Zachary Ellison scholar, father, fixer

First Post of the Moon Era

Or how I gave up on giving up and gave in to giving in, a failed story of accountability

Welcome, come on in

My name is Zachary Ellison and I’m a lot of things. I’m a father, a sophomore at Harvard University, and a maker of things with varying degrees of quality. Most recently, the things I’ve found myself drawn to create are technical. I love messing with computers, learning to program, and figuring out how networks work. Something about it intrigues me. Maybe it’s due to my obsession with Mr.Robot or maybe it has to do with my life long passion involving computers. My dad can attest that since I could get my hands on them, I would tear apart computers to figure out how they worked and try my best to put them back together, much to his dismay. Though that lovely man supported me all the same.

I’m late to the game, but I am studying Computer Science here at college. Declaring that going into my junior year, with only a single intro class, CS50, to back me up is going to be a difficult trek, I’ve been told. I figure it’s about the passion and experience, not the struggle or even the endgoal. I found out that what I was studying, electrical engineering, wasn’t for me, and that what I do for fun probably is how I should have tried to find my passion. That’s all the better, I think, to know what not to study, and know how to find what you enjoy. Here’s what my dad says, “Do what you like and you will do it well.” Alright then, that’s what I’ll do.

Doing what I like

This semester, my fourth, I have only three courses. That doesn’t mean in any way that I have a light load - my fiancé and child are moving out here. What it does mean is that I have to use any extra time I have, after being with my family, to prepare for the long haul ahead. Every semester from here on will have two CS courses within them. It starts next semester with CS121, Introduction to Theoretical Computer Science, and CS61, Machine Programming. These courses will also be paired with two courses of my choosing, courses in philosophy or literature would be my direction.

Now I know these courses will be tough. Though perhaps not as tough as those to come, there is an entire self-study course made for preparing students for the onslaught. This is perfect because it gets me in the mindspace of self-study, which is going to be a lot of programming and I love it. It also provides a structure for me to follow, so I’m not blindly trying to learn enough to do the first posted homework.

That’s where Github comes in.

Lovely Github Pages provides free static web hosting. I do already have a website and thanks to our friend CS50 I can run a simple one from a python and flask backbone. (I used that to propose to my partner.) But I want to learn more and I want it to be hosted for free. Luckily, Jekyll and Liquid are a ton like Flask’s Jinja2 so the conversion to getting started is simple.

I used a theme I found and loved for this website. I need to learn to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. That’s officially one of my projects. This post is before I rewrite the entire theme, called Moon, and is therefore in the Moon Era of my blog. Post Moon, this site will be my portfolio, a resume to show what I have learned through my personal projects, classes, and jobs _if_ once I can get them.

Keep Moving Forward

It will also live under a different name, when this URL expires. zacharyellison.com will be my face on the web, literally as my face will be on the home page. Along the way, this blog will keep me accountable and be a way to show what I learn as I work. I will post problems and solutions to builds, I will post progress and interesting computer science things I learn as I prepare my C skills and math skills, and I will post my progress and projects for things like:

But now, as quickly as I have started this, I must also cut it short. I have math, physics, and a paper to write.

Zachary Ellison