M config.yaml → config.yaml

@@ -29,7 +29,6 @@ </a>
         <a href="https://webring.xxiivv.com/#random" target="_blank">
         <img alt="xxiivv webring" src="/static/webring.svg">
         </a>
-        <span style="float: right;">Anirudh Oppiliappan &mdash; &copy; 2021</span>
     </section>
 
 

A pages/blog/2021-05-10.md

@@ -0,0 +1,109 @@
+---
+template:
+url: 2021-05-10
+title: Status update
+subtitle: A review of Q1 2021
+date: 2021-05-10
+---
+
+I realize I haven't done one of these in a while, a few ...
+status-update-worthy things have piled up. Bangalore is currently in a
+lockdown after ranking in the top 3 worst COVID-hit cities, in India. As
+such, I'm sitting at home, in my home-office thing which now has an
+extra monitor, writing this. We've got a lot to talk about -- let's get
+to it!
+
+## working at DeepSource
+
+Starting January of this year, I've been working as a Site Reliability
+Engineer at [DeepSource](https://deepsource.io). As a Kubernetes shop,
+nearly all of my day to day work involves working with Kubernetes. I
+didn't think I'd say this, but I actually quite like using K8s now. The
+more I understand it, the more I find myself appreciating the need for
+it. Of course, I wasn't around for the initial setup of everything --
+I'm merely enjoying using an already stable cluster environment.
+
+So far, I've set up an event-driven observability pipeline (pictured
+below), some infosec work and the usual SRE stuff. I'll probably write
+about the observability infrastructure in detail sometime -- perhaps on
+the company blog.
+
+![deepsource observability infra](https://x.icyphox.sh/vm~-t.png)
+
+I even managed to break prod within the first month! But in all
+seriousness, it's pretty riveting work, with some very fun people.
+
+## projects
+
+There haven't been too many, I must be honest. I did briefly consider
+the idea of building a small SaaS -- a simple email-based bookmarking
+service. Send a bunch of links you want to bookmark to an email address,
+and get back the entire webpage as a thread of emails. 
+
+I got as far as writing the backend for it, at
+[forlater/donkey](https://git.icyphox.sh/forlater/donkey) -- a simple
+Flask app that pulls web pages and sends an email, on a webhook. And a
+helper tool [forlater/mdawh](https://git.icyphox.sh/forlater/mdawh) in
+Go that takes mail in STDIN and sends a webhook to an endpoint. I used
+OpenSMTPD to call `mdawh` when mail arrived. Overall, a pretty simple
+system. Except, HTML email sucks. And the modern web sucks. I quickly
+got bored of it -- dealing with websites not getting rendered correctly,
+email delivery being pretty shit overall and the fact that nobody would
+actually use something like this, let alone pay for it. Of course, I
+could be wrong and someone looking for a service like this could be out
+there -- and if they're reading this, please [email
+me](mailto:x@icyphox.sh)!
+
+That said, I'm open to revisiting this project sometime. Perhaps with a
+different use-case, even.
+
+## reading
+
+In 2020, I began getting into the
+[Cosmere](https://coppermind.net/wiki/Cosmere). I've read nearly all the
+books in it, save for the _Mistborn_ series, which I'm reading at
+present. Still in Era 1, having finished _The Final Empire_ and _The
+Well of Ascension_. I'm taking a break before I dive into _The Hero of
+Ages_.
+
+Aside from high fantasy reading, I've begun spending some time reading
+the essays at [Slate Star Codex](https://slatestarcodex.com) -- more
+specifically, the selected few at
+https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com.
+
+## learning Russian
+
+I'd begun learning Russian sometime last year, but stopped studying it
+for about 6 months or so. Recently, I decided to pick it up again after
+coming across this video by Johnny Harris on [how he learnt
+Italian](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i1lNJPY-4Q). In essence, he
+talks about why the textbook method of learning a language, i.e., the
+grammar: conjugations, rules, exceptions, etc. is ineffective. Instead,
+he suggests starting with learning the 1000 most frequently used words
+in that language which helps build an intuition for the language. 
+
+I've found two decks from the [publicly shared
+decks](https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/) to be really good:
+[1000 frequently used words](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1545956138),
+[7000 sentences in order of
+difficulty](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/549290451). This lets me 1)
+learn the basics (vocabulary, sentence construction) and start applying
+them in making my own sentences and learning the grammar intuitively,
+instead of memorizing rules and conjugations.
+
+## fitness
+
+For a good portion of last year, I was unable to get any physical
+exercise done -- gyms were closed, running downstairs just wasn't fun.
+Early this year, before wave 2 of the virus, the gyms here opened for a
+brief bit and I managed to get some swole on. They're closed again, now
+but I've taken to running about 3 - 4 km everyday. It's still quite
+boring compared to lifting, but it needs to be done.
+
+## that's it
+
+I've hit a writer's block, so to speak, with this blog. I have a few
+ideas for future posts, but they require actual research (read: I can't
+just pull up Vim and type away), so they will remain as ideas for now.
+If you have some ideas for things I can write about, please shoot them
+my way.

M static/style.css → static/style.css

@@ -49,7 +49,6 @@ margin: 0;
   padding: 0;
   box-sizing: border-box;
   text-decoration: none;
-  color: #000;
   word-wrap: break-word;
 }
 
@@ -79,11 +78,11 @@ margin: 0 0 15px 0;
 }
 
 main ul, main ol {
-	margin: 0 30px 7px 30px;
+  margin: 0 30px 7px 30px;
 }
 
 main ul ul {
-	margin-bottom: 0
+  margin-bottom: 0
 }
 
 .subtitle {
@@ -104,6 +103,10 @@ }
 
 article p {
   padding: 7px 0 7px 0;
+}
+
+article a {
+  color: var(--cyan);
 }
 
 pre {

M templates/text.html → templates/text.html

@@ -28,9 +28,9 @@ <h1>{{ .Fm.Title }}</h1>
       <h2 class="subtitle">{{ .Fm.Subtitle }}</h2>
       {{ .Fm.Body }} 
     </article>
-    <p class="muted">Questions or comments? 
-    Send an email to 
-    <a href="mailto:x@icyphox.sh?Subject=Re: {{ .Fm.Title }}">x@icyphox.sh</a>.
+    <p class="muted" align="center">Questions or comments? 
+    Send an
+    <a href="mailto:x@icyphox.sh?Subject=Re: {{ .Fm.Title }}">email</a>.
   </main>
   <footer>
     {{ .Cfg.Footer }}