About Martin

Toolmaker. Explorer.

The Beginning

Coming full circle.

When I returned from kindergarten, I noticed a weird box on the table in our living room. Dad whispered magic spells that a wizard had taught him: "Restart in MS-DOS mode and then write cd games." The curse started with Supaplex. Unfortunately, I killed the computer a couple of years later by trying to compress the hard disk.

At thirteen, I built an antenna holder to finally get internet. Then I learned C# from a Czech school website. I faced a choice: to pursue 3D graphics or programming. I chose programming — because making something out of nothing is the ultimate creativity. Also, I couldn't afford a better PC or 3D software licenses.

Now, with RayBox, I'm coming full circle to 3D graphics. And with AI in terminals, I'm coming full circle to MS-DOS.

3D Kitchen, 2008

Case modding, 2009

Drawings

Drawn from the rough.

At fifteen, I had to move with my mum and sister from a small spa town to a grittier corner of Ostrava. The following seven years were an infinite loop: sleep at school → gym → programming → games or attempts at art.

Drawing became my quiet escape — and a brutal teacher. When you create, the gaps expose what you don't know. No way to cheat.

I slowly learned to struggle well and trust my decisions. Soon, I was able to help mum pay our rent from my first programming jobs — and my collection of drawings grew.

Poetry

Words and lines.

Silhouette in the window
Watching street lamp in the moonlight
Holding the cup of cocoa
The clock's bell strikes the midnight
...

Duration[seconds: 4]
|> Timer/interval()
|> THEN { Bell/strike() }
|> THEN { 1 }
|> Math/sum()
|> Scene/render()

The Emptiness

A guitar composition.

There are 3 kinds of emptiness. Sad one, when you miss something. Better one, when fear of frustration is gone. The best one, when time is distorted, everything but a single thing ceases to exist and you get superpowers. Visualization in Pixar's Soul - Into The Zone.

You get into the flow when balancing on the edge of your skill while doing things you believe in. A fresh mind and comfortable environment help too — I always felt like a burlak in classroom or office.

"Burlaks on the Volga" (1870–1873) by Ilya Repin. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Composed in the pauses

I rely on my unconscious mind a lot for solving difficult problems or when I need creativity. It means I typically work in bursts through the day or night, including weekends. You can call it Ping Pong method or effective usage of shower thoughts and incubation.

So I needed some "filler" when the unconsciousness works. I also wanted to learn guitar. I can't sing, can't keep the rhythm and can't produce loud noises at night. Hence learning to play simpler fingerstyle songs started.

I was learning pieces like Romanza Un Dia de Noviembre Dust in the Wind The Heart Asks Pleasure First Watermark (Enya) Moonlight Sonata (if my left hand was fresh before gym) main themes from Metro 2033 and Requiem for a Dream. It was on cheap guitar with small and slow fingers, but I felt the similar magic like writing code.

However, I'm creator so the urge to "compose" own song was stronger than motivation to improve my guitar skills. Those days, I was listening Philip Glass and similar, even electronic music with a lot of repetitions and patterns to keep me focused and relaxed. It was natural to draw some inspiration from them. I've written The Emptiness tablature with pencil while testing on guitar and then (years later) I've recreated it in the app Steinberg Dorico.

Hardware Detours

The universe pushes back. Since high school.

Car Diagnostics

My student car started enjoying mornings as much as I did. Some mornings it started; some mornings it just... didn't. Fine when you need to get to school. Less fine at 2 AM after a rock concert.

Mechanics weren't able to fix it — a rare heisenbug in a car from 1997. So I tried myself. OBD diagnostics, forum deep-dives, and other alchemy — until I finally stuck a multimeter on a relay after a rainy night. I swapped the "humidity-sensitive" fuel pump relay with the wiper relay. Russian roulette downgraded to "hope it doesn't rain".

MasterCard Dělovka (2013) — McCann Prague. Photo via Effie Czech.

Football Launcher

A Frankenstein's monster of Atmel microcontroller with C, C# desktop app, PHP backend connected to FB API. And of course an old concrete mixer — I mean, a football cannon. Users in a Facebook app watched a livestream and picked where to shoot a ball at a real goalkeeper.

The capacitors powering the kick generated EMP bombs, often killing the controller. Manual defibrillation required. Russian roulette vol. 2. But it was still a success — the campaign reached 1.2M Czech viewers.

Both projects whispered the same truth: "You know nothing, Martin Kavík. Do not meddle in the affairs of hardware, for it is subtle and quick to punish." So I crawled back to software.

Ten years later, I'm developing a language to write software and design hardware. I'll create my own roulettes!

Testing Gravity

I've rallied friends for some jumps.

"If you don't experience real fear from time to time, then your mind just sort of creates fears out of nothing."

— Alex Honnold

Life

Who I am now.

I live in Prague with two hobbits and one queen. I'm nocturnal, but I enjoy those couple spring days before the warm sun turns into a Death Star.

  • Lifting mostly toys and small creatures instead of dumbbells.
  • Like one-to-one conversations, spicy food & sushi, cozy cafés, and hikes.
  • Unoffendable. Relax, write, skip the formalities.
  • Slow replies? Probably on the kindergarten walk, thinking about your problem.
  • When Hobbiton gets quiet, I raid the Shelf.

Our Tour de Norge 2024 confirmed the plan to learn Norwegian and move there.

Met a cat in Ålesund. Petting was mandatory.

No, we didn't stay (yet) — return tracking died.

As Your Partner

I'm not hired to write code — I'm hired to help you with your product.

Turns out how I naturally work has a name — Shape Up. Six years of 4–6 week cycles ending with progress reports and demos. I ask a lot of business-related questions.

Systematic Empathetic Proactive INTJ-A

I fill the gaps. I've also been paid to:

  • teach Rust
  • get apps through Facebook review
  • design apps in Figma or Penpot
  • audit smart contracts
  • write email templates
  • make integration tests faster
  • write blog posts
  • edit photos or icons in Affinity

I work mostly part-time — open-source, research, and two small creators in training need my attention (but can switch to Winston Wolf mode when needed).