I have been a Lobsters member since June 2018. In the eight years since, I have submitted 220 stories to the site. I downloaded my entire submission history via the Lobsters API, and here’s what I found when I analyzed it. Contents Growth over Years Yearly Overview Most Upvoted Stories Most Discussed Stories Score Distribution Comment Distribution Score vs Comment Count Story Tags Authored vs…
Magix is a neat tool that lets us run Haskell programs as scripts 1 . We put a shebang on top mentioning Magix, list the Haskell packages we need, and ./script.hs just works. This post is about running such a script fast(er) on GitHub Actions .
This week note covers the week of 21st–26th July. Last week was quite busy with a lot of running around. In the week prior, we celebrated our now 4yo A ’s birthday. Since we were never able to have a big party for A for any of her important occasions in the last four years, we decided to throw one this time. We booked a party hall and invited all her school and home friends and their parents. The…
Another round of answering questionnaires found on internet! This time is it 100 Questions for Webmasters . Here we go!
This week note covers the week of 13th–20th July. Aliens vs. The Fish Since I’m writing this week note so late, I’ll throw in an extra day for free. Last week was the week of birthdays. Both my wife and our now 4yo A had their birthdays, and the whole week was spent in celebrations. For A ’s birthday, we went to the Aquarium Paradise , probably the largest aquarium in Bengaluru. A had a lot of fun…
This week note covers the week of 6th–12th July. Last Day of Summer Yes, I was there at the foot of the Eiffel Tower 9 years ago, and yes, I took this photo. I visited Paris on my way to Berlin for EuroClojure 2017 , where I talked about Moving People with Clojure . It feels like a lifetime ago, maybe it was. Today is a lazy day in sort of a contemplative way. I really did not feel like writing…
This week note covers the week of 29th June–5th July. Life # Last week I got back to work after a week’s break. And work I did! I switched my office cab time from 7:30 AM to 9:30 AM so that I could sleep a little longer. Now I have breakfast at home instead of office, and I start working right from the cab so that I get to work same amount of time. I’ve been sleeping 10+ hours every night and it…
The day after IndieWebClub Bangalore Special Anniversary Meetup , Ankur , Tanvi and I got together and did a retrospective on the event. We noted down what went well, what didn’t, and what we should do the next time. This note summarizes our discussion. What Went Well # We front-loaded many decisions, such as talk format, venue, date, topics etc., and didn’t second-guess them. This helped us later…
This week note covers the week of 22nd–28th June. Life # I took the whole last week off to recover from illness and fatigue. I’m happy to report that all three of us are doing much better now. I had a sinus infection, not major, but enough to give me headaches entire days. Thankfully, the medication worked, and now I’m almost over it. Earlier I had decided to not work on personal projects last…
Almost nine years ago, I decided to write my own website generator. Static-site generators (SSGs) were sort of new back then, and somewhat fascinating to me. After failing to start a website/blog for a decade, I realized that I’ll never be satisfied by a ready-made solution, and I need to make something of my own. I started with Hakyll , a small SSG framework written in Haskell. Over years, I…
This week note covers the week of 15th–21st June. By the Lake Life # Last week was a pretty bad weak for us health-wise. Wife, I, and A have been battling different illnesses at varying degrees. I have slept for only four hours last night. I shouldn’t even be writing this weeknote, but there is nothing else I can do at this moment. If you have been a regular reader of my weeknotes, you’d have…
I wrote this post for a prompt given during our local Indieweb club meeting: “Capture the moment that led to starting your blog.” I bought this domain name “abhinavsarkar.net” in June 2007. A few years prior to that, my exposure to the internet had been expanded massively by me finally getting an internet connection over Ethernet. Dial-ups that I used before were just too slow for me to actually…
In the previous post , we learned how to get started with managing and building a Haskell project with Nix . In this post, we learn how to easily create statically-linked executables for Haskell projects with Nix.
This week note covers the week of 8th–14th June. Golden Fruity Tea Life # Last week was a little slow, in many ways. My health is improving, but I’m still not at a place to be able to do physical activities. I’m taking it slow, and mostly resting. I started doing regular meditation starting last week. It makes me feel calmer and more restful. I hope it aids in my recovery too. By the end of the…
feed-repeat is a small tool that selects old posts from RSS/Atom feeds you configure and puts them into a new Atom feed. Use it with your feed reader for a spaced-repetition-like experience for feeds. See the announcement post for the motivation behind it, and more details. I just released v1.1 of feed-repeat. This release brings some great new features, and improves the security and performance.…
This week note covers the week of 1st–7th June. Life # Last week was a week of rest and recovery. I felt better with each passing day. I wonder if what happened to me in the last month was some sort of echo of my burnout and spell of illness of the last year. But this time I didn’t wait six months, I immediately started focusing on resting and nutrition. I hope this cuts down my recovery period…
It all started with a question about cake. IndieWebClub Bangalore had its one-year anniversary on 24 May 2026. After the meetup on 2nd May, I asked Ankur and Tanvi if we could get some cake to celebrate the anniversary. We agreed to it, but a larger idea had taken roots in my mind. Conception # On 5th May, I posted in the IWCB admins group chat: I was wondering if we could do a special meetup on…
This week note covers the week of 25th–31st May. Life # Compared to the week before, I was in good health for most of the last week. I managed to get a lot of work done, and attended three drumming classes as well. Though my playing is still very sloppy, sight reading is slowly coming back to me. I recorded myself playing, and later cringed at the inaccuracies. I’m sad to see how much my skills…
This week note covers the week of 18th–24th May. The Bends Life # Last week was a mixed bag. I had some minor health issues that lasted almost through the week. It was annoying and uncomfortable, but I worked through it. My wife and child A also had some cough and cold because of the arrival of rains in Bengaluru. But I am not complaining. The rains have been a lifesaver for me. The temperature…
Have you ever wanted to reread that old article posted by your favourite author on their website? Do you use feed readers and wish that some great posts from your friends magically reappear in your inbox so that you can remember the good old days? Do you want to use your feed reader as sort of a space-repetition tool? Well then, feed-repeat is for you. I have just released the version 1.0 of…
This week note covers the week of 11th–17th May. Life # Last week was sort of a rebound to the weeks before, that is to say, it wasn’t a great week. A was sick the entire week and I was worried sick. I made the mistake of having some coffee on Tuesday (only 10ml espresso though), and then going to the gym. My body just couldn’t take them together, and I messed up my sleep completely. Then to…
This week note covers the week of 4th–10th May. Paris? Paris! Life # After a gap of three weeks, I finally felt recovered enough last week to be more physically active . I was able to hit the gym twice, and also go for a run after a break of a whole month. I also walked 20kms. It was nice to feel the energy back in my body. The downside was the soreness and exhaustion I felt most of the time. I…
This week note covers the week of 27th April–3rd May. Life # It finally rained in Bangalore last week. There was a severe thunderstorm and lot of trees were uprooted. The rain lasted for a couple of hours. Thankfully, I made it home just before it became extreme. I had hoped that the rain will bring the much wanted coolness, but unfortunately the heat came back next day. I have completely lost the…
Exactly a year ago, an ambulance in Bangalore hit several people . The next day I was driving my scooter on the road besides an ambulance. The sight of the ambulance reminded me of the news story and I thought to myself, “it could happen to me, I should be careful.” We were stopped at a traffic signal, and I was lost in thoughts about the news. The signal turned green, we started moving, the…
Trying a new note format inspired by Azan’s Playlists . Here is a playlist of songs that I find really hard to get out of my head once listened to: Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl — Broken Social Scene A Teenager In Love — Dion & The Belmonts Angel Of The Morning — Juice Newton I Only Want To Be With You — Dusty Springfield Such Great Heights — Streetlight Manifesto Just A Girl — No Doubt…
This week note covers the week of 20th–26th April. This is going to be a short note. The summer is at its peak in Bangalore. The heat is making my body unable to do anything productive. I’m running in power-save mode, where I’m doing minimal possible work. So I don’t really have much to write about. I’m over the food poisoning from the previous week, but a little bit of weariness persists. I…
This week note covers the week of 13th–19th April. Life # After my wife and our 3yo A , it was my turn last week to catch the stomach bug. I had a case of bad food poisoning last Monday, and the sickness persisted till yesterday. Only today I started feeling normal. It was also the hottest week in Bengaluru. I heard about many folks getting food poisoning in last couple of weeks. I’m guessing it’s…
I’ve been watching anime for over 30 years now. After such a long time, I’ve become very selective in choosing which shows to watch. These days I only complete a couple of shows per season. I’m tired and bored of repetitive themes and settings, sequels, long-dragging shows, and in particular the deluge of Isekai anime. My patience wears thin and I drop things I don’t like without a thought. Now, I…
This week note covers the week of 6th–12th April. Life # Last week started with sickness. A caught a cold and had a mild fever for two days. Just when she was starting to feel better, she caught a stomach bug and then was sick for the entire week. She stayed at home and threw a lot of tantrums. Thankfully, she is feeling better now. I couldn’t sleep well because of A ’s sickness and something in…
microvm.nix is a framework to run NixOS based micro VMs on various platforms. In particular, it can use vfkit to run micro VMs on macOS that use the macOS virtualization framework to provide a more performant VM than QEMU . microvm.nix works well but the documentation is a bit lacking. I had to figure out some gotchas while setting this up on my MacBook Pro M4, so I decided to write this note.…
This week note covers the week of 30th March–5th April. Before SUNrise Life # At last a week note in time! Last week had some extra holidays, it being the Easter week, but I did not get anything extra done. In fact, I did not get anything much done at all. My gym sessions are going well but they are leaving me too sore and tired to do much else. I also started on a new low carb diet last week…
As a child I spent a lot of time looking at the stars. I grew up in a small town in east India in the 90s. This was before the boom of cable TV or internet or social media. Often after doing my homework, I’d go out in my front-yard and look at the stars. I was a bit of astronomy geek back then, obsessed with the night sky. We didn’t have telescopes or cameras or any other equipment, but we had…
This week note covers the week of 23rd–29th March. Over the seas and far away Life # The biggest change to my life last week is: I started going to the gym! Well, it’s only been two days, and my body is all sore, but I have a good feeling about this. This is the gym at my work, and it’s got all kinds of equipment. I don’t know anything about anything yet so I have to frequently ask the trainers…
This week note covers the weeks of 9th–22nd March. Stuck Forever Life # I skipped writing the week note last week because I got too lazy after being caught up in things I’ve been doing. So I’m writing this one to cover both weeks. Life has been hectic but good. All the usual activities continue, with some new things added. I went for a short run last week after a gap of almost 10 months. It was…
This week note covers the week of 2nd–8th March. Rectangular Life # This is another late week note because I was quite overwhelmed to write one yesterday. Life has been hectic, tiring, fun, and anxiety inducing last week. Somehow we march on. I’ve made sleeping on time a priority and I’m getting a full 8.5 hours of sleep now. I’m waking up refreshed and not feeling sleepy during the days. I’ve…
This week note covers the week of 23rd February–1st March. Life # This week has been a slow one. Not much to update on this time. Life is moving at usual pace; home-work-walk-build-watch-read. My sleep has improved but I’m still not waking up fully refreshed; at least I am able to drive now. I kept sneaking in walks here and there, even spent some time on a treadmill because the summer is here in…
This week note covers the week of 16th–22nd February. Lake After Rain Life # Back-from-vacation week is never a great one. This week we struggled to settle back in our daily routines. Our sleep schedules were out of whack. I, in particular, slept pretty badly till Friday. Only yesterday I was able to sleep well. Being sleep deprived most days caused me to be working in a low-energy state, just…
This week note covers the week of 9th–15th February. OUTSIDE Life # I was on vacation this week. We had been vacation-starved for last many years, so, now that we can, we are trying to fill the gap with consecutive vacations. However, I think there will be a while till I take the next vacation. A and I spent a lot of time in parks running around chasing squirrels, and just idly walking on grass.…
This week note covers the week of 2nd–8th February. Boat Life # My wife’s sickness continued into this week. The doctor did not prescribe antibiotics on the first visit last week, so we visited again this week and finally got prescribed some. I’m so thankful to scientists and medical professionals for inventing antibiotics. She is recovering well. The fatigue of illness kept us mostly doing bare…
This week note covers the week of 26th January–1st February. Supernova! Life # I returned to work last Monday after a ten day vacation. It was hard; my mind kept going back to the relaxing days. I felt very refreshed. It lasted only a day. My whole family caught a cold on Tuesday. My wife had it worst. While A and I have recovered, my wife is still not well enough. We made through the week somehow…
This week note covers the week of 19th–25th January. Blue As Sky Life & Travel # I was on vacation this week. This was my first proper vacation after 6½ years. My wife, I, and our 3yo A took a train to Kodaikanal on last Sunday. This was A ’s first train journey of life. There was much excitement, followed by much boredom waiting for the train. We took the overnight train from Bangalore and slept…
This week note covers the week of 12th–18th January. Life # Bangalore is slowly getting warmer. The city seems to be coming out of the winter; I don’t require heavy blankets at nights anymore. This week has been a usual mix of work and personal. I attended the Indieweb club Bangalore meetup on Saturday. It was a tech-focused session in which all of us worked on our respective websites. I write…
In the previous post , we added channels to Co , the small language we are implementing in this series of posts. In this post, we add the sleep primitive to it, enabling time-based coroutine scheduling. We then use sleep to build a simulation of digital logic circuits.
This week note covers the week of 5th–11th January. All That Remains Life # This week has been quite uneventful. I’m back to work after a break. The infamous Bangalore traffic is back and worse than before. The weather has become cold again, but this time we are better prepared. We stayed home all the week, sipping on hot beverages and occasionally eating fried stuff. Health # I decided to walk…
About three months ago I started using Jujutsu (JJ), a new Version Control System , for my personal projects. It took me a while to get used to it after more than a decade of using Git , but now I’m quite comfortable with it. Working with Jujutsu requires a shift from the mental model of Git. However, it is not as daunting as it may seem on the first day.
This week note covers the week of 29th December 2025–4th January 2026. Ramp walk This was a week of resting and having fun with family and friends. I was on vacation for most of the week. Life # We had another well-fed day on the 31st, starting with home-made biryani for lunch, and ordered pizza for dinner. We didn’t do much else, just chilled at home. On 1st January, all of us went to the Namma…
In 2025, I ran ten polls on Mastodon exploring various topics, mostly to outsource my research to the hivemind. Here are the poll results organized by topic, with commentary. Contents General Programming JSON Pronunciation Compilers Compiler Backend Targets Haskell Parsing Libraries Compiler in Haskell with Lenses Blogging & Web Blog Post Length Preferences Blog Post Print Support Résumés on…
This week note covers the week of 22nd–28th December. The Heading It is the week of Christmas holidays. Though majority of Indians are not christian, a lot of us still take vacations during this period. The stores and malls in Bengaluru put on decorations and play Christmas music. The weather has also been great. I took half of the week off just to cool down at home. The big event of this week for…
Looking back at 2025, I spent a lot of time working on my website. I did nearly 500 commits focused on content diversification, feature expansion, and performance optimization. Let me walk through what I did chronologically by months.
This week note covers the weeks of 8th–21st December. Half ’n Half After a 10 week long streak of writing week notes, I missed writing one last weekend. But that’s okay because … It was my birthday last week! I’m pretty much middle-aged now, so it’s one less thing to worry about anymore. My wife organized a day-long birthday food festival for our family. We had all delectable things to eat that we…