Roller Blading
Went to a skating rink recently with the family. I’d forgotten how fun it is… That’s it, that’s the update…
Blog - Albert Hwang
Latest posts
O, it me...
#rambling… Feels like the internet is again becoming a place where creators are front and center, but differently… Unlike before, where the front-and-center-ness had to do with the lack of any coherent structure, this time around it feels more like it has to do with all the institutional structure getting so crowded. As in, platforms can’t really disambiguate from one another except for the people…
Wat is happening on the web?
As Twitter seems to be slowly 4chan-ing itself out of existence, I find myself wondering: why am I still here doomscrolling this godforsaken site? Does witnessing the death of a community provide pleasure or something? When did I even get here and what brought me here in the first place? Whenever I lurked (a lot), I always felt like, well, a lurker. An outsider not clever enough to play the game…
VR Dance Clip
Made a thing a while ago… posted to Twitter but totally neglected to post it here. Anyhow, here’s an animated gif of a music video I made: Posted this to YouTube, but unfortunately there’s a content match that prevents folks in many countries (including the US) to view it. Anyhow, recently discovered a service that will match two videos on a 3rd party site… so now I can assemble it back together!…
I'm deplatforming from social media...
About a week ago I posted this on FB: https://www.facebook.com/phedhex/posts/10109136712222269 This came just a few days after I made a Twitter thread on the topic of “Designing for Exit”: https://twitter.com/phedhex/status/1196724690808496128 The public declaration that I want to design a way out of these systems has been good for me. At this point, I merely have an awareness and a commitment,…
Groovember
Background In 2017 I posted 30 daily videos, each of me freestyle dancing. Had a lot of fun and grew a lot as a dancer ( my post about the experience ). Later that year I learned about “ Inktober ” — a social media event where throughout October, lots of people post photos of their drawings to social media and hashtag it “ #inktober ”. To help along, the Inktober website also publishes a list of…
Freestyle Dancing
Here are 3 recent clips of me dancing. Uhm, not much more to say bout it than that.
Tech Ethics, and Ken Perlin's Blog
Ken Perlin has a blog. It’s unassuming, it doesn’t try to be too much. In the sea of internet CONTENT, this blog is one of those places where a person is simply just letting their brain run, with no agenda other than just letting the world in on their interesting perspective of the world. I find it inspiring in that I wish I had that type of relationship to tech. I wish I could attend to my web…
"The Tributary"
I’m experimenting with an online social network game, that uses a digital currency (“tributary water”) to track value of the social network. The premise of the project came up when I wondered what would happen if your currency depreciated at a rapid pace. Eventually I landed on this idea where 10% of your wallet of this currency would be forced to be directed to other players twice a day. This…
Lego and VR Games (Beat Saber, Catch the Beat) as Dance Notation
So just publicly posted a video to YouTube. Mang, it’s been slow going on those public videos. I think being so secretive at FB for those two years was really not so good for my creative process. Also, like YouTube has changed a LOT since I started posting, so I think navigating that new landscape is a bit of a beast, too. Anyhow, enough of my hangups with the internet as an old man : ) Onto the…
ASDFJKL; update -- video of difficult song, new visualization, and storyboards of VR experience
In my last blog post I shared a link to a really difficult song. I decided to try to make a video of me playing / performing the song: Another Visualization… I built a new visualization on key input. It more closely emulates the shape of a keyboard: I like that the mapping doesn’t have “a” and “;” right next to each other. I don’t know why I’m attached to this circular shape. Maybe this is just an…
ASDFJKL; -- new hard song, and dev on visualizations
One of the shows I really enjoyed recently was Halt and Catch Fire. In addition to it being a great show, it also has a pretty amazing theme song. Take a listen: So anyhow, I made an ASDFJKL; song for it. The choreography is pretty challenging, but I feel pretty proud about it: https://albert.github.io/asdfjklsemi/?v=yD_kCKiSkoI&choreo=32488779637710864 Also, on top of that, yesterday I made a…
Updates to ASDFJKL;
I made many updates to the game. You can play the game here: https://albert.github.io/#asdfjklsemi This is a continuation of the work mentioned two posts ago. I’m happy with the progress and have been getting some good feedback. Most of the work was ironing out the user flow to make it way less confusing. Then I posted to social media and got some good response. The biggest power user as of right…
It's refreshing to be back out in the public again
When I moved to Seattle, one of my goals was to get involved in the new media arts / tech scene out here. I wanted to go to meetups and share my perspective and bounce ideas off of others. But when I arrived, I started working for a company that didn’t really want me to be social. My creativity wasn’t really allowed to be expressed in a public manner because of PR fears. They didn’t want any of…
"asdf jklsemi" -- a YouTube rhythm game
I made a YouTube Rhythm game. Here’s footage of me playing it: Here’s the experience if you’d like to try it out yourself. Go here (Seems to work best in Chrome): asdf jklsemi for Blur Song 2: Finger Choreography by Phedhex Press the “Play” button under the video (Not the play button on top of the video) Here are a couple other songs I choreographed rhythms to: Pen Pineapple Apple Pen Keyboard Cat…
Vim Motion Graphics
So I’m a fan of this program called “Vim”. Vim if a text editor that, among other things, lets you move your cursor around the screen really really quickly. I wondered what it would feel like if my Vim cursor left a trail — like a pebble skipping along the surface of a water. So I decided to build a (very limited) prototype. Here’s a screen cap of that prototype: If you want to try the prototype…
A few VR180 videos...
So over the past few months I’ve made a handful of VR180 videos. Here’s the playlist so far: My favorite video in the playlist is when I captured Icon Sleepy Tut. Happy I was able to get footage of him in stereoscopic VR180. Also, at my urging my good friend and very talented photographer / videographer Eric made a VR180 reel of DC which turned out beautifully. I have thoughts on a few other…
XOXO, my experience + VR photos...
How I found out about XOXO Many years back, I somehow stumbled upon Waxy.org . I actually can date it to 2011 because I remember the blog post I saw was a link to the House of Cosbys . A comedy sketch created by a relatively unknown Justin Roiland that, for a variety of obvious reasons, hasn’t really aged well, but was still packed with sparks of brilliance. Anyhow, Waxy.org was a blog that…
Seattle VR Hackathon being announced -- in VR180
This last weekend I went to XOXO festival and had a totally bananas incredible time. I'm nowhere near through processing it as I met so many incredible and fun people, saw some phenomenal talks, and learned just boatloads. I do eventually hope to blog more about the festival and how amazing it was, but real quickly I wanted to post this. Here's a photo and video I shot with my VR camera that I…
How to watch VR180 videos on YouTube
VR180 is a new video format. When you watch a VR180 video, it perceptually feels like the recorded stuff (environment, characters, props, etc...) is teleported to the space around your body. Also: It's super cheap and easy to get set up! Here's how to watch VR180 content on YouTube: