the unconquered. ex libris Brandon LaRocque.

programmer. curator. former chef. nearly twenty years in kitchens and mining camps before The C Programming Language, read at night between shifts. now a computer engineering student with a CS degree underway. the credential follows the practice.

i build native linux desktop software for people who treat their library as worth maintaining. my focus is on rich metadata, strict organization, and local-first architectures; i try to carry librarian vibes into the codebase. rust with gtk4, c built with meson, python where the standard library reaches. it runs on your machine and answers to you.

no cloud. no docker. no electron. no telemetry. no accounts. no vc.
your data on your disk: sqlite in WAL, single-writer worker, read-only pool, FTS5.
compile-time boundaries over code-review rules. hard ceilings over soft benchmarks.
local-first, or it doesn't ship.

• Atrium · a production-grade native linux task manager built on local-first SQLite. fuses the aesthetic calm of Things 3 with the power of OmniFocus and the strict data model of Org-mode. features a dual-path search engine (AST compiling to SQL fast-paths with in-memory fallbacks) and a bidirectional Org-mode sync that solves the "anti-echo" problem using nanosecond-precision mtime ring buffers. Rust · GTK4 · Tokio · shipping v0.72.1
• Framework · high-performance, dual-engine document viewer (PDF, EPUB, CBR, Markdown). bypasses MuPDF's lack of thread-safety by spawning up to 8 isolated render instances with an atomic round-robin dispatcher. achieves zero-copy rendering by mapping MuPDF BGR bytes directly into Cairo/GTK4 surfaces. uses Linux Landlock LSM to sandbox WebKitGTK. C17 · GTK4 · WebKitGTK · shipping v0.83.1
• Viaduct · a fast, local-first rss reader that treats articles as text, not web pages. an opinionated linux port of NetNewsWire's engine. uses a strict single-writer SQLite worker alongside a concurrent read pool to ensure background syncs never stutter the timeline UI. RSS is constrained inside a neutered WebKit sandbox (no JS, strict CSP, custom URI interceptors). Rust · GTK4 · WebKitGTK · shipping v3.7.3
• Conservatory · "calibre for audio." inverts the player model to be database-canonical: the SQLite database owns the library, rendering folder templates and executing dry-run, undo-journaled filesystem moves. mutates libmpv audio filter graphs live to prevent clicking, and taps PipeWire for real-time FFT visualization. Rust · GTK4 · libmpv · shipping v0.4.3
• Hermitage · a visually immersive gallery browser for calibre libraries. reads metadata.db strictly read-only, thumbnails and colour-quantizes covers on a background thread, and ships as a flatpak. Python · GTK4 · shipping v1.8.0
• Topograph · a blazing-fast filesystem visualizer in the qdirstat tradition: gpu-accelerated qt6/qml over a rust scan core, styled in kanagawa dragon. Rust · Qt6/QML (CXX-Qt) · shipping v0.2.4

• cquarry · canonical calibre database layer. a headless engine providing read-only SQLite access (escaping write-locks safely) and a pure-python recursive-descent parser that faithfully ports Calibre's search grammar (AST evaluation, boolean logic, accent folding) with zero external dependencies. Python · stdlib-only · shipping v1.12.0
• CalibreQuarry · CLI/TUI front-end for cquarry. goes beyond wrapper scripts by implementing deep data mining: extracting literal copyright-page text from book binaries to verify database ISBNs against reality. Python · vir-tui · shipping v3.27.0
• bindery-cli · deterministic EPUB repair tool. gates every modification behind W3C's epubcheck and executes atomic os.replace filesystem writes, with lossy watermark stripping protected by three strict safety nets (character conservation, tag balancing, and a no_worse check). Python · shipping v0.28.0
• raindrop-cli · dependency-free Raindrop.io CLI. refuses heavy packages like requests or rich. hand-rolls multipart/form-data encoding, API rate-limiting, exponential backoff, and ANSI terminal rendering using only the Python standard library. --dry-run safety is strictly enforced at the lowest network layer. Python · stdlib-only · shipping v0.6.0
• AudiobookTools · declarative tag-and-folder normalizer for audiobook libraries. dry-run by default, reversible --apply with an undo journal; never re-encodes, never deletes audio. Python · mutagen · shipping v0.2.0
• lattice-music · CLI/TUI audit and visualization suite for music collections: ~20 read-only modes plus nine dry-run-first companion scripts. the filesystem is the source of truth; tags are never written outside those scripts. Python · mutagen · vir-tui · complete v4.17.0
• dragon-agents · a local ZCode plugin shipping six read-only research subagents: repo cartography, doc-drift audits, downstream cascade checks, spec compliance, ci triage, and prose slop passes. Markdown · Python · v0.1.1
• Carrel · a single-user reading room contract for a curated calibre library. enforces ok-lab accessible typography, disables upstream features via hooks to prevent merge conflicts, and owns its CSS entirely. code rides in the companion fork, Carrel-calibre-web. CSS · docs · shipping v0.9.7

• Colophon · native statistics viewer for koreader. imports a copy of statistics.sqlite3, draws its own cairo charts, ships the reading analytics nobody else has. Rust · GTK4 · shipping v2.2.0
• Dead Reckoning · navigation-cockpit preset for koreader's bookends plugin: session pace, chapter eta, projected finish date. Lua · complete
• 2-kobo-style-sleepscreen-banner-prettified · koreader user patch: redraws the sleep screen as a kobo-style floating card over your cover. Lua · complete
• 1-timezone · koreader user patch: forces a correct posix timezone inside the process (setenv + tzset), fixing the clock on framework-less installs. Lua · complete
• deadbeef-cui · faceted, foobar2000-columns library browser plugin for the DeaDBeeF player. C · complete v1.3.3

• vir-search · a shared rust library parsing calibre-style search expressions into a typed AST. used by Atrium and Conservatory. Rust · active v1.4.0
• vir-tui · a lightweight python library providing a robust terminal ui (curses grid menus, pagers) without the bloat of textual. Python · complete v2.3.0
• vir-gtk · a shared gtk4 styling library for native linux apps, extracting the Kanagawa theme engine. Rust · GTK4 · active v1.0.3
• Hearthfall · grimdark clan-survival for the terminal. seasonal turns, a fog-black map. engine is stdlib-only pure logic with no i/o, driven from a single seeded rng. Python · Textual · shipping v0.18.0
• opends · reverse-engineering toolkit for ssi's dark sun crpgs (1993–94): thirteen tools covering a disassembler for the undocumented gpl bytecode vm, gff/save editors, and exe map tooling. Rust · Python

the full codex, with screenshots and the long writeups, live at → virinvictus.github.io

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Rust · C · Python · GTK4 · SQLite · Meson, with a soft spot for Ruby.

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