Notes by Austin Pocus

Catching Up

It's been a few. Too long. Need to write again, which means, you guessed it, another "thought dump".

I'd love to do a piano-based version of the "Planetary Duality" album by metal band The Faceless. The melodies, the scales, the pure musicality of it is just brilliantly executed. I think a slightly simplified, single-voice version on the piano could be incredibly appealing. Or a piano with strings! That said, their albums besides "Planetary Duality" and earlier are not all that inspired.

In general, I'd like to get into the more creative side of programming.

This doesn't necessarily mean writing, as I've been doing, nor does it necessarily mean audio programming, as I've experimented with. It could be graphics. It could be VR sculpting! It could be a lot of things!

I think, generally speaking, that whatever allows us to create more effectively, is a good thing.

This probably means I need to expand beyond the web. I mean, yes, the web is becoming more and more capable every day! But you'd at least need an engine like Unity powering the web experience i.e. WASM. Web Assembly, folks. It's coming.

It's already here, in some cases. It's just so under the radar that we don't really see it, I think. I think it's going to power highly accessible, highly interactive experiences in the future, though.

Interactive creative experiences are the most interesting.

For example, if you can create a painting, that's cool. If you can make a painting that changes as your perspective changes, that's even cooler.

Likewise, if you make music that changes according to your mood, or if you make a game that changes its strategy based on how aggressively you play, that would be ideal. But of course, this requires AI technology that's (currently) beyond my grasp.

But it doesn't have to be.

And the whole point of my ramblings on creative software is this: software and creativity on computers don't have to be so damned inaccessible and incomprehensible. They can appeal to regular people.

Take, for example, Photoshop. Totally inaccessible to the average person, in my most humble opinion (powerful though it may be).

But if you had VR sculpting software that simply responded to your hands and fingers...that could be a very different story.

I think we should be building for the creative case. And I think we should make the UX such that any average person can pick it up and just go.

That's all I've got for now. But damn, it's good to be back.