Al's CyberCenter
Welcome to my website!
This is a virtual place for me to share some of my hobbies and interests with the world.
About Al
I was born and raised on my family's dairy farm in southwestern Idaho. The high deserts, forests, and mountains where I live greatly inspire my art and music. I'm a recovering band geek (baritone saxophone) and I started playing the guitar when I was six years old. Music has always been my primary interest throughout my life, and any career I've had or financial decision I've made has revolved around whether or not it could fund my growing collection of instruments and gear!
Currently, I'm pursuing a degree in Cybersecurity with a minor in Computer Science. Web development with HTML and CSS is a creative hobby for me, but my web development class helped me realize I would hate to do it professionally. JavaScript makes my hair fall out. Topics which interest me the most in my fields of study are:
- Defensive Security
- Lower-level programming and scripting in C/Bash, and I recently started learning Go for developing TUIs!
- Governance, Regulation, and Compliance
- Cybersecurity Research
- Vulnerability Reporting
- Anything with technical writing (like software documentation or text-based learning materials)
Writing has always gone hand-in-hand with computers and technology for me. In high school I would email myself back and forth to create short story ideas, all of which have been lost to time, but in my adult life I've tried to pick up writing for fun again. Science fiction, fantasy, and horror are some of my favorite genres to read. I'm also big into journaling, it's a valuable part of my personal, creative, and professional pursuits in life.
The main types of artwork I'll share on this site are pixel art I make with Aseprite, digital art made with FireAlpaca, and some photography. There are physical art mediums I enjoy too, like spray painting, sculpting, and wood working, but I love the accessibility of digital art. I started crocheting when I was 11, I think learning how to read patterns really helped me understand code and algorithms when I got interested in computer science.
I hope you enjoy my corner of the Internet and the smorgasbord of projects I've worked on so far! Feel free to sign my guestbook, I try to check it at least once a month:
