I'm a student, building the back-end of everything.
I study web design, and I spend most of the time around it on the rest of the stack — servers, self-hosting, and AI. Local language models especially: once one is set up, you've got a machine quietly working for you in the background. No monthly fees creeping up, no restrictions, and a frankly absurd amount of automation suddenly within reach.
Since 2021 I've been building my own digital backbone around all of it — data management, workflows, self-hosted tools (Anytype, my own mail setup, Immich, my own sites), and the small stuff most people skip: file naming, compression habits, the systems underneath the systems. Then the bigger questions on top: what do I actually want, and how do I get there?
I know the cliché — people disappear into their own setup forever — and yes, there's real procrastination in here. But the base is genuinely solid now. Solid enough to put in front of other people, because almost everyone I'd want to work with runs on data and software, and almost no one has built something steady to stand it on.
Now I want to come out and show it.
So the plan is to stop polishing in private and start putting it out there. First in writing and video: how the back-end actually works, the tools, the decisions, the things I wish someone had explained to me. Then the lighter stuff — vlogs, small films, one loose series per project, mostly shot solo.
Some of it means leaving the desk. Gravel-bike trips through Europe are part of the plan: a slow way to actually arrive somewhere, meet the people there, and film what I find. Everything goes out in English first; the site turns multilingual over time, and the moment YouTube lets me add my own audio tracks, I'll record the German myself.
None of it is live yet. This is me saying it out loud so I can't quietly back out.
Gerome is what it's all building toward.
Gerome is the brand I want to spend my life on. Right now it's a direction, not a product — none of these exist yet. But across every version of the future I picture, the same five threads keep coming back.
Studio
Studio is how I want work to stop feeling like work: teaming up with people and companies I genuinely admire, and putting my systems to work on their vision — which, more often than not, is partly mine too. It's the layer where I connect with others and apply everything I'm building for Gerome to whatever they're building. Less a job, more a calling.
Architecture
Architecture is about where and how we live. We're drifting toward a real reckoning — shrinking generations, more isolation, systems that won't hold — and my answer leans communal: more self-sufficient, living together instead of apart. It starts small (furniture, 3D printing, principles worth caring about) and grows toward designing and building real places for real people — eventually a system others can build with themselves, while Gerome tends what's underneath.
Apparel
Apparel starts as the easy one — solid essentials, built to sit alongside what you already wear. But where it's headed is functional: tech you actually carry. I sit too much; I'd love to work from anywhere with my whole setup on me — tucked into the clothing or a pack, the screen on glasses or a projection. Meta is chasing this too, but I don't trust where they'll take it — surveillance dressed up as convenience. I'd rather build it honestly.
Foundation
Foundation is where Gerome's surplus goes to do something real. The model I love is Ecosia: a working business that pays its people and pours what's left into its mission. I want that — profit from the rest of Gerome funnelled into good, with the Foundation managing it. The non-negotiable is transparency: the people who give should decide where it goes and see exactly what it changed, not just trust that someone, somewhere, did the right thing.
Frontier
Frontier is the lab — for the problems you can't fix by sending money and hoping. Some things (a new way of building, the tech suit) you have to make yourself. So this is where I want to do the actual research: recruit sharp, ethical people from anywhere and put them on hard problems together. A safe haven for people who, like me, would rather build the thing than wait for someone else to.
For now, this is the whole site.
This page is a placeholder, honestly. The plan is for it to become the actual home of all of it — once I start posting, whatever goes up on YouTube and Instagram should show up here too, in one place, on my own ground instead of someone else's feed.
Until then it's quiet across the board. If any of this resonates, the kindest thing you can do is stick around — it's about to get a lot less empty.