I am a Junior Systems Administrator with a passion for building stuff. I have my
own homelab which I use to test my new creations on the path to my goal-career in
cybersecurity. At the moment, I'm a student at Griffith University.
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About Me
Since 2014, I've had an interest in programming and making things. This portfolio serves
as a place for me to collate and show off some of the work that I've done and
experiences I've had.
At the moment, I've returned back to Uni to finish my degree after achieving a point in
my career that I am happy with. With the experience I've gained, and after finishing my
studies, my plan is to work in the cybersecurity field.
Skills & Confidence
While this isn't an exhaustive list of all my skills, it is a brief list of skills and
interests I wished to highlight.
Education & Goals
As of 2023, I have returned to studying a Bachelor of Information Technology at Griffith
University using the experiences I gained from both QUT and work environments. Having
previously studied Computer Science at QUT from 2019-2021, I gained critical knowledge
on how computers worked at a low-level, and other concepts such as networking. Following
the COVID pandemic, I decided to take a break from studying to pursue getting hands-on
experience in work environments.
From my previous work experience, I found that employers look more for relevant skills
and industry knowledge over the type of degree or the majors and minors you study. The
mentorship I gained from those jobs was what influenced me to change my degree over from
Computer Science, and opt for the no major or minor route.
As time has progressed, my goals and ambitions have also adapted. Initially, I wanted to
be a systems administrator. But upon reaching that goal, I shifted my gaze to another
long-held interest: cybersecurity. Given that the industry is ever-changing, I felt it
appropriate to not hem myself in to a single major or minor, and to focus on the bigger
picture the IT industry presents.
Experiences
Informal Experience
Griffith University has also been helpful in engaging me with industry panels and
experiences. In early 2024, one of my units had a panel with some industry experts who
discussed what they thought the future of the IT industry would look like. Between talks
of AI, and other new technologies, I came away from that panel feeling better about the
path I had taken. All the experts agreed that the IT industry is a constantly changing
field, and that standing still is the worst mistake you can make as a newcomer.
Another extracurricular activity I undertook was the 2023 'James-Jam'. In this activity,
groups were formed and given two weeks to construct a working game in p5play.js. The
theme was a game remniscient of Homeworld (1999). While this wasn't a competition, our
group did an amazing job at constructing a fully working game. You can play the game at
this link here. And if you
want to view the source code, it can be found
on my GitHub.
Outside of work experience and university, I also aim to learn new projects in my own
time. For example, the website you are reading this on was built by hand, by me. You can
find the source code for this project, and others at my personal GitLab instance here
or my GitHub here.
Moreover, I also have my own homelab setup. Utilising Proxmox, I use Proxmox to run
virtual machines and containers for various services that I use for myself and my
friends. For a list of services that I am running, you can visit my AWS-hosted status page here.
The homelab is a constantly evolving project that has enabled me to self-teach myself
aspects of linux administration in a safer environment. In the future, I may have a blog
with some of the more interesting projects I've worked on.
Contact
Thanks for checking out my site, if you want to get in contact with me, you can find me
on GitHub, or send an email to
hello@nickbland.dev.