Reading

Chapter 1 - Reliable, Scalable and Maintainable Applications In [[Reading DDIA - Part 1]] , I read about Reliability. The next section is Scalability . First let me talk about the assumptions I made about the term Scalability, what I understand from it prior to reading Martin Kleppman’s thoughts on the topic - What is a scalable system? My thoughts prior to reading the section - Scale refers to how does a system grow. Growth can be needed for multiple reasons - ...

(Here’s the preface in case you missed it - [[Reading DDIA - Preface]]) Chapter 1 - Reliable, Scalable and Maintainable Applications This chapter’s goal is to effectively give us a high level overview of what this book is fundamentally about - Thinking about data systems along the axes of : Reliability Scalability Maintainability What is a reliable system? My thoughts before reading the section : A system that is available to return results/outputs that are expected of it when it is employed. If I’m accessing an API, if the API is available 99 out of 100 times, then its reliability is 99% If a server is available for 23 hrs 45 minutes per day then its availability is 23.75/24 = 98.9% But is availability == reliability? Let’s see. A reliable human is someone who does something that he says he will do or is expected to do every time. Similarly a reliable system is one that returns the expected results every time that they are used. An ATM is reliable if I can withdraw money from it in the denominations that I want, when I want it. For example, the ATM in Puttenahalli , JP Nagar is perpetually unavailable. Everytime I go there, the system is under maintenance. It is 0% reliable. Let’s read the chapter. ...

Over the next few weeks, I want to read a book that has been long-pending - “Designing Data Intensive Applications” by Martin Kleppman. I’ve been building data applications for a while now but most, if not all the learnings, have been through trial and error after error after error. I’ve learnt a decent bit from observing more senior engineers, architects, design documents and building architectures little by little on my own, but not yet I think, in a structured, deliberate manner. I’m hoping to learn that in this book along with the other books I will likely have to refer along the way. ...

Today, I’m experimenting with a new way of logging. An incremental account as opposed to a summarized one at the end of the day. Morning log - The plants did not require watering today as it rained heavily last night for quite a while. Breakfast procured, tea prepared and work has begun at an honest, early hour. A good, hopefully productive 2 hours to go before I am interrupted by other humans….unless I indulge in distracting myself before that. I also began reading my 5th Agatha Christie novel today - Poirot Investigates - Short stories involving the duo - Hastings’ and Poirot’s cases. The similarities between them and Watson and Sherlock of the Conan Doyle persuasion isn’t lost on me. But of course, this subject of comparisons has been of interest for decades to bloggers and literature students across the world. One read I found particularly interesting as I looked up the internet to support my immediately preceding comment was this - https://dirkdeklein.net/2018/04/13/when-arthur-conan-doyle-looked-for-agatha-christie/ .I must read up more on ACD’s “occultist” practices. But perhaps, that’s an activity for a later time. Off to work now.

I continued listening to Cabin Pressure today and completed it. Not much of an accomplishment since there were only 12 episodes of 28 minutes each. It’s a testament to how good of a show it was that I was listening to Episode 6, Season 2 and I remember feeling bummed out a little when I realised it was the last episode on the playlist, with the third season not yet in sight. ...

I bought two books on Jun 27, using a Champaca gift voucher that was about to expire. I didn’t need the books, but it was …there. So I ordered “Ways of Seeing” by John Berger and “Digital Minimalism” by Cal Newport. Now, the latter, I was really looking forward to because it’s ongoing and eventual goal to successfully subscribe to and practice the “philosophies” of digital minimalism - a topic highly relevant today and definitely more so, tomorrow. ...

I wrote a little about the book this show is based on, earlier this year. I’d absolutely loved it and ever since a dear friend, Reema, told me that the trailer for the Netflix show was out, I’d been excitedly awaiting its release, slated for December 29, 2021, which if you’ve still managed to keep track of time, was yesterday. It was a little late in the day that I realised that it was here and I waited for meeting after meeting to get over so I could start watching the show. ...

It was a bright summer (already?) day and I was in high spirits. And why not? I’d woken up early and on a Monday no less! Surely that was a sign of a good day? I left home to go to work at 8.45 AM as intended (but seldom carried out. Not today though. Another good sign). I got my vehicle out and was greeted by the familiar sound of the woman who comes everyday to take out the trash. This person who has no need to be on time has more sense of punctuality than the so-called skilled workers that we’re dubbed to be. I greeted her in the usual fashion as I do on the days that I’m able to match her time. The ride to the Metro station was uneventful and that in itself was pleasant. I saw the usual sights - vegetable peddlers idly pedalling away on their cycles to get to their usual circuits, no doubt. Shopkeepers chatting with each other as they opened the shutters to their shops ; some early birds had begun their ritual of praying to their gods for a good day of business. Familiar, pleasant sights. I smiled to myself as I continued riding leisurely. I was on time, there was no need to rush. ...

Today I learnt that there’s this term called Bildungsroman . I tripped upon it while I was pondering the commonalities between Harry Potter and Naruto , about how both of them were underdogs, cursed at birth - one with a horcrux, and the other with a curse-mark, grew up effectively with no one to love them till they were of a certain age but are both intended for great things and grow into their respective savior roles. The genre itself doesn’t require the main character to be a “hero”, but the stories do intend to show the psychological and moral growth of said character. ...

Padma sat by the window reading “Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix” for what was probably the fifteenth time. She’d already binged through Goblet of Fire. When she reached the chapter “Silver and Opals”, she looked up for the first time in three hours and out the window. The road outside was empty save for a cat that was scratching the neighbor’s door on the other side. “What if that were Minerva McGonagall?”, Padma thought to herself and chuckled, amused. She decided to give herself a break, leaned against the wall adjoining the window and closed her eyes, her mind buzzing with thoughts of Voldemort taking over Harry’s dreams and wondering if she might fall victim to that too, if she fell asleep just then. She’d just closed her eyes when the doorbell rang. “Now? Really?”, she muttered and made her way unwillingly to the front door. She peered through the peephole cautiously, but there was no one in sight. She slowly opened the door and heard a shuffling noise at her feet. It was the cat she’d seen, trying to nudge past her legs and into the house. Before she could make sense of the situation, it had already made a dash for the living room and paused at the edge of a straw mat by the poojai room. Padma, still bewildered looked outside one last time before she closed the door and wondered who had rung the doorbell. Surely, it wasn’t the cat?! She shook her head. The doorbell mystery could wait. There was a stray cat in her living room. She frowned and stared at her intruder who had by then decided that the mat was an enemy and must be destroyed. Padma meanwhile, had gathered her wits and gently started tiptoeing towards the cat; although what she would do once she approached it, she hadn’t thought about just yet. The cat was still pawing away at the mat, its concentration unwavering. Padma was now within petting distance from it. Now came the almighty question. What was she going to do? What could she do? Shooing it would only drive it deeper inside her house. She couldn’t just pick it up and take it outside her house.. could she? No, that was out of the question. For starters, she had no idea How to lift a cat. What if it scratched her face? No. That was out of the question. As she pondered, she slowly sat down behind the cat. Now she was level with its tail and just looking at it with a vacant expression, head tilted to a side, unable to decide what to do next. Meanwhile, the cat, who had evidently felt an alien presence around it, stiffened and looked around and with a loud and startled miaow backed a couple of steps away from Padma, who was equally startled by the feline shriek. Both looked at each other, the cat with its paws slightly lifted, ready to flee and the human with her hands behind her on the floor, a confused expression across her face. The human acted first. She raised her hands , in an expression of resignment and surrender and mouthed, “Okay, calm down. I am not going to hurt you”, even as a voice in her head said “You are talking…to a cat.”. Another voice in her head said “Yeah, what if it doesn’t know English?”. Padma chuckled for the second time that day having amused herself again. She shook her head again. “This is not the time, Padma.”, she thought and began inching away from the cat. Slowly, she got up and walkedto the kitchen, all the while watching the cat through the corner of her eye. “I might as well get you some milk”, she called out, still aware that her visitor probably didn’t understand the noise that the owner of the house was making. She heated up a bowl of milk to a moderate temperature, took the bowl and placed it cautiously at the edge of the now-somewhat-worse-for-the-wear mat. The cat looked up at Padma with wide eyes and then at the bowl of milk still not moving from its position. She took the cue and backed away. This prompted it to approach the bowl and sniff its contents. Satisfied, it dipped its tongue into the milk and started lapping it up, its eyes initially on Padma and eventually on the contents of the bowl. It must have been really hungry, for it finished drinking within a matter of minutes and placed a foot on the bowl when it found that there was no more milk to drink. It looked up at a smiling Padma, who was glad that her offering had been so well accepted. “Do you want more?”, she enquired, not really expecting a response. Those expectant eyes were answer enough and she went back to the kitchen area to heat up some more milk. This time however, the cat followed her and began poking at the slippers she had left at the entrance of the kitchen. She refilled the bowl and placed it again, this time closer to the cat that did not inch away, but was looking intently as the bowl moved from human to floor. The pace at which the bowl was emptied this time was even quicker, but it evidently sated the cat’s hunger, for it did not look up again at Padma, but moved towards its favorite torn-up mat and lay down. She heated up a glass of milk, this time for herself, picked up the Harry Potter book from near the window and sat next to the cat. She took a sip of milk and opened the page to Silver and Opals and started reading out loud, a gentle palm on the cat’s head - “Where was Dumbledore, and what was he doing?…”. She paused. “What was Dumbledore doing, Minerva?”, she addressed the cat, took another sip of milk and smiled. ...

“Are you ready?”, the voice on the phone asked Subbu. Subbu didn’t feel remotely ready. But his response didn’t matter either way. It was 7.30 AM - time to leave for school. The dreaded exam week was to commence that day. He mumbled something incoherently and placed the receiver on the telephone. “Subbuuuuu, late aachu da. Breakfast saapdu!” [Subbuu, it’s late already. Finish your breakfast!]. He wasn’t hungry. In fact his stomach felt like they were full of polymers of isoprene. Why was he thinking about rubber now though? He should be mentally wading through the rivers of the world and jogging through the various farms of India. Geography had never been Subbu’s strong suit and yet, that was the mountain he had to scale that day. He sat at the table obediently though and looked at his plate. Rice and Chapati.. Rice and wheat.. Bihar? Chattisgarh? No no.. The maximum production of rice was in West Bengal and wheat, in Uttar Pradesh. He tried to come up with mnemonics to avoid forgetting that as he poked at a chapati. His mum yelled at him again and he hastened to finish it. His mind was still buzzing with random keywords he had associated with lengthy paragraphs as he tied his shoe laces and noticed that he had worn mismatched socks. Well, it was too late to do anything about that now. He prayed that the class monitor would accept his offering of one Yummies packet and overlook this error during routine assembly checks. The school bus arrived and the driver honked rhythmically as usual. Subbu got on and waved absently to his mum. Was K2 the tallest mountain in the world or did that honor belong to Everest? What was Kanchenjunga then? Wait, were K2 and Kanchenjunga synonymous? Aaah! He didn’t know anything! He moved to the back of the bus and squeezed in between two bulkier boys. Then he picked out a textbook with a slightly worn out cover and opened it to a page at random. Anything was worth revising. Itanagar was the capital of Arunchal Pradesh. “Itanagar - AP, Itanagar - AP , Itanagar - AP”, he chanted in a low voice. He remembered talking about capitals with his dad the previous evening. He had asked the old man what the capital of Telengana was, confident that he wouldn’t know what it was. Subbu’s dad had disappointed him by not only telling him the correct answer, but supplementing it with more historical information - “When we were studying, Andhra Pradesh was one state. Ippo daan kanna pinna nu state mela state pannindirrukange” ["It’s only now that they’re creating new states left, right and center"]. Subbu didn’t care for this new bit of information. Actually, he felt cheated that he was having to consume more nonsensical facts than his dad. He resumed memorizing the rest of the capitals of states and moved on to a chapter titled “Weather - seasons and their importance”. Subbu groaned. In Bangalore, it was summer but it had just rained heavily the previous evening. This completely contradicted what this - he flipped to the first page - this Veena Bhargava was telling him about Karnataka’s weather. She would have him believe that climate change was periodic and that there were months beyond which Summer would not last or months in which there would be no rain. He made a note to word a strong box-format letter to her after he got home. Maybe she would discard it though. He wasn’t sure if adults were in the habit of receiving letters from 14 year olds. He shook his head and continued reading about how Cherrapunji had the highest amount of rainfall in the country. What was the capital of Cherrapunji again? Wait. Cherrapunji wasn’t a state. He gave the page a distasteful stare and looked around at everyone else. Their peaceful expressions agitated him even further and he started flipping pages at random. He shook his head and decided he wouldn’t let this faze him any further. He leaned further into the book in an act of increased focus and started reading about soils and their significance in the plantation of different types of crops, about earthquakes and tsunamis and their places of likely occurrence. Mental images of everything he had read blazed through in his mind, and at that point, he seemed unstoppable, when the bus came to a slow halt. They had reached school. He hurriedly closed his book, suddenly feeling more unprepared than ever and got down from the bus following the long file of students ahead of him. He walked into the classroom and saw huddled groups of students everywhere, no doubt trying to cram in one last satellite’s name before the call for assembly. He wasn’t going to try anymore though. He quietly sat at a desk closest to the door and waited with his head on the desk, trying to recall any fact he could. ...

“Good morning maaaaa’m”, the class bleated obediently like a herd of sheep, Subbu among them, as a stern looking Miss Prema entered the room with a thick book in her hand. She eyed the class suspiciously and dropped the book on the table where it landed with an resounding thud. The class fell silent and Prema ma’am spoke in her high pitched voice, “This quarter, we have a lot of History to cover. So, we will not waste any time and continue where we left from before the test - " Chapter 5: The Rise and Fall of Alexander the Great”. Subbu frowned. Why was she starting off on the first day? More importantly, had she corrected the papers yet? But he didn’t dare interrupt her as she read monotonously, “The land of Macedonia was already a great military power …”. He instead nudged Venky, his best friend who always sat next to him in class (or rather they’d grown close as a result of being made to sit next to each) and said “Hey, why don’t you ask Prema ma’am for the marks. You did well in History no?”. Venky looked at his friend with a mixture of pride and condescension that Subbu had not only assumed his prowess in the subject, but also entrusted him with a task that he was too cowardly to do himself. “Okay you chicken”, he commented as he cleared his throat in preparation, a little louder than he’d intended. “Venkatraman!”, the teacher yelled, “What is it? Why are you making sounds?”. The lion in him had shrunk into a kitten at the admonishing and he mewed incoherently. “What is it boy? Speak up!”, she yelled again. “Ma’am..Can you..Can I drink some water ma’am?”, he managed to squeak. He was disapprovingly given permission and had to make a show of going to the back of the class, fetching his water bottle from the array of baskets and drink it despite not being thirsty at all. Subbu looked back at his courageous friend, disappointed that the soldier had fallen without even getting a chance to yell a war-chant, let alone draw a spear. When he returned to his station sheepishly, Subbu had half a mind to taunt him, but seeing the ashen expression on his face, thought the better of it. He gave him one last look before shaking his head and looking to the other side for another chess piece to move. ...

Today (prompted by a breadcrumb of other thoughts), I found myself thinking about how Lays used to be called Ruffles Lays, atleast in India. But when I looked it up, I couldn’t find a shred of textual evidence on the Internet. Pretty much everything listed Ruffles and Lays as two separately owned brands under Pepsico. And this wasn’t actually the first time I’d thought about this. I’d thought about it before but was just to lazy to search more and prove my memory right. ...

This is the first design-related book I’m reading. I’ve read blogs in the past though. I picked this up because of its rave reviews and my own interest in wanting to design software and represent data better. Here I list some notes I made from the book peppered with my own thoughts during the reading. Chapter 1 : The psychopathology of everyday things In the reading of this chapter, Don Norman stresses that the 2 most important characteristics of good design are ...

This article about Facebook’s history of weighing reactions differently overly time culminating in uniformity for all reactions except for the “like” and the “care” reaction was published in October this year, 2021 - https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/emoji-reactions-cute-addition-facebook-became-headache-rcna3747 I’ve hated the concept of social media while being a grudging yet more-than-active participant in it for years now. And what gnaws on me day in and day out is the fact that this is all very dystopian and unnatural - the concept of assigning points to every little thing we say. every thought we have that we choose to put out there. This is not normal and definitely can’t be healthy. We weigh things in real life in relative terms already. Now for years, we’ve started getting conditioned to weigh every statement we make as well, wanting each to perform better than the last. ...

I think one of the biggest differences between someone who embodies a educator-mindset and someone who isn’t there yet but wants to be is - An educator or teacher doesn’t think anything they’re teaching is beneath them or is too easy to beg teaching. I started thinking about this when I saw time and again, experienced Python developers who I respect and have learnt a lot from talk and write publicly about topics that would be among the first ten things someone learning Python would be expected to have learnt. But this can be said for any other technical concept/subject/domain as well. ...

I do a lot of stupid things. And more often than not, they end up with acceptable, pleasant and sometimes even desirable results*. The most recent one was today, in getting a 600 page textbook printed** online but, forgetfully, not spiral bound as intended. So when the courier arrived with a cover enclosing a sheaf of 600 sheets, unbound and loose (but thankfully in order), I was puzzled and indignant, initially at the printers and then upon realization, at myself. The next 20 or so minutes were spent in wondering how best to collate the sheets. ...

I started reading at an early age,initially beginning with Grimm’s Fairy Tales (ages 5-7) and then moving on to the then-popular Amar Chitra Katha series. And people ask me why I’m so into mythology. Pfft. Every weekend, my mum would take me to the library and we would both read. She would dive into the likes of Shakespeare and such (books I could not comprehend at the time) and I would skip on to the children’s section to pick up an Enid Blyton or R.L.Stine (a 10-year old’s Stephen King :P ) . To me, that was just..bliss.. ...