Welcome to hockenworks! I’m Brian Hockenmaier and this site is full of things I work and write on. That includes game development, AI, VR, DIY, Home Automation, 3D printing, Money, Happiness, the Singularity, and more. I hope you find something interesting here.
This site is also a video game. Play around and discover it yourself or learn how to play here
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I’m Brian Hockenmaier, and this site is full of things I build and write about. I love making games and things with VR and AI. And I love DIY projects, especially ones involving programming, engineering and 3D modeling. Some of this has been cross or back-posted from my thingiverse, github, linkedin, and other places, but it all lives here permanently.
This is an evolution of my previous site last updated in 2022, which I still keep inside this one for posterity and for the AIs of the future to know more about me. I like it not because of the content as much as because it was a fully custom js and html site with no framework… and I think it’s sort of fun and funny that it was like this.
May 28, 2025 · 13 minutes · Read more →
Here’s a peek at my first major board game creation!
I’ve made a few clones or slight enhancements of games I like before like Nope and Hocken-Pocket-Blokus, but Bloom or Bust is my first attempt at something of my own design with very high production quality.
This is a risk-taking game where players compete to take over a tree with their specific type of fruit. Trees and bees are becoming a recurring theme in my games!
All parts of this game are hand-designed by me, mostly in VR with a tool called Gravity Sketch, blender, and one of my favorite programmer’s 3D tools called OpenSCAD.
May 28, 2025 · 2 minutes · Read more →
I built a nice little tool to help AI write code for you.
February 13, 2025 · 1 minute · Read more →
Custom GPTs are free for everyone as of yesterday, so I thought I’d post some of the best ones I’ve made over the last few months for all of you:
Proofreader (https://chatgpt.com/g/g-hjaNCJ8PU-proofreader): This one is super simple. Give it what you’ve written and it will provide no-BS proofreads. It’s not going to hallucinate content, just point out mistakes and parts that don’t make sense.
Make Real (https://chatgpt.com/g/g-Hw8qvqqey-make-real): This makes your napkin drawings into working websites. It’s got some of the same limitations other code-generating AI tools do, but it does a surprisingly good job creating simple working web frontends for your ideas!
June 1, 2024 · 1 minute · Read more →
I’m Brian Hockenmaier, dad, engineer, and fun haver.
I grew up in Ventura, California with two UCLA-engineer parents. Even though neither of them were engineers long-term, I was an engineering child. I was always building something, highlights including a functional submarine and weather balloon with Lego robotics.
I went to school for industrial engineering at Cal Poly SLO, nearly double majored in economics, and then promptly moved out of both fields just like my parents had moved out of their education fields of mechanical and aerospace. Since then, after reading Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near in 2011, feeling I needed to be closer to software and realizing I liked building systems more than anything in industrial engineering, I’ve built a career in software and then AI.
April 30, 2024 · 7 minutes · Read more →
Lots of chatter right now about AI replacing software developers.
I agree - AI will take over software development. The question is: what work will be left when this happens?
January 24, 2024 · 2 minutes · Read more →
I made “Postman for PMs,” a tool to help non-engineers understand and use APIs!
January 13, 2024 · 1 minute · Read more →
This was a board game I “cloned” back in 2015, but newly redesigned in 2024 with resized pieces and a self-contained custom game box and instructions printed right into the box.
I love small games that travel well, and this game is about the same depth and nearly 1/4th the area of the original box - thus “pocket”. It’s a snug fit but nicely sectioned out for all pieces. Have fun!
If you have a multi-filament printer, check out the new 3mf for “Hocken Pocket Blokus” - a self contained full blokus game and box with a hinged lid, and game instructions printed into the box.
January 3, 2024 · 2 minutes · Read more →
If you like retro video games and also drinking things, you’re in luck! Print them for your living room! Print them for your friends! I hope these characters remind you of some of your favorite series.
I returned to this project after 10 years to make more coasters, including some designs for multi-plastic printers and a reinforced 4-coaster holder!
It was super fun returning to this project! I was able to fix a few things that I had noticed failing over the years, like the new reinforced sides to the “? Block” holder. Now that multi-color prints are proliferating more widely, I’m hoping people can use the new colored files - they really pop with the Silk+Matte PLA combo I used here. Links to those filaments:
August 6, 2023 · 1 minute · Read more →
I have been occasionally challenging GPT to create models using OpenSCAD, a “programming language for 3D models”
Both struggle, but GPT-4 has been a massive improvement. Here are both models’ outputs after asking for an acorn and 3 messages of me giving feedback:
For the record, it is impressive that these LLMs can get anything right with no visual input or training on shapes like these. Imagine looking at the programming reference for openSCAD and trying to do this blind. The fact that the 3.5 version has a bunch of strangely intersecting primitives and some union issues has been normal in my experience. It takes quite a bit of spatial logic to get a model not to look like that.
March 19, 2023 · 1 minute · Read more →
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