Be curious and kind whenever possible!

  • Thoreau's World.

    Created Thoreau’s World a web site for displaying Thoreau artifacts held by the Concord Museum with interactive elements inspired by NYT articles with embedded visualzations.

  • Observing With NASA.

    Created an Electron-bassed kiosk application for RLMG and the Center for Astrophysics: Harvard & Smithsonian to allow science museum visitors to investigate and maniupulate astronomical images taken by a wide range of NASA telescopes telescopes and observatories.

  • Making Nose Strips for People Sewing Masks.

    The pandemic arrived in March 2020 and I wanted to do something to help. I saw lots of folks were sewing masks locally for hospitals and first responders and they were being made either without nose strips to help shape and seal the mask where it fits over a persons nose or adapting household items that might not be stiff enough to keep the shape like twist ties or pipe cleaners.

  • Splitting a large red oak log to make cutting boards.

    I made a bunch of beautiful cutting and cheese boards from a very large short section of red oak from Schoolhouse Road in Shutesbury.

  • Intonation for small high-performance guitars.

    I’ve recently finished two small high-performance steel-string guitars inspired by the 1918 Martin 1-18 plans Ted Nelson created for GAL. There are some interesting intonation issues I am investigating that I suspect are inherently more difficult to ameliorate because the tops have been designed to work very efficiently with lightweight steel strings.

  • Learning something new can make all the difference.

    In 1982 I was working at TERC for Bob Tinker. TERC is a 501-C3 educational non-profit focused on math and science education and research and Ronald Reagan drastically cut back the Department of Education. For an organization that relied on soft money this was a big problem. Our grant funding was drying up.

  • Using LEDs to measure narrow spectral bands of light.

    LEDs can be used to measure spectrally narrow bands of light by connecting them to a high-impedance current-to-voltage amplifier and treating them like inefficient photodiodes.

  • Shiitake and Oyster Inoculation Party Fall 2018.

    Forest Voges and I are holding a another Shiitake and Oyster mushroom inoculation party on Saturday November 10th behind Forest’s house at 206 Cooleyville Rd, Shutesbury, MA 01072.

  • A hybrid guitar-dulcimer-mandolin.

    Imagine designing and build an instrument from scratch in two weeks! In Early March 2015 I was in the middle of a long-term project learning to build guitars from scratch. I was doing this with a small group mentored by a good friend John Fabel. Since I already had experience making all kinds of things I also ended up making many tools and making tools to make tools.

  • Imagining what could be.

    Sometimes the critical constraining resource is what you can and can’t imagine. In 2011 Google Foundation gave us a large un-solicited grant to recreate an HTML5 version of our Java program Molecular Workbench. I desperately wanted to shift what people imagined was possible.

  • Shiitake Inoculation Parties.

    Forest Voges and I have been hosting community Shiitake Inoculation parties every Fall and Spring for the last few years. We usually hold them behind Forest’s house at 206 Cooleyville Rd, Shutesbury, MA 01072.

  • Shiitake Inoculation Party, Spring 2018.

    A small group gathered … and it was raining … but we had lots of fun!