The word “Drewkarnia” is a portmanteau formed by combining my name (Drew) with the Polish word for a printing press, “drukarnia”. I’ve rendered “Drewkarnia” above using an experimental font designed in the 1930’s by the remarkable Polish artist Władysław Strzemiński. The symbol for this site is “DK” rendered using that font: .

Who am I?

I’m an unapologetic globalist, a computer security researcher, a nerd herder, an amateur economist, an aspiring polyglot, and an owner of a beautiful hand-made Gutmeier classical guitar (who hopes someday to play Aleksander Tansman’s Cavatina from beginning to end).

I live in Washington, DC. I have recently started serious study to improve my Polish language skills in the hopes of finally impressing my Polish-born wife. One of the reasons I started this site was to share some of my experiences grappling with this difficult language.

My academic background is in Computer Science. I went to Carnegie Mellon, and the trajectory of my professional life began in Pittsburgh. I work as a researcher-cum-manager in my role at CERT, the computer security division of the Software Engineering Institute, a lab operated by Carnegie Mellon. My research interest is in experimental design for technology evaluation in computer security.

My wife and I travel quite a bit, and we both love learning about the history, culture, foodways and language of new places. I really enjoy learning about how languages work. I’m especially interested in areas of linguistics that touch on pragmatics (https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/meaning-semantics-and-pragmatics). I also play classical guitar, and have a quasi-scholarly interest in early 20th century music that draws on different folk traditions.

Colophon

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