Lokesh Learning Journals

Being burnt out and losing your way is a universal experience, yet when you’re in the middle of it, it feels incredibly isolating. This post is a personal one. I haven’t blogged in a while because I’ve been navigating a season of significant change. I wanted to take this moment to clear my head, share my truth, and finally get back into the game. Let’s be honest: I lost my momentum. I lost my way, and I lost my consistency. Last week, burnout finally caught up with me, and I spent several days doing absolutely nothing. The habits that usually anchor me—journaling, meditation, studying—all fell by the wayside. When I tried to force myself back into my routine, I realized I didn't even know what I was returning to. I lacked focus. I lacked a "why." I was drifting without a compass. Perhaps it was the weight of recent professional and personal changes. I didn't manage the transition well, and without my usual systems in place, I spiraled into a familiar cycle: a burst of...

 As we have learned earlier, being in the field of DevOps require working with servers (Linux servers). Most of these work will also involve working with remote servers. This means that we need a secure and efficient way for DevOps Engineers and Cloud Engineers to talk to the remote servers. That is where SSH (Secure Shell) and WinSCP (Windows Secure Copy Protocol) comes in.  In this article, we will look into:  What is SSH? What is WinSCP? Why is SSH important? How is SSH used in DevOps? What is SSH? Secure Shell (SSH):  - is a cryptographic network protocol that allows secure communication between a client and a server over an unsecured network - is lightweight and efficient, making it ideal for resource-constrained environments What is WinSCP? WinSCP (Windows Secure Copy Protocol): - free, open-source SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) and SCP (Secure Copy Protocol) client for Windows - securely transferring files between a local Windows machine and ...

RAG( Retrieval Augmented Generation) is an important component and enabler of efficient Gen AI solutions nowadays. Foundation Models are essentially learned or pre-trained Deep Neural Networks. They can act as the thinking brain but they have some significant disadvantage.   One is "hallucinations" whereby they generate confident but false information,  and the second is the "knowledge cutoffs" (a lack of awareness of events or data after their training period). In this article, we will look into What is RAG? Why do we need it? what advantage do they serve? what is the typical process of a RAG looks like? What is RAG? RAG resolves both these issues by allows the FMs (brain) to ensure that whatever information that it is retrieving and generating is based on grounded organisational document. For example, if we are building a chatbot for a hotel today on our hotel policies, the model itself would not know about the hotel or its policies, building a RAG on top of it wh...

 Life is a very puzzling thing. Sometimes when we frantically chase after something, we do not get it. But, we go past the need of wanting it, we easily get it.  Success is similar in that sense. Whether it is success in career, relationship, happiness, or money. When we chase after love and relationship, we end up becoming "needy". When we chase after money, we are labelled as "greedy". It is not to say that we should not chase after things, or wholeheartedly pursue things.  I believe the nuance there is the difference between chasing "frantically" and chasing "wholeheartedly". When we say frantic, we often mean that the person is in such desperation that they believe that they cannot live without. When we say wholeheartedly, we mean that the person is sole focus and pure intention pursuing something .  The intention and the mood with which (the state of mind) that we pursue a goal is important. So what is the state of mind we should cultivate...

In modern analytics, efficiently organising and connecting business data is essential for meaningful insights. Dimensional Modelling schemas such as the star and snowflake schema are power data models that can be used to building high-speed analytical databases in platforms like snowflake.  In this article, we will look into: what is dimensional modelling? What are the core components of dimensional models? What are the different schemas in dimensional modelling? When to use which schema? What is Dimensional Modelling? Dimensional modelling: - is a design methodology specifically geared for data warehouses and business intelligence (BI) systems - were the main goal is to organise data so it can be queried quickly and intuitively - empowering both simple reporting and complex analytics.  Key Features of dimensional modelling 1. Simplifies data structures for end-users 2. Supports efficient aggregations and slicing/dicing of data 3. Optimised for read-heavy analytical workloads ...

Data Ingestion and data engineering is an important aspect of being a good AI Engineer. Data is fundamental for AI/ML projects today.  Snowflake is an important asset or toolkit for AI Engineering and other data analytics projects.                                In this article, we will look into: What is Snowflake? What is data modelling? Why do we need data modelling and what is the importance of it? What are the layers in data modelling? What is data normalisation and the steps in it? What is Database Design? What is Snowflake? Snowflake is a cloud-based data warehouse platform crafted for modern analytics. Its strengths: - Handles both structured and semi-structured data - Separates compute and storage for scalability and cost efficiency Data can reach Snowflake via: 1. Batch loads (e.g., COPY INTO from cloud storage) 2. Continuous ingestion (Snowpipe) 3. ETL/ELT tools (Fivetran, dbt, Informatica) 4...

 AI Engineer is probably one of the most popular roles right now. Many people aspire to be AI Engineer without fully understanding on what the role is about.  In this article, we will look at: What is an AI Engineer? What an AI Engineer does? How is different from the other AI roles that people might get confused with? AI Engineer: - is responsible for designing and developing AI Models that can be used in various applications - work across different stages of the AI Development life cycle, including data collection, pre-processing, model training, and deployment - integrate the AI models into existing systems and ensuring they function correctly with a broader architecture - also fine-tune models for efficiency and accuracy What is the value that AI Engineers bring to an Organisation? That question must be answered by what is the value that AI brings to an organisation. Ultimately, for any organisation where AI is not the product or service that they provide, it is about 2 th...

Failure is a common experience for all of mankind such as sickness, love, and death. However, it is the one experience that many people have failed to understand in depth. That, it is just a first step towards something meaningful.  Just as necessity is the mother of all invention, failure is the mother of all success . We have a lot to learn from our failure than our success, failure also keeps us humble and reflective where success would make us arrogant.  I have read a great book a few years ago. Back when I was a university student called "Hannibal and Me", it is about how the author draws comparison between his own life and the life of Hannibal, a great warrior who fought against Rome. Rome's greatest nemesis.  Hannibal was a great general who stroke fear into the hearts of the Romans. He made many women widow, many great families without heir. People would be frightened so much that "Hannibal is at gates" became a saying. However, what happened to such an ...