Justin

Hi my name is justin liang. I am 25 years old.

I've lived in New York City for the past few years.

For my day job and as hobby, I develop software. My latest interests have been in building custom web browsers, under the project name: Justin Browser.

I love using the website are.na. This personal website is based on a collection of are.na channels I've made that express who I am.

Biography

I write of human experience so that I may understand it and thereby force myself into some kind of honesty

- John E. Williams

I originally grew up in Dallas, Texas. My childhood memories were filled with walking to my friends' houses in the sprawling suburbs, through blistering heat and pollen allergies. My favorite Texas restaurant is Whataburger - for iced tea I like doing 60% unsweet and 40% sweet. As a child my parents would feed me fruits like grapes and watermelon.

My family is from Shanghai, China. I'm trying to learn Shanghainese in my free time to better communicate with them. As a child they spoke in both Mandarin an Shanghainese, so I got confused between the two. I can understand Shanghainese better though, probably at the level of a 7 year old.

During middle school and high school, I played the cello in the school orchestra. I wasn't a big fan of classical music at the time, so I always tried to play covers of indie songs I liked but on the cello. For example, I liked to play Pulaski at Night by Andrew Bird. I was never extremely invested in practicing, so I never got to be that good at playing the cello. I remember I started to really dislike playing it by senior year of high school, during which I also developed a hearing condition that caused a loud static noise in my left ear when hearing loud sounds. I told my cello teacher that I wanted to quit, and I remember crying a lot during that final lesson.

I spent most of my free time growing up playing video games. I loved playing Team Fortress 2, Dota 2, and Skyrim. I liked how video games gave you goals to strive for, and immediate feedback on how you were progressing towards those goals.

Eventually, I went to college. I studied computer science at Georgia Tech. I was quite lonely for most of my college experience, but I enjoyed hanging out with the friends I did have, mainly my roommates. I have fond memories of my going out with my roommates to go to restaruants like Cookout and Waffle House.

When I graduated college, I moved to New York City. I currently live in Brooklyn and work as a software engineer at Atlassian. I'm grateful to have made more friends after moving here.

Interests

Programming and Design

I am broadly interested in programming and interface design.

I believe in slowness in the creative process. Meaning I like making projects without deadlines or external motivations. I know this is idealistic, but since this is just a hobby I'm allowed to act this way.

Here are some various projects I've made:

are.na

I love using are.na to organize my interests in life.

These are my favorite 3 channels

Anime and Manga

I love watching anime and reading manga. I only got into it relatively recently in 2022 when I watched Attack on Titan for the first time. I love the art style and stories that the mediums enable. Here are some of my favorites in no particular order