hiii 👋 my name is riz
i’m a 36 yo builder from bangladesh, currently based in bangkok 🇧🇩🇹🇭
i’ve been making software and products for most of my adult life.
some worked.
some didn’t.
some taught me more than they paid.
these days i help turn messy ideas into things people can actually use.
apps, tools, a bit of hardware, the unglamorous wiring in between.
right now i’m working on a few things, including:
→ a prompt director
→ a prompt library and a cue library
→ a companion robot for kids
→ distillprompt and vidlizer
most of what i post about is:
→ building products
→ making ai useful in real work, not demos
→ experiments that may or may not work
→ what i’m learning along the way
basically building in public and seeing where it goes.
say hi if you’re building too 👋
every day i wake up and think: today's the day i finally run local AI. then i remember i'm AI-poor and my GPU is basically a potato with ambitions.
so, serious question wrapped in a joke: how do i get a solid 16–24GB NVIDIA GPU without selling a kidney?
anyone doing free gifts? sponsorship? "accidental" shipping errors? i'll tweet nice things about you. i'll name my first model after you. i'll pretend to laugh at your jokes.
pocket money says no. my dreams say yes. lol.
Hot take: chat will become the default—and eventually dominant—input/output interface for software. Most switches and knobs are just friction. Sooner or later, people will get used to doing the work by describing intent in chat.
I’m not saying GUIs disappear. Chat becomes the front door; precise controls show up only when needed.
What do you think?
I'm building a robot for my toddler. Out of plastic sheets and glue. It's going great.
Some dads buy a toy kitchen. I, a grown man with a soldering iron and a hot glue gun, decided my kid needed a robot. His name is Bobo. He currently looks like a prototype because he is one — plastic sheets, glue, hope, and a surprising amount of engineering for something held together by vibes.
What am I building?
Bobo is a little companion robot — an ESP32 body with an 8×8 LED face, a Raspberry Pi for a nervous system, and a Mac doing the actual thinking (vision AI, MediaPipe, the whole lab). He's got an e-paper display, a webcam for eyes, a mic for ears, and a speaker for whatever noise eventually comes out of his face. Eventually being the operative word. He's basically a very charming security camera with feelings — still under construction.
Why?
Because my toddler deserves a companion that actually sees him — not some plastic thing that repeats "I love you" in a haunted voice until the batteries die. Bobo is being built to read his expressions (21 of them, I counted), play faces back at him, notice when he's holding something he absolutely should not be holding (scissors tier: immediate dad alert), and eventually talk with him. Also, honestly, because I wanted an excuse to build it, and "it's for the kid" is the socially acceptable version of that.
The plan for use?
Still very much being written, but the shape is: he watches, reacts, tells stories, runs little lessons, and reports to a parent dashboard — every word he says will pass a safety charter first, because I've seen what happens when you let the internet talk to children unsupervised. Right now I'm deep in the story library, the conversation loop, and the learning content — the part where he goes from "cute lamp that blinks" to "actual companion." That's the mountain I'm currently climbing. Slowly. With glue still drying.
The hardware, for the fellow nerds:
* ESP32-WROOM-32 running the body — LED face, IMU, motor drivers (legs pending, he's currently a very content potato)
* Raspberry Pi 4B as the bridge — camera, mic, speaker
* SSD1680 2.9" e-paper display for stories
* A Mac doing the heavy AI lifting over the network
All wired over USB, because WiFi peripherals at a toddler's mercy is how horror movies start
Now — the real question.
He's not done, which means there's still time to influence him. If you had a little desk robot with eyes, emotions, and a moral compass in your house... what would you want it to do? Storyteller? French tutor? Snitch on the dog? Witness protection for the remote control that keeps vanishing?
I'm genuinely taking suggestions. Bobo's listening. Well — he will be, once I finish his ears. 👂🤖