Invisible Parade

Invisible Parade

Alex Onsager

My name is Alex. I grew up near Boulder, CO and spent most of my childhood reading books, playing music, and playing video games. I learned programming by making bad games for my TI-83 calculator. The first things I published online were bad flash websites. In college I studied programming and human-computer interaction. A team of classmates and I made a few apps on Facebook, which eventually turned into a startup. This was the first time I made something that was used by a large number of people. It became my introduction to making real products that have users and make money. I have been working at a mobile game company in Japan since 2010. Because my day-job doesn't currently involve much programming, I like to work on fun projects on the side that let me build things directly. Part of the reason I maintain this blog is the hope that it will help me make more connections online. Please feel free to get in touch! It would make me very happy.

Latest Posts

Pets A while ago we got a Betta, and we recently adopted a hamster as well. The whole family loves them. Mahjong I’ve started learning Mahjong, hoping eventually to be able to play with my dad friends. I’m playing mainly on Mahjong Soul...
A number of my dad friends play Mahjong, so I figured this would be a good time to finally take the time to learn to play. I’ve been able to use AI tools in a way that makes learning extremely efficient (at least I think so). First, I...
My primary email address is hosted on Gmail, and I have used it for basically everything since Gmail was first launched in 2004. I access my email via IMAP and Gmail’s spam filter is great, so I haven’t ever had issues with the service....
I just started using Harper via an Obsidian plugin and so far it is working great. It is open source and runs locally with no external dependencies, doing everything it needs to and nothing else.
I just started using Harper via an Obsidian plugin and so far it is working great. It is open source and runs locally with no external dependencies, doing everything it needs to and nothing else.
I sure wish I could commit to writing with pen and paper. There are very compelling arguments for why one should write by hand. It’s good for your brain! Science proves it! I’ve been in meetings with people who enter the room with a pen...
I’ve been swimming weekly for almost 2 months now, because I was (am) a poor swimmer and want to improve. The main things that were holding me back are common issues – it was hard to keep my legs up, and I couldn’t breathe comfortably....
I’m been in a big building and tinkering mood recently, and have been really getting into Valheim. I play solo and honestly don’t have too much time to put into it, but I’ve been building larger bases and am legitimately excited to keep...
Swimming As I promised myself, I started swimming this month. I still need to put in a lot of work, but I’m hopeful that I can make some reasonably improvements — both to my swimming form, and to my fitness in general. I’ve started...
Swimming As I promised myself, I started swimming this month. I still need to put in a lot of work, but I’m hopeful that I can make some reasonably improvements — both to my swimming form, and to my fitness in general. I’ve started...
This post by Daniel Gilbert immediately resonated with me, because I struggle with procrastination and have found AI tools to be surprisingly helpful in overcoming it. I have a stale task waiting to be done, but I just can’t bring myself...
Local AI shines when the model’s job is transforming user-owned data, not acting as a search engine for the universe.
Spectrimage takes a photograph, visualizes the color information pixel-by-pixel, and builds a palette. Great writeup of techniques to extract a good set of colors from any image.
A lovely web app to extract color palettes from images. Simple, but really impressive set of features.
Consumption versus Creation. I’ve long been conscious of two contrasting categories of pastimes – those that consume, and those that create. Consumption is fast. Consumption is passive. Consumption is easy. Consumption in today’s world...
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