Hey,
I thought about leaving out my personal history here, but in the age of GenAI I think it's more important than ever that I leave this in.
The first time I probably used a computer was when I was four. My dad used to work in sales for a local technology company in Muscat in the '90s and early 2000s. Mum is a computer science teacher. So every now and then, us siblings got to see a lot of cool gizmos—MP3 players, weird computer peripherals, you name it.
So yes, first computer: Pentium 4 machine, Windows XP, CRT, and those white CPU cases we don't miss. Not too shabby. We got access to dial-up in our home in 2006, and now I'm on this weird place called the "Internet." It was the wild west—maybe not as much as those in the '90s thought, but it still was a wild place. I mean, in a usually slow place like Muscat, it was like being catapulted into the future. Everything from Flash games, Wikipedia, Wattpad, fandom sites, theFacebook, and what not. I remember begging Mum to allow me to play a game online, but it needed a 20MB Unity download.
We were taught QBasic in school—basic commands to talk to the terminal. You'd expect me to say it was life-changing and further increased my love for computers, but truth be told, it was quite unexciting. Then I discovered HTML through Geocities. Declarative and showed you exactly what you make. No boring black terminal. I spent hours and hours playing around on Notepad++, from marquee banners, to using my name as a colour to see what shows, realizing the real magic was in CSS styling.
In 5th grade, me and one of my best friends at the time (and a much smarter lad than I ever was) would pop into the computer labs every day. Those didn't have access to the internet, but we were there for serious business: Excel, specifically visualising fancy charts with useless data, just making them cool and 3D. We slowly discovered Visual Basic and got to work on it. Every day, no agenda, us boys would bring code we found online in our notebooks and run them on the system—and a lot of times it didn't work because my handwriting wasn't the one you'd want to see often. We took a lot of pride in what we were doing, and our teachers on their breaks did notice and encourage us, and we did take liberty of that.
Through the years, I picked up more and more pieces: advanced big-boy languages like C/C++, figuring out databases, Linux and why it's the bedrock of development, system design, and now building compound AI systems. The theory was nice, but seeing theory in action and what it takes to bring together something useful and accomplish a goal was the real bonanza. I had a weird long phase with design too, and maybe that's helped me out in consulting and communicating ideas. I mean, I'm not some Silicon Valley prodigy building the next big thing, but this was fun to me. It meant something, very deeply.
I did computer science engineering and found my love for architecting and DevOps, and being in FOSS movement groups made me pursue a career in data privacy. Technology is deeply integrated in any organisation; most types of risks that organisations face today have evolved to become tech risks too. I'm trying to exist in the privacy space as a practitioner, using the very obsession I have with putting systems together to help fix fragmented privacy operations and understand the entire lifecycle of data as the law demands.
When I'm not navigating the intricate world of enterprise architectures, regulations, and compliance, you'll find me tinkering in the cloud, on the most random platforms or tech stacks, or diving into anything AI/tech related. Like a jack of all trades, maybe master of none—because every programming library has to introduce a library update in six months that makes a lot of stuff obsolete. (Except you, COBOL—you're good.)
As an AI language model, I have been trained... jk, I don't want to make this section like a LinkedIn About, so yes, here's some things about me:
- I love cameras. 360 cameras are dope, especially for reframing your PoV after you're done shooting. I shoot on a Sony APS-C too, primarily portraits and cars, loving the lightweight body and Sigma fixed-aperture lenses.
- Been reading The Metamorphosis by Kafka.
- Odesza is my all-time favourite duo. I could listen to all their albums on repeat forever. Eyeing Colorado to watch them live someday.
- I take my time with travel. I want to see as much as I can, spend as much time understanding what I'm looking at on trips.
- I'm building Kaitaki—AI agents to help privacy teams do assessments faster.
So yeah, that's me. Feel free to explore the site, and don't hesitate to reach out if you'd like to chat about data privacy, technology, or just about anything else! I believe in keeping your identity fluid enough that you don't become complacent, but one thing I can assure you is I'm a technocrat. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, until I'm not here anymore. The tech landscape will continue to be in flux, and how we interact with information and computation will never be in stasis. My grandfather saw the era of punch cards and mainframes. My father saw the internet and personal computers in the hands of individuals. I saw the rise of cloud computing, further decentralised access, creating a web of interconnected systems, the age of the children of the Internet, and of course the rise of artificial intelligence for the individual and enterprises alike, manifested by decades of ML research. Now, we stand at the threshold of agentic AI (and possibly AGI, but I don't know about that)—autonomous, adaptive systems capable of decision-making and learning, poised to redefine human-computer collaboration. Each shift has expanded our capabilities, and each carries the promise and more so the responsibility of reshaping society in profound ways. Regardless, I will have to adapt, but I will always be at this juncture of technology.
Resume
Do grab a copy of my resume while you're here!