Farewell CSaju

My first game was Road Rash which I played in my maternal uncle’s home. And the second was GTA Vice City at the local cyber cafe. The era of mig33, MSN, Yahoo. We used to have a big sheet of paper with GTA codes that could unlock many things in the game. For the game, we split up the Rs 5 that we saved and paid a total of Rs 10 to play for an hour at the cybercafe. It was fun. I was already interested in how people make games. Beyond that, I was much more curious about hacking because of cheat codes. My mother bought me video games too. It was fun playing super mario, contra, doble dragon and many more. I am grateful that I had such memories and played. Thank you, mother. My computer teacher, Raju Sir, taught me that games use programming languages like C++. You can also build games if you are eager to learn such programming languages. I learned that they rely on logic and math, which turned out to be true.

This was in the early 2010s. I used the internet for the first time on my mom’s phone as well. To connect your mobile phone internet, you have to send message to provider with the message. It wasn’t easy at all. At first glance, having the internet in my hand, I was curious about how the internet works. Also, my conspiracy thoughts, the internet provider tracked every action of each person. It turned out to be true as well. I felt scared at the same time as well.

Those were the time, the internet gave me an incredible rush. My first sites were Google and wapkid.com. Back then, internet speeds were slow, around 10-15 kbps, and data was expensive. Dial-up, cyber cafe internet, and UTL modems were popular. Having 256 kbps was a big deal. I learned the cost of data minutes into browsing. I remember NCELL charging Rs. 6 for 1-3 MB, while NTC was cheaper. It was the era of Mig33, and social media was beginning. The Wapkid and the Waptrick were where I downloaded games.

My computer teacher (Raju Sir) introduced me to W3Schools, and I started learning. Internet access was rare at my school, and I took notes on my mom’s phone. I even showed my code to my teacher. Raju sir later suggested using drag-and-drop tools such as WordPress. He also recommended IDEs like Dreamweaver and Notepad++. I was using Notepad at the time in the computer lab once a week and sometimes internet. I started QBASIC for the first time printing out the hello as well. I had to rote learned the code, this was completely different than HTML with CSS. Tried to dig around how it works.

My dad gifted me a laptop, and this was when I became more interested beyond my military training after all. The training was the preparation with my friends planned to go in defense. Besides that, I spent my time with academia, painting, and dancing. I made the most out of it. To get more exposure, I often go my mama’s home for fast internet. There, I usually updated my antivirus, downloaded YouTube tutorials, and gathered PDFs. I was also sick of having and experimenting with many Antiviruses and testing which one was cool. I met buckyrobert, the newboston and learned basic python. This was before I explored cybersecurity. Later on, I switched my operating system from Windows to Backtrack. I saved my festival money to buy the disk of Backtrack r3 and it has tutorial too. Now it’s called Kali Linux. It was a different era of time. I learned about cloning websites too. This was also the peak period of Wi-Fi hacking using Aircrack and AndroDumpper. Some of my friends even made a joke of me hacking site using html. Often time, people were curious how to do it and root their android mobile phones. I learned how to root the Android phones of my friends. I didn’t have my own, but I experimented with my friend. Also, I was a big fan of Bikash. He inspired me much more interest over cybersecurity. Still, at that time, I didn’t have a website too, and I wanted to make my website to share with friends.

In 2017, I discovered an online forum called TechSanjal. It was a community of tech enthusiasts from around Nepal. I met forum’s founder later on and few members who became my undergraduate friend too. Others with their blogging sites inspired me. Many people I knew then are now leaders in technology and senior software engineers. I’m grateful for that platform, where everyone was kind and supportive. I miss Binit Ghimire, who inspired me back then. This was the initial start of CSaju.

I found a platform called Freenom, where I could get a free .tk domain and host it on 000webhost. It was fun. Developers used FTP clients like FileZilla to transfer files to production. SQL injections and XSS attacks were common. Many government sites used to get hacked. I even learned a lot when my site got hacked. I moved on and started writing on wordpress.com and documented my journey. You can check out some of my earlier posts here. It was enjoyable.

After finishing high school, I moved to the Kathmandu Valley. I came valley to prepare for the CS entrance exam. I saved some money and was on a tight budget. Hosting Sewa had partnered with AskBudie (a Facebook group). They allowed members to get domains for about Rs. 800 and cheap shared hosting. I didn’t have an eSewa account, so I had to find someone to pay for it. I paid the fees via the local eSewa center and got access to my domain.

This was on May 19, Sunday, the day I bought the CSaju domain to share my thoughts and learning.

So far, CSaju reflected who I was, a computer science and cybersecurity enthusiast. It became a journal of my growth and space connecting me with others who loved tech. This is how CSaju began, rooted in my love for the web.

During CSaju time, I talked to interesting people, interviewed some of them and shared in my site. I shared my journey, sent out a newsletter, hosted a podcast as well. I even wrote security write-ups. Via the CSaju, I replied to tons of cold messages from strangers and juniors who were looking for a tech career. It was helpful so much to the users.

Thank you, Bipul Gautam, I appreciated for making the CSaju logo. I loved it. I haven’t changed yet so far.

My initial first version was plain HTML, CSS, and PHP on the backend with Apache Server. I get handson with Jekyll as well. Later on, I choose wordpresss for the site.

Later on, in 2021, I revamped and tasted the flavor of JamStack technologies. My friend, Anurag Hazra, who inspired me from his Portfolio site to switch to Gatsby. It was fun, and SEO was top-notch due to server-side rendering. He even helped me to resolve some initial bugs and errors I encountered. Thank you once again Anurag for those days, it was awesome and interesting now too. We will meet one day : D

The plugins that I used over Gatsby, are no longer active, and I have some issues with packages and plugins. I got hooked again in the Zola static site generator, and I made the site upon it.

It was fun again. During this time, I experimented again with Hugo based on Go as well. I experimented a lot. I examine my SEO metrics, my visitor as well. I learned how it impacts when the site gets changed. I never notified to the readers. Later on, I realized that I no longer need fancy cool tech. I am done and wanted to have a simplistic one. I wanted to write and published it. Hence, I chose Astro and never switched again. Still, this site is also powered by Astro.

Looking back, CSaju wasn’t a website; it was a reflection of my journey. I made mistakes, wrote terrible code, and launched half-baked ideas, but I kept showing up. It taught me consistency.

Today, I’m making the official announcement that we will no longer update CSaju. This isn’t a sad ending but a heartfelt goodbye to a phase of my life that shaped who I am.

CSaju was a significant part of my early journey, but I have outgrown that phase. I am no longer CSaju. I’m exploring more, writing and building. It’s time for a clean, fresh space. CSaju will soon redirect all traffic here for a single identity. Csaju wont be avilable after May 19, 2026.

Thank you to everyone who read my posts, clicked links, shared feedback, or followed along. You were part of this journey. You motivated me to keep learning, building, and sharing. I built it, but it thrived because of you. This is not the end. Everything I write, share, and build will now be at Ajutamang. You’ll find notes, experiments, and everything I’m working on. I will continue to share what I learn and build in public.

Stay tune : D