Curated blog posts

We are in this world to help each other, and what better place than the Internet for sharing knowledge. This page contains a curated list of interesting blog posts I've written which you may find useful.

Technical

• Tips from my experience of assembling my computer. 
• PGMPy tutorial.
• Haar features tutorial for Viola Jones algorithm.
• Hidden Markov Models tutorial with Forward Trellis (with some nice visuals I created).
• Bitplane Slicing.
• Otsu thresholding with Differential Evolution.
• Solving the puzzling MokManager problem in Ubuntu (this became quite a popular reference worldwide). 
• Apache Storm concepts.
• Apache Storm tutorial.
• A better branching model for Git.
• Solve Git merge conflicts with KDiff.
• Configure NTP between two Linux machines.
• C++ virtual functions (somewhat popular worldwide).
• Cleared a lot of confusion about CSS with a tutorial.
• What a virtual SIM is .
• d3.js tutorial (presents a rather complex syntax in an easy to understand way).
• Verify website links during development.
• Mutex tutorial (became extremely popular worldwide).
• Prevent compiler optimizers from reducing output precision.
• Trigger Jenkins build on Git commit (somehow this became popular worldwide).
• Install Jenkins plugins.
• Contribute to the open source community.
• N'th permutation without swapping and without recursion.
• Does Android really need an antivirus? (digging into this truth gave other people some helpful pointers too). 

Fun Projects

• Snacker: An "AI" for choosing office snacks.
• Smartphone hologram.
• Other hobby projects I built.
• Machine graded programming tests. 

 

How I used analytics to analyze real problems

• Women's safety issue at office.
• What caused the drop in blood donors?  

Volunteering (CSR) 

• Painting pillars.
• Realize when to stop donating to charity.
• How to start volunteering. How to start a volunteering team.
• Measure how good your volunteering team is.
• How to analyze volunteering activities.
• Cleaning up garbage beside the road.
• Subway cleanup.
• Build good volunteer reputation.
• Mr. Somebody Else.

Conferences and science meetups 

• Useful tips from IIM-B's startup conferences I attended.
• Industrial methods and tools for formal software verification, at Indian Institute of Science (IISc). 
• National science day at Raman Research Institute. 
• IISc open day 2020. 
• IISc open day 2023. 
• IISc open day 2025. 

Artificial Intelligence

• Hopes for AI in 2026. 
• Concepts: Generative AI with large language models (LLM). 
• Prompt engineering tips. 
• Free image generators and copyright issues. 
• Free LLM access without login. 
• Free local LLM use. 
• Using ROCm on AMD. 

General How-to's

• Super-detailed planning for visiting Lakshadweep (I created this since various travel blogs/vlogs and even official sources didn't understand just how much detail is required to plan such a vacation).
• Open source licenses simplified (my manager was so impressed with this that he asked for it to be converted to a formal reference in the company). 
• Remove EXIF data from photos.
• Reduce monitor brightness more than what the system controls allow.
• Convert pgm files to jpg or png.
• LaTeX on Ubuntu.
• Reset BIOS password.
• Search for trends on Google Books.
• Dual booting with UEFI.
• MySQL: quick summary of tables and rows.
• MySQL: Speed up inserts.
• Avoid crashes due to memory problems on AWS.
• Repair pendrive corrupted by virus.
• Networking at conferences (networking is about giving).
• Waterproofing with cement (it's important to understand what workmen speak).
• bashrc for Windows.
• Transfer data between computers at high speed with an Ethernet cable.
• Understanding the disk usage analyzer on Linux.
• Applying for a passport in India.
• Renewing your driving license without going to the RTO. 
• Exact steps to renew your vehicle registration certificate (RC). 
• Quick help with End User License Agreements (EULA).
• Destroy Windows viruses with Linux.
• Push to GitHub without the authentication problem.
• Access GitHub with authentication token instead of password.
• Avoid special-character problems while posting code on websites.

Good health

• The real cure for eye strain (the Medium version became quite famous with time).
• Organic food: Oota from your thota and health effects of various chemicals.