I'm raf, most commonly known as NotAShelf on the world wide web. I am a part-time FOSS contributor and part-time political scientist. Currently pursuing my PhD in the field of Political Science, hoping to bridge the gap between out of touch political institutions and the end-user in terms of data protection, and privacy (which is a fundamental human right, unbeknownst to many.)

Whatever free time I have left is is usually spent working on OSS projects, digital art, and other various DevSecOps activities. Ever since my introduction to the world of FOSS and Linux in late 2018, I have been very passionate about writing my own software and System Administration. While I avoid publishing them to GitHub, writing home-made CLI applications are one of my favorite past-time activities. Reliable and scalable systems are also within my interest. I use, and contribute to @NixOS in my free time to help me towards this goal. Sometimes I write about Nix and NixOS too! You can find my ever-growing collection of notes here.

My experience and knowledge (both in very heavy quotes) span over multiple languages and frameworks, however my primary focus remains as Go and Rust for building reliable backend applications.

If you want to contact me for any reason, you may just shoot me an email @ raf [at] notashelf [dot] dev . In case you were unable to reach me via email (e.g. your SMTP server uses an outdated cipher, or my domain is blacklisted by your provider), you may contact me via Matrix or Mastodon using the links below. I am also on Discord, going by the same handle as my GitHub username. My public GPG key is available at /gpg. You can curl it!

I am available at almost any given time if you would like to ask questions, or consult me on Nix. If you want to hire me, sure! As long as you are a shady defense company that uses Nix and can afford to buy my morals. Wanna collaborate? Absolutely, shoot me an e-mail and we'll talk.