Sid Verma

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The one where I witnessed First Contact 03 Oct 2026
In the summer of 2019, I was visiting Bir, helping out at Hillhacks . It’s great fun - you talk tech, art and policy in the day, and sit next to a campfire in the night, perhaps with some peppered-up rice mead. One night, while lying alone in the grass, next to a campfire that I…
I don't like traveling anymore 03 Apr 2025
One of my biggest motivators to make money in my early 20s was traveling. I would book one way tickets to places near and far, enjoy the nature, the food, the culture, and the lovely people. I would come back a slightly wiser, friendlier and happier person. Then, in late 2020,…
IS 1293 : What are the different kinds of Indian electrical sockets? 07 Mar 2023
I spent a lot of time today reading the specifications of Indian electrical sockets, and since it took me way too long to find this information - here’s a quick summary of what the different kinds of sockets mean. I hope at least one other person finds this useful. Common…
Comparing tools to connect your devices in a mesh VPN 03 Jan 2023
I have a nice little computer in my house which hosts a bunch of services I use. It sits behind a NAT, so I can’t connect directly to it via my public IP address. Hence, I use a cheap cloud instance on DigitalOcean to act as the gateway for my home-server to the internet. My…
House tour 01 Dec 2022
Goa, India I moved into a much older house in Goa earlier this year, and had a lot of fun these past months setting it up and wiring it down. It’s very janky, dusty, and lovely. Tried to buy nothing new except wires and electrical junctions. Please excuse the dust, I am not…
Decision making while writing software 01 Jun 2020
Post #1 in the Meta:Programming series. Very often, a significant part of software development is making decisions between a couple of available options, over and over again. In some areas, you would just skip the decision-making process by picking a default, which can be…
Diary of a new employee 04 May 2020
Monday Today was my first day at this stealth startup. The boss (CEO) is a dick, but we’re building great stuff. The physical entertainment/tourism industry is a huge market, and it’s very possible that we’re going to be the next Disneyworld. Tuesday Surprisingly, I feel like…
Website Updates 07 Mar 2020
Every once in a while, I get into this productivity slump where I don’t write code for weeks, and it gets hard to get back into the rhythm of working again. For me, the easiest way out of it is to redesign this website. It’s low-effort (relatively), gets some creative juices…
Personal infrastructure overview 11 Jan 2020
Writing intros to posts is such a hard thing. I’ve spent more time on what to write in this paragraph than the rest of this article. You’re supposed to start with a background and a motivation, and conclude with a sentence that you finally did it, and here is how. I have not…
iOS Shortcuts for Firefly III 06 Dec 2019
I’ve been using the excellent Firefly III to manage my expenses for a while. As a result, I have developed a habit of actively monitoring every transaction I do, which, in my opinion, is a much better way than using other automated expense managers which can only track your…
Moving to an iPhone (for now) 04 Dec 2019
I spent the last two days trying to switch from my three year old Oneplus 3 to a brand new iPhone 11. I thought I was probably done with expensive phones (I count Oneplus as an expensive purchase), but resigned to giving iOS a chance this time around. The Oneplus has served as…
Backpacking 2019 01 Dec 2019
Some Places Been backpacking for a few months, while severely reducing camera time. Here are some photos from Goa, Kolkata, Bangkok and Pai. Shot on Nikon D5300 and Oneplus 3
Eight months of unemployment and traveling 19 Nov 2019
In March 2019, I left my job at Tower Research Capital , to take a small break from work and live aimlessly for a while. My mental health had been declining steadily for the last few years, and going away for a while seemed like the only way out. I spent a lot of this period…
Doing sysadmin things through Terraform 15 Nov 2019
Disclaimer: I have not worked as a sysadmin anywhere in my professional life, nor do I consider myself to be very good at it. I’ve self-hosted a small part of my personal infrastructure (IRC bouncer, VPN server, torrent client, etc) for a while now. These services were set up…
Ziro Festival 2019 26 Sep 2019
Ziro, Arunachal Pradesh, India I was not planning to go to the Ziro Festival this year, but the dates coincided with a layover in Kolkata, and hence made the stop. Shot on Nikon D5300 and Oneplus 3
Russians are harvesting our faces! 19 Jul 2019
This Forbes article says that Faceapp is evil because they are harvesting user-data: That (Faceapp’s TOS) may not be dangerous and your likeness may stay on Amazon servers in America, as Forbes has determined, but they still own a license to do whatever they want with it. That…
Kodi controllers 06 Jul 2019
For the past five years, a Raspberry Pi, running Kodi , has been attached to my TV. The Pi, TV and the software all get updated from time to time, but the overall setup has been the same for most of it. +----+ +----+ +-----+ | TV |----(HDMI)----| Pi |--(USB/DLNA)--| HDD | +----+…
Andaman Islands 01 Jun 2019
Port Blair, Andaman Islands, India Family took a few days off to spend some time in the Andaman Islands. Shot on Nikon D5300 and Oneplus 3
(Hillhikes and) Hillhacks 2019 01 May 2019
Himachal Pradesh, India It felt disingenuous to just call this album Hillhacks 2019, given the extreme lack of actual conference photos here. The main motive of venturing out was Hillhacks, but the hikes we padded it with were much more photogenic. Shot on Nikon D5300 and…
Week in Goa 01 Jan 2019
Arambol, Goa, India The annual trip with a couple of close friends took us to Arambol, Goa this year. We did spend more time in the hills of Goa rather than the beaches this time around. Shot on Nikon D5300 and Oneplus 3

Sid Verma

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