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 has been good. I streamed 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 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 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.The performances 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. 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

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