Links

A directory cataloguing an assortment of my works and side projects

Obsidian–Carbon

A theme for Obsidian based on the Carbon design system

I use Obsidian a lot, especially academically and for zettelkasten, so I built a neat little theme for it based on the Carbon design system from IBM, of which I am a big fan. You can find it on Github but you can also search for it on your Obsidian installation within Settings → Appearance → Themes → Manage and search for “Carbon”.

Low Carbon Showcase

Featured, 2023

This website is conscious of its environmental impact and maintains as low a carbon footprint as possible. It is currently around 0.06–0.09g of CO2 per page view, which makes it cleaner than 95% of the websites on the internet. For this reason, the Low Carbon Websites showcase rated this website A+ and listed it as compliant for having a low carbon footprint as on 28 November 2023. This measure remains valid till date.

Fonts In Use

Featured, 2023

The critical archival of excellent use cases for typography, Fonts in use, featured this website on 17 November 2023. The typefaces featured in use were Martina Plantijn and Söhne from Klim Type—read the colophon for more.

Covid-19 diaries

2020

Update This special section was archived at the start of 2024. Read more about changes made in 2024.

A novel coronavirus brought the world to its knees at the start of 2020. Three months in—as India, the US, Italy, the UK, Spain and nearly every other country on the planet went into a lockdown—it became clear that this event would define our generation in ways we never expected. Starting from the first day India was locked down, a set of daily notes were published as the COVID-19 diaries that would record the views of a handful of people, but primarily of the owner of this website, of life under quarantine and several thoughts on how India and the rest of the world were handling this crisis.

Other articles have also been published on the SARS-Cov-2 virus: read about the bright side of humanity’s capacity for survival; the global economic impact of COVID-19.

Apple Teacher

2019

Apple runs a free programme where they train educators to use Apple products in the classroom. From programming to films to presentations everything an Apple product can do and how you can use it to improve your lessons in the classroom, whether at school or university, is taught for free in the Apple Teacher Learning Centre. Although you can get an Apple Teacher certification for any tool of your choice (iPad, Mac or coding skills) the programme is a continuous learning experience that can spark creativity in many ways. Also join #AppleEDUChat every week on Twitter for discussions and continued learning.

Ulysses theme

Typewriter, c. 2018

Back when I was using Ulysses (I bid goodbye when they moved to a subscription-based model) there was this specific theme I had designed for myself that took inspiration from a typewriter but tweaked things to adapt to a modern, digital screen. I eventually submitted it to the official Ulysses Styles & Themes collection where it was accepted and has since received a modest amount of love and installs. Take a look for yourself.

Wedding website

Visit our permanently archived wedding website (December 2018)

The lovely Vaishnavi M. Kulkarni and I got married in December of 2018. This was our wedding website and since I coded it I gifted myself the right to unabashedly use my favourite typeface of all time, Minion, almost everywhere. (The wife approved.) While this website is not of public interest, it is certainly in my personal interest to archive the link here for posterity.

The currently live version has been edited so everything is in the past tense and our wedding day counter has been removed. However, there is a frozen version of the site that still looks exactly as it did before the wedding except with the countdown timer reading zero for obvious reasons.

Interview

The Sweet Setup (2016)

In 2016, a couple of years after I had fully settled into the Apple ecosystem, I was interviewed by The Sweet Setup about my iPhone, iPad and Mac set-ups, choice of apps, and about other technology- and workspace-related questions. Although not an accurate representation of the current state of things, my fundamental approach to technology has remained somewhat consistent since this interview to this day. The full interview is available on The Sweet Setup.

Political compass

Apparently I stand just left of centre and am a liberal, c. 2016 onwards

In 2016 I first sat the political compass test. Before then I had thought of myself as a socially modern liberal but fiscally conservative person. After the test I was told I was staunchly in the middle of the third quadrant of the political compass. I expected to be further left and closer to the x-axis but the test refused to oblige. I sat the test a few more times over the next few years and the result remained the same. The last time I sat this test was in December of 2019. You can see the latest graph which is quite representative of its predecessors. I am unsure about the accuracy of this test (although I have seen many people believe it is reasonably accurate, even academically) but it certainly is a fun activity to partake in.

Editing with curves

Photo editing guide for the Enlight app (April 2015)

Back in 2015 when Enlight was just entering the mobile photo editing game where it is now quite a big player, I was invited to write an article that would guide users on editing their photos. I had chosen to speak about using curves effectively. Read the article on the Enlight website.

Blog archives

An archival of select blog articles (2011–2017)

From 2011 to 2017 this website was powered by Wordpress. In 2017, to mark its ten year anniversary, there took place what I like to call the great purge: I removed over 500 essays permanently from the database to allow for a leaner collection of articles with an increased baseline quality for the entire archival. Since 2017 this website has eschewed databases and moved to Hugo (after a brief stint with Kirby) for a more modern framework on which to run the site; and articles made since that time, including a handful from the 2011–2017 years, can be found on this website. You are welcome to browse the archives anytime.

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