Pranab’s site

Where I share my thoughts, ideas, projects, and (mis)information.

Pronouns: he/him.

All dates are in IST (Indian Standard Time).

• Code, comments, data

  Sep 21, 2024

  You only need these three syntax highlighting faces.

• A better Soupault introduction

  Aug 10, 2024 Aug 13, 2024

  Soupault is an incredible static site generator (SSG), but the documentation can be confusing.

• Light theme toggle

  Jun 24, 2024

  A CSS based system/light/dark mode toggle, with Javascript for fallback and additional functionality.

• Log

  Jun 24, 2024 Sep 21, 2024

  Where I add short thoughts, TODO items, links, etc., that shouldn’t be a separate page.

• Clean URLs: bad!

  Jun 24, 2024

  “Clean URLs” like site.com/hello/ should not be used.

• SSGs should be libraries

  Jun 24, 2024 Aug 04, 2024

  Hugo (SSG) should’ve been a set of libraries that the user imported and hooked up.

• Metadata in Markdown

  Jun 24, 2024 Sep 20, 2024

  Alternatives to putting the markdown title in TOML/YAML.

• SSG attempt 1 notes

  Jun 24, 2024

  I made a little progress on creating my own SSG, but I decided it would take too much time and I need to work on my base skills first.

• A Bean-troduction

  May 21, 2024

  An introduction to the (currently imaginary) Bean markup language, with some comparisons to Markdown.

• Two random foughts

  May 21, 2024 Jun 24, 2024

  1) Hugo (SSG) should’ve been a set of libraries that the user imported and hooked up. 2) Clean URLs like site.com/hello/ should not be used.

• My current favourite (web)fiction

  May 09, 2024

  For the last few months, I open a tab at least two days a week, and I refresh it every few minutes or hours, in the hope that a new release is made, and I rejoice for every chapter released. Introducing: Super Supportive by Sleyca.

• Bookmarks

  May 07, 2024

  List of interesting links with brief introductions.

• Detailed military sci-fi book

  May 03, 2024

  Quod Olim Erat (Battleship Chronicles #1 on Amazon) is an incredibly realistic, detailed, believable and intense take on military sci-fi.

• Bean markup

  Mar 13, 2024

  Bean is an extensible markup language, with generic constructs for delimiting and marking up text, as well as syntax sugar for commonly used markup, such as emphasis, lists, and tables.

• Web feed now live!

  Feb 09, 2024

  AKA “RSS” feed, or Atom feed.

• Try djot instead of markdown

  Feb 03, 2024 Apr 13, 2024

  Djot is a pretty cool markup format that contains the lessons learnt by the author of the CommonMark spec and implementation.

• Flatpak

  Jan 29, 2024

  Low network speeds and limited availability are a fact of life for me. I update my devices every 7 days, and the size of a single Flatpak package (around 350mb on the lower side) is often larger than the regular apt updates, if not comparable to updates that include Firefox, Chrome, Inkscape, and/or Linux.

• Ceci n’est pas Wordle devlog

  Dec 18, 2023

  Bonjour! Welcome to devlog 1 of 1: why I made a Wordle clone (and then another), as well as some tips and design choices.

• UI/UX Design Principles

  Nov 07, 2023

  Some of the choices behind most of my designs. I can sometimes sacrifice these, based on context, but I adhere to them most of the time.

• Oh! That’s cold!

  Oct 30, 2023 Oct 31, 2023

  Low sci-fi speculative micro-fiction

• Ekkas’

  Oct 17, 2023

  Bridal accessories website design and live concept.

• Dyme’s

  Oct 15, 2023

  My aunt’s cooking is better than the restaurants I’ve eaten from in Ranchi and Khunti (perhaps excepting Radison Blu). So I thought that her food should be shared with people, and this website design is a result of that idea.

• Links

  Oct 06, 2023 May 07, 2024

  The contents of this page have been moved to “Bookmarks”.

• About

  Sep 26, 2023 Jan 04, 2024

  A brief introduction to me and the site, including tips on how to use it (the site, not me ;).

• Now Playing

  Sep 22, 2023

  KU LO SA by Oxlade and Camila Cabello

• Expose Product Team to Users

  Sep 18, 2023

  Designers should be directly exposed to users (as opposed to only relying on reports from a dedicated user research team). Notes on article by Center Centre.

• Design Takeaways from Fabricio Teixeira

  Aug 17, 2023

  These are my takeaways from “The musings of a designer and what he loves about design and what he’s learned along the way” (2023) by Fabricio Teixeira. I found it full of practical and actionable advice and I recommend you read the whole article yourself:

• Significant Whitespace Lisp Syntax

  Jul 11, 2023

  I was browsing the web when I came upon the Rhombus language by the Racket team, and I couldn’t help but have a few thoughts of my own for a Lisp syntax with significant whitespace. The key difference in my idea is that it works quite transparently with s-expressions, and has some extra sugar and rules to help with parentheses elision.

• I Discovered Skribilo!

  Jun 29, 2023

  Skribilo is a way to interleave markup and scheme code, with very similar semantics to what I was envisioning in Lispy Templates:

• PubNotes

  Jun 25, 2023 Sep 26, 2023

  Superpowered “notes”: imagine sticky notes, and then imagine if you could add fancy things like images, links, videos, games, and more.

• More on Noon-Flower (Game Idea)

  Jun 22, 2023 Jun 23, 2023

  Just a summary of my motivations, inspiration, and the origin of the name (it’s random). See my first post on Noon-Flower for an introduction.

• Noon-Flower (Game Idea)

  Jun 22, 2023

  Imagine if Minecraft were 2D — and top-down, instead of sidescrolling (Terraria, Starbound). Something like CrossCode, but with building and more emergent gameplay.

• Ivy

  Jun 22, 2023

  I thought that I was dreaming, when you said you love me. The start of nothing. I had no chance to prepare. I couldn’t see you coming.

• Better Markup Headings

  Jun 19, 2023

  Lightweight markup languages are designed in such a way that the markup looks like what is intended. Bulleted lists use asterisks or hyphens and emphasised text has asterisks or underscores around it.

• Plain Text Data Structures

  Jun 18, 2023

  This is a wild one, which stems from my education as a visual designer, as well as a regular terminal user. The gist of my idea is that there are many ways of representing data in plain text for easy use. This is especially useful in a terminal based workflow, but even basic users can adopt some of this in something like Notepad or any simple text editor.

• Typst Syntax

  Jun 17, 2023

  I’ve mentioned Typst here and there, but I just thought I should give it a proper mention. They’ve done a lot of interesting things to make it easy to write large documents. For this post, I just want to talk about the syntax.

• Portfolio

  Jun 01, 2023 Oct 15, 2023

  Hi! My portfolio is currently available as a PDF. You can reach out if you’d like to know more about any project. I’ll be including some of them on the website over time.

• More Ideas on CL SSG

  May 31, 2023

  Following up on my initial post (CL SSG — Common Lisp Static Site Generator), Coleslaw didn’t really work out (more below). Instead, I’m imagining a static site generator based on a build system, a typst-inspired language, and a simple server.

• Minecraft Activate the Monument

  May 21, 2023

  I was watching the 9th devlog of Space64 (WIP name) by FireDragon04, and as he talked about activating the doorway by enabling beacons, I thought about Minecraft beacons, and a spin on the Minecraft CTM (Complete the Monument) formula where you activate beacons instead of fetching wool and returning it to the monument. A Minecraft ATM. (Activate the Monument. Hah.)

• Todo Formatting

  May 21, 2023

  A way of visually organising your tasks to suggest which one is currently actionable, which one can be acted upon next, and which tasks depend upon which. This can be used to create UIs, organise tasks in a todo app, or to organise tasks in a simple text file.

• CL SSG (Common Lisp Static Site Generator)

  May 18, 2023

  Writing so much about Static Site Generators, I want nothing other than to implement one in Common Lisp. I get full configurability, really nice templates, programmatic css, awesome scripting, and anything else I might desire.

• Scripting (SSG Edition)

  May 17, 2023 May 18, 2023

  A lot of applications that are meant for creating media benefit from some sort of scripting, including SSGs (static site generators). All of the Javascript ones seem to use Javascript, but Hugo and Zola rely on templates to do everything, which can be quite cumbersome, limited and generally painful.

• Lispy Templates

  May 15, 2023

  Lisp makes a pretty great system for templating all kinds of material. Simply let people write lisp code directly in their files and evaluate it in the context of the document, while blocking features unsuitable for templating.

• Drawing and Writing

  May 15, 2023

  Drawing and writing are essential tools for thinking. Because they are loose and unstructured, they allow you to capture thoughts with the least friction; and capturing thoughts quickly and smoothly is essential for completing, developing, and refining ideas.

• Github Forks

  May 13, 2023

  “Forks” in Github should probably be called “clones”. That’s basically what they are. Other related terms are “remotes” and “mirrors”.

• GNOME Appreciation

  May 11, 2023

  I frequently see people annoyed with GNOME, but I personally like a lot of GNOME’s decisions, even if I don’t use it. This post is about those decisions that make GNOME great.

• Function Design Recipe

  May 11, 2023

  How to Design Programs (HtDP) specifies a simple method of designing programs, called a recipe, which they call the Function Design Recipe, introduced in the preface.

• DIY (Fish) Shell Templating

  May 07, 2023 May 11, 2023

  If you’ve seen my note on creating a Static Site Build Tool, you might’ve seen the link to pp, and that I lament the syntax and the fact that it uses ash/dash. Turns out it’s quite easy to implement in fish, along with a syntax I prefer!

• Do More in Your Minecraft Worlds

  May 06, 2023

  It’s hard to get things done in a Minecraft world, because you often don’t have time, and you can’t achieve the things that you dream of, especially the cool things you see from other people, and maybe prototype in your creative worlds. This is a set of rules to help you do cool things in your Minecraft worlds, including singleplayer, as well as small multiplayer worlds with friends.

• A New (Top-Down, 3D) Game

  May 05, 2023

  I like coming up with game ideas all the time. Well, I come up with bizarre ideas of any kind. Here’s my rambling about a game idea I had last night:

• Skeu­morphism

  Apr 28, 2023

  The gear icon for settings. The envelope icon for email. The paper plane icon for sending a message. The bell for notifications. The pages in the world wide web. The desktop, and the windows on it.

• Organising Your Files

  Apr 24, 2023

  This is a pretty simple file storage method, revolving around two folders and links.

• Resumé

  Apr 23, 2023 May 23, 2024

  Hi! I try out (or note down) design concepts almost daily, and I love reading books, as well as learning about new things. Streamlining systems and making things work (or theorising how to) is what I enjoy most. Paired with my knowledge of software engineering, this makes me an ideal candidate for working with software teams.

• djot

  Apr 23, 2023 Feb 04, 2024

  EDIT: Whoa! Inane mind dump ahead! Just check out the post on why I like djot. I’m keeping this link for something to at least laugh at, and to build a habit of not breaking links.

• Static Site Build Tool

  Apr 20, 2023 Oct 29, 2023

  I’ve just been thinking of what it would be like to have a static site build script. You would have dependency management, parallelisation, task runners/commands, and access to all sorts of (cli) tools (including your own scripts and binaries).

• How Static Site Generators Work ft. Zola

  Apr 19, 2023

  This is a general guide about how static site generators work, using the Zola static site generator as an example, with a sprinkling of why they are organised this way. Other static site generators have the same requirements, and generally use the same ideas and structure, so this knowledge should help you get started with any static site generator.

• Kinds of Magic

  Apr 18, 2023 Jun 12, 2023

  This is a musing about apenwarr’s post on AI and magic, and related things. It’s more of an idea I had related to it.