• I have been building many of my projects in public for a long time, but not all my work can be public, and not every team I work with works that way. Still, I’ve found a pattern that works for most teams and for me: something like open office hours, except we’re all working. I call it Katte – The Open Desk. We meet online at a specific time, in one or two hour blocks, ideally with 2 to 8 people, and work together or separately, talking only when it helps. It’s mainly meant for teams, but it can also work with strangers as a form of accountability. This week I documented it.
• A friend, Bharathi, at NPTEL/CODE turned 50. It seems like she is just getting started, even after achieving so much. She is such an inspiration to me.
• I attended a lecture by Peggy Mohan at APU today. It was brilliant and also fun. She is such a brilliant storyteller.
• We are making great progress at Dristi V2. The last two weeks were spent designing. It’s been build and build week. The next few weeks will be the same, I guess. Once it reaches some stage, I will share more details.
• Uthara and Dave from BuzzWomen wrote a book, The Buzz Way, covering how they work. Congratulations, Uthara and Dave.
• Tomorrow, October 10th, is a big deal; I am guessing based on how far the Delhi police will go to prevent the peaceful protests. If they were this proactive in general, Delhi wouldn’t have become the crime capital. I am very optimistic about the protests; they are going to be large, effective, and, above all, peaceful.
• NCF is 30 years old now. They are celebrating with lots of programming; attend if you can. Aleph Alpha has built Savanna, a model factory that implements the entire training pipeline in code so that models can be built collaboratively. They have also released their open-weights model, Kolibri. I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks interesting. I came across RoadStr, decentralized road-event reporting using Nostr and MeshCore. Web and Android. It’s very close to the project I had proposed at FOSSHack/2026. I am trying it in a browser now. I will definitely try it on OSMAnd using their plugin. I need to see if I can collect historical data for a specific location for research. Otherwise, it looks great. I am also studying and exploring the Reticulum Network. It seems useful and stable, especially when the bandwidth needs are small.

• Sunday, I went to FOSSIndia/2026. I met a bunch of people, did my BoF session on microgrants, and then also got Cardputer Adv (with Mesthstatic) from Kiran. Also met lots of other folks: Tanvi, Adhavan, Vivek, Aman, Rukmini, Arun, Noopur, Padmini, Pranesh etc. I have missed mentioning a bunch of people here. Sorry about that. But I might write different blog posts just covering the people and projects at FOSSIndia/2026.
• Tuesday, I left for Goa for a work offsite with Pucar. It was an amazing three days; I learned a lot. It’s fun to be in a room when people are debating. Just to watch, listen, and absorb. This was my first face-to-face meeting with the Pucar team. I really enjoyed hanging out with them.
• It was a short trip. I couldn’t do much other than work. I played a bit and went for a walk; that’s all. The tourist season has not started yet, so it was peaceful and fun.
• I also met Ajay Shah and Susan Thomas. We had a bunch of fun but enriching conversations. I will have to make plans to go to Bombay now, just to have longer conversations. Given the work I have now, it’s probably only possible in early 2027.
• It’s been two weeks of back-to-back travel. I don’t know how people do it.
• I played one game of pickleball this week; no runs, but I walked quite a bit and also did one P.T. session.
• Everyone is using AI at work. I think it is okay, but the negligence. is NOT OKAY. I found an AI chat prompt in a judgment by a Bangalore District Court. I have been exploring decentralized mesh networks. Meshtastic on LoRa is popular and seems very useful, but it’s limited to messaging. Reticulam Network is a network stack to build decentralized wide-area networks using heterogeneous communication modes. Currently, I am trying an app called Sideband that runs on top of Reticulam Network, which runs on top of the Internet. I will try other interfaces soon.
• Happy Mahatma Gandhi Jayanti to all of you. It was a long weekend for all of us. We took a short family trip to Hesaraghatta. It’s a do-nothing holiday. Pathu is enjoying her stay with other dogs; Echo is with us.

My idea is how to have more such grants. What might be stopping them, especially if they want to? The discussion was informal, like all BoFs. I made small notes. But here are the takeaways from the discussion.

1. A starter pack or playbook for new micro grant-givers, covering the problems I ran into, not just the process I settled on. The amount of work it takes, taxes, and legal questions are what worry people most. This was the biggest ask, and I think I can work on it.
2. A 10th-year report: an optional, light email to past recipients, then a publication of short updates, blurbs, or photos to encourage others. I don’t ask folks for updates, but a lot of them do update me anyway. Folks think some grant makers are especially encouraged by the effect. So this kind of report would encourage them. I am considering this.
3. Grants on specific themes and sponsors backing a theme, as FOSSUnited did. But in general, there could be theme-specific grant makers, and how do we make it possible for them?
4. Publish unfunded proposals so others can support them, and use the email list actively. I am trying this; there is more to do.

Other similar funds that came up during the discussion were Helium Grants,  Escape Velocity Grants,  Sudha Mahesh Grants, and Bellare Grants; most of them are covered in this wiki.

If you think there are other ways to encourage more small grant makers to come forward and make grants. Do share them.

This week has been tough but interesting overall. Lots of good conversations, both technical and non-technical. I hope to find more time to write next week.

• Uma wanted to get on a digger; she asked me. I said I don’t own it; if you want, you need to ask driver uncle. She called him loudly and asked him if she could come inside. He said, “Yes.” After a while, she asked, ” Can you start and move the hand? He said, “No.” I was just watching the conversation.
• This week’s P.T. was at odd times because I was traveling; thanks to Bhumika for accommodating. I couldn’t play this week, but I was able to run wherever I was, which is a good thing.
• The Indian Express has done a good series on the CEC and ECI of India. For me, the most worrying factor was that technology blocked what the law allowed; hence, 97 voters couldn’t be added to the voter list, and I think it’s a crime that should be punishable. Also, what was decentralized in process and pre-tech is now centralized by technology; i.e., voter list creation is decentralized but centralized technically, and storage and RBAC are centralized. Ideally, each state should own the platform with a separate installation and database. They should sync to the central one only for reporting purposes, as it used to work before. We are kind of losing it due to the centralized architecture design, and it goes directly against the Constitution.
• I was in Chennai to meet the team. It was a very short but hectic trip. I couldn’t get a train ticket, so I took a private electric bus. I must say KSRTC (Karnataka) has the best buses in the country.
• I like that Anand includes “Mistakes I made” and “Questions I was asked” in his weekly updates. Lume is a small, crazy-fast hybrid search engine written in Rust; you can run it locally or on your server.  

• I did a long walk/run with friends on Sunday, along with a huge kaalu soup (paaya) breakfast. Otherwise, it was a regular week with one game and one P.T. session. I should be back to two sessions next week. Also wrote a post about why I chose the Forerunner 965.
• The Hyphen Journal is here. I subscribed a long time ago, but their system somehow didn’t register my payment. So I had to ask customer support. Thanks to Pradeep for reminding me to subscribe. It was on my list, but as it often happens, I had made a mental note of it and promptly forgot about it. The journal looks pretty; I haven’t read it yet, maybe this weekend.
• Many times, I try to remember the sites I’ve already visited and struggle to do it. I have used bookmarks with tags, but it hasn’t worked because I forget to bookmark them. What I need is a search engine that remembers every site/page I visit and indexes it for searching. Turns out Hister is exactly that. It’s FOSS and self-hosted. Ducklake looks simple and powerful at the same time. It uses SQLite/PostgreSQL for the catalog and Parquet files for the actual data to build a data lake. WebMCP looks like a very interesting addition; it could be useful for websites that don’t support APIs or where the user wants to see things as they happen. Jeff sent me ebook2audiobook, which seems to support Kannada through Facebook’s mms-tts. I haven’t tried it yet; it’s on my list. Tante’s article on Power Grab and Fascism in FOSS is a must-read. There is a lot of fear-mongering about open-weight models, especially from the V.C. and S.V. community. I remember Bill Gates calling FOSS developers communists almost two decades ago. In that regard, open-weight models have already won.
• Kerala women MLAs walk out of a workshop where Hindi was the only language used. Why is it so difficult to run a bilingual event for a government organization when they are forcing kids to learn three languages?

Requirements

• Known and proven brands that have supported the hardware for at least a decade. And not known for dropping products. No Google, Apple, or Samsung.
• It’s meant for outdoor use, so at least semi-rugged. Buttons and not just touch screen. Good readable screen.
• Good battery life
• It should work without a phone for at least a few days. I.e., good offline functionality. It should work without a network for sure.
• GPS and Offline Maps. Ability to run GPS/Maps for at least 24 hours.
• Good community, openness
• Cost. I had a fairly high budget of 50K.

Solution

I looked into Garmin, Coros, and Casio.

I chose the Garmin Forerunner 965. Other watches I considered were the Garmin Instinct 3, the Garmin Fenix® 7X Pro, and the Coros Nomad. I considered the Casio ProTek (WSD-F20) series, but neither the community nor the OS seemed interesting enough. But I do love how rugged they are. I will keep an eye on them.

Garmin Instinct 3 has everything except offline maps. It has a cool screen and GPS. But it has no routeable maps. It’s also expensive. Garmin Fenix® 7X Pro is better in every way, but it’s double the cost and weight. Coros Nomad is the closest competitor; it has all the features I wanted, at a similar price, and it’s rugged and pretty. But I don’t know anything about Coros; no one I know has it. Also, I don’t know much about the community around it. It’s also the brand that is on my list.

I was able to load Indian OSM maps onto my Forerunner 965. I have used it while running and for casual walking. I haven’t done much routing on the watch, though it’s possible. I could follow a GPX track easily. I will blog more. Overall, these features seem to work.

Everything on the phone works offline and also works without the phone. Of course, you can send messages without the phone (it doesn’t have a network), but it can connect to Wi-Fi if needed. It can also store music and play it through my Bluetooth earbuds. So you can go out without the phone.

I have not charged the watch much. I am quite active every day, so it’s not bad. I haven’t taken it out for a full day of motorcycling or trekking with maps/routing on. When I do that, I will write more.

The community around it is good, though they are more focused on outdoor activities and mapping. I haven’t explored their apps yet.

As I said, this is not a review. This is just the list of things that I looked for while buying this watch, held up against them. For how it performs in those areas, you will have to wait. And it won’t be a single blog post. For now, there are no red flags with the Forerunner 965.

• It’s been an okay week for physical activity. I did one run and one game. Since we played singles, it was a bit intense. I had an evaluation in my second P.T. My left and right are still unbalanced; otherwise, I am doing okay. I set new goals for the year with my trainer; she thinks I can achieve them. I will update the goal tracker.
  • 3 good pull-ups; this was my personal goal, now shared with my trainer
  • Squats with weight equal to body weight
  • Bench press with weight equal to half body weight
  • 5KM run under 30mins
• My BoF session at FOSSIndia/2026 is scheduled now. It’s on Sunday, September 27th, ROOM 2. Please do come. Even if it’s not my session, we can at least grab coffee. There are also some good pre-events: Maintainers Summit, Pucar hackathon, etc.
• I wrote a blog post about loading maps to the watch. I have two more posts in drafts that I need to publish.
• Seems like the rest of the month will be a busy as well. I will be in Chennai (22nd and 23rd) and in Goa (29th to 1st) at the end of the month, mostly on work, meeting teammates, etc. I hope to get some days off in October.
• I have not spoken about the really long ride I want to do next year yet. I have already started planning. For now Manju will be the partner. It will be this time next year. I am looking forward to it already.
• My name is on the voters’ list; thank god for that. SIR in Karnataka is a mess.

Download

1. Go to BBBikes Garmin Page
2. Choose the format Garmin OSM (UTF-8). All modern Garmin devices can use UTF-8.
3. Select the area you want (bbox)
4. Click on Extract
5. Once it’s ready, you will get an email.
6. You can also check the progress on the status page and download it from there.
7. Extract the zip file to get .img file

Load

1. Plug into Ubuntu with USB; it should appear as mass storage.
2. It’s in the Garmin Connect App; On the top right, click on the watch. Go to System > USB Mode; set it to Media Transfer (MTP). Reattach and check.
3. In my case (Forerunner 965), I had to block the `garmin_gps` kernel module from loading. You can try that too.
4. Once that is done. Once you connect, the watch will ask for your permission to connect as mass storage
5. Say yes
6. It should appear as mass storage
7. Go to /Garmin/
8. Paste the downloaded .img file
9. Safely unmount the Garmin
10. Now go to the watch and go to Maps Manager
11. Your map file should be there
12. Open it and see