farischebib.is

exploring pid with animations

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In my journey to branch out from web development, I’ve been exploring both game design, animation, and CNC programming. Naturally, I’ve stumbled upon the concept of a PID Controller as I was trying to understand how to implement a “natural” look of feedback in an animated vehicle.

For this demo, I’ve constructed a basic webgl space with a “train” (or car, if my models load correctly…) that attempts to reach a spot on the track. During the loop, you can click on other parts of the track and change the PID parameters to get a sense of how those inputs impact the feedback loop.

You can check out the demo at pid.brain.run

Leading Through Service

Mon, 26 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

For the past seven years, with a hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve been a “Kid’s Crew” volunteer at Primary Children’s Hospital. This role is more than just a volunteer position—it’s a commitment to filling gaps, addressing the non-medical needs of child patients, and making their healing journey a bit brighter. This endeavor entails a variety of responsibilities, ranging from practical tasks such as cleaning to more creative pursuits like planning activities and crafts.

In the midst of my service, I’ve found myself surrounded by younger pre-med volunteers from the local university. As one of the more seasoned volunteers, I often step into a leadership role, guiding others in patient safety protocols and day-room check-in procedures. However, my true passion lies in going beyond the standard protocol and instilling an intrinsic motivation in my fellow volunteers.

This motivation comes from the understanding that for the families of our patients, they’re navigating one of the most challenging times in their lives. Our role as volunteers is to alleviate this hardship, even if it’s just by a fraction, with every interaction. Emphasizing this shared value is a cornerstone of my approach to leadership. Value-based leadership. It’s not a new idea, but it’s a foundational part of how I practice the privilege of leading others.

The measure of success for me is not just in the smooth running of operations, but in seeing this value reflected in the actions of other volunteers. It’s in the moments when, instead of reaching for their phones during a quiet spell, volunteers begin preparing craft kits or contacting patient pods to see who might need a bit of company.

This ethos of service and value-based leadership has resonated throughout my professional career as well. As an engineering manager, I’ve had the privilege of leading development teams at a large genetics company. There, I’ve strived to instill a sense of purpose that extends beyond the lines of code. I remind my team that each challenge we overcome in debugging spaghetti codes translates to countless patients gaining access to crucial genetic diagnoses, helping them move forward with their lives.

This concept of value-based leadership, this shared understanding, does more than inspire—it transforms. It transforms mundane tasks into meaningful contributions, routine responsibilities into purposeful engagement, and individual workers into a cohesive team united by a common purpose. It is the glue that binds us, the driving force that propels us forward, the shared beacon that illuminates our path.

The joy and fulfillment I derive from my work come not only from the roles I perform, but from the knowledge that every single day, in some small way, I make a difference. Every line of code debugged, every craft kit prepared, every moment spent guiding fellow volunteers or developers, contributes to a larger purpose. It’s the constant pursuit of this purpose, the opportunity to serve, to lead, to learn and grow, that truly defines my dream job. As I continue this journey, I am filled with a profound sense of gratitude and optimism. For the future is not just something we await, but something we actively shape, with each decision, each action, each moment of service.

your password sucks

Tue, 11 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

A couple months ago, the new White House press Secretary tweeted out these seemingly random letters assumed to be his password:

A day later, Secretary Spicer tweeted out a seemingly stronger set of letters and numbers, also assumed to be his password:

You might think that Secretary Spicer was greatly improving his password strength by starting to incorporate numbers and letters, but you’d be wrong.

In fact, just adding numbers and letters isn’t the best way to improve your password strength.

Passwords are an annoyingly bad user experience and an almost unusable way to maintain your personal security, but unfortunately they’re one of the best ways we developers have at keeping your information secure.

And thanks to a myriad of historic reasons and bad practices, we as users have had to resort to bad and hard-to-remember passwords.

Think about the times have you run into a site where ridiculous requirements are enforced / suggested. Things like “you must not use special characters” or “your password is too long”. It’s no wonder we as users have ingrained such bad practices in our passwords.

The Solution: Passcodes, Password Managers, and 2-Factor Authentication

There is a better way to create a password. If you’re using an up to date password manager (eg Keepass, LastPass; etc), then you’re able to make one “Entropic Passcode” (we’ll call them “passcodes” for short) as long as you want, and they’ll be super-secure as a result.

The best way to come up with your passcode is to use the EFF Dice Method, which is basically: roll 5 dice, find the word in the EFF Long Wordlist, Repeat. If you do this 6 times, you’ll have 1 of 221073919720733357899776 alternatives.

For example, you could end up with:

CorrectHorseBatteryStaple ¹.

The reason this is better than something like Tr0ub4dor&3, is primarily because it’s longer, which is much, much harder for computers to guess.

When combined with a password manager, even if your password is compromised, you won’t have your password stolen on other sites because they’ll be different (having been randomly generated by your password manager).

2-Factor Authentication is another way to combat your password being stolen. If you have to put in a continuously-changing key in addition to your password, then even if your password is stolen, an attacker still needs to have access to your phone or other device in order to wreak havoc. Authy is my personal favourite, as it also securely backs up your 2-factor keys.

In Short

Generate a long & secure passcode using the dice method.
Use a password manager for day-to-day password logins, and protect it with your secure passcode.
Use 2-Factor Authentication if available.

One last note

If you’ve been using the same password everywhere, you should definitely check out have i been pwned?. There, you can plug in your email address and find out if one of your accounts has ever been breached.

If you have, then it’s definitely time to change your password.

Stay safe out there!

Don’t use this particular passcode, it’s from an xkcd comic ↩

Landing

Sun, 04 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Just another landing on runway 35 at KBMC.

Red Bull

Sun, 04 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Snapped a shot of the Red Bull extra at the Hill Air Force Base bi-annual airshow.

a blog together

Sat, 03 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This is an initial go at re-creating a hacking blog!