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I realized that I hadn’t touched my blog in over a year. A lot had happened since then, but I hadn’t taken the time to note anything down. Looking through my old posts, I remember how good it felt to actually sit and write things down. I thought I’d change the theme and tweak things a bit just for the sake of it. Lo and behold, I ended up spending an entire day trying out themes and tweaking knobs and controls to see how things looked. Sometimes, I feel like I waste a lot of time on preliminary aspects of a task. ...

Recently, I started randomly going through the Go standard library, mostly to satiate my curiosity and to find out what goes on behind the curtains. While checking out the testing package, I found this interesting little snippet of code in src/testing/testing.go: // TB is the interface common to T and B. type TB interface { Cleanup(func()) Error(args ...interface{}) Errorf(format string, args ...interface{}) Fail() FailNow() Failed() bool Fatal(args ...interface{}) Fatalf(format string, args ...interface{}) Helper() Log(args ...interface{}) Logf(format string, args ...interface{}) Name() string Skip(args ...interface{}) SkipNow() Skipf(format string, args ...interface{}) Skipped() bool TempDir() string // A private method to prevent users implementing the // interface and so future additions to it will not // violate Go 1 compatibility. private() } This seems pretty evident once you see it. It makes sense for the Go standard library where the private function enables them to circumvent the compatibility promise by ensuring that no one would be able to use this interface outside of the standard library because of the private function. This gives them the flexibility to add functionality later without breaking anything. ...

I recently came across an article which talked about how brain researchers made strides in understanding the function of specific regions by studying brains with damages or wounds. The whole idea of understanding something by comparing it with a reduced form of itself was fascinating for me. With a protagonist who is cursed with being forgotten, this book presents a similar opportunity for understanding our subjective reality by comparing it with a reduced form of itself, one where all relations are ephemeral. ...

“The trouble with Lucious," he said, putting his feet up on the desk after this cousin has gone," is that he thinks politics is a fight for justice. Politics is a profession.” Imperium presents the tale of Cicero’s rise to power, narrated through the notes of his loyal slave and scribe, Tiro. Through his oratorical prowess and political theatrics, we see Cicero climb the shaky ladder of power. Each passing rung accompanies with it an erosion of the moral values that propelled him into this grand venture, until acquisition of power becomes an end in itself. ...

I’ve observed that misanthropic traits in protagonists manifest primarily in two ways - In those that are weak, in whom misanthropy arises as an effect of their inability to hold their own, and in those that are strong, in whom misanthropy arises because of their utter disregard for those who are weaker, poorer, or otherwise unfortunate than them. For me, a heart-warming story usually involves humanizing a strong misanthropic protagonist. A skilled author portrays this “thawing of the frozen heart” in an artful way, making the character more relatable and empathetic, with bits of humor thrown in along the way to tie the whole package together. In “The Man Called Ove”, it’s the stubborn widower who’s set in his ways, and in “A Gentleman in Moscow”, it’s an estranged aristocrat who’s the subject of this artful dissection. Through whimsical adventures and happy little accidents, the author turns The Count into an endearing character whom we root for and relate to with the utmost passion. ...