Absent or just on a seceret mission?

In reality, I've just been rather busy. As you may or may not know, this site was crafted over the summer when I had a lot more time than I do now! Through the rest of the seasons, I am back to being an undergrad student at U.C. Berkeley, and that's exactly what has been taking up much of my time. Fret not, for I am still developing software even if it's not being made public immediately. Before we get in to all of that, let's talk about school.

Berkeley Life

I can't believe one out of a million other articles rated Berkeley as the #2 public school in the country, and I further cannot believe that the Berkeley social media pages decided to signal boost it by reposting it. Its got a lot of people up in arms about our reputation, but at the end of the day, the heirarchy of Californian schools is always about who is comparing themselves to who, here's how I see it.

• People at UCLA really need to make it known that they're better than Berkeley, when they're not.
• Berkeley people don't even address UCLA, it's beneath us! No need to concern ourselves. But in the dark looms...
• Stanford people, now I'm not trying to say I or my classmates have similar opinions as UCLA does to Berkeley, but those trees do sometimes live in our heads rent free.

Anyhow, that's a small time capsule of what the populous has been thinking about this last week.

In regards to what I've been up to, I've started by first semester as Director of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers' Corporate Branch, meaning I'm in charge of acquiring clients for our club, granting us info-sessions, sponsorships, sometimes tours, and projects for our other branches. Neat stuff, but not really in-line with my current career trajectory.

I've also started my first semester as Officer in Berke1337, Berkeley's largest cybersecurity club. Here is where I'm really making my mark, working with lots of great friends and making some fun projects. We're already slated to compete in a number of competitions including much of the same CTFs and Network Defense challenges. Furthermore, some exciting projects which I can't say much about but may include new features to the Berke1337 site. If you're a Berkeley student and want in, send me an email.

Finally, one of the most exciting communities that I've been a part of is the Open Computing Facility here on-campus. It's a really neat computer lab with a great community behind it, and 30 years of history too! Apparently GIMP, the non-destructive image editor was first developed here, more on Berkeley inventions I've come across later. I've been participating in the community rather frequently now, working on a handful of projects which has elevated me to a Staff role. Metrics are important to me, so I've been working on revamping their stats page and making sure the new NixOS systems we've got are properly hooked up through our metrics gathering and displaying services. It's also my first time working with NixOS, and I'm already seeing the benefits of having an easy and sharable template to pass to systems, it makes things like version control and provisioning new systems really easy. I don't think I'll be switching to it so soon as I am still enjoying Debian, but I'll keep these experiences close and consider switching in the future. Ubuntu has already begun to stink for me.

This semester is likely going to be my most intense semester yet as the units I'm taking on are at an all-time high, the courses are difficult, and I'm juggling all that which is previously mentioned. Namely, I'm taking a class on Machine Learning, some other classes, and my first graduate level course. I'm not going to get too into it but involves cybersecurity and it's been really exciting and has the prospect for really launching my career. I'll post updates in a later blog post when I have more to share.

As of this article, I am looking for internship opportunities related to cybersecurity. If you are or know someone who is hiring with my skillset (as shown through some of my achievements), I would like to direct you to my contact page. I'm a big "learning-by-doing" guy, so the sooner I can do that the better.

The Work on Projects

As you may or may not know, I released version 0.1.0 of Robot Ladder, an infinite climbing game to the likes of Flappy Bird or other endless scrolling games. I'm happy to say that v0.2.0 is in the works including features related to enhancing score calculations and a new difficulty mode! Expect a new version to be available here on Edendev and on itch.io.

I've been getting feedback from some of my classmates and clubmates on Fast Files so there will likely be further additions and bug fixes on that piece of software. For the uninitated, Fast Files is a command-line file manager written in Rust which helps organize file endpoints and custom opening actions. I find use in it when I'm regularly navigating to something like a config file 11 folders deep and I don't want to memorize the filepath or find it cumbersome crafting the long 'cd' command. Check it out on crates.io when you get the chance.

Hashcrab is still in the works, right now I am drafting up the project plans and sourcing interested personelle to maintain the project. If you're a Berkeley student who is Rust-inclined and interested in helping out, feel free to reach out on my contact page or my discord if you have it.

Recently I've been researching hardware solutions for my home network and am looking at building my own device tailored to the task. I want to make its own blog post once I purchase the parts and put it together, so keep an eye out for that. In summary, I'll be using a small mini PC with just the right parts in just the right form-factor to manage my network using an open source router operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution. As a side note, one of my professors was in the same graduating class with the guys who developed BSD 1.0, this might be carbon dating the guy but I'm sure he doesn't mind. Either way, it's a really exciting implementation that I can't wait to share with you all.

On the topic of hardware, the Open Computing Facility has graciously granted me access to their e-waste bins as of late which I have taken advantage of, snatching some old parts for a LCD display project. This will likely not get its own blog post but is still worth sharing at some point.

Finally, my new student employee position I've gained will involve a really exciting project that I will also be sharing on completion. I'm working for the Center of Long-Term Cybersecurity and by extension the Consortium of Cybersecurity Clinics, it's a really great crowd filled with really smart individuals and the scope of the project is decently big. My biggest take away is that this work, compared to all the places I've worked before, feels really important. But I digress, once again, more to share when the project is nearing its completion.

Final Thoughts

Though I've been busy, I'm not feeling tired. I had this discussion with a friend recently who is (unfortunately) majoring in Computer Science. He was working on numerous projects for his classes which were undoubtably effective learning exercises and training his critical thinking. Ultimately, they were draining and pushing the stress-workload to its max. I felt for him, working with software is wonderful but not everyone has the opportunity to spend time making the things they enjoy making, they are instead caught in projects with no way out but trudging forward.

My mentality on the matter is the same as it goes with stuff like classwork, and it's to only do things if they're fun. I choose to spend time on content which is genuinely engaging, working on projects that have value to me and ones where I can make my passion apparent through the work. This is the reason I work on the projects I do, not because I am ordained by Berkeley's computer science department to do so. Ask any student there if they like it and I'm sure the answer will lack a harmonious agreement.

I'm lucky enough to not have to make software projects for a living, so I'm taking advantage of the fact that I can work on whatever I want whenever I want, while I still have the luxury to do so. Now that I have a career path in mind, something I didn't have before this last February, I can work on any fun project that I can come up with to aid in this goal. I'm not waiting for a Computer Science class to have a slot for me where I can do a less than valuable guided project which hundreds of other students have done. My motivation echoes through my projects, and I hope that when someone sees it one day they'll feel trace amounts of that passion. In conclusion, do what you like while you can.

That's all from me for this month, I hope you enjoyed reading this update. Once again, feel free to reach out if you want to talk, I'm available via my contacts page.

Thanks for reading, see you next time.