About Pradeep
👋 Hi, I'm Pradeep, and welcome to my blog!
Everywhere on the Internet, I describe myself as an indie maker, solopreneur, travel enthusiast, and aspiring writer. I believe it encapsulates all my main interests.
Most of the time, you will find me hunched over my laptop, reading a book, or taking a walk. If I am walking alone, chances are, I'm thinking about a problem that I'm trying to solve or listening to a podcast.
You are welcome to say "hi" if you run into me offline. Extra points if you have an interesting story or two: I'll buy you a kaapi 😛
Reading
You can find me on Goodreads if that's your jam. This is what I'm reading now.
I used to be a big fiction guy back in school, and had my name on the library card for most books that fit my age. I dropped off on reading towards the end of school, though, and have been trying to get back in the habit recently. These days, I find myself almost exclusively reading non-fiction and growth (please do not call it "self-help" 🙏).
Podcasts
I started listening to podcasts very late (2019), partly because I didn't know they existed (🙈). The main value I get from them over books, is that I can listen to them when doing other things like walking or commuting.
I started with the Seeking Wisdompodcast from uncles DC & DG (my manager is a big fan, and introduced me to podcasts with this). I loved it so much that I ended up listening to every episode from start to finish. I still go back and listen to a few episodes from time to time. If you want to get started, this is an excellent podcast to start with! Start with the oldest episode.
These days, I prefer stories of products and people, and listen to podcasts like How I Built This and Side Hustle Show. I switch them up with whatever is onBlinkist that day, if it sounds interesting.
Setup
I work with / on computers for a living. My personal machine used to be a clunky Lenovo G510 that saw much wear and tear. After I quit my job, I upgraded to a 14-inch Macbook Pro M1 Max with 32 gigs of RAM and 1TB of storage. And the thing I love most about it? I can do whatever I want on it, and it doesn't even begin to break a sweat!
I don't have a special desk setup. Most of the time, I use an old table and a plastic chair, but I hope to upgrade some day.
My mobile phone is a OnePlus 6T (8GB+128GB) running the stock setup with dark theme. I use Google Keep, Google Docs, Trello and Notion for note-taking and organising my ideas, Splitwise to share expenses with room-mates, Slack for work communication, Stitcher for podcasts, and Duolingo for learning Hindi.
Languages
I am a native Tamil speaker, but have near-native proficiency in English as well. I can understand a bit of Malayalam and Hindi. I'm trying to learn Hindi so that I'll be able to speak it some day.
Python is my go-to computer language for fun and work. I'm slowly getting into Javascript with React and Gatsby (this site is powered by Gatsby).