Notes

I am one of those people who function better by writing things down. One day, I realized that most of my notes don’t have to be private, so here they are - my second brain. Be warned that, if you stumble upon something here that doesn’t make sense to you, it isn’t meant to!

Frittata

Saute onions and a bunch of other veggies in a medium sized pan. (Put whatever you got!) Half a large onion sufficient. Don’t brown it too much in the beginning. Fill up the pan with the veggies. If veggies are frozen, probably put them early to give more time to the water to evaporate. Costco pans that we have are oven safe up to 350°F. Whisk together 8-9 eggs, salt and shredded cheeze. (Can add milk too.) Once veggies are sauted, put whisked eggs in it (while pan is still on the stove) and mix everything with a spatula. (Eggs should reach the bottom.) Cook in oven: 350°F for 30 minutes or more.

Learning queue

Reminder: Don’t learn in advance. For a new technology, only get an overview. (Clear out basics though.) Don’t do many things at once. Actually, just pick up 1 in addition to work. Why even learn? Build something instead. Learning candidates Check this on why the following list is so lean now. Technical books that will help me learn new skills (something I am not too keen on doing right now): Crafting Interpreters. Rust programming language. Fundamentals of Software Architecture: An Engineering Approach. Might be good if and when I change companies at principal/staff level. MIT 6.824 Distributed Systems (Spring 2020) - hopefully, it makes me implement the core algorithms. Teach Yourself Computer Science. Database Internals. Google SRE. Kafka: The Definitive Guide: Real-Time Data and Stream Processing at Scale. Note that O’Reilly books are available here for free. ...

No long duration courses

I am not going to do any long-term courses after the current one on Artificial Intelligence. Rule of thumb will be: nothing that takes more than an afternoon or two. So, a random research paper, tech talk or a deep-dive in some technical documentation should be okay. No long-term commitments though. I don’t read technical books today, and that will continue to be the way. Reasons: Such courses take time and I’d rather spend that time with family. I’ve learnt enough and, if anything, I should spend time building stuff with whatever I already know. (If I need new knowledge to do that, either as part of work or a personal project, I will learn just enough along the way.)

Stop slacking on the D2L book

I don’t spend as much time as I wish on the D2L book. While family and work has been keeping me busy, that book too is important (and fun) for me. I’ll stop slacking and become more serious about it. I have to start chapter 8. I’ll finish 10th by end of January. I’ll create more time during work. During weekdays, I often think I’ll study a lot on the weekend and it’ll be different this time. It usually doesn’t work out that way. This is part of my career growth and work should indirectly pay for it.

Gym before Covid-19 vaccination

This weekend, I began thinking about joining a gym back. That’s a bad idea, however, because it isn’t safe yet. Running and kayaking aren’t as good as lifting weights but they’ll have to suffice for now. Once vaccinated, we’ll travel to India where I should get a personal trainer and can go crazy.

Online Masters in Computer Science

In the last few months, I’ve intermittently thought about getting an Online Masters in Computer Science. And then wasted a few days mulling over it. Here are a few reasons why I think about it. Go deeper into CS in a more structured manner. The OMSCS program from Georgia Tech seems best for this: it’s both cheap and reputed. However, people also say online that it’s rigorous and it’ll require dedicated time every week. So, instead of signing up for something like that, a better approach would be to rigorously study something on my own. For e.g., I could take a goal to read up two books on Artificial Intelligence this quarter. They take so many students that I won’t be guaranteed to get into the classes I want in every semester. I am part of an industry that hardly cares about credentials. (In fact, many self-taught programmers are able to make it big.) So, such a degree won’t help me in any professional way. Get a degree for the sake of it. If so, there are two ways of going about it: Find a shitty college that doesn’t have a high bar in handing out degrees. (The college doesn’t necessarily need to be in the US.) Pursue a degree from some other field, such as quantum physics or arts. That would be more fun and challenging. I am going to drop this idea for now. And focus the little time I get away from work and parenting to studying Artificial Intelligence. I should probably take a goal of finishing the D2L book and Hands on Machine Learning this quarter.

Restic

Setup, for Backblaze Create a configuration file: cat > ~/.config/restic-backup.conf << 'EOF' BACKUP_PATHS=/media/unencrypted_drive/SharedFolder BACKUP_EXCLUDES='--exclude-caches --exclude /media/unencrypted_drive/SharedFolder/... --exclude /media/unencrypted_drive/SharedFolder/... --exclude "._*"' RETENTION_DAYS=14 RETENTION_WEEKS=8 RETENTION_MONTHS=6 B2_ACCOUNT_ID=... B2_ACCOUNT_KEY=... RESTIC_REPOSITORY=b2:restic-personal-backup-1:home-hard-drive RESTIC_PASSWORD=... EOF To source these as environment variables, simply do: set -a source ~/.config/restic-backup.conf set +a # To unset. Setup: restic init mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user/ cat > ~/.config/systemd/user/restic-backup.service << 'EOF' [Unit] Description=Restic backup service [Service] Type=oneshot ExecStart=restic backup --verbose $BACKUP_EXCLUDES $BACKUP_PATHS ExecStartPost=restic forget --verbose --keep-daily $RETENTION_DAYS --keep-weekly $RETENTION_WEEKS --keep-monthly $RETENTION_MONTHS --prune EnvironmentFile=%h/.config/restic-backup.conf EOF cat > ~/.config/systemd/user/restic-backup.timer << 'EOF' [Unit] Description=Backup with restic daily [Timer] OnCalendar=daily Persistent=true [Install] WantedBy=timers.target EOF systemctl --user daemon-reload systemctl --user enable --now restic-backup.timer Then: ...

Import local Python modules in Jupyter

import os import sys module_path = os.path.abspath(os.path.join('whatever_path')) if module_path not in sys.path: sys.path.append(module_path) Copied from here.

Install Machine Learning libraries

Cuda versions: pip install torch torchvision \ mxnet-cu102 \ pandas \ scikit-learn \ jupyterlab \ matplotlib \ ipykernel \ boto3

Wallabag

Install docker run \ -d \ -v /opt/wallabag/data:/var/www/wallabag/data \ -v /opt/wallabag/images:/var/www/wallabag/web/assets/images \ -e SYMFONY__ENV__DOMAIN_NAME="https://wallabag.flister.cf" \ -e SYMFONY__ENV__FOSUSER_REGISTRATION=false \ --restart unless-stopped \ -p 8091:80 wallabag/wallabag # Setup TLS sudo certbot --nginx -d wallabag.flister.cf Add the following to the relevant section of the Nginx config file: location / { proxy_pass http://localhost:8091; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $server_name; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto https; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr; } Note: Detailed instructions here. The domain in SYMFONY__ENV__DOMAIN_NAME is the one you use to access the website. So, if you access via some other IP address or domain name, CSS styles won’t load. Upgrade Upgrade Docker image by following this. If needed, run database migration by following this.