Conversation on about the blog

Hi there!

A warm greeting from here.

It’s me, Damodar from Physics Log.

First of all, thank you for visiting this blog :)

Let’s start our conversation to introduce this blog.

Q. Your blog looks like a Physics-related blog. Can you explain to me what your blog is about?

A. Exactly, you wonderfully caught the main subject of this blog. To be specific, I like to document things that I learn in my academic life. It includes physics, mathematics, computer science, and many more. But, the main subject of this blog is mostly physics & maths.

Q. How did your blog get started?

A. I love ideas and, am always interested to know how it fits and turns into reality. I believe every theory has a specific idea with an exact meaning. But, while the process of getting knowledge of it, it turns into several views and several views turns into several meanings. Now, it’s really hard to pick which one is pure. So, the concept of blogging came into my mind. Let me answer why?

The main thing that came to my mind is that if I share an article on the topic that I learned then, other peer people will read my articles and will give some feedback which I thought was a wonderful idea. Having good knowledge and ideas matter much to me!

I’ve learned (and currently learning) so many things on the internet, and I believe this is the best way to give back. So, I started this blog.

Q. So, you want to purify your knowledge. Right?

A. Absolutely! Even if I know something, I’ll love to test my knowledge whether it’s correct or not! So, you guys are my real heroes.

Q. What is the most important thing you wish to have in your blog, and why?

A. A nice discussion on the topic that I share! Let me elaborate with a quote by John Seely Brown,

Conversation is a good catalyst for new innovation.

So, what if we have our good times while discussing in the comments and generate new innovative ideas or build our understanding level a bit more? Isn’t that sound interesting?

Q. Agreed! There are lots of Physics blogs on the internet, why should someone care about your blog?

A. Nice question! I suggest you look at other blogs too. I can’t say my blog does the best efforts to help you understand the same subjects that you and I are interested in! Maybe, I have less knowledge about something or I couldn’t able to explain it in a more accessible way.

I believe science should be biased free. So, try to convince yourself with other similar content on other sites. I understand that everyone has limited time and investing your time in my blog is great for me. So, I’ll try to do my best to explain the topics more understandable way.

I love to introduce myself as a learner, not as an expert even though, someday I will!

Q. Would you please explain why did you choose the torus in the logo?

A. In the numerical simulation, it suggests to us the simplest way to introduce a system without a boundary. I chose it because I simply loved the idea. i.e. Periodic Boundary Condition

Q. Why is there a mini-blog called “Thought”? And what is this for?

A. I don’t want to create another new blog (meaning buying a new domain and so on) to fulfill a variety of my needs. So, I decided to post the things in “Thought” that I think are not suitable for the main blog theme. The theme of the main blog is to share articles that I think it’s not worth publishing in the journal, or, fill the gaps in the skipped derivations while I’m learning the physics/maths course, or something I learn new stuff and give my taste through a blog article.

By the way, when I post something in this blog, you will see a green bell icon beside the “Thought” tab on the menu bar. It will show up until the posts are more than one month old.

Please note that all the views and thoughts presented especially in this mini-blog are solely my own, and do not reflect others (even the institutions that I’m currently associated with).

Q. When did you realize you need this mini-blog?

A. That wasn’t a random thought. When I want to share a topic (this post, isn’t related to physics or maths at all), I felt bound by the theme of the main blog. Since then, I felt that I need to have a mini-blog that can accommodate any post which is not related to the main blog theme.

At that time, I use WordPress and was running on Vultr’s virtual private server (VPS). But the problem is that the WordPress theme wants me to follow on how it was implemented. Of course, I can modify it by learning some bits of PHP. But I felt like I don’t want to learn it. Long story short, I moved to Hugo static generator (on 2021/04/24) and I can quickly do whatever things I want to do. This is one of the motivating factors why I’m using Hugo. Because Hugo’s documentation is super complete and most of the things are already implemented there. Believe me, you can do many things even if you’re just starting to learn the Hugo template language.

Now, that post is moved to “Thought”. If you like what I post in there then, please do visit time and again :).

Q. As you said you migrate from WordPress to Hugo. But why?

A. One motivating factor I already mentioned in the previous answer. Another one is I’m tired of maintaining the server. I hosted my blog in the VPS because I was interested to learn some sysadmin things. Initially, it was kind of fun learning it. After some time, issues are piling up. This means I need to fix it. This is how you learn so many things on a certain topic, and you master it. It was fun. But the cost is my limited time to learn these things and fix those issues. During that time, I noticed so many attacks, especially DoS attack which can easily crash my LEMP stack server. So many bad people 😠 or maybe noobs! For that, I wrote a bash script that can restart any of the components of the LEMP stack if it found it’s not running. I felt that I’m now wasting my time on a topic that does not help me in my professional career.

The main motivating factor is this: When I was having a conversation with my senior research fellow. We came to a question what if my blog database gets corrupt and there is no easy way to fix it? This made me worry about my blog because I’ve invested so much time and energy. So, I migrated it before it encounter such a situation.

In Hugo (or any static generator), you write things in markdown language, and you save them. All the files including your contents and the theme are in one root folder. So even if Hugo dies (hope not), you have all your things in one folder that you can migrate to other static generators. Always keep in mind that such static generators have to be fast to convert your content into HTML. Because if you have thousands of posts then, it takes time, right?

Q. What is the purpose of the “Notes” tabs on the menu bar?

A. When I left Nepal, I also left my books (which I thoroughly read), and notes (with detailed calculations, derivations, and explanations) behind. Whenever I need to refresh my memory, I need to ask my family to take pictures of it and send them to me. This is a problem for me, and maybe for most student ex-pats. While I was doing my Master’s at Jagiellonian university in Poland, I decided to write everything on my iPad, notably in Notability; kudos to this app. But, I had a feeling that I should share my notes with others. So, I decided to publish it on the web.

These note tabs will be like a personal archive for physics, maths, and computer science. Or, you may like to call as a personal Wikipedia of mine. I hope you will get benefited along the way I publish things on these webpages.

Q. Do you have any plans for this “Notes” tab?

A. Yes, I have plans. For the moment, I can only tell that when I have teaching duties in the future, I will publish my lecture notes on these web pages in an organized form.

Q.Why do you put notes in webpage format instead of PDF?

A. PDF has less flexibility in the presentation of materials than in webpage. The webpage uses the power of javascript and CSS. For example, animated or interactive plots, present only the output of the code (with the option to hide the code), and many more are only possible in webpage format. I’m not saying that PDF is bad. It’s just that I want to have more flexibility in the presentation of materials. This is the main reason why I’m using webpage format. By the way, I have configured the notes’ webpage in such a way that it generates nice PDFs. Please feel free to save any notes on the notes’ webpage by doing Ctrl+P or Command+P on Mac under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

Q. Why are there “external links” web pages in all three subjects?

A. I initially tried to use the Microsoft Edge collection and bookmarks. But the problem is that things are overcrowded and difficult to organize. So, I decided to put the links (that I frequently or sometimes visit) on these web pages. You can visit those pages by only typing /pel or /mel or /cel after the base URL. Note that /pel means physics external links, and so on.

Q. How often are you planning to post on this blog?

A. I like blogging because I like to share things that I learned from others or by myself. So, I’ll try to post either in the main blog or mini-blog based on the availability of my time. I’ll try to post usually on the weekend depending upon how busy I am.

Q. Why do you ask for support?

A. I do not like ads filling over my website. This causes distraction to the reader. So, I decided to ask for support through my BuyMeACoffee.com page. Your offer helps me to pay the fees for renewing the domain name and some cups of coffee or Nepali Chi·ya for a month. This way I’ll be motivated to share more interesting and helpful content on this website. I hope you guys will support me on the way.

Q. Is there a way to get updates from your blog?
A. Yes, there are two ways to get updates:

1. As I said, I’ll post usually on the weekend depending on how busy I am. So, I strongly suggest visitors visit my blog once every weekend. I think this is a good idea.
2. You can use any RSS feed aggregator to stay updated with this blog. You can easily add this blog RSS via /rss. Please note that most of the feed aggregators don’t support rendering the maths equations. So, I strongly recommend you visit this site to get the fullest feeling of the post.

Updated on 15 Sep 2024