My interest in LLMs has increasingly shifted towards smaller models, small in terms of size and their ability to run on modest local machines. For some time now, I have been using models with fewer than 40 B parameters on my machines in some quantized way. Then I came across BitNet, a project that introduced me to...

With the Peppo team here in Bangalore and other commitments, the week was crazy busy. I met at least half of the Peppo team in person for the first time. We have a great team at Peppo. As Mohammed said in one of our conversations, the Peppo team is not only talented but also filled with good human beings. We’ve been...

I have not been running. The last time I ran anything serious was a decade back. The max I have been doing is walking. Though I must say I love walking, especially with friends and family. It’s a great way to have conversations. I tried running again a few years back and dropped it. I wanted to start running again....

Photos taken on a mobile phone can include metadata. I like it for various reasons. My various projects depend on metadata, such as date, location, orientation, etc. But more and more, the phones are removing that metadata when I transmit it. Some of them also change the file name. But I care, and I want them. It’s...

It’s been a hectic week. Lots of work, meetings, and things to get done. I still have things on my list. I might have to work a bit tomorrow. I continued with my regular P.T sessions. I could also play last Saturday, which was fun. BTW, welcome to the second half of 2026. Yamaha at Hive Club, Thanisandra. Looks all...

I was looking for an alternative to Tinkercad to simulate building, coding, and running Arduino projects. SimulIDE Circuit Simulator seemed like an ideal candidate. SimulIDE is a simple real time electronic circuit simulator, intended for hobbyist or students to learn and experiment with analog and digital...

I wanted to visit TVC to monitor the construction of the house and help Kiran set up the fiber backbone for internet connectivity. TVC is roughly 90 kms from MG Road. It’s a good distance with a variety of road conditions to test my Yamaha and see how it performs over a long distance. If it can do 200+ Kms in a day,...

I am back from Chennai. It was fun meeting lots of students, hearing what they think, etc. This time I met some old-time friends, which was a bonus. Conducting the workshop was also fun. I hope to build on that workshop to demystify LLMs further and offer it again. In the last week, I had not attended to my email...

I sent this email to all workshop attendees. It made sense to publish it as a post as well. Thank you for attending the “Back to Basics: Build Your Own LLM from Scratch” session. It was great to see so much curiosity and many questions in the room, the feedback many of you shared echoed this sentiment. I’m really...

This time, my trip to Chennai was also a road trip. I got a ride with friends in the car, and it also gave us lots of time for conversation. As we were going to the convocation, the discussions turned to education and degrees. Though there are lots of folks dissing college education and degrees in the tech world. I...

I did a workshop titled “Back to Basics: Build Your Own LLM from Scratch”, which kind of included some basic theory on how a transformer works, and then building a very small LLM. The idea was to demystify an LLM (or transformer) by understanding what goes on and then building one to deepen our understanding. I had...

I am at IITM/Chennai for Paradox. I have been here since 2022, since the first Paradox. The fest and the crowd have grown bigger. I came by car with friends A&S. We took Old Madras Road and stopped at Sriperumbudur for a quick visit to the Rajiv Gandhi memorial. Rajiv Gandhi Memorial at Sriperumbudur I explored a...