ISSUE DATED NOVEMBER 8, 2025 BANGALORE, INDIA

AMAN'S GENERAL MISHMASH OF
DESIGN, DATA & CODE

THE DEFINITE, ILLUSTRATED & ANNOTATED ANTHOLOGY OF MY VARIED PASTIMES

tl;dr

Nifty clicky-click stuff,map-alicious eye-candy stuff,snazzy chart-y-chart doodads,arty schmarty stuff,code-y code stuffand if-i-don't-know-it-i'll-learn-it stuff.

Notes

Updated 7 Nov 2025, 09:32 pm IST

Last track: 52km

Web dev?

Data viz?

More?

Available for freelance work from Soon

My newsletter on dataviz and more

Last track: 52km

Heard and seen, here and there

AI Research collaborations

Deforestation in Brazil

Just for fun

Who's Ahead in the Word Games?

Rhea and I play word games daily and we're pretty competitive. Since January 2024, we've tracked every game. These charts show who's been winning more recently.

Wordle

Mini

Connections

Wordle

Mini

Connections

Listening

459. The Suit, Savile Row, and Smartly Dressed Men 459. The Suit, Savile Row, and Smartly Dressed Men

60%

PODCAST LOG

……………………………………………………………………………………

459. The Suit, Savile Row, and Smartly Dressed Men

[███████████░░░░░░░░░] 60%

Part Two: King Leopold II: The First Modern Bastard

[█████████░░░░░░░░░░░] 46%

606. Enoch Powell: Rivers of Blood

[████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░] 21%

Part Two: How Peter Thiel Became the Gravedigger of Democracy

✓ DONE

Part One: How Peter Thiel Became the Gravedigger of Democracy

✓ DONE

Part One: King Leopold II: The First Modern Bastard

✓ DONE

--------------------------------

Vivek and I gave a talk at the IndiaFOSS Open Data Devroom on our work at [Diagram Chasing](https://diagramchasing.fun), covering our design and development philosophies, behind-the-scenes of CBFC Watch and why open-data suffers in India.

I was at DA-IICT (Gandhinagar, India) for the three weeks teaching a module on web design to their M.Des students. I love websites and code, but 'making' websites means something different in 2025. Is it all AI? Is it just UI/UX? IDTS. In my course intro, I wrote, "...what does it mean to learn web design in an age where a cat walking across a keyboard might accidentally 'prompt' a website on ChatGPT? What, you might ask, is the point?" So, this course evolved from being one on learning how to code to broader, more interesting things like the small and indieweb, personal digital gardens, open-source philosophies, and making with code for the sake of having fun. I don't know of many design courses anywhere that include learning Git and web frameworks. Everything from this module is open-source and public, from the slides to student submissions. I've put all their handmade, handcoded work on a showcase site.

In this two-week course for design students at Chitkara University (Chandigarh, India), I taught a range of topics that introduced visual and statistical thinking to the students. We worked with our own personal data, analyzed large datasets through a no-code, visual-programming interface called Orange Data Mining, learnt how to quantify qualitative data through movies and produced two print-posters that brought all these learnings together.