rewrite with zola

config.toml

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+# The URL the site will be built for
+base_url = "https://arjun.ninja"
+
+title = "Aℳ☺︎"
+
+# Whether to automatically compile all Sass files in the sass directory
+compile_sass = false
+
+# Whether to build a search index to be used later on by a JavaScript library
+build_search_index = true
+
+theme = "zola-bearblog"
+
+taxonomies = [
+    { name = "categories", feed = true, render = true},
+    { name = "tags", feed = true, render = true },
+]
+
+[markdown]
+highlight_code = true
+highlight_theme = "dracula"
+render_emoji = true
+smart_punctuation = true
+
+[extra]
+date_format = "%d %b, %Y"
+favicon = "/favicon.png"
+
+
+[[extra.main_menu]]
+name = "/Blog"
+url = "@/blog/_index.md"
+
+
+[[extra.gzz]]
+name = "/Uses"
+url = "@/uses/_index.md"

content/_index.md

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++++
+title="Home"
++++
+
+I'm a full-stack Software Engineer and a platform-agnostic geek. I love working with Python 🐍 & Rust 🦀
+
+Originally from Hyderabad, I'm currently working at [Playbrush](https://www.playbrush.com) in London, helping make oral hygiene fun! 🦷
+
+I enjoy tinkering with software, reading books, photography, cycling, chirps of little birds in the morning, and using the Oxford comma. Sometimes I [blog](/blog),
+albeit not often as I'd like to.
+
+Say hi on [twitter](https://twitter.com/arjundot) or shoot me an [email](mailto:arjunmunji+arjun.ninja@gmail.com?subject=Hi) like it's the 90s.

content/blog/2018-in-review.md

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++++
+title= "2018 In Review"
+date= 2019-01-05
+[taxonomies]
+tags=["personal", "year in review"]
++++
+
+I've always wanted to do an 'year in review' kinda post to help me reflect upon the year passed and see how it has affected me.
+<!-- more -->
+At least it gives me a moment to appreciate all the good that has happened in the past year, and hopefully learn from the mistakes I've made.
+
+
+---
+
+## Work
+
+At the end of 2017, I joined MedleyMed
+[^1], an e-commerce company as a full-stack product engineer. It has been a great learning curve, given that it is my first real job and that I had to learn Python and Django, the stack the product is based on, from scratch.
+
+I immediately fell in love with Python — it is a well designed, easy to understand language that is so flexible that a noob developer such as myself can start building apps in no time, and yet powerful enough to be used to solve complex scientific problems. Django felt quirky in the beginning but as I started using it, I realised how mature and fully featured the framework and its ecosystem is. Apart from these two, I also dipped my toes into PostgreSQL 🤞, wrangled with Git 💪, wept over Vim 😫, made peace with Linux 😇, and mastered VSCode 🤓.
+
+Of course, writing code is only a part of my job. I also had to sit through countless meetings, discussions and demos. I learned how important it is to plan out your work and strategy before writing even a single line of code. I've missed a good number of deadlines thanks to my poor planning. Although some of it can be attributed to my sub-par debugging and backtracking skills.[^2] It is something I want to fix in 2019.
+
+My coworkers have been super supportive and helpful throughout and the structure of our team is such that often times we solve problems in collaborative, not-quite-pair-programming kinda ways. I also got to mentor a new member of the team for a few weeks. It was super fun, although I feel like I could've been more helpful and approachable to my mentee.[^3]
+
+---
+
+## Personal
+
+I took a bunch of bite-sized vacations this year, and it was super fun to break away from work for a few days at a time and return energized. I Collected a ton of happy little memories from all the places — A road trip to Bangalore, a weekend getaway to Pondicherry, a weeklong trip to Delhi, and a day trip to Gulbarga. I realised that I'd been missing out on the fun of travelling and I will make an effort to travel more this year.
+
+Speaking of efforts, I really made an effort to be in touch with my close friends and spend time hanging out with them. I'm only now beginning to understand the value of deep, meaningful friendships and the effort it takes to foster them. My friends still think I'm not trying hard enough so this year it is going to be a quite a challenge 😅.
+
+Another effort I made(am making) is to form habits. One of my overarching goals is to be fluent in German by next year.
+So I'm making it a habit to practice the language for 20 minutes every day before bed.
+Similarly, I'm strictly following the [Pomodoro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique) technique at work since the past few weeks.
+I don't know what it is about the Human mind and incentive based stimuli, but it has worked wonders for my productivity.[^4]
+Also, in October last year, I started learning touch typing on a whim. In about 3 months, now my typing speed is ~60 WPM. I'm proud of myself for that, and I'm more amazed by how quickly our muscles can learn, unlearn, and relearn.
+
+It has not been all sunshine and rainbows for me though. I gained weight and I haven't exercised in more than a year, except for the occasional cycle rides. That is something I look to improve in 2019.
+
+Although I didn't plan on it, I ended up reading a ton of books in the past year. Thanks to my hour-long commute, I have almost a couple of hours every day to pass time. I spend most of that time on my Kindle. I'll probably write another blog post to share what I read.
+
+---
+
+### Other Stuff to look forward to in 2019
+
+- In the last week of December I finally got around to finishing the React Course I purchased in 2017 (😲, yes I know) and I think it **finally** clicked for me. Just three years later, no biggie 😅. I've since been obsessively learning everything I can about React. In fact, I brought this blog back to life just so I could learn Gatsby and remake my blog. So I'm seriously going to use React at work and elsewhere because it is **so** good!
+
+- More books! I can't read enough books.[^5]
+
+- Deliberate choices about time spent in activities, in terms of risk, reward and strength
+
+- Audit relationships regularly, discuss long-term priorities, issues etc.
+
+- Ship more stuff, even if it is just MVPs. "Better done than perfect".
+
+- Understand how the world works [^6]
+
+- Making lots of lists [^7]
+
+- Unlearn and Relearn Math (A man can dream...)
+
+---
+
+[^1]: The product I work on is <https://biz.medleymed.com>. It aims to solve really complex logistical and supply-chain problems in the B2B pharmaceutical industry.
+
+[^3]: I'm still not sure how I feel about this.. I tried to strike a balance between hands off and spoon-feeding, just letting them figure stuff out from clues and pointers. But I do feel guilty idk.
+
+[^2]: I legit spent multiple hours on stupid bugs more times than I'd like to admit
+
+[^4]: Highly recommend this fun little app if you're interested in a Pomodoro app: <https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/bft-bear-focus-timer/id1328806990>
+
+[^5]: <https://twitter.com/ASmallFiction/status/1027790488865107968>
+
+[^6]: <https://twitter.com/jackerhack/status/1040472413039779840>
+
+[^7]: <https://twitter.com/david_perell/status/1071836429058232320>

content/blog/2019-in-review.md

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++++
+title= "2019 In Review"
+date= 2020-04-24
+[taxonomies]
+tags= ["personal", "year in review"]
++++
+
+Continuing my tradition of yearly reviews of well, years, here's a reflection my life in 2019.
+<!-- more -->
+
+> Let us please pretend that this post is not late by almost half a year, okay? Clearly, I was so busy that a lock-down caused by a global pandemic was the only thing that could free me enough to publish this.
+
+😉
+
+---
+
+## Work
+
+I continued to grow as a developer and learned where my interests lie in the vast world of software engineering.
+
+Around the middle of the year though, I grew frustrated with my employer, as did my teammates, for a myriad of reasons. Before I knew it, I [burned out](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_burnout). And so, I quit my job.
+
+A couple of days later, I accepted an offer from Melvault, where I currently work at. It's been 7 months to this date and it's been amazing! Some things I learned so far:
+
+- Navigating through a large, mature codebase for an enterprise product.
+- My debugging skills have vastly improved. By improved I mean I've gone from littering my code with `print('here')`s to actually using all the amazing debugging tools available in modern IDEs.
+- Asking for help. It might seem strange but I've only now learned to ask for help after exhausting all other options to solve a problem.
+- How much you can enjoy your work when you have a supportive manager.
+- I've realized that working from home, with dedicated focus blocks, is the best way for me to be productive. I'm now much better at finishing tasks within deadlines and due dates.
+- I've given up on my fight against [JIRA](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jira_(software)>) and I now realise that it is a necessary evil to get the job done.
+
+---
+
+## Personal
+
+### Some things were good this year:
+
+- 🛹 I bought a skateboard on a whim and learned to ride it in a couple of days!
+- 🏃‍♂️ [I took part in a marathon](https://arjun.ninja/blog/running-a-marathon/) something I've wanted to do since school.
+- ⌨ After learning to type last year, I got into the [wonderful mechanical keyboard community](https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/) and bought my first "clicky keeb" and I love it!
+- 🥰 My personal life and relationships have never been better, the pieces are falling in place for a future I've only dreamt of.
+- 💸 I've gotten serious about long-term investing and the magical power of [compounding](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/compounding.asp).
+- 😴 On average, I'm sleeping better and more consistently and its effects are quite evident on my physical and mental health.[^1]
+- 🚶‍♂️ Walked more this year than I ever did before, for an average of ~7000 steps a day.
+- 👯‍♀️ Spent more time with friends.
+- 💗 Started tracking my heart rate and sleep quality 24/7. It's insightful to see trends over a period of time to reflect on specific situations etc.
+
+### Some were not so good:
+
+- 🚫✈ Did not travel **at all** this year.
+- 🚫📚 Read fewer books this year.
+- 🚫⚛ Wrote less javascript that I would've liked to.
+- 🚫🚀 Did not ship a single project.
+
+### Things I hope to do in 2020:
+
+- 💪 Exercise regularly to build core strength and stamina.
+- 🚀 Ship something, anything!
+- 🌱 Be mindful about what I eat. After all:
+  > there is no such thing as a 'bad' or 'unhealthy' food, just an unhealthy diet. [^2]
+- 🦉 Get serious about learning at least one new language.
+- 📚 Read more books.
+- 🎮 Play more games. I've been missing out on the fun and thrill of video games.
+- ✈ Travel, for my own sanity.
+
+
+---
+
+[^1]: All thanks to this book, Why We Sleep: <https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963>
+
+[^2]: <https://twitter.com/Botanygeek/status/1029653068638572544>

content/blog/_index.md

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++++
+title = "Arjun’s Blog ✍︎"
+sort_by = "date"
+template = "blog.html"
+page_template = "blog-page.html"
++++

content/blog/diskpart-saves-the-day.md

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++++
+title= "DISKPART saves the day"
+date= "2015-11-06"
+[taxonomies]
+tags= ["miscellaneous", "howto"]
++++
+
+Last month, when my laptop's hard disk failed hard, all my work came to a grinding halt. 
+<!-- more -->
+In a desperate
+attempt to restore order to the universe, I installed Ubuntu on it. I used two pen drives; one as a bootable drive and the other to actually store the OS and data.
+
+Now this make-shift setup worked for a week or so before the performance degradation due to
+running an OS out of a pen drive became too much to handle. I ended up assembling a custom PC and joining
+the [#PCMasterRace](https://twitter.com/hashtag/pcmasterrace).
+
+<!-- ![pcmasterrace](./images/Glorious_pc_gaming_master_race_by_sasukekun17-d7mdjvo.jpg) -->
+
+Anyway, when I plugged in the pen drives from before, to my surprise, one of the drives wasn't being recognized by Windows while the other drive showed its capacity as 2MB(!). I, being a noob at such things, thought there was nothing I could do about the drives..
+
+..until I came across `DISKPART` utility after thorough googling.
+
+Here's what I did:
+
+
+```bash
+# run CMD as administrator
+diskpart
+list disk
+select disk 4 #mine was 4
+clean
+create partition primary
+active
+format fs=ntfs quick
+assign
+exit
+
+```

content/blog/how-i-built-sketch.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "How I Built Sketch"
+date: "2017-04-16"
+taxonomies:
+    tags: ["projects", "javascript"]
+---
+
+Over the last week, I built a fun™ and cool™ web app to draw doodles and simple drawings.
+I appropriately named it **Sketch**.
+<!-- more -->
+
+You can check it out here: [https://sketch.arjun.ninja](https://sketch.arjun.ninja)
+
+## Why
+
+I got the idea for Sketch while I was checking out the [article](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Canvas_API) for HTML5 Canvas on MDN.
+Now why was I doing that? Because I recently completed Wes Bos' [JavaScript30](https://javascript30.com) course (great course btw, highly recommend!) and used Canvas element in one of the course lessons.
+I was immediately blown away by its capabilities and potential.
+So to dig deeper, I scoured the internet for resources and found myself on MDN.
+
+## Process
+
+First, I noted down the functionality my app would provide. writing it down helped me focus and build a [Minimum Viable Product](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product).
+
+![User Stories](/images/user-stories.jpg)
+
+I started by building whatever I had learned during the Canvas course.
+With little effort, I had a canvas to draw on and a function to listen to mouse events and translate them to ink on the canvas.
+
+Here's an initial UI mockup:
+
+![UI Mockup](/images/ui-mockup.jpg)
+
+I then added a colour palette, a brush width selector, and a multi-colour brush. The multi-colour brush is my favorite.
+
+<video autoplay loop muted width="100%" preload="auto" playsinline src="/images/sketch-color-selection.mp4"> </video>
+
+
+I then added touch and multi-touch, with the help of MDN's excellent [guide](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Touch_events) to adding touch input to canvases. There was only one feature remaining in my list: Saving sketches as images.
+
+For this, I used the canvas API's `toDataURL()` method to convert the canvas to a base64 encoded string of `image/png` type, which I then set as the `href` in my download link element.
+
+```html
+<a href="#" download="drawing.png" onclick="saveImage()" class="action">
+  Download sketch
+</a>
+```
+
+The `download` attribute triggers a save dialogue in the browser when the link is clicked.
+Unfortunately, this hack was of no use in mobile browsers because apparently mobile browsers don't automatically decode base64 strings.
+
+I said screw it, ship it. And that's how I got to my MVP, two days after I started from scratch.
+I launched the website on GitHub Pages and got good reviews from my cool friends.
+
+**This is v1:**
+
+<video autoplay loop muted width="100%" preload="auto" playsinline src="/images/sketch-v1.mp4"></video>
+
+
+<!-- But the lack of mobile save option still bugged me.
+Meanwhile, I thought of another feature:
+**A unique share URL for every sketch**.
+
+## Sketch v2
+
+*To be continued...* -->

content/blog/jadoo.md

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+---
+title: Jadoo
+date: "2016-12-15"
+taxonomies:
+    tags: ["projects", "javascript"]
+---
+
+When I saw *[Koi Mil Gaya](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koi..._Mil_Gaya)* for the first time in 2003, it quickly became one of my favourite movies.
+<!-- more -->
+It had elements such as an underdog to achiever storyline, aliens, friendship, and comedy.
+The combination of all these, along with Hrithik Roshan's brilliant performance won me over.
+I hadn't yet seen *E.T.* then and this movie was the closest my 8 year old self had come to alien sci-fi adventure.
+
+Over the years, among other things, the distinct theme music of the film stuck with me as did the computer interface used in the movie to communicate with aliens.
+
+So as a tribute, I combined both of those to create **[Jadoo](http://arjun.ninja/jadoo)**, a web app that attempts to replicate the interface from the film. Works only in Chrome/Opera now. Try it with sound!
+
+Check out the source [here](https://github.com/arjunnn/jadoo).
+
+<a href="http://arjun.ninja/jadoo">![jadoo screenshot](/images/jadoo.png)</a>
+
+