Welcome, friend!
I'm currently a Senior Frontend Engineer with over 10 years of experience, but my fascination with computers goes all the way back to elementary school. It started when my parents' friends gave me an old i386. Aside from playing Doom 2 and Lotus, I loved poking around the OS, discovering commands and seeing what they actually did.
A few years later, I got an Intel Celeron running Windows XP. As I spent more time with it, I realized that many programs were clunky or didn't work quite the way I wanted. I thought "How cool would it be if I could build these myself and make them work exactly the way I like?". That was the moment I decided to become a software engineer (´• ω •`)
Later on, I adopted the alias Val Saven to make things easier in international circles and I've been using it ever since.
My Digital Philosophy
Keep Identity Simple
A password and an email (paired with 2FA via TOTP) should be more than enough. I value services that respect boundaries and don't pry into personal data, like phone numbers or IDs - especially when it's forced under the guise of "security".
Privacy by Default
I'm a strong advocate for E2EE. I respect platforms where private conversations stay private, rather than being treated as a commodity for advertisers or governments. Privacy should be a right, not a feature.
Speed is Respect
Performance isn't just a metric; it's how you show respect to the user. I'll always prefer the snappiness of native apps and lightweight toolkits over the "Electron for everything" trend (with all due respect to VS Code). In an era of 20MB JS bundles, I aim for lean, fast and accessible interfaces. That's why I prefer Vue over React for SPAs and why this very site is built with Astro instead of Vue. I believe in using the right tool for the job - one that doesn't waste the user's hardware or their time.
Latest Blog Posts
Latest Projects
VoidExtractor
12/3/2025 - Present
Universal game archive extractor. Currently supports Pathologic (2005) and Pathologic Classic HD (2015) game archives (.vfs). More games and archive formats are planned for the future.
Disk monitor
6/23/2025 - Present
A disk monitoring utility for Windows.
pathologic-vfs-unpacker
4/1/2025 - Present
A command-line tool written in Go to unpack VFS archives from the Pathologic game series (e.g., Pathologic Classic HD). It extracts files from the game's VFS format, making it useful for modders, data explorers or fans wanting to dive into the game's assets.
Markdown to JIRA 2
8/9/2024 - Present
A simple extension for converting between Markdown and JIRA formats.