https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/Recent content in Writings on Amal BansodeHugo -- gohugo.ioen-usTue, 13 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2026-01-13-donkey-days/Tue, 13 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2026-01-13-donkey-days/When my family explained the Marathi idiom Gaddhe Panchvishi (गद्धे पंचविशी) to me a few months ago, I couldn’t help but laugh and feel a little exposed. Roughly translating to “donkey-like behavior at age 25”, it describes a supposed tendency for 25-year old men to be headstrong, careless, and impulsive in their decision-making — like a wild donkey kicking and braying its way through life. The endearing idiom sounds like a widely quoted pop-science bit about the human brain’s prefrontal cortex not being fully developed until age 25.https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2025-12-24-rust-the-process/Wed, 24 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2025-12-24-rust-the-process/I’ve been trying to learn Rust for years now, and I finally understand enough to (t)rust the process. Or maybe I should say, <T>rust the process. My efforts began in college through reading The Rust Programming Language book, but I was rarely able to proceed past a hump around chapter 4. I think my emphasis on simply reading the book was a large reason for my failures. It’s like when I believed I could ace Math exams by RTFM-ing and skipping practice problems.https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2025-10-29-japan/Wed, 29 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2025-10-29-japan/After months of influencing from friends, family, and social media, I finally made the quintessential tech-guy Japan pilgrimage. I was largely motivated by food, having been sufficiently wowed by the Gyukatsu at a previous layover in NRT and being very influenced by konbini store snack reels. Beyond food, I enjoyed the order of the public transit system, the courteous people, and the many sights to see. As I was researching things to do during my trip, I made peace with the fact that I wouldn’t be able to visit every attraction, and that was okay.https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-10-06-the-who-hits-back/Thu, 06 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-10-06-the-who-hits-back/That’s what I explained to a friend in jest after I told them I was going to a concert — that I wasn’t just quipping “the who?” in response to their repeated questioning. Watching one of my favorite bands in my first real concert is all I could’ve asked for. I have faint recollections of being taken to a few concerts as a kid, but those don’t really count do they?https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-05-22-return-to-fiction/Sun, 22 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-05-22-return-to-fiction/My relationship with voluntary book-reading has gotten pretty tumultuous over the last few years. Through high school and college, most of my reading has been textbooks, articles, and code — all usually serving some kind of extrinsic purpose. The few books I read on my own volition each year were down-to-earth “boring” non-fiction: Quiet, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Factfulness, for example. I began this year on a similar footing (albeit probably setting a new personal reading record in college) by reading Liftoff, Atomic Habits, and Algorithms to Live By.https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-04-24-murphys-law-metropolis/Sun, 24 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-04-24-murphys-law-metropolis/A few weeks ago I found myself writing a note to self about how many happenings in life the last few months seemed like Murphy’s Law at play. I went on to note how I always feel suspicious at the end of a “good week”, since things are almost always too good to be true. Surely life can’t be this easy right? What’s the plotline for this episode? However, two things happened in the weeks that followed that may have increased my appreciation for Murphy’s Law.https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-03-31-atomic-habits/Thu, 31 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-03-31-atomic-habits/Today Me isn’t really the type of person who flocks to productivity gurus or “self-help” style media. Sometimes I think it’s a good thing for my mental health, but other times I’ll also question if it’s stopping me from truly becoming a “better person”. Nonetheless, I felt pretty intrigued after hearing about James Clear’s book Atomic Habits last year. The byline on the cover reads “an easy & proven way to build good habits & break bad ones”.https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-03-22-modular-polynomials/Tue, 22 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-03-22-modular-polynomials/I’ve spent the last two and a half years working with the Michigan Solar Car Team, where we design, build, and test the world’s fastest and most efficient solar-powered racecars. The strategy/software division I work with develops simulation models, optimizations, and other software products to aid engineering divisions and determine our on-race strategy. I’ll try to write about the fun things we work with at some point! Solar car strategy is pretty close to being an NP-Hard problem.https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-03-18-in-person-exams-comeback/Fri, 18 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-03-18-in-person-exams-comeback/It was around this time two years ago that I took my last in-person exam in college. Since then we’ve wrangled with various methods of test administration: proctoring via Zoom, open-note tests, 24-hour windows, and more. These new methods brought their own slew of quirks too: buggy software losing students’ answers, cheating increasing 200%, students being forced to install spyware that monitors their exam environment, to name a few. However, as the United States re-declares its victory over the pandemic and shifts the goalposts, college has also started returning to its old ways.https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-03-11-offers-of-credit-spam/Fri, 11 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-03-11-offers-of-credit-spam/I’ve noticed a recent uptick in the number of USPS Informed Delivery emails I’m receiving (and of course, the increased mail to accompany it). Contrary to my hopes that they’re letters from secret admirers, I seem to be receiving more marketing offers now. It turns out that my credit score has finally risen past the good threshold, and our corporate overlords have taken note of this. Yay for personal finance I guess?https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-03-03-hugo-migration/Thu, 03 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-03-03-hugo-migration/I’ve owned amalbansode.com for about three years now, and have held some form of Internet real estate since the early 2010s. I think some of my early attempts at building websites have been lost to the business cycle (honestly, thank goodness). If you’re wondering what those looked like, think: <marquee></marquee>. I also hopped around on Blogger and Wordpress over the years, and have taken down those blogs. Don’t worry, I backed up my articles so I can look back and cringe at my 14 year old self’s work.https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-02-24-a-familiar-feeling/Thu, 24 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-02-24-a-familiar-feeling/It’s happening again. Michigan is heading to spring break. And the world is on fire. Two Years Ago Here’s Wikipedia’s international event summary for February 24, 2020. During my second semester of college, I had a decent routine going. I’d head to the gym 4-5 evenings a week, and then recover and grab dinner at our dining hall. I’d generally have dinner by myself and use the time to catch up on news via NPR and the AP.https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-02-13-adulting-dishes/Sun, 13 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-02-13-adulting-dishes/It’s been about two years since I began adulting. Things like acclimatizing (or acclimating? who designed this language??!) myself to millions of new brand names for every household product, eventually realizing that Clorox™ wipes are the one-size-fits-all solution to cleaning most surfaces, and distinguishing between a million varities of bread and milk are some of the key experiences I’d list in my adulting resume. I’d received some warnings about the abundance of choices at American stores, so this wasn’t entirely unexpected.https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-01-16-spirit-reduced-emissions/Sun, 16 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-01-16-spirit-reduced-emissions/In my previous blog, I described my experience flying Spirit Airlines for the first time. Spoiler: it wasn’t that bad, and I honestly will likely do it again. I ended that on a note about how I suspect Spirit may actually be emitting less harmful stuff by way of flying lean and reducing its mass load. Below I detail some napkin math that I did on board the plane (well not literally, because they didn’t even give us napkins) and while writing the previous blog.https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-01-15-spirit-airlines-not-bad/Sat, 15 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-01-15-spirit-airlines-not-bad/A few months ago my family and I found ourselves trying to plan a trip to southern California during my college’s winter break. I couldn’t help but feel defeated as I looked at flight prices for the late-December period. At the end of my hunt, it seemed like the cheapest fare through Spirit Airlines beat other airlines by a factor of 3-4x. After adding in Spirit’s fees for baggage beyond a single “personal item”, that factor reduced to about 2x.https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-01-09-annual-tracking/Sun, 09 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2022-01-09-annual-tracking/The turn of every year is an interesting time, despite my sometimes laid-back or cynical attitude of “so what’s the big deal”. The thing I associate most with the new year is new year’s resolutions, the idea of “new year, new me”. To be honest, I probably haven’t made any concrete new year’s resolutions since my early teenage years. I think I gave up since I recognized my behavioral inertia back then and thought there wasn’t much I could do to counter it.https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2020-08-05-smoothie-of-social-media-apps/Wed, 05 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2020-08-05-smoothie-of-social-media-apps/If you are a Medium member, support me by reading my story here instead. About a decade ago, Instagram piloted its photo-based mobile check-in app. The app’s launch was a success — it took less than a quarter of a year for the app to gain one million users. The app’s emphasis on sharing images complemented the growth in the popularity of camera phones. Instagram became increasingly popular and threatened Facebook’s dominance in the social media space.https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2020-05-08-new-phase/Fri, 08 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000https://www.amalbansode.com/writing/2020-05-08-new-phase/It’s been a while since I last published an article. The truth is that life has gotten pretty busy since I moved to college. A new environment, new friends, new jobs, and more. Anyway, I have been thinking about a lot of things the past year. I’ve managed to save some thoughts, while others have faced worse fates. Either way, I intend on sharing these at some point. I recently read a thread on Hacker News about how online blogs are seemingly “dead” now.