POV

Let me start with a simple quote: “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” — Steve Jobs The best way to learn deeply is to do what you genuinely enjoy. Whether it’s software dev, farming, carpentry, or any other task — if you like it, you’ll enjoy doing it and you’ll learn from experience. Our minds naturally grasp the things we care about. Put in more effort where your interest lies, and you’ll get better. I say this up front because it’s something I’ve always told myself. ...

Are you a wagie? Most probably you are, unless you have some passive/active income from your own product. Over the past decade, I’ve seen many people jumping from mechanical engineering roles to the software field. The reason is quite obvious. I don’t want to tell you that the software industry now provides more employment — that’s already known. It’s really good if you enjoy it. But what if you’re not interested and still working on it? I don’t know how that feels, considering money comes as a reward on top of it. ...

Maybe I’m too distracted. But, screw any movies, series, or any such content showing smoking and shamelessly claiming it causes lung cancer as if that makes it okay. I’m not one of those “social activists” or people who raise arguments about everything others do. I don’t involve myself in anyone’s privacy because I’d like to give them their own space. But addiction is something someone doesn’t choose — they end up doing it mindlessly. ...

The school 🎒 Back in 2015-18, writing blogposts was all about curiosity. I still don’t know how I was so boosted at that time. I was at 10th standard. Didn’t own a computer at that point. Parents didn’t like me doing something on computers. And had a valid reason to block me from using it. See me.. I was very good at studies from 3rd grade to 7th grade. After that, I turned out to be an average. It wasn’t intentional at all. All happened unknowingly and I became more aware of it after each test papers. Fast-forward! what would you expect me at 10th grade? I was even slipping down from the average position. ...

This is intentional. If you know me from when I had “techcraft.tk” (my old tech blog), it was roughly around 2016-2018, but later I decided to change the domain. The point is, for each post, I saw many spam and irrelevant comments, which made me realise some people are so dumb. They’d be dropping comments about “crypto” or “pay me I’ll hack social accounts…so on..” I used to think that it’s too normal in a public comment box. People are not taking accounts on any platform using their own ID, it’s random and hence there is no form of validation to determine anyone. Some others may be spreading toxic comments too. ...

It has been more than 6 years since I started my Blogger journey. Blogspot indeed was/is a good way to start any static website from scratch and get it done in minutes. It felt very convenient for me over the years and also the settings and configs are also very intuitive. Not so long ago, I saw a cookie pop-up on my blogger which I didn’t notice until someone told me. I was sure I hadn’t done anything to show a cookie banner. Idk why but, it kind of made me think “this is not my stuff and I do not fully own it”. And it was one of the many reasons I wanted to switch. I had some political opinions which I wanted to share but afraid about Google policies applied to Blogspot. Over the time, it really shook me and made me think “why do I use Linux, FOSS, etc..?” That’s when I really took the time to switch. I backed up all my posts from Blogger since 2016 and converted it to Markdown and made a video on YouTube about the process just in-case if someone wants to switch immediately without much research. ...

The title is obvious. Everyone loves Flask as a small web framework. As of now, all my projects are built with Flask. Including b3nsh4.tk A few people have asked what I used for XREP. Yes, it’s Flask again. I don’t know why it’s so easy to get started — it really can’t get much easier. For me, Django is a framework that works out of the box and has many more features. But if your application is complex at the backend with a simpler frontend and no database or login system, Flask is the option. ...

Yes, after a year, I finally decided to take Discrete Mathematics again as part of my university course. Tbh, I didn’t really enjoy it when I first came across it. But now I feel like it’s helping me think more logically. I also found a good playlist for learning it. If you ever want to jump into this, this will help. I thanked him via Twitter for this. If you’re bored, I think this will fill — or blow — your mind. If you’re free, take a look. Btw, I’ve got a few things to say about YouTube and why I might leave it soon…

When I started blogging, I was changing my domain frequently. I was never satisfied with any of them. Finally, I settled on the techcraft.tk domain and used it for a very long time. I was more passionate about blogging back then than I am now. For some reason, I couldn’t keep it going. So, after a very long time, here I am — changed domain again to bensh4. I really liked this username and sorta wanted it everywhere, which is why I made the switch. I was worried about AdSense because of all the changes, but since I’d stopped blogging anyway, I didn’t stress about it too much. My advice for a new blogger (or any starter) would be: be really sure about what you’re doing and plan to stick with it. Choose something — a username, for example — and resist the urge to change it. ...

I’m realising there’s so much noise on Twitter. I’m still there for some reason I can’t really explain. I could post my thoughts here on this blog even if I left the platform. But I’m only thinking about it for now — though I’ll leave one day for sure. Think about it: why do we even need that platform? For sharing thoughts and ideas? That’s what a blog is for. That’s what I believe, anyway. Back in the day, it was great to see so many people writing their own blogs — like personal diaries. Now everybody’s on Twitter and the rest. There’s a lot more I could say about this. Maybe my first podcast episode will cover it. ...