1---
  2template:
  3slug: 2021-05-10
  4title: Status update
  5subtitle: A review of Q1 2021
  6date: 2021-05-10
  7---
  8
  9I realize I haven't done one of these in a while, a few ...
 10status-update-worthy things have piled up. Bangalore is currently in a
 11lockdown after ranking in the top 3 worst COVID-hit cities, in India. As
 12such, I'm sitting at home, in my home-office thing which now has an
 13extra monitor, writing this. We've got a lot to talk about -- let's get
 14to it!
 15
 16## working at DeepSource
 17
 18Starting January of this year, I've been working as a Site Reliability
 19Engineer at [DeepSource](https://deepsource.io). As a Kubernetes shop,
 20nearly all of my day to day work involves working with Kubernetes. I
 21didn't think I'd say this, but I actually quite like using K8s now. The
 22more I understand it, the more I find myself appreciating the need for
 23it. Of course, I wasn't around for the initial setup of everything --
 24I'm merely enjoying using an already stable cluster environment.
 25
 26So far, I've set up an event-driven observability pipeline (pictured
 27below), some infosec work and the usual SRE stuff. I'll probably write
 28about the observability infrastructure in detail sometime -- perhaps on
 29the company blog.
 30
 31![deepsource observability infra](https://cdn.icyphox.sh/vgPL9.png)
 32
 33I even managed to break prod within the first month! But in all
 34seriousness, it's pretty riveting work, with some very fun people.
 35
 36## projects
 37
 38There haven't been too many, I must be honest. I did briefly consider
 39the idea of building a small SaaS -- a simple email-based bookmarking
 40service. Send a bunch of links you want to bookmark to an email address,
 41and get back the entire webpage as a thread of emails. 
 42
 43I got as far as writing the backend for it, at
 44[forlater/donkey](https://git.icyphox.sh/forlater/donkey) -- a simple
 45Flask app that pulls web pages and sends an email, on a webhook. And a
 46helper tool [forlater/mdawh](https://git.icyphox.sh/forlater/mdawh) in
 47Go that takes mail in STDIN and sends a webhook to an endpoint. I used
 48OpenSMTPD to call `mdawh` when mail arrived. Overall, a pretty simple
 49system. Except, HTML email sucks. And the modern web sucks. I quickly
 50got bored of it -- dealing with websites not getting rendered correctly,
 51email delivery being pretty shit overall and the fact that nobody would
 52actually use something like this, let alone pay for it. Of course, I
 53could be wrong and someone looking for a service like this could be out
 54there -- and if they're reading this, please [email
 55me](mailto:x@icyphox.sh)!
 56
 57That said, I'm open to revisiting this project sometime. Perhaps with a
 58different use-case, even.
 59
 60## reading
 61
 62In 2020, I began getting into the
 63[Cosmere](https://coppermind.net/wiki/Cosmere). I've read nearly all the
 64books in it, save for the _Mistborn_ series, which I'm reading at
 65present. Still in Era 1, having finished _The Final Empire_ and _The
 66Well of Ascension_. I'm taking a break before I dive into _The Hero of
 67Ages_.
 68
 69Aside from high fantasy reading, I've begun spending some time reading
 70the essays at [Slate Star Codex](https://slatestarcodex.com) -- more
 71specifically, the selected few at
 72https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com.
 73
 74## learning Russian
 75
 76I'd begun learning Russian sometime last year, but stopped studying it
 77for about 6 months or so. Recently, I decided to pick it up again after
 78coming across this video by Johnny Harris on [how he learnt
 79Italian](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i1lNJPY-4Q). In essence, he
 80talks about why the textbook method of learning a language, i.e., the
 81grammar: conjugations, rules, exceptions, etc. is ineffective. Instead,
 82he suggests starting with learning the 1000 most frequently used words
 83in that language which helps build an intuition for the language. 
 84
 85I've found two decks from the [publicly shared
 86decks](https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/) to be really good:
 87[1000 frequently used words](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1545956138),
 88[7000 sentences in order of
 89difficulty](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/549290451). This lets me 1)
 90learn the basics (vocabulary, sentence construction) and start applying
 91them in making my own sentences and learning the grammar intuitively,
 92instead of memorizing rules and conjugations.
 93
 94## fitness
 95
 96For a good portion of last year, I was unable to get any physical
 97exercise done -- gyms were closed, running downstairs just wasn't fun.
 98Early this year, before wave 2 of the virus, the gyms here opened for a
 99brief bit and I managed to get some swole on. They're closed again, now
100but I've taken to running about 3 - 4 km everyday. It's still quite
101boring compared to lifting, but it needs to be done.
102
103## that's it
104
105I've hit a writer's block, so to speak, with this blog. I have a few
106ideas for future posts, but they require actual research (read: I can't
107just pull up Vim and type away), so they will remain as ideas for now.
108If you have some ideas for things I can write about, please shoot them
109my way.