Avil Page - Personal & tech blog by Pandikunta Anand Reddy (aka Chillar Anand)
Context Around 2016, I explored various speech-to-text (STT) tools to reduce strain on writs due to RSI(Repetetive Strain Injury) and gave up on them due to their limitations. With AI advancements, these tools have come a long way. Open Source STT Tools Handy TypeWhisper FluidVoice HyperWhisper VoiceInk There are couple of paid tools but they didn't work well in noisy environment. After trying out…
Why? I have been using TailScale from 4 years. Recently, I wanted to self-host HeadScale(open source TailScale server) on my own server. During self hosting, I realised that HeadScale is not a drop-in replacement for TailScale. App connectors are main reason I was using TailScale and HeadScale doesn't support app-connectors . NetBird NetBird is completely open source and has a self-hosted server.…
CLI Tools: GitHub Copilot CLI, Claude Code & Open Code IDE: GitHub Copilot Plugin Caveman Reduces token usage by eliminating clutter. It doesn't affect thinking/reasoning. Alternatives: Ponytail These tools will help in saving more than 30% of our time to read model output and money(tokens). Claude-mem Claude-mem preserves context across sessions by automatically capturing tool usage observations,…
A little trust goes a long way As a senior technical person, you will have certain professional authority. But to be effective, you need to build personal trust with your team and peers. That can happen only if you are approachable & transparent. Set up 1:1 meetings with your team members and cross-functional team leads. Go on a listening tour and take your notes. Be specific on how people can…
The best code is the code you don't have to write Config First Tools Any tool that provides first class support for configuration files can be considered a Config First Tool. These tools allow developers to setup/build/deploy applications by writing configuration files instead of writing code. In DevOps world, tools like Terraform, Ansible, and Kubernetes are examples of Config First Tools. These…
During 25th Feb 2026, a joint meetup was hosted by BangPypers & SciPy India. There was a slot for lightning talk & I gave a talk on Kraken2 performance optimisations titled as "Classify billion base pairs per second". Since it was a lightning talk, I didn't had time to polish the slides. During the talk, I briefly covered: What is metagenomics? Overview of open source classification tools Brief…
In a world of complex internal tools, OliveTin bridges the gap between raw CLI and usable web UI with just yaml config. Server Admin Panel I used admin panels like CockPit , Ajenti, etc to provide simple web UI for non-developers to provide access to services. Developing custom widgets is time consuming and requires programming skills as well. With OliveTin, I can provide web UI directly with just…
Introduction We learnt how to deploy kubernetes cluster anywhere with a single k3d command . By default, k3d cluster is accessible only from the host machine. Remote Access Create new cluster with $ k3d cluster create cloud-k8s \ --api-port 6443 :6443@loadbalancer \ --k3s-arg "--tls-san=<remote-ip>@server:*" --api-port 6443:6443@loadbalancer maps port 6443 on the host machine to the cluster's API…
Problem Statement In the earlier post, we have seen how to route specific websites to an exit node using a SOCKS proxy & browser extension(or a PAC file). With this approach, when we need to work on multiple computers, we need to setup the SOCKS proxy & browser extension individually. Instead we can use Tailscale's App Connectors to route specific websites through selected nodes. Tailscale docs…
Problem Tailscale 1 provides zero-config mesh VPN built on top of Wiregaurd. It provides an option to use an exit node for routing all traffic through it. But it can't route only specific domains through the exit node. Solution Setup a SOCKS proxy using ssh command line tool. ssh -D 1080 -f -C -q -N user@exit-node-ip -D 1080 : Specifies the local port to listen on for SOCKS connections. -f :…