Bo Bayles Annex
Professional information
I'm a software engineer. I'm most interested in backend application development, Python tools, and reverse engineering:
Current job: Solutions Architect at Wurl (now part of Applovin)
Previous job: Software Engineering and Technical Operations at Observable Networks (now part of Cisco)
For more, see my resume.
Software projects
I maintain or co-maintain several open source software packages. Here are the the ones I'm working on lately:
more-itertools - Python library for working with iterable objects
boto3-helpers - Automate various AWS interactions
ada-python - Python bindings (with CFFI) for ada, URL parser based on the WHATWG URL Spec
python-pure-cdb - Python implementation of the "Constant Database" tools and library
I've also been a major contributor to gcp-flowlogs-reader, flowlogs-reader, netsa-pkg, obsrvbl-ona, redis-collections, vod-metadata, and various other projects.
Reverse engineering
In my spare time, I like to use reverse engineering tools like Ghidra to examine the video games I used to play as a kid. Here are some of the cool things I've found:
A hidden game inside Clockwork Knight 2
Different characters for Saturn Bomberman
Upgraded camera controls for NiGHTS Into Dreams
Hidden extras in Three Dirty Dwarves
See Rings of Saturn and High Context Burning Rangers for more.
Other output
Personal blogging:
The lost car chronicles - never unlock your doors (2022)
The Fifth Iron - yo, I heard you like this one song (2021)
Yes, you can play it - an appreciation of The GHZ, where I spent my youth (2018)
Playing it again - I will be the one to set your heart free and/or true (2021)
Podcasts:
The GHZ Podcast - My friends do a show about Sega, Sonic Team, the 90s, and more. I did sound editing for the first two seasons, and appeared as a guest on a few episodes (2021-2022)
Sonic Weekly - I have also edited and appeared on another show about the long-term effects of Sega exposure (2023-)
Tech blogging:
Being fooled by randomness - a lesson in how not to stream binary data (2020)
Yo, I heard you like decorators - using and abusing Python decorators (2017)
FTP, "Apr 26 02:xx", and you - troubleshooting on the edge of madness (2014)
Policy blogging:
The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves - a snarky exposé (2017)
Till then, my noble friend, chew upon this - the followup (2017)
Reference material:
Interpreting ESNs and MEIDs - on mobile phone technology identifiers, the most popular thing I've ever written (2010)
Calculating the Erlang-C formula - I was really into teletraffic engineering for a while (2009)