Teej Of All Trades

34.52 - TBD - To Be Dad

Hello! It's been a while since I last posted here - 18 weeks exactly. Some of you know the real reason I stepped away from the keyboard, but for those who missed it, life took an amazingly good (and chaotic) turn with the arrival of our son Minchu [https://www.tejovanthn.com/categories/minchu-tales] 10 weeks ago. All the time leading up to the birth was spent in parks, walking around the colourful streets of Basavangudi, and spending what felt like the last few days of being just a couple with Varsha. I wanted to push this out - one so that I can talk about Minchu and the changes he's brought to our lives, but also because this newsletter celebrates the last week of my 34th revolution around our friendly neighbourhood star. -Teej 🚨 The Poop Protocol It's 3 am. The baby grunts with a long mmmm. And the diaper, which we use only at night, has become heavy and soggy. Pulling yourself from the half-asleep state, while your partner is exhausted, only chaos reigns during the night. This is when we developed the poop protocol - a simple system that kept our sanity intact, and made managing the midnight blowouts seem like a breeze. * Warm water in the kettle, within arm's reach * A caddy with * Fresh diapers/langots neatly stacked nearby * Clean clothes, in case you need them * Small towels folded Sounds quite obvious, right? But here's what I learnt - even smart people make questionable choices in the face of chaos (and sleep deprivation)! The protocol is about having systems in place, so that your brain doesn't have to think - a ritual, nay, a habit - that you can run on autopilot. The magic of having systems in place is that you know by the end of it, your desired outcome will be fulfilled. It's the assurance that lets you coast while working at 30% capacity. Meal prepping, coding with AI/LLM, everything is a system that you can develop and leverage! 🕉️ Dichotomy of the Ancient vs Modern I joined a sandyavandane class, essentially to understand the nuances of some of the Vedas that we were taught as children. sandyavandane for those of you who don't know, is essentially a sun salutation - praying to the light coming from the sun. Every weekend, I sit in a class of 400 others and recite and understand 3000-year-old hymns praising the pagan roots we have - the sun, the water, etc. This, juxtaposed with the software work I currently do, felt like jarring cognitive whiplash! I mean, how do you reconcile ancient wisdom traditions while building AI-powered apps? But lately, I'm realising they're not opposing forces - they're complementary forces(?) for different problems. The Vedas teach presence, patience, and connection to something larger than immediate desires. Code teaches iteration, problem-solving, and building systems that serve others. Both are technologies for human flourishing, just operating on different timescales. And both have enough meaning buried deep inside, if you have the right tools to peel them open! 🛏️ The Floor Bed For the longest time, I've had a floor mattress. Luckily, my partner, too, was accustomed to a floor bed long before I met her. When we moved to Mysore, one of the first things I did was dismantle the cot and convert the mattress to a floor bed - not by choice, but because the bed proved to be too small for the three of us! Best. Decision. Ever! Suddenly, everything seems easier in the room - night routines, poop protocols, and the best part - no fear of the baby (and more importantly a parent) rolling off! This has also enabled easier nursing positions, simplified sheet changes, and felt like an upgrade instead of a compromise. This is happening everywhere in my life now.Limited work hours due to baby care? I'm shipping more focused, intentional projects.Can't travel easily? I'm exploring my immediate neighbourhood more deeply (discovered a new idli joint nearby!).Fewer social commitments? Deeper relationships with the people who matter.No time to send out this weekly newsletter? Let's face it, I have no excuse other than "I have a new human". Sometimes, the constraint is the solution! When you can't have everything, you discover what you truly need. 🎯 The Vision Test Before Minchu, I was the king of shiny object syndrome. I still am!New project idea? Let's do it! Interesting opportunity? Why not! My attention was scattered across a dozen half-finished projects. Now, with maybe 2-3 focused hours per day, I've developed what I call the "Vision Test" for any new idea: * Does this directly accelerate my path to the farm vision? * Can it be completed in less than 10 hours total? * Will it generate recurring income with minimal maintenance? If it's not three YES answers, it goes into a parking lot and gets forgotten like the cars and bikes outside a Bangalore police station. This simple filter has been life-changing. When resources are scarce, you stop optimising for options and start optimising for outcomes. 🖥️ AI Coding Assistants Years ago, I led a team where I had one amazing coder who couldn't communicate, and one amazing person to talk to who would take forever to understand the docs. Cursor + Claude is exactly like an unpaid intern version of these two! I've spent significant time with both tools (and some with ChatGPT for its superior image generation capabilities). I've had days where I think I'm shepherding the tools in a good direction, only to realise they've walked off a cliff and I need to trash all development. Days when some of the changes the tools suggest amaze me. What I've realised is that it's a lot more art than logic - similar to how managing a team is! Prompting, nudging, and making sure things are broken down into the smallest of pieces is how you can get work done by them. It's like Aladdin's genie - Phenomenal cosmic powers! Itty bitty living space - LLMs now have amazing capabilities, but lose their context very easily. End Note Writing this feels like coming home. The newsletter format forces me to step back and extract meaning from the daily chaos, which is exactly what I need right now. Life with a newborn is simultaneously the most natural thing in the world and the most disorienting. Every day brings new challenges that somehow feel both unprecedented and eternal. But buried in all this beautiful chaos are lessons about systems, priorities, and what matters. If you've liked this post, I'd love it if you could share it with a friend. You can get them to subscribe here [https://teejofalltrades.substack.com/subscribe] I do my best to have 5 "fun" things I've been working on every week, hopefully on Thursdays. I'm stoked you're here on my journey, and would love to read/hear about what you think. If you think there are other things we can look at, do them my way! Thanks for being here and reading all this. See you soon!Teej P.S. - Minchu says hi. He also says "waaaah", but I think that's unrelated to the newsletter quality. Also, go read Minchu's weekly posts [https://www.tejovanthn.com/categories/minchu-tales]. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit teejofalltrades.substack.com [https://teejofalltrades.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

34.34 - Ecosystems and Shared Modes

Hello! I wrote parts of this a while ago. Schedule, perfectionism, and life just got in the way of publishing. Quite a few of you checked in on me during this hiatus, and I'm truly grateful for all of you :) Someone I met once said, "You're the guy who apologises for posting something late", and I don't know where to start apologising from - not just for you the audience, but also myself for letting me slip so much! Today will be a little heavy, and a little raw - I'm slightly unprepared, and running this on a stream of consciousness - sort of. A while ago, I came across a couple of people who're vocal on Twitter (currently X), who tried to live a day or two in the life of a delivery agent of some 10-minute delivery apps. I have more to whine about this later in the newsletter, but this got me triggered about what and how we (as a culture) are sharing with our world and neighbours. My mother grew up in an apartment complex equivalent of the 50s - called a vatara [https://www.instagram.com/chennaghelidri/p/C5N-N4ivhd6/]. It was essentially a few houses surrounding a central courtyard, with an alleyway to the main road. There's no fixed size of a house, and every home ends up being unique. Amma organised a meetup of all the people who co-lived with her in this vatara - and some 60 people attended the reunion. Much better than 25 families visiting each other. This made me think about how families are designed now, versus our grandparents' era. How common modes of entertainment brought us close. And what learning would mean for the world going forward? I hope you all enjoy reading/listening to this as much as I've enjoyed putting it together. -Teej ⚛️ Atomic Families As mentioned above, my mother grew up in a vatara community of homes - her cousins are as close to her as her siblings. Appa fondly narrates stories of how he helped his large family with bulk buying groceries, how he and the siblings wore similarly made dresses because they would buy material by the yard, how hand-me-downs worked between them and even how he was dressed as a girl for a long time because he had 4 elder sisters! Contrasted this with my childhood where I couldn't keep in touch with my cousins, or we were taught to express individuality quite early. Both my parents worked multiple jobs to make ends meet and even hustled to give us the life we lived. But this also meant I was shuffled from school to daycare, from school to staying by myself while I waited for my mother, from doing homework to fixing my dinner on those rare nights both of them were away from home. I see people around me growing their families and making similar decisions our parents did to build everything from scratch. Nuclear families. This style of living has been on the rise with projections of over 65% of all households being in this mode by the end of the decade from over 50% this year. It's a fine balance between the mental health benefits of nuclear families and the social/cultural pillars of having larger families. Children of nuclear families have been shown to have better health especially because they're exposed to consistent parenting, have better innate conflict management skills, and better channels of communication. Elders however have shown signs of social isolation because they're unable to connect with others in their age group after living by themselves for decades, generational knowledge and stories are lost because people are disinterested, and parents are usually overwhelmed because of the lack of support. While I've stayed away from home for a fair bit, I do understand the value of keeping my family close. But there is a lot of give and take, and compromises between individuality and the group dynamics - something that can work only in a world of reciprocation and mutual understanding! 📺 Shared Contexts There used to be a time when I watched Dragonball Z, and ran to school the next day to talk about how long Frieza's fight was taking (30 episodes actually) or laugh about how useless Krillin was. Having a fixed schedule of entertainment from the idiot box [https://teejofalltrades.substack.com/p/3401-learning-at-the-end-of-rainbows?r=7g3ma] made everyone watch the same-ish things. This created a social thread of shared contexts that people could relate to. These threads brought people together and grew communities. There were the anime/cartoons friends, saas-bahu families, and quizzing folks. Labels are attached to people because of something they all did individually but could relate to as a group. Fast forward to today, and these communities though larger because of the borderless world of the internet, are fragmented across geographies and timezones. I don't know more than a couple of people around me watching Solo Levelling, there's hardly any social contact with people entertained by the same kind of Lo-Fi music I use to focus/study, even having conversations about movies is difficult because people have access to watch them at leisure. On-demand media, though it's created a plethora of options, has broken that automatic conversation. The shared contexts we were able to fall back on between topics are now replaced by negotiations of (re)establishing that connection. Which feels like work. What was the last movie you watched? 📚 Education of the Future It's a warm sunny morning. We're sitting on the lush green grass of Lalbagh, under the tall trees, talking about kids. Some of my friends are coming to an age where they'll start looking for a school for their young ones. We're not on that path, yet. In the distance, we see a group of children. Engrossed. Not with each other or play. But with the phones in their hands. There's no denying the power of the dopamine factories we've invented for ourselves. There's no escape from the convenience this brings us. But what was made to connect people is now unravelling to show the lines of discontent and disconnect. Education of the next generation, I imagine, will look wildly different. Instead of the rote learning we were subjected to where we memorised formulae and derivations - machines will help us remember and abstract away the details until necessary. The way tertiary education in India is split between applied science and pure science, AI and other technologies will create a drift at the primary schooling levels too.I mean, you don't need to know how to find a determinant of a matrix when you're building a shader for your indie game on Blender. The style of education though, that's something I've been fascinated about. AI is already embedded in the schools to keep the place safe, and for admin work (that's a bridge I'll have to cross when I come to it), but not so much in the teaching aspect. When LLMs can explain concepts better and more personalised, we should evolve the role of the teacher to more of a guide who shows how to do things instead of someone who just gives us notes. The alternate systems like Montessori and unschooling etc seem very lucrative. Where a child is trained to be a lifelong learner, and avenues of passion are created for them to follow. Technology can help create more personalised choose-your-adventure style games for learning, and truly break barriers of language.But all this depends on how well the facilitators are equipped and retooled. What are your thoughts on this? 🪔 United by a Festival It's 1893. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, against all laws set by the Britishers that prevented political congression, brought together people to celebrate a long-forgotten festival. A festival we now celebrate with a flair that has become rather worrisome. Ganesh Utsav was designed by Tilak and the reformers of that era as a covert operation to plot against our colonial past. Tilak encouraged the pandals, with mass installations of the Ganesha idols, and created opportunities for fanfare - with plays, Satsang, debates etc - anything that can unite people across castes, creeds, and even religions. The festival emphasised unity and brought everyone together against a common threat. Similarly, the Shivaji Jayanthi festivals, the Salt March, and the Lucknow Pact showcased cultural platforms to bring people of all religions together. The Ganesh Utsav was one of many examples that threw light on how cultural and shared traditions can be repurposed for reformation, fostering unity and collective action. While the Ganesh Utsav has been co-opted by right-wing nationalism currently, events like the Hornbill Festival, Sindhu Darshan, and Rann Utsav are gaining momentum in creating cultural platforms that try to unite people. Have you been to these festivals? 🌚 India's new oppressors How gig workers are toiling away their lives "lack of job security, irregular wages, and uncertain employment status for workers", is what the NITI Aayog describes the current gig economy that powers the consumerist 10-min delivery and similar labour marketplaces. There was a time when I was the e-commerce delivery agent for my mother - she would tell me what the kitchen pantry had run out of, and I would zip away with a tote to the Kirana store and buy things. In under 10min. And I would accept payments in bubblegum or chikki. Now, there's a folder of apps on my phone, and everything is a touch (and more than 10 minutes) away. There have been numerous people talking about how the pricing, especially for fresh produce that's not regulated as much, is much higher on the apps than in the market. Now and then there's a post empathising with the delivery agents who bring the things we've ordered in paper bags or compostable covers. The movie Zwigato [https://youtu.be/RCMxX6lWJcY] follows the life of one such agent. It humanises the person with the absurdly large bag that even looks uncomfortable before wearing it.One of my friends recently wrote something in a similar vein [https://open.substack.com/pub/pratikchandak/p/quick-commerce-from-a-lens-of-a-seller?r=7g3ma&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false]. Nothing shouts "money is power" louder than the verbal abuse and tantrum someone throws when an order is messed up. 100 years ago, it was the colonials who threw those who couldn't afford under the bus, and now it's us throwing the youth into an unsustainable pit. 80% of all unemployment is from this youth bracket, and yet they work more hours than our corporate bums to make ends meet. The longer-term impact of pushing our youth into this line of work also means we begin to lag behind other economies that can better equip themselves for the future! "There's no bonuses anymore, only EMI", regretted an auto driver when I asked him about how the driver marketplaces are. Updates & Errata * One side-project I just started is nestnow [https://nestnow.in], to help people find rental homes and flats in Bangalore. Let me know what you think! End Note If you've liked this post, I'd love it if you could share it with a friend. You can get them to subscribe here [https://teejofalltrades.substack.com/subscribe]. I do my best to have 5 "fun" things I've been working on every week hopefully on Thursdays. I'm stoked you're here on my journey and would love to read/hear about what you think. If you think there are other things we can look at, do them my way! Thanks for being here, and reading all this. See you soon!Teej This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit teejofalltrades.substack.com [https://teejofalltrades.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

34.11 - Shravana

Hello! I'm sorry for going AWOL again. A bunch of you reached out asking if everything is well, and I'm truly touched ❤️ Things were hectic with interviews and festivals two weeks ago. We were in the middle of Shravana - the season for all festivals. We celebrated the arrival monsoons with nagapanchami (mostly to make people aware of snakes in the rain I suppose), we also had a sense of renewal with the upakarma and spent a lot of time with family with raksha bandan and varamahalakskhmi puja.The month has put a lot of emphasis on spending time with my loved ones, and eating a lot! And the last week, because of all the food and the rain, I fell unwell. My resetting flu, as a friend called it. 3 days of fever, cough, syrups, and antibiotics. I'm a lot better now. But I truly miss the deep podcaster voice from last week. 😹 -Teej 🎉 Festivals We started the hiatus with naga panchami on the Friday.It's a paganistic festival celebrating the start of the monsoon, and the snake deities who usually symbolise fertility. As the rains flood snake holes the festival also makes people wary about our slithering friends. We try not to cook with a hotplate/girdle as our ancestors believed this would hurt snakes seeking refuge in the clutter of the kitchen. A sweet made of raw rice and jaggery is distributed too. Went to a cousin's wedding reception on Saturday and ate peanut curd for the first time. The food was lavish, and the relationship "cousin" is used very loosely here. I have a lot of relatives, and my parents are very keen on adding more people to the family tree - so much so that they've made contact with branches of the tree that are around 7-9 generations away. I honestly adore their effort, but I lose track of how we're all related (though I was instrumental in making a map of the tree a while ago). We observed manglagowri vrata on Tuesday. We kept this low-key this year. An arishina gowri (cone-shaped mound using turmeric paste) is made and worshipped. Though we don't observe the fast at home, we do celebrate the shakti which represents prosperity and fertility. The vrata has stories that are narrated as part of the ritual, and usually talk about the benefits of observing the vrata. I had a family get-together on Thursday. My paternal uncle opened a commercial building, and many met up for some havan and food. It was refreshing to meet this side of my cousins after a while. Went to my parent's house for varamahalakshmi puja on Friday. This is more of a cultural event than a religious one at my home. We don't use a kalasha at home but celebrate the festival with an old brass idol of Goddess Lakshmi that my grandmother used. The festival is to seek prosperity and abundance from the goddesses (like most of the other festivals in this season). Neighbours were called and tamboola were exchanged - making this a more community-growing event. V had a performance on Sunday. She performs veena fairly regularly, for seemantha (Indian baby shower), and other events. We ended up going to a rayara mutta with another artist friend and ate a heavy but simple meal. Sunday was another large family get-together. I was down with fever for the week, and luckily recovered enough to engage with people for a couple of hours. Met more cousins, and had a lot of fun with this event! For those of you who don't know, my partner is a GSB Konkani. Her community's guru has come to a samaja near our home (after 45 years I must add). We spent some time at the samaja during gokulashtami. This is a bigger festival for V than me, we spent some time making sweets and went to the samaja at night to celebrate Krishna's birthday. How was your Shravana? What festivals do you celebrate? 🍅 Garden The WhatsApp group for gardening [https://chat.whatsapp.com/HpeMzDJyPfc8TnhC62ajKz] has been thriving because of the Thindi Capital community. I found out that we had tomatoes growing out of the pot, and they had a calcium deficiency - Blossom End Rot. Someone in the group asked me to treat the soil with some slaked lime water. I finally got around to doing it, but most likely the damage is already done. Our cute little fiddle-leaf fig decided to shed all but one leaf. Looks hilarious, but I feel a little sad. This also reminds me to change the pot this weekend! I did change the pots for our mint and basil. They're taking root, and their own time to grow. They look a lot lot healthier than what they seemed like in their previous pots. The basalesoppu has thrived! We have multiple shoots creeping up some string trellis, and we've harvested them a couple of times for making some delicious tambli! 🚧 Side-projects What started as an amazing impulse of uploads with code.with.teej [https://tejovanthn.com/youtube-cwt], suddenly stopped.There are some good ideas in the pipeline - enabling better search, showing notations for songs, and my idea of curating events. Let's work on this in the coming week. On the sidelines, I've been redeveloping my website [https://tejovanthn.com/] to shift from logseq [https://logseq.com/] to obsidian [https://obsidian.md/] backed. I got most of the things working, except for the deployment on SST. The issue I'm facing is that in production, the files aren't available to process. I should perhaps look at alternates - in either how I handle deployments, or set up a pipeline for data extraction. I'm inclined to the latter - not because I know it's easy, but because I think it's easy. I was also rebuilding my talapettige [https://talapettige.art/] project to use Faust Programming Language [https://faust.grame.fr/] instead of the current tone.js [https://tonejs.github.io/]. I believe this DSP-based approach will have a cleaner sound, and make things better concerning the timing etc.I can also work on a hardware device to use this DSP output on a later date (could be a S2 in code.with.teej [https://tejovanthn.com/youtube-cwt]) 🤾🏼‍♂️ Sports as a Signal of Progress 1 silver, and 5 bronze. That's the number of medals we've won at the Olympics 2024.India is a "young" country when you measure how recently we've gained independence. But we often hide behind this and don't talk about how the most populous country sends a delegation of 150 people to the largest sporting confluence. There are 3 major events we can look at in the world of sports - the Commonwealth Games, the Asian Cup, and the Olympics. Each has a larger pool of participation and a relativistic decrease in what India brings home.The only time India bagged a major success was when we hosted the first-ever Commonwealth Games and grossly overrepresented the country. All this is to show some hard evidence of a John Adams quote I once came across - "I must study politics and war that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.". Though India claims to be a young country, we've always been a collection of princely states that indulged in arts and sports. Somewhere along the way of being dominated we lost that knack and slipped off the global table. Progress here means a lot of things. Someone can pursue a dream of being an athlete, and the infrastructure can support such dreams. It's the choice given with enough financial security for someone to perform at their peak consistently. It's also time for an audience to seek out and encourage talent.The dot-com boom of the 90s essentially rewrote what is considered lucrative to pursue as a career. This is the same in the startup boom of the 2000s, and the rise of the gig economy in the 2010s.All this sidelines taking up a sport at a professional level - because people either don't have the grit, time, or money. Sure there are budgets set aside by the government, but how much of that ends up in a sportsperson's wallet or at the grassroots to encourage fresh talent is anyone's guess. Things aren't all that bleak though - the last 2 decades have seen immense progress, and things are picking up. My only tussle is that we're over 75 years old, and have the largest talent pool, and yet we're unable to foster sportspeople as well as we should. Tell me what you think! End Note If you've liked this post, I'd love it if you could share it with a friend. You can get them to subscribe here [https://teejofalltrades.substack.com/subscribe] I do my best to have 5 "fun" things I've been working on every week hopefully on Thursdays. I'm stoked you're here on my journey and would love to read/hear about what you think. If you think there are other things we can look at, do them my way! Thanks for being here, and reading all this. See you soon!Teej This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit teejofalltrades.substack.com [https://teejofalltrades.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

34.08 - Streamgalore

Hello! Wow, what a fortnight it has been. We ran around and met a bunch of people which kept us on our toes. This is also why I couldn't write this post last week and broke my 10-week streak. I was bummed about it, but I guess life happens. What I thought was a habanero plant, turned out to be a random flowering plant. I caught up with a few friends of mine, went to a dance show, and walked around the neighbourhood parks looking at pretty mushrooms. Activity has reduced, but I think that's okay. The weather has been bizarre. It's hot. It's cold. It's all over the place. I also joined yoga as I wanted to switch focus between strength and flexibility. -Teej 💻 code.with.teej code.with.teej [https://tejovanthn.com/youtube-cwt] has been good. I streamed [https://tejovanthn.com/twitch-cwt] more in the last two weeks than in the last two months I guess. Got a bunch of things done - from updating the database, creating API endpoints, and even adding dark mode (which no one asked for, but which app doesn't have dark mode these days?). Response to the stream itself has been lukewarm - I guess the afternoon slot is best for solo work, not for others to hop in. But the afternoon slot works well for me, while I fight the want for a siesta. The project - rasika.life [https://rasika.life] has garnered good feedback. There have been numerous suggestions for making things better. A short list of feature requests looks like this: * Adding content for the glossary, for people to get acquainted with terms * Adding support for notations for the songs * Being able to search for a song regardless of how it's spelt. Some nice technical challenges within feature requests. It's exciting to be working on this, and now that the slump of setup is done, I feel the momentum is good to keep me going :) Take a look at the site, and let me know what you think. There's a limited set of songs right now (karnatik.com [https://karnatik.com] in comparison has over 8000 songs' lyrics). I'm adding things slowly, while improving the quality of life of the end user and not making them scroll multiple times to search. 🪴 Leaves of our Balcony As I mentioned, what I thought was a spicy chilly turned out to be a Marvel of Peru or Sanje Mallige. This had been disappointing - after waiting months for it to bloom. The rains have been nice - we're seeing a lot of green in the garden. We got a random tomato plant, I think (I want to stop guessing the plant till it is fruits/flowers). Somehow a curry leaf plant also has managed to survive in all of the mess. We also got a cute fiddle leaf fig from the nursery. They recommended changing the pot - which I haven't gotten around to yet. I'm worried about our Mysore garden though. It had taken a beating the last time we were there, and hopefully, it'll pull itself together long enough for our next visit. 🥗 Fruits of Someone's Farm We tried a farm produce service last week and were disappointed in the quantity of veggies we got.The service said it would be a few kilograms of veggies, fruits, and leafy greens. And for the same price from the local market/q-commerce apps, we could fetch a lot of lot more. Honestly, the price of food has gone through the roof, and the prices of even basic ingredients seem quite outrageous. Especially given the kind of inputs these vegetables/fruits are grown with. Cooking has been similar this fortnight too - 1 in 4 meals is outside 😹The bheemanamavasya lunch was very festive and felt elaborate, but it came together in less than an hour! We also borrowed a friend's convection oven to play around with baking. Experiments are bound to explode soon because of this! I'm desperately looking out to starting my farm at some point. If you know any parcel of land nearby, do get in touch ❤️ 📄 Mini-essays to Learn What if there was a way to learn exponentially fast? If this took 10-20 minutes when the idea was fresh in your mind, would you practice it? If this was 100-500 words you had to write, what would be stopping you? Mini-essays are exactly this. They are held together in the same essay structure of start-body-conclusion. Mini-essays are made to be created easily, usually in a single sitting, and talk about a single topic. These can also start conversations or thought processes that give rise to other long-term efforts. Sparks need to be captured because it's how you engage with ideas and the world itself. Spark to remark is a nice way to document what interests you. Anything can spark interest, the only way to fan these embers is to ask "because". In this world of overloaded consumption, stopping to ask why something piqued interest is like stopping to smell the roses. Some useful frameworks are writing about experiences, opinions, or events.Experience, "this happened to me", hooks the reader with an emotion that can be visceral.Opinions, "Here's a strongly stated thing", almost always generate polar reactions. People either love what you're writing about, or hate it, and they'll engage regardless.Events, "this happened on this day", are more journalistic. But this can be tied to a story style of writing. Free writing is a way to explore ideas when things are still nascent. It's a way of thinking on paper, similar to how morning pages create insights. Rewriting this insight for a particular audience makes it a mini-essay. Curating your PKM system can also pop up embers that have been buried. This is one of the biggest reasons to capture thoughts and ideas and revisit them periodically. Balancing curiosity with clarity can make mini-essays more engaging. Think of them as how TV shows are written - where the audience's emotions are played with to keep them drawn in. Organising mini-essays with tags that are outside the content itself can help resurface the idea at a later date. Also equally important is to keep track of the references, so that you can revisit the inspirations of the mini-essay. Mini-essays are a way to make better notes. They generate insights and can be thought-provoking. It ties Feynman's techniques of teaching to learning, where the minimum audience of your mini-essays is a future version of yourself. 📸 Say cheese! For those of you who don't know, I was a photographer for a couple of years of my 20s. I transitioned from a hardware developer to a web developer, and in-between I explored the wonderful world of performance photography. I speak about this part of my life because sometimes I miss being behind the camera and capturing the world in front of me. Especially when the world in front of me is filled with students from my friend's dance school [https://www.instagram.com/trayag.natyalaya/].The performances [https://youtu.be/wVED_7ch6Zw] were amazing, and the students did a fabulous job carrying themselves on stage. There were a couple of pieces from some senior artists too. It's also this kind of event I want to capture and amplify using rasika.life [https://rasika.life/]. What do you think? End Note If you've liked this post, I'd love it if you could share it with a friend. You can get them to subscribe here [https://teejofalltrades.substack.com/subscribe] I do my best to have 5 "fun" things I've been working on every week hopefully on Thursdays. I'm stoked you're here on my journey and would love to read/hear about what you think. If you think there are other things we can look at, do them my way! Thanks for being here, and reading all this. See you soon!Teej This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit teejofalltrades.substack.com [https://teejofalltrades.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

34.06 - Gazing into the infinite

Hello! The past week has been hectic, in terms of geography, again. We were in Mysore for a bit, trying to revive some of our plants (and a very beautiful curry leaf shrub). I had a lot more plans for the week, but things couldn't be executed, and we ended up chilling at home for my partner's birthday. It was fun - we ate churmuri (a snack meal made of puffed rice), got a yummy cake to cut, and spent time with people we've missed the past few months. You should order from Cookie & Treats [https://www.instagram.com/cookieandtreatsmysorehomebaker?]! And, we ended up Netflixing and chilling a lot. Honestly. Bad Newz was at the cinema, and it's worth watching if you have an afternoon to spare. Keeping this edition small too! -Teej 🥙 Cook-at-home Challenge This started as a small challenge [https://teejofalltrades.substack.com/i/146050787/cook-at-home-challenge] and an accountability group [https://chat.whatsapp.com/GaI8GwRnTkHA3VWJ4Fygd0]. We ended up cooking over 70 out of the 100 meals in the past month. We still have a long way to go, but this feels like a good baseline to bounce off. We want to cooking easier and healthier - especially for individuals and small families. Sundri [https://teejofalltrades.substack.com/i/146286073/introducing-sundri] is one project along these lines. 🪴 Reviving the Garden 5 weeks of not watering has taken its toll on our Mysore garden. It's not as blessed as our Bangalore one, which is automatically watered by the rain, but it's managed to survive. Thanks to yet-another-whatsapp-group [https://chat.whatsapp.com/HpeMzDJyPfc8TnhC62ajKz], of garden enthusiasts, I think I'm in the right direction to keep these plants alive. The curry leaf plant was given a good trim, better soak and mulch. Luckily, it's not dried, and I hope to visit it soon for some compost top-up. Errata/Updates * I streamed [https://youtube.com/@codewithteej]. Someone asked me why I stream. I stream to stay accountable, to build in public, and to say it's ok to make mistakes while people watch - because within that discomfort lies an opportunity to grow. * An idea a neighbour and I discussed at some length was gati irode jagatu, loosely translated to "the world lies in a pace". We spoke about how the generational gap is changing because of the adoption of technology. And how technology can make or break human connections. I want to ponder more about this, and if you have recommendations about how this flux changes how we connect, please send them my way! * I appreciate those of you who spoke to me after the post on vulnerability [https://teejofalltrades.substack.com/i/146760050/vulnerabilitys-power]. ❤️ You all made my week! * I also got a better microphone. Expect the audio quality to be a lot better going forward 😄 End Note If you've liked this post, I'd love it if you could share it with a friend. You can get them to subscribe here [https://teejofalltrades.substack.com/subscribe]. I do my best to have 5 "fun" things I've been working on every week hopefully on Thursdays. I'm stoked you're here on my journey and would love to read/hear about what you think. If you think there are other things we can look at, do them my way! Thanks for being here, and reading all this. See you soon!Teej This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit teejofalltrades.substack.com [https://teejofalltrades.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]