Throughout the years I've worked as:

  1. a software engineer at a startup and at the MIT Media Lab on the Scratch project.
  2. a designer, media inventor, and researcher creating user interfaces for what computers might become decades in the future. I worked with one of the top interface inventors in the world, Bret Victor, in the group that became Dynamicland.
  3. a psychotherapist, graduating from Lesley University's clinical therapy program in May 2020.

In all these pursuits, I learned and created many things.

This website is a collection of these projects, insights, and the joy I felt along the way. I hope you Glenjoy your time browsing my work! 😸

Psychology and Therapy

Compassionate work to bring healing, freedom, and happiness to people through empathic relationships.

from left to right: a computer, an arrow, a heart

Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist

The story of an unusual career transition.

A book open on a table with the pages folded into the spine in the shape of a heart, with sparkling lights in the background.

What Happened After I Quit Tech to Become a Therapist, Part 1 – Graduate School and Internship

A follow-up to Why I Quit Tech and Became a Therapist.

Deep Listening at the Recurse Center

Compassionate conversations with programmers trying to change their lives.

White Tara image from wikipedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mongolia_White_Tara.jpg

Mindfulness and Purpose in Difficult Times

Using mindfulness and purpose for emotional well-being in tough times.

Media Inventions and Research

Using the capabilities of computers to help us learn, communicate, and create in new ways.

Two people playing a game of Laser Socks

Laser Socks

A sweaty game pointing toward a future computing medium.

Eyes on the Prize redesign

Eyes on the Prize

How can media support a reader's active engagement? An interactive redesign of a documentary about America's Black civil rights era.

Dictionary of Numbers

Dictionary of Numbers

A Chrome extension to help people build numerical literacy by annotating quantities in web pages.

Alan Kay Wiki

Alan Kay Wiki

I collected and organized all the works authored by computer pioneer and researcher Alan Kay into a wiki.

Picture of a bog boardwalk

Links from 2013

A collection of works that brought clarity to my initial research direction.

Future of Computer Programming Research

Redesigning programming for human understanding.

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UI Design for the Future of Programming

A newsletter where I send out very occasional emails about my programming research projects.

Flowsheets v2 screenshot

Flowsheets v2

A prototype data transformation programming environment. What does it feel like to program while seeing concrete data? 10 minutes

Legible Mathematics

Legible Mathematics

Sketches of an interactive arithmetic for programming.

REPLugger screenshot

REPL + Debugger = REPLugger

A prototype programming environment that's like a mix between a text editor, REPL, and debugger. How can program data be useful when programming large systems? 10 minutes

Fuzzyset, an interactive representation of a code library

Fuzzyset: Interactive Code Documentation

Imagining a future where every program is designed to be an interactive human-readable explanation, not just textual code.

Flowsheets v2 screenshot

Flowsheets v2 visualizations

An extension of Flowsheets v2. How can interactive visualizations, data, and code be integrated in the programming experience? 22 minutes

Flowsheets v1 screenshot

Flowsheets v1

The first version of Flowsheets, a programming environment prototype seeing what it's like to program while seeing concrete program data. 15 minutes

Robot cartoon

Python Play

A Python graphics library I designed for children to make games and animations.

Picture of programming researcher John Maloney

Marilyn Maloney

A small interactive redesign of a program to modify images. How could programs be designed so that children can easily understand them?

Future of Coding.org

Compassion and Programming

I talk about my programming work with my friend Steve Krouse on his Future of Coding podcast. ~2 hours, July 2018

Screenshot of a flame graph redesign

Flame Graph Redesign

A small visual redesign of a helpful programming visualization.

Screenshot of non-programers paper redesign

Nonprogrammers Paper Redesign

A visual redesign of computer science paper about how non-programmers like to think about programming concepts.

Artisan's Asylum logo

Intro to Web Programming Class

An intensive class I taught for adults to learn web programming.

Mission Bit Logo

Mission Bit Web Programming Class

My observations of a free after-school class I taught for public high school students in San Francisco.

Fun Stuff

Boston Stupid Hackathon Logo

Boston Stupid Shit No One Needs & Terrible Ideas Hackathon

An annual "hackathon" I organize where people make useless and terrible things for fun.

Wifi-Extending JavaScript Robot

Wifi-Extending Robot

A large robotic tank controlled over Wifi that creates a WiFi network as it drives. A student project programmed in JavaScript.

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ExtensionPay - Monetize Chrome Extensions!

A service to let developers easily accept payments in browser extensions.

URL Animations screengrab

URL Animations

Animations in your URL bar. (Try it in Firefox for desktop.)

Screamy Bird screamshot

Screamy Bird

A game where you scream at your computer or mobile to make the bird flap. (Try it in Firefox.)

Poison ivy

Poison Ivy Quiz

A quiz to help woodland explorers train their intuition to recognize poison ivy. A collaboration with Rosemary Mosco.

Delay's - Valentine fan video screenshot

The Delays - Valentine fan video

A music video / Valentine's day present.

Custom Ninja Turtle Logo

Ninja Turtles Logo Generator

Put in whatever words you want to make them look like the Ninja Turtles logo.

Me wearing a custom Thomas the Tank Engine costume on my head

Thomas the Tank Engine Halloween Costume

A Halloween costume I made for a video chat.

Cute Capitalism Is Terrible shirt

Capitalism is Terrible shirt

A shirt for cute anti-capitalists.

Jump!

Pictures of me jumping, for reasons.

Wet Hot American Summer logo

Wet Hot American Summer kissing supercut music video

A video supercut of all the times the characters awkwardly or disgustingly kiss in Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp.

Poetry Autocompleter

Poetry Autocompleter

Automatic suggestions as you write poetry.

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Poetry

Some non-autocompleted poems I've written over the years.

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Who in the Rainbow Can Draw the Line?

A short story.

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A Wizard Didn't Do It

A short story about a lazy wizard office worker in the style of Terry Pratchett.

Comic

Comics made from 2006 to 2014. Many of these make no sense at all.

Doodles

Just random doodles over the years.

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On The Other Side of the Mirror

A collaborative month-long fiction and drawing project with my friend shoofle.

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Photos

A collection of the best photos I took from 2004-2013.

Terrible version of breakout where the paddle bounces around too

Terrible Breakout & Persistent Editable Webpages

Projects I made at the 2019 Boston Stupid Hackathon. (2 minute project video)

Hamster Dining Set

Hamster Dining Set

A very tiny 3D-printed dining set for civilized hamsters made at the 2018 Boston Stupid Hackathon. (2 minutes)

Emoji Tokens

Fortune Telling with Laser-cut Emoji Tokens

I gave unique emoji tokens as gifts at Burning Man.

Exclamation point totem

Exclamation Point Totem

A wearable electronic exclamation point I fixed above my head to wear at Burning Man.

Bicycle Kayak Trailer

I made a kayak trailer for my bicycle that held two sea kayaks.

a pancake

Smoosh

An interactive essay explaining how large a pancake someone would make if they were smooshed down to a 1 atom-thick sheet.

light-painted skull

Light Painting

Having fun with long-exposure photographs.

Things I Made Before 2013

Art, album covers, shirts, custom Lego cars, tree ornaments, 3d-printed things, and more.

Trash Wagon Club logo

Trash Wagon Club

A parody website for a company that delivers artisan trash to people's houses.

PDQ game logo

PDQ Game

A digital version of a physical card game about being the quickest to come up with words.

Sims Patch Notes

Humorous Sims Patch Notes

My friend and I had a fun time coming up with fixes for hypothetical bugs in the Sims games.

Government 2.0

Random snarky suggestions for what "government 2.0" might be.

How to do Asynchronous Callback Functions in Python

A short code snippet.

Theory on the Relative Temperature of Lesbians

A scientific theory proven by Google Search results.

Code to Rhyme Countries and Quarterbacks

Taking a tweet way too far.

Dinosaur Comics panel

Dinosaur Comics character generator

Randomly generate a short story from a comic prompt.

DARPA robots falling down video thumbnail

A Compilation of Robots Falling Down at the DARPA Robotics Challenge (Brodyquest edition)

I just added music to an already funny video.

Funny Town Names in Massachusetts

I know, I can't believe it either.

Buttercup Festival Transcript

I transcribed one of my favorite comics.

Lyttle Lytton contest winners

Lyttle Lytton Contest Winners

I collected all of the Lyttle Lytton contest winning entries on one page.

horse

Pigeon Helmet

Inspired by my friend Misha, I bike around with a fake pigeon on my helmet to bring people joy and confusion.

Ozai from Avatar the Last Airbender burning off his robes with firebending and flying away with the text '5 o'clock? fuck this shit'.

Avatar: The Last Airbender Gif

How everyone ends their working day.

horse

Horse

Horse.

Things I'm Credited In

Projects in which I played some small part.

Scratch Logo

MIT Scratch

I worked as an engineer on this popular children's programing system.

Dynamicland Logo

Dynamicland

I helped create this research lab.

Clay logo

Clay.run

I was paid to make end-user programming prototypes for this startup.

Open Mile Logo

Open Mile

I was an engineer at this freight logistics startup for a couple years.

Picture of Northeastern's Resnet storefront

Northeastern University Resnet

I repaired student computers and volunteered to build many internal tools at my university's computer repair center.

4D Toys logo

4D Toys by Marc ten Bosch

A playground for building intuition about how four dimensional objects would work.

Parable of the Polygons logo

Parable of the Polygons by Nicky Case and Vi Hart

An interactive explanation of segregation.

Adventures with Anxiety game screenshot

Adventures with Anxiety by Nicky Case

An interactive story about our relationship with feelings of anxiety.

3 connected roulette wheels

Ronnie's Casino and the Nature of Reality by Adam Becker

An interactive exploration of a quantum physics phenomenon.

What If? book cover

What If? by Randall Munroe

Serious answers to absurd hypothetical questions. See my contribution on page 137.

Thing Explainer Cover

Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe

For better or for worse, I came up with the name for this book.

Me modeling an XKCD shirt

Modeling for the XKCD store

My short-lived professional t-shirt modeling career.

Dau Screencap

The Dau Project

I prototyped media experiences for this bizarre film project with 700 hours of footage.

Picture of Natalie Rusk

Natalie Rusk wikipedia page

I made a wikipedia page for my brilliant friend Natalie Rusk, in part to combat sexism.

Margin Notes system screenshot

Margin Notes by Geoffrey Litt

An example-driven programming documentation prototype.

Wildcard system screenshot

Wildcard by Geoffrey Litt

A research project to let people easily modify existing websites with a spreadsheet interface.

Potluck system screenshot

Potluck by Ink & Switch

A research project imagining dynamic documents as personal software.

Finally, if you'd like to see even more, there's an archive of glench.com from 2008 to 2018.