A life ordinary by Amit Sarkar - Issue #1

Hello friends,

Welcome to my very first newsletter.

Newsletters are the new form of blogging where instead of you coming to the blog, the blog comes to you.

Every week I will aim to publish my newsletter to talk about things I have done, things I have read and the things that I have watched.

The idea behind this newsletter is to talk about my ordinary life in the hope that you might find something interesting in it.

Over the week, I read a lot of articles from various sources like GSMArena, Engadget, Hacker News, How To Geek, etc. I also watch a lot of videos on YouTube from various channels like MKBHD, LTT, Mrwhosetheboss, Vox, Wendover, Bloomberg Quicktake: Originals and many more.

I also co-host a tech podcast, creating my first course on Udemy on software test automation, work as a Software Test Manager in a Unicorn company and am a father to our wonderful son.

🖥️ Technology

In the technology sector we use a lot of terminologies but we rarely know whether we should use them or not. Does it hurt someone or not?

The Office of Information Technology (OIT) at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) published an Inclusive IT Language Guide which should guide your terminology choices in your documentation, codebase, and discussions.

I found it very eye-opening and have made changes to the way I speak or write about technology.

🏃 Running

Last Saturday I ran my 29th Parkrun with my friend who was running his 50th. Parkrun is a free, weekly, community event hosted all across the world. Every Saturday people run 5 kms in their local park with people from all age groups.

Its completely run by volunteers and is a great way to start moving, meet some very interesting people and also enjoy your local park. There is no pressure to race. And since its a community event people can run/jog/walk at their own pace.

I would highly encourage you to participate in these weekly runs and reap the benefits.

🎙️ Podcast

I also posted my latest podcast on Biotech with Rinat. In this episode we talk about how technology is changing the biology of organisms. We cover many areas from bio hacking to gene editing to GMOs. We talk about various bio technologies, try to explain them and provide examples.

One of the things I enjoy about the podcast form is that it lets us talk naturally about something, that we would usually do when we talk to people, but record it for posterity. Imagine my great grandson listening to my podcast long after I am gone, even though the technology I talk about would most likely be outdated 😂 by then.

📚 Book

I also finished reading the book The Almanack of Naval Ravikant and have been deeply inspired by it. The book is available for free, if you want to read it in a digital format, on the website.

The book covers a lot of things from building wealth and judgement to learning happiness, saving yourself and the philosophy of life.

A quote that has moved me deeply from the book is

We all have very limited time on this planet. What we do with our time will define our lives.

To add further to the above quote, this article by Tim Urban from Wait but Why gives a graphical representation of our finite time on Earth. Sometimes life seems really short, and other times it seems impossibly long. But this article helps to emphasize that it’s most certainly finite. So let's make the most of it.

🎬 Movie Trailer

The most exciting trailer I saw this week is from the upcoming Marvel film on Thor. I really enjoyed the latest Spiderman film and can't wait for this new adventure of Thor.

Spoiler Alert - There is a female Thor.

Enjoy your week, and the bank holiday for people who live in the UK.