That Was The Week That Was: 5th to 11th April 2023
The one in which I learnt about email security and geared up for travel.
This edition of That Was The Week That Was is going to be shorter than usual. I have to go for a short holiday from tomorrow (will be a well-deserved break after all the busy work that has happened this year) and last week has been an effort to close all the urgent tasks before I leave. That, combined with all the travel anxiety I am experiencing (aisa lag raha hai jaise koi train chhoot rahi hai) has left little energy to dabble in anything else.
One urgent set of tasks came in the form of a client complaining that their business emails weren't getting delivered to personal Gmail accounts. Attempting to fix it led me down a path of trying to understand how SMTP and email delivery work. Eventually, we realised that the problem was occurring because they didn't have a proper SPF or DKIM record set up. It was a good learning experience overall—I now know what SPF, DKIM and DMARC records are for. I will probably end up writing about these soon.
Other Notable Stuff
I helped a friend improve the styling for the website of a Hindustani Music collective that he's a part of. It was the first time I used Squarespace and I hated it like every other website builder I've tried.
A bird pooped on my shirt while I had gone for a run one evening. Some people say that it’s lucky to receive such gifts "from above". Well, it certainly didn’t feel that way. 🤢
I restarted my efforts to write on Medium. I'll probably also cross-post on other platforms like Hashnode, Dev.to and HackerNoon. Hope it goes well. 🤞🏽
Chelsea played decently against Liverpool (Kante played) but couldn't win. Unlucky.
The circus came back to town! Frank Lampard got appointed as Chelsea's interim manager till the end of the season. And his first game back ended in misery against relegation-threatened Wolves. I don't know what the Chelsea management is smoking. 🤷🏽♂️
Random Thoughts
Speaking of circuses 🤡, there seems to be one at every corner these days. Every new story in the news has some farcical element involved. The latest one I noticed was the Twitter vs Substack saga—Substack trying to clone Twitter and allegedly steal its data, Twitter blocking all Substack links in response and then ending up in some weird technical state in the process. Is the world super weird now and the news just reflects it as is or is the news really skewed towards stupidity and people go out of their way to exploit that?
Content Consumed
Film: Pathan
Watched it with my mom over three days during dinnertimes. I had heard enough from my friends to avoid spending extra money to watch it in a theatre, but a decent watch on OTT. Absolutely no logic in any portion of the storyline and too much inspiration drawn from mediocre Hollywood films, but the action sequences and nautanki made it a fun watch overall.Book: The Course of Love by Alain de Botton
Stumbled Upon
Liquid Death, an Austrian company valued at $700 million that sells...water. Liquid Death has somehow managed to turn drinking water into a lifestyle product. 🤯
Last Week in Numbers
16 deep work hours
0 matches won by Chelsea
1 day to go for my holiday. 🏖️
That was the week that was. Not much this time. But the next one should be interesting. 🤘🏽