Srikanth Perinkulam @sriperinkulam@mastodon.social

After three years of focused effort, this July 5th, I will be taking the Oath of Office as a Foreign Service Specialist. Super thrilled! The last twelve months has been crazy busy with lots of travel amidst heavy uncertainty. And our PCS move last week has been nothing different. We’re... https://srikanthperinkulam.com/2022/06/28/pcs-orientation/

Today marks my last day as a Certifying officer with USAID. Quite typical with my previous career moves, there was a fair share of uncertainty when I signed up for this position. I wasn’t very sure what exactly I was getting into and I guess that was likely the draw too. It’s been a ter... https://srikanthperinkulam.com/2022/06/03/rco/

Sinhagad at a distance. This picture is from on of my previous hikes.
Sharp at 0600 as we finally reach the road that winds up to Sinhagad, Ankur and I take a moment to savor the twilight chill. The last 7.5 hours has been nothing short of mesmerizing and rewarding. Just as it was twelv... https://srikanthperinkulam.com/2022/04/05/k2s-5/

‘Urbanization’ peeking in quite adjacent to the Hauz Khas fort. This beautiful reservoir and the surrounding wooded area sealed the deal! Spent quite some time exploring around here this evening. Can’t wait to introduce M&S to this place.

That’s one neat, much-needed reminder!

Buses have come a long way!

Over the last few months, I have been able to drastically reduce the digital clutter with two key tools – Anonaddy and KTN. Anonaddy lets you spin up email aliases on-the-go and sever them as needed.  KTN let’s you subscribe to newsletters in your feed reader via RSS. Pretty cool concep... https://srikanthperinkulam.com/2022/03/09/de-clutter/

Of late, the NUC has been getting really hot. Core CPU temperatures were hitting the 80s despite the system being on literally no load. When I first bought it in mid-2020, I was aware that this lineage of tiny monsters are known for their ‘hot’ness and the fan being a bit loud.  Only o... https://srikanthperinkulam.com/2022/03/06/tiny-troubles/

Fred – Senior Citizen Assistant: https://srikanthperinkulam.com/2022/03/05/fred/

Exactly a decade ago, I landed on Posterous Spaces. This was before any of the currently common messaging platforms that exist were built. M wanted a way to backup texts and at that point in time, Posterous Spaces looked like a terrific option. We’d email the texts over to an email addr... https://srikanthperinkulam.com/2022/03/03/ephemeral/

TIL about OpenAPS [Open Artificial Pancreatic System Project]. A fascinating take on owning medical data related to ones’ sugar levels and automating insulin intake for folks with Type1Diabetes. I never knew managing T1D was so complicated until I read Graham Jenson’s post. My uncle had... https://srikanthperinkulam.com/2022/03/01/openaps/

The Arabian sea – shimmering bright orange with the diffused reflection of the dusking sun, was way too tempting. With strong currents and offshore winds, It’s been an intense couple hours. Not much wave riding for all that paddling. Before we called it a day, I decided to paddle one la... https://srikanthperinkulam.com/2022/02/28/mulki/

A bi-yearly rundown on the state of the home-servers I run and applications I host on the cloud. Published while listening to: Mist of Capricorn ( Manavyalakincharadate ) | Agam

A few major changes since the last September update:

During the Jan trip, I moved the Odroid XU4 and NCP ov... https://srikanthperinkulam.com/2022/02/22/sotn-feb-2022/

After a good one year away from Whatsapp, I’m back on it . This time however, on better terms.  All thanks to the Mautrix bridge and the Matrix protocol.  Essentially, I can access my whatsapp account data on my regular phone or desktop using Elements’ pretty robust app system. Note tha... https://srikanthperinkulam.com/2022/02/20/bridged/

These fishermen in their catamarans were slowly yet gleefully making their way back to the coastline early AM. Likely a terrific catch that they could sell back on land? Or was it just another day in the waters making ends meet, doing what they love and loving what they do?

Wills and plans: https://srikanthperinkulam.com/2022/02/18/wills-and-plans/

Yet another terrific early AM outing to the beach. S and V joined Coach R’s group for an athletics workout session. As one of his junior coaches guided the kids on the beach sand drills, I took this opportunity to chat up with this cheerful 75+(?) year old gentleman. Quite a humbling pe... https://srikanthperinkulam.com/2022/02/15/coach-r/

#TIL When infected with measles, the immune system takes a reboot and abruptly erases every memory of pathogen it’s had before, essentially making your body vulnerable to infections. Rebuilding immunity takes years…
in 2002, a group of Japanese scientists discovered that the receptor th... https://srikanthperinkulam.com/2022/02/15/immunity-amnesia/

Pretty neat and quick! Didn’t quite explore this feature in Thuderbird till date. I think primarily because email encryption in general only works when both parties are on board. Thunderbird definitely seems to make that process easy. One issue with this traditional approach however is ... https://srikanthperinkulam.com/2022/02/13/email-encryption/

Spent some time today quasi-automating the gpx fetch and mapping from garmin. A modified python script fetches the gpx from garmin-connect and builds the map-tiles that I can now embed in my workout posts. I simultaneously back these up in my nextcloud instance for redundancy and am ota... https://srikanthperinkulam.com/2022/02/09/garmin-plugin-2/