AI isn’t a magician. It’s an eager intern that says yes to everything. To get real results, you need to coach it. Use context, examples, reverse prompting, and role assignment. Push it with harsh feedback. Iterate until it’s useful. Why AI Feels Polite but Useless AI is designed to be helpful. It rarely says no….
Category: Pick my Brain
Teaching My Daughter with an LLM We’re Building Together (And the High-Level Problem We Solved)
I’ve always believed the best way to learn something is to build it. So I decided to teach my eldest daughter, Khawlah, Python not with textbooks or tutorials, but by building something real together: a personalized large language model. It’s not a toy. We’re building a fully functional private LLM system with FastAPI, Supabase for…
Justice Even When It’s Hard: The Quiet Strength of Standing Firm
“O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm for Allah, witnesses in justice, and do not let the hatred of a people prevent you from being just.” Qur’an 5:8 There’s a powerful moment in parenting that tests you. It’s not when your kids misbehave. It’s not when they throw a tantrum or ignore your…
Cognitive Range, Conflict & Chaos: Lessons From a Late-Night WhatsApp Chat
You never know when a conversation will hit deeper than expected. This one started casually a comment in a WhatsApp group, a few thoughts shared, and suddenly we were neck-deep in team dynamics, neurodiversity, and what it really means to build resilient, future-ready teams. I wasn’t planning on writing about it. But it stuck with…
Why Staying Comfortable Is Quietly Costing You Growth
It was just after Fajr. The house was still kids asleep, the wind outside doing its usual Cape Doctor tantrum. I stepped outside with a cup of rooibos, barefoot, feeling that cold Gordon’s Bay dew soak straight through my socks. Classic mistake. But it woke me up properly. As I looked out across the garden…
My Intermittent Fasting Journey: What I’ve Learned, What I Use, and Why I’m Not Stopping
Intermittent fasting started off as a curiosity. I wasn’t overweight by most people’s standards, but I didn’t feel like myself—sluggish, unfocused, and heavier than I wanted to be. I was 35, sitting at 92 kg, and I knew that if I didn’t reset, I’d slip into a health spiral that would only get harder to…
Raising Core Skills for 2030 (One Bedtime Story at a Time)
The other night, as I tucked Khawlah and Thauban into bed, Khawlah asked me a question that made me pause:“Papa, when we’re big, what kind of work will we do?” It’s a simple question, but beneath it lies the real challenge of parenting today:We’re raising children not just for 2030 — we’re raising them for…
The Struggle Is the Point: Why We Need to Think Before We Ask
The goats were fighting again. I was trying to sort out a small programming bug while keeping one eye on the kids outside. Somewhere between chicken feed and line 84 of my code, one of the kids ran up and asked: “Papa, how do I spell ‘galaxy’?” I paused. I knew the answer, obviously. But…