Hello reader 😄

I thought it rather unnecessary to write a welcome post, mostly because my goal is to write about things that maximize;

Value to readers
Value to myself

Just a word is a blog for me to keep track of happenings in my life. From IT administration to travel logs, from playlist organizers to learning resources, this is where I'll keep track of them all. Ironically, this welcome to my blog does little to provide either benefit. In fact, if all goes as hoped, this will be the least mutually beneficial post I ever write.

So having made it this far, I'd like to dedicate this first post to you, the reader.

Who am I?

A self taught developer and amateur ML researcher. An avid piano player and gym-goer. Also a proud older brother. I like to travel and play frisbee and badminton health and climate permitting. I love music, memes, and movies. I try to be eclectic yet maintain a degree of esotericism, especially when it comes to music and food. I like sports; from MMA to marble racing. I think self-development, philosophy, psychology, are pretty neat. I love my friends, trying new things, and overthinking.

Why am I doing this?

Because I figure if I'm going to keep writing stuff I might as well make it public
Because it might help channel character traits and auxiliary functions I would like to develop
Because maybe something I write will fix a problem or inspire action or introduce an idea...

Most of all I want to be the person who helped me when I was learning and growing on my own. If there's one thing I hope you do while reading my writing it's that you learned something new about yourself or about the world. Why I'm doing this becomes a bit more obvious when I explain what I'm going to write about:

What am I going to write about?

In order of most to least obvious:

Things I've been thinking about lately
- Things that I want to remember
- Things that I think deserve more attention
Things I think will be well received
- Things that are "safe"
- Things that are valuable

So most often about my work in programming and machine learning, the learning resources and content I find, and the research ideas I'm pursuing. I also hope to throw music and travel into the mix, or perhaps the occasional off-topic idea I've been obsessed with.

In regards to prose I plan to write in much the same way as I think. So kind of all over the place.

Sometimes I'll speak colloquially, other times I'll use jargon specific to the topic I'm writing about (a constant balancing act of succinctness and pretentiousness)
I might commit the occasional grammatical or syntactical crime (changes in narrative/perspective, abuse of dashes or slashes, stupid puns)
Often times I'll deviate and elaborate on tangents before leaving the trail cold
Other times I'll belabor a topic rigorously, to the point where it might even seem trivial.
I rely on semi-colons too frequently, often until my writing is more a patchwork of ideas than a well collected document.
I often throw parenthetical statements into my sentences to cover edge cases.
I'll make analogies and references that often don't make sense to a reader.

Due to these points, I'll often use notation I've picked up over time. This is a list of what they mean:

When writing and analogy, A : B :: C : D means A is to B as C is to D
s.t, i.e, e.g, wrt, w/o, bc, wlog, etc. (literally and functionally) mean what they usually do
Pseudocode, latex, UML diagram-style figures are all game

Hopefully in time, I'll smooth out the creases and weed out inconsistencies. With the above in mind I hope you find my blog interesting at worst and inspiring at best.

FAQ

Why does this blog look like Medium? I used to write a lot on Medium. I'm not very proud of those articles, but they were a good learning opportunity. Those old relics still garner views. So when it came time to make my own blog, I decided I'd pay tribute to the website that turned me into an amateur writer ☺

What does "Just a Word" mean? It's a moniker derived from one of my favorite producers; Just a Gent.