Technology
Nichanan Kesonpat
Crypto and The Open Metaverse

In this article I explore…what the Metaverse is, the differences between a closed vs. open metaverse, key principles for an open metaverse, and where crypto (DAOs, NFT, DeFi) fits in

Crypto and The Open Metaverse
Technology, Life
Nichanan Kesonpat
Things I wish I knew before I got into crypto ...

In this article to start off the year, I cover how this crypto bull run is different from the ICO boom in 2017, what I would tell myself if I was entering the market for the first time, and predictions for 2021 (with emphasis on Ethereum, NFTs, and DeFi).

Things I wish I knew before I got into crypto & Predictions for 2021
Life
Nichanan Kesonpat
2020 Year in Review

I wrote the bulk of this retrospective and then fell into the limbo that are the days between Christmas and New Years Eve before I could hit publish. It usually doesn’t take long for these reviews to reach the 10000+ word range because involves turning the microscope on all the major aspects of my life: noting the highlights, lowlights, and lessons learned. This year was no different. On the other hand, the year was pivotal in such a holistic way that I can anticipate looking back on my life years from now and referring to things as being pre- and post- 2020.

2020 Year in Review
Life, Technology
Nichanan Kesonpat
Creators, Communities, and the Gray Space in ...

In 1999, David Bowie saw the internet as an “alien life form”. He saw that humanity was on the cusp of something both exhilarating and terrifying: it was a breakdown of the barriers between creators and their communities. Instead of a piece of art or information being broadcasted one-way to an audience, it was becoming more of a dialogue, where the thing that originates from a creator isn't finished until the audience comes in and add their own interpretation. From there the piece evolves, gets sampled and remixed in ways that the creator couldn't have possibly imagined. Bowie called this area where creators and their communities meet "the gray space in the middle": a powerful new area of engagement where the most interesting things happen, and he predicted that this space is what the 21st century was going to be all about…

Creators, Communities, and the Gray Space in the Middle
Technology, Life
Nichanan Kesonpat
A Quick Guide to Online Privacy

The recent Twitter hack is the latest reminder that even top companies with the best security teams are not immune against bad actors and data breaches, so why let them handle our sensitive data when we don’t need to? In this article I introduce concept of operational security and how you might begin to identify the information that is out there about you, analyze the risk of this exposure, and deny adversaries from exploiting this data.

A Quick Guide to Online Privacy

Anatomy of a Bitcoin Transaction

Anatomy of a Bitcoin Transaction

Our bitcoin transaction ledger now contains 512200+ (at the time of writing) immutable pages of history detailing nothing except who sent how much BTC to whom...

But what exactly happens during each transaction? What are public and private keys and why is it such a big deal to keep the latter a secret? What's in a wallet? What does it mean to verify or "sign" a message in this context? In this post I will walk through what happens when you send and receive bitcoin and what it means to "own" cryptocurrencies.

Idea to Event: Behind the Scenes at ThoughtWorks Talks Tech #1

Idea to Event: Behind the Scenes at ThoughtWorks Talks Tech #1

We take time out of our busy lives to attend things and often forget to evaluate whether or not the returns from our being there justify the investment of that time and effort. I've been to whole-day conferences where there was no information about where everything was at the venue, sessions strayed off the agenda, speakers came unprepared... and on the other hand I've also been to conferences that were easy to navigate, and every session had some gem to write home about. What did the organizers do differently that led to these different outcomes? My experiences and learnings from helping to put on ThoughtWorks first tech talk event of 2018 in Thailand.

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Dig my Crate: A Ruby project inspired by record collecting

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Dig my Crate: A Ruby project inspired by record collecting

I went to bed with a half-finished post on record collecting and thought it would be nice if somehow, non-collectors can explore someone's collection in a simple, interactive way. While Discogs is packed with information about each release, there isn't a way for someone to peruse the records without being bombarded with details they might not care about. In addition, there may be some records that collectors forgot they even had or have not listened to in a while. Though the tactility of crate digging is part of the allure to vinyl in the first place, I thought it'd be fun to also have a tool to pick something for you at random. So I decided to do something about it...

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Back to Code

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Back to Code

A few weeks ago I decided it was time to revive a hobby I had begun to pursue in college: computer programming. I enrolled in a Data Structures & Algorithms course during my final semester in an attempt to fight off senioritis - and despite the allnighters spent debugging and balancing red-black trees, this decision ended up being one of the best I made at Cal....