Programming

I was first introduced to programming in middle school, from turtle drawing in Python to web game development in HTML, CSS, JavaScript with Dreamweaver. In first year uni, I was (brutally) exposed to C as an official introductory course, and then (much more gently) Java as an Object Oriented Programming course. Not knowing any better, I completed both courses using only vim and the command line. Throughout my uni degree of Mathematics and Physics, I continued to use programming as a scientific tool, consisting of Python, R, and MATLAB.

Self-hosting

After stumbling on a YouTube tutorial and port-forwarding a simple web server on my home internet, I picked up the hobby of self-hosting, which gave me exposure to a range of skills and technologies

• Linux server management (bare metal services, cronjob + bash scripts)
• Networking concepts (port-forwarding, self-hosted VPN, DDNS)
• Scripting (web scraping and interacting with APIs using Python)
• Docker (fast deployment of open-source application services)
• Cloud (careful usage of Azure and AWS cloud resources with free credits)
• The ability to self-learn unfamiliar tech on the fly (courtesy Google)

I enjoy running services on my home network, (cloud storage with Nextcloud, media serving with Jellyfin, VPN with Wireguard, password manager with Bitwarden, etc.) as well as on a VPS in the cloud (Apache 2 on bare metal linux to serve this website). Although their usefulness remains to be decided, I find the process of setting them up and dealing with problems faced interesting, and feel a sense of accomplishment by getting them up and running.

Cybersecurity

I thoroughly enjoy hacking away at things, in the sense of exploring how programming and tech can do). Equally, I take great interest in hacking in the cybersecurity sense of compromising systems. I enjoy learning both blue team and red team skills through sites like TryHackMe and HackTheBox that offer CTF-like learning, as well as through more structured courses such as the Google Cybersecurity Professional Certificate course.