cyberjunkie.in

Mangalore visit - Apr-May 2026

Mon, 04 May 2026 23:14:59 +0530

Things have been happening faster than I can blog about them. The most interesting event has been my visit to my ancestral hometown, Mangalore in India. I was there for a cousin’s son’s wedding and a holy communion party. Many of my cousins also made it. It was one of the largest family gatherings in recent times for sure. The last time I met my family, I was shy and in a state of turmoil in my head. This time around, I felt a lot calmer, wiser, more in control and I think I was able to add meaningful value to every conversation, no matter how short it might have been. I made a lot of new friends in my family, and I’m already planning to call them more often.

I met my cousins, their children, my second cousins, even my dad’s cousins. I intended on gifting things to family and I did. That makes me happy and everyone appreciated the gesture. The fountain pen, along with some ink and a cute little notebook, all packed into coloured, netted pouches were a hit! I’m very tired, a little tipsy after a beer, celebrating a successful visit to Mangalore. There’s so much more happening in the next month or so. Some anticipation over these, but let’s take things one page at a time.

Gifting stationery to family

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 22:15:58 +0530

I have bad handwriting. I used fountain pens in school till ball-point pens and then gel pens replaced them. I wasn’t fascinated by fountain pens then, as much as I was about gel pens when they first arrived. Over the past 8 years or so, I’ve taken on a liking and appreciation for fountain pens. There is something very organic, and nice about writing with them. My handwriting has slightly improved too.

I remember walking by a small stationery shop during a visit to Istanbul, where I purchased a Lamy Safari, and some Iroshizuku ink. It has remained one of my best non-tech purchases.

I’ve owned these pens over the past 8 years, nothing too fancy but they’re all so satisfying.

Lamy Safari
TWSBI Eco
Jinhao X450
Jinhao X750
Muji Fountain Pen
Jinhao 82
Platinum Preppy

I have some Waterman, Pelikan, and Iroshizuku inks, a Rhodia notebook and many worn and used locally manufactured notebooks. I’d like to own a lot more, but I need to write a lot more before I do. My handwriting certainly needs more improvement.

I’ve been parting with most of my pens at work, so all I have now is my bag is the Jinhao 82. The Lamy Safari is with my father.

There has been a lot happening over the past month, and this will continue till the end of May I think. I need to write a post about it.

One of the fun things I’m looking forward to though, is going to my ancestral home, Mangalore. I was there for a funeral last week, and there are two weddings and another function to be attended. I am going to meet again, my dad’s cousins from across their wide family tree.

I suggested the idea to my father, that we gift something a little personal since he might be meeting some of them after decades. I’m going to gift packs, that include a nice bag, a fountain pen, inks and notebook. My dad is particular about section-bound notebooks and their ability to lie flat. I maintain a family tree on my PC, but I don’t think I’ll be able to get to printing a large poster in time for our trip, but the rest is underway. Deliveries are coming in over the next week and I am excited for this.

Buying a smartphone in 2026: what a mess!

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 11:25:11 +0530

These are the phones I remember owning since 2000.

Nokia 3210
Sony Ericsson K300i
Nokia E63
Dopod D600
Motorola Milestone
Samsung Galaxy Nexus
Nexus 5
Apple iPhone SE
OnePlus 5
OnePlus 7 Pro
Motorola Edge 40 Neo

I’m about to buy a new phone. It’s about two years old, and it’s not bad for what I need - listening to music, podcasts, communicating on Telegram, Matrix, IRC, WhatsApp, browsing through Pixelfed and Mastodon. Occasionally, if I’m on holiday or at a family event, I do miss the cameras on the better phones I used before this Moto Edge 40 Neo. They were good - well above average in photo detail, but more importantly, they captured photos with balanced colours.

In the process of distancing myself from social media in 2019, I decided not to spend good money on phones. My OnePlus 7 Pro stopped working soon after, so I forced myself to buy the Moto Edge 40 Neo, for about $200. It’s been good for everything, except the photography bits - it’s inconsistent, with random saturated colours and I have spent a lot of time using Snapseed to normalize colours. You should be able to tell which of the photos on my Pixelfed account were clicked from this phone.

So, why are phones today priced at $1000 and $2000, why are people buying them at these prices and what great, profound work are they doing on them? Does your TikTok and Instagramming need a $1000 phone? If I had to spend $1000 or two, on a phone for photography, I’d look at a mirror-less camera with some lenses and a $300 phone. I’m complaining about cameras, because I’ve been travelling this past year and my trusty Nikon D5300 has done its job well, but there are times I find it would have been nice to have a decent camera-phone in my pocket.

All the phones I mentioned at the start cost me between $50 and $300 or so. Long story short, I need to increase my budget a bit, and buy a somewhat better phone, for say under $500. I’ve narrowed the models down to the Samsung S25 FE and the OnePlus 15R - very good performance, especially on the 15R, a flat screen (applying a screen guard is easy), a good screen and generally good cameras, based on the samples photos I’ve seen online. If you have some thoughts, please mail me

A day of joy

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 23:31:07 +0530

My folks live in an apartment complex. We have a security guard, and here in India, they’re called the “watchman”. Their days are uneventful. They ensure shady characters don’t wander into the apartment compound, they ensure the lights are turned on, the cars are cleaned, the water is pumped to the overhead tank, while doing some other errands like watering the plants and sliding mail and bills into the apartment doors.

This particular watchman was a very polite person, and I’ve seen people be truly cruel towards him, because he’s submissive. I once remember seeing security footage of a drunk tenant’s friend slapping him after entering the compound drunk. I remember our watchman’s body language - no intent to strike back.

Despites short interactions, I have been good to him. One day, I heard that the watchman had to leave. I remember hearing from the neighbours that he might have oral cancer. I felt bad, and surprised, and I don’t know why, I just hoped he’d be well. He didn’t smoke or drink. He was a pure vegetarian. I did not have any contact with him, and I felt bad I didn’t ask others to find him. All I knew was that he lived in a far-off, rural part of the country. I think we suspected the worst.

When Covid ended, I always thought things would all be nicer. To hear of this man’s cancer diagnosis made me feel like everything going south again. Of course, the world is far worse today. All of this bothered me. It wouldn’t keep me up at night, but every week or two, I would remember him when I visited my parents place. I think everything was unfair to him.

This evening after work, and spending time with my parents, I walked down the staircase and into the darkness of their compound. I met a very slim man with palms folded, in worn-out clothes and I couldn’t quite understand what he was saying. Then he repeated with some exaggeration, that he was our watchman and he had to go home to get treated. I was quite overwhelmed to see him.

There is so much to explain than I can in this post, so much more context that is needed to understand this. He was trying to make sure he didn’t shake hands, out of respect, maybe that I thought shaking hands with someone who suffered from cancer was a bad idea, because in his head, in our society, he’s considered to be labour. I had to grab his hand and shake it. I had to tell him that I was very sad to hear of the news, and so very happy to see him here.

He told me that his cancer had gone away, and he needed followups every 4-6 months or so. He had a part of his tongue removed, and he showed me a large scar running around most of his neck. I don’t why but I emptied my wallet for him right then, possibly from my guilt. I asked him for his wife’s bank details, so I can deposit a chunk of money to his family. I’ll also get him a smartphone, and I have a bunch of things at home that I don’t need that I will hand over.

It was a bit late today, but I hope to sit down with him and have a much longer talk. That was one of the most joyful moments I’ve had.

Garbage the band

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:29:56 +0530

I Think I’m Paranoid was one of the coolest tracks from Garbage when I first heard them in the 90s. Shirley Manson was hot, bold and in your face in that music video. The song also had one of the freshest, crude yet appealing sounding distortions from a guitar. For someone in his teens, it wasn’t my first rock band but it was one of the coolest. This week, I went back to listening to Garbage and in a big way, realized I knew so little about them.

I was watching a video of them performing live while writing this post.

For one, Garbage isn’t Australian like I imagined. Somehow their style and tone made me think they were like Silverchair. Shirley is Scottish, and the rest of them are American. Butch Vig is the drummer but he’s responsible for so much, it’s insane! He produced albums for bands like Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, Depeche Mode, AFI, Jimmy Eat World, Green Day and so many more. It’s crazy! It’s almost as if Garbage was a prototype to demonstrate how good a band could sound, and then he did his main gig - being a producer.

If you haven’t heard of Garbage, listen to them in this order -

I Think I’m Paranoid
Only Happy When It rains
Push It
Stupid Girl
Girl Don’t Come
When I Grow Up
You Look So Fine
Androgyny
Cherry Lips

Short trip to Kochi

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:09:17 +0530

Things have been a bit busy yet again, and I’m just about recovering from a mild case of flu. It hasn’t been as bad as the truly bad ones I’ve had growing up.

We flew to Kochi over the long weekend. It was a good excuse to fly via the new airport I wrote about a few months back. It was so much more comfortable than the older airport. I returned from work, and freshened up. We were at the airport in 25 minutes.

We didn’t make this a very touristy trip. We lived in Ernakulam for 2 days, visited the Fort Kochi area, Mattancherry and Jew Town. The highlights were the ferry rides, and the great food. Kerala is probably the most liberal state in the country, so you eat as you wish and you can see how people co-exist so peacefully without the uproar. The second visit to the state in less than a year has been very pleasant. I have posted some photos on my Pixelfed account.

The second half of the stay was quieter, in a place called Aluva. The highlight here was our apartment facing a large stream/creek, with the occasional local or two headed downstream in their boats. There were kingfishers, and a bunch of other birds flying about. We saw flocks of them flying back at sunset, and it was just nice. We walked around the place, and made a visit to the LuLu mall and did some shopping.

I like these kinds of holidays because they can be done without expectations of sight-seeing. We now just visit a city or town, wander about, eat some, shop some, see what we feel like, if we feel like it, and that’s great!

Plasma 6.6 - better virtual desktops on multi-monitor setups

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 19:13:20 +0530

KDE Plasma 6.6 was released yesterday, and since I’m an Arch Linux user (btw), I already have it installed. I use sway on the desktop, primarily because it handles multi-monitor setups so well, and KDE Plasma does not. One of the major annoyances I’ve had with it, is that virtual desktops switch on both my monitors.

The new Plasma 6.6 update includes the option to enable virtual desktops only on the primary monitor, while the secondary monitor remains stationary. That’s how I use my setup - games, or videos play on the second monitor, while multi-tasking continues heavily on the primary 4K monitor. I’m going to be using KDE Plasma 6.6 for a few days to see how I feel about it.

New mechanical keyboard

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 21:53:38 +0530

After the long rant about the mechanical keyboard market, I bought the best mechanical keyboard that meets nearly all of my requirements - the Royal Kludge R87 Pro.

87% - Compact enough but not cramped
No wireless, no batteries, obsolescence and stuff to worry about
Ins/Del/Home/End/PageUp/PageDown key array at the correct places
Replaceable keycaps
Replaceable switches
VIA/QMK support
Brown switches aren’t noisy
Pretty affordable - all of this at roughly ~$50 in India
It’s not low-profile, but it is lower than most other mechanical keyboards

Pure Magic: Guitarix + Neural Amp Modeller

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 13:53:55 +0530

It’s been busy since the new year. We had a 3-day weekend and I got some time to myself to mess around with new things. I’m not even a half-decent guitar player. When I’m alone, and I have a drink, I loosen up just a bit and I can make some noise that’s likeable, at least to my ears. I think of myself as a guitar geek more than a guitar player.

I own a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 which I’ve used with some amp modelling software. I’ve always booted into Windows to use this setup, and having moved to Linux, I have hesitated. It sounds decent and I never really made an attempt to setup something similar on Linux, until this weekend.

I installed guitarix (the UI is so good!) and Neural Amp Modeller, channelled my inputs and outputs with some help from qpwgraph. I set up new strings on the guitar, snipped the extras and plugged it into the 2i2. And this sounds insane, especially when you use the Online feature to download patches straight off the guitarix UI! It’s entirely free and open-source! It’s legit one of the coolest things right now.

A rant about mechanical keyboards

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 17:51:24 +0530

I’ve owned mechanical keyboards since the early 90s. It was a rebranded variant of the Model M. I’m no stranger to mechanical keyboards so I know why they resonate with so many people. The TVSE Gold here in India later became the affordable, no-nonsense mechanical keyboard for a long time. There was even a USB version. Now, they’ve replaced the Cherry MX keys with cheaper alternatives. I owned two of the Cherry MX ones, one of them was a PS2 version. Mechanical keyboards became a thing again in the past 15 years or so, but look at how things have devolved.

I do not know why people need wireless keyboards. There are going to be some wires on your desk and that’s okay. Why is every mechanical keyboard wireless? Why should a keyboard have a battery, or lights, or a screen?

Years ago, I bought my wife a Keychron K2. It’s a nice TKL keyboard, but again, it comes with a battery in it and I have not once seen my wife use it wirelessly. She, like millions of others use their keyboards in front of a PC or laptop inches away. No one is sitting on their couches using their wireless mechanical keyboards. HTPCs died in the early 2010s.

I gave my dad the TVSE Gold and my cousin a 60% Epomaker one. I’ve been using a split membrane keyboard for the past year, alongside an AmazonBasics membrane keyboard. Both are barely average keyboards, and I was hoping to buy a mechanical keyboard for myself, but it’s not easy to find the right one. It is why I’m typing this post.

Wireless keyboards with batteries are one problem, then there’s the problem of overly thick models - presumably made that way to pack in the battery. What I’ve narrowed down to are purely wired, low-profile keyboards with function keys. The cheapest product I can find locally is a Royal Kludge N80. There are a few decent reviews and it costs about $90 in India. Why are mechanical keyboards so expensive? I don’t want lights, or knobs, or screens on my keyboard - just something I can type on at a 130 words per minute!

January 2026 - Week 1 updates

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 22:46:20 +0530

I took a few days off around the past weekends and turned them into four and five-day weekends. Things were pretty uneventful, but I wasn’t too productive - just being lazy, having a drink or two every other evening, binging on shows and movies but very little gaming. The game I play obsessively had a release right before Christmas that broke the performance on Linux so this meant rebooting into Windows. I avoided that and I’m still waiting for a fix to arrive.

As the holidays came to an end, I also realized my PC booting slowly and then I started seeing some errors. Turns out the hard drive where I have the lesser played games installed is dying. I don’t care about the data so I’ve unplugged it for now. Prices for hard drives, SSDs and RAM are currently through the roof so I feel silly even considering a hard drive at a price closer to that of SSDs months ago. I’m distracted by this - trying to put off the purchase but I don’t know if it’ll be months or years before the AI-bros ease off on hoarding hardware. I might give in at any moment and buy a 2TB SATA hard drive for now.

The productive stuff I did was getting a better grasp of chezmoi templates, quicker synchronization to my Git hosting instance and better coverage across devices. I’m pleased about that.

Slick IRC client: Halloy

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 22:00:31 +0530

Not sure if it’s the GTK versions or Wayland or Hexchat has been left unmaintained for so long, but it’s pretty slow when I switch buffers from ZNC. I happened to look for alternate GUI IRC clients (I use weechat on the headless server sometimes). I ran into Libera’s IRC client recommendations.

Halloy is just what I needed to end this slow Sunday. Configuration is done through a TOML file, it plays well with ZNC, the config changes can be refresh using Ctrl + R and the documentation is detailed and crisp. The application is written in Rust, so it’s crazy-fast, and it looks great.

New tools tried out: autofs and chezmoi

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 21:10:03 +0530

Among the list of cool tools I discovered and tried out lately on my Linux boxes are autofs and chezmoi.

autofs solves the problems of network shares that are unavailable when your machine boots. The service automatically mounts network shares (nfs and Samba are of interest to me) when you access them. The Arch wiki page for autofs has a good explanation of how to set up autofs along with examples. I got it running in a couple of minutes. The end result is that things just work.

Dotfile management could have been managed with git alone, but having to manually add so many configs for unique machines is too much work. I’m not disciplined enough yet to do that. chezmoi lets you simply add config files or symblinks to them to a git. It also has auto-commit options and that makes things just a little more seamless. Since using chezmoi, I’ve better synchronized my dotfiles across machines - so I have familiar and identical setups everywhere. There are some complex configurations I am yet to get to, like Neovim. I want to learn templates better too, and how to handle secrets. Anyway, it’s been fun using this tool and it’s satisfying each time I run a chezmoi update -v && chezmoi apply.

A new airport has arrived

Wed, 24 Dec 2025 22:54:01 +0530

I have been fascinated with planes, civil aviation in particular for as long as I can remember. I faintly remember my father’s newspaper cutouts of aircraft like the Airbus 300, stuck on our apartment door like a collage when I was 4 or 5. It was around the age of six that we moved to my parents’ own apartment in this brand-new town, and that fascination with aircraft only got obsessive. Our house lies on the final approach for the longer runway, of the busiest airport in the country, and so since the late 80s, I’ve run to the window to look up my parents’ bedroom window to see and hear aircraft spool up the engines, to counter the drag as the flaps are fully extended and landing gear lowered. Each aircraft has a distinct sound: a haunting scream (or yawn) as these actions are orchestrated with engines in some cases sounding they’re suffering from nasal congestion, others monstrous. I have 40 years of seeing and hearing these - the last of the Dakotas, Boeing 737-200s, the older-humpy 747s, Lockheed Tristars, MD11s, Airbus 300s, 310s, and many more that followed.

Fast-forward to Christmas day 2025 - a new airport goes into service, the second for Bombay/Mumbai - the second in nearly a 100 years. This one is larger, spacious, accommodating two parallel runways. While the runways aren’t aligned to my liking, robbing me unfairly of more air traffic overhead, it is however convenient - much closer to us. The older airport would take anywhere between an hour to two and a half hours to reach in traffic. This meant added hours to travel, sometimes late in the evenings - anxiety, uncertainty and fatigue. I can cycle to the new one in 25-35 minutes, or drive there in 15 or 20. This has me very happy, because I can have a evening tea at home or work, take a 20-30 minute cab to the airport at the last minute, fly to my hometown for dinner. The airport on the other end is also some 15 minutes away from my maternal home.

Products created wireless/smart for planned obsolescence

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 21:09:19 +0530

There are some products that I just don’t need to be wireless or smart. I think that is true for a lot of people, but surprisingly neither customer nor manufacturers seem to get it. My (conspiracy) theory is that they are manufacturing products wireless or smart, so that they can sell your data or have your product be obsolete in a few years.

Two products come to mind that should be dumb (non-smart) and wired - Mechanical keyboards and TVs.

In the case of TVs, I’d rather buy a Fire TV or Chromecast for $30-$50 or better still, use a used mini PC on a dumb TV than having some bloated OS that over the years gets slower and stops working. Just let us buy dumb TVs with quality panels. s I use my keyboard on a laptop (at work) or the desktop. It’s always there and I’m rarely ever moving my keyboard. The clutter isn’t bad, and I don’t need a battery in a keyboard so I can have a cleaner desk. So why do I need a wireless keyboard and why is every god-damn mechanical keyboard wireless? I’ve read stories about people having to remove the battery from their keyboards because they start swelling up.

Wireless keyboards add cost, complexity, the risk of failing batteries. I don’t want any of these ‘features’. I want to go back to a time when I bought a wired keyboard and use it for 15-17 years, because I have done that (using a PS2-USB adapter). I’m looking for a low-profile mechanical keyboard but I can’t find a wired one.

Travel with the folks - Istanbul

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 20:46:37 +0530

After much planning, anticipation, hyperventilating, preparing for the VISA formalities, we finally made our trip to Istanbul in late November 2025. The trip went smoothly.

Istanbul has always fascinated my father. We spent about a week there and it was amazing. It was my second time there and I loved it just as much, maybe a tad more because I was familiar with everything. Things are more expensive than I remember them being in 2018, the food specifically.

I’d like to write long posts about each of the places we saw, because they are each deserving of it but I’ve have a tiring long week since I returned. I’ll keep it brief and maybe at a later point, filter and expose some of the phtoos we clicked. I purchased a Pixel device for my father before our trip, while I carried the old but still capable Nikon D5300. Some of my photos are already on my Pixelfed cyberjunkie@pixelfed.social

We stayed in two parts of Istanbul, Fatih-Sultanahmet and Beyoglu, near the Galata tower. Both of those places were charming in their own ways.

Sultanahmet might be avoided by most as being the touristy part of the city, but we wanted to be able to walk multiple times a day in and around the Hagia Sophia area, the Aquaduct, Gulhane Park and everywhere around there. We did and I’m happy we stayed there. I think we clocked about 9km on average, on each of the 7 days in Istanbul.

On the 3rd day we moved base to large apartment in an alley a minute or two away from Galata Tower. It was quiet, calm and very home-like. We had a good time there and most of our journeys meant either walking down to Karakoy or taking the funicular. Travelling around Istanbul is an absolute joy, moving from a Funicular to a tram to another tram or a ferry, all using a single card. It’s a heavenly change from how things are here.

The Galata Tower area is crowded as always, but being able to walk by it every day, morning evening and night was something. Some evenings, I would walk out to the local restaurant to get dinner in, rather than all of us going out. The food in Istanbul is great. Istiklal street was buzzing with activity but it was nice walking around early in the morning before thw crowds showed up.

We also spent half a day in Kadikoy (a town on the Asian side) after taking a ferry. Our other ferry ride was a 90-minute Bosphorus tour which was also very nice. We clicked a lot of photos. Shopping was done, at the Spice Bazaar and Grand Bazaar, and a local convenience store. Everything from teas, dry fruits, cheese, meats of the cured kind, chocolates and even bread was bought. We will nibble on this over the weeks to come.

I think this visit was a good mix of touristy things, and also living there and seeing people go about their day. I think my father is open to the idea of visiting Istanbul again and I definitely am.

Wrapped thingies of 2025

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 12:39:39 +0530

Even YouTube tried to do an Unwrapped thingy this year. It is awful and I am not including it here, but some of the others can be nice. I won’t lie, I like that Spotify creates a playlist of the music I listened to this year. I listen to the playlists from previous years. I tend to look for what others are reading, watching and listening to. It’s by preferred way of discovery. I hope you find something nice to consume from these lists too.

Spotify - My Spotify Wrapped 2025 Playlist.

You know who does music listening tracking better though?

Last.fm! - Last.fm’s 2025 Listening Report

Goodreads - Books I read in 2025

Pocketcasts - My top podcasts. Ok, it’s 95% the top 3 podcasts.

Spotify powered by ncurses - ncspot is great

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 12:22:06 +0530

I recently wrote about wanting to setup mpd/mopidy for Spotify but some things weren’t working the way I intended. I ran out of patience and installed ncspot instead, and it’s been great.

It’s fast, the authentication is simple and the keybinds are near vi-like. It even lets me navigate and modify my Spotify playlists. The default Shift+m bind even finds me ‘similar’ songs. That feature is powered by Spotify so I don’t have high hopes but overall the experience has been great! I’ve been listening to a lot more music on the PC and laptop than I did before.

There is a lot more I have to write about, but I thought I’d quickly post this since it has been on my mind the past few weeks.

Locked in!

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 23:09:36 +0530

Yes, locked inside to be specific. As if the days couldn’t get more chaotic. This is the week, for my most hopeful and ambitious travel for my folks. My wife also has a work offsite, where she’s flying out in a couple of hours. It’s nearly 10:30pm.

I ordered in some dinner for me, locked the outer safety door of the apartment, latched it all up, then tried closing the inner apartment door and it wouldn’t close shut. It’s been a little erratic lately, but a quick rotation of the knob does it. Today it wouldn’t, but it did on the second attempt. That’s when it dawned on me - I can’t open it - I’m locked inside. My wife’s about to go to bed, prepared to wake up about 4 hours from now.

I tried to unscrew the door lock mechanism, hoping that I could slide the metal plunger but it’s hard to undo something that was screwed in by the landlord maybe 35 years ago. One of the screws is moving freely but won’t come out. I call my father, who stays five minutes away. I tie the door keys, in a cloth bag and throw it carefully, not to have it fall or hang off a tree branch or someone’s apartment parapet. Dad comes upstairs, tries opening the outer door but can’t. Then I realize, I had latched all the bars and locks on the door outside. So even if I cal a locksmith, he’s going to have to pry open the door outside, somehow to access the lock of the inner door.

I doubled down, unlock most of the screws on the locking mechanism, but it won’t come off. That’s because the mechanism is bolted on along the edge of the door - it’s only accessible when the door’s swung open. So I wriggle it, use a thicker screwdriver to make just enough space for me to run another screwdriver to slide the metal-bar open.

It works — I’m out! I thank my dad. I ask my wife to go to bed, and here I am now, writing this blog post.

21st November 2025 update - Been busy

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 00:16:24 +0530

It’s been a busy two weeks and more. I wish every day, to write a little on my blog but there has been much on my mind, while at home and at work. Sleep has been sketchy. I am taking my folks on a overseas trip and I’ve been preparing to make it as comfortable as I can. Work got busier too this past week. I am quite sleepy as I write this, but hopefully I’ll write more over the weekend and before the trip.

Been reading

Mark Hoppus’ memoir - Fahrenheit-182 - This has been a lot better than I thought. I like Blink 182 and it’s nice knowing the background so much of their music.

Anthony Hopkins’ memoir - We did OK, kid - Anthony Hopkins was shrewd but there’s something about him not taking himself too seriously.

Meet the Savarnas - It rips through casteism in India in many aspects of life.

Been watching

Plur1bus - Dystopian, very AI-has-taken-over vibes, but it’s a good watch while eating dinner.

Silence of the Lambs - Anthony Hopkins talks about it in his memoir, and I felt like I’d missed something great. It’s a very good movie.

Remains of the day - Very classy movie and nothing extraordinary about the plot, but the storyline and feel of the movie is cosy.

Using Spotify, not their horrid app/site

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 22:56:24 +0530

I use Spotify and I am not too ashamed about it. I’m sure there are concerns about how they treat artists. I have used most popular music streaming services - YouTube Music (also when it was Play Music), Apple Music and lately, Spotify has been the music service of choice.

I like that I can find most music there. Along with last.fm, it lets me discover and play new music from Last.fm once you link your accounts. Most of the time, however, I use the app on my phone, or off a web browser on the laptop or PC. I hate them. They change things all the time; they’re inefficient at workspace usage and they are painfully slow and buggy. I don’t want videos in my music player; I don’t want podcasts, or recommendations or local events or anything else! Just let me find and play my music, the way I want to!

Fortunately (until Spotify decides to hunt them down), there are alternatives. One way is to start playing a track on your phone or desktop, then switch to a Linux command-line Python tool called spotify-cli. There are arguments you can pass and it lets you control Spotify.

I typically use -

spotify play ___________
spotify search _________
spotify queue __________
spotify prev 
spotify next
spotify seek 160 (to skip to the solos!)

A better way to use Spotify might be to use mopidy (alongside mopidy-mpd so mpd clients can connect, and mopidy-spotify for the obvious purpose). You could then use ncmpcpp as a ncurses-based Spotify client, or more conventional GUI players. I like Cantata. I remember using it ages ago but I don’t remember why I gave it up for the mobile app. However, when I tried Mopidy yesterday, something was broken with the libraries for Spotify or gstreamer-plugins. I’m going to wait for the weekend and hope it’s fixed.

I’d like to talk much more about how I discover new music, books, movies and TV shows, but I’ll leave that for another post.

For now, if you’d like to hear what I listen to, this is my Spotify profile - cyberjunkie. If you’d like to share yours, or recommend other clients, mail me blog@cyberjunkie.in!

AI is plagiarism

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 18:07:14 +0530

I don’t care for AI. I don’t care for it enough, for many reasons. Most folk today are leaping over each other to claim the title of ‘prompt engineer’. I’m sure there are a few good use cases for AI; it can be a tool in situations if used in moderation, provided you’re already a subject matter expert.

Take for example, an experienced writer. Sure, in a speedy, angry, typing bout, he or she might misspell a few words, and a grammar check is a great tool to have. Another individual might normally have struggled to put forth a sentence - in speech or in text. Now, this individual with the help of AI churns out exhaustive, daily stories with seeming flair and finesse on LinkedIn. People who don’t typically read too, like these posts. It makes for a lot of likes, and compliments, of an opinion that appears to be well put. But is it?

A few years back if I copied text from someone’s articles claiming it as my own, I’d be called a plagiarist. There are no such consequences today.

Sure, this is a rant, but I’ll reserve my view that AI can be a tool, only to those who were already great at what they did.

In conclusion, a colleague at work recently told me that he had made a song for his child using just a 3-line prompt. The song was cringey but that wasn’t the agonizing bit - it’s the bit that this man claimed his child came to tears, of joy. Another colleague told me, her daughter has written a 100 or so novels using AI. She is 12. I asked her, if someone might read some of her ‘work’ and meet her, trying to debate and discuss her work, the interaction could fall short of underwhelming.

Too many hobbies, little time

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 11:49:59 +0530

I’m introverted, and asocial. I like spending time on my hobbies. I’m the type to finish off all my work first, then relax. I’m the type who eats all the boring stuff off a plate, before relishing the good stuff. I have a high-speed routine of how I get ready, and how I unpack when I’m home. I know how many minutes I need to freshen up.

It’s odd but I cram in as much as I can, in a day. I don’t think I have experienced boring days in decades. However, the same things that keep me engaged, also leave me longing for a little more time (and energy) for more things. As I have grown older, I think it’s the mental space (and a bit of the physical energy) one needs to truly indulge that’s lacking on weekdays especially. Physically, trying to play the guitar at the end of a long day is something I can’t get myself to do. Even gaming, sitting upright in front of a PC starting at 11pm, is rarely fun. I’ll often lie down on the couch after 12am, scrolling through content on a laptop, while some tutorials, game-streaming Twitch or YouTube videos that I’ve queued up through the day, and play them on the larger screen.

Even the weekends can feel sapping at times - by the time Sunday afternoon arrives, my mind fixates on the week ahead. This is something I realized the prior week’s 5-day holiday (when I started this blog), allowed me to do - to truly feel empty and spacious - to do things at my pace and expand each activity as I felt fair. I must make my weekends longer, more often.

Write to me, at blog@cyberjunkie.in

Right to Repair - Car woes in India

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 16:40:53 +0530

Owning a car, like many other things in India, can be quite a frustrating experience. You’d think a company like Renault operating in the country would have its act together. The service center franchises surely don’t, or, unknown to me, they do at the customer’s expense. I’ve had issues with my car for the past four years or so, soon after a periodic service. I realized the car wouldn’t crank the engine. I’ve had it towed maybe 3-4 times and driven 10 km a few times to the certified Renault service center. Each towing costs about $40. Once, I paid about $300 to get some parts replaced.

The fear of going to local garages is that you don’t know if you’ll get official parts or quality parts. The vehicle stopped cranking the engine, and I did everything I could personally figure out—checked the fuses, the relays, charged the battery externally, tried resetting error codes, and looked for errors using a third-party OBD — no errors. There is no official repair documentation, no information on the fuses or relays used, no tools, etc. You’re only assigned a service center, meant to take you on a ride.

This time, I thought I’d pay a visit to the local unofficial garage. The guy shows up an hour or two later, is sure something’s wrong with the stator motor, yanks it out, goes back to the garage, and returns an hour later with it repaired. First ignition, and the car springs back to life.

Write to me, at blog@cyberjunkie.in

My First Post

Sun, 26 Oct 2025 14:48:25 +0530

I have a few domains registered but I’ve done little with them. Hosting a blog was one of the long-pending things to do. I chose to use Hugo - it’s familiar ground - Markdown, a single command to generate the pages and I have a handy server at my disposal.

I have long abandoned mainstream social media and news. Now with AI threatening to numb and dumb down people further, I figured I’d partake in the circles of bloggers (considering I have hundreds of them subscribed on my feed reader). This also serves as a way to keep my writing habits intact.

It’s the end of a holiday week here, and the next time I have some time and something that excites or angers me, I’ll make it a point to post here.

Write to me, at blog@cyberjunkie.in

About

Sat, 25 Oct 2025 21:46:44 +0530

I’m a hobbyist-generalist. I spend all my time on things interesting to me. I also read blogs to further those interests. I wrote for work in the past, and I’ve been nudged lately to write on things that interest me.

So, this is my little blog - consider downloading a RSS Feed Reader and subscribe.

Write to me, at blog@cyberjunkie.in