I've been getting bookbinding lately on a whim. My computers are full of ebooks but my home is scarce on real books. Ordering books online is playing roulette -- some of the counterfeits being sold are unreadable. The good news about bookbinding is, aside from the initial investment for a printer, books are very cheap to make! And a book takes less time to make than it does to read.

the state of my workplace, after being vandalized by a naughty boy

Cardboard, paper, thread, glue, and fabric are all quite cheap. It costs me under $5 to make a book. Against the admonishment of "frugal" friends, I purchased a Brother DCP-L2540DW laser printer. It prints good quality prints and refills are relatively affordable. I am quite blessed to live in a place where all the physical components of books are dirt cheap, and the local fabric, especially, is quite beautiful.

My first "casebound" book was the Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. The cover is quite luxurious and feels good to hold. The inside is a collection of "signatures" (little booklets); I poke holes through the spines of the booklets before sewing them together. Then, I glue the spine with a small piece of cardstock on it; while that dries, I glue cardboard panels the size of the spine and each cover to fabric with 0.7mm spacers to act as a "hinge." Glue it all together and it's complete.

...But the inside is a crappy PDF, oh no!

I got on top of this issue by working out a process to push Epub files through LaTeX to imposed pages, so the insides of my newer books are beautiful and look as books should. Shout out to Pandoc!

How I turn epub to html to markdown to LaTeX to PDF:

https://wiki.gikopoi.com/o/BookPrinting.4

This process works quite well with the collection on StandardEbooks but it has also worked well on commercially available Epubs.

My first book: Pale Fire, bound in a cardboard box that once contained Mentos candy.

There are many planners being sold across the internet. Some are very cute. Many are overpriced. None of them are simple enough for me, so I made my own. This is not a planner intended to map every hour of every day, but focuses on life by the weeks and months.

The annoying thing about making a planner is that there are many days, weeks, and months in a year; to get around this, I used HTML and CSS to trivially generate printable pages. I wanted a minimal planner using A5 pages so it wasn't too big and I could print it as a booklet on standard A4 page size.

The planner opens to a spread of the 12 months of the year. Each month gets a box that's about 7cm x 7cm (2.75" x 2.75"). Enough space to jot down really important goals and reminders.

Next, each month begins with its own spread. This is meant to give an overview of the month -- important notes -- but not go into crazy depth. The width of each column is 7cm again (2.75") but the seperation between dates is only hinted at. There's about 2.6cm per day (~ 1") to write in. And there's a little extra space at the end of each month -- even more in February!

The meat of the planner is the weekly view. Each day gets about 7cm x 10cm (2.75" x 4") which gives plenty of space to keep notes for each day. There's an extra space for each week that includes the ISO week number. The bonus space may be useful for reflections or goals for the week.

I'll be printing this out soon and see how useful it is. As someone who's never been a fanatical journaller, I think this should be fine for logging my various experiments and writing down brief notes about my life. What do you think of this journal? I would love to hear your feedback !

Estimated pages for a year: 53 weeks + 12 months + 1 year + 1 cover

= 67 spreads = 34 sheets of paper (cheap to print)

• Source: https://github.com/153/planner
• 2026 PDF: https://github.com/153/planner/blob/main/2026.html.pdf

I've long been a fan of board games. They're a great way to stay entertained and develop mental skills while socializing with friends. The name "mental sports" is kind of a tacky name, but it's kind of a good one, too. Lately, I have been revisiting a classic, Mahjong, and exploring a new-to-me game series, the Gipf project. The purchase of a special games table has been tremendous in reviving my social board game interest. When not in use, it conveniently lives under my couch, but is easily transported.

Dimensions: 86cm x 86cm, 72cm tall - 34" x 34" -- perfect for Mahjong and card games, but also quite suitable for tournament size chess boards (51cm/20"), luxury Backgammon sets (53cm/21"), or "universal" GIPF boards (46cm/18").

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As of May 1st, 2025, I've now been here for 3 years.

I'm not sure what exactly I expected before coming. For most of our long-distance relationship, my wife lived deep in the jungle, several hours drive away from a not-great city. So I saw a side of the world very different from my home, but also different from where I live now.

I came here during lockdown. Spent 2 weeks in Jakarta. I got the feeling that even if things weren't locked down, it's not the kind of tourist destination Seoul or New York City may be. Large, dirty, gray water sewers ran along the streets, constant traffic jams, heavy smog. The only things that really were appealing were the malls but they sold the same kinds of things you can find at every mall in the world.

Converted to Islam over Whatsapp, got mailed a certificate, brought that to the department of religious affairs, got married, got a marriage visa. The bureacracy was really straightforward and easy. The first Islamic wedding I attended was my own. I don't really have strong memories of it aside from thinking the ritual was a little strange, but it really made my wife's parents happy. I had to repeat the Arabic phrase three times before the priest accepted the marriage declaration as valid -- Arabic is not my strong suit.

My life is pretty comfortable. There are frequent blackouts and my city is underdeveloped, but I've made a ton of great friends. My city is safe. People are very friendly and laid back.

If you're tired of life in the West, you may enjoy life here. The language is pretty easy to pick up. Adjusting to a less developed city hasn't been hard for me -- the only thing I still struggle with on a regular basis is the oppressive heat.

Here's hoping the next 3 years are great, too...