I recently shifted my operations to a thinkpad x13g4amd (Ryzen 7840U + 780M Radeon) and am using this transfer as an opportunity to realize and improve my work related habits.

GNU/Linux

All of my pipelines are based around Linux and the core GNU utils. I had to use windows for a while due to org-wide constraints but I’ve recently been given the signal to shift to linux.

I rarely used any windows native tools for my workflows and there was always a layer of linux emulation/virtualization (wsl, scoop, and the likes) upon which I conducted my usual operations. Given I use Debian at home, a non native linux experience was frustrating at best and depressing at worst. No more, do I have to confine myself.

check out what an IKN0x means here

Understanding different languages can open up one’s mind towards different cultures.

The evolution of languages over centuries and common ancestors there-of over millenia indicates the evolution of cultural complexity.

The Conventional Take

I grew up actively conversing in 4 languages: English, Hindi, Marathi and Gujrati. French was my first romance language I was exposed to for over 8 years (I say exposed as was learning this academically as a third language and didn’t use this as a “natural” language as much as the others).

I haven’t been writing quite as much as I’d like to lately and have been considering how I approach the whole thing.

Instead of talking about what I’m thinking in the moment (pretty fleeting), I’m ……

This is exactly the point where I’ll go “I’m planning on …” : I do not wish like doing that anymore. Talking about my momentary plans for a while has been quite the distraction that I occasionally enjoy.

I finished my first pass of SICP (structure and interpretation of computer programs) around 3 years ago. Since, I’ve realized the elegantly implicit existence of symbolic algebra in several domains that I personally explore on a regular basis.

That initial infatuation with Lisp ( and consequently symbolic computation ) has simmered and fermented enough in my mind to be realised as a potent generic thinking device. To cement my commitment to the same, I’ll regularly dive deeper into relevant academia so I don’t lose out on the joys of thinking for the sake of itself.

check out what an IKN0x means here

Snap-shotting projections of the mind over time is a good habit that you should practice.

I will try my best to persuade you of that…

An over-powered upside to pursuing multiple interests over the span of your life is to have the ability to compare and contrast multiple domains, akin to having multiple hill forts over your territory than only establishing a centralized castle.

Currently, I prefer tracking the temporal increments of my existence (“age” is what normal humans would say this means) via hex timestamps.

Years ago, I kept track of my age in years and months like normal humans do.

I maintain the habit of analysing my mindset every major temporal mileston in my life - when I turned 10 (I don’t quite remember exactly how I felt then) or 20, for instance, in accordance with the widely accepted gregorian calendar.

Checkout the previous polymathy musings

Context

I intend to formalize my plans of getting good at multiple domains not for the reputation that follows but for the generic insight about the world that you may harness as a result.

This is the second refactor of the way I approach this subject and this time around I will be pushing for practical indicators that allow me to gauge my progress over time.

Writing is an involved process. A rough overview is as follows:

• you think of an idea
• you build upon that idea with what you already know
• you structure out some initial drafts
• you run it under a careful eye to scrape out the loopholes
• you edit it, to the point of satisfaction

The problem with that process is the last bullet right there. It makes the worth of a word in the moment diminish than the act of etching something down in stone.

I find most sources of information these days (since several years) to be too noisy compared to the actual signals of wisdom you expect from a popular source.

Rarely, I’ll pull up the news application on my phone and consume a whole bunch of generic, and some domain specific news.

Other than state of the art research in a technical domain, which is based upon a corpora of established citations, most other “new” stuff is noise.

ESDS Software Solutions Ltd. (where I work currently) was lately the technical facilitator for the School Education Department of the Government of Maharashtra, towards conducting a state level slogan competition, the winner of which was rewarded by a lunch with the chief minister of Maharashtra.

Brief Context

One of the records (total of 3) they were going for was the most number of handwritten notes uploaded to a bespoke platform in 24 hours.

Speech and the word written, are potential expressions of a thought. Each one of us enjoys a different mix of how we best convey ourself.

Ever since I began blogging when I was 19, I’ve been prioritising descriptiveness over precision. I feel I’ve entered a mental state where I value the distilled value of the transmission more than the exhaustiveness of the message.

I also notice a rift between the way I speak and the way I write. Not to say that any one of them is superior than the other but I could use an exercise in convergence - projecting them both onto a common ground.

This is a brief update on the nootropics post in which I initialized my current stack and promised for a review down the lane.

I’m back on a controlled dosage of caffeine - 80 mg (dawn) + 80 mg (afternoon). Each cup is supplmented with 100 mg of L-theanine and also dump in 5+ grams of creatine in the dawn. Both do their job well and will continue them this cycle.

I’m an AI Research Engineer and that involves messing around a little with python. I’ve spent the past 4 years perfecting a disciplined, minimal, but enabling setup.

This is a tour of my trusty set of tools, in the hopes that it will help you find the same CLI zen that I’ve been enjoying for a while now.

Tmux : towards an Eternal Shell

I start my work sessions off by ssh’ing into my remote compute cluster.

I’ve been formally delving into epistemology and relevant lateral root domains recently and have been re-encountering several ideas that I’d previously casually explored with intrinsic motivation.¹

This isn’t my first accidental implicit intersection of thoughts with core philosophical theories like constructivist epistemology and ontology.²

Given my natural inclinations towards personal interdisciplinary research, apart from my core specializations, I do deliberately maintain an extensive scaffolding around several domains that I plan to build foundations in soon. This allows me to generalize over multiple realizations of similar concepts in different epistemological clusters and identify some interesting patterns.³

I partition my days in phases of different mindsets that allow me to cater to my varying epistemological hungers. One of them is a daily ninety minute ideation hunt and feast that helps keep my skills sharp.

The laws of thermodynamics do form a formidable devil that really does mess up your ordered habits if you do not inject in the necessary energy from time to time.¹

As a way to sharpen the intellectual axe, I envision myself going on domain hunts to allot myself a new class of game to look forward to during minor breaks from my usual, comparatively conventional endeavors.

Some-days, I wonder that I’m born half a millennia too late into this world given the extent of novel societal tendencies that I’m not fond of.

Although, the notion of Batman didn’t exist then, given a choice, I’d probably consider time traveling to an intellectually simpler life when much of what the present science and engineering entails was just beginning to be discovered and invented.

Research options then weren’t thresholded by who’s packing heavier compute but rather open to all that could observe patiently and portrayed the will to ask, sceptic-ize and act according to their whims.