About

Hi there!

The name is Pawel; I’m just a math guy (who also loves semicolons and parentheses). I received a couple degrees from the University of Waterloo and then completed my PhD at the University of Ottawa in 2023. I then returned to Waterloo for two years to bang out some more research. I’m also man of various unique interests.

Research

I did research in the field of operator algebras and functional analysis. I pretty much studied really big matrices (even infinite!), and how they interact with eachother. OA has applications all over the place, including quantum mechanics & quantum information, quantum field theory, noncommutative geometry, dynamical systems & ergodic theory, random matrices & free probability, index theory, and data science & machine learning, to name a few. I’ve written several papers in the field, which you can see here.

Tech

I’ve been using Linux for well over ten years, starting with the usual cycle of distro-hopping, breaking things, fixing them, customizing desktop environments, ricing window managers, and generally learning by making my computer worse before making it better. These days I’m just using Fedora on my T480, which is a nice balance between modern software, stability, and not spending my entire life configuring things (oh, how I miss the gentoo days).

Most of my technical work lives around data analysis, machine learning, automation, Linux systems, and self-hosting. I use Python and SQL for analysis, modelling, and scripting; I’ve worked with tools like pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn, PyTorch, Jupyter, Git, Docker, and Caddy; and I’ve built everything from data-science pipelines to small web apps to self-hosted services on a VPS.

A lot of my projects start with a question I find interesting: Can I automate boring parts of language learning? Can I self-host my own privacy-respecting tools instead of relying on a dozen random services? What can I do with all this climbing data? Can I de-google?

The answer is usually: sort of, but it takes longer than expected.

Some examples:

I analyzed large climbing-board datasets and trained machine-learning models to predict route difficulty.
I built ClimbingBoardGPT, a small generative AI web app for board climbing.
I wrote Saiki to make language-study card creation less painful.
I run (or have run at some point) various self-hosted services such as: git servers (gitea), carddav/caldav servers (radicale, baikal), password managers (VaultWarden), mailservers, websites,

Basically, I like using code to explore things, automate things, understand systems, and occasionally make a mess that later becomes a project (or is silently forgotten).

Hobbies

Privacy nuttage

I’m, simply put, a privacy nut.

You: how can you be a privacy nut when you have a website telling us all about yourself? You also have all these socials. Also, being a privacy nut isn’t even a hobby…

Well, good question, and good points. I’ll get to that.

Language learning

I like learning languages.

I was raised bilingual, with my second language being Polish. I was actually surprised to find out some time in highschool that I was officially “ESL” (English Second Language) – nobody had told me, and I just saw it on the report card one day. I think, for my whole life, I would consider myself an English speaker first and a Polish speaker second.

French is Canada’s official second language. I never learned it. One day I’d like to.

I got really bored during covid, and learned how to read Japanese. I’ve since realized that reading doesn’t help too much with listening or speaking. It also turns out that you get bad at things that you neglect. So I’ve been trying to improve a bit there.

I’m also trying to pick up Spanish. I think it’s a cool language, I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Spain, and I’ve had spanish-speaking friends my whole life.

I learn languages traditionally (I actually enjoying going through grammar books), but also immerse and use Anki.

Rock climbing

I’m an avid climber, and have been for a while now. I never realized I was scared of heights until I started climbing, but that’s how she goes sometimes. I still do it.

I’ve shakily followed some friends up a small mountain or two, successfully climbed some others, have wrapped a pineapple tanktop around a friend’s bloody head, and have hit the ground because, as it turns out, rocks break sometimes… It’s always a good time.