Hello Word

Note: This was my first post on the first version of my website, which was hosted on WordPress.

WordPress, that is. Or maybe Microsoft Word, since that's what I'm using to type this up. This being my first post ever, I figured I should maintain the status quo and just talk about myself and why I'm starting to blog. I also felt obligated to use a featured image that's not exactly relevant but totally looks cool.

I'm a computer engineering student, and go to University of Maryland. I hope to enter a career in cybersecurity upon graduation, or maybe digital hardware design, or reverse engineering malware, or just plain software engineering. So, I don't know exactly where I'll end up next year, but here's how I ended up starting a blog:

I've wanted to have my own website for a while. First, I just thought it would be cool to have my own place on the internet. Then, I realized it'd be a good idea to have some type of online resume. I think I went through at least three separate attempts to make my own website before this one. The reason none of them were completed is because I was making them from scratch. I wanted to show off my own web development skills by coding my own site. Over the course of these iterations, I used plain HTML and CSS, stated integrating JavaScript features, and then moved to ember.js. I even considered writing a custom backend in golang to serve the pages just to say I did. Eventually, though, I realized that not only am I putting way to much effort into reinventing the wheel, but I don't want to go into web development as a career, so there was absolutely no reason to write my own website. Granted, my ember.js site was looking pretty cool and unique, but it would've been a pain to make it work well on all devices, and just maintain in general.

I also realized during this time that I already have a LinkedIn account. LinkedIn is literally an online resume. I had no need to make a website that would just rehash everything already there.

So I caved.

I bought a domain name and hosting from Namecheap, (I had met them at a hackathon, and they seemed more modern and hip than GoDaddy), and installed WordPress. I had reverted back to wanting a website more because it's cool, and it'd be a good place to share things I'm up to that don't have a place on Facebook or Instagram.

And now we're here. I plan on posting about projects and computer engineering things I experience as a student. Not all my posts and thoughts are going to be nerdy and tech related, but a lot of them certainly will be (you've been warned). Some things I already plan on writing about are basic reverse engineering since I'll be assistant teaching it next semester, as well as basic crypto algorithms and low level networking implementations as practice for classes.

That's it. If you want to know more about me, either read more of my posts or skip directly to the source and send me a message.

Thanks for reading!