My First Blog Post

I enjoy doing stuff that is cool, challenging and fun. Particularly, I am interested in problem solving, mathematics (especially, mathematics olympiad), informatics olympiad (competitive programming), Artificial Intelligent (AI), algorithm, robotic, Internet of Things (IoT), Capture the Flag (CTF) and development related topics.

I learnt a lot while I am exploring these topics. However, I tend to forget something that I had learnt and had to browse through the Internet to relearn something that I had learnt before. This is super unproductive. For example, I learnt how to setup a nginx server and I found out several tips and tricks when setting it up, but several months later when I need to setup another nginx server, I know the general steps but I had forgotten some important tips and tricks.

Hence, I decided to blog about stuff that I had learnt to act as a reminder for myself and also helping others to pick something up fast. I will also blog about other things that I feel interesting (usually technical). This blog will act as a medium to express my thought and to polish my English writing too.

When I decided to write a blog, there are several things to consider, including the blogging engine, where to host, the theme and style of the site and etc. After a short research on several options, I decided to use Jekyll, GitHub Pages, and Minimal Mistakes theme. Why this combo? This is answered in a separated blog post.

After deciding the Jekyll, GitHub Pages, and Minimal Mistakes combo, I need to actually set them up which is kind of non-trivial for me as there are many ways to setup this combo, but the trivial way does not allow customization of the theme. Hence, I spend some time browsing the Internet, try to understand how Jekyll works and find the best way to make the combo works.

I then conclude my findings in this repository minimal-mistakes-jekyll as a simple yet customizable way to setup Jekyll on Github Pages.

After setup all the technical stuff and get everything to works, I had to decide the configuration and plan the content. I had an idea of how should my site looks like, what my content should be and almost all the configuration, except one, the site title. I have a few options, either my name, omit it or other creative site titles. I tried using my name or omit it but it looks awkward and unsatisfactory to me.

Hence, I decided to use a custom creative name as my site title. But now, the problem that makes me headaches comes to me (again), naming something. I am bad in giving name, all names I had ever used is either lame or stupid, like KitKat as my programming competition group, sudo rm -rf as my security competition group or The Potatoes as my robotics hackathon group name, they are not really creative (I think). After brainstorming for awhile, I fail to comes up with a good name.

I asked around, telling my friend what I will be writing in my site and asking them for some suggestions. Some of their suggestion are either too creative or abstract and it does not fit as a technical site. The suggestions remain unsatisfactory until one of my friends suggested, “Binaries and Binomials”, and I was like, “Yes, that’s it! Thank you very much” (yes, I mean it, thanks for such fantastic name). It is technical, creative (I like the double bi syllable), and it suit my content perfectly (see About This Site).

After everything is decided and configured, now I can focus on writing the contents of this site, and make some changes to the theme when I feel there is a need.

Lastly, I would like to thank all my friends (including Google) that helped me in proofreading, suggestions in name, grammar and sentence structure.