blogging 51

I don’t post all my writing on LinkedIn. For example: Fewer strategy posts, e.g. “Where Enterprise AI is Headed”, “How My Innovation Team Works”, etc. aren’t on LinkedIn. Fewer developer posts, e.g. my AGENTS.md, my SKILL.md files files, CLI tools, evals, etc. aren’t on LinkedIn. I also shorten content because of LinkedIn constraints. For example: No links, e.g. the list of all my AI-in-education resources Short content, e.g. my full advice for teams using AI is much longer than the LinkedIn post. Trimmed prompts, e.g. how to convert meeting transcripts into a personalized org-consulting report Snipped chats, e.g. the full moves of GPT-5.5 playing chess I filter the LinkedIn posts, sharing what’s most useful for most people. ...

ARCHIVED: From 30 May 2026 onwards, I track this on GitHub. Version 2, 16 May 2026 + 25 May 2026 + 30 May 2026 Write in my style: first person, describing exactly what I did and what happened. I make it easy to read. Jump straight in. No preamble. Start with the incident, experiment, surprise, or claim. Be terse. If you can rewrite in fewer words and sentences, do so. Once stated, don’t restate. If a sentence sounds clever but you can’t restate it plainly, cut it. Clever-but-empty is worse than plain. Prefer one idea per paragraph. Bold the key insight so reading the bold summarizes the article. Max 5-10% bold. Use italics for emphasis, not decoration. Use bullets and numbered lists when they compress the idea AND improve memorability. Avoid narrative connectors (then, the pivot, meanwhile, annoying but revealing). I’m human and flawed. ...

It’s incredible how hostile LinkedIn is for reading / writing content. Posts containing links to external websites (like my blog) get significantly less reach. That’s why you see links in comments, not the post! You can’t copy content from posts on their mobile app. You can’t even easily select the entire article on the web app! Selecting a part, and then shift-clicking elsewhere (which works almost everywhere) doesn’t work. Also, the copied text isn’t clean. It’s filled with hidden text (e.g. “Skip to search”), duplicated text (e.g. author name repeated), and other junk. It’s hard to export content. For example, the export feature does not include the original links in your articles, nor the links to images you posted! It’s hard to scrape content. LinkedIn actively tries to prevent scraping, and their TOS prohibits it. No formatting. You have to embed unicode characters. Search is terrible. You can’t search for posts by keyword, date, or author easily. No public posting - so you need to log in to read anything. ...

Thejesh tagged me with these questions. Why did you start blogging in the first place? I started my website in 1997 on Geocities at https://www.geocities.com/root_node/, mostly talking about me. (A cousin once told me, “Anand’s site is like TN Seshan - talking only about himself.” 🙂) (As an aside, I didn’t know that searching for Geocities on Google renders the results in Comic Sans!) I wanted a place to share the interesting links I found. Robot Wisdom by John Barger and Scripting News by Dave Winer were great examples: collection of interesting links updated daily. ...

My blog’s been through a number of phases. Between 1996 – 1999, it was just a website with a few facts about my and some of my juvenile ramblings. Inspired by robotwisdom.com, I converted it into a blog – except that I didn’t know what blogging was and just called it “updating my site every day.” It was mostly a link blog. In 2006, around the time when I moved from Mumbai to London, I reduced my link-blogging and started writing longer articles talking about my experiences. This was a fairly productive phase, and I was churning a few dozen articles every year until 2012. ...

The whole point of a blog is to be able to write what I want, isn’t it? Without the need to be coherent. Intelligent. Useful. I read somewhere, in a top 10 list of advice to programmers – to avoid constipation. It’s actually good advice. It gives you a headache for the rest of the day. That piece of code is really not worth it, trust me. But then, when you have a headache, there isn’t anything quite as beautiful and relaxing as code. Or good documentation. Like node.js docs, for example. ...

Pegasus on why Even numbered booths in toilets are better. This is one of those things I’ve endlessly thought about, but never got around to writing about. Comments pegasus 8 Dec 2006 2:29 pm: Hey thanks man :) ritzkini 9 Jan 2007 9:49 am: Same here !!! thought abt it so many times !!

Arrange books by colour. It looks lovely.

Waiter Rant: daily experiences of an anonymous waiter in New York. via Shruti’s post on Waiter Rant

What Drives Bloggers? I think what most bloggers are doing is thinking out loud. It’s a little misleading to talk of “putting things into words,” because that implies the ideas come first. In fact, expressing thoughts creates them. And especially expressing thoughts to other people, even people you don’t know. So I think the reason many people like blogging is that they like the thinking it causes.

How to tie a bandage without it falling off. It’s in Japanese, but the video is pretty clear.

Hilarious post on Pallu baby. Nice read, Karthik. Stay on course. Here’s his follow-up (which I can’t find on his blog any more). Confluence 2005 is happening and there are students from so many B-schools who have come down to IIM-A. Some of my friends from BITS, now studying in other B-schools, have come down as well. Yesterday I happened to get a call from one such friend of mine who’s studying in ISB (with whom I wasnt in touch at all). After a couple of hi-bye statements, the first thing she asked me was “How’s Pallu baby? And why arent you blogging at all? Your blog is very widely read in ISB. Everyone knows your blog in ISB. That Pallu baby post was circulated around like crazy.” ...

Most blogged books of 2005.

So I have a blog is Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s blog. The comments on the first post pay homage to the father of the WWW. via LazyGeek

Technorati Blogfinder tags blogs.

Londoners’ reaction to the bombing. Feels like a classic British reaction. That seems to be feeling around office too. More from IrishEyes. Comments S Anand 13 Jul 2005 11:50 am: More at We’re Not Afraid.

Uri Geller, the spoon-bender, has a blog. via Monish

The Google-like blogger template had me for a while, when I was browsing Shamit’s page. Comments Kaviraj 21 Feb 2005 12:00 pm: Hi Anand TOPFRAME 21 Feb 2005 12:00 pm: that was pretty good.. Dhar 8 Mar 2005 8:06 am: In the free anti virus category, I would put Clam-Av, in firewalls for Linux - iptables, IDS I am surprised they didnt put in SNORT, website ripper - wget.

Amazon enters blogging. Comments Navneet 10 Feb 2005 12:00 pm: Whoa! Hee-uu-ge Geocities popup on page. Thought it was temp. Apparently not.. S Anand 10 Feb 2005 12:00 pm: Can’t seem to avoid it… Dhar 8 Mar 2005 8:08 am: Amazon India Center’s blog: i-5.blogspot.com S Anand 8 Mar 2005 8:24 am: That was a good one! Didn’t know corporate blogs were getting along in India.

Google blogger fired, possibly for the blogging. Maybe he should talk to the Committee to Protect Bloggers. via MetaFilter

I’ve managed to get my commenting system to work. Feedback welcome. Comments ashish 25 Jan 2005 12:00 pm: cool harish_an 25 Jan 2005 12:00 pm: hey snand… howdy? back to regular blogging i guess ritzkini 25 Jan 2005 12:00 pm: good to have u back anand…been irregular with ur posts last few months… SHAMIT 25 Jan 2005 12:00 pm: Javascript ?

My RSS feed is back.

I was unwell. I’m almost back to normal now, and likely to update a little more frequently.

I’ve taken my longest break from this blog. Three reasons: work has been good, Age of Empires has been exciting, and the Web has become boring. But having heard from so many of you (thanks!), I’m going to continue the blog a bit. But I’m thinking of a new format, in the meantime. So please bear with infrequent posts till I get there.

The next Mumbai Blogger’s Meet is on May 4th.

Experimenting with GeoURL. It also gives an interesting perspective of blog usage, geographically.

A blogger’s first week at Google. Ovidiu Predescu. via GoogleBlog

I have blogged about 5 days last month – my lowest since June 2000. Guess it shows that the combination of consulting and family life cures even the most determined Web addicts. I’m not sure when life will return to normal. Please excuse the infrequent updates until then.

The Bangalore Bloggers’ Meet in the eyes of Ayesha and Harris.

Your recommended blog list via Anita

A taxonomy of bloggers by psychological profile.

Amrita has mirrored pictures of the Mumbai Bloggers’ Meet. Since she has no bandwidth restrictions, please visit that site.

Photos from the Mumbai Bloggers’ Meet.

India Today on blogging. Very nice article, Nidhi. (You need to have a subscription ID. But if you just keep typing random 4-digit numbers, it eventually lets you in.) Featuring Rohini, Prachi, Prabhakar Venkataraman, Radhika, Aditi, Rajesh, Anand, Mahesh, Anita, Arun, Jaykrishnan Nair, Rushi, Kiruba, Madhuri and Sylvia. Comments golu 25 May 2007 6:44 pm: thanx a lot yaar """" 4181 """"" worked for me nkt 29 May 2007 6:33 am: 4181 still works, thanx man!! Sai 17 Sep 2002 12:00 pm: 4181 works!!! Thanks a lot rejin 17 Sep 2002 12:00 pm: thanks mohit 17 Sep 2002 12:00 pm: thanks worked for me gbaja biamila 17 Sep 2002 12:00 pm: this works for me too, thanks man, appreciate it Krishna 17 Sep 2002 12:00 pm: It still works, dude! 29th Aug 2007 hksubbu 17 Sep 2002 12:00 pm: works…… 10/10/07 Amit 17 Sep 2002 12:00 pm: thanks a lot….it still works 01/11/07 :-) g 17 Sep 2002 12:00 pm: still works .. nov 10 2007

Garth is working on audio-blogging tools. Given the amount of poetry I see among bloggers, this might unleash a host of blog-singers.

Bizarre. Funeral homes offer to convert cremated ashes into a diamond.

Meg calls for professional blogging. I agree. Like all good things, blogging will have to go commercial, and like Faraday said, “… someday you can tax it.” (Note: Actually, Faraday didn’t say it.)

I have a cold. And although some Chinese may say otherwise, it has nothing to do with cold weather.

I’m starting a blog on Dr. Abdul Kalam.

My weblog’s second birthday passed unnoticed. On 19th June, it turned two. (My website itself is nearing its 6th birthday.)

I take my post on 31st May back. Satish’s site links to mine.

Essential Blogging: a book on weblogging. Quite good. Technie note: This RSS thing looks interesting. Daypop has started offering RSS output. Need to see how I can use it.

Things Mil and his girlfriend have argued about. I dread to think of my future.

The psychology of weblogs. After reading this, I realised I ran out of things to say almost a year ago.

740 digits of pi in a poem.

Finally managed to put a decent photo of myself on my home page. (OK, “decent” is a matter of opinion.)

Finally figured out that lorum ipsum dolor… means nothing.

I am not a blogaholic. I scored 48/100. 39% scored more than I did. I am “a casual weblogger … blog when nothing better to do … post more often … readers happy.”

I’m in Bangkok. Not planning to update this site for a week. Incidentally, it’s almost time for my site’s first anniversary – a year since 28 July 2000, when I started updating it regularly.

I’ve replaced my old photo (left) with this new one (right). Yes, I know. I’m growing younger by the day.