On the art, craft, and aesthetics of technical writing — Writing about technology can be challenging, especially because the technology space evolves so fast; it is difficult to catch up to the happenings in one’s own little technology domain, let alone the whole caboodle. But that shouldn’t stop you either from reading or writing. Instead, it should prompt you to…

A brief introduction to databases that were built on Postgres — Open-source databases to rule ’em all Database technology has seen tremendous innovation since its inception. From the first database built by IBM in the 1960s, we’ve seen a constant change in how we store, arrange, process, access, and analyze data within a database. The 1970s saw an uptick in database usage with the advancement of computers…

Using QuestDB to find missing data — Introduction Whether you are just starting to work with a specific data set or monitoring activities and reports based on existing data sets, one of the first things you need to consider is the quality of the data you’re dealing with. Continuity is one of the most critical factors in gauging…

On Zakir Hussain winning the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy and the Padma Vibhushan — Few musicians have been responsible for putting Indian classical music, especially the music from the northern parts of India, on the world map. In chronological order, the most prominent names that come to mind are Ravi Shankar, Allah Rakha, Salamat & Nazakat Ali Khan, Dagar Brothers, Zakir Hussain, and Nusrat…

Vijay Sardeshmukh’s marvellous rendition of the beautiful raag — After I stumbled upon Vijay Sardeshmukh’s Kalyan Darshan session, I got interested in his style of rendition, which, although it has significant imprints of Kumar Gandharva, also has a unique form and element to it. I started searching for more. His disciples and kids have uploaded several of his recordings…

The art of the drut teen taal tappa — The subgenres of north Indian classical music or Hindustani classical music look very similar from far away but require completely different training, both in terms of tayyari and also in terms of understanding the subgenre form. For instance, despite all the lyrics being in Punjabi, as it has its roots…

Jayateerth Mevundi’s timeless rendition of the famous pentatonic raag — This new year started by listening to Boris Moskvitin’s piano recital in Moscow, where he played something like Bairagi Bhairav for about twenty-odd minutes. When I was just introduced to Indian classical music, I thought it would be very difficult to play raags on the piano. In 2012, when I…

A few scattered thoughts about Jaun Elia — I’ve been meaning to write about Jaun for many years. I’ve consumed his poetry, or instead, I have been consumed, in a good way, by his poetry in a way that is difficult to put into words. There’s a thing about Jaun that is true of very few poets, musicians…

A brief introduction to various types of data workloads — Introduction Databases are storage and processing products. They take data in from applications and store them. When you issue queries, database engines process them and give you back the output of your queries. The kinds of data captured by applications and how it is used by their users vary tremendously. Early…