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• About
• Contact
• Interests
• Research Work
  • Peer-To-Peer MFA System
  • Linux Dependency & Vulnerability Analysis
  • Master’s Thesis
  • Smart Car Authentication
  • AI Voice MFA
• Projects
  • End-To-End Encrypted Chat
  • Static Site Builder
  • Configuration Manager
  • Email Utilities
  • Desktop Utilities
  • Keyboard Stuff
  • Ashen
  • Neovim Plugins

About

My name is Daniel, and I am a graduate student researching cybersecurity, programmer, and Linux enthusiast. As part of the NSERC CREATE Cybersecurity program, my work combines programming, cryptography, system design, and threat modeling to tackle real-world security challenges.

I use Helix as my main text editor, and I prefer typing in Colemak-DH on a custom layout. I run Arch Linux on a desktop PC and ThinkPad, my preferred terminal is Foot, and I’ve been enjoying Niri as a window manager.

I’m passionate about minimalist technology. This website is part of the 1mb club, JavaScript free, and built with zona, a tool I wrote myself. On this site you can learn more about me, my interests, and my various projects. There’s also a blog where I write about tech I’m currently interested in.

Contact

• Email
  • daniel@ficd.ca
• Public Key (for encryption, signing)
  • public key
• IRC
  • ficd on Libera

Interests

• Programming
• Linux
• Typing

Research Work

I am very passionate about research, which I have conducted during my undergraduate and ongoing Master’s education. My main research interest is Authentication.

Peer-To-Peer MFA System

• Undergraduate capstone project.
• Topic: P2P MFA system using sound comparison.
• Completed.

Linux Dependency & Vulnerability Analysis

• Research project for “Release Engineering” graduate class.
• Topic: Relationship between package dependencies and vulnerabilities in Linux Distributions.
• Completed.

Master’s Thesis

• Topic: Authentication.
• Ongoing.

Smart Car Authentication

• Research project for “Cyber-Physical System Security” graduate class.
• Topic: A novel authentication scheme for cars.
• Ongoing.

AI Voice MFA

• Research project for “AI in Cybersecurity” graduate class.
• Topic: A novel voice-powered MFA scheme.
• Ongoing.

Projects

I really enjoy programming. I care about writing code that’s efficient and optimized. Below, you’ll find a selection of my projects. Some of them are for fun, others are for school assignments.

End-To-End Encrypted Chat

Go-Chat

• Lightweight end-to-end encrypted TUI messaging application implemented in Go.
• Proof-of-concept application. My first Go project.

Static Site Builder

Zona

• Static site builder written in Go and optimized for lightweight blogs following minimalist design principles.
• Support for templates, declarative metadata, and configuration files.
• Interprets inline image “alt text” as Markdown, rendered as an image tag.
• In active development, plans for many more features.
• Used to build this website.

Configuration Manager

AutoYADM

• Shell utility to automate managing dot files with yadm.
• Consists of two Bash scripts; very lightweight.
• I use this daily to keep my dotfiles in sync.

Email Utilities

• Email Parser
  • Forked and maintains a Tree-sitter parser for mail files.
  • Extended formal grammar definitions, supporting additional syntax elements & fixing critical bugs.
  • Wrote highlight and text object queries implementing mail support for Helix; contributed the feature upstream.
  • Currently researching how to leverage the parser to contribute mail support to the Harper grammar checker.
• Email Formatter
  • Wrote a lightweight email formatter in Python, intended to format outgoing plaintext emails.
  • Wraps paragraphs at specified column width.
  • Automatically reflows uneven paragraphs.
  • Preserves long words, quoted lines, indented lines, lists, code blocks, and signature blocks.
  • Custom heuristic for preserving two-line signoffs.

Desktop Utilities

Wayland Utilities

• Screen Recording Utility

  • Lightweight utility to improve the UX of sharing screen recordings and demos on Wayland.
  • Automatically records screen, compresses the file, and copies its URI to the clipboard for easy sharing in GUI apps.
  • Implemented an asynchronous server in Python which provides recording status integration for Waybar.

• Niri Window Status

  • Python server that integrates with Niri to provide a live indicator of windows open on active workspaces.
  • Designed for use with Waybar and similar software.

• Niri Window Picker

  • Simple Python script that spawns a fuzzy picker allowing users to fuzzily select an open window to switch focus to.

Keyboard Stuff

• Self-built wireless corne keyboard.
• Colemak-DH (non-QWERTY, ergonomic layout).
• Custom columnar split layout leveraging overloaded modifiers and layers to maximize efficiency.
• Custom ANSI layout intended to make my ThinkPad internal keyboard as ergonomic as possible without conflicting with external keyboards.

Ashen

Ashen

• Original color scheme designed by me.
• This website uses it, too!
• Ported to a wide variety of software, including (but not limited to):
  • Helix (text editor).
  • Terminal emulators (Most popular emulators covered)
  • Firefox
  • CLI tools (eza, bat)
  • TUI tools (lazygit, yazi)

Neovim Plugins

Academic.nvim

• Neovim plugin.
• Automatically installs and configures an Academic English spelling dictionary.
• Minimal performance overhead.

Ashen.nvim

• Implementation of Ashen for Neovim.
• Supports numerous plugin integrations.