Hi, I’m Aakash!

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

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.