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

Jake Saunders wrote about discovering that a recent Next.js vulnerability allowed hackers access to their server through an Umami instance. I use Umami, too! I logged into my VPS and didn’t see any suspicious files or running processes....
Jake Saunders wrote about discovering that a recent Next.js vulnerability allowed hackers access to their server through an Umami instance. I use Umami, too! I logged into my VPS and didn’t see any suspicious files or running processes....
From Transparent Leadership Beats Servant Leadership, by Chris at Entropic Thoughts: In my book, a good leader coaches people, connects people, [. . .] creates direct links between supply and demand (instead of deliberately making...
From Transparent Leadership Beats Servant Leadership, by Chris at Entropic Thoughts: In my book, a good leader coaches people, connects people, [. . .] creates direct links between supply and demand (instead of deliberately making...
I use an IQUNIX Magi65 keyboard at home, and absolutely love it. I didn’t get the Pro version, as I don’t really need a dial or media keys, and I preferred the smaller size anyways. The only real criticism I noticed in reviews was that...
I use an IQUNIX Magi65 keyboard at home, and absolutely love it. I didn’t get the Pro version, as I don’t really need a dial or media keys, and I preferred the smaller size anyways. The only real criticism I noticed in reviews was that...
I wanted to copy slides from one Google Slide document to another. Half-expecting it to not work, I just copied slides in one document, switched to a different tab, hit paste… and it worked! Seamless and perfect. It looks like when you...
Or, “The latest chapter in my fool’s quest to discover a productivity framework that magically makes me effortlessly productive”. So it goes. I’ve always considered my todo list as a list of things I need to do (for obvious reasons). But...
I was pointed to an article on Cosmographia which in turn shared an archive of photos taken in 19th century Japan. These are amazing photos, but what struck me was how familiar some of them felt. Photos taken from 150 years ago should...
As a rule of thumb, you are more likely to be satisfied by a service that you pay for directly. This is because paying money makes you a customer of the business, and the business is thereby directly motivated to keep you satisfied. If...
The Fediverse, a network of interconnected social media services, requires users to choose a service for their account, tying their identity to that community. This can be problematic if the community experiences issues like spam,...
Some uplifting news from Japan: On April 13th in Shibata City of Niigata prefecture (Japan), the popular idol group Momoiro Clover Z had been planning a large music festival in cooperation with a large number of other artists, as well as...
I’ve overhauled the design of my website, and am very happy with how it turned out. The root homepage. Old design on the left, new design on the right. A post page in dark mode. Old design on the left, new design on the right. Design...
I initially chose Coolify as a self-hosted alternative to Heroku when it got too expensive. Coolify makes a lot of things very easy, but I ended up having to dig in to the details and learn a lot to fix things that didn’t work. Now that...
This is my personal manifesto for how I will and will not use generative AI. I believe it can be an extremely useful tool in certain situations, but can also have many negative repurcussions if used incorrectly. 1: Use to expand my...
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