Software
I have loved computer programming from a young age. Like most developers, I know over a dozen programming languages (to varying degrees). In the last decade, I have become extremely fond of Python
, because of its beauty, power, and versatility—I use it for scripting, web programming, and data-science.
Open Source Projects
I am a big fan and contributor to open source software. I currently contribute to and/or maintain the following projects:
-
Simba Text Assistant: developed together with Freya Hewett, Christopher Richter, and other colleagues, Simba is a web plugin that supports abstractive and extractive summaries of webpages to improve online reading experience (under active development).
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pyasn: a (highly downloaded) Python package that enables very fast IP address to ASN lookups. Historical lookups are also possible—which is important in internet measurement research. I am the package’s architect & maintainer (since 2010), with major contributions by Arman Noroozian and a host of other collaborators.
-
We Called It Earth: a participatory, digital platformer game that simultaneously creates the world it explores. Designed by artist Jessica Renfro and programmed by me (2021). Rejecting the myth of self-authorship, the avatar of this game is a black hole with a profusion of unruly limbs controlled by multiple players.
Past Contributions
- datarights.me platform & dataset: Datarights.me is a platform that helps participants exercise their ‘right of access’, used by us in several studies. (2017-2020).
- Open Web Privacy Measurement: I contributed the docker support and cookie banner detection; used in our ConPro paper (2016-2019).
- Glasnost Python Analyser: Python
scripts used to parse MLab’s Glasnost test results; used for our DPI papers; (2011-2013; see
python_parser
directory). - Argus Codewatch: a (now obsolete) Eclipse plugin that added code warnings to assist Java programmers create higher quality code (2008).
- Farsi DBF Viewer: for reading and accessing legacy Farsi FoxPro files—a very old yet commonly used database format—in Microsoft .NET (2004-2006).
- Property Sheet Shell Extensions in C#: property sheets are used extensively in Windows, and by default the .NET framework had no support for them (2003-2006).
Last Update: Jun 2023.