My name is Zachary Billman. I'm an MD-PhD student at UNC Chapel Hill in Ed Miao's lab. The curious reader may be thinking: "But Zach, Ed Miao's lab is at Duke now! What does that make you?" What an astute question! I am a card-carrying UNC Microbiology and Immunology student who happens to have all of their research take place at Duke.
This move was quite a trial, especially when compounded with the onset of the pandemic. I suspect my research timeline suffered, though this is an extremely minor inconvenience compared to the tragedy the pandemic caused.
I am broadly interested in innate immunology. I am in the 4th year of my PhD studying the host-pathogen interaction between the intracellular fungus /Histoplasma capsulatum/ and macrophages. There are many unstudied curiosities regarding the innate immune response to /Histoplasma spp./ and other intracellular fungi that I think are quite interesting. Stay tuned, hopefully there is a major breakthrough to report here someday.
Besides my science, I am interested in birding, baking sourdough bread (I swear I began years before the pandemic, though hearing of people baking bread brings me joy no matter when they first began!), board games, roasting coffee, and self-hosting free and open source software. Over the course of the pandemic, I have learned how to maintain a basic suite of services on a server I rent that have replaced my need for Google Photos and Google Drive.
I'm hoping to be able to move away from these platforms entirely soon. I think they provide a great service, but at a substantial cost to privacy. Hopefully more to be said about my thoughts on FOSS soon!
I also transitioned my old, (and quite frankly, embarassingly slow) managed Wordpress site with this lean, static site made in Hugo that I host myself. Now that I have mangled together some CSS to get my precious sidenotes up and running again, I'm ready to begin putting some ideas to paper.
I love marginalia. I'm not sure if this is unique to me, but I seem to get caught up in parenthetical / tangential thoughts very often, and I think using an [[https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0000ld][Edward Tufte-esque]] sidenote is a great way for me to communicate in this way without distracting the reader too much. It seems[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginalia][ marginalia]] such as this have been used throughout history, so perhaps it is normal, but most people can keep their thoughts focused better than me. The implementation I use is inspired by the [[https://github.com/edwardtufte/tufte-css][Tufte CSS project]] and largely taken from [[https://scripter.co/sidenotes-using-only-css/][this incredibly helpful post found at scripter.co]].
On this site I plan to post updates about my journey through med school, grad school, and self-hosting I would like to share with the world. I have been helped immensely by many others' advice and I hope to impart similar tips to others someday. I suspect most posts will be about much lighter fare, like whatever hobbies tickle my fancy at the time.
My partner and I took a trip to the [[https://ncbg.unc.edu/visit/mason-farm-biological-reserve/][Mason Farm Biological Reserve]] the other day, and what a glorious day it was. This year, I've been quite busy in the lab, and missed a lot of the early spring warbler season, so I was very excited by the opportunity to check out the old stomping grounds.
I brought the camera with me despite the fact we were going to be there around midday when the birds are much less active. I'm glad I did, because I got the best look at a common yellowthroat I've ever had.
I brought the camera with me despite the fact we were going to be there around midday when the birds are much less active. I'm glad I did, because I got the best look at a common yellowthroat I've ever had.
#+header: :trim-pre t :trim-post t
#+begin_sidenote
Normally these guys are flighty, staying close to the ground in small brush or tall grasses, but this one was putting on a proper show for the mating season. Even when you get a glimpse of one, it is usually just that, as they have jumped away before you can pull out the camera, taunting you with their [[https://ebird.org/species/comyel#Modal-playlist][iconic call]].
#+end_sidenote
I was very pleased to capture a few choice shots of the bird. Hopefully there are more to come. While we were out, I also got a nice picture of a hermit thrush and a king snake.
These images have been compressed quite a bit for a lighter internet footprint. These have all been resized to 25% of their original size, then converted from JPG to webp. If you would like the full sized images, let me know and I will send you a link!
