Week 45 / 2024

Published: 10/11/2024

Life happened and I missed writing these for the past six weeks. I'm back now, trying to get back into a weekly cadence again.

Instead of catching you up on every little thing that happened over the past month and a half, here are some highlights.

What's been happening?

  1. S was back in India during October. We got to spend time talking, relaxing, or simply existing together. I made her try my matcha latte, which she enjoyed drinking. We celebrated her birthday together. For her birthday, I got her a custom keyboard called the Cat65. We spent a day building the board together. It was the best time.

    Cat65 Keyboard
    S's Cat65

    October was also Diwali month. I went to a few Diwali parties and hosted one as well. Diwali celebrations included new clothes, chatter, food, and losing money in teen patti.

  2. Winter is coming. I've switched to drinking hot coffee for the remainder of the year. One of my goals for this year was to learn how to steam milk and pour latte art. I've started working towards this and the results have ranged from pretty decent to borderline ridiculous. I'm really enjoying this project. I look forward to prepping my daily coffee each day to see if my pour is delightful or an absolute monstrosity. Current progress:

    Bad latte art - a blob of steamed milk
    From this
    Decent latte art - a heart in steamed milk
    To this

  3. My vinyl collection is growing slowly but surely. S carried a Daft Punk record for me, which I've jammed out to for the last month. Another friend carried my first Jazz and City Pop records from Japan.

    Daft Punk's Random Access Memories on Vinyl
    A Jazz and City Pop record laying on a bed in warm lighting

  4. One of my close friends from college got married, and he asked me to be one of his groomsmen. Being asked to do this was way out of my comfort zone. As groomsmen, we got gifted fabric that we had to turn into our wedding outfits. This was a totally new experience for me as someone who isn't the suit-and-tie type. Wearing formal pants to the wedding felt quite strange. Before the wedding, we even had a photoshoot with the groom and the other groomsmen. I was nervous about it all, but I also really wanted to be there to celebrate my friend's special day. In the end, everything worked out and I was happy to have been part of the event. No regrets.

    Photo of Ratik in a grey suit and white under shirt

  5. Some news to be proud of on the work front: we launched the Android and iOS apps we built for 2nd Floor (2FL). The 2FL apps allow New Jersey youth to receive 1:1 confidential chat support and communicate directly with peers on an anonymous message board.

  6. My car is back from the workshop! It has a ramp retrofitted in it now which enables me to use it to commute. Fancy restaurants in Delhi, here I come!

    A photo of a Kia Carens car

  7. I've finally started documenting my keyboard builds on my YouTube. I've posted five videos of typing sounds in the last month. Check my favourites out below or find the whole playlist here.

    Speaking of keyboard builds... if you're someone who has been curious about building a custom mechanical keyboard for yourself, feel free to drop me a line on hi@ratik.in. I'd love to help you build your dream keyboard. Let's talk!

Media Diet

  • I finished watching Something in the Rain (SITR) with S. It's such a good show. The ending was so satisfying, which isn't something you can say about every show. I miss the vibe of the show already.

  • Finishing SITR means that there is room for another show now. I'm making S watch Chuck, a show I loved watching in high school.

  • Coming home: In this and her follow-up piece Mandy Brown reflects on reclaiming creative space and focus by shifting her publishing approach to POSSE (‘publish on your site, syndicate elsewhere’), finding freedom in shaping her work outside of the attention-driven dynamics of social media. “While one of the reasons oft declared for using POSSE is the ability to own your content, I’m less interested in ownership than I am in context. Writing on my own site has very different affordances: I’m not typing into a little box, but writing in a text file. I’m not surrounded by other people’s thinking, but located within my own body of work.”

    Yes. This.

~

This weeknote was typed out on a Vega by ai03, built with broken-in and hand-lubed Cherry MX Browns on a Aluminium plate.