Approach

What I built

What it showed

genesis

Despite an abundance books, videos, and workshops on how to learn the language of jazz and bebop, every teacher I've had says the same thing in the end: transcribe the solos of the masters.

YouTube provides an excellent, free catalog for this task, but the playback interface has drawbacks. YouTube is designed to enable exploration, not focus. The Clips feature, which enables looping content, has a high interaction cost and every Clip opens in a new tab.

Along with every new tab comes more recommendations and advertisements. The result is the absence of a unified interface for isolating, deconstructing, playing-back, and learning the various aspects of a song or solo.

my vibe

reflection

I have a sketch in my notes app from 2023 with the seed of an idea that became Melodicus. This project is a working example of the kind of unique, personalized software that AI enables.

Melodicus is a full-stack design and development accomplishment that leverages a little bit of every part of my intellect, creativity, curiousity, and dedication to growth.

design foundation

shaders as intelligence

I've become enchanted with shaders and WebGL. I admire those who can write these advanced motion artifacts by hand. I must rely on Claude.

Something about the perpetual motion, the fluidity of a shader, represents to me the idea of intelligence. Claude helped me write a simple background shader for PrettyQuery that morphs between the simple charcoal and grays of the color palette. It also transitions between light and dark mode alongside the rest of the interface.

reflection

Another journey of curiosity, PrettyQuery started as a desire to learn about a specific component library and evolved into something much more interesting.

When I completed it, it was the fastest, high-fidelity protottype I had executed in code. It came together in the evenings after my 9-5 design role in just a couple of weeks.

I feel truly at home—and like I have so much to contribute—at this convergence of intellectual curiosity, design, code, and artificial intelligence.

genesis

In What the Dormouse Said ↗, a history of the Silicon Valley hardware scene that pre-dates the famous garage days of Jobs and Woz, I was inspired by how many user experience decisions early hardware engineers were making.

Douglas Engelbart's wooden mouse prototype—primitive yet functionally similar to modern versions—resonated with me.

After some discussion of the principles of kernel-level programming, I asked Claude to write up a learning journey for me to build my understanding of the layers of software that more directly interact with a machine's hardware.

pivots

reflection

A few years ago when I was contemplating where I wanted to take my career, I came across the title Creative Technologist for the first time. Whether or not this is a practical, marketable, or realistic role, I have always admired the ethos of the phrase.

I like to think that this TouchBar journey embodies a creative technologist approach. It combines intellectual and technological curiosity with practical implementation, leveraging AI tools to overcome my knowledge gaps in unfamiliar territory.