When I originally started this blog, it was just to post random tools I had made or malware analyses I had performed. Adding additional social platforms, tying it to my real name, branching out into CTFs, sharing my reading list, etc. were never originally in the blueprint for this site.
Then again, very few things I've ever started have ended like I'd imagined them in the beginning. To quote Lynch, "Never take a bad idea, but never turn down a good idea." To that end, let's pivot to a brief story.
I used to have a wholly separate set of online presences: a different blog, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube (I used to have another separate set during my ASMR days, but that's a story for another time.) However, in 2018, after some personal issues led to a precarious state of mind, I ended up destroying all my works (deleting files and backups, shredding and burning paintings, shuttering accounts, etc.). I attempted to focus solely on technical pursuits. My creative endeavors would lie dormant for several years.
In late 2019, I started a Twitch account. I intended to mostly do technical streams—working on my scripts/tools, doing retired HackTheBox machines, etc. However, I wanted a specific feel to my channel's aesthetics. Thus I began animating, coding, recording sound, making graphics, filming, etc. Before I knew it, I had bought a cheap folding table to set up in my office for doing artistic things. And here we are in 2020, and I've basically resumed all the artistic things I had been doing before, but without dropping any of my technical pursuits. I was starting to achieve balance.
Yet it still bothered me. Years of work—including an oil painting I was proud of, the third draft of my novel with editors lined up, a short story that had been accepted into a local collection, etc.—were gone, never to be seen again. At least, that's what I thought.
I have a hard drive from my laptop that suffered physical damage after an assassination attempt by gravity. This never crossed my mind. However, I did some sleuthing into my own email records. I picked two points in time that I knew were related to both the hard drive failure and the destruction of my works. By my estimates, the hard drive crashed before I destroyed my works. One day, when I have the funds to fulfill a quote from a hard drive recovery firm I know thru work, I may get a great many things back. But that's a vague hope with a high monetary cost. Hardly comforting.
Yet last week, the week of November 15th, 2020, I was mindlessly cleaning up some cloud backups to free up some space. It was then that I discovered a purge policy for deleted items had NOT taken effect! I spent days restoring, vetting, and organizing various files I had unearthed. Not everything had been restored, but a sizeable chunk of visual works were recovered and subsequently uploaded to my Instagram. Then I set out making this section of my blog to host written works, one of which had been recovered. Several other pieces had been recovered to visual works, films, and animations, and should the eventual hard drive recovery fail, I'll have someplace to start from other than absolutely scratch.
In the meantime, I'll be uploading written works here directly, and linking to places where you can find my other visual or multimedia-format works.
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