Blog

// robotics

Dual-Stream Safety for Robot-to-Human Handover: How I Made a VLA Robot Hesitate

A technical walk through my MSc dissertation: why Vision-Language-Action robots fail silently, why one safety monitor isn't enough, and how a dual-stream architecture catches a failure family that neither half catches alone.

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Jun 29, 202611 min read

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// research

The Year I Taught a Robot to Hesitate

Writing a master's dissertation in a single year, on top of being a CTO and a father. The inspiration, the struggle, and what I learned about making AI admit when it isn't sure.

Jun 29, 20269 min read

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// ai

Slaying Claude Rate Limits in Production: A Practical Guide

My AI app was choking on Claude's rate limits – here's how I built a resilient solution that slashed API costs by 60%.

Mar 7, 20267 min read

// personal

Hello World: Building My Digital Garden

Welcome to my blog! A space where I'll share technical deep-dives, lessons from building AI systems, and reflections on the journey from Kenya to Berlin.

IntroductionCareerAI

Feb 16, 20262 min read

All Posts

// robotics

My ROS2 Debugging Toolkit: 5 Commands I Use Every Week to Untangle Robotic Systems

Tired of ROS2's complexity? These 5 commands help me quickly diagnose and resolve robotic system issues, saving me hours every week.

ROS2DebuggingRobotics+1

Mar 7, 20267 min read

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From Kenya to Germany - Building an interactive robotics portfolio

This is a submission for the New Year, New You Portfolio Challenge Presented by Google AI ...

Jan 29, 20268 min read

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From Shaky Farm Videos to Sharp Diagnoses - Building a Client-Side Media Pipeline

How Shamba-MedCare processes user media entirely in the browser. Image compression, video frame extraction, blur detection with Laplacian variance, and why the server never sees raw uploads.

Jan 24, 20268 min read

Building Shamba-MedCare AI app for Real Users

Building Shamba-MedCare - an AI-powered plant disease diagnosis tool for farmers. The problem, the failed approaches, and what finally worked.

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Dec 1, 20254 min read

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Shamba-MedCare Prompt Engineering

Building Shamba-MedCare - an AI-powered plant disease diagnosis tool for farmers. The problem, the failed approaches, and what finally worked.

Dec 1, 20254 min read

The Architecture Behind a Stateless AI Application

Building Shamba-MedCare - an AI-powered plant disease diagnosis tool for farmers. The problem, the failed approaches, and what finally worked.

aiwebdevopensource+1

Dec 1, 20256 min read

Why I Built Shamba-MedCare (And What I Learned About Solving Real Problems)

Building Shamba-MedCare - an AI-powered plant disease diagnosis tool for farmers. The problem, the failed approaches, and what finally worked.

aiwebdevopensource+1

Dec 1, 20253 min read

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Optical Flow: How Robots (and maybe your Phone) See Motion

Okay, so here's a weird question: how do you know something is moving? Like, right now, if I threw a...

Nov 14, 20257 min read

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CNNs: from a beginner's point of view

I've learnt this topic about 20 times now, some are a bit confusing, and of course, I know some core...

Nov 12, 20257 min read

// robotics

Robot Immitation: A gentle Intro

You know that feeling when you're trying to learn something new, and the best way is just to watch...

roboticscvai+1

Nov 12, 20257 min read

Getting started with Robotics

You've probably seen a robot doing something cool. Maybe it's one of those automatic vacuum cleaners...

airoboticsprogramming

Nov 11, 20257 min read

Learning AI in the world of fast-moving AI

This is gonna be a tough one. I mean, writing without using ChatGPT, Claude, etc, to generate this...

webdevaimlhgrad+1

Nov 10, 20253 min read

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BTS - Back to School Planner Assistant

This is a submission for the Heroku "Back to School" AI Challenge What I Built BTS -...

Sep 28, 20252 min read

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// personal

2024 Wrapped

2024 was the year I decided to hit “Record” on my journey, not just “Play.” Sure, I didn’t accomplish every goal I set, but I found the courage to start, experiment, iterate, and that’s what mattered.

Dec 19, 20243 min read

// cloud

How Auto Scaling Groups (ASGs) Work

DisclaimerThis article was majorly created with the help of GPT 4o-mini What's Auto Scaling Groups (ASG)? Auto Scaling Groups (ASGs) in AWS are a feature of the AWS Auto Scaling service designed to a

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Sep 16, 20247 min read

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// cloud

AWS Fargate

In the modern cloud landscape, the shift towards containerized applications has brought forth new application deployment and management paradigms. AWS Fargate, a key player in this evolution, offers a

Sep 1, 20247 min read

// backend

Understanding HTTP

HTTP, or HyperText Transfer Protocol, is a fundamental protocol for transferring data across the web. Origin and History of HTTP HTTP is a protocol for transmitting hypertext via the web, forming the

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Aug 26, 202415 min read

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Upload files in NestJS & GraphQL

The challenge with uploading files with GraphQL is that GraphQL isn't friendly for handling multipart requests and a bit of configuration is needed. There might be a better approach out there, neverth

Aug 19, 202410 min read

Introduction to File Uploads

While interacting with different web apps, you must have uploaded or managed/interacted files. As engineers, these features can be tricky to handle at some times, especially, when it comes to uploadin

Aug 17, 20245 min read

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Cloud Messaging Patterns

Cloud messaging is a fundamental component of modern distributed systems. It involves the exchange of information between different software components or applications. The core idea is to decouple sy

Aug 14, 20249 min read

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// cloud

Why You Need AWS Lambda for Your Applications

AWS Lambda is a serverless computing service that Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides. It allows you to run code without provisioning or managing servers. AWS Lambda executes your code only when needed

Aug 9, 20247 min read

Mastering NestJS CLI: Advanced Usage - From Beginner to Pro

New to NestJS, look at NestJS 101 to get up and running. NestJS is a powerful and versatile framework for building scalable and maintainable server-side applications. One key tool that makes working w

nestjs-clinestjsbackend

Aug 6, 20245 min read

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Developing a TV Remote Control App in JS

I've been working on small #WeekendBuild projects to advance my hard skills in building production-ready simple projects. Developing a TV remote control app using JavaScript and Node.js is an exciting

Aug 4, 20245 min read

Building Intelligent NestJS Apps with Generative AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been revolutionizing various industries by enabling smarter solutions, and Generative AI, in particular, has opened new frontiers in content creation, automation, and

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Jul 31, 202414 min read

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NestJS Decorators

Decorators in NestJS play a crucial role in enhancing the functionality and readability of the code. They are a powerful feature that allows you to modify the behaviour of classes, methods, and proper

Jul 31, 20246 min read

JavaScript and TypeScript Bundlers

I recently took on a #WeekendBuild challenge idea to create an autocomplete/autosuggestions input package, nicanor-autocomplete. Of course, it seems like a stupid idea, but the end game was learning a

bundlerjsjavascript+2

Jul 29, 202410 min read

Deploying a NestJS Application

This is a continuation of the NestJS series, take a look at part 1 here Here we'll cover: Setting up NestJS app Dockerizing your NestJS app Deploying to various platforms Using Nginx Other Deploy

nestjsbackenddeployment

Jul 22, 20249 min read

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NestJS 101

What is NestJS? NestJS is a progressive Node.js framework for building efficient, reliable, scalable server-side applications. It leverages TypeScript, a strongly typed language that builds on JavaScr

Jul 22, 20247 min read

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NestJS Unit & Integration Tests

Testing is a crucial part of software development, ensuring that your code works as expected and preventing bugs from making their way into production. In this blog post, we will explore how to write

Jul 22, 202414 min read

Monitoring a React App in AWS et al

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Apr 4, 20245 min read

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Web Components , Create your Library

Mar 27, 20244 min read

Package management tools in JavaScript Ecosystem

In JavaScript development, packages are bundles of code that provide specific functionality or features. The community often shares and maintains these packages, allowing developers to leverage existi

package managernpmyarn+2

Mar 22, 20243 min read

Shell and terminal

Funny enough, I thought these two were the same, like one thing. But under the hood, these are two different things that share most similarities. Think of them as your backstage pass to the inner work

shellterminalos

Mar 21, 20244 min read

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JavaScript Under the hood

JavaScript, the language of the web, breathes life into interactive interfaces and dynamic applications. While writing JavaScript code feels intuitive, its execution involves a fascinating interplay b

Mar 19, 20247 min read

Debugging in CSS

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Feb 21, 20238 min read

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Import Order: A Matter of Readability and Maintainability

Feb 13, 20233 min read

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Web Elements Padding vs margin

Padding and Margin are sometimes confusing and you might use the wrong one for the wrong purpose. Both have a different impact according to how you use them. For me, I always have a secret on how to g

Jun 28, 20223 min read

Giving and Receiving Feedback

Definition Feedback is the transmission of evaluative or corrective information about an action, event, or process to the original or controlling source. Feedback can be hard, especially if things are

skillsteamagile+1

Mar 11, 20213 min read

Upload multiple images using FormData Web API

I always knew I could only a single image in javascript using FormData web API. But turns out, I was wrong, kind of, you can upload multiple images using the FormData web API. This API helps to constr

html5javascript

Nov 9, 20203 min read

Upload single or multiple files in react dropzone

Uploading files can be both tricky and easy. Let's say a user wants to upload images to the API REST endpoint. We'll use axios to make our http calls easy, (communicate with the API) Axios is a prom

reactaxios

Nov 2, 20204 min read

node.jssecuritybest practices

Securing NodeJS Apps: Best Practices

The following are Some of the essential(required) that I believe should be followed to secure NodeJS apps Ensure you use up to date dependencies and third-party packages Ensure your dependencies are

Jul 7, 20203 min read

Documenting NodeJS API using Swagger UI

Swagger UI is an open-source resource that allows anyone to test/run API endpoints. This is of benefit to the development team, project managers, and the end customers. There's no need for developers

documentationrest api

Jul 2, 20203 min read

Design a Smartphone in HTML and CSS

designhtmlcss

Mar 29, 20203 min read

// devops

DevOps For Frontend Developers

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Jan 29, 20203 min read

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// backend

Postgres installation in Mac

Jan 8, 20193 min read

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Adaptability

Oct 31, 20184 min read

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Collaboration has been Key to my Improvement

Oct 24, 20184 min read

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Overcoming Comfort Zone

Oct 22, 20184 min read

Managing a Github project in Pivotal Tracker through git

Pivotal tracker logo First, let's define some terminologies that might be hard for beginners. Github is a web-based application that is used to store projects online and to encourage online collaborat

Oct 11, 20183 min read

Lesson’s Learnt as a beginner in Programmer

Unable to determine what to do When starting out programming, everyone has a different approach. However, not all approaches are faster to keep you in line with other programmers. However, there are s

Sep 15, 20183 min read

Why Passion in Software Development

The passion we all get in programming It all begins with an “Hello, World!”. With advancement you jump into ‘“Hello, “ + $world’. This gives a developer hope that he/she is doing something great. The

Jul 24, 20183 min read

The Power of a Tech Community

Today it has been Four months since when I relocated to Nairobi from Eldoret. I had an internship and I was ready to start my career. But with time and adapting to Nairobi, everything never seemed all

Jul 18, 20183 min read