itsnick.co
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it'sNick.co Friesen

Welcome. On this site you'll find everything from creative to machine learning and everything that connects the two. With my dad having his PhD in genetics and my mom being a piano teacher, it's a great intro into who I am. The intersection and depth of seeking to understand both art and the technical.

If any of this interests you or you'd like to chat more, give me a shout at hey@itsnick.co.

see the work ↓ say hi
§ 02  ·  the lens

Creativity + ML.

how I think about the work

My earlier years were solar system maps, anatomy diagrams, and microscope slides. My teens into early adulthood were piano, guitar, photo, and video. Now it's a great mix of both the art and the structure that holds it together.

I believe the future needs more creatives who are immersed in the technical side of AI.

Much of my time is spent running The Match Artist, an online dating photography company with our team spread throughout the US. The rest of my time is spent with my wife, two dogs, too many hobbies, and as much ML as I can get my hands on to make sense of the art I and others have created.

§ 03  ·  the lab

Applied ML research.

weird, ambitious, shipped
L-01 / 2026
causal inference · survival · genomics

Dog Longevity ML

End-to-end analysis of the Dog Aging Project, 50,188 dogs, 15,056 deaths, 2,993 variables, genetics for 7,688 dogs. LD-clumped polygenic risk scores, causal forests, TMLE, cognitive-trajectory modeling, kinship GWAS where only IGF1 survives correction, and a novel seasonal-mortality pattern no one had published. All prior DAP work is classical stats only; this is the first modern-ML treatment.

Causal Forests Survival · RSF LD-clumped PRS +760 d Q5−Q1
50K dogs · 2,993 vars dogs.itsnick.co →
L-02
embeddings · interpretability

Latent Cinema

Transformer embeddings of 2,390 screenplays, distilled into 50 interpretable "Film Genome" axes. Predicts IMDB rating at R² 0.116 and powers a 1,185-film recommender.

Transformers PCA Recommender
2,390 scripts film.itsnick.co →
L-03
nlp · comparative textual analysis

predictingGod

843 pericopes × 20 dimensions × 3 translations, scored by 23+ ML methods across 8 world corpora. Multi-model Blackwell-GPU ensemble. A systematic, empirical textual study.

LLM ensemble 843 × 20 × 3
23+ methods bible.itsnick.co →
L-04
generative · music · autoresearch

classicalML

First large-scale score-level piano dataset (26,934 pieces, 27.5M tokens preserving voice and staff structure). A 59M-param transformer composer trained via Karpathy-style greedy hyperparameter search.

PyTorch 27.5M tok
val 1.1123 piano.itsnick.co →
L-05
generative image · prior startup

fibb.ai

2024, 2025. Trained LoRA fine-tunes and identity-preserving image-generation models for photorealistic human likeness. Entry point into ML; every project since has sat at the seam of ML and creative work.

LoRA Stable Diffusion
2024, 2025 archived
L-06
computer vision · veterinary

Canine MCT Cytology

Open-source ML classifier for mast-cell tumors in canine fine-needle aspirate cytology. Most existing tools are locked behind expensive commercial paywalls, so I'm building one anyone can use. Kicked off when my own dog Casper was diagnosed. V1 in progress.

CV PyTorch Open source
v1 · Tier-A scraping research
L-07
browser-native data · duckdb-wasm

Spotify Lifetime

An in-browser DuckDB-WASM app over 139K of my own plays (2019–2026), 77+ analytical sections, no backend. Built in a single evening session.

DuckDB-WASM 139K plays
browser-native listening.friesen.co →
L-08
behavioral psychometrics · llm-as-judge · MCP

personalContext

A pipeline for building a behavioral self-model from one's own communication history. Cross-platform ingest (iMessage · Slack · Gmail · Google Chat) is exposed through an MCP server. An LLM-as-judge scores each relationship against a fixed 10-dimension personality framework. Cross-relational triangulation surfaces the patterns that hold across many relationship types, the higher-confidence signal, and separates them from relationship-specific masks. The pipeline closes the loop by deriving a self-report instrument (yes / no items) that should reproduce the same behavioral profile if administered cold. Behavioral psychometrics, not survey psychometrics. Used self-reflexively only.

MCP server LLM-as-judge 10-dim framework Cross-relational Instrument derivation
behavioral, not self-report context.itsnick.co →
§ 04  ·  dating photography

The Match Artist.

thematchartist.com ↗

The business I built that paid for everything else. The Match Artist is a network of photographers across the country shooting men's dating-profile portraits, paired with style and dating-coaching support.

Same job everywhere, take a guy who feels invisible on the apps and give him a set of frames that actually look like the version of himself he wants the world to see. Thousands of clients later, it's changed real lives. Co-founded with Shane White and run with a team of photographers, stylists, sales, and ops.

brandphotography networkcoachingops~30 cities
long-form interviews

Our Podcast.

I talk with past clients and experts about the struggles men face in the modern day.

§ 05  ·  weddings + couples

The Wedding Artist.

theweddingartist.com ↗

I run theweddingartist.com with my wife Allie.

We've had so many engagements from dating photography that we wanted to capture it in a more artistic style. It's a project my wife and I can really let loose with and capture moments in unique and experimental ways.

see the full set →

§ 06  ·  the studio

Photography + video.

I was the founding photographer for The Match Artist before we brought on more photographers. I'm pretty intrigued by the idea of facial expression coaching, and I don't see many photographers out there offering this.

Everyone has expressions they give off at the right moment. Confidence, mystery, and joy are the ones the camera wants to see. Most photographers will tell you to “act natural,” but that doesn't get most people anywhere. My approach is to find what a person's face does well, and coach them back to their natural state when they're in a good moment.

motion · jake + riley · the match artist
lifestyleon location · TMA
§ 07  ·  the shop

Small tools, shipped.

things I made to be used, not studied
T-01 · knowledge graph

NickBrain

A personal knowledge-graph PWA + MCP server. Queries years of messages, files, and notes from my phone over Tailscale.

PWA · Gemini · MCP personal
T-02 · pedagogy

Polyrhythm clock

A tiny web tool to see polyrhythms as rotating dot clocks instead of counting them out loud.

web · audio poly.friesen.co →
T-03 · recipe

Pizza & burger

Two small recipe sites, New-Haven-leaning pizza, smash-burger build, versioned like software projects.

static sites pizza / burger →
T-04 · research site

research.friesen

Open research write-ups hosted as mini-sites. Long-form text + charts, no framework, easy to share.

static research.friesen.co →
also, off-screen

Things I make outside the laptop.

Piano. Guitar. A smoker I welded myself. Live-edge slabs with bow-ties. Hydroponics, aquaponics, and a fish tank running the nitrogen cycle for my plants. Briskets, pan pizzas, sourdough. The shop where I think.

see hobbies ↗
§ 08  ·  say hi

Let's build something.

Open to applied-ML consulting, advisory on creative-software ML, and interesting one-off projects. If the work above looks like the thing you need, email is the fastest path.

hey@itsnick.co linkedin
bench · idle · listening for a job