Misc

By now you’ve seen a lot of stuff being built using ChatGPT. A lot, Jerry. A LOT. I’ve built a few apps and extensions as well, but this is the first I’m writing about. Over the last 3-4 years, “building” software on any scale has seen quite a radical shift. Here’s an image to scale - So when I first tried to build a Chrome extension for a company hackathon in 2022, I took around 12 hours, pulling an all-nighter. I looked up documentation, Stack Overflow answers, sample blogs and trudged through the whole process - The way god intended it. And finally completed…something. The end result was something that did the job I wanted but it looked absolutely horrendous and I had to hand-wave over the UX because I had no time before the presentation. ...

I’m not feeling all too well but I didn’t want to break my streak of writing. So today I’m writing about a non-Python related topic - Timeline Charts. I was doing a profiling activity for work and I was scratching my head for a way to represent the info so as to explain it easily. Then I got to thinking, how does Google build all those charts to track page loads and API runtimes in Developer tools? ...

There’s this thing I need to get done by August 22. A person whose inputs I’ve come to really value said I need to get the first cut by Aug 06 if I’m to realistically get the final cut by 22nd, so that gives me just a day to go. Where I am in the process- I’m still being a little clandestine about the whole thing, so I am going to publicly talk about it in code. Maybe as a recipe for something to be baked or cooked. ...

Didn’t work much today. Did some stuff that was pending at home though. Had tea at an administrative office. Got extremely drenched after probably more than a year. Oh and also started watching “The Indian Detective” starring Russel Peters late today. I’m on episode 2. It’s a cringe-y, cliched-jokes-filled piece of mindless production so far. But then again…it did make me get to episode 2 at least. The “detective”-ness is still very much in the making but Russel Peters is alright. Anupam Kher is bearable and somehow they picked all the worst Hindi speakers to speak Hindi while shooting in Bombay. Good stuff guys… ...

I tried to work today but I didn’t really succeed in the attempt. I did a little but not as much as I would have liked. I think the amount of work over the preceding two days had taken quite the toll on “the old noggin”, as Wodehouse would put it. Anyway, before long I found myself at the latter half of the 16th hour of the day and went on my daily walk, today in the little park in RBI Layout. Also scheduled at that hour was a “bookish” discussion between two people organized by some-other-people that I’d signed up for. The rest of us who were not these 2 gents were to be spectators with some minimal butting in allowed. I joined a few minutes late and for a little while felt quite like an alien from a different planet being dropped in the middle of a war with no equipment and no intimation of who the two sides fighting are and for what purpose. I gathered over the course of one circuit of the park that one of them was talking about a book that changed his life and the book had something to say about the power of the mind to fix the ailing body or some sort and the other guy had a sort of vicious vehement way about him, straightaway pooh-pooh-ing the whole notion. Now I must mention that both these chaps were very familiar with each other and their shared history was the reason they were chosen as the people to discuss today. It turned out to be a decent enough discussion to listen to on a 45 minute evening walk, but it did end up with me left in serious doubt if I would much enjoy interacting with either of them if I had to at some point. ...

♥ Now I have to read this

Recently at the theater, I accidentally stood up in attention for the Vicco Vajradanti ad expecting the National Anthem in the sequence. To my surprise there was another dude who’d also stood up. He was looking around the theater in embarrassment. Our eyes met. I instinctively and hastily waved at him, breaking my fixed posture. In that split second, he also understood and waved back and even grinned for good measure. I gestured wildly to mock-indicate that I’d catch up with him later. He understood and gestured appropriately. As I resumed my seat, I wondered how wonderfully and smoothly that whole episode had gone. I shook out of my reverie to see a bunch of people glaring at me for remaining in my seat. ...

I suck at poems but I try - Abhiram We are resilient. We were here long before you were born, and we will be here, long after you’re gone. We are intransigent. We wander into your house like we own it. And in many ways we do. We are stealthy. We creep along the sides, on the walls, on the blinds. We whisper to the inner walls of vessels. We are cautious. ...

-– borne out of sounds I heard, remembered or imagined. A glass bottle rolls lazily down the stairs, not too hard that it would crack or shatter on each bounce but just enough to maintain momentum that it doesn’t stop noisily rolling down till it reaches the floor. The dog next door barks continuously, tirelessly, but probably not effortlessly. It’s hard to imagine that there wouldn’t be some stress on its lungs for the amount it barks. I wonder what it’s thinking about..What it’s pining for..Maybe it’s hungry. Maybe it wants some attention from its owners. Maybe it feels cooped up indoors. Maybe there’s a sudden unexpected change in what it’s been observing. Maybe… ...