hello!

Hello! Since this is my first blog post here, I thought I'd start by introducing myself. I'm Nourin, a senior engineering student (at the time of writing this) at Mansoura University—though you probably figured that out by now through the 100 ways I've made a CV. It's obnoxious and I'm aware of it — instead of making new projects, I keep making new ways to display my existing ones, but that's beside the point. Some things you may not know about me, though:

• I love creating things in every realm you can think of, and have a delusional belief that I can probably learn anything
• I'm 20 and have no idea what I'm doing after graduation
• I love reading & writing, both of which used to consume all my time as a young girl before school got in the way
• I HATE bell peppers
• I lived in Kuwait growing up until COVID, and have felt like an outsider both here and there ever since (classic expat experience, I know)
• I put salt in my espresso — try it وادعولي
• I grew up on YouTube & genuinely believe 90% of who I am stems from the content I watched after school from 2014-2018

Now that I've already overshared 1 paragraph into this, I want to explain what the purpose of this website is, and in turn this blog. A couple of years ago I discovered neocities and the world of the indie web, and got charmed by this idea of personalization in the realm of the internet that is heavily commodified and has lost any sense of community within it. (Watch: The Internet Used to Be a Place). I heavily considered working on my own site there, but then remembered I'm a web developer and can make my own with much more freedom. I knew I wanted it to be a dumping ground for everything "me": any project I make, any song I like, any thought I have—it can all be housed in one place. The best way I found to display that was a desktop app—sort of mimicking my own computer, since that's technically where everything I make and enjoy lies. And alas, that was the birth of this website. I don't think of it as a "portfolio" anymore since it's definitely grown much broader than that, contrary to what I originally expected. It has been in the making & planning for around 1.5 years now, since I kept scrapping ideas and starting over. For a second I wanted it to be a program you download instead of a website, so it would feel more like a real OS and not just a funny-looking website. But then I thought about the probability of someone downloading a random .exe of a "personal desktop" from a random stranger on the internet—and the idea was swiftly scrapped.

Since I was already sharing everything I've ever made here, I naturally thought I'd have to write something too. The idea of a blog for random things has always been on my mind, but I never found a way to make it & share it that didn't feel random, so I'm glad I finally found a home for it. Even though I'm aware hiding it within this website probably means it won't be read by anyone, and I'm essentially writing to the void of the binary sea, that doesn't really matter to me. If this is my little corner of the internet, then I want to express my opinions and life lessons on here as well—a compact documentation of my life in a way. Another bonus of keeping a blog, for me, is getting back into writing essays, since I've completely lost that skill over the past 5 years. I used to be able to articulate my thoughts well, research a topic from all its angles, and write a 600-word essay on it without the help of AI — all thanks to my IGCSE days. I miss being able to organize my thoughts on a subject and cohesively write about it without blanking like I do now. That being said, I want to make it clear that not a single word is generated or revised by AI. That will explain the inevitable awkward phrasing or grammatical error you'll see moving forwards.So I guess those are all the personal reasons why I started this blog, even if it will be mostly casual, sparse notions on things I was thinking about. There isn't an official way to be notified when I post, but I'll be posting a story over at my Instagram when I do. So, if you've read this far, hope you stick around! :D