The idea behind weekly fixations

My intent for these posts is to keep a check on myself as to what content I am consuming. Some of it might be interesting and useful, and some of it might be downright brain-rot. This will help me keep a tab on my content consumption.

Books

In 2024, I accepted the Goodreads challenge and set a goal of reading 20 books. I ended up reading 29 of them. With confidence galore, I decided to increase the number of books for the next year. And so, as I set out on a hunt for my next read, I came across a rather unique post on X. I do not recall the exact words, but it advised people to stop setting reading goals and “just read”. I thought to myself, what a brilliant piece of advice. And like a moth to a flame, I entered 2025 with this idea in mind, and I’ve read a total of 2 books till now. That’s what you get when you follow a bad idea.

Lesson: Check the validity of ideas yourself before executing them.

I’ve decided to toss that idea of not setting goals into the bin and set out to read 10 books this year. I love reading, but having a goal to move towards is something that motivates me to keep doing the things that I love. With that in mind, I’m currently reading the following books:

1. Kafan by Munshi Premchand (first Hindi book this year)
2. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (that colossal work by Murakami I’ve always wanted to read)
3. The Discovery of India by Jawaharlal Nehru (wanted to wet my beak with Indian history)

I’ve targeted to read at least 2 of these by the end of August, 20205.

Tech

Astro

This is the framework that I’ve used to create this website. I’m flabbergasted as to why more people aren’t adopting or even talking about this framework for building lightweight sites. Here are the reasons why I feel this framework is so good:

1. Astro renders components on the server side and delivers blazingly fast load times. It is a no-brainer choice for static sites.
2. I am amazed by its “island architecture” that allows you to plug in your favourite JavaScript framework like Angular, React, Vue, and Svelte for the interactive elements.
3. The learning curve is gentle, and people can build their content-based applications in hours.

Please do consider giving this a try if you’re trying to build a static or semi-static site that needs to have great performance.

Odyc.JS

What a fun little gaming library! Although I haven’t explored it completely, I was genuinely impressed by the playground they’ve provided to create games online. It seems easy to use and has minimal setup, even if you want to try it out on your local machine using vanilla JavaScript. Although the showcase games on the site are minimalistic and have a simplistic gaming mechanism, it still feels like a fun library to play with. Will probably do some game development this weekend.

Movies

Image Credit: IMDb

Hope is back, and Superman stole the show for me! I know it’s been more than a couple of weeks since it released, but I just wanted to share my thoughts on this. It is a solid first instalment in an expansive DC universe that continuously keeps you engaged and is entertaining. I loved the fact that they got all the characters from the comics spot on. James Gunn is really in the process of turning the ship for DC movies. I hate the fact that people are even comparing this new movie to Man of Steel and would not even grace that debate for a minute. The best thing I’ve heard this movie do is increase the sales of Superman comics. I know people close to me who haven’t read superhero comics as much, dabble into the Man of Steel’s literature right after they watched this movie. That’s a huge win for this movie and everyone involved in making it.

However, this week I did not get a chance to catch up on my movie list. Will probably get on it from this weekend.

Music

Image Credit: Spotify

Big Dawg Hanumankind dropped his new mixtape titled ‘Monsoon Season’ this week. While I do not relate to his songs much, this felt like a very decent mixtape.

Credit to the efforts that were taken in sequencing this project. The beginning of the project had those high-energy HMK tracks that he’s become famous for. The middle section stood out to me, and songs like ‘Someone Told Me’ and ‘Cause’ have gone into my playlist. I especially loved the production on these two songs. What felt off to me was the ending collaboration with A$AP Rocky. I can’t put my finger on what was wrong, but it somehow felt like the “Big Dawgs” beat wasn’t supporting A$AP Rocky’s vocals. And what could’ve been a great opportunity for both these guys just wasn’t.

My favourite lines from ‘Someone Told Me’:

If there’s demons

In your crew as

You be walking on clouds

Or if there’s 
angels in your
Circles as you
Walk through the fires

And so we walk 
Through the flames, and
Through the clouds we gon’ dance

Standout lines from ‘Cause’:

What’s the cause 
That’ll cause you
To wake up and see that there’s
More to it all?

That there’s 
reason to breathe

That the rise and
The fall of your chest through
The day is the
Engine that pumps

Fuel to a fire…

Anyways, with this mixtape, Sooraj Cherukat has struck a fine balance between intense energy and quite introspection. Will be waiting for his future drops.

TV Series

Succession:

I’ve never felt this stressed re-watching a series. I knew the story - I had seen it before, but there was something so difficult in there that before sitting down for every watch, I had to prepare myself.

Now, I know that I have nothing in common with the characters on the show. They live in mansions worth millions of dollars, engage in business deals worth billions of dollars, wear designer clothes, ride around in luxury cars, and basically eat, breathe, and live like the uber-rich do. However, they are still humans. And they, too, go through life with hopes and fears like all humans do.

Now the character I most related to was Kendall Roy. I won’t go into the depths of it because those thoughts are reserved for my diary. All I can say is that Jeremy Strong did an amazing job portraying the number one kid!

Sakamoto Days:

Sakamoto Days is back, and I feel that they’ve improved the animation (if only by a bit). There are still places where they’ve made a few errors, but it hasn’t affected the general vibe of the show. The story has picked up from the point where Slur has contacted a few deadly death row inmates to assassinate Sakamoto. I’m excited to see what crazy ways they come up with this time to show the prowess of the greatest assassin, Sakamoto.

That I believe captures most of the content I’ve been consuming this week ✌️