Meta

I started this website for writing down my thoughts for future reference. That included the things that I've learned, mostly computer programming related, but also some things about the way I felt about life in general. I never thought I'd stay interested in publishing on this blog after this long. Not only has that happened, but I really enjoy writing here.

This blog is a reflection of how I go about my life, picking up random interests and building something interesting out of it.

Primarily those things are about computers and computer programming. I have a keen interest in engineering things in the areas of security, privacy, and anonymity. I love the world wide web and the hacker culture. I resonate with the way Richard Stallman describes hackers;

What they had in common was mainly love of excellence and programming. They wanted to make their programs that they used be as good as they could. They also wanted to make them do neat things. They wanted to be able to do something in a more exciting way than anyone believed possible and show "Look how wonderful this is. I bet you didn't believe this could be done". - RMS (1985)

Other than that, I like and enjoy working in pretty much all areas of computers, from algorithms to web engineering, infrastructure and devops, application and networking protocols and systems programming.

Slightly outside of all that, I love working on hobby electronics. This wasn't a huge interest until I started reusing stuff to save money. Now, I find myself regularly getting my hands dirty with things like old speakers, LCD monitors, drills, soldering machines, and wood.

I love reading about cars and automobiles in my spare time, and tell my friends that I'll someday start a garage of my own. I also love star gazing and other forms of amateur astronomy.

I strongly believe in keeping things simple. I like it when I do things with motivations bigger than money and fame, and definitely appreciate it when others do the same. Hopefully, that is what I'd be able to say and do for a long, long time from now.

If you wish to talk to me, hit me with a Hi on abhishek@nagekar.com.

Technical setup and debugging

I maintain a /setup page for my current tech setup and some debug notes on how to get tricky things working

Reading List

Non-tech

• The Grand Design - Leonard Mlodinow
• Relativity: The Special and the General Theory - Albert Einstein
• A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
• The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
• And Then I thought I Was A Fish - Peter Welch
• The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho (thank you, Abhinav & Shivangi)
• How To Win Friends And Influence People - Dale Carnegie (thank you, Dhananjay)
• The Third Wave - Steve Case (thanks, Abhishek)
• Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse
• Deep Work - Cal Newport
• Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer
• Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari (thanks, Yatris!)
• Predictably Irrational - Dan Ariely (thanks, Ayush!)
• 1984 - George Orwell (thanks, Ayush & Ram) - Completed: 20/6/18
• Animal Farm - George Orwell - Completed: 25/6/18
• Rich Dad Poor Dad - Robert Kiyosaki (thanks Kunal) - Completed: 30/6/18
• Zero to One - Peter Thiel - Completed: 15/8/18
• Politics and the English Language - George Orwell - Completed 16/8/18
• Wings of Fire - APJ Abdul Kalam - Completed 11/10/18
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck - Mark Manson - Completed 11/11/18
• The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
• Tools of Titans - Tim Ferris
• Essentialism - Greg McKeown
• A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson - Completed 7/11/19 (thanks Ayush, Ram)
• Atomic Habits - James Clear (thanks Megan!)

Tech

• The Mythical Man-Month - Fred Brooks (good useful insights about software development methodologies for programmers and programming managers alike)
• The C Programming Language - Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie (I read it recently, and it was enlightening. I understood why this book is recommended to aspiring programmers)
• Serious Cryptography - Jean-Philippe Aumasson (a very practical book to applied cryptography written from an implementer's POV)
• Responsive Web Design - Ethan Marcotte (read this book before starting to work professionally as a frontend engineer, very clean; fun to read)
• Philip Roberts: What the heck is the event loop anyway?
• Javascript: Understanding the weird parts
• Learn Python The Hard Way - Zed Shaw (one of the best resource to start learning Python or programming in general)
• Cryptography 1 by Stanford on Coursera (taught me a lot about cryptography with formal methods)
• Hacking - The Art Of Exploitation (touches the topic beautifully)
• Cracking the Coding Interview (helped a lot with technical interview prep)
• The Pragmatic Programmer - A great book on effective software engineering, practical tips on how to focus on the problem and not get lost in the meta.
• Design of Everyday Things - Don Norman (general tips on human psychology that can be used to build great UXs)
• Don't Make Me Think - Steve Krug
• Soft Skills: The Software Developer's Life Manual - John Sonmez
• Automate the Boring Stuff with Python

Documentaries

• Little Dieter Needs To Fly - Werner Herzog (1997)
• Hypernormalization

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