harshad

harshad, 1 month ago to random

After living remotely with only solar (+batteries) to power my home for past 5 years, I have greater appreciation for every watt that's spared - by hardware and software.

My workstation (Mac mini M1) and home server (ThinkCenter mini PC) use <30w between them. The Internet contraption with 4G router, PoE switch, and multiple APs uses another 20w. Laptop is <10w when charged.

Still 🤯 that my computing setup uses less power than an old 60w incandescent light bulb!

harshad, 15 days ago to random

#Caturday done, need to charge up my catteries!

harshad, 1 month ago to random

The web is dead to me. Managed to keep the thousands of ads at bay for years but now the "consent" and newsletter popups and the non existence of "reject" button, instead several misleading steps to just look at a paragraph or two of text doesn't seem worth my time.

And even if I jump through the artificial hoops, there's no guarantee that a human wrote the text

Either I'll build agents to fetch the data I need or I'm not engaging. The concept of www is no longer fit for humans as consumers.

harshad, 1 month ago to gardening

Looked up how tall Mullein usually grows, median answer is 6 ft, one site says up to 10 ft/ 3m.

My exuberant plant that's ~ 12ft/4m tall is looking down and laughing. Will save the seeds and share around. Heh, I love the idea of thinking of plants as Earth's middle finger to entropy that rules rest of the universe.

#gardening #mullein

Reference photo for height, I'm 5'10 and barely as tall as the shortest stalk at the base of the taller stalk.

harshad, 10 months ago to bangalore

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spathodea

#BloomScrolling #Archive #Bangalore

Several orange flowers blooming at the base of a large cluster of buds.
Close up of a cluster of buds. The buds form a conical shape with larger buds at the bottom and smaller ones at the top.
Wide shot of tens/hundreds of orange flowers covering the tree, rising above the deep green foliage.

harshad, 8 months ago to Cats

How it started / How it's going

#pets #cats

Looking down from my perspective in bed, there are 11 cats sleeping next to me.

harshad, 2 months ago to archive

When the sky is divided about how the sunset should look.

#archive #sky

harshad, 16 days ago to Cats

Guess I'm sleeping somewhere else…

#pets #cats #caturday

harshad, 4 months ago to gardening

One trick to be successful in growing vegetables without a drop of pesticides entering the farm in 5 years: try every seed/cutting you can find, repeat what wants to grow, keep trying what failed another year since the food web keeps getting better and potentially has brought in predators for the pests that were previously unmitigated.

I dont see any more pest damage on my plants, veggies and fruits than nearby farms that drench their food and land in assorted poisons on schedule.

#gardening

harshad, 1 month ago to random

punches everyone involved in "not now" buttons

What? I should stop? But you can learn more about why I'm punching your face!

What? No? That's not an option, how about we pick this up when I feel like punching your face again? Good? Good!

harshad, 2 months ago to wildlife

Saw an Indian Gaur on the way from town today, excuse the potato quality photo, was taken with phone and cropped heavily.

It's rare to see them in the day, this one was a lone male happily grazing away. A family in car stopped nearby and I called them over to have a look, the gaur noticed us talking, gave this nice pose looking at us, then quietly vanished behind trees.

#Kodaikanal #wildlife

harshad, 6 months ago to Cats

Nelly isn't sure if the rumours of #caturday are true.

#pets #cats

harshad, 1 month ago to Weather

Temperature is 30°C indoors in an airy room today. All animals (including me) are feeling sluggish and just want to lie down. I'm ensuring everyone has cool water to drink nearby.

This is not normal in the hills, 26°C is about as hot as it used to get only a few years ago.

I shudder when I recall being passed out in a pool of sweat whole day when temps in plains rose to 45+°C in summer. It is getting worse there.

#Kodaikanal #Weather

harshad, 6 months ago to motorcycles

Went for quick ride to Poombarai village, enjoyed riding in light mist.

#motorcycles #Kodaikanal

A hill road surrounded by trees in either side vanishes into the mist.
A narrow hill road obscured by mist. A car and a motorcycle appear faint, but are close by and are coming towards the camera.
Three men walking on a road, away from the camera. Decorations are hanging over the road, strung to sides of Teri temples that appear partially towards the right side. Heavy mist is obscuring the road and shops ahead.

harshad, 1 month ago to Cats

Kiki has a box

#pets #cats

harshad, 1 month ago to random

Chai, on the rocks.

harshad, 2 months ago to Cats

I piped my (mental) error logs to cat, and it purrged them to /dev/null‽

#pets #cats #unix

harshad, 3 months ago to Dogs

Doggos!

#pets #dogs

harshad, 7 days ago to random

The benefit of live A/B testing and continuous integration and deployment seeping into every team is that on any given day you as the user will encounter software that's broken in novel ways, and you'll never get good at any user interface. Tools that you depend on to get shit done keep shapeshifting? Praise the A/B CI/CD baby!

harshad, 28 days ago to random

Riding towards Kodaikanal town and I'm shook. Much of the forest is now ashes. Forest guards are finally here with fire management teams, only took two weeks of raging fires to get their attention?

Sigh.

What's remaining is very much at risk until monsoons put an end to this rampage.

#Kodaikanal

Smoke rising from green cover on hill side.

harshad, 3 months ago to gardening

Chonky

Stir fried a bunch of almost ripe peas instead of eating raw because they're less sweet beyond this stage.

#gardening

harshad, 4 months ago to random

Unboxing Saturday, looks pretty.

#OurDailyThread

harshad, 4 months ago to Weather

Sunny morning!

#Kodaikanal #weather #BloomScrolling #gardening #flowers

A lavender tree-dahlia entertaining a hungry bee.
Orange-yellow flowers glowing in the sunlight against the blue of a clear sky.
A red hibiscus bud next to a young inflorescence of mullein.

harshad, 3 months ago to random

Cowsay

#cows

harshad, 1 month ago to random

When a site takes a whole minute to load their javashit and presents you with a "Can't show you text because of GDPR" you can be sure they're a very slimy business.