Posts on Dilip's Log

Revamp the blogs

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0530

Hello world, again!

Hopefully with this new year (2026) I wish to do regular blogs and get habit of giving (writing) out more.

I’m a heck fanatic of ASCII text, I prefer text reading over any media. I really want to get on with blog (even crap quality is fine for now). I actually write tech-report for FOSSUnited platform and to improvise that as well I better do more writing here!

OBTF as Second Brain with Org mode

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0530

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One Big Text File is simply writing down mostly everything in single file to organize or manage data. This single file acts as the source of knowledge and holds all notes.

Second brain has been a buzz word, thanks to the sourcing of Zettelkasten method, every productivity freak is on the stance to organize their life and get things done.

Embarking in Foss United

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0530

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[2026-01-05 Mon] Update

From the previous post, I’m amazed to share that I have started my career in FOSS United Organization (FossUnted) which focuses on promoting FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) in every day use and every where. Its an NPO, run to conduct events, support students and get this ideology elicited everywhere.

I just joined before 40 days for IndiaFoss 2025, which is now a grinding period with work loads. Lot of focus and work aligned up. Initially I feared a bit about taking this responsibility but just few weeks in, I’m happy that I grasped the most parts and got a hang of it. Thank to my CLI, Emacs experience, it hastens up by development workflow.

Wrap up on my Bioinformatics Masters Journey

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Sat, 28 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0530

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June 2025 finally marks the end to my academic journey with completion of my Post-graduation Masters of Science in Bioinformatics.

Preface

The story of me here starts with the Covid period, when I was introduced with laptop and when I started using Linux, I wanted my Biology related topics to be involved with Computing, Linux and CLI stuffs. That is where magically I learnt about the domain, Bioinformatics.

My MSc journey with Emacs Orgmode

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0530

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I wrote and used emacs orgmode for all of my post-grad Masters classes, presentations, projects and thesis.

Before post-grad itself I was introduced to Emacs world and enjoyed getting good with it. As I used it, I realized emacs is not just an text editor, its an Personal Development Environment itself and user has power to craft it as they need. This was a worthwhile investment.

If cats disappeared from world

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0530

If Cats Disappeared from the World is an light novel by Genki Kawamura.

It depicts the life-death situation of a person, who in-return to live a day makes something disappear from the world. The novel shows a thought-provoking idea of, “what’s life worth it” or how much meaning it carries.

The reviews spoke as sober one, but I did not feel any depressing moment about story. But the lesson and points definitely are reflective on life. The major good thing about the book is, English translation and writing style is easy and friendly. I would not recommend movie as such, but the gist is shown very well there

Overview of Decentralized socials

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.00071

The paper elaborates on architecture of Decentralized social networks. Although not much takeaways for common users, but it ensure that Decentralized networks would be the way future for privacy and security concerns.

Although I lurk around mastodon, I think Decentralized did not work as expected. Althought small communities can group together, the inter-connection between other serves are tedious. There is no smoother discovery of posts. The pain is, some account in a server must expose or connect with other server people to get their feed/posts exposed in current server. So unless that, even with trendy hashtags, there is no way to view their posts.

Stoicism: Way of life

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0530

I’ve been reading Stoicism 101 by Erick Cloward as a beginner. Although internet suggested stanford philosophy, book does have a way to communicate which connects readers mind.

Initial chapters covered the history of Greek and Roman times, of how prominent philosophers emerged. Some prominent works that influence and laid foundation were from

Zeno of Citium
Socrates
Epictetus
Marcus Aurelius

The book or in-fact the philosophy, is a thought provoking for sure which not only talks about history, but it provides a realization of how thinkers and people lived in those moments.

Biocode Daily to hack solutions

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0530

https://www.biocodedaily.com/

Biocode Daily is a new platform like rosalind, which offers daily bio-related coding challenges.

Its python oriented currently, which basically gives problems and expects a solution on given example and also on hidden tests.

These hidden tests are the good ones, because you need to solve the problems effectively and cannot just hard code some solutions to get over it. Althought very new, I’m excited to see how it will grow, as I’m highly anticipating a comments section, a way to engage with others and share code with help.

Manga: Three days of happiness

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0530

A light novel by the name, and manga goes by name Jumyou wo Kaitotte Moratta. Ichinen ni Tsuki, Ichimanen de by Sugaru Miaki. His all novels follow similar theme.

If you wonder why japanese manga names are reallyyy long, they say that, its useful for buyers to know the gist of what it is about. So basically the names would indicate most of the main theme or gist. It makes sense as it can gives mini-overview on itself.

The story is kinda depressing, or lets say it makes you sober. More of its an thought provoking story and makes you wonder the importance in life. Although everyone cannot relate based on NEET character, since IRL we are busy with connections and responsibilities and some flow is going on with out life.

Resonance: The Echo

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Sun, 10 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0530

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Am at such a career building stage, and learning lot of new things everyday. Every day I wanted to blog and write something, and even now at the time of writing, I’m enjoying to put up and convey something as a post in my editor, emacs. The point, is “I have to just start”.

Using Gnus to read rss feeds

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Sun, 10 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0530

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Emacs is my editor, and my companion for most of my tasks. Yes, I’d like to call it a second brain extension.

I’m a rss feed user, to read with coziness, freedom and comfort. Lately I have been experiment with the rss readers choice in Emacs. I feel that gnus, the powerhouse in Emacs is one of the good choice. I mean to say, not with nnrss backend, but with rss to nntp gateway.

Nobody Cares about blogs

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0530

This is an obvious statement over this era, that things are moving so fast that people lost the touch of blogs. I came across an interesting blog post on how nobody would care, and it sounded pretty reasonable. In fact, social media’s have dominated over rss (Ik nobody even is aware of it now) and blog sites. Another interesting fact, AI has taken over social media now.

Now, only AI and social media becomes the de-facto place to read about others post. Having a website or blog site is like now people calling you, “are you still living in old times?”

Art of Getting things Done

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Sat, 03 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0530

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GTD

The tendency to organize things, and get the workflow in right track is a natural process, and we insist more on that in today’s world. The mere idea of finding the “right way”, “Best way possible” is a driving opinion for various Internet opinions. People do share what works for them, and they argue.

The ultimate deal I found is, a system does not have to help you, the natural process has to help you in getting things done.

Window Managers

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0530

Desktop Environment gives us everything we would like to operate on Desktop with care towards UI and UX, that matches the common paradigm. It is a lot driven by mouse, and seems to fairly make work simpler and easier. It is not like keyboard can always make task quicker, mouse can be ahead of the race.

But I too followed the trend to ditch mouse and embrace the swiftness of keyboard. I like to hear the “clicks” and “tacks”.

Literate org config

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Fri, 29 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0530

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Organizing Config
- Org-mode Config

Organizing Config

Configuration files as we know are the text to instruct the program to modify and tweak to our needs. Every Open-Source, hack-able software or tool has configuration files provided for the choice of user’s needs. Most of the tools provide simple and basic configuration with JSON-like formats, Yaml and Toml. For the word, they are not extensible, as ml stands, they are merely for markup to already defined instructions.

Emacs on Droid

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Sat, 16 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Emacs is a definite Greatest editor of all time, the extensibility power is unmatched with any other software. Users of Emacs can only know what it is, one who has not used it may not really understand the principles and power it gives us, the users.

Once settled with it on PC, its not late to think of something similar for our handy pocket phones, at least support for org-mode so we organize our life. The research leads us to find apps, and its unfortunate that market has lots of apps supporting markdown, just for its markup. Even org-mode is good for markup only, Karl voit’s post explains it very well.

Organize File

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Sat, 16 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

From past few days I have been dabbling in the dimension of how to organize files, notes in effective manner. After jumping deep into the rabbit hole, I went on a spree of digesting several blog posts, articles on maintaining files, organizing notes, getting things done, what not, the list goes on.

With power of org-mode comes the doubt, is it efficient to maintain one big org file or multiple small files. Yes, its personal preference based on users need, there is no set guided rules.

Nix: Home for Acer

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Sat, 21 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In this post am sharing some of the experience of using my new laptop, Acer swift Go Oled. Compact, Premium ultra-book with Oled, Yes, a good hand made mobile laptop.

As expected and as usual, it got windows 11 and first major encounter was heating and battery issue. It got me scared as it felt wrong decision. Since many claimed windows gives better battery life than Linux. It gave me nightmare of installing Linux too, really, new laptop with 4-5 hours of battery, for oled with black screens?

Beyond Ken

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to some more snippet of Quotes. Lately I have been busy, kinda dusting off my table. Ooof.. procastination!

Some more laughs, some more values!

Napoleon Bonaparte

If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.
Henny Youngman

I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up - they have no holidays.
Lillian Hellman

Things start out as hopes and end up as habits.
Dorothy Parker

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

Nix Learning

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Wed, 03 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

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nix-learning

NixOS is definitely an advanced Linux distro, but it ain’t easy to understand overnight or like Archlinux to have easy manual, but it sure has alot on the table. There is whole bunch of families like Nix functional language, Nix package manager… so and on with the prefix “nix”.

This is really confusing, many hate nix and are not convinced to go long run just because of this difficulty (mess?). To make a simple thing work as expected, you need to go through such a rabbit hole. But once you know Nix* (families), everything will make sense, and you would feel bad to go back to old traditional Linux manners.

FOSS : On Droid

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

As we know, Android is widely popular OS for many phone. But these days its all filled with junks and bloated apps, these are to say so called “Popular Android Apps” or “Trending Apps”. The reason simply would be “everyone in my circle uses it” or “I use it because they use it”.

But surely you are not giving yourself some privacy or space that you need for your own personal phone. I’m talking about using Free/Libre and Open Source (FOSS) Apps. Free doesn’t mean by price, Free means Freedom. Freedom that comes with :

Cognizance

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Sat, 22 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to next snippet of Quotes.

Hope so, it is advising enough to make your day well ;)

Psychology Reads

People Aren’t Better Lie Detectors (50-60%) in More Realistic Settings

Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it

Herm Albright

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.

Linux : The Matrix

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

There are tons of linux command line cheatsheet or guides.

Here are some of the best reads, I suggest you to go throught each of it, It’s a gem.

The Art of Command Line — notes and tips on using the command-line, suitable for both beginners and experienced users.
commandlinefu — command-line gems, includes a handy search feature.
tldr — collection of community-maintained help pages for command-line tools.
explainshell — write down a command-line to see the help text that matches each argument.
General purpose command-line tools — examples for most common usecases.
Bash reference cheatsheet — nicely formatted and explained well.
Bash scripting cheatsheet — quick reference to getting started with Bash scripting.

With that coded, I hope you enjoy the terminal. Unleash the Matrix.

Vim Proficiency

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Wed, 05 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

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Although I don’t use vim, it has good points for being easy keyboard glue. Why not learn both of the best worlds of Editors?

Apart from normal vim navigations and operators, These are some of the unique vim magics, which I haven’t used at all.

Marks

This is the important one, I have not used this at all. Should try and make use of it. Although emacs mark-ring is alot better.

Emacs Efficiency

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

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This is straight away from VernonGrant who hosts a podcast for Emacs called “Discovering-Emacs”. It’s a great and has very much professional vibes, the explanations are Crisp and Clear! I suggest you to check out, he even has made YouTube channel for it.

Insightful Quotes

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I will be making few snippets on few quotes which impressed me or made me laugh for the day!

Hope so, it is insightful enough for you also.

Self quote

Don’t just read, Think - Research and Understand!
Walt Kelly

Every burden is a blessing.
Gustave Flaubert

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
Samuel Butlet

Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.

Imposter Syndrome : Formula for Success

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

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Ways to stop Imposter Syndrome

Have you ever felt a fear of losing or doubt your own ability?
Have you felt unworthy, lost your self esteem due to a mistake?
Are you feeling constant fear of being discovered rather than being proud?

The matter is, is these sound true or happening at some moment, let me condition it as “Imposted Syndrome”.

RSS: The better Internet

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

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Cheesy Internet

I don’t have to say this, the Internet is hella bloated.. Junks are everywhere, nobody knows that they read shit, they are watching shits whole time.

Just do a test, How many popups have you closed today, How many cookies (web) have you eaten, How many captchas did you solve, How many minutes did you wait to skip an ad just to watch a video… Even worse, ads sponsors are embedded within a video (So cruel and harsh world) It goes on.

NixOS : Reproducible - Immutable

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0530

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Introduction part, you would better have read it on official nixos site (https://nixos.org)

“Should you try NixOS?” ❄️

Here’s an answer from a non-programmer, who just browses and watches media. Just don’t, if you are looking for small benefit. Don’t! regret having hard time to figure out petty things, again forget about error, you cannot even search in web.

Emacs is OP

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Before anyone shouts vim, let me :q! I was a vimmer for a year, I played and had a good basic config. Even after an year, I didn’t grasp the full potential of vim, it was just handy to use hjkl to move around.

But When I’m learning Emacs, the experience is immense, it defines how things are meant and the legacy of Emacs for 40 years, is not a joke.

Journey Begins

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0530

I have almost set my first static website. From here my creativity goes public to the world.

Its just a small thing, but my passion thanks me for this.

Its time.. time to begin the chapter!

Tools that are Best!

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

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Utilities that are Best! 🌟

Utilities that are Best! 🌟

Class	Name
Window Manager	Hyprland 🌸
Text Editor	Emacs 💮
Gtk Theme	Gruvbox / Orchis 🎨
Font	Comic Code / Comic Mono / Fira Code
Pdf Reader	Sioyek 📔 (ditch zathura)
Media Player	MPV! 🎬 (its MVP too)
Image Viewer	Imv 🖼️
RSS Reader	Elfeed 📰 (Again, Emacs)
Music Player	Ncmpcpp or Mingus in Emacs 🎶
Terminal	Foot via footclient ⚽
Menu/Launcher	Rofi 🚀
Notification	Dunst 🛎️
Shell	Zshell with Starship 🔰
Status Bar	Waybar 🍥
Favourite Color-Schemes	Modus-Vivendi + Gruvbox

Rest all other stuffs I do in Emacs, tbh I could do everything in Emacs lol.

My Linux Journey

dilip@fossunited.org (Dilip's Log) — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

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The Embark

Small info/log on my linux journey and my experience.

If you are reading this, I encourage you to write blogs like this and have it in your git repo. Don’t forget to tag or inform me, I’d be glad to read your journey too!

Linux is not widely recommended or discussed topic among real life friends or circle, every system comes pre-installed with win-dows, and its no big surprise people don’t have a feel towards their usage of OS.