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School killed poetry for me. The only poem I grew to appreciate was – “The Road not Taken” by Robert Frost – much later in my life than I was originally introduced to the poem. That said, I never appreciated other poetry for a very long time. I blame schooling for this debacle because I have come to realize that poetry is the most beautiful expression there is. For what its worth, words are always lacking when it comes to expression and poetry is, perhaps, an earnest attempt to fill that gap....

I had never been one to appreciate music. I had a few tracks that I listened to all through college. I still remember the CD that Satya gave me – sort of an initiation to rock and metal, so to say. I wasn’t quite a fan of classical music at the time. Neither Indian classical nor western classical. I did like a selected 2-3 songs from each of the prominent boy-bands of the time – Backstreet Boys, Boyzone and the like....

I am finally able to write common lisp code. Frankly, though, I don’t think I have arrived as far as Lisp goes. You can take a look at some of my work here: https://exercism.io/profiles/abishek Learning to write code, looking through CLHS for usage and figuring out a workable solution in a near-functional manner is how far I have gotten. I don’t yet know to write a macro. I mean, I know the construct to create a macro....

After a while I found my true netflix and chill combination in the least likely of all the things I have tried – Korean Dramas. And the best part is that I didn’t even spend time picking them out. I just picked the first few recommendations. I am on my third drama now and I am ‘hooked’ is the least I can say. Path to here wasn’t straight-forward though. It is not like one day I bit the pill and started watching K-Dramas....

I stumbled upon this pure genius on Netflix by serendipity. And I don’t think I have laughed as much on anything else. This is the kind of absurd humour that I enjoy the most – I wonder what that says about me, sometimes. This genre is somewhat hard to find, though. For a long time, it was only the Monty Pythons that worked on this genre. Then I stumbled upon Douglas Adams and haven’t looked back since....

We recently completed all 12 seasons of the big bang theory (BBT). I loved the piece so much that I miss having them over during our dinner time. And my 4 years old son (yeah, he definitely shouldn’t be watching this one), dresses up like Sheldon on most days. Now that its over, I am kinda rewatching Friends. My go-to sitcom is Seinfeld, but Netflix seems to have run out of that one....

Twelfth standard math was hard. We didn’t have a stable teacher all through eleven and for beginning terms of twelve. Whoever took over math usually left within the year, although for no particular reason. Most of the class went to external tuitions for math. It was all the more critical because we had to clear a separate competitive examination for engineering admissions. Aral Mani’s near my house was the most famous of all....

I am a paranoid guy. But my paranoia borders on a potential disorder. I am paranoid about things that might not even happen. For example, I always worry that I cannot do great work. My fear is not about failing, though. My concern is that someone will dig up something I said on my twitter feed that I can’t entirely agree with today. Is that rational? But when has fear been reasonable?...

I have been writing web applications for quite a while now. For a more significant part of this experience, I had been developing on top of an existing CMS type environment; moodle, drupal, WordPress, or the like. Very few of these are web applications written from scratch. I typically used PHP when I write for the web because it has the lowest barrier of entry. You can write HTML and then insert your PHP wherever you need dynamic content....