Hello there, my name is Tiago Magalhães and I am a software engineer interested in complex problems. I am particularly interested in the areas of systems programming, and real-time computer graphics. So why am I interested in these areas in particular? Well besides the fact that they all contain interesting problems to solve of course.
I mainly got into systems programming because of my severe discontentment with the generally low performance of modern software, it probably all started with Google Drive driving me nuts with how slow it was in my old laptop (and any laptop without a discrete GPU). I started to wonder if there was a good reason for software being so slow, which lead me to start learning the basics of performance optimization and what modern hardware is capable of, then, I got a school project where I had enough time to do some performance optimization, which just solidified my passion for the topic further. One thing led to another, and before long I was studying topics related to systems programming as a whole, additionally, as I learned more about the hardware/software interaction and how the hardware components in our systems work, I fell deeper into this hole. It's an area that I find myself continuously researching more about, be it through books, papers, blog posts, or, talks.
But that is just systems programming, what about computer graphics? Well, the answer is complicated, as I honestly can't pinpoint when I fell in love with this field. If I had to point at an initial thing that drove me to the field, it has to be video games and generally liking to look at pretty/shiny things. But that was just the initial spark of interest. As I started learning more about the field on my own, I realize how many interesting problems the field has and how fulfilling it is to get almost immediate results on whether you improved your solution or not. On top of all this, real-time computer graphics goes hand-in-hand with systems programming, in a sense, it's a perfect marriage given my interests. And, while I find offline computer graphics interesting as well, real-time computer graphics is significantly more interesting to me. This is because you simply don't have the option to throw more hardware or time at the problem, which means the only option is to get creating and ingenious. As Bear Grills would say (at least according to the meme), "Improvise, Adapt, Overcome", to a degree that is a perfect one-liner description of real-time computer graphics.
But these are just my professional interests, what about hobbies and personal interests? Well as you might have surmised by now, I am a big fan of Video Games. I will spare you the details of my various adventures into the world of video games, my favorite genres are RPGs, MMOs, and, action-adventure games. I am also a big fan of anime and manga, so much so that some of my friends call me a bit of a ... weeb. While I also enjoy traditional TV shows, there are significantly fewer of those that catch my interest, in fact, I'm more likely to watch a documentary than a traditional TV show.
Outside of entertainment, I have spent too much money and time on mechanical keyboards, but hey I didn't choose the clack, it chose me. That being said I probably swap keyboard and switches way too often. I also enjoy political and philosophical debates, despite it being very hard to have healthy productive debates in these areas. I have been thinking of getting into photography, but right now I know next to 0 about it. I have never been much of a fan of traveling but there are some places I would like to visit, I'll let you guess what those places are though.
At this point I think that you know enough about me, I am a pretty chill person so if you want to contact me, feel free to do so over email, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.. While I am always open to new business ventures and opportunities, I beg that you truly think if your proposal fits my interests, otherwise you might not get a response. (web dev opportunities can go away cough... cough...).