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 barely ever existed: superultra.dk.
I really want to do something fun with the site, and with my newly acquired THREE.js skills, it seemed like the perfect opportunity. I spent a couple of hours Saturday creating the company, setting up domain and email hosting, but also snuck in some time to fiddle around in rhino and grasshopper with the 3D objects that I want to use in THREE.js.
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 work on my side projects and have all my tools and materials immediately at the ready.
This also marked the final week of the Sun of Denmark project this time around. Last night we changed the clock and moved to Daylight Savings Time. It’s been fun and challenging doing a side project revolving around writing on social media. Although I didn’t reach a big audience, it was a fun exercise trying to make each daily tweet interesting and significant.
As usual, I also wrote weekly tweets for @SunOfDenmark. I realized that this is the second to last week before going over to standard time, which ends the stream of tweets. It has been a fun experience writing daily tweets and trying to find creative and appealing twists on the emergence of daylight, but to be honest also has become a bit trivial here at the end.
I had hoped to work on Project Caramel this week, but only did a light bit of reading. I happened to stumble upon a thread mentioning that MicroPython’s built-in ADC only reads in the 0.1MHz range, which might be one of the reasons why I’m not seeing enough data. I need much faster data than that, so I will investigate whether I can build my own MicroPython module in C to gain the required speed. Otherwise, I’ll have to move into building my own C application.
Breadboard amplifier circuit and piezo disk connected to pyboard
I’m getting readouts, but it seems the amplifier circuit needs more work. For some reason there’s a high “ambient” value (noise?) but I have to actually tap the piezo itself to get peaks, but I should only need to knock on the table. As usual with this project, I will keep oscillating between prototyping and reading theory.
Experimental JavaScript course
Recently, I have been doing weekly work sessions with Alexis Hope (check out her site, she does cool stuff). She gave me a tip on some cool courses offered by SuperHi and I fell for the Experimental JavaScript course. It goes into using canvas, three.js, matter.js, and PixiJS, which are all libraries I have wanted to learn more about. Here is a quick sketch from the first lesson:
One of the projects I would like to do is make a fun 404 page using some of these technologies. Maybe interactive headlines as well, we’ll see.
Updated Portfolio
I have probably redesigned my portfolio once a year for the past 5-6 years, but never published it. I always get stuck re-writing my portfolio entries or with the website itself. But with my recent success building this website using Gatsby, I felt like I could use the same structure and have it be a small project. I have been unhappy with my current portfolio for a while because of the design and using wordpress which feels clunky and slow.
I ported all my content to the new structure, made necessary design changes, and published it in a couple of days. Available here: portfolio.kevinandersen.dk. I also switched from Google Analytics to Panelbear, a cookie-less alternative that is also free and much simpler to use.
As you’ll notice, my portfolio and this website look eerily similar, and that’s something I will be thinking about how to address. One thought I had is to have the header gradient be sunrise-colors for this site and sunset-colors for the portfolio. Sunrise to represent what’s ahead for me, and sunset to represent my past.
