About

Hey! I'm Jianmin Chen. But you can just call me jc, as I typically go by on the Internet, although I also use a billion other variations of my name on the Internet (that is, "jchen" or "jianmin-chen" or "jianminchen". And counting, depending on whether my name's been taken or not. It's surprising how a rare name like mine's can be so common). In real life, I go by "Amanda" since most people have trouble pronouncing my name. (Here I would crack a joke about how I can't even maintain a relationship with my own identity much less with other people, but I'm going to stop at that.) I'm constantly working on various projects at any given time and pretending that I'll be able to finish them. In my free time, I also love playing the guitar (note: should probably start playing more often, quite frankly), reading (I read a lot, check out my digital bookshelf!), running, and stressing over the small things (now I have ducks to stress with me! Four of them, to be exact.) You can catch me at the following places:

I refuse to sign up for any social media websites (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, etc.) unless I have actual reasons for doing so (i.e., business-related), so you won't find me anywhere on those lovely not-so-lovely places. It's just a me thing, I guess.

Now that I've started talking about myself, I should probably talk a little more. (Trust me, I'm less talkative in real life.) I discovered programming when I found an awesome book called Python for Kids at my local library. (I've since moved, but Brooklyn is an awesome place. I lived in Bay Ridge.) Programming is basically my favorite pastime (I don't know if it can be considered a pastime anymore), as long as I don't feel pressured to do it. (I think not enjoying being pressured to do something applies to a lot of things, but especially learning. Take that, public school system!) And that's me in a nutshell.

Anyways, I love tech in general, so a pretty large chunk of my day is spent doing something tech-related. Currently, mostly full-stack web development, but I've also been exploring: WebGL, C, building games, building programming languages and more.

What are you doing currently?

What am I thinking about currently? is the right question. If you wanted to know what I was doing, I suppose you could stalk my profiles.

  • Thinking about how in the early 90s there were thousands, at most millions of websites. Now there's a billion websites, and petabytes of data get uploaded everyday. Honestly fascinated by how humanity has become so much more raw but also so much more filtered with the advent of the Internet. (And yes, I'm young, blah blah blah...) Raw because you can share your feelings, your thoughts, and in return get millions of other humans sharing the same feeling - sadness, happiness, euphoria, depression - but you also see millions of humans not being themselves. It's a paradox, and is it something that comes with with our growing Internet? Trying to gather my presence into one, feeling place. Maybe it's impossible to, but I'm a digital hoarder if there ever was such a term.
  • Reading Sapiens and Homo Deus.
  • Trying to find resources to learn Spanish. I wanted to take AP Spanish next year, but the AP coordinator doesn't believe I can learn Spanish ("Spanish II might be a better fit for you"), even when I told her she was underestimating me (at least two times), so now I'm on a hero's journey to prove her wrong. I can't stand it when people tell me I'm not capable of doing something, especially with flowery language.