Side Projects blog and archive
Just like week 108 , I started writing this post late-march, but got so busy that it wasn’t finished and published until May. On March 21, Morten Just posted a tweet that set my brain on fire: Apparently, he had created a Slack bot with different personas based on which slack channel he uses, e.g. #ai-copywriter for copy writing, #ai-web-developer , #ai-lawyer , etc. I thought the idea of…
This post was originally written March 21, but wasn’t posted until late April… It’s been quiet for a few weeks! Once you miss a weeknote it’s easier to miss the next one too, unfortunately. But I’ve been busy. CADGPT A few weeks ago I thought, sure 2D bitmaps through generative AI is interesting, but I’m even more curious about how generative AI could be a…
LAVIS I mentioned last week that I was trying out LAVIS, but that the Ubuntu machine I was running it on died. I spend some time reinstalling and now have a bit to share. It’s really cool how easy it is to play with image analysis, and like I also mentioned last week, feels like reverse diffusion. Here’s a photo I found on unsplash: If you like this photo, please check out the…
Portfolio Refresh Updating my portfolio always seems exciting to begin with and then I get stuck in a technical detail or find myself unhappy with the creative direction. But this week I did it! It felt necessary, as I can see a lot of people visit my portfolio and it doesn’t include any of my professional work the past 8 years. When interviewing I have been building private portfolios which…
This week has been less about creating and more about gathering. Weekly reminder, please keep booking 30 min with me to talk about anything. I’m having a lot of fun learning and exploring by myself, but also starting to miss the social interactions and sense of purpose from working with a team. So if you’ve got an interesting project and could use a hand - please do reach out. Writing…
The past few weeks have been super busy. Lesson learned to write weeknotes during the week so I don’t miss a week like I did last week. It does take quite some time to write these though, especially preparing images and GIFs. Most of the business has been talking to people around potential projects. I’m still exploring what’s next, and have set up a dedicated Looking for Work…
This is not the 100th post, but it is 100 weeks since I started this blog. But other than that it’s been a pretty normal week, and actually slightly slower and less focused week than last week. Since I enjoy them so much, weekly reminder that you can book me for 30 min to talk about anything. Need a hand with a project? are you a student looking for advice? or do you just want to catch up or…
This second week of self-employment has been a really fun mix of interesting conversations and building prototypes. People have already been using the opportunity to book 30 min. with me on Calendly or otherwise contact me . Thank you to everyone who has, and please keep doing so. I have been thorougly enjoying conversations about life, technology, design, careers and potential collaborations. By…
It’s a new year, and that also marks another end and beginning for me. I decided to leave my role leading the Tools & Interactions team at Bang & Olufsen, which also means I am looking for what is next for me. If you have interesting ideas, book 30 min. with me on Calendly or contact me . Reflections For the past nine years I’ve invented new technologies, products, tools, teams and…
12 years ago, while I was studying, I came across an article that described an ambient Justin Bieber song. Sounded like an oxymoron to me, but also intriguing. A few seconds in, I was completely hooked. I remember taking note that the song was made using something called PaulStretch, but I guess I never investigated further back then. I’ve thought about PaulStretch several times since then,…
I started writing this weeknote almost a month ago - so much for weeknotes. But it’s fine, this was never meant to be a chore. Work has been incredibly busy, and I’ve underestimated how difficult it is to build something truly new, while building an organization, a culture and being in a transition from individual contributer to leader. In a sense, I’m learning to be the diffuser…
Admittedly, the potential of missing the generative AI/ML train that’s running full speed these years gives me anxiety. I haven’t found the way to use it in my current job yet, but I’m curious. This week I have been reading about Stable Diffusion, the open source latent text-to-image diffusion model capable of generating photo-realistic images given any text input. It being open…
It wasn’t until today Sunday that I found some time to work on side projects. Last week I added tracking to Morphaweb so I can see if people actually use the site to export reels - and it turns out people do! That gave me some motivation to work a bit more on morphaweb (yes the title pun was terrible). Morphaweb One of the major challenges has been handling multiple files. After an hour or…
Another light week of side project work, but I did manage to finish the Blender x Three.js tutorials and there by also the last bit of Three.js Journey . It’s been a great course, and the best money I’ve ever spent on e-learning. Bruno is a great teacher, and he’s even added lessons since I bought the course, so maybe I’ll even get more for my money’s worth. Blender x…
This week was going to be a slow side project week due to lots of work and sunny evenings in Copenhagen. But then I saw a Github notification about a project I worked on a while back… Morphaweb One of my hobbies is modular synthesis. One of the modules I use is Morphagene by Make Noise. By their own description: The Morphagene music synthesizer module is a next generation tape and…
This week was a bit sporadic because of work taking up a lot of time and headspace, but I did find time to think about newspapers, work a bit more on blender lessons, and read. RSS Newspaper I spent my holidays reflecting a bit about my use of time on social media, and how to stay up to date with “the industry” and people whose work I like. Twitter has brought me so much joy, allowing…
This week has mostly been about getting to work after three weeks vacation. I’m still pretty hooked on building a fun 3D world with LEGO elements for my website. To do that, as mentioned last week, I need to learn a bit more about Blender. I’m almost done with Bruno Simon’s first lesson on creating a scene in Blender , and when I’m done with that, next lesson is about…
This last vacation week, I got around to doing one of the things I love - intersecting different interests. Like every designer, it seems, I’ve been wanting to update my portfolio for a while. Mainly with the work from my time at LEGO. Another thing I’ve wanted to do for a while was to play with three.js and it’s ability to load LDraw files (LDraw is an open, community-driven…
Web 3 I’ve been trying to ignore Web3, and NFTs in particular, for a while. I think apes and black PNGs selling for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars is dumb. But I’m excited to see computer artists who’ve barely been making a living for years finally achieve financial success. A few weeks ago, I started studying web3. First by listening to the NFTs, Blockchain, Social…
Music and visual experiments I’ve been playing the piano since I was a kid, in my teenage years I dabbled in computer music and synthesis, and a couple of years ago I got into modular synthesis. Since I moved back to Denmark and got a piano again, I’ve been curious how to marry the analog and digital music… and how to marry that with my new curiousity with three.js and shader…
It’s been 62 weeks since I last posted - sorry! I want to start posting side projects again soon, but this week I will focus on why I’ve been absent. 62 weeks ago I was interviewing for a position that I ended up accepted. Since October 2021 I have been working in the design team at Bang & Olufsen , and have moved to Copenhagen where our design studio is. I lead a small but expanding…
This week I thought I’d share more of the process behind the background graphics of superultra.dk . The idea came from having some sort of interactive element on the front page which builds on the concept of super ultra. The story behind the name is that it’s an ironic take on my design aesthetic. I like simple, minimalistic, understated objects that unfold in use, but I thought it…
I missed a couple of weeks there! The weather has been excellent here in Denmark, and I’ve spend the last couple of weeks in Copenhagen enjoying the sights and good company of friends. Recently, I gave a talk about ‘innovation in practice’ to a Danish tax audit company, which reminded me that I should have a company to refer them to, so I’m spinning up my old company that…
It’s Easter holiday and I have prioritized spending quality time with friends and family instead of working on side projects. I did manage to finish up the last two projects in my Experimental Javascript course! First project is a Google Earth’y project and the second one is a cute poly cat .
It has been a busy couple of weeks, but I did manage to sneak in some side project time this week. Primarily on the Experimental Javascript course where I played around with THREE.js: https://tiny.kevinandersen.dk/project4/ I have also been working on an open call application for a 20" container at Institute for X - a creative enclave in my hometown. I’m hoping to get a space where I can…
Light week this week. Spent most of my side project time continuing my Experimental JavaScript course. I completed a lesson using PIXI.js to play with WebGL. See demo of lesson over at https://tiny.kevinandersen.dk/project3/ . I also completed a lesson using matter.js to play with physics. See demo of lesson over at https://tiny.kevinandersen.dk/project2/ . As usual, I also wrote weekly tweets for…
Project Caramel I received components for Project Caramel this week: STM32F411 Nucleo board (but ended up using a pyboard running MicroPython instead) Passive components (resistors, caps, diodes) LM358 opamp I followed a microphone amplifier guide and used MicroPython’s built-in ADC module. I’m getting readouts, but it seems the amplifier circuit needs more work. For some reason…
I spent most of my spare time this week working on this site - and publishing it! Also wrote more project pages, like Sun of Denmark and Wall Art . I should have received components for Project Caramel, but since that didn’t happen there will not be any progress on that project this week. Project Cocoa Instead, I started Project Cocoa. I thought the name would be appropriate since the idea…
First week with this new site. I’ve spent a couple of evenings setting up the site , my github repo , and modifying the site theme and writing these articles. Project Caramel The first side project I want to start writing about is Project Caramel. Why Caramel? Working on confidential projects in my dayjob, I’m used to working with codenames. Besides being a fun way to reference what…
Hi, welcome, you made it. And since that’s the case, so did I! I’m Kevin, and I work as an Interaction Designer at LEGO. This isn’t my portfolio. This is where I display and blog about my side projects. Since leaving the Scratch Team and the Media Lab last summer to go back to Denmark, I miss being part of a community that’s interested in the intersection between art,…