaint about him wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt is superb!

Gabriel Weinberg’s post with a list of mental models that he found repeatedly useful has been great. There have also been some great comments on it! I wish to keep going back to the post.

Anaghs shared a summary of Brian Christain’s Algorithms to Live By and the books seems really interesting. Added it to my reading list.

This ad by BigBazaar for Eid touched a chord.

Black Mirror’s The Entire History of You totally got to my head, and if you are interested in the future of technology and human behavior, I highly recommend watching this episode, if not all the episodes. Thanks to @9 for the recommendation.

Calvin and Hobbes’ Search is a fun project - search for Christmas, Life and Universe and enjoy the wisdom!

Sowmya Rajendran’s post on how the menstrual cup touched her life more than anything else after the Internet, was an interesting read.

The lights in the audience truly look “amazingly beautiful” in this Coldplay video.

I’ll try and post things that made me happy or touched my heart, each week.

What I liked 2016-07-10

Wed, 27 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0530

Airtel’s response to @karthikb351’s write up on how they are sniffing and censoring CloudFlare’s traffic in India was funny but sad, though, not totally unexpected. For instance, see @kingslyj’s version of how this might end.

I loved this interview with Amanda Palmer where she talks about her stolen Ukulele, Music, her dad and her baby and her love for life comes across, like in everything else she does. ‘I want to get a couple of T-shirts printed for me and the baby that say: “We are determined to enjoy ourselves”’, she says.

A year old but inspiring article on Serena Williams, shared by @baali. I like how she says, she’s opening the next door for the next person, like the many people who opened many doors for her. @baali also recommended this song from Neerja as background music, and I loved it!

Pierre buttin’s screenshot art is amusing and gives a sense of how distracted he is, each day of the week, and how distracted we are, as a people.

We were walking through the fields and bushes in Hampi and stopped at the gate of a private property. A bearded man with a calm look on his face asked us “Do you know where you are headed?”. And then let us walk across his beautiful nature home to the other side, where we found this amusing sign.

Finally, this Nike India ad on Women in Sport is great!

What I liked 2016-07-17

Wed, 27 Jul 2016 00:00:00 +0530

@9 shared this story about Peter Norman. Woah, so inspirational!

This conversation with Amitav Ghosh on his latest book The Great Derangement is pretty scary! He says, “You know that this great derangement is ultimately going to lead to a great unraveling, but to see it working itself out, day after day, in the news, it’s so terrifying. I mean, it’s here, it’s happening. You may not see it a direct connection between the events happening in the world today and the climate in general, but that relationship does exist. In Syria, everything started with a great drought. The Middle East, this entire Mediterranean region, is going through a historic drought. And if you think about how this tumult in the Arab world began, it was with protests over food in Tunisia. So what we’re facing really, if you like, is a catastrophic convergence of natural impacts and human impacts.” I ended up buying the book at Bookworm.

This IndiaSpend article on how quotas have helped the disadvantaged caste students is a really well written article, with informative charts.

Kenneth Reitz released Episode-2 of Import This, a podcast that I wasn’t aware of and ended up listening to Episode-1. I really liked the discussion on being considerate to others in communities that you are part of. The quote that this episode ends with, “Software is all about the people. Don’t dismiss them. Don’t dismiss their experience.”, resonated well with me.

Julia Evans’ how to be a wizard programmer sketch is rad! (tweet).

I watched the movie Blind Side (2009) with friends, and really liked it. SJ and Oher together, they are a blast!