Planet FSCI

June 02, 2026

aktsbot A guide to self-hosting web apps on a VPS
A guide to self-hosting web apps on a VPS

02 Jun 2026

If you have not chosen a VPS provider, the following are what I've used
So now you got yourself an account on a VPS provider and you plan to host your dream project(s) on it. Well done, fellow traveller. Let our journey commence!

Table of contents
Choosing a server

Most VPS offerings start from a VM that has
- 2 cpu cores
- 25 GB ssd storage
- 1 GB of RAM.
This should roughly cost us around 5-6 USD a month.

By all means this should be more than enough for most hobby projects. How much RAM and CPU are your projects consuming when they're running on your laptop/desktop? This should be the only deciding factor for choosing the specs of your VM.

As for the operating system, if you are unsure, choose Debian GNU\Linux.

Configuring our server

When we provision a VPS, we get a public IP assigned to our VPS/server. To connect to the VPS we'd do something like this from our terminal
```
dev$ ssh root@12.13.14.15 
```
Digitalocean for example, enables root logins via ssh to our new server. For other VPS providers it maybe different. They may provide a normal user which can sudo to root.
```
dev$ ssh admin@12.13.14.15 
```
If you need to specify the private key file, the command would look like
```
dev$ ssh admin@12.13.14.15 -i /path/to/private-key.pem 
```
There's a handy config that let's you not worry about ips and usernames while connecting to a server. Create $HOME/.ssh/config if it does not exist and add the following at the end
```
Host myvps Hostname 12.13.14.15 User admin IdentityFile /path/to/private-key.pem 
```
And then you could do
```
dev$ ssh myvps 
```
and we are in our server. Please note that the .ssh folder and its content needs to have their permissions in order. If we screw up, run the following
```
chmod 700 ~/.ssh chmod 600 ~/.ssh/id_* chmod 600 ~/.ssh/config chmod 644 ~/.ssh/*.pub 
```
I usually keep all of my private and public keypairs in the $HOME/.ssh folder, so that it becomes easy for me to do backups.

Lets login into the VM and get cracking
```
server$ sudo apt update server$ sudo apt upgrade 
```
This updates and upgrades the installed software in our server. Now, we'll install a few handy tools to make our server management life a bit easier.
```
server$ sudo apt install tmux neovim git curl htop 
```
1. tmux

tmux should be the first thing you run when you login into a VPS. Why? In the event that our ssh connection dies, any commands we were running on the server would still be running inside tmux. Let's configure it a bit
```
server$ nano ~/.tmux.conf 
```
Put the following in it
```
# Index starts from 1 set-option -g base-index 1 set-option -g pane-base-index 1 # Renumber windows when a window is closed set-option -g renumber-windows on # no login shell set -g default-command "${SHELL}" # 256-color terminal set -g default-terminal "tmux-256color" # use 256 colors instead of 16 # Add truecolor support (tmux info | grep Tc) set-option -ga terminal-overrides ",xterm-256color:Tc" # Mouse set-option -g mouse on # Reload ~/.tmux.conf bind-key R source-file ~/.tmux.conf \; display-message "Reloaded!" 
```
Ctrl+o and Ctrl+x to save and quit out of nano. If you roll with vim, use it to edit the files mentioned in the guide instead of nano.

Now run tmux
```
server$ tmux 
```
We should see a green bar at the bottom indicating that we are in a tmux session. Here's a quick video on how to use tmux.

Whenever I login into my server, this is what I do
```
server$ tmux ls 0: 1 windows (created Tue Jun 24 23:19:42 2025) server$ tmux a -t 0 # or which ever session 
```
2. A new user

If your VPS provider sets you up with the root account by default, then its a good idea to create a normal user.
```
server# adduser jim 
```
Fill in the prompts that follow. The add our new user to the sudo group so that we can run sudo commands. Replace jim with your preferred username.
```
server# usermod -aG sudo jim 
```
Let's check if jim has powers by switching to the account.
```
server# su - jim 
```
Let's do something only root can do, like copying over the .ssh folder in /root to jim's home folder so that jim can login via ssh.
```
server$ sudo cp -r /root/.ssh ~/.ssh [sudo] password for jim: 
```
Provide jim's password and the command should have succeeded. Fix permissions of the new folder
```
server$ chmod 700 ~/.ssh server$ chmod 644 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys 
```
Let's now try to connect to our VPS with this new user.
```
dev$ ssh jim@12.13.14.15 
```
All good?

3. Configuring ssh on the server

We need to make 3 changes
- prevent root ssh logins
- only allow ssh logins with private keys i.e no password logins
- change port to something other than 22
Have two terminals with ssh to our server open. And do the following in one of them.
```
server$ sudo cp /etc/ssh/sshd_config /etc/ssh/sshd_config.orig server$ sudo vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config 
```
Backups saves lives!

Make the following changes in the file. Find the corresponding line and change it.
```
Port 2202 PermitRootLogin no PasswordAuthentication no 
```
If the line of interest has a # infront, remove it before saving. Otherwise, it'd be considered as a comment. For example
```
#PermitRooLogin yes 
```
should become
```
PermitRootLogin no 
```
Then save the file and exit. Restart the sshd service on the server
```
server$ sudo service ssh restart 
```
Logout from one of the terminals and connect to the server like so
```
dev$ ssh jim@12.13.14.15 -i /path/to/private-key.pem -p 2202 
```
If not able to connect, we have the other terminal from which we can debug. If all is well, make our lives easy by making the appropriate edits to $HOME/.ssh/config on our dev machine.
```
Host myvps Hostname 12.13.14.15 Port 2202 User jim IdentityFile /path/to/private-key.pem 
```
Check once again with
```
dev$ ssh myvps 
```
4. Setting up a webapp on the server

It is hard naming things, so unfortunately the actual physical machine that runs our webapp and the software that it has to run to serve content - like our webapp, html files, images files etc is also called a web server.

This guide will use a web server program called nginx. Almost all webserver software allows one to host multiple websites on a single vps/server. Apache pioneered this technique and this is exactly what we need to host multiple projects on a single VPS.

Here's our hypothetical webapp
- https://myapp.com is a react.js SPA.
- https://myapp.com/api is a nodejs api that the above react frontend would consume.
- https://api.myapp.com is the same nodejs api as above.
Assuming, we bought the domain myapp.com ofcourse.

4.1 DNS

Head over to where you purchased the myapp.com domain(namecheap/godaddy/bigrock?) and add an A record with @ as sub-domain to it. Set the destination to our VPS's public IP.
```
A @ 12.13.14.15 
```
After this is done, all requests to myapp.com, foo.myapp.com, bar.myapp.com etc will all land on our new VPS.

4.2 Installing runtimes and dependencies

We are installing node.js here as our hypothetical webapp's backend needs it to run.
```
server$ curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_23.x -o nodesource_setup.sh server$ sudo -E bash nodesource_setup.sh server$ sudo apt-get install -y nodejs server$ node -v 
```
Refer nodesource for latest instructions on how to install node if you are reading this in the very future.

Now lets set up our database.

a. sqlite

If your application can make due with sqlite, then please go with sqlite. Then as your application grows, switch over to an database system like postgres or mongodb. Most ORMs used in backend codebases support switching database systems. So, a switch like this would not pose a challenge.
```
server$ sudo apt install sqlite3 
```
Put the following in ~/.sqliterc
```
.headers on .mode column 
```
Then to open a database
```
server:/var/projects/dbs$ sqlite3 myapp.db 
```
b. postgres

Just a side note, its a good idea to run database systems like postgres, mariadb/mysql, mongodb etc on a separate VPS. More on that later.

Onto installing postgres. Latest instructions for doing that are available on the postgres website. Run the following one by one on the server.
```
sudo apt install curl ca-certificates sudo install -d /usr/share/postgresql-common/pgdg sudo curl -o /usr/share/postgresql-common/pgdg/apt.postgresql.org.asc --fail https://www.postgresql.org/media/keys/ACCC4CF8.asc . /etc/os-release sudo sh -c "echo 'deb [signed-by=/usr/share/postgresql-common/pgdg/apt.postgresql.org.asc] https://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt $VERSION_CODENAME-pgdg main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pgdg.list" sudo apt update sudo apt -y install postgresql 
```
Next we setup a database user with which we can access the application database from the myapp backend.
```
server$ sudo su - postgres -c "createuser myappdbuser --pwprompt" 
```
The above prompts you for a password for the myappdbuser.

Create the application database, if not done so already.
```
server$ sudo su - postgres -c "createdb myapp_db" 
```
Now we grant acces to myappdbuser to myapp_db.
```
server$ sudo -u postgres psql psql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE myapp_db TO myappdbuser; 
```
The connection string for your application would look like so
```
postgres://myappdbuser:s3cr3tPass@localhost:5432/myapp_db 
```
If you decided to host the database on a separate vps,
```
server$ sudo cp /etc/postgresql/<version>/main/postgresql.conf /etc/postgresql/<version>/main/postgresql.conf.orig server$ sudo vim /etc/postgresql/<version>/main/postgresql.conf 
```
Look for the line that says
```
#listen_addresses = 'localhost' 
```
and change it to
```
listen_addresses = 'localhost,10.2.3.4' # the above is the private ip for the database vps 
```
Restart postgres
```
server$ sudo service postgresql restart 
```
Now the connection string for your application would look like so
```
postgres://myappdbuser:s3cr3tPass@10.2.3.4:5432/myapp_db 
```
c. mysql/mariadb
```
server$ sudo apt install mariadb-server server$ sudo mysql_secure_installation 
```
In the prompts that follow
```
Enter current password for root (enter for none): Switch to unix_socket authentication [Y/n] n Change the root password? [Y/n] Y 
```
Set the new root password and we're all set. Lets create a new database user instead of using root for our day to day.
```
server$ sudo mariadb 
```
Next, we'll create the user
```
MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL ON announcing-litebb.md announcing-poof.md announcing-spb-lil.md autologin-sway-debian.md better-font-rendering-linux.md color-me-baby.md copy-paste-vim-slackware.md dwm-st-installation.md hello-lc230.md install-docker-linux.md javascript-callbacks-promises-async-await.md lubuntu-i3wm-awesomeness.md minimal-unix-setup-sowm.md multiple-ssh-keys-for-services.md no-more-blurry-fonts.md openbsd-getting-started.md polkit-thunar-mount.md self-hosting-webapps.md setting-up-neomutt-offlineimap-msmtp.md __skeleton.md__ slackware-install-lvm-luks.md slackware-kernel-patch-install.md slackware-post-install.md swaywm-on-debian-11.md vim-to-neovim.md xml.xml TO 'admin'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'p4ssw0rd' WITH GRANT OPTION; MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES; 
```
Please note, what we did here was making a user similar to root. We'll create an application specific user next that we'll use for our myapp webapp.
```
MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE myapp_db; MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL ON myapp_db.* TO 'myappdbuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'N3wp4ssw0rd' WITH GRANT OPTION; MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES; MariaDB [(none)]> exit 
```
The connection string for our application would look like so
```
mysql://myappdbuser:N3wp4ssw0rd@localhost:3306/myapp_db 
```
If we decide to run mariadb on a separate VPS, make the following edit in /etc/mysql/my.cnf
```
... bind-address = 10.2.3.4,127.0.0.1 ... 
```
Then restart the service
```
server$ sudo service mariadb restart 
```
The connection string will now look like so,
```
mysql://myappdbuser:N3wp4ssw0rd@10.2.3.4:3306/myapp_db 
```
4.3 Application directories

The following is just a convention I use. Feel free to put your application whereever you like.
```
server$ sudo mkdir -p /var/projects/myapp.com/{frontend,backend} server$ sudo chown -R $USER /var/projects/myapp.com 
```
Now get the code into the folders. Let's start by building and copying over the frontend project from our dev machine.
```
dev:frontend$ npm run build dev:frontend$ ls ./ ../ dist/ src/ package.json 
```
The dist folder is what we want to deploy. Let's make an archive of it, so that we can copy it over easily.
```
dev:frontend$ tar -czf dist.tar.gz -C dist/ . 
```
Now lets copy the archive over to our server.
```
dev:frontend$ scp -i ~/.ssh/private-key.pem \ -P 2202 \ dist.tar.gz jim@12.13.14.15:/var/projects/myapp/frontend 
```
Let's extract the archive
```
dev:frontend$ ssh myvps "cd /var/projects/myapp/frontend; tar xzf dist.tar.gz; rm dist.tar.gz; ls" 
```
if all went well, we should see the built react project in that folder in our server. Here's a handy deploy.sh script that has all of the above. Put this in your project root and add to .gitignore
```
#!/bin/sh npm run build tar -czf dist.tar.gz -C dist/ . scp -i ~/.ssh/private-key.pem \ -P 2202 \ dist.tar.gz jim@12.13.14.15:/var/projects/myapp/frontend # or # scp dist.tar.gz myvps:/var/projects/myapp/frontend ssh myvps "cd /var/projects/myapp/frontend; tar xzf dist.tar.gz; rm dist.tar.gz; ls" 
```
Lets do the same for our backend code.
```
dev:backend$ ls ./ ../ app/ .git/ node_modules/ package.json 
```
Include all folders and files we need into the archive
```
dev:backend$ tar -czf api.tar.gz node_modules app package.json 
```
Now lets copy the archive over to our server.
```
dev:backend$ scp api.tar.gz myvps:/var/projects/myapp/backend 
```
Let's extract the archive
```
dev:backend$ ssh myvps "cd /var/projects/myapp/backend; tar xzf api.tar.gz; rm api.tar.gz; ls" 
```
Here's a handy deploy.sh for this as well
```
#!/bin/sh # npm run build # - if its a typescript backend tar -czf api.tar.gz node_modules app package.json # or if its a typescript backend # tar -czf api.tar.gz node_modules dist package.json scp -i ~/.ssh/private-key.pem \ -P 2202 \ api.tar.gz jim@12.13.14.15:/var/projects/myapp/backend # or #scp api.tar.gz myvps:/var/projects/myapp/backend # NOTE: tweak this as per your project. ssh myvps "cd /var/projects/myapp/backend; tar xzf api.tar.gz; rm api.tar.gz; ls" 
```
To run the backend, I use pm2. Create a file called pm2.config.cjs in /var/projects/myapp/backend with the following. You can check this in with git.
```
module.exports = { apps: [ { name: "myapp-api", script: "./app/index.js", }, ], }; 
```
And then I check if my project secrets in the file /var/projects/myapp/backend/.env are all set.

Then to run the backend, its a simple
```
server$ npx pm2 start pm2.config.cjs 
```
To see the logs
```
server$ npx pm2 logs myapp-api 
```
4.4 Setting up nginx

This is the webserver that we talked about earlier. Install it with
```
server$ sudo apt install nginx 
```
Now on to setting up a vhost files for our webapp.
```
server$ sudo nvim /etc/nginx/sites-available/myapp_com.conf 
```
Put the following in it
```
server { listen 80; root /var/projects/myapp/frontend/dist; index index.html index.htm; server_name myapp.com; location / { default_type "text/html"; try_files $uri.html $uri $uri/ /index.html; } # assumes the backend is running on port 3000 location /api { proxy_pass http://localhost:3000; proxy_http_version 1.1; proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade; proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade'; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade; } } 
```
Remember our hypothetical webapp's deployment plan?
1. https://myapp.com is a react.js SPA.
2. https://myapp.com/api is a nodejs api that the above react frontend would consume.
3. https://api.myapp.com is the same nodejs api as above.
1 and 2 are covered by the above nginx config. We need one more file for hosting our api in its own sub-domain.
```
server$ sudo nvim /etc/nginx/sites-available/api_myapp_com.conf 
```
Put the following in it
```
server { listen 80; server_name api.myapp.com; # assumes the backend is running on port 3000 location / { proxy_pass http://localhost:3000; proxy_http_version 1.1; proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade; proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade'; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade; } } 
```
Now to make nginx use these configs, we need to run the following
```
server$ sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/myapp_com.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/myapp_com.conf server$ sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/api_myapp_com.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/api_myapp_com.conf 
```
We can ofcourse create the vhost files directly inside the sites-enabled folder, but it wouldnt be best practise.

Now we restart nginx
```
server$ sudo service nginx restart 
```
Anytime, we make a config change to nginx, check if there are any problems with the config with
```
server$ sudo nginx -t 
```
If all green, update nginx with
```
server$ sudo service nginx reload 
```
4.5 Certbot HTTPS

By now, visiting http://myapp.com and http://api.myapp.com should have loaded our webapp and the webapp's api. But we need that sweet sweet https.
```
server$ sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-nginx server$ sudo certbot --nginx -d myapp.com -d api.myapp.com 
```
certbot would ask a few questions and after that would give us the ssl certificates for our domains.

Note: Let's Encrypt SSL certificates(the ones that certbot sets us up with) expires after 3 months. By installing certbot with apt, we get a systemd timer also installed for checking the certificates' expiry. We can find it with
```
server$ sudo systemctl list-timers | grep certbot 
```
Finishing up

Always remember to keep you server patched with updates. A simple set of
```
server$ sudo apt-get update server$ sudo apt upgrade server$ sudo apt dist-upgrade server$ sudo apt-cache clean 
```
would be all thats needed to do this.

Just a heads up, keep an eye on database software upgrades like postgres / mysql. apt will tell you the packages that are about to be upgraded when you run apt upgrade.

P.S always backup your database before upgrading.

And with that, well done webmaster!

Happy Hacking & have a great day!

June 01, 2026

Thejeshgn GN Micro-granting in India – BoF at IndiaFOSS/2026
I have proposed BoF (Birds of Feather) session and discussion at IndiaFOSS/2026. The proposal is yet to be approved as of today. I am logging the same content here for readers of my blog post and also for record keeping. I will update in both places if there are any changes.

Background

I am Thejesh GN. In 2018, I started a yearly micro-grant of ₹1,00,000 in memory of my mother, called the Nagarathna Memorial Grant (NMG). The idea was to support meaningful work with no strings attached.

The reason for the grant can be anything that matters to the applicant and the people around them. While I personally prefer Free and Open Source Software, Creative Commons, and public-interest work, that is not a requirement.

Over the years, the size of the grant has grown from ₹1 lakh to several lakhs, thanks to friends and supporters joining in. In 2026, the grant reached its largest size yet ₹5.6 lakhs with many people contributing and supporting the process.The idea is also not to grow beyond ₹10 lakhs as of now. Personally, I would consider any grant handling more than ₹10 lakhs/year in 2026 is not a micro grant. Even with the growth, the core idea remains unchanged, small, direct, trust-based support for meaningful work.

2027 will mark the 10th year of the grant. This BoF is an opportunity to discuss how we can encourage more micro-grants in India.

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. There are student discounts and There also diversity scholarships available, so please do apply:

Key Focus
- Explore how micro-grants can enable meaningful creative, public-interest, community, and FOSS projects
- Discuss how to build communities around micro-funding and peer-to-peer support
- Understand the challenges involved and ways to overcome them
- Encourage more people to start and run small independent grants
Brief

In India, most funding for creative, public-interest, and open projects comes through large institutional grants. While those are important, micro-grants ( small, decentralized, peer-to-peer gifts or funding ) can often be more accessible, flexible, and liberating for both the giver and the receiver.

This BoF is an open discussion for FOSS contributors, creators, artists, writers, researchers, and community organizers to discuss about
- the usefulness of micro-grants,
- the realities of running them,
- and how we can encourage more people in India to participate in or start their own micro-funding initiatives.
Possible Discussion Points
1. What is micro-funding?
2. Who can fund, and who can receive?
3. How small is “small”?
4. What are the challenges?
5. What makes it rewarding or fun?
6. How do we encourage more people to participate?
Discussion Format

Round-table discussion.

We will begin with a short introduction to micro-funding and why it matters, followed by an overview of how NMG has worked, lessons learned, and challenges faced over the years.

The session will then open into a broader discussion and brainstorming on possible discussion points mentioned above.

Moderators
- Thejesh GN
- Will update
Note

I will make small changes to this as I gather more feedback on the session. But the core remains the same.

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May 29, 2026

Thejeshgn GN Weekly Notes 22/2026
This Saturday, we drove to Palakkad to meet Pradeep and Dhanya. It was a short morning walk and breakfast meet. We met at the fort, walked around, and chit-chatted while having breakfast at Indraprasta. The fort is well-maintained, and the walking path around the fort is good for a casual morning walk. Thanks to Pradeep for this. I have been coming to Thrissur quite regularly since 2013 (my first time was in 2010, during a motorcycle ride). At least twice a year, but in most years, three or four times. Each time I have spent at least two weeks. Given how much time I spend here, I should meet more folks here. I should take the initiative.

Tippu Fort at Palakkad

Meeting Pradeep and Dhanya
- 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.
Kathakali at Thiruvambady SreeKrishna Temple

Kathakali at Thiruvambady SreeKrishna Temple

Tea Mill – Punkunnam – Thrissur

Loaves and Muffins – Thrissur

Peringavu Post Office”

Ashtamichira Bus Stop P.B

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Ravi Dwivedi Budapest Travel

In September 2025, I attended the annual LibreOffice conference in Budapest, Hungary. This gave me an opportunity to explore the city, which I will cover in this post.

Let’s start with the currency. Although Hungary is a part of the European Union (EU), it doesn’t use the euro as its currency. Instead, it uses Hungarian forints (denoted by “Ft”). During my time in Hungary, 1 Indian rupee was equal to 4 Hungarian forints.

After reaching the Budapest airport, I bought a 15-day public transport pass. The public transport counter is after you pass customs and immigration. The pass allows unlimited use of public transport in the city. I had to show my passport and pay 5950 Ft to get the pass. The pass had my passport number mentioned on it. The public transport passes can also be bought at any of the tram stations as well.

This is the counter from where I bought my public transport pass.

My unlimited public transport pass for Budapest. I have redacted my passport number from it.

An automatic ticket machine at a tram station in Budapest.

Budapest is a union of two cities—Buda and Pest—lying on opposite sides of the Danube River. My hotel—Corvin Hotel—was on the Pest side.

Budapest had good public transport. The buses, metros, and trams complemented each other. For example, the airport didn’t have metro or tram connectivity, but it was served by the bus. Most of the metro was on the Pest side, with only a couple of stations falling in Buda. However, both sides had an extensive network of trams.

Furthermore, the information about the public transport was easily accessible. For instance, the map of tram stops inside the trams also included the bus routes one could get after alighting at those stops.

From the airport, I took a bus followed by taking a metro on the M3 line to reach within walking distance of my hotel.

An M3 line metro in Budapest.

During the conference I would take the tram to the conference venue. The trams were modern and fast. They also had a smiley face at the front, which gave them a friendly look. It seemed like the trams were happily doing their job. The city also had a good pedestrian infrastructure along with separate cycling tracks.

A tram in Budapest having a smiley face at the front.

Budapest’s tap water is officially safe to drink, which was mentioned on a sticker posted on the wall of the bathroom of my hotel room. So, I did not need to buy any water bottles while I was there.

On the 6th of September, I went on a sightseeing tour of Budapest with my Dione. Our friend Attila, who was a local (from Hungary), joined us. We went to the central market from our hotel by metro.

If you read my post on Vienna, I mentioned that the metro stations don’t have AFC gates but ticket validators instead. Budapest’s metro also has the same system. If you buy individual tickets, you need to validate them using the validators on the station before boarding the metro. If you are using a public transport pass like I was, then you do not need to validate, and you can board the metro directly.

A ticket validator at a metro station in Budapest.

In 10-15 minutes, we reached the central market. Attila showed us around. I bought a fridge magnet and paprika powder as souvenirs. Paprika powder is a signature spice of Hungary. It is mainly available in two forms—one is sweet and the other being spicy. I wanted the spicy one, but I didn’t get that in that market. Therefore, I had to contend with buying the sweet version. The sweet version isn’t sweet though, it is just not spicy. After bringing that paprika powder home, it is mainly used for food coloring. I like it though and use it frequently in my omelets and other dishes.

Central market.

The building right behind the tram is the central market building.

At some point, Atilla had to join the The Document Foundation (TDF) sightseeing group, so we parted ways at the central market. Dione and I continued our sightseeing and decided to start with visiting the Hungarian parliament, which is a tourist attraction. It was because we were on the Pest side and the parliament was also on the same side, while other tourist attractions were on the Buda side.

So, Dione and I hopped on a tram and went to the parliament. We got off at a tram station just outside the parliament. The parliament is the icon of Budapest. The building has a gothic architecture and colored brown and white. One can buy tickets and take an inside tour. However, we didn’t have a lot of time, so we stayed outside the building.

Hungarian Parliament building.

After spending some time outside the parliament building, we took a tram to the Chain Bridge. As I mentioned earlier, Budapest has two parts—Buda and Pest—separated by the Danube River. To go from one of the sides to the other requires crossing a bridge. Although Budapest has many bridges linking the two sides, the main one is the Chain Bridge.

We walked on the chain bridge to get to the other side. The bridge gave a good view of the Danube River. It also had a statue of a lion. The Buda Castle (another major landmark of Budapest) was visible from the bridge.

A shot of Chain Bridge.

The lion statue on the Chain Bridge.

After reaching the other side of the bridge (the Buda side), we sat on a bench for some time and then planned on where to go next. We decided to go to Fisherman’s Bastion, which is another tourist attraction.

We used the OSMAnd~ app to figure out which bus to take and hopped on one. Soon we reached Fisherman’s Bastion, where we found a flight of stairs that led upwards. Upon climbing the stairs, we got a panoramic view of the city. It also gave us a good view of the Hungarian parliament across the river. Going further upstairs, we found a statue of Stephen I of Hungary. He was the first king of Hungary, getting the crown in the year 1900.

A view of Hungarian parliament from Fisherman’s bastion.

I found Fisherman’s Bastion to be the best tourist attraction in the city. As mentioned earlier, it offers a panoramic view of the city, which I liked. I liked the arhitecture and open space there. If you find yourself in Budapest, I would highly recommend that you visit Fisherman’s Bastion.

Fisherman’s Bastion.

Statue of Stephen I of Hungary at Fisherman’s Bastion.

Next, we went downstairs and returned to where the bus dropped us. From here on, we walked in random streets to see the residential and non-touristy side of Budapest. It was not so random as we walked towards Batthyány tér metro station. Upon reaching the metro station, we found a café where we stopped for a while for some coffee. After injecting some caffeine into our blood, we proceeded to find a place to have lunch.

Batthyány tér metro station.

For lunch, we decided to go to Rákóczi tér metro station after reading on the internet about the food options there. Upon exiting the metro station, we found a market inside a building that had a lot of shops, but most of them were closed.

After roaming around inside a bit, we found an Italian place open and decided to eat there. The name of this place was Matteos. We ordered an eggplant parmigiana, a lasagna artichoke, and a classic tiramisu. It wasn’t very tasty but filled us up for the day.

A picture of Matteos, where we had our lunch.

Budapest has four metro lines, and we had been to three of them, so we decided to try the remaining line, which was the M1 line. It is the oldest line in the city and has a different vibe than the modern lines. This line was opened in 1896, one of the oldest subway systems in the world.

The coaches were much smaller than the other metro lines, and the seating arrangement was something you would expect from a bus than a typical metro train. We rode all the way to the last stop, Mexikói út. Upon going outside, we found out there wasn’t much to do here.

At this point, I checked the map and realized that Heroes’ Square is just a couple of metro stations away. Heroes’ Square is a tourist attraction in Budapest. It is located in Zuglóa and is a historically significant place in Budapest. It has a monument which features the Seven chieftains of the Magyars.

M1 line station and tracks. It is the oldest metro transit of Budapest and one of the oldest in the world. It started operations in 1896.

Here, our unlimited public transport pass was handy because if it was paid per trip, we would think of the stop as a “wasted” one because we would have to buy a ticket again, but in this case we could just hop on again without any regrets.

An M1 line metro train entering the station.

So we took the M1 line again and deboarded at Hősök tere station, followed by walking to the square. After roaming around for a while, we saw a trolleybus and decided to ride on that.

Heroes’ Square.

This is the trolleybus we took in Budapest.

A trolleybus is an electric bus that is powered by overhead electric cables. It is like a tram but runs on roads instead of tracks. We got down at Dózsa György út metro station. Then we took a metro to our hotel.

Before going to the hotel, we went to a place to eat something. We had coffee and lángos. Lángos is a deep-fried Hungarian dish, which looks exactly like the Indian flatbread bhatura. I found it tasty, but since it was deep-fried, that was almost a given.

Lángos — a dish which looks like the Indian flatbread bhatura.

The next day we went to Vienna—the capital of Austria—which I have already posted about. Check it out here.

I had a good time in Budapest, and it is a beautiful city with good public transport and some amazing sites to visit. That’s it for now, and see you next time!

Credits: Thanks Dione and Badri for proofreading.

May 22, 2026

Thejeshgn GN Weekly Notes 21/2026
I was in Chennai for the first half of the week. I couldn’t get a confirmed 1st or 2nd class train ticket. So I had to fly from Kochi. It’s such a waste of time and money. Chennai is hot, hotter than Thrissur. But I mostly worked from Indoors, so it was okay. It seems like it’s been raining a lot in Bangalore, and temperatures are down. I miss it.

Nail paint

I am yet to get a good picture at IITM
- 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.
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May 19, 2026

Thejeshgn GN Embedding user code in your app using Extism
Every application I love has some kind of power-user mode where I can add my own code or scripting to make it useful to me. Simple examples are Firefox with its addons or VLC with its plugins. Ideally, any significant or valuable application should have such a feature.

But as a developer or builder, it’s not easy to build such a feature securely. I have tried it before with embedding Lua with some restrictions. But it isn’t great in sandboxing. I’ve always had an eye on the WASM-based implementation because browsers have decent sandboxing. Very recently, when I was updating Navidrome, I came across its plugin system, which uses Extism and is based on WebAssembly. Ideally, at some point, even WordPress can do this, allowing us to sandbox plugins.

So I wrote a simple plugin to try out this infrastructure. I wrote a plugin with internet access to a given URL. Its only goal is to test the plugin’s ability to make web API calls in a controlled way. And to explore how plugins work. The language I chose for the plugin is Python, but there are many better supported languages. I tested it using CLI. And it’s not difficult to call it from a host language.

I installed and used Extism CLI, version 1.6.2. Direct binary download from the repository. I wrote a simple Python script that, as a plugin, expects a JSON input containing URL and payload for a web post. There are other ways to pass the data to the plugin, but JSON seemed most flexible.

Inside the plugin, I read the JSON input, parse the parameters, and make a web POST request using Existims Http. Remember, you need to use the Python PDK (Plugin Development Kit). Those PDKs can have some limitations of their own. So be mindful when choosing a plugin language.

Also as you can see, a plugin can have many functions. The ones annotated with @extism.plugin_fn can be called from the host environment. The code is easy to understand.
```
#webhook.py
import json
import extism
from extism import Http

@extism.plugin_fn
def post_json():
    params = extism.input_json()

    url = params["url"]
    payload = params["payload"]

    response = Http.request(
        url,
        meth="POST",
        headers={"Content-Type": "application/json"},
        body=json.dumps(payload),
    )

    result = {
        "status": response.status_code,
        "body": response.data_str(),
    }

    extism.output_str(json.dumps(result))
```
To call this plugin first I need to build it. To build use the extism-py which is installed as part of Python PDK. Then run
```
extism-py webhook.py webhook.wasm
```
That will produce webhook.wasm, the plugin code that one would probably ship. You can call or invoke it via the CLI for testing. As you can see, I have to grant internet access to the WASM by allowing access to the url webhook.site.
```
extism call webhook.wasm post_json \
--allow-host "webhook.site" --wasi \
--input '{ "url": "https://webhook.site/0b757518-7120-4919-a12f-252d3dfbc8b5", "payload": { "name": "Thejesh from inside the sandbox", "seq": 1 } }'
```
But in real world you would be calling it from host code/program. Let’s say your host language is also Python, then you can call this WASM plugin using the following piece of code. Again, it’s not that difficult.
```
# host.py
# /// script
# dependencies = ["extism"]
# ///

import json
import extism

wasm_file = "webhook.wasm"

input_data = {
    "url": "https://webhook.site/dc895b92-0b21-46db-a9c0-766dd87e8b0f",
    "payload": {
        "name": "Thejesh from inside the sandbox",
        "seq": 1,
    },
}

manifest = {
    "wasm": [{"path": wasm_file}],
    "allowed_hosts": ["webhook.site"],
}

with extism.Plugin(
    manifest,
    wasi=True,
) as plugin:
    result = plugin.call("post_json", json.dumps(input_data).encode())
    print(result.decode())
```
All of a sudden, safe plugin implementation doesn’t sound that difficult, isn’t it?

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May 15, 2026

Thejeshgn GN Weekly Notes 20/2026
We are in Thrissur. We left at around 2 AM and reached by 11 AM, with two breaks. The drive was comfortable. The traffic was friendly this time. Echo is getting old, and Uma is more active now. So the breaks are a necessity now. Thrissur is hot, but it’s been raining since we arrived, which keeps it manageable. Uma, Echo and Pathu love being here.

Uma loves singing
- 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.
Yamaha getting washed

Radio Uma

Travel work setup

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सिर्फ春 How Good is Pure Randomization for Indian Competitive Tests?
I got a very good rank in <insert exam name> without studying anything. I just chose anything lol

â€” Some Redditor

This comment felt like a very curious claim to me. See the exam that person is referring to, CUET-PG, is a pretty big one and if randomization is seriously that good then it would be pretty stupid to answer the questions yourself.

So I decided to check the marks of 2025 batch to see how likely the Redditor’s claim would be. Turns out a university called Nehru Gram Bharati has leaked the marks of all candidates, at least for the Economics section. (Fuck privacy bro!) The first result for “nehru gram bharti cuet pg economics marks” was for a PDF on their website.

It is, of course, difficult to do any data analysis on a PDF. I started looking for an azad software to do the PDF to spreadsheet conversion but didn’t get any. Eventually I was forced to use the Adobe Acrobat’s online tool which I think did the deed nicely.

I used readxl and dplyr for importing the file. Cleaning the data after that required some time but in the end I had a nice numeric vector:
```
# load the spreadsheet
marks <- read_excel("~/Documents/R/CUET/marks.xlsx") |>
  pull(MARK_TOT)

# clean bad entries and convert type 
marks <- marks[! marks %in% c("MARK_TOT", NA)]
marks <- type.convert(marks)
```
The final CSV after tidying is available at marks.csv. A weird thing about that CSV is that it only contains 15,843 entries though there are supposed to be 18,379 students in the list. I have zero idea what happened to the rest.

I then looked up some basic things:
```
median(marks)
# 45

sd(marks)
# 40
```
I also plotted a graph just in case I was missing something.

The Redditor’s claim seem quite plausible in the light of the above data, even if we account for the 50 marks rise in cut offs this year. However, I focused my attention back to the comment. It says “I just chose anything lol”. Hmm. I think I have been looking at the problem in the wrong way. Pure randomization after all doesn’t have anything to do with the distribution of marks within the rest of the students.

In CUET-PG each wrong answer deducts 1 marks and each right answer gives 4 marks. Empty answers don’t change the score. Since the expected value of each question is positive (0.25), it would be in the best interest of the exam taker who is using pure randomization to answer all questions.

Assuming our person of interest answered all questions, the probability that they would have a score which is at least as extreme as the one they got (which was 100 marks) would be:
```
pbinom(35, 75, 0.25, lower.tail = FALSE) |> 
  format(scientific = FALSE)
# "0.00001411975"
```
That is very very unlikely.

For conclusion, pure randomization only has a terrible expected value of 18.75. I don’t think anyone should submit to such chances if they have an alternative.

May 14, 2026

सिर्फ春 I Love My New Laptop!

I had been desperately waiting for my first laptop since the last month and now it’s finally here.

It is the Motobook 60 Pro. Yes, you heard it right: it is a laptop by Motorola. At the time of writing this, the only other laptop model made by them was “Motobook 60”. Since Motorola is owned by Lenovo, the firmware design and the bad thermal management are very Lenovoish. The outer blue design gives it a modern look and I was genuinely surprised when I found out that the boot button was on the side next to the USB Port.

My cutie pie ðŸ¤�

Of course, the first task at hand was to install Linux. However, I was not able to boot either CachyOS or Fedora correctly. In my frustration I even accidentally deleted Windows though I had some intentions of dual booting before that. I looked up hundreds of forum posts. Ultimately the problem turned out to be the thumb drive itself. This new fucker was corrupting all of the files and it was only after using another old USB stick was I able to make any progress.

I quickly created a bootable thumb drive with CachyOS, Limine, and Hyprland. Suffice it to say that the setup didn’t lasted long as I wasn’t able to connect to my WiFi. I wasn’t even able to fix the font size in end-4’s Hyprland dotfiles.

I reinserted my thumb drive and this time I chose KDE instead of Hyprland. It was nice, and I would have continued for longer if it wasn’t for me getting annoyed by the extremely long compiling process of R packages. Arch, unlike Fedora or Debian, does not have binary files for R packages, which means the user has to compile it themself. I would not recommend that shit even to my enemies. I tried to suffer silently for a bit longer but my OS soon became unbootable when I changed the background image of Limine but forgot to update the hash.

Damn it! I have had enough. I installed Fedora KDE Plasma because of its pure black theme. A little modification here, a little change there, and I had a very nice and stable setup.

After a few hours I have downloaded almost everything except WINE for emulating Microsoft Excel (which might be useful for following professors using it in their classes). I hope that that would not be a big pain in the ass.

May 08, 2026

Thejeshgn GN Weekly Notes 19/2026
My first, full-fledged in-class course at APU ended this week. The final round of assessments is yet to be done. I am in the process of it. Most students have done well. I have done physical workshops, special classes, a bunch of short-term courses, but this was my first in-class, full-fledged course. Traveling to APU and prepping took time. Otherwise, it was fun, and I really enjoyed it.

Tender Coconut Cold Brew at Maverick & Farmer Coffee
- 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.
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May 01, 2026

Thejeshgn GN Weekly Notes 18/2026
It’s been a busy week, both at work and at home. I think the heat also made the week much more tiring, but thankfully, it rained a bit yesterday. Hopefully we will get more rains.

Uma at South United Football Club. It’s summer camp.

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.
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April 28, 2026

Abhijith PA Patience could've saved me time.
If I had been patient, it would have saved me time. One such instance is following.

From my early blogs, you might know I am using mutt to do email. Just after I get along with mutt, I started using notmuch. Because limit search in mutt is always a pain when you have multiple folders. And what better tool out there than notmuch-mutt to bind both these.

notmuch-mutt provide three macros by default.
```
macro index <F8> \
"<enter-command>set my_old_pipe_decode=\$pipe_decode my_old_wait_key=\$wait_key nopipe_decode nowait_key<enter>\
<shell-escape>notmuch-mutt -r --prompt search<enter>\
<change-folder-readonly>`echo ${XDG_CACHE_HOME:-$HOME/.cache}/notmuch/mutt/results`<enter>\
<enter-command>set pipe_decode=\$my_old_pipe_decode wait_key=\$my_old_wait_key<enter>" \
      "notmuch: search mail"
macro index <F9> \
"<enter-command>set my_old_pipe_decode=\$pipe_decode my_old_wait_key=\$wait_key nopipe_decode nowait_key<enter>\
<pipe-message>notmuch-mutt -r thread<enter>\
<change-folder-readonly>`echo ${XDG_CACHE_HOME:-$HOME/.cache}/notmuch/mutt/results`<enter>\
<enter-command>set pipe_decode=\$my_old_pipe_decode wait_key=\$my_old_wait_key<enter>" \
      "notmuch: reconstruct thread"
macro index <F6> \
"<enter-command>set my_old_pipe_decode=\$pipe_decode my_old_wait_key=\$wait_key nopipe_decode nowait_key<enter>\
<pipe-message>notmuch-mutt tag -- -inbox<enter>\
<enter-command>set pipe_decode=\$my_old_pipe_decode wait_key=\$my_old_wait_key<enter>" \
      "notmuch: remove message from inbox"
```
One for search, one for reconstructing threads and one for manipulating tags, which I missed.

Now my impatient part. I have already mapped f6 for my folder movements and in my initial days of notmuch, I only use just search. So I never cared about the f6 macro provided by notmuch-mutt. As time goes by I got very comfortable with notmuch. I was stretching my notmuch legs. I started to live more on notmuch search results date:today tag:unread than more on the mutt index. To the problem, since notmuch-mutt dump all results to a temp maildir location, can’t perform flag changes back to the original maildir which was annoying, because we need to distinguish what mail you read and what not when you subscribed to most of all debian mailing list.

I was under the impression that, the notmuch-mutt is not capable of doing so and I just went like that without checking docs. I started doing all crazy hack to sync these maildirs.

I even started reading notmuch-mutt codebase.

Later, I settled on notmuch-vim. Cause I can manipulate flags sync back from notmuch to maildir.

And while searching for something, I accidentally revisited the the the notmuch-mutt macro page and saw the tag manipulation. I was like :( .

If I read about the third macro patiently when added that to config, I could’ve saved time by not doing ugly hacks around it.

I think I learned my lesson.

Ravi Dwivedi A day in Vienna

On the 7th of September 2025, my friend Dione and I had a day trip to Vienna—the capital of Austria. We were attending a conference in Budapest, Hungary, which is 250 km from Vienna. So, it was a good opportunity to visit Vienna.

We took a morning train from Budapest to Vienna and got back to Budapest by night. However, booking these tickets turned out to be a bit complicated. There were many websites to book the train ticket—Hungarian Railways, Austrian Railways, and third-party sites such as Omio. All these websites had different prices for the same ticket.

I booked the tickets from the Hungarian Railways website as it was the cheapest. The train from Budapest to Vienna was €13, operated by Eurocity. Also, I had to pay €2 for the seat reservation on top. The train from Vienna to Budapest—operated by Railjet—was €21, along with €2 extra for reservation again—making it €23. The tickets for the two-way journey added up to €38.

The cost of these tickets varied depending on when one purchses them: the sooner you purchase, the lower the price. I bought my tickets 15 days ahead of the date of journey and paid just €38. In contrast, Dione booked just one day before her trip and paid around €100 for her tickets.

As for the seat reservation, long-distance trains in Europe usually require paying extra for the seat reservation. This ensures that you get your preferred seat, such as a window seat or an aisle seat. Nevertheless, you will get a seat on long-distance trains because they do not sell more tickets than there are seats. Therefore, you will get a seat without reservation as well. However, we reserved our seats so that we can sit together. This helped us more in the return part of the journey—from Vienna to Budapest—which was more crowded than the train we took from Budapest to Vienna in the morning.

On another note, reservation is mandatory on some trains in Europe, but ours wasn’t one of them. In addition, people also use rail passes, so an extra charge is required on top for reserving the seats for pass holders. On the other hand, local trains do not require seat reservations in general.

Our train’s scheduled departure was at 08:55 from the Budapest Kelenfold station. We reached the train station 40 minutes before the train’s scheduled departure. The Kelenfold station had free Wi-Fi, which was handy because I didn’t have a local SIM.

A departures board at Budapest Kelenfold station. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

This is platform number 15 of Budapest Kelenfold station where we boarded our train. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Our train arrived on time. I tried to find our coach number but could not find the numbers written anywhere on the side of the coach. Luckily, we were helped by a fellow passenger who directed me to look at the doors, where the numbers were mentioned clearly!

Then we got into our compartment and took our respective seats. Our tickets were checked twice - once while the train was in Hungary and the other when in Austria. Showing the PDF of the train ticket on our mobile to the ticket inspector was good enough for the purpose. Austria and Hungary are a part of the open transit Schengen area, which means this was the extent of the border control checks we had to go through.

Interior of our Budapest to Vienna train. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

The train also had free Wi-Fi, albeit with poor connection at times. There were no eatery options inside the train.

We deboarded at the Wien Hauptbahnhof station in Vienna. The journey was 250 km and took 2.5 hours, reaching Vienna at 11:25, which was the scheduled time.

This blue colored train was the one we took for our Budapest to Vienna journey. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

An ÖBB train standing at a platform of Vienna train station. ÖBB is the national carrier of Austria. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Wien Hauptbahnhof train station. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

At the station, we bought a 24-hour public transport pass from a ticket machine for €8. The pass includes unlimited access to all the public transport in Vienna for 24 hours. My pass was valid from the 7th of September at 11:34 to the 8th of September at 11:33. A single public transport ticket (from anywhere to anywhere) costs €2.4. A single ticket of €2.4 can be used once on any public transport in Vienna—trams, metros, and buses.

Therefore, the pass is a good deal if you are going to take at least four public transport trips in a day. Unlike the public transport pass I got in Budapest, the pass in Vienna was anonymous and not tied to the rider’s name.

My public transport pass in Vienna.

We wanted to visit the Schönbrunn Palace. The palace was reachable by subway. In order to get to the subway station, we started by going outside the station. But it was not outside. So we came back inside the station building and realized that the subway was underground.

We took the subway and deboarded at the Schönbrunn subway station—the closest one to the palace. The ride was smooth; the train was pretty silent.

By the way, like Budapest, there were no AFC gates for boarding the subway in Vienna. The stations had ticket validators instead, where you are supposed to validate your tickets before getting into the subway.

Instead of AFC gates, Vienna has ticket validators as in the picture. You need to tap your ticket in the validator before boarding the subway. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

These validators are in place to ensure that you use your ticket only once. Unlike AFC gates, which are present in metros of most of the countries I have been to, the ticket validators don’t act as a physical barrier to enter the boarding area.

If you board the metro without validating your ticket, you will be facing hefty fines upon getting caught. I have heard that the fine is around €100. On the other hand, if you have a public transport pass like we did, then you don’t need to validate it before boarding.

In addition, there were no annoying security checks either, unlike in Indian cities. In the Delhi metro, for example, you would need to scan your bags and pass through a security check before getting to the AFC gates.

Vienna subway. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Now back to the story, after alighting at the Schönbrunn subway station, we walked to the Schönbrunn Palace. One can roam around outside the palace and click pictures for free. To go inside, however, requires buying tickets. The tickets for the palace can be booked in advance on the internet. We didn’t take the tickets in advance, as we decided to visit the palace at the last moment.

So we went to the ticket counter and found out that we needed to wait for 1 hour 40 minutes before going inside if we took the tickets at that moment. In addition, one ticket costs €44 (around 4000 Indian rupees). Since we had to return to Budapest in the evening and only had a few hours in the city, we decided not to go inside the palace. Instead, we clicked a few pictures outside the palace.

Schönbrunn Palace. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

The Schönbrunn Palace is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is a historically significant place. It servedas one of the residences of the powerful Habsburg dynasty. The palace looked so good that my friend Dione said, “It seemed like the palace was built yesterday”. This remark applied to other parts of Vienna we went to. For example, the subway stations also seemed like they were built yesterday.

A street near Schönbrunn Palace. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Now, we wanted to go someplace to grab a bite. I asked my friend Urbec for suggestions on where to go. They suggested we visit the steps named Strudlhofstiege, which had the added benefit of being in a neighborhood with good bakeries and buildings.

So, we took the subway and deboarded at the Roßauer Lände station, followed by walking around a kilometer to reach the stairs.

Roßauer Lände subway station. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Platform of the Roßauer Lände subway station. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

The The Strudlhofstiege steps. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

On the way, we were also looking for a place to eat. Unfortunately, it was Sunday, and Vienna closes on Sunday. That means most of the shops—including bakeries and cafés—are closed. Only places like railway stations have shops open on Sundays.

By the way, walking around in the streets of Vienna was a treat. The streets were not crowded (as it was not exactly a touristy neighborhood) and had good pedestrian infrastructure, with clean streets and separate cycling tracks. The buildings were also beautiful.

A random street in Vienna.

Another street in Vienna.

After some walking, we found a restaurant open. I grabbed the menu to check the prices. A lady at the shop asked me what I was doing, and I told her that I was browsing the menu. She said that the menu was in German. I don’t know how she knew that we didn’t know German, but it seemed like a racist thing to be told.

We roamed around further and found a café by the name of Blue Orange, where we ordered coffee and croissants. When we got our order, the waiter told us that they were having some issues, so they wouldn’t charge us for the croissant if it wasn’t good.

A picture of Blue Orange café. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

My friend and I took a bite, and both of us didn’t like the croissant. After some time, the waiter came to us and asked whether the croissant was okay, to which we said no. Therefore, they didn’t charge us for the croissant. This was the first time something like this happened to me. It felt like I was in a different world. I added a small tip at the end for this gesture, which I had to put in a jar at the counter.

The cappuccino I ordered was €4.50, while the espresso that Dione ordered was €3.60. The croissant would have been €3.60. I remember Paris having cheaper croissants!

Then when the waiter brought our drinks out, they automatically gave me the espresso and Dione the cappuccino. Dione found this funny because there is a stereotype in her country (Australia) that men drink strong black coffee, and women drink milky drinks like cappuccinos. She found it interesting that this stereotype seems to exist in Austrian culture too.

We hopped on a tram to reach the nearest subway station and went to the Wien Hauptbahnhof station to have something before we caught our return train to Budapest.

Trams in Vienna. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

At the station, I had Esterhazyschnitten and Punschkrapfen (thanks, Urbec, for the suggestion). The lady at the shop warned me that punschkrapfen had alcohol in it, to which I said okay.

Esterhazyschnitten was a cake made of almonds, while punschkrapfen was a jam-filled sponge cake, soaked in rum. Esterhazyschnitten was my favorite out of the two. The punschkrapfen was too sweet for my taste.

Punschkrapfen. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Esterhazyschnitten. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

While the station was well-built, there were a couple of things about the Wien Hauptbahnhof station that we didn’t like. There were no seats inside the station, so we had to eat outside the building. Also, the toilets needed to be paid for. It costs 50 cents to use the toilets at this station.

The Vienna train station had departure boards all over the place. So, we went to the platform our train was to arrive on.

Departure boards in Vienna displaying information about the trains. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Platform and tracks at Wien Hauptbahnhof station. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

When our train arrived, we had some difficulty locating our compartment. This train was operated by a different company (Railjet) than the one we took in the morning (Eurocity) from Budapest to Vienna, and we were able to locate the coach numbers using the digital board at the station. Each compartment had a digital board next to it on the station displaying the coach number. However, that wasn’t the problem. Even after reading the coach numbers and trying to find ours, it didn’t appear where we expected in the sequence.

When we were not able to find our coach for a while, we asked a ticket inspector of the train who was standing on the platform. He directed us towards the front side of the train. So we started running to the front side as we didn’t know how long the train stops.

As we ran toward our coach, we found out that the engine of the back train was connected with the last compartment of the train at the front. At that point, we realized that the train was a combination of two trains. At a later station, the train on the back side parted ways and went towards Vienna Airport.

Interior of the train we took from Vienna to Budapest. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

This is the train we took for our return journey from Vienna to Budapest. It is standing on a platform in Budapest Kelenfold station. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

We had a smooth journey and reached Budapest a couple of hours later.

Vienna is a beautiful city; we enjoyed being there, and we would like to visit the city again!

That’s it for now. Signing off. See you in the next one!

Credits: Thanks to Dione and Badri for proofreading.

April 27, 2026

Sahil Dhiman Weekly Notes
Weekly notes is a genre where people chronicle their week on their blogs. Weekly notes are like a window. I love going through these, as they’re a steady stream of week on week happenings and progress in people’s lives. It shows people making efforts to improve: from basic things like learning to swim or drive, to planning long-term goals such as vacations, moving house, states, or even countries. In some cases, they carry internal monologues, thoughts, and anxieties. These are like a constant nudge for me to work on myself, like them.

These are the weekly notes I read nowadays:
Most are there on Thejesh’s weekly notes planet which autoupdates when new posts arrive, usually starting on Friday evenings, and by Monday, almost everyone has posted.

It reminds of a word from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows - Kenaway :

the longing to see how other people live their lives when they’re not in public; wishing you could tune in to the raw feed of another human existence, in all its messiness and solitude—shimmying in place while brushing their teeth, squabbling over where to put the shoes, talking out their problems on solitary commutes—if only to give you something to compare your own life against, and figure out whether you’re bizarrely normal or normally bizarre.

Close enough.

April 24, 2026

Thejeshgn GN Weekly Notes 17/2026
NMG 2026 results are out. If you are a grantee, congratulations. This is the 9th edition of 2026 and the biggest both in terms of total grant and the number of grantees. Initial emails have been sent. Today, I started sending some introductory emails so fund transfers can happen. The actual fund transfer is from person to person as a gift. I also started working towards the 10th year, where I want to cover at least some of the grantees (if they are willing) as part of a blog series.

When we were in SFS School, our campus had lots of trees of this fruit. We used call it gasagase hannu. We used to love it. APU has some and they are full of fruit now. I had a few today. I still love it.
- 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.
My at least a decade old 504 and 511 Levi’s

Patched up Levi’s 511, ready to go

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सिर्फ春 Are Entertainers Useless?

In a way, I agree with a lot of points in Nicholas Decker’s recent article Social Credit. Our society with its modern mass media has allowed a handful of people to dominate our attention, and these people aren’t usually the ones you would want to be on top of the attention economy. I think you might have plenty of people in your mind who fit that description.

The core idea of Nicholas’ essay goes like this: sports, fashion, politics, and entertainment are kind of things which do not contribute much value to our society but still command our awe and, hence, we should discourage them in favour of scientists which actually do contribute to the progress of our society. In the words of Nicholas,

It is not so bad if someone should go into sports because they are of little intelligence, and would amount to nothing if it were not for their body. But we should regard every person of intelligence, who could have done something which would actually improve the world, who goes into sports as a shameful tragedy.

I am not very sure how they concluded that entertainment or musicians are a zero sum game since they haven’t provided any justification for that. They also included politicians in their criticism of “professions and industries whose existence is entirely zero sum”. This seems weird to me, especially considering the fact that Nicholas is from USA, a country which is currently not having a great time under its new set of poltical representatives. Nicholas doesn’t actually address how their criticism applies to politics, so the fact that they casually inserted that word seems wrong.

However, ignoring those bits, I would point out that the essay relies on one central assumption; the assumption that scientists are much more smarter than the rest of the population. This assumption critically weakens the logic of the essay and makes the whole argument a lot less convincing.

Scientists are not that smart when compared to the rest of us. They are able to do what they do because they have spent a lot of time on it, and in that way they are not that different from experts in other fields. I think that the image of scientists as people with some innate talent is derived from the image of science as a meritocracy where the best idea always win. This is of course not true. There is also plenty of evidence that more educated people are more polarised on important topics of contention such as climate change or universal basic income.

This weakens Nicholas’ arguments, since if scientists are really not that different from the rest of us, then transferring people from fields like sports or fashion may in fact lower welfare as people who previously enjoyed their jobs will be forced to do things which are possibly less enjoyable. Maybe there would also be a decrease in the total amount of effort applied by the person. In fact, it could be better to transfer, say, care workers instead.

I am also not sure if there is actually a scarcity of researchers right now. Maybe it’s just the case that research institutes are not getting enough resources to do stuff. In that case a transfer from sports will not be required. Unfortunately, Nicholas hasn’t discussed this either.

April 21, 2026

Ravi Dwivedi LibreOffice Conference Budapest 2025

In September 2025, I attended the LibreOffice Conference in Budapest, Hungary, on the 4th and the 5th, and a community meeting on the 3rd. Thanks to The Document Foundation (TDF) for sponsoring my travel and accommodation costs. The conference venue was Faculty of Informatics, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE).

The conference was planned to be held from the 4th to the 6th, but the program for the 6th of September had to be canceled due to the venue being unavailable because of a marathon in Budapest. So, all the talks got squeezed into just two days, making the schedule a bit hectic.

The TDF had booked my room at the Corvin Hotel. It was a double bedroom with a window. The breakfast was included in the hotel booking. The hotel was walking distance from the conference venue. One could also take a tram from the hotel to reach the venue.

A shot of my room. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

A tram in Budapest. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

3rd of September

On the 3rd of September, we had a community meeting at the above-mentioned venue. I walked with my friend Dione to the venue. Upon reaching there, I noticed that the university had no boundaries and gates. This reminded me of the previous year’s conference venue in Luxembourg, which also had no boundaries or gates.

In contrast, Indian universities and institutes typically have walls and gates serving as boundaries to separate them from the rest of the city. Many of these institutes also have security guards at the entrance, who may ask attendees to present proof of admission before allowing them inside. I was surprised to find that institutes in Europe, like the one where the conference was held, did not have such boundaries.

The building where the conference was held was red, which happened to be the same color as the building for the previous year’s conference venue. I remember joking with Dione that the criteria for the conference venue might have been the color of the building.

The red building in the picture served as the conference venue. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

During the community meeting, we shared ideas on how to spread the word about LibreOffice. The meeting lasted for a couple of hours.

After the community meeting, we went to the hotel for dinner sponsored by the TDF.

These Esterházy cake bites were really yummy. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Raspberry Currant cake slices. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

4th of September

On the first day of the conference, attendees were given swag bags containing a pad, sticky notes, a pen, a conference T-shirt, and a bottle.

Conference swag. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

The talks started early in the morning with Eliane Domingos, Chairperson of TDF’s Board of Directors, giving the inauguration talk. As always, I found Italo Vignoli’s talk on the importance of document freedom interesting.

During the snack break, I noticed that there were three types of milk available for coffee: cow’s milk, lactose-free milk, and almond milk. Almond milk is rare in India, but I have managed to get it, but I have never seen lactose-free milk in India.

Since I run fundraisers in my projects, such as Prav, I could relate to Lothar K. Becker’s talk. He discussed the issue that certain implementations in LibreOffice require a budget that is too large for any single interested entity to fund independently. Furthermore, The Document Foundation (TDF) cannot legally receive funds from government entities. Therefore, there is no organization or entity to pool resources from all the interested entities to finance the implementation.

Lothar giving his presentation. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Another talk was by the Austrian Armed Forces on their migration to LibreOffice. I wanted to know why they migrated, and I found out that they did it for their digital sovereignty, and not for saving on the license costs. Another point presented in the talk was that LibreOffice is available on all the operating systems, while the Microsoft Office suite is not that widely available. The migration was systematic and was performed over a few years. They started working on it in 2021, and the migration was finished recently. In addition, it also required training their staff in using LibreOffice.

Presentation on migration to LibreOffice by Austrian Armed Forces. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

The lunch was inside the university canteen. We were provided lunch coupons by the TDF. I got a vegan coupon with 4000 Ft written on it, which meant I could take lunch for up to 4000 Hungarian forints.

My lunch ticket for the conference. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

The lunch I had on the first day. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

During the evening, it was my turn for the presentation. I was done with preparing my slides ten days before my talk. I also got my slides reviewed by friends.

My talk was finished in 20 minutes, while I was given a 30-minute slot. This helped us catch up on the schedule. Furthermore, I made my talk interactive by asking questions and making sure that the audience was not asleep. During my talk, my friend Dione took my pictures with my camera.

My talk was on how free software projects could give users a say in freedom to modify the software. I illustrated this using the Prav project that I am a part of.

After the talks were over, we were treated to a conference dinner at Trofea Grill. It had a great selection of desserts, which helped me sample some Hungarian desserts. The sponge cake was especially good.

Desserts at Tofea Grill. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

5th of September

The next day—the 5th of September—I went with Dione to the venue early in the morning, as her talk was the first one of the day. Her talk was titled Managing Tasks with Nextcloud Deck. Later that day, I also attended a talk on Collabora. At lunch, I found the egg white salad quite tasty.

Dione giving her presentation. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Egg white salad. Photo by Ravi Dwivedi, released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

After the lunch break, we had the conference group photo. I had a Nikon camera, which we used to take the group photo. I requested a university student to take our group photo and also taught her how to operate the camera.

Group photo

By the evening, the conference ended, after which we went to a pub, which was again sponsored by TDF. I had beer, but that one really tasted bad, so I couldn’t finish it. The only vegetarian option was goat cheeseburger, which my friend Manish and I opted for. The burger tasted awful. Apparently, I don’t like goat cheese.

The next day I went sightseeing with Dione in Budapest. Stay tuned for our adventures!

Credits: Thanks to Dione and Richard for proofreading.

April 20, 2026

सिर्फ春 Hate as Distortion of Love

…I feel that everything is about love and that hate is a perverse way of expressing love. It’s not that they are two sides of the same coin.

— Gustavo Santaolalla, in an interview with TechRadar

[SPOILER ALERT! THIS POST DISCUSSES THE PLOT OF THE LAST OF US.]

One of the central themes of The Last of Us Part 2 is the contrast between Ellie’s hate for Abby and her love for Joel. In the story, the hate emerges from Joel’s brutal murder at the hands of Abby. Due to its importance to the story’s narrative, this idea of hate coming out of love heavily defines the music of the game. In fact, a lot of music from Part 1 was actually repackaged and given much harsher tones in Part 2.

I am fascinated by this evolution of love, and for me this contains an interesting way to view “evil”. Of course, much of this has been already discussed in popular culture in the form of “humanising the villain”. However, inspite of this, the general consensus views evil as being a fundamental property of some outliers and seeks to punish them. After all, the populace generally finds it difficult to imagine, say, a Hitler who loves dogs and children. (There has been some evidence that that statement is actually true.)

In my view, this only serves to provide a scapegoat instead of solving the actual problem. A better solution, in my opinion, would be to actually understand this evolution and try to reverse it. It would be difficult, especially considering we are talking about empathising with people who are sometimes even referred to as demons. However, inspite of difficulties it is actually the right method to adopt.

In the world of The Last of Us it would be hopeless to imagine helping Ellie since the environment is a dystopian anarchy anyway. However, in more calmer state of affairs maybe there’s a chance of redemption.

April 16, 2026

Sahil Dhiman What is Life (to you)?

It started with a thought: to understand people’s perspectives on life and its meaning. So I texted folks, “What is life (to you)?”. Each of the following list items (-) is a response from a different individual, mostly verbatim.

- A lot

- Everyone has a few universal basic qualities, and some special qualities. To me life is pursuit of exploring world based on those qualities and maturing those qualities as one goes on about exploring world/life with those qualities.
Discovering and enhancing experiences as one goes through them.

- life is endless suffering

- my answer might change daily, but this is what I’ve noticed and feel recently. Life is a spectrum with two distinct ends: what we control and what we don’t. At birth, the spectrum is largely tilted toward control, but throughout our lives, it gradually shifts toward the other side. Ultimately, as we approach death, we lose all control over any aspect of our existence, reaching the other end of the spectrum.
tho this isn’t universal, privilege plays a huge part in what you control tho i believe it holds true for the majority
but yeah man, meaning and purpose are dynamic, it’s in their nature to change i can give you a different answer this evening itself xD

- Funeral Monologue from Synecdoche, New York. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9PzSNy3xj0

- Zindagi ek nadiya hai, Aur mujhe tairna nahi aata
(translation - Life is a river, and I donâ€™t know how to swim)
On a more serious note, Life is what you make it out for yourself. The only established truth is that it will end. We can never know if there is something after or if there was something before. So try to live a life that you feel aspired by? But this question was beautifully answered by that book which you had about that dying professor
(Me - He was talking about Tuesday’s with Morrie)

- My answer is 42

- One, it’s living on your own terms, you define everything for yourself, success, normal, whatever. You get to curate your version of it no matter the societal norms.
It’s an accumulation of experiences - friends, parents, work, activities, doing shit loads. Sab try karo- travel, zumba, art, music, workout, sports, dil kara ye karna hai karlo. (translation - If your heart wants to do it, just do it.)
Then I think relationships - all that you’ve nurtured, people forget maintaining people because of work. It takes efforts to keep people in your life, everyone that comes has a place in yours, how well thats stays is upto you. You also get to curate your people, who stays who don’t. Family toh hai hi (translation - family is there) but everyone else that comes along can make it pretty good.
So I don’t want to be 50 and be like chalo ab kuch apne liye karte hai… (translation - Come on, now letâ€™s do something for ourselves) Do whatever shit you want today. Not everything costs money, and if it does get thrifty
But do keep healthy while doing all of that

- Being alive so that my daughter can grow up and i can help raising her kids as well. Raising kids without mother is tough :P

- Definitively, I feel like Life is a by product of proteins and energy working together. But in a more personal sense, Life is a dumb joke played onto us. Itâ€™s a rat race. But rats exists because of life and then it becomes a chicken-egg problem
Honestly, I donâ€™t give good answers to life questions. Iâ€™m generally the one asking
Life can be like a box of chocolates, you donâ€™t know what youâ€™re gonna get untill you experience the chocolate(assuming the chocolates are heterogenous and contains a mix of everything)
Camus once said, â€œLife is a revoltâ€�, and one of his students added more spice to it like â€œLife is a revolt against the meaninglessness of existence"
I kinda feel like Life is the pursuit of every personâ€™s search for meaning

- Imprisonment waiting for execution ğŸ˜„
I have one more thought while we are on the topic , game with pre defined starting position and predefined destination , path to reach is a maze

- A phase where you can have a really good time or really bad one, usually the mix of both. A phase where you are prisoner to responsibility and materialistic wants.
It’s a hell for you, where you try to create heaven for others. Being born was never your choice, but ending is always in your hands but you are a prisoner. You fear that leaving this world behind will destroy the heavens you created for others and they will be back to hell. But eventually everyone moves on watching the hourglass of their life.
Once you are left with no desires or no one to create heavens for, you look arround yourself. You see everyone chasing something, everyone scared of their limitted life time sliping away yet you want it to end sooner.
Doesn’t matter if it was all good till now, or all bad. The other half is waiting for redemption. If it was all good, it’s best time to die don’t wait for the bad to start. If was all bad, it’s still the best time to die what if it was the good one and more worst is waiting for you. We desire to be remembered, yet we want to free from this loop of suffering.
Someone once said, life is a suffering, chose your sufferings.

- Life to me is to live without regrets and live with freedom.
Life is always unpredictable and this unpredictability makes it more interesting and worth it.

- As of now, for the state of mind that I am in , I think for me life is about subtle struggle, subtle inconveniences and yet moving forward cause that’s all I know.
I am not sure if any of this has any meaning, but sometimes I feel I was born of a purpose and that the universe has my back.
For me it’s about raising my consciousness, understanding people to their depths, gaining moderate material success and helping people to some extend.
I have tried to seek a grander meaning but I have failed.
Life for me is what I make out it.
In my times of great success i rarely think about life for I am busy enjoying it, whatever you may call that state of mind.

- For me its the little things that you enjoy with YOUR people

- Life to me is about living and loving, and doing it in a way that sustains. It’s the people who shape you, the work you get absorbed in, the quiet moments in between. There’s also the wanting, the drive to figure out what’s worth going after and how to get there, but that’s just one part of it, not the point of it. And none of it happens in a vacuum. I’m aware of the privileges that let me live this way, and I try to hold on to that gratitude. In the end, life has both a material and a non-material side, and a lot of what we do is chasing material things in an attempt to satisfy something non-material within us

- Mere liye (translation - for me) life is staying at my home and studying random economics papers. That’s when I enjoy myself the most.

- Very complicated
Some days I wish this life never ended and some time I feel it would be better if it stopped at that moment.
It all depends on the events that happen in the so called “life”.
So life to me is a string of events that happen anyway and you get to make some decisions which can turn it in any direction and then you wonder how did that happen.

- not forgetting to breathe, learn, eat, game, take a good shit, love, sleep.

- To be honest it changed with time! At 19 it was about freedom, wasnâ€™t sure what freedom meant but i wanted that! To be free from everything, maybe because parents still controlled a part of my life. Then came 22-24 where i was working, trying to figure out what i want, the meaning changed from freedom to living for myself. To earn more, to be greedy about myself and pursue whatever would help me gain more steps in my career.
Came my mba life, switched my life from doing for myself to trying everything out to have no regrets. Life meaning was just about living with no regrets, invested, gambled, did everything to earn that tag of â€œyeah, have tried thatâ€�. Now it has all switched to, it was all just a fake facade. Life turned to having a meaningful life rather than finding meaning in what i am doing. Living for people around me, chhoti chhoti cheezo m khushi (translation - happiness in small things(?)) isnâ€™t really a topic of conversation but more of happy thing for me. So it changed, and m quite happy to be honest. Life did show me a lot of failures, but was privileged enough to face those failures. Gained a lot of learnings if not moneyğŸ˜‚
Hopeful for more learnings and change meaning of life with time

- A task.

- You have different answers at different times You learn different meanings at different times When you are studying, basically it is about job, finding a partner then it becomes, house, car other things based on your income in between, there can be passion too
Free Software was a passion, electoral politics too, but both kind of faded and I want cooperative and user driven development now (prav - something that motivates me every day) and these days learning Chinese and watching Cdrama takes a huge part of my leisure time it is heavily subjective and also influences by previous experiences people around you, how much influence they have on you
it also depends on if they had to struggle in their life or not, for some life did not give much troubles and trouble itself can be relative people who never had to struggle may find even smallest challenges as troubles like if you own a car, your worry is finding a parking slot

- I am too young to think about lyfe

- A ticket to see the show on earth, I guess ğŸ˜€
I guess life is different depending on the mood. It is a very broad question.
(Me - What is it in this present mood?)
Learning stuff (like I am learning a new language) and being happy but also to regulate emotions in a world where being optimistic is getting harder each day.
Life is also having a unique set of glasses you wear. Both in terms of looking from your eyeballs and your psychological perspective. Both are unique and cannot be replicated.
It is interesting what people on their deathbed think of life. If I know I am dying, my perspective would change a whole lot.
Life is finishing reading books while we are alive ğŸ˜‰
Life is sleeping after a good XMPP chat ğŸ˜‰

- Dukh dard peeda (translation - surrow pain suffering)

- uhh to word it? life is just like a journey from A to somewhere and its all about what paths you take and what line you get on to me, just a series of short adventures that all connect to a larger sequence until you can’t have any more adventures-
(Me - eee, THE END. drop dead, like a coin)
yeaaaah- I am not really for spirituality of an afterlife, to me life just ends at some point, after which point there fails to remain a discernable you, and some X time after which, you will be last remembered, try to make that last time a good one I guess?
(Me - no soul?)
uhhh not in the way most people think of it i guess?
theres just a lot of yous, theres the physical you, there is the idea of you, there is the expectation of you, and one of the undefinable you I would label as the soul maybe? like the part thats not physically you, but also certainly you
(Me - can’t say I understood part, but I get you in this sense)
mhm- well its about just questioning who you are more so questioning what life is-, I have sadly spent way too much time trying to figure that out

- Making the best of the time you have

- living a full range of experiences and embracing the good ones, seeing all that the world has to offer. In the end we were always just stardust. Might as well enjoy it when we are stardust with a consciousness of our own.

- For some reason or the Universe’s /dev/random I was born here as a biological being, and from my experience I understood living is hard and the best way to live is by embracing it. Loving everyone and everything around you. Be happy and joyful until you naturally say good bye to this world.

- Life is being fucked by everything and you just have to figure out and try to stick to the things worth being fucked for

Note: Following was transcribed from a audio message.

- There are five conditions to become a life to survive in the environment. I think there’s five conditions by the biological definitions and reproduction is one of the factor virus is not considered a life form because it cannot reproduce on its own but technically it’s kind of a life because it reproduces using the DNA ability this is the biological definition. Do you want a philosophical definition?
My definition is kind of the same except that you get life experiences along with it as a human. Extra benefits is that you are not an NPC. All other organisms are NPCs. But humans can interpret the world and change it to their liking. That is life in the case of a human. But then many humans are mostly NPCs. But they still can change the life. Okay, fuck this. Where is this even going?
A human is an exception in the case of life, because human is not an NPC. Human can interrupt the world, human can change it to its liking, which is why we are such a successful organism on this planet. That is life to me. That’s a human. But all of this is kind of meaningless, because the biological impurity of a human being still exists, so you still have the urges to reproduce, which kind of makes it like just another organism. But then, humans are yet to evolve to overcome that biological imperative.

I’m grateful for all the replies, outlooks, and subsequent conversations I got to have after this question with everyone. After all, it was a deeply personal question. It does fit in nicely with my definition of life:
“Life is all about experiences and all the transient relationships one gets to have with folks we meet on the way.”

April 14, 2026

Ravi Dwivedi Hungary Visa
The annual LibreOffice conference 2025 was held in Budapest, Hungary, from the 3rd to the 6th of September 2025. Thanks to the The Document Foundation (TDF) for sponsoring me to attend the conference.

As Hungary is a part of the Schengen area, I needed a Schengen visa to attend the conference. In order to apply for a Schengen visa, one needs to get an appointment at VFS Global and submit all the required documents there, which are then forwarded to the embassy.

I got an appointment for a Hungary visa at VFS Global in New Delhi for the 24th of July. There were many appointment slots available for the Hungary visa. One could easily get an appointment for the next day at the Delhi center. There were some technical problems on the VFS website, though, as I was unable to upload a scanned copy of my passport while booking the appointment. I got an error saying, “Unfortunately, you have exceeded the maximum upload limit.”

The problem didn’t get fixed even after contacting the VFS helpline. They asked me to try in the Firefox browser and deleting all the cache, which I already did.

So I created another account with a different email address and phone number, after which I was able to upload my passport and book an appointment. Other conference attendees from India also reported facing some technical issues on the VFS Hungary website.

Anyway, I went to the VFS Hungary application center as per my appointment on the 24th of July. Going inside, I located the Hungary visa application counter. There were two applicants ahead of me.

When it was my turn, the VFS staff warned me that my passport was damaged. The “damage” was on the bio-data page. All the details could be seen, but the lamination of the details page wore off a bit. They asked me to write an application to the Embassy of Hungary in New Delhi stating that I insist VFS to submit my application along with describing the “damage” on my passport.

I got a bit worried about my application getting rejected due to the “damage.” But I decided to gamble my money on this one, as I didn’t have time (and energy) to apply for a new passport before this trip.

Moreover, I had struck down a couple of fields in my visa application form which were not applicable to me, due to which the VFS staff asked me to fill out another visa application.

After this, the application got submitted, and it was 11,000 INR (including the fee to book the appointment at VFS). Here is the list of documents I submitted:
- My passport
- Photocopy of my passport
- Two photographs of myself
- Duly filled visa application form
- Return flight ticket reservations
- Payslips for the last three months
- Invitation letter from the conference organizer (in Hungarian)
- Proof of hotel bookings during my stay in Hungary
- Cover letter stating my itinerary
- Income tax returns filed by me
- Bank account statement, signed and sealed by the bank
- Travel insurance valid for the period of the entire trip
It took 2 hours for me to submit my visa application, even though there were only two applicants before me. This was by far the longest time to submit a Schengen visa application for me.

Fast-forward to the 30th of July, and I received an email from the Embassy of Hungary asking me to submit an additional document - paid air ticket - for my application. I had only submitted dummy flight tickets, and they were enough for the Schengen visas I applied for until now. This was the first time a country was asking me to submit a confirmed flight ticket during the visa process.

I consulted my travel agent on this, and they were fairly confident that I will get the visa if the embassy is asking me to submit confirmed flight tickets. So I asked the travel agent to book the flight tickets. These tickets were ₹78,000, and the airline was Emirates. Then, I sent the flight tickets to the embassy by email.

The embassy sent the visa results on the 6th of August, which I received the next day.

My visa had been approved! It took 14 days for me to get the Hungary visa after submitting the application.

See you in the next one!

Thanks to Badri for proofreading.

April 08, 2026

सिर्फ春 Nicely Pleased With Openly Available Lectures

I am currently preparing for IIT Delhi’s internal test for Msc Economics. An hour ago I came across this question in the 2023 question paper.

It’s a simple question, but I was unable to do it because I keep doing some annoying calculation mistakes (which I didn’t notice at the time).

I started thinking that there must be some deficiency in my understanding of joint probability distributions, so I looked up a particular video that has been stuck in my to-view list for a few months. The first slide was this

Lecture 06: Joint, Marginal, and Conditional Distributions by MIT OpenCourseWare

LMAO. The video did show that it was just a calculation mistake that I was making. OpenCourseWare Movement for the win!

April 07, 2026

सिर्फ春 Problems With EconHindu Utility Analysis

Elections for the student council of Economics Department are currently going in my college. Out of all promotional images that are being flooded in college group chats one in particular caught my eye because of its poor economics, so here are some of the obvious issues I find with it.

Oh Gawd

For one the axes aren’t even properly labelled! It only reminds me of this

‘Convincing’ by XKCD

Due to this it is hard to understand what they mean by a continuous budget line. If it corresponds to candidates, then it should have been discrete. However, lets say that instead of comparing themself with other candidates they are comparing themself with the whole of India; in that case the size is large enough to warrant a continuous budget line.

What about the indifference curve? I think they want to say that that is actually a social indifference curve. However, this begs the question how did they calculated it? As anyone aware of basic utilitarianism can tell you, it is impossible to aggregate individual indifference curves without making some sort of philosophical basis. However, the image hasn’t specified exactly what constitutes this basis. Without these assumptions clearly stated it seems that the analysis was manipulated to make it tangent to the budget line exactly at their preferred point and this considerably reduces the legitimacy of their analysis. I suspect a case of Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem.

Another thing to note are the two axes. Why are there only 2, and not 3 or more? A decision as complex as deciding members of student council must take more variables into consideration. In my opinion, at the very least a 5 dimensional marginal analysis was necessary for this study.

Finally, the caption actually contradicts the whole graph given above. As the budget constraint shows there are other people on the line too. So how is it possible that the opportunity cost is 0? Are they trying to imply that all other candidates are not even on the budget line, perhaps even at origin? If that’s really the case then it should be regarded as a clear violation of “no personal attacks” rule and strict action must be taken against them. I recommend solving the 5 variable optimisation version of this problem by hand as punishment.

April 06, 2026

सिर्फ春 The Two Flavours of Atheism

I recently came across the fact that, at least in recent times, there has been 2 major strands of Atheism.

These are, in words of David Hoelscher, Scientifc Atheism and Humanistic Atheism. Now here are some of my own views of these cultures which have been heavily influenced by his article New Atheism, Worse Than You Think in CounterPunch.

Scientific Atheism corresponds to a philosophy with near religious faith in power of science and a very intolerant view of religions. However, the view is not as unbiased as it seems at first glance. Science has often been used in modern times to advocate for an eradication of the “lower class”, with its most popular example residing in eugenics under Nazi dictatorship. Similarly, the New Atheism Movement has also been accused of Islamophobic and Sexist tendencies. The “Science”, in fact, can be used to prove almost anything that your heart desires. An almost blind faith in the superiority of science is, hence, very dangerous for the functioning of any society.

Humanistic Atheism, on the other had, is more “humanistic” or tolerant of religions. Instead of simply rejecting religion because “there is no evidence a god exists” like Scientific Atheists would normally say, it actually engages with religious literature. It is also more conducive to discussions since the actual goal, after all, is to get good agreements on other contentious topics like climate change, monopolization of capital, poverty, and so on.

My thinking has always been very similar to one propunded by Humanistic Atheists. However, it was only recently that I came to realize its deeper implications.

Here are a few instances in my life of “unscientific” thinking: A believes in black magic, M believes in ghosts, T believes in Astrology, and RU believes in “cat crossing path is bad omen.” I usually have a very negative view of these stuff and on multiple occasions I have gone passive aggressive when talking to these people. But in light of the two distinctions that I just drew above regarding Atheism was this response on my part a sensible behaviour?

I contend no. Rage over minor “unscientific” abnormality like these is very counterproductive. It angers people with no change in the actual status quo. It can also be considered very demeaning. A better idea is to always move to other issues which are far more deserving of attention. Humans deserve dignity, even when their opinions seem pretty stupid.

April 05, 2026

सिर्फ春 Addresses are Really Helpful

I was recently reading Demographic deposit, dividend and debt by Sonalde Desai. Following the Standard Operating Procedure, I looked up this Sonalde person and turns out she is a researcher at a research institute in Delhi called National Council of Applied Economic Research. The work of this organization felt interesting to me, so I had to pause my studies and see its location on OpenStreetMap.

Nothing. Looks like the place hasn’t been mapped yet. I searched for 11, Indraprastha Estate since that was mentioned on their contact page and this time I did find an object. A person called “n’garh” had added the address back in July 2014 and I am so glad that I was quickly able to push a changeset (#180878526). Another win for address mapping!

April 01, 2026

सिर्फ春 NOTICE ME SENPAI!
Feeling a lack of love in your life? Then look no further, cause I am your perfect boyfriend material!

This very large piece of meat will provide u with:
- hundreds of dad jokes
- thousands of romantic lines that I copied from manga ðŸ˜˜
- lakhs of shittiest news from azad software folks
- crores of “Hey! I mapped in that place ten decades ago!”
- arabs of random economic topics that are not part of my syllabus
- kharabs of “I like buses more than metro”
- and so on… (My knowledge of Indian Numbering System has ended.)
Think this is the product of your dreams?! Then send me that “be my senpai” right fucking now.

Issued in public interest.

March 30, 2026

Sahil Dhiman MiniDebConf Kanpur 2026

MiniDebConf Kanpur 2026 was held on 14th and 15th March 2026 at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur.

Having a Debian conference in the North was something many folks wanted. Ravi started the discussion (with IIT Kanpur folks) almost 7 months before the conference. Lots of folks from Debian India joined in organizing the conference, which was nice. All the meeting notes and discussions were posted on the Debian India mailing list, a first.

Despite all the efforts, the conference start was delayed due to logistical issues. Things went fine post Day 1 lunch. We had two days of almost full schedules. disaster’s Decentralising Indian Communication was an interesting talk, diving into decentralised communication.

IIT Kanpur is a huge campus with nice footpaths and greenery. We got the opportunity to explore their HPC at the Computer Center post conference.

Work has already started for MiniDebCamp Kochi. More details can be found on the wiki.

Working to make this conference happen was different with all the challenges involved, but overall, everyone was happy with the outcome.

Group photo. Click to enlarge

March 29, 2026

सिर्फ春 Paul Romer Likes Charter Cities

A few days ago, I came to know that Paul Romer, of Romer Model fame, actually has a more or less active blog since 1997! This was a surprise, considering that I thought that the guy must be old enough to die. So, I looked up YouTube videos on him and found a TED Talk with the title “Why the World Needs Charter Cities”.

“Charter Cities”? Huh. I have never heard of that term. However, A casual “research” soon gave me so much interesting information that my mind exploded.

The term Charter Cities was first coined by Romer himself in the TED Talk I mentioned above. Charter Cities are supposed to solve the problem of poor quality of institutional structures in least developed and middle income countries by allowing high income countries to develop cities and then giving them near absolute power to regulate everything there in a manner similar to how British controlled Hong Kong, with a few caveats.

The idea is fascinating, not least due to the massive amount of allegations of neocolonialism made against Romer’s idea. “Are Charter Cities Legitimate?” by Rahul Sagar discussed these problems in detail and concluded that it’s the practical issues, not moral ones, that make implementing Charter Cities difficult. I would recommend the interested reader to give it a read, though I do not fully agree with the essay.

Aside from the discussion on these problems, the thing that fascinated me the most was that Charter Cities have already been implemented by some countries, though not exactly in the manner Romer approves.

Prospera of Honduras was the first one. The city of around 2000 people is controlled by Honduras Prospera Incorporated, a company controlled by venture capitalists. The legal structure of the city is mostly defined by the corporation with the national government of Honduras having little control over it. Multiple attempts by the national government and judiciary has been made to destroy Honduras Prospera Incorporated, but some stakeholders from USA have lobbied enough to stop any repeals of its existence. Currently the corporation is suing the government for an amount about 1/3 of the country’s GDP. Now similar Charter City projects are being started in Africa.

All of this sounds super dystopian to me and it keeps reminding me of the fictional Night City from Cyberpunk 2077. In this world of Neoliberalism, what hasn’t been tainted? I don’t know.

March 27, 2026

सिर्फ春 Talking to my ex-friend After One Year Was a Bad Idea
Talking to your ex-friend long after breakup is supposed to be enjoyable. Both of you share updates on what’s happening in your respective lives and joke about the circumstances surrounding the breakup. Or so I thought.

In this case we did a normal civilised conversation, unlike the few times we met earlier where we both had our daggers drawn out. She told me how she definitely made a lot more friends after dumping me and how her dog died. I told her about my new username and its meaning. (Yup, I thought that might be a good point of conversation. I wonder if she will be able to find my new blog…)

However, I started to lose my control when she started speaking of something along the lines of ’this is the last time we are talking.’ I am totally aware about the fact but saying stuff like that really makes me emotional. Thank you. I managed to recover my composure and talked amicably till she and I split up at the bus stop. I was OK with how everything went.

But after 5-10 minutes I got a message from her which was like

BS BS BS. BS. BS BS. Goodbye.

Holy fuck that word again. At this point I was suddenly feeling a few emotions intensely, and had to choose between 2 options:
1. (Lie) Tell her I hate her to ensure that it leave a bad taste in her mouth
2. (Lie) Tell her I love her to ensure that she stay with me
So I of course chose option 3:
1. Just send her a goodbye
I think my usage of poetic license with the phrase “Sayonara Stranger” pissed her off and I was blocked again by the next day.

So, yeah. In the end it was me who felt terrible from all the talking and now I am too disturbed to continue watching random London School of Economics’ lectures on YouTube. I still want to be her friend.

March 26, 2026

सिर्फ春 The Department of Economics of Hindu College is Not Doing Well

My college life is going to end in about a month. I think this might be a good time to write about some of my experiences which might be useful for the future kouhai who will search “Is Hindu College Good?”.

The Student Council might be a good start. The Council, in theory, is supposed to represent the interests of students. However, it doesn’t seem like that it is happening right now. The last elections were a disaster with a person called A winning the president position. As far as I have heard from other people in the class, it seems like in their last position in the council A didn’t do much work, effectively resulting in K overworking the heck out. In the next elections K didn’t participate which automatically made A the winner. Around 160 votes were casted, of which 90 were for A and around 70 were NOTA.

The actual study isn’t going very well either. An important Economic Advisor was going to give a guest lecture on 12 March, but almost nobody from the department showed up. The Department Head had to make arrangements with the Science Department to get some supply of students to fill up the seats. A similar thing happened on 27 April. In fact hearing loud whispers during even the normal lectures is very common. The Head nowadays often complain about “this generation.” Maybe this is happening as a result of COVID-19?

I often ask my friends how much they think they have learned in the college and I often get the reply “nothing.” Education is supposed to be liberating, and here we have a bunch of people who are mostly preoccupied with keeping up with the assignments.

The relations between students isn’t very rosy either. Casteism and Sexism for one are prevalent. For instance, I once joined a small Maths group of my friends and had to exit soon when they started sending videos of girls dancing in Sanganeria Auditorium and GIFs of masturbating stick figures.

An important demonstration of this classism is the “department trip.” A department trip is supposed to include most, if not all, students. Now see for yourself how many of the 90 students in my batch actually attended the trip:

Why are there so few people you ask? The cost per person is â‚¹8000 and I don’t think even the people from Economically Weaker Sections get a discount. The 6 page PDF description of the trip has even a size of 73MB! How is any of this inclusive?

Finally I would like to end with an important suggestion for my future kouhai: don’t choose Hindu College just because it is Hindu College. I once met 5-6 Philosophy Department students who chose Philosophy because they can’t get Economics, even though they had the excellent option to study Economics at Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College. How idiotic!

March 25, 2026

सिर्फ春 I Downloaded Termux and now I Feel Like a HECKER

I think I must be the second coming of Alan Turing. I mean, JUST LOOK AT THIS SCREENSHOT!

By the way, I am actually posting this blog from Termux! Now I will never ever need to use a laptop ðŸ¥³

Planet FSCI

June 02, 2026

A guide to self-hosting web apps on a VPS

Table of contents

Choosing a server

Configuring our server

1. tmux

2. A new user

3. Configuring ssh on the server

4. Setting up a webapp on the server

4.1 DNS

4.2 Installing runtimes and dependencies

4.3 Application directories

4.4 Setting up nginx

4.5 Certbot HTTPS

Finishing up

June 01, 2026

Background

Key Focus

Brief

Possible Discussion Points

Discussion Format

Moderators

Note

May 29, 2026

May 22, 2026

May 19, 2026

May 15, 2026

May 14, 2026

May 08, 2026

May 01, 2026

April 28, 2026

April 27, 2026

April 24, 2026

April 21, 2026

3rd of September

4th of September

5th of September

April 20, 2026

April 16, 2026

April 14, 2026

April 08, 2026

April 07, 2026

April 06, 2026

April 05, 2026

April 01, 2026

March 30, 2026

March 29, 2026

March 27, 2026

March 26, 2026

March 25, 2026