This is Forest Key’s blog, about stuff.
Forest is a product guy who likes media tech, travel, and strives to be a passionate DEI advocate and ally.
I seek to meet and listen+learn from people with diverse life experiences, cultural traditions, and neurodivergent modes of subjective reality.
Here are a few Videos on a few of my software projects:
Work
What was Voodle?
Voodle was a tech startup that built a short-video messaging app that launched in 2020 and shuttered in 2022. The…
What was Pixvana?
Pixvana was a VR Video tech startup from 2016-2019 that built a cloud virtual reality video processing, streaming, and editing…
What happened to Pixvana / Voodle?
In fall 2015 we made an ”emerging tech” bet on VR and chose a “swing for the fence” scale risk-reward…
On Building a Diverse Team
I just finished reading an amazing sci-fi/fantasy series called the Broken Earth trilogy from N.K. Jemisin and it has really…
From VR, onwards to Voodle and voodling
In January of 2020, after nearly 4 complete years working feverishly and with great passion and focus on the virtual…
Pixvana SPIN Play for iOS
Well after 4 years at Pixvana chasing after the dream of VR and headset based immersive storytelling, today marked a…
Masters of Visual Effects 1999 Style
Too fun. So in 1999 some buddies and I put together a series of instructional video tapes (that we shipped…
Field of View Adaptive Streaming for VR
Kudos to Aaron Rhodes and Sean Safreed for the first of many Pixvana videos that outline some of the unique…
Clear Example of VR Video Assembly
Here’s some really clear images and videos that illustrate a VR Video assembly process using a 6 camera go-pro rig.…
buuteeq : Founder Thinking 2010-2013
The Future of Hotel Websites…isn’t Flash Adobe Flash® is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash gained popularity as…
Silverlight in Asia
These are various Silverlight posts i wrote on my original blog from 2006-2009, merged here for posterity. “WPF/E” now called…
Microsoft Expression : Behind the Scenes
Ahh.. Microsoft Expression Studio. Today we announced our final availability, pricing, naming, and key UI innovations for the Expression family. Expression Web…
Travel
Montana de Oro State Park
Wild flowers poppin’ Feb 11 ’23. The waves were happening. Diablo Canyon in the myst
Palm Springs Outings
We just kicked off our “year of living in airbnbs” with a lovely stay in Palm Springs. The warm temps…
Back to Mountain Biking
When i lived in california in the 90s i was a huge mountain bike enthusiast—Mt Tam in Marin County was…
Shoreditch Street Art
I had a lovely art-walk experience this week in Shoreditch neighborhood of London led by David Stuart of http://www.shoreditchstreetarttours.co.uk and…
Beijing and Pingyao Visit 2019
We just had a wonderful trip to Beijing and for the first time had a chance to do some side…
My Japan Recommends
Just putting a quick note on some of my top recommends from Japan as i get a lot of requests…
Zapallar in VR Project – Start
We just got back from a lovely spring break in Zapallar Chile visiting family. We took a Omni VR Camera…
Grand Canyon River Expedition with Hatch as Outfiter
My Family and I just completed a marvelous 9 day expedition on the Colorado River from Lees Landing launch, down…
Recommendations for visit to Madrid, Spain
I lived in Spain during a study abroad year in college back in early 1990s, and have returned several times…
Spain, 20 years later
20 years ago I lived in Madrid for my junior year in college. It was a lovely time of life.…
Chile Earthquake Madness Feb 27, 2010
We were awoken last night by the 8.8 earthquake that hit chile. We ran to our children’s rooms after we…
When “making the connection” is a bad idea
Cristina and I have been a fan of “making the connection” ever since I first learned of the concept whilst…
Expat Living Experience Chile 2010
New Chapters in countries that start with “CH” sound So we are on to our next adventure, in our quest…
China Family Expat Experience 2009
Malaysia Spring Break (Chinese New Year) Forest says: Well, it has been so long since either of us posted to…
China Family Expat Experience 2008
Cold but dry – Chinese New Year looms Feb 5, 2008 – Cristina There have been some atrocious storms in…
China Family Expat Experience 2007
Ok, this needs some description as many of our friends and relatives don’t even know that we are living in…
Other Sutff
Pismo Beach Building & Planning Department – My Experience
We have purchased a lovely vacant lot in the seaside town of Pismo Beach, CA. and hope to build a home. Hope, the key word. 2 years and counting into the process, plenty of curveballs and surprises. A wise friend…
My thoughts on Future of @work Team Collaboration
I spent a few hours answering some great questions for a blog post that i wanted to point to. the title is: The Future of Communication Technology: Forest Key of Voodle On How Their Technological Innovation Will Shake How We Connect and…
Me on the What Fuels You Podcast
We have been working with an awesome talent search firm called Fuel Talent and CEO Shauna Swerland reached out to me re: her podcast series What Fuels You. I have recently been listening to a ton of audio books on…
Carlos Key Filmaker
My son Carlos Key has a few websites up and the search engines need a little help finding them, so the young filmaker and storyteller can be found when he is being sought! Carlos Key maintains a catalog of his…
Voodle for iOS Launch
Very excited to kick off life for Voodle for iOS, which launches Monday June 29th 2020. As my son Carlos explains to gen z friends, “Discord and TikTok had a baby and named it Voodle”. To older gen X friends…
Voodle Concepts
We are off and running adding content to explain Voodle, and our beta testing is underway. So, excited. Here’s a blog post on our website i wrote about feature development for voodle.
Onwards to voodle
Voodle is a vegetarian noodle, but it is also a great name for a software product? Video-doodles! Voodles are plural, voodle is a noun (“i made a voodle”), and voodle is a verb (“voodle it and it shall be done!).…
Unfurling URLs
Ok so we are adding support to Pixvana SPIN Studio to share URLs more easily of what we call SPINs, playlists of content. Here’s our default SPIN that loads when you download our player app, SPIN Play, from various app…
Unboxing Kandao Obsidian R VR Camera
Just unboxing a Kandao Obsidian R VR Camera, this is going to become my personal VR blogging / testing camera, i really like the form factory and the quality of shots is excellent. First observations which are important to others…
Obituary: Luis Emilio Casanueva Tagle
Our papa Emilio Casanueva passed away Friday May 25th, 2018, at the Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara CA. He was surrounded with love and affection with family. Emilio was born in Chile in 1939 and immigrated to the USA with…
Remove and Replace Ford Focus RS mk3 Billet Badges/Emblems
I replaced my front and rear Ford emblem/billet badges, on my 2017 Ford Focus RS mk3
We shipped Pixvana SPIN Studio!
These people (including some that aren’t pictured): Just shipped our first baby, Pixvana SPIN Studio: Pixvana SPIN Studio is an amazing new tool for storytelling with video for Augmented and Virtual Reality. The suite has a lot of components still…
Sofia the VR Explorer by Jesse Link
Seattle fine artist Jesse Link completed a commissioned piece for me to adorn the Pixvana office. He completed the piece and dropped by our office last week, and my colleagues and I are totally psyched. My wife and I came…
SPIN VR – Pixvana’s storytelling platform
@Pixvana this week we announced our Virtual Reality Video platform, now known as SPIN VR. The word SPIN has obvious connections to the new VR and AR medium, namely, the ability to “spin” or otherwise adjust your point-of-view to perceive the…
If Pixvana was an animal…
At Pixvana we use a company culture mini-pulsing product from one of my favorite seattle startups, TinyPulse. Each week the tool asks our team a fun question that can be answered anonymously via browser or iphone and usually takes less…
Adaptive 360 VR Video Streaming
We’re having a lot of fun at the Pixvana working on various VR storytelling technologies, what we have termed “XR Storytelling” as we are thinking broadly about both AR and VR but also xR, such as virtual reality caves, and…
Pixvana is a lovely word, and i will make it MINE!
I’ve got a new favorite word that i’m investing energy in imbuing with greenedness: Pixvana. Pixvana is evocative of video delivery and virtual reality, and has its very own domain at http://www.pixvana.com. I really like the combination of the pixel and…
F80 BMW m3 Kidney Grill Replacement Install
I changed the kidney grill “bib” from the factory chrome to a matching black; this is apparently pretty common cosmetic upgrade/change, and it was ultimately pretty easy to do–however, i found the online documentation/help to be a bit confusing so…
My Apple Watch Review, vis a vis Fitbit Surge
I sold my Apple Watch after 1 week of use, here’s why! After a sordid 1 week fling with the Apple Watch, i decided this AM that I had had enough and i posted it for sale on my internal company bulletin board.…
Strava and FitBit Surge Together / Review of Fitbit Surge
I’m training for the Copenhagen Marathon in May of this year (2015), and have been using Strava and a new Fitbit Surge device to track my runs. Unfortunately the two systems are not compatible (update May 2015–they are now compatible,…
Trotamundo wins Perk of the Year 2014
I’m incredibly proud and happy to have won the Geekwire Awards Perk of the Year 2014 for buuteeq’s employee travel stipend program, “Trotamundo”. I started buuteeq because of my deep passion for travel and seeing the world. We created the…
Small Talks event in Seattle re: Millennials in the Workplace
I spoke at a Small Talks event last week on the subject of Millennials in the Workplace (millennial are the generation born in the 80s and early 90s, that came after my generation “gen x”). buuteeq has a lot of…
Tokyo Marathon
What a great experience. First some context, a marathon is 26+ miles, or 42.165 km. I ran my first and only other marathon in Los Angeles 2 years ago, with my brother Andy and friend Adam Brownstein, and while the…
Surface… Minority Report type UX, today…
Wow, i can’t believe it has been over a month since I chimed in to this blog. I had imagined the post vegas/Mix07 timeframe to be a really prolific one in terms of blogging, as there is so much joy/information…
LA Marathon 2007
My head is going to explode, and my toes hurt! First my toes–I ran the LA marathon this last weekend. It was an absolutely amazing, horrible, and wonderous experience all at once. I have never run a marathon, but have…
Forest Key's Blog 
3 replies on “Forest Key Musings”
Hi Forest – My mom just showed me your blog & I read the entry about Caetano Veloso and your experience w/ the king’s court. Made me feel instantly in sync with you! Would love to catch up one of these days, though I know how busy life gets. Besotes a todos, Nina
Hi Forrest, thanks for you amazing blog! We are from the Netherlands and planning on flying to Cile, buy a car and driving it to North Amrica 🙂
We read some tips on buying cars in Chile, but perhaps you can give us a few pointers? We are especially interested in cars one can sleep in. What are the chilenean rules on camping off-site?
thanks, Reinout
Hi Reinout,
There is a great book on the subject of driving a car from Chile to far north in Alaska at the top of North America, it is a bit dated as it was written 20+ years ago, but given your interest in that itinerary/trip, i still would highly recommended. The author is Tim Cahill who i love and is a great fun-to-read travel writer. The book is called Road Fever, here it is on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Road-Fever-Tim-Cahill/dp/0394758374
Buying a car in Chile–cars cost a lot more in Chile because of import duties based on the size of the car’s engine, and cost of the car. So cars are about 40% more expensive in Chile than they are in the USA. Compared to Europe/Netherlands, they may be approximately the same. If you are buying the car with cash, you will need to find a way to get the $$ into Chilean Pesos into the country, which can be hard to do if you are taking about $20,000 or more Euros… i did it by moving $10k USD at a time via wire transfers, took a few weeks to get the funds settled. Once you have the car, getting insurance was a hassle. So, as an alternative to buying a car and driving it all the way to the USA… you might think of renting a car in each country and not dealing with the border crossings? I took my car to Argentina for a weekend, and it was a huge huge huge hassle… nothing like the convenience of driving between Netherlands and Germany 😉
As for sleeping in a car and or camping: I don’t think you’d have any trouble car camping on side of roads/etc. throughout Chile–it is sparsely populated and there is lots of land/space. There are also many national parks/monuments where car camping is common. I think from a security perspective, you would also be ok in the smaller towns, but not in the big cities where you would be safer/more comfortable getting cheap accommodations in a hotel.
All of that said, driving a car around Chile is wonderful. I was just down there again a month ago, and did a good 8 hr drive to the north and loved every minute of it. We stopped in small towns for walks and meals, and just super enjoyed as I hope you and your family will if you make the trip! let me know if I can answer in more detail on any subject.