I started this website, “The Embedded Kitchen” back in 2014 as a platform to share what I make with the world. The thought behind naming the website so was comparing my process of building hardware with that of cooking food because of course boards are baked as a part of the manufacturing process and it appeared no different to me than baking bread, for example. And thinking of myself as a chef bringing my creations to life in my mini-laboratory of hardware equipment, it sounded like a really good idea to register the domain name and start writing. A lot has happened in the 6 years since, and this post is a reflection on how things have been.
Firstly, this website has allowed me and my work to be discovered over the years, nothing viral as such but serving a niche who happen to stumble upon my work when looking for something very specific on the internet, as Google’s Search console tells me when I go and review what leads users to my website, and at the time of writing this post it’s mostly always BeagleLogic (if you’re wondering how it is currently, I could write a full blog post on how I missed so many opportunities for it to gain traction). Of course I have worked on many personal projects here and there since then, but I feel nothing so far has came close to the scale of the creative work I did for BeagleLogic in 2014, and then a second wave in 2017 for its standalone version. All the work done in few focused 100m-dashes with no long-term horizon, and yet it’s what probably brings you here. Wow.
I graduated and moved to a full time job in 2017 and since then it has been almost radio silence over the years on “The Embedded Kitchen”, with an occasional post, and a 100-day experiment which I couldn’t complete as planned. That didn’t stop me from flourishing at my day job; I was still building and debugging boards, I was still writing code but it was all for the company I worked with. I suppose it’s the cost of having your day job overlap with the things you once loved and performed as a hobby.
I wasn’t working at my Embedded Kitchen as I was busy cooking in another kitchen and at the end of the day I wanted to have a wholesome meal for myself and 8 hours of sleep.
Fast forward to 2020, while this hasn’t been the best year so far for the world, staying indoors for several months has helped me gain personal perspective, reprioritize and reorganize. If you look at my LinkedIn today, you will see that I now have a new day job as a Software Engineer at Google – as exciting this new position is, it also entails a whole new set of responsibilities which means that I will have a lot less time to spend here. It’s interesting to note that the recruiter who reached out to me about the opportunity found me through my body of work on this website, which makes me all the more grateful.
I also now have a personal website, a new web property called kumarabhishek.me which will be the home to new content that has a more personal touch, which is not just about hardware creation but what I choose to show to the world about myself.
Going forward, The Embedded Kitchen is going to be my sacred space, a space for me to look up to and look back on as an archive of the place I begun my journey, as a collection of my previous writings to come back to so that I am reminded of humble beginnings. Please know that while I no longer cook in this kitchen on a daily basis, I make sure it’s maintained and whenever I choose to cook here, know that I’ll be cooking with the utmost reverence and serving you my finest.
Thank you so much for stopping by The Embedded Kitchen. Should you choose to follow me along on kumarabhishek.me, I’ll see you there.