hey, i'm aryan
i enjoy programming, cars (mk7.5 gti and recently, a 1990 mx-5 miata), reading about topics i'm passionate about (climate change, impacts of colonialism, civil rights struggles, anti-surveillance), spending time in nature, attempting to relearn guitar, and most importantly spending time with my family, lovely girlfriend, and friends.
there are a few reasons i created this site.
one reason i created this site is that i like to learn new things and want to document that stuff somewhere. im a software engineer by profession but i didn't really care about programming as a kid. i only chose a cs major because my best friends did. then, in my dsa class in my freshman year, i became fascinated by learning about C, coding up skiplists from scratch, and more thanks to my prof. but as time passed, i kinda lost that passion /wonder with the field and became focused on getting a job. now that its been like 3 years since i got my first job and im not super worried about finding a new one - i want to spend my free time continuing to learn more about software (and other things in life) that intrigues me the same way it did my freshmen year. i want to share/talk about those things and what better place than my own site.
continuing with that thought, i want a space of my own to post my thoughts and share things that I find interesting. obviously social media exists but i've grown tired of using it (not like i was a posting a lot or anything). i've been reading more about the small internet movement and im totally hooked. the idea of having your own little corner of the internet, free from big tech & their algorithms is very cool to me. having my own site means i can post about anything without having to worry about if it fits a specific format/vibe/theme of a social media platform. also i kinda like not knowing who is visiting my site, which lets me kinda post freely without worrying about who's reading this (probably no-one - except for you!)
lastly, i've realized im consuming a lot more than i am creating and that's something im actively trying to change. for example, relearning the guitar after years of not playing. this website is my attempt at putting my thoughts into words and trying to get better at writing. i also want to use this website as a creative outlet, trying to make it look as cool as i can (work-in-progress). i've been browsing sites on neocities as inspiration to help with that
i'm currently building ai applications to power pinterest's internal teams. i've also been working on my masters degree at georgia tech's omscs program since jan 2025.
before pinterest, I was working at aws for ~3 years after graduating. at aws i worked on a few things - patching and notifications for ec2 instances, data aggregation pipelines & apis for enterprise customers, a new service for cross account/org access & auth, and some frontend work.
if you're interested in more - check out my resume here.