Insert Cliche "Hello World" Title Here

October 25, 2023

All tech-oriented blogs must make this joke; it's required.

The other required part: opinions are my own.

I've rewritten this blog post in 2026 and updated the static site generation details. tl;dr - I use 11ty and deploy to Cloudflare Pages.

Hello to tech enthusiasts, hobby OR professional devs, and security practitioners out there!

First, a warm welcome to my corner of the internet. I'm Pat - a blue teamer focused on engineering and automation, a Penn State grad, and an avid learner. I've worn multiple hats in the realm of information security across various industries, and now* I'm also donning the writer's cap.

*For context, I've written blog posts for my employer before; this is my personal blog.

Everybody Has a Blog (Except You)

Especially in the age of AI slop blog and LinkedIn posts, one might wonder, "Why bother trying to write?" The answer is simple: this blog is mine. It isn't an LLM's. Posts on this blog are based on my experiences - a challenge faced, a project built, or a curious tangent pursued. I've been lucky to learn from countless professionals and human-written blogs. Now, I feel it is time to contribute to that collective knowledge (disclaimer again, on my personal blog this time).

What Can You Expect? (or, what do I hope)

Dives into Security Topics: Using Python in defensive security, designing cloud-based SIEM automation workflows, practicing creating or tuning detection rules, setting up lab/test environments...
Adventures Beyond Security: While security is a significant chunk of what I do, I'm also intrigued by the broader landscape of technology. Expect some off-topic tech musings and adventures. For example, check out JCompanion, a project where I started to explore TypeScript and modern web frontend frameworks like React (code).
A Blend of Formal & Casual: Not every post here will be a scholarly article.

How's This Blog Set Up?

For those interested in the technicalities:

Tech: TypeScript + Eleventy (11ty) + markdown-it (plus a couple of plugins for Markdown attributes/processing) + Tailwind CSS, all living together in a pnpm workspace (I'm sure this list will either grow or shrink over time, but at the time of writing, this is accurate).
Hosting: Cloudflare Pages, deployed via a GitHub Action - every push to main builds the site and ships it with Wrangler. Pull requests get their own workflow that lints, checks formatting, typechecks, and does a trial build before anything's allowed to merge.
Theme: Minimal Tailwind layout with light and dark mode - it follows your system by default, with a toggle in the nav if you disagree with your OS.

Join Me on This Journey

So, here we go - the beginning of what I hope to be at least an interesting, if not genuinely enriching journey. If any of my posts resonate with you or if there's something you'd like me to explore, feel free to send me a note via:

blog [at] s3c [dot] ninja

Your feedback and curiosity will shape this blog as much as my experiences.

Until next time, happy coding, and stay secure!