Tech Cafe - Blog

How I started Blender!

2025-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

In April 2024, I came across a cool animation made in Blender and thought, ‘Wow! That’s crazy. I want to learn how to do that too’. So, I started my journey

At first, I was really confused because there were tons of buttons, shortcuts, tabs and a cube in the middle.

Pro tip: Use Blender Shortcuts</a> cheatsheet as it helped me remember the keys.

(Shortcut key: X to delete the default cube)

So, I did what everyone does when they’re new and lost – I searched for “Blender tutorial for beginners” and came across the iconic donut tutorial by BlenderGuru</a>. If you want to learn Blender, start by making a donut 🍩. Most people begin their Blender journey here.

What I Learned Throughout the Tutorial Series</h2>
Part 1: Modeling the Donut Base</h3>
I started by doing what every Blender user does, that is to delete the default cube.Then I added a torus and began learning how to navigate in 3D space.

Part 2: Adding Realistic Details</h3>
I started adding little bumps and imperfections to make my donut look like it came from a real bakery instead of a computer. I found this part really satisfying once I got used to the sculpting brushes.
Part 3: Creating Icing</h3>
This part blew my mind. I duplicated my donut, scaled it up slightly and used Blender’s modifier system to create icing that actually dripped down the sides using a sculpting brush grab.
Part 4: Making It Look Like Real Food</h3>
I learned to create realistic surfaces using the shader editor. The donut got texture and the icing became glossy.
Part 5: Adding Sprinkles</h3>
I created different types of sprinkles - long and round ones. I used geometry nodes for this. The setup involved using “Distribute Points on Faces” to scatter points across the icing surface, then “Instance on Points” to place the sprinkle geometry. I controlled the sprinkle density with a named attribute and used Collection Info to randomly choose between different sprinkle shapes. The geometry nodes gave me precise control over placement, rotation and scale variation etc.
Geometry Node for Long Sprinkles: 
Geometry Node for Round Sprinkles: 
Part 6: Making the Background and Adding Textures</h3>
Once the donut was done, I added a simple plane for the tabletop and textured it with a marble material using a Principled BSDF shader for realism. Then, I modeled a plate for the donut and applied a shiny ceramic material with subtle imperfections.
I duplicated the donuts a few times and stacked them on the plate. The combination of textures and stacked donuts really brought everything together.

After this I set up the lighting to make the donut look good and positioned the camera and added depth of field to blur the background.
Part 8: Creating My Final Render</h3>
The last step was generating the final image. I learned about render settings, balancing quality with render time and made some basic color corrections to enhance the scene.
I used Cycles with GPU compute for faster rendering. After adjusting the settings, I rendered the scene and was finally able to see my donut in all its glory.
Final Result! 
I had so much fun creating it, and I’m so happy with the final result. I never expected it would turn out this well. I’ll be spending this week getting back to learning more about Blender, and I’ll be sharing my progress soon.
I hope you enjoyed this blog post :)

My Nand to Tetris Journey

2025-05-09T00:00:00+00:00

Introduction</h2>
In March 2025, I signed up for the Coursera course From Nand to Tetris: Building a Modern Computer</a> by Shimon Schocken and Noam Nisan. I thought “Why not learn how computers work from the basics?” Spoiler:- It’s not as easy as it sounds. The course promised to turn me into a computer-building wizard, and I got pretty far completing four out of six projects.
Logic Gates from NAND</h2>
The course starts with a simple idea: using only the elementary NAND gate, you can construct all other logic gates necessary for a modern computer. This concept blew my mind, the idea that complex systems ultimately reduce to this simple building block.
I started by implementing basic logic gates in the NAND2Tetris Hardware Simulator</a> using hdl:
NOT gate</li> </ul>
CHIP Not { IN in; OUT out; PARTS: Nand (a = in, b = in, out = out); }</code></pre>

AND gate</li> </ul>
CHIP And { IN a, b; OUT out; PARTS: Nand (a = a, b = b, out = aNandb); Not (in = aNandb, out = out); }</code></pre>

OR gate</li> </ul>
CHIP Or { IN a, b; OUT out; PARTS: Not (in = a, out = nota); Not (in = b, out = notb); And (a = nota, b = notb, out = and); Not (in = and, out = out); }</code></pre> XOR gate</li> </ul> CHIP Xor { IN a, b; OUT out; PARTS: Not (in = a, out = nota); Not (in = b, out = notb); And (a = a, b = notb, out = temp1); And (a = nota, b = b, out = temp2); Or (a = temp1, b = temp2, out = out); }</code></pre> Pro Tip: Use NAND Game</a>! to understand how theses gates are formed using NAND. As It transforms theoretical concepts into visuals that make implementation much easier than it seems. From Gates to Chips</h2> Once I had a grip on basic gates, it was time to get serious and build some chips. Enter the realm of multiplexers and demultiplexers. These allow you to: MUX (Multiplexer): Choose which input signal to use.</li> DMUX (Demultiplexer): Route signals to different outputs based on selection bits.</li> </ul> I thought the difficulty would skyrocket when I started with the 16-bit and multi-way chips, but once I built the first 16-bit chip, the rest were a breeze, just a bit of grunt work, really. Arithmetic Components Next came the exciting part which is creating chips that can actually compute! I implemented: Half Adder (adding two bits)</li> Full Adder (adding three bits with carry)</li> Multi-bit Adder (for 16-bit )</li> The ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit)</li> </ul> From Bits to Storage</h2> The next phase took me into the realm of computer memory, where I designed: Registers: Flip-flop based storage units that hold data temporarily</li> RAM8: A small 8-register memory unit</li> RAM64: A memory unit of 64-register</li> RAM512, RAM4K and RAM16K: Increasing memory units</li> Program Counter (PC)</li> </ul> This hierarchy of memory components taught me how computers are organized. Challenges and Limitations</h2> While I successfully completed four projects, the two modules focused on assembly language programming were… let’s just say, less successful. I realized I’m a visual learner who prefers tools like simulators. Still, the struggle was part of the fun. Sort of. Resources That Helped Me</h2> The NAND game (seriously, don’t skip it!)</li> Course forums where students swapped war stories about their challenges (misery loves company).</li> Drawing chips designs on paper before implementation</li> </ul> Conclusion</h2> While I didn’t complete all six projects, the four I finished gave me a solid foundation in computer architecture that I’ll build upon. If you’re curious about how computers really work from the ground up, I highly recommend this course. It’s tough, but incredibly rewarding. After all, who wouldn’t want to say, “I built a computer from scratch with just a NAND gate”?

Challenges and Limitations</h2>
While I successfully completed four projects, the two modules focused on assembly language programming were… let’s just say, less successful. I realized I’m a visual learner who prefers tools like simulators. Still, the struggle was part of the fun. Sort of.</p>

Tech Cafe - Blog

How I started Blender!

Part 1: Modeling the Donut Base</h3>
I started by doing what every Blender user does, that is to delete the default cube.Then I added a torus and began learning how to navigate in 3D space.</p>
</p>

Part 2: Adding Realistic Details</h3>
I started adding little bumps and imperfections to make my donut look like it came from a real bakery instead of a computer. I found this part really satisfying once I got used to the sculpting brushes.</p>

Part 3: Creating Icing</h3>
This part blew my mind. I duplicated my donut, scaled it up slightly and used Blender’s modifier system to create icing that actually dripped down the sides using a sculpting brush grab.</p>

Part 4: Making It Look Like Real Food</h3>
I learned to create realistic surfaces using the shader editor. The donut got texture and the icing became glossy.</p>

My Nand to Tetris Journey

Tech Cafe - Blog

How I started Blender!

Part 1: Modeling the Donut Base</h3> I started by doing what every Blender user does, that is to delete the default cube.Then I added a torus and began learning how to navigate in 3D space.</p> </p>

Part 2: Adding Realistic Details</h3> I started adding little bumps and imperfections to make my donut look like it came from a real bakery instead of a computer. I found this part really satisfying once I got used to the sculpting brushes.</p>

Part 3: Creating Icing</h3> This part blew my mind. I duplicated my donut, scaled it up slightly and used Blender’s modifier system to create icing that actually dripped down the sides using a sculpting brush grab.</p>

Part 4: Making It Look Like Real Food</h3> I learned to create realistic surfaces using the shader editor. The donut got texture and the icing became glossy.</p>

My Nand to Tetris Journey

Part 1: Modeling the Donut Base</h3>
I started by doing what every Blender user does, that is to delete the default cube.Then I added a torus and began learning how to navigate in 3D space.</p>
</p>

Part 2: Adding Realistic Details</h3>
I started adding little bumps and imperfections to make my donut look like it came from a real bakery instead of a computer. I found this part really satisfying once I got used to the sculpting brushes.</p>

Part 3: Creating Icing</h3>
This part blew my mind. I duplicated my donut, scaled it up slightly and used Blender’s modifier system to create icing that actually dripped down the sides using a sculpting brush grab.</p>

Part 4: Making It Look Like Real Food</h3>
I learned to create realistic surfaces using the shader editor. The donut got texture and the icing became glossy.</p>