Aamir Shahzad - Notes https://aamirshahzad.uk Software Engineer specializing in Scalable Django Architectures, Technical SEO, and Applied AI. Currently documenting experiments with Large Language Models. en-GB Wed, 20 May 2026 23:47:27 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) https://aamirshahzad.uk/og-image.png Aamir Shahzad - Notes https://aamirshahzad.uk <![CDATA[Which LLM For Which Task (And Why I Didn't Self-Host)]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/which-llm-for-which-task https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/which-llm-for-which-task Tue, 18 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) LLM OpenAI Claude Model Selection Architecture <![CDATA[Controlling 20,000 Requests Without Burning Money or Getting Banned]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/request-cost-control-llm https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/request-cost-control-llm Sun, 05 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) LLM Redis Celery RabbitMQ Cost Control Architecture <![CDATA[Why SEO is a Must-Learn Skill in 2025 (And It's Not What You Think)]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/why-seo-is-must-learn-skill-2025 https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/why-seo-is-must-learn-skill-2025 Fri, 05 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) SEO Digital Marketing Career AI Content Strategy <![CDATA[What I Learned from SEO: Surviving the 2024-2025 Algorithm Chaos]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/what-i-learned-from-seo-2024-2025 https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/what-i-learned-from-seo-2024-2025 Tue, 12 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) SEO Google Algorithm AI Content E-E-A-T Lessons Learned <![CDATA[When Matrices Stopped Being Scary (Linear Algebra for AI, Part 3)]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/linear-algebra-part-3-matrices-svd https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/linear-algebra-part-3-matrices-svd Fri, 25 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) AI Math Learning Matrices SVD LoRA <![CDATA[The Week Vectors Finally Made Sense (Linear Algebra for AI, Part 2)]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/linear-algebra-part-2-vectors-similarity https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/linear-algebra-part-2-vectors-similarity Tue, 18 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) AI Math Learning Vectors Embeddings <![CDATA[Why I'm Learning Linear Algebra as a Web Developer (Part 1)]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/why-linear-algebra-for-web-developers https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/why-linear-algebra-for-web-developers Mon, 10 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) AI Math Learning Linear Algebra <![CDATA[Why Did My Celery Workers Keep Dying at 3am? (Debugging Python Memory Leaks)]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/celery-memory-leaks https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/celery-memory-leaks Thu, 05 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) Python Celery Debugging Production Memory Django <![CDATA[How Did One Failed Request Turn Into 3,000? (Understanding Retry Storms)]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/retry-storms https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/retry-storms Wed, 20 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) Distributed Systems Python Reliability Architecture Celery <![CDATA[How Do You Stop an LLM from Inventing Prices? (Preventing AI Hallucinations in Production)]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/llm-output-validation https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/llm-output-validation Tue, 15 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) LLM Python AI Pydantic Production OpenAI <![CDATA[Why Was Our AI Taking 1.2 Seconds to Write an Email? (Optimizing LLM Validation)]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/llm-validation-latency https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/llm-validation-latency Sun, 08 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) LLM Python Performance Pydantic OpenAI Optimization <![CDATA[Why Did Our Queue Crash on Black Friday? (Understanding Queue Sizing and Backpressure)]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/queue-sizing-backpressure https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/queue-sizing-backpressure Sat, 22 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) RabbitMQ Architecture Celery Queues Python Performance <![CDATA[Why Did Our Search Get Slower Every Month? (PostgreSQL Full-Text Search Limits)]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/postgres-fulltext-limits https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/postgres-fulltext-limits Fri, 10 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) PostgreSQL Elasticsearch Database Performance Search Django <![CDATA[Why Were New Listings Taking 15 Minutes to Appear? (From Batch to Event-Driven)]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/batch-to-event-driven https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/batch-to-event-driven Fri, 15 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) AWS Architecture Lambda Event-Driven Python SQS <![CDATA[The XLSX From Hell: When Shapes Break Everything]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/xlsx-shapes-nightmare https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/xlsx-shapes-nightmare Sat, 20 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) Python Excel DataEngineering Automation <![CDATA[Building Dashboards Leadership Actually Uses]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/grafana-dashboards-leadership https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/grafana-dashboards-leadership Fri, 05 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) Grafana DataVisualization Metrics ProductThinking <![CDATA[Scheduled Jobs That Actually Recover From Failures]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/scheduled-jobs-error-handling https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/scheduled-jobs-error-handling Fri, 15 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) Celery Python Automation ErrorHandling Backend <![CDATA[When the Frontend Sends a Query as a String]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/query-builder-string-parsing https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/query-builder-string-parsing Fri, 01 Dec 2023 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) FastAPI Python QueryParsing InternalTools <![CDATA[How I Turned a 4-Hour Report Into a Button Click]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/4-hour-report-to-one-click https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/4-hour-report-to-one-click Wed, 15 Nov 2023 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) Automation Python Pandas FastAPI Productivity <![CDATA[The Page That Made 147 Database Queries (Fixing N+1 in Django)]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/django-orm-optimization https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/django-orm-optimization Sat, 19 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) Django ORM Performance PostgreSQL Optimization <![CDATA[Why Did Two Users Just Bid the Same Amount? (The Polling Problem)]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/websockets-live-auctions https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/websockets-live-auctions Sat, 12 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) WebSockets Django RealTime Architecture Auctions <![CDATA[How Do You Process 200GB of Vehicle Data Every Day?]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/processing-200gb-vehicle-data-daily https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/processing-200gb-vehicle-data-daily Sat, 05 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) ETL Python AWS S3 Elasticsearch Celery <![CDATA[How Do You Build a Search API with 30+ Optional Filters?]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/building-search-api-filters https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/building-search-api-filters Sat, 29 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) Elasticsearch API Django Architecture Search DRF <![CDATA[Why Did Toyota Searches Take 3x Longer Than Lamborghini?]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/elasticsearch-routing-by-make https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/elasticsearch-routing-by-make Sat, 22 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) Elasticsearch Performance Architecture Search Database <![CDATA[How Do You Deduplicate 3 Million Records Without Running Out of Memory?]]> https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/deduplicating-millions-records-miller https://aamirshahzad.uk/notes/deduplicating-millions-records-miller Sat, 15 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT info@aamirshahzad.uk (Aamir Shahzad) Python ETL Data Performance Miller