[


    
    
    {
    "id": 0,
    "url": "/404.html",
    "title": 404,
    "body": "404 Page does not exist!Please use the search bar at the top or visit our homepage!"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 1,
    "url": "/about",
    "title": "Welcome!",
    "body": "Hi, I'm Shirish Pokharel!I go by 'Shirish' which is pronounced Si-Reash. My last name is pronounced Pokharel -- Poe-Kh-Rael.As of September 2024 I work as an Senior Innovation Engineer at Solaria Labs. I enjoy working"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 2,
    "url": "/about/index.html",
    "title": "Welcome!",
    "body": "Hi, I'm Shirish Pokharel!I go by 'Shirish' which is pronounced Si-Reash. My last name is pronounced Pokharel -- Poe-Kh-Rael.As of March 2024 I work as an Innovation Engineer at Solaria Labs. I enjoy working here,"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 3,
    "url": "/categories",
    "title": "Categories",
    "body": ""
    }
    
    

    
        
    
        
    
    ,
    {
    "id": 4,
    "url": "/favorite",
    "title": "best posts",
    "body": "If you don't know where to start, this is where you should be!These are posts I like myself, and have enjoyed writing."
    }
    
    

    
        
    
        
    
        
    
    ,
    {
    "id": 5,
    "url": "/",
    "title": "Home",
    "body": "{% if paginator.page == 1 %} Featured {% assign featured_posts = site.posts | where: \"featured\", true %} {% for post in featured_posts limit:4 %} {{ post.title }} {{ post.excerpt | strip_html | truncate: 220 }}"
    }
    
    

    
        
    
        
    
        
    
        
    
        
    
    ,
    {
    "id": 6,
    "url": "/page2/",
    "title": "Home",
    "body": "{% if paginator.page == 1 %} Featured {% assign featured_posts = site.posts | where: \"featured\", true %} {% for post in featured_posts limit:4 %} {{ post.title }} {{ post.excerpt | strip_html | truncate: 220 }}"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 7,
    "url": "/page3/",
    "title": "Home",
    "body": "{% if paginator.page == 1 %} Featured {% assign featured_posts = site.posts | where: \"featured\", true %} {% for post in featured_posts limit:4 %} {{ post.title }} {{ post.excerpt | strip_html | truncate: 220 }}"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 8,
    "url": "/page4/",
    "title": "Home",
    "body": "{% if paginator.page == 1 %} Featured {% assign featured_posts = site.posts | where: \"featured\", true %} {% for post in featured_posts limit:4 %} {{ post.title }} {{ post.excerpt | strip_html | truncate: 220 }}"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 9,
    "url": "/page5/",
    "title": "Home",
    "body": "{% if paginator.page == 1 %} Featured {% assign featured_posts = site.posts | where: \"featured\", true %} {% for post in featured_posts limit:4 %} {{ post.title }} {{ post.excerpt | strip_html | truncate: 220 }}"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 10,
    "url": "/an-admission",
    "title": "A real boring admission",
    "body": "This will be short. I want to explain why I haven’t been writing recently. It’s about AI and it’s a shameful admission.I started writing (for this site) in early 2022, and put a lot of"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 11,
    "url": "/things-to-do-before-genai",
    "title": "Things to do before starting your big GenAI project",
    "body": "You’ve heard the warnings. You’ve read up on the importance of figuring out your ROI before starting on your journey. The calculations show a positive return on investment for your project. Now what? Where lie"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 12,
    "url": "/intentionality",
    "title": "Effort is for Winners, or why I'm removing ai-generated content",
    "body": "I’m removing AI-generated slop-illustrations from the blog. In this brave new world of genAI, intentionality and process matter more than ever. When everybody can cheat, the exam answers are worthless. What you test for is"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 13,
    "url": "/the-joy-of-simple-physical-work",
    "title": "The joy I found in donating my physical labor",
    "body": "I found great joy in doing simple physical labor and assembly line tasks last month. Mental labor is more draining than you would otherwise think. In donating my physical labor, I connected more strongly to"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 14,
    "url": "/roi-on-genai",
    "title": "What's the ROI on your genAI deployments?",
    "body": "What’s the payback time for your fancy GenAI project? Will the rate of return outdo the stock market? As GenAI becomes less magical fairydust, and more hands-on work, it’s time you looked at the ROI"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 15,
    "url": "/return-to-office",
    "title": "Chitchat and small talk is actually how business gets done",
    "body": "This is a hot take. As much as grumpy engineers are loathe to admit it, physical proximity matters. Companies haven’t fully thought through their RTO implementations, and that’s hurting both sides of the argument.My friend"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 16,
    "url": "/wordiness-is-costly",
    "title": "Lessons from a rambler in recovery",
    "body": "Wordiness is costly. It’s important to keep it short and to the point. Ask me how I know. I’m a rambler in recovery.This quick essay applies to the written word and the spoken word.I tend"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 17,
    "url": "/handmade-art",
    "title": "All art here will be handmade going forward",
    "body": "Announcement. Most of the illustrations in this website were generated by Google’s Gemini AI. It was done when I didn’t know any better. I will eventually be replacing them with my own hand-drawn art.I enjoy"
    }
    
    

    
        
    
    ,
    {
    "id": 18,
    "url": "/stop-the-slop",
    "title": "Posting llm-generated content as your own is hurting you",
    "body": "Seriously, don’t publish that raw ChatGPT’d thinkfluencer piece as your own. Nobody’s falling for it, everybody’s doing it, and you’re cheating yourself.It is mid-December of 2024 and I’m in Nepal. I’ve been spending the past"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 19,
    "url": "/do-good",
    "title": "Do good things, don't worry about scale, don't let systemic issues stop you",
    "body": "This is a lesson that took me a decade to fully ‘get’. You don’t have to worry about the systematic issues to bring change. You can make changes as an individual at a small scale.When"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 20,
    "url": "/burnout",
    "title": "Consistency is better than surge; or how to not burn out",
    "body": "I spent way too much time and effort working on this blog. I forgot consistency mattered over immediate output. I was burnt out. I put a too much effort writing and coding this website that"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 21,
    "url": "/diverse-hobbies",
    "title": "Diverse interests help us understand the world better",
    "body": "Having a diverse set of interests allows you to look at the world in different ways. Pick up a weird hobby, or a new craft. If nothing else, it’ll help you do your job better.From"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 22,
    "url": "/japanese-shrine",
    "title": "Bringing lessons from Japanese temple constructions to software maintenance",
    "body": "Don’t entomb your applications. Make them flexible, be ready to make gradual changes. That way, they won’t need an overhaul from scratch when the time comes.IntroductionThe new software engineer wanted to start our project from"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 23,
    "url": "/tape-and-strings",
    "title": "The duct-tape and strings approach to software is unfairly maligned",
    "body": "The “duct-tape and strings” approach to building software prioritizes functionality and rapid iteration. That comes at the cost of design perfection and technical debt. It stresses the heck out of proponents of careful planning. But"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 24,
    "url": "/review-tinkle-dabble-pillay",
    "title": "Srini Pillay's Tinker Dabble Try: The Power of an Unfocused Mind, a book review",
    "body": "Planned “unfocused” activities can enhance your cognitive toolkit. So says Dr Srini Pillay In “Tinker Dabble Doodle Try: The Power of an Unfocused Mind”. In the book Dr. Pillay challenges the idea that laser-sharp focus"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 25,
    "url": "/ollama-mac",
    "title": "Running large language models (LLM) locally on your Mac using OLLAMA",
    "body": "This is an introduction to Large Language Models (LLMs) and an instruction to running them locally on a Mac using OLLAMA.It was originally designed as a walk-through Lunch & Learn event at Liberty Mutual with"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 26,
    "url": "/kubernetes-time-slice",
    "title": "The story of what it took to setup NVIDIA GPU drivers and time-slicing in our GPU EKS cluster",
    "body": "I spent six months working on a work project that I thought would take two weeks. This essay narrates the adventure in implementing GPU time slicing on our EKS kubernetes cluster. It began as a"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 27,
    "url": "/innovation-trap",
    "title": "How to prioritize profit while supporting innovation",
    "body": "It’s easy to be seduced by the latest ‘innovation’ fads. But it’s important to focus on aligning innovation with core business goals and customer needs. Doing so will protect teams from the innovation trap and"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 28,
    "url": "/infrastructure-training-material",
    "title": "Software infrastructure and databases workshop for interns and new engineers",
    "body": "This is the syllabus I originally designed to train Hack.diversity fellows for a 8-week workship (1 hour weekly classes, 2 hours of expected assignment load) to help them perform well on their internship/co-op interviews. I’ve"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 29,
    "url": "/high-trust-engineering",
    "title": "Creating and leading high-trust engineering teams for success",
    "body": "If you’re starting a team, you want it to be a strong, cohesive group. One that trust all its members. I call such teams ‘high-trust’ teams. In this piece, I expand on what such a"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 30,
    "url": "/evaluating-tech",
    "title": "How to evaluate the right choice of technology for your team",
    "body": "Choosing the right tool or library for software projects can feel like navigating a minefield. This essay will offer a practical framework for evaluating competing technologies. You’ll be able to make better and informed choices"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 31,
    "url": "/engineering-and-fermentation",
    "title": "How my Fermentation Hobby Helps Me as a Software Engineer",
    "body": "For a software engineer, technical expertise is of course of the greatest importance. However, how they approach solving problems can significantly shape how they get their everyday tasks accomplished too. Through a hobby of mine"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 32,
    "url": "/collaborative-ai",
    "title": "LLM's will be the next spellcheck assistant, not the next robotic overlords!",
    "body": "I’ve changed my opinion on genAI and LLM’s a few times now. As technology, politics, and economics around these technologies change, my beliefs have evolved. In this essay I propose that generative AI will be"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 33,
    "url": "/checklist-manifesto",
    "title": "The Checklist Manifesto: A Guide to Better Software Engineering",
    "body": "A review of Atul Gawande’s seminal book ~ The Checklist Manifesto ~ and the lessons it holds for engineers.Atul Gawande’s “The Checklist Manifesto” offers a simple but potent solution for many problems leaders in complex"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 34,
    "url": "/bringing-back-blogger",
    "title": "A blogger's plea (and a proposal) to Google: bring back Blogger!",
    "body": "This essay proposes a plan for revitalization of Google Blogger. I argue for a premium subscription model, trendy features powered by Gemini AI , and a focus on actual user needs, not perceived ones. This"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 35,
    "url": "/ai-future-frontiers",
    "title": "What's next for AI? My predictions for the next 10 years",
    "body": "Explainable AI, optical AI, analog AI, and meta-learning. I predict the culmination of optimizing massive generative models will result generative AI being turned into a commodity, and these four areas will be the next frontiers"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 36,
    "url": "/llms-and-risk",
    "title": "The risk of production, customer-facing LLM's let lose",
    "body": "Readers of technology-adjacent news might remember the recent case where a Canadian passenger, Jake Moffatt, sued Air Canada after its online chatbot misinformed him about bereavement fares, costing him hundreds of dollars? Air Canada ended"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 37,
    "url": "/david-epstein-range",
    "title": "Book review of David Epstein’s Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World",
    "body": "Author David Epstein argues that individuals who embrace diverse experiences and develop a broader range of skills outperform specialists in complex and unpredictable environments. The conclusion flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 38,
    "url": "/learning-to-learn",
    "title": "Book Review: Learning to Learn and the Navigation of Moods by Gloria P. Flores",
    "body": "One can create a mindset highly open and receptive to learning quickly by managing one’s moods. That’s what learning researcher and psychologist Gloria Flores argues in her book Learning to Learn. She argues that only"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 39,
    "url": "/leadership-styles",
    "title": "Understanding what kind of leader you are: a new lens to look at Engineering leadership",
    "body": "Here’s my approach to to help engineering leaders understand themselves. It will allow them leverage their skillsets the best.IntroductionI have been helping a Nepali engineering non-profit shop with Product Management since 2022. When I started,"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 40,
    "url": "/data-engineering-team",
    "title": "How our squad integrated data scientists and software engineers",
    "body": "Our team integrated data scientists and engineers into a single team. We learned important lessons as we tested different team structures and planning regimen. This essay takes us through our journey.Software teams always struggle with"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 41,
    "url": "/kubernetes-upgrade",
    "title": "A tale of the treacherous task of Kubernetes upgrade",
    "body": "This is a tale of unmitigated blast radius in networking. I broke two of our developer environments the second day of joining the infrastructure squad. We discovered several potential issues with our workflow and engineering"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 42,
    "url": "/cdk-vs-terraform",
    "title": "Infrastructure management: from chaos to Cloudformation CDK to confusion",
    "body": "Our team decided to use Amazon’s infrastructure-management tooling versus other available tooling a while back. We are now reconsidering the decision.IntroductionOur team – a small group with self-managed infrastructure within our AWS account – began"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 43,
    "url": "/hoarding-engineer",
    "title": "Don't hoard your engineering players, let them out in the field",
    "body": "Well-run organizations can fall into the trap of ‘hoarding’ their star engineers. They keep them ‘on the bench’, they don’t deploy them for risky, challenging projects. That’s an unnecessary inefficiency. As in sports, allowing your"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 44,
    "url": "/how-i-created-this",
    "title": "Making this blog",
    "body": "This is an old post from a now-deprecated website. I’m keeping it around only for historical preservation reasons. Not much of it is relevant to the website you’re currently reading on.Three months after buying the"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 45,
    "url": "/ideas/tuktuk-kathmandu",
    "title": "Small electric vehicles as public transport in Kathmandu",
    "body": "Wouldn’t it be cool if gas powered cars were replaced by tiny electric vehicles for public transport in Kathmandu? Kathmandu could even get a replacement for the infamously polluting Bikram Tempos, but in EV form!ProblemKathmandu’s"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 46,
    "url": "/ideas/clean-trash-national-park",
    "title": "Getting students to clean national parks",
    "body": "Let’s teach young students leadership, 3d printing, and organizing skills, by having them organize a program to clean National Parks of litter.Project to Reduce Littering in Nepal’s National Parks(Shivapuri, Nagarjun, and other parks)1. Background Litter"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 47,
    "url": "/ideas/bus-consolidation",
    "title": "Combining school bus systems to save costs",
    "body": "If all the private schools in Kathmandu collaborated on a joint school bus system, they’d all save money, and the city will see reduced traffic.ProblemKathmandu’s private schools operate independent bus fleets that cause: Heavy traffic"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 48,
    "url": "/ideas/BNKS-social-innovation",
    "title": "Boarding school can lead in innovative practices",
    "body": "Budhanilkantha school could do more to invest in innovation, and deploying existing innovation orgs it in real-world usecases.VisionTransform BNKS into a hub of creativity and social impact, giving students future‑ready skills and a global outlook.Phase 1"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 49,
    "url": "/ideas/bsfl-muni-trash-mgmt",
    "title": "Kathmandu can turn trash into protein-rich feed",
    "body": "Kathmandu valley could use Black Soldier Fly Larvae to convert organic waste to high-protein insects that can be used as bird or fish feed.Proposal: Using Black Soldier Fly Larvae (BSFL) for Kathmandu’s Organic WasteProblem Kathmandu"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 50,
    "url": "/ideas/caps-of-nepal",
    "title": "Idea to sell collections of caps from all Nepali ethnicities ",
    "body": "What if we offered curated collections of high‑quality traditional caps from across Nepal. Each set would show different ethnic styles and come with explanatory packaging that explains history, cultural significance, and origin…Would be a cool"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 51,
    "url": "/ideas/chhyang-modern",
    "title": "Chhyang making business & brewkit",
    "body": "What might it take to start a chhyang brewkit business in Kathmandu, and would it be legal? Gotta learn the Tradition • Spend time with local brewers and communities to understand chhyang’s history, cultural role,"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 52,
    "url": "/ideas/empowered-migrants",
    "title": "Trying to increase wages for Nepali emigrants",
    "body": "If we could train and unpskill Nepali labor traveling abroad, could we significantly increase the earned income? Could such a potential increase fund the training itself?Summary of the Low‑Skilled Nepali Migrant Upskilling Program Problem Statement"
    }
    
    

    
        
    
    ,
    {
    "id": 53,
    "url": "/ideas/marcha-marketization",
    "title": "Somebody needs to collect and save marcha from all over Nepal",
    "body": "Marcha, or rice starter yeast, is a coloby of mold, yeast and bacteria. Each geographical origin has a unique bio-signature. It’s not a valued commodity in Nepal, but what if we preserved it and commercialized"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 54,
    "url": "/ideas/modern-woodcarving",
    "title": "3D printing and CNC-ing traditional Nepali craft, and training manpower",
    "body": "There’s a potential for Nepali craftsmen and technologists to gain a foot ahead in fabrication of wood and plastic with traditional design. Somebody’s gotta start the ball rolling. I can volunteer with seed fund.Digital Fabrication"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 55,
    "url": "/ideas/municipal-data-transparency",
    "title": "Make Nepali municipalities compete on digital transparency",
    "body": "What if there was a very public ‘competition’ across Nepal’s municipalities on data transparecy based on their websites and other easy-to-measure metrics. The municipalities could be awarded with positive media attentioin and a small amount"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 56,
    "url": "/ideas/research",
    "title": "Can Nepali labs do more outsourced research work for foreign Universities?",
    "body": "A few Nepali organizations are currently doing outsourced research. The scale is at most, a dozen ongoing projects at the most. What if we scaled this up, and made Nepal a center for most low-cost"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 57,
    "url": "/ideas/riverfront-renewal",
    "title": "Can we turn riverfronts in Kathmandu to be a positive experience?",
    "body": "Kathmandu’s rivers stink, and there’s no direct incentive for locals to not dump sewage into the rivers. What if we changed incentive structures so that cleaner rivers led to higher income and better property valuations"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 58,
    "url": "/ideas/rural-residential-tourism",
    "title": "Turning abandoned houses in rural Nepal into bed‑and‑breakfasts",
    "body": "Can we restore abandoned village houses, equip them with basic services (water, electricity, simple furnishings) and let long‑term tourists stay in them. The guests would stay weeks to months, paying a modest rent, and hire"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 59,
    "url": "/ideas/student-clean-project",
    "title": "Can we get students to lead awareness programs for urban canitation?",
    "body": "Littering and a lack of ownership of shared hygeine are big problems with urban sanitation in Kathmandu. Might a city-wide competition among schools and students to keep their communities clean and well-informed change the dynamic?Main"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 60,
    "url": "/ideas/upscaling-nepali-tourism",
    "title": "Can we upscale Nepali tourism without a massive infrastructure spend?",
    "body": "Are there low-lying fruits with tourism upscaling that don’t involve massive and expensive infrastructure programs or marketing campaigns? What might be the cheapest way to get more boogie tourists to come, and spend more?Upscaling Nepali"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 61,
    "url": "/ideas/ward-level-festivals",
    "title": "Local festivals in Kathmandu to increase local consumption and preserve culture",
    "body": "Can we replicate Hadigaun festival, and the similar ones in Bhaktapur/thimi across all the towns of Kathmandu valley? Can we make it so that there’s always some big festival or other going somewhere near the"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 62,
    "url": "/ideas/ecards",
    "title": "Exploring selling animated e-cards for weddings etc.",
    "body": "Would a business that just sell heavily-custom, animated ecards for weddings and other major life events make sense, or has genAI completely destroyed that market? have thought about creating an e-cards company in Nepal. got"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 63,
    "url": "/ideas/ethnic-food-branding",
    "title": "Nepal's Ethnic food idea",
    "body": "This is the best idea I’ve ever had. I’m willing to spend the rest of my life working towards it. I don’t know how to put it at the top of this page, but if"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 64,
    "url": "/ideas/school-for-the-elderly",
    "title": "Day schools for the mobile over-55 in Kathmandu, against loneliness",
    "body": "Can we convince the retired and the elderly to gather together into ‘day schools’? Would it be viable, or are there too many competing social/cultural blockers in either direction? My main goal is to get"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 65,
    "url": "/ideas/service-app",
    "title": "An online service marketplace / platform for domestic Nepali professionals",
    "body": "Can we connect service providers in Nepal with potential Nepali customers abroad and create a thriving marketplace without competing with other major platforms? Or if such a place already exists, can somebody tell me wher"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 66,
    "url": "/ideas/nepali-bands-global",
    "title": "Can Nepali bands go global like Korean bands?",
    "body": "Nepali culture is cool and well-liked. We have talented singers, performers etc. Can we create an industry to sell our performance abroad, without massive investment in marketing and infrastructure like Japanese and Korean governments? Or"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 67,
    "url": "/ideas/just-a-draft",
    "title": "All the blogs I want on this site",
    "body": "This is me ideating on all the cool sections I’d want on this site, and if it’s just a wild fantasy that’ll never be realized.** THIS IS MEANT TO GO IN A SEPARATE SECTION OF"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 68,
    "url": "/ideas/nepali-currency-unfair",
    "title": "The unfairness of Nepali currency pegging",
    "body": "Nepali currency is massively overvalued for it’s relative usage in the global economy. It’s value against the dollar (and by general proxy most other currencies) going down will be good for the local market, and"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 69,
    "url": "/ideas/3d-slipcasting",
    "title": "3D printing for slip casting, Nepali decorations, and parts business idea",
    "body": "A challenge with innovating in mass‑produced pottery is creating new concrete molds and turning them into mass product. The cost of a new mold is high enough that you need to sell hundreds or thousands"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 70,
    "url": "/ideas/cooking-for-dads",
    "title": "Cooking classes for dads, by dads, in Kathmandu",
    "body": "It’s one of my small, sillier ideas. I’m excited about it because it’s easy to implement, and I love food! It also relates to my other idea, which is the school/club for the retired folks"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 71,
    "url": "/ideas/gap-year-project",
    "title": "The Gap Year Project for Kathmandu",
    "body": "Can we organize lightly structured classes around individual discovery, expansion, personal intellectual horizons, adventure, art, craft, history, etc., that high-schoolers don’t usually explore? We would help them apply to foreign universities and also train them"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 72,
    "url": "/ideas/whynepal-aspirations",
    "title": "My leadership and community-building aspirations",
    "body": "How do you start with leadership when you don’t have an organization to lead? How do you build a community when all you have is friend groups. I’m trying to figure out the way ahead.NOTE"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 73,
    "url": "/fermentland/future-chyang-plans",
    "title": "Exciting future plans for my rice wine projects",
    "body": "I want to create an inventory of the fermentation and planting projects for the rest of the summer. I have finally been successful with the tempeh-based starter culture, and that’s been a massive encouragement to"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 74,
    "url": "/fermentland/fermented-rice-vinegar",
    "title": "First Batch of Rice Vinegar Ever!",
    "body": "I accidentally created rice wine vinegar a couple of weeks ago, and it was the first time it happened. How the hell did that happen, and what am I going to do from now? I"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 75,
    "url": "/fermentland/tempeh-2025-experiments",
    "title": "I have finally made some progress on the Tempeh front!",
    "body": "A discussion of my experiments with tempeh, my successes and failures, and future plans.I bought the tempeh starter two or three years ago. It’s possible I bought it before I moved to Seattle, and I"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 76,
    "url": "/fermentland/future-kombucha-plans",
    "title": "Kombucha flavors and fermenting in the winter: Plans for collaboration with my friend and his juicer",
    "body": "The idea is this: I want to get back into fermenting kombucha. It’s a pretty good drink. I haven’t made it in a long while. And I remember in Boston, it was a pretty good"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 77,
    "url": "/fermentland/adapted-water-kefir",
    "title": "My experiments with training milk kefir grains into acting as water kefir tibicos replacement",
    "body": "In this post I want to share one of my smaller long-running experiments with milk kefir grains. This is about my experiments to turn milk kefir grains into consuming only sugar-water. It’s been going for"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 78,
    "url": "/fermentland/corn-grains",
    "title": "Future fermentation plans, and an amazing new way to drink grain wines!",
    "body": "I want to record and share my plans for making wines from novel (to me) grains in the next few months. To recap, I’ve fermented fruits and sweet glutinous rice for a few years now,"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 79,
    "url": "/fermentland/equipments",
    "title": "The equipment I use for my fermentation projects",
    "body": "What they are, how they are used, when they need to be used, alternatives etc. ~10 wide-top food-safe gallon jars air bubbler to help ‘weak’ ferments with oxygenation heating pad and temperature controller, often used"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 80,
    "url": "/fermentland/failed-ferments",
    "title": "Failures and challenging brews from my 8-year journey",
    "body": "proper fruit wines haven’t turned out the best. water kefir is always either overcarbonated or undercarbonated. Have eventually been figuring out what’s up. The results are weird and unexpected! nettle leaves as addons will make"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 81,
    "url": "/fermentland/fruit-wines",
    "title": "My ferment: banana / ginger / carrot wines (fruit wines)",
    "body": "Alcoholic fermentation first began here. I learned to make invert sugars accidentally and saw they were extraordinarily potent. Classic ferments: use a source of sugar (carbon), proteins (not really protein but nitrogen), flavor, add yeast"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 82,
    "url": "/fermentland/future-plans",
    "title": "Grand plans for the future: Where I intend to take my fermentation hobby",
    "body": "join homebrewers association, attend the convention red rice yeast other grain ferments experiment with drinking methods more complex recipe, following old, traditional recipes using fruit and herbal infusions ‘jhhwain khattey’ chicha, maybe?Here are my future"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 83,
    "url": "/fermentland/how-i-ferment",
    "title": "How I got into fermentation OR The beginning of this grand journey",
    "body": "long term investment started with kombucha kanji was so easy I had to just do it loved it because it was an experiment, a hobby, the outcome of which could be drunk good topic of"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 84,
    "url": "/fermentland/kaanji",
    "title": "My ferments: kaanji drink",
    "body": "Indian / South Asian drink, fermented carrots and mustard seeds with optional added sugar, traditionally a bit fizzy and done in the summer, need warm temperature, the sort of Indian Spring / Summer. I tried"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 85,
    "url": "/fermentland/kimchi",
    "title": "My ferments: different kinds of kimchi",
    "body": "Napa cabbage, daikon radish. Fermented vegetables in the Korean style. How is it different from sauerkraut? Using korean recipes, spices and methods. Done cabbage and radish, with pineapple added too. RUb salt on veggies, let"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 86,
    "url": "/fermentland/kinema",
    "title": "My ferments: Kinema",
    "body": "Fermented soy product of South Asia, Limbu and other tribal groups in Eastern Nepal and north-eastern India. Basic solid-state fermentation, cooked soybeans provided alkaline conditions and high humidity and left out in the air for"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 87,
    "url": "/fermentland/kombucha",
    "title": "My ferments: Kombucha",
    "body": "What is kombucha anyway?. Mention SCOBY and pellicle. Takes tea, all kinds (except oily ones) and sugar. Carbon from sugar, nitrogen and minerals from tea. Different ratios of green tea, black tea and sugar can"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 88,
    "url": "/fermentland/lessons-adaptive",
    "title": "Lessons in fermentation: adaptive and hardy creatures",
    "body": "ADAPTIVE Using milk kefir for water kefir Using kefir and kombucha combined rice fermentation molds for millet etc. kombucha adapted to take new sugars after so long. HARDY really hard to destroy a ferment starter,"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 89,
    "url": "/fermentland/milk-kefir",
    "title": "My ferments: Milk Kefir",
    "body": "Milk kefir. What is it? Put the ‘grains’ of starter in cold milk, leave for 24-72, hours, longer means more sour. Milk can ‘break’ if for longer, but it’s not ‘spoiled’, vigorous shaking will reconstitute"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 90,
    "url": "/fermentland/philosophy",
    "title": "My philosophy of fermentation",
    "body": "Why do I do this? How’s it help me? why need a philosophy of fermentation? how does a philosophy thus defined shape everyday tasks? what exactly is my philosophy? let the ecosystems do their work,"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 91,
    "url": "/fermentland/red-rice-yeast",
    "title": "My (future) ferments: Making chinese yeast balls, red rice yeast",
    "body": "What are the species of these two. What is chinese yeast balls? ?What is red rice yeast? What are they ysed for? The recipe is to basically used the starter culture into rice that is"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 92,
    "url": "/fermentland/rice-wine",
    "title": "My ferments: rice wine/beer",
    "body": "Rice beer made in Asia over thousands of years. Use a. oryzae and yeasts (natural or store bought, with their own ferments). Easy. Steam sweet glutionous rice, add rice yeast (it’s mold culture with local"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 93,
    "url": "/fermentland/sauerkraut",
    "title": "My ferments: different kinds of sauerkrauts",
    "body": "Soured veggies, fermented in their own juices. First thing to do is to salt the vegetables to dehydrate them slightly, to break the cell walls, then clean off the salt (otherwise its too salty). Cut"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 94,
    "url": "/fermentland/special-techniques",
    "title": "Special techniques and discoveries in fermentation",
    "body": "Where do I learn the special techniques from? HOw do I validate them? How do I accept/reject them? * add carrots, * add the bubbler, * add whey protein, * use kefir to carbonate, *"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 95,
    "url": "/fermentland/tempeh",
    "title": "My ferments: Tempeh",
    "body": "Ferment from Indonesia, soy-based, uses R ryzope (look it up online), makes solid structure out of soy grains. White mold-like structure, traditionally made inside banana leaves. Consumed in curry form, stew, fried, in sandwiches, and"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 96,
    "url": "/fermentland/tongba",
    "title": "My ferments: Millet wine / tongba",
    "body": "Made by the Limbu people in eastern Nepal, millet grains fermented by mold and amylase enzymes, plus yeast from the air. Ferment it by boiling millet grains, adding mold starter after cooling and putting the"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 97,
    "url": "/fermentland/turong",
    "title": "My ferments: soy-rice ferment (tu'ong)",
    "body": "Inspiration: https://www.travelling-fermenter.com/tuong-banMixture of two of my ferments, already a tradition in Vietnam, compound one what good luck! Fermented rice grains with alcohol taken out, and fermented soybean (kinema, or tempeh) mixed together, brine solution added,"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 98,
    "url": "/fermentland/water-kefir",
    "title": "My ferments: Water kefir",
    "body": "What is water kefir? is it kefir at all? Tibicos. Took me long time to figure out. Needs sugar water, mineral source, and nitrogen source. Mineral + nitrogen source can be fruit juices or veggies,"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 99,
    "url": "/fermentland/yogurt",
    "title": "My ferments: yogurt",
    "body": "Introduction thermophilic ferments, heat seeking ferment. Need temmperatures around 50C, which is hot hot hot. Some exceptions abound. Yogurt, curd, differently, fermented milk in coagulated form,common in South Asian. Heat milk until it’s boiling, let"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 100,
    "url": "/fermentland/zynurgy-chicha-chhyang",
    "title": "That Zymurgy article which changed everything: Chicha Chhyang and a revelation in traditional brewing techniques",
    "body": "  where did I hear about this article? From the ancient and mystical herbal brews book.  Give a high-level summary for the article  advantages, interesting points  refer to other blog"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 101,
    "url": "/aboutme/fun-facts",
    "title": "Fun facts about me",
    "body": "Here are some fun facts about me. I'm building out this website to be of higher professional standards over the coming weeks and months, so enjoy this bit of trivia! If you think this stuff"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 102,
    "url": "/aboutme/mentorship",
    "title": "",
    "body": "Mentorship [1hr]I have mentored fellows from hack diversity 5 years in a row, Helped out 2 year of tufts grad student projects, during covid years.I have provided training workshops for product development, overall career guidance,"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 103,
    "url": "/now",
    "title": "What am I up to this moment?",
    "body": "A lot has happened in my life since the last post! An eventful worklife (with the same team, but new projects), and a very eventful personal life.</br> If you're looking for book recommentations, I *highly*"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 104,
    "url": "/resume",
    "title": "Resume",
    "body": "Shirish PokharelContact Email: hire@shirish.me | Website: shirish.me | GitHub: [github.com/shirish93] Seattle, WAProgramming Languages Python, TypeScript, Golang, Java, JavaScript/ES6, Ansible & Helm templatingSoftware Experience Senior Software Engineer | Solaria Labs (Liberty Mutual Incubator) | Seattle, WA"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 105,
    "url": "/socials",
    "title": "Social media and me",
    "body": "I am currently writing an essay explaining why I’m not on social media, and how this website is my social media. There I discuss my understanding of social media and connectivity, and the direction it"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 106,
    "url": "/aboutme/timeline",
    "title": "A personal timeline of errors and achievements",
    "body": "Hi I’m Shirish and this timeline charts the experiences, both grand and tiny, that have shaped who I am today.2008: Big Interviews, Big Troubles: As student reporter, I interviewed two of Nepal’s most prominent figures:"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 107,
    "url": "/aboutme/walking",
    "title": "",
    "body": "HOBBIES: Walking Write about maybe 1k words on how walking is a great hobby, way to connect with people etc etc.(can we make something out of it? Walking tours? guided walking groups? free walking teams?)"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 108,
    "url": "/failed-projects/blockchain",
    "title": "The great dream, and the betrayal, of Blockchain: lessons from Grad School",
    "body": "During my graduate studies at UMass Amherst in 2017, distributed computing was a hot topic. Blockchain technology, in particular, held so much promise for the future. Ethereum was supposed to be next big thing, Solidity"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 109,
    "url": "/failed-projects/food-research",
    "title": "A food research and development company: foiled by factors far beyond our control",
    "body": "The idea was to research, develop, market, and sell new and novel health food products into the Nepali market. Our target audience was the health-conscious upper-middle class and foreign “returnees” familiar with Western health-food culture."
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 110,
    "url": "/failed-projects/hawaghar",
    "title": "Hawaghar: a failure in community-building",
    "body": "Early to mid-2010s, inspired by Peter Thiel and the “unschooling” concept, I wanted to start a learning space for folks to offer and take unaccredited classes on different skills and topics. I called it Hawaghar.The"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 111,
    "url": "/failed-projects/laptop-carts",
    "title": "Shuttling laptops in carts: foiled by lack of clear and united team vision",
    "body": "My idea was for a local business to purchase dozens of laptops and shuttle them across different community schools within a neighborhood. At the time, laptops were not as affordable or as common as they"
    }
    
    

    
    ,
    {
    "id": 112,
    "url": "/failed-projects/olpc",
    "title": "OLPC project: a failure to understand the limits of technology",
    "body": "You can’t just hand a hundred laptops out without significantly adapting the syllabus and the pedagogy, they told us. We refused to believe our energy and drive wouldn’t be enough. We were wrong.Finding InspirationMy friend"
    }
    
    

]