About me

I’m a Python and Rust developer from Ukraine, passionate about Linux and FOSS, and deeply unimpressed by the LLM culture.

As a developer, I have one big problem — perfectionism. Even this text is written following every possible rule of HTML, CSS, and typography. And yes, I’m also following rules I’ve invented in my imagination.

I’ve built personal sites before — this one was inspired by sites like this. The simplicity is by design, not because of skill issues.

Life outside the terminal

Programming isn’t my only hobby, but it is the main one.

The complete (not) list of my hobbies:

Programming.
Writing.
Hacking.
Drawing (used to do it regularly).
Herbalism.
3D modeling (did it a lot before, now just occasionally).
Building and soldering electronic devices.
OSINT engineering.
Creating videos (only a few, and only for specific reasons).
Discrete mathematics.

This list is sorted by time spent, but I might sort it by desire instead. Yet another mental issue.

“wrong.city” — a project

I run the wrong.city project. Its goal is to foster collaboration between creators with strong personal visions, including digital artists and developers.

The two main services I host:

“GoToSocial” the Fediverse instance.
“WriteFreely” the multi–user blog system.

I created this project after closing another project, “opulus.space,” whose core was a Matrix server. The main idea was “an independent alternative to Telegram for Ukrainians.”

“foresle” vs. “phoresl”

“foresle” is my first long–term nickname, dating back to 2020, I think. I still like it, but in 2025 I created a new, upgraded version after reading the “Cult of Dead Cow” book. I changed the name according to hacker–style wordplay.

It’s hard to replace a long–standing nickname across the Internet. So I decided to introduce a new version as an alternative, while still keeping the original. They’re the same identity, just spelled by different rules.

My digital signature is “Orest Smertnyi (foresle),” which also represents “phoresl.”