Hi, I’m Raphael Li!

I’m a Year 1 undergraduate studying BSc Computer Science at UCL. I previously graduated from St. Joseph’s College as part of the Class of 2024.

I started this blog and published its first post on my 18th birthday, on 3rd November 2024.

“What would you even put on an About page?” If you’ve landed on this page wondering this, allow me to assure you that I too am seeking the answer to this very question. Chances are, I’ll probably come up with something more decent or fitting to put here in the near future, so I’ll leave it at this for now.

In the meantime though, here are some questions I do know the answer to.


Why is the blog called… that?

Back when this site was still in construction, I had to come up with a short phrase to act as a temporary placeholder name for the blog. Being the wordplay enthusiast that I was, I ended up using the somewhat nonsensical title Typewriters to Belie Format, which was an anagram of “temporary title for website”.

After most of the site development was done, I decided on the title The Dumping Ground, which simply felt apt. I didn’t really have (or want to have) a specific central theme to base all my posts off of; instead, I wanted this to be a place where I can showcase my projects, share my ideas, and document all the minor epiphanies that occur to me throughout the day, from the marginally comedic to the utterly ridiculous, from the completely pointless to the surprisingly useful. In other words, I want to treat this site as a discard pile: a dumping ground where I can easily put my ideas “out there” whenever I desire, without necessarily worrying about whether those ideas are actually any good.

Plus, The Dumping Ground is by all metrics definitely a catchier name than Typewriters to Belie Format, which is a mouthful to say and is frankly speaking nothing more than a few meaningless lexicons squished together.

Will you post regularly?

Probably not.

As much as I would love to be able to do that, it likely would not be sustainable. Right now, this site is just an experiment of unknown duration, where I get to talk about whatever and whenever I want to. As to how long I can stay active here for, I guess only time will tell.