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Book Review: “The Word for World is Forest” by Ursula K. Le Guin Book Summary This was my first book by Ursula K. Le Guin. She is a very prominent science fiction writer who has written popular books such as the Earthsea series and The Left Hand of Darkness. She was always on my reading list, and I finally got a chance to read one of her books. What attracted me to this book was the unique title: The Word for World Is Forest. This is a poignant title, which is, of course, a phrase from the book. This phrase is spoken by a humanoid species on another planet far from Earth, but in some ways, they are more humane than the actual humans in this story. The humans derogatorily call them “creechies,” a furry, green, little species populating the planet Athshe. Athshe is a world full of trees—a global forest. The Athsheans cohabit the forest and live in harmony with it. On the other hand, humans have come from Earth with the sole objective of clearing the forest and harvesting its lumber. Lumber is a precious resource in the future, as humans have consumed it all on their home world. The story revolves around the conflict over resources: the needs of the local people versus the wants of the outsiders. ...

Book Review: Thinking in Systems by Donella H. Meadows Book Summary Ever since the summer of 2010, I was interested in Systems Thinking. I got the first whiff of the subject in an eye-opener of a course by Prof. L. S. Ganesh. It has been so long that I do not remember the details of that course, but it instilled a curiosity that made me study more, read more, and experiment more. Here is the professor talking about Why Learn Systems Thinking. ...

Book Name: A Canticle for Leibowitz Book Summary The book deals with a journey across time, where the only constants are the Church, war, paranoia, and the disastrous human tendency to make the same mistakes again and again. The book places its emphasis on the challenge of preserving knowledge, understanding it, and repeating the same cycles of history. The scope of the book spans over a thousand years, where human civilization goes from a desolate, religiously oriented, post-nuclear apocalyptic world to a medieval one where tribalism dominates. The world slowly opens its eyes to new avenues of understanding its history from the point of view of science. The ending of the book culminates in a developed world where human civilization has progressed to achieve interstellar travel, yet is still as divided as ever. The book ends with the world wrecked, pushed into apocalypse yet again. How scores of humans navigate this world throughout the eons determines the flow of the story. ...

What is UV? An fast python package manager and project manager (Written in Rust) replaces pip, pyvenv, virtualenv etc. Runs scripts Installs and Manages Python versions Installation UV can be installed using any one of the package managers (homebrew, pacman etc) Commands Initializing a project uv init <project_name> The above command creates a folder named <project_name>. Inside the project name there is a complete project directory including the virtual environment. UV expects you to follow this project structure. Project Structure: . ├── .venv │ ├── bin │ ├── lib │ └── pyvenv.cfg ├── .python-version ├── README.md ├── main.py ├── pyproject.toml └── uv.lock pyproject.toml This file contains the metadata about the project in question, that can either be added manually by editing this file or by running certain commands. Sample file: [project] name = "hello-world" version = "0.1.0" description = "Add your description here" readme = "README.md" dependencies = [] Adding dependencies to the project uv add request #package versions can be specified Removing dependencies from the project uv remove request Running a program and running a script #program uv add flask uv run --flask run -p 3000 #script uv run <python_file_name> Updating the environment uv sync Note: UV does not activate virtual environment using these command. One needs to activate the virtual environment first before running scripts or programs. Creating virtual environment using uv uv venv #creates .venv uv venv <venv_name> #creates virtual environment named venv_name Integration with emacs Install uv-mode: link Instructions UV Mode works automatically once installed. Simply open a Python file in a project that has a .venv directory, and UV Mode will activate the appropriate virtual environment.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) CSS is nothing but the collection of selectors, their properties and values that help in styling the website in a way that is desired. Rules of CSS Rules are the order in which the CSS is applied on a web page. Rule 1: Specificity The more specific the rule, the higher is the priority h, a { y color: green; /*Type selectors (Lowest Specifity)*/ } .text-block{ background-color: yellow; /* class selector, denote by ".", (Medium Specifity)*/ } #text-block{ color: teal; /*id selector, denoted by "#" (Highest Specifity)*/ } /* { color: white; /*Universal selector, No specifity*/ } Rule 2: Inheritance ...