Home on Avi Chandra

Editing the same file on two computers

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s a problem that sounds simple until you actually sit down and try to solve it.

You’re building a local-first app. Let’s call it Thangs, a Things 3 clone for people who like their to-do lists fast, offline, and free of subscription fatigue. The whole pitch is that your data lives in a file on your machine, and if you want sync, you just drop that file in Dropbox or iCloud and let the cloud do its dumb cloud thing.

Arrhenotoky and AI swarms

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a word I want you to sit with for a second: arrhenotoky. It sounds like a neighborhood in Athens where you’d get a very good lamb dish. It is actually one of the strangest reproductive systems on Earth, and I’ve become convinced it says something about where AI systems might be headed. Not human-shaped. Hive-shaped.

Bear with me. The biology comes first, and the biology is the good part.

Authentic Thai Green Curry

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is the long way around to green curry: a fresh paste pounded from green chillies, herbs and spices, then cooked with chicken and rich coconut cream. The paste takes time, but the flavour is on another level. Adapted from Mark Wiens’s recipe at Eating Thai Food.

Serves 3–4.

Ingredients

Green curry paste

150 g Thai green chillies, stems removed
1 head garlic, peeled
3 small shallots, peeled
1 thumb-sized piece galangal, sliced
5 cilantro roots, sliced
zest of 1 kaffir lime
2 stalks lemongrass, tender bottoms thinly sliced
1 tbsp white peppercorns
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp shrimp paste

Curry

1 whole chicken, about 1.4 kg, chopped into bite-sized pieces (or your preferred chicken pieces)
2 cups water
2–3 cups coconut cream
6–10 Thai eggplants, quartered
leaves from 6–10 stems Thai sweet basil
2 red spur chillies, thinly sliced
20 kaffir lime leaves, about half torn in half
1/2 tsp salt, or to taste

Method

Make the paste. Dry-fry the cumin and coriander seeds in a hot pan for about 30 seconds, until fragrant. Add them to a mortar with the chillies, garlic, shallots, galangal, cilantro roots, kaffir lime zest, lemongrass, white peppercorns and salt. Pound until very smooth. Add the shrimp paste last and work it through evenly. A food processor is quicker, though the mortar and pestle gives the paste more fragrance and texture.

A sync engine is mostly conflict policy

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Every time I start a sync engine I spend the first week on transport, and every time that turns out to be the week that did not matter.

Transport is solved

Batching, retries, resumable cursors, a version vector so you know where you left off:

type Cursor = { replica: string; clock: number }

async function pull(since: Cursor): Promise<Op[]> {
 // page until the server says it has nothing newer
}

There are a dozen good write-ups on all of it, and the code ends up looking the same regardless of who wrote it.

Preppy Kitchen Mocha Cake

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is John Kanell’s mocha cake from Preppy Kitchen, made for my mom’s birthday. Three layers of deep coffee-bloomed chocolate cake, a mocha buttercream that tastes like a good latte, and a dark chocolate ganache that goes between the layers and drips down the sides. The vegetable oil keeps it soft even straight from the fridge, which is where this cake lives.

Shipping to one campus at a time

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

mrmr launched at one university before it launched at two. That was not a growth strategy, it was the only thing that worked.

The same software, three different products

An anonymous feed changes character entirely with size, and nothing in the code changes with it:

~100 people. It is a group chat.
~1,000 people. It is a newspaper.
10,000 strangers. It is a sewer.

Only the boundary moved.

Scope does the work a filter cannot

Restricting the feed to a single campus handles moderation in a way no classifier has managed for me. Everyone posting is someone you could plausibly stand next to in a queue tomorrow, and that fact alone removes most of what makes anonymity grim.

Homemade Fermented Louisiana-Style Hot Sauce

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I wanted Tabasco and didn’t have any tabasco peppers, but I had a whole bowl of bird’s eye chillies going soft on the counter, so I used those. They’re hotter, and there’s something almost floral hiding under the heat. I tasted a bit of the raw mash off my finger and said “huh” out loud to nobody. Good sign, usually.

The fermenting is the part I keep coming back to. You salt the chillies, you wait, and the jar quietly does the rest. Tabasco apparently ages theirs in oak barrels for years, which is wild, and obviously not happening in my kitchen, so I give mine two or three weeks on the counter. Even that’s enough to get this sour, funky depth you just can’t get by pouring vinegar over raw peppers. I threw in some oregano leaves halfway through without really thinking about it. Couldn’t tell you why, but the next morning the jar smelled green and warm under all the heat, and that settled it. Haven’t made it without since.

Avi's Special Cheesecake

Sun, 07 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is the cheesecake I keep coming back to — dense and creamy in the middle, with a crisp biscuit base and the faintest tang from the sour cream. It takes a bit of patience (mostly waiting), but the steps themselves are simple.

Makes one 9-inch cheesecake — about 12 slices.

Ingredients

For the base

200 g digestive biscuits (or graham crackers), crushed
100 g unsalted butter, melted
1 tbsp sugar
a pinch of salt

For the filling

600 g full-fat cream cheese, at room temperature
150 g caster sugar
200 g sour cream
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 tbsp plain flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
zest of 1 lemon
1 tbsp lemon juice

Method

Prep. Heat the oven to 160 °C (320 °F). Line the base of a 9-inch springform tin with baking paper and lightly butter the sides.

Miso Brown Butter Cookies

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

These look like normal chocolate chip cookies right up until someone asks why they taste better. The answer is a spoonful of white miso, which leans into the brown butter and makes the whole thing taste like salted caramel without any caramel.

Makes about 18 cookies.

Ingredients

170 g unsalted butter
2 tbsp white (shiro) miso
150 g brown sugar
80 g caster sugar
1 egg + 1 yolk
1 tsp vanilla extract
220 g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
200 g dark chocolate, chopped
flaky salt, for the top

Method

Brown the butter. Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat, swirling, until it smells nutty and the milk solids turn golden-brown. Pour into a bowl and let it cool until just warm.
Add miso + sugars. Whisk the miso into the warm butter until smooth, then beat in both sugars.
Beat in the egg, yolk and vanilla until glossy.
Fold in the flour and baking soda, then the chopped chocolate.
Chill the dough for at least 30 minutes (an hour is better).
Scoop onto lined trays, leaving room to spread. Top each with a little flaky salt.
Bake at 180 °C (350 °F) for 11–12 minutes, until the edges are set but the centres look slightly underdone. They firm up as they cool.

Notes

Don’t skip cooling the brown butter — too hot and it scrambles the egg.
The miso already brings salt, so go easy with any extra.

Black Sesame Banana Bread

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Banana bread is the most forgiving thing you can bake, so it’s a good place to do something slightly strange. Black sesame turns the crumb an unapologetic grey and adds a toasty, nutty note that sits somewhere near halva.

Makes one loaf.

Ingredients

3 very ripe bananas, mashed
60 g black sesame seeds, toasted and ground (or 3 tbsp black sesame paste)
110 g unsalted butter, melted
130 g brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
200 g plain flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
a handful of white sesame seeds, for the top

Method

Heat the oven to 175 °C (350 °F) and line a loaf tin.
If using seeds, grind the toasted black sesame to a coarse paste in a mortar or spice grinder.
Whisk the melted butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla together, then stir in the mashed banana and ground sesame.
Fold in the flour, baking soda and salt until just combined — don’t overmix.
Pour into the tin, scatter white sesame on top, and bake 50–60 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.
Cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out.

Notes

Toasting the sesame is what makes it taste like anything — do not skip it.
The grey is the point. Lean in.

Marmite Butter Noodles

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is barely a recipe and entirely a 1am survival mechanism. Marmite melted into butter makes a glossy, intensely savoury sauce that coats noodles like a much fancier dish. You either trust me or you don’t.

Serves 1 (hungry).

Ingredients

1 portion of spaghetti or instant noodles
30 g butter
1 heaped tsp Marmite (or Vegemite)
a splash of the starchy cooking water
black pepper
optional: a soft-boiled egg, spring onion, chilli oil

Method

Cook the noodles in well-salted water. Save a mug of the water before draining.
In the warm empty pan, melt the butter, then stir in the Marmite until it dissolves into a dark, glossy sauce.
Add a splash of the noodle water and swirl until it loosens into a silky emulsion.
Toss the drained noodles through until every strand is coated.
Crack over black pepper. Add the egg, spring onion or chilli oil if you’re feeling civilised.

Notes

Marmite is salty enough — taste before adding any.
The starchy water is what makes the sauce cling. Don’t skip it.

Frame buffers beat photos

Sat, 02 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The first version of the Lorcana scanner had a shutter button. You lined up a card, tapped, waited, got a result. About three seconds a card, and your thumb hurt after a playset.

The second version never captures a photo at all.

Read the buffer, skip the capture

Recognition runs on whatever is already flowing through the capture pipeline:

func captureOutput(_ output: AVCaptureOutput,
 didOutput sampleBuffer: CMSampleBuffer,
 from connection: AVCaptureConnection) {
 guard let pixels = CMSampleBufferGetImageBuffer(sampleBuffer) else { return }
 recognizer.submit(pixels) // no still capture, no pipeline flush
}

The whole speed win comes from deleting the capture step: