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dusting it off

Wed, 30 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

it’s been a while.

my original plan with this blog was to write something every day. that clearly didn’t happen.

anyway, this weekend i revived an old project.

my SO-101 robot arm had been sitting around collecting dust for a while. the last time i used it, it could do teleoperation. i moved one arm, the other copied it. cool, but that was about it.

so i dusted it off, found the correct power supply after more searching than i’d like to admit, reinstalled environments, fixed the usual collection of things that stop working when you haven’t touched a project in months, and got it running again.

this time, though, i wanted the arm to do something on its own.

the current experiment is chess.

right now, it’s still basically a pick-and-place problem. look at the board, find a chess piece, move the arm toward it, pick it up, and eventually place it somewhere else.

“eventually” is doing some work there.

i can get the arm to move based on what it sees in the scene, which already feels like a pretty big step from teleoperation. but there are still a bunch of things i need to figure out:

gripping a chess piece accurately
actually moving the piece without knocking everything else over
generalizing it so it can pick any piece from any square and place it on any other square
figuring out when it should make a move
figuring out whether this can mostly be solved with a flowchart-like “if this, then that” approach, or whether some part of it really needs a neural network

the eventual goal is to make the arm play chess.

maybe against me.

maybe against another robot arm.

i don’t really know yet.

and that’s kind of the point.

there isn’t a practical reason for me to build this. i’m not trying to turn it into a product. i don’t have a deadline. i don’t even know exactly what the final version looks like.

i just like making things, especially when i don’t completely know how to make them yet.

sometimes an old project doesn’t need a better purpose.

it just needs to look interesting again.

things i unpacked first

Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

my original intention with this blog was to post something every day.

but life happens.

i recently moved, which meant my evenings were suddenly all about packing, moving, unpacking, arranging, and trying to figure out which box had the thing i needed right now. and, of course, fishing clean underwear out of a pile of clothes that definitely had a system when i packed it.

among the first things i unpacked were my monitor, desk, chair, modem, router…

and my knockoff roomba.

i love that thing.

i’ve had it for about three years now, and there’s something very satisfying about coming home to clean floors without having done anything about it myself.

it’s not particularly smart. it bumps into walls, gets confused by furniture, and has absolutely no concept of rooms. there’s no mapping, no self-emptying dock, no fancy object detection. it just drives around somewhat randomly until, eventually, the floor is cleaner than it was before.

if anyone is actually shopping for a robot vacuum today, i’d probably tell them to get a nice one. get the mapping. get the self-emptying dock. get all the bells and whistles.

i think about upgrading mine every now and then too.

then i look at this stupid little robot bouncing off another wall, realize it still cleans my floor perfectly well, and decide i’ll use it until it dies.

maybe there’s something comforting about unpacking the same familiar things in a completely unfamiliar place.

i’ve moved every year for the last eight years.

different apartments, different rooms, different layouts. the same ritual of boxes, tape, missing chargers, and wondering why i own so much stuff.

i’ve started to hate moving.

this time, more than anything, i’m hoping i get to leave the roomba where it is for a while.

smart (enough) lock

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

i recently moved into a new apartment and decided that this time, i wanted a smart lock.

i’ve used retrofit smart locks in the past. the kind that sit on top of your existing deadbolt. they worked, and at the time they were pretty great, but they always felt a little clunky and out of place. more importantly, they were just a little slower than i wanted a lock to be.

eventually, i went back to a regular key.

this also isn’t my first time messing around with smart locks. back in 2016, i built a very crude one for my room door. it wasn’t meant to secure an entrance or anything serious, but it was probably my first attempt at making a regular lock unnecessarily smart.

i still have a 10-second video of it on youtube.

this time, i wanted to replace the lock entirely.

before getting into how i’ve liked it over the last week, i thought i’d explain why i picked the aqara u100 in the first place.

apple home key was a must. i love my gadgets, and the idea of tapping my phone or watch against my door to unlock it is exactly the kind of unnecessary technology i enjoy.

ideally, i also wanted uwb.

uwb lets newer locks recognize that you’re actually approaching the door and unlock automatically. no tapping your phone, no fingerprint, no code. just walk up.

there were two options that caught my attention: the schlage sense pro and the aqara u400.

the schlage was immediately out for me because it doesn’t have a traditional keyway. as much as i love technology, i also firmly believe that a lock should have a key.

that left the aqara u400.

unfortunately, it costs around $270.

i like gadgets. i don’t like them that much.

once i accepted that uwb was out of my budget, my options opened up. the two i kept coming back to were the schlage encode plus and aqara’s u100/u50.

between the u50 and u100, the big difference i cared about was the fingerprint reader. the u50 is cheaper and also easier to rekey, but i ~~needed~~ wanted fingerprint unlocking.

so, u100.

i also just prefer the way aqara’s locks look.

and then, conveniently, i found someone selling a u100 on facebook marketplace for way less than retail.

decision made.

installation took maybe 15 minutes. most of that was actually spent removing the old deadbolt, which had apparently become one with the paint on the door.

once the lock was on, setup was a breeze. getting it into apple home was simple, home key appeared in wallet, and everything pretty much worked the way i expected it to.

after a week with it, i might be biased because it’s still a new gadget, but it’s freaking great.

it’s noticeably faster than the august and switchbot retrofit locks i’ve used before. no hate toward either of those. back when retrofit options were the easiest way to make a lock smart, they were solid and reliable. a purpose-built smart lock just feels much nicer.

i do have one complaint.

the lock talks.

i hate devices announcing errors and confirmations out loud. just beep at me. blink a light. anything else.

aqara makes you download their app to change that setting.

yes, i muted it.

and uwb?

i still want it.

i just don’t want it $200 more.

if i ever find a ridiculous deal on a u400, i’ll probably switch. until then, i’d rather keep the $200 to myself.

the middle dog

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

4439 days ago, on july 9 2014, i got my driver’s license.

more importantly, i got scooby.

two of my friends were with me that day. somewhere between the driving test and everything else going on, we went to pick up a puppy.

except the puppy we initially picked wasn’t the puppy we came home with.

a doctor took one look at him and told us he was too young. he then showed us two other puppies.

so, for a brief moment, there were three puppies lined up in front of us. the one we had originally picked, and the two the doctor had shown us.

scooby was the one in the middle.

we picked the middle dog.

he was this tiny, inquisitive, slightly confused ball of fur who seemed to have absolutely no idea what was going on.

for the first few days, his primary activity was sleeping.

his secondary activity was eating, during which his stomach would visibly grow. he’d eat a meal, acquire a cartoonishly round belly, sleep it off, and repeat.

he also couldn’t climb anything.

the couch was an obstacle.

the bed was an obstacle.

stairs were completely out of the question.

even the tiny step at the entrance to our house required assistance.

and whenever the world presented scooby with one of these impossible challenges, he had one response.

he squeaked.

he squeaked when he wanted something. he squeaked when he couldn’t get somewhere. he squeaked when something confused him. for a while, squeaking was basically his entire vocabulary.

his world was also very small.

for his first couple of weeks, he only knew the ground floor of our house. there was an entire house above him, but as far as scooby was concerned, the known universe ended at the stairs.

i don’t remember much of the difficult puppy stuff anymore.

i’m sure there was cleaning. i’m sure there was crying. i’m sure there were nights when someone had to stay awake with him.

for whatever reason, that’s not what stuck.

i remember the puppy kisses.

i remember him sleeping on my chest.

i remember that whenever something scared him, he’d run to me.

that one got me.

i was surprised by how quickly this tiny animal figured out who his people were. he had known us for days, sometimes hours, and somehow he already knew where to go when he was scared.

he made me feel wanted.

twelve years later, i’d like to think i’m his best friend.

i know he’s mine.

not bad for ₹9,000.

everyone has a favorite pokemon

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

i’ve been a pokémon fan for pretty much as long as i can remember.

my main connection to it has always been the rpgs. i’ve played almost every main-series game from yellow through scarlet and violet. pokémon go has come and gone in phases, and i’ve barely touched the tcg. but if something is pokémon-themed, it will probably get my attention, even if only for a day.

my latest rabbit hole has been vgc-style double battles, thanks largely to pokémon champions.

last weekend, my partner got me tickets to pokémon xp + worlds in san francisco. i’ll probably be more grateful for that than i can ever properly express.

and after spending a day there, i think my favorite part was simply the crowd.

you could ask almost anyone their favorite pokémon and they wouldn’t need long to answer. and it’s rarely pikachu.

there’s something very endearing about adults, children, competitive players, and casual fans all thinking so highly of some weird-looking duck that came out 30 years ago, and somehow treating it as something genuinely personal.

we spend a lot of adulthood slowly deciding we’re too old for things.

it was nice spending a day around people who didn’t seem to care about that at all.

p.s. mine is venusaur.

think different, again

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

the first apple product i ever held was the first-generation iphone.

my dad had bought one and showed it to me.

i still remember taking a photo and zooming into it.

it was butter smooth.

it was intuitive.

it was magical.

more like i had just seen a piece of the future.

i was instantly hooked.

i already knew apple existed. i knew about the ipod. i just didn’t know much about the company, what else they made, or the people behind it.

the iphone made me curious.

i started reading about apple, its products, its history, and somewhere along the way, i naturally stumbled across this:

this is the version narrated by steve jobs himself — the one i keep coming back to.

the first thing that fascinated me about the ad was what it didn’t do.

it didn’t talk about a computer.

it didn’t show you why one apple product was better than another.

it barely talked about apple at all.

instead, it showed people.

i didn’t know who everyone in the ad was at the time.

but the message was obvious even before i knew all the names.

these were iconic people. people who had made a difference. and apple was deliberately placing itself alongside them.

but the word i connected with most wasn’t genius, rebel, or troublemaker.

it was misfit.

i’ve always liked people who question what is considered normal.

people who ask why something has to be done the way it has always been done.

people who look at the obvious answer and wonder if there is another one.

people who think outside the box.

maybe that’s why “misfits” stayed with me.

apple also shaped the way i look at technology.

it taught me that the magic lies in the finer details.

things have to feel intuitive.

they have to feel simple.

not simple because there is less there, but simple because someone cared enough about the details that you don’t have to think about them.

that first pinch to zoom is probably the earliest example i remember of that.

you didn’t need instructions.

you just did it.

i’m much more critical of apple today than i was back then.

but that doesn’t change how much the company shaped the way i look at things i put out into the world.

how something feels matters.

the small details matter.

whether someone can understand what you built without having it explained to them matters.

apple made me notice those things.

and today feels like an especially strange day to think about all of this.

tim cook’s time as ceo is coming to an end, and apple is entering another era.

it makes me think about how far the company has come since that first iphone ended up in my hands.

and how far my own relationship with technology has come with it.

i don’t think “think different” taught me to be different.

i think it gave me a language for something i already admired.

the people who question the normal.

the people who notice things others don’t.

the misfits.

init

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

i’ve wanted a place on the internet that feels like mine for a while.

not a portfolio. not linkedin. not social media. not a carefully maintained personal brand where every post has to prove something or end with a neat takeaway.

just somewhere to put things.

i spend a lot of time going down rabbit holes. sometimes i learn enough about something to have thoughts worth writing down. other times, i just want to document what i tried before i forget all of it three weeks later.

most of those thoughts currently end up in one of three places: a half-finished note on my phone, a conversation with someone, or nowhere.

so, this.

init felt like an appropriate name.

in computing, init is traditionally the first process—the thing that starts everything else.

i’m not going to stretch the metaphor much further than that.

this is just my little corner of the internet.

i want this to be a place where ideas can exist while they’re still forming.

consider this process 1.

everything else can start from here.