Portfolio
Welcome to my Portfolio page! Here will you find the ongoing projects I’m currently working on and select samples of content that I’ve produced. Feel free to explore this showcase. You can inquire by writing to portfolio@cdahmedeh.net or contact me via my other channels.
Initiatives
Ottawa Computing Group Social Club
The craziest in-person tech social club in Ottawa, that’s not always about tech. Every single Friday night.
Links
Meetup Page — https://www.meetup.com/ottawa-computing-group/
Description
Ottawa Computing Group is an in-person social club that I’ve been running weekly for over 6 years. What started as a write-in meetup, has become a lively social. Initially, it was intended for the tech savvy, but has brought bright minds from all sorts of backgrounds. Conversations are free-form and dynamic with no per-determined topics or suggested subjects.
And unlike many meetups that have transitioned to virtual conferences after the pandemic. We crash a coffee shop instead! None of that online nonsense!
I really take pride on the impact that OCG has brought into the local community. Introducing people who’ve found networking opportunities through the attendees. People showing some really impressive projects that actually have an impact on the tech world. And many new enduring friendships with people of all kinds and ages.
Over three-hundred events have been hosted since its foundation in August 2019 and strong at over a thousand members. If you’re in Ottawa, and want to get to know me and the loyal regulars, the best way is through this meetup.
PoetWrite
Taking poetry writing to the next level with rhetorical analysis and lexicographic assistance. In early development.
Links
GitHub Page — https://github.com/cdahmedeh/PoetWrite
Description
PoetWrite is a very-early-in-progress application that brings IDE-like sophistication to poetry writing with AI-free rhetorical analysis and lexicographic assistance. Poetry composition is heavily based on structure and devices. Overcomes the primary challenge of determining sound production with clever heuristics.
The project is fully open-source with a penchant on standard software engineering practices including documentation, practical architectural design and a UX-first philosophy.
Still in early development stage. The bulk of the work right now is going into developing the variety of analyses. And designing and experimenting with some of the major architectural pieces.
Crosswind
Bridging modern flight planning tools with older simulators that are normally not compatible with each other.
Links
GitHub Page — https://github.com/cdahmedeh/Crosswind
Description
Crosswind is an application that allows bridging flight simulators and EFBs (Electronic Flight Bag) that are normally not compatible with each other. I made it since I still use Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 and wanted to make Navigraph Charts work with it. More EFBs are planned to be supported like LittleNavmap and ForeFlight. With possible expansions to support simulators other than MSFS and X-Plane like FlightGear, Aerofly FS, and Condor.
It was partly also to learn how to reverse-engineer undocumented APIs and protocols, like Simlink. And to familiarize myself with modern C# along with its associated ecosystem (I’m kind of jealous how much more elegant it is than Java) and native Windows interop functionality.
TopRoms
A tastefully curated 'best of' ROM collection focusing on high-quality and historically-significant titles.
Links
Home Page — https://github.com/cdahmedeh/TopRoms
Description
TopRoms is a curated collection of classic console games. It focuses on high-quality, notable, historically significant and popular titles rather than an exhaustive set of all releases. Many retro-gamers find it cumbersome to navigate complete sets like No-Intro or TOSEC. TopRoms solves this problem by being compact and practical.
Games are distributed through a torrent hosted on a seedbox that I administer myself. The curation process is proprietary heavily dependent on both manual efforts and automated scripts. The formats are converted to work out-of-the-box with emulation packages and come fully-patched in the case of foreign titles.
Currently, TopRoms has over 4000 games across 60 platforms through six generations. The project is a preservation effort and the most popular ROM collection on the web. The selection process is a trade-secret and people find it oddly uncanny how every respected title finds a home in the collection.
Case Studies
Exploring everyday technologies, taken for granted. Made simple, but still tell an engaging story.
Links
Propulsion Controlled Aircraft — https://www.cdahmedeh.net/blog/2021/12/15/the-sad-demise-of-propulsion-controlled-aircraft
Automatic Transmissions in Games — https://www.cdahmedeh.net/blog/2018/4/8/automatic-transmission-simulation-in-games
NES Music — https://www.cdahmedeh.net/blog/2020/5/19/nes-musical-masterpieces
Description
Discussions of everyday technologies in various fields including computing, gaming, automotive and aviation. It’s a show and tell that’s accessible to everyone. Heavily research-driven with interactive content.
My most popular case study is about automatic transmission simulations in games. Where I uncover the very few obscure titles that imitate the unique behaviour of automatics accurately. It is the first comprehensive showcase about this topic online.
How-To and Guides
Tutorials on how to get things done within your computing and gaming life. Aimed at power users.
Links
Windows Guide for Linux Users — https://www.cdahmedeh.net/blog/2025/3/8/make-windows-like-home-a-guide-for-linux-refugees
LAN Party Games for Underpowered Systems — https://www.cdahmedeh.net/blog/2023/10/1/lan-party-games-that-run-on-a-potato-and-any-platform
Description
Various guides for users who are finding themselves in transitional phases whether it’s operating system hoping or gaming for those without a NASA supercomputer.
Essays and Commentaries
My rants and opinions that nobody reads. About my qualms and frustrations voiced unapologitcally.
Links
No One Is Living — https://www.cdahmedeh.net/blog/2025/6/1/im-heartbroken-because-no-one-is-living
Your Can’t Afford to be an Artist — https://www.cdahmedeh.net/blog/2022/8/16/you-cant-afford-to-be-an-artist-let-alone-be-respected — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19180339
Why I Hate the Weekends — https://www.cdahmedeh.net/blog/2017/4/15/why-i-hate-the-weekends — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32487190
Description
Blogs can get trite when there’s a laser-focus on technology. A human touch is a reminder that there is a worldly struggle that we all share. A bit more poetic, a little more anthropomorphized and more intimate.
Why I Hate the Weekends and You Can’t Afford to be an Artist went viral on Hacker News. The links are alongside the posts above.
Humour
Jokes so bad that even I forget to laugh. Ever wondered if you could drift a bus?
Links
Endothalmic Adaptance — https://www.cdahmedeh.net/blog/2018/7/16/h6v6k2i9c8os6uo60a5az60uloib6b
How To Drift A Bus — https://www.cdahmedeh.net/blog/2018/9/3/drifting-a-bus
Top 10 Tips for a Top 10 List — https://www.cdahmedeh.net/blog/2022/2/10/the-top-10-tips-to-make-a-top-10-list
I Want To Be Cat — https://www.cdahmedeh.net/blog/2017/4/23/i-want-to-be-a-cat
Lenovo P16 Warranty Tale — https://www.cdahmedeh.net/blog/2023/5/10/lenovo-p16-series-dont-even-think-about-it
Description
Sometimes we can become too serious in the world of corporate culture so you need to a break. People love things that make them laugh and it’s even funnier to write, sometimes tasteless, jokes. I have a penchant for sarcasm though I’ll grudgingly admit that I’m not always understood.
The post How To Drift A Bus actually uses accurate simulation from BeamNG.drive.
Music Analysis
When inspired by a song that never reached any charts. Trying to understand what the artists really mean and feel.
Links
Electric Youth by Marnie — https://www.cdahmedeh.net/blog/2022/12/29/song-of-the-day-004-electric-youth-marnie
Description
Music is a big part of my life, and while I’m technically pitch-perfect, I have no background in music theory at all. So I’ve focused on deciphering meanings and untangle the story-telling. I got some help for transcriptions and the more theoretical concepts.
Whitepapers and Brochures
Technical documents don't live in vacuum. The outside world needs to hear and engage with our voices too!
Links
Syntronic Digital Transformation and Cloud Migration Whitepaper - A Case for Digital Transformation
SSXK Attenuator Box Product Brochure — SSXK Attenuator Box
Description
I’ve had to the task of writing some brochures and white papers which are technically out of my field of expertise. However, some communications do have to go public. They require a completely different tone and appearance with an emphasis on accessibility and marketability.
Song Lyrics
Satisfying the inner song writer fantasasist within me. Maybe I was a pop music composer in another life.
Links
Suno Profile - https://suno.com/@cdahmedeh
Description
I’m a big writer of poetry but there was always a ‘what if’ it was song. Suno is a generative AI for music. It can generate a song with a bunch of prompts, but you can always write your own lyrics and precisely dictate the genre, style and structure.
Writers know how entertaining it is to write lyrics because you can be so much more lazy with the rhetorical devices. The chance, to pretend for a few hours, that you were a pop star writing the next hit.
The profile above has the entire corpus of my Suno library. All the lyrics were written by me.
I know that generative AI will never replace the soul than an artist can put into their paintings or songs. However, it allows those of us who don’t have these fine hands to explore expressing ourselves if we had skills that we will never have.
Admittedly, I still feel uncomfortable with how AI has proliferated the Internet. Not because it’s being used, but because no one is labelling that kind content making clear it was generated through AI. Personally, I use LLMs in particular every single day. But it’s not to offshore or outsource my thinking, rather a useful tool for research, learning, brain-storming and improving my productivity.
Personal Website
An online prescence that struck a chord with many. All my tales and projects started here. Welcome!
Links
Description
Where all the action started, when the domain was registered in 2013. After several failed attempts, the blog finally picked up page in 2017 where it’s been seasonably alive since. It’s a portal to my world and my passions. Sometimes I’m tempted to go too far, but recruiters and potential employers will look at me like a madman and think ‘this guy is really messed up, next’.
On a more serious note, when I registered the domain, I was trying to create the website from scratch. Of course, pretty much every video back then had a sponsorship for Squarespace. So that’s what I signed up for, and been using it since. If I was a proper web developer using a CMS would be a major sin. But frankly speaking, I just want to be able to focus on my content and not wrestle myself with some web framework that will be outdated within days and be replaced by a new one.
I like to keep my statistics secret, but there’s enough people visiting to keep this project worthwhile. Especially with all the friendly emails I’ve gotten from many of my readers. I see this as a passion project, and I don’t want to litter my page with ads and other nonsense. The whole idea of advertisement doesn’t bode well with me so I’ll have to admit that I use an ad-blocker when browsing the web.
The template has been the same since the website was first hosted on Squarespace. While my house is overly decorate with too many colours, I thought that a more simple look would make the site timeless. Squarespace doesn’t provide that many templates in the first place, and needed quite a bit of CSS tweaking to make it look just slightly more polished.
For those wondering what the story behind my username, and therefore, the site’s name, I wrote about it here.