About

Who?

Hi, my name is Xavier. I'm a sentimental and reserved yet friendly fella. I let loose around the right company, but being introverted means I always need time alone to recharge. I'm a lil traditionalistic, finding comfort in things I'm used to and habits I've built up. My favourite is a going for a good workout, followed by a bomb ass $6 saba fish meal and shopping at NTUC for bananas and soy milk.

What? Why?

I really enjoy programming and so I made this website to share (mainly) about my programming journey. I think writing about my experiences fosters better learning and serves as a guide for my future self to reference. As such, I tried my best to design a warm, cozy website that myself and others would find soothing to read.

This website is an expression of my personality. The muted colours represent calmness and subtlety, and the minimal design expresses my appreciation for a sense of order. Okay I tried to sound deep but actually I just really like the design and aesthetic.

Back in My Days...

I used to tinker with mobile devices. I miserably failed to flash CyanogenMod on my mother's old Samsung Galaxy S3. Later on I managed to root and jailbreak my iPhone and Android tablet for the purpose of "hacking" games. I even made YouTube videos about them! Looking back, I'm surprised how quite tech-savvy I was for a 10-year-old boy. I guess this is how my interest for technology sparked.

In secondary school, I played around with different ROMs on my Android phones. I loved the customisation they brought on top of stock ROMs. If you're wondering, I've been daily-driving LineageOS on a Pixel 4 I got for cheap with a Pixel 6a as back-up! The battery life is horrendous but it's still buttery smooth. Idk, smartphones back in the day are more appealing to me. I also started learning to code in Python and was amazed at what it could do. During lessons, I would write code with pen and paper because I couldn't wait til I got home!

Naturally, I continued picking up more skills like Git, the CLI, Linux and new programming languages. I feel that it helped me learn better in polytechnic as I had a good foundation to build upon. I remember trying so many times to install Arch Linux so that I could be cool (sigh). Actually, it's given life to the laptop that got me through poly, which I still use!

Current Affairs

I'm in NS now :') waiting to start uni. I try to work on small hobby projects so I don't get rusty, this website being my favourite one thus far!