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New Secretariat and Airport: Season of Dither

The sensational announcements have been made. And they have created the sensations that were expected. There is anger in a few places, mockery in others and genuine concern in a few quarters. All of this would have been well enough had there been well-thought-out reasons behind the decisions. Now that the announcements have been made […] The post New Secretariat and Airport: Season of Dither first appeared on Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music .

Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music · EN

The Avadi Story

Last week, I went to the Sir Ramaswami Mudaliar School in Ambattur to judge an elocution competition. The topic was (what else?) ‘If Chennai’s old buildings and streets could speak.’ Driving back, I reflected on how, if the neighbouring area of Avadi could speak, it would scream from the rooftops that its name is not […] The post The Avadi Story first appeared on Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music .

Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music · EN

The Madras Gate at Pondicherry

Each time I drove to Pondicherry, I would resolve to stop just before entering the city and read the inscription at the base of the massive obelisk that stands on the left. But then, you know how it is – the priorities of others in the vehicle invariably take over. In January this year, however, […] The post The Madras Gate at Pondicherry first appeared on Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music .

Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music · EN

Cross-Site Requests

Hello, Internet. I thought about cross-site requests and realised we have both CSRF protection and CORS and it doesn’t make sense from the first glance. It does generally, but I need a thousand words to make it so. CSRF stands for Cross-Site Request Forgery. It was rather popular in the earlier internet but now it’s almost a non-issue thanks to standard prevention mechanisms built into most of popular web frameworks. The forgery is to make user click on a form that will send a cross-site request. The protection is to check that the request didn’t come from a third-party site.

Smagin · EN

I Need your Help to Improve Money Formatting on the Internet

I noticed the other day that a popular ruby library for all things money, Money , formats Serbian Dinar incorrectly. I spent several evenings to learn and describe what the correct formatting would be and how to achieve that. The answer requires croudsourcing, which you probably figured already. TL;DR: Unicode categorised it all; ECMA 402 contains lots of wisdom; if you make a money formatting library, make sure it uses CLDR; if you know about a less popular currency or language more than most, check if CLDR is correct. Update 10.01.2026: most of the PRs I mentioned are merged now, thanks ever

Smagin · EN

Ordinary Life Improvements since 2018

Gwern wrote a post about his ordinary life improvements in 2018. I feel like now is a good time to write a follow-up. Obviously, we’re different people who live in different places and have different habits. What’s better, people in comments live in other places, and have other habits and hobbies and I hope would bring 10x of what I can think about. So, for me, compared to 2018, Laptops are fast and live all day. Smartphones live two days on one charge. Noise cancelling headphones are great. Dishwasher and robot vacuum remain the best quality of life improvements for home. Both bec

Smagin · EN

AI for Personal Finance?

Y Combinator published their latest request for startups , and one area they’d want to see startups from is called AI for Personal Finance. I make a personal finance tool . This post is a brainstorm where AI could enhance it, and the conclusion is it’s better if AI is involved on a higher level. What Personal finance tools as I understand them should be very different for people in different financial situations. E.g. what they say on the YC page about investing and tax optimization usually comes after you have your own contingency fund in place. I make a tool to help get there. It

Smagin · EN

Spacing Over Cards

This post is a rationalisation of “I don’t like cards”. I say that in most cases where cards are used, they don’t need to be used. Specifically, they take space, they let you skip gestalt principles and be lazy and undisciplined, and being so easy to implement they are often used by developers. To multiply the effect, you can put a card into a card, and it seems so hard not to do so. We recognise patterns. This is known for quite some time, specifically Wertheimer in 1923 wrote the paper that everyone cites, where he said just that, and additionally suggested a number o

Smagin · EN

Software on Its Users Side

When I try to pitch my budget app people always say that they have some kind of analytics in their bank app. I then tell that banks and their apps are not on the side of the clients. This article is to explain what I mean by that. Your bank and you have different goals Here is how I imagine a normal person relations with money: you are in charge of your budget, so you need to be in control of it. You also don’t want to stress about it now or later. To achieve this, you should control lifestyle creep, have a contingency fund and a plan of what you’d do when you stop working. If you&

Smagin · EN

Neovim colorscheme doesn't have to be about colors

I have an nvim theme called Boring Tomorrow that highlights different things in and around the code than most of the themes. I have a post about it. I changed the theme recently to use terminal colors instead of colors set in neovim, splitting things I want to highlight from the the colors I like. Incidentally, this brings dark mode switch a problem of the terminal. TL;DR: Terminals support hex colors, it doesn’t mean I should use them In 2026, basically all terminals support all the same colors as browsers. It was an achievement when the standard was made and implemented. Before, it was

Smagin · EN

Popovers

Here is what I know about popovers. Most of popovers are avoidable Or, to put it strongly, popover is the most stupid thing you can do ( in Russian, use browser translation ). Really, putting content into a popover doesn’t require you to think how to put it on the screen. So, with some effort, most of the content could either become their own pages or put into existing pages. I have to mention dickovers here. Surely if you’re making them you know what you’re doing and it has nothing to do with good UX. This part reads as a disclaimer but really the first thing I would do befo

Smagin · EN

Crystal Clear

After more months than I ever would have imagined, I have finally finished taking notes on David Crystal’s The Story of English in 100 Words. As I had expected, this book was an invaluable first step in my research for the analogous book about Spanish that I plan to write. Now I will move on […]

Spanish Linguist · EN

I didn’t forget the paragraph

My (adult) children still remember that when they they were schoolchildren, if they left the house in the morning but ran back a minute later crying “I forgot my lunch!” I would always say, “You didn’t FORGET your lunch, you REMEMBERED your lunch”. This undoubtedly got old after a while. Anyway, today I realized that […]

Spanish Linguist · EN

Much ‘-ado’ about nothing

Yesterday I made good headway in Spanish Word Histories and Mysteries: thirteen words, many of which will be useful grist for the mill of my next book. I’ve titled this post “Much ‑ado about nothing” because the -ado or -ada endings of three of these words — armada, bastinado (from Spanish bastonada), and avocado — […]

Spanish Linguist · EN

Catching some z’s

By now I’m well into the “c” section of Spanish Word Histories and Mysteries. This is decent progress, since in my previous post inspired by this book I was only in the “b’s”. However, my perusal ground to a halt yesterday when I read about the English word cedilla, which is a straight borrowing of […]

Spanish Linguist · EN

Why is rr different from ch and ll?

Yesterday I had a linguistic panic attack at my gym. I always speak Spanish with the staff there, who are are uniformly Latina, and they know that I’m interested in the language. Yesterday one of them asked me why Spanish has more letters than English. This was a mistake on her part, because I immediately […]

Spanish Linguist · EN

Coriander, cilantro, culantro

Slogging through the letter C in Spanish Word Histories and Mysteries and taking notes for my third book, I was interested to learn that a single Greek word, koriandron, gave rise to the English and Spanish words for the three different culinary flavorings pictured below: coriander seeds, which are sold both whole and ground, and […]

Spanish Linguist · EN

I rewrote my previous blog post twice

I love to write. Decades after I learned to read, it still amazes me that the written word can cross miles and millenia to transmit a writer’s thoughts to his or her readers. In high school, a series of excellent teachers taught me that writing is an expression of thinking, so that if you’re having […]

Spanish Linguist · EN

Flávio Bolsonaro

Linguists experience the world differently. For me at least, it’s hard to turn off the part of my brain that is constantly analyzing the words I hear and see around me. A case in point is the news coverage of the recent presidential election in Brazil. As you may know, on October 4 Flávio Bolsonaro, […]

Spanish Linguist · EN

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026: Pordenone Post No 5

Even here at Pordenone, not every film you watch can be a masterpiece. So rest assured that tonight’s gala screening of A Page of Madness (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926), with live benshi narration from Kataoka Ichirō, more than fulfilled the festival’s chef d’oeuvre quotient for the day. It screened in the evening, with more shorts, all … Continue reading Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026: Pordenone Post No 5 →

Silent London · EN

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026: Pordenone Post No 6

I have spent a lot of words on Le Giornate del Cinema Muto so maybe I need some new ones. Conveniently enough, day six of the festival proved a fruitful day for neologisms – right from the start. A couple of minutes past nine in the morning, in fact when I was merrily enjoying the … Continue reading Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026: Pordenone Post No 6 →

Silent London · EN

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026: Pordenone Post No 7

Let’s begin in the logical place, at the very end of the day. Tonight was a gala night in Pordenone, a celebration of some of my favourite women. For sure we had Pola Negri and Gloria Swanson on the big screen, but if you want a really iconic duo, check out our Jean Mitry prize-winners, … Continue reading Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026: Pordenone Post No 7 →

Silent London · EN

Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026: Pordenone Post No 8

Even the most beautiful tram ride eventually comes to a halt. Even the transcontinental railroad has a beginning and an end. It is also true that after eight days of divas, detours, detectives and decadence, the Giornate del Cinema Muto closes its doors for another year. I had a wonderful festival with great films and … Continue reading Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026: Pordenone Post No 8 →

Silent London · EN

Queen Kelly in Belfast this month

Hello! How are you handling the Pordenone comedown? I am mostly answering emails and drinking tea. But I just wanted to pop on here to let you know that the Queen is coming to Belfast. And so am I. The gorgeous new restoration of Queen Kelly (Erich von Stroheim) will screen at the fabulous Queens … Continue reading Queen Kelly in Belfast this month →

Silent London · EN