Photos that a phone saved sideways with a “rotate me” note (EXIF orientation) now stand upright in galleries; the last church photo in ജോർജ്ജിയ, ഭാഗം 2 was lying on its side.
The footer has its own colour now, a sand tone a shade deeper than the page, so the page has a clear end; on the dark theme it sits a shade lighter than the page.
The footer ends with a band holding a line from a Malayalam writer, a different one each time a page opens, like the quote band on the main site.
The theme is now called Veedu (വീട്, “home”), the same name as the main site’s theme. It was Marappeythu; nothing about how the site looks or works changed.
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Above written and done by Claude Code.
01 Oct 26
Added ഇന്നത്തെ എഴുത്ത് to the home page: today’s ചിത്രക്കുറിപ്പ്, its photo and the whole poem side by side like a spread from the book (stacked on phones). The poem sets the height, so a poem is never cut.
Added a share bar, പങ്കിടുക, to every post: WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, X, email, copy link, and the phone’s own share sheet where it exists. Plain links, so nothing from those services loads on the page and nobody is tracked.
Poem and story cards now show as much text as fits and fade out the line that continues, a hint that there is more to read. A poem that fits whole shows no fade.
ഇനിയും വായിക്കാം under each post now matches its section: poem cards without photos under a poem, photo cards under a story, whole scribbles under a scribble.
On phones, എല്ലാം കാണാം moved to the bottom of each home page section as a button; the long section names left it cut off at the screen’s edge.
The text of ഈ പുസ്തകം in the ചിത്രക്കുറിപ്പുകൾ book is larger, using the empty space on laptop screens (it still fits the page on every screen).
On the main site, binovarghese.com, the Malayali menu link now opens this site, and every old Malayalam address (/ml/, /ml-musings/, /ml-img/, /ml-space/) redirects permanently to the same page here.
A one-step script for writing a new ചിത്രക്കുറിപ്പ്: it finds the latest post, creates the next day’s file and puts the photo in place. The scripts now run on a Mac as well as Windows.
Above written and done by Claude Code.
30 Sep 26
Faster pages: the icon font (144 KB for ten icons) is replaced by small inline drawings, the stylesheets are joined, minified and cached for a year, and the first photo on a page loads first. On a phone the pages got 23–79% lighter.
Photos in posts (the figure shortcode) are now resized too, instead of sending the camera original: the Asry beach post dropped from 4.8 MB to 1.9 MB on a phone.
എല്ലാം became a reading stream: every piece by year, scribbles in full and the rest in part, each ending with തുടർന്ന് വായിക്കുക → and its date under a dashed line.
On each ചിത്രക്കുറിപ്പ് page, the copy-link icon moved beside the page number.
The footer shows when the site was last updated, linked to this changelog.
ചിത്രക്കുറിപ്പുകൾ now start on 1 October 2026: every post’s date moved from September to October (post N is dated N October), in the main site’s content and synced here.
Hugo holds back posts dated in the future, so added a daily rebuild (a Netlify scheduled function at 00:05 UTC) that publishes one ചിത്രക്കുറിപ്പ് each day on its date.
Added a .gitignore. The build output (public/) and Hugo’s image cache (resources/) are no longer tracked in git, since Netlify builds them itself — about 5,500 files less in the repository.
Added this changelog, and a footer line with the credits and the last-updated date, in Malayalam.
Above written and done by Claude Code.
29 Sep 26
ചിത്രക്കുറിപ്പ് photos now come in four widths (480, 720, 960 and 1200 px, WebP) with srcset, and phones stop at 960 px, which looks the same on a phone screen. The book page dropped from 4.4 MB of photos to 2.18 MB on a phone and 1.68 MB on a laptop. The cover is resized to WebP too.
A new phone menu: the ☰ button opens the links as a list, instead of a row that scrolled sideways and cut off the last items.
The ✦ button moved to the menu bar and now opens a random poem, story or ചിത്രക്കുറിപ്പ് from any page. Fixed the light/dark icon sitting off-centre.
Reworked the home page to use the same cards as the section pages: the newest three poems, stories and scribbles, and the ചിത്രക്കുറിപ്പുകൾ photo strip. The section cards sit two by two on phones.
Links to a section that isn’t published yet (a draft) are now hidden everywhere — the menu, footer, home page, About page and the ചിത്രക്കുറിപ്പ് pages — so no link leads to a missing page.
Set the site up for its own address, ml.binovarghese.com, on Netlify: the base URL, netlify.toml, robots.txt and the production title.
കവിതകൾ became a stanza wall: text-only cards with the title, the opening lines exactly as written and “വായിക്കുക →”, all the same height.
കഥകൾ was renamed കുറിപ്പുകൾ, and its cards now match the poems’ style, with the photo at the bottom as a black-and-white 16:9 strip.
കുത്തികുറിക്കലുകൾ show every scribble in full, on a board of cards in the same style, newest across the top.
The poem, story and scribble cards share one paper background.
Widened the reading column for stories, and each poem now sits centred at the width of its longest line.
Removed the category tabs above page titles and the leaf ornament from the poem cards.
Above written and done by Claude Code.
28 Sep 26
Started the Malayalam site in earnest. A one-click sync (sync-ml-content.cmd) copies the Malayalam writing — ml, ml-musings, ml-img and their images — from the main site, keeping every folder and URL the same, so old links can be redirected here one to one.
A new theme, Marappeythu: warm paper-and-ink colours, one colour for each kind of writing, self-hosted Malayalam fonts (Gayathri, Noto Serif Malayalam, Chilanka and Manjari), and light and dark modes. Dates now show in Malayalam.
ചിത്രക്കുറിപ്പുകൾ became an open book, brought over from the chithrakkurippu book project: the cover, dedication, the നാൾവഴി calendar, contents, month dividers and a photo-and-poem spread for each day, with keyboard page-turning and copy-link buttons.
Stories show three to a row, and the line spacing in poems, stories, scribbles and ചിത്രക്കുറിപ്പുകൾ is tighter.
Removed the category chip above post titles.
Removed Bootstrap, and left the English pages copied from the main site out of the build.
Above written and done by Claude Code.
20 Aug 26
Rearranged the poems and other writings into their own sections, and fixed style issues.
19 Aug 26
Created the site, starting from a copy of the main site.