Fredrik Knudsen

Fragments of a Hologram Rose by William Gibson

Desperately late for April's audiobook is a particular favorite short story of mine about the effect of new forms of media on people and their relationships.

Deep Blue Q&A Question Collection

After far, far too long, the Q&A question collection for Deep Blue is here. Ask your questions in the comments of this post and I'll answer them in video format. These questions may be directed at myself, Ryan (the composer), or Arcaxon (the graphic designer). One question per person, please.

(Yes, the Austrian Wine Q&A is absurdly late. I unfortunately deleted my half of the Q&A but Vex and I will be recording it again soon)

Progress Update: 4/28/21

I just got out of a meeting with Arcaxon, who is making rapid progress on the graphic design for the new Down the Rabbit Hole. Some of the particulars have been difficult to diagram, but the end result is looking excellent. Section 1 is finished, and now he's into Section 2, which is where the most work will be done. Once he's finished, it should be a simple matter to place them onto the timeline and get the video out. He's probably going to need just a couple more weeks. All of the music is ...

Progress Update and Apology [4/15/21]

As it stands, the new video is in its final phases. Ryan is only waiting on a few last pieces of instrumentation to add and mix, and Arc is actively working on the animations and graphic design. As I mentioned before, this is an extremely graphic design-heavy episode, and so he'll need a couple of weeks to get it done. I've let him know that he has full permission to interrupt whatever I'm doing during the work week to discuss his work and make certain that everything is looking solid.

...

I'm Hosting a Stellaris Event

Paradox Interactive have invited me to host a large roleplaying event called "The Cold War," to celebrate the imminent launch of their new Nemesis DLC for Stellaris. I'll be acting as the voice for the main stream, where I'll be analyzing the game from a spectator's perspective and commenting on the economic, military, and political situation in ways that someone unfamiliar with the game will be able to understand and digest.

On a personal level, this is exciting for me, since I was a c...

Progress Update: 4/6/21

Final narration is all edited together, and Ryan has everything he needs to finish the music. Once it's all mixed and he's made the few necessary adjustments to the timing, Arc will receive the tracks and he'll be able to start timing his animations. It's important that he has the full track because so many of his clips will be on screen for long periods of time with no space in between.

Most of my work for the video is done besides cutting everything together, and so I'm going to catch...

Fredrik Knudsen on The Official Podcast

I joined The Official Podcast to talk about Down the Rabbit Hole.

The Art of War by Sun Tzu (Books 7-13)

Finishing up the second half of Sun Tzu's Art of War. Enjoy!

Progress Update: 3/29/21

The final narration is now recorded. Tomorrow, I'll get to cutting it together, which should be a relatively short process, and then files will be sent to Ryan and Arc so that they can fit their music and graphic design to it, respectively. In the meantime, I'll be blocking out the editing to prepare for their contributions. As they'll both need a little bit longer, I plan on going back and catching up on work while I wait for them, and if I'm waiting beyond that, I'll begin preparation for t...

I'm Writing for the Stellaris Board Game

As I'm finishing the new Down the Rabbit Hole, I've been invited to write an event for the Stellaris board game, which made headlines recently for raising over $2,000,000 on its Kickstarter page. The company making it, Academy Games, is a boutique studio which has released numerous well-received titles based on historical events.

If they reach their modest community stretch goal of 3,000 followers on Twitter, then I'll have the opportunity to include my own... more existentially unsettl...

Progress Update: 3/22/21

The final draft of the script is now complete.

I'm going to read it aloud to a few trusted friends to get their feedback, but beyond a few minor grammatical or wording changes, this is what it's going to look like. The word count only dropped by about 100, putting the script at around 8,400 words, so we're looking at a runtime of about an hour, though with the more generous time given to the music and visuals, it likely will be a bit over an hour. The topic is unreasonably complicated, ...

Progress Update: 3/13/21

The first draft of the script is now complete, clocking in at about 8,500 words. Compared to Deep Blue's 20,000 words, this new video will likely be about an hour in length. Ryan has already finished rough versions of about half of the music, and most of the graphic design assets are already completed.

With the Deep Blue video, I ended up rushing production towards the end to complete it before the month was out, but this time, I'm resisting doing so to prevent burnout and have a more r...

Progress Update: 3/5/21

Short update this time, just letting you all know that I'm closing in on finishing the first draft of the script. My first drafts tend to be quite close to my final drafts, so I only expect a day or two of script editing before recording the final narration. Ryan has been actively working on the music during this time, and much of the visuals are already done or are available, so we're coming remarkably close to the video being finished despite the fact that I'm still working on the script. 2021-03-06 00:20:52 +0000 UTC View Post

Tea Streams are Back on Twitch

After some setup and deliberation, tea streams have returned! This time, they'll be a bit more spaced out and on Twitch rather than YouTube, as people on YouTube expect more explicitly Down the Rabbit Hole content. I plan on having friends come on for a natter every so often for the streams, as well. The tea tray is back, as well as some new tea implements. We'll be going back and forth between casual conversation with the chat and strategy games, such as chess or Stellaris. The name of the t...

Progress Update: 3/2/21

Ryan just finished the full rough version of the music for section 1. Overall, the section ended up being approximately 16 minutes long and serves as the background for the events that follow in the second section. It's some of the best work he's ever done for Down the Rabbit Hole. Thank you so much to everyone here on Patreon so that I can afford to hire such skilled creators to work with me.

Early reads of the rough draft of the script so far have been extremely positive, though the c...

The Art of War by Sun Tzu (Books 1-6)

This is approximately the first half of the ancient work by the apocryphal Sun Tzu. If you enjoyed this reading and would like the second half, please let me know and I'd be happy to make that March's audiobook.

February Audiobook is Late

Apologies to everyone who was pledging for it, it'll be out later (technically) today.

Progress Update: 2/19/21

Hello everyone, it's been a while! I apologize for how long this video is taking; I initially intended for this video to be a half-hour jaunt, but this is quickly expanding into something that will likely be well over an hour, possibly over an hour and a half. The Deep Blue script was approximately 20,000 words, this new script is already at about 5,000, and I'm well shy of the halfway point.

However, my team and I are experimenting with a method of content production that will allow th...

Empress Theresa: Chapter 1 | January Audiobook

Sorry this one came so late, I was in a lot of mouth pain earlier this month and it threw me off. Fortunately it's all resolved, so enjoy, or... whatever it is you're supposed to do with this book.

Progress Update: 1/11/21

This subject is so obnoxiously complicated that it's taken me a silly number of re-reads in order to wrap my head around it. I spent several hours with Arcaxon today trying to plot out the events of the subject and we were able to get through half of it. This subject is well outside my area of expertise, and so I've had to slog through jargon and make inferences all while trying to parse the events, which themselves are rather complicated.

There likely will only be four sections to this...

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep: Chapter 5

This is partway through the book, but it's of one of my favorite scenes in science fiction: the interrogation of Rachel Rosen to determine if she is an android. It's one of the most famous scenes in science fiction, known largely through the movie Blade Runner. Enjoy.

Regarding the late audiobooks:

For some time now, I've been rather late with the distribution of my monthly audiobooks. This has mostly been a feature of poor time management, as I will prioritize work on the video and push my audiobook obligations aside, and while technically they have still been during the month, it often is only with a few hours to spare.

To address this, I'm making a consistent deadline to release the audiobooks on the 15th of every month.

If you were planning on reducing or removing your p...

Progress Update: 12/11/20

Good news: the three books I needed to earnestly continue my research just arrived. They weren't difficult to find, but there aren't very many of them left, and some of them were scarcely available in the United States. E-books were available for one or two of them, but I knew there would be diagrams in some of them and I wanted to make certain that I wasn't missing out on them if they were important. However, I promised myself that I wouldn't work on weekends to prevent burnout, and so I'll ...

Down the Rabbit Hole: The Big Post

Hello everyone. This is going to be a long one, since this will be an update, a discussion of the current status of Down the Rabbit Hole and what's changing in the process of creating it (don't worry, it's positive), and an outline of what things to expect in the near future.

The Process

The last month has been less productive than I would have hoped for a reason that I've been hesitant to address: for the last four years, I haven't had a regular weekend or schedu...

November Audiobook: "Reason" by Isaac Asimov

One of his more comedic stories. I hope you enjoy!

Down the Rabbit Hole Music Behind-The-Scenes

This Sunday at 1:00pm PST, Down the Rabbit Hole composer Ryan Probert will be doing a stream on the official Patreon Discord server, discussing the process of producing the music and doing a play-by-play of the soundtrack, as well as fielding any questions. I've given him a version of the video without narration to use, with levels restored to hear them in their original form with the visuals.

If you need an invite to the Discord server, feel free to DM me here on Patreon and I'll set y...

The World Record History of iCarly (for Wii)

Another YouTuber, Saltydkdan, approached me to help edit and narrate a script he wrote, and when he told me the premise, I had to say yes. I hope you enjoy this slight diversion.

Deep Blue | Down the Rabbit Hole

The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe

This is obviously a bit of a short one, but I thought I'd try my hand again at The Raven, especially given the season. Enjoy.

Short Update to Release Window:

One of my collaborators is going to need a bit more time to finish their work, so now I'm looking to have the video out on Friday if possible, and this weekend if not. Just gotta put the final touches on.

-Fredrik