Lei Feng's Blog https://leifengblog.net As tools like ChatGPT reshape how we work, prompting—the skill of designing effective instructions to guide AI behavior—has become a new critical skill. Techniques like zero-shot, few-shot, and chain-of-thought can improve outputs at a tactical level. But they cannot answer the bigger questions: which approach should you choose for which... Mon, 07 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://leifengblog.net/blog/how-to-collaborate-with-ai-a-four-quadrant-framework-for-smarter-conversations/ https://leifengblog.net/blog/how-to-collaborate-with-ai-a-four-quadrant-framework-for-smarter-conversations/ In today’s digital world, terms like API and SDK are thrown around often. But what do they really mean? Here’s a simple breakdown using an analogy we all understand: a restaurant experience! 🍽️ 🔹 API (Application Programming Interface): The Menu Imagine you walk into a restaurant and receive a menu.... Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://leifengblog.net/blog/api-vs-sdk-what-s-the-difference/ https://leifengblog.net/blog/api-vs-sdk-what-s-the-difference/ With the rapid influx of new LLM research papers, I wanted a way to store, summarize, and explore these findings seamlessly. The idea was to build a QnA system that could quickly retrieve relevant knowledge while keeping everything under my control. Given the excitement around DeepSeek R1, I thought this... Sat, 01 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://leifengblog.net/blog/building-a-local-knowledge-qna-system-with-ollama-deepseek-r1-and-anythingllm/ https://leifengblog.net/blog/building-a-local-knowledge-qna-system-with-ollama-deepseek-r1-and-anythingllm/ In today’s information-explosion world, we are constantly bombarded with claims made by individuals, organizations, and companies. Advertisers emphasize the quality of their products, universities boast about the salaries of their graduates, and pharmaceutical companies promote the efficacy of their medicines. But how do we know if these claims are trustworthy?... Fri, 23 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://leifengblog.net/blog/understanding-hypothesis-testing-for-evaluating-claims-with-confidence/ https://leifengblog.net/blog/understanding-hypothesis-testing-for-evaluating-claims-with-confidence/ Have you ever got stumped by a logic puzzle? Sukodu got you scratching your head? Einstein’s puzzle made you crazy with the clues and facts? These puzzles might seem like mental gymnastics, but there’s a secret weapon can be used to crack the code: Constraint Programming (CP). What Makes CP... Mon, 27 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://leifengblog.net/blog/cracking-the-code-solving-puzzles-with-constraints-programming/ https://leifengblog.net/blog/cracking-the-code-solving-puzzles-with-constraints-programming/ This post is a quick start manual for beginners to use Git with GitHub for source code control. Although this manual aims for the operations with repositories of GitHub, the instructions apply to general Git practices. This post assumes that you have already set up a GitHub account where you... Wed, 06 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://leifengblog.net/blog/git-and-github-for-collaboration-a-step-by-step-tutorial/ https://leifengblog.net/blog/git-and-github-for-collaboration-a-step-by-step-tutorial/ In today’s fast-paced and ever-evolving technological landscape, the role of a technology manager has become increasingly important. A technology manager is responsible for overseeing complex projects, leading teams of technical experts, and ensuring that the organization’s technology infrastructure is up-to-date and aligned with its overall strategic goals. To be a... Mon, 17 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://leifengblog.net/blog/what-qualities-make-a-great-technology-manager/ https://leifengblog.net/blog/what-qualities-make-a-great-technology-manager/ This post is a quick start manual for beginners to use Git with Auzre DevOps to source code control. Although this manual aims for the operations with Repos of Azure DevOps, the instructions apply to general Git practices. This post assumes that you have already set up a Azure DevOps... Tue, 25 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://leifengblog.net/blog/best-practices-of-source-code-control-in-azure-devops/ https://leifengblog.net/blog/best-practices-of-source-code-control-in-azure-devops/ Both Data Science (DS) and Operations Research (OR) are two disciplines that provide advanced analytics capabilities. They are highly relevant and overlapped, but they work in two different paradigms. In this post, I’m trying to explain the relationship between DS and OR, the differences, and how they could work together... Sun, 16 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://leifengblog.net/blog/data-science-vs-operations-research-in-advanced-analytics/ https://leifengblog.net/blog/data-science-vs-operations-research-in-advanced-analytics/ The last day of the year is usually a time when I reflect on the past 12 months and set up some new goals for the coming year. The year 2021 was marked by many ups and downs across the country and the world. Well, which year was not? I... Fri, 31 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://leifengblog.net/blog/goodbye-2021-hello-2022/ https://leifengblog.net/blog/goodbye-2021-hello-2022/ Auzre Machine Learing Workspace provides a centralized platform to work with all aspects of Machine Learning, from creating and training ML models to publishing the models to services. This post describes the steps you can follow to train a ML model and deploy the trained model as web service on... Thu, 15 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://leifengblog.net/blog/train-register-and-deploy-ml-models-to-azure-kubernetes-cluster/ https://leifengblog.net/blog/train-register-and-deploy-ml-models-to-azure-kubernetes-cluster/ This post is a quick start manual for beginners to Git or GitLab. Although this manual aims for the GitLab Enterprise edition on Windows, the instructions apply to general Git and GitLab/GitHub practices. This post assumes that you have already set up a GitLab web account where you can restore... Mon, 15 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://leifengblog.net/blog/git-and-gitlab-quick-start-tutorial/ https://leifengblog.net/blog/git-and-gitlab-quick-start-tutorial/ Connecting to an Oracle Database with Python cx_Oracle through LDAP is not trivial. It needs to install cx_Oracle module and Oracle Instant Client libraries, as well as set up LDAP settings in the Oracle Client. This post describes the processes to set up a connection to an Oracle Database on-premises... Sun, 31 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://leifengblog.net/blog/connect-to-oracle-database-with-python-cx-oracle-through-ldap-in-ubuntu/ https://leifengblog.net/blog/connect-to-oracle-database-with-python-cx-oracle-through-ldap-in-ubuntu/ 2020 is over, and brighter days are coming. On the last day of 2020, I want to reflect on the past year and set up something new for 2021. The COVID-19 changed our lives and caused many losses, but I was, lucky enough, able to get on some new habits,... Thu, 31 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://leifengblog.net/blog/my-reflections-on-2020-and-resolutions-for-2021/ https://leifengblog.net/blog/my-reflections-on-2020-and-resolutions-for-2021/ Microsoft Power BI Desktop can connect to many data sources, Oracle Database is one of the most popular ones. The missed steps on installation of Oracle client and ambiguous specification of ServerName/ServiceName in the Power BI’s official document make it hard to follow. This post aims to fill the gap... Thu, 29 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://leifengblog.net/blog/connect-power-bi-desktop-to-oracle-database-through-ldap-jdbc-connection-string/ https://leifengblog.net/blog/connect-power-bi-desktop-to-oracle-database-through-ldap-jdbc-connection-string/ In previous post I described how to create a Linux Virtual Machine(VM) and connect to it through WindSCP on Windows 10 under a company proxy. However, it is not a best practice from security perspective. One of the best practices is to create a VM with private IP that comes... Tue, 20 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://leifengblog.net/blog/create-a-virtual-machine-with-private-ip-from-a-virtual-network/ https://leifengblog.net/blog/create-a-virtual-machine-with-private-ip-from-a-virtual-network/ To learn Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine, the first thing you want to try might be to create a VM and connect to it. If you follow the steps described in Microsoft’s official quickstart document, you most likely fail to connect to it, especially when you are under a company proxy.... Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://leifengblog.net/blog/create-and-connect-to-azure-vm-under-company-proxy/ https://leifengblog.net/blog/create-and-connect-to-azure-vm-under-company-proxy/ AI Platform Notebooks is a managed service that provides an integration of JupyterLab, Git, and optimized data science libraries and frameworks. From it, you can get access to almost all ML frameworks, such as TensorFlow, Keras, PyTorch, etc. It is an excellent place for machine learning developers to experiment, develop,... Thu, 16 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://leifengblog.net/blog/create-ai-platform-notebooks-instance-in-shared-vpc-without-service-availability/ https://leifengblog.net/blog/create-ai-platform-notebooks-instance-in-shared-vpc-without-service-availability/ As a power user of Google Cloud Platform, you definately need to use gcloud, gsutil and bq commands to work with GCP, which means you need to install Google Cloud SDK on your local computer. You can install the Cloud SDK through many options, including versioned archives, installer, apt-get/yum for... Sun, 07 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://leifengblog.net/blog/Installing-Google-Cloud-SDK-to-Use-Python-from-Anaconda/ https://leifengblog.net/blog/Installing-Google-Cloud-SDK-to-Use-Python-from-Anaconda/ Kubeflow is an open-source project which aims to make running ML workloads on Kubernetes simple, portable and scalable. However, setting up a Kubeflow cluster in a shared VPC on Google Cloud Platform can not be done through the web console yet. This post tries to describe the steps you need... Sat, 14 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://leifengblog.net/blog/setup-kubeflow-cluster-in-shared-vpc-on-google-cloud-platform/ https://leifengblog.net/blog/setup-kubeflow-cluster-in-shared-vpc-on-google-cloud-platform/