I don’t know what to say about this week. During this whole week Nidhi was not around. She is in Pune to find a job herself and a house for both of us. I was feeling low, anxious, tense the whole week.. we will find a home or not, whether Nidhi will find a job or not, how we will survive in this low salary.. all these questions were running in mind..

My sleep cycle is gone, I am sleeping at 2 - 2.30 at night and waking up by 9 - 10 am. I have become a mobile addict, not the reels or social media but reading / browsing other stuff. specifically I have become Hacker News addict.

WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING

—> Website Development

I spent most of my time this week in developing small small features in my website. I wanted to escape from the situation so I engaged myself in learning new things and implementing on my website.

• I have redesigned page called ‘Educational Practice’
• updated ‘about us’ text in all social media (medium, linkedin, instagram)
• implemented ‘hugo-bearcub’ theme with CSS tweak and RSS feed set up
• I have shifted all weekly notes in blog section with ‘weekly-notes’ tag
• Custom domain set up with cloudflare SSL certificate

- Linkedin2MD

• I made a copy of my linkedin profile in markdown. I tried using the npm package (https://github.com/fkztw/linkedin2md) but it didn’t work for me so I used inbuilt resume builder of linked in and downloaded PDF and converted it into markdown. I did a little bit (actually a lot time wise) manual editing and adding / copy-pasting specific data from the linkedin profile which was missing in resume builder. Now I have a complete profile on my website which I can update anytime / send it to anyone. I need to put a PDF version of the same.

- Medium posts in markdown

• Medium changed its policy for readers, that was the one of the triggers to start this website and blog. I have been using Medium for the last 11 years so I wanted to take a backup of my old posts and put it here in this blog. I checked the medium setting and downloaded all the files but it came in html format which is no use for me directly. I need to convert it into a markdown to put it here. I found and tried one python script and one npm package. The npm package didn’t work for me. The Python script worked but it was converting one file at a time. I have lots of files. So I am stuck. I am searching for another tool or I will try to tweak this script to do multiple files. If anything doesn’t work I will do it manually.

- I have learnt about

• Github Workflow
• How to use github issue as comment box on your website
• using Prose.io as CMS
• Fediverse
• self hosting

I will implement these all features in later on, not in priority. you can see what I am work on website here

- Custom domain email

• Custom domain email id setup using zoho mail. I have created [email protected] , I was searching for the trick so I can only forward emails written by humans to my new id from my gmail id. I didn’t want any subscription / promotion / updates email to come on my new id. Finally I found something called ‘filters’ in gmail where you can make rules for email forwarding.

I use gmail for / at

• all the places / social accounts / subscription
• for using cloud storage G drive (mostly if my collaborator is using it otherwise i mostly use markdown and simplenote for pretty much everything and for project management I use basecamp

I wanted my custom domain,it is fun to see and use.  Also I wanted to shift the communication part from gmail to a new custom email id. Where only humans communicate no machine generated emails. Custom domain email on google is costly. Also they only give 30GB cloud storage and if you use a normal paid account you will get 100 gb in 1300 rs yearly.

so I searched for other services which give custom domain email service. Price comparison, feature comparison

Migadu and Fast email came multiple times in the recommendation but finally I signed up for zoho mail. They are giving free custom domain email with 5GB email space. I have tried this service before for some time with my old domain learningwala.com. So I was familiar with it. If only humans talk 5GB is space and if it exceeds the limit/ needs more features the price is 58.34rs per month.

Apart from gmail I was using hey.com / hey email by 37signals (makers of basecamp). It is paid service after a one month trial. But I wrote to them that I really like the service and the price point you are offering (99$ yearly) is not affordable for me. They gave me a 1 year free subscription. I really liked the product and spacilly the desktop and mobile app with clean simple UI and their workflow features. I love writing emails in those apps. But finally I have decided that I need to move on because two reasons :

1. dependence on them for the pricing. I can afford to give 8000 rupees yearly for the email service.
2. I want to try a custom domain which is more costly then normal email on hey. So finally set an auto responder on hey account saying please email me on my new email id.

- History of my email ids :

I have started with live.com / hotmail / outlook mail

Past :

• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected] (used it a lot when I was working at Muni Seva Ashram, Goraj)
• [email protected] (I was using it till 1.5 year ago, stopped using after my google drive got full)
• [email protected] (made for trying out, never used it)
• [email protected] (made with zoho, never used it, domain got expire so email id is also gone. It is still showing on zoho mail btw)
• [email protected] (shishukunj school work id)

Current :

• [email protected] (made it paid account on google one, using it everyday )
• [email protected] (using it from past six month loving it, but I am moving out of this)
• [email protected] (made for eklavya work, but never used it)
• [email protected] (still not started using it)

—> Wix Payment

• I have done mitaliben’s school website domain and hosting renewal. It was difficult to do payment on wix because they only accept cards. I got new card from bank in that net banking / international purchase is not active. I tried another friend’s card but it didn’t work.. finally my axis bank debit card worked. The friend gave the idea that you can activate international purchases from your axis bank app. I quickly downloaded the app, and it worked.

—> Call with Rameshwariben (2nd April 2024)

• I had a call with Rameshwari ben, she wants to do some activities related to nature / environment with teenage children at her NGO. I did some research and planning for it during the week. I was thinking if we can focus on the river. Visit river, interview, nature journaling, season watch, bird watching, mapping, etc.

I have reached out to Ankush from HBCSE, Sneha, Siddharth from Veditum, if they can help us in water testing and other river related activities. Ankush and Sneha replied promptly, they said they can connect me with MSU environment dept and Navrachana university, Sneha will send my requirements to her friends in vadodara so they can help. I also reached out to Madhushree from ATREE, she sent some amazon links to buy water testing kits, Ankush also sent one link for kit.

—> Writing about tools for self directed learning

I have started writing about tools for self-directed learning. What are the tools which can help you in doing self directed learning? I am reflecting on my journey, observation of BeMe children, Conversation with Nidhi and Nidhi Solanki

some of the tools I have identified :

• Note taking
• how to make your portfolio (how to document, your own narrative writing, website or other medium)
• how approach people/ communication (cold emails, networking, researching about people - org - project - anything )
• how manage your tasks, how to work in team
• what is the goal of internship and how to find one
• how to prepare yourself for internship
• list of places where children can go and work (different location, different subject)
• list of mentors

Interesting resource - https://www.recurse.com/self-directives

I want to write how you can learn these tools so you can implement them during your sdl journey. I will publish it after I finish writing it.

—> Seeing Karnataka

For the last two semesters in BeMe, I was part of an elective course called ‘how about seeing bengaluru’. Namrata wants to make something similer around karnataka. ‘Seeing Karnataka’

I have did some research during the week. Also did some reflection on what we learnt from the last two semesters.

—> I met Konarak Ratnakar aka Kondi (3rd April 2024)

I heard about him many times from common friends like samyak bhai, malay, kartik bhai with ref to Gujarati wikipedia, maker, geek and hill hacks. These all friends are from Vadodra / Ahemdabad CEPT Fablab , Maker Fest

I searched about him only many times but didn’t find anything except his mails on public mailing lists of hillhacks and wikipedia profile. I remember browsing his website a few years ago - konarak.in which was using terminal style css at that time.

Finally Malay told me that he is in BLR and Samyak bhai sent me the number. We met at IDC, Dumlur Talked about open source, linux, education, financial stability, setting up ham radio and solar powered raspberry pi based website.

—> Call with Priyanka (Nature Classroom - NCF) (3rd April 2024)

 I had a call with Priyanka. We talked about  - Socio emotional learning through nature based activities.  - how teachers are feeling when an outside NGO goes with their agendas / programs  - reflection on a workshop she did with teachers on SEL and Nature she sent me a workshop report for the feedback. She wants to work on a second version of this workshop. I have yet to read the report.

—> Call with impu and saatvika (4th April 2024)

We have decided to meet on the 9th for a trial shoot and the 12th for the final Abhiupa is back from travel. She will be there with camera and other stuff Impana is doing research. They want to shoot the first episode of a podcast with me.

—> Faculty reflection - BeMe (5th April 2024)

I wrote my faculty reflection. It is ritual in beme, every semester all faculty write reflection for themself and give feedback to others to

—>  What I listening now days

last week I listen mostly :

• Kede katari on loop
• indian ocean album Tu Hai , Akhiya Udek Diyan
• songs from advaita band
• lagi lagi from Coke Studio S2
• Gulam ali gazal
• Aditya Gadhvi

Today morning I have started listening my old favorite from Susmit Sen

—> that’s it

I am waiting for Nidhi to come back. Hopefully she finds a house for us. Reva, Ashutosh, Megha, Arnaz, Snehal - all friends from pune are helping a lot in this journey. fingers crossed.