Who I Am

I’m Billal, an IT student based in Australia with nearly six years in the field. I’m currently completing a Diploma in Cyber Security, with graduation set for late 2026.

My main interests span networking, cybersecurity, virtualisation, Linux, and gaming — and more often than not, several of those overlap in the same project.

How I Got Here

One of my teachers introduced me to Claude early in my studies, and it genuinely changed how I think about AI as a tool. I went from treating it as a novelty to using it as a proper part of my workflow — for studying, building, troubleshooting, and writing.

What I Do

  • Networking & Security — hands-on practice with Linux CLI, Windows PowerShell, pfSense, and virtual lab environments
  • Virtualisation — running Debian and pfSense VMs, using Claude Code and Claude Desktop within isolated environments
  • Game Modding — as a heavy gamer, I mod and extend games in ways I couldn’t do without AI assistance
  • Side Projects — small builds and experiments I do in my own time, mostly to learn by doing

Skills & Tools

Grouped by what I actually build and troubleshoot in the projects on this site:

  • Networking — pfSense firewalls, egress/RFC1918 containment rules, guest-network segmentation, WPA3, DNS, SNMP, Tailscale / WireGuard mesh VPN
  • Security — network isolation and containment design, host and service hardening, least-privilege, threat modelling, defence-in-depth
  • Linux & systems — Debian administration, systemd services, Bash, service hardening, self-hosting
  • Virtualisation — VMware Workstation, VM networking, isolated lab environments
  • Programming — Python, C# / .NET, TypeScript — small tools, and porting code between them
  • Observability — Prometheus, Grafana, node_exporter / snmp_exporter, MQTT pipelines
  • AI-assisted workflow — Claude Code, custom MCP servers, agentic build and troubleshooting
  • Web & tooling — Hugo, Git and GitHub Actions, this self-hosted blog

What This Blog Is

This blog documents what I actually do with Claude — not polished tutorials, just real projects, small wins, and things I figured out along the way. If it ended up working, it probably ended up here.

Want to get in touch? The GitHub and LinkedIn links are on the home page.