On Being a Late Bloomer

Late bloomer is a term often associated with developmental milestones in kids. It turns out the actual meaning is a lot more generous than that, despite what Urban Dictionary has to say on the topic. I always topped my class in school. Even through undergrad classes, I stayed in the top 5 ranks. So, “late bloomer” is not a term that anyone would associate with me. Frankly, I haven’t considered the possibility until very recently....

May 25, 2024 · 8 min · Abishek Goda

Move to Hugo

Hello Hugo! Today I moved my blog to hugo. Frankly it doesn’t make intuitive sense to run a blog on a static site generator. But when I think about it again, my blog is my expression of ideas. I rarely engage on the comments section. And the best way to let me know your thoughts is still to tweet at me. Given these, it makes sufficient sense to run the blog as a static site....

November 15, 2021 · 3 min · abishek

On Newsletters

What and Why? Personally, newsletters are the new blogs. While I don’t write or curate my own, I read a lot. And I am over-subscribed too. I subscribe to about 15 different newsletters but manage to read 1 or 2 in a week. That isn’t good. Luckily, I don’t yet pay to subscribe for any of them – and precisely for this reason. The only newsletter that I pay and subscribe to is the Blackbook newsletter by Vijay Anand....

November 10, 2021 · 10 min · abishek

WordPress Compromised

I, accidentally, noticed that my WordPress instance was compromised. Of course, I would be the person to blame for this. It’s not a commercial thing, so I don’t nearly spend enough time looking under the hood. This cost me a couple of hours yesterday fixing and cleaning up the mess. I’ve taken some precautions to ensure I won’t need to look under the hood too frequently but also ensure I don’t sponsor some botnet or click-fraud elsewhere on the tubes....

October 24, 2021 · 6 min · abishek

“Hey Siri”

I have an axe to grind with Siri. I use Siri every day to time my yoga routine. These are short reps of 30s poses. It takes about 30 mins to complete them. I searched for a good timer a couple of times in the past and then gave them up altogether once I figured I could use Siri to set up the timer for me. On a good day, it’s all good....

August 7, 2021 · 5 min · abishek

What do non technical founders do?

I am largely techie guy. In the sense, I can rarely understand what it is to be a non-technical person. Let me explain that a bit. I cannot fathom why some people cannot see how a certain idea or logic could be written as software. While here I am, trying to see the world around me as though someone wrote down code to make it work the way it does. I guess people are just wired differently....

February 8, 2018 · 2 min · abishek

Chennai International Airport

The International Airport in Chennai (MAA) is a statement. But before you start assuming its cultural significance, let me quickly say this: I don’t know how to frame the statement itself, but I’ll attempt to elaborate my understanding. As someone interested in UX and wanting to improve UX every here and there – no I haven’t improved UX anywhere yet – I cannot help but notice this about the MAA airport....

November 28, 2017 · 2 min · abishek

Long form writing on a phone

Its 2018, almost. And I still find it hard to compose long form content on a handheld phone (iPhone/android). Its just not comfortable to enough to get out of the way and allow the thought flow. iPad was better definitely, but I decided not to upgrade since the last one. Seemed too redundant to our lifestyle and given that my Mac Pro is not all that heavy, I end up composing all long form content on the Mac Pro....

October 29, 2017 · 3 min · abishek

Fear

My favourite TED talk is the talk by Larry Smith on “Why You Will Fail To Have A Great Career”. It is also my worst nightmare. It is what keeps me looking hard for problems that I believe in, that I want to be assosciated with. I take part in multiple forums just trying to see what would interest me. After all, if you want to commit all your time to working on something, you might pick up something that you really believe in....

May 14, 2017 · 2 min · abishek

Tonnes of updates

The biggest update since the last time I posted something is that I have moved to Chennai. Singapore is fun and a great place to live, but perhaps it didn’t work out very well for my career aspirations. It did work great for the wife, but she is happy to back in Chennai as well. Besides she is on the planned break for Sid, so maybe it doesn’t matter all that much in the short term....

July 19, 2016 · 2 min · abishek