Projects
Xfinity DNS and Pi-Hole ad blocking
Date written: 8 Nov 2025
I currently rent an Xfinity router for my apartment next to University. I thought it would be fun to set up a Pi-Hole DNS server to route all my internet traffic through a Raspberry Pi 4 and block unwanted ads from Big Tech. As a customer of Xfinity, I was quite displeased to learn that Xfinity doesn't like people trying not to have their data sold to advertisers - I'm not able to change the DNS server of the router I pay for from Xfinity. Basically, in layman's terms, I don't want ads given to me on my devices. I want to create a filter that looks at requests made by my applications, like YouTube or Netflix. The filter would block common ad-serving HTTP requests, ones that start with something like "ads.google.com"...
Click to read full project →Ad Blocking broke
Update: 15 Nov 2025
I broke my network by messing around with my PiHole configuration and turning off the DHCP setting on the Netgear router. This shut down my entire network because devices had no idea what their name was or where to send requests. I had to factory reset my router and decided to keep DHCP on the Netgear router rather than the Pi. Things are working now, though I'm still puzzled why ads are blocked on my computer browser but not on the Roku YouTube app...
Click to read full update →Underbranch: Online Latex Editor
Underbranch is a online tex language compiler and editor. This idea came from a fellow Computer Science major and close friend of mine. He used the industry standard for tex file manipulation, Overleaf. Our product is inspired by Overleaf however we wanted to make a low-cost open source version for people to use without having to pay high ammounts that overleaf costs for their paid version.
Here is the link to our project github.
Here is a link to our website!