Brajeshwar

Ok. Let me try to spoil you. You are looking for this https://plotterusa.com

And here is a review from Fatih Arslan at https://arslan.io/2025/02/24/plotter-notebook-system/

I do have a primary notebook, and by default, it is indeed a “Dirt Notebook.” It is my own way, and I’m sure things will continue to evolve. I use that single/primary notebook for everything, everyday use. I have settled on a standard A7 notebook making it easy for me to buy just that.[1]

My writing style is ‘harnessed’ by a simplified Bullet Journal method,[2] complete with diagrams, writing on the sides, sometimes vertical, and everything else in between. However, the interesting thing is, my notes are still one of those that gets shared by other people in the same meeting. I tend to draw out everyone’s speech and ideas into visuals that make me understand better.

I also start writing from the last page of the notebook too, to maintain a running list of TODO/TASK items.

When a page is parsed or transferred or no longer valid, I mark that page as ‘archived.’ This is usually done weekly or whenever I feel like it with the same simple fountain pen or a colored marker if I find it nearby. This way, I know which page I never need to look back at and which ones need to be re-checked later.

Individual pages sometimes contain TODO/TASK too. This is where the Bullet Journal method comes in to finish it off.

For contents that are useful for future references, such as resources of knowledge or ideas or a journal entry, I transfer them to my digital notes, the physical journal, and the commonplace book. [3]

These might seem complex, but after a while, they have become muscle memory for me. If you want to start off today, constrain yourself with something "un-dirty" like the Cornell Note Taking System[4] to build up a habit.

I’m including links to some of my personal blog’s articles (not very popular around here), but it makes sense with the above notes I just wrote.

Edit/Addendum: I think it is only fair to confess that I am inspired by the note-taking style of Leonardo da Vinci depicted and dramatized in movies, and TVs. I’m just a low-level copier and thief of the methods of such a great person.

1. https://brajeshwar.com/2025/notes/

2. https://bulletjournal.com

3. https://brajeshwar.com/2024/commonplace-book/

4. https://lsc.cornell.edu/how-to-study/taking-notes/cornell-no...

I’ve taken an interest in maintaining an LLM agnostic base/boilerplate of sort Digital Twin. In comparison to Gwern’s LLM Guardian Angels, mine is minimal and yet tries to be a practical instantiation of Gwern's “Human-Controlled Context.”

I’m not sure if I want to be inspired and try the fine-tuning model part too!

May be Gwern is right that this static personalization approach may not be long-lived. Still, I find it fascinating, and I’m seeing a lot of interest in this area from others too.

When I started, my personal interest was on how to multiply/enhance what I already know and touch adjacent topics/experiences and not really become pseudo expert or the know-all-generalists in things I have absolutely no clue.

Now, shamelessly plugging my idea that I started early this year

https://github.com/oinam/bodd

Similar experiences. Many people are surprised when I do have the phone wiht me in person during walks, at meetings, etc. In the sea of digitals, I find peace in writing with pen/paper.

Unconfirmed but I seem to recollect that this violates their Terms of Service. Or was it Dropbox; something like that.

Archived https://archive.is/LV6Cw

Long back Xiaomi Phones used to have soemthing like this. That one feature was how I migrated my in-laws to Smartphones from their Nokias.

The key content from the article;

Here's how you set it up: Head into Settings, tap Accessibility, scroll down to the General section at the very bottom, and tap Assistive Access. Now, tap Set Up Assistive Access, then Continue. It will then ask you to select your preferred appearance: rows or a grid. I suggest choosing a grid. This is how you get those super-large tiles. Now the OS will ask you to select allowed apps—tap the green plus icon next to the apps you want to allow.

I think I saw and was fascinated by this which some time back here on Hackernews, https://maps.vasile.ch/transit-sbb/

I'm sorry but I usually look at the content, the poster much later or sometimes not at all.

I’ve strange news from the business world. That ability to talk to strangers and be conversational with various topics is actually making him a rather successful boss/business-person. Remember, not just talking, but the far better one is the ability to listen, and take genuine curiosity in the other person’s stories.

I learned, and am still learning, to start with very subtle conversations in contextual proximity to the person without shocking/surprising them. And then, I mostly try to listen more and try to guide them to talk more. You will be surprised at how many a lot are eager to talk to someone, if they are being listented to.

Deepseek seems to know a lot about me!

If I have a strength of just 488, how can that put me in the top 10%! Anyways, fun idea.

The founders being the erstwhile Apple routers team, I believe they are playing the Apple game — sell good quality hardware; free the software that runs the hardware.

Quite a few during the early days. Recreating some fun ‘game’, popular during the Flash days. A work breaker/silencer, etc.

Then, I got bored because they seem to be bad beyond certain complexities. But around Christmas last year, things improved a lot, and I’m getting confident building real ones. In the mid of these, I also got an offer to work with the [pre]sales/GTM team of a large company. So, I have been building working prototypes of bits and pieces of boring enterprise business around the world and have been racking in, if not billions, but very close to it in sales pipeline in about two months. (I did that 1B token in a week thing.) I’m sure the business and sales team will be able to convert 20% to 30% of that in the coming months. I also pitch and presented my work directly to customers and they are coming for more. So, it has been fun.

Lastly, I really wanted to scratch an itch I had for a while—build a Static Site Builder. But I ended up buildig it to be a documentation tool for TypeScript and JavaScript. It can be used as an auto-detect and let it build alongside front-end projects, make it a hybrid so you can add human-written documentation too or just build a Jekyll-esque static site.

O’Vellum is a 3-in-1 documentation tool. https://ovellum.oss.oinam.com

The work silencer/breaker is at https://void.oinam.com

The bubble popper that I re-created which my daughter loves https://brajeshwar.com/2025/bubble-wrap/

Many a true word is spoken in jest.

You can have haveibeenpwned.com check for the custom domain itself. For instance, I get notified if any email of our family domain get leaked (not just mine).

Or park with a decent grace period. Resellerclub gives me 60 days after expiry.

I tried this and it was unbearable.

Well, Fatih Arslan uses quite a lot more premium of the premium tools. I once stumbled on his website, on the topic of Fountain Pens (I think). I subscribed to his feed since. Leica for photography, 3D prints pretty interesting items, etc. He spends time and definitely have a taste and can afford some premium product for “ordinary use.”

All of the brilliant video and voice over was expected, I love the final, “The Apple Logo," that is that taking care of the back of the fences. With AI-this-&-AI-that, the human intuition to think of the unnoticable subtle differentiation will be the thing that stands out of your cohort.

Once upon a time, whenever I interview developers, most of them proudly announced their expertise in jQuery. I have to bring them down to the basics and ask them about JavaScript. Almost all of them were lost. I asked them, if not for this, but to learn JavaScript and all the other framework will that; a framework on top of JavaScript which one can just use (perhaps take a week or so ro learn).

The same goes for CSS. Everyone bolded, and highlighted their experience with Bootstrap but missed the CSS. I did used Bootstrap, Foundation, Skeleton, Bourbon, and many others, especially when working with the team, so we all can speak the same language. This is true for Tailwind too. I remember when Tailwind was still in alpha and I realized that was the perfect tool to bring the team together and move fast. I was able to use it both as a utility and like most other people as the HTML polluter (but it worked).

If one is keen, it is always a good idea to learn the core - HTML, CSS, JavaScript; all the frameworks that wraps them should just be syntactic sugar. Bootstrap came and went, so will Tailwind.

PS. With AI/LLM Coding Assist, writing in plain CSS is becoming beautiful again. I can outline what I want, give it a checklist and make it do the strenuous part of writing them. I don’t even have to remember the cascades.

Something parallel, there is a Black Mirror episode 7.1 (Common People) where he pulls out his own teeth, tongue in a mousetrap, torture/harm his body, etc. to earn money on the Internet.

Edit/Add: I asked Claude to find that episode as I explained part of the storyline and is now asking me to seek help. Early Internet would now, definitely, be totally banned.

Edit2: Is this new, or am I stumbling on something new? I cannot reply to my replier below. I’m sure @stavros hasn’t blocked me. But, yes, we will always call him Roy. That is the only way we remember him.

Oh! Dear Lord. I still want to hear my Indian friends speak Indian to me during Support Calls. These days, I’m hearing American accents trying to calm me down over my complaints on that excess masala in the idli-dosa-pav-bhaji butteerr-chicken combo in the El Camino Eatery in the outskirts of Jhalandar.

Actually, I like quite a lot of the subtle jokes on HN. It is harder to notice, fewer to find, and I don’t get it many a times. But when I get it (or someone explains it to me, perhaps out of pity), I chuckle, laugh, and laugh again. And I remember those comments.

Yes, correct. Elrond reminded Gandalf. I remembered Gandalf better.

Yes, API was the other best thing about Flickr. A friend made his fortune, especially during the exodus days of Flickr. He traveled around the world photographing some of the best pictures I have seen in my life. He retired pretty early in the Himalayas (he is originally from there).

He made Bulkr, which was one of those tools that just works and super easy to use, in getting all of your photos offline from Flickr. I don't think it works anymore. His revenue and hits went crazy after Veronica Belmont talked about it.

https://brajeshwar.com/2011/bulkr-access-and-backup-your-fli...

This is where I usually insert that 3,000 year old Gandalf meme.

I was there pretty early. I remember being super happy on a day I got an email from Flickr that my Pro account upload quota was upgraded to 2GB monthly.

Made many friends via my photos, online and in-real-life. Many of my photos became pretty popular and picked (stolen a lot too) up by major newspapers/publications in India, USA, and even in Vietnam. Some even bought the original copy and rights. It was never my intention to sell my photos nor will that ever be but my guestimate is that I sold quite a lot (high single digit thousands of dollars).

I donated and gifted a lot of Pro accounts to people who asked, mostly students and thos who commented nicely on my blog. Many of my payments comes to Paypal and it got accumulated and there were no ways to get the money to India (for a very long time). So, I just used it to gift to others.

Before I stopped using it more than a decade ago. It had garnered over 10+ million views and my tenure with Flickr lasted almost a decade.

I’ve taken backups/takeout but do not have the heart to delete my account yet. https://www.flickr.com/photos/brajeshwar/

What is wrong with all the good things in the world?

I moved entirely to buying hardcovers. It is easier on the eye, and paperbacks, especially in India, are horribly bad quality. The cost is a matter of perspective (or geography). A typical hardcover costs ~₹2,000 (~$20) which is the norm, but that is a costly thing in India (is roughly the cost of the tea/milk supply for the whole month for my family.)

Of course, this makes me choose my books wisely and with intention. I’m still on the lookout for an ebook reader (no more Kindles). I still want to keep a good ratio where for every 5 ebooks, I should have at least 2 physical books.

So, books are NOT cheap, but the cost is what to consider if it is “worth it” to you.

During its early days (2009), an investor showed me a white Kindle reading a book. This was India, long before Amazon was even introduced to our country. I decided to get mine a few years later. I decided to move bag and baggage to ebooks. After some time, I got one for my daughter too. Then the Kindle Oasis was, to me, one of the best ways to read books.

But I realize that I have a better and cozier feeling holding a physical book to read. As I get older, that also means I cannot deal with Paperbacks (especially in India where the quality is as bad as it gets). Buying only Hardcovers makes me choose my books wisely and feel immensely satisfied reading books.

Unfortunately, with all the things happening with Amazon—Kindle, I have done away with Kindle and sold them except for a Paperwhite that I want as my gadget/device museum piece.

I have too many books that I want to get back to, so I might just keep one but looks like Amazon is not making it easy to archive books.

Now, I’m on a lookout for an Open Source but well designed eBook Reader, akin to the Framework computers but for ebooks. I would like to still keep the physical to ebook ratio to a good number; for every 5 ebooks, I should have at-least 2 physical ones.