Szymon Kaliski

Publications, Appearances, and looking for the Next Thing

Hi,

the last quarter flew by — I was mostly working on finishing documentations of various projects (which you'll see below), and recovering from a busy summer.

I didn't have much time or brain-space for any serious side-projects. I noodled a bit more on the shape grammar stuff (putting a pin in it for now), and hacked together a MIDI CC looper for my Norns, so I can record and replay knob movements for more organically sounding modulations.

Also, I guess I'm on Mastodon now: @szymon_k@mas.to

Write-ups, a Talk, and a Podcast

This quarter has been filled with a lot of Programmable Ink things:

• My Strange Loop talk is now online. I go over the background of why pen & paper is important, why we might want a dynamic version of these tools, and what they could look like.
• I went on the Metamuse podcast together with James Lindenbaum, to talk mainly about Inkbase, but we also touched on some related topics, including meta-reflections on the research process itself.
• We published the Inkbase essay which surprisingly hanged around on the first page of Hacker News for a couple of days.

Finally, I wrote a long article documenting my research into end-user-programmable UI-builder at Glide, which includes a live version of the prototype — go check it out. If you want to see it in action with additional commentary, I recorded a short informal demo in the last newsletter issue.

What's Next?

After four years at Ink&Switch, two of them as a Principal Investigator, I want to turn the dial from pure research, to more industry-oriented work.

My main interest lays in the space of no/low/future-of coding tools, and end-user programming. I believe that there's a ton of untapped potential in computing, and that a lot of it is limited by (broadly understood) interfaces.

I specialize in solving complex design problems, and approaching them from both engineering, and end-user perspectives. I know how to lead a team, and I'm most interested in an IC role — not looking to become a manager.

The section above documents most of my recent work. If you want to see more, you can explore the projects page, or browse through some of my working notes.

Reach out if you know something that might be a good fit: hi@szymonkaliski.com — I'm looking forward to hearing from you!

Worth Checking Out

Books I enjoyed recently:

• Cognitive Science: An Introduction — a pretty good overview of the field of cognitive science
• Being You — the title sounds cheesy, but the book is not: highly recommended overview of current understanding of biological basis for consciousness
• Draw in Order to See — very relevant to the Programmable Ink thread
• How The World Really Works — (thanks Geoffrey for the recommendation!) another very interesting book with a pretty cheesy title: this one explores various areas of current developed world through the lens of fundamental physical measures — things like how much human-labour-time is needed to produce a kilogram of wheat (two seconds!)
• Rules of Play — (thanks Peter for the recommendation!) a great study of what games are, and how to design them

On the web:

• I feel obligated to share another Ink&Switch essay on Dynamic documents as personal software
• An Engine of Improvement for the Social Processes of Science
• Stop Drawing Dead Programs, and a collection of Classic HCI Demos from Jack Rusher
• 3D modeling with spatial queries
• Multi-touch number picker explorations
• Homoiconic spreadsheets, a great talk from Eli Parra featuring a lot of overlaps with Programmable Ink track: spatial queries, unfolding time into space, and Working with the Material

Fin

I hope 2022 was great for you, and as always, wishing you all the best for the upcoming one!

Backlinks

1. 2023-04-03Joining Replit, and musings from the Job Hunt¹