About me

Language: English | 中文

My name is Sirui Liu.
Across most platforms and on GitHub, I go by the username WorldVanquisher.
This name does not come from any grand ambition—it simply comes from a piece of music I like, World Vanquisher by void (Mournfinale). Nothing more than that.
Of course, if I eventually manage to carve out my own path in computer engineering, that would be even better—and you are welcome to wish me luck.

I am an undergraduate Computer Engineering student at the University of Waterloo.
My current career interests focus on DevOps, infrastructure, and backend systems, and I am actively working toward these areas.

Personally, I do not believe AI will replace human technical work unless P = NP is proven.
However, it is clear that the era where simple and repetitive technical work provides strong career leverage is largely over, especially for Gen Z.
Because of this, I am trying to move toward becoming a higher-quality, engineering-oriented technical worker.

If computer engineering ever fails to support me financially, I may end up working in northern Canada pulling power lines.
Hopefully, that will not happen within the next 10–20 years.

A short note for potential employers (if you are reading this)

  • Current GPA: 84.6 / 100 (relatively strong within Waterloo Engineering)
  • Stronger coursework areas: Data Structures & Algorithms, Digital Circuits, Analog Circuits, Mathematics

My hard skills are listed on my résumé.
Below are a few soft skills I believe I have:

  • I am a motivated student who actively seeks opportunities
  • I am willing to take responsibility
  • I am a reasonably good communicator and provide feedback when issues arise

Below are my main projects so far, listed in chronological order.

1. Ultrasonic Smart Cane (Early Embedded Project)

This project was part of the ECE198 course and was my first exposure to a formal engineering project.
GitHub Repo

Through this project, I worked with:

  • Sensor principles and their interaction with analog circuits
  • STM32 programming and basic C usage
  • Fundamental ideas of hardware–software integration

This was my first major pitfall.
The course design was not particularly student-friendly, but it was my first complete engineering course project and marked my first real entry on a résumé.

2. Building a Personal Blog with Hexo

I later built this blog, not as a portfolio, but as a place to record what I learned and struggled with.

This process involved:

  • My first structured understanding of modern web systems
  • Writing technical notes in Markdown
  • Basic Git and deployment workflows

Looking back, this blog does not contain much technical depth.
However, it was the first step that defined my overall career direction.

At the time, I struggled extensively with themes and configuration.
It feels a bit amusing now, but every beginning is difficult, and this step was meaningful.

Over time, the blog became a technical notebook for system configurations, design decisions, and lessons learned.
Due to academic workload, it has not been updated as frequently as I would like.

3. Personal NAS Deployment (Linux + Docker)

With more system experience, I began repurposing an old device into a personal NAS.

This project involved:

  • Deploying long-running services on Linux
  • Managing multiple containers using Docker Compose
  • Configuring file sharing, media services, and remote access
  • Handling permissions, stability, and maintenance in real network environments

As for why I ended up using Arch Linux:
Debian Bookworm failed to support my network card drivers, leaving the system offline, and I was convinced by Arch enthusiasts to install Arch instead.

Arch is difficult and inconvenient.
Many issues that could be solved with sudo apt require manual intervention.
Still, having a highly optimized and controllable server is satisfying.

4. Self-Hosted Telegram Bot (Backend Service + Image Pipeline)

I later developed and operated a self-hosted Telegram Bot, which is essentially a long-running backend service.

The initial motivation was simple:
after seeing memes involving “Dong Zhuo and Lü Bu,” I wondered whether I could design a system that continuously generated related AI images.

Some people consider this bot to have little technical value, and to some extent I agree.
However, I spent a significant amount of time understanding the underlying system aspects, including:

  • Building an image processing pipeline on top of object storage
  • Designing proper network interactions and request handling

This project involves:

  • Overall backend service architecture
  • Integration and management of multiple external APIs
  • Handling image-related requests and simple processing pipelines
  • Operating services under real-world constraints (proxies, timeouts, restarts, failure handling)

This is not a one-off demo, but a continuously running and evolving system.
More experimental features may be added in the future.

That is mostly everything I wanted to say.
This page will remain here for future employers, colleagues, and myself.

Waterloo is exhausting—very exhausting.
But I still have hope.