Jerry

StepSnap — I Built a Chrome Extension

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 23:19:03 -0500

I ~~have~~ had a very specific problem at work.

Whenever I need to walk someone through a process on a web app - onboarding a new team member, handing off a workflow, writing up a process doc - I end up doing one of two things: scheduling a screen share, or spending 20 minutes stitching together screenshots in a Google Doc while writing “click here, then click there” in a way that somehow still manages to be confusing.

Roasted by my daughter!

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 21:32:22 -0500

My daughter just roasted me, and honestly, I’m impressed.

She told me, “Dad, at the rate you’re watching Demon Slayer, GTA 6 will be out before you finish it.”

I’m proud of her on a few levels.

It was a top-tier burn-novel, well-timed, and perfectly tailored to her target audience. We both had a good laugh, but now I’m on a mission to prove her wrong.

Knowing her, that was likely the goal all along.

My Projects

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 00:11:57 -0500

Welcome to my projects page. Here you can find a collection of tools, guides, and documentation for various projects I’ve worked on.

🚀 Current Projects

Project	Description
📸 StepSnap	A chrome plug-in that helps you create step-by-step guides and save as PDF. Site \| Plugin
🔐 CLI Auth 2FA	A terminal-based 2FA (TOTP) authenticator. Search your accounts, generate tokens, and copy them to clipboard — all from the CLI.
🍃 Mongoose Express Middleware	Express CRUD middleware for mongoose
🔌 Mongo Express Middleware	Express middleware that will give you CRUD APIs on top of any MongoDB collection.
🐀 ReST API Tester - R.A.T	CLI-based code generator that automates the creation of Mocha and Chai-based REST API test cases using simple JSON configuration files.
🚀 BashAliases	My bash aliases
☸️ K8s Pod Monitor	A bash script to monitor Kubernetes pods in specified namespaces and report their status if they are not running.
🗄️ Unity Catalog Express Middleware	Express middleware for Unity Catalog using @databricks/sql
📡 Unity Catalog DBAPI Express Middleware	Express middleware for Unity Catalog using DataBricks API

📜 Legacy Projects

Project	Description
📲 SMS Gateway	Turns your Android phone into a simple SMS gateway.
💻 Bash Menu	A simple bash list menu for directory switching

Documentation

Project	Description
Essential Commands	A curated list of essential commands for setting up servers, installing development environments (Go, Node.js, Docker), and configuring SSL certificates.
Site Development	Insights into the development process of this website, including Hugo configuration, adding features like global images, and integrating a comment system.

./J

Setting up a home server

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 01:19:22 -0600

For a long time, my Mac Mini was the unintended backbone of my workflow. What started as a few local workflows, soon blossomed into a workflows for emails, scheduled jobs, Home Assistant alerts etc. It’s a great machine, and it handled my daily tasks alongside a growing list of background services-MongoDB, Postgres, Redis, and n8n-without breaking a sweat. It even ran my local AI models via Ollama.

But then came the “lab creep.” I started adding more: a MagicMirror instance for the family calendar, Excalidraw for diagrams, and various utility containers.

Traffic Blocking with Pi-hole and Learning about DNS

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:09:41 -0600

Building a privacy first home network with Raspberry Pi

My Productivity Hack for 2026

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 22:02:55 -0600

2025 GitHub Heatmap

Looking at a GitHub contribution graph is like looking at a mirror of your year. My 2025 graph tells a very specific story: a quiet first half followed by a second half that was busy, very busy.

I did create a bunch of poc-xxxx repositories and frequently updated my personal projects, but the real drivers behind that green heat-map were my website updates and, most significantly, Obsidian.

Bypassing AI Guardrails

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 21:11:56 -0600

Most of us have played around with prompt engineering by now, experimenting with different ways to get an AI to do exactly what we want. It really comes down to the ‘magic words’-the specific phrases and framing that can either trigger a perfect response or leave the model confused.

It’s like the difference between “Wingardium Levi-O-sa”(explode) and “Wingardium Levio-sa”(levitation)

Levi-O-sa v/s Levio-sa

Jailbreaking

Much like finding the perfect prompt to get a high-quality result, crafting specific words or phrases can be used to navigate around an AI’s built-in guardrails - often called “jailbreaking.” It’s essentially the art of finding a loophole in the AI’s logic. These methods take advantage of the fact that human language is flexible and messy, and AI models sometimes struggle to tell the difference between a helpful instruction and a “hacker” trick.

From Zero to 10k

Wed, 24 Dec 2025 12:14:13 -0600

I have never been a runner.

In fact, before this, I hadn’t run a single mile in my life.

If you asked me a few months ago, I would have told you I don’t run unless something is chasing me.

Despite my history as a non-runner, I stepped up to the starting line of the BMW Dallas Marathon 10k. I crossed the finish line with a time of 1:14:34 - and even managed to clock a new 5k personal record of 32:00 along the way.

30 Minutes with Gemini 3 and Google Antigravity

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 21:50:10 -0600

This is a late post. Pretty late post actually.

I wrote this in November 18th. But got arount to post it only by 24th Dec.

Google released Antigravity a while back (quite a while back) and this is the log of how it went for me.

Background

Most of my personal projects use MongoDB as the database. After a while you start to notice patterns in the way APIs are built for accessing and managing data. The next step in the evolution is to create a library that can quickly create these data APIs for you.

From "Half-Stack" to Full-Value: Owning Your Deployment Pipeline

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 16:41:10 -0500

I recently had the pleasure of speaking at the Commit Your Code conference, where I presented my talk, “The Modern Full-Stack: Owning Your Deployment Pipeline.” The core idea was to challenge our definition of what it means to be a “full-stack” developer in today’s world.

For too long, we’ve defined full-stack as proficiency in front-end and back-end development. But I’d argue that this leaves a massive gap. If you write code but have no visibility or ownership over how it gets to users, you are not full-stack, you are “half-stack”.

Upgrading A Hugo Website

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 15:45:16 -0500

This website runs on Hugo and is hosted via Cloudflare Pages. The last time I wrote a post and updated this site was almost an year ago. Since then, I have been busy with the book, that I rarely got time to update this site.

The book’s done, I now have time to get back to writing and maintaining this site. The first thing I had to do was to upgrade the site.

Book

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 00:11:57 -0500

The Developer’s Guide to AI: From Prompts to Agents

Authors: Jacob Orshalick, Jerry M. Reghunadh & Danny Thompson

Publisher: No Starch Press

Pre-order the book here

You’re a software developer. You solve complex problems and build real-world applications. So why does breaking into AI often feel like you have to switch careers overnight?

That’s the gap we saw. There are countless resources for AI, but a huge void for developers who just want to build.

Adopt AI-Assisted Code Development. Now!

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 13:50:05 -0600

The productivity improvements an AI-assisted code development tool can bring to your workflow are significant.

If you are not convinced, allow me to give you one recent experience of mine.

Me, like many of you, have a bunch of personal projects that I work on in my spare time. I’m currently building something around AWS, using the AWS JS SDK and Next.js. In one of the pages, I want to list all the EC2 instances in my account. The table should also list the tags for each instance. But the way AWS stores tags is not very convenient to work with when you want to display them in a table.

Commit Your Code Conference 2024 - Session

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 09:25:34 -0500

I recently had the opportunity to speak at The Commit Your Code Conference in Dallas.

The Commit Your Code Conference

The Commit Your Code Conference is one of a kind conference where 100% of proceeds go to FreeCodeCamp and St. Jude. Here’s the excerpt from their website.

100% of all ticket sales will be donated to charity.

Podcast: About AI and Data Driven Decision Making

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 21:11:53 -0600

I recently had a fantastic time chatting with the folks over at This Dot Labs for their Leadership Exchange podcast.

We dove deep into some really interesting topics around AI, leadership, and how we at DataNimbus are working to make AI accessible to everyone.

We covered a lot of ground, but here are some highlights:

We explored how my experiences have shaped my approach to leading DataNimbus, and how innovation is at the heart of our mission to democratize AI.
We discussed practical applications of AI that are transforming businesses today, from creating comprehensive Customer 360 models to accurate demand forecasting – all powered by a company’s own data, within their own secure environment.
We tackled the issue of “analysis paralysis” and how we help organizations confidently test and implement AI models.
I highlighted how data engineering and data science teams are seeing a resurgence in demand for their skills as organizations look to build their own AI solutions.

Want to hear more? Head over to the video below.

Fun With Imagen 3

Sun, 13 Oct 2024 20:35:41 -0500

Google (re)enabled image creation cabaility via Gemini with their new Imagen 3.

It can generate images, and you can request changes to the image through follow-up messages. I had to give it a try! 😃

Here we go!

Generate a teampunk rose

A martian is holding the rose

The martian is surfing a big wave in hawai

The wave is inside a snow globe

Kratos is holding the snow globe

Kratos is sitting in a boat

A dog appears!

The Leadership Exchange - Dallas

Sat, 12 Oct 2024 10:15:47 -0500

Last week, I had the privilege of attending a leadership meetup in Dallas organized by This Dot Labs and to be on the panel discussing the “Impact of AI on Organizations”.

I was lucky enough to be in the same room with some seriously brilliant people. The discussions we had were refreshing and a big learning experience for me.

What got me fascinated was the kind of applications where AI is being put to use. While I cannot disclose the specific applications discussed, the common thread was on leveraging AI to analyze and interpret vast quantities of data.

The Sunday Test

Sun, 22 Sep 2024 20:23:44 -0500

Recently I read an article about how Stripe built one of the best engineering teams. I have used their products and I have to admit that it’s just well built. Clean, precise and easy to use. Love their documentation too. When i came across this article I wanted to know how they built their team.

What stood out for me was the section about “The Sunday Test”.

The Sunday Test

While other sections about treating recruiting as marketing, valuing rejection experiences, and leveraging existing engineers for talent sourcing were valuable, The Sunday Test was different.

Speech models + LLMs = Magic

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 00:27:09 -0500

Speech-to-text models are the magic behind converting spoken language into written text. From dictating documents and emails to transcribing meetings, their applications are vast. Personally, I rely on this feature to send hands-free messages and control my smart home devices.

While those everyday uses are great, I recently discovered an even more powerful application for speech-to-text. When you combine speech recognition with the power of LLMs, things get really interesting. We’re talking Q&A documents, meeting summaries, and even enhancing RAG models.

About

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 00:11:57 -0500

Hi!

I’m an engineer, a passionate problem-solver and lifelong learner.

This is where I collect my random thoughts and observations on

📡 Tech
🪄 Design
🏎️ Formula 1 🏁
⚽️ A bit of football ⚽️
and life as a father – 👧🏻, 👧🏻 & 🐶 …

🌱 Go vegan!

Jerry

The opinions, views, information, code, and examples provided herein are for educational and informational purposes only. They do not represent official endorsements or recommendations by my employer.

👋🏽 Hello World (Again 🙄)

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

~~(Yikes! broken image)~~

Yay! figured out how to enable global images.

This is my third attempt to get a website built.

Tried Ghost, then Substack and then Wordpress. Nothing seems to be working.

Let’s see where this goes.

May be it’s not the platform. May be it’s me stuck in a writer’s block.

TODO

I’m yet to figure out load images on this website. For some reason referring to the images in the assests folder is not working. I have to figure that out. (3rd SEP 2024)
Tags
Categories
Google analytics

./J

Solving Sudoku Puzzles with OpenCV

Sun, 03 Sep 2023 23:14:48 -0500

For my next project I wanted to build something that I have been planning to do for a long time.

I love solving sudoku and I was really good at it. Yup, I was good. That was three years ago. By the time I got good at solving sudoku, it started to get boring for me and I decided to write my first sudoku solver – goSudoku.

CLI Solution

goSudoku is written in Go. The goal was to make a fast sudoku solver by improving on the basic back-tracking algorithm. (More on that below)

Learning ML

Fri, 14 Jul 2023 23:14:08 -0500

I’m no expert in AI/ML. I’m trying to self-learn and haven’t built anything significant, until now!

To learn something, I need a problem to apply and practice what we learned. I was missing that. I didn’t have a use case for anything related to AI/ML and I wanted a pet project for AI/ML.

The beginnings

Yeah! Let’s talk about that.

I started with this – Basic classification: Classify images of clothing. Yeah, why not. Jump into the deep end and figure out the basics as you progress. That has been my way of learning new things. This time, it did not work. My effort to learn ML and build a basic classification system spans 2-3 years 🤷🏾‍♂️. At the pace at which technology progresses, that’s a lifetime.

To Care!

Thu, 13 Jul 2023 23:10:18 -0500

Take a look at the photo 🌌. It almost looks like a photo taken by an amateur stargazer. Grainy streaks of sunlight.

But this photo was taken in 1990 and was not taken from Earth. A machine took it, the right technical term being space probe. It was called Voyager 1, and it was launched in 1977. Voyager 1 traveled 13 years and 6 billion kilometers into deep space, very, very far from home, to take that photo using instruments that were cutting-edge in 1977.

The Underappreciated Skill of Comprehension

Wed, 12 Jul 2023 23:09:43 -0500

Comprehension is the understanding and interpretation of what is read.

Documents at work are rarely 140 characters or 140 words or even a single-page document. Whoever wrote that document has put their thoughts into words. It would have been peer-reviewed. Revisions made and approved for general consumption. It might not be the best-written technical document or the best way to string words together, but it nevertheless captures an idea.

Part 3: After the Date

Tue, 11 Jul 2023 23:09:05 -0500

Part 1 of this series examined how handling date and time presents a slightly different challenge than other data types. Part 2 focused on design-time considerations, including schema, validation, and operation definitions. In Part 3, we will look at some of the implementation aspects, and I will use javascript as the language here.

Accepting date-time

If you are building an API, enforce a standard format. I generally use ISO 8601 for date, time, and timestamps.

Part 2: The Second Date

Mon, 10 Jul 2023 23:08:35 -0500

Part 1 highlighted the complexity of handling date and time. Part 2 focuses on design-time considerations, including schema, validation, and defining operations.

I have been part of multiple teams where we had to design data schemas. When it came to storing date and time, we just slapped on the ISO 8601 format (which, if you ask me, is the only format you would ever need). ISO 8601 format has date, time, and timezone information. Most programming languages also have good support for this format.

Part 1: The Date

Sun, 09 Jul 2023 23:07:38 -0500

First, let’s talk about the basics.

We all know the usual data types – strings, numbers, and booleans. They’re like the bread and butter of programming. Databases and programming languages have matured to the point where they can safely handle these data types, and we don’t think twice about how we store, retrieve and perform operations on them. They know that we know that there are a set of expectations, and it should work. And most of the time, it works.

The Promiscuity of PUT

Sun, 09 Jul 2023 05:02:10 -0500

From Single-Document Updates to Multiple-Document Mayhem

When creating or supporting HTTP APIs for database operations, the technique is to connect HTTP methods to database operations. The widely accepted mapping is as follows:

GET: Find
POST : Insert/Create
PUT: Update
DELETE: Delete/Remove

(Unless you’ve adopted GraphQL, in which case, what in Middle-earth?!)

In general, everyone agrees on how POST, GET, and DELETE operations are supposed to behave. There isn’t much room for ambiguity there.

2FA tokens via CLI

Sun, 09 Jul 2023 04:02:10 -0500

Generating 2FA tokens on the terminal so that i don’t have to reach for my phone #lazyTech

Securing your accounts with 2FA or two-factor authentication is a great idea, and what I use most of the time are time-based OTPs (TOTPs).

The process is simple; you only need an app like Google Authenticator (iPhone | Android) or Twilio Authy on your phone. But I’m lazy when I have to get codes from my phone and type them into my laptop. Cloud-based clipboards are also not my thing either.

Being vegan!

Sun, 09 Jul 2023 04:02:10 -0500

Going vegan was a surprisingly easy decision for me!

As a proud Malayali, I was raised on a diet rich in meat and seafood, especially dishes like beef fry and seafood curry. The bright side of the Covid lockdowns was that I got to spend a lot of time with my family, and my mom’s cooking left me with no holds barred eating.

However, by early 2021, my sedentary lifestyle and love for food caught up with me, and I put on a lot of weight. None of my old clothes fit. Social distancing and lockdowns meant that we were going out less often, and the freedom of a mundu meant finding clothes that fit was not a problem.

Mongo Express Middleware

Sun, 09 Jul 2023 04:02:10 -0500

I am super excited to share my latest open-source project with all of you — Mongo Express Middleware library! 💻

It all started with a fun weekend project where I was building APIs for a MongoDB database. I usually use Mongoose and mongoose-express-middleware, but I wanted to try something different and work with MongoDB directly this time.

That’s when I realized I needed a library to handle the API layer, so I had to make a choice — find one or build one myself. And you know what I chose! 💪