Dirk was fascinated by electronics from an early age. It all started in the early 1970s with a "65 in 1 Electronic Project Kit" he bought as a kid at the local Tandy store. His first crystal radio receiver, building a small transmitter and learning to etch his own printed circuit boards sparked his interest in all things electronic. Later on, the 6502 processor, used on the KIM-1 computer board, introduced him to machine code language. The Commodore 64 led him to programming in BASIC language, but tweaking his C-64 by writing machine code for its 6510 processor was even more fun, although quite elaborate. At the time, computers were still pretty unknown to the general public. Stuff for nerds, and who needs a computer anyway? Not quite, as history later showed.

His adventure in electronics evolved from vacuum tubes, still widely used when he was a kid, over transistors and integrated circuits to microprocessors, computers and programming. The rapid evolution of electronics and digital systems also led to his interest in all sorts of more advanced equipment of which the complexity quickly exceeded his technical knowledge to build it yourself. However, operating such equipment is just as much fun as designing and building electronic circuits, but the average citizen could hardly buy such specialized and often expensive gear, and had no need to use it anyway. He therefore chose a profession where you got to work with the most modern communications equipment.

Dirk enlisted in the Signal Corps to turn his passion into a profession. Over the years, he worked with a wide range of communications equipment and had the privilege of working with signal units and military personnel from many countries. He retired after serving 39 years. In 2004, he created the Cipher Machines and Cryptology website and the SIGINT Chatter blog to share his passion for cryptography, as well as military and intelligence history.