Welcome to the site. This is my own personal corner of the internet, a place to call home in the chaos of the world. I created this blog as an outlet for my interests, so posts will be incredibly varied in topics. These can range from card games, to general cool Linux things, to infosec, and music. Additionally, posting will be spurradic in nature as I lead a busy life and tend to jump between interests as and when my brain decides. I figured an inital post about myself and my journey with computers would be a good place to start.

My journey into computing started very young. It was my father that sparked my interest, due to his interest. I spent a lot of time when I was younger tinkering with an old Windows XP machine with no internet access, learning how to navigate Windows filesystems, figuring out what all the different settings did, and discovering ZIP archives for the first time. I was a very curious child that felt the need to always learn more about whatever I was currently obsessing over. I had my first “programming” experience at the age of 5 with Scratch on my primary school computers. It was fascinating to me that I could create things and control them.

Fast forward to the age of 12, I had my first experience with servers and networking. I had the traditional “Minecraft server hosting to computer science student” pipeline several kids of my age went through. Hosting servers for my friends allowed me to learn about IP addresses, ports, protocols, firewall rules, and more. Minecraft also led to me having my first brushes with malware, as I ended up downloading Minecraft mods from sketchy sources and paying the price. I knew about malware, however I had no idea what it actually was nor what damage it did. Luckily, Malwarebytes protected me and gave me a stern warning, and that gave me the kick that I needed to be more careful on the internet.

I had my first encounter with programming at the age of 13. Python was my first language, and it was something I pursued of my own volition. A friend had told me about the programming language and me being me made it a new obsession. I learned the fundamentals of programming languages from books and videos, and things started to click for me. I had no formal computer science (specific) education until I started my GCSEs, which is where I thrived. I had already learned the curriculum before starting, bar a few networking definitions and proper boolean algebra, so it allowed me to further develop my own knowledge. I taught myself Java, which in hindsight I have many opinions on (post for another time, maybe), as well as very basic C, as well as Golang. It was also during this time period that I learned about web development, and also learned that I hate web development and didn’t want to touch it again. Ironic.

My GSCE years were crucial in developing me as a person and my knowledge. It was during this time I met my closest friend to date, who was also a computer fananic with an addiction to learning just like me. We both pushed each other to learn more and do more, sharing our Python scripts, talking about the latest project we found on Github, and eventually discussing the thing that changed the rest of both of our lives forever, the Linux kernel. We fell HARD into the Linux rabbit hole, and looking back it isn’t difficult to see why I did. Windows 10 was the operating system I used, and I had come from Windows 7 prior to that. I can honestly say with all my heart that I despised Windows 10. I was looking for a system I could tinker with to my hearts content, and one that wasn’t restrictive. Open source software was something we both became passionate about very quickly.

GCSEs came and went, and with my newfound time I did what most 16 year old boys from low income households do: get a job. I worked in a Chinese takeaway on weekends, and did gardening and decorating for a property management company during the week. When I had finally saved enough money for my first laptop, I jumped headfirst into the deep end and installed Arch Linux for the first time. I had heard so much chatter about how hard it was, so naturally I figured why not start there? The chatter wasn’t wrong, it was hard. I had no clue what I was in for, and this led to a lot of reading the man pages and reading the installation guide all the way through countless times. I also watched a bunch of videos on installing the system and closely paying attention to every little detail. After days of reading, I booted into the live environment and successfully installed my first Arch Linux system on my laptop. Now, my friend from earlier had recently introduced me to a YouTuber called Luke Smith, who introduced us both to the idea of minimalism and efficiency. I am aware that Luke Smith is hit and miss for a lot of people, however his videos opened my eyes to what you could actually do with a Linux system and this made the process worth going through. It is a different experience entirely and I was fully willing to dive in. We both used the LARBS script as a starting point to get a working “desktop environment” that we could play around with. I immediately fell in love with the tiling window manager experience, and my efficiency improved drastically. The DWM customisation experience helped me become more familiar with C, and I wrote countless scripts in my free time that I could integrate into the environment.

I realise I have rambled a lot about my Linux experience and probably seem like a bit of a nutcase and evangelist for it, however I must iterate that this experience flipped a switch in my mind that helped me see comptuers in a different light and gave me more of an appreciation for development as a whole. You will see that Linux users emphasise the freedom of choice, and I don’t want to give the impression that I believe everyone should use computers the same way as me. Everyone should use what is best for them and their workflow, and I have created an experience for myself that works for me and I only intended to work for me. I must also stress that even though my friend and I both used a script to install an environment for us, we both quickly learned how to do this all from scratch and have fully diverged from LARBS entirely. I have also switched to using Void Linux, which I might do a post on at some point.

Lets put my love for the Linux kernel aside. Cyber security is something I never originally thought I’d be interested in, let alone pursuing a career in. Growing up, you’d hear the same stuff about phishing and making strong passwords. So much nagging about (very important) things just turned me away from it entirely. That was, until I watched a YouTube documentary on The Silk Road. To say I was hooked was an understatement. I was already an enjoyer of true crime documentaries, but this was one on cyber crime. I learned about hidden services and the existence of Tor. It baffled me that a website like this could exist at all, even if it was only around for relatively short time. But the real meaty part of the tale for me was the deanonymisation and arrest of Dread Pirate Roberts. At the time, I thought it was genius. I quickly became obsessed with everything security, from default creds spamming, to spear phishing techniques, privacy, and ransomware. I kept up with all the latest news, from small time attacks to massive ransomware attacks on organisations, for example the NHS attack. From there, I grew my knowledge futher and further.

To everyone’s suprise, I now study Computer Science at University. As my time in the education system has progressed, I have incresingly found myself disliking formal education. It’s not for everyone, and the degree doesn’t spark joy for me. I enjoy the freedom of being able to research at my own pace and do projects on whatever I want to. Two years in, I can say that I’ve only enjoyed two modules. I help run the Cyber Security society and have given several talks, and I have also grown socially as a person during my time in the Metal and Alternative Music Society, of which I am currently the President (Metal music will definitely be a post for another time). I understand the value that a degree has, and currently that is my only motivation to finish the degree. University has led me to working for a cyber security company, which I thoroughly enjoy, however I’m still discovering myself and I have no idea what I want the future to look like for myself. I’m attempting to make a conscious effort to attend more cyber security conferences and focus myself with my future career path.

This was a brief insight into my journey so far. If you made it this far, congratulations! But also did you really not have anything better to do? Jokes aside, a lot of detail has been missed out as it might push me to make more focused posts in the future.

Until then, I hope you enjoy my little corner of the internet.

| Jake |