Thinking in Public

A personal archive for independent long-term builders — engineering, A.I., drones, systems, and the life around the work.

Engineering & Life

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Is the Future of My Work Writing, Typing, Drawing, and Orchestrating?

Is the Future of My Work Writing, Typing, Drawing, and Orchestrating?

For the last few months, I have been noticing a strange shift in my work. I am still building software. I am still thinking about AI runtimes, Linux, C Kernel Engine, Antsand, content systems, drone math, control systems, and all the engineering projects I keep returning to in cycles. But the entry point into most of this work has changed. It is no longer always a code editor. Most days, the en...

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AI Is Teaching Everyone the Command Line. So Why Are We Still Ignoring Linux?

The strange part of the current AI coding wave is this: almost every serious agent workflow is quietly becoming a Linux workflow, but Linux is still treated like the side door. OpenAI's Codex app page is a clean example. As of May 22, 2026, the page shows the desktop app available for macOS and Windows, while Linux users get a notification option. That is not some massive scandal. It is a product...

Your Job May Change. That Still Does Not Make Optionality Easy.

A lot of tech writing right now has the same shape: your job is going to change, AI is moving fast, you need optionality, become AI-native, maybe build a small software business, maybe consult, maybe package your knowledge, maybe make a few thousand dollars a month on the side. I agree with the direction. I do not agree with how easy it is often made to sound. This post is partly a re...

Are AI Agents Good for Your Brain?

A recurring criticism of AI coding agents is that they make people worse at the very skills needed to use them well. Cal Newport recently discussed this through the lens of agentic coding, cognitive atrophy, and deep work. I think there is a lot of truth in that warning. But I do not think the useful conclusion is do not use AI. That feels too blunt. It sounds a bit like sa

Qwen3 From a C Runtime Perspective

Qwen3 is not just a model name inside C Kernel Engine. It is a concrete runtime target: a GGUF file, a model configuration, a set of tensor shapes, a generated C runtime, a packed weight blob, a shared library, an IR report, and a profiling surface. This post is for people who want to understand what actually runs when a modern LLM leaves the framework layer and becomes a CPU run...

HTML Was Always the Interface. SVG Was Always the Diagram.

HTML was always an interface. AI just made that obvious again. I keep seeing people rediscover HTML as if it is a new invention. The new framing is usually something like: Markdown is no longer enough, HTML is becoming the better format for AI plans, specs, design systems, dashboards, and interactive artifacts. I agree with the direction. I just find the surprise ...

Hardening Long Projects in the Age of AI

Images generated by chatGPTI have been thinking a lot about hardening lately, especially with Antsand. Not hardening in the dramatic cybersecurity movie sense. I mean the boring kind of hardening. The kind where you go back to something you built years ago and make it less fragile. You fix the small UI bug. You clean up the ugly workflow. You upgrade the old part. You make the...

Why I Replaced QuickBooks with Antsand — and Why I Think AI + Open Source Changes the Software Subscription Game

thinking ai workflow 13 min read
Source: Image generated by chatGPTThe Code Got Cheaper. The Infrastructure Didnt. For years, I paid for software subscriptions because that was simply how things worked. You needed invoicing, so you paid for accounting software. You needed ecommerce, so you looked at Shopify. You needed dashboards, so you paid for another SaaS tool. You needed a portfolio

I Think Like a Compiler - But not in the way you think.

Over the years I have worked on a few personal projects, and I generally work on them long term (for years). Antsand is one of them. A flight controller is another. C-Kernel-Engine, which started as C-Transformer, is another. They look like different projects from the outside. One is a website and application builder. One is closer to embedded and control systems. One i...

My two-tier A.I workflow: frontier thinks, MiniMax (open weights) does the heavy lifting

ai workflow 5 min read
Everyone assumes you need the most expensive model to write good code. They are wrong. I have spent the last year building a CPU inference engine from scratchno PyTorch, no TensorFlow, just C and x86 intrinsics. Along the way I learned something: the model that understands you is not the same model that should write your code.

Why I’m Doubling Down on C in 2026

ai workflow 4 min read
It's 2026, and the hype around memory safety is deafening. The industry consensus seems to be that C and C++ are archaic, "unsafe" languages that we need to abandon immediately. There is a growing chorus pinpointing that the majority of CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures, the standard system for cataloging publicly known security flaws), from databases to the Linux kernel and even Git, st...

The Great Untangling: Why I Ditched Vue, Node, and Microservices for Pure JS, PHP, and AI

I have been developing Antsand since 2014. It is my digital garden, a sophisticated personal project that generates federated, static websites, including the blog you are reading right now.Eleven years is an eternity in software development. Antsand has survived multiple eras of "the next big thing." By 2021, the application had matured into a complex beast powered by Vue 2 on the front end and a ...

Archived Personal Posts

Older writing, daily notes, business posts, year-end notes, and personal archives.

The 3rd Week of January

personal 3 min read
17 Jan 2021 by Anthony ShivakumarThis past week or so I have been doing good energy-wise. One being, I can get up very early. Anywhere between 4:00 am and 5:00 am. I do not put an alarm. I get up organically. I love it. After I get up, go to the washroom and wash up, I then sit and do the Wim Hof breathing exercise. It is a great way to start the day. A bit of deep breathing, yoga, and some medita...

Client work and system identification

personal 1 min read
On Monday I was working on a bit of client work and on drone tech. I woke up at 5:00am and started to do week 2 of the wim hof breathing. It is a good start to my morning. Get my lungs moving and helps set my mind for the day ahead.As mentioned, mostly client work was the goal of the day. Monday and Tuesdays will be focused more on client work and ANTSAND, while the rest of the week will be focuse...

Understaning the Kalman Filter

personal 3 min read
I am writing my Saturday and Sunday Journal together and a day later.Saturday the 9thOn Saturday the 9th, I got up arund 6:30. I haev not done the Wim hof Breathing ever since I did my afternoon run and got a bad eye and head ache. I just wanted to take a day or two off from breathing. Which in the morning allowed me to spend time working. I had to reply to a friend which I did. It took about a
Headache and eye hurt

Headache and eye hurt

personal 2 min read
Today started off well. Got up at 4:45 and started to do my Wim Hof breathing. Then I got to work on the sensor fushion algorithm. I had breakfast at 7:45am. Around 8:30 am I had a shower. I ended it with 1min of cold water. It felt good. I still believe I have the groin cycst. The cold shower helped a bit.After which I had a meeting at 9:30 am and again go to work on the sensor algorithm. My g

The importance of priority #1. What is ANTSAND and why is it being built?

Business personal 7 min read
ANTSAND first started as my personal dairy to keep track of my life. At one point in time, I did not wanted to use any Social media sites. I wanted to only use the one I created. I think the creator in me thought, if I can build one, I will build one. Why do I need to use other products. This idea has still not completely grown out of me. For the most part I am vey much a maker.I have been working...
Progress on Drones

Progress on Drones

personal 2 min read
I did not write yesterday's journal. Today and yesterday I woke up at 430 am. This is so that I can squeeze in the Wim Hof Method in the morning. I want to get into the practice of breathing, meditating yoga, and perhaps even cold showers. My eating habits too, have been improving. Though today I did skip lunch. I had a slight headache and my left eyes were hurting. Plus I woke up at 4:30 am so I ...

3rd day of the year

personal 2 min read
Today, I got up at 5:00. Started to do the wim hof method week 1. It is going good. I feel great after each session. I want to get up earlier, perhaps at 4:30a.m so that I can get a head start on the meditation, breathing and yoga.At 7:30 a.m I cooked Uppma for breakfast. Eating breakfast in the morning is a wonderful routine. It help me keep check of the time. This way I am aware what I am doi

The 2nd day of the year

personal 1 min read
Today i woke up at 5:00 am. around 5:30 am or so I started to do the Wim Hof method. The breathing exercise, yoga and meditation. At 7 am I had to go out to get some bread for my breakfast. I then came home and prepared breakfast.For breakfast I prepared a sandwich, avocado, roasted chic peas and sprouts. With the sandwich I also had leftover butternut squash soup. It was a good healthy breakfast....

1st Jan 2021

personal 3 min read
I am not big into the New Year celebration thing. It is just another day. Every day is kinda a new year. So, it is just a matter of perspective. Nevertheless, the date change does make a psychological impact. the 1st of the month, a different or new year. It is in these times we tend to set goals, resolutions, change things up for the better, make commitments, and try to keep up. I am no differ

A cooking day

personal 1 min read
Woke up around 6:00 am. and worked on making a proper meal plan. We then went for gorcery shopping at 8:00 am. After we came back I made myself brunch while washing some of the fruits we just bought. I did not get much work done today. I did take a short afternoon nap. I may need to drink coffeee to keep my self awake. After I woke up, I prepared to cook the butternut squash. While cooking I did m...
Working on ANTSAND

Working on ANTSAND

personal 2 min read
Today is ANTSAND day. Monday and Tuesdays is where I will dedicate my time on ANTSAND. I got up today around at 6:00am. Went to the toilet, brushed my teeth and got to work. Around 9:45 am or so, I did my TACFIT moderate intensity workout. It is always good to follow and stick to my fitness plan. In the coming new years, I will want to make fitness and my eating habits set. No more burping, fartin...

A lazy day

personal 1 min read
Today, I got up early and worked on some client work. I felt very bloated in the morning. A lot of burping. I also sent a mail to a potential co-founder on starthawk. I most likely will need to look for a co-founder for ANTSAND. Will need someone who can take care of sales and marketing.We then went for a walk followed by a run round the park. The distance covered was approx. 2.7 km. I beleive
Root Vegetables

Root Vegetables

personal 2 min read
Today, the 27th of December (Sunday) was a normal day. Got up around 7. We did our recycling before I joined my mastermind. The mastermind session was good. Chill, relaxed and we just spoke on few different topics. One of the books that was recommended was Siddhartha y Herman Hesse. Another interesting blog that was mentioned was neilonsoftware.com .After mastermind, I did feel a bit lazy an

Getting the acclerometer working

personal 1 min read
Today, once again I got up early and started to work on getting the accelerometer working. I did start to get it working. Had a meeting with a friend that is likely to collaborate with me to make drones. After the meeting, we went for a walk. I had my mastermind meeting today too. I only spent an hour in the meeting. don't want to spend more than 3 hours a day on meetings.After which I did m
I2C and learn how to troubleshoot

I2C and learn how to troubleshoot

personal 1 min read
Today is hardware day.. Woke up early and got working on interfacing the gyroscope and accelerometer. The whole morning went trying to get I2C working. The signal were just not right. It took me the whole day to realize that there was a connection isssue. Nevertheless, I got it working. A clean signal like this always feels good.Healthwise, I am feeling a lot better. No more pain as such. I did do...

Learning Kalman Filtering ...

personal 1 min read
Today was a lazy. Woke up a bit late, did not do any exercise and just not productive as such. Towards the evening I did spend some time learning how to use Kalman Filtering for attitude control of a quadcopter. Tomorrow, I will try to get the accelerometer and gyroscope working and see if I can start to apply the Kalman Filter.My stomach still has the left side discomfort. I did go to the toilet ...

Recovering ... but bloated

personal 1 min read
Today, I did not want to do too much. So I spent time studying some Machine Learning Algorithims. Pretty much the whole went in learning.My health is better, though I felt really bloated after dinner. I ate a decent size meal, but the bloating is a bit concerning. Hopefully the tablets I take Ilaxatives) will help relieve some of these issues.Tomorrow, I might spend more time on ML. Perhaps wor

Recovering ...

personal 1 min read
Today, I was feeling much better. I went to the doctor and they gave me a few tablets. If the problem still continues after 2-3 weeks then I need to go back. I have got most of my appetite back. I was able to eat my salmon, kale, yoghurt, naan, sprouts and avocado for lunch.I plan to now work, 3 days on hardware and 4 days on software. The 4 days of software will include working on A.I, machine

Little Tension and a christmas tree

personal 2 min read
Today, I did not sleep too well. I work up at around 3:30 a.m. due to burping and farting. I did drink the prune juice yesterday. It might have been the cause of my discomfort. My fiance could not bear the smell, so she slept in the living room. After an hour or so, I did got to the toilet and was able to pass motion. The prune juice helped. When I got back to bed, I did not want to start worki

let the progress begin ...

personal 2 min read
Alright, today was just a normal day. I work up at 6:30 am. I did pass motion, so that was good. Still constipated though. Not sure what the issue is. Hope it is not something too critical.We went for a morning walk as it was bright and sunny. A walk always helps. I might need to walk more often to get my bowel movements going. Either in the morning on after lunch.Today, was also the last day o

Another slow day

personal 1 min read
Embedded system programming is tedious. Sometimes things work fast and quickly, sometimes they just take time. My progress this month has been very very slow. I have switched from working on the nrf24ap2e to the nrf24l01+. The latter is easier to configure. I want to get the radio working by the end of the month. .. Hopefully I can get something working soon.My fitness is going well. I have com

The day of ups and downs

personal 2 min read
Oh, today was an exhausting day. Not physically, but emotionally.My day started like any other day. Woke up early, passed motion, which is good. Not too constipated. Had a shower and got to work. Today is solder day. Which is, the day to solder another radio and get the two radios talking. Unfortunately, the soldering did not go as well as I planned. In 2014, I had bought enough components to make...

Let us get moving

personal 1 min read
Today, once again i started the day early. A bit constipated. Hopefully nothing major. I might have to do more movement exercises. If it persists for a few more days or a week, I will have to go see a doctor.Other than that, I got most of the ANT+ radio config working. I was not able to check over the air signals. I will need to solder a new radio tomorrow or by the end of the week. I also was abl...

More work .. but progressing

personal 1 min read
Today, once again I got up early, around 5:30 a.m. Had a shower and got to work. My goal for today was to progress more on the radio. I want to get it to start interfacing. Te protocol is a bit complicated. I hope to get it working by the end of the month.I also studied a bit from the course "Sensor Fusion and Non-linear Filtering for Automotive Systems" on Edx. It seems to be a decent course. I w...

Drone Specification ...

personal 2 min read
Today, was just another day. Got up a bit late, around 6:30 a.m. I did a bit of the machine learning course in the morning. After which, I did my workout. Before my workout, I was once again browsing the different courses on Coursera / Edx related to image processing, sensor fusioh etc. It is easy to get carried forward in designing a very big system. To stop my self from doing that, I spent ti

Getting the radio to work ...

personal 1 min read
Today, once again I got up early. Not too early, around 6:30 a.m. My plan was to work more on the radio and get it interfacing with the microcontroller. I am progressing well in this regard. Hopefully soon, I will be able to send data over the air. This will be a good achievement.I also had our mastermind session today, The discussion were good. We talked about business, ideas, philosophy and r

Another Day ...

personal 2 min read
Today, once again I got up a bit early, at 6:30 a.m. Had a shower and worked a bit on ANTSAND. There are bugs in the app, and I plan to work on it frequently. One thing I have realized today, regarding the making of the drone, is to not focus on theoretical stuff anymore. The only theory I can work on is on A.I. I will only get back to theory once I have a drone that is flying and working. It is i...
Let's get the drones sketched

Let's get the drones sketched

personal 3 min read
Today, once again, I got up early, around 5:30 am, had a shower, and got down to work. In the morning, I was working on interfacing the radio with the micro-controller. I got most of the device driver working. Next, I will need to send some ANT+ commands and see if it will transmit the messages over the air. After which, I did my Tacfit Commando. Today, was a high-intensity day. I did push myself ...
A dumb A.I.

A dumb A.I.

personal 3 min read
Today, my day did not start at 5:30 am. It started at 2:30 am when a funny smell polluted our room. We woke up from the smell as it smelt like burnt plastic. We were not sure if it was caused by something in-house or it was coming from outside. We went out to check and the smell was stronger outside. There was nothing we could do, so we closed all the windows and went back to sleep.Sleep interrupt...
Getting Closer

Getting Closer

personal 1 min read
Once again, today I got up early, had a shower and got straight to work. The agenda for today was to work on the radio fro 6:00am to 10:00 am. I did stick to my plan. I was able to progress further with the radio. Hopefylly by the weekend, I can get it to work properly.After working on the Radio, at 10:30 or so I did my Tacfit Commando. The exercies, the morning routine and the evening routines

Getting the radio working - Work in progress

personal 3 min read
Today, once again I got up early at 5:30am, had a shower and got straight to work on interfacing with the radio. Embedded systems and interfacing is not particularily difficult, but it does cosume a lot of time. Espcially if you are trying to get something working with limited resources. When it comes to these types of things, the manufactuere should provide sample code. In this case, little to no...
Let the training Begin

Let the training Begin

personal 4 min read
My morning routine of getting up early is going well. I got up at 5:30 am, had a shower, and got straight to solving the backpropagation algorithm. Surely, in the mornings my mind reaches a new level of concentration and focus. I got the assignment working in an hour. After which I did my Tacfit commando. Today was the high-intensity day. I believe I pushed myself quite hard. I reached a heart rat...
Back Propogation

Back Propogation

personal 1 min read
Today, once again, I woke up at 5:30 am, had a shower, and got straight to work. Today I wanted to get the back-propagation algorithm of a neural network to work. Unfortunately, I am still struggling to get it to work. What I did today?I woke up earlyI did my Tacfit Commando exercisseI went for a walkI took a good afternoon nap.I worked on Week 5 of the Machine learning course by Andrew Ng. I am ...
Neural Networks and a so so day ...

Neural Networks and a so so day ...

personal 3 min read
Today, once again I got up early, around 5:30 am, had a shower, and got down to work on completing the neural network chapter from the course Machine Learning on Coursera by Andrew Ng. I am now in chapter 5 and need to finish the backpropagation chapter. Once I get the backpropagation to work, I will start to train the neural network to create websites. At least, this will be the 1st step towards ...
The Radio

The Radio

personal 5 min read
Today, once again, I got up early, around 5:30 a.m. I had a shower and got straight to work. My goal for today was to get as much client work done by 10:00 am, do a workout, and start working on interfacing the radio module. I had a bit of pending client work, so I tried to get as much done. At 10:00 a.m, it was a hard stop. This meant, even though I did not complete the client work, I had to stop...
Client work

Client work

personal 2 min read
Today was client day. I got up early at 5:00am, had a shower and got to work on client work. I am working on a website for a clinic. The design needed a few elements that were not readily available in ANTSAND. so I had to progam a few features in. I worked for a few hours before I had a call with my business partner. After which I did my cycle 3 of tacfit commando. The fitness side of things is go...
Machine Learning progress

Machine Learning progress

personal 3 min read
Today seemed to be a good day. I got up early, around 5:30 am, brushed my teeth, had a shower, and got started working on the machine learning course by Andrew Ng. I wanted to complete the logistic regression chapter and get started with a neural network. I wanted to end the day implementing my neural network to auto-create websites. Unfortunately, I procrastinated a bit. Plus, it does take time t...
The Starry night

The Starry night

personal 3 min read
Today, I got up a bit late. Around 6:30a.m. The reason being I slept a bit too early last night and had to get up in the middle of the night. The sleep interruption offset my sleeping schedule by an hour. After getting up, had a shower and got back to work. I posted my app on product hunt and submitted ANTSAND to app sumo. A bit of marketing. Then, I did my tacit commando. After which I needed to ...
logistic regression

logistic regression

personal 1 min read
Today was a slow day. I did get up early around 5:30, had a shower and got to work. I completed a few client work in the morning. I also did my Tacfit commando workout. After which I studied logistic regression from a machine learning course taught by Andrew Ng from Coursera. Around noon I cooked some fish curry and ate the same for dinner. Noon time I was once again studying the course. Tomorr
The pivot

The pivot

personal 2 min read
Today was a good day. I got up early, had a shower, worked a bit on ANTSAND. Did my Tacfit Commando (high-intensity day). Then we went for a walk around the nearby park. The walk was half-hour long. After this, I had my mastermind meeting from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm. I needed to install OpenCV to do some image processing/ computer vision work. I had a few issues trying to install it. Once I got it t...
Headaches and a dud day

Headaches and a dud day

personal 2 min read
Today was a slow start. Got up around 7 a.m. We went grocery shopping around 8:30 a.m. As the covid cases are rising, we were preparing to stock up on some food in case there will be another lockdown. After coming back from grocery shopping, I had a slight headache. I took a nap before having a call with one of my mastermind friends. We talked about drones and more about the ANTSAND app and how he...
the Dilemma

the Dilemma

personal 2 min read
Today, once again I started the day early. Had a shower and tried to figure out what I want to do today. I wanted to get started doing some machine learning A.I. course. I also needed to work on getting the infrastructure in place. Which is the ability to get data, process data, train the A.I., and then deploy the A.I. to an application. There is a bit of backend code that is needed to be done. Th...
Just another day

Just another day

personal 2 min read
Today, once again I started the day by getting up early, around 5:00 a.m. Had a shower and got down to work on client work. I needed to add some animation on a client website. Since all my clients website are now directly powered by ANTSAND, I had to fix a feature in ANTSAND itself. I got it working so that is good.Then around8:30 am I did my conditioning exercise. Day 5 of my program. Today was a...
A sore body and a semi-productive day

A sore body and a semi-productive day

personal 3 min read
My morning routine is going great. I got up at 5:30 a.m, had a shower, and started to get down to work on antsand. At 7:00 am, I had a consulting call with one of my clients. At 8:15, the call ended and I got down to do my high-intensity workout. The 1st cycle of mission one is complete. Six more to go. The table below shows my performance.Day -4 Mission 1 Tacfit Commando - High IntensityExercise1...
Let the exercise begin

Let the exercise begin

personal 4 min read
Today, I started the day pretty well. I got up at 5 a.m., had a shower, and got right down to work on ANTSAND. Today's goal was to fix SSL or auto-configure websites for security using LetsEncrypt. Honestly, all my design ideas turned out to be fruitless. Which is to say, I would need to come back to this at a later date and figure out how to auto-configure websites for security. One of the reason...
Day 2 of my Journaling

Day 2 of my Journaling

personal 2 min read
Today is my 2nd day of writing. I got up early, around 5:00 am. Daylight savings did help me to get up early. Had a shower and was ready to get started programming. Being the 1st working day of the month, I sent invoices to my clients. Today, I had to work on the form section of ANTSAND. Finish up with the "don't break the chain rule" feature. While doing so, I got a chance to refactor some of my ...
Blog writing and habit tracking

Blog writing and habit tracking

personal 3 min read
Today I have started a new blog called shivasnotes.com. This blog is to help me keep track of my journaling, habits, and accountability. I have wanted to do this for a while, but I kept coming up with excuses. Nevertheless, I am happy I got started.In this blog, I plan to write on my challenges like the 30-day challenge, rant on random topics like productivity, health, fitness, hobbies, mindsets, ...
39+ mental tools I use to make better decisions

39+ mental tools I use to make better decisions

Are you looking to start a company, make a drastic change in your life or are you stepping into the unknown? There are forces of nature that are there to help and guide you if you look for them. It can get scary, fearful, and very daunting. As a result, I have compiled a list of things that will guide me even in the darkest moments of life and business.   This is a list of belief that I use as a
13 things I learnt after doing the 10-week wim-hof method

13 things I learnt after doing the 10-week wim-hof method

lifestyle personal 14 min read
Do you get a migraine or sinus and lose a full days worth of productivity? You think yoga is for old people or it is too boring to do it? You tried meditation, and think you are better off going to sleep than sitting like a fool? Or even the thought of cold showers frightens you, why would anyone do it?  Let me tell you a little about myself. I have lived with headaches like a migraine an