This post was generated by AI and reviewed, edited, and annotated by a human Some years ago, kartiknair, built a lovely little thing called Noize — a single-page app that plays looping background noise (rain, a café, a medieval town, brown noise) over pixel-art scenes, so you can relax or focus. This week I decided to actually get it running again and put it somewhere permanent. It’s now live at aryamans....
writing in the age of AI feels… strange. even as I type this, GitHub copilot is suggesting entire sentences for me to write. I can see the appeal of using AI to help with writing, but it also feels like I’m losing a part of myself in the process. the previous sentence was one of those suggestions. on one hand, technical writing has always been about getting your point across. if AI can do a better job of that (quicker), then there’s nothing wrong with using it....
This post was generated by AI and reviewed, edited, and annotated by a human I have an 8BitDo Retro Mechanical Keyboard, N Edition, the cream-and-grey one that looks like an NES typewriter. It comes with “Super Buttons” that beg to be mapped to something. My something was simple: I wanted one of them to fire a single global hotkey so I could trigger Wispr Flow dictation. The catch: the only software that programs this keyboard is 8BitDo’s official Windows app, and I’m on a Mac....
In many ways, getting the visa for my US internship was harder than getting the internship itself - after all, there is no Leetcode to help you get through USCIS bureaucracy. Though there is some information online, it can feel scattered and hard to find. This is particularly true for non-Canadian citizens since we have an additional interview at the US Consulate. That’s where this guide (hopefully) comes in. Before I begin, here are some excellent guides made by other UW students you may want to check out as well:...
Over the last weekend, I attended HackThe6ix 22’ . It was a hybrid event, mostly held online with a couple of events happening at the Wealthsimple Offices in Toronto. I was able to snag a ticket to the in-person events, which unfortunately also meant traveling 3 hours on the GO Bus from Waterloo to Toronto 😔. Luckily, the Wealthsimple Office was a great place to meet my team, attend workshops and get some free food!...
Happy _why day! I learned about Why the Lucky Stiff when I was looking for resources to learn Ruby for my upcoming internship. Though I don’t really understand much of what made _why popular, I do understand his love for writing code for the sake of it - something I don’t feel like I’ve been doing enough of. So, I thought today might be the day I dust off a really old DOS project I worked on way back in 2018, and see if I can still run it....
Zendesk is a very popular cloud-based customer service platform that lets you implement chatbots and CRM systems easily - but you probably recognize them from these buttons at the bottom-right of many websites: If you’ve ever wanted to implement this on a React app, you’ve probably encountered React Zendesk, which attempts to convert Zendesk’s widget into a React Component. It has over 10k weekly downloads and a bunch of references online, but it is far from official....
I’ve been meaning to start a technical-but-not-really blog for a while, partially to increase my ✨ web presence ✨, but mostly to create a space for me to talk about things I’m thinking about. If not for others to read, but for me to look back on. Behind this post was hours of deciding and researching between Jekyll, Gatsby, and Hugo. Jekyll is old and mature and uses Ruby, which is a language I’m trying to learn as part of my co-op....
This is meant to be a summary of my time at the University of Waterloo. I was admitted to the Computer Engineering program in Fall 2019, and my (expected) graduation year is 2024. I was inspired to write this after reading Jonathan Tsang’s story, and I’ll be adding to it as time goes on. (This post was written way before I created this blog, but I am only getting around to editing and posting it now....