Jiahao Ren Building tools that solve real problems.

I'm a Computer Science student at the University of Waikato. I enjoy figuring out how systems work — recently, that has meant reverse engineering eFootball player data, building AI-powered tools, and turning failed experiments into blog posts.

I don't just list technologies — I build complete pipelines: reverse engineering binary formats, scraping 37K+ records with anti-detection tooling, modeling tournament databases, and shipping desktop apps to real users. When something breaks, I write about it.

假舆马者，非利足也，而致千里；假舟楫者，非能水也，而绝江河。君子生非异也，善假于物也。

He who borrows a carriage and horses does not make his own feet swifter, yet he travels a thousand li; he who borrows a boat and oars does not become able to swim, yet he crosses rivers and seas. The noble person is no different by nature — he simply knows how to make good use of what is at hand.

"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."

Newton wrote this to Robert Hooke amid their bitter priority dispute over optics — and since Hooke was reportedly short and somewhat hunched, historians have long read a wry dig beneath its humble surface. The phrase isn't originally Newton's either: it traces back to the 12th-century philosopher Bernard of Chartres, though Newton's fame made it the enduring metaphor for intellectual debt and lineage.