Kognise

Hello! I usually go by the moniker Kognise /ˈkägˌnaɪz/ on the Internet, though my real name is Lexi. Many things capture my interest, and this site features some of them. You may enjoy reading one of the articles I’ve written.

Reach out: hi@kognise.dev or @kognise on Discord
Find me:   GitHub X, The Everything App LinkedIn Resume

On this page:

A year ago I quit my job to explore some projects of my own. In the past, I’ve worked at Neuralink, Hack Club, Replit, and Redwood Research. I am a fellow of Lux, Human Capital, and Interact.

Computers!

I spend a significant portion of my time writing code and creating with technology. I believe in having passion for your craft and attention to detail. Since I just adore building things, I have a huge amount of side projects that I don’t really know what to do with! You can see an abridged list of stuff I’ve done if you’re interested.

I use TypeScript, Rust, and React on a daily basis and love them. I used to daily drive NixOS with KDE Plasma (you can check out my dotfiles, they’re not half bad) but now just use macOS and reserve NixOS for my desktop at home. I design everything for myself and for others using Figma.

I’m often asked, “hey Lexi, what kind of programming do you do?”, and I never quite know how to answer. I do everything. Frontend! Backend! Embedded hardware! Mobile apps! Compilers! Infrastructure! I find it immensely enjoyable to learn how shit works and plunge down rabbit holes, and I pick up whatever’s needed to build what I’m excited about.

A consistent thread through the past couple of years of my life has been meeting my online programmer friends in person. I’m lucky enough that many friends I previously only know online now live within a few blocks of me. This chapter of my life began in the summer of 2021 when I rode across the country on a hackathon on a superdome train, and since then, I’ve met friends as far as Europe and as exotically as Kalamazoo (a real place in Michigan!).

9-year-old me making friends with a cool robot I made:

A young girl holding hands with a robot made mostly out of cardboard and covered in tinfoil. The face of the robot has lit LEDs and some electronics can be seen inside. A desk with wires and a roll of tinfoil can be seen in the background.

Airplanes!

I think aviation is pretty cool. Over the pandemic I got really into flight simming and VATSIM, and then I realized, hey, I can do this in real life.

I started training for my Private Pilot License, first out of KSSF, then KBTV, and now KSQL. I keep getting peskily interrupted, but I’ve finally un-interrupted myself and I want to finish my license this year.

I’m currently learning to fly the good ol’ Cessna 172. I pinned a VFR wall planning chart to my wall and I’m sticking pins in every airport I land at, and I’m hoping to visit as many airports in the U.S. as I can. I mentioned travelling earlier: when I have the chance, I also love flying as a passenger and I’ve spent many, many hours in coach visiting new horizons and making new friends.

If you want to hang out and don’t live in San Francisco (where I live right now), still reach out! I might stop by your city some time!

Here are some neat pictures I took while out flying:

The parking area of a small airport, with two visible small planes. In the background is the runway and air traffic conctrol. The photograph is taken from the perspective of standing at the door, and is partially obscured by a brown ceiling held up by columns.San Antonio, Texas as seen from above at night. A wing strut can be seen in the foreground.A small Cessna plane sitting in a parking area, taken from the front. A beautiful blue sky with spread out fluffy clouds is on top.The analog cockpit of a Cessna 172, with the plane rolling slightly to the left.

(This used to say “some neat pictures I took from the air” but two of them are clearly taken from the ground, so, that’s fixed now.)

In the spirit of ending these sections with pictures of young me, the oldest picture I have of myself is actually in a cockpit, in 2010. Perhaps an old Boeing 737? I must’ve been like 4 years old; clearly, my love of the skies isn’t new.

An airliner cockpit filled with analog gauges. Sitting in the pilot seat, a blurry child with a blond ponytail, red cowboy hat, and overalls.

Music!

When I’m not programming, flying, or slacking off, I’m probably doing something music-related. I’ve been playing classical, jazz, folk, Balkan, and contemporary music on cello for almost 15 years. I briefly played piano. I also more recently got a 5-string NS Design electric cello, which I’ve been having fun with.

I compose music for acoustic instruments and create electronic bleep bloop sounds in a variety of styles using Ableton, REAPER, Pd, and Max. Perhaps I’ll release an album eventually.

I’m actually turning ideas around in my head about building a DAW of my own, a project I’ve always been interested in. This has been one of my bigger side quests during my last year of funemployment, and I think it may turn into a main quest :)

Aisde from making music, a large portion of my time awake is spent listening to music. My taste is wildly multifaceted, but I primarily listen to upbeat music spanning genres of EDM, hyperpop, hip hop, orchestral, chamber, rock, pop, K-pop, J-pop, and even modern country, which I got into during my years living in Vermont. I initially listened as a joke, and then I realized how catchy some of the songs are.

Here are my favorite albums of all time, in no particular order:

Here are some Spotify playlists I made:

I also used to play Beat Saber badly and loved it, although I haven’t had that much time recently. (For some reason, I was unusually good at one-handed mode. I could destroy even some top ranked players.) I DJ sometimes, but I wouldn’t call myself an expert. I enjoy jarring transitions.

Other things!

For the first time in my life, I’ve started taking pleasure in physical activity. I enjoy rock climbing and I’ve been getting into Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I wouldn’t call myself a runner, but I ran a 15k and that felt pretty cool… some day I might even do a marathon.

I also bike positively everywhere. It’s fun, good exercise, and often much faster than every other form of transport! But it’s also just full of joy. The longest I’ve biked is probably about 150 miles.

I love cooking and baking. I’m a fan of the mise en place mindset, and I especially love hosting parties where we cook tons of food and I get to boss around a small army of sous chefs. I enjoy building mediocre furniture out of wood. I learned how to solve a Rubik’s cube and got down to under 25 seconds, but I haven’t practiced as much recently. I’m also fascinated with the law, think double-entry accounting is pretty fun, and enjoy doing taxes so much I do my friends’ taxes for them. I’ll do yours for you if you want!

Almost as much as I like engulfing myself in books, I like watching beautiful movies. Many of my favorite films are anime-style, including almost everything by Studio Ghibli as well as CoMix Wave Films; my favorite Ghibli movie is probably Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.

Live-action movies that stuck out to me as really great are Dr. Strangelove, tick, tick… BOOM!, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Resurrection, Wake Up Dead Man, and Black Bag.

In the animation world, in addition to anime movies, I’m a die-hard fan of the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy and the Spider-Verse franchise. Both mean a great deal to me. I consume actions flicks with great enjoyment, too, and I actually recently started tracking all the movies I’m watching in theaters on a site I built called koggerboxd.

Some of my favorite books that I can 100% recommend:

What else… I’m a dual German-U.S. citizen, which is neat. I have a Lettera 22 manual typerwriter, an AKAI X-360D reel-to-reel tape recorder, a working analog telephone with a SIP proxy I wrote myself, a super old iMac, and a giant metal printer that makes incredible WHHHRRRRR-BBHHHHHH-BEEP noises.

You might enjoy a piece of writing I synergized, or perhaps get a kick out of reading some brand guidelines.

And as always, feel free to shoot me an email or direct message me anytime, anywhere, and for any reason :)

Projects!

Now that I am more so In The Industry, there are fewer projects I can publicize! It is kind of sad to me that I can’t share as much as I used to, but hey, I suppose it pays off for me.

Here’s a semi-complete and unordered list of tech projects I’ve can share that I’ve worked on over the course of my life, with links provided for the ones that are more consumable:

A white person with a brown ponytail grinning, sitting on a gray bed in front of a wall of posters.

^ Finally, here’s me in my room, taken on my E-M10 Mk.II! Byeeeeeeeeeee.