Fahim Farook

I'm a bit of an eclectic mess 🙂 I've been a programmer, journalist, editor, TV producer, and a few other things.

I'm currently working on my second novel which is complete, but is in the edit stage. I wrote my first novel over 20 years ago but then didn't write much till now.

I post about #Coding, #Flutter, #Writing, #Movies and #TV. I'll also talk about #Technology, #Gadgets, #MachineLearning, #DeepLearning and a few other things as the fancy strikes ...

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npub1swsx6w0hr9y5fr473v3z5laq82h37cr97gwsrw46hl5yppm3v6uqmv94xh

NIP-05 Address

f@a-farook-org.mostr.pub

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nprofile1qqsg8grd88m3jj2y36lgkg3207sr4tclvpjly8gph2atl6zqsackdwqazcw8c

Author Public Key

npub1swsx6w0hr9y5fr473v3z5laq82h37cr97gwsrw46hl5yppm3v6uqmv94xh

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Last Notes

2025-03-09 12:44:43

Trying to get "Raisins of Wrath", my novella about a cult (and a conspiracy) surrounding sentient raisins out.
Just need to get the cover done, the book laid out, and a few other things done first while juggling health issues in the family.
#AmWriting #Writing #Bookstodon #FediBooks

2025-02-16 11:37:43

My second novel, "Sir Lanka Files" is now available outside of Amazon at Apple, Kobo, Smashwords etc. Full list here:
https://books.farook.org/sir-lanka-files/
Print version coming to other places (besides Amazon) soon.
#Bookstodon #FediBooks #Indie #Author #Books

2025-01-20 23:35:10

Edited 2,600 words on the novella — chapter name, "Cult Ficrtion".
No writing though since we had some errands to run and one of our rare outings outside the apartment 🙂 Hopefully, will get back to the writing tomorrow.
#AmWriting #Writing

2025-01-16 01:04:13

"Skeleton Crew" and a lot of other Star Wars stories make me think that this stuff is being written by kids. The lack of security protocols, trusting anybody who walks in claiming to be something or other.
Is any of this believable?
#StarWars #TV #Writing

2025-01-15 15:38:17

Had to help a friend yesterday with converting their book for Amazon and Draft2Digital and was reminded how confusing the mix of apps, formats, and publishers could be.
If any Indie author needs help with this stuff, I'd be happy to help — free of charge, of course 🙂
#Writing #Help #IndieAuthors

2025-01-13 14:09:27

- reply

@nprofile…0qap Based on bits I read on the Vulture article, he apparently has scenes of women being tortured and assaulted in his books and this was taken as a sign of his empathy towards women. Not sure how they arrived at that conclusion, but people seem to always see what they want to see ...
I was horrified by what I read, put the article down, then went back again but was even further horrified by what I read later and put it down again.
Not going back. It's just horrible. At least for me.

2025-01-13 13:39:30

I couldn't continue with the Vulture article on Gaiman. I've never been a Gaiman fan. Only work of his I've read is "Good Omens" and that was due to the collaboration with PTerry.
But he's a monster. And it surprises me still how well people hide their vileness.
#Reflections

2025-01-03 13:28:22

I don't understand the point of Instagram populating their "universe" with generated people.
Are they saying that there aren't enough real people on Instagram?
Or that they want more diversity and so will create fake people to diversify?
What is the point?
#Tech #Dystopia

2024-12-22 00:00:20

Is it just me or are the re-works of old movies just crap?
Just tried to watch "Hellboy: The Crooked Man" and "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" and they were both so inane and boring that we gave up after a little while on both.
#Movies #English #Hollywood #MovieUpdates

2024-12-19 12:38:32

I've been using Bluesky for a couple of days now and it's rather interesting that some accounts that I really liked on Twitter (like QI and Engadget) are either not present on the Fediverse or tried to create a presence but became inactive after a bit.
But on Bluesky, they are very much active.
So why the difference? Is it a lack of interaction? Or the percieved fragmentation due to how Mastodon works?
#Mastodon #Fediverse #Bluesky

2024-10-17 13:02:08

As a child I really wanted to be able to draw. I tried to teach myself drawing by tracing over artwork I liked, looking at stuff and drawing etc. but I was never very good at it.
As I grew older, I found others at school who could draw effortlessly. I joined up with them and wrote books where they did the artwork. But I still wanted to draw.
A while back on Mastodon I discovered @npub1ljz…4ags and his feed. I already knew Michael Whelan from his book covers but his feed made me realize the scope of how many of the book covers I remembered from over the years were by him.
The most memorable for me personally will always be "Destiny's Road". The book itself is very memorable for some reason — I remember how I felt when I read certain passages, how the sun felt on my skin that day, where I was and so on. But I picked up that book from a second-hand store over 30 years ago because of the cover and I still remember Michael's cover notes in the book describing the various elements like the fool cage.
So, seeing all the great covers that Michael has created over the years has made me want to try art in some form again. I know that I'm not very good at drawing/sketching, but I thought I might be better at painting perhaps?
So I gave it a try with digital painting and I discovered that I loved oil painting on the computer 🙂For some reason, I really like how the oil paints "feel" on the screen and how it works when you mix paints.
I created my first painting yesterday. It's not very good and I hadn't actually looked at techniques or tutorials when I did it. But I think I'm going to give this a go and see if I can get better at it.
At worst, I'll have fun trying all this out. And that's not a bad thing, right?
A digital oil painting showing …
https://a.farook.org/media/f72af4e190f1fac797184c54835491137c21c696a9a461099a09d3b70f6313cf.jpg

2024-08-27 12:55:31

I read a book and I liked it 🙂
It's been a while since I've compleed a book. I've picked up multiple books over the last few years and I generally couldn't finish them.
But then I started reading "Pink Tuxedo" this weekend and by the time I got to the middle of the book, I couldn't put it down.
Here's my review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6795088866
#Reading #ScienceFiction #Humour #Bookstodon #Fedibooks

2024-08-05 13:02:37

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@npub15wt…7rek Yes, it's just the Discord. Sorry, I should have been clearer in my post (will modify). You have the Discord join link on the page, but I didn't even look at the web page after that ...

2024-08-05 12:47:59

I looked into how to promote your indie novel online over the weekend. Here's what I found:
https://books.farook.org/2024/08/05/promoting-your-book/
#Books #Writing #Author #SelfPromotion #IndieAuthor

2024-07-13 13:36:32

After waiting like a couple of weeks, my author page on Amazon is finally up 🙂
Only 3 books there (and two are on iOS programming) but hopefully, I'll have one more to join the fiction category soon since I’m 1.5 chapters away from completing my second novel …
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Fahim-Farook/author/B0D7789CLF
#Writing #SupportIndieAuthors #SciFi

2024-06-26 11:15:28

Do you think you might hate my book more than this person did?
Care to try? 😛
https://shop.farook.org
If you do, please let me know what you think? I found this review after 13 years.
#ScienceFiction #Humour #Reviews #SupportIndieAuthors #FediBooks #Author #Bookstodon #Writing
https://a.farook.org/media/3db2dcdaea5d0ffe9f1eb8e4fb8512913aa4817045624bb2c5241bc3ce984726.file

2023-10-21 05:05:19

Watched two different Tamil movies today where they mention that China (and other countries) are plotting to stop India's progress by sending drugs and poisoned products to India ...
Seems like classic human behaviour — "others" are jealous of us. They want to drag us down.
We'll never change — we always blame others and want "our" people to be cautious/wary of strangers.
And then we pass on this behaviour to our children ...
#NationalismOrParanoia #PoliticalRhetoric #Politics #Humanity #TheHumanDisease

2023-06-10 05:27:03

Sometimes, you know something exists (like Xcode Playgrounds) and how to use it, and yet fail to see the possibilities in terms of how you can integrate that thing with your regular workflow 🙂
The “Prototype with Xcode Playgrounds” session was such an experience for me 😛 I watched the session and immediately realized that there were so many ways that I could have used Xcode Playgrounds in the past to make my work easier!
Give it a watch, I’m certain you won’t be disappointed …
https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10250/
#Apple #WWDC #WWDC2023 #XcodePlaygrounds #Prototyping

2023-01-21 04:32:09

Guess I should post a new introduction since I moved servers and this account has no posts at all 😛
I'm a developer/coder. I used to be very much into mobile development (both #iOS and #Android) using #Swift and #Kotlin. Now my main area of interest is digital creativity using #AI to generate art, text, and music.
I don't post a lot generally, but do daily postings of interesting papers from the cs.CV category on arXiv.org. So first thing in the morning, there will be a barrage of posts from me and then probably nothing much for the rest of the day 🙂
I also post a daily set of images based on my #StableDiffusion prompt of the day — I generate a bunch of images through the day based on a single prompt, pick the four best images (according to me) and post them the next day.
Other than that, I do boost a lot — #MachineLearning and #DeepLearning, #Writing, #AIArt, #Photographs, #Humour are probably the main topics of interest for me. But if I find anything interesting in the areas of #Books, #TV, #Movies, I'd boost those too 🙂
#introduction #introductions