May May go away.. Oh damn it just did

Having missed the April journal entry, this is the combined April May journal post. To be honest, April wasn’t like March I did end up doing things, but procrastination along with vaccine induced languish in the starting of May, ensured there was no April entry. This is not hopefully going to be an extra long post, primarily because I cannot for the love of god remember what all happened in these two months. So I am going to be trying my best to give as detailed a recollection as possible.

Recapping April May 2021

April and May were eventful, lot of things happening but I really cant place it all chronologically, so I am just going to dump it all here for you. ( I promise to do better next month) Impromptu rides and short day trips There were a couple of short bike rides and impromptu visits to Phillaur to meet my grandmother. Beer, friends, family, ping pong and chocoballs I had cousins over two weekends, there was a lot of day drinking on my friend’s birthday, a couple of hours of ping pong every weekend. There was a weekend wasted when we all had some “special” chocoballs from Malana, it was a good weekend. There was also some bhang pakode in the middle somewhere. Vaccination #Vaccinated Resin, Home improvement We resin-ed the jigsaw puzzle, and a couple of leaves. We made a shed/ structure for grape vines on our terrace

Personal Development

  • Fast API, Semantic UI - I learned fastAPI and semantic in April. FastAPI is a new shiny web framework which handles both synchronous and asynchronous requests, which is ~800X times faster than Flask. Semantic UI is a front end development framework, which uses pre built classes and components which make it easier to build prototypes.
  • Docker, AWS Devops, linux - Not an expert in any of these, however did learn these things which might come in handy to deploy applications and products on scalabale environments
  • Kiteconnect API

Other interests

  • I created a new recipe for vegetarian mushroom burger, which was pretty nice. I a fried mushroom patty with pineapply relish, grape leaves and jalapenos. I also made a vegan taco recipe, which wasn’t that bad, but I am yet to find a proper substitue for cheese

  • We had a completed jigsaw puzzle, now what ? I tried pawning it off to a cousin but that did not work, so either frame it or box it up were the two options, until we found another one- Resin !! So we ended up resin-ing it for an extra day of fun ! We also ended up preserving some leaves.

  • There was a storm one of the weekends, which led to the partial falling of a tree outside our home. While clearing the wreckage I did saw some nice logs, for a starter wood working project. There should be some updates in June

Books/ Audiobooks/ Podcasts

  • 10X Rule (audio book) - Okay this book officially sucks and just a man shouting in my ear. So I am not hearing this anymore.
  • Homo Deus - Read some pages, nearly half done
  • Jorgenson’s Soundbox (podcast) - This podcast is just chapters of Alamanack of Naval Ravikant. I think it is brilliant book where Naval is onto something, about building wealth judgement etc. I would higly reccomend it.

Excercise/ Workout

  • The corona virus induced lockdowns did not help that much however I did start running regularly, I ran 6 2Ks and 3 5Ks in the month of April. I actually started doing what I call the “2 punch man workout” - 5K run, 50 pushups, 50 situps and 50 squats everyday. It is exhausting but fun, but I did hurt my foot in May which did not really help in making it a continuos habit

Projects

  • Project Gecco - Redesigned the entire architecture using fatspi and semantic UI. Looks pretty now, but still ways to go- All categories and ingredients need to be added to the UI, include an option of using the exact ingredients for cooking, major UI tweaks.

  • Project McDuck - My trading account again experienced some ups and downs ( eventually down only). I decided in May to subscribe to the Kiteconnect API, which allows me to trade algorithimically. Naval’s thought resonated with me on this one, that ideally we need to build a scalable model which requires least intervention on my end, especially on weekdays, free my time for other activities. I ended up programming a VWAP strategy that loops over 50-60 stocks, executing buy/ sell orders, placing stoploss/ target orders. I did end up making notional money ~Rs. 300-400 on these algorithmic trades, but I did end up with high transaction costs, with the small quantities and the number of orders that I was placing. (Weird flex but I was algorithimically placing 500-600 orders, which was a nice feeling). In next steps I have to come up with an order management system, which based on some price action will exit my trades before they turn into a loss ( preferably in a smaller timeframe).

Recap

I did warn you that I was not sitting on my ass for two months, I did binge watch a couple of old shows/ anime - Seven deadly sins ain’t that bad, Entourage is always fun. I think I had a good balance of things done as well as some chill time these, hopefully June is going to be similar or stronger.