I tried Mastodon multiple times. It was hard to use.
- Following new people was hard. - The timeline didn't refresh and was broken. - Following conversations was hard. - Seeing what others liked and going down the rabbit hole was not possible.
I read about Mona on Daring Fireball. It is such a pleasant software to use. It provides everything at a single place. It remembers where I left. The multi column interface isaddictive. It is fast, no bling, no surprises, "do one thing well" …
I spend a lot of time in terminal. Most of it goes in reviewing code, managing servers, running tests etc.
These are the tools I use. I hope to keep this list updated. It should be helpful during system re-installs.
Libraries
Shell: zsh This is what runs the commands. ZSH is installed by default.
Prompt: Starship Prompt is the information we see about the current env. Starship automatically shows active git branch, virtual env, python version, AWS login, docker and other such things.
Terminal: iTerm2 The main app we use to interact with shell. iTerm is most used.
I stopped posting the weekly notes for sometime. I thought, I would instead post small updates as and when they happened. But I was unable to do that. Restarting with weekly updates.
Joined MMA Matrix
I have been wanting to learn boxing or street combat. It is good to have proper skills. To have confidence to help others as well as ourselves when needed.
My boxer friend, Tabish, recommended me MMA Matrix gym. It provides Mixed Martial Arts training in Lucknow. They have a beautiful boxing cage. They provide MMA training 4 days a week.
I feel proud of my new record as I never thought I could run 5 kilometers. I haven't felt healthier ever before.
The credit goes to my Garmin Coach. Details of my 5k run on Strava I started running in November 2022. I needed a watch to track my runs. My requirements were:
The watch should have an inbuilt GPS as I don't carry a smartphone.
MailBrew is one of my favourite services. It allows us to create custom email digests. We can use it to track blogs, Tweets of favorite people and other sources. It is like creating a custom newspaper for yourself.
I have 3 daily digests on MailBrew.
1. Daily Morning Digest - 8am This one contains: - Tweets of people who Tweet rarely and I don't want to miss them. - RSS feed for DD News. To track national developments. [Want a better unbiased alternative] - RSS feed for KnockSense. It keeps me updated about Lucknow. - Top links on …
These are few of the things I want to do this year.
Run thrice a week - do 150 runs
I did a Chattisgarh Jungle Trek in 2022. It was one of the most magical experience. Being alone in the jungle for 4 days. No horns - no noise; only the chirping of birds, blowing of breeze and crackling of leaves. Walking on the river, swimming in it, stargazing, sitting by the lotus lake and having conversations with friends. All magical!
The requirement to qualify for the trek was to run 5kms in 35 minutes. I hadn't run 1km in …
We recently added a "search everywhere" feature on Screener. It allows us to do a full-text search on all the concall transcripts, announcements and key-insights of all the listed companies.
This was our second attempt on it.
There are various ways to implement full-text search: - Using full-text index in relational database such as MySQL / PostgreSQL - Using services such as ElasticSearch, Algolia, TypeSense or Meilisearch - Using text search databases such as Lucene or Tantivy
We tried full-text using MySQL in our first attempt. This time we shifted to Tantivy. These have been our learnings.
