First version of my bio (/about_me.html)

about_me.md

@@ -0,0 +1,127 @@
+---
+title: About me
+displaytitle: '$ whoami'
+showtitle: true
+
+---
+
+I'm Tito, alias "tauroh". I'm a high school student living in Pavia, Italy. I
+was born in 2004. I have many more interests than I'm able to pursue and I still
+have to decide what to do after high school. Unless I undergo a sudden change in
+personality and hobbies, it will be something science-related. I'm quite a geek;
+I'm into maths and pretty much everything that has to do with computers. I used
+to play the piano regularly until last year but I don't have enough free time to
+study music seriously right now.
+
+## Maths
+
+I have been fascinated by maths since I was a child, and my parents taught me
+where the elegance that some people (like them, and like me) see in mathematics
+really resides. Abstraction and formal logic are in my opinion the most advanced
+capabilities of the human mind -- the latest that evolution gave us from a
+biological perspective. When you get to really appreciate maths, you discover a
+brand new world. Unfortunately, that's something that school is not able to
+teach -- that's why many people still think that maths is made of formulas,
+exercises and grades.
+
+As you might have understood, I like pure mathematics, and specifically the most
+abstract and foundational aspects, often related to logic and philosophy:
+[category theory][ct], [abstract algebra][abstract-algebra], [type
+theory][type-theory], [model structures][simplicial-sets]... Problem is, you're
+supposed to study a lot of undergraduate mathematics before proceeding with this
+areas. I haven't done that (yet); my mathematical background is fragile and
+therefore my knowledge is quite fragmented. I would like to study maths with a
+more consistent approach. Hopefully, that's what I will do after high school.
+
+I spent some time studying [Categorical Quantum Mechanics][cqm], a mathematical
+setting for quantum physics in dagger-compact categories (such as the one of
+finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces and linear maps) originally introduced by
+Abramsky and Coecke. It has some interesting foundational implications on
+operational postulates and diagrammatics for physics. I also wanted to know
+whether I had really understood how does a proof checker work -- so I put the
+two things together! I wrote a partial formalization of these categorical
+structures in [Coq][coq]. The sources can be found [on my GitHub][titos-catqm]
+(it uses @jwiegley's [category theory library][coq-ct]).
+
+I have taken part in the Italian [Mathematical Olympiad][olimate] with my school
+since my first year here. However, training and competitions are fun only with a
+team -- I perform much better in the team olympiad, and I don't really put the
+required effort and training in the individual competitions.
+
+The [nLab][nLab] is a nice play to get lost in during cold winter nights with a
+cup of tea.
+
+## Computer science
+
+Mathematics is hard: it's something I still haven't been able to get around. CS
+and programming are easier and that's why I spend a considerable amount of hours
+a day playing with my computer. Before examining my interests, I have to stress
+that I really happen to hate frontend development and weakly typed programming
+languages. This website doesn't depend on 50KB-sized DOM-diffing JavaScript
+frameworks and it never will.
+
+My approach to computer science is dual. Just like in mathematics, I like
+abstract and theoretical areas of CS: functional programming,
+dependently-typed[^rec] [proof assistants][agda], type theory (again!)... On the
+other hand, I want to understand how things work at the lowest level and I'm
+often busy reversing some crappy x86 ASM code or studying network security and
+operating systems internals.
+
+#### Functional programming and theoretical CS
+
+[Haskell][hs] is an awesome language and [GHC][ghc] is an astonishingly
+well-engineered piece of software. Functional programming in general has some
+inherently interesting properties related to pure mathematics and
+logics[^curry-howard-lambek]. Apart from theoretical and academic topics, I'm
+interested in the implementation of call-by-need referentially transparent
+functional languages and I'm currently studying the Haskell RTS and the STG
+machine (mostly during boring school classes). The GHC codebase is quite hard to
+read for a newcomer, and I'm still looking for a mentor! Sometimes I hang out on
+`#haskell-it` on `libera.chat`, the IRC channel of [Haskell-ITA][haskell-ita].
+
+#### Hacking and cybersecurity
+
+My low-level geek soul sometimes needs to take a break from lambda-calculi and
+theoretical CS and gets involved into hacking competitions called [CTFs][ctf]. I
+am part of [Tower of Hanoi][toh], the CTF and hacking team from Politecnico di
+Milano (although I'm not a student there). Staying up all night looking at
+disassemblies and memory dumps has some kind of inherently mystical meaning, and
+it's also good fun.
+
+People from ToH were the first to introduce me to offensive cybersecurity during
+the [CyberChallenge.IT 2021][cyberchallenge] project. I also take part in the
+Italian [Cybersecurity Olympiad][olicyber], which targets high-school students.
+I got the second place at the finals in 2021.
+
+Apart from my technical interests, hacking history is an interesting topic on
+its own, and the underground scene that started to fade away a few years before
+I was born had a deep impact on technology as people use and know it today --
+and also on our economy and our society. If this is eye-catching to you, Bruce
+Sterling's [The Hacker Crackdown][the-hacker-crackdown] is a good read.
+
+[^rec]: Did you know that mathematical induction and recursive functions are
+  basically the same thing?
+[^curry-howard-lambek]: Such as the [Curry-Howard-Lambek
+  isomorphism](https://wiki.haskell.org/Curry-Howard-Lambek_correspondence)!
+
+[abstract-algebra]: <https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/group>
+[agda]: <https://wiki.portal.chalmers.se/agda/pmwiki.php>
+[coq-ct]: <https://github.com/jwiegley/category-theory>
+[coq]: <https://coq.inria.fr>
+[cqm]: <https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.02265>
+[ct]: <https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/category+theory#abstract_nonsense> "i.e. abstract nonsense"
+[ctf]: <https://ctftime.org/ctf-wtf/>
+[cyberchallenge]: <https://cyberchallenge.it>
+[ghc]: <https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc>
+[haskell-ita]: <https://haskell-ita.it>
+[hs]: <https://haskell.org>
+[nLab]: <https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/HomePage>
+[olicyber]: <https://olicyber.it>
+[olimate]: <http://olimpiadi.dm.unibo.it>
+[simplicial-sets]: <https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/simplicial+set>
+[the-hacker-crackdown]: <https://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html>
+[titos-catqm]: <https://github.com/jabberabbe/CatQM>
+[toh]: <https://toh.necst.it>
+[type-theory]: <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/type-theory-intuitionistic/>
+
+[comment]: # vim: ts=2:sts=2:sw=2:et:nojoinspaces:tw=80

index.html

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   on in the forecoming years. I like maths, computers, classical piano,
   swimming, electric guitars, hiking, and a lot of other things that I'd be
   glad to share with someone else.
+  <a href="about_me.html">Read more about me.</a>
 </p>
 <p>
   Write me at
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+          $else$
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