Tag: Hobbies

Self hosting absolutely everything I feel is not practical as of today. Hopefully it will be possible one day, but currently is not. In that case, what can we actually self host? Maybe the question to ask is, why do we self host?

Why do we self host?

Privacy : Placing all our personal data in the hands of large multi national companies which in-turn sell our data or use it to train their large scale AI models is unfortunately the world we live in today. With self hosting, privacy is protected.

Cost : Sometimes the storage costs of certain services mean that the subscription cost of services tend to be prohibitive. Self hosting that service means that we don’t have to incur that cost.

Why don’t we already self host everything?

Although this sounds like a stupid question, its very important to think through this one. The reasons I specifically do not self host for the longest time is

• Deployment complexity: A non issue with projects like Caprover
• Opportunity cost of failures: sometimes the opportunity cost of an action failing is higher than the subscription cost itself. For example, the opportunity cost of an email send or receive failure could mean a lot. During some ops work or because of some other random reason, what if the disk gets corrupted or data gets partially deleted. Can I just hit a button and restore my stack back what it was today morning? This seemingly simple ask is surprisingly complex.
• Missing Network effect: Cannot move people from Instagram or Whatsapp. With the current setup, meta knows everything and there is nothing we can do about it if we want to live normally in this society unfortunately.

With this information, what is that I use day to day but can’t self host (for context, look into the stack post)

• Finance apps : PayTM, Fi bank etc.. obviously
• Social media & distribution channel apps: Instagram, Whatsapp etc.. cannot ask people to move to matrix suddenly. Similarly Uber, Youtube, Prime video cannot be a self hosted solution since the moat is the network.
• Critical communication apps: gmail, google calendar. The cost of missing an email or an invite is super high and not worth it. Better to switch to more secure apps like proton mail etc..

So what can we self host then?

App picks

Library streaming solution – Jellyfin

Libraries tend to be irrationally large after a while, hosting jellyfin on a old PC at home & using that as a base and streaming media to your TV / mobile across your family members & yourself is extremely cost effective. Going the subscription route will be extremely expensive.

Password management – Vaultwarden

Bitwarden is a beautifully done software to manage passwords across all kinds of devices. Vaultwarden is the rust implementation of Bitwarden.

Bookmarks management – Omnivore

Looking forward for omnivore to wrap up their self hosting setup so that I can start self hosting. Right now it does not exist.

Status monitoring – Statping

Simple, straight to the point and solid. Recommended!

Missing apps in the ecosystem

• A great to do app similar to TickTick with solid reminders, good apps on mobile & collaboration.
• Sync solutions for photos & files. Automatically backing up photos, videos & documents so that information is not lost. An alternative for iCloud.
• A great note taking / voice notes app with solid mobile apps and collaboration. Alternative for iCloud notes, simplenote etc..
• Health tracking, ideally with hardware.

The idea is of collecting data points about thyself, in hope of drawing constructive inferences and use that to make positive changes to lifestyle.

Here are some data points I would like to collate and analyze

Data sources

• Movies watched: Trakt
• Books read: Goodreads
• Song listening history: Last.fm
• Run tracking: Strava
• Habits
• Programs used on the computer
• Travel data
• Caffeine intake
• Food and corresponding calories
• Financial Transactions
• Podcasts
• Chat history
• Videos watched
• Videos linked
• Articles read
• Articles liked
• Websites visited
• Articles I would want to refer later
• Notes from books
• Sleep tracking
• Purchasing history
• What do I ask alexa?
• EMail data
• Keystrokes
• Calendar events
• Phone calls
• Investments
• Apps used on phone
• Mood tracking

This is what you need to know to understand & appreciate how watches are made. This is a basic 101 to introduce the ideas behind watch making.

Watches & watch collecting can be an expensive hobby, But it does not have to be. The best place to be is to have watches tied up to significant memories so that the thing on the wrist reminds you of something that makes you happy.

Watch movements

There are broadly speaking three types

• Quartz / Digital
• Mechanical hand wound
• Mechanical Automatic

Quartz

Quartz are technically the advanced, but much more simpler to make in bulk. A quartz crystal vibrates at a particular rate when current is passed. This vibration in turn drives the seconds hand & therefore the time in the watch.

Although this is technically more advanced, since the number of moving parts are very less. This type is much easier to make in bulk. Thus also driving the price down. Most of the cheaper watches are running quartz.

Since this is simply battery driven, accuracy of these watches is also very high.

Mechanical hand wound

In the beginning of watch making, there was no electricity or batteries. Hence people used a loaded spring as a store of energy. And this spring would continuously release power, which would be then directed towards moving gears. This is how mechanical watches work. These are complicated to make and involve a lot of moving parts.

Also, since this is relying on a loaded spring. Depending on the spring, the charge reserve is also variable. Charge reserves usually are anywhere around ~ 30 hours – 80 hours. And after that, they would need to be manually wound and “recharged”.

Since they are mechanical in nature, the time drift is also a problem. These watches could be off by a second or often times by a couple of seconds every day. So, recalibrating the watch once in a while is also important.

Mechanical automatic

Mechanical watches require to be wound manually every once in a while, automatics get rid of this problem by having a loaded weight at the back of the watch. Since the watch will be moved around when its worn, the loaded weight will move back and forth. Which in turn generates potential energy to charge the spring.

The automatic & mechanical watches have definite downsides, but the reason people buy them is in appreciation of the craftsmanship & engineering which goes in making them. My father has a HMT mechanical watch which was bought during his childhood, which still runs like a charm. The fact that these watches are built to last forever is very appealing to a lot of watch enthusiasts.

Watch glass

Broadly classified into a three categories

• Resin: very basic, easily scratched. Very cheap to manufacture.
• Mineral glass: slightly better, scratch resistant to a good extent. Slightly more expensive.
• Sapphire crystal: Extremely scratch resistant & transparent. Try to go for this if your budget permits. Obviously more expensive to maintain. Apparently only diamonds can scratch a sapphire crystal.

Other important notes

• Case diameter & thickness: These tend to be deciding factors when buying a watch. Watch makers usually have a couple of options here. Try them before buying to understand what size fits your wrist size.
• Water resistance: Unless you plan on swimming with your watch, most of the times this is not a massive deal breaker and most watches come with decent water resistance by default. There is a class of watches called the divers watch’s, these are meant to be worn by divers and have a very high water resistance (usually around 200m). If you plan on swimming then get a watch which is certified to be 100m/10 bar/10 ATM.

Respected brands in the industry

Not all brands of the conglomerate are listed, these are just some of my favorites

• Swatch group
  • Tissot
  • Hamilton
  • Omega
  • Rado
• Seiko
  • Seiko
  • Orient
  • Grand Seiko
• Citizen
  • Citizen
  • Bulova
  • Miyota
• Rolex & Tudor
• Casio
• Timex

A lot of the fashion brands like tommy hilfiger, Giorgio Armani etc.. actually source their machinery from Fossil usually. And just have a markup in price because of the branding. If that’s something you enjoy, then it makes sense. Otherwise, it usually makes sense to go for the titans of the industry.

My wish list

I would want to have one of each:

• Dress watch: An open heart automatic for me. Something to wear for formal or special occasions. It needs to look classy and clean.
• Daily driver: Something that is possibly not very expensive & something which looks good when you dress up & dress down.
• Beater: Something along the lines of a G-Shock or a Casio duro. A watch you would wear for sports, treks, etc..

Watches I own or plan on owning:

• Fossil machine
  • The first serious watch I ever bought, bought it after my first job.
  • This has been my daily driver for the longest time.
• Seiko presage automatic watch: blue open heart
  • My dress watch of choice.
  • My first mechanical automatic, bought it as a sign of reaching a particular milestone in my career and life.
  • Always wanted an open heart automatic. When I got to know that a friend was on vacation in Japan, I asked them to get it from there. It happens to be about half the cost in Japan.
• Seiko 5 sports SBSA053
  • Looking forward to add this into the collection. Will be the preferred watch for daily wear if I happen to get this.
• Timex weekender
• Casio Duro

Perfume comes from the french word parfum. “per” meaning “thorough” and “fumus” meaning “smoke”.

Types

Depending on the concentration, they are classified into multiple tiers

• Eua De Toilette (EDT): 5-15% aromatic compounds
• Eue De Parfum (EDP): 15-20% aromatic compounds
• Parfum : 20-30% aromatic compounds

Vocabulary

• Longevity: Describes how long a fragrance lasts
• Projection: Describes how far someone can smell you from
• Sillage: The trail left behind while walking
• Top notes: These are the initial scents you get when you apply. This usually last for around 5-15 minutes.
• Middle notes / heart notes: These are the set of scents which you get in 20-60 minutes
• Base notes: These are the set of scents which lasts from the first hour to around six plus hours
• Decanters: Fragrances are expensive. A good fragrance easily ends up costing 5k+ for a 60ml bottle. You would not want to buy a fragrance you regret. So there are people who import multiple bottles, and then they sell small quantities (10ml, 20ml etc.. ) of expensive fragrances at logical rates (usually). This means that with around 3k INR, you can experiment with 5 fragrances and get a feel for them. Once you decide, you can get a bigger bottle.

To learn

Basics

• Charlier cut
• Swing cut
• Swivel cut (later)
• Revolution cut
• Sybil cut
• Sybil cut 5 face
• Spring flourish
• Dribble flourish
• Thumb fan
• Smear fan
• Table spread
• Scissors cut
• Hotshot cut
• WERM
• Faro shuffle