About Me

My name is Volodymyr Lavrynovych. I was born on October 8, 1987, in Sverdlovsk, a small industrial town in the Luhansk region of Ukraine, where I spent my childhood. Every summer I escaped to my grandmother’s village in the Cherkasy region, surrounded by endless cornfields, sunflowers, and the wide Dnipro River. Those landscapes, that contrast between calm blue water and dark stormy skies, shaped the way I see the world — attentive to details, moods, and inner states.

I started writing poetry in my early teens, and by the age of 17–18 it became a conscious form of self-expression. Later, music joined words. I experimented with software like Fruity Loops and Reaper, diving into the world of VST plugins and digital sound design. Without formal musical education, I slowly learned how to turn feelings into sound, mastering effects, remixes, and reworks. This journey led me to professional sound recording studios, where I gained experience working with various dynamic and condenser microphones. Today, I continue to capture my ideas using my Marshall MXL USB.007 microphone. In 2010, together with a composer and a vocalist, I released my first album, Romantika. Creativity was my language for understanding love, loss, and personal growth — and for a long time, it was my main way of talking to the world.

At the same time, another passion was growing in parallel — technology. I first touched a computer at the age of three, and by the time I was in school, programming had become part of my daily life. I studied in a math-focused class at Sverdlovsk Lyceum #1 (1995–2006) where programming started early, and later continued with a degree in Information Security in Computer Systems and Networks. What began as curiosity slowly turned into a profession. My graduation project was already a real web application with access control logic, and that opened the door to my first job in IT.

Today, programming is both my work and my creative process. I see code not just as logic, but as a way to build ideas into reality. I enjoy trying new technologies, exploring different domains, and solving problems that sit somewhere between engineering and imagination.

I would describe myself as open, initiative-driven, rational, slightly skeptical, and always curious about new things. I get inspired by others and try to inspire back. Freedom, family, usefulness to others, inner balance, and creative impulses are core values for me. I love turning ideas into tangible things — whether it is software, a personal project, or even a custom car build. On May 14, 2020, I bought my first car, a VW Jetta Mk6 2.5L (2012), which is still with me today and has been a subject of many technical improvements I documented in my blog.

Beyond cars and music, I am a passionate "homelabber". For over five years, I've been building and maintaining my own digital infrastructure — from automated smart home systems using Home Assistant and Zigbee to self-hosted email and VOIP servers. I find deep satisfaction in managing my own virtualization environment with Proxmox and Docker, securing my network with OPNsense and Cloudflare Tunnels, and exploring the latest in local AI with Ollama. It's my playground for learning systems administration, networking, and privacy-first technology.

A significant part of my path was taking part in GeekHub. It wasn't just a professional role; it was a deeply personal achievement and a humble step in my life. Volunteering as a JavaScript lecturer allowed me to share my knowledge with talented youth, reinforcing my belief that giving back is as important as moving forward.

I have many hobbies, and that is part of who I am. I run, cycle long distances, collect LEGO, build scale models, and constantly move between different interests — diving deep for a while, then returning later with fresh eyes. I don’t believe in focusing on only one identity. I believe in living at the intersection of logic and emotion, engineering and art.

Since April 17, 2021, I have been married to my wife, Viktoriia. Family is an important anchor in my life, giving stability to my experiments and direction to my freedom.

This website is my personal space. Here I gather my projects, my professional path, and fragments of my creative history. It is not just a portfolio — it is a map of things I have built, tried, felt, and learned. Somewhere between an interesting human story and a creative engineer — that is where I feel most like myself.