Selected Design and Artworks

Back in 2010, I spent a lot of time on internet communities. I was known for making memes in Photoshop so fast that the joke was still relevant.
That’s how I learned Photoshop and graphic design.

I learned to paint digitally as it was cheaper than buying paint. At first, I painted with a mouse. Eventually, I bought a Wacom Bamboo pen tablet.

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The Day I Knew I Existed

My earliest memory as a child was walking home in the evening with my mom, through a street market. I was four years old, wearing a t-shirt and shorts. My shoes didn’t fit well and I was tired. I had become fixated on a toy robot a vendor was selling: a battery-operated red robot with dials and lights. I remember distinctly thinking: this robot is not alive, but I am.

That was the moment I became conscious of being conscious. The robot could blink, whir, and turn its head—all the outward signs of life—but it wasn’t there inside. I was. That realization was unsettling. For weeks afterward, I obsessively drew that red robot, trying to capture it on paper. I didn’t understand why, but making those drawings felt like proof that I existed.

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Don't Ask Your Co-Founder to Sign an NDA

As someone with both technical engineering experience and product design experience in the startup world, I regularly receive outreach from first-time founders and aspiring entrepreneurs. These conversations follow a predictable pattern that’s worth examining, particularly given how the recent AI boom has amplified certain misconceptions about building high-growth tech companies.

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The Canvas of Consciousness: Evolutionary Origins of Self-Awareness and the Future of Art in an AI Era

Abstract

This essay examines the evolutionary significance of self-awareness and artistic expression through an interdisciplinary analysis of competing theoretical frameworks: the adaptationist perspective, which interpret these traits as fitness-enhancing social and cognitive capacities, and non-adaptationist views exemplified by Peter Watts’ Blindsight, which depict consciousness as a possible evolutionary byproduct or epiphenomenon. Drawing on neurobiological evidence for specialized self-referential processing, comparative studies of self-recognition in nonhuman species, and the cultural universality of artistic production, the essay evaluates the plausibility of these positions. The recent emergence of artificial intelligence systems that appear capable of generating sophisticated artistic outputs, despite what current scientific understanding suggests is an absence of conscious experience, introduces a novel philosophical challenge: whether creativity and introspection are necessarily tied to biological awareness. While current empirical evidence leans toward adaptationist interpretations, the rise of what appear to be non-conscious generative systems reframes the debate, suggesting that the cultural and symbolic role of art may illuminate human values more than it resolves the evolutionary status of consciousness.

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Cybersecurity Projects and Presentations

I somehow graduated with a Cybersecurity degree specialization on my diploma. It was due to some graduate-level systems and hardware security courses I took. These courses provide a birds eye view of the cybersecurity field, and I had fun doing the homework assignments. The assignments were modelled after wargames and even had a leaderboard. Here is a list of short security projects and talks I did in school.

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