I’ve never written anything on the internet before. Sure I’ve sent emails, but I’ve never had a website or blog and I don’t post on forums or social media (I’m perhaps the only former Twitter employee who has never sent a tweet). I’ve just never had much to say that hadn’t already been said. And 2024 feels like a weird time to start a blog, given how the internet works these days.

But I am starting a blog, for two reasons. The first is because I’m attending the Recurse Center (RC). It’s been super engaging to be surrounded by people exploring every imaginable aspect of computers (and some unimaginable) and sharing that knowledge. People share in a lot of ways, including blog posts: RC’s internal chat app has a stream dedicated to blogs written by people in the community. I’ve enjoyed reading these and generally participating in this learning culture. So far I’ve mostly shared through presentations and interest groups and writing daily snippets (in said chat app). But longer-form writing seems like a great way to dig into more complex topics and get more attentive feedback, and it’d be nice to be able to also contribute to the blogging culture instead of just lurking.

But more than that, the other reason I wanted to start a blog is: just for me. In the past I struggled to think of an intended audience for any writing I did – who would be interested? Who would want to hear my perspective? But at RC, everything I’ve been doing – building emulators, working through CTFs, learning about CPU architecture – has been just for me. I haven’t been writing code with the intention that anyone will use it – even I don’t use most of it! But it’s still been fun and worthwhile. And if writing for myself will help me accomplish my learning goals, why shouldn’t I do that too?

So this blog is an experiment. I hope to write about computer things I find interesting: these days mostly security and low-level programming. I may also write about the experience and process of learning. I hope to improve my writing but not sweat the details or worry about making everything I write the best it can be. And if it’s not helpful for me, I’ll stop.

If this sounds interesting to you, I hope you’ll join me!