I am a high school student based in California. I am interested in photography, data analysis, artifical intelligence, and Go.

Photography

During the COVID lockdown, my parents made an effort to take my sister and me hiking each week so that we wouldn’t spend the entirety of our time indoors. On one hike, I asked my dad for his Fujifilm X100F¹ and took some pictures with it. This was a time when I did not have a smartphone and had little experience with taking photos in general, and I was hooked. On every hike afterward, I asked my dad to use his camera. He was somewhat annoyed by this – he likes to take pictures too – but put up with it.

Over the past few years, I’ve grown to love photography. I bring my camera almost everywhere I go and, I think this will be one of my lifelong hobbies, one that I never lose interest in. I will add a gallery to the photography section on my website shortly.

Aerial Photography

I have a DJI Spark, an entry-level, compact drone released in 2017. Compared to some of the drones released today and back then, this could be referred to as a toy drone. The base bundle did not include a remote; instead, it could be controlled by a smartphone using a Wi-Fi connection. While most smartphones could capture 4k video, the drone capture was limited to 720p. Nevertheless, I loved flying it. On hikes, I brought the drone along to take shots of the scenery and edited those into short videos. Over time, the drone became increasingly unreliable mainly due to the reliance on a Wi-Fi connection rather than a radio signal. The drone would consistently disconnect from my phone and fly without input, so I had to stop flying it.

I hope to fly drones again sometime in the future. It is pretty amazing to see how far DJI has come since the Spark. Their entry-level drone now shoots great videos with professional features like log recording. Beyond drones, they are probably the most innovative company in the videography space right now with products like the Osmo Pocket and Ronin 4D. But for now, the drone is too niche of a tool and I do not have enough money to justify buying one.

Cinematography

I have always been interested in shooting video, but have not had much to shoot. In 7th grade, I started a YouTube channel and posted cubing² videos, but stopped after I lost interest in cubing. On a recent trip to Japan and China, I had the idea of producing a film about the trip, but I ended up not shooting enough video to make it.

Programming

I use Python for various data analysis and machine-learning tasks.

The majority of my programming experience has been unstructured and self-taught. My dad first introduced me to Python in middle school, but I did not use it much until high school. In 2022, I participated in USACO, the programming olympiad. I was not particularly good or interested in these tests, but they did reintroduce me to Python.

Data Analysis and Machine Learning

I ask a lot of random questions. In the summer of 2022, I decided to answer some of these questions using the best programming language for data analysis – Python. I learned many essential libraries like pandas, numpy, and matplotlib. Towards the end of 2022, I began a research project that compared the effectiveness of three machine learning models for classifying biased text.³ I used the data science tools that I had learned that summer as well as specialized machine learning libraries.

Web Development and Java

Despite making this website, I know almost nothing about web development. This website is built with Hugo, which allows me to write my webpages in Markdown. To format my pages, I used the Papermod theme. I have made many modifications to this theme, but these were done with lots of guesswork and help from AI.

Important: I used AI for help in technical, code-related tasks. None of the content (writing, design, images) on this website is AI-generated.

I am somewhat familiar with Java. The College Board test for computer programming (AP CSA) uses Java, so I learned it for that reason. Outside the course, I have little use for Java.

Go

In December 2020, my family and I watched the live action of Hikaru no Go, a Japanese manga involving the game of Go. I liked the show and started playing Go because of it. Today, Go is one of my favorite pastimes. I am completely self-taught, have played around 2000 games, and am currently ranked 2kyu on my OGS account.