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Welcome to my site! My name is Zachary Billman. I’m an MD-PhD student at UNC Chapel Hill in Ed Miao’s lab. The curious reader may be thinking: “But Zach, Ed Miao’s lab is at Duke now! What does that make you?” What an astute question! I am a card-carrying UNC Microbiology and Immunology student who happens to have all of their research take place at Duke. This move was quite a trial, especially when compounded with the onset of the pandemic. I suspect my research timeline suffered, though this is an extremely minor inconvenience compared to the tragedy the pandemic caused. This makes for very interesting basketball viewing parties with my Duke friends! ...

I, like many others, picked up a new hobby during the pandemic. Other people’s hobbies may bring them joy. This could be for many reasons. There is the joy of creating something from scratch. You can revel in your thriftiness. You can embrace the pride when you recognize that your creation is on par (or better!) than what you can buy. I feel like these are embodied in the sourdough craze that caught fire early on in COVID. Dare I say that I did this before it was cool? 😎 I baked two loaves of bread almost every weekend through med school. Maybe I should bring that back, it’s been a while since I brought out the ole’ starter. My pandemic hobby is similar, but different in that it often feels like a chore, costs more money, and often turns out worse than what I can buy. Of course, I am talking about how I’ve started roasting my own coffee at home. ...

It is an age-old question: how can one keep up with the continuous output of science? I remember at the beginning of my PhD struggling to figure out how anyone found out when a new paper came out. 😵 Did they sit on nature.com and spam the refresh button? Did they know when each journal released their latest issue? Behold the power of RSS! Most websites have a page that contains information about each subpage in a computer-readable format called RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Mine has one right here! These pages can be parsed by a number of RSS feed aggregators. The way these pages are set up make it such that they add any new information hosted at that domain. This is useful in the science world because you can find the RSS feed of a given journal, subscribe to it, then have every new article published online be delivered right to you. ...

My interest in self-hosting began in my with my interests in internet privacy. Plastered all over the internet are stories about how much Google, Facebook and Amazon know about you. I deleted my Facebook account years ago, and I’m too paranoid to go back to the site because there’s a real possibility that Facebook has cached my account, ready to spin it back up in case I try to login again. The ads served to me were too accurate for my liking. This is despite almost never clicking on them! I have become convinced of the idea that, if you are not paying for the product, you are the product. From this assumption, it follows that anywhere I trust with my data that I am not paying for (like Google Drive, Google Photos, Dropbox, Facebook, Twitter) is using my data to earn money. We know that Google uses the labels you add to Photos to train it’s AI, and Facebook uses (at least) Instagram photos to train it’s AI. For some, the value proposition of allowing a company to use your data for a useful service in return is an acceptable one. I find this to be a reasonable stance, but I took my growing interest in internet privacy as a chance to learn about how I can take control of my data. ...

N.B.: I hope to add screenshots for each of these eventually. For now, I hope links to each services’ website will suffice. Seafile This is a great tool for managing files. I moved to this from Nextcloud because I am of the philosophy that I would prefer services that do one thing excellently instead of many things well. Nextcloud is an incredible Office365 replacement, but I found myself using a fraction of what it was capable of providing. Enter Seafile. It is cloud file syncing with a robust encryption implementation, just what the doctor ordered. ...

My partner and I took a trip to the Mason Farm Biological Reserve the other day, and what a glorious day it was. This year, I’ve been quite busy in the lab, and missed a lot of the early spring warbler season, so I was very excited by the opportunity to check out the old stomping grounds. I brought the camera with me despite the fact we were going to be there around midday when the birds are much less active. I’m glad I did, because I got the best look at a common yellowthroat I’ve ever had. Normally these guys are flighty, staying close to the ground in small brush or tall grasses, but this one was putting on a proper show for the mating season. Even when you get a glimpse of one, it is usually just that, as they have jumped away before you can pull out the camera, taunting you with their iconic call. I was very pleased to capture a few choice shots of the bird. Hopefully there are more to come. While we were out, I also got a nice picture of a hermit thrush and a king snake. ...