Ideas
·3 mins
Table of Contents
Things I want to build, explore, or think through. No promises, no deadlines.
Security & Hacking #
- Bad USB — build and document attacks; understand what’s actually happening at the firmware level
- OWASP Juice Shop — already built JuiceSec as a lighter version; go deeper with the real thing
- OWASP MASTG — Mobile Application Security Testing Guide; pair with the APK analyser work
- WarGames / OverTheWire — wargame platforms; structured practice rather than ad hoc
- Zeek / Suricata — deploy, generate traffic, write rules, understand what the alerts actually mean
- Reverse engineering — Azeria Labs ARM tutorials, then x64dbg; document what breaks first
- Wi-Fi Pineapple — Hak5; test in a controlled environment, write up the findings
- PowerShell for Hackers — I-Am-Jakoby’s repo + obfuscation techniques
- URL fuzzing — Tero Karvinen’s guide; hidden directories, common misconfigurations
- Flash cards — build a deck for cert/interview prep; something spaced-repetition friendly
Systems & Networking #
- DD-WRT / OpenWRT — flash a router, configure, document what’s possible vs. stock firmware
- pfSense — deploy as a VM or on hardware; build a lab network behind it
- LineageOS / GrapheneOS / /e/OS — de-Google a device; compare the three approaches and what each actually changes
- Linux From Scratch — LFS — an old favourite. Build it again, write it up properly this time
Coding & Challenges #
- Advent of Code — adventofcode.com — use it to learn a new language properly, not just solve it in Python
- The Odin Project — structured web development curriculum; do it if the vibecoding frontend work starts feeling shaky
- Project Euler / Kata / Leetcode — choose one and go deep rather than skimming all three
- New language — pick one (Rust? Go? something else) and use AoC or Euler as the vehicle
Writing & Publishing #
- 100 posts on Mastodon — consistent, public, short-form; different muscle than blog posts
- TiddlyWiki — mrdee.tiddlyhost.com — figure out what actually belongs there vs. here
- Digital Garden — Tom Critchlow’s framing is the right one; think about what this would look like for security writing
- NaNoWriMo — 50,000 words in November. Probably fiction. Possibly terrible. Worth trying once.
- Self-hosted journal — kevquirk/journal; evaluate whether it solves anything this blog doesn’t already solve
- Wikipedia project — follow a featured article through its history; understand what makes one work, whether the pattern holds across different topics
Analysis & Research #
- Wars, operations, battles — pick one conflict, go deep: primary sources, maps, decisions, counterfactuals
- Cricket match analysis — scorecards as data; what’s actually predictive, what’s noise
- Browser performance measurement — uBlock Origin vs. Privacy Badger vs. nothing; measure with Selenium; quantify the difference in page load, requests blocked, data transferred
- Books from EiE & TSATU — work through the reading lists; write up the ones that land
- Mental models & security analogies — map security concepts to things non-security people already understand; sketch, not slides
Vibe Coding Backlog #
- Mastodon bot for Kannada poetry — 945 Mankutimmana Kagga verses collected, bot not yet written
- APK analyser v2 — proper JADX integration, cleaner architecture
- curl notes — source reading is happening; the writing isn’t keeping up
- Snippet bot — post short, useful code or text snippets on a schedule; platform TBD
- Emacs / Org-mode — spend a month using it seriously before forming an opinion
Last updated April 2026. The list grows faster than it shrinks. That’s probably fine.