I am back to physical P.T again. I have also started doing some stretching at home every day, thanks to Sandeep and friends. My goal for the year is to gain muscle and do some pull-ups. I measure lean mass and body fat with a yearly DEXA scan. My body fat was 30% last year. I am not aiming a lot. But a couple of percentage points reduction from last year is a win.

And if I can dead hang for 2 minutes and do at least 3 proper pull-ups. I will consider it a win. Let’s see.

• Added more albums from Kannada and Malayalam to MusicBrainz. My contributions to MusicBrainz are mostly driven by the music I listen to, so I can track them in ListenBrainz. I also updated Uma’s playlist on her radio. It’s no more baby rhymes now. It has carefully selected songs. Currently, U2026 has songs from Kannada, Malayalam, English, and Italian. I figured out a way to publish playlists and embed them in posts. Maybe from next week I can include a weekly playlist.
• If you think you are a part of the majority, hate will never reach you. One day, it will reach you and your children, for sure.
• Got confirmations from all NMG/2026 grantees that they have received the funds. NMG/2026 is officially complete. I have added a blog post about the micro-granting BoF discussions at FOSS/2026. If you have any questions or points to discuss, please add to the post or send me an email. If you think you are a part of the majority, hate will never reach you. One day, it will reach you and your children, for sure.
• I like the Ways of Working series (on Substack) by Hiran. I had read about Viashnavi Murthy before and, for some reason, had not subscribed. I blame Substack. Thanks to Pradeep for bringing it to my notice again through Mehar’s story. I have subscribed now. I have sat on public benches and spent hours reading or waiting when I was a teen. Though some parts of the city still have public benches, they are vanishing faster. The world in general needs more public benches. Losing them is more than losing resting places, says Brune in this beautiful piece on Places Journal.

• So with these visits, I have also seen how Thrissur is changing. In the last few years, there have been lots of cafes (with coffee). Now you get good coffee, too. I am waiting for someone to start Bangalore Filter Coffee. This week, I tried Loaves and Muffins (again) and Tea Mill. Last time I was at L&M, it was very now. Now they are well established. The Tea Mill is very new. So new that they have not worked on their full menu yet. They are friendly, and I liked their burger. I added postboxes at Palakkad, Peringavu, and Ashtamichira to the OpenPostboxIndia collection.
• Work has been stable this week. I am on top of most of the things, so good.
• Uma watched Kathakali at Thiruvambady Sree Krishna Temple. It was her first time. She kind of liked it, but she was also impatient with the pace. May be in a couple of years she will sit through it.
• I continued with online P.T sessions this week. I didn’t carry weights this time (I should), but I did carry enough bands. The trainer did a great job organizing my workouts with what I had. And they were really good sessions. I also learned some from Fitbod; they have small but good video demonstrations. I have not played in three weeks. I hope to get back to it when I return to Bangalore.
• All fund transfers related to NMG/2026 are complete. IndiaFOSS 2026 is happening on September 26th and 27th at NIMHANS, Bengaluru. It is a Free and Open Source Software festival organized by the FOSS United community. It may sound more technical than it actually is. In practice, it is a festival of public-interest cultural, knowledge, technical, and community work in India. The community around it is open to many forms of participation and collaboration. I am also proposing a discussion session on “Microgranting in India” (confirmation and scheduling are still pending). You can read the proposal and send me feedback. There are also student discounts and diversity scholarships, so please do apply. Also propose talks, BOFs, and apply for a booth to showcase your FOSS projects.
• Domain name suspensions are always scary, especially if you have things attached to your domain name. Erin Brockovich (yes) has a map of AI data centers across the USA with their water consumption, power usage, etc. It would be great to have a similar one in India, especially given how short we are on potable water. I discovered The Primer, a quarterly periodical. A security report blog on the CBSE online marking app is a good read.

• I continued my exploration of Extism and wrote an initial blog post. I am using it in an actual implementation. I will write the details later.
• Except for three transfers, all the NMG/2026 transfers are complete. I am guessing we should close this by the end of this month. I am also planning to do a BoF session on microfunds at IndiaFOSS/2026 in Bangalore. Ping me if you are interested.
• Updated the Exploring Digital Technology course page with all the slides I used in class as reference. There were quite a few lab classes on Linux Basics, Bash, Git, etc, which are not fully covered by these slides but should be good enough to get a taste. I also finalized the class’s grades. They have done well.
• The special anniversary event for IndieWebBlr is on the 30th of this month. I am not able to attend, but you should if possible.
• One of my favorite web apps, Arena, has introduced metadata at various levels (blocks, channels, and connections). You can have multiple key/value pairs. This is a great addition to the data model, allowing one to extend and build on Arena. I also updated my sync code to CouchDB. It’s working well now. At some point, I will make it open. My apps use CouchDB as the source of truth. But the data editing happens on Arena. I have a Flipper One (reminder to blog more about it). It’s a versatile, hacker-friendly device. And this new plan makes it much more interesting. Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a satirical political movement, seems to have grown so fast that the IB of India considers it a national threat and censors it online, inadvertently triggering the Streisand effect.

• We have a new playlist for Uma’s radio. Now they are full-fledged songs. She can now sing songs in Malayalam, Kannada, and English.
• It’s been a busy week at work. Though I have closed most tasks, it’s been tiring. I will have to rest well this weekend and not do much. On NMG/2026 from, about half of the fund grants have been transferred. The rest should happen in the next few weeks. It usually takes two to six weeks after the announcement. So not bad. I will be in Chennai for a couple of days next week. Mostly to meet folks, otherwise working as usual.
• Two workout sessions and one pickleball session this week. We played singles on Saturday. It was tiring but equally fun.
• I had a quick online Coffee Meet with Mihir this week; it was mostly about working style and time management. This speech by Federer came up during the conversation. He has won 80% of his total singles matches, but in those matches, he has won only 54% of the points. The 54% figure makes it seem possible and human. I think small things compound, so keep doing what you are doing; don’t lose your mind over one small failure. You can still win the match. Thanks to MK for pointing me to this speech during a pickleball match.
• I have not upgraded to 5G yet. I think 4G itself is not up to the mark, and we are just overpaying. I hardly get 3 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speeds, which are way below the promised speeds from any major telco in India. It would be okay for general phone video watching (which I think is their use case) or a video call. But as soon as you tether from a computer and start your work. You hit the limits. I am not going to talk about the bandwidth or daily limits.
• The first anniversary meetup of IndieWebClub Bangalore is on 30th May. I am going to miss it. But if you are in Bengaluru, please go meet people. Also, give a talk about your blogging experiments.
• I got the Yamaha washed and filled the Petrol (E20) to the brim before we left for Thrissur. I am worried about rust and the burns that E20 might cause to the bike. Once I return to Bangalore, I will find an XP100 petrol bunk and use only that petrol. I also plan to use Yamalube/Milex fuel additives to keep the carburetor clean. Let me know if you have tried them? While I was getting the motorcycle washed. I got a picture of Lingarajapuram PO for OpenPostBoxIndia.
• OpenArchiver is a self-hosted FOSS email archiving and search system. It can do continuous sync and store emails in standard .eml format. If you are interested in knots, functional or decorative, then you might like animated knots. Animations have been very useful to me. There is a lot of discussion about Mythos and security testing, including some panic actions by the NHS; in that regard, the Curl team’s experience with Mythos is interesting. Overall, industry feedback seems like a good addition (I don’t have access to it), but nothing spectacular (in public yet). Also, check notes by the AI Security Institute and the NCSC’s advisory on Mythos. She has been riding a beautiful motorcycle since 1968. I want to be her when I am her age. Over time, IoT has been used to take control away from consumers rather than to deliver information and control. This Bamboo Labs case is just another example. Any IoT device that doesn’t run on open protocols, doesn’t allow you to run without their cloud, and is not owned by you. It’s the same reason I don’t like connected cars or vehicles. Sadly, many electric cars fall into this category. An interesting AI policy by Ghostty takes the middle path. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to eliminate obtrusive technology in motor vehicles. It’s one of the reasons I love old, simple tech. Easy to fix and run.

• I met friends for a quick lunch at Maverick & Farmer Coffee. I have come to love cold brew with tender coconut water as a summer drink. I love cold brew and have been making it at home. I usually drink it without any additions. But Coconut water is a good addition in summer.
• I have caught up on various pending tasks on the personal front, such as renewing insurance and agreements, paying premiums, etc. There are some more on that list, but I have time to close them.
• I went to PT twice this week. I am doing well. Also did a half-yearly blood test. They look good. I didn’t get to play this week. We are planning to play tomorrow, let’s see.
• My 30 Days of DXing is going very slowly. On the positive side, I made a long wire antenna for SWL, and it’s working very well.
• We will be in Thrissur for the next three weeks. Ping me if you are around. I hope to catch Radio Ceylon on my SW Radio from Thrissur. It has not rained in Bengaluru for last couple of days, its gone back to being hot. Thrissur is generally much hotter than Bengaluru. I hope it rains.
• Updated the home installation of Navidrome to the latest version. I am updating my music database with MBIDs (MusicBrainz IDs). Once I do, I will fully integrate it with ListenBrainz and its playlists. The new plugin system on Navidrome is WebAssembly-based and runs inside a WASM sandbox provided by the Extism runtime. There are a couple of interesting plugins for my use cases, such as syncing Daily Playlists from Listenbrainz and getting lyrics. Extism as a technology looks very interesting and useful, especially if you want the user to extend your system.
• All the work related to NMG/2026 is complete. Now just tracking transfers and marking them as complete. This phase usually takes 2 to 4 weeks to complete. The kid who is part of NMG/EDU has completed her B.Com with good marks. Her final semester results are yet to come. She wants to be a CA. This week’s high point was registering her with the Institute of Chartered Accountants so she can start her Intermediate journey. We also got her registered for offline coaching classes at ICAI Bhawan in Bengaluru. I knew nothing about becoming a CA. I am learning so much. It feels like hidden knowledge.
• Martin Fowler has a hybrid of short notes, a link log, and til called fragments. It’s worth subscribing to if you like his blog in general. This MastoReader, a Mastodon thread reader, is a simple but useful tool. There is a ground invasion of Lebanon by Israel; during this time, Apple has removed the names of villages in Lebanon. Tech companies are never to be trusted. Ashley MacIsaac is suing Google for an AI-generated summary. It is a genuine case of harm caused by AI (if you call it AI).  
• I wanted to write a longer post about how India (and, indirectly, us the Indians) has lost its voice internationally on anything that matters to us and the world. For a long time, India had a strong voice that was heard not because of its muscle power but because of its strong ethical take and actions. But today, we are not just silent when it matters to speak; we are also going in the opposite direction. Trying to water down the criticism of Israel during BRICS is one such example. The post needs more time and research. If you have thought about this in any form, ping me.

I spent a bit of time organizing the NMG/2026 introductions and making them. It’s almost done except for three. More coordination is required there. There was also one small change in the NMG; one of the grantees couldn’t receive the funds, so I granted them to the next person. Also, I had missed adding Ganghadhar’s contribution to the pool. Ganghadhar has been a long-term supporter of NMG and a good friend. Thank you, Gangadhar. With that, we could award a bigger grant. All in all, good.

• Update the Idly Dose Vada Coffee price survey to have 2026 values represented on the graph. I have not added a year-on-year comparison chart. I plan to do that.
• I continued with my two days of P.T. I want to make it 3 days of workouts a week. I need to make changes to include it in my schedule. I couldn’t play this week, mostly due to the rain.
• I have been playing pickleball for more than 6 months, so I thought it was a good idea to buy a pair of paddles. I got a pair of Vinsguir Graphite Pickleball Paddles (the ones with colorful doodles). It’s an entry-level, affordable paddle. I have used them before; I found them decent, so I got a pair. I also got a pair of Impakto barefoot shoes and a set of Supersox No Show socks, mostly for gym use. Both are practical, affordable, and easy to pack.
• I rode Manju’s HD x440 for the first time. It rides well. It felt a bit long, especially on sharper turns, but it’s a comfortable ride even for my height (163 cm). It’s heavier than a CB350, but I didn’t notice it while riding.
• Added Weeknotes by Jon Sterling and Liam O’Connor to my list. Both are from academia. I also like the platform they use for writing online. It’s called Forrester. It’s a FOSS tool for authoring, exploring, and sharing scientific and mathematical hypertexts. BirdNET-Pi is a FOSS software system for the Raspberry Pi that does real-time acoustic bird classification. You can easily set one up at your home or office. Locus Sonus Stream Project offers a worldwide network of “open mikes” that permanently stream local soundscapes to a dedicated server. The resulting live audio can be used in a wide variety of artistic and scientific projects, including bird identification. Unrelated but similar audio project where, in the center of San Francisco, a microphone listens to the street and uses Shazam constantly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• SourceGit is a FOSS Git client. It’s not on Flathub, but they have deb, AppImage, etc. It’s really useful if you are new to Git or you want to explore a complete repo. Honker is an SQLite extension that provides durable queues, streams, pub/sub, and a scheduler. I would like it to be integrated with Dramatiq. I think it will be a great combo, though it can work on its own. One of the MAGA “Influencers” is an AI character created by an Indian Student to earn money. I wonder how many Indian influencers are AI characters. Talkie is a vintage model trained on historical texts from a specific period. It’s fun and also a way to see if they can predict the future. I introduced 32-Bit Cafe community, Codeberg, and Neocities to my class this week.

• It’s been very hot; I used to think 35°C was the hottest, but now it’s consistently crossing 35°C. It is also very dry heat, the type that makes you tired, drowsy, and thirsty all the time.
• We had lunch with niblings at YouMee. I think it was okay. But kids loved going around, as there were lots of kids due to the holidays. Uma has been spending a lot of time with them this summer.
• Fixed a couple of pairs of Levi’s jeans that were at least a decade old. Started wearing them again. I love how they fit.
• A new 30 Days project called #30DaysOfDXing, where I am trying to receive various radio wave transmissions and listen to them.
• I was introduced to a new band, Peepal Tree, by a gymmate. Songs Chetana and Tangi are on my playlist now. I watched Vaazha -2 (Malayalam) and  Second Case of Seetharam (Kannada) this week. Both are one-time watchable.
• We have a new workout plan now. We will follow it for the next six months. My personal strength goal is to squat 1x bodyweight. Currently, I am at 18 Kgs, which is roughly 1/3. This was a good week, three workout sessions and a game session. We also got to hang out a bit at the Dolphins after the game.
• You might like The Creative Independent if you are looking for articles, interviews, and how-tos that can help you lead a creative life (according to them! ). I have found them useful.
• The union government tried to Trojan Horse the delimitation through the new women’s reservation bill. It wasn’t an honest effort, and it failed. If you didn’t know, there is already a reservation bill that was passed in parliament, but is not yet operative. On the other side of the world, people are getting arrested for sharing something privately on WhatsApp. I am no longer sure about E2EE on WhatsApp, following Signal’s E2EE being broken via a notification flaw on iOS.

• Uma started playing football this week. She is just getting used to it. I am still not sure if she loves it. But she likes going out, running around with friends. Football is a good way to do it.
• I have been working on NMG applications. We should have results on 22nd. I am late by a week this year.
• I started my regular gym sessions. This week, there were two sessions with my trainer and one on my own. I also played a game of pickleball. I am looking for more players living in and around me so that I can play at least twice a week. But I can only play when Uma is asleep, so it has to be either before 7 in the morning or after 7 in the evening. It’s not easy to find partners.
• We have a beehive on our balcony now :)
• I want to do a long ride on the NX500, at least a day ride of 200+ Km. RoyalBrothers, where I usually rent bikes, used to have it, but they don’t seem to anymore. Could you suggest any other place where I can hire it? Also, if you own one, can you ping me? I would like to talk to you.
• I used to host on MediaTemple, which later got acquired by GoDaddy. Two years ago, they also moved the platform to GoDaddy. Overall, it’s been okay, though pricey. In the last six months, they have been working on performance ( I know because it has improved, and I can also see they use Cloudflare CDN), but it’s been breaking my media hosting. often. The recent one is my GPX files, they have been serving it with the wrong content-type. So most of my GPX maps are broken as of now. I will have to think about it now.
• I think it’s fun to act like an AI bot for a while and chat with humans. If you are a ollama user, you might want to know this.