Personal Projects

Below is a selection of some personal projects I have worked on

PC Building

I have built two PCs, gaining valuable skills in both hardware and software. My first PC was made with entirely brand new parts, and has the following specs:

And my second PC (which I use as a server) has the following specs:

Homelab

I have gained extensive, hands-on experience in networking and as a system administrator through the countless hours I have spent architecting, deploying and upgrading my home server. The main philosophy I made it with was compartmentalisation: creating many VMs, each with a specific job, so that if one of them is compromised the rest of the system is not affected. The operating systems I used include Proxmox , Ubuntu Server and TrueNAS .

Websites

Besides the ones I made for work and uni, there are several other websites I have created that are currently online:

  • drmamdoohsaleh.com : A website for my dad, made using a free WordPress theme and hosted on AWS Lightsail (although I intend to move it to my server)
  • masterspark.org : My own website, which you are currently reading, made with Ruby on Rails and hosted on my server
  • Two reverse proxies to my Nextcloud and Jellyfin servers, both protected by passwords and two-factor authentication. The former gives me a self-hosted alternative to Google Drive, and the latter gives me a beautiful UI to watch my anime.

There are also several websites I am making for my relatives, which I will add here when I finish them.

Wikipedia

Because of my love of history, I have created numerous articles on Wikipedia related to my interests. The longest is Chalcedonian Schism, which took over two months of meticulous research. Some other ones I wrote are Demes in the Byzantine Empire, Mounted bandits, Continental rōnin, and various biographical articles, which are listed here.

More technically impressive are Template:COPTICDATE and Template:JULIANCALENDAR, which are two templates I wrote to calculate the current date in the Coptic and Julian calendars respectively, accounting for the differences in leap year calculations between those calendars and the Gregorian calendar. Those two templates are currently used on Wikipedia articles such as these.

(Also, please don't look at my user page. It's embarrassing, although I am proud of it)

Gaming

Much of the experience I have gained with software was driven by my passion as a gamer. While it is beyond the scope of this portfolio to list every gaming-related technological project I have done, I will briefly go through some of them here, which I believe demonstrate my competence in this field.

Minecraft server

A friend of mine, who has a degree in Networking and Cybersecurity, once said that the best way to learn networking (especially port forwarding) is by setting up a Minecraft server. I happen to have done just that. I have also set up multiple private servers for other games, such as Genshin Impact .

What most people consider most impressive build is a 1:2 scale model of the Second Temple, which I created over years using both primary and secondary sources. Here is a video touring it. Of course, my world makes heavy use of commands, mods, and self-made datapacks (but not my server because that's only in survival).

Homebrewing

As an avid fan of Nintendo, Sony and Sega, I emulate, collect, and mod many of their old consoles. My collection includes the Sega Genesis, Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable, Wii, Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. This has given me great experience with both hardware and software, such as installing custom firware (like Homebrew), soldering, and following detailed documentation.