ASHRAF
I fix servers for a living. I build things because I can't leave things alone.
I'm a software engineer at RunCloud.
Most of my professional life involves Linux servers, production debugging, infrastructure, and figuring out what actually happened when something breaks.
Outside of work, I make things. Some are useful. Some are experiments. Some exist because I wondered if I could build them.
I remember
RunCloud
Production servers, debugging, infrastructure, deployments, NGINX, Linux and the occasional problem that refuses to explain itself.
Observatory
Exploring how market allocation changes over time across sectors, industries and companies.
Badminton
Working on reaction, footwork and not somehow missing perfectly easy drives.
Garden
Okra. Eggplant. Pineapple. Whatever survives my experiments.
Things I've made.
Capital Rotation Observatory
I wanted to see market rotation over time without
constantly reconstructing the picture in my head.
So I built a little observatory.
It is an experiment in observing market-cap rotation across
sectors, industries and companies, rather than a literal
measure of money flowing between them.
Shuttle Tactics
I play badminton, then apparently decided that what the world really needed was another badminton game.
ASBF Calculator
I got tired of rebuilding the same financing calculations in spreadsheets, so I made a calculator.
Something else.
There is almost certainly another project hiding somewhere in my brain.
Research reports.
apparently wondering wasn't enough
Farm Fresh Berhad
SDS Group Berhad
Unique Fire Holdings
Next report.
The next rabbit hole has not been selected yet.
the field
Things I've learned
the hard way.
Production bugs rarely live exactly where the error message says they live.
A surprising amount of production debugging is basically archaeology.
If you can automate something twice, you will probably automate it forever.
Sometimes the spreadsheet is just a database waiting for someone to get annoyed enough.
Users will install a plugin and forget about it for two years.
Things that occupy
my brain.
/SYSTEMS/
NGINX
networking
debugging
databases
weird tools
trading
capital rotation
reaction
"why did I miss that?"
Observatory.
I wanted to understand market rotation better. I didn't really have the tool I wanted. So I made it.
Current loadout.
Badminton
Intermediate. Control play. Working on reaction and footwork.
Coffee
Bitter. Oat milk. Tiny pinch of salt when required.
Garden
Okra, eggplant and pineapple. Plus whatever experiment comes next.
Markets
Investing, trading and trying to understand what markets are actually doing.
Cats
Two stray cats. Neither has contributed to household expenses.
Side projects
Build → use → improve → accidentally turn it into a proper project.
to become projects
Ideas graveyard.
DiariDuit
Personal finance tracker. Tried building it more than once. Still couldn't replace my own Excel.
SekolahCode
A small coding academy with a friend. Website built. GitHub organisation created. Projects existed. Even hosted an online class. Then it stopped.
Trading algorithms
Built Pine Scripts, indicators and TradingView backtests. Tried different strategies and even machine learning. Worked tremendously well on some stocks and completely failed on others. Never produced a profitable enough result to justify continuing.
Grocery tracker
Track what we have. Track what we need. Restock when necessary. Then I realized I hadn't found the actual problem yet.
Something involving AI agents
There were diagrams. There were token calculations. Nobody knows what happened next.
37 other things I will probably build eventually.
Day job.
I work at RunCloud, where I spend a significant amount of time figuring out why production servers are doing things they were not supposed to do.
How I got here.
Mostly software, servers, production problems and a suspicious willingness to fix things that were not technically mine.
Before all this became a career.
There are older versions of Ashraf.exe. This one was still figuring things out.
RunCloud
Software Engineer (Remote)
Lead development projects and improve RunCloud’s core platform, working across backend services, server infrastructure, and product functionality. Troubleshoot complex production issues, investigate system-level problems, and build tools and features that improve the reliability and usability of the platform while also serving as a final engineering escalation point for complex customer issues and server troubleshooting.
Junior Software Engineer
Researched and developed new features, improved existing features and maintained the RunCloud Server panel, mostly on the back-end side of RunCloud microservices, with some front-end work when needed.
Web Development Intern
Developed new features, improved existing features and maintained the RunCloud Server panel, mostly around the back-end side of RunCloud microservices. Was absorbed as a Permanent Staff before i complete my internship.
WinApp
Frontend Web Developer
Built the Insight Dashboard to display statistics from the WinApp mobile application and help the company analyse user experience and services. Built with Laravel and connected to MySQL, PostgreSQL and Neo4j, then deployed and managed the AWS VPS myself.
TRG
Unit Pengurusan Maklumat Negeri Terengganu
Web Software Developer
Maintained and improved an existing event registration system using PHP and MySQL.
Along the way...
Alongside my main career, I took on software projects with different companies, usually joining existing teams to build features, fix problems and help ship things that needed another engineer.
Completely unimportant information.
I apparently kept very few photos of myself. The ones that survived mostly came from conversations, old events and questionable selfies.
This is one of the survivors.
Ashraf.exe
+ Shuttle Tactics escaped into the internet
+ ASBF Calculator became an actual thing instead of another spreadsheet
+ three deployed side projects
+ started treating side projects as things worth finishing
+ portfolio.exe abandoned conventional UI/UX
+ apparently cannot leave a problem alone once it enters my head
+ started to try stock picking but spend more time trying to build trading algorithm
+ more things to debug
+ started building more things outside work
+ accumulated several ideas that probably should not have been allowed
+ worked on various software projects outside RunCloud
+ continued accumulating production experience
+ increasingly became the person people call when something is broken
+ first proper job as a software engineer
+ finally have money to start saving/invest
+ started working on actual production systems
+ DNS Manager / Cloudflare integration
+ custom NGINX configuration
+ File Manager and dashboard work
+ Backup V2
+ learned that production software is considerably less forgiving than university projects
+ first serious exposure to production software
+ RunCloud Education
+ Admin Panel improvements
+ PHP
+ JavaScript
+ somehow this turned into a career
UMP / UNIVERSITI MALAYSIA PAHANG
+ discovered the gem: programming
+ started building things purely because I wanted to know how they worked
+ built my own MVC framework
+ built my own ORM
+ learned Laravel
+ made various questionable side projects
+ spent an unreasonable amount of time reinventing things
+ programming stopped being just a subject
+ it became the thing
UMP / UNIVERSITI MALAYSIA PAHANG
+ EAT
+ SLEEP
+ GAME
+ repeat
+ skipped a suspicious number of classes
+ discovered DOTA2
+ played DOTA2 like it was a full-time occupation
+ games became significantly more important than academic performance
+ failed some subjects
+ learned that skipping class has consequences
+ took exactly one class on making animations
+ entered an animation-making competition anyway
+ somehow made something good enough to get a genuinely good comment
+ briefly discovered that maybe I could make things after all
+ probably learned more about games than anything else
+ somehow still made it through
SKSS 2 → SMKA SHEIKH ABDUL MALEK
+ primary school at SKSS 2
+ secondary school at SMKA Sheikh Abdul Malek
+ discovered MMORPGs
+ Ragnarok Online entered the system
+ spent ridiculous amounts of time gaming
+ skipped classes
+ played futsal
+ played games
+ came home
+ played more games
+ repeated
+ school happened somewhere in between
+ computers
+ games
+ random curiosity
+ things taken apart for no particularly good reason
+ Ashraf.exe begins accumulating random knowledge
+ system initialized
probably should not be trusted with another side project
building things
playing badminton
growing things
drinking bitter coffee
wondering what to build next