This page summarizes a few projects that I've worked on/with over the years. Some of them are digital manipulatives for learning; there is a tool to help hearing and hard-of-hearing friends communicate with each other; yet others aim to make human-computer interaction be a bit more bearable, with a few robotic friends thrown in for good measure. I hope you'll find something useful in these pages that help you playfully create.


Math Balance was a Things That Think toy built in the Spring of 2001 to help young children playfully learn algebra. Numbers were represented with blocks of varying weights: a block marked "3" weighed three times as much one marked "1". By placing two threes in the left basket, a child would "balance" out the equation by putting any combination of blocks that weighed exactly six in the right basket.

As she balances the baskets on her own (or collaboratively with others), a child constructs her own knowledge about numerical relationships and can explore concepts like "how far off-balance is this experiment?". Only when she asks it for help does the toy turn the dial on the colorful clock face to indicate the number needed to satisfy the equality. We prefer that the balance suggests the answer by implying: "you would need 3 on that pan to balance this equation", rather than pontificating: "3 is the only thing that will balance the equation".

image of a child playing with the math balance


Tweedlededum was a portable, 7-key chorded keyboard designed and built in the Fall of 1999 for electronically jotting notes one-handed. Consisting of an 8052-compatible microcontroller and a 16x2 character LCD screen, it also had a rudimentary text editor written in assembler. When plugged into a computer's keyboard port, a user can dump 20k of text into any program that accepted key presses.


Aileron is a GPL, IMAP-4-capable graphical email client for the BSD / GNU-Linux desktop, modeled after Mail.app from NEXTSTEP. It was designed in 1998 to integrate with the Window Maker window manager. It is feature rich, very easy to use, and looks good, if I do say so myself. This work has become a standard part of a number of GNU-Linux distributions, including RedHat and Sony's LinuxKit for PS2. Why yet another X11/unix email client? Read the FAQ. In 2002, GNUMail superceeded Aileron. image of the message composition using Aileron

image of the AfterStep Control Panel ASCP (AfterStep Control Panel) is another GPL program with the NEXTSTEP look and feel that allows you to painlessly configure the AfterStep window manager, a task that otherwise requires manually fiddling with configuration files. I took over development from Alfredo Kojima in 1997, evolved it into a GTK program, and eventually handed development over to Andrew Ferguson around 1999.



Beat Balls
3-DOF light tracking robotic arm
8051-based HP-48G Hardware Emulator
Baudot Terminal Communicator
Teacher's Large Little Helper
Rube-Goldberg Golf Teeing Machine




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