The Workshop

The Handwerker Paradox

I come from a long line of people who built things you could touch.

My grandfather could look at a piece of wood and see the furniture hidden inside it. My father could fix anything with an engine. I grew up in a world where “work” meant calluses, sawdust, and the smell of oil. At the end of the day, you could point to something and say, “I made that.”

I am a 3rd generation Handwerker, but I broke the chain.

I don’t build with wood or steel. I build with logic, syntax, and architecture. I build pipelines, teams, and software. And for years, this has been my struggle: the existential weight of spending 12 hours a day building something that, technically, doesn’t exist.

The Digital Sawdust

Professionaly, I treat my career like a series of increasingly complex construction sites.

• The Foundation (Trion Worlds): This is where I learned the trade. Working on RIFT was my apprenticeship in the “measure twice, cut once” discipline of live services. It taught me that a solid foundation is the only thing that prevents the roof from caving in when the users (the storm) arrive.
• The Skyscraper (Machine Zone): If Trion was residential housing, Machine Zone was building a skyscraper in an earthquake zone. Highly distributed, massive scale, millions of concurrent users. The engineering challenges were immense, the pressure was relentless, and the satisfaction came from keeping the structure standing against impossible loads.
• The Frontier (Survios): Virtual Reality. This was less like construction and more like terraforming. We weren’t just building a house; we were defining the laws of physics for a new medium. Raw Data wasn’t just a game; it was a proof of concept that we could build recognizable structures in a void.
• The Renovation (Splash Damage): Sometimes, you don’t build from scratch; you inherit a structure that’s fighting to stay upright. Taking the helm of Dirty Bomb, I wasn’t just a builder; I was a structural engineer reinforcing the beams. We turned a struggling project into a profitable enterprise, proving that with the right team and the right tools, you can save any building.
• The Power Grid (Hololight): Now, my focus has shifted from the building itself to the invisible utilities that make it function. In the Industrial Metaverse, I build the pipes—the streaming infrastructure and security protocols—that allow heavy industry to operate in XR. It’s the ultimate infrastructure project: invisible, critical, and built to last.

Why This Blog Exists

I am as handy with my hands as I am with my thoughts, and I refuse to let one atrophy for the sake of the other.

When I’m not writing code or managing production pipelines, I am likely taking photos, fixing a motorcycle, or building something physical. I need that balance. I need to remind myself that entropy can be fought with a wrench as well as a keyboard.

This blog is my workshop. It is the place where I leave my digital sawdust on the floor. It is where I document the process—whether I’m debugging a server cluster, compressing images for a slide deck, or talking about the philosophy of acceptance criteria.

I am interested in everything. And I am still learning how to build.