What I’ve Been Up To

Wow, it’s been while. Well, a lot has happened. I graduated with my Master’s in software engineering with a focus on Data Science at San Jose State University. Also, I’ll be working full-time as a ML Engineer at CBS Interactive. Here are a couple of things I’ve been working on + things I hope to be working on in the future.

What I’ve Done Recently

Migrating from WordPress to Github Pages + Jekyll

I’m mostly done with migration of my old WordPress account (i.e. http://kevinchuangblog.wordpress.com) to Github pages + Jekyll https://k-chuang.github.io, which is what I’m using right now to write this blog post. I’m not completely sure why I did this to myself, but I feel like this is good. A couple reasons I can think of for the migration is that everything is more central now for me, since I use Github a lot. Also, I’m more familiar and comfortable with the workflow for Git & Github as well as Markdown. Lastly, Github pages is free! Now, I just need a way to automatically convert my resume written in LaTeX to Markdown, so that I can use it with Jekyll. I use Overleaf, which is an online LaTex editor, for creating my resume. What’s nice is that I have a pipeline set up in Github with Travis CI, so that whenever I push changes, Travis CI will automatically compile the LaTeX code and convert it into pdf, which I have hosted here on Github pages: https://k-chuang.github.io/KevinChuangResume. Not Enough Data is the new name of the website, which is an event that frequently occurs in my field, so I thought it was fitting.

Yet Another URL Shortener

For my cloud computing course, my team and I created a URL shortener application with 3 core microservices. The project is implemented with React.js as the frontend, Golang as the backend API microservices, and MongoDB as the NoSQL database. In addition, we use Docker containers (containers are the future!) for packaging, deploying and running our microservices. All of these components are hosted on AWS. Not only did I learn a lot about Golang, but also about the design of a microservice architecture. Check out the link for more information!

Short-term Plans

Better Understanding Kubernetes + Helm

Kubernetes is heavily used at my current job, and while I do have a good understanding of the core concepts of Kubernetes, I want to master it along with Helm. I might blog about Kubernetes in the near future just to better understand it. I’m currently reading a book called Kubernetes in Action.

Tech Company Case Studies

In order to keep up to date with the current trends and state of the art, I’m planning on reading white papers that big companies, such as Netflix, Amazon, Google, etc., release. I’ve actually read a couple papers already (Youtube, Netflix). The plan is to take notes and provide my notes publicly on Github. Hopefully, my notes will provide a good overview of the current state of the art and trends.

What I Do For Fun

Video Editing

So, I’ve been on vacation for the past month, and recently got into video editing as a hobby. Right now, I’ve only been editing gaming videos (for the game Rust) using Adobe Premiere Pro, but I am trying to branch out to other avenues, such as skateboarding or travel videos. I still have a lot to learn, but it’s been super fun learning all the different techniques and cuts. Checkout my Youtube channel here, and let me know what you think!