The Author

My short bio in most social network profiles is this: “Avid Reader, Full-time Skeptic, Site Reliability Engineer”. Here goes the full version.

Avid Reader

I am usually reading at least one book at any given day or week; that usually cumulates to ~30 books a year, and I tend to keep it that way. My range of study has been diverse in the last few years: evolution, neurology, psychology, cognitive science, behavioral economics, game theory, standard economics, startups, leadership, communication, philosophy of science, skepticism and critical thinking, strategy, IT management, DevOps, SRE, agile methodology, lean, and most notably, science fiction novels. You can check my virtual library. Why such diversity, you say? I believe in well-roundedness and cultivating a broad worldview. Why so much? (or so little perhaps!) Because I believe in self-education as the only form of education that exists¹, and I tend to take my education seriously, never letting my schooling interfere with it!²

Full-time Skeptic

I feel like I’ve had skeptical tendencies from early childhood, but it might be my fallible memory playing tricks on me! I often couldn’t resist the urge to poke holes in Baloney’s arguments and anecdotes. I could feel something was wrong but often couldn’t point to what or how wrong it was. Having read quite a few books on skepticism and critical thinking, I can better understand the reason behind my vague feelings toward baloney claims: they suck! Put more scientifically, they lack proper evidence and chain of reasoning!

So, alien abduction? Nope! Homeopathy? Never! Astrology? Kidding?! Chakra, prayer, energy healing, conspiracy theories, fairies, reincarnation, ESP, Voodoo, and other pseudo-scientific fads: No!

Site Reliability Engineer

My introduction to the world of computers was as a front-end developer. Having a burning desire for open source software and Linux, I managed to transform into a Linux sysadmin, a platform engineer, and then into an SRE³. I like challenges that come with complex distributed systems; I have a nack for observability, a passion for reliability, and a thing for resiliency!

The Site

I first started blogging in 2004, in Persian, mostly about the Internet, tools, front-end development, and web standards (it was the fad back then among cool kids); this continued to 2009, when I last published a post. I have been meaning to revive it for a while, but then I thought better and to let nature take its course.

I have been meaning to start a new blog in English for a while but was hesitant to set up a CMS and fiddle with it, I wanted something different, and Hugo combined with Github Pages and Github Actions gave me that different thing. Much less hassle, better control, and minimum costs. So here we go again, after 11 years. Let’s see how rusty I have become!