Hi, I’m Aakash!

I travel. I write. I make computers do things.

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I find myself turning on Reader mode very frequently while reading a blog post or article on my phone.

Many sites aren’t mobile friendly, or use a tiny font size that can’t be read without perfect vision.

Many websites also don’t offer dark mode, so it’s an uncomfortable transition if you use dark mode on your phone.

Apple’s Reader mode is much easier on the eyes! I want LogSpace to feel easy on the eyes, just like Reader mode.

I’ve been programming regularly for over seventeen years now, and it has never felt like a job to me. Not once!

Building software is by far one of the most enjoyable things I get to do, and I hope to continue doing it for as long as I can..

Today I learned iOS does not allow websites to send push notifications to iPhone users, unless the user has manually added the website to their home screen, which itself is multi-step process (shown below).

As a developer, I hate this. But as an iPhone user, I think it makes sense that I shouldn't be getting mysterious push notifications from something I never installed.

The simplicity of SQLite can’t be overstated:
- Nothing to install or update
- Database is a single file on disk
- No network requests (10x faster queries)

So much less to worry about as a developer!

While I loved using Remix v3 for logspace.app, I wanted to see how far I could push things with a more bare-bones stack:
- Bun's built in APIs (HTTP & Markdown rendering)
- Effect v4 (error handling, database access, schema validation), and
- DataStar (frontend interactivity and data fetching)

Turns out the new setup:
- processes requests 5-10x faster
- can handle 5-10x higher traffic
- has 55% lower memory usage
- serves just 13 KB of client-side JS

I simply *had* to switch. The new stack is now live!

This site is built using Remix v3, which has been a pleasure to use so far (via a coding agent, of course). This project has just two dependencies: `remix` and `@tanstack/markdown`.

Till yesterday, the content of these posts was stored in a `posts.json` file in the code repository. I just added a SQLite database, S3-compatible file storage, admin authentication and post creation/update screens.

Now I have my own little CMS, using which I'm writing this post! 🚀

Vietnamese has three variations of the vowel _a_, and I'm finding it useful to relate them to their equivalents in Hindi:

| Vietnamese | Hindi | Example |
|---|---|---|
| â | अ | cân (to weigh) ≈ “kan” with the अ of कन |
| ă | आ (cut short) | ăn (to eat), a quick, bright “aan” |
| a | आ (long) | ba (three) ≈ बा |

This does not cover tone marks (á, à, ả, ã, ạ), which are harder for me to grasp, since Hindi is not a tonal language.

Written with AI assistance.

My AI Disclosure Policy

As AI agents start to communicate on our behalf (on email, GitHub, social networks, and elsewhere), I feel it's useful to disclose the extent of AI usage in writing. I plan to include the following disclosures in my writing:

1. Written without using AI.
2. Written with AI assistance.
3. Written by AI, reviewed by me.
4. Written by AI, not reviewed.

1 is the default, anything without a disclosure is written by me.

I've been off social media for some time now. I deleted my Facebook account in 2017. I had an Instagram account for a while, but never really posted anything or followed anyone, so it was easy to delete. I begrudgingly used LinkedIn and Twitter for work, mostly, but I eventually got rid of them in 2023.

I also stopped using WhatsApp sometime in 2022. Quitting WhatsApp was tough, because that was how I communicated with my family, but I was able to convince them to use iMessage. Now, almost all of my communication happens through SMS, email, and iMessage. I love it!

But I miss having a place to write, share updates about my life, and let people know what I'm up to. This site is an attempt to create a personal social feed, free from algorithms, ads, and greed. I'm not anti-social, just anti-social media.