Me
So, about me... I am Konrad Ślusarz, a 21-year-old Polish biologist with big ambitions. Well, I say "biologist" — at this point, I "only" have a Licentiate (BSc) degree, but I'm in the process of getting my Master's degree, with my sights set on a PhD.
Education and research
As mentioned above, I hold a Licentiate title from the Faculty of Biology at the University of Gdańsk. My research interests centre around bioinformatical analysis, whether it be of taxonomical, biogeographical, or other datasets. Currently, I'm focused on Neottia nidus-avis and its mycorrhizal partners, but I plan on branching out as my experience and possibilities grow.
In the pursuit of this research, I employ...
Computers and programming!
Possibly even moreso than the study of life, it's the study of thinking machines that has stuck in my head for the longest time.
As pretentious as that sounds, isn't it almost magical that we've found a way to harness lightning and make it compel sand to think?
Granted, that way of phrasing it is quite excessive, but my point still stands.
More to the point, I am an "amateur" programmer — a word I use only because I haven't had any formal software engineering education, and my practical experience is, as of now, still relatively modest. Still, my Licentiate thesis was carried on the back of small pieces of utility software that parsed and processed data, while its most impressive point, in terms of custom software at least, was a piece of software that processed maps by overlaying data points on them, coloured and scaled based on the factors pertinent to the analysis at hand.
As predictable as such a statement might be for a person whose birthyear starts with a 20.., I am most fond of the Rust programming language.
Click to learn more... the explanation got a bit long.
Though I have historically been a fan of C, I — as many others — have found myself frustrated of its dangerousness. I had been loyal to it, among other reasons, because the other "big" option (that being Java) came with a performance and size penalty that I was wholly unwilling to accept, having got used to C, not to mention Java's utterly atrocious syntax.
And so, to the rescue came Rust — a language that promised the filesize and speed of C, but with complete memory safety without employing a garbage collector. To me, sacrificing a little freedom is a small price to pay for the benefits it affords, and unlike languages like D and Zig, it has strong community support.
Now, more broadly, I'm an avid enthusiast of the GNU/Linux operating system, but I am also quite fond of the modern BSDs, especially FreeBSD. I use Fedora on my workstation and laptop, and my home server runs CentOS Stream. On top of that, I have extensive experience using Debian and OpenSUSE, as well as moderate experience with other distributions, including Arch.
As can hopefully be seen here, I also have a passion for slightly unconventional webdevelopment. I'm very traditional in the technologies I utilise and I tend to either lean very maximalist or very minimalist (like here) with the design itself. Though I intend to call back to the days of early internet with my refusal to round corners, I try not to fall into the trap of accepting the Web 1.0 aesthetic wholesale — you won't find any low-resolution 3D gifs here, and the colour palette ranges from milk chocolate to milk coffee. I hope it's as easy on your eyes as it is on mine.
Although I am enthusiastic about computer-related activities and ideas, I have never considered pursuing a career in "pure" computer science. It has always been clear to me that while computers are a spectacular tool and means to an end... they are not an end-goal. I'm thrilled to be able to use them "to do biology", but my attachment to them as a "career path" is limited to their instrumentality and to it only.
Everything else...
As time goes on, this page will be expanded to discuss more!